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Missions never went as planned, that was a fact Lind had learned in the Marines from the get-go. Perfectly laid plans could go up in smoke in a matter of seconds, leaving nothing behind but whatever spark decided to set the world alight. It was how he landed himself here, wherever here was.
The cells of the walls were white, almost like snow, but proved instead to be a beautiful unyielding stone. It wasn't exactly ideal, but nothing was escape-proof–Lind knew that much. His captors seemed to have thought ahead, binding him with seastone. The sensation made his teeth itch and the beast whose will he shared ached to pace through the cell. Neither enjoyed the idea of being confined, but there was little he could do in the situation. Lind’s back hit the wall as he slumped and slid down. The Stalking Hound, caged over a kid– the bitter thought crossing his mind with vengeance, eyes squeezing tight. It was supposed to have been a simple mission: one target, one hit, then leave. It wasn't something he had hesitated on before, not like this.
The debrief had been short and sweet, he’d be taking out one of the heads of the Revolutionary Army. He saw the bounty, the name, but he hadn't been ready for the fact that someone whom the government feared so much was just a teenager–a teenager who had given him the beating of a lifetime when the shot had missed.
“Sad way to end a career, to suddenly have a moral objection to something…” Lind spoke out loud just to hear the sound of something that wasn’t just his breath or the pounding of blood in his veins. He wasn't quite sure why he was being held–he was the enemy, a tool of the government. Maybe they hoped they could torture secrets out of him, or maybe the stay of execution was to make him sweat, or worse, hope.
His head pricked up as he heard someone approach, their heels clicking against the white stone the whole building seemed to be made of. Lind couldn't do much, as bound as he was. Still, if there was a chance to escape, he had to take it. He let his head drop like he was sleeping, slowing his breath as he counted the steps.
The door opened with a creaking groan of metal too long unmoved, and his red eyes, nearly shut, flickered up. Brown heels waited at the end of legs clad in black stockings–a young girl, he noted, not ideal. He waited, breath baited, then snapped out, muscles tense as he lunged, only to have her foot connect hard with his ribs. Lind groaned, doubling over as she kneeled down.
A slender hand went to her face as she frowned and Lind could see big brown eyes regarding him both with annoyance and pity, “Sabo said you were going to be a handful,” she said, “Come on. You have to keep the seastone on until you behave, but you don't have to stay in there anymore.”
Lind coughed as pushed himself to his feet, both pride and body now more bruised than they’d been before. The girl wrapped her hand around the chain between his wrists using it as a leash to lead him, her pace brisk, as if they had a timetable to keep. She tugged firmly anytime he faltered, expression a little grim.
“I don't like using these, but from what I heard, it's necessary.” She groaned, free hand rubbing her face, “I told Sabo not to go alone…he's lucky you missed.”
“I don't miss, I…” Lind tried to say, but no, he had missed. He’d hesitated because a teenager had looked at him as if he’d known Lind was there. “Fuck…”
“Call it what you want.” the girl shrugged, pulling him into a room with a long semi-circular stretch of counter, with seats placed along the outer curve of it, “The point is you're here now and you have a choice to make.”
“Choice?” Lind echoed back, realizing now for the first time in a very long time he was afraid, “What choice do I have in any of this?”
“You have the choice of where you go from here and why.” The stern voice cut from across the room. A man with dark skin and darker hair addressed him. A tattoo inked in red crisscrossed down one side of his face. With arms crossed, he allowed himself one final glance out the window before turning to their captive in full.
Behind Lind, the door swung open again and the young man he’d failed to kill, Sabo, strode in with a loose nonchalance that could have passed for indifference. “You called, boss? Oh–” His familial smile wavered when he caught sight of the sniper in chains, but it swiftly broke into a warm chuckle. He slid into a seat without waiting for the order, “--you’re here too. This should be interesting.”
