The Fear.
Summary: Last of the Mohicans fanfic, that I wrote ages ago and recently rediscovered on my computer, where I edited the ending… kind of like everybody else. Alice/Uncas centered, beginning at the scene in the waterfall that was in the script, but not in the movie for some reason. The main premise of this fic is not so much how the two would survive the events of the film, but how they would live after.
(I.)
Alice knew she was going to die then.
"You mustn't tell her. Say nothing to Alice." Cora had whispered into Nathaniel Poe's shirt, as he held her close to him.
She didn't need to be told what had happened... from a distance. Her hand drifted to her chest on it's own, and felt her heartbeat there. Such a fluttering, fragile thing, so fragile that anything, a knife, a bit of metal, something that glinted like the stars that shone outside, could cut through and silence it forever. It could cut, and gnarled, hungry fingers could pull it out and the teeth could devour it as if it were nothing.
It was too simple, too easy to wipe all traces of a heartbeat away forever. In an instance, a flash of a knife, the man, her father, was lost to her forever. If Uncas had not come for her, come for her and her sister, she too would have been lost under some ball of metal, some humming blade.
Alice stared at the stars, visible behind a veil of water, and the small world that surrounded her thought she had lost her mind.
Uncas watched her when no one else did, and saw how she had grown so silent. She no longer belonged to the world that the others were so preoccupied with, she was somewhere else, lost in the stars, the moon.
Alice knew she was going to die, but want for life was nothing to her then. This world with all of its blood, all of its knives, was for nothing. It was the stars, that endless tranquil sprawl- that was her solace. If only she could have left then, they weren't so very far, just beyond the falls...
She had no way of knowing how much time had passed, her sister, Nathaniel, they had all vanished somewhere in the dark recesses of the cave. The wolves were howling, and that meant something, but what she did not know. Alice wandered, looking for the sky until she had found it, resting somewhere between a break in the wall, a fissure. It looked so close to the earth then, something she could step into - just a little farther.
A dark hand grabbed her and pulled her back, away from that silly dream she had.
Alice didn't have to open her eyes to know it was Uncas that held her, his smell of leather, earth and gunpowder, someone from the world, not the celestial bodies above them.
His dark eyes met hers, and he held a finger to his lips, asking only for silence. With Uncas' arms around her, she suddenly began to feel fatigue and weariness taking its toll on her. It didn't matter, because she was safe then, with him. She lie against the rocks, and he sank to the ground with her, trying to somehow make her stand again.
Alice could hear his heart, beneath his chest, strong and steady unlike her own frightened, rapid beat. But then... just as easily as all the others, it could be silenced.
What if she were to lose him, like her father? Like all of the others she had seen die? Fear gripped her, and she clung to him, tighter than before.
"Uncas..." She whispered, her voice frightened and soft, somehow hoping that he would understand.
He wanted to calm her, but Alice would not be calmed, faced with the thought of losing him- someone who made her feel safe. Without him, the world would be cold, hard, and filled with death.
A kiss, something simple, but he pulled away, his expression dismal and confused.
"Uncas," Alice pleaded. She needed him. She needed him to hold her and kiss her and love her, just as he needed something to protect.
He loved her then, moving against her in the dim light, carefully, gently.
But Alice knew, somewhere in the back of her mind that she couldn't hold him here forever, that time was something neither of them had. His fingers entangled in her hair, Uncas leaned forward to kiss her lips, and a sob escaped from them.
Pain. Pain from having him inside of her and brought her mind away from stars and the moon and intangible things like love. He had stopped now, and then the tears came. Uncas held her then, in an attempt to console her.
She wondered what she was doing, and marveled at her selfishness, her fear. Alice pulled away from him in shame, her body shaking with sobs.
Uncas reached for her again, finding her pale form in the dark, and held her to him tightly, with the same force of desperation that had caused her to cling to him. In that silence, Alice wrapped her arms around him, realizing that he did not want to lose her, either, that he had felt the same fear she had.
Eventually, she fell asleep, safe in that embrace, while Uncas waited, wide-awake, listening for the wolves.
(II.)
Alice suddenly stood dangerously close to the edge, and everyone was watching her, whether by will or some act of compulsion, some desperate attempt to save Uncas, she did not know. Cora would have done something different, something wild, but that was not Alice. Her strength was in silence.
