lifeonqueen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lifeonqueen) wrote2004-06-21 08:55 pm
lifeonqueen) wrote2004-06-21 08:55 pm
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Mother Wolf: Devil's Bargain
Title: Mother Wolf: Devil's Bargain
What follows is rated R for violent imagery and needless thematic borrowing.
They had made a devil’s bargain for peace and safety to raise their family. Arriving planetside in the middle of a civil war, Aeryn sold her services to the young Emperor in exchange for asylum for Crichton and their children.
It did not take long for Aeryn to prove herself a warrior without peer among the Emperor’s army. When the last sword was sheathed, he rewarded her deadliness and her loyalty. With his own hands, he raised her to a place in the Imperial Household: he appointed her his Hand-of-Justice.
Crichton objected, of course. But Aeryn’s position brought land, wealth and the protection of the Emperor. She reminded him that they were not in a position to refuse such largesse and he reluctantly agreed.
It was not home the way Crichton, after all these years, still thought of Earth but there was a house and gardens, snug behind high walls and locked gates, where the children could grow and play in the dirt with their father while she administered the Emperor’s justice to those clans that had raised arms against him.
The years that followed were idyllic. The children were healthy, happy and far more precocious than their parents could manage. Crichton consulted astronomers from throughout the system and refined his wormhole calculations. Aeryn learned to garden. And, delighting in growing things, she gave birth to a new baby their third spring on the planet
If Crichton could not forget the cost of their happiness, he learned to forgive the ease with which she paid it. Their marriage endured and even flourished.
But the devil always demands his due….
They had argued that morning, which was not unusual, but she had left without speaking to him because of it, which was. After so many years, she had finally learned to take it for granted that he would always be waiting for her when she returned--that had been his vow when they had married. That she would always return had been hers.
In the end, they had both kept faith.
“We never did say good-bye, did we love?” she asked, brushing the hair away from his face.
There was so much blood everywhere else, but his face was unmarked. For the second time in a life, she stroked her fingers across the lines and angles of his face and felt the unnatural chill of his flesh against hers. Cold hands, warm heart, he’d teased but his heart had been the warmest of all. Without it to warm her, she could already feel ice forming in her soul, enclosing her heart.
The assassins had slipped past her sentries on the walls and caught Crichton in his study, probably working on yet more equations. There were two bodies in there, amidst his papers and equipment, and more in the hallway leading to the nursery. Three dead and possibly more wounded, she had estimated as she followed the trail of violence to the rooms where her children slept. She'd forced herself to be analytical and cautious, to look with Peacekeeper eyes, so she could keep her sanity as she climbed the last short flight of steps.
He would have known to keep the children calm and the intruders pinned down in the corridor and wait for his moment. They had never gotten over the habit of paranoia: the nursery door was reinforced with steel; there was an escape ladder with rungs close together for childish feet, weapons and money secured in the room, away from little hands. It wouldn’t have taken him long, microts only, to bar the door and get the kids organized: they were smart, they’d been taught about the things that could go bump in the night, the bad men—
The grenade must have been thrown just as Crichton was closing the door. He wouldn’t have hesitated, just thrown himself over the children…
The blast had shredded the flesh on his back and upper legs and riddled his body with shrapnel. The shock from sudden, massive-haemorrhage would have been nearly instantaneous. He was probably no longer even conscious when they had pulled him off his children and sliced his throat…
Zoey, six cycles old, cut nearly in two from shoulder to hip…
John Robert, four cycles, beaten and strangled. They’d pinned his body to the nursery wall like some hideous scarecrow, his head lolling sickly to the side…
Whether Aeryn knelt in the blood of her family, staring, for hours or minutes, she never knew. She might have fainted. Perhaps she hyperventilated. Maybe she just went mad. When she crawled on her knees to lower John Robert’s body, she moved like an old woman. She could barely jerk the dagger from the wall. It grated against his sternum as she drew the blade from his chest and the vibration nearly shattered her every bone to pieces.
Gently, she laid him on the floor by his sister. She still held the knife in one hand and she had to look at it a moment before she remembered why she held it. Was this the blade that cut his throat? She turned it over in her hands. The edge was laser-honed, sharp enough to split microwire, she would feel nothing more than a hot kiss across her throat…
A muffled cry broke her reverie. Instinctive curiosity--some deep, evolutionary part of her brain--prompted her to stick the bloody knife under her belt and find the source.
