"Titaniaaa!"
The knight briefly considered diving beneath the conference table, but the tent flap opened before she could grapple with the idea and come to a consciencious conclusion.
"Rhys…" She gave the benignly beaming saint a dark look, "I know what that tone means. I'm not interested in-"
"Oh, Titania! Must you be so pessimistic?" His impervious jollity did not brighten the axe-mistress's mood as he continued blithely, "It's not about that anyways. I'm your friend; you asked me to curtail my matchmaking endeavors and I will! Besides," reluctantly, Titania allowed her arm to fall captive to Rhys' slim but strong hands and stood, "it would tarnish my sainthood were I to disregard your wishes."
"Enough stalling, Lord Sainthood!" reprimanded the knight. "What's this about if not another ill-fated coupling for me?"
A red glow began working its way up from the base of the tome-wielder's neck. Titania knew this flush had multiple meanings, but her practiced eye pinned the particular hue now tingeing his ears as one of mischievousness. To this end, she was unfooled by the response he provided as he led her through the tent flap and across the center of camp.
"It's nothing really, just a favor… There's a patient I'd like you to watch for a few moments, if you don't mind."
Without warning, Rhys turned upon her with his best beseeching stare and, being unprepared for such a brutal tactic, Titania fell to her fellow redhead's singular charm.
"Of course I don't mind, Rhys," responded Titania in a much gentler tone than she had been able to conjure all morning.
"Oh, thank you, Titania!"
A small smile stole across her lips as she received the radiant robe-wearer in a brief embrace.
"It won't be but ten minutes." He clasped one of her hands as he began his retreat, lidded amber eyes trained on hers, reassuring. "There shouldn't be much trouble…he was asleep when I left."
"Okay."
Rhys gave one last smile before turning on a backwards step and disappearing into the maze of tents at a mild sprint.
Titania brushed her unwieldy bangs from her eyes only to let them flop inevitably back and let out all her suspicions, stress, and mistrust in a deep huff. Though she was still not wholly convinced of the purity of Rhys' motives, she could perceive little harm in the proposed activity. Besides, if anything it would provide a much needed break from the current chaos of the world.
Allies, enemies, all had been mashed together in what seemed like a matter of days; lines had been entirely redrawn; mysteries solved only to be replaced by even greater conundrums. She inhaled.
Gods and Goddesses.
This was just too much for her. She was a knight, a simple knight, and an aging one at that. Narrowing down, a crowd of fifty plus of Tellius' greatest warriors to a mere squad of sixteen was preposterous, and more than that, it could be a death sentence.
And yet, had she not always known in the deepest reaches of her being, that the very essence of knight hood lay in following the lord or the lady you served into whatever incarnations of anarchy he or she got it into their heads to plunge into? And there was Ike. Ready to plunge away.
She exhaled.
Yes, maybe her dear little priest's favor was more of a divine intervention than she gave it credit for. Pushing these subfusc musings from her mind, Titania opened the flap to the medical tent and walked quietly in, observing how every sound and color seemed heightened - like her steps were explosions and her hair was Cymbeline at the height of its casting.
Suddenly self-conscious and feeling rather awkwardly un-effeminate, she cast amber eyes around the blindingly beige canvas walls until she found the only occupied bed, a lump of white sheets, directly to the right of the door with something dark resting on the pillow. A small wooden stool was positioned at its side with a small chair cradling a bowl of water evidently meant for saturating a cool compress keeping it company. The fiery-haired knight shuffled in what she hoped was a discreet way towards the bed, turning to slink sideways past the chair and sinking, with well-concealed relief, onto the stool. She made a quiet thanks to whatever powers might be for allowing her to not trip over anything as she had been positive she would.
The last word had just finished echoing in her anxiety ridden mind when a low groan came from the bed at her knees. Holding her breath, she instantly took the silent statement of gratitude back, chiding herself for speaking too soon. She should have learned by now; she never escaped from the healer's tent unscathed.
"Oohhh…"
A gauntleted hand emerged from the pristine folds of the sheets and, after considerable searching, located the cloth over his eyes and removed it with sluggish reflexes.
The breath she'd been holding caught somewhere in her throat.
"Hm?"
Bleary dark eyes made a careful circuit of the room, starting at the corner to the right of the bed and, after what seemed like years later during which Titania feverishly debated whether or not she should flee, finally came to rest on her. A few layers of sleep seemed to fall away from the gaze and the patient sat up a little taller. "Lady Titania?"
He knows my name?
Numb with surprise and unparalleled fear of the impending social encounter, the addressed party remained completely dumb.
He cast about the tent again, finally comprehending his surroundings. The expression of mild surprise fell into one of dark determination and the prostrate man made to rise.
"No, no, no!"
Clinging to the nature of her task, Titania forced the potential escapee down with considerable fervor. "You're in no state to go anywhere," gathering some composure from this success, she gathered all of her authority and tried to force it out through her facial features as she intoned condemningly, "Duke Renning."
It was the crowd that caught her eye, a throng of bodies that grew each second as passersby were drawn by that strange magnetic quality of fellow human beings.
Barely aware that her feet were moving, she fell victim to the pull of the mass, striving to contrive some reason for such a crowd to form: was someone injured, someone lost, someone caught where they should have been wise enough not to be- it was the Crimean tents, the temporary residence of the queen, the Royal Knights.
The pulse of the crowd was excited; there was nothing serious at the source… It took a bit of shouldering, past both those she'd drawn a weapon beside and against, to reach a place where no head would obscure her view. The monochromatic armor of the Royal Knights provided personas to the people in the inner ring almost instantly: a guarded bronze Makalov, the shaken silver of Astrid, and crimson concern fighting conviction across Kieran's countenance.
