Rivetra Week: "Prologue"
A sort of written prologue to clothobuerocracy's (askdrunklevi) and emilykochva's (ask-hanjiandpetra-voice) collaboration Rivetra Week audio recordings. “Everyone’s equal when they’re dead,” the crazy old man had told him once. They were inside a store, he remembers, a store full of their fallen enemies and he had nodded then, accepting the words as truth. But that bastard had been wrong, of course. There were emaciated bodies left on the streets of the underground, just sitting there to rot, and then there were the lavish funerals for the swine inside Sina, with ornate caskets and hundreds of strangers to mourn them. Everybody isn’t equal in death, and they sure aren’t equal in life, either. He loves each and every member of his squad, but somehow she had managed to work her way into a special place in his heart. She had become the one he wanted to protect from the world more than anything, even when she told him she didn’t need protecting. So he’d do it in small ways, ways so subtle she might not have noticed at all. He’d try to assign her the tasks with the least risk: sweeping when they had to clean, or searching for and comforting survivors in the aftermath of battle. Not always, of course - it was never a good idea to play favourites, and besides, she was a fighter. But behind closed doors, he made sure she knew that she held a special rank above the rest. She really deserves more, he thinks, a proper wedding, where she’d wear a beautiful long white dress, made of lace or some other fine and expensive shit, not this cotton that’s pulled too tightly and carelessly around her waist. She should be surrounded by family and friends, congratulating her on the occasion, but he’s the only one looking at her, and he can’t bring himself to say a word. A ring around her finger instead of that bare left hand at her side. But to the world, Petra Ral is another soldier. A skilled soldier, sure, and a member of the Special Operations Squad, but if they knew that Lance Corporal Levi is—had been—engaged to her, the press would have had a field day. A soldier marrying her higher-up? It would have been scandalous, he mentally scoffs, and it wouldn't end well for either of them. When he looks at her, he can’t help but think that it’s not fair that she’s here like this. She shouldn’t have become a soldier, she shouldn’t put herself in so much danger, she shouldn’t have yet that was the life she chose. For that matter, it’s not fair that these warriors, his squad, ended up here. They all deserve more. And as the small bundle is pushed from the wagon, and he watches it tumble onto the ground away from him, he could have sworn that the thud he hears makes the world scream. Levi reminds himself to kill the old loon if they ever meet again.