John Robert’s body had hidden the trick panel. She pressed the fake knothole and felt the wood give under her hands. They had decided that it was too easy to find and too easy to open when hiding their own weapons in the room, so they had let the kids use it, mostly to store toys and books.
“Frell.”
In the middle of a hastily assembled pile of plush toys and cushions, baby Kit lay red-faced and squalling, big, angry tears rolling down his face. She moved automatically to reach and lift the baby out of the hidey-hole, holding him awkwardly. She couldn’t remember how to hold a baby and he kept wriggling in her arms. She wanted to put him down but there was so much blood. So she held him. He squealed at her and lurched for her chest, so she held him closer. He started rooting for a breast so she pulled open her shirt and let him nurse.
As the baby suckled, some of the confusion drained from her mind and Aeryn began to think more clearly. She shifted Kit to cradle him more comfortably in her arms and waited for him to finish. Once he was done, she laid him in his crib and began to care for the bodies of her husband and her other children.
Aeryn put them all in the bed she had shared with Crichton, the bed Kit had been born in. It seemed fitting to her. She arranged them with one on either side of Crichton, as if they were sharing a lazy morning together. She kissed them each one last time, drew a sheet over their head and doused the bed with lamp oil.
Kit was awake, standing against the railing of his crib, when she returned to the nursery. Lifting up his arms, he gazed reproachfully at her: “Hhhp,” he demanded. When his commands were not immediately followed, he banged his fists on the railing and repeated himself more loudly: “Hhhp!”
Aeryn pulled the knife from her belt and studied it one more time, rubbing her thumb over the embossed crest of a heron in flight at the base of the blade. The assassins had been Gay’yu. They had come for her. They had found her family instead.
The swirling gossip of the Imperial court had never interested Aeryn. She had never given any serious attention to the courtiers who whispered that, by rights, her position should have gone to one of the honoured clans who had supported the Emperor through the dark days of his exile and the bloody war that followed, not an outlander of no family. And she had thought even less on those who suggested the Emperor was planning to make her his warlord, the most powerful noble in the land after the Emperor himself. That had been a mistake: obviously not everyone gave the rumours as little credit as she.
The Gay’yu were the most powerful clan in the Empire--Aeryn would kill every last one. As they had brought down her world, she would bring their entire reality crashing in around their ears.
Aeryn had been the Emperor’s Justice for three years and she had learned the ways of her adopted land very well. On Crichton’s body, and the body of their daughter and son, she had sworn vengeance on every single, last Gay’yu--no man, woman or child of Gay’yu blood would be spared.
There was no longer any place in her world for family. Vengeance had a cost and her son would be a target for Gay’yu revenge. It would be kinder to kill him cleanly now, so that he could join his family in the next world, than hide him away to die at the hands of Gay’yu scum.
She gripped the dagger firmly and picked up a soft, red rag ball that Crichton had made out of an old shirt for Kit to teethe on. She didn’t want to frighten the baby, so she waved the ball to distract him from the knife: “Kit--ball.”
He ignored it and reached for the knife. “HHHP!”
She moved the knife out of reach of his hand. “Kit, look: ball. Daddy’s—“ she choked on the word, “Daddy’s ball.”
“HHHP!” he cried, pounding his fists against the crib rail. “HHHP! HHHP! HHHP!”
Kit pushed the ball away and grabbed again for the knife: “HHHHHHHHHHHP!”
“Kit-” Aeryn sighed plaintively. Of all her babies, he was the most stubborn, always insisting on having his own way--she handed him the knife.
Instead of dropping it, Kit clenched his chubby baby fingers tightly around the handle.
“HHHP!” he shouted and pounded the butt of the knife against the crib rail for emphasis.
“Yes, ‘up’,” she repeated and lifted the baby out of his crib. Still holding the knife in one hand, he grabbed a hank of her hair tight in his free hand and settled his body firmly against her side. Something grim and resigned but almost like a smile twisted Aeryn's mouth.
“Don’t worry, baby,” she assured him, “I’m not going to leave you behind. It’s just us now.”
He nodded, “Yhh.”
“Yeah,” Aeryn agreed.
With one hand, she packed a change of clothes for each of them, a days worth of rations and what weapons she could comfortably carry. She set the first fire in the bedroom where she had left Crichton and the children and a second in the kitchens. The house was old--it would burn quickly.
The last thing she did was take the ceremonial battle sword, the sword she had received from the Emperor’s own hand, from its place of honour. Then, carrying Kit with one arm and the sword with the other, she walked out of the house, through the gardens and out the gates. There was a muffled explosion behind them as the fuel reserves in the kitchen ignited and bright flames climbed high into the night sky.
