An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Chapter 1: Steer
The petit punutiy sneezed.
A chorus of "aww"s blossomed from among the group. Han'urel chuckled, and continued to pet the patch of moss on its tiny hump. The poor thing had attached itself to him during their side excursion through Ihuykatumu and refused to leave his side.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Kaaras could hear birds peeping and cawing, could hear the tumble of the stream he'd just finished bathing in, could hear the shifting of foliage in the breeze. But what he couldn't hear were the sounds of his fellow Valo-Kas mercenaries as he approached their campsite, and that made him pause in his tracks.
i have fallen for what is apparently the classic dragon age blunder and accidentally got obsessed with a brand new guy
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Sora's tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth as he tried to wriggle the wooden block free from the tower with just his thumb and forefinger.
"Careful," Strelitzia warned, watching just as intently.
"I aaalmost got it," Sora said.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Chapter 33: And That's What You Missed On Glee
"—If you two are down, we could use the time for a fight call, go back over your face-off in 'Down Once More'. Thoughts?"
"Actually," Asad said before Bran could answer, "We could do 'All I Ask' first—at least one runthrough, for Bran—and I could stand in as Christine. I know the blocking; I spend the whole scene hidden and watching anyway."
Bran tried not to bristle at the way Asad said "one runthrough, for Bran," as if he thought he didn't know his own number backwards and forwards.
Bran broke the tar's surface with a heaving gasp and hauled Bautista's still body onto the shore, where he collapsed coughing next to him. "Bautista," he said hoarsely, and shook his shoulder. He didn't move. Bran pushed himself to his knees and knelt over him, panic clawing its way up his throat. "God, fuck, please, Bautista." He cradled his face in his hands and dug deep, deep within himself for that reservoir he was worried he'd used up, then stretched forth the flickering warmth he found there, desperately searching within Bautista—
And then he was tugged—yanked—into another pool of tar, the viscous substance filling his nostrils, his mouth as he was pulled through, choking him, enveloping him, swallowing him—
And he jolted to a stop, suddenly breathing freely, suddenly dry, and he retched, but nothing came out. It took him a few moments to register the sensations around him: heat, but without the damp heft of the South; hard stone and sand beneath his palms; indistinct chatter around him—but just as he settled into the environment it shifted; the floor beneath him was smooth, cold tile, and he flinched at a sharp wooden pounding above him—then silence, broken only by a ticking clock, and the carpeted floor of a narrow, air-conditioned hallway—and back to the heat. Bran almost didn't trust himself to get up, still nauseous and light-headed, expecting another shift.
But he forced himself to his feet anyway, and found himself in a cafeteria—canvas walls and roof over a stone floor coated in sand—filled with men in tan combat fatigues. Conversation and laughter flowed all around him, but no matter how he tried to focus, he couldn’t make any of it out.
Something invisible pulled at him, and when he turned to follow it, he saw him—his face was younger and gaunter, but Bautista sat in the middle of a throng of his fellow soldiers, his dull eyes boring a hole into his empty cafeteria tray. “Bautista?” Bran said, but his words were swallowed by the cacophony of voices. “Bautista!” he said again and stumbled towards the table. Bautista didn’t acknowledge him—no one acknowledged him. The soldier on Bautista’s right jostled into him with a laugh, then returned to his conversation without noticing the lack of reaction, or the way his hands trembled in his lap.
Another soldier approached Bautista from behind. He went rigid when the soldier clapped a hand on his shoulder, and his eyes sharpened when the soldier said something to or at him, then turned around to laugh with another group.
It was the turn that did him in. If he hadn’t turned, he would have seen something in Bautista’s face snap, and he would have seen Bautista seize his tray in a white-knuckled grip. But he did turn, and so he remained blissfully unaware. Once the tray crashed into the back of his skull, he stopped being aware of anything for a while.
There was a moment of quiet and stillness as the soldier crumpled, then the cafeteria roared to life as Bautista hauled back for a second swing, his face twisted in anger. Soldiers swarmed him, wrenching the tray from his hands, and then grabbing his arms when he kept swinging his fists. Bautista roared as he pushed against the tide of bodies. To most, it probably sounded like base, instinctual fury, and it was, in part. But Bran had felt that sound rip from his own throat often enough to recognize the anguish in it.
