Hello! And welcome back. Y'all have probably noticed that these are following a chronological order but are in a more vignette-like style. I've had a lot of stories and one-shots in my phone's documents for a really long time now but only just started to post them anywhere and I've been a long time user so I thought I'd test the waters here and then post them somewhere else. Anyway, thanks for stopping by! And I hope y'all enjoy!
The Champion was a quiet person. Outwardly, but not inwardly. Ezra could see the torrent of negative emotions swirling underneath his skin in the flex of a jaw muscle, the slight twitch of his left eye. He was quick to react to any violence, and loud noise.
She had been that way, too, once.
She'd felt beyond betrayed and knew agony, then trusted her caretaker to give her the comfort she needed. Ezra supposed that progress was agony, as well. She appreciated Haggar now, however. Loved her as her own mother, in fact.
Ezra's true mother was a blur.
She watched the little being pace in the room he shared with the Witch; who was away for an indefinite amount of time. The witch knew very well that the two individuals in that room were either too scared or too broken to try anything major while she was gone. Shiro, being still so new, was the one who felt terror at the prospect of punishment. Ezra, being used to the full thudding pain of kicks and the slicing torture of dull knives, had no fear of death. She was a finished product and incredibly loyal to the Empire. Shiro was still in the works if the long scab cutting boldly and darkly across his pale face was to go by. The bruises had faded, but the skin around it looked tender. Ezra was no medical officer, but the injury would surely scar. He hadn't look at her yet, too worried in the wake of his Malch leaving on such a long trip and many other things, as well.
Ezra studied everything closely. Her eye for detail would have made her a great artist had her temper not been so short when she was young. It had been something she regretted not keeping up with as Ezra, the CO of Engineering. As Ezra, the Emperor slave, she could afford no regrets. She was a prized weapon. Just as Shiro would be if he survived Haggar's conditioning. Perhaps he would even be pitched against her in a spar or two to test his ability. A bolt of energy traveled to length of her spine at the thought of it. She'd seen him in the rings. There was incredible potential there, and Ezra wanted to test it to its breaking point. Perhaps it was sadistic, but Ezra loved fighting and it was a jarring contrast to her laid back manner. Usually, she was content to lounge wherever her masters ordered her to be; whether that was at Haggar's side, in the grand rooms of the Emperor, or whoever else she was protecting. It was an outlet for the foreign anger and manic energy that balled up in her belly; unreleased and hidden from prying and magically inclined minds.
Shiro was no different. Though, Ezra thought with a flicker of annoyance, he wouldn't give her the same attention as her masters did during times of calm. She brushed it off, though. She wasn't a cub anymore.
Not that she could remember what being a cub was like.
"What were you like before?"
The question startled her, the high timbre of his voice reminding her of a shadow in her memory. A child, perhaps? Silence had been the Champion's approach to her protection, and now here he was, standing just out of the reach of her arms in case she struck out at him. Smart alien. If she had been startled enough she might have accidentally hurt him. He must be the same way or have found it out from trial and error. He'd been pacing almost manically for the past several hours; all practice ranges had been booked, he had read all pertinent data to himself and his studies, and activity had been so very slow in the center of the Galra empire in terms of action or excitement that even Ezra, the shining paragon of patience and control, was feeling the growing unrest of stir-frenzy. Champion had been disallowed from fighting in the ring when Malch was not present, and the inactivity was starting to wear him thin. Ezra wondered if Haggar had ever considered taking the little being on walks.
But, his question. What a loaded query; was he asking for her sake, or his own? Or to simply to know his protector a little better? He didn't seem devious enough to use what she could remember against her, but, Ezra couldn't bring herself to look him in the eye. She didn't want him to know that she could remember little, if anything at all. It was her one shame; that she let all of her memories pass into forgotten memory. She worried he would see that as weakness, that someone so resilient would see her so broken or that he would use the weakness to prove himself better. He had also been twisted by Malch, or rather, Haggar. Ezra could see it in his eyes, in the deep hollows of his cheeks, the frantic twitching at his fingertips. Ezra saw it in herself, as well. But it was subdued. She was subdued.
She knew she wasn't alright, wasn't herself in the disconnect of mind from body and heart from soul, but couldn't find the will in herself to care much when her masters praised her for her behavior with affection and attention. The Champion wasn't like that. She saw it in his eyes, in the flickering control of his violence and anger; he was a mad dog circling the peg of its chain. One day, he would break. He would still be strong, still himself. She broke quietly, he would be explosive.
She wanted to answer as honestly as she could. She liked the Champion and thought very highly of him in terms of her broad yet small world. She decided to trust him. In the voice she had learned during her rehabilitation under Haggar, smooth as silk, danger and compassion and emptiness laced into each word, she confessed that her memory had gone entirely hazy and muddied. The voice she possessed now was of Ezra, the Puppet, Servant, and Assassin. It was nothing like the motherly and roughhewn timbre of Ezra, the "Beloved Commanding Officer"; a title she had seen in a public alert. The alert had been her obituary, and the memory of it only solidified the knowledge that because she was officially dead, there would be no home to go back to. This was her home. The Empire was her home.
