"Welcome back," General White exclaimed with a sinister smile. Raven merely stared back impassively. "How was your lunch? Mine is just about to arrive, I hope you don't mind."
With timing only possible through meticulous coordination, there was a knock on the door, and a guard entered with a tray containing a small wellington and a glass of whiskey, placing it in front of the General and saluting before leaving. "The wellington consists of three parts. The pastry, the Duxelles and the Tenderloin. The pastry houses the dish and adds a nice crunch. The tenderloin is the heft and contains the flavour and weight. The duxelle binds the two, and balances out the flavour. Each component must be in perfect order to create a wellington."
He cut a piece, forked it, and lifted it to his mouth, chewing on it for several moments before letting out a content sigh. "In this case, this was a well made one. I know because I inspected the ingredients and observed its preparation. Just as I did your training. So imagine my surprise, when my two most promising agents decide to try and elope together."He paused, observing Raven sternly, before cracking a smile. "Where's that sense of humour I know you possess? I've missed it quite a bit, you know. A year is a long time out here, it must have felt even longer in the camp."
"The days blur together eventually," Raven replied stoically. White considered the point before nodding thoughtfully.
" I suppose that is true. You bring quite a unique perspective, as always." White set down his fork, pushing the tray to one side. "So tell me, what did it accomplish?"
"Sparrow is free."
"And was it worth it?"
"I...don't know," he shrugged. General White observed him with a shrewd smile, hiding it by raising his glass and indulging in a gulp of whiskey.
"Do you know why I set up the test?"
"Because you wanted to be certain of my loyalties."
"'I'm disappointed...of all the answers you could have given, do you truly believe that was the main purpose?" General White sighed, taking a sip of his whiskey. "Do you remember our conversation, the last one before Berlin?"
Raven frowned, recalling the memory. Suddenly, his eyes widened, causing the General to smirk. "Well?"
"To new beginnings?"
"So you heard the words, but do not understand," General White sighed disappointedly. "It is in the nature of all to question their lives. Was Marx not a hypocrite for preaching equality while being a womaniser? Was Lenin not a hypocrite for claiming to support the people when he caused the collapse of Russia in 1918? Was Stalin not a hypocrite for preaching party unity while ruthlessly purging his enemies? To live by and to believe are two different things. To immerse yourself in the Union, you had to be broken down and rebuilt."
He sipped another gulp of whiskey, while Raven's eyes widened in surprise at the General's blunt reasoning, causing the man to sigh irritably. "You are still blind, child, believing you have all the answers. The fact is, servitude wears down an individual, just like machinery. Eventually, they need to be refurbished and repaired."
"And you believe in the principle of continual revolution?" Raven questioned, causing the General to pause before smiling.
"So you do follow," he almost purred, hunching over the desk to watch him closely. "I believe in continual revolution at a societal level. The old get tired, stagnant, weak, conservative. Thus the old must prepare the young. I'm sure you can find some ancient proverbial nonsense describing the justness of this, but the reality of this is because, like a machine, every individual, whether in body, spirit, or mind, eventually wears down."
"And discarded." Raven finished. The General frowned for several moments, a tension forming in the air, before it was relieved by a shrug.
"You are not wrong in that sense," the man conceded. "But more pertinent to our discussion of you. You see, traditional torture could never work on you, of that I was certain. It would never push you to your limits...close, perhaps, but never quite. It made you my best agent. But not truly mine, yet. When Orobus had her way with you, I expected...more, I admit. That you somehow managed to turn the tables and guilt trip her...well the time it took for me to rectify that was painful for the both of us."
"And so you set me up with Sparrow?"
"Indeed, after the Bolshoi ballet, I knew you were hooked, interested enough in her that something would happen between the two of you."
"With respect, General, I doubt you knew for certain that I would not defect."
"Yes, but I sensed it more likely than not," White explained with a hint of exasperation. "Had you not defected, I suppose the hassle of deploying that many guardians would have been a waste, and my superior in Moscow would have been right about my paranoia wasting resources. As is? I have been given far more leeway for preventing a future disaster."
"My congratulations, General." White merely waved it off.
"Meaningless titles and medals, they just clog up my closet space. But enough of that."
The door opened, the sound of two distinct guards dragging in a slumped body across the ground. He did not need to look to know what had happened, and he felt a brief pang in his mind before squashing it, his face always remaining impassive in the face of White's scrutinising observation.
"It is time to bury the past, Raven," he declared.
"Why have you not killed her yourself? Or offered the same?" he queried. Both men knew Raven was stalling for time, but it seemed that White decided to indulge."What good would it do? It would prove nothing?" White decried. "The cycle would not change, and your next betrayal would occur all the same. No, I think not. I will not allow you to fall victim to the curse of repeating the past. You know what you have to do."
He did not bother pleading. A part of him liked to believe it was because he knew it was futile, but there was another, more vindictive voice, that whispered she had failed him, betrayed him by being too weak to allow both of them to escape. Too weak to come back and save him. Too weak to avoid being recaptured.
One of the six guardians in the room grabbed their pistol from their holster, about to hand it to him, when the General raised a hand, beckoning for the man to resume his position, shaking his head and tusking.
