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ashintheairlikesnow · 4 years

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Killan Josta: The Rabbit

Listen. Exactly one conversation with @wildfaewhump and this boy found himself nearly fully formed, and he wanted his backstory and who am I to deny an OC who technically doesn’t exist their moment?

Exists in the same world as @wildfaewhump‘s Iesin and Talvos, and this is in no way relevant and should definitely not fill you with hope for his future. He is a sad boy. No hope for him.

CW: Suicidal ideation (of the ‘would be better than this’ variety, is brief, happens twice), debt slavery, beating and violent abuse, kicking, blood, death threats, emotional and financial manipulation, referenced purposeful malnourishment

“Where d’you think you’re gonna go, Matti?”

Killan’s thin shoulders hunched up somewhere near his chin and he drew his knees up to his chest. He could see a bit of red soaking into the rough woven cloth in his pants where he’d hit the ground and scraped hard along a bit of tree root sticking up out of the dirt.

Under the hollow created by the lifted root, he could just see the glitter of an eye, some kind of bitty rabbit or chipmunk or other tiny prey animal hiding.

He wished he had somewhere to hide, too.

Show me how to escape, he thought to the creature. Teach me how to run or fly fast and far enough next time. Are there really woodgods like my mother used to say? Are there really monsters who sometimes save people like in the stories?

“Hey. Matti.” Ren snapped his fingers before Killan’s face.

“My name’s not Matti,” He said in a half-whisper, then flinched instinctively against the blow he knew was coming.

He threw his hands up just in time to take the brunt of Ren’s heavy-handed slap meant for his face.

“Your name’s what I say ‘tis,” Ren snarled down at him. He leaned over Killan like a great big tree giving off shade and Killan shrunk even more under the baleful look in his eyes. The other hunters and sometime bandits that worked with Ren had settled in a circle around the two of them, four more. Beron, Vanya, Tinch, and Pylko were all as broad and terrifying as Ren ever was, but they deferred to Ren - which made Ren, the holder of Killan’s debt and the one he was starting to think might never let it be paid, the scariest of them all.

“If I say you’re Matthias and call you Matti, that’s what you are. Isn’t that right?” The hand was threatening again, held high in the air and Killan kept his arms up to protect himself, curling them over his dirty brownish hair. They took baths once a week, the group did, and Killan always got last turn at the bathwater and he never felt clean unless he dipped into the river when sent to get water and took the time to scrub himself and took his punishment for dawdling when he returned.

Except this time, he’d tried not returning.

They hunted him down anyway, rubbed his head in the dirt to punish him for putting on airs of cleanliness, and worse was coming. He knew worse was coming. There was a sick pit of fear in his stomach marrying with the hunger that chased him through days and nights. He was worked too hard for little in return, but if he ate too much...

“Y-yes, Ren,” Killan tried from behind the dubious security of his own thin wrists and arms. “I-I’m Matti if you want, ‘til I pay off the money. When… when will I-”

“Not for you to know, debt-slave.” That wasn’t Ren but Beron, who aimed a kick to his side he wasn’t ready for, a crack into his ribs that sent Killan sprawling sidelong into the dirt with a cry.

Once that dam was opened, all their violence burst forth, and it was all he could do to curl into a ball and take the kicks from their good leather shoes. All five of them had their go, laughing and having fun with him, just like always.

Each cry, every whimper or whine, was a mark added to his debt. Ren counted cries as more he owed them for the inconvenience of having to hear ‘Matti’ be a weak little mess who couldn’t even take a hit like a man.

He counted all the food that Killan ate on a little list, marked the wine he drank from the wineskins on occasion, too. Killan owed him for the little tin cup and plate they let him keep, owed him the nights they made stew and let him have a spoon, owed him for the clothes on his back that had gone worn and threadbare, for the needle and thread Killan used to mend every bit torn open by their fists and their boots.

He owed them for the second set of clothes they’d gotten him so he might be clean, just for a day, now and then when he did the washing.

He owed and owed and owed.

