Fic: A murderer’s hands

[rusakko]

No matter how much Sigrun tries to twist the matter around, the blame ultimately lies with her. Her and her stupid pride.

Takes place between pages 665 and 667, the day after Tuuri got infected.

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She regrets snapping at Emil as soon as the words leave her lips. Still, the fury burning in her throat chokes any attempt she might have made at apologizing. Instead, she turns away from the hurt and indignation in the Swede’s eyes and stalks off before she can do any more damage.

It’s not Emil she’s angry with. In fact, Emil is probably the last person on the team that she should be mad at. At least he’s trying to make himself useful. Besides, out of the six of them, he may be the one who’s least at fault for the mess that they’re in.

Well, she can’t really blame Reynir either, although an irrational part of her would like to yell at him, too, for not doing… something when the troll – that damned slithering troll – burst into the tank. If his stupid magic didn’t feel like manifesting itself at the moment when it really counted, he should have just thrown himself in front of Tuuri. Their clueless (albeit magically talented) civilian stowaway getting infected would have been regrettable, but it wouldn’t have endangered the whole team’s survival. Losing their driver, mechanic and interpreter, though – that’s a disaster.

But yelling at Reynir would be a waste of her breath. He wouldn’t even understand what she was saying. And if she’s honest with herself, she can admit that he probably couldn’t have made much of a difference.

Lalli, now, Lalli could have, if only he had reached the tank in time. Should have, too, given that he’s supposed to be a real, competent mage, unlike the Icelander. If he’d been more alert, if he’d been paying more attention to whatever strange sense lets him know that trolls are near – but no, Sigrun has to admit that that’s unfair. There were too many trolls that night for anyone to be able to keep track of, and the scout picked off at least a dozen of them with that rifle of his.

Besides, she’s haunted by the stricken look that hasn’t left Lalli’s eyes since last night. He clearly blames himself so much already that Sigrun doesn’t have the heart to add to that burden.

Something twitches in the ashy sludge at her feet. Sigrun is smashing the heel of her boot into it before her brain properly registers what it is – a hand with blackened, twisted fingers, disfigured first by the Illness and then by fire. The slender bones shatter with a sickeningly satisfying crunch. She stomps on the creature’s head, too, for good measure, before crouching down to finish the job off with her knife.

It feels clumsy and awkward, gripping the hilt with the wrong hand. She compensates by driving the blade into an eye socket with more force than necessary, and twists it around savagely in the rotten flesh even though she’s certain that the first thrust was enough to put the troll out of its misery. It’s unnecessary violence with no honour in it, and in the back of her mind, Sigrun is aware that it will not serve to dull the raw pain inside her for long.

Still, it’s better than yelling at her subordinates. And, as she wipes her knife on a patch of snow, she tells herself that she might as well get used to wielding her knife with her non-dominant hand, since it looks like the other one may very well be out of commission for the remainder of this miserable failure of a mission.

She’s got the feeling that Mikkel might see through that excuse, though. He has an annoying habit of doing that, being perceptive when she doesn’t want him to be. Like Trond, with whom it’s best to just be scrupulously honest no matter how badly you’ve screwed up because he’ll find out anyway. She’s hated him for it sometimes, over the years. To be fair, though, the old man is also an expert at cleaning up other people’s messes, however much he may grumble while doing it. Sigrun has long ago lost count of all the scrapes he’s gotten her out of, from backfired childhood pranks to conflicts with her superiors in the military.

A weak, treacherous part of her wishes that he were here to clear up this mess for her, too. The same weak part fears that this mess is beyond what even Trond could fix.

Sigrun has lost people before. It’s inevitable in the military, if you yourself survive long enough. Never like this, though. She’s lost hunters to ambushing trolls, to rampaging giants. She’s had scouts disappear in the mountains, never to be found again. She’s even (and these are the ones that haunt her on sleepless nights) had soldiers killed by sheer carelessness: friendly fire, unsecured rifles, careless handling of explosives.

