Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was difficult to spot what exactly went wrong.

Your hands ache due to the strength you exercise on them. The cuts all around the area reminded you not only of the closed call you faced back there, but the also the dangerousness of the life in the wild that you were about to enter.

Things were weird all the time, but it was weirder if they weren’t. Living in a secluded village in a tiny forgotten stain in the map of Spain, with royalty still reigning while the outside world grew apart in many aspects will give it to you.

You heard the grunts, the screams, and the chants of the persecutors behind you. Sweat started to drop from your forehead all the way to your neck. You remember that is supposed to disgust you, but with your heart at the edge of stopping, you brain at the edge of burning and the uproar of your own mind reminding you of your fate if you ever look back was enough for you to forget about it.

Padre Méndez was the first. He was not only the Father of our church, not only the chief of the village, but he was also our friend. He said he lost his eye due to a lost bullet in the last civil war, and he came to this place to find peace with God and himself, after that everyone loved him, and he became this important figure every man admired. I remember myself in his arms trying to reach his glass eye and see if he could feel it, he would just laugh it off when my parents scolded me for my curiosity.

“You have a wonderful kid. When we become adults, we are mostly driven by shame, by modesty. Let the kid be a kid, this innocent curiosity and hunger to understand the world… is important to keep it intact.” He said.

“Ah!”. Your arms burn so much, the mountain you’re trying to climb is getting more and more steep, one hand slipped from your hold on the rock. Panic spread through your body and the only hand holding you to your literal lifeline shook in fatigue and fear.

Padre Méndez was acting weird, grunting, and coughing blood from time to time. Every villager grouped together, thinking that if all of us raised enough money we could send him to a doctor. A real one, with artifacts and books and nurses that could discover what was happening to his body. But then it was too late.

Everything burned.

“Arrrgh!”. You let out a scream of rage, but just right before it ended sobs and bawlings left your lips. Why? Why you? What have you done?! What have we all done?! “I hate you!”. Was your last effort; you didn’t even know who you were hating on, but it didn’t matter, you were boiling inside. Unfair, not deserved, unprovoked. Your life and hundreds more ruined, your neighbors and childhood friends gone and forgotten.

He started to teach about Los Iluminados, how they gave him enlightenment, how they stopped his suffering and wanted all of you to join him. In the mind of the eldest this was ridiculous to the very core, disrespectful to God itself, heretic. But unfortunately, the infection already started to spread from the ominous Salazar Castle all the way to our village. Even if they denied themselves to… “salvation”, they would be turned against their will or sacrificed for the “cause”.

‘Huff, huff’, you grunted frustrated, panting as you kept climbing higher and higher. Even when you couldn’t hear or feel the presence of the infected villagers anymore, you didn’t stop until you reached the top. The mountains you’ve draw in you caricaturize drawings or you heard about in the stories of the eldest didn’t even compare to this one. This one started as any normal mountain would, with the base slowly rising to the top; unfortunately for you this elevation got to an abrupt end, when you realize that your path was cut due to the acute angle you had to climb up.

“Chain the young ones, lock them up in the barn”. You heard them say. Heavy shackles connected by a long chain were secured in your wrists, just as your friends and neighbors were. Some of them were chained together, the stronger and faster ones of us. Others, just like you were thrown in the barn with the pigs and cows to make you company.

The first night two chubby children were dragged against their will, they called them ‘Cows’. Most of you couldn’t handle it and started to cry and beg for mercy with no avail. The older ones teamed up to burst the gate of the barn open, even with wrists and ankles chained up they almost reached freedom. In punishment they decided to place one of the infected to stop your intents to escape.

It was brutal for the oldest of you, el papá de Alejandro. [1]

Alejandro shouted at him, cursing him out, begging to him, but he didn’t budge. His mind long gone to whatever was consuming him from inside. There were no escape attempts for a long time, the smallest children were taken, and your turn was closer.

You reached the top, somehow. How strange, the sky was huge now that your perspective changed. The sky was bright blue, and the sun burned your skin like never before. Deciding that you were far away enough, you took a rest. Your chest slowly raising as you deep breath in and falling back down while exhaling. All muscles in your body were sore, and your hands were in no better position either.

You fought for freedom, but at what cost?

Faking to be asleep, you kept one eye open observing the man standing in the middle o the barn. You have been thinking about it for weeks now; la señora Dolores [2] lend you a book for a while, a mystery book. One of the characters was handcuffed like just like you, and he “dislocated his thumb” to free himself. You tried a lot of times when you first read it, thinking that it might be useful one day, but you never succeeded.

