3/16/8: As of today, all of my rewrites for both Hic Sunt Leones and Omnis Vir Lupus are 100% complete. I'm moving forward with this story again, so you can expect a brand new chapter sometime in the next two weeks. Sorry the wait was so long, but inspiration struck, and I needed to map out how this fic would end before I could move forward.

Chapter 8: My People:

Agea

Mars

March 16th, 2841

The Citadel medBay was past its maximum capaticity. To treat patients, every empty space between hospital beds was filled with rows of Sun Industries gurneys and additional makeshift beds. The air was filled with coughs and solemn whispers as Red, Pink, and Yellow nurses in scrubs moved through the beds checking the patients. The back of the main room had been converted into a burn ward, separated from the rest of the patients by hastily assembled containment walls. He could hear a woman screaming from the other side of the plastic, fighting a nurse trying to give her an injection. Two more nurses rushed to help subdue her. It was a harsh reminder that the violence of war was not confined to the battlefield.

Darrow felt swallowed by the sterile sadness of the medical center. There was no gore. No blood dripping on the floor. But this was the aftermath of his call to arms. Even now, the casualties continued to mount up. They had taken Agea, but Mars still burned around them. Shiro was laying siege to Whitehold. Tactus had just taken New Thebes and was pushing onward toward Corinth, where loyalist Golds surged upward in their private yachts to escape the conflict. But even if they took Mars today, the revolution was only just beginning. And Darrow knew in his heart that millions more would die by the time it was over. And even more would suffer like the wounded here in Agea.

As he walked through the rows of beds, his datapad beeped with an incoming message. Lykos evacuated. Family safe. Minimal casualties, the tactical update reported. Darrow breathed a sigh of relief. The tone was patented Julii, but he was grateful to Victra for confirming that his mother, siblings, nieces, and nephews had made it out safely. He'd been worried ever since Quicksilver's spies had reported the Jackal's plans to gas the whole mine with Achlys-9. It was a relief to know that the Sons of Ares had managed to evacuate in time. As he made his way back towards Ragnar, another message came in reporting that Tactus had secured Cyprio, on the Aventine Peninsula north of New Thebes, while the Telemanus forces fought to secure Yorkton, the city beneath which wound the tunnels of Darrow's childhood home.

With the fear for his family's safety satisfied, he turned his attention back to the hospital. Even with a Carver as good as Mickey, and medical supplies being shuttled over from Sun Industries buildings, the Rising still didn't have enough resources to mend these people. The wounded stared up at the lavish ceiling wondering what their lives will be like now. That was what best described the feeling of this room. Not the trauma of flesh, but of lives and dreams interrupted. Darrow wanted to retreat from the room, but Ragnar nudged him forward to the edge of a young man's bed. The boy had watched as Darrow came in, his hair short, face plump and awkward with a prominent underbite.

"What's what?" Darrow asked, his voice remembering the flavor of the mine. With the battle winding down, his inner circle agreed that it would be good for morale if he went to a few of the field hospitals in Agea and visited the wounded. Ragnar evidently felt that the best thing for him to do would be to strike up conversation. Darrow was nervous as he sat down on an empty chair propped up next to the bed. These were his people, and he felt like a stranger to them. So as Shiro likes to say, he thought to himself as he focused on the young man in front of him. Here goes nothing.

"Just dancin' time away, hear?" the younger man answered with a shrug. The Reaper could certainly understand that. He'd spent days during and after his carving stuck in Mickey's workshop or the Sons of Ares' penthouse hideout with nothing to do.

"I hear," Darrow replied, extending a hand. "Darrow… of Lykos."

"We know," the other man said as he took Darrow's hand. His hands were so small that he couldn't even wrap his fingers around the Reaper's. He chuckled at the ridiculousness of it. "Vanno of Karos."

"Night or day?" Darrow asked.

"Dayshift, you pigger," Vanno retorted. "I look like some saggy-faced night digger?"

"Well, you never know these days…" Darrow remarked jokingly.

"True enough," Vanno replied. "I'm Omicron. Third drillboy, second line."

"So that was your chaff I'd be dodging deep," Darrow commented.

"Helldivers," Vanno grinned as he made a lewd motion with his hands. "Always loking themselves in the eye. Someone's gotta teach you to look up." The two laughed. After all these years, it felt good to slip back into the familiar rhythm of competitiveness in the mines.

"How much did it hurt?" he asked, nodding to the Reaper. At first Darrow though Vanno was referring to the injuries he'd sustained in the battle. But then he realized the Red was referring to his hands, where the Sigils used to be. He wants to know about my first Carving, the Reaper realized as he unveiled his hands from his sweater.

