this is a snippet from Haven's Release, if anyone has any feedback or comments I'd appreciate them (•‿•)
Alaric sat nursing his latest injuries, brooding over the latest developments. He didn’t like brooding, it didn’t suit him, but there was little else he could do for now. Nightbreeze and his flunkies had been prepared the last couple of times they had gone to one of his secret underground bomb factories, and this time they had lost too many in the process. Not all had been killed then and there, true, but taken prisoner was almost a worse fate.
They hadn’t heard from Akemi in nearly three months. He hoped she was just lying low somewhere, safe but unable to contact them. A dark, despairing voice in the back of his head said otherwise, and tonight it was harder to ignore it.
He had gone into this thinking it would be… not easy, exactly, but not this real. He had imagined his own involvement being a larger scale, more useful version of the prank schemes he had run at university; a little disruption, mayhem and ultimately fun, while helping other people in the process. He had assumed that all his friends would come through unscathed and laughing, victorious at the end.
Reality had a brutal way of making itself known.
Kester’s house had become a crowded infirmary over the last few weeks. Sickly escaped prisoners, their own injured, and a couple of too-quiet pallets in the back room, covered in sheets and awaiting what final dignity they could manage to give.
He missed the days when it had been the five of them, complaining about their coursework, holding drinking contests and lewd puppet shows, throwing glitter and leaflets from dorm rooftops. Even when this was over, when the dust settled and Elena came back, when Akemi managed to find her way out of wherever she was stuck (because she was not dead, not dead, not dead), when Kester returned from his wander in the wilderness, the group would never be whole again.
Jonno had never been this quiet in his life.
“You stupid bastard,” Alaric muttered, throwing a glare at the limp red hair poking out from under the too small sheet. “You could have got out of there, but no, you had to be all noble. Had to go all ‘let’s save everyone’ and get yourself killed instead. What am I supposed to do now? We were supposed to have each other’s backs, Jon. We were supposed to get each other through this, be a safe place for Akemi to come back to, throw a huge party when Nightbreeze was gone. What am I going to tell your parents? What do I tell Akemi and Kester?”
He paused, waiting for an answer that would never come.
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