The Royalists lost.
It was a quick decapitation; the king hung from the gallows in the palace's garden, and all of his supporters soon followed. She remembers the sight of that body swinging, no different than anyone else –no more regal than the lowliest pauper– and the shiver that shot down her spine to the tip of her tail.
It was the first dead body she'd seen, and wouldn't even be the last she'd see that day.
The Dukes were merciless as they were thorough. Nobles from families that she knew– neighbors and friends, knights and their squires from the Tower that she had once looked up to, and even…
Even her eldest brother. Her mother's gasp is what had first caught her attention, her parents' eyes fixated upwards on a lamp post.
Mother wept, father cursed his hot-headed boy, her brother and sister tried to pull Shae away– tried to cover her eyes, but Shae stood and stared… and felt nothing.
Above her, swinging to-and-fro, lifeless, unable to hurt her any more.
Hate, anger, relief; she wished that she could feel something.
Anything.
The heart thunders in the ears, lungs heave painfully for more air, the rush in her nerves pushing Thera harder than she's ever gone. It's nothing like those life-or-death moment's she's faced before; this is constant, overbearing, draining–
"Go! Get going! Get over that barrier, slabs!"
Howling from all directions assaults her. Jeers, the kind of things said that would have set her off, brought Fangs gnashing to the fore to put some respect upon the ones that thought they were hard enough.
Except… the need to keep pushing forward keeps Fangs in check. She has to channel all that fire deeper as she takes a running start at a wooden wall, grasping for the dangling rope. Hands on the familiar rough, scratching twist of linen, she ascends steady and measured… but her ruck… it's literally laden with rocks. Halfway up the height, she can feel her hands tire, arm muscles screaming at her to just… let go. Other trainees have dropped, some none-too-gently, and not a single one has reached the top yet.
"Come the fuck on! This is the latest batch? Pathetic! Absolutely shameful!"
"Look at her! She thinks she's going to make it? Look at those hands quivering. Just let go, pillock. It's not worth it!"
"Don't crack your skull on the way down, slab! Then again, a head like that–"
Thera tries to ignore them all. Two-thirds of the way up– feels like she's ascended damn near half the side of a mobile city's external walls. The other trainee beside her on the wall drops, roaring in pain as the rope burns their hands all the way down. Even as Fangs urges, even as she feels that righteous indignation burn bright… it burns her twice as fast. She can't push past, can't drive herself to the apex with pure hate and fury alone, but she can't just give up either.
"Soon as she falls, you are all running this again. "
Anger got her here, but it couldn't get her out.
Muscles tighter than ever before, she does everything in her power to wrap her hands on the rope, lock herself against the wall in a stubborn refusal of gravity.
"Just fall so we can run this again, pillock!"
"Why struggle so much? C'mon!"
Even the other candidates have given up, turning the frustration of their failures onto the one person who still dares to fucking try. Thera exhales, taking that moment for a cool, calming breath despite everything. It's a pause, a reset that gives her sharp clarity. As her tail flicks against the rope, an idea forms. The course expected her to bring the pack up and down this wall, but they didn't say a damn thing about how.
One more deep breath, preparing for the pain as she works the slack around her hand and bicep, pulling the bottom end of the rope up bit-by-bit. No one who matters tells her to stop, not a single trainer stating that it's a violation of some unspoken rule, so she keeps going until her tail flicks off the bottom end of the rope. The sharp panging beat of urgency overlap with soaring excitement of hope as she uses her tail to help maneuver the rope's end around one of the ruck's straps. Has to let go with one hand for a horrid, agonizing second, but on the brightest side it's the fastest knot Thera's ever damn tightened.
And it lets her slip the ruck off her shoulder, easing the slack free of her arm to just drop the weight unceremoniously to the ground.
No one's said a damn thing yet, either– neither the trainers nor the other candidates.
Weight's off her shoulders now though, and that last stretch up the rope? It's the same damn rope wall she'd been climbing the last three months, and it's the last stretch that she knows exactly how to drive through.
"C'mon, Fangs. Get your shit together." she snarls at herself, upper lip curling into a sneer as she puts one hand over the other. "This… is nothing. Nothing."
