#if it wasnt clear the book im quoting at the top doesnt exist

[reds-skull]

BLOOD||HUNGER

[AO3]

Sooo I maybe started writing the new AU already... and maybe already wrote 2 chapters...

I'll say it on ao3, but I'm planning on having longer chapters for this fic compared to Not Alive, Nor Dead, so I won't be posting as frequently. That being said, I did write these 2 chapters in 2 days so... it might happen anyway lmao.

Also, I'll be putting the cut before the chapter so it will be easier to scroll by if any of you aren't interested.

As a sidenote, for this fic I'll be adding qoutes at the top of each chapter, and I suggest reading them because they are pretty important to the story!

Now, onto chapter 1, "Wræclast (Path of Exile)"

Page 1 of the “Blooede Starvatfōre-dēde”, parable 1:

Often were the stars, the only witness to me, To my regrets, to the stories of a fallen knight, It is only the sun and moon, that could hear my words, And yet none understand, the cries of a fallen man, The man who hides friends, in dark and rich earth, A friendless man, that he is. Where have the horses gone? Where have their masters leapt? Where have the knights fallen? The dark is all he knows, nightshadows risen, He walks alone, a blind man.

Often was Soap told, “stop trying to be the hero, MacTavish.”

He was told that by his CO on the mission that earned him his callsign, where he first found the true meaning of war. He was told that on missions he refused to listen, where he would run off to try and save what little life was left to die.

He was told that on the day he was dishonorably discharged for disobeying direct orders.

John likes to pretend life afterwards was peaceful. That while, yes, he hasn’t held down a job for longer than 4 months since, and he’s behind on a couple of months on rent, and he walks alone more often than not, he is happy. Content.

Right now, drenched in rainwater and mud, acting amounts to fuck all.

His heart beats fast, faster than it ever did on the field. Because this isn’t the field, John isn’t a soldier. He doesn’t belong in wars anymore.

John’s eyes dart around the dark alleys of the city, the silence a discomfort more than anything. Silence means everything else has ran away, or died. He shudders again, the chill biting through his clothes (civilian, flimsy, made more for show than any practicality), when he hears a whimper. He freezes in his tracks and strains his ears.

“Shhh” a small voice whispers, following words in a language he doesn’t understand. They belong to someone young, far too young to be here alone.

A voice in his mind tells John to turn away. “Don’t be a hero. Don’t be a hero.” it screams. John tramples it down.

He doesn’t need to be a hero, but he won’t ignore the literal cries of children. He can take them with him as they get out of this city.

Not a hero. Not a fucking hero.

John slowly gets closer to the sobbing kids, zeroing in on a small shed, its wooden doors rotten. “Hey” he whispers softly, and the voices instantly quiet. “I’m not gonna hurt ye, I’m not one of them.” 

The doors creak slightly as one eye peaks at him, wide and teary. He keeps his hands above his head, showing his lack of gear and weapons. After a few moments, the door opens.

A child, no older than 13, hugs a toddler, both big eyes look over him concernedly. John smiles, tried to seem reassuring even as his heart breaks a little more. It’s not a sight he ever got used to, children in war zones. He hoped he wouldn’t see it again, but life, as they say, finds a way.

“Where are yer parents?” John lowers his arms and squats slowly. The older kid frowns, opening and closing her mouth. “They… not...” she mumbles in English, sputtering a few more words he doesn’t know.

“Do ye know where they are?” he tried asking.

The kid carefully lets go of the toddler, their sibling, John assumes, and starts motioning with her arms.

She folds her fingers in the shape of a pistol, brings it to John’s head, and presses the pretend trigger. Her eyes don’t waver from his, and it strikes him how empty they are, as if all life bled out of them with the mimed shot.

John nods. He wished he had time to let them mourn, but he fears for the moment they hear boot-clad steps echo through the streets again, in search for more children to orphan.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get ye out of ‘ere.” he offers the older sister a hand, and the kid takes it hesitantly, “stay close to me, and we will get through this.” The kid holds tight onto the toddler in her other hand, and nods.

