#waves cutely

Commander Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity was born in the pile of smouldering ashes that was the Blood of Eden. When she was very small, her mother told her stories about what they used to be, back in her grandmother’s day, and how the zombies and wizards had overwhelmed them with their numbers and their tricks, how her grandmother, her uncles, and countless more had been killed and had their bodies desecrated and turned into fuel with which to kill their brethren. She told her that one day, they would rise from the ashes, and triumph, and Wake believed that with her whole wretched heart.

When she was twelve, she held a gun for the first time. Her little calloused fingers fit around the grip like they were meant to be there. She raised her shaky hand, guided by her elder sister, God Shall Be My Hope. Their mother had been blown apart from the inside by a wizard, her parts too small and burnt to bear any resemblance to the person she once was. The Nine Houses, as it always did, reduced people to tools of war, and her mother was in the right place and the right time to become a bomb. It wouldn’t happen like that to her.

“I’m gonna bring us back,” she said, a few years later, when she was old enough to know that the Blood of Eden was operating like shit, but not old enough to know how to fix it. She said, “like we used to be, before they found that base and wrecked our shit.”

She remembered that Hope looked tired, and a bit scared. She always looked tired— bucking up at the age of fifteen and raising your sister did that to a girl. The fear was new, though. She said, “I don’t want you to go out like mom, Wake.”

Wake slid the magazine back into the pistol and smiled a nasty, curling, bitter smile, “Not up to me, but let me tell ya’— if I’m going out, I’m taking as many zombies as I can down with me. They’re gonna remember me, and even when I’m dead, my name’s gonna scare the piss out of them.”

Her sister said, “I hope you’re right.”

Ten years after that, Wake was a Wing Commander, and things were starting to go right. She knew how to hold any gun without shaking and without hesitating. She knew how a zombie’s eyes looked when light left them, and she knew more than anyone that they weren’t unkillable.

Her sister, meanwhile, was dying in childbirth on a shitty patch of dirt that the Houses’ God had long since forgotten. Wake made herself stay by her side and listen to her howls of pain. They didn’t have any anesthetic or morphine— their stores had been sacked by a drove of Cohort pigs not even a week ago. Wake was on fire. She was red-hot furious. Hope was dying— fucking hell— and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

She said, “Save her, save her. I don’t fucking care about kid.”

Her sister wailed and clawed at her arm and hair and she said, “No, don’t you fucking dare. Don’t you fucking dare.”

But in the end neither of them really had much of a say in the matter. Hope died with a name on her lips, and Wake, who had never wanted to be a mother, gave it to the newborn Our Lady of the Passion, and did what her sister had all those years ago— she loved that shitty kid as best as she could.

---

Wake had rules of engagement when it came to dealing with any of the Emperor’s favourite minions— his specialist little zombies— lyctors. Those rules of engagement were as follows:

1. Do not fucking engage

2. If you somehow end up doing that, give them hell

The Commander had not woken up that day with the notion that she’d be toe-to-toe with a lyctor. But here she was, boots scraping up hard-packed red earth as she danced around one of their rapiers.

“You look like a pussy, fighting with that thing,” she snarled.

And the zombie smiled. Deep brown eyes crinkled around the edges, and stark white teeth peeked out through dark lips. Infuriatingly, it was devastatingly handsome. This realization slapped her across the face, and she thought, distantly, if I get out of this thing, I need to get laid ASAP.

It smiled, and then it pulled a spear out of the rigid corpse of one of its comrades and lunged towards Wake. The speed of it might have been impressive, if the asshole wasn’t literally bringing knives to a gun fight. She raised her pistol to block the spearhead before it made contact with her chest plate. The gun clattered on the ground behind them, and without looking, Wake leaped into a back handspring and kicked the pistol back into her grip. The zombie was looking at her with what she thought might be genuine awe, but she didn’t allow herself to ruminate on it. They’d been going at this for nearly an hour. She was running on fumes, and she had to finish this.

She flung herself forward, dancing around the lunge of the spear. She shot the hand that held it, then spun and kicked the steel toe of her boot into the joint of the opposite wrist. She smiled a wicked, feral grin at the sound of both weapons clattering to the floor.