Geoffrey, bold and composed in his broad range of blues was in the small space left open in the center. Across from him in ebony armor, was a man with smooth and shortly cropped black-green hair, a figure so well known from a time that suddenly felt so long ago.
He lunged, Geoffrey parried, they stepped to the side in the orbital dance of a spar, and she saw them each in profile. The breath she'd been holding caught somewhere in her throat.
She had heard he was back.
A half-hero, half-peer, it was like watching a dream held, just out of her reach so she could neither join nor break it, one like many she'd had in the past but what different players.
That sharp nose: she'd seen it before.
This was a real knight, one from her time when duels like this happened every day and were fought for only honor and only the love of the movements used to practice and not kill: sacred almost. She had walked those steps, she had felt that dance make her heart pound. She had watched the muscles of a man she came to love from afar, used this waltz as an excuse to be closer than she could let herself be otherwise.
They watched each other's muscles now, the knight and the boy, and her body swelled with the urge to cheer on one or the other, but this was her dream again. That grim line beneath the moustache: she'd faced its frown before.
The bodies rotated like their celestial counterparts, fixed and unwilling to break pace until one fell or the other did. The eyes stayed firmly bound together as the brains behind them knew that to break that static connection of combat might lose today's match, might slip- fatal.
All at once she thinks he sees her, over the heads of all the other members of the masses and past the face he should be studying- all at once she, knows he saw her as he loses today's match and slips to a boy who is not surprised, only weary.
A silly, old knight to try and face the commander of the Crimean armies. But she woke up with a smile on her face, left alone as the crowd collapsed on itself.
She was not the only one left after all.
"So you saw that?"
"Um, yes. Yes, I did."
He chuckled a little in defeat. "I imagine most everyone did. A stupid little skirmish but worthwhile… My replacement is well qualified, I can now affirm from experience, and that is a comfort."
"You were at a disadvantage," Titania pointed out judiciously, hiding subconsciously behind beloved battle-talk more than trying to console the duke.
Renning, studying the woman from his place on the pillow, seemed to understand the motivations and exhaled neutrally, "That's true… but I've rarely found it to be the end all and be all."
"Hm."
"After all, I seem to recall a certain scarlet-haired paladin cutting me down at least once in the days of my brother's reign: axe beating sword."
Titania buried her gaze in her hands, devouring the lines criss-crossing in the palms and fingers. They sat in a comfortable silence for a while.
"Rather soundly too, might I add!"
She lifted her eyes and found the lost acquaintance smiling marginally at the ceiling.
The expression fit him rather nicely, she thought. Apparently he'd acquired at least one new skill over the past few years.
"That may be so. Though a sound defeat is not always a victory."
The smile disappeared just as smoothly as it had appeared and Renning took a deep breath.
"And here I was trying to be tactful and light-"
"I didn't mean to-"
"But off you go sounding like antiquity herself speaking-"
"Well, now, just wait a minute-"
"Perhaps my niece even: such a grandmotherly attitude she's taken towards me!"
"You're being completely unfair and-"
"Not that it disappoints me. Permission to sit?"
"Yes! Well, no! I guess, but- oh!"
Titania clamped her lips tight at the ridiculousness of it all. She rarely lost control like this and, quite frankly, it seemed condescending somehow. Only a very cruel and calculating mind could have knocked her off balance so easily.
Glowing coals ate into the temporarily incapacitated Duke as he brought himself up to a sitting position, swinging his legs over the bed's edge and running a hand through his hair.
It was very, hard, to hate him when he up and decided to spontaneously appear weary and vulnerable.
Out of the blue he broke the silence, tone plummeting with gravity, "I meant no offense, my lady. It was a stupid skirmish."
She blinked.
"But worthwhile. My allies are well-qualified, I can now affirm from experience-"
"And that is a comfort," finished Titania quietly.
The smile flicked on again for a fraction of a second and she could not even be sure it had happened as the tent flapped open to her left, effectively killing any chance of discovering the answer.
"Titania!"
Rhys' clear voice filled the room and she felt the colors, dull, the sounds dim as he entered. Relief.
Both knights swung their heads up to take in the deceptively tall priest and Oscar standing close and looking serious, almost touching. Rhys' faint smile remained in place despite a mild tinge of uncertainly in his tone, "Ike wants you, both of you actually…"
The way the sentence died spelled out clearly what they were wanted for.
Titania stood, moving her right arm as if shifting and axe. Renning's fingers twisted around a hilt that wasn't there.
"Bring a support," Rhys broke the invisible wall that usually separated he and the green knight, resting shaking digits on Oscar's arm to still them. "We go in pairs."
"Do you have a support, Duke Renning?"
"I think so, Lady Titania. And yourself?"
"The same, my lord."
"Very good. I can bring our mounts if you care to go on."
"Why, thank you."
"It's nothing! My steed will be glad to see she's not the only one left after all."
Author's Note: Okay, so I thought I'd explain this a little bit...I really have a soft spot for RenningTitania as a couple and wanted to write something for them to kind of highlight why I think they work well together. On a side note, I took the Royal Knights plus Oscar and Titania to the finals once and put Renning and Titania together and they were FAB. XD That was probably my favorite finals of all time, but anyways. :3 The switch to italics was a flashback to Geoffrey and Renning's spar that is referenced in a base conversation before you go into Ashera's Tower and I played around with it from Titania's POV, bringing in the idea of her era of knights elapsing as well as her recognition that this is something she and Renning share. Also, I thought I read/saw somewhere that Titania was once a Royal Knight or at least has spent time with them at some point so I also worked in the idea that they already knew each other and possibly trained together, etc. So, that's kind of where I was coming from if there was any confusion. :) Please feel free to ask, state, ponder, or threaten in a review! ;3
A thousand thank yous for reading!!!
-bows-
-S