FIC: my heart is both shield and sword... for escritoireazul
For wonderful escritoireazul, on her birthday.
my heart is both shield and sword, and i shall wield them(The Darkness | OFC, The Ghost and the Darkness, PG-13)
The Darkness stretched her own old bones, and opened her human jaw in a mighty yawn. Outside their den, the high sun burned hot, but inside it was cool. The Darkness walked barefoot over the beds of bones, listening to the percussion of the jaws and ribs rustling against each other. The Ghost slept, snoring quietly, still as a lion. They were the same color, their lion hides.
As a child, Asha often thought maybe she had taken all the pigment from her brother's skin, leached it when they were inside their mother. She was so dark her skin had a purple tint in the sun, blue in moonlight. Kwame had been born minutes after Asha, and pale. White skin, white eyes, white hair. The Darkness remembers painting her brother's skin with clay to keep the sun from turning it to boils. Remembers walking with him through the village, hearing the whispers of the people. Children like Kwame disappeared, and the witch doctors sold their parts for much money. Asha heard screaming in the night and listened to her brother's breathing hitch as he laid beside her on their blanket. Something would have to be done.
They had known it was bad moti, this medicine, but it was the only way they could protect Kwame. As always, Asha took the initiative. She made a bone blade from the rib of an abandoned gnu carcass, and hid one night outside the hut of a man she heard took pale children for their parts. When he was sleeping, she drew her bone blade across the man's throat and collected the blood that bubbled out. In the moonlight, now, her skin was red. The man had so much blood in him.
Asha took Kwame before the witch doctor. They painted their faces red with the man's hot blood. They were the same color now. The doctor chanted over bowls of herbs for them to drink. Kwame was scared, but Asha never feared anything but losing Kwame. She drank first, licked the dregs from the wooden bowl, even though it tasted awful. If didn't matter. Only one thing mattered.
Asha was still watching Kwame drink his moti when the most horrible pain filled her bones. She dropped the bowl. Kwame cried out for her, but she screamed for him to keep drinking.
Asha felt her teeth elongate. She stretched out her arms and watched the bones twist and shift like tectonic plates beneath the earth. She screamed. She screamed and screamed until it came out a roar.
The Darkness was born that day, and minutes after, the Ghost.
So men had come for them again, come with fire and with guns. The Darkness did not fear them. What were men to two creatures and their millennia? What was a gun to claws and teeth? What was a spark and a flint to this heart?
The Darkness crouched by the beds of bones and washed blood and dust from her face and hands. She felt the cool air fill her human lungs, and for a moment, she almost felt sorry for the men with their guns and their fear. She had crushed their guns beneath her paws and tasted their fear as their throats crunched between her mighty jaws. She listened to her brother’s long sleep breaths, and she smiled. Fear had died with Asha and Kwame. A bullet was the size of a bead and her heart had the strength of a lion. That was no battle at all.