Chapter Text
"This isn't how I pictured this dig going, not gonna lie." In the middle of a surprisingly local woods, three figures, damp with rainwater and sweat, tried to dig up something worth their while. Dave stopped to take a breath, wiping some soil off his knees before glancing between his dig-mates. Unlike himself, neither seemed to be in fouler spirits.
"Hush up, doing it yourself never hurt anybody!" Chipped in Aradia with her trademark optimism. Despite being smeared with grime and soaked, her strong frame and unerring positivity leant itself well to this situation.
"Tell that to my shoulders." Dave grumbled, getting back to digging "And my shirt. If I'd known we were doing it ourselves, in the rain, yet at the same time stewing in ass end of summer heat, I'd have brought something I was chill with ruining."
"And would that have stopped you complaining?" Jake snorted from his own trench "I swear, you ought to have selected a different career my good boy, this one seems to rub you up the wrong way."
Dave groaned in frustration "I'm a paleontologist, I get paid to stare at dead shit and be like, yeah, it's dead. You assholes are the ones who decided it was a fucking excellent idea to come out here in the middle of wet season to look for something we don't even know whether-"
Clunk.
All pretence of the slick mud was dropped, Dave falling to his knees to push aside the thick slime, to find a large stone slab, with a fresh graze mark from where his careless shovelling had hit. The other two were already dropping in to join him, excited by the telltale silence of 'Dave shut up, that means there's something vaguely interesting'.
Aradia looked over the dimensions and confirmed what Dave had been thinking. "Judging from the shape and size, as well as the relationship to the foundations we found, I think it's a tomb of some sort."
"Yeah, exactly what I was thinking." Dave's voice gave away his grin. Finally, something he knew how to do.
"Well if there's something here, I suppose we ought to call in that dig team?" Jake chimed in, the only one unenthralled by the appeal of possible dead shit "Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed fucking with Dave-"
A face-full of mud later, Jake would regret that sentence.
The rain stopped just after the dig team arrived, and within the next day, the site was fully exposed, laid out for the more exact members of their team. Dave, professional oogler of dead shit, was of course called out to confirm that the graves, were in fact, graves. Surprise, they were.
The vast majority of them were damaged or caved in, but a few seemed fairly viable. In came the usual debate: should we open the boxes of dead shit? Another surprise: yes. It seemed like a useless venture though, six tombs in and nothing to show for it except what was either a stick or a rib. Dave wasn't licking it to find out. The seventh tomb was the saving grace of the dig.
The grinding slab was lifted to reveal an extremely well-preserved body, a few features such as a mass of black hair, a prominent arrow wound in the chest, and the lack of matter around the wrist bones standing out especially. Dave had the marvellous (at least to him) of examining the corpse. It was buried with respect, bit not in a way that suggested high status. A well-decorated soldier? A famous musician? It might not be a healthy habit to get into, but Dave always enjoyed the speculation more than the answers. Answers he would get, however, as a beautifully preserved journal lay tucked between the body's thigh and the wall of its tomb. Careful in the removal, Dave slipped it out.
"I wonder if it's rude to read the thoughts of someone who's been dead for hundreds of years." Aradia said thoughtfully as she examined the artifact in the safety of the tent, carefully plucking a stray spider from the spine.
"I wouldn't say so. And good gracious is this a rare opportunity, we can actually find out what the poor chap was like!" Jake weighed in, peering excitedly at the ancient book, jittering ever so slightly.
Dave was lost in thought, and must've gazed at it for too long to the point of even Aradia giving him a funny look.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say you had a crush on our new friend!" She teased, promoting a snort from the crusher in question.
"Hey, I like my men the way I like my- what's something with lips?"
"Tulips?" Jake suggested.
"Pussy?" Aradia lesbianed.
Through his laughter, Dave took the journal from Aradia "Both very good options. I'll give mudman's sweet teen diary a quick perv over and make some notes, you kids go play in the dirt before Jade makes you have a shower." As if realising how dire such a situation would be, the two hurried out, leaving Dave with his own thoughts as well as those of a centuries-old corpse.
It didn't take long to abandon his note-taking as Dave got lost in the historical sauce, parsing through the pages with a growing addiction. The author was a farm boy with big opinions about the state of his world. Antiquated language left him wondering from time to time, but this guy also seemed to have big opinions on when to curse someone out. Those opinions were "always" and "without mercy". Authentic historical texts weren't known for their humour, but Dave found himself chuckling from time to time.
The tale progressed into a more intriguing one, the kid progressing into a young man. A few stories of lost fistfights and catastrophic run ins with the local guards made Dave think this protagonist was probably a bit inept, but his heart seemed to be well placed. He started wondering if they could've been friends, flipping pages from tales of market places and how the harvest was going, ancient doodles, and of course, the overhanging curiousity about how this particular person died.
