alSO SORRY TO SPAM BUT SOULSCAPE FOR VIN IDK UST PICK WHICHEVER muSE U WANT TO D O I DONT MIND IM JUST WOWWWW AT UR WRITING
Send ‘Soulscape’ and my muse will describe what they think your Soulscape looks like! || Accepting
Everything is white. Pure, blinding, alabaster white, and the only comparison he can draw to the strain this strange hallway puts on his eyes is ‘snow blindness’. He’s so busy trying to save himself from the assault on his eyes that he was entirely unprepared for the smell - sickly sweet, chemical, sterile, it’s like the olfactory contents of a medcenter were gathered up and slammed into his face at hyperspeed. He staggers, gags, coughs and sputters as the sudden onslaught of odour nearly bowls him over, until he manages to pull his scarf over his face to help mitigate the scent and serve as a makeshift air filter. He shivers - as clean as it looks, this place still feels sick - and continues, slowly. The hall feels narrow and confined, but his footsteps don’t echo. He almost wishes they would - at least that would make the place feel a bit less empty.
His eyes darted around the expanse, in between long periods of being shut, to try and preserve his vision. Up ahead, he noticed a break in the whiteness - finally!- and rushed forwards to see what it was.
It was a medical chart, taped beside a door as equally white and featureless as the rest of the space. He frowned, then grimaced as he read it over, trying to fight off the growing sense of disgust rising in the back of his throat. Every single space on the form was filled out with a single word: ‘Defective’.
Name: Defective
Number: Defective
Age: Defective
Gender: Defective Defective Defective Defective Defective DEFECTIVE DEFECTIVE DEFECTIVE DEFECTIVE DEFECTIVE DEFECTIVE DEFECTIVE DEFECTIVE DEFECTIVE DEFECTIVE DEFECTIVE DEFECTIVE DEFECTIVE DEFECTIVE DEFECTIVE DEFECTIVE DEFECTIVE DEFECTIVE DEFECTIVE
He threw the sheet away, crumpling it up in horror as the bile rose higher, and he only managed to swallow it down when he turned away from the paper and pushed through the stark white door. Once again, he’s hit by a wave of stimulus, and it’s not scent, this time.
It’s sound.
Loud crying, wailing, screeching that got louder the further he went down the hall. It wasn’t just any screaming, though, not screams of pain or terror or anything like that. No, these were the cries of a human infant.
A baby.
What in the name of the Force was a baby doing in this unnatural place?
A mixture of fear and concern brewed in his gut, and his hands strayed to the weapons strapped to his hips. He’d only made it a few steps when he felt the first tug on the back of his shirt. He turned, frowning, but saw nothing. He stayed as he possibly could for a moment longer, scanning the emptiness back and forth, but he still saw nothing. He turned slowly, glancing over his shoulder for a moment before facing forwards again. He knows he didn’t imagine it, though, and so unclips his sabers and keeps his thumb on the ignition switch. Only a few more steps passed by when he felt another grab at his shirt, then another, tugging, yanking, pulling him back so forcefully he almost fell, and he turned, wide-eyed, to see absolutely nothing, but there were hands all over him and he couldn’t see them, and no amount of screaming or thrashing or lashing out got whatever was grabbing at him to go away. He turned, sprinting down the hall with arms raised to shield his face from the doors he barged through without care. The wailing of the baby got progressively louder until it crescendoed to a shrill, deafening shriek. There was a soft noise underneath it, one he initially dismissed as the rustling of his clothes and his own ragged breathing, but, no - it wasn’t becoming louder, it was getting clearer, more coherent, until, inexplicably, he could hear a hoarse whisper, over and over again underneath the baby’s screaming - wrong wrong wrong broken broken FIX IT broken WRONG WRONG WHY WRONG FIX IT - and he wanted to cover his ears, but he had to keep going, the hands at his back were becoming more insistent, pulling harder and harder, and there was a swelling presence behind him, and he didn’t know what it was, but it was cold and it was dark and hungry and he knew, he just knew, if it caught him, it would devour him whole and leave nothing behind. Shivers race up and down his spine like pod racers on Tatooine, and the cries were too loud and the whispers were too harsh and the walls too bright and the hands too rough and everything was overwhelming and he cracked his eyes open just enough to see that the walls were so bright because they were mirrors, and even though each step shattered the equally-reflective floor, it still seemed to reflect and amplify the crying, the whispers, the hands and his legs and lungs burned and he knew, he just knew that he couldn’t keep running for much longer, he would fall and it would catch him and he would be gone, and just as he started to stumble, a loud roar came from somewhere behind him, and everything else stopped, aside from the tinkling of a flurry of glass shards as the mirrors were blown away. The roar lingered for just a moment longer in the form of a nearly subsonic growl, before there was a chuff like air being expelled from a ship’s engines, and a sense of sudden calm washed over him. He opened his eyes to find himself face to face with a massive cat, coated in soft, sleek golden fur, its age shown in the white flecks on its muzzle and its authority in the dark mane that encircled its head.
