|Dead Heart| Reaper x Reader

Chapter Seventeen - Slowly

You jolted upright in your bed with beads of cold sweat compiled onto your brow, your body stiff and shaky. You couldn't tell what time of day it was thanks to the windowless room, but you guessed it was early thanks to all of the soldiers around you sleeping like rocks.

Your eyes stayed glued to your shaking hands that were forcefully bundled in your sheets, your heart hammering out of your chest as your breath was uneven and wispy. You just had yet another nightmare that had begun to become common in your life as a new criminal. Thankfully, you could never care enough to remember any of them, but streaks of blood, gunshots, and screams always plagued your mind after they finished, and there they stayed.

Your body hadn't felt true rest in quite a while, and judging by the way things were run around here, you guessed this would continue for the foreseeable future.

On every night you awoke from a nightmare, you nearly wished you could remember, so just maybe you could overcome what was troubling you. But life wasn't kind, and she would rip everything away from you that brought you comfort.

---

"Stand tall, recruits!" An older man yelled, his beard twisting with how his jaw slammed open with each gnarled out word that would hang in the air of the gym.

After your little escapades with sleep, you couldn't manage to fall back into it, and sadly enough, you laid awake in your bunk for around an hour or so. You didn't much mind, it gave you the time to think about what had happened so far, it seemed like everyone around you was decent enough, and hell, even the girls you bunked with didn't seem half bad.

"Today we'll be doing the general tests of endurance, strength, agility, and precision, the other tests will come later," He bellowed, walking up and down the neat line of women and men before him, standing in three nice rows of ten each.

You, and a few other future agents, inwardly sighed at the word, "other" you just knew they would be impossible, not to mention the insane amount of testing you had to do today.

"Don't go soft on me, now!" he half laughed, half sneered, "The tests will come in two sets, with a break in-between. We don't plan on breaking you."

His voice and tone sent shivers down your spine, but you kept your shoulders squared and eyes straight ahead of you, occasionally following his pace. The pose you held made your new bruises ache and your muscles stiffen from your fight previous, but you knew it to be a standard procedure, and necessary if you wanted to be taken seriously.

"We'll be starting our first test shortly, before, I'd like you all to stretch, you'll be running soon enough."

You nearly groaned aloud at this, you were never much good at running, and you supposed this to be a perfect show of a particularly weak skill, but if you could at least keep up, it wouldn't be all bad. Knowing it'd probably be a mile run or so, you made sure to thoroughly stretch your legs, and anything else that was needed. As you stretched, you noted how everyone around you looked a bit confused, or just as lost as you, it seemed like the people around here liked to give you little, to no real information, possibly to see you flounder, or maybe they didn't even care.

There were around a dozen guards near you, quite overkill for only 30 trainees, but they probably had their reasons, either to break up fights, or maybe even to observe for some kind of twisted fun. Either way, you couldn't bring yourself to care much, you were attempting to stay focused as you finished up the final stretch, and hop back up from the previous position you were in, brushing off your hands as you glanced around the room.