They never looked back.
What follows is rated R for violent imagery and needless thematic borrowing.
They had made a devil’s bargain for peace and safety to raise their family. Arriving planetside in the middle of a civil war, Aeryn sold her services to the young Emperor in exchange for asylum for Crichton and their children.
It did not take long for Aeryn to prove herself a warrior without peer among the Emperor’s army. When the last sword was sheathed, he rewarded her deadliness and her loyalty. With his own hands, he raised her to a place in the Imperial Household: he appointed her his Hand-of-Justice.
Crichton objected, of course. But Aeryn’s position brought land, wealth and the protection of the Emperor. She reminded him that they were not in a position to refuse such largesse and he reluctantly agreed.
It was not home the way Crichton, after all these years, still thought of Earth but there was a house and gardens, snug behind high walls and locked gates, where the children could grow and play in the dirt with their father while she administered the Emperor’s justice to those clans that had raised arms against him.
The years that followed were idyllic. The children were healthy, happy and far more precocious than their parents could manage. Crichton consulted astronomers from throughout the system and refined his wormhole calculations. Aeryn learned to garden. And, delighting in growing things, she gave birth to a new baby their third spring on the planet
If Crichton could not forget the cost of their happiness, he learned to forgive the ease with which she paid it. Their marriage endured and even flourished.
But the devil always demands his due….
They had argued that morning, which was not unusual, but she had left without speaking to him because of it, which was. After so many years, she had finally learned to take it for granted that he would always be waiting for her when she returned--that had been his vow when they had married. That she would always return had been hers.
In the end, they had both kept faith.
“We never did say good-bye, did we love?” she asked, brushing the hair away from his face.
There was so much blood everywhere else, but his face was unmarked. For the second time in a life, she stroked her fingers across the lines and angles of his face and felt the unnatural chill of his flesh against hers. Cold hands, warm heart, he’d teased but his heart had been the warmest of all. Without it to warm her, she could already feel ice forming in her soul, enclosing her heart.
The assassins had slipped past her sentries on the walls and caught Crichton in his study, probably working on yet more equations. There were two bodies in there, amidst his papers and equipment, and more in the hallway leading to the nursery. Three dead and possibly more wounded, she had estimated as she followed the trail of violence to the rooms where her children slept. She'd forced herself to be analytical and cautious, to look with Peacekeeper eyes, so she could keep her sanity as she climbed the last short flight of steps.
He would have known to keep the children calm and the intruders pinned down in the corridor and wait for his moment. They had never gotten over the habit of paranoia: the nursery door was reinforced with steel; there was an escape ladder with rungs close together for childish feet, weapons and money secured in the room, away from little hands. It wouldn’t have taken him long, microts only, to bar the door and get the kids organized: they were smart, they’d been taught about the things that could go bump in the night, the bad men—
The grenade must have been thrown just as Crichton was closing the door. He wouldn’t have hesitated, just thrown himself over the children…
The blast had shredded the flesh on his back and upper legs and riddled his body with shrapnel. The shock from sudden, massive-haemorrhage would have been nearly instantaneous. He was probably no longer even conscious when they had pulled him off his children and sliced his throat…
Zoey, six cycles old, cut nearly in two from shoulder to hip…
John Robert, four cycles, beaten and strangled. They’d pinned his body to the nursery wall like some hideous scarecrow, his head lolling sickly to the side…
Whether Aeryn knelt in the blood of her family, staring, for hours or minutes, she never knew. She might have fainted. Perhaps she hyperventilated. Maybe she just went mad. When she crawled on her knees to lower John Robert’s body, she moved like an old woman. She could barely jerk the dagger from the wall. It grated against his sternum as she drew the blade from his chest and the vibration nearly shattered her every bone to pieces.
Gently, she laid him on the floor by his sister. She still held the knife in one hand and she had to look at it a moment before she remembered why she held it. Was this the blade that cut his throat? She turned it over in her hands. The edge was laser-honed, sharp enough to split microwire, she would feel nothing more than a hot kiss across her throat…
A muffled cry broke her reverie. Instinctive curiosity--some deep, evolutionary part of her brain--prompted her to stick the bloody knife under her belt and find the source.
John Robert’s body had hidden the trick panel. She pressed the fake knothole and felt the wood give under her hands. They had decided that it was too easy to find and too easy to open when hiding their own weapons in the room, so they had let the kids use it, mostly to store toys and books.
