godfrey liu ; d13 fin

calla
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just a litle creacher

godfrey liu ; d13 fin Mar 25, 2020 0:49:14 GMT -5

Post by calla on Mar 25, 2020 0:49:14 GMT -5

[ GODFREY LIU ]
CODENAME: DOG
38 / D13
the lunar directive

all my grief says the same thing:
this isn't how it's supposed to be.
this isn't how it's supposed to be.
and the world laughs.
holds my hope by the throat.
says:
but this is how it is.

— fortesa latifi

Last Edit: Apr 20, 2020 1:14:05 GMT -5 by calla

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calla
RP Tutor

2,121 POSTS

Pronouns: she/they
last seen Apr 19, 2024 20:57:56 GMT -5

just a litle creacher

godfrey liu ; d13 fin Apr 20, 2020 0:40:14 GMT -5

Post by calla on Apr 20, 2020 0:40:14 GMT -5

don't you remember
the promise we made
as our shadows grew long
in the field where we lay

i.

there's a certain sound to the stone in thirteen, something that shatters against the cave walls and cuts through the metal scaffolding.

i used to think that it got louder the deeper you went, like it was the very heartbeat of the district. but it's just at the surface where it's the worst, blaring, grating, and hanging like an omen the air.

the agency's rooms must be up here on purpose, like some kind of sick initiation for the kids that came all the way from the upper districts. but it still sets my teeth on edge, makes my skin itch from the inside out, because i never thought that i'd be anywhere but the underground.

i had never understood when people said that home was a person, or that home was a feeling. it's like there's something in my blood that keeps me here, a physical tie to the foundations sitting under the soil.

there was always a place for me beneath the dirt. i never had to worry about finding my way.

sometime in my twenties i think i stopped looking for it. i don't think i tried hard enough.

maybe i just gave up.

because i remember holding the world in my palm, being stupid and using it to stoke a flame, and then being so surprised when i burnt myself. i remember being drunk on sunlight and trying to steady my hands against a heartbeat.

i remember a lot of things.

but all i can think about is how badly i need a smoke.

and i've gotten bad about cleaning out the ashtray now. there's a build up of cigarette butts, a dozen little arguments that seem so trivial now, all pent up and rotten under the ashes.

under my skin.

they gave us two rooms like they knew the distance was inevitable.

maybe if things were different.

maybe if we were different.

it's half past six on a tuesday morning and i leave the bed unmade.

ii.

i was ushered into a cadet program under my family's name.

it was always told to me like this: my mother was a top scouting commander and her father was a martyr - a trainee that had thrown himself onto an unstable ied and saved thirty-two lives. my own father was a rising field medic who fell in love with his commander and used his heart and his hands to keep her alive.

so i guess i knew that i was always going to be a legacy, in one way or another.

to be anything else was unthinkable.

but for a while, it didn't matter who i was.

i grew up in the dim barrack lighting, to the sound of guns being cleaned and soldiers shuffling their way through gravel. there was always a low noise in our rooms, a type of murmuring that was soothing.

because there was always something about the quiet that put my mother on edge, and i could never understand it. she always invited people over for dinner, had her troops and their families stay with us, and i can barely remember a time when the walls weren't echoing with voices. i came to realize that even the strictest soldiers got rowdy, and that their filters liked to come loose under the low ceilings.

on the busiest nights, i would sit by my mother's feet as she read through the evening reports and try to listen to them through the door.

i was alina liu's son, and they loved her like a sister, respected her like a leader. i rode on the shoulders of a man who had lost his eye to a stray piece of shrapnel and sang nursery rhymes with the daughter of a hydraulics engineer. i had never learnt how to be afraid of the dark because the shadowy corners of thirteen always seemed to have the best hiding places. my bedtime stories came from the squadron, and they taught me how to sleep soundly through nightmares, how to read a room and how to fire a weapon without flinching.

they taught me how to not embarrass my mother.

because the real training started eventually, and while the other cadets laughed in the mess hall and slacked off during morning runs, their eyes were still on me. the general's eyes were on me. because i was alina liu's son. and suddenly that meant everything.

suddenly i had to prove it.

i spent so long trying that i didn't see the sun until i was sixteen.

