The Ephyran War Hymns

Disclaimer: Clearly, I don't own Gears of War or its characters in any shape or form. Everything belongs to Epic Games.
All lyrics, as posted in short, are the intellectual property of their respective artists.

This body of work is rated T for language and mature themes. Might get bumped up to M along the way, though I appreciate any feedback on how I rate my work.

—

This is a collective of shorter, mostly unrelated pieces (some in multiple parts) focusing on smaller, but no less pivotal moments in the lives of Gears, mostly Marcus Fenix, Dominic Santiago, and Anya Stroud.

All stories were inspired by songs or song lyrics, one way or another. If you're curious which ones, you need only google the chapter names or introductory quotes. ;)

The Hymns will be updated and built upon as the mood strikes me; a permanent work-in-progress into which I shall pour my feverish love for the Gears universe. If a story starts getting too long (upwards of three parts) I'll probably break it off and publish it separately.

—

Spoiler Alert:
II. Bruise contains mild spoilers for the Barren comic story arc.
IV. Halycon contains major spoilers for Aspho Fields.

—

And lastly, a huge thank you to everyone who has read, reviewed, favourited, and/or alert'd. Even the fact that you took the time to read an Author's Note down this far warms my heart.

((Concrit is encouraged and very much appreciated))

I.
Non Populus
(Part One)

tell me, will I dream?
and tell me, will it be serene?

Nearly chewing through her full, pale lips, Anya Stroud tried her hardest not to snatch Dom's hand and crush it with the wild weight of her anxiety.

"This is crazy. Why are they taking so long?" The lieutenant's voice was stretched like an overtuned violin string. "They were supposed to arrive forty-five minutes ago."

"Forty-eight," Dom glanced up from the scratched face of his watch and leaned forward to stare down the street before them, its once-smooth face scarred by frag explosions and old emergence holes. The past decade had etched an unfair amount of pre-mature lines into the Gear's face, but in the weak orange light of Ephyra's barely-functioning street lamps, they seemed to have doubled in number and depth in the last hour alone. Silently, Anya reminded herself that he was just as emotionally invested in this early morning as she was. Maybe even more so.

"Maybe they've been delayed..."

"Maybe." Dom jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. "But you'd think they'd know."

Following the gesture, Anya saw that a crowd of men and women had amassed by the doors of the large, squat terminal building behind them. Roughly a third of the group was buttoned up in dark, slightly tattered suits; the others were lightly armoured, holding their sidearms on casual display. The lieutenant raised a slender brow; she had been too absorbed in the emotional war raging inside her to even notice them.

"Looks like they're going to try to rip through the official pardon paperwork right on location," Dom ventured, eyes narrowed at the silent crowd. "Not that Hoffman's been overly concerned about legal formalities since E-Day."

Neither one said it, but they were both thinking the same thing: for the past week, the Jacinto Maximum Security Penitentiary had been experiencing increased pressure from the Locust wave that was gradually pressing out from Ephyra's overtaken borders. Some guards were even reporting indirect enemy contact while on their patrols; Anya had officiated one of the transmissions herself. No one wanted to admit it, but the fortress-like Slab was on the verge of falling prey to the invasion that had already claimed much of Ephyra. The prison faculty's urgency in getting the inmates out and pardoned as soon as possible did little to allay Dom and Anya's fears.

"Don't worry, Anya; they'll get here. We're talking about moving a friggin' brigade of hard ass criminals here. Shit's probably going to take a while."

He was right, though the way he was mercilessly wringing his hands suggested he needed to take his own advice. Forcing herself to take a deep breath and focus on something other than her thrumming pulse and the emptiness of the street, Anya glanced around her cold surroundings.

