Tag: return

Hands (pt 2)

Jahan made a strangled noise in his throat. “Standing. You shouldn’t be here.”

Looking up, eyes sharp, Mi did their best not to sound as harsh as their expression. “Everyone returned. Didn’t need a scout after all?”

“We were lucky,” Jahan said. “And I scouted.”

They doubted it. Jahan couldn’t scout to save his life. But if everyone returned, he obviously scouted well enough to save the life of everyone else in the unit. Mi looked past him. Their unit moved passed and the crowd either followed or returned to their lives.

“You shouldn’t be up.”

Mi looked at Jahan’s hands, ignoring his words. He bound his hands, as they needed on the field, in fresh linen. Not drenched in red and dried in brown, like the others. Their uniform, red without the brown. Their uniform, the occasional leaf stuck within its folds. “You really scouted.” They mouthed the words, rather than speak them aloud.

Jahan didn’t answer. He took them by the arm and forced them back to the hospital. Jahan was fast, but kept himself at a slower pace for Mi’s sake. Mi didn’t need him to, didn’t know why he did this. As they didn’t want to return however, they didn’t speed up. They reached out with their left hand to try to pull him off. For some reason they couldn’t, wrist resting on his arm.

Hands (pt 1)

hands_titlecard.png
artwork by ケLV

They commanded attention, leaving spectators breathless in their presence. Mi didn’t expect anything less. Dressed all in red, the crowd could still see the stains of the blood on them. Somehow, despite having returned from battle, despite the blood of their enemies and of their friends upon them, they all stood tall. Not as though they had suffered a heavy loss.

Mi dipped their head down before Jahan could see them. They shouldn’t have bothered. Their red cloak stood out in the cooler colours worn by the rest of the crowd. Jahan would break formation, they know. They shouldn’t have come, not right now.

“What are you doing?”

They stared at their boots, instead of looking up to see how many people Jahan pushed aside. The crowd had moved, giving them space. Mi’s boots looked the same as ever. They had only managed to pull on the boots and put on the cloak. The rest of their outfit was not the same uniform. “Standing in support.”