Five Revelations
Title: Five Revelations
Story Continuity: Battle For the Sun extra
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 98 + 88 + 93 + 80 + 86 (vignette chain)
Summary: Five firsts in the life, such as it is, of Ragnar Merridan.
1.
When Ragnar first realizes what death means, he is eleven.
There is much talk about how proud his father would be of him if he were still there to see him. Ragnar thought, for eleven years, his father was invisible and blind, and he always thought that was strangely poetic. He thinks later it's also strangely accurate.
When his uncle makes a rabbit stew, Ragnar is able to connect it to his missing pet.
"Why you crying, Ragnar?" Yurieth says. "It's good! Tastes just like chicken!"
And Ragnar understands now what the adults and trees have only whispered.
2.
When Ragnar first kills a man, he is fourteen.
It's entirely, laughably accidental; the man is a burglar, and the sword on his father's mantle looks so lovely in the moonlight. Ragnar doesn't know how to use it, and the burglar knows it.
What the burglar doesn't take into account is that sharp things can cut deep, no matter the wielder's skill.
It is entirely, laughably accidental, and yet it feels to Ragnar so heavy with significance.
He begins training with swords a week and two days later.
3.
When Ragnar first dies, it isn't in battle, or to a vampire on a dark, stormy night.
He is seventeen, and she is sixteen. It isn't love, and it isn't quite the kind of lust they've read about. When they fight - they never train - it always ends up as something tenderer, yet no less violent.
"You're going to be the death of me," she says, and thinks it romantic.
She's wrong.
When the medics revive him, his first words are, "There was nothing there. If that's death, then I'll live forever."
4.
When Ragnar is deployed into active duty at nineteen, he is sure there is no one who would grieve for him.
He is right.
When he moves from Sangria to the Capital of Sangria's vanquishing country when the war is over, the glares and poorly-concealed enmity are a lot more like home than he's willing to admit.
Of course, he really did kill many thousands of people. They just didn't include his family, despite what his hometown might have thought.
5.
The first time Ragnar feeds as a vampire, he hesitates.
"Come on, now," his sire says, and there is laughter in that voice. "It can't be that much harder for you to drink the blood you shed. Don't worry; men are a lot like chicken."
Because he knows Mashiro wouldn't understand, Ragnar says, "I'm savoring the moment. This is a first that won't come around again."
It is strange, he thinks, that he feels his humanity more acutely the closer he comes to losing it forever.
Story Continuity: Battle For the Sun extra
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 98 + 88 + 93 + 80 + 86 (vignette chain)
Summary: Five firsts in the life, such as it is, of Ragnar Merridan.
1.
When Ragnar first realizes what death means, he is eleven.
There is much talk about how proud his father would be of him if he were still there to see him. Ragnar thought, for eleven years, his father was invisible and blind, and he always thought that was strangely poetic. He thinks later it's also strangely accurate.
When his uncle makes a rabbit stew, Ragnar is able to connect it to his missing pet.
"Why you crying, Ragnar?" Yurieth says. "It's good! Tastes just like chicken!"
And Ragnar understands now what the adults and trees have only whispered.
2.
When Ragnar first kills a man, he is fourteen.
It's entirely, laughably accidental; the man is a burglar, and the sword on his father's mantle looks so lovely in the moonlight. Ragnar doesn't know how to use it, and the burglar knows it.
What the burglar doesn't take into account is that sharp things can cut deep, no matter the wielder's skill.
It is entirely, laughably accidental, and yet it feels to Ragnar so heavy with significance.
He begins training with swords a week and two days later.
3.
When Ragnar first dies, it isn't in battle, or to a vampire on a dark, stormy night.
He is seventeen, and she is sixteen. It isn't love, and it isn't quite the kind of lust they've read about. When they fight - they never train - it always ends up as something tenderer, yet no less violent.
"You're going to be the death of me," she says, and thinks it romantic.
She's wrong.
When the medics revive him, his first words are, "There was nothing there. If that's death, then I'll live forever."
4.
When Ragnar is deployed into active duty at nineteen, he is sure there is no one who would grieve for him.
He is right.
When he moves from Sangria to the Capital of Sangria's vanquishing country when the war is over, the glares and poorly-concealed enmity are a lot more like home than he's willing to admit.
Of course, he really did kill many thousands of people. They just didn't include his family, despite what his hometown might have thought.
5.
The first time Ragnar feeds as a vampire, he hesitates.
"Come on, now," his sire says, and there is laughter in that voice. "It can't be that much harder for you to drink the blood you shed. Don't worry; men are a lot like chicken."
Because he knows Mashiro wouldn't understand, Ragnar says, "I'm savoring the moment. This is a first that won't come around again."
It is strange, he thinks, that he feels his humanity more acutely the closer he comes to losing it forever.