“Frell.”
In the middle of a hastily assembled pile of plush toys and cushions, baby Kit lay red-faced and squalling, big, angry tears rolling down his face. She moved automatically to reach and lift the baby out of the hidey-hole, holding him awkwardly. She couldn’t remember how to hold a baby and he kept wriggling in her arms. She wanted to put him down but there was so much blood. So she held him. He squealed at her and lurched for her chest, so she held him closer. He started rooting for a breast so she pulled open her shirt and let him nurse.
As the baby suckled, some of the confusion drained from her mind and Aeryn began to think more clearly. She shifted Kit to cradle him more comfortably in her arms and waited for him to finish. Once he was done, she laid him in his crib and began to care for the bodies of her husband and her other children.
Aeryn put them all in the bed she had shared with Crichton, the bed Kit had been born in. It seemed fitting to her. She arranged them with one on either side of Crichton, as if they were sharing a lazy morning together. She kissed them each one last time, drew a sheet over their head and doused the bed with lamp oil.
Kit was awake, standing against the railing of his crib, when she returned to the nursery. Lifting up his arms, he gazed reproachfully at her: “Hhhp,” he demanded. When his commands were not immediately followed, he banged his fists on the railing and repeated himself more loudly: “Hhhp!”
Aeryn pulled the knife from her belt and studied it one more time, rubbing her thumb over the embossed crest of a heron in flight at the base of the blade. The assassins had been Gay’yu. They had come for her. They had found her family instead.
The swirling gossip of the Imperial court had never interested Aeryn. She had never given any serious attention to the courtiers who whispered that, by rights, her position should have gone to one of the honoured clans who had supported the Emperor through the dark days of his exile and the bloody war that followed, not an outlander of no family. And she had thought even less on those who suggested the Emperor was planning to make her his warlord, the most powerful noble in the land after the Emperor himself. That had been a mistake: obviously not everyone gave the rumours as little credit as she.
The Gay’yu were the most powerful clan in the Empire--Aeryn would kill every last one. As they had brought down her world, she would bring their entire reality crashing in around their ears.
Aeryn had been the Emperor’s Justice for three years and she had learned the ways of her adopted land very well. On Crichton’s body, and the body of their daughter and son, she had sworn vengeance on every single, last Gay’yu--no man, woman or child of Gay’yu blood would be spared.
There was no longer any place in her world for family. Vengeance had a cost and her son would be a target for Gay’yu revenge. It would be kinder to kill him cleanly now, so that he could join his family in the next world, than hide him away to die at the hands of Gay’yu scum.
She gripped the dagger firmly and picked up a soft, red rag ball that Crichton had made out of an old shirt for Kit to teethe on. She didn’t want to frighten the baby, so she waved the ball to distract him from the knife: “Kit--ball.”
He ignored it and reached for the knife. “HHHP!”
She moved the knife out of reach of his hand. “Kit, look: ball. Daddy’s—“ she choked on the word, “Daddy’s ball.”
“HHHP!” he cried, pounding his fists against the crib rail. “HHHP! HHHP! HHHP!”
Kit pushed the ball away and grabbed again for the knife: “HHHHHHHHHHHP!”
“Kit-” Aeryn sighed plaintively. Of all her babies, he was the most stubborn, always insisting on having his own way--she handed him the knife.
Instead of dropping it, Kit clenched his chubby baby fingers tightly around the handle.
“HHHP!” he shouted and pounded the butt of the knife against the crib rail for emphasis.
“Yes, ‘up’,” she repeated and lifted the baby out of his crib. Still holding the knife in one hand, he grabbed a hank of her hair tight in his free hand and settled his body firmly against her side. Something grim and resigned but almost like a smile twisted Aeryn's mouth.
“Don’t worry, baby,” she assured him, “I’m not going to leave you behind. It’s just us now.”
He nodded, “Yhh.”
“Yeah,” Aeryn agreed.
With one hand, she packed a change of clothes for each of them, a days worth of rations and what weapons she could comfortably carry. She set the first fire in the bedroom where she had left Crichton and the children and a second in the kitchens. The house was old--it would burn quickly.
The last thing she did was take the ceremonial battle sword, the sword she had received from the Emperor’s own hand, from its place of honour. Then, carrying Kit with one arm and the sword with the other, she walked out of the house, through the gardens and out the gates. There was a muffled explosion behind them as the fuel reserves in the kitchen ignited and bright flames climbed high into the night sky.
They never looked back.