middleofsomewhere | The Will to Fight: Conclusion

The Will to Fight: Conclusion

The battles rage loud and ferocious at the gates of the city and off in the ruined wastelands of Erda, and on the walls a struggle of a different kind occurs. The team who stayed behind at the towers are small but determined as they move stoically across the walls to right the stones that have become misaligned, even as their friends battle not too far away.

The city begins to hum. It's a quiet hum, not loud enough to be heard out where the others are fighting but it vibrates even through stone. The recovering monks assure them that it is done, the wards are back up and no demon will be able to enter the city.

Eventually the battle is won, all three battles. The demons fought back and killed, a major blow to their gate system that will keep them back for hopefully a long time. Those waiting in the caverns return to the city and by the time they get there the illusions are gone. Everyone can see the world for what it really is.

But despite the ruins of their world the people are relieved, the adrenaline of the fight coursing through their veins and the mood is one of hope. They will build again, their people will survive.

All Voidtreckers please return to the Voidtrecker Express. Departure will be in a few hours

It has landed not too far from the city, cloaked to make it unnoticeable to the citizens, for all the good that does. No one has been particularly subtle this last week. People can begin regrouping, packing up the camp and getting any wounded not already healed to the train.

However roughly half an hour later another message appears on their SCA.

Passenger Persephone has requested we remain on system System #86525656412355 for an additional day to further assist the people of Erda. The Voidtrecker Express will depart on the morning of Day Fifteen of the month of Kazoo.

The train remains where it is, so the voidtreckers can use its facilities. There is definitely a lot that can be done to assist those of this world and the citizens will welcome any helping hands.

After an extra day they finally depart, returning to the void once more.

(OOC Note: Once the wards are up any characters who are demonic in nature will not be able to enter the city either!)

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"I know. Fussing like that means they care. People used to do it to me in Beacon, too." Though their brows are pulled together like this is somehow confusing. Misty fussing makes sense. Even the first time they got a proper scold out of her, they'd been doing chores for her and learning to cook for a few months. Crowley didn't get angry about "it" for two months. Sora attached himself immediately, but Sora is also... Sora, and had never met anyone else with problems with names and lives before.

They scoot down the beam to hammer a little further along, and then admit, " ... most of them in Beacon knew me for longer than a month, though. Before they got upset about things like that." Or less than a month, in some cases.

He's a little embarrassed by that, mostly because he realizes how utterly pathetic it is to get attached that quick. So might as well say the part he didn't say out loud.

"Yeah, yeah I guess it's uh... kinda funny of me." He grunts, clears his throat. But there's something in that grunt that's some kind of self-disparaging word, something like calling himself a half-blind hunter. Very Centaurian difficult to translate and he's forgotten would try to translate.

"I just ain't had someone try to get to know me. Not since Stakar. Not since my old crew. An' that's been a while. Hell, I don't think anyone offered to learn Centaurian for me, or show me somethin' like the dancin' thing." Which he'd mostly learned 'cause it was a part of Soldat's history, more than it was something he was particularly interested in. An eye for an eye in the best way.

"Few weeks an' you been better to me than people I knew for years."

Edited (deformed saiyan fusion of two sentences) 2021-03-26 23:46 (UTC)

If you think Soldat is going to miss the self-deprecation, Yondu, you're wrong. They look sidelong in his direction, but don't comment immediately. Instead they look back down at the planks, lining up another nail to hammer flat with two strikes.

"For a long time. Decades. I had no one. And then in my last place, in Beacon. I started learning how to. How to have friends. Maybe I don't go about it the way people do, I don't know. I had to learn on the fly."

"Seems like you got it right."

For the most part Yondu just has been letting friends come to him, not actively seeking them out as he's convinced he'll only find damage doing so. Some he won't let get closer. They seem too aggressive, too violent. They look at him and see battle scars and, fine, maybe a camrade. But it feels too dangerous to let them near his personal business.

Somehow Soldat didn't come off as that.