"Manic shit, that," Vanno commented, flicking where the skin grafts were with his finger. Darrow looked around and realized that it wasn't just Vanno watching him. Everyone was. Even through the open doors to the burn unit Reds were pushing themselves of their beds to look at him. They couldn't see the fear inside him. They only saw what they wanted to. Darrow glanced at Ragnar, but the giant was busy speaking to an injured Obsidian. There was no backing out of this now. He had no other choice but to go through with it.

"How much did it hurt?" Darrow repeated. "Well, imagine falling into a clawDrill, Vanno. A centimeter at a tme. First goes the skin. Then bone. Easy stuff." Vanno whistled and looked down at his missing legs with a tired, almost bored expression.

"Didn't even feel this," the Son of Ares remarked. "My suit injected just enough hydrophone to knock out one of them," he paused and nodded to Ragnar, then drew air through his teeth. "At least I still got my prick."

"Ask him," a man on the neighboring bed urged. "Vanno…"

"Shut up," Vanno sighed before turning his attention back to Darrow. "Boys have been wondering'. Did you get to keep it?"

"Keep what?" the Reaper asked. There were a lot of body parts spliced and replaced during his carving. There wasn't any particular one he could remember Mickey leaving behind.

"It," Vanno repeated, his eyes pointing towards Darrow's groin. "Or did they… you know… make it proportionate?" Oh, Darrow realized. He bit back a blush as his mind recalled making love to Mustang two weeks ago. The reminder of her pregnancy helped him keep a straight face. He honestly had no way of knowing how his carving would affect their child. Would the baby have traces of Red in his genes? Or had Mickey carved him so thoroughly that even his sperm was Gold? Thinking about their future child only made Darrow worried about his ability to be a father amid all this chaos.

He forced his own worries out of his mind. These people needed to see him humanized, but that didn't mean they needed to see behind the mask of The Reaper. They needed to believe in the legend. If they saw how terrified he was underneath, morale would crumble. So, for now, he could put aside his worries and humor them.

"You really want to know?" Darrow asked, making sure the wounded soldiers were serious about this.

"I mean…" Vanno stammered. "Not for personal reasons. But I've got money riding on it."

"Well," Darrow began, leaning forward seriously as Vanno and his nearby bedmates leaned in as well. Shiro's right, he thought as he let the suspense build up. I really do have a flair for being dramatic. "If you really want to know, you should ask your mother."

Vanno stared at him intensely, then exploded into laughter. The man's bedmates laughed and spread the joke to the far edges of the room. And in that moment, the mood shifted. Amusement and crude jokes cut through the suffocating sterility. It filled Darrow with energy to see the shifting tide and realize that it was all because of a single laugh. Instead of retreating from the eyes of his people, Darrow moved away from Ragnar down the lines of cots to mingle more with the injured, to thank them, to ask where they were from and learn their names. This was where Darrow thanked whatever deities existed that he had a good memory.

Forget a man's name and he'll forgive you, he thought to himself. Remember it, and he'll defend you forever. Most of the wounded called him sir or Reaper. He wanted to correct them and tell them to call him Darrow. But he knew the value of respect, of distance between men and leader. Because even though Darrow was laughing with them, even though they were helping him stay steady emotionally in the face of the chaos happening around him, there were not his friends. They were not his family. At least, not yet. Not until they had that luxury. For now, they were his soldiers, and they needed him as much as he needed them. He was their Reaper, but like he had told Fitchner and Dancer about visiting Lykos, he needed to remind himself who he was fighting for.

Ragnar flashed him an ungainly grin, pleased to see the Reaper smiling and laughing with the soldiers. Darrow had never been a man of joy or a man of war, or an island in a storm. He had never been an absolute like Lorn. That was only what he'd pretended to be. Darrow was and always would be a man who was made complete by those around him. He felt stronger now than he had before he arrived here fatigued from battle. He had not felt this kind of strength in so long. It wasn't only that he was loved, but that they believed in him. Not the false idol he'd built in the service of Augustus, but the man beneath. Lykos might be gone. Eo might be silent. Mustang and their friends scattered across the planet as they fought for the very survival of this rebellion. But after four years undercover, he felt his soul trickling back into him as he realized he was finally home.

When I decided to re-write this fic, I knew I wanted to include Darrow's scene of mingling with the wounded Sons of Ares in somewhere, and given what I've come up with later on down the road, I felt like this would be the best place to put it. I've taken out the part of Darrow and Ragnar going to liberate the Obsidians, since it clashes with what I've got cooked up for the rest of the fic.