Chapter Text
You know I’m breathless as I come undone before you.
There’s someone behind him, and there's something fond and heartracing making itself at home in his chest at the mere thought of this person. As if he was just about to say something, something happy or exciting, and he finds that he really enjoys the feeling. Like a nervous breath before the plunge into a cool spring during summer.
The sun is setting far in the west, bathing the rolling sands of the Badlands in molten gold and deep pink before their eyes, and a warm breeze plays gently in his hair as he turns to speak to the other person standing just a few steps away.
They’re beautiful, he thinks when he meets their eyes and they smile in that infuriating, addictive way he’s come to adore. He knows at that moment that he wants, needs to say whatever it is that makes everything behind his ribs feel like butterflies, and he feels so oddly safe in his conviction that it’ll end with something world-altering and good. The person he’s with has never made him feel like he has to worry or feel dread for the future, and with that emotion rooted deep within him he opens his mouth and-
“Augh! Fuck, Gibby! Eyes on the road, please?”
The van swerves violently, the two sitting in the back getting jostled, and Jurard gets rudely awoken to the sight of not a south Elysian sunset, but instead a very irate-
“Ruze.” A fleeting, warm and far too honest feeling skims over his newly awoken mind as he speaks without thinking, disappearing as he gradually comes to and takes in his surroundings. His voice isn’t much more than a sleepy croak, but unfortunately Ruze seems to have heard him anyway and throws him an irritated glare.
“What?” The question is sharp and short, like the crack of a whip, and Jurard has to bite his tongue to not snap back and risk starting something.
Things haven’t been so great between them recently.
”Sorry, sorry, no damage done.” Comes from the front seat, Goldbullet steering the heavy vehicle with a calm smile, as if they weren’t weaving through a rock canyon and narrowly avoiding the outcroppings at breakneck speed.
Octavio rides shotgun, and even his usually impassive and unflappable nature has turned just a smidge jittery at having the front seat to Goldbullet’s joyful dance with death, but he manages a giggle as he throws Jurard a glance over his shoulder. ”Hey, sleeping beauty. Good nap?”
Jurard blinks before his brain catches up, the dream now all but gone from his memory, and he shrugs with a lopsided smile. ”Eh, I guess. How far is it now?” He doesn’t feel refreshed, waking up to the root cause of his sleepless nights didn’t do much to improve his mood, but that was less important at the given moment. Keeping morale high and the team together was of higher priority.
”Fifteen, give or take a few.” Their sniper answers as he veers sharply to the right, a hair's breadth from clipping a cragged boulder, and chuckles. ”This shortcut shaved at least thirty minutes off our ETA.”
Across from Jurard, Ruze grumbles. ”I wonder why nobody uses it, I really do. Since it’s so convenient and all.” He’s holding on to the rack above him with a white-knuckle grip, looking like he’s fighting for dear life to not get thrown around like a leaf in a storm (Jurard sympathises, because he feels just the same and he suspects he has a few bruises to show for his brave battle against Goldbullet’s experimental driving).
From the driver's seat comes only an amused chuckle and a delighted: ”Oop, there we go!” As Goldbullet opts to ignore the muttering complaints.
Silence falls in the van again, occasionally broken by Goldbullet’s little exclamations and Octavio’s humming, and Jurard takes the opportunity to gather his wits. His fingers are looking for something to distract him with as he’s growing more and more uncomfortable with Ruze’s silence and refusal to even look at him, and he finds the familiar coldness and weight of his guns. Those’ll do. He unholsters one carefully, letting the pad of his thumb brush over the worn and treasured crest engraved on the side of the stock, and checks it over piece by piece with sure hands. He might not have the aim that Goldbullet has, but he does know his weapons of choice very well after having to fend for himself while running away from-
”Watch those things, idiot.” Ruze’s voice cuts through the start of some very unpleasant memories, and Jurard lifts his eyes to meet the monster hunter’s pale lilac ones that are narrowed in irritation. With a jerk of his chin, Ruze gestures down at the gun in Jurard’s lap, the barrel vaguely pointing in his direction.
”They’re not armed, I haven’t put the cartridge in.” Jurard mumbles, taken off-guard by the admonishment, but angles the weapon away almost instinctively as he’s told. It’s gotten harder and harder to roll with Ruze’s increasingly volatile temper; they either end up at each other’s throat or ignoring each other for days, and now is not the time for any of that. Their chosen bounty will be a demanding one, not only for its size or well-earned infamy but also for the scorching summer heat and the terrible terrain they’ll be forced to fight in.