She stood, breathing heavily, looking into deep brown eyes. In another life, she might have described them as warm. In this life, she shoved the barrel of one gun between them, and the other under its breast, where its heart would be.

She hesitated only for a moment, and in that moment, the zombie that she would come to know as Pyrrha Dve made a choice that would haunt her to her dying breath and beyond. She leaned forward and captured her dry, split, lonely lips in a kiss. She raised her dark, blood-stained hands and cradled her face with an alien softness.

Wake bit her. She clamped down hard on the zombie’s bottom lip until blood bloomed on her tongue, and then they broke apart, and the Emperor’s hand smiled, torn lip trickling blood down her chin. She said, “I’m sorry, destroy me as I am, but I wanted to kiss you before you killed me.”

Wake should have killed her then and there. She should have blown her head and chest apart and burned the bits of flesh and viscera that remained. Instead, she said, “Why the fuck would you want that?”

And the zombie laughed again, and again Wake didn’t take the opportunity to tear her heart out. She smiled a soft, destructive smile, and said to Wake, “I’ve only once met someone so willing to burn for what they believed in, and I loved him on sight. Commander, the first time I died, I asked of him what I ask of you now,” she pressed a calloused hand again to Wake’s face, and it was horribly warm. Those terrible dark eyes met hers, and she said, “make it quick.”

Then she kissed Wake again, and again, and again. And Wake didn’t kill her that day.

---

Wake ended up meeting Pyrrha one other time before she met the other one. This was a good thing, because if she hadn’t had the heads up she might have ripped his dick clean off. Pyrrha was bleeding from thick, deep cuts on her exposed biceps and throat, her breaths coming out as sharp, desperate wheezing. Her immortal blood seeped through Wake’s fingers same as any soldier, same as a dog bleeding out on the side of the road. Wake pressed down harshly on her throat with the butt of her pistol and hiked her knee up between the other woman’s legs.

“Hard already, Dve?” she taunted, then snorted when all Pyrrha could do was let out a low whine.

“Shit, baby,” Pyrrha said, fear creeping into her words.

Wake was no one’s baby. She leaned forward and sunk her teeth into thin cartilage, and tore off the tip of her lover’s ear with her teeth. She spat the severed flesh on the grimy, stained floor of the shuttle and looked at Pyrrha’s eyes.

No.

No, Pyrrha’s eyes were a warm, deep brown. The eyes that she was looking into now were a clear green, alarmed, confused, and still a bit horny.

Wake smiled, her lips curling, “Hello, Gideon,” she purred, jerking her knee against his half-hard cock. “How are you feeling?” and she slipped her gun into her holster and unsheathed her well-used knife. Without preamble, she thrust the blade between his ribs.

He howled out in pain, strong, calloused hands scrambling at her shoulders. But, notably, he didn’t push Wake away. Instead, between panting breaths, he said, “Who the hell are you?”

Wake leaned in close to his still-bleeding ear and whispered, “Your worst fucking nightmare.”

---

Long, long before she was born— long enough that it had long since faded into legend, a Lyctor had made contact with the Blood of Eden. Referred to only as Source Gram. She, allegedly, hailed from the Sixth House, and, even more dubiously, aided her ancestors in the beginnings of their movement. But nothing of the sort had happened since, and Lyctors had become the villains of legend. Many thought that they were immortal, and that they would be the death of them. They were something to be avoided at all cost.

But she knew she could not keep her knowledge of Pyrrha and Gideon from her people, and more than that, she didn’t want to. They could be of use to the Blood of Eden— invaluable even. And so she called her Wing Commanders together, and told them she had something important to discuss.

She told the Blood of Eden, “I have a source in the houses,” and the room went silent. Expectant gazes fell on her, and for the first time in a long time, Wake felt nervous. She tilted her chin up and hoped she could project confidence. “I believe,” she said, “that I’ve gained the trust of one of John Gaius’ hands.”

Her breathing felt impossibly loud. Then, We Suffer breathed out slowly, locked eyes with her, and said, “Tell us what you want us to do, Commander.”

