Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sanguine is not a man, but a weapon. 

Trained from birth to be only the utmost of excellence at all it does, it is everything a man cannot be. 

Unwaveringly obedient. Intelligent. Efficient. Unaffected by the weaknesses of humanity.

It does not desire. It is not tempted by any pleasures of life outside of its mission. It is not and cannot be selfish. It has no attachments. 

It is a weapon.

Weapons do not want.

It is used to wipe scum from the Earth, the kind that interferes with Their goals.

Sanguine does not know who They are. All it knows is that it is subordinate to Them. They are its superiors. Their orders are the ones it follows and it does not question Them.

It has its purpose and They are the ones who determine what exactly its use is.

It can be very useful. It is very good at being useful.

Sanguine is a master of everything in its arsenal. However, its expertise lies in its abilities with long range firearms.

It is a silent killer. One shot, and its mark is dead. It is never seen, near heard, never suspected.

Its ability to kill is what defines its worth. It is the best because it never would let itself succumb to the weakness or laziness. It is the best because it never rests. 

It is always working to become an even better killer. 

Because it is a weapon and all weapons are good for is killing.

When it is not killing or training to kill, it is kept in its box.

Its box is heavily secured. The door is made of the thickest of metals and is only opened with a series of locks and biometrics that only its superiors can access. It is a bare box with a slot where sustenance is provided at the allotted times and a water box where it expels its bodily fluids and excrements which disappear when it presses the lever on the side. It sleeps on the floor of its box, lights always on. It does not know why the lights are always on but it knows no different so it has acclimated.

There is a routine. 

It wakes up after its sleep and there is sustenance in the slot for it to eat.

It eats.

It expels bodily fluids and excrements.

It leaves its box and trains its body.

It goes back to its box.

It eats the sustenance that comes in the slot.

It expels bodily fluids and excrements.

It leaves its box and shoots its guns at the targets.

If it is the third day, it gets hosed.

It goes back to its box.

It eats the sustenance the comes in the slot.

It expels bodily fluids and excrements.

It goes to sleep.

The routine repeats.

Sometimes, this routine is changed if it has someone to kill. In that case, the routine is adjusted so that the training and shooting the targets with guns comes earlier to prepare for the kill.

It leaves. It kills. It comes back.

The routine has never changed in its time with Them. The routine has always been the same.

Which is why its so concerning when the routine is abruptly changed.

Sanguine awakes and there is no sustenance in the slot for it to eat.

Perhaps They’re running late.

(They’re never late. They’ve never been late. Why would they be late?)

It waits in its box.

It is not taken out to go to training.

It waits in its box.

It is not taken out to shoot the targets with guns.

It waits in its box.

No sustenance is put in the slot.

It waits.

It sleeps.

It awakes.

There is no sustenance in the slot.

It is not taken out of its box.

Sanguine loses track of the minutes, hours, days. With no routine, it has no concept of time.

Sanguine is not accustomed to the deprivation of social contact.

Though it would never admit it, it has grown used to the different superiors that it is cycled between throughout its day.

Sure, it spends much of its time in its box, but it sees a superior during its training and during its shooting and, on the third days, its hosing. 

Sanguine knows better than to converse with its superiors. It only speaks when giving mission reports or when a superior has ordered it to speak. 

But, even though Sanguine does not speak with Them, does not mean it does not listen.

It soaks up their conversation like it’s the most precious words ever spoken. Everything it learns, every phrase that it learns, it stores it away in its mind.

It does not know why it does this.

It knows it will not have to ever converse. Weapons do not converse. They are meant to be silent. 

But something in it longs to. Longs to be like the superiors with their cheeky grins and barked laughter and twisted jokes as they stand on the sidelines. Longs to talk about meaningless drivel that fills the air just because. Longs to talk to someone about everything and nothing, to learn what makes them a person and not a weapon, to understand what makes man and weapon so different and know why it is not and can never be like Them.

Instead, it sits inside its box with the a silence only broken by the ringing in its ears. 

In this silence of its box, it lets itself contemplate why the routine has changed.

Is this… punishment? Had it done something bad?

It remembers when it was young and it was punished. No sustenance when it had a bad training. Isolated in its room after a thorough beating to teach it a lesson on behavior. 

But its training was superb as it always is. It had not been beaten for bad behavior or a job poorly done.

It was just… left.

But surely it must have done something wrong to be punished.

Right?

The superiors were all knowing. It wouldn’t quite say that They are omniscient, but it often felt like that. They knew everything that it did not. They knew all the right words to pacify any doubt and satiate any curiosity. They knew everything about everyone, or so it always seemed.

Sanguine does not know much. It only knows what it knows, what it learns from its superiors.