She did not know how she had come to be here. Everything since the night before passed in a blur of confused images and surreal events. They had been captured, and Cora had been saved – not her – but Uncas had come for her anyway, and now he was doomed.
Magua's blade was stilled, the air humming with the movement that would have ended the life of the man she loved. She took another step back, her eyes red-rimmed and glassy. Magua signaled to his men before lowering his blade, and no one dared approach.
Uncas looked at her with wild, dark eyes, and she knew that he would allow himself to die before they took her away from him forever. If only she could have made him understand how she didn't want to live in a world in which he did not exist.
Magua stepped towards her, holding out his hand, reddened with blood. Alice only moved farther away. She could feel the wind rising up from the ravine, knowing that it wouldn't stop her from falling farther, falling faster.
Magua turned to Uncas, realizing that Munroe's daughter already belonged to him. His chief had ordered that Munroe's seed must not die, so too, the seed of the Mohican tribe he would let live.
"We go." Magua said simply, and they left, stepping over the men Uncas had slain, saying nothing.
Uncas kept his eyes on Alice as Magua and his men left them. There was blood at his side, but the wound was not deep.
Alice did not leave the safety of the ledge until they had gone, her sister, Cora, Nathaniel and Chingachgook emerged from the rocks, watching them leave in awe.
Uncas approached her slowly, carefully picking his way across the path, and reached for her. This hand, this familiar, loved, hand, she took, and allowed him to pull her to safety as he had done before.
He held her hands in his, and cut the bindings on her wrists, frowning as he inspected the deep red marks, and he stepped away again.
"Alice!" Cora embraced her sister, tearfully. "Oh, Alice." She moved back, examining her carefully. "I'm sorry."
(III.)
They left the promontory, taking shelter in a cave as the sun waned.
Uncas tended to his wound in silence, as Cora and Nathaniel talked in grave tones while Alice sat beside him, and stared into the fire they had built.
"What will you do?" Cora was asking him.
"Winter with the Delaware- my father's cousins. And in the spring, cross the Ohio and look for land to settle with my father and brother in a new place called Can-tuck-ee." He paused, looking over at his father, quiet with contemplation. "Will you go back to England?" He asked her.
"I have Alice to think of." Cora spoke gently.
After being silent for a very long time, Alice picked up her head. "There is nothing to go back for." She said, her voice soft, but audible.
"What?" Cora asked, as if she had not heard her.
"I want to stay." Alice said. "There is nothing…. Nothing to go back to England for. Everything is gone."
"Then I will stay, too." Cora turned to Nathaniel.
"Then you will stay in America?" He asked. "And you will be my wife?"
"I will." Cora answered after a pause. "Yes, I will."
"The frontier moves with the sun and pushes the red man of the wilderness forests in front of it. Until one day there will be nowhere left. Then our race will be no more, or be not us ... The frontier place is for people like my white son and his woman and their children." Chingachgook spoke at last.
Alice leaned her head back, resting against Uncas' knee, flooded with the relief that she hadn't lost him. She felt his gentle, calloused hand on her neck, drifting and resting on her shoulder. Alice closed her eyes.
Cora and Nathaniel did not see them, they were looking deep into each other's eyes, wondering how they had chanced to find each other in the first place.
Chingachgook watched them, carefully. He had seen the depths of his son's devotion for this white woman ever since the first time he had seen Uncas look at her. It was Alice that surprised him most of all, how someone from such a vastly different world could come to understand his quiet son, how they spoke to each other without needing to speak at all.
Night came quickly, and they slept, Uncas keeping watch at the mouth of the cave for all manner of things that might come for them.
There were steps behind him, and he turned quickly, silently.
"I'm sorry." Alice breathed.
His eyes softened and she sat next to him, his arm comfortably around her, and she rested her head against his chest.
"Why did you chose me?" Alice whispered.
"Because our spirit is the same. I knew that when I looked at you." He answered.
Alice smiled, and her eyes turned upwards, towards the stars. "It will be hard, won't it?"
"Yes." He nodded.
"I'll manage." Alice yawned.
Uncas laughed at this, his fingers entangled in her hair, and Alice laughed too. "There's a lot of ground to cover in the morning." He said. It would be a hard life for her, Uncas knew, the youngest daughter of a wealthy man, but somehow she would be all right. Somehow they all would.