(and they called him dragon.)

iii.

choosing a partner over an objective was seen as a weakness.

is.

and it's a lesson we learnt almost too quickly.

it snuck up on us, like an ambush, and maybe that's what made it so hard. i was raised around soldiers, around the shaky hands and all the paranoia that plagued them. i knew that trying to surprise a soldier would do nothing but put a bullet through your skull.

but maybe i was selfish. or maybe i was just an idiot. i thought that if we tried hard enough, it could work.

we worked in tandem until we didn't. spent each sunrise together until we didn't. i held his face in my hands while he cut into my chest to take the heart there.

he started to take solo missions and left the doors unlocked, claimed that it was the higher ups that kept calling him away.

and it was believable. for a while.

i blew smoke into his face and took more dangerous assignments, tried to make him stay, tried to get a reaction, anything.

but nothing changed except for the seasons, the passage of time, and eventually i felt like a fool, counting the days until the spring would melt and he would be home.

iv.

my twenty-seventh summer sank a rattling into my father's lungs that took him out before any bullet ever could. i remember that my mother stayed by his side for the entire month he was bedridden, and by the time i'd gotten back from a retrieval outside of eight, he was gone.

i had always thought of my mother as a mountain - strong and unyielding and only softened by the gentle warmth of my father.

because i had never seen her break before, and that strength, that rigidness, that absolute ability to stand up for what she believed in, was always something i envied.

even when he died, i don't think she shed a tear in front of me.

but the pair of them had always worked that way, professional until they weren't, and i grew up on their makeshift love story, ebbing and changing and shifting, but always constant.

it was the only thing i knew.

until it wasn't.

v.

there was a child.

and then there wasn't.

that's it.

there's nothing else.

vi.

at some point it became more about the mission and less about the casualties. childhood was a memory and retirement seemed a sweet dream. or maybe everything in the committee shifted, methodical, and i just didn't notice. i had always been good at following orders, giving them wasn’t really that different.

but it felt like there were new recruits every day, fresh faced and eager and so fucking young. they laughed too much and focused too little, too caught up in their own budding lives to realize they were cutting them short. no matter how hard i pushed them, no matter how many times they ran the same gauntlets, the numbers would dwindle and the reports would stack up.

i had wondered, distantly, while signing condolences, if my mother ever felt like this.

~~vii.~~

visiting her is still more of a habit than anything.

her nose turns up at the nicotine still clinging to my fingers, the result of the long trip and a familiar absence. she eyes the hair i didn't have time to cut in the field and the scruff i didn't bother shaving. it's sudden, and it reminds me of how she had sat me down and taken a paring knife to my head when i was young, when i had disappeared into the caves and the woods and the districts and immersed myself in the thing i thought i was born into, when i had finally focused on the work and let my hair reach past my shoulder blades.

but she's still my mother and i'm still her son, and there are matching sets of shadows under our eyes. she takes my hands in an iron grip and when i kneel at her feet i feel like a child again.

"godfrey," she says, still tender in her stoniness, "xiǎoguāng." and she looks over my head at the photographs on the wall, runs a calloused hand along my bruised jaw, "so grown up."

and i play the game, waiting for her attention to swivel back as she reminisces, watching her face framed with silver and lined with stories. the sharpness of her eyes seems to grow duller with each visit and it sends something electric though my chest. she starts suddenly then, like she knew what i was thinking, squints down at me with a renewed energy and snaps, "you're old now, godfrey, and you still-" she huffs and splutters and i stay quiet as she searches for the right word- "you still galavant. i want grandchildren to spoil before i die, you know."

and if she feels my recoil, she doesn't say anything.

i clear my throat and speak to her gently, hold her hands even gentler. because after everything, i think it's all i can give her, "it's not galavanting, mama, it's my job."

her old age has made her no less hypocritical and no more subtle. she takes my tone as a challenge and flashes the steel in her eyes, "then retire," she says easily, with a parental kind of vigour, "tell them you're done, settle down with that boy of yours, raise a family." there's a finality to the way she looks at me, "you still have time."

except she was a soldier, top class, and she had my father to lean on when there was blood under her nails and doubts in her head. they were there for each other - the great mountain range and the sun that shone on its peaks.

until they weren't.

i think of a little house on the edge of the woods, of the pattering of tiny feet and the slants of sunlight seeping through blinds. i think of smoke and gunpowder and eight days of waiting, being plagued with the fear of being left alone somewhere, in the dark unknown with only the steady hum of silence for company.

"i can't leave them." i tell her.

i can't leave him. i don't say, and try not to hate myself for it.

bruno major — fair-weather friend

Last Edit: Apr 20, 2020 1:01:37 GMT -5 by calla

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calla RP Tutor 2,121 POSTS Pronouns: she/they last seen Apr 19, 2024 20:57:56 GMT -5 just a litle creacher	godfrey liu ; d13 fin Apr 20, 2020 1:14:51 GMT -5 Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by calla on Apr 20, 2020 1:14:51 GMT -5 here come dat boi shrimp
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shrimp Retired Staff 1,953 POSTS Pronouns: he/his last seen Oct 19, 2020 18:16:41 GMT -5	godfrey liu ; d13 fin May 17, 2020 19:42:35 GMT -5 Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by shrimp on May 17, 2020 19:42:35 GMT -5 ow </3 accepted!