"The gun...it has many advantages," he lectured, "but unfortunately for our purposes today, too distant. No, you must confront this in the rawest sense. No hiding behind weapons. No excuses to yourself. I want you to kill her, knowing full well it was your choice, and your actions. Nothing less. Now, I believe we have delayed enough."
The guardian removed his handcuffs, and at White's nod of permission, he turned to face the bloodied and beaten form of Sparrow, looking up at him tearfully. As though knowing what was about to happen, she shook her head pleadingly, while beginning to struggle against her restraints. At White's flick of the finger, the ballgag was removed from her mouth, causing her words to spew out.
"Raven, no! I don't know what he has told you, but they're lies! I still love you! We can still survive this together!" she rambled out, clearly nervous. He sent a burst of legilimency, which impacted against her occlumency shields, far different from the weak ones he remembered from prior. He was grudgingly impressed, wondering how she had built such up, when he was knocked on the back of the head with the butt of a rifle.
Feeling the throbbing pain and a faint trickle of blood, the legilimency probe ended, while White's voice reprimanded, "Still harbouring feelings? Perhaps you're not cured as I believed."
A flash of panic rose through him, propelling him several steps forward before he regained composure, taking several breaths in and out. All the guardians had their wands pointed at him, no doubt prepared to end him at the first
"You left me to rot. I thank you for freeing me from my delusions, Sparrow," he smiled bitterly, advancing on the restrained woman.
"No Raven! I love you! I would never betray you I-"
Raven didn't hesitate as he plunged two fingers into her eyes, feeling her struggle against her restraints desperately as her pleas turned to threats, before devolving into primal screaming as he gouged deeper.
"As amusing as this is, end it." White instructed with satisfaction colouring his voice, and Raven knew he had passed some sort of unspoken test. Grabbing the back of her head with his other hand, he twisted hard, causing her neck to snap with a loud 'crack', and her struggling to cease.
Sparing the corpse a single glance, he turned towards White, who gave a satisfied hum, grabbing a second glass as
"Let us have a toast. To new beginnings." Raven held out his glass mechanically, allowing the General to clink his cup against it, and raised the liquid to his throat. He poured the drink down his throat, feeling it soothe its thirst, rushing down his throat with a firewood taste.
Placing down his glass, he stared forward impassively, waiting for instructions. The General, however, was in no hurry, savouring the moment slowly by drinking slowly. Only when his glass was empty after several minutes, did he give a satisfied hum, placing the glass on the table, causing Raven to mirror his motion. "Welcome back, Raven."
Author Note:
Shorter chapter this time, though perhaps the hardest hitting of them for me to write. I felt that this really deserved its own chapter, so I won't make the mistake of squishing another less relevant segment to detract from it. Seeing as this chapter is shorter and I'm in a slight drought of writing, I've decided to respond to a comment:
A review on my previous chapter by iiNeo really got me thinking, and I thank them for that. I completely understand the discomfort that discussing cannabilism brings, and I assure you writing it is even worse. With that said, I believe it was necessary as a natural progression of events. Raven is rarely moved, apart from Sparrow, thus the next best thing would be to rekindle the memory of Sergei and force him to devolve into a cannibal to survive. I now begin to suspect that my attempt to rush through the chapter was a mistake, and not truly authentic as I wished it to be. It is, perhaps, because of my personal discomfort, that I tried to write less, and in turn had to compress several thematically seperate chapters into one, hurting the pacing. While regretful as it signals that I have a write have not succeeded, I hope that one day I will be able to return to the chapter and give it to true reworking it deserves such that it really conveys the raw emotion of Raven's descent. Perhaps I spaced the two events to close to each other for each to shine in their own right, even if I feel symbolically they are quite different. Onto their second point, they mentioned how the return to Kolyma was 'lame', and this was something I struggled with. While returning to the camp has obvious thematic consequences, it was hard to develop a natural progression to justify him being any worse off than the first time, especially after his training. I knew I needed both a physical and a mental challenge for Raven to fall to. For the former, that was achieved through his solitary confinment as well as him being restricted from working in the mines and thus recieving rations. Initially, I was tempted to draw this out longer, and perhaps that would have helped the pacing, but again, I trimmed a lot of the in between which would have involved a more savage Raven in the mines, struggles with other prisoners slowly building up his ruthless streak before the challenge of no longer being allowed in the mines was introduced. On the mental side, without introducing Sparrow, an element saved for this chapter to establish finality, Raven's only logical regression was the cannibalism aspect. Looking back, I feel as though I haven't done it justice, but am unsure of how exactly to remedy it. I'll definitely sleep on it. Hopefully this clears up why I did what I did.
Again, I want to reiterate my thanks to iiNeo for bringing this up. This story was meant to be dark, uncomfortable, and push both myself as a writer and you as a reader to the limits. It's not for everyone, hence the warning at the start. That being said, there will be times I flop. If you look at my previous writings, none match Harry Potter and the Raven in scope or darkness, which means I'm flying mostly blind and experimenting. Your feedback is crucial to ensuring that I know where I succeeded and where I failed to improve my writing, and also by extension deliver a more authentic reading experience to you.
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