Chapter Text
The room shook with the loud music from the local band. The air vibrates with shrieking guitar and thundering drums as he moves towards the back. A drink, or two. Did he really drink so much?
A swing, a crack, and a fall. The last thing he remembered was the sight of running and large boots.
.
.
.
“When I was little, I had a small farm,” Cian started, a small, pitiful smile playing on his lips as he spoke. No one tried to stop him. No one tried to silence him.
“I had a sheep, a chicken, and a dog. That was what my parents trusted me with. But one day my father was mad at my desire to leave the family home when I’m older. He yelled and yelled, the day ending with me covered in bruises and the blood of the animals I worked so hard to raise. We ate lamb that night, my father’s farm dogs being fed hearty chicken.”
The soldier stared quietly at him, a curious, dark look in his eyes as he watched the bloodied and bruised man. “Like now?”
Cian simply chuckled under his breath, shaking his head. “No. Worse. ‘ Measc do chuid fola le do chuid ainmhithe. Foghlaim do cheacht.’ Do you understand what that means?”
The soldier shook his head, ignoring the quiet sigh of his comrades behind him. “No,” he said, a light Scottish accent in his deep voice, “I don’t know.”
Cian smiled softly, cracks echoing through the empty room as he twists his neck to wipe the dripping blood on his forehead onto his shoulder. “‘Mix your blood with your animals’. Learn your lesson.’ He thought that me being forced to kill my animals, my hard work, would make me more obedient.”
“It didn’t, though,” the soldier interrupted, holding out that old photo again. “Not with how ye got involved with Russians mobsters.”
The soldier looked at Cian with a look of quiet disgust, his short mohawk caked in grass and dried mud, light cuts littering the exposed expanse of his skin. His blue eyes were stormy like the waves of the North Sea, threatening death and violence to all who were not of his, those who did not already live in his heart, those who were not accustomed to his chaos.
The man behind him was no better, the dusty skull mask and piercing eyes making the abnormally large man seem more like an oversized guard dog rather than a full-fledged soldier. ‘ Perhaps he’s a rookie’, Cian would ruefully think.