Names

Sid was awake now, the damaged body on the verge of death just hours ago now fully recovered without any mark of injury. It would have been unknowable to anyone that Sid had been in the midst of such a ferocious battle were it not for the battle-torn garb, semi-salvaged and hanging loosely by the reconstructed limb now working away. Her hair was tied back as it was before, a strand of sweat dripping steadily as she worked in haste to adjust her damaged weapons.

Finally satisfied with the edge, Sid took the frayed cloth from her mouth and wiped away the debris from the edge of the weapon before wrapping the knobbed whetstone in it and placing it back into the leather satchel resting by her foot. Dan swung away once Sid's attention was displaced, but his movement was too slow, too clumsy.

"What are you looking at?" said Sid, looking up from the machete, her eyebrows twisted with irritation.

Dan continued to work falsely on his rifle, checking the angle of the barrel and some complex array of imaginary features by the hammer. "I just... can't believe you're alright..." He smiled timidly while scratching his face away from Sid. The latter watched the man's tiresome display, hand cupped to the side of the face, before glancing down at the newly-formed hand and clenching it twice.

"Yeah," muttered Sid.

"That said, I was wondering what I should call you from now on..." Dan laughed awkwardly with his hands clasped in a circular motion, finally turning in Sid's direction.

"Haah...?"

"I mean, now that we know... and you don't have to hide..." Dan was pointing his fingers this way and that way in such a manner that it almost looked as if he was doing a little dance.

He stopped as soon as his vision went, now replaced by a steel claw rapidly tightening around his skull. "Uh... uhhhh... uh! Sid! SID!! You... you're hurting me...!"

Despite being over double his captor's size, the sound of Sid's voice next to his ear arrested any sense he had to resist a second before. "You always call me the same thing you've always had. Boss."

"Y-yes, boss!"

Sid sighed while her hand allowed Dan to tumble to the ground where he rubbed his temples in short, pained breaths.

"As for the rest of you, I can see where the confusion may lie." She was silent for a moment as she scratched her head, the other hand tapping melodically on her blade hilt. "My full name is Sidney Arnacht. You may address me as such."

"Daniel Turner," said the large man on the ground, still very much in pain.

With that, the pair of two looked over the room at the rest of their hastily placed allies.

To the farthest corner of the room, one was eager to get things over with. "Kenton Birna."

No further elaboration. None necessary. Next.

"Old man?"

The eldest of the bunch looked up from the diagram he was drawing in the dirt to the kid. To his left, Fen was eating some sort of dried grain from his leathery hand. "Ah... I'm Lucius," he said as he stood up from the picture and walked over.

His posture was relaxed, yet strangely, Sidney saw few openings in his lazy stance.

"And...?" asked Sid.

"I'm sorry?"

"And your last name?"

Kenton looked up from the side to capture the moment. He supposed it never came up before, but even he didn't know Lucius' last name, much less anything about him. As far as he could remember, just recently, when it was all about surviving, the man was just good at what he did, and that was good enough for him.

"I don't use it," said Lucius in a spry, dismissing laugh, "it brings up some rather bad memories for me."

His makeshift mirth was followed by a bellowing silence. Sid's expression did not change, and both Daniel and Kenton were following suit with their pressing gazes at the elderly man.

"It's just manners," said Sid, meeting the Old man's eyes, which had grown serious, "and it's just a name. Out with it."

Lucius remained silent.

"If you want us to work together, you'll have to give us something here. Don't get all caught up on something so small as a label," said Dan.

The old man looked at the rusty set of ODM gear lying to the side, fuelless, then out above into the blackening sky. The first stars were peeking out from the darkest edge, and the tip of his nose could almost feel the cooling wind of night.

"It was a long time ago, but I once went by the name of 'Grice.' But..." he gave a strange smile, half-curled and long, "anyone who would know me by that name is now gone."

Sidney stood there for a moment. Dan wanted to say something but it didn't reach his throat.

"There are a few now," Sidney said, clasping her hand on Lucius' arm. Her face was stuck in a tight frown, but not one devoid of empathy. Despite the apparent age difference between the two, her face was still worn with traces of knowing.