It’s… not an ideal situation. But Armis had taken down bigger and worse marks before, and this would land them a reward big enough to take a few, much-needed days to rest. Buy supplies, fix up the undoubtedly banged-up car, stock up their paltry medical kit… Jurard wrinkles his nose at the thought of spending so much, but they’ve been running on recklessly little for a while now. So while the bounty might be difficult, it’ll be worth the extra effort. Not to mention, it’ll earn them generous amounts of fame.
After a few seconds it’s clear that Ruze has decided not to answer him, so his itch to snap back thankfully simmers down. He’s left with an empty kind of hopelessness instead. He doesn’t know how the two of them ended up here, what he did to make Ruze this opposed to his very existence, and it’s starting to grate on his already fraying nerves. Jurard can be magnanimous and understanding for a good long while, but he’s beginning to feel like Ruze should either say whatever it is that has him this pissed off, or get over himself. He just doesn’t understand! Jurard had only ever tried to be friendly and, recently at least, tried to understand his comrade better and grow closer. Ruze didn’t need to know why, and Jurard absolutely didn’t plan on telling him, but he hadn’t done anything bad or something to warrant… this.
…
… Or, maybe he has a little bit of a clue. It just burns with hot shame in his belly whenever he thinks about it, like a heavy piece of hot coal composed of regret and embarrassment, so he prefers to hide behind feigned ignorance and petty, temporary anger. Most days it works, and he’s become a master at lying to himself when he needs to protect his stupid, hopeless emotions, but…
He’s certain the prestigious monster hunter looks down on him, and has done since… well, since they met, Jurard assumes. Ruze has become increasingly vocal and open about this during the past month, the banter they had has turned ugly and pointed, and it confirmed a lot of the things Jurard already suspected. And still, he craves every look and every word aimed at him, because it was better to hurt than be treated like nothing.
Jurard grits his teeth and double-checks the bullets in the cartridge, counting them silently in his head. He won’t fuck this up. The hunt will go off without a hitch, they’ll come out of this with gold practically bursting from their pockets, and he’ll show them all that he can be the leader Armis deserves.
Be someone they’ll be proud of.
Someone that Ruze isn’t ashamed to have by his side.
Ruze doesn’t know how he’ll be able to keep up with them all.
Not physically or in skillsets, because there’s no denying who the most prolific and successful monster hunter is in their group based on the sheer number of kills, but… whatever it is the others have that he doesn’t. Dreams? That weird, illogical thing that drives them forward. He didn’t have many of them left after what happened to his old gang, to be honest. Days came and went, he survived and pressed on. Goals? He had those. Kind of.
Not in the way that Jurard did, though. Based on the multiple times their self-appointed leader has tried and failed, and tried again and failed again, he should by all accounts have given up. Gone back to whatever ruins he crawled out from and stayed there.
But Jurard doesn’t. He burns as bright and hot as the sun, and Ruze wonders when he’ll have to start looking away before the light will turn him blind. That light, that fiery stubbornness isn’t for him. He’s long since accepted that, made peace with the fact that Jurard would never be someone he could hold on to, no matter how much he’s grown to want to. He would inevitably smother the flames at some point, would get so terribly burnt in the process, and then he’d have to live with the knowledge of what he’d done.
Pragmatism, and a well-developed skill in compartmentalisation has served him well in recognising, and subsequently stowing away his naive emotions before they got out of hand. They were neatly tucked away, not needed and definitely not something he’d act on. It was all fixed up nice and orderly, and he could keep on living his life and have his tentative do-over with new people without anything complicating it.
He was truly content like that for a while.
Until Jurard kept sauntering over every invisible line Ruze had drawn in the sand, wouldn't stop worming his way closer and closer until Ruze’s skin started to ache from the proximity to the heat, the light, the sun. So he pushed back hard, needed to create space for himself because Jurard couldn’t know, but the damage was already done. His neat boxes had been torn open by that bumbling idiot, and they were almost impossible to put back in order because Jurard just kept pushing and pushing and-
The van momentarily creaks loudly before gravity takes a pause as Goldbullet crests a hill far too fast, making the heavy vehicle catch some air-time. It lands with a shrieking crash of metal, and the back where he and Jurard are clinging to the racks and seats starts smelling faintly of motor oil. He throws the redhead sitting straight across him a glance, and isn’t surprised to see him looking a little worse for wear. A small, unwanted part of himself wants to reach over and help him, pull him closer to stop the smaller man from being tossed around the back of the van, but he quashes it quickly and looks away. He can’t and he shouldn’t, and entertaining such a thing is unproductive at best and catastrophical at worst.