A lion, he realised, and he knew that he should be afraid, but he just couldn’t find that emotion, no matter how he tried. It blinked its amber eyes lazily, paused, then yawned in his face and curled up on the floor. He wrinkled his nose against the warm, meaty feel of its breath, closing his eyes and turning his face away. When he looked down at the great beast, it was curled comfortably on its side, breathing slowly, deeply, peacefully, its eyes closed, aside from the occasional contented blink. Settled against its stomach was a small child, nearly drowning in a soldier’s tactical blacks that were far too big for them. He couldn’t see their face, as it was covered by a mask of plain white flimsi, secured by two thick strips of black electrical tape, one on their forehead, one on their chin. Poking out from under the tape on the child’s forehead was the bare edges of a stamp, and, while he could only see the tops of the letters, he had an idea of what they said: ‘Defective’, just like the medical chart. The flimsi mask was covered in black marker, and, though it was a bit crude, he could make out the vague impressions of a face, with dark eyebrows, high cheekbones, a strong jawline, a straight nose, and very distinctly masculine features. It looked like it had been drawn on rather quickly.
“Uh… Hi,” the young man said lamely, and the child looked up at him, shaved head tilting to one side. They shifted to stand, and the collar of their shirt fell away just enough to reveal a long, cruel scar along their shoulder, crossed over by a series of small, X-shaped black stitches. When its small hand moved to re-adjust the fabric, he saw similar wounds and stitches around each joint on tiny fingers.
“Hello,” the child replied, and underneath its little voice sounded another, older one, though he couldn’t place any details to it aside from ‘adult’. In fact, he couldn’t really pick out any distinguishing features from either voice. That realisation made his skin crawl, but he swallowed and crouched low to continue their conversation. The lion raised its head to look him over, then apparently decided he wasn’t much of a threat, snorted, and lay back down.
“Is- He yours?” The young man asked, nodding down to the lion, and the child nodded in return.
“He’s my friend,” they said, snuggling up to the great beast. “He keeps me safe. Keeps all the bad stuff away.”
“The bad stuff…” He murmured, frowning, as he glanced over his shoulder to the hall he had come through. … Yeah, that had been pretty bad. “Is it always like that?”
“Some days,” the child said, idly petting the lion’s mane. “Other days, my brothers are here, and they help.”
“Brothers?” The young man repeated, brows raising. The child nodded again.
“We’re gonna be soldiers. All of us. Even me.” When they said that, a little hand went up to press at their forehead, where the stamp sat against their skin. “I’m gonna be the best soldier.”
“I bet you are,” the young man smiled, and the child hummed happily, settling down against their feral guardian’s flank.
“Why don’t you rest here a bit? It’s safe, and there won’t be any noises,” they offered, and he nodded.
“I’d like that,” he said, and he lay down, folding his arms behind his head and letting his eyes slip closed.
