by Greg Ramsay
"Spirit, you've returned...with a stray."
"Fighter Friend." She replied, pointing to Bruce before she silently assumed an invisible slave pose.
Silently the woman ushered them inside, barring her door behind them.
Bruce glanced at Spirit curiously. “Why did you bring me here?” He asked her gently.
Spirit simply smiled before stepping away and sitting on the floor. “Safe.” She stated.
“You’ll have to forgive Spirit, she rarely speaks.” The woman said.
“Why?” Bruce asked Spirit directly. Sadly, she looked away.
“Enough about that. All you need to know is you're alive now because she pushed herself to tell me what you did for her.” The woman warned.
“Being alive isn’t something I’m keen on now, so you can drop the badass shit.” Bruce retorted. Almost instantly, an old worn pistol was shoved into his face.
“You sure about that?” She mocked angrily, watching his hard eyes turn sad.
“Didn’t think so. The fuck’s your problem boy?” The woman’s slight Russian accent was accentuated slightly by her irritation. Staring her down blankly, Bruce didn’t bother to reply.
“The gun isn’t going anywhere, so you can tell me what your deal is, or I can shoot you. The sound from the gun is sure to attract the other psychos on this shithole, who would love to attack everyone here...” She threatened coldly.
Using his anger to break the boulder in his throat, he finally spoke. “Fuck you, commie. I’ve lost my parents, been beaten and raped just days ago and now you think I care if you shoot me? Why, cuz the world’s so fucking worth living in?! I’ll just let you know I’m son of The Prime Minister that caused all this, so go ahead and just get it over with!” Bruce raged.
Why did I bother over some girl... He questioned darkly. His enraged expression gives way to sadness he’d done his best to suppress.
“Good choice. Consider yourself adopted. You can call me Captain or Reva, don’t bother telling me your name. I don’t give a fuck.” Reva stated coldly before stowing her gun. “Welcome to the family. Start by getting us water.” She demanded, tossing him a makeshift bucket.
“First my name is Bruce, Bruce Knight, and why would I go get you water? Get your own!” Bruce whined angrily.
Suddenly Reva was in his face, brutally knocking him to his back with a sweeping attack before slamming her fist into his gut and pinning him. Shaking in fear due to her femininity being anywhere near him, let alone her sudden forcefulness, Bruce froze.
Reading his expression she drew back carefully, “Attitude won’t get you anywhere here, respect will. If you get the idea Go. Get. The. Water.” After Bruce left she sighed, “One needs to learn to speak and the other could use a sock in the mouth.” She whispered, annoyed.
Spirit smiled awkwardly. “Thanks.” Spirit said quietly as if confirming she could speak in retort.
Reva gave her an irritated parental look in response “He any good as a hunter?” Spirit shook her head no.
“You called him fighter but you didn’t know shit when you got here, so I’m guessing you just meant his edgy attitude?” A thinking expression on Spirit's face gave way to a resigned nod followed with a sheepish attitude.
“Great.” Reva huffed, watching Bruce set up another water boiling setup near the house.
“At least he isn’t entirely useless.”
Later on when Bruce delivered the water irritably Reva and Spirit took a drink before Reva bluntly dumped it on the floor.
“Do it again!” Reva demanded. Angrily, Bruce gets a serious look from Spirit so he repeats the long process. Having repeated the process to the point of utter madness Reva finally lets him drink.
“A whole day of that, what the fuck?” Bruce whined, receiving a backhanded strike to the head in response.
Besides a serviceable amount of shelter, water and gathered food, Bruce was subjected to days of patience building exercises till he was about ready to run away. Any attitude ended with increasingly aggressive discipline until he started to get the point. One morning, he stood before the pair having wordlessly prepared water repeatedly without complaint.
“Good, gather wood.” Reva demanded, handing him a well-blunted knife.
