A/N: Oh wow, this is like my first non-House of Anubis one-shot! You guys should be so proud of me! But I've had this written up for a while now. It never ceases to make me laugh. There are so many parts of this story that I absolutely love. I'm quite proud of it actually. It takes place right before Colette leaves the party after Asguard for the first time. I hope you enjoy it and leave a review!
A blonde young man sliced a carrot, stirring the stew he was brewing up with a wooden spoon, concentrating with all of the focus he had.
"Emil, you're such a good chef; the perfect boyfriend! You really are!" A young brunette exclaimed dreamily. The said Emil blushed in response, looking down into the stew shyly, avoiding any eye contact with the brunette, Marta.
"It's nothing really, Marta. A lot of guys can cook." Emil said quickly, trying to change the subject.
On the other side of the campfire, another blonde was sitting, admiring a pendant in her hand. As Colette noticed a smudge on its surface, she rapidly rubbed it spotless with her white blouse, obsessing over anything that could possibly be wrong with a gift so precious to her.
Marta just so happened to stop with her constant clinging to Emil to notice Colette's apparent infatuation with the pendant, causing her curiosity to reach a peak. "Hey Colette, what's that your cleaning off?" She asked, tilting her head to the side with eager interest.
Colette's head snapped up, glancing in Marta's direction before smiling happily, as if remembering the past and pleasantly reminiscing. "Oh, this is a pendant that Lloyd gave to me on my 16th birthday!" She beamed, looking down at it. "Sure, it was a little late, and it broke a few times. He never got it to me on time for my birthday in the first place. Even Dirk said that it's about one third of what Lloyd's capable of, but I still love it." She rambled, staring intently at the accessory she had received and treasured ever since. After all, it was beautiful, and given to her by a person she thought of highly and lovingly.
Marta furrowed her eyebrow for a moment before grinning wildly. "Aw, that's so romantic!" She gushed, hearts replacing her wide blue eyes.
Within a second, a purple dark shroud of darkness appeared; Tenebrae soon emerged and approached Colette. He took a quick glance at the pendant in her hand, then at the Chosen's face. "It appears that Lloyd would have to feel a great amount of adoration for Colette to create something that thoughtful for her, even though it is amateurish." He said wistfully, floating closer to Emil. "Call it Centurion's Intuition."
For a moment, Colette blankly stared at Tenebrae, who had a mischievous expression on, and a love-struck Marta before blushing and shaking her head repeatedly. "E—eh? No, no! It's not like that, I swear! We've been very good friends for all of these years, nothing more!" She spluttered, tripping over her own words clumsily.
The Chosen's denial didn't shrink cause Marta's grin at all. "Colette, I think it's obvious."
Colette's blush didn't disappear, either. Instead, her face grew to an even darker shade of red as she gripped her pendant even tighter. "What's obvious?" She asked.
"That you're in love with Lloyd!" Marta announced matter-of-factually, as if it was already a known fact. "Sure, I don't really like him because of everything he's done, but if someone as nice as you can be in love with him, he must not be all that bad. I mean, maybe something's making him do what he's doing! That's a possibility, right?" She took that moment to fall into a dramatic pause. "And all of this because of love, it's so romantic! It's such an amazing love story; a fairy tale, forbidden love, practically!" Then, the young woman turned to Emil. "Why aren't you ever this romantic with me, Emil? Why won't you make me a necklace and then leave without telling me what your goals are? Why don't we have a fairy tale story? Wait, no! Don't leave, just make me a present! It'll make me a really happy woman!" She ranted excitedly, walking closer to Emil mischievously.
Emil shrunk back. "M—Marta, maybe you shouldn't say stuff like that. And, um, well…" the timid boy trailed off with a small voice, glancing at Colette and Tenebrae helplessly.
But the Centurion had no interest in helping Emil; rather, Tenebrae still inquired Colette with great curiosity. "I'd like to be there when this romantic meeting of chance occurs that Lady Marta is referring to. It seems like a truly wonderful tale being unraveled right before our eyes." He said thoughtfully. "If it will be as romantic as Lady Marta says, of course. She could very well be exaggerating. I do believe that it would be more interesting to watch than Lady Marta's hopeless love with Lord Emil, of course." He continued, not bothering to think that he could easily strike a nerve with Marta.
Though Tenebrae's last words caused Colette to flush even more than when the conversation had begun in the first place. "Ah, Tenebie, Marta, it's really not like that, I swear! We grew up together, and Lloyd's my best friend, too. I mean, we traveled around alone, just me and him, for a little bit—" The blonde then proceeded to slap a hand over her mouth; she had just blurted something out that Marta could easily twist into some fake tale of romance, which she would never stop denying.
Marta stared at Colette with wide eyes, before beaming once again, taking her hands off of Emil as well, inching towards the only other female in the group. "You traveled alone together? Did you two date; are you boyfriend and girlfriend? Are you ever going to get married and have a big wedding and then a happily ever after?" She demanded, her questions like bullets, firing at full speed. Colette backed away a little more, nervously fingering the pendant.
"I said it's not like that! It's really not!" Colette continued further into her denial, furiously waving her hands in front of her face. Of course, even the dense Chosen knew deep down that she did in fact have great feelings for Lloyd; she admitted to herself that she was in love, just not to anyone else. She didn't have enough courage to do that. She was even pretty sure that he returned those feelings, too, but then he just vanished on their trip to gather the exspheres from the connected worlds. All that she was getting at the moment were mixed emotions.