If their ‘boss’ was bothered by the teen’s casual disrespect, he made no indication. His gaze remained firmly pressed on Lind. “Koala, he won’t be running off with those chains on. Let him go.” There was something hiding behind his guarded expression–a small disquiet centered on the seastone shackles that linked Lind’s wrists. Or maybe the man’s brows perpetually pinched in. Maybe his mouth always turned down that way. Lind had no way of telling. He gestured to the seats stretched out before him, allowing Lind his pick–or to abstain if that was his wont. “I’ve been over your files, Collart, your history. Your childhood experience with nobility provides you with a unique perspective that many in your current position lack.”
A twinge from the corner of Sabo’s lips told little but a sliver of discomfort.
The man continued, stoic. “The organization whose employ currently keeps you also seems to be shifting its goals. Less assassinations. More leeway to hunt on your own…” SWORD had been lucky not to experience complete upheaval when its former director died. Their current had not directly contacted Lind yet, but with so many old orders still adrift and being carried out, it would be some time still until its new ringleader could wrangle some semblance of control back as agents dipped in and out of contact. “Your experience with them speaks volumes of your skill. But knowing what you know about the belly of this world, about the pain your own government plays blind to…”
Sabo shifted in his seat and his smile faded, replaced with something more serious and befitting on his post as his superior continued.
“But because of the tumult in your ranks, wouldn’t you agree–now would be the most advantageous time to disappear…if one had to?” The man’s head tilted just slightly. “Do you understand?”
Koala released the chains without hesitation, her gaze still focused on Lind before it shifted between Sabo and Dragon. She didn’t protest, though as she stepped aside, she kept within striking range if Lind decided to do something foolish.
Lind fell silent, eyes darting between Dragon and Sabo. How could they know about SWORD? It was supposed to be secret–black ops to be whistled up in the dark, to strike where the Marines couldn’t. The fact that these people knew that, knew about him , when everything was supposed to be under the strictest of confidentiality…the possibilities made his guts ache like a knife had been twisted in them.
“Then I understand that someone managed to slip into our ranks and feed that information back here.” There was a hiss as air pulled through his teeth in a way far more animal than human, “I understand that if I had known who my target actually was, I would have been far more careful.”
Would’ve, should’ve–there was no walking back from the past or failure. Whatever changes Dragon spoke of were likely going to be of no consequence in the long run. The weak got culled quickly and the sympathetic even more so. Lind rolled his shoulders, jaw set as he defiantly locked his gaze with Dragon’s.
“A threat to stability needs to be put down, no matter the cost. You’re worse than that…you’re a vector animal. You carry a disease for something that makes people bite the hands of those that shepherd them, like a dog with rabies.” Lind spat, wishing he could loosen the shackles on his wrists, the ancient predator that shared his mind ready to defend itself. He would do the deed if he could–like his father had set upon thieves in the forest. Nobility was nobility for a reason, Lind had always been told. To steal from them or harm them was tantamount to killing a demigod. It was his duty to keep them safe, to keep the stability the world enjoyed.
Sabo bristled where he sat, terse. “Stability at the cost of innocent lives isn’t stability. It’s oppression, theft, murder–I could go on.” Though he hadn’t been privy to whatever plan Dragon had for the captive operative, Sabo had still seen the intel on Lind when it came in fresh. Perhaps his own missing history was the reason why Dragon had reeled Sabo in for this–was he meant to be the bridge for the poor bastard?
When Dragon gave him the berth to continue, Sabo did.
“I came out of Goa, you know.” He couldn’t recall his family, but he remembered too clearly waking below deck on the revolutionaries’ ship, horrified by the idea that the people who had saved him might return him. With elbows on the counter, his gloved fingers laced together, raised to prop his chin upon. “They ruined the land around the kingdom–buried anything beyond the walls that they could reach in garbage piled so high, you could smell it for miles in the country.” Second-hand knowledge, but accurate. “When they decided they didn’t like the idea of being seen with poor folks milling around in their refuse, they decided wholesale murder was good enough and set fire to it all.”
