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Invader training is one of the most important types of military indoctrination available to irkens. Those that make it past inspection fresh out of the education plug are lucky, and those that manage to make the cut for recruitment are legendary. However, when it comes to performance in the field, surviving the trials of the standard courses for rookie soldiers is childs play compared to ranking out of trainee and stepping up to elite. Such was the case for the four particularly fortunate ones at the top of the class.
Most shorter soldiers were dead weight. They flunked their trials, fell behind on the field, or suffered a variety of other terrible fates including injury or death, on a few small occasions. Realistically, there should have been no reason for the two smallest recruits in the entire rank to end up in the same squadron as the tallest. These two, however, were not your typical short statured irkens. So, there they were, situating themselves uncomfortably close to their taller peers in the barracks they'd had since their first day on Devastis.
The smallest was the nicest one of the two. As nice as an irken could be. Her name was Tenn. Not many knew this, given she could hardly muster up a whisper to tell anyone half the time. There wasn't much else she knew how to do than keep to herself and do her duty, except for ride the coat tails of her closest companion, Tak.
Tak was miles less mild than Tenn in terms of temperament, and was louder and more confident in comparison. She did not mind her business most of the time, and often butted into everybody else's. She did not do as a typical shorter would and try not to disturb her tallers, and in fact had nitpicked and nagged them almost non-stop their entire first day on the field. She could carry her own weight in course training, often efficiently, and made sure everyone was aware of that any time the opportunity arose. Now was one of those opportunities.
Purple padded across the floor and flopped lazily onto his little bunk, sighing as Tak ranted at him whilst she made her bed, neat and tidy, something she was currently accusing her peers of never doing. "It is embarrassing," she spits, pulling a pillowcase tight over a perfectly fluffed pillow. "You would think two tallers would know something about image. But, no, you must make a mess everywhere you go. It makes you look lazy." She sets it at the head of her bed, pausing for a beat to adjust it among the thin headboard, then shoots an evil eye down at her exhausted bunkmate below. "You are lazy."
Purple rolls his eyes as he tugs his heavy steel-toed boots off, tossing them to the side and tipping over Tak's pair that sat carefully placed at the side of their bunks. She squints and sneers at the mud smeared across the metal soles of his shoes now strewn across the floor. "Yeah, yeah," Purple says, pulling the seam of his socks free from between his toes, "I'm a sack of shmoop." He unbuckles his utility belt and heaves a sigh of relief. "Leave me alone, will you? I'm too tired to argue."
There's silence for a few seconds, as if Tak is actually considering whether to continue nagging or not, until she huffs and lifts her neat blanket back. "Make your bed in the morning," she says, tucking herself in under it. "You know Poki checks the barracks at the end of every week." Purple mockingly mouths each word as she speaks them. There's a small pause then, in which Purple considers back talking Tak one last time before cuddling up in bed, before a gruff voice booms from outside the barracks. "Lights out," Commander Poki shouts, the sound of her steel toes clicking softly outside the door. Purple listens carefully as they pace back and forth a few beats before fading away. He lets go of a soft breath. He respected Poki as a commander and a person, but he'd be lying if he tried to pretend she didn't terrify him. Not that he was the only trainee that was horrified of her and her well disciplined demeanor. Even Tak held her tongue and her breath when Poki walked by.
The door clicks open then, though not to reveal an angry Poki ready to yell at any elites staying up late. Instead, a weary Red walks in, still scuffed and dirtied from a days worth of rigorous training. Purple sits up, perhaps a little too fast, bonking his head on the bottom of Tak's bunk. To this day, he was still angry she had bullied him into taking the bottom bunk in spite of his height. He hisses and lifts a hand to hold what would probably be a bruise by daybreak, rubbing his temple as he speaks. "Hey," he says, eyes following Red sluggishly walking by his bunk, "what took you so long? Poki already called lights out."
Red drops down onto his bunk across the floor from his friend's, the thin frame creaking under his weight as he does so. How these old beds held up the weight of two six foot teenagers, he'd never understand. He unbuckles his utility belt and sighs. "Restroom," he says flatly, stepping on the heel of his boots and kicking his feet out of them.
"Oh." Purple blinks. True, they hadn't had much of a chance to relieve themselves throughout the day. "Well, you got here just in time. Poki sounded like she was ready to skin someone's hide for being out of bed."
