Tales of the Abyss, 326 words
Drabble written in between Russian classes. 'Smile' prompt out of the 100 prompt Tales challenge.
There’s blood on Luke’s hands he can’t wash off, dirt and sweat and mud caked on every inch of his body and clothing. They’ve been marching civilians across Rugnica’s battlefields for days now, and it felt like days. Every hour keenly passing, every hour in the baking swamp and blazing sun that had turned Luke’s skin as red as his hair.
For the first time, too, the edge of perfection had dulled from the Colonel’s presence. Jade’s hair is in need of a wash, clumped in elaborate spikes, and his glasses are smeared with sweat and droplets of blood he no longer bothered cleaning off. But he still smiled like there wasn’t a care in his world - which there might not have been. Jade is a soldier, Luke reminds himself (not that he really should need reminding of it); he’s way too used to standing on edge every hour, every day, for weeks on weeks. Even though he’s tense and never seems to sleep or eat, he leads the civilians and Luke without ever looking at a map, without ever breaking step or looking glum, without ever not seeming like he’s just walking down to a market for a bite to eat. Maybe after thirty years, Luke would find this all easy too.
And Jade is the Necromancer, which Luke never needs reminding of.
When Jade smashes a man’s skull in, spraying his uniform head to toe in viscera and brain and shards of bone, and steps calmly over the paling corpse with the twitching, frozen face, he still has a smile up on his face. When he calmly removes his glasses and doesn’t so much as clean them as smear around the red blood and gray brain into a foggy, muddy stain on glass, and casually comments on how there’s no good cleaners outside of Grand Chokmah for getting human out of clothing -
Then Luke is glad to feel human and sick and miserable.
.
There’s blood on Luke’s hands he can’t wash off, dirt and sweat and mud caked on every inch of his body and clothing. They’ve been marching civilians across Rugnica’s battlefields for days now, and it felt like days. Every hour keenly passing, every hour in the baking swamp and blazing sun that had turned Luke’s skin as red as his hair.
For the first time, too, the edge of perfection had dulled from the Colonel’s presence. Jade’s hair is in need of a wash, clumped in elaborate spikes, and his glasses are smeared with sweat and droplets of blood he no longer bothered cleaning off. But he still smiled like there wasn’t a care in his world - which there might not have been. Jade is a soldier, Luke reminds himself (not that he really should need reminding of it); he’s way too used to standing on edge every hour, every day, for weeks on weeks. Even though he’s tense and never seems to sleep or eat, he leads the civilians and Luke without ever looking at a map, without ever breaking step or looking glum, without ever not seeming like he’s just walking down to a market for a bite to eat. Maybe after thirty years, Luke would find this all easy too.
And Jade is the Necromancer, which Luke never needs reminding of.
When Jade smashes a man’s skull in, spraying his uniform head to toe in viscera and brain and shards of bone, and steps calmly over the paling corpse with the twitching, frozen face, he still has a smile up on his face. When he calmly removes his glasses and doesn’t so much as clean them as smear around the red blood and gray brain into a foggy, muddy stain on glass, and casually comments on how there’s no good cleaners outside of Grand Chokmah for getting human out of clothing -
Then Luke is glad to feel human and sick and miserable.
.