When it goes to kill, They make sure that it is not exposed to The Outside. The things that will make it stray from its mission. The things that will taint its careful programming and make it useless. 

It has always feared The Outside because of this. 

It doesn’t know much about The Outside, only that its kills are from The Outside, and just that should be enough to deter it.

But knowing that The Outside will ruin it. That it will rot away at its perfect programming and destroy its discipline that its built its entire lifetime? That is something that is truly terrifying.

Sanguine knows so little about The Outside. 

And it doesn’t think it will.

Its been days, maybe weeks, and Sanguine does not think it will survive.

It has not received enough sustenance. It has resorted to drinking out of the water box that it expels its bodily fluids and excrement in just to quench its unbearable thirst. It feels as its body wastes away from starvation. 

Death is inevitable. It has always known this. It just never expected to deteriorate so slowly, in excruciating yet numb pain. It was foolish to believe it would be spared with a merciful death. 

It stares at the door of its box, waiting for it to open once more.

And it does not open.

But it does something it does not expect.

The entire wall collapses, the door falling in at Sanguine, and it has to propel itself up the wall to stop itself from getting crushed by the thick metal.

It gapes at the giant hole, breaths rapid and unsteady.

Its eyes go wide as it sees the hall behind where its door had once been.

The walls have crumbled into heaps of debris. Bodies litter the halls, blood staining the floors. It smells of gunpowder and soot, the air filled with a thick smog of plaster, crushed concrete, and smoke. 

It makes Sanguine’s nostrils sting, its throat and lungs burning with every breath and cough.

It takes in the scene, not quite comprehending what it is seeing. And then it realizes.

There was an attack on the compound.

And They hadn’t deployed Sanguine for protection.

It gently lowers itself back to the ground where the door lies in the middle of the box’s floor and peaks its head around the corner.

Abandoned. The only sign of people are the corpses that fill the halls.

It stares at the wreckage with a pull in its chest.

Where are They?

How could They have let this happen?

What could do this to Them?

It still waits. Waits for its superiors to somehow come back for it. To give it orders. To tell it what to do. For its routine to go back to the way it is and for everything to be the same.

But They never come and Sanguine realizes that it is truly alone.

It makes its way through the compound feeling wrong, Wrong, WRONG for going without the chaperone of one of its superiors. 

It was never alone unless it was in its box. It was too precious of a cargo to lose track of. Even during its kills, it was closely surveyed. It’s something that has always been somewhat of a comfort, to know that it was never alone.

But it’s alone now, and it does not like how it feels.

It prepares itself to see the mangled corpses of its superiors but it doesn’t find Them in its traverse through the winding halls.

It doesn’t know what it would do at the sight. Should it mourn? It doesn’t know. Sanguine has a deep reverence for its superiors, but to mourn them would admit its attachment to them. 

The mission never stills, never falters at the face of death.

And neither does Sanguine.

It checks every corner of the compound for survivors, for instructions, for answers, but it finds none.

Along the way, it finds the room with the sustenance and it gorges it greedily, like a wild animal that is eating its first kill in the dead of winter. It eats until it feels sick and it knows it must stop because it needs to find answers.

It makes its way to a part of the compound it had never been to before.

And there’s a reason it has never been here before.

It is for superiors only.

But… but if the superiors are gone, and Sanguine is all that is left of Them, then it must break the rules to follow what is left of their orders.

It rifles through drawers and cupboards but finds that everything has been ransacked or destroyed.

It is starting to lose hope, thinking that perhaps it needs to be decommissioned for good, when it sees a flash of white sticking out from underneath the desk.

It gets on its hands and knees and carefully pulls the white sheet out and its breath hitches.

A list of names.

The bottom is singed, as if it had been burnt but the flame was extinguished before it could consume the rest of the page. 

The names are barely legible, as if they had been written in haste.

This is Sanguine’s last mission.

The names on this list are its last targets.

It doesn’t know why yet, if they are ally or enemy, but it will find out.

These are not the answers it expected to receive, nor the orders it expected to have to follow, but it will.

Because Sanguine is a weapon and a weapon’s purpose is to serve its handler.

And this is what They want.

Chapter Text

Sanguine knows to complete its mission it must leave the compound.

However, the protocol deeply ingrained in it holds it back. It cannot leave without being accompanied. It cannot leave without an order to leave. It…

It has no one to accompany it. It has no one to give it orders.

Sanguine makes its own orders now.

It does not know how to do that.

Leave, it tries to tell itself. You must find sustenance. You will waste away before you can complete your mission if you do not.

And so it pries itself away from the only place it knows and makes its way to the unknown.

The world is bright, sun blinding in a way it has never experienced. It has never left the compound without its goggles which means it has never experienced the sheer brightness of the sun. 

