I am so obsessed with the Huntmaster. Most unusual for a deathmark. I don't know if we get a detailed description anywhere of how deathmarks used to be raised and trained - but they were certainly never considered honourable, except only in the most reluctant circumstances. Death-by-deathmark is a 'base assassination', fit only for the non-sentient or the disgraced, and since their work is a dirty secret they barely get any acknowledgement. Their entire existence is a taboo. According to the rules of their society, they're barely even necron; they don't even suffer the Anti-Life Insanity Disease in the same way other Destroyers do, they have their own variation.
We know that deathmarks don't take this lying down - Lysikor certainly doesn't, but he in many ways is the societal perception of deathmarks played straight. He's scheming and treacherous and nobody is surprised by this, he knows the role he is playing, and he'll exploit it every way he can. Not so much the Huntmaster. He's dangerous, he's expensive, and local necron nobles find his work disgusting - but he's loyal, too, and he is trusted, enough that Trazyn hangs out with him in his oubliette and entrusts the Empathic Obliterator to him. He seems to have been treated well ever since he came to Solemnace, being allowed to work at his own pace - sometimes against his own master's pace! - and everything about him suggests he enjoys being with Trazyn. That's not the usual deathmark treatment at all, they have something special going on here.
Now I've no doubt that a large part of this relates to how Trazyn treats his court, that is to say: with surprising courteousness. As a rule Trazyn values his retainers, and since Trazyn is so far beyond necron perceptions of normality, it makes sense he would be good to his deathmark too. But respect goes both ways, and I find myself headcanoning endlessly just what Trazyn did to earn the Huntmaster's endless loyalty, or what the Huntmaster must've gone through before his residence at Solemnace. He was already infamous when Trazyn secured his fealty. Was he actually admired in his old dynasty, or was he feared and hated like any other deathmark? Did he have that void cape before he came to Solemnace? Did Trazyn offer that price for him himself, or did he have to negotiated over? Was he known for his loyalty before, or is Trazyn the only master he's ever respected? Did they have a genuine friendship prior to biotransference, or did they start spiraling together in their mutual collectors' insanity after the Great Sleep? Some real food for thought there 🤔
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For the word prompts:
Scars - Sam/Deena
Break my heart! :D
Okay anon! This prompt has been hanging out in my inbox for a while because I couldn't figure out how to fill it in an angst-y way because you all know I pretty much live on fluff alone. So I did my best here...not sure it falls into the "break my heart" category or that it turned out how you wanted but maybe it will fill a little bit of that for you!
“What are you in some kind of secret society of something?”
The question is asked around a snort of laughter and as the guy, whose name is Calvin or Dalvin or something like it, presses his thumb against Sam’s palm and for a second she’s too surprised to do anything but let him. Judging by the glassiness in his eyes and the red Solo cup in his hands, Calvin/Dalvin/Alvin has had more than a little bit to drink, much like most of the people at the party that had stopped being the super-fun-awesome-time her roommate swore it would be about an hour ago. Apparently he’s crossed the threshold where touching strangers’ scars is an acceptable thing to do.
“I…” Sam looks at her hand in his, seeing, for just a moment, what he must be: the thin, silvery scar that bisects her palm, the result of a dozen possible causes including, apparently, the type of rituals that involve bloodletting and mysterious pacts. It’s strange to look at the scar and not see it for what it is: her hand in Deena’s on the floor of the dirty girls’ bathroom, trying to keep herself from trembling so that Deena could cut a straight, clean line.
Sam pulls her hand away, curling her fingers against the skin. “It’s-”
She’s stopped from the impulse to answer by the feeling of a hand against the small of her back and, thankfully, this touch isn’t from another stranger who has opted into the touching people portion of the night but from Deena, who has been gone for five minutes that have suddenly felt like an eternity and she’s holding the refill for the drink Sam no longer wants.
“Hey.” Deena’s eyes cut toward Alvin or whatever his name is, the sort of guarded sharpness in her gaze that is slowly starting to fall away now that they’re out of Shadyside, except in moments like this. “All good?”
Sam nods and wonders if Deena can tell that she’s hedging her bets a little with that answer. “Calvin was just telling me about his major.” At least he had, before he’d noticed the scar on her palm.
The guy frowns, looking genuinely hurt. “It’s Alan.”
Whoops.
Deena looks at her and lifts her eyebrows and Sam smiles, genuinely, in response to the entire conversation that she can hear in just that expression, in the quirk of Deena’s brows and the hint of a smirk on her face. It’ll be different, later, when she and Deena are alone together and it’s Deena who is tracing the scar there, when they’re laughing about Allen and the party and the wild absurdity of it all.
But for now, it’s easier for Sam to relax into the touch against the small of her back, the kind of easy contact that girls thankfully seem to get away with all the time, the kind of thing that no one looks twice at during a party like this or somewhere far, far from Shadyside. Deena passes over the drink and Sam takes it even though she has no intention of drinking anymore tonight, not when it suddenly seems like a much better idea to just slip out with Deena instead.
“Whoa.” Alan squints and he might be drunk but apparently still has the observational power of Sherlock Holmes. “You have one too.”