Thinking back now that was dumb from you. But that’s what brought you here.

You hid with the cows; in the book it wasn’t described how the man dislocated his thumb, so there was no way to know how to do it properly. You remembered seeing an old medicine book back in Manuel’s house, his dad wanted to be a doctor, but he wasn’t smart enough to get into a medical school, he married a kind young woman and they lived happy. He talked to you about it, long names, and scientific terms you don’t clearly recall right now, but you asked him if someone can escape from handcuffs dislocating their thumb.

“Well, I’m not quite sure. I mean you can dislocate this joint right here, the metacarpophalangeal”. He flexed thumb inside so you could see which bone he was talking about. “In theory you could, but it would be hard, you usually dislocate that because of punches or falls. If you pay attention, there should be a little space you could pull out, like a lock.”

Crack

In the middle of the quiet night the sound of your thumb cracking was painfully obvious. Your wrists were very thin, so pull your hand until the thumb slip out was easy (the excruciating pain should’ve been a clue to you, something was wrong). With one hand free (injured), you ran to the gate, and you pushed it with all your strength.

What now? You escaped, what now? Where will you go? Who do you turn up to? You were alone, starved, injured and scared. You were never the brightest kid out there, or the strongest, you were an “opportunist”, as other may say. Waiting for the best moment for you to succeed. The sun was in its highest point, dehydration started to kick in your body. Started to feel lethargic, slow.

“No escaparás!”[3] The man growled, swinging his axe to you.

“Ah!” You screamed covering your head and running past him, putting as much space between the two of you as you could. But the barn was filled to the brim with kids, animals and wastes, there was not enough room for you to dodge properly. “Déjeme!”[4]

“¡Ven acá!”[5] He grabbed a bunch handful of your hair pulling you and making you fall. You thought you were going to die right there, but after a while you just heard grunts, smash sounds and then silence. The man grabbing your hair fell to the ground and after that, a big sob echoed in the quiet barn.

Alejandro just killed his own dad.

He used a piece of broken wood, long forgotten in the dirty floor of the building to hit his head as hard as he could that even brain matter splatters him and you, equally.

“A la mierda todo, tío.” He gritted through his teeth. “¡Nos encierran a todos, hacen lo que se les da la puta gana y nadie explica qué coño pasa!” [6] He shouted. With his shaking hand, he took the axe brandishing it as a mad man while his friends were pulled by his force.

“Ale, calma, hombre, calma. No nos volvamos todos locos, por favor.” [7] That’s María, trying to be the voice of reason while Alejandro was still swinging the axe around like a gangster.

“¡María, te callas la puta boca! Le acabo de romper a mi papá la puta cabeza y me pides que me calme.” [8]

“Eh, eh, no nos desconozcamos. Para empezar tú solito te has lanzado a pegarle hostias” [9] That was Pablo. He always has been the most unfriendly of them all, blunt, no empathy to show, but he was the smartest, usually.

“Ah sí, y cuando nos comience a matar a machetazos a todos, también me tenía que quedar parado pensando en musarañas, perfecto.” [10] He snarled back, sarcastically.

“Miren, que iré a sonar insensible, pero yo no me guardo nada, escuchadme algo: El muerto ya está muerto. Has matado a tu papá por nosotros, Ale, y te lo agradezco, hombre, que estoy que te pongo en un altar.” [11] Manuel started to speak. “Pero entre más nos quedemos aquí repartiendo culpas y tirando responsabilidades como una papa caliente, de aquí no salimos”. [12]

María nodded, startled aback because of the aggressiveness Alejandro just showed, but determined to look out for an exit. Pablo shrugged in his place, as if he didn’t care what would happen to him. Odd

“Ale, con el hacha rompes las cadenas, abrimos la puerta y corremos como si nos llevara el puto diablo.” [13] Manuel said, calmly. Raising one hand in a gesture of peace, trying to soothe out the nervous and furious Alejandro. “Te prometo, Ale, que cuanto más rápido piremos de este lugar, más rápido buscamos ayuda y acabamos con estos hijos de puta, ¿vale?”[14]

“Haced lo que se les de la puta gana.” [15] He said. Throwed the axe in the dirt, his knees gave in, and he fell to the ground. The fury he had shown a moment ago left his body and became the child he was. He grieved his father’s death as he did to his old life, he orphaned himself in the matter of seconds, and you could only feel guilt just as him. María got closer to him, caressing his back in a gesture of support and a mild attempt of comfort.