”Woo, open roads here we come!” Goldbullet cheers, and through the wide front window Ruze can see the arid Badland plains stretch out in front of them, meaning they’ve cleared the most uncomfortable part of the journey until they enter the rougher gorge further ahead. ”Sorry for the turbulence gentlemen, got a bit rocky there.” Their sniper chuckles.
Octavio sighs dramatically and slumps in his seat. ”Finally! I thought we were toast back there!”
The car creaks as if in protest, but the smoother ground soon lets them all relax and prepare as best they can while passing the time. Ruze absentmindedly runs his fingers over Zephyr’s hilt, the motion and texture under his hands grounding in a way that takes his mind off of the things troubling him, and focuses on the battle ahead. Jurard had, in one of his less useless moments, procured two big maps of the area to plan ahead. It was a desolate, uninhabited swath of land between two settlements that’d previously been fairly undisturbed, except for the off-chance a trader or hunter wanted to take a dangerous shortcut. That’s how the beastie they’re hunting had been able to grow big without anyone noticing at first. Nobody bat an eye if a herder lost a goat or if a roaming merc was never seen again out here, that was just an expected loss in the outer areas, but when a corruption beast the size of a small house had been spotted wandering far, far too close to the villages… yeah, they wanted the thing gone. The bounty was a joint request from both villages, with a hefty reward sum to boot so Jurard had been quick on his feet snagging it.
Ruze didn’t mind, he was looking forward to sinking his axe into a challenge, and hopefully brawl out some of his frustrations as a bonus.
They hide the van in a shallow canyon a fair distance away from where the corruption beast was last spotted, going over the last of the intended battle plan. Goldbullet has already shouldered his pack, prepared to start the trek that’ll take him to higher ground and to hopefully establish a visual. They’ve followed the directions they’d gotten from the locals as best they could, the heat and the early-year dust devils making the tracking more difficult than they first anticipated, but now they’re certain they’re just an hour or two away from the anticipated roaming grounds of their prey.
Jurard shifts on his feet as he looks out over the craggy, barren land, something unsettling creeping up on him for no discernable reason. Things would go fine, he’d made sure to pay attention and to prepare, they were all here and had a solid strategy. Nevertheless, there was something about the place, or the day or the current tensions running like a dark undercurrent through their interaction that disturbs him. He usually doesn’t have a problem with fighting on unknown ground, but-
”Jurard? Are you listening?”
He startles and tears his eyes away from the wasteland and the heat haze shimmering across it like water, only to meet Octavio’s bright, inquisitive gaze. Apparently he’s missed something again, and he hopes Ruze didn’t notice. He doesn’t know if he can take another off-handed, surly comment without blowing up.
”We’re all set. Gibby’s radio is working and he’ll move out in a minute.” Octavio’s voice is light, but Jurad recognizes the gleam in his eyes for what it is. He wants to ask and have answers to something else, something more personal. Octavio sees and understands a lot more than Jurard would like sometimes, perceptive little shit, and he doesn’t need him to start picking at things that are too raw for even Jurard himself to touch.
So he decides to look away, pretends to be interested in double-checking his meagre field-kit, and answers with a toss of his head. ”Great! We’ll hang back and wait for him to get in position, and then it’s hunting time boys!”
The words are a call to battle, something to rouse the bloodthirst they all carry in one way or the other, and even for his own odd mood, it works. There’s something familiar, intimate and deadly sharp in the feeling that starts seeping into his muscles, and he greets it like an old friend. From the looks of it, so does the rest of the unit.
”That’s my cue.” Their sniper says and breaks away from the group by his van, raising an arm in a half-assed salute in goodbye. ”See you out there!”
Jurard follows his retreating back until the sun makes his eyes water, and they all move towards the thin strip of shade the cliffside offers without speaking. They need to reserve their strength, and heatstroke was a bitch to deal with in the middle of a life or death situation. The sun was merciless and there were no second chances out here. From his place in the shadow, Jurard tries to focus on Octavio’s gentle, quiet humming and his thin fingers plucking the softly glistening blue strings of his chosen weapon, but his eyes keep darting towards Ruze. Who has his face turned, pointedly shutting the rest of them out except for when Octavio pesters him for his attention. And that’s… fine. Just fine. Jurard doesn’t feel hurt by this at all, he decides, and busies himself with trying to memorise as much of the map as he can with a dull mix of longing and guilt.
They whittle away the minutes in relative silence, taking a last look through their packs and supplies, until at last the radio crackles to life in Jurard’s hand.