For the rest of the day that’s exactly what he did while Spirit once more tried to teach Reva to make and shoot a bow like she’d been doing for days. In return, Reva somewhat bullied her to speak up constantly. Suppressing his irritation like he used to do when judged in the Holdfast, he delivered a last armful of wood. Silently he watched Spirit working with a black-looking wood from a mutated tree, deftly preparing it to become a new bow like the makeshift looking bow at her side. Growling frustrated, Reva gave up once more, heading towards him instead.
“Giving up?” Bruce asked, careful to sound pleasant and not at all like he was calling her out.
Chuckling sarcastically, Reva eyed him challengingly. “Still got some fight in ya? Perfect. Why don’t you show me what you can do?”
Mind immediately awash with unintended anger, anxiety and fear, Bruce could feel his muscles tightening.
“Come on, if I wanted to do anything you’d be screwed already. Why not learn how to ensure things like that never happen again?” Reva said pointedly.
Looking at her confusedly, Bruce takes a step back.
“Fight me, boy, or I’ll have Spirit lay on you naked All Night.”
Juggling with a sudden sense that he’d normally want that, self-hate that he didn’t know, and the usual fears that left him sleeping in trees at night, Bruce opted to take a desperate swing. As before, he was simply disposed of like garbage. His back screamed in pain. Way worse without the armour. Bruce noted once more, wishing he hadn’t abandoned it at his original camp.
“Get up. Again!” Reva demanded, pulling him up violently when he didn’t rise again.
Weeks of fighting, water gathering and wood gathering later he was finally able to stay on his feet for a couple of minutes. Driven solely by his impulsive anger, egged on occasionally so he could learn to use it and suppress it. Months later, Bruce’s face no longer looked painted in dirt that only highlighted his confusion and pain at the increasing intensity of Reva’s vaguely explained ‘lessons’. One afternoon after Reva succeeded in achieving her first kill with a bow, she celebrated by challenging Bruce once more.
“You ready, boy?” She questioned cockily with a self-satisfied smile.
“Same deal as always?” He asked.
“Sure...not that it’ll matter for you.” She mocked, highlighting the dull knife in her belt that served as their victory condition.
Immediately Bruce closed the gap, reading her patterns, parrying, or dodging her blows and achieving one or two himself. Every attempt to seize the knife earned him more bruises like always. Trying to read and adapt to her maneuvers helped only slightly. Eventually he dodged a familiar right strike, landing a hard strike to the gut that put her back a few steps. Bruce closed the gap, seized her counter attack in his left arm, pulling on her slightly as he stuck his leg behind hers.
In that same series of movements, he pulled his leg back to destabilize her footing, while pushing her backwards with her shoulder, making sure to keep her arm from using him for balance. As he guided her down hard like she always did to him, he shot his free arm inside her center, barely seizing the knife from her belt before yanking it up. Reva’s free fist froze right before his face when she felt the cold metal on her neck. Smiling gleefully Bruce held her fast.
“Good...Bruce Knight, now let me up.”
Laughing Bruce held her down, “Pardon?” He asked cutely.
“Don’t push it boy.” Reva seethed. Bruce let her up, returning her knife with a smile.
“You might be Alpha group Spetsnaz material... if I had twenty years left to live. Which graciously assumes you’d survive. Although first we’ll have to start by getting you strong enough to beat my dead grandmother. So wipe that ugly grin off your face” Rev
a joked with a dead serious intimidating expression that made him falter slightly.
Keeping his face serious he nodded respectfully. She’s impressed. He thought to himself smugly, keeping his pride to himself. Spirit smiled in his stead, which he caught a brief glimpse of. After preparing more food and water for the evening, he finally felt confident enough to sleep in the house with them for the first time.
His homemade shelter nearby was left abandoned as-is. Through all that time practically living together neither of his new friends minded his lineage or his recent traumas; both remained respectfully distant except when training. I wish I knew how to apologize for my doubts about them thus far. Bruce mused before he finally fell asleep. The next day the family awoke to enact their daily survival rituals.
Reva and Bruce training in between him doing various chores while Spirit hunted.
“I get you won’t tell me anything about Spirit cuz she has to do it herself, but why did you take her in, let alone me?” Bruce enquired, receiving a harsh blow due to distraction.
