Jeremiah, Survive
Title: Survive
Fandom: Jeremiah
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Kurdy survived because he could win. Markus is just getting it.
Disclaimer: I don't own Jeremiah, I'm just playing around.
Notes: For picfics pic number ten, thought up and written in exactly thirty minutes, as specified. Really shitty title, I’m notoriously awful at them. Had I more time I would add in some of Kurdy's dry humor or adjectives elaborating something he said, because as is it sounds kind of shitty.
*~*
Life revolved around this. This. Fighting. You had to know how to fight, how to defend yourself. Kurdy remembered vague images of pansy fucks in silk boxers beating the shit out of each other for money and masculinity.
This, this was different.
This was fighting for everything: food, survival, salvation.
Kurdy decided long ago he was going to survive.
Thrive.
He made it to the ripe old age of puberty on luck and cuteness and other people’s coattails. He made it to adulthood because he learned how to fight. Kurdy could beat the shit out of any fucker who came at him.
He killed a man once. Some punk who made off with his pack while he was taking a piss. Motherfucker. Kurdy ran after him-he was what, maybe seventeen then?-tying his pants up as he went. Even with a head start Kurdy got him. Made him eat dirt and smashed his head in with his fists. Didn’t even let the guy get up to fight back, just wailed. Animal. He didn’t even remember doing it.
“Stop it!” this little voice shrieked from beside him, little hands tugging at his jacket. Little face connecting with his fist on the upstroke. “He’s dead, stop it already!”
The words brought him back to himself. Kurdy stared, dumbfounded, at this little boy who was sobbing on the dirt beside him, holding his little face in his little hand. Kurdy almost asked him what was wrong before-a thought, a look down at this thing he was straddling. Oh yeah. The man he was straddling. The man he had indeed just fucking killed. Bones were poking his thighs uncomfortably. He fucking killed a guy who looked like a walking skeleton. He didn’t lose because Kurdy was better than him.
Kurdy could just barely hear the kid’s wailing over his own heartbeat-and the lack of the guy’s below him.
He rushed off after that, threw up possibly everything he’d ever eaten.
That’s when he started that whole, ‘Man, fuck this shit, I’m outta here,’ mantra. Yeah, Kurdy’d killed guys before that one but that was always just. The stupid fucks usually started it, they at least fought back. Survival of the fittest. If that was true, why did being the fittest suddenly start to feel like shit?
*~*
Markus didn’t like fighting. He’d seen how kids in the towns around the Mountain acted and thought it was degrading. Like civilization and decency died along with the adults. Schools were burning, libraries were burning, knowledge was being destroyed, there was brawling in the streets. That’s not what Markus wanted. He had a plan, that didn’t include squalling children ruling the country.
So he grew up, kept himself locked up in the Mountain so he didn’t have to see it, sent other people out to gather information. Pick up new people. The right kind of people.
Markus grew up. He couldn’t believe he felt like that, was so selfish. Stupid. Self-absorbed. He didn’t keep civilization and decency either, they were lost artifacts until he grew up and noticed they were missing.
He didn’t know how to fight. It took him awhile, but he figured out how useful fighting was. How...almost artistic it could be.
All it took was Kurdy beating the fuck out of him to notice. When it was clear he wouldn’t win, part of himself detached and watched. The play of finely-tuned muscles, the technique and calculating it took.
“Teach me?” Markus asked, sprawled on the floor with the taste of blood in his mouth. Didn’t hurt as bad as he thought he should, knew he probably should. He had the sneaking suspicion Kurdy knew exactly what he was doing.
“There’s only so much I can do.” Kurdy offered a hand up.
“Are you saying I’m hopeless?”
“In a word? Yes.”
“I took karate when I was a kid.”
“I couldn’t tell.”
“It looked so easy in my video games. Do you remember those? This kid gave me a concussion the first time our teacher let us spar, I decided it wasn’t worth it.”
“If you grew up out there, you’d say different.”
“It seemed so...barbaric.”
Kurdy remembers hearing that kid wailing-the body memory of it all came back to him in his dreams that night. “It is. It’s survival, that shit it barbaric.”