She sighed, placing the PAD she was working on onto the wall desk and swiveled the chair she was lounging in to face him. "A few too many electric shocks to the brain, little one." It felt like a lame finish, a retreat. Ezra could feel her regrets and her shame crawling under her skin, but she couldn't quite place instances to the feelings. When she became overwhelmed, she merely blended into the deep violets and glowing orchids of the Flagship's hallways or into the lush apartments her emperor frequented. The memories of home were fading away.
Shiro understood the sentiment all too well, though he didn't know that the impassive galra was suffering the same troubles. To him, she was unnaturally stoic. He was almost mad with worry. He was beginning to forget everything. His family, his years at the academy, the faces of his friends...God, he was ready to rip his hair out in frustration. He didn't trust Ezra, she was too close to the higher ups, but he did know that she wouldn't lie to him or purposely hurt him. After all, she was protecting him while Haggar, his Malch, was away. She followed every command to the letter and then some. Shiro envied her seemingly permanent calm.
Shiro snarled low in his throat. He needed- God he didn't know what he needed. He- No. He had an idea. "Can you put a writing program onto my PAD?" He'd gotten that sentence out perfectly, Ezra noted with dulled pride. It seemed that all she felt was muted and grey. It was a part of the conditioning to keep her calm in times of distress, but it had transferred into every other part of her new life.
The Galran furrowed her thickly furred brow ridges, twisting her upper body to face him, head tilting in confusion. "You mean Malch didn't put one on yours?" Odd that she wouldn't if she was taking the little Alien as an apprentice. Then again, if Malch didn't want him to remember anything, if she beat every good thing out of the little human, Ezra didn't want to create any issues with Champion's conditioning. A traitorous voice in her head asked her if that was what she really wanted and Ezra brushed it away, untroubled, as she did most things.
Takashi flinched. He hated calling the Witch that title though he did it often in his thoughts. "No, she didn't. I am using paper for lesson and PAD restricts to whatever she wants on it!" His words were stilted oddly, the language foreign and thick on his tongue. He waved his PAD in the air for emphasis as he said it, almost losing it in the still slick, unfinished fingers of his new prosthetic arm. It was a prototype, and, unfortunately, a replacement for his dominant arm. He felt useless even with the new addition, or rather the replacement, for his missing limb. His tentative grip on Galran created an even more intense ball of frustration. His current guardian spoke only high, militant, and low Galran (the low form was usually curses) and Takashi had found that he could barely speak to her without sounding like a child, and his feelings of helplessness grew.
He'd never get away if he couldn't even learn the language of his captors.
The thought of escape brought a sharp pain through his skull that he ignored and the embarrassment of his toddler's handle on the language that flowed so easily from the Beasts around him made his cheeks burn and tears to gather in his eyes. He wasn't sure why, though. Why should he care at all? He hated them. All of them. Yet, he still looked to the Witch for reassurance and praise and felt shame that he might sound stupid in front of his temporary guardian. He wrapped his arms around himself, PAD still in hand as he shrank in on himself, and grew even more despondent at the stark difference between his flesh and metal arms; one yielding and warm, the other cold and hard. They had taken much from him.
Ezra rumbled low in her throat, ignoring the cringe from the smaller being and thinking of the possible ramifications if she did something that Haggar would not like and subsequently shrugged off the momentary worry. Whatever happened would happen, and Champion could not possibly continue his lessons in Galran on something as archaic as paper. Besides, there was little that could be done to her now that she would acutely feel even with the benefit of druid magic. She was completely loyal and the Witch, as well as the Emperor, knew this. With the assurance of her servitude, they trusted her judgement for her honesty despite being centuries older and her status as a servant and assassin. She wasn't ambitious, conniving, or defiant. Not anymore.
Her compliance with the human might also have something to do with the stricken expression on his face and the unhealthy pallor of his skin. Something familiar yet foreign welled up in her chest at how pitiful he looked, and the desire to draw him into her arms was strong, but she held back knowing that he wasn't a child. He wouldn't appreciate the comfort or pity.
Her hand left her side, long fingers unfurling to receive the tiny PAD the Champion was quick to place in her much larger palm. Malch must have commissioned a cub sized one for the little alien and the great differences in their size was stark when the evidence of it was laying in her palm. It had looked large in his hands, but in hers, it looked impossibly small and when she began to mess with it, she had to be careful with the wicked points of her claws or she would have pierced the screen. Then she'd really have a problem...Champion could always borrow her own, she supposed.
When she was done hacking into the system to remove a number of restrictions as well as downloading a writing program, Ezra handed the minuscule PAD back to Champion, and the spark of something she couldn't quite name was obvious as it ran its course through her charge, and the small smile that he gave her felt something like a thank you.
Ezra couldn't have been happier to do it and the warm glow in the pit of her chest woke something fiercely protective. Under her care, Champion would be the safest he had ever been.