MGS: Tooryanse, Tooryanse
Aug. 4th, 2010 11:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
what_we_dreamTitle: Tooryanse, Tooryanse
Series: MGS
Pairing: None
Rating: PG
Summary: A very stylised look at Sunny's rescue from the Patriots.
Let me pass, let me pass,
What is this narrow pathway here?
They had none of them ever done anything the easy way. Most people wanting a child simply found a willing partner; some out of charity or barrenness took on orphans. They were soldiers and killers and schemers and dreamers, and the only worthwhile things they had ever found, they had gained by fighting for. They claimed a child they had never seen as their own, and they made her theirs by planning and working and striving, without ever laying eyes on her.
It’s the narrow pathway of the heavenly god’s shrine
For the first three years, all they knew about her covered two pieces of paper. The first – printed in blue ink on rough-sided continuous-feed paper, a remnant of the old dot-matrix days of printing – was a simple hospital record.
Name: [undecided; deadline 05-30-2008]
File number: RIGH-2008-001203
Birth date: 05-16-2008
Sex: F
Weight at birth: 8.42lbs
Length at birth: 22.6”
Blood Type: B+
Hair: Bl
Eyes: Bl
Mother: Grimbsy, Anna
Father: ungiven
Doctor: Dr. James Evans
Attending Nurse: Samantha Jones-Terrace
Billing information: …
The second had once been slick and shiny, but grease from fingertips and constant wear had dulled it; a printed photo of Olga Gurlukovich.
Please allow me to pass
The first clue in three years came entirely by accident, the first clue they had that she had not been killed, had not been purged years ago when a bullet and a blood smear on mist-coloured scales had rendered her at least temporarily useless as a hostage. One of the monitored Patriot-affiliated directories had popped up a reminder of her status on May 30th, a simple passing note that OG002 was now a three-year old asset. Wheels which had been slowing picked up again, fading fervour burning phosphorous-bright as three men and three women who were no kind of family at all to each other threw themselves into their task with the bed-rock determination that had fuelled four separate unfaltering ventures to protect peace by dousing flames with their own blood if necessary.
They found nothing for another two whole years.
Those without good reason shall not pass
This time it was not a lucky strike, not a chance hook dropped in the right pool at the right moment. It was a coordinated attack, combining physical and technological infiltration, and they burnt an entire covert facility to the ground to take down enough servers to have a chance of hacking in to a satellite network. They stormed two castles simultaneously, slashing and burning as they went, until they found what they had come for. A single file, locked away behind six firewalls and under three false names which still crashed two computers before they quarantined it.
Inside was what amounted to one printed sheet of paper.
Name: OG002, codenamed Anna
Age: 731 days [5.000 years]
Blood: B+
Height: 3.12”
Weight: 40.67lbs
Hair: Bl
Eyes: Bl
Attributes: mole on right wrist; birthmark on right shoulder
Notes: known allergies: none.
Even more coveted than the new information, drunk up by thirsty eyes like rain in the desert, was the single unfocused picture: a small girl in a white smock. Her blond hair was cut short, and she sat with her back curled and head tilted to stare back towards the camera like a cat on a post in the bizarre posture of a child raised apart from others. It plucked a chord all of them had wrapped tight around their hearts. To men and women used to working and fighting and giving everything for an ideal they were in many cases assigned, as an ideal they had chosen, she could not have been more precious to them than she was already. But she became much more real.
To celebrate this child’s seventh birthday,
I have come to dedicate my offering
They lived on that picture, like leeches drew all the emotional sustenance they could, for another two years while they fought with computers and guns and swords and blood to keep the world from tearing itself apart. Fought, and waited for the chance to take what was beyond all question theirs.
Going is fine, fine,
But returning is fearful
They would have bought or bartered or bullied, laid down bills spirited from bank safes or stolen stocks or siphoned accounts, but if there was one rule the Patriots held to it was that nothing which could be held in the palm could even out the weight of a heart on one side of the scales. They would place a ransom on any possession which might buy them a dearer one, but the only price they ever put on safety was a pledge of goodwill. When it came down to it, a life for a life.
It’s fearful, but let me pass
That wasn’t a concern; they had their own on hand.