Commander Poki was prepared to pound trainees into an obedient pulp even at her happiest, but she had not been in the best of moods since the death of Tallest Spork. That's the second tallest lost in two years. An unlucky streak on the Empire, one that had shaken everyone to their cores, even the most hardened soldiers and disciplined commanders. Though, if Purple were asked to pinpoint the beginning of his superior's odd behavior, he would mark it after the murder of Miyuki. The war waged on Vort had left many irkens weak willed and weary, though Poki seemed to have never recovered from her time in the trenches. She had not been right in the head since.
Purple shivers at the memory of Tallest Spork's cries choked in the back of his mind for a moment, but tries to turn his attention back to his friend, who was currently slipping out of his tunic and into a torn up night shirt. He feels his face flush at the sight of the scars across his bare arms and back, embarrassed at how easily he recognizes and remembers the time he gave his once rival each and every one. He wasn't proud of how threatened he once was by another trainee of the same height arriving on Devastis at the same time as him. Nor was he proud of the times the two had almost killed each other sparring, perhaps too hard for practice. It was hard to believe this irken in front of him was not always a friend. Ever since they had started to unwillingly spend time together in training due to their similar heights, they had found a bond of sorts through their interests, and dare say, personalities. Two years ago, Purple would have laughed in the face of whomever told him he would come to respect his rival. Today, Purple feels as if he's known Red his whole life.
Red smooths down his old stained shirt and sighs. "Yeah, well," he says, sliding into his unmade bed and shuffling underneath his blanket, "you know how she is."
"Yeah." Purple pauses, waiting and watching Red ready himself in bed until he realizes he isn't going to say anything else. Not yet ready to give up the freedom the end of the day grants and go to sleep, he pipes up again. "Man, I'm not tired. You wanna play something before bed?" Purple had been a bottomless pit of energy since the education plug. His stamina was insane, and even after twelve hours of training, his pak was still alive with vivacity and would keep him wide awake for hours into the early morning. He often needed to wind down and bore himself with simple mind games until he drifted off. It wasn't unlike the two to play games from their smeethood or make some up on the spot to pass the time until one fell asleep.
"No," Red replies, roughing up his pillow to its full fluff, which wasn't much.
"Why not?" Purple asks, his smile starting to fade.
"Because I'm tired, Purple." Purple's antennas twitch at the irritation in Red's tone. Red pays no mind to the offense taken. "I've had a long day, okay? You can stay up all night if you want, but I'm going to bed like everyone else." He pauses, eyes flicking over to his frowning friend, then sighs and turns his face from him. "Leave me alone, alright?" His head drops down and hits his pillow with a huff, and then that's that, Red is ignoring Purple now and Purple is sitting there staring at him as he does so.
Irkens were not bred to be a benevolent kind, nor were they engineered to feel things as intensely debilitating as empathy. They were much more suited for more mechanical functions, the constant operation of the mind and body acting together in sync, the undying whir of finely tuned evolution which left no room for emotions. Each and every single irken had pure power razing beneath their skin, tight circuitry mapped out across their entire being, and it always complied to a schedule, a strict schedule of serving the Empire, the collective knowledge. An emotional irken is a hiccup in the functioning, a loose cog in the machine. Purple tries to think of Red like this, in terms of machinery. It helps lessen the sting when their hateful past rears its head like this.
Still, it hurt whenever it happened. Purple pauses, considering the possibility of Red snapping at him if he continued pestering him, before finally sighing and lying back into his bed. As much as he tries to act like he was, he was not an exception to Red's coldness. It's in him, in all irkens, to be cold, to be callous. It's simply apart of their code. Red always seemed to trip him up with his rudeness, always found his soft spot and sank his claws in until it hurt. Red knew, Red always knew what would hurt, what would deter him from feeling the emotion only weak defectives feel. Purple wasn't scared, wasn't shaken by Red's temper or his empty threats, but sometimes he thought, this is what's meant to be between them, and this scared him. The what if's, the could have been's that seemed hardwired into his brain from too many nights of overthinking his and Red's bond. The destiny of two irkens of the same height, to rise to the top together and fight til the other falls. The possibility of fate being more than a belief and more like a promise, one that makes sure one of them looses the other in the end.
He's keeping himself awake again. As he was wont to do. He sighs and runs his hands over his long antennas, brushing them flat against the back of his head, holding them there for a moment as he tries to steady his mind. He stays there for what feels like hours, tossing and turning, tortured by his overactive thoughts.