He’d been thankful when they saved him. He was still thankful, but part of him had started wishing they had just let the other ones throw him in the river in town after they stole all his coins, just let them toss him like a pebble with weights tied to his feet force him down.

It would probably hurt less to be dead, at least. It would hurt less than this.

But… but there were beautiful days, too.

There were days when Killan walked beside the horses just so he could fall back a little and look around at the sun dappling through the trees along the path, or other days when they kept camp instead of moving on when Killan could race himself to the river for water, or dive into a deep forest pool and get himself clean, blessed blissful clean, and sun himself naked on a rock until he was dry, feeling like one of the wild beasts who could have come and gone as he pleased.

There were days when they were nice to him, cuffed him lightly instead of harsh, pulled him to sit with them around the fire to tell their old stories of fae stealing babies away until Killan shivered and went pale and they laughed, but it was good-natured laughing. Not mean, not really. Not the way they usually were.

There were days during his watch with Beron where Beron would show him how to make tiny little animals out of wood, carving this way or that until he made a tiny fox, a wolf, one time a bird that whistled if you blew into its beak.

They didn’t mark his debt up some days, when they were happy with him, and he could sing their drinking songs by heart and get rewarded with a grin and a clap to the back.

So there were good days, too, and he leaped desperately from good day to good day like a squirrel jumping between trees.

But after a few bad days, he’d had enough, and thought he could run even though they were hunters and bandits.

He’d been wrong.

“Y’know what this means, Matti,” Ren said heavily, as though Killan were a grand disappointment. “Don’t you?”

Killan’s whole body ached, and all he could do was groan on his side on the forest floor, feeling old leaves soft beneath him, smashed into his hair, dirt and mossy green smeared along his face. He throbbed with pain every place their boots had gotten him, and hated his own thin leather shoes cut badly and bought cheap that sometimes wore his skin raw and bloody along the sides of his feet.

He’d get boots when he earned them, he was told.

What else could he do to be worth good boots? What more was there that Killan had not already done?

“I-I’m sorry, Ren, I d-d-don’t-”

“It means we’ve got to tie you behind my horse again,” Ren said. The others clicked their tongues against their teeth, disappointed sounds. Killan slowly pushed himself up, hissing through his teeth at the flare of pain just about everywhere.

“You… you d-don’t, I didn’t-”

“No, we do. If you’re going to try and steal your debt from me, Matti, then you’re going to have to be kept close. Where would you be if I hadn’t saved you, Matti, huh?”

Killan looked back down at the ground. “Dead, Ren.”

“That’s right. You’d be dead if it weren’t for us taking pity on you. And what do you think it tells me when you try to run off and steal my bread?”

Killan’s chin jerked up at that, jaw set in a faded hint of stubbornness. “I baked the bread!”

Ren backhanded him, sending him back down to the dirt, like he lived there. Like he belonged in the decaying leaves where mushrooms sometimes came up in the spring and Killan would pick them by the basketful to cook in oil for dinner, back home, back before. “It’s my bread whether you bake it or not. Stealing bread’s a crime, ain’t it?”

Killan wiped at his mouth with his arm, spat into the dirt and ignored the blood in it. “Yes, Ren.”

“Right. And runnin’ from a debt is a crime, too. You’re lucky we caught you first - show your face in a town and they’d lock you up ‘til I came for you, wouldn’t they?”

Not if they didn’t know I was a debt-slave.

Killan wisely kept that to himself.

“Should’ve let him run,” Beron said, ruffling Killan’s hair as he cringed away from the unwanted touch. “Let the fae eat him.”

“They don’t come down from their stupid mountains,” Vanya drawled.

“Sure they do,” Beron said, but offered no detail or proof. “Where else would they get humans to eat?” He was the one who told the best stories about fae, stealing babies from mothers and taking the children in a village as thralls and leading them away with song, making men kill themselves in front of their horrified true love. They were spooky stories that left the hair on Killan’s arms standing up but kept him leaning forward towards the fire, waiting for more.

