“Dayshift, you pigger. I look like some saggy-faced night digger?”
“Well, you never know these days…”
“True enough. I’m Omicron. Third drillboy, second line.”
“So that was your chaff I’d be dodging deep.”
He grins. “Helldivers, always lookin’ themselves in the eye.” He makes a lewd motion with his hands. “Someone’s gotta teach you to look up.”
We laugh. “How much did it hurt?” he asks, nodding to me. At first I think he’s asking about what the Jackal did. Then I realize he’s referring to the Sigils on my hands. The ones I’ve tried to cover with my sweater. I unveil them now. “Manic shit, that.” He flicks it with his finger.
I look around, suddenly aware that it’s not just Vanno watching me. It’s everyone. Even on the far side of the room in the burn unit Reds push themselves up in their beds to look at me. They can’t see the fear inside. They see what they want. I glance at Ragnar, but he’s busy speaking to an injured woman. Holiday. She nods to me. Grief still very much at home on her face for her lost brother. His pistol is on her bedside, his rifle leaning against the wall. The Sons recovered his body during the rescue so he could be buried.
“How much did it hurt?” I repeat. “Well, imagine falling into a clawDrill, Vanno. A centimeter at a time. First goes the skin. Then the flesh. Then bone. Easy stuff.”
Vanno whistles and looks down at his missing legs with a tired, almost bored expression. “Didn’t even feel this. My suit injected enough hydrophone to knock out one of them.” He nods to Ragnar and draws air through his teeth. “And least I still got my prick.”
“Ask him,” a man beside him urges. “Vanno…”
“Shut up.” Vanno sighs. “Boys have been wonderin’. Did you get to keep it?”
“Keep what?”
“You really want to know?”
“I mean…not for personal reasons. But I’ve got money riding on it.”
“Well.” I lean forward seriously. So do Vanno and his bedmates nearby. “If you really want to know, you should ask your mother.”
Vanno stares at me intensely, then explodes into laughter. His bedmates laugh and spread the joke to the far edges of the room. And in that tiny moment, the mood shifts. The suffocating sterility cut through with amusement and crude jokes. Whispering suddenly seems ridiculous here. It fills me with energy to see the shifting tide and realize it’s because of a single laugh. Instead of retreating from the eyes, from the room, I move away from Ragnar down the lines of cots to mingle more with the injured, to thank them, to ask where they’re from and learn their names. And this is where I thank Jove that I’ve a good memory on me. Forget a man’s name and he’ll forgive you. Remember it, and he’ll defend you forever.
Most call me sir or Reaper. And I want to correct them and tell them to call me Darrow, but I know the value of respect, of distance between men and leader. Because even though I’m laughing with them, even though they’re helping heal what’s been twisted inside me, they are not my friends. They are not my family. Not yet. Not until we have that luxury. For now, they are my soldiers. And they need me as much as I need them. I’m their Reaper. It took Ragnar to remind me. He favors me with an ungainly grin, so pleased to see me smiling and laughing with the soldiers. I’ve never been a man of joy or a man of war, or an island in a storm. Never an absolute like Lorn. That was what I pretended to be. I am and always have been a man who is made complete by those around him. I feel strength growing in myself. A strength I haven’t felt in so long. It’s not only that I’m loved. It’s that they believe in me. Not the mask like my soldiers at the Institute. Not the false idol I built in the service of Augustus, but the man beneath. Lykos may be gone. Eo may be silent. Mustang a world away. And the Sons on the brink of extinction. But I feel my soul trickling back into me as I realize I am finally home.
—
With Ragnar at my side I return to the command room where Sevro and Dancer are hunched over a blueprint. Theodora’s in the corner exchanging correspondences. They turn as I enter, surprised to see the smile on my face and to see that I’m now standing. Not on my own, but with Ragnar’s help. I left the chair in the hospital and had him guide me back to the command room I fled only an hour prior. I feel a new man. And I may not be what I was before the darkness, but perhaps I’m better for it. I have humility I didn’t have before.