Fandom: Jeremiah
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Kurdy survived because he could win. Markus is just getting it.
Disclaimer: I don't own Jeremiah, I'm just playing around.
Notes: For picfics pic number ten, thought up and written in exactly thirty minutes, as specified. Really shitty title, I’m notoriously awful at them. Had I more time I would add in some of Kurdy's dry humor or adjectives elaborating something he said, because as is it sounds kind of shitty.
*~*
Life revolved around this. This. Fighting. You had to know how to fight, how to defend yourself. Kurdy remembered vague images of pansy fucks in silk boxers beating the shit out of each other for money and masculinity.
This, this was different.
This was fighting for everything: food, survival, salvation.
Kurdy decided long ago he was going to survive.
Thrive.
He made it to the ripe old age of puberty on luck and cuteness and other people’s coattails. He made it to adulthood because he learned how to fight. Kurdy could beat the shit out of any fucker who came at him.
He killed a man once. Some punk who made off with his pack while he was taking a piss. Motherfucker. Kurdy ran after him-he was what, maybe seventeen then?-tying his pants up as he went. Even with a head start Kurdy got him. Made him eat dirt and smashed his head in with his fists. Didn’t even let the guy get up to fight back, just wailed. Animal. He didn’t even remember doing it.
“Stop it!” this little voice shrieked from beside him, little hands tugging at his jacket. Little face connecting with his fist on the upstroke. “He’s dead, stop it already!”
The words brought him back to himself. Kurdy stared, dumbfounded, at this little boy who was sobbing on the dirt beside him, holding his little face in his little hand. Kurdy almost asked him what was wrong before-a thought, a look down at this thing he was straddling. Oh yeah. The man he was straddling. The man he had indeed just fucking killed. Bones were poking his thighs uncomfortably. He fucking killed a guy who looked like a walking skeleton. He didn’t lose because Kurdy was better than him.
Kurdy could just barely hear the kid’s wailing over his own heartbeat-and the lack of the guy’s below him.
He rushed off after that, threw up possibly everything he’d ever eaten.
That’s when he started that whole, ‘Man, fuck this shit, I’m outta here,’ mantra. Yeah, Kurdy’d killed guys before that one but that was always just. The stupid fucks usually started it, they at least fought back. Survival of the fittest. If that was true, why did being the fittest suddenly start to feel like shit?
*~*
Markus didn’t like fighting. He’d seen how kids in the towns around the Mountain acted and thought it was degrading. Like civilization and decency died along with the adults. Schools were burning, libraries were burning, knowledge was being destroyed, there was brawling in the streets. That’s not what Markus wanted. He had a plan, that didn’t include squalling children ruling the country.
So he grew up, kept himself locked up in the Mountain so he didn’t have to see it, sent other people out to gather information. Pick up new people. The right kind of people.
Markus grew up. He couldn’t believe he felt like that, was so selfish. Stupid. Self-absorbed. He didn’t keep civilization and decency either, they were lost artifacts until he grew up and noticed they were missing.
He didn’t know how to fight. It took him awhile, but he figured out how useful fighting was. How...almost artistic it could be.
All it took was Kurdy beating the fuck out of him to notice. When it was clear he wouldn’t win, part of himself detached and watched. The play of finely-tuned muscles, the technique and calculating it took.
“Teach me?” Markus asked, sprawled on the floor with the taste of blood in his mouth. Didn’t hurt as bad as he thought he should, knew he probably should. He had the sneaking suspicion Kurdy knew exactly what he was doing.
“There’s only so much I can do.” Kurdy offered a hand up.
“Are you saying I’m hopeless?”
“In a word? Yes.”
“I took karate when I was a kid.”
“I couldn’t tell.”
“It looked so easy in my video games. Do you remember those? This kid gave me a concussion the first time our teacher let us spar, I decided it wasn’t worth it.”
“If you grew up out there, you’d say different.”
“It seemed so...barbaric.”
Kurdy remembers hearing that kid wailing-the body memory of it all came back to him in his dreams that night. “It is. It’s survival, that shit it barbaric.”