Chapter Text
He’s going to die for his king.
Chief knows this. He has known this. In whatever way the universe deems it worthy, he’s here to give his life to his king, and he’s okay with it.
Parker’s eyes burn into the back of his helmet, unbearably so, and he wants nothing more than to turn around and reassure his king that he’s okay, he’ll be okay, he’s always okay. Instead, he keeps his eyes locked on the army-obscured horizon where the enemy is waiting for them.
“Chief,” had been whispered against the skin of his neck a few sunrises prior. His king had worn his newly adjusted armour for battle to make sure it fit him properly, with him there to supervise, and when the servants had left he’d collapsed against his most loyal knight as if the weight of the sun was bearing down on him. “Chief, I can’t lose you.”
He holds those words close to his heart now, holds them tighter than he does his sharpened and gleaming sword. It’s not exactly what he wants to hear, but uttering those three sacred words so close before a slaughter would be nothing more than a fool’s dying wish.
Looking back risks too much, but he does so anyway because stolen moments in the darkness of the castle haven’t been enough, and turning to look over his shoulder at his king is the last thing he’ll most likely be able to do. His eyes meet Parker’s—Rek, his Rek—for one more time, to promise him with a fiery passion to do anything in his power to keep him safe. His king, in turn, gives him so much adoration his breath is stolen from him for a second. Rek’s eyebrows caught in such a beautiful but ultimately heartbreaking frown, a smile that’s trying so hard to be brave, his curls flowing in the wind that’s starting to pick up.
Chief swallows the lump in his throat and nods to his king, giving him an encouraging hint of a smile of his own. Then he turns back and the cold is banished from his bones for just a second longer.
“Tell me. Tell me that you—that you l—” Rek had stuttered, unable to get that four-letter word off his tongue. Chief held him, that day, in the silence of a great bedroom not made for him but one he still spent some unusual amount of time in. He’d let the shape of his king imprint in his mind, the way they fit together perfectly, curves of their body made for each other, even with the armour separating them.
Horns of war blow. The wind howls through the army. Their flags wave violently in the direction of the enemy. Minute, their commander, shouts from atop his night-black horse and the whole crowd shifts. Chief glares in the face of doom, hands tight around the reins, devotion keeping his heart beating.
He remembers his own words well. “I will do anything for you,” because it means the same thing, that thing neither of them can say out loud. He’d pressed his lips to the helmet protecting his king’s forehead, any lower and he’d have guilt distracting him. “I will do anything to protect you, I’ve sworn it on my life and I’m swearing it again.”
Those aren’t words Rek wants to hear. Preferably ones that tell him ‘I will be safe, I promise,’ but they both know those are impossible to keep.
His sword is loyalty, his lips a four-letter word kept locked away for when the universe gifts them a miracle and lets him live so he’ll be able to whisper them to his king in safety and in peace. He doesn’t expect to be able to live to tell them. But he knows. Rek has to know.
Rays of sunlight and hope disappear behind darkening clouds. The enemy begins to move, a buzzing hive of misery to bring upon them their doom.
Chief has one thing he’s made for and he will do it, by God.
His chest already aches with the promise of a painful death, diamond-shaped, through his heart, but he can pretend it’s what Parker placed there, warmth, cutting like a sword to remind him of it at all times. He can’t say it but he knows it. It’s there and he’ll wield it like a weapon, terrifying and all-powerful.