Killan liked Beron’s stories, even if he didn’t like Beron.

Even if Beron always kicked him hardest.

“Hey.” Ren hit him across the face again to get his attention, and Killan’s teeth came down too hard on his lower lip, a burst of salt-sweet coppery taste against his tongue as his lip busted and he coughed, gagging at the overwhelming taste. “You listening, Matti?”

My name's not-

“Yes, Ren,” Killan muttered, trying to speak around his lip, so it came out more like Yeh, -ehn. “I-... listenin’.”

“Good. Next time I catch you running from me, I’m going to tie half a raw deer to your back and have Beron use his fae whistle to call one down to tear you apart. And if a fae doesn’t make quick work of your scrawny arse, trust that everything else that smells it on you will.”

Killan shuddered. Beron’s stories made the fae monstrous, rows of sharp teeth and feathers that could cut like a blade, big claws on their hands instead of proper fingers. It wouldn’t be a good death, but at least it would be one. “Unner-... unnerstan’, Ren.”

“Good. And I don’t want any of your mopery no more, either. All you do is mope around actin’ like you don’t have a perfectly good lot in life compared to your bones restin’ in the river where we found you. I’ll take a happier face from here on out and anything less will make it worse for you. Now get on your feet.”

Killan swallowed blood, felt his stomach spin and lurch and threaten to make him bring up his meager breakfast all over the forest floor. He nodded and pushed himself to his feet, falling into line with the men who owned him as they headed back to camp, the occasional smack or kick or curse urging him on even as he limped and dragged one foot a little behind the other.

Ren owned his life until his debt was repaid, but the debt was higher with every breath he took, and he was starting to understand that Ren would never let him go.

He spat blood on the ground as he limped, and wondered if maybe a fae would eat him, if ever he could find one and politely ask it to.

Killan tried to take a breath and winced at the sharp spike of pain from his side. “I th-think you cracked my rib,” he mumbled to Beron, who had come up on his right. The tall, older man glanced sideways at him and shifted, elbowing him sharply right in the side.

Beron, who was sometimes the nicest of them all, right now grinned at Killan’s answering hoarse whimper.

“That’s another mark,” Ren said from up at the front, and Killan made another hopeless sound that only brought Beron’s smile wider.

“Don’t worry, cracked ribs heal fast enough,” Beron said, suddenly jovial and friendly, clapping Killan on the back just to watch him stumble and hiss through his teeth to hold back the sounds as he got his balance back. “I’ll cook tonight, lad. You can lie down early.”

Unsettled by the sudden switch from cruelty to kindness, Killan looked up, only to stumble over a tree root he would’ve seen if his eyes had still been down, falling to his hands and knees on the forest floor, palms scraping dirt and the just-closed cuts across his knee opening up to bleed again.

Killan sniffed back the heat that was building behind his eyes and set his jaw as he forced himself back to his feet, trying to ignore Beron’s booming laughter at his back as he hurried to catch up to Ren.

By the time the leader looked back at him, he had set an empty but vaguely cheerful expression on his face, despite the bloodied lower lip, despite the bruising already starting up across his face on both sides, despite cracked rib and hurting back and aching legs.

Ren didn’t want to see him being sad about his lot in life anymore, and Killan was so tired of getting hurt. Lying wasn’t all that hard. It would be easy enough to lie, with the right reasons, and if I look right they won’t hurt me so much seemed as good a reason to smile as any.

He set himself to look as happy as he could, and hoped that Beron had really meant it about letting him get into his bedroll early.

Ahead of them, the sun came down in dappled yellow through the canopies of the tallest trees, and Killan fixed his eyes on the sight, forced the slightest smile to stretch his split lip until he winced.

The smile wasn’t really all that hard to force, if he was honest with himself. He might be hurt, and bloody, and dirty and downtrodden, but… but you could live for the forest, if you really wanted to, not just live off of it.

Killan could’ve been happy in the woods forever, on his own. In the deeper woods like this he could almost swear the air felt like magic.

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