After that, the next year and a half were a cascade of formed connections and formed plans. Source Joyeuse, Piotra, and Chysoar offered them tools and knowledge that her mother and sisters would not have dared dream of. They were in a better place than they’d ever been. Wake could taste the blood of the Emperor, could feel his death at her fingertips.

She was going to be the change she’d wanted to be since she was a child. She was going to avenge her mother, blown to pieces, and her sister, dead to the Nine House’s negligence.

She met with Gideon a few more times, and Pyrrha a few more than that. Each time, they fought and fucked, and sometimes they talked, but never about her plans. Gideon was infuriatingly loyal to his puppet master, and Pyrrha wasn’t supposed to exist. The knowledge of what they were planning would only burden her.

Especially when the Vat Wombs failed, and Wake set about making her bomb with her own two hands.

---

There was a certain level of domesticity that Wake had never allowed herself. She helped raise Pash, and the girl certainly looked up to her, but she wasn’t a mother. She didn’t know how to cook more than what you could boil in a pot of water with little to no additional steps. She could barely keep her own space clean half the time. And she didn’t do feelings talks. Never had, really. Hope had tried, when they were both young and stupid, because she read in some book that it was good to do so. Wake didn’t need a book to tell her that talking about that shit was important. She knew. She just didn’t do it.

Pillow talk, too, was a concept she was familiar with in theory, but something she avoided in practice. She’d fucked around with folks before Pyrrha and Gideon, and she let them assume that was still the case, though it wasn’t— she didn’t have time these days for that kind of bullshit. But even when she did have the time for it, she never stuck around for long after. She liked to think it added to her air of authority. They were done when she said they were done.

Sometimes, when it was Gideon, he would lay back after and hold his hand out, and if she had one (and she usually did), she’s shove a cigarette into his hand, and he’d smoke it and stare at the ceiling or the wall while the cuts and gauges stitched back up. He rarely said much of anything, but sometimes he would look at her for a bit too long, with a certain soft crease to his eyebrows and a barely-noticeable curl to his lip that looked alien on him, like it wasn’t an expression he had a lot of practice with.

He told her once that she had a wicked, mean smile, and she snapped back that he didn’t smile at all, so he shouldn’t talk, and he’d huffed out a curt laugh and said, “I used to. Not for a long time, though.”

And she hadn’t known how to respond to that, so she’d pinned him down, and he’d laughed, and it was a beautiful thing— one that she did not allow herself to dwell on for more than a moment, lest the sound worm its way into her cold, tired heart and find a home there. She sunk her teeth into his shoulder until she tasted blood.

On another occasion, he said, in that gruff, flat way he always spoke, “Sometimes I wish I’d known you before I knew him,” and she’d responded by telling him to take that sentiment and shove it where the light of Dominicus can’t find it. There wasn’t any worth in what ifs. If Gideon weren’t a tedious chicken-shit, it wouldn’t matter when they’d met.

Bottom line: she didn’t need, or want, his loyalty.

Pyrrha was different. It was like she’d orgasm and suddenly she had to talk, or she’d explode and take her necro with her. It usually wasn’t about much of anything. She’d lay back with her hands folded under her head and smirk and tell Wake all about what it was like, before she died the first time. She seldom talked about Gideon, and if Wake ever asked, it usually ended the conversation immediately.

But she’d talk about friends that had long since died. About Anastasia, and Cass, and Cyth, who was still alive, but who hadn’t spoken to her in a millennium. Wake, of course, knew Cyth. She’d been helping the Blood of Eden for some time, but the knowledge would bring Pyrrha no comfort.

Pyrrha would ask Wake questions, too, about her life, and the people she cared about. Once, Wake had spoken to her, briefly about Hope, and something in her voice must have given away her still-smouldering grief, because Pyrrha reached forward and rested her hand atop Wake’s. And there must have been something wrong with her, because for a few burning seconds, she allowed it. And then she said, with less anger than she’d hope to muster, “Get off my ship, Dve,” and the bastard had the nerve to pause to kiss her brow before leaving.

Wake should have killed her for that. She really should’ve.