As he guides the children through the narrow streets, mud splashing under their feet, John wonders back to the moment it all started.

A few hours earlier

John stumbles into a bar. Or at least he thinks it’s a bar, either that or it's a “vap”. He’s still not really familiar with the alphabet here. 

The place is quite empty, save for a few rugged older men staring him down. John steps up to the counter, noticing the bottles of alcohol on display, and tries to flag the bartender. The man stops his conversation with another patron, and asks, “what?” with a heavy accent.

John nods behind him, “ye have Scotch?”

The bartender stares for a moment, before scoffing and turning around, grabbing a bottle off the higher shelf, and slamming it down in front of John. He couldn’t read the label, but the color seemed right at the very least.

“Cash?” the bartender grunts, and John pulls out a few bills to hand him. The man counts them, satisfied, and turns back to his previous conversation partner, “enjoy”.

John grins, “I’ll certainly will, cheers.” He takes one of the shot glasses and fills up a few fingers worth of the amber liquid. He lifts the glass and takes a swig, only to grimace when it burns down his throat.

It’s fuckin’ Bourbon. John glares at the offending bottle. They don’t have Scotch, but they got this shite? He should’ve stayed in Scotland.

John sighs, gloomily sipping on the foul drink. He knows he couldn’t have stayed there a second longer, senses buzzing for something more than a monotonous desk job and a gym full of pumped pricks who wouldn’t survive a fraction of what he had. It felt like he was choking, drowning in the repetition. 

He tried tamping down his need for action, for the first few months after the discharge. His therapist suggested him to find a new hobby, but nothing truly interested him. John knew what he really wanted, and it wasn’t steamin’ knitting another scarf.

The only thing he did, when he wasn’t in his stupidly mind-numbing job, or working out, was drawing. It’s a hobby he had while in service, sketching the locations he went to while on missions, passing the time in between fights. Little notes from debriefs, reminders, memorabilia.

His journal from the service was confiscated. Too many sensitive details, they told him. John fought tooth and nail, but it didn’t matter. 

He bought a new one, but it was a pathetic copy of his previous journal. The drawings meant nothing to him, just as much as his surroundings did, so John started sketching from memory. Against his therapist’s instructions, he started thinking more and more about the past.

It started consuming him. John couldn’t focus on the job, got told off, and because he was a little shit, talked back. 

He stopped going to the gym, instead going to self defence classes, where he was usually more experienced than the instructor themselves, but his blood still cheered every time he sparred with someone. Eventually, he got kicked out of those, for being too aggressive. It was hard to hold back, when he was used to sparring with soldiers.

John went to airsoft fields, the guns a familiar weight in his arms. It settled something in him for a while, but he grew bored of shooting down inexperienced teens.

It came to a breaking point when he was threatened with being evicted. His sister called the day before, screaming at John to get it together, crying that he wasn’t himself anymore, begging him to just keep down one fuckin’ job for more than a few months.

He said nothing in response, but it hurt. It hurt, knowing she was right. That he was fucking broken.

So, John just left. Took all of his few belongings, the rest of his money, and hopped on the nearest train.

After a couple of weeks, he arrived here, to this random city in the middle of nowhere. Without enough money to get onto the next train, he stayed, stuck. At least the food was cheap, and he found a nice enough motel to stay in.

As he swallows another mouthful of Bourbon, he distantly thinks perhaps it’s not the best use of money, especially when he’s not even really enjoying it, when a gunshot pierces through the air. The entire bar was silenced, everyone holding their breaths.

And it all went straight to hell from there.

Glass shattered as stray bullets hit the building, people screamed as they ran inside for cover, the wails and cries deafening as they mix.

John’s heart was beating so fast he felt like it’s going to explode, and he realized he’s not a soldier anymore. His body, his mind, didn’t feel a comforting familiarity in the crackling gunshots, in the perfected chaos of war.

No, John was terrified. 

The gunshots drew closer, and John spotted a back exit, dashing towards it, pulling the bartender with him.

“This way!” he shouted behind him, and not a moment later the body in his arm fell, the large man taking John down with him.