A fucking wall was nothing compared to the things she's done already.
A fucking wall couldn't hurt her in the same sense; a fucking wall was just that– a wall, a thing meant to be surmounted.
"Weakling." she growls when her muscles twitch in protest.
"Daft little dame." she rumbles, baring her fangs to the sky as she ascends one hand at a time.
"Head in the clouds… thinkin'... thinkin' she's a bloody hero." Fangs punches her in the gut, sneering, staring her dead in the eyes, trying to hold her down in that final step.
"What are you worth?"
The roar tears up her throat as she digs her hands upon the lip of the wall, eventually pulling herself up atop the cut of bastion that towers over all the Achnacarry Yard.
And yet she doesn't stop. She digs her heels in before grabbing more of the rope. Arm-length after arm-length, she fights. Gravity, doubts, exhaustion, the damn snarling voice in her head– she fights them all off until that rucksack is sitting atop the wall too, right beside her feet. The people below are near-imperceptible. Just moving figures, muted words, not a single face that she could recognize.
"Candidate Thera." a voice hisses over the Yard's speakers; a dreadfully familiar voice of a particularly cruel crone.
"Aye, Captain." she bellows, snapping a salute from atop the wall, feet still perilously perched upon its lip. If she were to be chewed out now for cheating the course, well at least she was on top of this damn tiny world.
"Excellent thinking, you may continue the course. The rest of Rack Eight, you're restarting from the beginning."
Elation, a lightness that leaves her standing atop her tiny little world with the spark of something .
A small notion, a feeling, a sense that maybe, just maybe, she has a chance to grasp at her life once more. Not redemption– there is far more that she'd have to suffer through before someone like her could be redeemed by whatever power-at-be that could remove that weight from her shoulders.
But this is a start.
"Again."
Thera raises her weapon, pulls it deep into her shoulder before racking its bolt forward.
Finger off the trigger at first, at least until she can make a connection to the ammunition within. She knows the steps: sense the Originium in the casing, conceptualize the outcome, and from there it's just like connecting two live wires. The energy sparked by the Originium in her blood simply flows into the trigger and completes the circuit.
The air cracks from the front of the rifle, a little pointed bit of metal hurled downrange faster than a crossbow bolt. A fresh hole in the paper no bigger than her thumb.
And she has to do it nineteen more times in less than a minute.
Rack the bolt, connect, trigger–
Gets five rounds in before her first fizzle. No time to troubleshoot or manually reset the firing pin, she just racks the damn thing to get a fresh bullet in and tries again. Second fizzle, but she just racks and fires. Two more rounds before the next fizzle, and three more after that…
"Hold fire!"
Order comes down and everybody on the line reacts instantly with weapons down and taking a step back from the bench.
"Lanes six, ten, and thirteen to the range instructor."
Thera lets the groan slowly escape through her nose as she spins on her heel and marches her sorry ass to the foot of the rangemaster's tower. The two beside her aren't from her rack, a Perro man and Feline woman she only knew in passing. None of them looked eager to be a part of the conversation that was about to happen as their dreaded instructor descended the steps. A snow-haired Santka man with a faded and flickering halo dressed down in fatigues from the last era of the Army: old, disgruntled, and too damn serious for his own good. The moment his shadow passes over them, all three candidates snap rigid, heel-to-heel and at-attention.
"Fizzles mean remediation on your Arts courses. There's not to be a single fizzle during your mad minute."
The old Sankta's word is law, and as annoying and disheartening it was to know that she's still a ways off from mastering the Arts, Thera and the Perro man salute.
"Aye sergeant."
"Aye sergeant."
The third though, the Feline woman, raises her hand to ask a question, and Thera knows exactly where it's going to wind up. Wouldn't be the first new-blood to ask, and wouldn't be the last for as long as the Sankta drew breath in Achnacarry's Yard.
"What about faulty ammunition?"
Thera and the Perro cut glances at one another as their sergeant raises his nose to the Feline candidate.
"Are you questioning the sanctity of those bullets, candidate?"