The barracks were a cold place, bitterly cold. Not even the bumble of half awake trainees tugging their uniforms on to the sound of a reveille in the morning breathed warmth into the rooms. Each one harbored a certain emptiness, even when occupied, that chilled the flesh to the core. Purple hated it. He hated these stupid, stuffy cabins and their stupid, shoddy lights and their stupid, too small beds. He shifts around the sheets, cramping legs uncomfortably tucked up to his torso. He's spent the last hours wide awake, tossing side to side, huffing and sighing, hoping to finally fall asleep to no avail. Restless, mind racing with thoughts, Purple rolls over and turns his attention to the bunk across the floor from him, onto the Red-sized lump beneath the blankets. Watching the sheets rise and fall in sync with his friend's shallowed, sleeping breaths, Purple stares at his figure through the darkness and tries to steady his mind.
He finds himself reminiscing the longer he watches Red, lying still and mostly motionless aside from the occasional twitch, simply unaware of his admirer not so far off from him. Reminiscing on their week, sifting through the memories, these little snapshots of Red he often visited in his head. Red from this morning, doing a one-legged dance around the room to pull up his pants as the morning reveille boomed outside the barracks. Red from the other day, punching Purple in the arm for tripping him up in training and threatening more if he did it another time. Red from last week, sneering at the pickles in his sandwich at lunch time and insisting Purple take them instead. All Purple's memories were Red, simply Red and no one else, in every imaginable scenario, every existence of him at once. Invader Red to commanders, irken I.D. #DC143C to the control brains, plain Red to Purple. Purple looks and looks at him, lying there only a couple inches out of reach, and he knows with everything in him that it will always be Red.
And, as your new tallest, I am proud to say you invaders in training are the future of the Empire.
A ringing in Red's inner ears. A pounding in his head. A change in the atmosphere. The main auditorium of Devastis was grand, with huge arching walls hanging overhead of the tiny irkens that often stood within, and a long, tall stage made of the finest metals conquest could find from across the universe. Many of Red's memories were made in this auditorium. His first day on Devastis, his promotion from trainee to elite, the council of war on Vort, the mourning congregation for Tallest Miyuki, and today, his first day as an invader, albeit in training. His mouth was dry and his hands felt damp and clammy to the touch; he had never been so nervous before in his life, even through everything he'd experienced before this. He had never before felt so small as he did in this massive auditorium, so infinitesimal surrounded by hundreds of similar irkens huddled side to side. Even Purple, standing proudly at his side, felt like a little insect here, another nothing in the grand scheme of things. lt is a very scary thing for irkens to feel small. Small irkens are disposable, worth nothing more than the dirt under one's claws. Red saw first hand what lives awaited his smaller litter mates from the smeetery on the day they saw the surface. Standing beneath the big stage in front of him, staring up at the newly anointed Tallest himself looming over him, felt suffocating, felt strange and unnatural for someone of Red's stature.
There's silence for a few moments, then feedback from a microphone. Tallest Spork leans into it with a smile and a simple demand. "Salute me."
Red gulps, goosebumps rising across the nape of his neck, and does as asked, as the rest of the auditorium did the same. One massive sweeping motion of elbows bending and hands hitting the air. Antennas silently wiggling above hundreds of heads. Satisfied, Spork stifles his toothy smile and continues to speak.
Red isn't so sure what was said next. All he can feel is a ringing in his head, a tingling in his toes, and all he can hear is the screeching of the microphone static, the droning sounds of Spork's mumbling. An ache in his chest, an anticipation. A rumble in the floor, rattling his whole body around from the boots up. And then it's sudden, suffocating confusion, all the sensations shattering as the auditorium erupts. Leaves a gaping hole in a wall, revealing the vines of crackling wires ripping from the rooms innards like a dripping wound, enough room for the beast to enter through the mechanical sinew of the wall and swallow Spork up in it's mouth.
The entire congregation of irkens explodes into cataclysmic screams, almost creating a sick harmony of horror that swirls around Red's head and consumes his senses. Then there's pushing, shoving, an oceanic struggle throughout the sea of irkens trying to trample their way to safety. Red is left standing ram rod still in the midst of the waves, staring slack jawed up at the terror towering above him. The thing has his tallest in its snaggled teeth, gnashing and gnawing his limbs between them until the bones break with shatteringly loud cracks. His tallest is trying to scream, trying to beg for help, but all that comes out are gurgled groans. Blood pooling from his mouth and sputtering from his body spills out the sides of the creatures jaws, a sickening shade of pink staining the entire edge of the stage, trickling down to the tips of Red's boots. Red stares and stares at the scene, eyes burning, stomach churning, and holds onto his last shred of hope that this is only a dream.