The broken, debris-strewn street was dominated by the building behind them; in spite of the fact that its entire northern wall was little more than a mountain of mortar chunks and red brick dust, it was still the most intact structure on the block. All around them, the wind blew thinly through the corpses of buildings that lined the streets, their foundations collapsed by emergence holes and their walls pockmarked by bullets. It seemed like few parts of the city didn't look like this anymore; nearly every street had at least a few houses or stores that had been laid low in battle.

Arms wrapped around herself in a vain attempt to ward off the remnants of the night's chill, Anya looked towards the east. The sun was rising, and the bleary, colourless rays illuminated an entire city full of ruined buildings; the horizon was jagged with them.

This forlorn street had been designated as the rendezvous point for the inmates and prison faculty. Once the trucks full of pardoned prisoners arrived, as per Colonel Hoffman's explicit orders, they would be escorted straight to the COG headquarters and enlisted as Gears.

Or re-enlisted, Anya thought wistfully.

"Shit."

Dom's entire body tensed; his eyes were unfocused, but it was clear he was listening for something. Anya strained her ears as well, then had to swallow her heart back down as the roar of multiple engines suddenly echoed through the street.

Amidst the emotional onslaught that washed over Anya—somewhere between the instantly crashing heartbeats and the nausea churning in her stomach—she was suddenly overcome by the urge to find a mirror and check her appearance. She reached up and tried to smooth her hair back as best she could. The long night hours they'd spent waiting on this street probably hadn't been kind to her make-up job either...

"Dom...do I look okay?"

She caught the man's eye, and the dull look on his face stopped her primping cold.

"You look fine, Anya," Dom reiterated outloud, his tone slow and deliberate. "I mean, none of that matters...Not to him, anyways."

Anya blinked several times, then shook her head in embarrassment. "You're right. I'm...being stupid."

Dom's vaguely exasperated expression held for a scant second before melting into a sad smile. "Hey," he said, reaching out to give Anya's arm an apologetic rub. "I'm sorry. I know how much this means to you. I get it."

The corporal's last words were drowned out by the clamour of the approaching vehicles as they bombed through the city; the friends exchanged a final glance, then turned to stare down the street together.

No sooner had they looked, the first of a long convoy of beat-up civvie transport trucks turned at the dusty intersection and rolled up the uneven asphalt. One by one, they came to a shuddering halt before the building, the rhythmic cough of the idling engines still booming through the streets. The doors to the head vehicle swung open, and several haggard men in dark uniforms emerged. As they hauled themselves up the stairs, they were met by the group behind Dom and Anya, and the two sides began the barely-nessecary legal procedures.

The drivers—heavily armed, Anya could see—also stepped of the trucks, each one going to the rear doors and unlocking them. There was the sound of a hundred truck doors winching up, and then the hordes of prisoners began to pour out into the street.

"Oh God, Dom..." Anya breathed, her throat instantly tight. Her eyes darted through the throngs of dirty, jumpsuit-clad inmates as they clogged up the street and spilled up onto the stairs where Anya and Dom stood. Driven by cold protocol, the COG escorts were attempting to assert full control over the prisoners, but revolt seemed far from their minds. Through the grime and blood on their pale, worn faces, Anya saw nothing but relief; it was obvious they were too happy about being released back into the world alive to even think about making trouble.

But that didn't mean they looked alive.

Anya thought she'd seen the worse in the civilians these days, their bones becoming more and more apparent as the food rations became more severe by the week, but these men were emaciated. The standard issue orange uniforms hung on the skeletal bodies of many of the men, the skin of their hands and faces drawn taught over the jutting bones. Even the prisoners who had managed to retain their physique seemed about to keel over at any moment, their ropey, malnourished muscles sagging pitifully beneath tired flesh.

And the scars, they all had so many scars; jagged lines of twisted white flesh that marred every inch of some men. Horrible and breathless, the minutes ticked by; Anya watched the exodus of inmates with steadily blurring eyes.

"This is what he lived through?" she whispered as she and Dom frantically raked the crowd for a single face. "Look at them...is he...is he like this?"