"N-No, staff sergeant I was just asking-"
"You were issued casings two-three-six-zero through two-three-eight-zero, and fired six-zero through to seven-three."
"I'm not sure… w-what?" The candidate blinks in the face of numbers thrown at her, and Thera realizes this might be this kid's first encounter with Lewis of the Old Breed. Always entertaining, assuming you weren't the one being chewed out.
The aged Sankta's lips pull into a thin line as he stands that little bit taller– though still nowhere near the height of any of the candidates before him.
"I hand pack each one of those bullets myself. I bless each and every bit of brass casings you leave behind, I measure the Originite down to the exact grain, I inspect every single completed cartridge to ensure that they are of Lateran quality- so no, candidate, I do not believe the ammunition is faulty. Just you. "
When Thera sees the other Feline's face contort, she has to stifle the laugh lest the sergeant's razor-sharp glare doesn't slice over to her next. When they're dismissed, she's ready to leap in and cheer up the new-blood when she feels the staff sergeant's eyes drill into her back.
"Candidate Thera, a moment."
Her feet plant themselves instinctively, her whole body lurching forward like someone had suddenly nailed her to the ground. Quick show-march pivot and standing at attention before trying to belt out a, "Y-Yes, Staff Sergeant Lewis!"
The Laterano tugs at a bit of snow-white mustache, adding some curl to one of the tips as he eyes Thera down. This wasn't her first talk with the ghost that haunted the range, wasn't even her third or fourth. She braces herself for the bad news as the old man's brow wrinkles deeper under his flickering halo.
"Your mad minute is still shite, but your accuracy is far above average. If we can't iron out your rapid-fire ability with a bolt-action, there's no point training you on the faster firing semi-automatics or automatics, but there might still be use for you."
"Sergeant?"
"Sharpshooter training might be more up your alley. Report to the specialist range on the north side of the Yard."
A salute, a handing off of ammunition, and she's off to the next stop. Bounced back and forth between places; between trainers, classes, assessments, drilling… She learned from her time at the Royal Guards Academy that the military ground you down, shore off any of the unnecessary bits until they had something nice and homogenous, but here at Achnacarry they seemed to be trying to find an edge to sharpen.
And that meant getting passed along like a fucking baton.
She passes by a class working on their hand-to-hand qualifications, resisting the urge to stop and watch– to judge with scrutinizing eyes. Her scores in close-quarters battle were top of the rack's, but they hadn't sent her to any specialization for further refinement. No, if anything they had assigned her more range time, more Arts classes, more tactics courses.
That grated at Fangs. The inaction, the lack of any sort of acknowledgement, the struggling with things she found unimportant. Put a saber in her hands and it could show them– by the Northern Hell, put a dagger in her hand and she could paint a beautiful fresco with the blood.
She bites her lip though, feeling her canine digging painfully deep as she presses on to the next damn runner in this relay. She might be the baton now, she might not know where the fuck she ends up in the end of it all, but she swears then and there that she'll never go back to the way things had turned out.
Those days when she used to freeze up in the face of adversity, dreaming of being braver than the young girl she had been.
Forced to grow up.
Forced to hold a sword.
Forced to hurt people.
Forced to kill.
She's through with having things forced upon her. If she is going to make any decision in her miserable life, let this be it. Let them test her, let them sharpen her edges, let them finish what her thrice-damned brother started.
They'll get their monster, and maybe through that monster she'll finally be free.
Fangs smiles coldly, hand tight on the sling of its rifle as it lock-step-marches onward for her.
"Pack your bags, Regiment's being called in." Captain Fairbairn belts with the kind of authority that you simply do not question, and everyone is in line and at attention with full packs in less than ten minutes. The old Vouivre only has to glance at her pocket watch to be satisfied with the results. Ruby-red eyes fall and each and every member individually, sets the tone before she even starts the informal briefing.