Its squints, the sun burning into its eyes. 

It does not know where civilization is, but it knows how to find it.

It walks for approximately three hours and twenty seven minutes. Its energy is quickly depleting and it knows it must find sustenance soon before it collapses.

Finally, it spots it. Civilization.

It realizes that what it wears will not aid it in integrating into normal society, so it decides it must find acceptable clothes.

He spots a car with bags in the trunk with colorful fabric. Perfect.

It is easy to break into the car without triggering the alarm. Child’s play for something as superior as Sanguine.

It rifles through the bags, shuffling aside the thigs that are too tight to conceal its weapons. 

It grins as it finds the perfect piece of attire.

It is tight around the torso, but a fabric that stretches and does not restrict its arm movements. It has long sleeves that cover its scars and a pair of skin tight thin fabriced footed pants will cover the scars on its legs. It extends out to a flowy ring that will give plenty of room for combat and will conceal its weapons beneath it. 

The fabric black with a pattern of blue roses on it. It does not know anything about fashion, but it infers that flower patterns cannot be out of style because flowers are a constant in the environment.

Satisfied with its acquisition, it fixes the bags so that the owner will not notice the disturbance. On its way out, it collects the loose currency that is stuffed in the hole between the seats before exiting. 

Next, sustenance.

Many of the buildings it passes are retail shops and it grows weary as it searches for a place with sustenance.

Finally, it finds it! 

The sustenance shop, Niki’s, permeates the street with delicious scents, so unlike the sustenance that it has recieved in the past.

It enters Niki’s, and approaches the counter where a young woman (non-threat, easily defeatable in combat) with bright pink hair stands behind it with a bright smile.

“Hello!” she greets. (Accent: of German origin.) “How can I help you today?”

Sanguine pauses. “I require… food.”

“Well, lucky for you, we’ve got a lot of that,” she says. “What are you feeling today? Something sweet? Something savory? Something sweet and savory?”

Its brows furrow. “I… I do not know.”

“Well, that’s okay,” she says, her smile not faltering. “Well, our special today is peach upside down cake. That’s got carameelized peaches on gooey upside down cake.”

Fruit is nutritious. It would prefer something with protein but it has already spent too much time here with its indecision. “I will take that.”

She smiles even brighter than before. “Alright! That’ll $5.50.”

It pulls the currency from its pocket and counts through the dollar bills and coins.

$5… $5.10… $5.11… $5.36…

“I… I do not have enough currency,” it says.

“Add it to mine,” a voice from behind it says. (Accent: of British origin.)

“Got it,” the woman behind the counter says.

The man behind it orders (two orders of sausage and egg on a biscuit, a large black coffee with caramel drizzle, and a piece of cinnamon coffee cake because “I’m being bad today”) and gives it a small smile.

“Mind sitting with me, mate?” the man asks.

Sanguine can say no. It should say no. But it knows that it owes this man and it does not want to create an enemy of him.

It nods.

The man smiles and leads it to a table near the window. 

Sanguine sits so its back is facing the wall so it can see all of the doors from where it sits. (Enterance, door presumably leading to where they prepare the food, closet, bathroom.)

The man sits down and sets down his food. “For you,” the man says, sliding the peach upside down cake to Sanguine and one sausage and egg on a biscuit.

Sanguine looks at the sausage and egg on a biscuit. “This is not mine,” Sanguine tells him.

“On me,” the man says with a small shrug.

“Thank you,” Sanguine says. “I am grateful.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “I’m Phil.”

“I’m…” Sanguine pauses. It does not know how to introduce itself. It cannot tell the man, Phil, that it is Sanguine. And without being Sanguine, it is nameless.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Phil says. “I don’t mind.”

“Thank you,” it says. Quickly, Sanguine is indebted to Phil’s kindness, patience, and generosity.

“I like your dress,” Phil says.

Sanguine does not understand what the man means, but it realizes it is referring to the attire it wears. “Thank you.” It pauses. “I like it too.” And surprisingly, it is not lying when it says so.

“Good,” Phil says. “It’s good to wear what you like.”

Sanguine disagrees. It is good to wear what is best for combat. This “dress” just happens to be both.

“Is this your first time at Niki’s?” Phil asks.

“Yes, it is,” Sanguine says. 

“Well, their special of the day is always good.” He taps his finger on his temple. “Let me know if that peach upside down cake is good. I might have to get some to go.”

Sanguine takes this as its cue to try the peach upside down cake. It picks up a piece with its finger and cringes at how sticky it leaves the pads of its fingers. It brings it to its lips and tastes it.

Its face twists with disgust.