Let me pass, let me pass,
Here is the underworld’s narrow path
They finally came for her seven years after she was taken, lives ready in their mouths, in their hands, in the dull metal in their holsters and sheathes. Beat into the underground complex like a summer storm, all rains of bullets and flashes of lightning and fire in the front and the eye’s fierce midnight calm in the back.
It’s the narrow pathway of the demon god’s shrine
They had expected guards, they had expected soldiers, they had expected men. They found their own kind of monsters and worse: hot metal forged around silver blood, living steel swallowing dead flesh, eyes which flashed from snake cold to wolverine hot with no warning.
Please allow me to pass
They cut them down with swords and bullets and knives and limbs, with whatever weapons they had on hand and whatever weapons they could take from the cooling corpses lining the corridors, and below it all relied on simple tooth and claw and heart.
Those without sacrifice shall not pass
They paid in blood, they paid in pain, they paid in the weight of lives taken. In the front, the soldiers staggered forward sunset-red, in the back the scientists stumbled onward heavy-shouldered.
To bury this child at age seven
I’ve come to offer my service
They came to find a child that didn’t exist: their child. They left behind what the Patriots thought of a child; an empty white room with features that could be measured and facets which could be recorded to represent it fully. They left OG002 buried in that complex, and took up on their backs, in their arms, on their shoulders, a child who had never been outside. A child who didn’t know the colour of the sky or the smell of grass or the taste of snow in the air.
Living is fine, fine,
But returning is fearful
She cowered, and cried, and bit and scratched. She twisted in their arms and kicked at their backs and struck at their necks. The soldiers told her not to be afraid, she wasn’t leaving her old life, she was starting a new one. The scientists told her to be strong, she was safe and loved.
They tried their best to hide her eyes from the red halls, to keep her nose from the thick coppery scent taken in exchange for seven years of separation and one instant of resistance.
It’s fearful, but
Let me pass, let me pass
They brought her out past the gates into the cool May night, the child who was not the Patriots’ nameless pet, or their own cherished daughter. The child who did not until that moment exist, born on her own seventh birthday. The child who they had strived for for so long she was much closer to an ideal than an individual, something to be fought for, something to die for. The child they would use to break themselves of reliance on a belief. The child that they hoped would find their humanity, and teach them to use it.
Series: MGS
Pairing: None
Rating: PG
Summary: A very stylised look at Sunny's rescue from the Patriots.
Let me pass, let me pass,
What is this narrow pathway here?
They had none of them ever done anything the easy way. Most people wanting a child simply found a willing partner; some out of charity or barrenness took on orphans. They were soldiers and killers and schemers and dreamers, and the only worthwhile things they had ever found, they had gained by fighting for. They claimed a child they had never seen as their own, and they made her theirs by planning and working and striving, without ever laying eyes on her.
It’s the narrow pathway of the heavenly god’s shrine
For the first three years, all they knew about her covered two pieces of paper. The first – printed in blue ink on rough-sided continuous-feed paper, a remnant of the old dot-matrix days of printing – was a simple hospital record.
Name: [undecided; deadline 05-30-2008]
File number: RIGH-2008-001203
Birth date: 05-16-2008
Sex: F
Weight at birth: 8.42lbs
Length at birth: 22.6”
Blood Type: B+
Hair: Bl
Eyes: Bl
Mother: Grimbsy, Anna
Father: ungiven
Doctor: Dr. James Evans
Attending Nurse: Samantha Jones-Terrace
Billing information: …
The second had once been slick and shiny, but grease from fingertips and constant wear had dulled it; a printed photo of Olga Gurlukovich.
Please allow me to pass
The first clue in three years came entirely by accident, the first clue they had that she had not been killed, had not been purged years ago when a bullet and a blood smear on mist-coloured scales had rendered her at least temporarily useless as a hostage. One of the monitored Patriot-affiliated directories had popped up a reminder of her status on May 30th, a simple passing note that OG002 was now a three-year old asset. Wheels which had been slowing picked up again, fading fervour burning phosphorous-bright as three men and three women who were no kind of family at all to each other threw themselves into their task with the bed-rock determination that had fuelled four separate unfaltering ventures to protect peace by dousing flames with their own blood if necessary.
They found nothing for another two whole years.
