Work Text:
You sigh, looking out at the woods. It had been a long mission. It was always a long mission, but this one just felt longer. And more heartbreaking. And so emotionally draining. You couldn’t sleep tonight every time you closed your eyes the vicious images of what you saw this week flashed behind your eyelids.
The woods were peaceful. Keyword, were. You let your shoulders fall loose, leaning against a tree when you heard it. Some small, strange laughter. You jerk up, your head whipping around. You were supposed to be alone. You had taken a small walk away from camp just to keep yourself from being bothered by your coworkers, and your base was miles away from the town.
There’s another sound, this time that of a stick cracking. Someone is closing in on you. You hear a soft pit-pat of fluffy feet on the loose dirt. Your heart starts to race, you have to figure out what to do. The obvious option is to run, except if this is a hungry animal they just give chase. You aren’t too sure about your likelihood to outrun a bear.
“I have a gun,” You announce, pulling your sidearm. “It’s fully loaded. I’ll use it,” You explain. If it’s a person, they should leave. Unless they have their own gun. If it’s an animal, you may end up in a standoff. Perhaps it’s wolves. Are there wolves here? You aren’t sure, but you know if you stand off against them they’ll get bored and leave.
The silver moonlight illuminates the small space you can see through, all of the trees breaking up your line of sight. You see a glimpse of fur. And then you hear laughter. Spotted fur, brown fur. Something meant for savannahs or deserts.
It finally creeps into your full eyeshot. Baby blue eyes piercing you. It’s a hyena. A fucking hyena in the middle of the woods. It’s snarling, growling at you. Its face is covered in scars. A brutal sight. It didn’t look like scars from animal fights either. They were too steady, too clean.
Who the fuck fought a hyena with a knife? It wasn’t even a fight, from how medical-perfect the cuts were. Who managed to keep a hyena still enough to do that? And why would they do that?
“Okay, I’m not gonna hurt you,” You assure it. You aren’t sure why you say it. You may have to. It seems to study you. God, whose eyes do they remind you of?
As it creeps closer, you see more of it. It was so buff and too big for a usual hyena. It has an almost uncanny look to it. Like yes, this was no doubt a hyena. It wasn’t a wolf or a bear. That was a spotted hyena. But then, was it a hyena? It may not have been another animal, but it was just…. off. Like a not-dear, or that one photo of the husky through the window. The thought that comes to mind, looking at its eerily familiar blue eyes is the wolf muttations from The Hunger Games. How Katniss explained that they were so much like the dead tributes, with their eyes and hair. Its face isn’t the only thing cut up, with scars all along its back. Like this big, curved one going from its left shoulder that turns up to meet the base of the back of its neck.
You back up slowly, watching the hyena as it keeps coming at you. It was slowly, but you aren’t sure if it was aggressive. You’re no expert in hyena body language. It comes forward until you’re all but pinned to a tree, sniffing at your ankles. It looks up at you, maw opening. You squeeze your eyes shut, you’re going to get mauled by a fucking hyena in a place where there should be no fucking hyenas. But before its teeth sink into you, some other poor animal makes a noise off in the distance.
It scurries off, leaving you alone in the woods, spooked. You sigh, looking back at your gun. Why didn’t you fire it? You don’t know. You get off the tree, turn around, and start walking back to camp. As fast as you can without making any noise. You don’t want to call for the hyena to come back and get you anyway.
Everything is dead silent back at camp. You creep through the dark rows of tents, looking around. They’re singles, so there’s only one person in each - the benefit of working for a PMC and not the actual military - and you stumble back to your own. You hardly notice that one of the tents on your way is unzipped.
You collapse into your tent, pulling yourself in and zipping up the tent. For a brief moment you let yourself feel comforted by the thought that so many people surround you the statistical probability of choosing you if it comes through is low. Then, you feel guilty, because you like these people. They’re friends, at the most basic part of it. Friends who you trust with your life, and who trust you with theirs’. And, you mean, the hyena has your scent, so who’s to say anyone else could distract it? You go back to thinking it might pick someone else.
You don’t sleep well that night. You rarely do, the military has ruined such a simple action for you forever. But that night was an outlier with how bad it was. You barely even feel rested, like you had blinked and awoken in the morning. Maybe even like you were running in your sleep.
It was way too early to be up when you step out into the camp from your individual tent. It seems no one else is up yet, bet you feel the need to look around, just for a little bit. Maybe you’ll sleep better if your subconscious accepts that the hyena really had run off. You wander through the camp, checking on each tent’s front, noting how once more all seems fine.
You almost slam into something, and you probably would have, if you weren’t so well trained. Instead, you backpedal, standing firm as you lean away from what you were about to slam into. It’s one of your coworkers, Nikto. Someone who didn’t speak to anyone much, who was a bigger fan of staring then speaking. That was how he was now, staring down at you. He was shirtless, a towel wrapped around his waist despite the fact that his mask was still firmly around his waist. You stare back into his eyes for a moment, blinking slowly.
“I’m sorry, Nikto,” You say, and he grunts before walking past. You watch as he slips into the one tent that was open the night before beside your own, taking note of the large scar on his left shoulder.