Aftermath - History Thread [Reiner]

[Rune]

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Ash 123

In the aftermath of the closing of the Rift, of being Chosen by his Goddess, high on alcohol and adrenaline and power Captain Kämpfer had made a decision that was, perhaps, in hindsight, a poor one. He had commanded the only other person who knew of it to forget, but he had had no knowledge as to whether such a command would actually have the desired effect. Kuno had no idea how to correctly use the power he'd been granted, what it could do, or the extent to which he could manipulate someone.

Because of this, once the deed was done and the two men involved were curled up on one of the makeshift beds that had been abandoned in the office by themselves and the others in their squad months before, the Captain did not fall immediately into a deep slumber as his victim had. Instead he had spent the majority of what remained of the hours of darkness with his lips pressed close to Reiner's ear whispering,

"It was your fault, your idea, you made me do it." In variations, on repeat. "Your fault. Your fault."

Your Fault

This command might have been seen as a contradiction of the first but he knew from personal experience that a person could forget the details of an event while still realizing that something had happened and feel guilt over it.

Eventually the high emotion, activity and inebriation of the day overtook him and he did doze for a few hours as the sky lightened over the recently liberated city-state. When the man in his arms stirred, however, he did also. No realistic commander would be expecting the soldiers that had been released to celebrate the night before to be on duty early, but that didn't mean they would not be expected at all. As they disentangled and sat up, Kuno pretending not to remember exactly how they had gotten there, he waited, breath bated, to see how Reiner reacted.

[Reiner Dornkirk]

The first sensation Reiner would feel upon waking would be guilt. More than that, guilt had haunted confusing dreams all of which centered around Kuno. The memory of those dreams was far sharper than that of the reality he quit to enter their realm. Much of the prior day was a blank, but visions from his dreams remained stark... Following Kuno up an endless flight of stairs, kneeling before some exacting, regal incarnation of King Kuno Kämpfer on an ornate, if foreboding, silver throne choking Reiner on his taut leash until he licked his boots clean. The dreams went on and on down increasingly degrading serpentine paths. He might have felt relieved to wake from them, but something in the pit of his stomach told him he had no such right to relief. He could still taste the dirt and leather on his dry tongue, even in wakefulness.

He curled in on himself slightly, hugging his belly where those feelings churned. He felt warmth at his back and grumbled at the symptoms of his hard-earned hangover. He knew, without looking over his shoulder, that it was Kuno behind him and that it was his own fault that he was waking in this compromising position.

“What did I do…?” He rasped, reluctantly, squeezing his eyes shut. I, not we, he'd said for reasons that might be clearer to Kuno than they were to Reiner himself.

He’d thought cutting off his vision might quell his headache, but instead it just left his mind defenseless against the assault of memories born of those imperious dreams. He opened his eyes and just stared ahead, instead. It was still dark in the room, but the shadows didn’t take familiar forms as the blank canvas of sightlessness had.

[Rune]

The words could have meant anything about the night before, and, in other circumstances, Kuno would have thought it was a comment on the copious amount of alcohol that Dornkirk had poured down himself. But something about his tone, or his posture, (or was in the sound of a rattling chain that Kuno swore he could almost hear?) told the captain loud and clear that Reiner was referring to the very circumstance that had kept one of them up most of the night.

How to play this? He could be forgiving, let Dornkirk take the blame but brush it off as a non-issue. But he wouldn't. He could shame him, give him the cold shoulder for a few weeks. But he wouldn't do that either. The point was to draw him closer, tie him fast.

Making a sound as though waking Kuno pulled away, not a jerk but more quickly than was usually his wont. Clearing his throat he sat up, rubbed his eyes and groaned. The groan was unintentional. The movements had given him a clear and present understanding of his own hungover state. Due to this, he remained sitting but his posture pulled in on itself subtly.

"You uh... you started getting handsy with that girl. Nothing more than anyone else was doing but she kept saying no, trying to fob you off." His voice was roughed by alcohol and dehydration but he kept his tone neutral, vague, distant.

"You weren't listening, drunk you know, maybe you didn't realize... I thought she might report you if you kept at it though, so I pulled you in here, figured we could sleep it off and no one would be the wiser."

Kämpfer let this hang in the air for a long moment, much longer than one might pause before continuing a story normally. Letting hope settle in was important, it broke down the walls that might otherwise protect a man. At last, when it seemed as though Reiner was about to say something himself, Kuno cut him off,

"When we got back here you... Maybe you thought I was the girl but then you said... you said that if I didn't take care of it you'd go find her. I couldn't let one stupid night ruin you, we're mates, but you wouldn't let me go and you... Why did you do that?"

Emotion finally cracked into the final sentence; disbelief, betrayal, but still connection, as though maybe his friend could explain it in a way that made it less awful and they could be okay.

[Reiner Dornkirk]

Reiner sat up, criss-crossing his legs and drawing a pillow onto his lap and into his embrace. He started by looking at Kuno, but he mostly looked at the tangled blankets between them as he listened and tried to envision what was being described. He remembered spending a few dances with a girl name Luisa, but she seemed keen in his recollection and the more Kuno elaborated the more alien the account seemed to Reiner's reckoning. It sounded like a story about someone else. He closed his eyes and tried to envision what was being said, in hopes of retrieving some shred of memory, but none came to him. His face and neck went red and his heart pounded like mortar shells on concrete.

As if the mortification of unremembered events that verged on criminal wasn't devastating enough, then Kuno turned an accusatory question upon him as if to assert that Luisa had not been his only victim. He felt like he was going to be sick, but a few panicked breaths steadied his stomach enough that he didn't leap up.

