Work Text:
(Million)
Annihilation. The designation for these operations always left a sick taste at the back of their throat. As if this extermination didn't include countless people. It might've been appropriate for dealing with the Seaborne, but that's... different.
(Thousand)
The number of Sarkaz participating in the Londinium occupation that Rhodes Island engaged was not that many, you knew. Centuries of oppression and war may deprive a people of ways of life outside it, but it also deprived a nation of its people to be oppressed and to wage war against.
Still, Rhodes Island was no Babel, and the masterwork of tactical genius you could muster would only cause casualty reports stacking up to the waist, at most. Is it better that it's not enough to overflow the room with pages full of names in red?
Either way, Amiya's coronation was paved in bloody stones, and her throne rests easy on the broken bodies of the deaths you ordered. That stain seems to have permeated through your gloves, because when you're not focusing your palms feel sticky and damp. And, when you notice, you can barely make out the sound in your ears. Drip. Drip. Drip.
(Hundred)
Close to a hundred active-duty combat operators had fallen under your service, if you were uncharitable enough with yourself – and you were – to include the names of those who had perished in the initial Chernobog operation. They were your duty, they had families, ties, now-severed skeins, and they had stories you’ll never get the chance to learn or remember. Not all patients make it to the operating theatre, but each loss is keenly felt nonetheless. That is, if they’re lucky.
(One)
Sometimes you're struck with the inexplicable longing to have never woken up in the mornings that followed. Sometimes you're so stuck in your head on how you could possibly ever atone for all the loves and lives you've taken. It wasn't by your hands, but it was your mouth and her eyes and none of it was ever what you wished for. Sometimes you think you should've never agreed to work with Kal’tsit at all. Still, your work is the only helpful thing you can contribute at this point. You're in too deep to back out, but not far enough to say you've done enough.
Sometimes it's just easier to feel nothing at all. After a certain point, it all becomes numbers anyway.
Bonus:
(One Hundred Thousand Million)
That was roughly the number of your kindred that expired over the course of the Observer crisis. Not that you’d remember that.