Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing to do with Far Cry or its characters.
Author's Note: This piece is a total experiment, an over long drabble that stemmed from me trying to get the relationship I had in my head down onto paper. I'm hoping to make a full, multi chaptered story out of these two eventually, so hopefully this drabble is the start of something new. It's my first time post in the Far Cry 5 fandom, so fingers crossed you like it!
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Sin always finds him, no matter how closely he walks the path.
He can't fail Joseph again, won't. He's been the black sheep of his flock for so long, fighting to prove himself and earn his place. He's heard the whispers, loose tongues who say that his position amongst the faithful comes from blood and nothing more. So far he's cut the tongues from any and all who dare speak out in such a way, but somehow someone new, someone bold always rises up to replace them.
The Seeds know deeply of sin, even Joseph. They've all shamed God and acted selfishly, strayed from the path they'd been put to follow like wayward children. Yet John knows that he's the one who always manages to stray the furthest, to lose himself within his own sin so deeply that it's a struggle to see a way out. Joseph is always there to pull him out and yet even that in itself brings shame and its constant bedfellow, anger.
Wrath. The word is carved into his flesh as an eternal reminder and yet sometimes it isn't enough.
It's ironic that the man whose purpose to save others from sin remains locked in its cold embrace. It's his burden, his cross to bear.
The reason that Eden's Gate might remain forever closed to him.
The key is the deputy; it is the will of the Father. John must gain her atonement and break her will or lose sight of the Garden forever. In words, it's a simple enough task, a role he has played for months. He has cut hundreds of sins from the Father's flock, from the eager to the ever reluctant. Despite his own struggles with sin, it's what he's good at; reading people, reaching into them and pulling their sins to the surface. It's the reason Joseph made him a herald, no matter what his enemies whisper. He's both feared and respected because of his ability to look into a person's eyes and see their soul and that is where his power lies.
But the deputy? She's something else. Something stubborn and strong, perhaps with a will that matches his own. She's not a nameless soul that needs cleansing. She's his past, a fragment of the man he was before the cult, before Joseph called him home.
In truth, it feels like a lifetime ago.
He was an empty vessel then, cut off from his brothers and his adoptive parents. A lowly sinner who had lost his way and stumbled from God. He still believed, but there was no clarity, no direction to his faith. He was ambitious, talented, a lawyer because his so called parents claimed that he would never amount to anything. Everything in his life was at break neck speed, a whirlwind of disposable income, bars and one night stands. He had so much, but never once stopped to give. Instead he kept on taking and taking, enjoying each night as though it was his last. There was no love in his life back then, no fulfilment. Just a deep dark void that he mindlessly tried to fill.
They'd met in a bar in Atlanta, both chasing the same sin. She'd immediately caught his interest with the darkness behind her eyes and the way she'd shrugged off his arrogance and accomplishments as if they were nothing. She was beautiful, strong, determined and fearless. Quietly confident but oddly trapped, like an animal forced to live in captivity. Even back then, John had sensed her potential, had found his interest piqued in it. It was a similarity they shared, two souls walking the streets of a city that barely understood them, always wanting, but never knowing what exactly made them so empty.
They'd slept together on that first night, a deliciously rough affair that had left him wanting more. Like a drug he kept on returning to her, intoxicated by her ability to be able to take whatever he gave her. With her, no sin felt too great. He could give pain, receive it and never once fear retribution. It was catharsis for them both, a release that was as close as John had come to being himself in decades.
And then Joseph called him home. He was given purpose, intoxicated by something else entirely. All thoughts of her left him the day that he stepped back in Hope County. He'd never even considered seeing her again.
Now, his will is the same as the Father. He wants her to atone, to say yes and renounce sin. But his better judgement remembers the stubborn streak in her that he used to care for, knows already just how much he will have to break her in order to get through. The thought is exciting and therein lies the problem. Joseph has already had to pull him back from sin with her once, back at the cleansing when his hands had been around her neck and her body had flailed under the water beneath him. It would have been so easy to hold her there until her limbs went limp. In that moment, she had been his singular focus, wrath and pride and lust flowing through him like poison. He wanted to kill her for everything she'd done, his pride damaged by the fiery swathe she'd cut through his region. But underneath it all, there had been a part of him that had still wanted her, the part that used to revel in the feeling of her skin against his. The part of him that the Father calls a sinner.
No.
The tattoo gun is a familiar weight in his palm. Pulling at his shirt, he yanks the blue fabric upwards, exposing the skin just above his hip. His foot on the pedal, a familiar buzz hums through the air as he carves the letters into his skin.
Lust.
He will wear this sin for as long as it takes, a fiery reminder of the man he no longer is. A man who refuses to be consumed by sin.
The man who refuses to be consumed by her.
