It was strange.
Whenever he thought about it, death really wasn't all that frightening.
How weird was that?
He wasn't even thirty, and the thought of death didn't scare him.
Shiro almost wished it would.
Most of his right arm was in bloody tatters. The creature he'd just fought had gripped hold of it with sharp, hooked tentacles, and pulled and twisted and - and now Shiro honestly couldn't stand to look at the ruins of what had once been flesh and muscle. For now, the adrenaline was keeping the worst at bay, but he knew that soon the pain would drive him to his knees.
Even now, he swayed where he stood, holding his sword in his left hand, not wanting to fall, afraid to show weakness. It wasn't something the crowd liked to see, and the guards would make him pay for displeasing the crowd.
The crowd was roaring his title now - Champion - they were cheering him like some kind of hero.
I'm not a hero.
Even as Shiro focused on staying on his feet and tried to catch his breath, the beast he'd defeated twitched and moaned, unable to continue the fight. The crowd rose in fury at the sound. Curses in hundreds of languages were hurled at the dying, bleeding thing in the arena like stones, and Shiro knew that the crowd would want a dramatic, finishing blow.
They always did.
I'm a puppet.
Shiro ground his teeth together. He'd tried to kill the creature cleanly with his last hit, but it just hadn't been possible after his right arm had taken such damage. His arm hurt - it hurt worse than anything he could remember - but he knew that unless he gave the crowd what they wanted, the guards would make sure he regretted it. They might keep him from the healing pods until he begged for mercy, or they might simply let him lose the arm to rot and gangrene. He'd seen it happen to other prisoners before.
I have to do this.
As Shiro approached the wounded creature, it seemed to rally for a final attack. It lashed out with two of its tentacles, weakly, futilely. Shiro easily avoided them and raised his sword for the finishing blow, intending to drive the blade straight through the creature's neck. He wished he knew where the heart was, but if he fucked this up, the creature would only suffer longer. Severing the neck was the only way to make sure it died this time.
One hit. Clean. Swift. Merciful.
Better than anything the guards would give it.
Even as he raised the sword, the thing tried to get away from him. It clearly didn't have the strength, but it tried all the same, and as it did, Shiro looked into its black eyes and saw that it understood what he meant to do, and it was scared of him, of the sword, of the blood and the red sand and the screams of the crowd.
Shiro had killed opponents before, all of them rabid beasts, half-mad with blood rage or hunger.
This was different.
This creature was bleeding out into the sand of an arena lightyears away from home, and it was in pain…and it was scared of him.
The crowd still screamed for blood, anger and rage now echoing in the words, but Shiro barely noticed. All he could hear now was the pounding of his own heart.
This creature wasn't a mindless killing machine. It had just wanted to survive.
The sword fell to the sand with a dull thud, and Shiro only realized it had fallen out of his left hand when he saw the Galra guards start to look towards him and speak amongst themselves, their faces angry, set, cold.
That was never good.
He felt panic rise inside him, an almost physical sensation of cold running down his spine.
The guards were going to make him pay for this mistake, for delaying the killing blow. The crowd was screaming at Shiro now, screaming and demanding blood and death and a proper end to the fight-
I have to do this. I have to do this. I have to -
Shiro reached for the sword again, but he saw the creature flinch away from him, still trying to get away, and he couldn't do it. He stopped moving, trying not to scare the creature again. He knew there was no hope for it, that it was too badly wounded to survive, but…he just couldn't bring himself to reach for the sword again.
Ever since Matt and Sam had been taken away, he thought he'd lost the ability to feel anything beside pain and fear. But at the creature's obvious terror and desperation, Shiro felt an emotion that he thought he'd forgotten long ago.
Pity.
He might die here too one day, in the arena, on the blood-stained sands surrounded by noise and blood and pain. If he did, he wanted to be human, not a Galra gladiator who killed with no thought of the lives he took.
"I'm…sorry," he said, and he meant it.
The eyes of the creature were large, almost orblike, but the light in them was already fading.
Shiro wished he knew for certain if the creature could hear him, or could at least understand what he meant.
I didn't want to kill you. I didn't want this. I didn't want any of this.
The creature twitched, its eyes blinking once, almost sleepily. It seemed to dimly realize that
Shiro didn't intend it further harm. Then it shivered once and went still. Shiro hoped it hadn't felt too much pain at the end.
