Chapter Text
==> be The Sufferer
The village is burning.
You can’t breathe. Can’t breathe because if you do acrid smoke will roil down your throat and stain the inside of your mouth with the taste of charred meat. You don’t want to know what your friends, your family, taste like.
Gunshots; you flinch, then prick your ears. Sounds close, sharp and sudden, and you go very very still. Someone screaming, shrill and terrified —pleading—it’s suddenly cut off. You close your eyes against the silence, and hold your sons even closer.
They’re killing your people. They came in the night and they brought guns. Came while you were all sleeping and defenceless and there are so many of them and they just… just started killing. Sloppy, with fire and lead and little to no regard of how much damage they’d do, fast and careless and taking as much as they can. Dead or alive doesn't matter to them; they’ll make a fortune from the blackened bones alone.
They're harvesting.
You promised to keep your people safe and now they’re dead on the ground and you couldn’t. do. anything. You promised, fucking swore an oath of duty to watch, to protect, and you didn’t notice until it was already too late and all you could think of was taking your two boys and getting the hell out of here.
Karkat sobs against your throat, soundless and terrified. Not a sound, not a sniffle, being very quiet like you told him. Just wet panic smothered against your skin. At your shoulder is Kankri, twisting handfuls your coat between sharp fingers. You’re hurt, and the weight from your youngest son in your arms has the blood flow faster from your body. There’s a crust of it around your lips, too. You’d bind the injury, but the sight of the bullet wound would only frighten your boys more and there's just no time.
Everything throbs with pain, but your left side has gone numb, remote. The sick fury of your heart beating in your chest has you shaking and reeling until your gut clenches against it, heaving. Fuck. You can’t afford to be sick - better stop for a moment.
Carefully, you lower Karkat to the ground. As soon as he realises, he begins to shake like he’s about to shatter. His little hands grasp at your clothes in denial - then let go. He wobbles on his hooves like a new fawn until Kankri takes his hand. Sinking through your front legs, you drop down to their height and meet their eyes.
“I need you both to listen to me very carefully, okay?” you tell them, wincing at how raw and wet your words come out. Bleeding inside; probably your lung. You hope it’s not, but, yeah. Probably is. Whatever, you have three others. You'll be fine.
“Daddy,” Kankri says and something inside of you shrivels up and dies because you can’t remember the last time he called you daddy (daddy, not father). Karkat just stares at you with huge dark eyes, ears laid back and nearly disappearing into the mess of his curls. “Dad, Daddy—” Kankri repeats, voice going high and shrill with hysteria.
His nose is bleeding. You catch it with your thumb and swipe it away in a dark arc. “Shh, Kankri, I’m not leaving you,” you assure him. “I just need to-“
“They’ll k-kill you,” he blurts, voice ringing through the night. “Dad, they’ll kill you.”
You wince, cover his mouth. “Quiet!” you hiss, drawing them close and listening hard for a few precious heartbeats. Nothing. You allow a shivering exhale, but keep Kankri’s mouth covered. “They won’t, okay? I promise”- lies, lies, and he knows it, you can feel Kankri’s mouth twist with indignation against your palm -“but I need to go. I need to help our friends. Do you understand?”
“I’ll go with you,” Karkat says. He’s so small and grubby with his face a mess of tears and snot and ash, but he’s looking at you so seriously, pure determination plain on his chubby round face. “I’ll help.”
You kiss the top of his head and just hold him for a second, breathing in his comforting scent. “You’ll help me best by staying safe, Karkat, okay?”
He gives you this squinty frown, like he knows that’s too simple. Too young to really understand what is happening, but too damn smart for his own good nonetheless. “Okay,” he says eventually, reluctant.
“Dad!” Kankri protests again, a burst of noise against your palm.
“Promise me, Kankri. Take Karkat and hide. Be very very quiet okay? Now, promise me.”
Kankri’s bottom lip trembles. “Like a mouse?”
“Like a mouse.”
He nods, face dropping and shoulders shaking.
“Good boy, Kankri. I’m proud of you,” you tell him, hugging him one-armed. Then you straighten up and nudge them upwind -away from the hungry roar of the fire. “Go on, hide. Pick a big bush and crawl under it and don’t come out for anybody but me,” you urge and he goes, pulling a hesitating Karkat along with him. You keep watching until they’re out of sight, hating every single moment they’re further out of reach.