His head bounced off the ground harshly, his nose radiating pain across his face. John grunted and took hold of the man crushing him, turning him over to see red blooming over his chest, eyes lifeless and dull as they roll around his skull aimlessly.

John stilled, staring at the eyes, unbelieving. His mind was racing, questions muddling his senses, loudest of them all is “how is this real?!”.

His mind quieted when he heard boots crush broken glass, a radio buzzing with unintelligible commands. John only caught bits and pieces, his heartbeat so loud in his ears he couldn’t catch more than “Kill everyone.”

The body of the bartender was still warm, sticky heat travelling down his hands, soiling them.

This would be the last time he would feel warmth.

John wishes he could speak the kids’ language, tell them how brave they are. The older sister kept talking to her little brother, the toddler sniffing occasionally.

He gave them his jacket a while back, the two of them small enough to both fit under it. As the night grew darker, the cold settled in, and John would be shivering from it if the adrenaline wasn’t already making him tremble.

They luckily haven’t encountered any soldiers, their path devoid of any life. John steered them towards the outskirts, where he first arrived to the city. He’s hoping there would be someone to take them there, either by car or train.

And if everyone else is dead… John hopes he still remembers how to hot-wire a car.

His thoughts are interrupted by the little toddler’s squealing, pointing ahead to something off in the distance. John swiveled his head to see a silhouette of a person, and instantly pulled the children off to a nearby house.

John feels the older sister tugging on his hand, trying to get out and into the open, “stay here, kid!” he whisper-shouts, but the child insists, pointing at the person and saying “they good. Know.” 

John peaks out to look at the person, who is now searching around, lowly calling out two names.

“You’re Maria and Victor?” he asks the kids, and they nod, expression lighting up. He sighs in relief - they’re more lucky than he thought.

He lets the sister, Maria, drag him over to the searching man. She called out, and they ran over to hug each other, the man crying and repeating the same phrase over and over. John stood off to the side, a small smile on his face. 

He’s not being a hero, but actually saving someone feels good.

Maria points at him, speaking quickly in her mother tongue. The man stared him up and down, and rose to shake his hand. “I don’t know how to speak good enough to thank you.” he says slowly.

John shakes his head, “don’t worry ‘bout that. Do you have a way out of here? A car?”

The man nods, retracting his hand to hold onto the two siblings, “car yes, train not working anymore. You?”

“I have nothing. You mind if I join you?”

The man waves his hand, “follow me.”

Relief fills his lungs, and John finally feels his heart slowing. Tiredness washes over him, but he knows this is no time to rest. Just a little longer.

The cruel crunch of a boot makes the group freeze. A soldier walks ahead of them, rifle in his hand, barrel searching for more victims to murder. John pulls the man and the siblings behind him, lifting a finger to his lips to quiet them.

For a moment, he considers waiting the soldier out, letting him pass and sneaking around, but John knows better. Leaving a hostile at their backs is a death wish.

He takes a step forward, but the man stops him, eyes frightful and questioning. John takes the hand on his bicep and pulls it off of him slowly, and tried to convey with his eyes that it’s okay. The man lets him go, nodding and pulling the children away, shielding them from the fight to come. Whether he thinks John will win or not, is unclear.

The soldier is currently searching a house in front of them, flashlight shining through the darkened windows. John drops to a crouch, making his way slowly towards him.

There’s a knife strapped loosely to his thigh. Perfect.

He holds his breath as he reaches for the blade, the soldier turning his rifle from side to side.

His fingers wrap around the hilt just as the soldier starts turning.

“What-” He hears the soldier mutter, and John instantly strikes.

The knife slides perfectly into the soldier’s side, in between the tacvest’s plates. The sharp edge cuts through muscle and fat like butter, and John easily pulls it back out, dropping low to dodge the butt-end of the rifle heading for him.

The soldier snarls, and tried to take aim, but John disarms him swiftly, slicing the veins of his wrists, making the gun fly off to the side and clatter to the paved ground.