"The Grey-an'-Tans have cocked up an already bad situation in County Trent and we're being called in to provide our expertise. They're on day six of a riot in the Bogside, with lines being stretched thin. We will be conducting a counter-insurgency operation under the guise of riot control. The Grey-an'-Tans will be holding riot lines and overwatch elements will support them with precise removals on the line of contact while excision teams conduct the surgical needs within the township." The purple-horned crone pauses a moment, fiery eyes raking across the gathered commandos once more, searching for signs of weakness. When no cracks appear, she simply nods and continues,
"Excision team one is as; Dirk, Scalpel, Khukri, Facon. Team Two is Dagger, Bayonet, Kriss, Rondel. Equip accordingly."
"Overwatch team one is as; Claws, Baselard, Poignard. Overwatch team two is Machete, Stiletto, and Fangs. Get precision rounds from Lewis. We'll go over a more detailed brief when we're in county."
Thera's heart sinks somewhat at the team assignments. She knew she was a qualified sharpshooter, but her true expertise still lay in hand-to-hand and close-quarters battle. She had beaten half the excision team members in single combat already…
"Questions?"
She wants to step up and ask why, but puts her foot in her mouth the moment Fairbairn's eyes bore into her. The question was decidedly pointed, a non-question, a bait for such thoughts-
"Fangs, you look like something's on your mind. Care to share?"
Fairbairn smiles, but her expressions are as murky as her Arts; a smokescreen concealing the truth… but Thera isn't a candidate anymore. She passed Selection, and as a full-blooded member of the Regiment, she couldn't be ejected for just requesting… right?
"Permission to join an excision team." Thera asks, snapping rigid.
"Denied. This kind of mission requires judition that you don't have when there's a sword in your hand. If the Army has need of a butcher, we'll reevaluate the teams. Anyone else?"
Suppressed snickering is stamped down right quick by the war-scale, but Thera still feels the needle pricks underneath her skin, catches the sideways glances from the corner of her eyes.
"Bayonet, what?"
"Who are the targets, mum?"
"... local population's majority Taran. You know the score."
Murmurs from the gathered commandos, a sort of unease that is felt more than heard, but Shae's ignorant of just what specifically.
"Those of you who've been around know what we're dealing with. Those of you who are new will learn." Fairbairn says with a hard, knowing glare that sends a bit of cold steel into Shae's gut. "This mission is a good chance to put some hurt on their aspirations, maybe find some good intelligence on who or where their leadership is-"
"-and finally put a dagger in them." Facon snips, much to the agreement of the other commandos.
"Only if we beat Castor's people to it. We'll show them that the Crown can do daggers-in-the-dark better, aye?"
"Aye, ma'am!" The gathered commandos belt out– Shae included. Swept up in the march, in the excitement and adrenaline that only a first mission could bring, anxiety… that sort of gnawing bug in the back of her mind, just isn't there. After passing muster? After Selection? After everything?
There's so many emotions as she piles into the transport, as they ride out that nine-hour transit, but fear and anxiety just isn't even possible. Not with the company she keeps.
In the shadow of right-bloody fighters –same as as she– if not more so with the time they've put into the Regiment. Few words exchanged with her team during the ride, even fewer as they disembark and shack up in a cabin on the outskirts of Trent. They can see the fires burning even from the edge of town, hear the shouts drifting in at night, and say nothing.
Unpacking and setting up in that tiny space feels far more unnerving than the prospect of the mission. There always was a cold cordiality during training with Machete and Stiletto, a professional civility between her and them, but it's been clear that everyone is wary on whether or not Fangs will stick around.
An odd pair, those two are; a Zalak man that reminded Shae of a shaggy-haired vagabond she knew from the Undercity and a quiet red-headed Feline woman who seemed more concerned with her equipment than anyone else. An odd pair that is waiting for Shae when she comes back in from the night with the last of their team's supplies.
"First mission, Fangs." Machete says knowingly, sitting at the small dining table with Stiletto over in the corner behind him. It's a tone that confuses Shae for a moment as she drops the supplies by the door.
She gives him the once over. His posture is relaxed, almost disinterested. It's the first bit of conversation since they departed headquarters and she's compelled to ask; "...and?"
Stiletto glances up from polishing her rifle's stock, cold eyes darting from Machete to Shae as the Zalak man leans forward.