He clicked his tongue. “When you’re born too poor to produce the capital to start a business, what can you do when no one will help you, based solely on the status assigned at your birth?” Sabo looked him over slowly, his gaze raking as he watched for any little nervous tic or twitch to sell Lind by. He shifted subject slightly as he decided to slice in a little closer to home for the other. “When the climate shifts for the worse for the year and starves out your village, what do people do when their neighbors with enough to leave to spoil turn their noses up, simply because they see their farmers as lesser? That’s not stability. It’s cruelty.” he answered, “And I think you know that.”
Another twist of the knife, one that rendered Lind’s mouth open like a strung-up fish. His jaw snapped shut as he tried to recover, forced onto a back foot he had not foreseen himself on. The knowledge of his homeland wasn’t classified and anyone who knew where to look could find it. –still, to hear it out the brat’s mouth with such confidence…
Once upon a time, Lind had known. He’d known and it had dogged him through his childhood, rearing up in nightmares that bubbled up night after night ‘til he’d found the will to bury it all away. Rain had fallen too sparsely for the short growing season and when winter had swept in, following too harshly, people ventured onto land that wasn’t theirs, as the starved looked for succor from the uncaring.
“Isn’t that what lambs are for though?” As a child, Lind had posed the question to his parents–his curiosity led by a learned disdain for souls poorer than he. Today he leveled it squarely at his captors, even though he knew the answer. People were not sheep to feed the hungry wolf–they were people with red blood, no different from those who would use them. Lind had been young at the time, one of the lucky children to survive that winter. The nobles that employed his family, even while others starved, always had fresh meat–even when the deer had all fled and there was nothing else to hunt. Despite it all, like the nobles, his family always had food–even as townsfolk disappeared, leaving fewer and fewer to work and produce anything …the realization clicked in his head. His face grew pale, as he swallowed.
“It’s more than cruelty, it’s…surviving on the flesh and blood of those you were supposed to look after.” Lind felt sick as the revelation struck him like a shot from his own rifle. He swore, the taste of bile rising in the back of his throat, making him choke. How long had that knowledge been pushed aside? How long had the fond memory of pork crackling on the fire in the kitchen where his mother worked been the bloody aftermath of his father’s sins? “I thought I had forgotten that…”
Sabo held his tongue. Dragon spoke, a hand flat against the counter at his vantage across the room.
“Handouts can ease those suffering, but in the long term, only empowerment can help them to their feet and give them the balance they need to stay standing. We help those who cannot help themselves. And when they realize they still–despite every hardship they’ve endured–have tooth and claw, have their voices, their rationale, their kindness and fury in equal strides where they thought only despair and apathy remained…”
Sabo leaned in, “What he means is that sometimes everyone needs a light to continue on. If you’d been grown during that famine, would you have folded to the demands to kill your own kinsfolk? Or would you have started looking for a way to dismantle the foundation that allowed anyone to make those demands in the first place?”
Dragon rumbled, “Your answer needs not be immediate. But I'd like you to consider it nevertheless.” Again his gaze flickered down to the chains at Lind’s wrists. How laughable that they–the people who wanted to break the chains of the world’s enslaved and oppressed, hold a man with the very same shackles under their watch. But precautions were precautions. And while the sniper might not immediately agree to bolster their ranks, Dragon believed fully that given space to breathe and time to think, the man would come around. “You’ll be offered a room for the time being. Unless you’d rather return to your cell. The choice is yours.”
There was no nobility in suffering. Lind had put down enough sick animals in his day to know that and perhaps that's what he was now: a sick animal, like the one he had accused Dragon of being, with snapping jaws and rending claws. And instead of that threat, he was being offered a kindness, one to ease that suffering for a moment.
“I’ll take the room, if just to…think some things over.” He didn’t realize how quiet his voice had gotten or how big the room suddenly seemed. Despair loomed before him, greedy as it always was, but he wouldn’t let it have him. Not now…not when something was being given so freely. “--and I don’t know what I would have done, to question it now would be pointless wouldn’t it? I can not undo what happened then, just like I can not purge the flesh I consumed to survive.” His voice cracked as he spoke, doubt slipping in for the first time in a long time, “But…that’s the point of this isn’t it? To see if I can make the choice to do better, to be better.”