Almost, you call them back. So much that could go wrong. The wind could turn and they could be burned alive, or they could get found and slaughtered or… or you could simply fail to come back and they’d stay, they’d fucking stay because they’re good boys and they’d stay right there waiting for you until they starve or freeze.
Almost.
You don’t, though. You can’t bring them where you are going. Can’t. Can’t, unless you want 'could' to turn to 'will'. Press the heels against your eyes, hard, take a shallow breath. Turn around and walk right back where you came from. You have to do this. Have to - you’ll never forgive yourself if you don’t. Even if you’re too late, you have to go and see with your own two eyes.
The village never was very big, but it seems endless now. Thick with fire licking at the wooden houses and up the trees, leaving dark, blistering scabs in its wake. Thick with the bodies of the dead on the ground. Some you recognise. Some you don’t; too much damage, just crisp husks contorted in agony.
“I’m sorry,” you tell them. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Your eyes water with grief and smoke. And with anger. This pure, vicious rage poisoning your blood and clawing your hands with the perverse need to rake the skin from your body until it can pour free in all its miasmatic glory. The heat pulls at your fur and dries out your eyes, but you think it might be coming from within you; this spitting mania with a sharp undertow of wanting to hurt. Hurt and rend and tear until something gives between your hands - it’ll never be enough for this.
Nothing can ever pay for this. Nothing. No pain or fear or misery or blood can ever pay for this.
The smoke gets thicker and the hungry growl of the fire nearly deafens you. Wish you had something to defend yourself with, fuck, you didn’t even take your sickles. No time, just your boys - nothing is more important than them. What good would your sickles even do against their guns, really? They’d blow a hole through your chest before you could even so much as scratch them.
You trip over something.
Go down on a knee hard against the hard-packed earth and shake with horror. Warm. Small (no, please, no). You look.
“Mituna,” you groan, already reaching. There’s blood matted into his endearing, fly-away hair near the temple. His small body is strewn across the forest floor like a child’s discarded plaything. Alhena’s son. Where—?
“Don’t move, bambi.”
The barrel of a gun sways into view. Under your hand, Mituna breathes - shallow and thready, but still alive. You swallow, try to shift yourself over him, making a shield of yourself.
On the other side of the gun is a human. Blonde curls are matted with dirt and his cornflower blue eyes narrow as you deliberately meet them with your own dark ones. “Fucking hilarious,” he scoffs through gritted teeth. “And here they keep saying you lot are as smart as we are.”
“I daresay we are,” you answer. “Lower your gun.”
“Or what?” he returns with a barking laugh. “What could you possibly hope to do? See, you’re just a dumb talking animal. I have a gun, and you don’t. Did you ever watch Bambi, bambi? Do you know what happens? No? Get up before I blow your brains out.”
You hesitate.
“I’ll shoot the calf,” he snarls. “Just get the fuck up—no, leave it, ’s not going anywhere.”
No way to see if Mituna is conscious or not, how bad the damage is. So you get up, allow yourself to be herded for a short distance -barely a few steps. Your eyes are down to watch where to put your hooves… getting lightheaded now, not good. The world is humming, sad wails ringing through your skull and your whole left flank is wet and sticky red, your hide keeps twitching involuntarily against it. More blood there on the ground, too, gluing sand and dried leaves to your hooves. Couldn’t possibly come from you, there’s a great big puddle of it which smears away into a trail. A trail that leads to a pile of bodies.
Tegmen, your sister, is standing before it, little Meulin clinging to her front. One arm she’s using to support the child, the other is holding a dagger pointed straight out a lanky woman with a high caliber rifle. Tegmen’s missing one horn and her right eye is crusted shut. Someone hit her, and hit her hard. Can’t see her lover, nor your nieces. The Disciple and Nepeta either, for that matter.
Despite yourself, you glance at the pile. There’s more poachers swarming around it, reduced to slinking shades against the throbbing red of the flames. They gather close to the bodies like vultures, gloved hands and sharp implements pecking away. A whole night’s work. Through the remains of the trees you can see a smear of dawn in the distance, gray and delicate above the blaze of the burning fields. Seems far away.
Tegmen sees you. “Kammar,” she sobs your name. Lost and heartrending, and you know they killed Elnath.
The second of distraction earns her a rough jab with the rifle. “Shut up! I’m saying it one last time, put down the calf and lie down on the ground!”