"What's your take?"
Shae frowns at his question; she has no take. Is she even supposed to have one?
"Just putting a stop to a riot, supporting the Army. What's there to think about?"
Machete clicks his tongue and Stiletto raises her eyebrows. The pair share a glance, some unspoken communication that… irks Fangs. The sort of duplicitous subtlety that puts her on edge, the kinda spine tingle that the more street-wise'd get before getting jumped in the dark.
"It's more than a riot." Machete says, pulling the only other chair out from the table, but Shae doesn't move to sit while his hand is still on the back. "Think for a second Fangs– why call us in?"
An obvious answer that Shae doesn't dare voice. It's double-edged, a provocation; either way she answers he'll be ready to pounce.
But even a neutral shrug is still a setup. Machete scoffs.
"It's because rebels are rebels, simple as." he says bluntly puts his boots up on Fang's seat, eyeing her up with a tilt of his head. "No more reason needed to put a bullet in them."
"Or a blade." Stiletto chimes in from the corner, still cleaning her firearm.
Shae stays silent for the moment, feeling the gritty, plaque-covered bit of her teeth with her tongue. Her teammates' stares certainly weigh on her. Good first impressions were more valuable than gold in the world of nobility and the underground, and here Shae is squandering it by waxing weakness.
His words though… the casualness of it, like violence is an inevitability.
"They're Victorians aren't they? Even if they think they aren't. Shouldn't it be our job to remind them?"
"Oh, we will be." Stiletto grins from the back, still not looking up from her weapon.
"Taran, Victorian– when you start using them interchangeably, things start getting… messy, Fangs." One of Machete's boots thuds to the floor, but he leaves the other still bouncing atop her seat. "Do yourself a favor and don't think."
Bloody hypocrite. Tells her to think then slags her off?
"I've been doing that my whole bloody life, how'd you think I wound up here with you blighters?"
That earns her a chuckle and Machete dropping his other foot off her seat, but still Fangs chooses to stand. She would have stayed standing anyways, it's not like she had any pride left to wound. That stubbornness seems to earn an ounce more of respect back from the other two.
"Then you should know how we get shit done." Machete grins as Stiletto nods along. "They killed the ones that stopped to think of them as Victorians. They raised arms against the ones who had their best interests in mind– you know, the ones who wanted a peaceful solution? Nah, the time for thinking– for regarding? That's gone." Machete leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, looking up at Fangs.
And in those ice-blue eyes she can see the hardness, the raw determination of someone who does not mince their words or deeds.
"They had their chance, and now we're here. You see anyone carrying a weapon that isn't in the Grey-and-Tan, you put a bullet in them. A boy with a blade, a gran with a crossbow, a fucking baby with a damn knife- it doesn't matter, you pull the trigger. We clear?"
Shae's stomach turns, but at the same time… there's a weight lifted from her shoulders. Clarity of purpose, certainly, but it's a clarity that goes with what Fangs has been telling her all along. The logical, sensible, feeling self has to fall in line behind the rest of her whether she likes what she hears or not.
"Clear." Fangs answers, clicking its heels together and stiffening up, if only for Machete to wave off the coming formality with a frown.
"It's martial law anyways." Stiletto pipes in, placing her rifle on the table beside Fangs'. "Anyone with a weapon that isn't Army is gonna have ill intent." The Feline woman's hand grazes over the wood of Fangs' rifle, and that makes the newly minted commando start to bristle. The redhead smiles softly at the reaction, knowing full-well the significance of their firearms. She delicately lifts it, regards it, conscious of no sudden movements as she spins the butt-end towards Fangs.
When Fangs takes the stock, Stiletto doesn't let it go yet.
"We see clearer than the others on the ground. As overwatch, our job isn't to kill the rebels, it's to protect our people, Fangs."
"-and if protecting our people means killing theirs, well best to save the one who truly see themselves as part of Her kingdom, yeah?"
Shae… Fangs nods.
"...then welcome to your first assignment, Fangs. Aim true and don't fuck up."
"Aim true and don't fuck up."
