Alright, so here's the next little drabble that just had to pop up in my mind at 1a.m and prevent me from getting a good night's sleep. I really can't seem to get past my obsession with this show... Pathetic, really. And quite annoying if you have to write a math exam the next day.

I just hope this was worth the time. Please read and tell me what you think!

Cheers, Kassandra

Losing the battle

He didn't come. She had been waiting for hours and he just didn't come. And the anxious beating of her heart already whispered to her what this meant: He doesn't want you, he doesn't want you…

Hot tears were prickling behind her eyes as hope gradually faded away with every passing second. How stupid of her to believe him. How stupid to believe he'd really choose her. But he had seemed so certain, so strong, so… dependable. Everything she had always wanted to see in him. And maybe this was exactly the problem.

The sun sunk lower and lower and she just sat there, watching her dreams fall from the edge of the world as well. He didn't want her. Hadn't wanted her all along. Everything she had thought she saw in him had been a product of her imagination only. How stupid of her…

The burning behind her eyes got stronger, but she refused to give in to the urge. It almost felt that if only she defied her tears just a little bit longer than perhaps she could defy the fate unrolling before her as well. Stupid, stupid… The words echoed in her mind while the scenery around her was unusually quiet. Even the soft, gentle wind that used to rustle the trees and bushes had left her alone to ponder on the end of what had seemed such a promising hope only hours before.

But those hours weren't normal hours. They were hours, wound together from little red droplets of life, from the hammering of her heart against her ribcage and from strength, gradually seeping out of her body. They were hours of war, where hope and fear, trust and a need to prepare for the worst fought endless battles that never saw a winner, but only the shifting of trenches.

Still she had stayed. For hours on end she had stayed, watching soldiers fall and raise themselves from the dead again, only to fight and fall once more. Still, she had refused to give up. But as the hours passed, the last soldiers of hope were slowly dying on the field and she was left to realize that maybe, hoping had been foolish all along. Because he hadn't come. And she shouldn't have believed him when he said he would. She should've known he was lying. She should never have entered the battle at all.

As for her, there was no happy ending. Never had been. She had stopped believing in fairytales the moment her parents had closed the door behind her and left her on the doorstep with everything she possessed at the age of fifteen. She should've known better than to start believing in the knight in armor again. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

But even as she sat there, berating herself for her naivety, she couldn't bring herself to go. She just sat slumped against the tree, pressing her fingernails into her knees. Perhaps, if she stayed just one minute longer. Perhaps... But the minute passed and nothing changed. Only the light seemed to grow a little dimmer and the birds seemed to sing a bit duller. And another soldier of hope stopped breathing painfully through a torn up lung and became just another body on the field.

He wouldn't come.

Dread took hold of her heart as suspicion turned into certainty. He wouldn't come, no matter how many minutes she spent here, torn between her refusal to give up and her need to let go.

He wouldn't come, because he had decided that she just wasn't worth it. The tears were almost burning her eyelids by now, but she just couldn't cry. She wasn't good enough to leave his wife for, even if that wife had been lying to him about her pregnancy. And that knowledge stung. In fact, it hurt like hell. Because inspite of everything she kept telling herself, she couldn't help but want to believe that there could be a fairytale-ending. That there could be a happily ever after, even for her. Because if there wasn't, if life was just a collection of fruitless efforts, then what point was there in going on?

Her fingernails had already dug vertical markings into the material of her jeans and she made a conscious effort to relax them, when all she really wanted to do was claw at herself until there was nothing left. No hope, no love, no fear and no pain. Nothing at all. Clumsily, she picked herself up and started to walk away from the tree she had promised to wait by. There was no reason to keep fooling herself. He wouldn't come and she couldn't keep doing this.

It was over, once and for all, before it had even really begun. And now she had to pick up where she had left. She had to build up the houses and churches again that had been burned to the ground by the raging flames of war and to care for the soldiers that lay wounded on their make-shift beds.

Somehow, she had to put herself together again, because life had to go on, in some way. It didn't matter that there were parts of her which would forever stay here, beside that tree. Parts she could never regain, because they were burnt, black and entirely dead. What mattered was that she kept going, even if her hope rested eternally at the feet of a broad, green eucalyptus tree.

A/N: Alright, so what do you think? Love it, hate it? Just press that cute little button down there and tell me!