The firsts attempts to cut through the chains were noisy and unfruitful. The metal got stuck in the grass and the wood bars of the corrals, there were a handful of times where all needed to stop and be quiet because the loud clangs of the axe contacting with the chain gained a little bit of attention.

“Intenten con algo de metal…” You said quietly. Every pair of eyes turned to you, piercing their gazes with yours and you quickly lowered your head. “La cadena se atasca en el piso y en la madera… Intenten con algo que no pueda perforar… [16]” You murmured. In a matter of seconds all of them took the hangers off the walls to use the flat metal space as a base.

You were fifteen people in total and more than half of you were already free, when suddenly you heard the gate of the stables being open. You froze in your place as other villagers entered the already overpopulated barn.

“¡Que no escapen!” One of them shouted. Paul grabbed the axe and pierced through the second gate, opening it by brute force.

“¡Ya habéis oído, escapemos ya!”

“¡Sacadme de aquí!”

“¡Todavía estoy encadenado, hombre!”

“Mejor aquí corrió, que aquí murió” [17]

The four-year-old kid started to cry his lungs out and the atmosphere of the stables transformed into a horrific scene plugged from the pits of hell itself.

“¡Ale, aún queda gente encadenada!” [18] María screamed. But Paul was quick to give her a dead-in-the-eye look making her to shut up.

“Si tanto quieres vivir en honor a tu nombre, te invito a regresarte y a caerte a hostias con el montón de gente allá. Pero nadie de aquí te va a acompañar, ¿me oyes?” [19] After that nobody moved towards the stables.

Everything happened in a rush really. The smaller kids were first, pitchforks and axes cut through their little bodies, as we heard the screams of agony. You weren’t very smart, or strong as much as you were fast and cunning, so the moment you couldn’t run past the gates the first thought in your mind was climb the trees.

You heard a scream behind you, as you turned around you saw Alejandro in the ground, Pablo in front of him receiving the lunge of a villager with a pitchfork. With both of his hands he grips the handle of the tool, keeping it steady, using his body as an obstacle, not letting her take it out. You covered your mouth, avoiding a squeal to leave your body.

“¡No te veo corriendo, Ale!” He shouted to the boy behind him.

“¡Hombre, no te voy a dejar aquí!”

“¡Joder, que te largues, tío!”

“¡No te estoy dejando!”

“¡Aunque te quedes o no, me estoy muriendo!” His throat gave in before he could notice, voice full of cracks and sobs. “Tío, por favor, vete de aquí ya. No dejes que me muera en vano, ¿vale? Que no sea en vano” [20]

Ale pondered a bit, looking Pablo’s back from his position. After that he stumble on his feet as he raised from the ground, nodding shakingly, and after a few seconds he ran away getting further and further away, until you lost sight of him. The villager grunted a bit, using her entire strength she took out he weapon running behind Alejandro, leaving Pablo bleeding there.

In that lonely and forgotten place of the village, you stood down from the tree making your way to an agonizing Pablo in the floor. You touched his cheek, startling him but there was nothing he could do, just look at you while blood fell from the corner of his mouth.

“El sol ya casi sale…” You said. He said nothing, didn’t even make a sound when you dragged him to a wall, facing Norwest.

“T-Te… Te tiene-s que… ir.”

“Al menos tienes que ver el sol, por última vez. El sol de la mañana.” You swallowed a sob, but your voice sounded tight. “Ale lo va a lograr, él es el mejor.” You reassured him. One of the other villagers saw you thanks to the torch they lit up, calling more people to capture you or kill you, you couldn’t be sure.

“V-… Ve. Sss-álvate.” [21]

Before leaving you gave him a quick look, to a few seconds later run back to the trees and cover with the shadows of the forest. You pressed your lips together, thinking it wasn’t fair he died young, scared and alone. He wasn’t the kindest kid, he was sarcastic, blunt and didn’t have an ounce of empathy to show. But if someone can sacrifice himself without a doubt to secure his friends life, they couldn’t be that bad.

And that’s what got you here.

Save yourself, that’s what he told you. But how?

“By living on the land, one can understand that nature is made up of halves, and bad things and good things are all part of nature.” You comforted yourself as much as you could, but tears kept falling from your eyes as you made stiff bed out of rocks and some tree bark. “They gave me their halves. But I don’t even know if I deserve them.” You drift in a restless sleep, promising that whatever comes tomorrow, you’ll handled it or it’ll swallow you whole.

“Could I be strong enough to carry your halves?”

Was your last thought until everything turned black.

Chapter Text

One thing you realize in your escaping time is that you sucked at fighting.