Shiro heard the guards starting to come closer, their voices raised in anger, annoyance, and even…hate. That was one emotion Shiro knew quite well, because the more sadistic guards clearly hated the prisoners, or anything 'weaker' than the Galra or their allies.
Shiro didn't hate this thing the Galra had thrown into the arena with him.
Shiro hated what the Galra called him.
Champion.
He wanted to die as Takashi Shirogane, not as Champion.
Knowing the creature was beyond any help he could offer, Shiro picked up the sword again, turning to face the guards, feeling his lips curl into a snarl of rage, of fury, of an almost animal wildness.
They wanted a fight?
Fine. They'd get a fight.
In the instant before he launched himself at the guards, the crowd's roar changed pitch, seeming to grow confused, almost bewildered.
Shiro knew he couldn't take on all the guards. Not with one arm mangled beyond use, not with blood loss and pain and rage blinding him like this.
But he knew that he would take on as many as he could before they brought him down.
Strangely enough, the only real thought that crossed Shiro's mind as he struck the first guard down was, "This is something that Keith would do - and I'd never let him hear the end of it if he did."
He whirled and kicked out at a second guard, hitting him squarely in the chest. He didn't know if the crowd was screaming in delight now or not, because all he could focus on was the overwhelming rage inside him.
Shiro had fought and killed beasts, brutes, and all kinds of vicious and slavering nightmares, but he had just killed a person. He'd just killed an intelligent being. Hell, it had probably been another prisoner. A prisoner like Matt, someone with a family, someone who had only wanted to live, to survive, to get back home.
There was a stutter of electricity by his right ear, and Shiro dodged out of the way, snarling at the guards as he fought them, using every move and dodge he'd learned in all the many, draining, awful fights in the arena, and a few he'd known from back home, on Earth.
Earth.
Matt.
Sam.
They'd been gone for months now - or at least, it felt like months. Shiro didn't know. There was no way to tell.
To Hell with it.
Shiro dodged another bolt of electricity and lashed out with his sword, knocking two Galra to the ground, and knew that he would probably die within the next five seconds.
Well, if he was going to die, he was going to die defiant.
"I'm gonna - have to go - with wrath," he said, and he thought distantly that he must sound absolutely crazy, and not the oh-you're-just-being-funny crazy, but the completely-off-the-wall-bats-in-the-attic crazy.
Sam and Matt would have appreciated the reference.
But the Galra didn't.
Then there were more guards - there were always more guards - both Galra soliders and drones this time - and Shiro was overwhelmed by them.
He kicked and bit and snarled and fought as hard as he could, the rage still burning inside his chest and lending him strength, but then one of the Galra guards managed to grip his damaged right arm tight, claws digging cruelly into the skin, into the exposed nerves and bones and tendons, and Shiro forgot everything except the pain. His vision flickered, dimmed, and wavered, and he felt them cuff both of his hands behind his back.
Damn. They didn't have to do that - he couldn't - use his right arm - damn…it…
He realized the crowd had gone strangely silent.
The only time they'd ever done that was when…
He heard a rustle of robes, the sound of a familiar voice saying his Galra name. It was raspy, bone-chilling, terrifying.
Champion.
No. Not her. Please, not her.
I am glad to see you still have such spirit.
No. No. No. Please, please, please, no.
Bring him to my ship.
The crowd was still silent. Haggar saw the expression on Shiro's face and smiled as she turned to leave.
I'm sure they look forward to your next fight, Champion - if you survive my experiments.
Shiro tried to resist, to break away from the guards holding him, but it was useless, pointless, hopeless. Someone hit him on the back of the neck, and the last thing he saw before the darkness claimed him was the red sand of the arena, rising up to meet him.
When Shiro woke up, he knew he was on the Druids ship.
It wasn't just the lighting, though it was eerily unique, all purple glow and flickering shadows. It was the smell of the place, the way the very air seemed to press in upon you. It felt like a tomb, and you were locked away inside, away from light and air and anything kind and good. The darkness wasn't only an absence of light, it was a physical presence, a suffocating cloak that threatened to stifle you.
Shiro tried to move, but found that he was strapped to what seemed like an operating table. He felt his heart leap into overdrive, and he knew that whatever was coming next would involve pain, and fear, and possibly cost him his life.