He makes a grab for Deena’s hand but she pulls back quickly and with enough force that Sam worries that’s about to deck Alan first and just ask questions later. Thankfully, Deena seems to think better of this impulse, glowering instead.
“Seriously,” Alan says with all the wherewithal of the very drunk. “You are a secret society, right?” He points toward Deena’s palm and Sam can see the moment where confusion turns to understanding and Deena’s body tightens, her fingers curling against her palm to hide away the scar. “What happened?”
Sam glances toward Deena, who just tightens her jaw. “Killed the sheriff and stopped the Devil,” she says and then bumps Sam’s shoulder with her own, nudging her. “Let’s go.”
It seems unlikely that Alan will remember this conversation tomorrow, or if he does it might be in enough jumbled pieces that it will make about as much sense as anything else destined to happen to him before the sun comes up, but it’s still worth it to see the expression of complete confusion on his face at Deena’s words, how he looks almost like he believes them, just a little bit.
Sam follows in the wake Deena is cutting through the living room, offering no objection when she points them toward the door instead and away from the crush of bodies and the surging music crackling from too big speakers. Outside, there are a few people milling about on the frat house’s questionably stable porch, and a few guys trying to play Frisbee by moonlight and drinking every time someone misses the pass -which likely accounts for the amount of missing and drinking taking place. It’s quieter anyway and Sam feels like she can breathe a little easier, away from the sticky heat of so many people packed into one place, and the music making her ears ring, and the people who grab her without her permission.
They sit on the front steps, far enough away from the other groups of people that it feels, for a moment at least, that it’s just her and Deena and the darkening night. Sam sets her drink aside, elbows on her knees and half her attention on the messy game of Frisbee going on.
“Are you okay?” Deena’s shoulder presses into hers to punctuate the question and support the answer.
Exhaling, Sam glances down at her palm, the only scar from those days in Shadyside that she can see all the time without even trying. She studies it sometimes during lectures when she’s supposed to be taking notes or filling her head with all the knowledge that will supposedly hand her the keys to the universe, to the world beyond the one she’d grown up in. Or sometimes she catches herself rubbing at the scar absently, scratching some phantom itch, as she walks to classes, one face among many and no one suspecting that place she’d come from or the truth of the things she’d seen. She could be anyone here, but one sight of the scar drops her right back into those moments when she wasn’t anyone at all.
Deena covers her hand with her own and Sam looks up, surprised, a smiling already sliding, slow and easy, across her face. Sometimes when she reaches for Deena’s hand, she imagines the scars then too, both out of sight but mirrored, lined up and pressed together.
“We could come up with a cool story, you know,” Deena remarks, managing, as she always seems to do, to read the thoughts running through Sam’s mind.
Sam presses her lips together. “Better than stopping the Devil?”
Deena leans back against the stair behind them, stretching out her legs. “Yeah, good point. That is pretty hard to beat.”
“For you,” Sam points out, and she’s teasing. Mostly. “At least you have a cool story. I was just the bait.”
“Not bait,” Deena corrects, lifting Sam’s hand and kissing the scar lightly, the way Sam thinks she doesn’t even realize that she does so often when they’re alone, when she reaches for Sam’s hand and kisses it, always on the scar first before moving toward her wrist, her knuckles, the tips of her fingers.
Or, Sam thinks with a shiver, here on this frat house porch, how Deena kisses the spot on her shoulder, replacing the feeling of steel in her mind with the butterfly light sensation of Deena’s lips. The press of Deena’s open-mouthed kisses more than makes up for the memory of the axe, especially when it comes on the tail-end of yet another nightmare featuring the Shadyside High hallway.
“Little bit,” Sam says, turning her wrist enough that her thumb brushes lightly against Deena’s lips, a poor substitute for the kiss she wants to press there instead. Still, Deena’s lips quirk slightly, her eyes darkening in the faint light spilling out from the windows. “But I guess that’s okay. Better than being in some kind of blood-letting secret society, right?” She looks at her palm, flexing her fingers to stretch the skin and pull the scar taunt, not that that ever truly erases it.
There are moments when she looks at Deena’s hands, when she feels the soft ridge of the scars there as they move across the small of her back or the xylophone of her rib cage and she sees the beauty in them, the memory of what they survived rather than what they lost. Moments where she thinks, with a sting of guilt, that she got off easy.
“I guess it depends on the society,” Deena teases, and, as though reading through Sam’s thoughts once more, she takes her hand again and the warmth and weight of her palm hides everything else away. “If it was a cool one, then it might be okay.”
Sam smirks. “I’m not sure I want to know what you would consider cool.”
“I am very cool,” Deena assures her smugly. “And I have great taste.”
Off Sam’s dubious expression and the noncommittal hum she makes, Deena just fixes her with a look. “I like you, don’t I?”
Sam huffs out a breath, rolling her eyes. “You can’t win every argument like that.”
Deena shrugs. “I mean, it’s worked out pretty well so far.”
Sam can feel the press of Deena’s scar against her own when Deena reaches for her hand in order to pull her close enough to kiss and then she doesn’t feel anything beyond the beating of her heart.
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