Still, they were all soldiers. Professionals who knew what they were doing (at least more or less) and were aware of the risks. Not civilians she had been charged with protecting. And for all the blood and ugliness of a death in battle, at least it’s usually a quick and honourable way to go. The creeping horror of the Illness, the way it twists the soul as well as the body ‒ she has no experience of dealing with that. She doesn’t know if she’ll manage it now.

The anger (Or is it the smoke? They both taste as bitter.) has Sigrun’s eyes stinging with unwanted moisture. By now, she’s made a full circle around the field, but she lingers, reluctant to return to the tank and no doubt be scolded by Mikkel for wandering off on her own.

Like Mikkel has any right to scold anyone, anyway. If she can justifiably blame anyone for their current predicament, it’s him, and he knows it. She could hear the hollowness behind his false optimism when he told Tuuri that it wasn’t certain that she was infected, that as long as she was symptom-free, there was hope. Perhaps he’s trying to force himself to believe that, too. After all, if he could’ve just admitted that, no, he didn’t get the slithering one – if he could’ve given Sigrun a straight answer for once – she would have caught the troll, injured arm or no.

She wants to believe that. She wants to hold on to that anger, to blame Mikkel and Lalli and Emil and Reynir and even Tuuri herself, but it’s no good. No matter how much Sigrun tries to twist the matter around, the blame ultimately lies with her. Her and her stupid pride. It’s what led her to continue their journey into remote and uncharted territory, against the advice of their military strategist. It’s what led her to disregard caution and get her stitches torn open despite Mikkel’s words of warning. It’s what led her to keep the itching and burning of the wound hidden from the medic, to ignore the increasing pain and weakness spreading into her arm and soldier on as if nothing was wrong.

It’s what led Sigrun to fail Tuuri and her whole team at the worst possible moment.

The most awful part of it all is how calm Tuuri is in the face of her death sentence. Because no matter what Mikkel says in his attempts to keep up morale, and no matter what kinds of wishful thinking their younger team members may be engaging in, Sigrun knows the truth. Tuuri is as good as dead already. Yet she’s busily digging through the ravaged interior workings of the tank at this very moment, trying to piece together the complex wiring and get their vehicle running again. Working as if everything was normal, as if the bandage on her arm was merely covering a harmless scratch.

Sigrun isn’t sure if Tuuri is being quietly heroic – selflessly doing her best to ensure her teammates’ survival even in the face of her own impending doom – or if she’s in denial, buying into Mikkel’s assurances that all is not yet lost. Could be a bit of both. Not that it really matters much. Soon enough, neither Tuuri nor anyone else will be able to fool themselves anymore.

Then it’ll only be a question of who has to do the mercy killing, and how soon they can bring themselves to do it. With luck, they’ll have made it to the quarantine ship before those decisions need to be made, and the Icelandic doctors will be the ones to make the final call. Otherwise, Sigrun supposes it’ll be either her or Mikkel. Unless there’s some Finnish tradition that demands that Lalli, being both a mage and Tuuri’s cousin, does the honours.

Not that this question really matters much either. Regardless of who ends up having to put Tuuri out of her misery, Sigrun knows that the blood is on her hands.

The light filtering through the smoky haze is beginning to fade, and the ashes aren’t warm enough to keep the cold from beginning to seep through Sigrun’s coat, now that she’s standing still. Her anger has burned down, too, leaving behind a weary emptiness that chills her from deep inside.

It’s time to go back. Time to pull herself together and face her team, no matter how badly she has failed them. Maybe talk to Mikkel and work on a plan that will get them to the quarantine ship without any more catastrophes. Apologize to Emil. Fluff up Tuuri’s hair and joke around, make herself pretend for a moment that there’s still hope.

Time to be the leader that her team needs, despite the ice in her heart and the blood on her hands.