Tegmen shakes her head, lips going flat and defiant. Chin held high.
“Tegmen-“ you begin.
“DON’T YOU MOTHERFUCKERS TOUCH HER!” The Grand Highblood stalks into the clearing, two guns trained on him and bleeding from a gash so deep the skin folds away like tattered rags. He’s carrying Gamzee on his back, the boy’s short arms clinging to his father’s waist. Kurloz comes behind - half dragged along the ground by a big brute human with hands as big as shovels. Still conscious though, and struggling against the cruel grip on his arm.
“Algedi,” Tegmen groans. “No.” The dagger wavers.
“It’s alright, sister,” The Grand Highblood answers. “It ain’t no big deal.”
“SHUT UP, ALL OF YOU!” one of the poachers roars, striding over to join the woman holding the rifle who’s still menacing your sister. “For the last goddamn time, you foul bitch, put the calf down or I’ll fucking blow it straight out of your arms.”
A frisson of terror runs down your spine. “Tegmen,” you plead with her. “Tegmen, put Meulin down, I’ll—“
The butt of the shotgun slams into your head and the world unhinges even more so. This time you do throw up and flounder down to your knees besides. Vertigo swirls behind your lids and your fur goes damp with sweat.
“—FUCKING KILL YOU MOTHERFUCKING SPINELESS AR—“
“KAMMAR!”
“—shut the hell up, make them shut—“
You hold up a hand, let them see you’re fine, it’s okay, this is the least of it. They can hit you all they want, if that’s what it takes. If they want to grind down your bones for potions or rip out your tongue and cook it for a priceless delicacy, sell you off piece by piece, they can have you, you don’t care. Let them go, you say, or you think you say, your voice is so sluggish and muddled you can barely make out the words you are speaking. Take me instead.
That’s when Meulin shrieks, this high note of pure fear that Kurloz echoes. The man has grabbed for her, has a handful of the child’s hair and is pulling at it until her head is bend backwards at a precarious angle. Tegmen lashes out, hacking at his arm with the dagger.
For a moment everything slows down. Feels like you stand there a whole lifetime over witnessing the glorious undulation of the fire reflected on the blade as dagger glitters through the air. The arc of Tegmen’s hair and the fervor in her eyes as she rises to defend a child that is not her own. The thick oiled clack of a shotgun slide, a gun being loaded — and then being aimed.
That single moment takes centuries and yet you don’t have enough time to even shout her name.
The shot cracks through the air. Tegmen jerks unnaturally as the bullet rips into her, through her, and she goes down still holding Meulin. Neither of them move.
Someone is making this goddawful keening noise into the ensuing silence.
“Bitch tried to stab me,” the man says, apparently unperturbed that’s he’s covered in bits of your sister. They killed her. Both her and Meulin are still shapes on the ground.
They killed Tegmen.
It’s you making that noise, you realize. You try to stop, she’s dead, she’s dead, it doesn’t help, they killed your sister. You clap a hand over your mouth to muffle the noises and find your whole face wet with - you don’t even know.
“Motherfuckers,” The Grand Highblood says in a low, rolling grunt. He lifts his left foreleg and hacks hard at the ground. “You’ll fucking wish you hadn’t motherfucking done that. Kammar—“
You look at him. See the look on his face and begin shaking your head, no. No no no no, fuck no, NO. “Algedi no—“
He’s huge and heavy, this great hulking mass of muscle topped off with curving horns and hair running from head-to-spine in this crazed, tangled mess and he just… just gives you this near mischievous grin and answers: “Algedi yes.”
And then he throws Gamzee at you.
“—get the fUCK OUTTA HERE, BRO,” he roars, and fucking explodes into motion. All you can see is his muscles churning under his hide like steel and his horns going down and one of the poachers is howling—
—your arms are suddenly full of Gamzee, and Kurloz is right behind and he has Meulin, how even… no, no time. A human body spins through the air, arms and legs flapping loose and slack like a lifeless doll. A salvo of gunshots ring through the air as all the poachers try to shoot him— no time, fuck, FUCK, no time, you have his boys — you shove Kurloz ahead of you, and Meulin is lolling along disoriented and slick with Tegmen’s blood, but alive.
Mituna, still motionless — Kurloz just fucking picks him up and slings him over his shoulder like it’s nothing.
Behind you can hear Algedi laugh and roar and snarl, and guns being fired over and over again.
You?
You fucking run.