Lind didn’t know if he could. Would his masters take the collar off his neck? Would they turn a blind eye to their trained hunter turning feral, biting the hand that once fed him? Or would they send another like himself to put him down?
“I would rather the comfort of a bed, than the floor of a cage.” Lind said, “Falcons rarely do well in cages.”
The smile returned to Sabo’s lips, warmth in the expression, and hope within it. You could lead a proverbial horse to water, but you couldn’t expect it to take up arms as a terrorist in the name of righteousness. While he hadn’t expected Lind to fumble so soon, to see genuine regret flush across the man’s face– Well, Sabo got no joy in the other’s suffering, but getting to view Lind’s realization that he could change despite past misdeeds… that felt good. One step on the right path could easily lead to the next.
“I can take you to one.” he offered. “It’ll give me time to cozy up to the man who wanted to take my head.” For attempted murder, he certainly seemed unconcerned. But having felled Lind once in combat, he could likely repeat the performance in record time now that they’d returned to his home turf. “Unless Koala wants the honor, that is. I mean–I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” he teased, “He’s kind of cute for a–” Sabo blessedly avoided the low-hanging fruit of ‘maneater’ , and instead settled on the uninspired, “--marine.”
Frowning, the gravitas around their fearless leader slipped and shattered as Dragon rolled his eyes.
A precocious and prodigious fighter with a whip-sharp mind–as Sabo’s calendar rolled to mark his sixteenth year, he’d become a whirlwind of trouble hellbent on making himself everyone else’s problem, whether they liked it or not. Despite this, he followed his duties within their group to the letter, which meant any aggravation caused was less a threat to any security and more of a middle-grade annoyance.
Honestly, had he been less charming, someone would have strangled him. Hopefully, with age, the young man would mellow out.
He stood and crossed the space to his friend, addressing her first and foremost and he playfully rapped his knuckles against her arm. “C’mon, what do you say?”
Returning to the vigil they’d found him locked in at the window, Dragon chose to ignore the exchange.
Koala snorted, lips pressing together in a look of frustration as she slapped Sabo’s hand away from hers. Unlike Dragon, she was far more willing to let her annoyance be known with her field partner. She had been to hell and back with him, but that didn't stop the ever-present, bubbling urge to thrash him within an inch of his life from creeping out.
“Take him, you handled him once before. I think like this it'll be easy.” Koala said, shaking her head in disappointment, “Also, he's not my type, and he's a little old don't you think?” She punctuated the words with a little nose wrinkle, her expression telling Sabo more than what she was willing to say out loud. She didn't think Sabo would do anything too reckless, but with how godsdamn annoying he had been recently, it was within reason to worry. “Besides, Hack and I have new recruits to work with today. I don't think you need my help to keep a Zoan in line, do you?”
Lind snorted, “So that's it, just like that?” He had expected something a bit more lengthy, but instead of torture he was being offered a bed and time to think. What was worse now, was his target was now volunteering himself as his escort–a bit of humiliation that made his face flush.
Sabo’s chuckle gently filled the space between the three of them, amiable as he gestured for Lind to follow. “Would you like it some other way?” Koala was right–he’d be fine. Without so much as a wave to his fellows, he herded the man out. “When I was given the order to bring you in, I had a feeling Dragon might want to talk to you. I didn’t think it’d be for such an open invitation though.”
Their home on Baltigo wasn’t a palace of decadence, but it had enough creature comforts to keep them from losing their minds in the middle of nowhere. In the bulk of their carved-in facilities, decor was almost non-existent, but each claimed room held a wealth of little reminders pointing back to the person who lived there. Some decorated with reminders of home, others with mementos from lands and people they’d aided. Some erred toward their hobbies, while others kept things simple.