"If you didn't love Lloyd, I don't think that your heart would be this aflutter. I certainly don't believe that you would be denying it this much, either. You are very flustered over this, Colette, a true sign of love." Tenebrae chided. Colette huffed out a sigh, looking away.
"You're really difficult sometimes, you know, Tenebie?" Colette muttered under her breath.
"Aha! You didn't deny it that time! You're admitting it!" Marta said, pointing at Colette and giggling wildly. Emily cast the Chosen an apologetic glance, but Colette only looked down sadly.
"I know that you don't think Lloyd is a good person because of the…because of the Blood Purge at Palmacosta and all of the other…evil things…the evil things that he's done…but he really is the kindest person I know, and the kindest people are the most vulnerable. You never saw him on the Journey of Regeneration; he risked his life time after time in order to save me, and everyone else. Though it was mostly me he was saving. He had to do what he believed was right, and he couldn't let an innocent person die in front of him. He would take those deaths personally…" Colette said quietly, but loud enough for everyone to hear her. "He's a good person, and I know it. Something's making him act the way he's acting; it's not the Lloyd I know." She finished barley above a murmur.
A silence took over the group of four, and an awkward one at that. For once, Marta had nothing to say about Colette's supposed "relationship" with Lloyd. Tenebrae had no snide remarks to say, and it was utterly surprising who spoke up first.
"I don't think that I'll ever be able to truly forgive Lloyd for what he did, but hearing his side of the story would be nice…I guess that I feel a little bad about blaming everything on him when it might not be his fault in the first place…" Emil said, earning a surprised expression from Marta and Tenebrae.
Colette smiled softly before dropping the pendant around her neck finally and standing up. "I'm going to go for a walk alone, I'll be back later. Don't worry about me" She said, offered the other three a wave, and slowly disappeared from view.
Once she was sure that Colette couldn't hear them, even with angelic hearing, Marta sighed with content that her work was done. "Sure, she's still in denial…sort of…but she really almost kind of admitted it to us!" She said happily.
"Well, I think that it's kinda obvious that Colette's in love with Lloyd, she really shows it, but I don't know if he feels the same way, I mean, this is Lloyd we're talking about. Colette deserves better that someone like him." Emil commented, almost contradicting his earlier statements.
"But the way Colette talks about Lloyd, it really seems like he's an entire different person that what we've heard about him. Maybe the Lloyd she knows and the Lloyd we know are different somehow?" Marta suggested, but Emil just shook his head, disagreeing with Marta, and stirring the stew once more.
"How would that be possible? He's the same person, unless he has a twin. That's unlikely, and Colette would've told us, probably. It's possible that he's maybe he's changed. People do change, you know" Emil said as a rejoinder.
Marta shook her head this time with more stubborn determination. "Nu-uh! I bet that he really does love Colette! And I bet that he really is caring, and after everything with Ratatosk is settled, he's gonna sweep Colette off of her feet and give her that fairy tale ending I've—I mean she's been dreaming of! And I'll get to be a bridesmaid at their wedding, and you won't have any position at all with the groom because you didn't believe in their wonderfully romantic relationship from the start!" She said, sticking out her tongue at the young blonde man. Emil sighed, showing defeat, causing Marta to grin with victory, and pump her fist into the air.
"It is indeed a plain thing to see that it's a reciprocated feeling." Tenebrae said smoothly. "I might be the Centurion of Darkness, but I am very in-tune with romantic emotions; I've been called the Centurion of the Heart in the past by my underlings, Lord Ratatosk and even my fellow Centurions." He paused, chuckling slightly as he thought of the past. "It is a part of my Centurion's Intuition, yes, but I do believe that this will all come to a happy ending in the end." He took a pause. "But maybe not as romantic as the ending that Lady Marta envisions with a royal wedding fit for a king, queen, or princess."
Marta and Emil regarded the centurion with surprise. "Tenebrae…are you…okay?" Emil asked carefully, his bright green eyes somewhat bewildered.
"Why wouldn't I be alright, Lord Emil? Care to explain?" The dark creature asked, cocking his head to the side.
"Well it's just that you're being really…" Emil trailed off, as if he couldn't find the correct words to describe Tenebrae's current state.
"You're being really deep!" Marta finished for Emil, nodding as if she liked her choice of word. "And less of a stick in the mud!" She added quickly.
"Yeah…that's it. You're being deep. Really out of character, too." Emil concluded, ignoring Marta's remark about Tenebrae not being a stick in the mud this time, though it was true. He was relieved in a way that Colette wasn't there at the moment, or another debate would have risen, causing Marta to grow grumpier and grumpier, which was never a good thing.
"I do not know what you two are talking about, Lady Marta and Lord Emil. I am always this way. It comes with being known as the Centurion of the Heart." He said with all seriousness, turning his head the other way.
Marta scooted closer to Emil. "If only we could take him to the doctor…something is seriously wrong here…" she whispered. Emily only gave an "mmm" of agreement, and resumed to finishing up with the dinner he had been preparing the whole time.
A/N: There it is. And now you know why Tenebrae is the Centurion of Heart; you learn something new every day if you keep your minds open, readers! Like I said earlier, I'm quite proud of this little one-shot. I hope you like it; leave a review please! It will make my night!
~Gray