I've noticed a surprising lack of love for the Spackle in the fandom, so here are a few drabbles about individual members of the Burden. From the perspective of 1017, or the Return, of course.

Disclaimer: This fiction is based on characters and situations created and owned by Patrick Ness. No money is being made and no offense is intended.

Would-be 0519 thinks would-be 0520 is the most beautiful person in the world. She lives in the farm next to your master's orchard. Sometimes when you are working, you can hear her voice from across the narrow street, filled with visions of graceful shoulders that hid a silent strength, not quite defiant, yet, beautifully calloused fingers and a voice, a voice that concerned and cared and loved so deeply.

A voice that she so badly wishes can ―

You like to catch her eye at that, bent over freshly planted tomato seeds, or from behind strawberry bushes. Her voice will turn pink with exasperated embarrassment. She'd swat you if you were any closer.

You meet would-be 0520 at the market sometimes, and she will help you with your burden when she thinks she should and there is a kindness in her that you think is more beautiful that just friendliness. You can see would-be 0519 in her voice, too, in pleasant ways that would-be-0519 doesn't know about, yet. Up close, she isn't as strong as she looks from afar, and you can see the tremor that shivers through her hands as her Master's knuckles whiten on her shoulders and the wavering undertones hidden just beneath the usual brave front of her voice.

In no time at all, though, the world flips over and the ground seems to be yanked out from beneath your feet, and 0519 and 0520 injure their backs a day after they become 0519 and 0520, crushed beneath a too-heavy plank, powerless and in agony.

Soldiers in blue uniforms come and take them away soon, promising them healers and doctors, and 0520 stares at 0519 with the fear and love and utmost terror that she has no more voice to show, because you all know what happens to those who cannot work anymore, that —

—

1121 is but a child, a child in 0823's arms — 0823 and 0228 who pleaded and cried out in silence, furiously screaming through the voice that has been cut away, 0823 and 0228 who were pushed back with a rifle to his head and jeers in his face.

The band snaps into the baby's flesh, cutting right into the impossibly tender skin. It looks too large, too disproportional to the minuscule helpless infant's arm it it encircles, like terrible, insentient jaws swallowing everything into its void.

They stay in the same field as you, and the silent screaming continues throughout the night as the child cries and cries and cries. Each sound is a terrible tear through the stifling night air. As the night drifts on, it seems like it's all there is, this silenced screaming magnified a hundredfold through the thick air, desperate clicking that said nothing about the pain, pain, pain.

None of you do sleep that night.

—

You've never met 0626 before. You think she may have been part of the group that worked in the small textile factory at the southern edge of town, but you can't be sure.

The night after you are banded she comes over to your field and hands out ragged strips of cloth, salvaged no doubt from her previous job, and helps to bind some of the worst wounds to offer some sort of protection from the rough gravel you dig through each day and the sting of infection. She is all hands and action as she works, doesn't look up.

You don't see her again.

Not until the afternoon when soldiers return with guns and blades, and line all of you up against the wall and cock their rifles and laugh and laugh and —

—

"We've got to keep track of the animals somehow," his friend says, clicking his words through his mouth. There is cruelty in his voice, cruelty that will lead him to do what he is doing without letting him realise the presence of a choice. Uninformed cruelty, though. He doesn't understand. He is nothing more than his pack animal. The Knife, however —

"They ain't animals, Davy." They have had this argument before, so many times and leading to so many fights, but now he just sounds half-hearted, as though saying it simply out of reflex. They have had this argument before, and now he isn't even trying.

"Whatever, Pigpiss. Take these." He holds out a bolt cutting tool and a handful of metal bands, strapped together with a longer one. The Knife takes them from him, before realising what he is holding.

Shock swells right out of him, colouring the air around him in thick, palpable waves. Even the face of that girl, the one that occupies his voice so often and for so long that even you've come to know her. In his voice, you see the way they mark the pack animals in their farm with these same bands. You see the way they wound, the way they infect and agonise and the way it stays, permanently marking the animal banded with who it is, nothing more.

"We ain't."

"Get a move on, Pigpiss. We're meant to get through two hundred today."

You watch would-be 0001 staring at the chain of bands. She is smaller than the most of you are, all translucent fingertips and a wavering lilac voice (gone, gone) and shy kindness. Right before her the Knife is thinking about how if he doesn't do it someone else would and better he does it than just his friend, better he be the one who hurts her, hurts all of you.

He takes would-be 0001's hand and she's still staring at him, unblinking. His voice registers shock at the warmth of her skin, the pulse beating underneath, and the horror that accompanies what he is doing. It sways his voice, filling it and pulsating beneath, almost tipping him over, but never does, because better he be the one to hurt her, hurt all of you. His friend reaches out and twists the bolting tool together, locking the metal strip into her wrist.

She hisses at the pain of it. You all do. Would-be 1016 — still so young, so much younger than even you — who is standing beside you squeezes your hand with his shaking fingers. You look up at the Knife who is still staring into 0001 eyes, looking at her thinking he's saved her, and it is all you can do not to charge forward and grab the rifle from his useless fingers and beat him until he finally topples under the weight of you, the weight of his horror, until he finally —

And he is thinking about the colour of her blood that flows from the wound that he has just created. The blood which, of course, is as crimson as that within his own veins. She bleeds red, he is thinking, and his voice seems to roil over with something hidden just beneath, because she bleeds red, she bleeds red. 0001 bleeds red and 0001 bleeds red and would-be 1016 pushes his head into your shoulder, mouth open in a silent, terrified scream.