Most of your survival tactics were easily frustrated by the infected villagers that ran towards you in masses. Being outnumbered and alone was not a good situation to be, also the fact that you had nowhere to take refuge and your lack of actual weapons was getting into your head. Paranoia has ingrained in your brain you couldn’t sleep at all.

Any noise, even the sway of tree branches moved by the breeze, made you turn around like a crazy person. But maybe you were going crazy. You’ve had encounters with wolves and snakes that persuaded you to take shelter in a cave or under plants with leaves big enough to cover you from rain. It was no surprise your mind started to get plastered with ghosts, delusions of finally arriving a safe place, someone to save you and get rid of all the infected.

You remember one time you almost got caught because of the hallucinations caused by hunger. One big rock was buried in the ground, from afar it almost had a humanly shape. You ran towards it, screaming for help with no response, but when you got closed to it you realize that you put your idea of salvation in an inanimate rock structure. You laughed maniacally, tugged your hair, screamed a few times, all while your stomach was sticking to your ribcage and digesting itself.

“There you are!” And as quickly as your psychotic attack came, it went away. Without a chance to think about what just happened, your body switch into flight mode, running away skipping through wooden logs and loosing yourself more into the deep forest. This happened for a long time, when you haven’t realized the smartest way of surviving just yet.

One day you fell to the ground without much energy left, starving, and feeling sick. It probably was the river water you drank in a desperate attempt to subjugate your hunger, after the stomachache you got left your dizzy and weak you knew it. You felt it in your debilitated and aching bones, you felt it in your sore throat and dry lips, in your heavy eyelids and your short breaths.

You were dying.

Starve to death or for whatever shit you were going to die at the village. Hard decision.

In the moment your eyes were going to sew shut, a white butterfly passed by you caressing your eyelashes and giving you tickles. You spotted her as she settled in a green plant, at first it didn’t ring any bells on your exhausted mind, but suddenly a sun ray blinded you for a second. And then it happened, a click in your brain.

Hierbabuena¹.

With renewed energy you pounded onto the plant scaring the butterfly away, and in a single mouthful you ate the mint leaves, crying. Because even if you were tired and wanted to give up, your body didn’t and moved accordingly. After swallow it, your mind was clearer than ever.

I don’t want to die here. Not this way.

Death is part of nature, you knew it. It comes as sure as the sun comes out in the morning and goes down in the night. As sure as the waves in the ocean and as sure as the winter coming after autumn.

But it doesn’t mean you would patiently wait for it to come for you.

I have the good parts of ‘them’ after all. I can’t let it go to waste.

• ·—– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

“¡Puedes correr, pero no te puedes esconder!”² Was shouted and your heart sank to your feet. The villagers were looking for someone, your heartbeat quickened as you kept your head low, and your limbs hidden between the branches of the tree you climbed before.

How do they know? I never encountered anyone in the way here.

You pushed some leaves away from your sight, the first thing you saw was the burned body of some unfortunate man in a bonfire, and after that, two watchmen walking back and forth in front of the gate.

Which… weird.

They don’t watch over the gates when the obvious victim is already dead and can’t move their legs to escape, frowning you decided to go back to your hideaway, because it seems today wasn’t optimal to steel some food. But before you could turn away, a blonde and shiny hair caught your attention.

¿Pero qué putas?³

Your eyes darted from the strange person to the old woman walking from corner to corner with desperation.

They’re about to get caught!

But as if it was destiny, the old woman just turned away and the individual took advantage of that moment to run and hide behind an almost collapsed barn. You couldn’t see them anymore, so you thought they’ve been founded and killed. However, if that was the case, other infected should’ve been warned at this point. Thinking that going down there is not the smartest option you could take, so you decided to stay still.

For whole five minutes there was just silence until…

“Un forastero!”⁴

There.

A figured adorned with golden hair ran towards the square of the village, dodging punches, pushes, axes, pitchforks, and bear traps. There’s only too much time until he gets tired, no way they were going to make it out.

Bang, Bang!

The sound echoed through the entire village, so they have a gun with them. Huh, now that’s interesting. Surely it will help them to last longer, but you could never be so sure about those maddened infected villagers. When the thing controlling them realize a new thread, it’ll send more and more people to hunt you down, so it’s not like he could get rid of every person coming over.

Bang. Thud.

Vale, they hit them with an axe, but the person seemed to not give up yet. He brutally poked the infected neck with a knife killing it instantly. More chasing and running happened, after a long time observing the person got closer to your hidden spot. It was a young man, sturdy and muscular, with some sort of jacket covering his torso, deep frown born out of concentration and probably stress. Oh, was he beautiful. The church used to have imagery of cherubs in the windows and paintings of ‘El Sagrado corazón de Jesus’⁵ , he reminded you of them.

