This is a reposted story from my LJ, originally written in February 2008. Because of this story's particular formatting issues I'd been wary of putting it up here, but now I'm giving it the old college try. This is a like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, except you're really choosing your own story! Branch I and Branch II are their own separate endings - enjoy!
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This is how it begins: a man and a woman, together. Night surrounds them in its oppressive embrace, but it is buffeted by the light of a half-moon and the nearby fire. The ambiance is lost on the both of them, if only because these two are Kent of the Lycian canton Caelin and Fiora of Edessa province, Ilia - two knights who have taken it upon themselves to ensure that no one else may enjoy what they have now, an increasingly intimate encounter with a person of the opposite sex. Right now they are proper, principled commanders sharing ideas on a matter that has troubled the both of them, that any two people could get so carried away in each other that they forget their duty and lose everything. It is a favorite word of theirs, duty: a noun, a virtue, an honor, and they use it often and with complete sincerity.
This is not the first night they have spent on their new idea, because they both have so much to share with the other. How should we clarify this? Would this be too harsh? In Caelin, the proper punishment would be this, but how would they do it in Ilia? Like this, you see, because any harsher might store up resentment. That's true, we wouldn't want to go so far; as a new commander I've found a direct, but lenient approach to be best. I'm surprised to hear it's only been a year for you, considering what Florina has said. Your sister has been working harder than the native knights; seeing you in battle, I realize her work ethic must come from the example you have set. I thank you for the compliment, but after seeing the improvement in her skill I should be the one thanking you. Well, I'm honored by your kind words. Ah, anyway, as you were saying here...
Well, maybe they have been affected, just a little, not that either of them are able - or willing - to recognize it.
Until tonight. Together, night after night, they have worked, conversed, and expressed surprise when one or the other realized just how much of the night had trickled by, so naturally they have had to promise to meet again the next night. And again. And yet again, until all there was in their days was battle and each other.
Until tonight.
Tonight is a night like any other, they think, but this is not true. They have been around each other for too many battles, too many nights, for that to be true. It is there in the way her breath catches when he leans over her shoulder to see something she has written - she feels that she might be breathing too loud and that will annoy him, but no, the only thing louder than the crackle of the fire is the staccato beats of her heart. It's there in the way his eyes linger on the curve of her wrist as she tucks a loose lock of hair behind one small, unadorned ear - Lady Lyndis has pierced lobes from which her mother's gold earrings dangle and he does find that detail very endearing, but he finds that there is something perfectly right that the woman beside him now would eschew something as frivolously simple as jewelry. The sound of his accented, precise Elibean as it slides into her ear and reverberates in time with her heartbeat, the scatter of teal-blue hair over her ear and trickling down her shoulder as she lowers her hand - these are the things they notice, these are the things they lock within their hearts, these are the things upon which they don't react.
Then it happens. Entirely by accident their fingers nudge together in that space between them that both knights had unconsciously left barren, a borderline of propriety. Both are surprised by the breach, surprised enough that they glance at each other, apologies fattened by their unconscious guilt already reaching their lips.
Their eyes meet, and then -