"I... don't know what I did, Kuno, I honestly don't remember any of that..." But he knew it was his fault. In the midst of horror and hangover, even absent any evidence but for Kuno's accounting, he knew he was culpable. How could a night of unbridled celebration turn so sharply to a morning of crippling regret. He squeezed his eyes shut, wishing he could just fall back asleep... Even those nightmares were a better lot than this news of his unremembered misdeeds and, he inferred, assaults.

"Are you...are you all right? Did I... Did I harm you?" He rasped, reluctantly.

[Rune]

The responses were good, the newly minted Captain decided. Guilt, panic and nausea, but not pulling away from the one who bore the news so unwanted. Now he needed to reinforce the idea, that their connection was still in place. Also, to remove himself from the category of 'victim' before such an unsavory idea tried to stick to him.

Scooting over he threw his arm around his huddles comrade, handing over his own canteen of clean water.

"Well..." He left some hesitation in his voice to start, "It isn't like we haven't all done things in drink that we didn't regret. It's been a long time since there was plenty to go around."

Kuno had, in truth, kept them both fairly well supplies with libations in the year since the world had fallen apart but they hadn't had the luxury of indulging to the point of blind drunkenness. Not when they were at duty's beck and call and never sure there wasn't another disaster waiting on the morrow.

"Hangover is the worst of it, really." This he tried to make as jovial as a severely hungover man might be expected to sound. In truth, he was hardly the worse for the drink, as he hadn't imbibed nearly as much as his fellows, more interested in drinking in his new power than the alcohol. Yet, there was something off, something wrong-feeling, inside of him. Like he had woken up missing a limb that he hadn't ever had, yet still felt the lack of.

His grip on the heartstring-chains he had created inside Reiner eased but didn't release. Dornkirk would never be free of them, not so long as Kuno had the ability to hold on. He didn't want his friend crippled by the guilt, not now that it was firmly in place. What use was an incapable ally?

He scoffed, credibly, when Reiner asked if he was alright.

"A night full of drink and a rough tumble between soldiers can't do us any harm. These things happen. But," Here he turned enough that Reiner could see his face, whether the other man would meet his eyes or not, "Next time you're gripped by such a thing, you can just ask, yeah? No one has been there for me like you have, not in a long time. Whatever sorts of things you need, we'll figure them out together."

[Reiner Dornkirk]

With Kuno at his side, he had a good excuse not to look at him, which was more than welcome at the moment. He didn’t want to look at anyone or anything, burying his face instead in his hands and, in the dark he created, his mind brought no visions of his supposed wrongdoing. He could only remember the fun that preceded the blackout. The release and relish of that long overdue celebration.

At Kuno’s summary suggestion for future instances like these, Reiner did lift his head from his hands and look at the captain. With knitted brow and watery eyes, he shook his head.

“But I don’t remember ever being ‘gripped by such a thing’… I get excited, sure, everyone does, but never to the point of… what you describe. Maybe there’s… I don’t know, someone else in me who comes out when I go to far.” He bit his lip, contemplating. He was clearly working through his thoughts in real time and his thoughts were impeded by a pounding head compounded by panic over this news of his misdeeds.

“I think, maybe, I just shouldn’t drink booze anymore. If… if this is the road it takes me down, then it isn’t worth it.” Reiner tended to overindulge in alcohol when he drank it, but he didn’t have it every day. He was more of a binge drinker than a habitual one. It wasn’t something he felt like he needed to have fun or to socialize. He wasn’t the shy type who needed inebriation to break through his own walls. In fact, it sounded like he had walls in him that should very much be kept firm to keep something ravenous from getting loose.

[Rune]

Kuno made a humming sound at the suggestion that Reiner might drink less, not sure how he felt about it yet.

"We've seen a lot, since the 34th. Survived a lot. It can change a man, seeing the things we've all seen, in ways no one expects." His tone was more introspective than was normal as he considered the changes that he had undergone in just the last few days. There were things that needed doing, for himself, for Zaichaer and for his Goddess. If he was lucky, and clever he could do all of them together and a clever man made his own luck. Kuno was clever and beyond that, he was Blessed, his devotion recognized and rewarded.

"Come on," He levered himself up to standing and offered a dirty hand to lift Reiner after him, "Let's see to these heads of ours and afterwards, find out what sort of Zaichaer we're all going to raise from these ashes."

~~~
Some weeks later, a plan has formed. Now that the majority of the city had been cleared for returning citizens, fewer soldiers were required. There were always new things to be done; lots of men were being sent to begin clearing the towns nearest to the capitol, or to the Riverland Forts to begin clearing the land for Glade planting, or to the new Borderland Fort locations to help build them. Some were even being sent as scouts to far locations that had not reestablished contact with the capitol yet. Learning of this last group was what had provided Captain Kämpfer with the opening he needed to pursue his Goddess-given goals. Getting himself assigned hadn't been that difficult, he could pilot a small aircraft, which was uncommon for an officer of the ZDC, and he had already served Zaichaer in establishing contact with the essential Riverland Forts. Technically, he had been a glorified chaperon on that mission, but its success had still reflected glory on him. It did not take long to lay suggestions, verbally and with his newly granted power, into the right ears and minds, so that, soon enough, he was being assigned command of a small ship, with one Reiner Dornkirk assigned under him to serve, yet again, as ambassador.

The new uniforms that had been oh-so impressive when the pair had first been granted them, were now standard issue, having been distributed to most of the armed forces. Still, they were clean and modern and looked sharp as a blade with their new rank insignias on the breasts and shoulders. In addition to spare set of said uniforms each, they were granted enough food and supplies to last them and the two junior ZDC recruits assigned under them a month. Their orders were to fly over the mining settlements to the far south of Zaichaeri territory in search of any survivors who needed aid. Whether they were in need or not, they were to be convinced of the value or falling in line under the new government.