“What gave you the impression I’d start answering your questions now when I haven’t in all the time you’ve known me?” Reva replied, annoyed.
“Why not? I am becoming your greatest student after all... that’s gotta earn me something.” Bruce retorted playfully.
Aggravated, Reva ended up being a lot harder on him than she meant to. Reeling from the force of her sudden emotion-based onslaught, Bruce improvised just enough to land a couple solid hits to her head. Staggering Reva collected herself.
“It doesn’t matter!” She yelled in response before brutally attacking him once more.
Badly injured and confused Bruce limped away angrily, leaving her to storm back to her house. A stunned Spirit who had just returned from a less-than-successful hunt watched as Bruce limped off into the forest. Quickly she gave chase, eager to ensure he wasn’t ambushed again. Ignoring her entirely, Bruce returned to his original camp. Immediately, he can tell it had been torn apart.
Human feces have been left on the ground, his entire shelter and all associated implements have been burned to ash. Seething with rage Bruce rushed to his hiding place, finding his armour still in place. A quick inspection showed it had only been disturbed by a group of 3-eyed horned mouse-like creatures, who had left a dead one behind before leaving. Disgusted Bruce shakes the corpse out of his armour, retrieving it and the remains of his sword to clean. Afterward, he brought it all back with him to Reva’s camp. Spirit gave him a questioning glance.
“Just in case we need it.” He replied.
In case that bitch goes psycho again & I have to kill her. He thought to himself, filled with arrogant spite. Upon their return, Bruce found Reva sitting cross-legged alone in the middle of their clearing, seemingly lost in contemplation.
“Come. Sit.” Reva demanded, staring directly at Bruce.
Stowing his equipment inside the house, Bruce did as she bid begrudgingly, along with Spirit.
“In short, I adopted Spirit to atone for trading my sister to remain longer in my own Holdfast when the Corpse-like Men started demanding people. I’d become something of a drunk bully who had little interest in giving that up to spend my days jerking off rotting men. When my Holdfast brethren voted me out, my sister volunteered to go in my place. Months later, one of their leaders returned to inform me he’d killed her, bringing her head as proof. I abandoned the Holdfast in search of vengeance, which I attained before surrendering to death... Instead I was sent here to break and here I have remained for years.”
Trying not to stutter incredulously, Bruce interrupted, “How the fuck did someone like you even get into Canada?”
“Practically anyone can get into Canada... it’s sad how easy.” Reva smirked. “The rest needed to survive, not so?. For years we fought in alliance with Canada, which is part of why we got slots in a Holdfast, but mostly because we’d become their supplemental special forces to compensate for Canadian losses during the wars on Russia’s behalf. Which made ingratiation to surviving Canadian politicians much easier when assassinations became problematic. Ultimately, we were sworn to guard the administration that had done so much for our country, but promised to always be there for each other above it all... Everything...all the politics, all the blood was so we could be safe...so she could be safe. This island is my prison. A hell I earned for failing all my oaths.”
Bruce stared at her in utter appalled shock. She’s just like my damn father! He realized horrified.
Noting their disgusted and shocked expressions Reva continued, “Neither of you deserve this place, such is obvious. You can judge me if you wish, or simply leave and I will never hassle you again. But, I offer another choice which may assuage my lingering guilt: stay and all restraints will be removed. I will mercilessly forge you both into weapons that will survive anything with all the time I have left. It will be far more brutal than anything I have done thus far, but when it is done we will truly be family.”
Sitting silently, Reva waited to see what the aftermath of the bomb she dropped on them would be. Intense silence filled the camp as her would-be students mulled over their options. She’s an idiot, sure, but she isn’t my father... and even he fought for me in the end. Besides all this time she’s done nothing but try to help me. If anything, I only benefit from her teachings given my luck when untrained... Grimacing at all the horrid things he’d experienced due to what he perceived as his own incompetence, Bruce nodded finally.
“I’m in. I’ll stay.” Nodding her agreement, Spirit took Reva’s hand comfortingly, more saddened for her than Bruce was.