”Found a good nest for myself.” Goldbullet’s distorted voice relays, before continuing: ”I got eyes on the mark, just a few paces north of you. You’re welcome to come over anytime.”
“Roger.” Jurard leans into the swell of excitement, lets it find a home in his bones, and makes eye contact with both Octavio and Ruze who has also heard the sniper’s call. He smiles wide into the radio. “Then, let’s go get rich!”
The reports had severely underestimated the sheer ferocity and madness that the corruption beast held, the strings of data entwined in the decaying blackness were screeching into the air with a bloodthirst that rivalled their own, and the ground shook as is moved erratically between scrambling to find the sniper who had done significant damage from afar and Ruze who kept it occupied up close. Chunks of it splatters on the ground as Zephyr carves into it, smelling horribly of ozone and rot, forcing Jurard to traverse the battlefield in a helter-skelter dance of dodging, jumping and running for his life while trying to get a shot in.
Ruze would prefer it if he wasn’t because his aim- below par on a normal day- was getting wildly inaccurate, and even though the beast was struggling at this point it was getting more and more frustrating having to deal with stray bullets from his teammate. The unsteady rock formations risk crumbling around them already, he has enough on his plate keeping an eye on potential landslides and the unpredictable death throes of their mark. Octavio has had to back up as the cliffs towering around the basin they’re fighting in have turned too precarious. The harsh winds are giving the puppeteer trouble as well, but he’s come through for them several times as he tries his best to hamper the beast’s movements.
He bites his tongue as he hears another shot whizz past somewhere to his left, and instead throws himself at the enemy, drawing on his last reserves. He hates to admit it, but in this instance he’s glad that Jurard mostly fights further away, because there's a prickle at the back of his neck that still wants to check so he doesn’t put himself too far in harm's way. A high-pitched cry does make him look, and he realises that their gunslinger has been forced closer than they all prefer, the tar-like puddles on the ground and the steep rock pillars crumbling making the area close off more than anticipated. Ruze’s worry quickly morphs into anger at how reckless he’s being. He trusts all of them to hold their own, sure, but…
Sweat and blood drips down his brow, down and off his chin and the droplets hit the exposed bedrock in a soft pitter-patter. The sound is instantly covered by the amalgamation of glitching shrieks and guttural roars from the dying monster as a lucky bullet from the gunslinger pierces through one of the bleached skulls, and he decides then and there that the fight needs to be over. He plunges himself into the battle growling like a wild animal, all his seething frustration making his blood pump hotter, faster, and for a humiliating, shameful second he imagines everything that’s been taunting him instead of the monster-
Imagines Jurard’s damned red eyes, like rubies in the desert sun.
-and swings Zephyr downward; like a bolt from a clear blue sky it thunders down to cleave into the beast’s side, slicing off a deformed limb and tearing open a gaping wound that gushes black mucus and glitching, writhing data. It belts out a scream, thrashing violently, claws gouging into the ground and tearing into chunks of rock and soil in its crazed last spasms, sending it flying towards the fighters. Ruze ducks down, rolling out of the way as the lethal hail of rubble crashes down around him and he hears a low, odd murmur vibrating through the ground.
“Ruze!” Their self-proclaimed leader shouts, throwing himself behind cover as the debris rains down from the sky, shattering on impact as it hits the battlefield and smothering it in dust. The sound is momentarily deafening, a terrifying klaxon of alarm and chaos, and underneath it the strange murmur builds into a rumble that shakes the entire basin. “What is happening?!” Jurard cries, just a few metres away and clearly trying to get to his feet but struggling to do so as the ground roils beneath him, with a note of panic in his voice.
“Fuck if I know!” He yells back, scrambling to balance himself, as the sand and dust make seeing anything more than his immediate vicinity difficult. “Get out of here, Jurard!”
He only hears the beginning of something Jurard starts to say, before the corruption beast topples heavily to the ground in a loud crash and the impact shudders through the area. The rumble turns ear-shattering, something reminiscent of gunshots ringing out from under them. He realises what’s happening a second too late, when the ground has already started to betray them and the cracks spiderweb out from the fallen monster.
He doesn’t know what he starts to scream, but when he whips his head around to see Jurard’s wide, confused eyes and the gaping maw that’s opened up beneath him, everything else turns inconsequential. The dark, cavernous chasm rapidly grows in size, like a hungry, terrible mouth swallowing the rocks and the corruption beast and-
“Jurard!”
-he’s gone, the ground swallows him up. Where the young prince just was is now nothing, only rubble and a sinkhole that eats away at what’s left of any stable ground in the basin.
He doesn’t think.
He jumps.