“Idiot,” said a voice from next to Bran.
He whirled to find Bautista—his Bautista—standing there, watching. But he was still covered in dripping tar, and Bran involuntarily stepped backwards when he saw his that his eyes, fixed on the scene, were pitch black, sclerae and all.
“Couldn’t have held it together for ten more minutes,” Bautista continued tonelessly. “Look at you. Throwing your whole life away. Over what?”
At that moment, the fight all at once left the young Bautista like air leaving a balloon, and he went limp in the arms restraining him. “Weakling,” Bautista said.
The world lurched around Bran. When his senses returned, the cafeteria in Iraq had been replaced with a severe courtroom, and he was standing between the defense and the prosecution. A uniformed man—his features blurred—sat at the podium overlooking the room, with the seal of the United States Marine Corps looming behind him. The jury box was empty.
“Corporal Marcus Alejandro Danum Bautista,” the judge said, and there was a scraping sound from Bran’s left as the younger Bautista, his olive green service uniform immaculate, stood as straight and still as a statue. The judge consulted a document laid before him, and continued, “You are charged with a count of aggravated assault against a fellow Marine. How do you plead?”
“Guilty,” he said immediately, “your honor.” The JAG officer next to him—whose face was also indistinct—said nothing.
The judge gave him an appraising look. “...Well, that simplifies things,” he said, and looked down at his files. When he opened his mouth again, his voice was suddenly muffled, as if someone had stuffed cotton in Bran’s ears.
“Not even going to put up a fight,” Bautista’s deadened voice scoffed from Bran’s right, and he turned to see him standing at the prosecution’s table, looking past Bran at his younger self with his eyes still fully black. Fat drops of tar continued to fall from his body to the tile floor, congealing at his feet. “Just bending over and submitting. It’s what you do best.”
“That’s not true,” Bran protested, but the words tasted like ash on his tongue. Every time he’d sneered and dismissed Bautista as a bootlicker, a doormat, a lapdog, rose from the depths of his memory at once and rang in his ears. He swallowed, ignoring the sound of his own voice, and said, “Bautista, it isn’t—”
“...dollars,” he suddenly heard the judge say. “Furthermore, you are hereby given an Other Than Honorable discharge. This discharge will be considered Dishonorable for Veterans’ Affairs purposes. You will be barred from reenlisting in the United States Armed Forces or reserves...”
The Bautista to Bran’s left clenched his jaw as he stared into the Marine Corps seal with dampening eyes. The Bautista to Bran’s right dropped his blackened eyes to the floor. “Coward.”
“Bautista—” Bran said, starting towards him, but with the crack of the judge’s gavel, he tripped over a chair, and he fell face-first onto the—
Carpet. The sound of the gavel was now the soft, hesitant knocking of knuckles on wood.
“...Dad?”
Bran looked up. Bautista was a large, physically imposing man. But here in this hallway, wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants, his shoulders hunched as he waited with his knuckles resting against a closed door... Even looking up at him from the floor, Bautista had never looked smaller to Bran.
“Dad,” Bautista repeated, “can I come in?” He paused and swallowed, listening for an answer.
None came.
Bautista leaned his forehead and palms against the door. “Please, can we talk?” he begged quietly, his voice cracking.
The clock in the hallway continued to tick.
“Why should he?” came the monotone Bran had come to anticipate. There was the tar-splattered Bautista, standing on the opposite side of his younger self from Bran. “Why should he want anything to do with a failure of a son?”
The younger Bautista’s face scrunched up. He closed his eyes and sucked a breath through his teeth as his shoulders quivered.
“You staked your whole life on your family’s proudest legacy. And then you went and fucked it all up.” Water seeped through the younger Bautista’s squeezed eyelids. “Disgraced your father, his father, and his father.” He shoved a sob back down his throat. “What good are you to anyone now?”
The younger Bautista slumped to the floor, shaking. “Worthless,” the other Bautista continued. When Bran looked back up at him, he saw a black rivulet trickling down his cheek from an inky eye. “Ungrateful. Useless. Selfish.”
“Stop it,” Bran snapped.
“Stupid. Good-for-nothing. Fuck-up. Waste.” The one rivulet became several, leaking from both eyes.