“Very well. Real training begins now. Bruce shall be King and Spirit shall be Goddess.”
A switch seemed to flip in her head, from that moment on her eyes were made of steel. Any compassion or restraint was stowed away. Immediately, she began training them both viciously.
“Do you like this, King, Goddess, would you like me to continue?” She asked every time she beat them, with a sweet, ingenuine tone oozing with exaggerated respect.
When they said no, she attacked them even worse. Spirit, who had no combat training faired the worse in the beginning. Fueled by a desperate need to help them, Reva, who demanded to be referred to as Captain, constantly amped up their workload. Between periodic bouts of training, Reva filled her time by making them run naked in frigid rain while carrying as many pounds of wood as they could muster until they dropped, and carefully played the villain to ensure their rage kept them sane.
Gradually, psychological training became a numbing exercise after days of fighting and countless nights of being tied up on their knees, nose to nose, in the nude. Bruce was made to nag Spirit if she stopped recounting the tortures of her past to him, all to keep them awake. Eventually, they became more desensitized to each other, as Reva hoped for Bruce. Meanwhile they were expected, day after day, to excel at hand-to-hand and improvised blade training using sticks or sections of Bruce’s sword. Tears, moral or emotional objections only drove Reva to keep them awake again.
On the nights they were allowed to sleep, Bruce was usually comatose or shaking with night sweats, Spirit would join him to keep him warm, drawing a secret smile from Reva, who always kept an eye on them. The only respite offered to them if they obeyed her without fail was occasional hunting trips, which were dangerous enough. Many times they’d come back with a miniature horned wolf that tried to eat them instead of the prey they intended to eat. Naturally, Reva would make them fight each other for it. After one such, Spirit won.
“Goddess, you're erring on the heavy side; would you care to stick two fingers down your throat? That’ll tighten up your flabs.” Reva enquired, oozing politeness as if it was the most wonderful idea.
Spirit complied, jamming her fingers down her throat so she could forcibly vomit all over the ground. Together, they stood emotionless while Reva clapped. After the first month, Reva was even kind enough to no longer interrupt their sleep. The single thing they were always allowed was fo
od, whatever meager amounts they could obtain. That is, if Reva didn’t enact the cursed Spetsnaz torture of forced vomiting– one that she said always happened to her when it wasn’t legally allowed. Eventually, after a year of carefully balanced pressure and false overbearing respect, both students were wiry, muscled machines on the verge of murder, and she was their target. Thanks to her, their pasts, while not forgotten, felt like memories of weaker people.
“King, Goddess, you’ve done well to survive thus far! You’re very lucky I gave you a week off each month to rest. Would it please you to continue your training beyond the rudimentary?”
“YES CAPTAIN!” They both shouted, standing nude and unmoving before her.
From then on, they spent months studying various languages, tactics, and how to stealthily navigate their environment. Mindful of the pressure on them, including their past stresses, Reva channeled their increasingly irrelevant pain into increased bouts of combat training. They were also afforded a single blessing, as Reva put it- it was only them, so they didn’t have to worry about being passed off – rejected from the chance to be Spetsnaz. Voluntarily, they exposed themselves very gradually to the poisonous plants on the island so Bruce’s story of incapacitation couldn’t happen again. Reva always poisoned herself the worst so they could see it was for their benefit. On their downtime, Bruce became obsessed with training to stay focused, becoming the kind of person who had no need of rest. Spirit also found his habitually relaxed methods kept her distracted. Their unspoken status as an inseparable team only strengthened as time went on. One day, they awoke based on their trained internal clocks to find Reva once more sitting in the middle of their clearing. Wordlessly they marched over, greeting her with a salute.
“PLEASE ASSIGN US MORE TASKS, CAPTAIN!” They shouted energetically, using Reva’s phrase, which really meant ‘Please strengthen us more!’
When she didn’t respond they tried multiple other languages. Growing frantic now, they watched nervously as a smile spread across her face. Reva could see the broken people she was once so desperate to save were no more. Standing, she walked up and embraced them both.