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When war was first declared, they handed out jobs. Niki was designated to feed the army.
It made sense that she got it. As a former baker, she had experience with handling food and cooking meals. Besides, with her lackluster fighting skills she knew she could do way more good in the kitchen than she could ever do on the battlefield.
When she first got her role, Niki was content with it. That was before she learned how hard it is to feed an army.
Now, Niki wasn’t dumb. She knew that in wartime their stores wouldn’t be overflowing with resources and food. She expected to have to ration, to limit what and how many ingredients she used, and to use every bit of said ingredients to their maximum potential.
But she wasn’t quite ready for the reality of having to provide meals while under siege. Tubbo was the main resource gatherer. He was the smallest. It was the easiest for him to sneak past the walls and the watchful eyes of the Dream Team.
While Tubbo did try, and bless his heart did he try, what he brought back was never enough. Not for six people.
It wasn’t necessarily his fault. Due to his size, he could only carry so much, even less if he wanted to be conspicuous.
Niki tried to supplement it with farming, but the resources within the walls were limited. The farming helped though. Kept them alive on the days or weeks where the Dream Team ramped up their perimeters, killing any opportunity for Tubbo to get in or out unnoticed.
Still, it was never enough. Not for six people. Not for six people fighting a war on the daily.
It broke Niki’s heart. To see her boys come back after a long day of fighting, completely exhausted and famished. For them to sit down for dinner, to eat til their plates were spotless, and for them to still be hungry. They were never sated. Niki didn’t blame them. She could never make enough. There just weren’t the resources.
The thing is, hunger kills. Thanks to her farming and occasional fishing, no one died from hunger. But still, hunger killed.
It killed their spirit. Every night, they would go to bed, doing their best to ignore the pangs and let the relative bliss of sleep distract them for a while. But as soon they’d return to the land of the living, they’d be welcomed back by the all too familiar ache of emptiness within them.
People became irritable. They picked fights with each other. Their hunger had nothing to feed on but their patience and sanity.
Stuck in the same cycle. Wake up hungry. Fill up a little. Fight. Fill up a little. Fight. Fill up a little. Go to bed hungry.
There was no escape from it.
Well, no escape but death.
Hunger killed them in battle. It made them slow, sluggish. It made their bones easier to break and their wounds harder to heal from.
And hunger killed their morality. The stomach has no conscience.
The others may have never suspected anything. But Niki knew there was something up with Eret. His cheeks had been less sunken. His skin less sallow.
No one else noticed. Their brains were too addled with hunger to pick up on such details. But Niki had less physical activity to burn energy. She did.
He was getting fed and as much as she hated to admit it, it wasn’t by her.
But Niki kept her head down. Eret’s business was his own. Maybe he had a secret stash somewhere or had found new resources. She hoped for the best but braced for the worst.
Hunger will turn a proud man into a beggar and a good man into a traitor.
Niki wasn’t there when it happened. He invited her to the final control room, but as she explained, she had to watch the pot. She did take the time to wave the five of them goodbye. Only four came back.
Armorless and clearly devastated, they refused to explain what had happened, only proclaiming that Eret was a traitor and enemy of the revolution.
Her suspicions were confirmed when they all denied the soup she had prepared for dinner. They weren’t hungry.
She had hoped for the best but braced for the worst.
She never expected the worst to be treachery. To sell out. To lead his friends, his countrymen to their death.
Feeding five people was a little easier than six. Everyone got a little more on their plate every day. But being a little less hungry never filled the new void in their hearts.
Losing a friend to war is hard, but at least when you lose them in battle, you can still treasure their memory.
When you lose a friend like this, you don’t have them or the memory of them to take comfort in. The memories you share are now corrupted. You can’t look back on them without being haunted by painful thoughts: “Were they already faking?”, “Had they already betrayed me by then?”, “Was it something I did? Why did they do it?”.
But for Niki, the thing she hated most about the hunger wasn’t how it corrupted Eret (don’t get her wrong, it was certainly up there). What she hated most about the hunger was how it affected the little ones.
Tubbo, Tommy, Fundy.
Sometimes they passed the time talking about the food they wish they could have. They would press Niki for stories from when she worked in a bakery, pumping out confection after delicious confection, unrestrained by siege and war.
Tommy would talk about his brother. Not Wil, the other one who didn’t live here. He apparently had a farm with fields that stretched as far as the eye could see, if not farther, and with more potatoes than one could mentally comprehend. Niki taught them how to say Kartoffel. Tubbo talked about how badly he missed having chips. Fundy mocked how the Dream Team would probably call them “fries” and then they would all laugh.
All of the boys would brag about how they would eat so many potatoes that they would burst. They talked about it so casually like they knew that feeling of being full like the back of their hand. Pretending like 'til their deaths in the final control room they hadn't almost forgotten how it felt to be so full you physically could eat no more.
This period of hunger would haunt them for the rest of their lives. In weak bones, poor hair, shoddy skin. Might even kill them through their heart.
While Tommy was tall for his age, Tubbo and Fundy hadn’t finished growing. With the lack of food Niki was able to offer them, they may never grow to their full height.
Niki felt guilty for that. She felt guilty every time she couldn’t fill their bowl to the brim. Every time they looked down at their empty bowl, silently disappointed that the meal was already over. Every time she looked in their eyes to see a soul years older than a teenager. Wartorn, tired and oh so hungry.
How she wished she could change it. Be able to feed them. Stuff them full of the cakes and sweets and biscuits she could make with her eyes closed and one hand behind her back if she only had the resources.
But she didn't. So long as this war continued, this siege prolonged, there wouldn’t be the resources.
Niki knew that feeding an army was hard, but being unable to was even harder.