The darkness around Angus was heavy, pendulant, and oppressive. The trees here were so tall, and not made of wind-worn stone punching upwards from a blasted heath. The crowd around him was thick, foreign, and loud. A strange smell, coppery blood and molded bread, reminded him of the charge he supported. He called her lad, as much because he initially thought this enigmatic and fiery willed Retrograde had been a boy, as to see how she would react. Mostly she would just roll her eyes. He tried not to worry about the bone sticking out of her arm, he knew it must be painful, but she just gritted her teeth behind thin lips and a zippered face, and didn’t make a sound.
She was a true survivor, not like the caravan around them with their laughing, and singing, and bells, and drums. Something in the thin road up ahead stopped the crowd and he heard someone yelling that there was a toll to Bravo. Someone said they were “General Mustang’s men” collecting. Slink spoke up, “Mustang has no power here. They’re just bandits.”
Angus handed Slink over to a pair of frightened Rovers, instructing them to keep her safe while he checked things out. In the darkness near an old horse pasture, he saw Mustang’s men squared off against the green fighters at the fore of the caravan. The tension was mounting, so Angus helped it along. It was a simple plan. There were maybe forty people here in this caravan and that was plenty. He would feed every single one of them through this grinder to get the Retro-girl through to her friends. She wore their name on her back, The Desperados.
Angus shouted, dropping his accent so no one would remember it was him, “Kill them all, they’re just bandits!”
He felt more than saw the line of Mustang’s men tense at the goading. Some woman nearby turned towards Angus, “We’re trying to negotiate a cheaper toll!”
Angus looked her in the eye, “The cheapest toll is their blood.” He drew his gun, aimed it between two of the fighters, and fired it into Mustang’s ranks. The woman stared in blank shock. At the shot the battle was off, shouts went up and both sides charged immediately. Angus walked calmly back to where he had left Slink and scooped her arm around his shoulders, “Come on, lad, let’s get you home.”
“Damnit Angus, I’m a girl.”
Angus just smiled, if she’s angry, she’s conscious.
------
The darkness around Angus was heavy, pendulant, and oppressive. The trees here were taller than that south road, and the shadows they cast were deep. The things in the no-light of road stood stark still. It was eerie the way they stared.
The one called John Henry said in his stern voice, commanding, demanding, “They won’t move as long as you watch them.”
Someone called out, “There’s some behind!” Angus turned to look, only to hear rushing movement at his side. The thing was on him, tearing at his meager armor, slicing open his side. He fell then, and screamed. Through the pain and the spattering rain, he saw the MC moving as one, fending off these things from each other, moving in concert. Without question or hesitation, they fought for each other. Thin strong hands grabbed Angus’ harness and drug him over the ground; he looked up and saw their prospect, the pale Merican Dakota, tossing him into the cabin. Someone was working on his wound, a figure with a patch on their back was standing in front of the door, protecting.
Even in the pain as someone poured fire into his wounds, Angus could not help but think that he had never seen a bond like this in his life. Not even Rover clans had this sort of camaraderie, loyalty, and love. Here it was, in the face of abject horrors, unfaltering and unwavering.
In the cold terror of that black night, Angus’ heart yearned for something that it had never known.
------
The darkness around Angus was heavy, pendulant, and oppressive. The trees here seemed taller in the morning’s light, but no physical thing cast shadows on the Rover. Having seen his cousins had been a source of joy, initially. Now, though, they were gone again, staying somewhere near town.
He picked through a pile of rubble, looking for scrap or other things of value, lost in thought. Livvie, Face, and wee Brodie had been familiar, seeming safe. Their presence, though, had been fleeting and he could sense a change in certain members of the club when they found out Angus had family alive. A Rover with a clan was a Rover with other loyalties. The MC didn’t like other loyalties and knowing that he had a family with its own agendas and goals, somehow set him apart. This fact gnawed at Angus in the cold air of Clintymas.
As he dug around an old bar of silver to pull it out of the ground, his grey and black scarf, the Dark Storm scarf, drifted into his way. It caught on his trowel, and he muttered a bit as he swatted it aside.
He stopped what he was doing and realized what he had done. Then he nodded. He was born a boy; he would never belong, fully, with the matriarchs of the Storm.
By right of birth, he was set apart. They were his cousins, and Brodie was like a sister to him, but they would never be the family he lost.
