grant me wings that i might fly
The sword and shield are bloodless. She'd have been pleased. Ilana hated all the fighting, all the useless death and pain, hated how close their world kept coming to destroying itself.
She doesn't hate anything anymore.
He does. He hates everything. The warlords and their armies, the militias and their petty defenses, the bombs and the blades and the hands that fixed her father's farm tools but cannot fix her, cannot bring her back to him. He hates himself for leaving. He hates himself for not having killed anyone personally, with that sword, while he was gone.
He blew them off the face of this miserable planet, but it's not enough. Who did this? Whose soldiers? Someone must pay.
my beloved, do you know? when the warm wind comes again, another year will start to pass
Razer counts hours. He doesn't mention it; it's pointless and painful. It will change nothing, and only serves to make him feel worse. But he knows how long he's been without Ilana and without a home worth returning to, down to the exact minute. If he wanted, he could tell anyone who asked.
But he doesn't want. And nobody asks. Not even in a casual way. Nobody. Not Bleez, who is the closest thing he sometimes has to a friend here, when they aren't busy trying to tear one another down. Not Zox, his partner. Not even Atrocitus.
He sometimes wonders if he should hate the Red Lanterns too. Not Atrocitus, who has given him a vehicle with which to carry out his vengeance. And not Loran, who tries his best to guide them all. But all the rest.
How long until Atrocitus's mission is complete, and Razer can return home, show the warlords the meaning of fear? No one says, no one asks. So Razer counts hours.
and please don't ask me why i'm here; something deeper brought me than a need to remember
Every now and again, in its endless pusuit of justice, Shard passes over his homeworld. Razer makes a point of finding a good place to view it.
It looks worse every time he sees it. The war lords have advanced beyond pitched melee combat in urban zones — how nice that they've noticed how urban combat eats soldiery, how it grinds up armies and spits them out in so many unrecognizable chunks — and have advanced to carpet bombing.
The fires are visible from space. And every time he sees them, they've grown a little bigger. What a wonderful place to be from! How long before it's a smoking cinder with no life on it at all?
He remembers warm winds across an irrigated desert, crops, the way flowers seemed as if they immediately sprouted up underfoot every time it rained. Ilana's brothers would laugh as they pulled the flowers up by the roots, tossing them away from the vegetable gardens. You might be very pretty, but you won't feed a city.
But he doesn't watch his homeworld to remember.
Once, Atrocitus joins him.
Because one does not ignore Atrocitus, Razer points at a burning spot. It's huge, covering most of a continent. He wonders idly how much larger it can grow. In the end, will they set even the seas on fire?
"That's a desert." (The sand must be glass by now.) "I made my first bomb there, an automated harvester."
He does not expect Atorcitus to care. But his leader curls his lips into a grotesquerie of a smile. "Soon, Razer," he says.
we were once young and blessed with wings
That is their fate.
It feels strange to wire traps. He's used to fixing, to making. At least in the miltia, he was wiring charges and mines to catch invading soldiers. To kill, certainly, and not always quickly. Now he's wiring to kill —
Green Lanterns. Atrocitus's enemies. The misbegotten army of Oa. Enemies of this entire part of the galaxy, who only wanted (as Ilana wanted, as his city wanted, as he wanted) to be left alone.
He'll burn them all.
my beloved, do you know how many times i stared at clouds, thinking that i saw you there?
Razer avoids the common areas when he can, preferring to work.
There aren't many friends amongst the Red Lanterns, only people who work together without actively trying to kill each other. The simple soldiers are better, but faceless and best left nameless. They regard Lanterns with a mix of respect and irritated suspicion, as if they expect to be attacked by ring-bearing berserkers at any moment.
Worse, he sees faces in crowds. It's not just Ilana; it's her parents and his, the other combat engineers who weren't lucky enough (is this luck? Is it really?) to survive.
So Razer works, and works, and sleeps, and works more. And he closes his eyes when he can, where he can.
moments lost, though time remains; i am still proud of what we were… eternity awaits
"For the greater good," he says.
He cannot bring her back. Will never see her again; she is gone, and he is beginning to accept it. He can only hope to fix the things that have gone so wrong with the galaxy. But not yet. First there must be a cleansing: a righteous scourging, a punishment. Justice. Justice —
And vengeance.
Notes: Segment titles lifted from VNV Nation's, "Beloved," because that is my Razer/Ilana song okay. (It and "The Wind That Shakes The Barley".) I REGRET NOTHING.