A/N: I felt the need to write a Noir story again after a long time and decided to try myself at writing Altena. I'm not a hunderd percent satisfied with the outcome, but I think I can live with it. However some criticism would be highly appreciated.
Disclaimer: Don't own Noir so don't sue. There's no money to get anyway
Night had fallen slow and silent while you were reading. A burning candle stood on the table beside you, already shrunken to half its original size with trails of wax along its sides to pool in the candle holder. One of your women had brought the candle when dusk had come; and now as dusk had turned over to night, the flickering flame was not able to spend enough light to decipher to old writing on the pages.
You laid the book down, right beside the candle and walked over to the balustrade. Wind was coming up, a warm southern wind which rose the dust and dirt from the ground, blowing tiny grains of sand over ones skin and piercing the flesh ever so slightly.
It was the same wind as back then.
You still remember it, because it was the first thing you noticed when the uproar of bombs exploding around you finally died down. You climbed out from under the thing which had previously been the staircase to your home's cellar and watched in silent wonder the expanse of ruins over witch the wind blew gently.
Clouds of dust floating over debris. The bakery was gone and so was the book shop next to it, the school down the street was nothing but a crumble roof and in your back there were the ruins of your own house.
You may have cried out for your parents. You probably did. But no answer came.
It was a mean thing to do, to leave a little girl like you all alone. You knew your parents would not do such a thing, especially not when they had promised you to come and get you from your safe spot once it was over.
So you scrambled over the detritus searching for them; if they could not come for you would go to them. Yet when you finally found your mother the longing to see her was immediately replaced by the wish you had never found her again.
She lay between where the kitchen and your room had been, half covered by a broken down wall. When you had raised a few stones from her head shrank away, repulsed by the smashed remains of her bloody face. Dreaded you threw the stones back on her form, to hide the destruction beneath them. Then you sat there, clutching your mother's hand crying.
When your crying had ceased you had the eerie hope your mother might miraculously rise but she did not all night whilst you sat beside her body and fear crept into your tiny limbs.
What should you do?
The decision however was taken from you as an explosion sounded from afar. You saw the flame rise up against the pale morning sky on the other side of the river and instinctively ran. Where to you did not know, the landscape you had known until yesterday was not the same anymore, all you knew was, that you were running in the opposite direction of the flame.
When you could not run anymore, you walked, never stopping to look back as there was nothing to look back for you. With a ragged doll tightly in your small fist
In the days and years before "it" you had often talked with your doll, you did not now. The recent happening had made you painfully aware that your doll was nothing but an inanimate object, no life of its own. You were totally alone.
You were only staggering, stumbling and toppling over before staggering on, on a way to anywhere with no destination when the deserted fields were replaced by the remains of yet another destroyed town. Or maybe it was your hometown. For all you knew could have walked in one big circle and in their current state one ruined town was no different from another.
Wherever you were; they were there and you only noticed them when you'd stood right in front of them because you had kept your eyes glued to your tiny feet urging them on step after step on the dusty path.
But they had surely seen you come. They were several of them, how many exactly you have forgotten, all in the same grey-green specked uniform, all staring down at you. Until one of them stepped forward.
He asked you if you had lost your family. You nodded.
He asked if you had nowhere to go. You nodded.
He put his plump big hand on your shoulder saying that he would then be your Daddy from now on. In your numb state of mind, the hunger and helplessness you were all too ready to believe in the kind words, regardless the fact that he was one of those soldiers who had brought misery upon your town. You were following so willingly when he offered you an outstretched hand, callous though, but warm and human.
Daddy will love you a lot, he said.
You were willing to believe in those words, hoping for food and someone to take care of the little girl you were. Even when he lowered you onto a ragged bed, forcing himself on your frail body you hoped.
Again and again he grabbed your hair, thrust and ignored your cries and whimpers. He ripped you open until you were bleeding and did not stop. It hurt.
Even as he lifted himself from you, walking out without a look behind, you still felt nothing but pain. With blank eyes you stared at his back, devoid of the last bit of hope you had kept in your heart.
If laying still already hurt so much, then why bother trying to move, there was nowhere to go for you anywhere. So you remained on the mouldy mattress, waiting to die.
But the blood between your legs dried and you were still breathing. Wind was whistling through the cracked walls of the house and while you listened to its sighs you wished for the end to come finally.
But you did not end up in either heaven or hell, you were with the Soldats when you woke up. How you got there you were never were told but later you guessed that you were found by some members and placed in a kind of monastery under Soldats' supervision. Why they took you in the first place was a reason you never touched, but since dying had eluded you, you decided to stay alive and if it was only out of spite.
This was the first step on the new path your life was going to take. Revenge on the lots at whose hands you had suffered, that was your goal. And so you started to learn, sucking up everything the nuns told you like a sponge, for you quickly picked up the ways of the Soldats. To gain power you first had to gain knowledge. Buried in your books you spent your youth, glad about the impersonal way the nuns treated you.
False promises of affection and love you had had enough, now you craved power to fuel the hatred you were harbouring in your chest.
When you met the two girls you instantly recognized them as your kind. Two lost souls let down by the world. You gave them names and took care of them. And when they first showed their potential talent it was the moment you knew, those two would be the weapons, crafted by your skillful hands, to take their, your, hatred out into the world beyond the Manor. They would save the world from its rotten state. This would be the heralded Grand Retour. At your hands.
After a moment you tear your eyes away from the fields surrounding the Manor. Amazing how a light breeze can bring back ghosts of your past so easily. Ghastly images you had quenched and thought erased.
Behind you the candle has been blown out by the wind. Quickly you gather it up along with your book and hurry inside.
You're now the most powerful woman among the Soldats.
But inside you, there's still the lost child who fears.