------
The darkness around Angus was heavy, pendulant, and oppressive. The trees here were taller than any he had ever seen, extending like the fangs of a giant snake into the night sky. In the half darkness at the edge of the square the Rover looked at the two hundred or so people gathered on the arc-lit porches of the old Washbourne slave quarters.
They had come from all over the world to fight Mustang. There were strains, rare and exotic, he had never seen. There were people there with knowledge far deeper than anything that he had ever encountered. Someone here could know how to make The Knife from the book. There were friends in there, people he had bled for and laughed with.
Chloe and Dakota weren’t there, though.
They were off trying to stop everyone’s destruction. They were saving all these lives and Angus just stared at the crowd and thought about how he would slit every throat in front of him to make sure those two came back to him safely.
‘I understand,’ a grave voice said in his mind.
‘Shut up, Fred.’
Freddy spoke up in the recesses of his nightmares, ‘I didn’t say anything, bub. That was you. I guess … I guess my work here is done.’
Angus frowned, ‘Whatever.’
‘Say it one more time for me?’
“I’m not afraid of you, you’re not real,” the Rover whispered.
“What say Angus?” Woni asked, looking over.
“Nothing.”
------
The darkness around Angus was heavy, pendulant, and oppressive. The trees here were smaller and recognizable, home. The crowd around him was thick, known, and loud. The Desperados stood around him, and John Henry spoke with familiar authority, “We all stay on the left side of the road. This way we don’t get separated.” It wasn’t lost on Angus that the Iron had included him in the plan, simple as it was. They were waiting for the scouts to check the area around boot hill for major dangers.
The Rover stepped into the pale red pool of light around the MC’s former president; he unconsciously rubbed his arm where JHL had crushed it not long ago with his hammer, a price Angus would pay again to help repair his friend’s mind. “John Henry, can I ask you something?” Angus had formed the sentence perfectly in his mind, it was such a simple idea, ‘Teach me how to spot things hidden in the dark, as you do, so that while you’re gone I can help watch over your family.’ Yet, for some reason when he walked up to John Henry and tried to say just that, it came out jumbled and broken. He stammered, foolishly. Either the stern Iron figured out what Angus was trying to say, or he just wanted to shut him up, and agreed to show him when they got back.
Angus stepped away and muttered under his breath, “Idiot. Why do you always do that?”
A strong hand slapped on Angus’ armored shoulder, “Hey Angus, you alright?”
The tall Rover looked up into the perpetually grinning face of Tim Freeman, “Yeah, Hammers, I’m good. How’re ye?”
“Ready to get home,” the young Iron brandished his chain axe and paced off. Angus could not help but notice how comfortable that man was in his own skin, and as he walked away and the words on the patches across his back became apparent, Angus smiled: that was the real skin Tim was comfortable in. That Iron would kill and die for anyone with those rockers.
Angus looked, set apart from the group a moment, as the MC congregated around one another. Fierce Slink, who had saved him more than he saved her that day in the wastes. Clever Chloe, with her wit sharper than Angus’ own machete. Cunning Cutter, whose brutal coldness was outmatched only by his loyalty to his friends, the one member of the club that Angus somehow felt the most akin to, only Angus’ mask was far more intricate. His cabin-mate and best-friend Dakota, her well-mocked softness and easy smile the frightening chains on a pit of fury. Towering Hammers, the literal and figurative beacon at the heart of the MC. Somewhere nearby were the hooded shadows of Shrooms and Tom, ever present though rarely seen, and just as dear to Angus’ heart despite not knowing either very well. The prospects, Woni and Rahn, fidgeted nearby, on the cusp of something new and wonderful. At their center was John Henry, stern, almost scowling.
And when no one seemed to be looking Angus saw something familiar paint across that face. It was a strange look, fleet as a hunter, but it read clear in those moments when that Iron was surrounded by these people. They all knew it and Angus felt it too.
Home wasn’t down that road. It was right there, in that circle.
The darkness around Angus was heavy, pendulant, and oppressive. The trees were tall and dark. The crowd around him was inconsequential compared to the family he had chosen. Angus smiled, the fear of rejection was gone, because now he understood. The burning times were nigh, and soon would come the first cool night of fall, and Angus would have to ask a question.
