bones and all

[gamemaker kelsier]

Six met Steven five years ago.

It was a year into his first command and Six'd been through three lieutenants already in short order. The first one said she didn't like the smog in Nine, it made her feel sick. The second one ate a bullet on patrol and the third didn't want to take orders from a piece of property, so he ended up on leave with broken fingers.

Steven showed up a few days later as his replacement but by then it was too late, Six had already decided that he didn’t want a lieutenant.

That didn't bother him, he was used to that.

Steven had never wanted to be a peacekeeper. He was supposed to be a carpenter, just like his father. He spent most of his childhood beneath the work bench in his grandad's shop in Four, listening to the gentle bickering of two men who knew their trade well. One day it’d be him standing at the bench, working with his father while his own child played beneath them, that was going to be his life.

He was ten when he carved his first chair. It was an agonising process, days spent bent over the wood, carving away carefully by hand. It's the best way to learn, at least that's what his father said. There was always a chair underneath the bark, it was Steven's job to strip it back, to find it. It took patience, smaller cuts than he thought at first and careful understanding but he did, eventually.

Then District Four grew colder, something about a current having changed in the last year or so. It brought frigid water to Four's shores and took everything warm away with it. Entire species of fish died off, their bodies trapped in an endless cycle of hibernation. A lot of folks went hungry. Steven's mother started mixing sawdust into the oatmeal just to fill their stomachs that much more.

Furniture stopped selling, his father had to take a job on the docks and so the shop sat empty.

The next time Steven picked a knife up, it was in the training yards in Four. His hands, so well-versed with a woodworker’s tools, were used for destruction instead.

The shop was gone, it’d sold a year after the fish died and a month before his granddad did too. His father’s hands couldn’t work the wood like they used to, they’d gone bad from days out on the docks in the cold.

After graduation, there was no other choice but to Peacekeep, the boy who’d sat beneath the bench fell out of his reach. By the time he was walking away from his last reaping, there wasn’t much else he could do with his hands but hurt. Mostly everyone around his age was in the same boat as him with a middle-class childhood that had fallen below the poverty line when the current came.

As a career, Steven had the benefit of skipping six months of training. He started out in the office in Four, processing paperwork and training fresh recruits that had the same idea he did after they aged out of the games.

It became clear that he was far too good for office work. He was sent to Two after just one year and under the keeper whites, that quiet, patient spirit stuck out like a jewel beneath the waves. He climbed the ranks fast.

By the time he met Six, Steven had only been an officer for three years but was on his eighth posting. Residual softness and a moral backbone straight as a pin made trouble for him. No captain wanted to keep the lieutenant that was far too stubborn to look the other way, and after all those transfers, he held no illusions. He no longer expected to be anything more than tolerated.

So it was a pretty good fit.

[gamemaker kelsier]

Dogs learn through experience and Steven was meant to hit the ground running. His first mission in Nine was a textbook extraction, simple, or at least it was promised to be.

The thing is, nothing was ever easy when it came to the jobs that Six's squad ran. Steven knew this before he even stepped foot on the train to his new district. He'd heard some of the rumours about the Hellhound and his ragtag band of misfits all the way in Four and then carefully collected the rest in the week after his transfer was posted.

He wanted to know what he was in for, that's all. It wasn't like he believed them, who would when every story begins with an, 'I heard...'? The thing about gossip like that though is that often, there's still a seed of truth layered beneath the piles of silk. Steven was able to verify some things for himself when he was handed his new Captain's file for the ride in.

"Breach in privacy? He's property of the force." The officer seemed irritated, not by Steven but at the need to even answer the question, or to consider the implications of what that even meant. "Get off your high fucking horse and read it, lieutenant. You'll need it."

The folder was thick and bound with wax-dipped cord to keep all of the papers in place. It was rough around the edges, paper fraying, breaking down from the oils of all the hands that it had passed through before landing in his.

A better man might have not opened it, left it unread on the seat beside him, but Steven knew where he fell. He read the whole thing from start to finish, some parts twice just in case he missed something.

He remembers thinking that it couldn't be real. The concept alone of Six' childhood was difficult to grasp, something you only think about along the edges until it falls away, back into the dark that it came from.

It had never even occurred to Steven that the sun on the crown of his head, or the breeze against his cheek, could be considered a privilege. He'd never had to think about it before reading about all those years Six spent in that basement.

He thought he knew pain, thought he'd felt hunger and knew it more raw than most, maybe that was true. After reading that file though he knew, he'd never known hunger like the Captain's.

Any emotion, any physical thing that Steven could recall, he saw it magnified in that folder, scratched out to be read between the lines in each new page of doctor's notes.

It made sense to him then, how Six could go through so many lieutenants so fast. Most officers already came equipped with an inferiority complex, serving under a Captain like Six wouldn't help with that. Just reading his file made Steven feel so small, relegated once again to sit beneath the work bench in his father's shop, only allowed to listen to the adults talk.

The captain was two years younger than him but what he lacked in years, he made up for in experience. There were things in that file that he knew he could never understand- that he'd never even want to.

Maybe, like the three who became before him, his answer to all of those things should have been disgust. There were other secrets between the lines though, a consistency in Six' mission records that he liked. It wasn't that he was a hero or anything, not every single mission ended well because there were selfish choices made, they actually seemed to end up more difficult because Six never seemed to be willing to sacrifice a single team member for an easier finish.

Twenty one missions in the last year, not a single team member lost. He'd never seen anything like that before, not at the posts he'd had back in Four. There was awhile there where it felt like he was attending a funeral every other week.

Steven didn't want that anymore. A few weeks ago he'd woken up and realised just how bearable it'd all become. It barely even registered, all of that loss. He could have been standing at the graveside of his own mother and he'd have felt nothing about it.