The throwing knife makes a satisfying 'thump' as it lodges itself in the drywall. More specifically, the knife is sitting right in the middle of John Seed's forehead, his mouth stretched into an overzealous grin. She'd found the poster hanging on the wall of a gas station they liberated and earned herself more than one strange look when she pocketed it for herself. She'd assured Grace that it was for target practice and little else.
In the picture John has his arms raised to the fucking heavens, where 'YES' is spelled in big white capital letters above his head. Throwing another knife, Mac hits the 'E' dead centre.
How about fuck no, John?
She's still piecing it all together, the week's events happening at impossible speed. What had promised to be a simple arrest had ended up being a real shit show and in reality she'd been fighting ever since. She'd never really thought that she would find herself spear heading some kind of All American resistance and yet, sitting in her dingy room above The Spread Eagle in Fall's End, that's where she's wound up anyway.
In truth, Mac had just been pissed. With her team in shackles, a megalomaniac running the show and no promise of back up from the outside, she'd figured that cutting her way through cult territory until she could rip that asshole Joseph a new one was her only choice. The violence she didn't really mind so much, guns and blood second nature to her at this point. But the constant threat of capture and torture has her constantly on edge and unable to find any real rest, even now sitting her cot in the newly liberated town.
Her back against the wall, Mac throws another knife, this time hitting John squarely in the crotch.
If only the picture was real life.
She hadn't thought about him in years, had never thought that she'd see him again, especially when she moved out of Atlanta. Joseph's entire church and congregation had been all kinds of fucked up, but if Mac was honest with herself, she had to admit that seeing John there had jarred her. She'd been all geared up to arrest a homicidal cult leader and then suddenly there was a ghost from her past looking her dead in the eye.
He'd recognised her too. Given her a cold, confused look that had sent her stomach spinning. Somehow even then Mac had a feeling that shit was about to hit the fan, but she could never have anticipated just how spectacular display it would actually be.
She keeps telling herself that the fact that it's John didn't matter. He might be wearing the same face, but John Seed had suddenly gone from a fucked up, corporate lawyer to a glorified torturer and any small allegiance she owed him is rendered null and void as a result. Hell, the man is flaying people alive for fuck's sake. John had been into some dark shit back when she'd known him, but this was a whole new fucking level.
And yet...
Mac isn't a woman ruled by her emotions, in fact most of the time she tries her damnedest to pretend that she doesn't have any at all. She has her own darkness, her own daemons that she rarely gives voice to. Instead, she prefers to go through life as smoothly as possible, avoiding commitment and relationships so that she never finds herself caught in one place.
John had been one of the very few people she'd gone back to. Over and over until neither of them dared mention that it was a thing.
Forgetting the downright kinky sex they'd shared, there'd been something else pulling them together. A shared common ground that they would only ever hint at and never fully discussed. There was an understanding between them, an acceptance. John never pushed to confine her and Mac never wanted him to. He'd been able to read her like a book, something that she usually hated. But with John? It just didn't bother her as much.
She'd trusted him, as much as she'd ever been able to trust anyone in her life. Maybe even cared for him. Once.
In her defense, she'd never fucking imagined that he'd end up somewhere like this.
Grunting, partially in irritation at her emotions and partially thanks to her stiff, aching body, she pushes herself upwards from the bed and moves albeit it slowly to the poster. One by one, she plucks the knives from the dry wall, hissing when a blade nicks her fingertip. Transfixed, she stands for a moment, watching the blood well up and pool on her skin, before coming to her senses and wiping it off on the back of her jeans. She barely even felt the pain, her body already battered and bruised from her time in captivity. She'd avoided confessing her sins this time, but she has absolutely no doubt that John's bliss bullets would find her again.
It's only a matter of time.
As she settles back on her bed, legs outstretched to try and counteract the dull ache from sitting for hours in a stress position, Mac can't help but wonder how she'll feel when she comes face to face with John again. She knows exactly how she's supposed to feel; angry, confused, terrified and in truth she doesn't doubt that he has the power to evoke all of those things within her, especially now.
But she doesn't entirely trust herself. Doesn't trust that she can be subjective, that she can forget the man that she'd met back in Atlanta. Will she be betrayed by that side of herself when it matters most? Just how much power will John hold over her? Just how well will he be able to look into her eyes and root through her mind?
The thought alone brings a cold shiver down her spine, the skin on her forearms quickly becoming gooseflesh. With a grimace, she throws one of the knives with more force this time, a loud thud sounding as it strikes John in the middle of his smug mouth. Smiling to herself, Mac throws her remaining two knives in quick succession, striking each of his outstretched hands with deadly accuracy. Even though she's only hitting paper, it feels good to strike back against him, to prove to herself that he's just enough crazy cultist that needs putting down.
They'll fight, that much is a given. In a way it was what they know best, a battle of wits and strength that they'd been fighting ever since the day they'd met. Mac had never let him win before and as she stares at his poster, covered in blades and puncture marks, she swears to any God that's listening that she won't start letting him win now.