The infuriating woman seemed to like to hear her talk about Pash in particular, even if it was just the same three things over and over. Wake never gave away much, even to her. She’d look at that shitty, grimy little photo in her toolkit and ask her questions, most of which she didn’t answer, but she never seemed to mind that.

Then, after the vat wombs had failed, and she took matters into her own hands, Pyrrha said, “I always wanted to be a parent,” in his soft, wistful voice. She was looking right at Wake, and for one mortifying moment, she thought that she knew. This shouldn’t have made bile burn up her esophagus, and it damn well shouldn’t have made her heart pound in her chest. She stared back at Pyrrha, her mouth slightly parted, and after a few long seconds, Pyrrha looked up at the ceiling and sighed.

“I think I could’ve been a good mom. Gideon always said I would, and Cass and Ana. Augustine, too, but he was always kissing up to me. He’d say the First was made of pudding if he thought it’d make me happy,” her words were sharp, but Pyrrha’s eyes always betrayed her with how repulsively soft they were. That warm, dark brown always reminded her of the hot chocolate she would get once in a while when she was small, before her mother died. She’d met the Lyctor Augustine once, and she couldn’t conceive of having anything more than passing resentment for the man.

"Any kid you raised would be a jackass with an awful sense of humor," Wake said dryly.

"Don't be a dick," but Pyrrha was still smiling.

She did not think through what she was doing when she settled back into the cot next to Pyrrha and rested her head on her bare shoulder. Her mind longed to wander. Images flashed in her periphery, of a quiet, calm life, somewhere far away with Pyrrha and Gideon and Pash and a shitty little kid. A world where the emperor was long dead and the age of Necromancy had begun to fade into memory.

But first she had to have the baby— the Bomb— and she didn’t know how happy Pyrrha would be with her after that.

It didn’t matter anyway. Even if it worked, and the Emperor was dead in a year, there would be work to do. Wake had long since accepted that she would be working until she was in the ground.

Pyrrha wrapped her big, strong arms around her and gave her a gentle squeeze, and Wake pressed her face into her chest. She didn’t know if it was the pregnancy hormones or something else firing around in her messed up head, but for a moment, Wake closed her eyes, and she allowed herself to imagine them in another life.

----

Celebrating the date of one’s birth was not something they could afford most years. She’d never had them growing up, and she turned out just fine. But the fact remained that having a birthday party was fun, and people, on occasion, liked to have fun. So they had a birthday party for Our Lady of the Passion on years where they had the means to. They had one on her fifth birthday, and her ninth, and now it was her fifteenth, and Wake was busting her ass more than she probably should to make it special, all while being nearly nine months pregnant and certifiably fucking huge. It was awful, it was uncomfortable, but she was, as Hope had once so aptly put it, more stubborn that those weird venomous cats, which were, for the uninitiated, endurance hunters, and ergo, very fucking stubborn.

We Suffer looked at her balancing a gift wrapped in crinkly brown paper and sighed audibly before lifting it out of Wake’s hands, ignoring the curse she bit out in protest.

“Have you ever considered sitting down— taking a rest?” She suggested in a soft, sing-song voice that she knew damn well Wake couldn’t stand.

“Have you ever considered shutting the fuck up?” She shot back, but there was no teeth to it.

“You’re carrying something pretty important,” We Suffer nodded to her stomach, “wouldn’t want it getting jostled too much because mom’s got too much goddamn pride.”

Wake frowned, brows furrowed. The details for her plan weren’t terribly well-known, and We Suffer wasn’t included in that circle. As far as she was aware, Wake was carrying a baby because she’d suddenly developed an affinity for them. So saying something like, I don’t really give a rat’s ass whether this thing is born healthy or on death's door, so long as it’s got blood, would be somewhat alarming. So she just grunted and didn’t complain about the help.

Pash was never good at keeping to herself, and Wake pretended to hate it more than she did. Couldn’t have the girl getting ideas in her head that she could go around doing whatever she wanted. But hell, it was her birthday, so when the little shit bumped against Wake’s side with a shit-eating grin and raised eyebrows, Wake smiled back.