“Too sweet?” Phil asks, lips quirked up with amusement. “If you don’t have a sweet tooth, I can see why you don’t like it.”

“My teeth are not sweet,” Sanguine says.

“I’ll take it, then,” Phil says, sliding the plate over to his side of the table. “Don’t worry about it.”

Sanguine will worry about it. It knows that somehow it is failing at its attempts of socialization.

It decides to try the sausage and egg on a biscuit, in hopes that it will like it more. Thankfully, it is something slightly more familiar, and it takes another bite, almost ravenously as it settles the ache in its stomach. 

“So, are you glad to be out for the summer?”

For a second, Sanguine panics. How does this man know that it has escaped the compound? It knows it is missing something. It inquires.

“Out?”

“Of school,” Phil clarifies. 

“Oh,” Sanguine says. “I am not taught in schools.”

“Ah, homeschooler, huh?” Phil says. “I could never do it. When I was in school, the only reason I dragged myself out of bed in the morning was to see my friends in class.”

“I… I have learned a lot,” Sanguine says.

“Good teachers?” Phil asks. 

“Yes,” Sanguine says. “The best.”

“That’s good,” Phil says. “Do you like it it?”

Weapons do not like anything. “I am superior at it.”

Phil holds his hands up with a laugh. “Smarty pants here, huh? It’s good to be confident about your smarts.”

“Being smart is important,” Sanguine says. Being anything but smart will get you killed.

“So, you got big plans for college, then?” Phil asks.

“I… don’t know,” Sanguine says.

“It’s okay not to know,” Phil says. “You’ve got plenty of time. My son, Wilbur, changed his mind so many times before figuring out what he wanted to do.” 

“You have a son,” Sanguine says.

“Yeah, I do,” Phil says with a smile. “Two actually. Wilbur and Techno.”

“What are they like?” Sanguine asks. It does not know why it asks. It shouldn’t care.

“They’re both smart too, but in their own ways. They’re both good with words, but while Wilbur is more of a debater, Techno is more about the written word. Techno works in a library. He loves it there. If you haven’t gotten the chance, I recommend you check out the library. There’s a lot of great resources there. Wil on the other hand wants to be a musician, and I really think he’ll do it. He’s amazing. Hey, maybe I can ‘plug’ his music. What do you usually listen to?”

“I don’t… listen to music,” Sanguine says.

“At all?” Phil asks. “I’m sure there’s something you like.”

“Music is just… noise, innit?”

Phil snorts. “I suppose it is.” Phil drums his fingers on the table. “Do you have any siblings?”

“No,” Sanguine says. Weapons do not have families. 

“Ah, only child,” Phil says. “I know what that’s like. It’s good and it’s bad. Sure you get more attention, but then, well, you get more attention. And you can’t get away with anything.”

“There is nothing I want to ‘get away with,’” Sanguine says.

“Good kid,” Phil says. “Don’t get wrapped up in any of that rebellion stuff. ‘s not worth it. God knows I was lucky my kids never had those phases.” 

“You are… close with your children,” Sanguine says.

“Really close,” Phil says. “It’s just us, so we’ve had to stick together.” Phil’s expression changes to something Sanguine can’t interpret. “Are you close with your parents?”

“I do not have parents,” Sanguine says.

Phil’s face falls, but he quickly covers it with a soft smile. “Do you have a safe place to stay?”

Sanguine pauses. It does not, but it knows that that is not the correct answer. “Yes. I do.”

The tension in Phil’s shoulders releases. “That’s good.”

Sanguine finishes its sausage and egg on a biscuit. “Thank you for the food.”

“Yeah, of course, mate. Anytime.” Phil pauses. “I… stay safe, alright?”

The things Sanguine plans to do are not safe. “I will.”

“Good,” Phil says.

Sanguine stands. 

“See you around, alright?”

Sanguine does not plan on seeing this man again. “Yes. I will see you around.”

And with that, Sanguine leaves Niki’s. 

It knows it must find “a safe place to stay,” or at least somewhere that will shelter it where it can keep its equipment and rest.

It wanders around the civilization, searching for somewhere to settle, when it finally finds it.

Hidden at the edge of town is an abandoned building. It is long decrepid and has clearly not been inhabited in some time.

Good. 

No one will come in.

It is so dilapidated that it is almost a hazard, which further proves it to be the perfect place to stay. No one will come looking for it in here.

It appears to be an old sustenance shop. There are benches and tables built into the floors. Inside those benches will be the perfect place to hide its weapons.

It makes its way through the building and finds a room hidden by a heavy door filled with shelves. It is slightly cold and reminds it of its box. It likes it.

This is its new box. It can create its new routine in its new box. It can create its new orders.

It can…

It can do this alone. Right?