Sabo’s room was a mix of photography and illustrations–most of the latter were fantastic, seemingly impossible things to most in the Cardinal Blues–like sky islands, dinosaurs, and monstrous men tall enough to pierce the clouds as they stalked the sea. The former were all dirty, smiling faces–children scuffed from rolling in the dirt as they played in the woods, men and women at work in their trades, filthy from sweat and soot–and all accompanied handwritten notes. Firsthand tales, old legends, ancient folklore–everyone had a story and Sabo had begun to catalog every one that passed him by.
As they came upon his door, left open for all passersby to see, Sabo paused–a small mercy to let Lind begin to put himself back together.
“Outside of acting defensively, this place was never meant to be your grave. I can say that much for certain.” Unlike Koala, Sabo had never taken up the chain that hung heavy between Lind’s cuffs. “Breathe. Talk to me. You’re carrying a lot.”
Weight would be an extremely mild way of putting it. Old memories he had long since buried, pushed aside for the idealized scarless childhood, now rushed to the surface, unbridled. Lind was certain his brothers knew–they had been far older than he during the famine–the eldest almost a man at the time, with their middle brother just old enough to help their mother in the manor.
He would breathe though, sucking in heavy exhausted breaths that threatened to turn into hysterical hiccups of frustration. It would have been better if this place was his grave, he could at least have earned back the semblance of the peace that had been ripped out from under him. A snort escaped–a self-soothing gesture to try and ease the instincts to flee or fight.
“Why should I speak to you? You already know enough to dredge the shit from where it should be left.” a growl escaped, shoulders tightening as he shook himself as if still possessed of feathers, “Is this how you get people? Offer them pity?” Lind knew his anger was irrational, that the urge to snap and bite were because of old scars, freshly picked open, but there was also deeply ingrained distrust. Why should his target care? Why should he offer to listen unless it would be used as a leash to choke him down the line? “Why do you care so much about any of this?”
“I didn’t know today would be a recruitment pitch–but I trust our boss enough to pick up the leads he lays down. So when he started up, I took what I knew about you and applied it. In my defense,” The earlier flippancy began to peel back in layers. Underneath, a young man well accustomed to pain and unafraid to reach out despite the threat of more waited patiently. “--I didn’t know you’d forgotten. Some folks never understand the reality of their actions until it’s coming from the mouth of another. I figured that was your case.” It was like watching cracks form in an old road, unable to take the rolling weight of another loaded cart. It sparked a brilliant and new curiosity in Sabo–he wanted to jam his fingers into those cracks and pull and twist until the heart hidden beneath it pried free, beating unhindered for the first time in decades.
That sort of behavior, however, was generally frowned upon, and even Sabo understood full well that one didn’t just charge in blindly when it came to deeply set trauma. People needed fresh boundaries as they navigated old and aching hurts, and their own tailored balance of safety and support.
“And it’s not pity.” he corrected. In his short years with the revolutionary, he’d comforted countless people: a hand on the shoulder, fingers carding through grimy hair, or a firm embrace to pull them back to themselves… Here though, he couldn’t see it appropriate to reach out to Lind yet–not physically anyway. All he had were his words. “Pity is more like,” he waved a hand, “...judgment. You’re helping because they’re less than you. Compassion and empathy though–that’s understanding the pain. Maybe it’s not point-for-point, but getting it enough that you want to help them back up alongside you. Not because you’re better than them.” Sabo took their shared pause to lean back against his open doorway. “We care because we’ve all been there. We’ve all seen it. Isn’t that enough?”
“Most would say no, but again…that's the point isn't it?” Defeated, Lind practically threw himself onto the bed. It was better the steel bunks from basic, far more comfortable than the continuous nights of camping that had been stretched out between orders.
It gave him a moment to take in the decor. Some of the images he recognized–places he had known briefly, others he had seen in books as a child. A wave of homesickness churned under the guilt and doubt. Lind hadn't had a real home in such a long time–just stops along the way, and for someone who was both a pack hunter by means of Zoan fruit and social by his own nature, it had left its own sores.