“Where the fuck did you get hair dye, you little shit?” Wake said, running her fingers through freshly blue hair. The sides of her fingers came away slightly stained.

“Scavenged it,” Pash said— she still had a bit of a lisp when she tried to say s-words, but it was a far cry from where she’d been ten. Back then she’d been nigh-incomprehensible. The kid eyed her stomach dubiously, the same way she had since Wake started to show. The two of them hadn’t talked about it, and Wake didn’t intend to, unless Pash brought it up. It’d be a non-issue soon enough, anyway.

“Sooooo,” she said, bumping her shoulder to Wake’s. The kid was stupid tall, and seemed to still be growing, “what’d you get me, dear auntie?”

“I got you my goddamned presence, you little worm,” Wake said with no venom and a traitorous smile curled on her lips. She added, “and a cake, so you better be fucking grateful.”

Pash threw her hands up in surrender, “I am, I am! Shit,” she laughed, and Wake let out a snort that to her own ears was far too fucking fond. This seemed to please Pash, who mumbled something about finding Unjust Hope and took off.

Wake watched her go, and felt herself grow a bit sentimental. She could remember when that kid was small enough for her to hold in both hands. She could remember when she was nothing more than what the Bomb was now, curled inside her, unaware of the world, or the destruction they’d be born into.

Pash had asked her once, when she was eight and newly old enough to understand what had happened to her mother, if Wake hated her for killing Hope. If anyone had asked her before that moment, she might have said yes, or that at least that a part of her did. But Pash had looked at her with those big, sad hazel eyes, and she’d found that there wasn’t any hate left in her for Our Lady of the Passion.

She told her, “No, I don’t hate you. Don’t go getting a big fucking head about it, though.”

And nearly seven years later, she seemed to have gotten a big head about it anyway, by the way she felt comfortable flipping Wake off or calling her old lady. From anyone else, this would have been a deal breaker. She’d fold that fucker in half just to shove their head so far up their ass they forgot which way was up. But the most Pash ever got was some sharp words and a tired huff. So maybe it was her own fault, a little bit.

A little under an hour later, they were all sat around a garbage sheet cake with a single candle in the middle, and Pash was opening their gifts— one of which was a machete with a wicked curve. At the sight of this, Pash let out an awed gasp and raked her eyes over it was a ravenous want. She was Wake’s kid, alright.

From across the table, We Suffer cocked an eyebrow at her, and rather than dignify that with a response, she looked at Pash and said, “You should learn to use it, just in case. But the biggest thing is just getting into a minion’s head. Fuck with them. Make ‘em think you can beat them at their own game, and games they ain’t even thought of yet.”

Pash smiled a wide, toothy grin, “Do you know how to use it? Can you teach me?”

“A little,” Wake said. Sometimes, after a rendeavouz, when Pyrrha was too antsy for pillow talk but nonetheless unwilling to leave, the two of them would practice swordplay together. Pyrrha said she looked like a dog with a stick, but she was working her way up to a dog with a sword. “When I have time, alright?”

Even God didn’t know when that would be, though. The baby would come soon, and, if all went to plan, the death of the Emperor with it. The aftermath of that was impossible to calculate. Even his inner circle wasn’t sure what would happen. But Wake always found time for Pash, one way or another.

Pash set the machete on the table, and seemed about to say something, but then the familiar voice of one of her Wing Commanders, Cherry, crackled over her walkie. It said, “Duty is trailing you. Ninth house operation’s gotta move up.”

We Suffer eyed her from across the table, and as she took the words in, her gaze hardened. What she thought she had figured out, Wake couldn’t be sure. But she’d always been bright, that one. She probably had a pretty good idea.

“Fuck, kid, I gotta go,” she said, feeling genuinely sorry. But Pash was looking at her with a wicked grin and fire in her eyes.

“Go give those zombies hell. You’ll teach me how to use this thing when you get back.”

“Hold me to that,” Wake said, and then she left the base for the last time.