Comparable to the depictions of angels in books you loved to read all the time, the peace and warmth they give away solely by their presence, the irrepressible shaking of expectation of encountering the holy and divine. You were scheming in your head, planning how to go down there and help him, given the fact that he seemed to be in a huge trouble.

Dong, Dong!

The church bell? That rare occurrence?

You don’t even remember the last time the bell ringed in the square. It felt like years ago even though you knew it wasn’t. Suddenly, all the people dropped their weapons and looked at the church in a daze, the man running and fighting for his life looked around confused. Knowing that everyone was going to leave soon you came down from the tree, slowly getting closer to the man in the middle of the village.

“Where’s everyone going? Bingo?”

Oh, bad jokes and yankee. But I forgive him, por su condición de lindo.⁶

• ·—– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

After he left through the farthest gate of the village you finally revealed yourself, blinked a few times, cocked your head to the side, breath in an out and then you realized.

Food.

A lot of food.

It felt like… like a dream come true. Usually, you only stole just enough eggs, a little bit of flour, meat that only lasted two days, and a vegetable here and there. It was with the purpose of not getting notice nor traced, if a lot of chicken eggs disappeared suddenly, or if an entire piece of meat vanishes from the pothook, the infected would start to notice. It didn’t matter they were controlled to do repetitive task every day, the moment something was off, a whole entourage was sent to monitor the forest looking for you.

So, the amount of food you manage to snatch away wasn’t worthy of the entire weeks you were being persecuted, at best, the only thing you would get from it was growing even more hungry. Ah, also don’t forget about having to fight with wild animals for prey. Animals aren’t clueless or stupid, they know what they’re dealing with and how dangerous could be for them, it was no surprised to see that the safest place you could take shelter was where the birds sang.

Or where the wolves howl.

It was a pretty good alarm for you when you saw all the animals running in one direction, it meant they were closer. The downside of this was the sleepless nights running and hiding into trees to escape from other predators. Better than being persecuted by axes, pitchforks, dynamite, and the list goes on.

Well, not quite, the ideal would be not being chased after.

You took a knife from a house, and you ran outside again to claim your prize. The dead cow and the piggies. Along with the delicate slices of meat you started to cut of the bodies, you wondered.

Will I be able to gather more food if I follow him?

You stared at the gate that had been opened and left unclosed.

Without knowing the motives of the strange man, you decided to pack your things and cut through the woods.

Better than being alone again.

• ·—– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

It was a really bad idea if you had thoroughly thought about it, but the thing is, you didn’t. Now you were in the middle of the woods, jumping from tree to tree having no clue where your next destination would be, following this stranger from afar. From the high you were, the windmill of the next villagers’ location greeted you from afar, the tile roof shining with its usual orange thanks to the sunlight falling over it.

A loud bellow was heard and shake you to the core.

Un bruto.

You bit your nails nervously, those… things were extremely durable and almost impossible to kill with the common axe and knife, the stranger does have something to defend himself but being surrounded and outnumbered by practically impossible to kill creatures could mean his end. You climbed down from the tree and crawled towards the windmill. They were at least three to four bodies in the ground, one of them being extremely recognizable due to the bull head in the top of their anatomy.

He killed them all, without mercy or hesitation.

He also works fast, like a worker ant.

Once again, he used the farm animals to his convenience, and now that they’re dead you used one kitchen knife to extract some meat from them. Due to the fact there weren’t any wild animals in the territory of Los Iluminados, you bathed the meat in salt left in the houses and hanged it to a line and a fish rod, letting the sun and the salt dry the meat. Using a stick and a scrap of fabric, you could shoo the flies away while you walk.

The portcullis was open and the moment you stood in front of it, the feeling of unease washed you over. You had never ventured this far, your place was secure and comfortable, you became to know the periphery of the zone as the back of your hand. If you go on in this journey to follow the stranger, you would be putting yourself in an unnecessary risk.

If he died, you will be alone in an unknown area of the invaded Valdelobos, one where you could find deadly obstacles with no one to help you this time. Is it truly what you really want? Risk your life like this, after your neighbors and friends gave their lives away so you could continue to go on? Overwhelmed by the sudden decision, your breath quickened becoming a rapid pant. Closing your eyes you let your body decide.

You leaned forward without being conscious about it, opening your eyes you found yourself one meter outside the gate.

It’s a choice, then.