“I know some of these places…” Lind forced himself to sit upright, “I didn't think your reach extended that far–outside of rumors, that is.” Not the revolutionaries would considered it a reach, more likely it was seen more as inspiration given–the voiceless were given a voice that could no longer be stifled under the boot of tyranny. Lind had turned a blind eye to it before, he’d been compliant in it, but now he was being forced to look at those he had dismissed for what they actually were.
They were people, no different from those who held power, outside of poor luck.
Sabo hadn’t intended his room to be part of their offer to keep the man, but seeing him momentarily melt into the space kept his smile kindled. And as Lind’s gaze picked his way from photograph to photograph, Sabo watched him intently.
“We go where people need help. Then we do what we can.”
There were other photos besides his displayed collection, bundled up and set away for times when the work drained Sabo past his ability to guard his weariness. They lacked the joy and beauty of those pinned haphazardly to his walls. Those hidden ones reflected the grim realities of missions failed and locales reached far too late to do anything but stand in a quiet only achieved in the wake of successful extermination. Those photos carried ash and fractured timber from homes burnt to the ground, trampled crops coated in the blood of slaughtered livestock, and too, too many for his liking that contained nothing but the blankets shielding the dead.
Whenever he wanted to crumble, to run and never look back–he took them out and carefully untied the twine that held them and went through the stack, one cold image at a time. And every time he laid his hand on the stack, he knew that no matter the final cost to himself, he’d never be able to leave, for the cost it would inflict instead on countless others. And despite that, there was no resentment toward Dragon or any of the other revolutionaries. He loved them, dearly, desperately even. Because of them, Sabo would accept help himself when he needed it, but he wouldn’t stop moving forward with them.
It built an ugly paradox around their group. Sabo wouldn’t wish the weight yoked upon them to anyone, but the burden only lessened as their numbers grew. The world had to unite to see real freedom.
It…really wasn’t fair. But that’s why he kept on–so one day it could be.
“If you want,” he reached out to a sheet of hastily torn notebook paper and unpinned it from its spot paired to a photo of shipwrights on a distant shore, looking up from their discussion of blueprints spread out across the sand. “--you can read the stories I’ve got. All I ask is that you pin them back up where you found them. “ He passed the sheet down, filled with neatly penned lines. “This one’s about a Klabautermann and the sailor that saw it.”
“I know that one, young Marines always hope to see one,” With surprising care, Lind took the paper offered–a soft wistful smile crossed his face and split into one that was all teeth as he read, “You get greenhorns from the North Blue, tucked into bed with tales of such things, who hope that they will get to see one.”
A dismissive snort followed and Lind shook his head at the thought. He knew better, even though he had also grown up with such stories. He could remember grandparents who left sweets and cream out for the spirits that kept their houses safe, and the whispers of young men who had been spirited away by women in the woods. Most of it was nonsense, but it still brought up a pang of loneliness he hadn’t felt in a while.
“That’s the problem with Marine ships though, no crew is on one long enough to form a bond with whatever spirit that may be there.” Lind's thoughts drifted to a man he had met in basic, who hailed from the North like himself, all red hair and a sense of righteousness that Lind had found charming, “We barely to get to bond with each other outside of a lucky few, so how do you think the ships feel?”
Sabo held his tongue for a moment, thoughtful as he let his mind percolate. “Well…” he mused, “If you stick around, you can ask Windy.” He took a seat on a large chest, legs stretched out before him, crossed at the ankles. “I’ve been with the old girl for six years now, and others like Dragon–even longer.” Wind Granma had held him safe and sound after his little boat had been reduced to wreckage in Goan waters, and in all the time since, she’d never let him down. For all the anxiety held within his young bones, even on the most frightening of missions, she’d never failed to put him to sleep at night with her gentle rocking.
