WHO: Becker WHAT: Being Death for the day WHEN: Friday, September 13th. WHERE: Syria (WARNING FOR CURRENT EVENTS THERE) RATING: Rated for violence, death, trauma, possible triggers for people. STATUS: Narrative; COMPLETE [cut text lyrics: Dire Straits ‘Brothers in Arms’]
Becker should have known. Should have realised that being Death for the day meant more than wandering through some city and reaping souls. That Death would make it more personal. Standing before the…. man (for lack of a better term) in Chicago, Becker had never felt more small or mortal or insignificant in his life. For a long moment he wished he could call back Ruby Winchester to whisk him away again, to crawl back to Lawrence and just hide. It was his Sandhurst training that kept him standing there, body rigid, practically saluting as he stood to attention, his expression utterly blank. Even so, Becker sensed that Death knew exactly what he was thinking as the true immortal stared at him. Impassive. Unblinking.
When he was given his assignment, Becker had to fight to hide his dismay.
Syria.
How typical. Send the soldier to a warzone.
The air was thick with screams and smoke the instant Becker appeared. Instinctively, he looked around, assessing the area, the situation. Risks, advantages, options. All flashed through his mind rapidly before the reality sunk in.
There was nothing he could do.
Not a damn thing.
All he could do was watch.
The people around him couldn’t see him, only the ancient looking man beside him, skin chalk white, eyes dark and sunken. The Reaper by his side to make sure he did the job. Becker couldn’t be entirely sure, but he thought the Reaper actually rolled his eyes at his appearance. But no words were spoken, and Becker had to stand and watch.
The country may have been different, but in so many ways he had been there before. Two tours. Afghanistan. Death had a pretty twisted sense of humour, clearly. He had lost so much back then, friends had died in front of him, so much of his own blood had been shed, and idealism just lost in the harsh reality of what war really was. There wasn’t glory, or heroics, there was just pain and fear and feeling utterly alone at the end of it all.
“So, now what?” Becker glanced at the Reaper beside him, not expecting an answer, but still rolling his eyes at the silence. He stared out at the scene in front of him, Assad’s men, rebels, firing at each other while the civilians ran between them. Every instinct Becker had wanted to step forward and help. He could see the flaws in their strategies, wanted to shout out orders and save as many of them as he could. But there was no way. They didn’t even glance in his direction.
A bullet sailed through the air, catching one of the soldiers in the throat, sending him down hard. And Becker just knew what he was supposed to do. Moving between the fighting people, he crouched down beside the dying man, and finally mortal eyes focused on him. He braced himself for protest, for begging, pleading, anything, but all he saw in those eyes were resignation. The man just knew why Becker was there and didn’t even flinch as Becker’s hand reached out to touch him, ending his life. The Reaper said nothing the entire time, just took the soul away, sending it on to wherever it was meant to go and the body was left for any comrades to find.
Although he didn’t show it, inwardly Becker was more shaken than he expected. He had faced death himself, come so close to it so many times, accepted it even, but to watch someone else just go with it like that. And even though the man had been the ‘bad’ guy in the war, in the end he had just been a person. Just human. And now he was dead. Because of Becker.
Becker staggered back a moment, actually finding it hard to breathe for a long few seconds. He was lightheaded, nauseous, as he looked around. He could see them all, soldiers and rebels, some of the rebels even members of Al’Qaeda, the very people he had been fighting against a few years ago. Civilians; men, women, children. Not just in the immediate vicinity of him, but across the whole country, torn apart by war, and so many of them were going to die in the next few hours. From bullets and fire, chemical weapons ripping families apart. Stupid tactical decisions getting made, so easily avoidable, that would lead to slaughters.
There was nothing he could do to stop it.
He turned to look at the Reaper, almost desperately, and had a cold look in reply. Silence. As always.
For a moment, Becker wondered how Death would react if he begged to be released from this. The Captain had never begged in his life, even when being tortured for weeks, but this was, in so many ways, much much worse. There would be hours more of this, and never before had one day felt like such a long time. He would have to kill so many people, innocent and guilty alike. And he honestly didn’t know if he could handle it without throwing up. Even with being what he was, temporarily at least, he could still feel the intense need to just be sick at the sight of everything.
And it was more than just the country they were in. It was all over the world. Every second, someone was dying, and Becker could feel them all, had that cold knowledge that Reapers everywhere were doing their work and collecting the souls, taking them onto wherever they were meant to go. They were everywhere and they were constant, and there was nothing he could do.
There was also places that just felt wrong to him, and as much as he wanted to run back to Lawrence, he could sense that Lawrence was where most of the deep, inherent wrongness was. Those who were alive but should be dead. The vampires, the demons. Jack. That felt like a punch to the heart, and Becker had to lean against the mostly broken wall to steady himself.
The heavy gaze of the Reaper was on him still, and Becker took several long and deep breaths, unneeded as they were for him then, before nodding that he was going to keep on.
In a moment they were somewhere else, watching a firefight going on. A rebel, a soldier, near to some children. Too near. Becker could see the events unfold in the instants before they actually happened, slowed down in a horrific clarity. The soldier shot. Caught the rebel in the side. The rebel span, his own shot going wide. Shooting a child in the stomach.
There was an inevitability to it all, but Becker found himself still denying it to himself even as the blood sprayed across the dirt.
The rebel’s wound was deep but not life threatening. He would be fine, Becker could see it, sense it. But the child was too far gone. Time seemed to stand still as he took in the scene before him.
“I can’t.” He shook his head with desperation, even as the Reaper remained impassive. From where they were, they could see the rebel clearly, see the tattoo on his neck. “No, really, I can’t. Fuck, this isn’t fair. Do you know? Do you know what that is?” Becker pointed at the symbol, faded by the harsh sun on the tanned skin, but still something he would forever remember. “Means he’s Al’Qaeda. Means he’s part of the same group that tortured me in Afghanistan.” Part of a group that terrorized people, murdered and maimed. “Why does he get to live and she not? I could change it, I’m going to change it, I won’t take her, he can die in her place.”
He even went as far as reaching out his hand, that deadly touch he now carried, towards the rebel, fully intending to wrap his fingers around the man’s throat as that last flash of life left him. Still the Reaper just stared.
“Don’t you feel anything? Doesn’t any of this mean a fucking thing to you?” Becker could feel the desperation in his tone, as he froze with indecision. It would be the right thing to do, to take the life of the grown man who signed up with murderers, instead of the innocent child. Right and moral and good.
And wrong.
“Damn you.” The words came out as a hiss, a look of pure venom and fury aimed at the Reaper as Becker’s hand moved, and softly brushed over the cheek of the dying child, whose eyes had gone wide with fear. Becker tried to smile, offer some sort of comfort to her, but couldn’t escape from the unspoken question of ‘why’ from her.
He didn’t think ‘because I have to, it is your time’ was a suitable answer.
It would be a whole day like this. A whole day of taking men, women, children. And never being able to tell them why, to offer comfort or condemnation. He wasn’t allowed to judge them, to decide if they were worthy of living or dying, just ending those he had to kill. And he genuinely did not know if he would even survive the day himself.