The image of a certain weakened, unshaven Gear loomed at the corners of Anya's mind, his once-powerful form hollowed by starvation and disease, but she bluntly refused it. The last time she'd seen him, he was standing healthy and strong, his muscled body held with stalwart pride in spite of the handcuffs and the guards at his sides. It had become the mental snapshot she'd held in heart and mind for the past four years.

He had looked to her that morning, in the wordless moments before they dragged him away: his startlingly blue eyes had never left her heart feeling so full, and yet so horribly empty.

And so she remembered that face: the eyes, the jawline, everything. It was the visage that kept her awake at night, and haunted her during the day. That was how she'd kept him in her memory, safe and familiar. Anything else just wouldn't be him.

Would it?

"...Where the hell is he?"

The sun had finally crested the destroyed Ephyran skyline, setting lifeless fire to the city of stone. The orange horde of prisoners was thinning somewhat as the armed guards ushered them towards the train that would whisk them off to the front lines. And still they hadn't found the man they searched for. The twinge in Dom's voice told Anya he was getting as desperate as she was.

"I mean, I've scanned the face of every asshole here twice..."

Another painful minute rolled away. Anya's gaze raced over the shuffling criminals, but she could feel her heart sinking, getting bogged down in a single, quicksand-like notion.

"He's still...alive...right?"

The lieutenant wasn't sure if it was the nerves or the extreme lack of sleep, but the words sounded so goddamn ludicrous, she wanted to laugh at them, even if just to make their bitter edge go away.

This isn't happening. It's insane, and it's damn well not happening. She hadn't waited almost half a decade to have her heart shattered at the last possible moment. No frigging way.

But for one, dreadful moment, the colour drained from Dom's suddenly stony face, and Anya wanted to throw up.

"I..." He stopped, head bowing slightly. "No...no. That's not possible. Hoffman...he'd know. He'd tell us."

The colonel's face flashed across Anya's brain—her commanding officer, and the man who'd sentenced their most beloved friend to forty years in the worst prison imaginable—and she felt a pained grimace creep over her features. She didn't want to admit it to Dom, but she had little faith in Hoffman's graciousness in this situation.

And still, doubt gnawed at her like a bonesaw; when she drew breath now, it came in hitched stutters, her throat tightening with sudden terror and grief. In spite of all the long years of tears, of praying for him and begging her heart for bravery, in this exact moment, Anya could feel her chest caving in on itself, and her world going right with it.

God, you're so stupid. Anya screamed miserably inside her head, eyes screwed shut. They told you. You read the stats. Life expectancy is less than a year for Slab inmates. You knew it was as good as a death sentence, you knew you'd lost him. You knew...

Anya...

She stopped, breath frozen in her aching throat, as a second voice flashed through her mind. It was not her own, but a man's, from a distant memory. Its deep tones were painfully familiar, and as hard as she tried to wince it away, she found her mind rushing backwards into the vision of that day four years ago...

"Anya...damn it, look at me."

His voice had been uncharacteristically soft; that frightened her more than anything else.

"N-no. This is bullshit, Marcus. That can't be their decision. It can't, it—"

"It is. Everyone saw this coming. It's over. You and Dom...you have to let this go."

"I...What? What the hell are you talking about? "

"I'm sorry; God, you know I am. But, I...shit, I won't let you waste your life on me."

"No...no. Screw that."

"Anya, please—"

"No. I don't care what you say; you can't ask us to just forget you ever existed. That's not how it works. I don't give up that easily."

The memory cut out like an old film, her final words echoing through her mind. The lieutenant opened her eyes.

"It doesn't matter if he would, Dom..." Anya said suddenly, her voice low and quiet with conviction. Throwing emotional caution and restraint to the wind, she grabbed her fellow Gear's hand and gave him the best teary-eyed smile she had in her.

"It doesn't matter, because Marcus is here. We just have to keep looking. He's here; I know it."