"Haha, I suppose there are."

"And you, kid?" Her voice was friendly, but firm.

"Boro." He pointed at himself. "Fen." He pointed at the dog.

"Kid... did you not pay attention during the whole thing with Grice over here? The whole thing, c'mon."

Boro nodded, but couldn't meet her demanding position.

"Alright, look here..." she said, walking up to the child.

A sound interrupted her movement. When she looked back, Kenton was covering his face with his dark hat, but the stifled sound was undoubtedly that of laughter.

"Something funny?" she said, tilting her head.

"No, no... go on," he said with a small wave of his hand.

She stepped back. "What's going on here?" she asked Lucius.

The old man looked away in dismay. With a crawling speed resembling something akin to fear, he looked forward, not at Sidney, but at the young boy who was looking back and forth from the dog by his hands to the map on the floor. There was something there, something he had long forgotten about, though he had not decided whether he should bring it out or let it remain buried.

"He doesn't have one. A last name. We don't know it." The thing was emerging on its own. It was cold steel, dripping, the sense of warmth cooling.

"What?"

Kenton snickered, swinging his arms towards them as if in a performance, "That's right. Tell them the whole thing."

Lucius' eyes dashed to him wildly but they could not stop the man's mouth. The metal thoughts churned in the old man's mind as Kenton worked the unburial.

"Tell the kid how I stabbed to death his poor mother— but only after you smashed the dad's head in right in front of her. You won over their trust and got into their house, pretending to be an injured, harmless old man. Then after eating a nice, warm meal with the parents and their brat over there, you unlatched the door for me and we set out to work. To do what we did best."

As he finished, Lucius' fist, which bore more strength than any man his age could be expected to have, crushed into Kenton's jaw, resulting in a dull crash against the heavy wood reinforcement. Even the old man's face didn't seem like it had realized what he was doing, but the rest of his body was uncontrolled, his legs tying Kent in place as his fists fell over and over in a frantic rhythm, attempting to mix flesh and bone with wet dirt.

"He'll die," said Sidney. Only when he felt the icy and freshly-sharpened edge of a machete against his neck did Lucius gather enough sense to cease his violence, though his crystal gray eyes were still caught in a hazy lifeless trance.

His attention was brought back by the clean sensation of skin parting ways and flesh breaking. Kent had forced him off him with a sudden blow, Lucius' neck grazing the blade in the process. Sidney stepped back, readying her stance again, but Kent had more than a chance to speak.

"WHAT! We were just doing what we had to! What everyone had to do! You think these two don't know that? You think that kid over there doesn't know that? Whose fault is it that those idiots didn't get that?" he spoke through bleeding breaths, "It's the way of life. It's survival. And at the end of the day what you trust isn't much more than yourself. Sometimes less."

His words danced around Lucius, who was moving closer once more, one hand pressed on his wound while the other was readying another blow. "What's more important to you, Kenton? Your way of life, or your life itself?"

The man didn't answer. Instead, he turned to the child, who looked at him with empty eyes. "You were only a few years old. I'm not even sure if you remember. No matter what I did to her... she was annoyingly hard to kill, I remember... she just kept calling for you: 'Boro... Boro...' until I made her stop." He grinned crimson. "So that's that... you gonna kill me?"

"I... " Boro's eyes were almost bulging out of his head. His grip on Fen, who was whining in front of him, was tight, almost hurting the creature.

"It's not your time yet." as Boro's eyes softened with that statement, it was almost as if the words left his mouth of their own volition.

"What...?" whispered the beaten man.

Before anyone else could respond to this, their bodies were seized by instinct. A voice at the door. No, two.

"Vanessa...! Vanessa!" said the voice of a young man in a poor whisper.

In front of that poorly concealed voice, a woman was standing by the entrance: hair short, knife-cropped, her clothes were floppy and ill-fitting, but her stance was strong. She was knocking on the door in a ridiculing rhythm, and though her other hand was concealed, Sidney caught a glimpse. Some sort of metal hook.

"Oh dear, I hope I'm not interrupting anything?"