The Endless Sea
Title: The Endless Sea
Fandom: Dragon's Dogma
Rating: PG
Word Count: 735
Spoilers: None
Warnings: Slavery, hints of dub-con
Disclaimer: In no way mine, or anything to do with me, I own nothing.
Summary: The first time it's explained to me, I don't understand.
AN: Written for the 'slaves' square for hc_bingo.
The first time it's explained to me, I don't understand. I assume that I've misheard, that perhaps the words are different to city people, far off languages lending strange meanings to familiar words.
The guard sees my confusion and tells me again, words careless, as though he's sharing something that everyone knows. 'They're pawns,' he says. 'They do what they're told. They're for us.' The words still don't make sense. He speaks as if there's an obvious difference between the weathered face of the guard, and the patient, amiable face of Rook. 'They're not real people,' he adds. 'They live and die to serve us.'
He smiles after he says it. As if that's the way it should be.
I still don't understand, but I see the way that townsfolk and guards react to them. I see how they look at them. It's as if something may be true if everyone believes it.
There are pawns aiding in the battle against the cyclops, they fight with a surety, even those that are new and not yet fully trained. Though one strays too close, staff held too high, and he's knocked aside. I'm too far away, sword still half buried in the Cyclops's leathery thigh. Too far away to aid him, to do anything but shout a warning.
"Help me." The pawn's voice is high and fragile, wet where the words move through blood. The sound of it crawls along my spine, like a shard of glass.
A soldier watches dispassionately, as his fighting companion is pinned by the Cyclops's club, fragile body smashed apart in one blow. There's nothing but the darkness of spreading blood left behind. The Cyclops falls eventually, body ripped open by swords and fire, and I won't pretend I'm not angry, reckless. That when it finally crashes to the earth I don't saw at its neck with an impotent and unnameable fury, until its head comes free.
The soldier goes on his way, as if nothing happened, and I'm cold, I'm colder than I've ever been.
The pawn who swore to serve me, the one the rift gave to me, he made me name him. As if it would please me, as if it was my right. When all I could wonder was where he had come from, who he'd been before he was sworn to me. I don't understand, I don't understand any of this, and gods forgive me in the darkness of a camp just North of the encampment I wish I'd never stepped into the rift. I wish I'd never seen the sea of upturned faces, hungering to be chosen, as if they had no other purpose. Perhaps it would be easier if they were blank-faced dolls, smooth and featureless as clay. Perhaps it would be easier to command them then, to watch them fall. To listen to them talk in quiet, repetitive sentences as if they can only hold so many thoughts at a time...like children.
And every time we rest, every time my - my pawn slides back through the rift I know there are others. I don't know where they travel, I don't know what they ask of him, what they demand. Perhaps the same thing he tries to offer me, as if I could take it and ever look in his eyes again. I don't know how many times he's died in service of another.
"I hope I have pleased you, Arisen," he says, when he returns, and it turns my stomach. Though they protest that they don't feel, that they don't want, there's an earnestness there. Something that if only it were stronger I would have named clawing desperation. I'm not sure if it's that they don't want, or that they've forgotten how. Or if they're afraid to after so long. Nothing so lifeless could ever be so starved for approval, nothing that wasn't real could ever fight like it mattered and die afraid.
They're supposed to protect me, but I find myself protecting them instead. I find myself pushing ahead and taking the weight of every strike, bruised and broken under blows from human and monster alike, to prove that it matters. To prove that they matter. They are not an endless and meaningless sea of faces.
I'm not whatever it is they think I am. I'm a fisherman.
But I will protect them if no one else will.
Fandom: Dragon's Dogma
Rating: PG
Word Count: 735
Spoilers: None
Warnings: Slavery, hints of dub-con
Disclaimer: In no way mine, or anything to do with me, I own nothing.
Summary: The first time it's explained to me, I don't understand.
AN: Written for the 'slaves' square for hc_bingo.
The first time it's explained to me, I don't understand. I assume that I've misheard, that perhaps the words are different to city people, far off languages lending strange meanings to familiar words.
The guard sees my confusion and tells me again, words careless, as though he's sharing something that everyone knows. 'They're pawns,' he says. 'They do what they're told. They're for us.' The words still don't make sense. He speaks as if there's an obvious difference between the weathered face of the guard, and the patient, amiable face of Rook. 'They're not real people,' he adds. 'They live and die to serve us.'
He smiles after he says it. As if that's the way it should be.
I still don't understand, but I see the way that townsfolk and guards react to them. I see how they look at them. It's as if something may be true if everyone believes it.
There are pawns aiding in the battle against the cyclops, they fight with a surety, even those that are new and not yet fully trained. Though one strays too close, staff held too high, and he's knocked aside. I'm too far away, sword still half buried in the Cyclops's leathery thigh. Too far away to aid him, to do anything but shout a warning.
"Help me." The pawn's voice is high and fragile, wet where the words move through blood. The sound of it crawls along my spine, like a shard of glass.
A soldier watches dispassionately, as his fighting companion is pinned by the Cyclops's club, fragile body smashed apart in one blow. There's nothing but the darkness of spreading blood left behind. The Cyclops falls eventually, body ripped open by swords and fire, and I won't pretend I'm not angry, reckless. That when it finally crashes to the earth I don't saw at its neck with an impotent and unnameable fury, until its head comes free.
The soldier goes on his way, as if nothing happened, and I'm cold, I'm colder than I've ever been.
The pawn who swore to serve me, the one the rift gave to me, he made me name him. As if it would please me, as if it was my right. When all I could wonder was where he had come from, who he'd been before he was sworn to me. I don't understand, I don't understand any of this, and gods forgive me in the darkness of a camp just North of the encampment I wish I'd never stepped into the rift. I wish I'd never seen the sea of upturned faces, hungering to be chosen, as if they had no other purpose. Perhaps it would be easier if they were blank-faced dolls, smooth and featureless as clay. Perhaps it would be easier to command them then, to watch them fall. To listen to them talk in quiet, repetitive sentences as if they can only hold so many thoughts at a time...like children.
And every time we rest, every time my - my pawn slides back through the rift I know there are others. I don't know where they travel, I don't know what they ask of him, what they demand. Perhaps the same thing he tries to offer me, as if I could take it and ever look in his eyes again. I don't know how many times he's died in service of another.
"I hope I have pleased you, Arisen," he says, when he returns, and it turns my stomach. Though they protest that they don't feel, that they don't want, there's an earnestness there. Something that if only it were stronger I would have named clawing desperation. I'm not sure if it's that they don't want, or that they've forgotten how. Or if they're afraid to after so long. Nothing so lifeless could ever be so starved for approval, nothing that wasn't real could ever fight like it mattered and die afraid.
They're supposed to protect me, but I find myself protecting them instead. I find myself pushing ahead and taking the weight of every strike, bruised and broken under blows from human and monster alike, to prove that it matters. To prove that they matter. They are not an endless and meaningless sea of faces.
I'm not whatever it is they think I am. I'm a fisherman.
But I will protect them if no one else will.