By her third day on the riot line she's already failed both. The army had fully fallen back to their last line by then, meaning the rioters wanted the fight– something they were prepared for. Rocks and bottles at first… at first. A flash of light, the thud of a pressure wave, and the tingle of every hair on her body standing on end. Five Gray-and-Tans dead at the blast site, another handful soon-to-be as they run screaming like human torches. Half-a-dozen more wounded… all because she hadn't pulled the trigger.
And now the riot lines are broken, rebel elements rushing the army's lines while they are disarray. More casualties to come as the fighting breaks out in earnest. Civilians running in panic, some crossing her sightline…
For the first dozen or so, she holds off the trigger, tries to get clear lines of fire… but she can hear the reports from Machete and Stilletto's rifles, can see the fine puffs of pink out the backs of civilians and rebels alike. She knows that those rounds overpenetrate, she knows that some of those shots are going into people just trying to get away, she knows that her teammates are going the Mad Minute in a target rich environment. Each and every one of the Taran's below had the possibility of being another fire-bomber…
The one who had thrown the first one had been a child, after all.
Fangs slithers to the fore, pulling the trigger before more doubting thoughts could mire the mind deeper. The woman who drops had been wearing a bonnet and apron, one of the local bakers… but a sickle drops from her hand, still red along the edge.
A second punch into her shoulder drops the Tabby Corner crier boy.
Third, runs clean through two– a farmer and his son.
Fourth, fifth, sixth…
Fangs works the bolt as steady as a clock, the click-clack-kchack of it, the flow of the Arts through her finger and into the trigger, the ignition of the Originite powder– it keeps her sharp and focused on the act of shooting rather than the slaughter.
Because down below, it's like they said; anyone not in the Grey and Tan is the enemy. The Victorian regulars ditched the batons and out came the blades.
"Bolters, residential windows, third floor. Scan for more trying to get vantage" Her shortwave hisses, the spotter in the chaos below coming in clearer than expected.
"On it." Machete's voice responds, and that's Fang's cue to take her eyes off the crowd as she finishes jamming new rounds into the magazine.
Stiletto is the first to find one, Fangs just catching a puff of red in an open window after hearing the report from the floor above. She's not about to be outdone though, catching another crossbower trying to set themselves up high. Not trained in sniping, they stupidly put their bowgun on the windowsill to aim.
Fangs showed them their error, one that they wouldn't ever get to learn from.
Another flash from the street, another firebomb crashing into the pressed lines without care to Taran or Victorian.
They're close enough to hear the screams this time.
"Fangs, find that bomber."
Both eyes open, scanning, waiting for the flash and glow of a fire-bottle–
Fangs catches sight of a youth stooped in a doorway, silhouette lit by flashes of orange. Looked like she was lighting something with a snap of Arts–
So she squeezes the trigger, catching the body slump before pulling back to scan again.
A man running to the front of the riot lines, satchel slung over his shoulder and clutched tight to his breast.
A simple snap, and he tumbles forward, unmoving.
A young woman no older than Shae dragging a wounded rebel back behind the lines.
Another snap, and she falls atop the combatant she was helping.
An old gentleman, screaming at the top of his lungs, face red like fire, veins throbbing in his forehead. Unmistakable hate as he raises his fist, a bottle in his hand.
She ends life as easily as she snaps her fingers.
Dispassionate, detached, devoid of feeling each time she does it.
Can't feel. Not allowed to feel. Can't feel when people whose lives are worth more to her are in danger. An awful truth– the ugliest truth.
The only mercy that she can extend to them is that she can extinguish them without hate…
For now.
The crowd had been dispersed from the Bogside, but come mid-day, no one had cleared the bodies yet. All the dead just… laying there, forcing Shae to have to look at her handiwork as she scanned her sector again and again and again-
Monotony to make the doubt creep in.
Did she really see a firebomb in that kid's hands? Was that woman opening the window actually armed, or was she just seeing what all the commotion was?
The worst was that young lady slumped over the man she had tried to help. Shae gave her a closer look, saw the black coat with the rook on it. One of the nurses from the local clinic from the bits that she still could recognize.