---

Wake stood on wobbly, uncertain, bloody legs. The Bomb was clutches to her chest, rolled a little too tightly in a blanket. On its soft, brown head a few strands of bright red hair, so much like her own, clung wetly to its skull. She refused to recognize herself within her weapon, even as it fussed and whined and cried and reached its tiny, chubby hand towards her in ask for safety, comfort, or anything else a mother might have to give.

But Wake wasn’t a mother. She was a warrior, a commander, a phoenix rising from the ashes, over and over. She put the wailing bundle into a haz suit and clacked the visor shut. Its cries continues, crackly and insistent, through the speakers.

Pyrrha was always the one that wanted to be a mother, and as she stood before her now, Wake felt as though she could read the thoughts storming through her head. She looked at Wake, who must look now like an uncaged beast, covered in her own blood, hair a wild tangle, eyes alight with adrenaline, and she looked every bit as sappy and lovelorn as she always did after they got done fighting or fucking. She said, “Wake, darling, I don’t have long. Let’s take the baby and get out of here. Please.”

“I’m not your darling,” Wake snarled, “and I’m not fucking going anywhere with you.”

Pyrrha stepped back, her eyes widening slightly, at Wake’s tone, and she felt a flush at pride at the sight of hurt contorting her features. Her eyes were always so wide and dark and expressive. She swallowed, “Gideon will be back soon. I can feel him. And he won’t let you go— you or the baby.”

At this, Wake threw her head back in a long, cruel laugh. Against her chest, the Bomb wailed, and in response Pyrrha stepped forward, hands outstretched, and Wake pulled her bundle closer with a low growl. “Fuck off. Gideon can do what the fuck he wants,” and, against her better judgement, she added, “you don’t think he’d kill a baby.”

Pyrrha’s eyes were fixed on the Bomb, like Wake didn’t exist at all, and it took a moment for her to reply, “He’d to anything for him. He’d always do anything for him. Wake, I don’t know what you think your plan is—“

“You don’t,” Wake said, “you don’t have a clue. But it doesn’t matter. I’m gonna kill the fucking emperor, and then it won’t matter who gave Gideon his marching orders. Nothing will matter.”

Pyrrha looked like she might say something more, but before she had the chance, she slumped forward, just briefly, and when she stood back up, green eyes blinked awake, and looked at her, and looked at the Bomb.

Gideon said, “What the fuck did you do?”

Wake said, “I’m going to kill your fucking boss, dipshit.”

Gideon went very still. He looked at Wake, in her ragged haz suit, and the baby, whose baby blue eyes were squinting through the harsh light of the shuttle over at him. For a moment, silence hung between them, save for the occasional fussing of the Bomb in her hands. “Say something,” Wake said.

“I don’t know what you want, Wake. I’ve never known.” Gideon looked properly sad then. The harsh lines of his face softened, and his eyebrows knit together. He looked like he might step forward, and for a precious moment in time, she lived in the world that Pyrrha had always wanted. She lived in a world with them, and maybe Pash, and no one else. Hormones going to her head and nothing more, and even if it were more than that, Gideon shattered the illusion with his next words.

“I can’t let you kill him. You know I can’t.” And he sounded so pathetic and desperate that Wake had to clamp her jaw together and look away, lest she burn apart where she stood.

“You’ve never let me do shit,” she said, laughing bitterly. She turned a knob on the side of her helmet, and the plex slipped down. Her voice came out crackled through the headset. “See you when we’ve won,” she said, and turned to open the airlock, to descend to the planet, and to light that motherfucker up.

Then a fist slammed against her back. She felt a rib break as she tumbled forward into open space. She turned around and briefly saw Gideon’s pained, horrible face, and for a split second, she swore she saw a flash of brown in his eyes. But she was losing air quickly, and she had to lose it quicker, if she wanted the Bomb to make it to its destination.

She wasn’t going to get back home, she wasn’t going to a half-flipped moon, she wasn’t going to see the demise of the Emperor of the Nine Houses. She wasn’t going to get to teach Pash how to use those damn machetes.

“Fuck you!” she snarled, and she directed her life preserves to the Bomb.

As they fell, and life drained slowly and agonizingly from her body, Wake shrieked, “Gideon! Gideon! Gideon!”