Post by rainstormamaya on Feb 4, 2010 1:23:16 GMT 10
Title: With A Smile On His Face
Rating: R
Length: 668 words
Competitor: Dom
Round/Fight: 1/A
Summary: The orders to leave Haven never reached Dom, and Kel didn't dare leave Haven.
Back to non-fluffy normality.
********
He sees her only in snatched moments now as the pride of the Own and the best refugee archers he’s ever seen and a few hopelessly brave hopelessly green knights fight to save Haven. He thinks to himself that she should have gone to Wyldon, and maybe she would have found the mysteriously missing orders that should have sent him and his men on to Mastiff or Giantkiller but when she returned with them she would have returned too late.
There is no time to think about these things now. The boy Tobe is dead and the girls Loey and Gydo fighting incredibly hard- he would never have thought they had it in them. Meech who is only a baby is hiding in the headquarters with the other small children and the few others who cannot fight because it is the safest place they have, and Jump, Jump is at Kel’s feet, growling a low constant defiance against the chopping and scratching of the metal machines, the scissor-killers that sliced through Wolset and flung half of his body away.
The screams are terrible.
Dom prepares another sortie, rides out briefly, cuts down and kills, streams back in to the refugee camp with his dwindling numbers of men and Merric, no longer hot-headed and battle-eager with his eyes grim and flat and blue. Dom has been pretending that he does not know about the letter to his sweetheart that Merric has hidden but earlier he dropped the pretence and told Merric that if he died, Dom would be sure that Lady Elenna got the letter. Merric thanked him and said that he would do the same for Kel if Dom died, and since if Merric knows the whole camp does, there is no need for secrecy. Not that secrecy would be important to Kel now in the thick heavy meaty smell of blood and death and the screaming and the shouting and the shrieking and the metal death but Kel likes privacy, and if they survive this she would be unhappy to know their secret was out.
He knows they are not going to survive this so it does not matter when he sees Kel kneeling briefly by Kevan bubbling his last breaths, not realising that he is not trying to speak but merely to breathe, and kisses her, biting her lip sharply and making her gasp under his mouth and blood spring coppery on his tongue, but at least telling her you are alive and I am alive and we are alive and now we fight together and maybe maybe something like I love you which he never said before because he knew it would spook her.
Then a killing machine crashes down part of Haven’s walls and there are renewed screams and they look at each other as Saefas takes down the killing machine with a lucky shot and pulls the bolt out but even though it collapses in the gap there is a space for Scanrans to spill through and Saefas falls to his death anyway without making a single sound. They know what has to be done and they know that it is death but they do it.
Later in the heroic ballads Oranie and Adie and Inness and Anders and Yuki and Shinko and Neal sing to their children, they will say that the lady knight and the sergeant died together defending the gap in Haven’s walls, their sacrifice meaning that Haven held out another two hours longer which was just long enough for Lord Raoul to reach them with a full company of men and kill in the name of a man like a son and a lady knight like a daughter. This means nothing to Dom as he lies bleeding out in the thick reddened mud of Haven with his sight fading, because all that he sees is Kel leaning over him and the shapes her lips make before she gives him mercy, and all that matters are those shapes.
He dies with a smile on his face, because she has told him she loves him.
Rating: R
Length: 668 words
Competitor: Dom
Round/Fight: 1/A
Summary: The orders to leave Haven never reached Dom, and Kel didn't dare leave Haven.
Back to non-fluffy normality.
********
He sees her only in snatched moments now as the pride of the Own and the best refugee archers he’s ever seen and a few hopelessly brave hopelessly green knights fight to save Haven. He thinks to himself that she should have gone to Wyldon, and maybe she would have found the mysteriously missing orders that should have sent him and his men on to Mastiff or Giantkiller but when she returned with them she would have returned too late.
There is no time to think about these things now. The boy Tobe is dead and the girls Loey and Gydo fighting incredibly hard- he would never have thought they had it in them. Meech who is only a baby is hiding in the headquarters with the other small children and the few others who cannot fight because it is the safest place they have, and Jump, Jump is at Kel’s feet, growling a low constant defiance against the chopping and scratching of the metal machines, the scissor-killers that sliced through Wolset and flung half of his body away.
The screams are terrible.
Dom prepares another sortie, rides out briefly, cuts down and kills, streams back in to the refugee camp with his dwindling numbers of men and Merric, no longer hot-headed and battle-eager with his eyes grim and flat and blue. Dom has been pretending that he does not know about the letter to his sweetheart that Merric has hidden but earlier he dropped the pretence and told Merric that if he died, Dom would be sure that Lady Elenna got the letter. Merric thanked him and said that he would do the same for Kel if Dom died, and since if Merric knows the whole camp does, there is no need for secrecy. Not that secrecy would be important to Kel now in the thick heavy meaty smell of blood and death and the screaming and the shouting and the shrieking and the metal death but Kel likes privacy, and if they survive this she would be unhappy to know their secret was out.
He knows they are not going to survive this so it does not matter when he sees Kel kneeling briefly by Kevan bubbling his last breaths, not realising that he is not trying to speak but merely to breathe, and kisses her, biting her lip sharply and making her gasp under his mouth and blood spring coppery on his tongue, but at least telling her you are alive and I am alive and we are alive and now we fight together and maybe maybe something like I love you which he never said before because he knew it would spook her.
Then a killing machine crashes down part of Haven’s walls and there are renewed screams and they look at each other as Saefas takes down the killing machine with a lucky shot and pulls the bolt out but even though it collapses in the gap there is a space for Scanrans to spill through and Saefas falls to his death anyway without making a single sound. They know what has to be done and they know that it is death but they do it.
Later in the heroic ballads Oranie and Adie and Inness and Anders and Yuki and Shinko and Neal sing to their children, they will say that the lady knight and the sergeant died together defending the gap in Haven’s walls, their sacrifice meaning that Haven held out another two hours longer which was just long enough for Lord Raoul to reach them with a full company of men and kill in the name of a man like a son and a lady knight like a daughter. This means nothing to Dom as he lies bleeding out in the thick reddened mud of Haven with his sight fading, because all that he sees is Kel leaning over him and the shapes her lips make before she gives him mercy, and all that matters are those shapes.
He dies with a smile on his face, because she has told him she loves him.