The Apathy of Acceptance - DSMP x Reader

Chapter 1 - Found

(It's gonna say some stuff about the main characters name, it's just a nickname I promise you, it'll get some story later.)
Ten years was long enough to fall into any sort of routine, no matter how changing it seemed to those around, war was never anything different. Scenery would blur together, place to place, face to face, the paint would be new but the walls held strong, content to never differ from their path, content to remain gruesome. One could say no man swung the same as another, one could say no arrow landed the same or no shield stood identical to each other, but after enough time looking between them, did it matter? The splinters in wooden bows, the wrappings around hand guards, the strings on boots, the colors on uniforms, did the small differences truly change a thing?

Some claim they do, that the colors they wear and the people they work under make them stronger, superior to others, but they bleed the same, they die the same, does it matter the method at this point? It's thought that some deaths are better than others, at home with your family, dying in a loved ones arms, or on a battlefield, sword in hand and hope and bravery and stupidity leading you-people will tell you these are the ways to go. But they're the same, all bodies attract maggots, and thus the neverending cycle begins. Once, she did believe that dying meant something, but when you hear enough enemies say they'd rather die, and nothing comes of it after they do, she's come to realize it's rather...stupid, to think the style changes anything. it's never different.

Ten years now she's fought, longer than that even, but ten years under Esempi, and that doesn't change. The same routine every time. Esempi was once a grand kingdom, now made an empire thanks to her own and her Emperor's efforts. Kinoko first, then the Badlands, then Nevadas, El rapids, Dry Waters, and as of recent, Serenity. Simple matters they were, when cut down to the base of it. They'd surrounded and worn out every area, no quarter, excepting children of course, and slowly absorbed every part of the kingdoms till they were strong, wars getting shorter over time. Serenity had taken barely over a year, they were strong of course, but that didn't matter in the end. Nothing did.

At first she liked to think that morals came into play in war, when she was given her first regiment and trained her soldiers well, acted tough and hearty as her Emperor, but what good did that do? Her yells turned to laughs as care wasted away, why scream at dying men? She turned away anyone under sixteen like she was told, but their enemies hardly ever cared to spare children, so why not have them out there and armed rather than sitting, waiting ducks? So when she saw children, hardly fourteen, if even, why shouldn't she have just accepted their lies? They wanted out there, their own choice to die then. If at first she saw bravery and ignorance as strength, and that wilted away as numbers on papers grew into bodies across fields, and fields grew red, then maybe she learned to be tactful to quit her hands aching from writing letters to grieving parents and siblings and spouses who'd then hear how great they were the next day, only so few lost, though those few had names and lives and relatives and aspirations after a war they'd die thinking they'd helped-

So what?

She did what made people happy anyways, why should it bother her? People died happy, thinking their life meant something, people back home thinking the same. Recruitment numbers rose, children were viewed as heroes by their families or they'd learn to ignore an empty seat. Deaths grew less, they were stronger, a hearty foe, and her name gained recognition. She didn't necessarily ask for it, but the feeling of young boys and girls staring up at her as if she was something stronger made her fill with pride and pity, for the work she'd done, and the work she feared they'd one day throw themselves into. But that was their future, not her own. Not hers to worry about, at the least.

Her Emperor was happy, well, relatively happy, he always looked as if he was, but he was content for the few months of fall, where half the army was dismissed home to waiting families, where people returned home to bury their dead, where people awaited who their sights would fall to next. Advisors and generals swarming palace halls, bustling with their returns, a place she was expected to be alongside them. She was their top, their 'best', she was the one newer recruits would expect to be the most hateful and spiteful, even the ones she trained-she's learned people heard stories and told them as well of her being a person of hatred and contempt, that she was strong in her beliefs around her Emperor-so many generals who she'd trained or even hadn't ever met before would sit in the mess halls for them, waiting daily for her arrival, papers and plans and maps tossed across tables, drinks laid out and hands stained with ink-but after the first week of peace was when they were most likely informed-by the Emperor through some maid or butler-that it was unlikely she'd show till he'd send orders for her. THe maid or butler would say it to them not at all like the Emperor had, using soft words rather than his scoff and mocking tone. Maybe people thought she had a family, or a manor, or a title besides the one she used, maybe she had businesses and banks and factories-and maybe she would, some day, but those were rather tiresome to pay people to keep up while you're out at war.