The journal turned from a rare find to a potentially priceless artifact as the story continued, until it became clear that this farm-boy, the one who Dave had spent the last day perving up the personal thoughts of, had in fact grown up to be the leader of a local rebellion. It was pretty well known from local records, which explained the circumstances of burial. He had a fair few people dedicated to the cause, stories of ancient espionage and intrigue being woven by a voice that was becoming more and more clear in the head of the unexpected reader. He could almost see him at this point, strong and tall from working a farm for most of his life, dark hair the same as the body he left behind. It was strange.
Dave was disappointed, not surprised, but oddly emotional to turn the page on an account of a plot to sneak into the nearby keep to find the next page blank. The story ended there. It made sense of course, anyone who knew what to look for could tell the corpse had been dealt an early death, but it was a shame. He thought he'd have liked to know the rebel's name after reading five years of his life, but the writer had seemed to be almost avoiding saying it. It was a shame, body names like "Lant Street Girl" and "Bamburgh Body" seemed dehumanising for someone who had written with such life.
He made a decision the night after closing the diary. The storm that had been kindly absent for the last three days was rolling back in, so the site would be closed until it passed on, and he wouldn't be called back unless more viable tombs were opened. So, he left the tent during the night with the journal and went to the still-open tomb, slipping the diary back where he found it.
It was strange to him how a corpse had gone from a specimen to a living being in a matter of days. Looking at him, he was just as dead and wrinkly as ever.
"All dried up like guy jerky..." Dave mumbled. It was strange to feel sad about this. He hadnt noticed the rain beginning to plonk down on his shoulders, but he cleared his head and stood up.
With an almighty slap, he slipped backwards, yelling out a choked yelp as his hand caught on a bit of broken stone, a large cut opening across his palm. He lay there for a second out of both shame and pure appreciation of the comedic tension of the moment before sitting up, groaning as he saw the gash on his hand, and that he'd managed to get blood on the carvings. Damn, if it wasn't for the incoming storm, he'd be worried Aradia would be mad.
Desperate to maintain some pride, Dave climbed out of the trench, throwing one last look at the rebel before heading in to get changed. He had to leave at ass-o'clock in the morning the next day, so he had no time to dwell on dead boys. Still, he looked back.
"Gonna have to replant the fucking begonias..." Dave mumbled, peering out of his kitchen window to what used to be his back garden, but seemed now to be a frog resort of some kind. Frogs liked puddles right?
The rain hadn't stopped in the last two days. The whole 5 hour journey from the dig site, it had rained. All through dinner with Jake and Aradia, it had rained. All through the night, kept up by the pat pat pat and the throbbing in his palm, it had rained. Rain rain rain. Poor rebel guy would be a soup by now, he supposed, stirring some sugar into his coffee.
He zoned out, gazing out of the window at the dark sky and the soaked grass, fingers drumming in time with the beat of the rain. He felt strange, he always felt out of sorts after a big find but this was really strange. He wasn't sure he liked it.
Snapping himself back to reality, Dave headed to the living room, plopping down onto the sofa and reaching for the TV remote. He coaxed his cat off of it (not his choice but when your sister's cat has 14 kittens it's sort of the rules you take one), and switched to whatever channel seemed easiest to ignore, gazing off into space.
Pat pat pat, drum drum drum, blah blah blah, noise noise noise.... KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.
Swearing as hot coffee stained yet another clean shirt, Dave grumbled and got up. Who the fuck was visiting him at 5pm on the wettest day of the year, and how soon could he get them to leave so he could return to his brooding?
He pulled the door open to see a person he'd never seen before, and almost immediately shut it. A smaller man, skin darker than Dave's but just as heavily freckled. In fact, they shared a few similarities. Freckles, dimples, some nasty scars, and the exact same shade of red eyes. What they didn't share was the look of seething rage on the smaller of the two's face, the dirt-caked skin, or the extremely ragged clothing that looked like it was grabbed from a museum.
Dave, dumbstruck, took about twenty seconds to say anything "Can I help you or are you just gonna stab me?"
The smaller figure inflated with rage "You very well cannot fucking help me, at least not now. First you read my diary, then you wake me up, nice going numbnuts, you're the worst grave robber on the fucking earth." He spat out.
Dave's nonplussed expression was all the man needed, and with a wet slap (there goes another clean shirt), he thrust a dirty, soggy book against Dave's chest.
"Well????"
Dave looked at the book. Leather bound, written in antiquated language, old, old, and old. It was the rebel's journal.
"How did you-"
"Get this? You know when someone's buried with something, it's typically easy to fucking get?"
Dave looked up with a start. No. No fffffffffffucking way.
"No."
"Yes."
"N-no?"
"Consider: Y-yes?"
Standing before Dave was an ex-corpse, the writer of the journal he'd spent the last few days becoming attached to, not only in the flesh, but with a hell of a lot more of the stuff than he had when Dave cracked him open.
"Congratulations, dumbfuck, you're a necromancer, and now we're bonded. Are you gonna let me in? I'm freezing my ass off out here."
Dave stood aside.