“--but only if you stay.” Sabo corrected, then added, “ I’d like if you did.” Only Lind could decide that, but Sabo hoped the man’s heart would lead him, not whatever the navy had pumped his mind full of. “Not everyone gets a chance to see the world for what it is. It’s ugly…and scary, more than it ought to be, but if you can keep standing despite that, it keeps you honest. I like to think that’s worth something.” Reaching up, he plucked a photograph down and passed it over, “Dinosaurs–” he grinned widely, his words a knowing tease. “Cool, right?”
Ah, Lind had heard those words before, or something very close to them. Out in the old training yards, a normally stoic face had split into a wide grin. Lind could hear the voice clearly, as he stared down at the photograph.
“You’re the other Zoan right?” The young man’s voice cracked in excitement, hands grasping at Lind’s shoulders as he stared him down, “The one who took the Utahraptor?”
Lind sucked in a breath, not realizing he was almost choking on it. He hadn’t realized how tightly he had held on to those memories–the only meaningful bond he’d formed with another person since he’d joined the rank and file.
“That’s…an allosaurus. I’d know that crest anywhere.” A bark of laughter followed that melted into a ugly sob. As he leaned forward, “Damn it…of all the things to get to me, it's him.”
Sabo hadn’t meant to strike a chord quite as sharply as this. The confession could have meant anything, but rather than speculate, after a heartbeat of hesitation, Sabo shifted over to the bed–closer, but for a palm or two of space between them–a space still all Lind’s own, one he could curl in upon if things became too much. “I sincerely doubt you mean the one in the picture–” Soft, judgment-free, gently, “...if it helps, can you tell me about him?”
Lind turned his head to wipe his face off on his shoulder. Cuffed as he was, there wasn’t much else he could do but that. He hadn’t expected to be gutted as he’d been, especially not at the hands of someone who had already beat him in combat.
“Drake….his name was Drake. Idealistic, but a realist at the same time. He came in a little older then most of the new recruits but…” Lind paused, shaking his head, “We were both ancient Zoans, big ones too, so it was better that we were paired together.” Another grin followed as Lind remembered their exhausted superior calling him over–
“Diez swallowed a fucking grunt.” the man had hissed and spit, face red as he yanked Lind over by the arm to the flustered looking man, still green in the cheeks from vomiting, “You field him from now on.”
“He…had an accident on one of his first transformations. Swallowed a man whole, then had to vomit him back up.” he said, thinking about how mortified his new friend had looked, “After that, they threw us together, probably because I was a problem child, but also because if he tried to swallow me, I wouldn't go down easy.”
“Prehistoric love at first sight or just predatory pals?” Sabo nudged the man gently with an elbow, his lips pressed tightly together between words as he struggled to will away the laughter pounding in his chest for freedom. Even if the story was riotous (and it was), it wouldn’t do to bark in the man’s face over the loss.
Lind looked a little pensive as he considered the past, “Maybe, I considered it but I don't think he was into men, or at least not into me.”
“Actually–” Sabo cut back in quickly. Lind’s story was a wonderful starting point to build upon… Rising to his feet, he repinned his Klabautermann tale back with the men who’d shared it with him, then offered a hand down to Lind, optimistic. “Come with me. Our ship’s docked. Meet Windy with me and you can tell me the rest along the way, deal?”
For a heartbeat, Lind simply looked at Sabo’s waiting hand. It was always frightening to take a step forward when he had no idea of where things would go from there. At least he could be comfortable in the knowledge that he was alive for the time being. “Uncuff me and I think that can be arranged. Or least cut the chains.” a shrug followed before Lind seized his hand, squeezing it on reflex, “Do that and I'm all yours.”
A million things could go wrong in indulging the other, but Sabo had whipped the man once already. Worst case, he’d do it again. Holding tight, Sabo yanked Lind to his feet. Catching the chain between the shackles with his free hand, he crushed the fistful with a brutal, yet satisfying crunch. “Dangerous words,” he laughed. “I’ll hold you to it.”