"You have to learn not to care," his third, maybe fourth captain had told him, "It'll drive you mad, all of that grief, you'll see."

But the grief had been good, it'd been cruel and kind and boring and the worst he'd ever felt all at once. It was the learning to let it go that did him in, it was the careful, slow departure of his empathy that made Steven feel like he was losing it.

He wanted life to be unbearable again, he wanted the absence of it to hurt him and one day when he died, he wanted to be grieved too.

Steven had been hungry before, countless times. He'd felt the nails of gluttony cutting his stomach to ribbons, felt the anger beneath his skin as his whole body screamed for a scrap of food. Hunger could take so many more forms than a person could even think of, and when the body cries out for nourishment, it's not always the stomach.

As the train hurtled closer to Nine, he never once looked back towards home.

For the first time in what felt like years, he suddenly felt ravenous.

[gamemaker kelsier]

It's nothing that Steven did but Six was guarded from day one.

It wasn't like he was expecting to be welcomed with open arms, not by the person that he'd read about in that file. Part of him had secretly wished that Six would take one look at him and he'd know that Steven wasn't like the other officers that'd come and gone. Didn't happen, not by him at least.

The rest of the squad decided he was alright though after that first mission. Bullet and The Vicar in particular but that's mostly because the three of them had worked together and so they'd already gotten to know him a little better.

It was lonely for awhile, he spent his first few weeks in Nine walking through the district, learning about all the nooks and crannies in the alleyways that lined the main streets like safety rails. It was strange for some time, he'd grown up with canals and the expanse of the ocean. In contrast, Nine was tall buildings and dead end streets, it felt a little hard to breathe.

He got used to it eventually, faster at least than Six got used to him.

"He'll come 'round eventually, lieutenant, just hold out a hand, let him sniff."

"Pretty sure he's been treated like an animal enough, Prez."

Every squad has nicknames, more of them being born from merciless teasing than anything else. Steven learned the meanings over time, even handed some out himself over his five years with the team.

Prez was from Three and the group's computer expert. One time on an overnight mission, he got tasked with making dinner for the squad. Apparently, his cooking was so bad that not only was he banned from doing it ever again, but Doc also accused him of trying to poison them all. Naturally, someone started calling him President Snow and the name got shorter from there.

"Just mean he needs to get to know ya, sir," Prez said with a smart little salute, "You'll see, he's really a warm guy."

If that was true, Six had a weird way of showing it.

He didn't see much softness out of him, even just being in the room near him, his Captain seemed to be on guard against him. It was three whole months until he saw the younger man even crack a smile. It was when they were on the ground in Eight and he stopped to pet a cat.

Six never had much to say to Steven in those early days. Their conversations were always about the work, or the rest of the squad. Steven didn't offer up anything personal but neither did Six. It was easier like that, to start with a working relationship. Steven didn't mind that, it was better than nothing anyway.

And Six was strange, he didn't seem to like Steven but it felt more like indifference towards him than hatred and that was something. Day by day, there were small changes. Six didn't leave immediately after briefings anymore. Sometimes it still felt like his Captain tensed up around him, as if he were just waiting for the other shoe to drop and for Steven to start demanding his job. Every time it didn't happen, he chipped away the littlest bit of trust.

That's the way Steven eventually made a home for himself.

One night, about five months after he first got there, Six called him into headquarters. It was urgent, he'd said, new mission just came through. Steven hadn't been doing much of anything anyway, he didn't mind the after hours summons. There was a thin paperback shoved into his back pocket and a a cigarette tucked behind his ear, half-smoked, when he got there.

The lights were out, no sign of his captain.

Haf of him wondered if it was a prank, half of him figured that he'd just made it in first.

It took him a minute to fish his keys out of his pocket and find the keyhole in the dark. There was a rock in a planter beside the door, "For emergencies only," The Vicar had advised him during the tour on his first day.

He hadn't had to be curious about that nickname for very long, Six had deemed him the Vicar after his first few weeks in the squad because he prayed so often and dressed a little more formal than most. Rumour had it that he grew up in a cult, which he firmly denied but that only seemed to confirm everyone's suspicions.

Steven let himself in, hand reaching for the light switch when Six' voice came out of the dark, "Took you long enough," he grumbled.

His hand found the switch, "Sorry sir, I-"

"YAAAAA!"

As the lights flickered to life, half the squad came careening over the back of the couch, their fists up in the air, yipping like dogs. The rest poured out of the kitchen, the Vicar proudly emerging from the back of the group, a small cake in his hands with a single candle sticking out of it, lit up and throwing shadows on the side of Six's face.

The captain had been standing dead-centre in the middle of the room, arms crossed, expression blank as slate.

Steven had his back against the door with his hands balled up into fists in front of him. He'd gotten a surprise once like this, it'd been the reason he was moved from one of his old squads.

For a moment he just leaned there in stunned silence, eyes flicking from the cake, then to Six and then to the rest of the squad's. They were all staring at him expectantly, but not a single one of them spoke.

After a long moment, Six shrugged, then finally said "Vicar likes making cakes for birthdays."

"Oh," Steven said, "I see."

He didn't tell anyone that his was today.

"Figured you'd read my file-" Six started, gaze steady on him.

"I-"

"So I read yours."

"Sir I-"

Six nodded towards the cake, "Better blow the candle out before wax gets on the cake." Then he turned and slipped off down the hall towards his office.

The rest of the squad took that as a dismissal and quickly crowded in closer, hands landed on Steven's back, "Happy birthday!"

Someone gripped his shoulder. It was Prez, with a triumphant little smirk crowding his face.

He didn't even have to open his mouth, he heard the, 'Told ya so,' clear as a mockingjay.

Steven just grinned back ruefully, then leaned forward to blow the candle out.

"Happy birthday, lieutenant!"

And it was.