#possibly innacurate banshee lore

[kyumisyumi]

Duet

It would've probably made more sense for me to write this about Soap but there's tonnes of Soap content and I'm tryna feed the starving.

Warning: Quickly written, barely proof read

Ship: Nikto x Banshee!Reader (F)

Word count: 1k

⊱⊶Taking requests⊷⊰

It was like throwing up pins and needles, using your voice after so long. The sounds clawed against your throat as if begging to never see the light of day. Your own song fighting to return to the darkness of your vocal chords, wishing to never be uttered. But this wasn't your song anymore and that's why it needed to be sung. Needed to be released into the cool air to meet the oracles in the stars. It was an ugly tune; gargles and keening as your emotions morphed into rancid sound. Your bloodline had ended decades ago. You remember the moment the elder, happy without child, closed her eyes for the last time. The final composer of your songs laid for eternal slumber with a smile turned towards your distant figure. Her end marked the beginning of your hibernation. A solemn existence. You lied to yourself that it was a prize for centuries of dutiful work, but loneliness festered inside your core as your wondered for years without purpose.

Then came the sound; timber against timber. The click of a composer's wand. Something you never thought you'd hear ever again. Click click. You were being summoned. Called for by Death to let you know your job was not finished. Like a hound to its name, you followed it. Your apprehension and confusion weighed heavy but no force inside you was stronger than the instincts pumping through your inhuman form. Click click. Like children to a dinner bell, you followed it. The fabrics draped around your greyish body clipping in and out of reality, snagging on branches when it unfortunately caught only to dissolve into mist. Stones and twigs piercing your feet before phasing through your ethereal form. Click click. Like sunflowers to the morning rays, you followed it. Something inside you beating feverously; a life that wasn't your own cradled within your chest. Click click. Like a magazine into a gun, because that's exactly what it was. When the thrumming inside your chest calmed down, you could finally hear the sounds of gunfire whizzing through the air. Hoof beats storming the ground revealed to be the boots of man. Soldiers. They bolted through the concrete and dirt of wrecked structures, firing their weapons into their own kind. None of that mattered to you however, you had seen war plenty of times. All that mattered were the clicks that called for your song and the person holding the gun. Click click.

It alarmed him, naturally, when he began to hear the eerie melody of a woman's song. It first reached him amidst a fitful attempt at rest within his small tent. Nikto wasn't sure what to make of it. Another case of his mind playing tricks on him? That the enemy had released hallucinogens into the air? However, when he'd asked his comrades if they heard it too all he'd received were worried looks in response. It was in his head then. Was this karma? Had all the lives he'd taken conspire in the afterlife to haunt him? If so, this was an odd tactic; to sing him hymns rather than rip his soul from his flesh to drag it down where he belonged. He'd tired himself out clawing at the walls of his mind, trying to find a source within. And so he just listened, all of him. It drove him insane almost as much as it brought him peace. Words he could not decipher being whispered in a tune unknown yet somehow familiar. A song that wasn't in his memory but somewhere deeper, somewhere more him than he could ever conceptualize. No matter how much it unnerved him to hear this mysterious singing, the way it warmed his body and stilled his mind became a drug to him. If this was a new level of madness, he had little complaints.

When he heard it in the midst of battle, the effects were reversed; it riled him up rather than calm him down. Like the being was singing life into him. It diffused into his skin to settle within the nerves and muscles beneath his flesh, pushing him ever forward. It whispered truths he'd always known. That he was a harbinger of death, a machine of violence serving those who wrote his cheques. How he felt about it made no difference to what he was. Nobody. Not a person, just a weapon. It felt almost blasphemous to commit acts of cruelty to music so beautiful but his body called for it. A head he'd bashed into a wall, a spine snapped beneath his feet, this bloodshed was his offering to the being that sang for him. To the unknown creature that had decided to take up residence in his mind.

This felt right, this felt like destiny. Nikto carved his path into the enemy stars like the bullet through his chest. Falling to his knees like a man in prayer before laying to meet the Gods.

It was only then that you went to his side, looking into the confused blue eyes of your composer. They searched yours, forgetting where he was and what he was doing as the shrouds of your body filled his vision.

"женщина[woman], sing for me." His voice was much like the metal instruments he played.

You held his hand in both your own, watching the calm slip into his eyes as he listened to your ugly wails. You'd heard the lyrics he filled in. Oh, how they made your heart bleed. But now, in his final moments, you sing to him in words he could understand. Serenade him with the truth of who he was, cradling him to hide his tears. The thumping in your chest was slowing down as your song mellowed to it's end. The final verse came in the sound of a rattle.