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When they found the Taranis, they sort of naturally fell into pairs. Malt and Mei. Kyle and Hanna. Socks and Boron. They had their combat stations, and it seemed to be working, and that was that.
That was before.
After... Things needed a bit of readjustment. No one wanted to leave the bereaved four-year-old on her own. Hanna stepped into the role, and Socks and Kyle sort of just traded Boron between themselves for a bit, but then they found Jihl, and suddenly there were six of them again. Kyle instantly claimed Boron full-time, and that left Jihl and Socks.
They still didn't put much thought into it. That was just how it was. If Socks did think about it, though, he had to admit that was probably the best way things could have gone. Boron worked best with people who already knew the way he thought, and Kyle had already punched Jihl once.
It still felt odd to have someone he barely knew manning the cannon next to him. Particularly when that cannon was still configured the way Malt liked it.
At least, with the constant attacks by Berman soldiers, they didn't have to talk a lot. While the silence wasn't always comfortable, it never stretched quite long enough that he had to do something about it. They could keep their eyes ahead on the next bend in the road, the next group of enemies to fight.
The next set of people they would have to kill.
That was another reason they didn't talk a lot. Socks couldn't think of anything that didn't involve that. And he didn't... really want to talk about it. Not until he felt like he had to say something, or else his chest would burst. "Jihl? How long have you been...?" No. That wasn't quite what he wanted to say. But what was?
Jihl barely looked up. His cannon fired. "Did you say something?"
The enemy returned fire. That didn't matter, though, because the Taranis' systems quickly stopped reporting any sort of damage. Hanna must have gotten to it near-instantly. "Do you remember the first time you killed someone?"
Ah. No. Too honest. Not that Jihl seemed to care about that, but Socks didn't like the way the words felt in his throat.
"Sort of? I mean, there was a lot of times it could have happened... I remember the first time I was sure about it. The corpse was sort of an obvious giveaway."
It would be, wouldn't it? Under that sort of definition, everyone on the Taranis could name their first kill, sort of. If deaths caused by the tank as a whole could be attribute to all of them, and not just whoever fired the lethal shot. While most of their trail of destruction was ambiguous, the Soul Cannon didn't exactly leave room for survivors. On either side.
It had been Socks who threw up the shield that Pretzel broke through. If he'd been more aggressive, or strategic, or focused on repairing the damage that was already there... maybe there would be seven of them traveling together. "When did that..."
"Dunno how old I was. Old enough to use a knife." Well. That said all it really needed to, didn't it?
Despite using the same weapon, Jihl didn't feel like any sort of replacement for Malt at all. And that was good. It meant that Socks was still thinking of people as people, and not a line of future corpses, the way he'd heard some of the Berman soldiers put it. He wasn't thinking like the enemy.
With how easily he fired the cannon, he couldn't help but wonder how Jihl felt about it all.
He decided that, for as long as they still needed to fight, it would be for the best if he didn't ask.
There was something big coming up. No one knew what it was, had only just sighted the lines of smoke on the horizon, but they all knew. Whatever was coming up, it was going to be so much more than the small detachments the Taranis would just roll over. It didn't seem to be advancing, so, for that night, they wouldn't advance, either. They'd all fight better on a full night's sleep.
Socks wasn't getting a full night's sleep.
He hadn't noticed anyone else was out of bed until he got to the kitchen and saw Jihl fumbling with a can opener. "Hey, think you can get this thing to work?"
Socks helped, because it was the nice thing to do, and peaches actually felt like a good idea right about then. "Could you not sleep, either, Jihl?"
"Guess I'm not very good at it. I always just stayed up until the adults knocked me out again." Somehow, every time Jihl talked about himself, Socks wanted to hear less and less. It was like his early life had been designed to be as torturous as possible, or something. "Maybe everyone has to practice it, and you just don't know cause you figure it out by the time you're Mei's age."
The peaches were wet and soft. Sweeter than anything eaten in a war machine had the right to be.
It was going to leave Socks' fur sticky. "Mei slept a lot, as a baby."
"See? Practice."
He couldn't exactly argue with that. He didn't want to, either. How sleep worked was something he'd always taken for granted, up until he stopped being able to do it as well.
He wanted to say it was because of the moving platform, but right then, the Taranis was completely still. "So you think the nightmares will get better once I get used to them?" It made sense. Malt used to have nightmares, after his parents died, but eventually he'd stopped talking about them. They'd all assumed he'd just stopped having them.
"Maybe? I don't know." Jihl took another bite of his peach. "Didn't know I could even have dreams until you woke me up. I don't think I like them."
If his dreams were anything like Socks' nightmares... that was fair. He thought he'd like to go a few nights without dreams, himself, and he knew good ones existed. They just didn't seem like an option for him at the moment.
Did Jihl have anything good to dream about?
Probably not tonight. Not right before they went into combat. Not when every tidbit he revealed about himself peeled back another layer, showed something even more horrifying. Not when he went into battle with a perfectly blank expression, right up until he actually started blasting.
...They didn't have enough peaches for this.
Somehow, they survived. By the time the locks lifted on the Soul Cannon, Boron had already fired the final shot of the battle. By some standards, that could be called an overwhelming victory.
Socks slumped back in his seat and watched as the world started to move again.
"Hey, you still alive?" Jihl asked.
"I'll be all right." He was alive. So was everyone else they'd gone into the fight with. That had to count for something. "Just... I'll be glad to take a break once we get to the next village. If our maps are correct, there should be one somewhere nearby."
Solid ground. A hot meal they didn't have to cook themselves. Maybe this one would even have shoes available for barter.
Not that he was getting his hopes up about that last one. But it would be nice to not have to worry about anyone stepping on a sharp piece of scrap and having to stay off their feet for a few days. Or infection. None of them would be qualified to treat it if someone got an infection.
"A... village?" Why did he sound so confused by that?
Wait... did he not know what a village was? "You know... it's a place where people live. All of us come from the village of Petit Mona."
"So... there's a lot of people who look like you."
Right... Jihl didn't look like anyone else Socks had ever known. He hadn't really thought about it, given that they pulled him out of the wall of their tank. There'd been so much else to think about, it just hadn't seemed to matter. All it meant was that his body language took a bit more effort to decipher. It seemed to lean more felineko than caninu, but of course there was no real comparison with all the missing parts.
Maybe he should have asked sooner. "Did you think there wouldn't be?"
Jihl didn't answer. Just turned back to the outside. "...Do we have to go?"
"You can stay on board if you want. I'm sure no one will mind." One less person to meet up with when they prepared to leave. Convenient.
He still didn't like hearing his response, for some reason. "...I think I'll do that."