Chapter Text
“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”
―
Soft, you think when you see it. It looks…soft.
Only that’s not quite right.
It is armed with a knife that it wields like a single, long claw, and armored to protect its vital organs, but in between are places that are pink and fleshy. Yielding.
Soft.
You see it, and know that it is not your target, the smaller, even softer prey you are meant to retrieve. But you chase it instead.
It looks soft, but it is not weak. It fights, thrashing in your grip, as if your fingers are not like iron shackles. It is clever, too, not mindless like the lesser ones you shove out of your way that burst like overripe fruit upon impact. It blinds you to escape, falling from your grasp when you recoil to shield your eyes. Afterwards your vision is clouded with bright spots, but you can still hear its quick footsteps moving away. That’s fine. It is fast, but you are relentless. You do not need food or water. You do not know exhaustion.
But you do know hunger.
You corner it later. You could hear the rabbit-fast beat of its heart from where it hides, and it is nothing to smash your fist through the wood and drag it out into the open. It tried to hide from you, the way it did from the licking ones, staying quiet so that you would pass by, but you are a superior weapon. You can track it by the sounds of its panting breath, the scent of fresh blood from where the teeth of the others have tried to claim it first.
It kicks at your wrist, but stops when you grab it by the throat, the place your eyes had been drawn to earlier. It's just as soft as you imagined. Here the skin is thin, the blood so close to the surface you can feel the heat of it even through your gloves. You didn't expect it to feel so warm, this soft, delicate thing. This is the real difference between it and you. Not the softness, but the warmth.
It's struggling less now. Without realizing you had lifted it clear off the ground, letting it dangle by your grip on its throat. The noises it makes are quieter, too, air whistling through its gaping red mouth. It cannot breath. This is how you have killed targets before, choking the life from their lungs, or crushing the tiny bones in their necks.
This time, you pull it close to your body, letting its weight be supported by your own bulk and your arm around its middle. You keep your hand on its neck, but slide it around to the back, where the hair begins at the base of its skull. With the slightest pressure you could dig in your fingers, let the brain matter pop out like a cracked egg. You do not. Instead, you watch the way your fingers part its shaggy hair.
Now able to breath again, its struggles resume, but you have it pinned. Its limbs cannot squirm free to reach for the blinding weapon is used before, or even the knife that bounces off you, as insignificant as the sting of an insect.
It is so full of life, this small, soft, warm thing. And though you do not understand it, though your mission is to hunt and kill the targets inside this building, you do not want to snuff this one life out.
For the first time, you want.