It's more than that. It's crashing sounds everywhere he turns, a cyclone of confusion swirling in the room and swallowing him whole and spitting him back out. It's a beast so tall he's craning his neck to see his tallest one last time before he's bitten in half. It's blood splattered across his body and dripping into his boots and it's desperation, a sensation ratcheting into something building, burning into resolve. It's an arm, white knuckled and strong, gripping onto his shoulder and spinning him around. It's running with all the strength in his weak legs, running with all the instinct to survive the remnants of his biological brain had in him. It's a realization that he's trapped in the room with this ravenous thing. It's irkens running to and fro across the floor, creating ripples in the crowd. It's sirens blaring somewhere. It's violence and it's death and it's the way the Empire works.
Nightmares do not become easy to deal with when they become repetitive. They are still memories, memories that Red has yet to mitigate the fear of. He tosses side to side, idly twitching, slightly panicked in sleep. Purple watches closely from the huddle of his bedsheets tucked around his body. Red was a shockingly light sleeper, someone who could be startled awake by the sound of sprinkling rain hitting the tin roof of the barracks. Not only that, he had an awful issue with insomnia, and when he did fall asleep, he lied as still as a pak-less corpse until he jolted awake hours later. It wasn't out of the ordinary for him to seem restless at this hour, but Purple's gut was twisted up into a worried knot, and he couldn't shake the thought that this was another one of his nightmares. After a few seconds consideration, he decides that if it is, he doesn't want Red to wake up alone.
Red had never understood how Purple could touch him, how he could stand to hold his heart in his hands. Not with the bruises from dumb decisions all across his body, not with his hideously calloused hands, not with that scar from that accident on that day, that rift of the flesh he received from that thing on that dreadful, deadly day. That nightmare of screams and shoving and something picking him up with terrible spiked tendrils and digging deep into his skin, down to the bone, down to his heart that thumped, thumped, thumped through his cracking ribcage. That distant dream of falling to the floor weak and wavering in and out of consciousness, calling out into the crowd, help, help, help, heaving as he's lifted into the arms of his savior and opening his eyes to the one steady thing in the sea of chaos and confusion, opening his eyes to Purple. Red, Red, Red, I've got you, I've got you—said with such clueless audacity, as if it meant something yet nothing all at once, as if hearing it said didn't feel like being stabbed in the gut by that terrible beast again. The remnants of the memories festering up a year in the future, stirring up inside Red like a storm that thrusts him into reality once more, jerking just as he's begun to bleed out in Purple's arms, just as he's struggling to remember why, why he let him hold onto him, why he let him save him—and then he's awake, choking on the air caught in his throat, tugging on someone else's tunic.
When Purple holds onto him now, it is as much of a shock as it was then, in that typhoon of screaming—the terror of being touched by him for the first time, the most shocking thing in the wide world—and he's holding him tight, clammy hands clasped on his shivering shoulders. Shushing him, a low hum in Red's ringing ears, he says, "I've got you," and it means as much as it did the first time the words left his lips. Barely aware, Red balls his hands into fidgeting fists, twists the fabric of Purple's tunic into his fingers and holds it there tight. It's all he can do to show him he needs him, all he can do to love him, because it was against an irken's being to love and be loved and the only thing they could do to communicate the incommunicable was claw and claw. "I'm staying," Red hears his savior say, and his cheek is then kissed, caressed. Red shakes, teeth clacking together, eyes welled with tears, and sobs into Purple's chest. Clings to him like a child, a child born out of guts and no glory, a child shell shocked.
They lie there for what felt like minutes or maybe forever, Purple tirelessly finding new strings of soothing things to say, Red feeling the heat of his breath in his face, legs tangled up together in the sheets and faces inches from each other, foreheads almost touching though not quite. Delirious, desperate, Red closes the last bit of space between them and lets them touch, lets Purple lean into him and hold him properly, hand around his head now and digging into the skin on the nape of his neck as he caves in and cries. "I'm sorry," he says, shushed, "I'm sorry," apologizing for something he isn't sure of. But Purple's there beside him, hands brushing his twitching antennas back against his head, shushing him and soothing him as best as he can, the way one would calm a crying baby. "It's okay, it's okay," he's saying, and though it really isn't, Red starts to trust him. He lets himself hold onto him, lets himself be held, a small indulgence he can afford to allow himself for a while.
They shift, Purple reassuring Red again and again, it's okay, it's all alright, and soon, Red starts to repeat him. "I'm okay," he breathes, hollow and haunted, "I'm okay."
And Purple nods, pulling him in and whispering hot against Red's neck, "You're okay," until the front of Red is flush against his own and the hammering hearbeat inside Red's chest calms until it feels like it could belong to Purple, until they can no longer distinguish where one of them ends and the other begins.
"I'm going to be okay," Red sighs, stilling.
"You're going to be okay," Purple says against his lips, "I know you will be," and kisses him like he is.