Death still didn't scare him.
But she did.
I'm going to make you stronger than you could ever have imagined, a voice from the shadows said, and then the witch was by him, her yellow eyes glittering at him from the dark.
Shiro wished he could manage a shaky laugh, or at least some kind of witty comeback, but it was all he could do not to throw up. The witch didn't make idle threats or promises, and Shiro knew from painful experience that she really didn't care what the side effects of her experiments were, as long as she obtained the desired result in the end.
Then there was a whirring sound, almost like that of a drill, and Shiro felt something bite into his right bicep. He tried to get free, but it was useless. Haggar never left anything to chance when it came to her experiments. He was completely at her mercy, and she had none.
Then the other Druids were gathering around him, and he felt pain - horrible, unrelenting, agonizing pain - everywhere, but especially in his right arm. It felt like razors and salt and fire were stripping his skin and bone and blood away, and replacing it with something cold, alien, and…and wrong.
"No - " Shiro stammered, but soon he lost all knowledge of where he was and what was happening to him. All he knew, all he could feel, was pain, pain so intense, so harsh, so searing, that nothing else existed. He screamed until his voice gave out.
Fragments came through - sounds and voices and purple light - but Shiro couldn't even attempt to understand or care about what they were saying, what they were doing. All he wanted was for the pain to stop.
A new pain - a different pain - suddenly seared his right side, and he jolted back into full consciousness. Haggar was engraving something into his skin, something that burned and bled and hurt. He must have cried out again, because Haggar turned her full attention to his face, and she was smiling, and her smile was a thing of teeth and cold eyes and complete, vicious satisfaction.
Stay with us, Champion, she said, gripping hold of his face with one hand. Her nails were sharp and dug into his skin. You're not supposed to fall asleep just yet.
His side - it hurt - it hurt so badly - what could - hurt this much -
Shiro felt his eyes begin to close again, his mind start to wander. He just wanted to rest. He just wanted to let his mind escape from this place.
There was another, sudden, searing pain on his right side, and it was fierce enough where Shiro screamed, bucking and twisting, trying to get away from the source of the pain. It felt like a knife of fire was tracing some sort of pattern onto his skin. He was crying by the time Haggar finished, and she released his hair with a hiss of venomous satisfaction at his pain and despair.
Shall I read it to you?
Shiro didn't answer her question at first. She gripped his chin again and forced his eyes to meet hers, and she smiled at the fear in his expression. When he answered, his voice was hoarse, almost too faint to hear.
"…what…?"
You are branded, Champion. Don't you want to know what it says?
His eyes were glassy, unfocused, but he clearly understood her. The witch smiled that crooked smile at him, and he flinched as she spoke, her words cold and harsh and something like a spell.
You bear my brand.
You wield the power I give you.
You will never escape.
When his eyes began to slide shut, the witch dug her fingernails into his skin again.
He was fading, but she could still make him suffer.
She saw his face crease in pain, his eyes flicker open once more, the irises barely visible, and she smiled at him in triumph and no little amount of satisfaction.
You will never be free.
You are nothing without the Galra Empire.
I think you'll remember that from now on.
His skin was cold, his muscles trembling.
The pain was too much. He was slipping away.
Make sure he doesn't die, the witch told the other Druids. It would be a shame not to see him in battle at least once.
As she left the room, Haggar smiled to herself.
She'd finally broken him. All she had needed was time.
Several months passed after that, but mercifully, Shiro couldn't remember many details. Haggar had experimented on him, and she'd made him fight in the arena. He didn't want to remember what had happened there.
He did remember the day he'd broken out of his cell, using his Galra prosthetic to access the shuttle bay. Most of the details were blurry, but he remembered a few moments clearly.
The door slamming shut behind him. The sound of laser fire hammering at the metal, the whine and whir of the engines as he activated the launch sequence. As the shuttle took off, words came to him. Distant, unfamiliar, but somehow, they fit.
"…we're going for a ride…" he said, and he wished he could remember why those words came to him, now of all times.
Maybe he was just going crazy. Hell, it was entirely likely he'd never make it home.
But he'd lasted this long.
As he piloted the shuttle, dodging laser fire and drone ships, he grinned to himself, and it was a hard, thin smile.
In all this crazy universe, one thing was certain.
Takashi Shirogane was a hard man to kill.