"Just tryin' to be encouragin' myself here. Don't know how well I'm doin'." He rubs the back of his head like it's itching, pulling a scrunched face as he does. "My brand of support is 'good job' an' 'get the hell back on your feet'."

Soldat gives a little chuckle, a memory plastering itself inside their brain like a movie. "If they knock you down, get back up again. If you die. Walk it off." It sounds like they're quoting someone. (Fucking Steve. It made the guys laugh, though. Not us. No, I think we. Rolled our eyes. Did that a lot, I think.)

Either way, the quote seems ridiculously apt, now that they can apparently walk off death. They give Yondu a little smile. "You're doing fine, Yondu. You're fun. And interesting. And a lot more kind than you give yourself credit for, I think. I would be glad to call you a friend."

"That's a goodun'," he laughs a little. "Shoulda used somethin' like that." But then he smooths out his expression, scooting down the roof some to move some of the tiles closer. "I couldn't be kind for a long time. I couldn't look soft or else I'd get killed. Peter'd get killed. A good half my crew wanted to take my boy to his real father. So I couldn't let 'em. Couldn't look-"

He thinks back to beating his chest, yelling in Peter's face. You're soft! In here! A warning to not make himself vulnerable when everyone wanted him. When Peter Quill only wanted to be kind.

"Spent a long time just tryin' to keep respect or fear. One or the other. Couldn't be kind. ...I think I might just have said enough for you to decide for sure whether you wanna keep me around or not. But for the record, I tried to ask for help when I figured stuff out. Nobody wanted to. They was too mad at me." And he was too stupid and proud to stick around and insist.

Soldat is quiet a moment, just holding up a hand for nails twice more as they think back through their previous conversations, put things together, and finally nod. They sit back on their heels and look at Yondu, actually look at him, eye contact and everything.

"Everyone has programming." It was one of the first things they learned about actual people, the first thing that made it possible to maybe relate to actual people. "I spent seventy years as an assassin because of mine. Because I was too afraid to do anything else. Yours made you mean because you were afraid, too." Scarlett's made her prickly and aloof. Pudding's made her pretend to be sweet to manipulate people. Javert's made him stiff and angry. Misty's made her stand alone, all the time.

But: "You still know how to be kind. You're doing it now. You can choose that. Maybe sometimes you'll fuck it up, and you'll have to get up and try again. But that's okay. As long as you're trying."

It's a force of habit that when he's worried about being rejected (though saying that was, essentially, to put the ball in Soldat's court about whether or not he wanted to keep talking to him), that when Soldat makes eye contact Yondu looks away. Down, off to the side. Something burned into him from a young age when he worried about getting in trouble to just to turn to an object and avoid engaging when things might go bad.

"Just sayin' if I ain't too good with it sometimes, that's why. Honestly not had much reason to here, though."

And Ego had played to his lesser demons. That surely he could talk it into being a loophole with the other captains. That as a slave he should understand what it meant to get a lost child back. That he could finally have all the wealth and respect he'd always wanted. "Nobody ever managed to convince me of nothin' like that again, didn't matter how mean I was. Figured out bein' a blood relative meant nothin'."

Just to assure Soldat that if he did stick around, he'd already put himself in a position where he knew better.

They get it, and they don't chase his gaze. It's easier to look aside, themselves. Eye contact is hard, and only reserved for when being very serious. They don't remember much about their family, anymore, and they know enough about Yondu's to know his parents were terrible. But there's other ways to make family. "You're my friend," they say. "I think that means something."

Then they reach over, being clear about doing it in Yondu's line of sight, and very gently punch his shoulder. "And don't insult yourself so much, yeah? You're not a." They attempt to mimic the grunt. It's not perfect, but it should at least get their intention in trying to point out the insult across. "You're pretty sharp-eyed, far as I can tell."

He finally looks up, not quite meeting Soldat's eyes, but enough to show some confusion.