“Stop it!” Bran repeated. He strode over to him and shook him by the shoulders. “Bautista—Marc—you gotta wake up!”
“Lachlan,” Bautista said, his voice distant, and sludge burbled from his mouth. He continued to look sightless into the middle distance. “I tried to keep you safe. From the anomalies, from PIRA, from yourself. From me. But I wasn’t good enough.”
“I’m right here! We can still make it out of here, Marc!”
“Not strong enough. Not smart enough. Not kind enough. Not—”
Bran grabbed Bautista’s face, his fingertips pressed to his temples, and brilliant emerald light seared the hallway away. Wincing, he closed his eyes, but then a burning pressure began to bear down on his skull. tHiS iS nOt YoUr DrEaM, that familiar voice snarled.
Bran cried out, but gritted his teeth and held fast to Bautista. “Not yours either, fucker,” he hissed. “Piss off.”
Through his eyelids, the green light grew brighter, and the voice howled in rage and pain. The light blazed into almost white, and the howling dissipated. A heartbeat that he somehow knew was Bautista’s pounded in his ears.
Bran took a deep breath. His turn now.
Images—scenes—flashed through his mind as he poured the warmth now blossoming in his chest into Bautista. Bautista letting Bran hold his hand through a panic attack. Throwing himself between Bran and a charging anomaly. Listening to one of Bran’s favorite CDs in the Jeep while he thought Bran was sleeping in the passenger seat. Offering Bran a coffee tin to keep a tiny marigold. Blazing a path through the woods with a bleeding Bran in a fireman’s carry. Cleaning and bandaging the blood-soaked gashes across half of Bran’s face in the woods. Cleaning and bandaging the blood-soaked gashes across Bran’s forearms and thighs in a motel bathroom. Casually shoulder-checking Bran outside of a diner. Coaxing Bran gently from a locked room after chasing everyone else away. Both of them laughing over some stupid joke while driving. Kneeling and holding Bran while he sobbed into his shoulder. Clasping Bran’s hand and intertwining their fingers outside Warden Forest.
“You asked me once if I thought you were a bad person,” Bran said. “And I didn’t say anything then. I mean, you were asking rhetorically, but...” He searched the void of Bautista’s eyes for a glimmer of something, anything. “I’ve been with you practically every day for the past two years. I’ve never known anyone more selfless, or dedicated, or loyal, or careful, or honest, or humble, or brave. I’d have been dead plenty of times over if not for you.”
He leaned forward so their foreheads touched. “You never gave up on me, no matter how shitty I was, no matter how dangerous things got. So I’m not going to give up on you, Marc Bautista. And I’m not going to let you give up on yourself.“
The space around them rumbled and the light became blinding, and Bran was thrown backwards. He landed flat on his back, finally feeling grass and mud beneath him once more. Solid. Real. He opened his eyes and saw the gnarled, bare tree branches reaching for the gray sky above, just as before. The mud squelched beneath his palms as he pushed himself upright and scrambled towards Bautista, still lying where he remembered. “Come on,” he whispered. He reached out and grasped his shoulder.
And Bautista rolled onto his side with a spasm, hacking and hawking up tar.
After a few moments, with Bran clapping him between the shoulder blades to help, the heaving passed, and Bautista sat there a moment to catch his breath, his head bowed. When he looked up at Bran, his eyes were his own—sclerae white, irises earthy black instead of inky—and they were full of trepidation.
If Bran were standing, he would have collapsed in relief. “Marc,” he said.
Bautista’s face crumpled, tears of water carving lines down his dirty cheeks, and he threw himself at Bran. He clung to him like he was afraid he might disappear, bawling into his shoulder, and Bran’s composure quickly cracked and fell apart in return.
In spite of everything—behind them, around them, ahead of them—they were alive.
In spite of everything, they loved, and were loved.
The storm had not yet passed. But it had not yet beaten them.
howdy! if you follow Fly, Little Raven, my greenwarden drabble collection, you may have noticed i did not post my scheduled update last week. i thought i'd be able to make it up this week, but i don't think i'll manage. i'll do my best to be back on my game next week! and depending on how working on this goes, it may wind up a multi-parter, and if it does, i'll post it weekly instead of biweekly. thanks for your patience!