Those without good reason shall not pass
This time it was not a lucky strike, not a chance hook dropped in the right pool at the right moment. It was a coordinated attack, combining physical and technological infiltration, and they burnt an entire covert facility to the ground to take down enough servers to have a chance of hacking in to a satellite network. They stormed two castles simultaneously, slashing and burning as they went, until they found what they had come for. A single file, locked away behind six firewalls and under three false names which still crashed two computers before they quarantined it.
Inside was what amounted to one printed sheet of paper.
Name: OG002, codenamed Anna
Age: 731 days [5.000 years]
Blood: B+
Height: 3.12”
Weight: 40.67lbs
Hair: Bl
Eyes: Bl
Attributes: mole on right wrist; birthmark on right shoulder
Notes: known allergies: none.
Even more coveted than the new information, drunk up by thirsty eyes like rain in the desert, was the single unfocused picture: a small girl in a white smock. Her blond hair was cut short, and she sat with her back curled and head tilted to stare back towards the camera like a cat on a post in the bizarre posture of a child raised apart from others. It plucked a chord all of them had wrapped tight around their hearts. To men and women used to working and fighting and giving everything for an ideal they were in many cases assigned, as an ideal they had chosen, she could not have been more precious to them than she was already. But she became much more real.
To celebrate this child’s seventh birthday,
I have come to dedicate my offering
They lived on that picture, like leeches drew all the emotional sustenance they could, for another two years while they fought with computers and guns and swords and blood to keep the world from tearing itself apart. Fought, and waited for the chance to take what was beyond all question theirs.
Going is fine, fine,
But returning is fearful
They would have bought or bartered or bullied, laid down bills spirited from bank safes or stolen stocks or siphoned accounts, but if there was one rule the Patriots held to it was that nothing which could be held in the palm could even out the weight of a heart on one side of the scales. They would place a ransom on any possession which might buy them a dearer one, but the only price they ever put on safety was a pledge of goodwill. When it came down to it, a life for a life.
It’s fearful, but let me pass
That wasn’t a concern; they had their own on hand.
Let me pass, let me pass,
Here is the underworld’s narrow path
They finally came for her seven years after she was taken, lives ready in their mouths, in their hands, in the dull metal in their holsters and sheathes. Beat into the underground complex like a summer storm, all rains of bullets and flashes of lightning and fire in the front and the eye’s fierce midnight calm in the back.
It’s the narrow pathway of the demon god’s shrine
They had expected guards, they had expected soldiers, they had expected men. They found their own kind of monsters and worse: hot metal forged around silver blood, living steel swallowing dead flesh, eyes which flashed from snake cold to wolverine hot with no warning.
Please allow me to pass
They cut them down with swords and bullets and knives and limbs, with whatever weapons they had on hand and whatever weapons they could take from the cooling corpses lining the corridors, and below it all relied on simple tooth and claw and heart.
Those without sacrifice shall not pass
They paid in blood, they paid in pain, they paid in the weight of lives taken. In the front, the soldiers staggered forward sunset-red, in the back the scientists stumbled onward heavy-shouldered.
To bury this child at age seven
I’ve come to offer my service
They came to find a child that didn’t exist: their child. They left behind what the Patriots thought of a child; an empty white room with features that could be measured and facets which could be recorded to represent it fully. They left OG002 buried in that complex, and took up on their backs, in their arms, on their shoulders, a child who had never been outside. A child who didn’t know the colour of the sky or the smell of grass or the taste of snow in the air.
Living is fine, fine,
But returning is fearful
She cowered, and cried, and bit and scratched. She twisted in their arms and kicked at their backs and struck at their necks. The soldiers told her not to be afraid, she wasn’t leaving her old life, she was starting a new one. The scientists told her to be strong, she was safe and loved.
They tried their best to hide her eyes from the red halls, to keep her nose from the thick coppery scent taken in exchange for seven years of separation and one instant of resistance.
It’s fearful, but
Let me pass, let me pass
They brought her out past the gates into the cool May night, the child who was not the Patriots’ nameless pet, or their own cherished daughter. The child who did not until that moment exist, born on her own seventh birthday. The child who they had strived for for so long she was much closer to an ideal than an individual, something to be fought for, something to die for. The child they would use to break themselves of reliance on a belief. The child that they hoped would find their humanity, and teach them to use it.