"Hm?" He says at first, before he realizes then that he'd said something he didn't expect to be translated and it had been. Well, damn. "...Means an idiot pretty much. Missin' your target a lot? Combination of the two."

But he seems to be a little less scared now, and he said his piece about being glad he's back. Being lucky he's back. He meant every word of it.

"Still don't like the idea of nobody thinkin' I'm soft but I'll tell 'em that I got a friend with a hard fist if somebody got a problem with it. How does that sound?"

"Absolutely. I make my metal fist available to anybody givin' you a hard time," Soldat declares without hesitation. "Nobody picks on my friends." They're pretty sure Yondu can handle being picked on, but it's the principle of the thing. Also, the joke.

"How'd your side of things go?" they ask. "I heard you on the SCAs a few times."

Yondu probably would take care of himself. He's still not so moral that, if approached threateningly, he wouldn't put his arrow up in someone's face at the very least. But the joke does make him feel a little better, actually makes him smile some when he looks over at Soldat.

"Boring as shit up to the end fight. Ya did? ...Yeah, it weren't nothin' even helpful, I reckon. Just found some shit in the catacombs."

"It seemed pretty helpful to me. You found out about some of the history, some of the information on the protection spells that Orange team used, right? You helped the people." Christ, what is it about people around here and belitting their contributions? It's like everyone does it. (Mission. Yeah, okay, sometimes I do, too. But not all the time. And not when I demonstrably did something to help.)

He doesn't say his reasons for being down in the catacombs. Despite everything he just said, it sounds pathetic. It feels like exposing his softer underbelly and making himself aware of his own weaknesses in a way that's deeply uncomfortable.

"People had some good life stories down there. Worth rememberin'. So I was writin' a few of 'em down to keep just in case the big demon showed up. But y'all took care of it before it could get bad."

"Oh, I like that," Soldat says, glancing up from their work again with a quick smile. "Are you bringing your stories back on the train with us? Or is it for them to keep?" Either one seems a worthy exercise, either for the people here to remember what happened here, or for the people on the train to remember who they're here to help.

"Figured I'd just put 'em in the library."

He reaches into his coat and pulls out his journal, now at least a third filled with the scrolls of the dead. Quickhand versions of what he'd managed to read down there. Some of it was stuff he'd put on the network, but some of it's pretty simple. He'd even done shit like write down the scant stories of kids or old housewives to go with those haughty tales of war heroes.

He hands it over to Soldat to look at. He'd taken a surprising amount of time cataloging this stuff.

They set the hammer down again and flip through a few pages. It's not a shorthand code they're familiar with, but the train continues to provide by translating. Awww, Yondu. The kids' stories.... "These are great, Yondu," they say warmly. "I'm gonna want to read all of these over once we're back on board." The few things they've actually read weren't really like this, and they think it might be educational.

"One of them times I'm glad I wasted time."

There's no real need of it. Some giant demon didn't show up. He didn't have to do it. Now he's just got it and he's not sure what to do with it.

"Well, I'll let ya get back to this." He goes to the edge of the roof, grabs it so he can tip off and hang, and then drops down like a sane being rather than using the arrow. From down there he holds his hands ready to catch the journal. "Guess I'll see ya around on the train."

Soldat tosses it down gently, but asks before Yondu can leave, "How do you say 'see you later' in Centaurian?" Because that does in fact seem like a useful phrase, and they imagine they'd get a lot of mileage out of it.

"Oh... yeah, hold on. Better to do it from over there."

He walks off, onto the street, before cupping his hands around his mouth and whistling a sound that has the feel of 'when we meet again'. Shrill and sharp and loud, like people that part at a distance.

There's a few citizens that look up and, again, look confused over understanding a whistle of all things.

Soldat is impressed. Also, ow-- sensitive hearing means it seems even louder.

They're not sure they can whistle that loud, but they make their best attempt at returning the call. The notes are right, but truly, they don't have the whistling volume to match that. Just in case, they follow it up with a wave.

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The Will to Fight: Conclusion

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