The soldier’s eyes, furious, glare at his as he slams the knife into his exposed neck.

The life fades from them as John twists the blade, letting the body fall to the ground, dead.

John is left standing, eyes staring at his reflection in the window. The man standing in front of him was bloodied, roughened, and fucking deranged.

He turns to look at the gun, the raindrops softly pattering on its metallic black body. John breathes heavily as he takes a wobbly step towards it.

The rifle, a Kastov-762, is one he knows well. He knows the way the mag clicks in when you reload it, the sound of the bullet travelling to the chamber, the way the air splits before the bullet as it’s being shot.

He knows the damage it can do to a person. He has felt it on his own flesh.

John could leave it. He could walk away, run off with the man and the children. He could turn his back to all of this suffering, like a civilian would.

He could decide, for once, not to try and be a hero.

When John drops to his knees, it’s as if the rest of the world holds its breath. As he drags fingers over metal and steel, he brushes off the dust that settled over his past self.

As he lifts the gun, checking the mag to see the shiny bullets, the man that rises is not John. He’s not the broken veteran, the unemployed asshole, the adrenaline junkie that can never find his fix.

Soap rises to his feet, rifle slung over his shoulder, eyes calculating over his surroundings. He walks over to the man, back straight, heart calm and collected.

“Follow me”, he orders, gun at the ready. The man flicks his stare between the dead soldier, the gun, and him. He walks out of the shadows, covering the children’s eyes.

Soap notices the radio crackle to life, hearing “-do you copy?!”. He takes it and crushes it under his boot. Putting a hand on the man’s shoulder, he growls, “more are coming, we need to move.”

He takes the man into one of the narrow alleys, hearing a commotion behind him as soldiers find the body. They almost reach the parked vehicles by the train station when they run into several soldiers.

The two groups lock eyes for a moment, before Soap and the rest are being shot at. He forces the others behind a wall, the children crying as the man hugs them tight, and Soap readies his gun.

He breathes. In for 5 seconds, hold for 5, release.

Soap sharply rounds the corner, silent footsteps run behind their attackers.

In for 5, hold for 5, release.

The soldiers are slowly closing in on the corner hiding the man and kids. Soap takes aim…

In for 5…

Hold for 5…

Release.

He shoots, taking down the hostiles with 5 perfect headshots.

He jumps down from his vantage point, scanning the streets around them for backup. Soap clears them and returns to the civilians, the man trying to calm the children to no avail.

“We’re clear, where’s yer car?” Soap gently pushes the man out when his feet linger. The man stares wide-eyed at the bodies before steeling his gaze and pointing to a blue truck, “there.”

Soap and the man walk to it, the area blessedly clear. The man places the children down as he unlocks the vehicle, the little kids instantly grasping at soap’s pant leg.

“Yer alright now, loves. Yer going to be safe soon.” he brushes the hair off their foreheads, their little bodies trembling from the cold and fear.

The man opens the doors and herds the kids in, taking a blanket from the back and wrapping them tightly. He closes the door and motions Soap to go around to the passenger sit, but he shakes his head.

The man’s brows furrow, “you not coming?”

“No.” he looks back to the city, “I need to help the rest, if anyone else is alive there.”

The man pauses, “you… you die. They kill you.” he stresses. “Come with me.”

Soap looks back at him, and smiles. “I can’t. Sorry.”

The man sighs, dragging a hand over his weary face. When the hand drops, he gives Soap a kind, yet sad smile.

The man reaches to shake his hand, “Mihail.” he says.

“Soap.” 

The man squeezed his hand, “good luck.”, and lets go to get into the driver’s sit.

Soap watches the truck drive off into the inky night, letting out a breath.

It should scare him, how easily he let his only escape slip between his fingers like water.

But he is calm, for the first time since he was discharged, he feels in control. The blood on his hands lingers, he is in his rightful place.

To the blood and devastation, Soap walks back, his heart beats a single goal.

His mission, save civilians, take down hostiles. As it always was, as it always should be.

Soap may never be a hero, but he will damn well try.

He is nothing otherwise.