She wasn't Tarran. Shae met her when scouting for meds for the team last night, and had a small chat. Not enough to remember a name, but enough to remember she was a Londinium girl, same as Shae.
Wrong place, wrong time, with the… wrong people– or perhaps sympathizing with the wrong cause? A case of a heart too big and strong colliding with a heart too ice-cold and razor sharp?
The anger wells up but peters out before she can make use of it to justify her actions. How convenient for Fangs to pull the trigger but leave Shae to pick through the consequences. She grits her teeth, scanning the bloody street for what felt like the thousandth time before a hand claps her on the shoulder. A reflexive growl rumbles from her, hand going straight for her shanker. Before she could draw though, the one behind her gets her wrist, holds her knife in the leather for her.
"The fuck is wrong with you Fangs? You don't respond to comms, then try to shank me when I come to see if you're alive?" Stiletto sneers, shoving Shae forward as she disengages, "Some fucking teammate."
"S-Sorry."
A weak, reflexive reply croaked from a dry throat and cracked lips. The kind of reply that only gets more scorn from a commando who knows they're supposed to be harder than that.
"We're pulling back to the rally, letting the regulars clean up this shiet," Stiletto grunts, adjusting the sling over her shoulder before turning heel and marching out. No other words, no encouragement, no more harshness, but the sting of her words still stick in Shae's skin. Puts haste to her scramble of picking up the spent brass, of packing up her little pop-up stall of murder-
Because there's not to be a trace of them, because the Regiment was never here.
"We killed civilians."
"We killed insurgents, Fangs."
"Every one? Every single body we left in the Bogside? How can you be so sure?"
The frustration mounts as Machete growls. His fists clench as he takes an aggressive step forward like he's going to beat sense into her– but he knows Shae's combat record, knows her skills, and has the wherewithal to know if he tried to throw fists to solve this problem, Fangs'd put him in the ground.
So he gets in her face instead, nose-to-nose, rancid breath of stale ration and watered-down beer permeating her. If he can provoker her into throwing the first punch, she'd catch the reprimand… but he doesn't. No, he puts his hands on his shoulders not out of a desire to wrestle her, but to hold her gaze locked to his.
"Dublin's a fucking parasite, Fangs. You want someone to blame for those dead civvies, blame Dublin for putting the idea in their heads that Tarans are a separate people from Victoria."
"What sort of thinking is that?" she snaps back, holding fast to her logic– even if that logic holds her stomach in an uneasy chokehold with the answers it's coming up with.
"The kind of thinking that keeps us doing what the Regiment is meant to do." Stiletto jabs in from the side. "We're Her knives in the dark. That blood is never coming off your hands, so you best grab your knife nice and hard to make sure your prints stick."
"We are not nice people, Fangs." Machete says with the venom in his voice practically dripping with acid. "We aren't Knights of the Tower– and if you think that's what the Regiment is, then you're fucked in the head, mate."
That… revelation makes Shae's knees quake. It's just a single second, just weakness more temporary than a blink, but it's enough to let her teammates know. Stiletto snorts, turning her head to look away from Shae's ugly feebleness, but it's Machete's grip on her, the tremble in his hands that tells her just how serious this matter is to them. She… looks away, mutters some unthought placation to get Machete's hands off of her.
"You're a fucking mess, Fangs." Machete snarls as he backs up, "this is why Knife didn't put you on an excision team."
Stiletto tails their team lead on the way out, only glancing at Fangs long enough to shake her head. They leave her to sit and stew, to stay in the ready room alone in the dark– isolated.
Alone until Shae locks step with them. A punishment not unlike… her older brother's.
Locked away with only a sword to talk to. No friends, none of her other siblings, not a soul to fucking care about her.
She hates the regret gnawing at her fucking spine.
She hates how Machete was right.
She hates how naive Shae could be.
She just hates.
–and that hate comes boiling up, a wave of it forced through Shae's throat in a burning, incomprehensible curse. A curse from Fangs that spills out on the floor, heaved up from that black place in her heart.
Wet, pungent, steaming.
A curse that… she's going to have to clean up.