Disclaimer: I am not Tamora Pierce. If she wrote this, I would cry for days, instead of the 10 minutes I spent teary-eyed writing the second part. But the first part isn't supposed to be sad at all, really. It's actually supposed to be really amusing.
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"You tell her"
"No you tell her"
"Why should I tell her?"
"Because I'm in charge and I say you should."
"But you're in charge and so it's your responsbility to tell her."
"Why doesn't he tell her?"
"That's a good question. Okay it's your job to tell her, Neal."
"Why me? She'll kill me, she's going to shoot the messenger..." he falls silent remembering that this is serious.
"Fine, we'll draw straws, and whoever gets the short one has to go tell her. Agreed?"
"Tell who what?" asks a new, more feminine voice. They all fall silent, and their eyes turn to the floor.
Nobody knows what to do. "Tell who what? Is this about me or something? I'd really appreciate an answer."
Nobody moves still, and he knows the truth is bound to come out sometime, so he sacrifices himself, knowing she would prefer getting the news from him and reacting in front of him instead of in front of the whole group and says, "Actually, Kel, I do need to talk to you about something. Let's go for a walk on the ramparts."
"Okay, Neal, but what is it about? You're all making me nervous."
They leave, as the rest of the King's Own squad breathes a sigh of relief. "Thank the Gods for my cousin. I don't want to know what she would have done to us."
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"What is this about, Neal? Don't tell me New Hope was attacked in the three days I was at Fort Steadfast."
Neal looks at her with nothing but compassion and hurt in his eyes. "Kel, that's exactly what happened. You had left at daybreak, and around noon the Scanrans attacked. They had a very powerful shaman who was making the ground tremble and the horses spooked. All the horses would have thrown their riders right into the melee in full armor had it not been for T-your extremely brave servant."
"Tobe? Where is he? Is he alright?"
"Kel, that's what I'm trying to tell you. So he used his wild magic to calm the horses, and had them all back to normal, while I was battling the shaman, magically of course. No one would let me ride into battle, me being the chief healer here. I had him almost finished when he cast another spell, he said a word, and it-it made Tobe burst into flame. After that the shaman was out of power, and I finished him easily, scorching him out of existence. The Scanrans retreated as soon as their mage was done for-Kel, are you alright? Kel?"
Kel had collapsed on the ramparts with her hands over her face. "Tobe, Tobeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, Mother's waiting for you to come back. Tobeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" She sobbed, her heart broken, rocking herself back and forth.
"Kel." Neal was unnerved to see his best friend this hysterical, but tried to comfort her nevertheless by putting a hand on her shoulder. "It's all my fault, I should have finished the mage off earlier, but I saved some of my power to heal the injured after the battle. Had I known there would be no injured, I would have killed him straightaway. Kel, you can't let yourself take the blame for this. You weren't here. There was nothing you could do to save him–"
"I could have stayed here, or taken him with me," she relapsed back to her crying.
"Kel, listen to what I'm saying. He's a hero. He saved more than thirty people's lives by calming the horses down, saving their riders from an almost certain death, as well as the other convict soldiers and civilians who would have gotten caught on foot in the melee and maybe by the spooked horses." Neal knew he was rambling, but he couldn't stop, he knew it was all his fault.
"Did you bury him?" gulped Kel.
"Kel," Neal lost his pseudo-cool, "there wasn't anything left for us to bury–" at this point all Neal could do was choke the words out, "he–was–burned–alive–". Neal started crying too, something he had done a lot of in the past three days, but apart from this, it had all been in private.
Kel and Neal hugged, though neither of them could see as their eyesight was distorted from the tears falling free. They kept crying and crying on the ramparts, until they fell asleep. And they spent the night, arms around one another. They didn't hear the others calling them, looking for them. The world had ended according to Kel. Poor, poor Tobe.
La fin. El fin. The end.
I'm so sorry for everyone who loves Tobe. I like him too, but this idea just came into my head. I got a bit teary writing this, it's kinda in response to my mood (I think I failed my math test and needed something to take my mind off it), but also a more serious subject, the murder of the young woman who answered the online ad. Although I didn't know her personally I know many people who know her and her family. I guess this is a tribute to her. And to my brother, I know he's always here with me.
I want to keep going with the story, but I feel it would lose its poignancy and it would trivialize Tobe's murder. I really want to make it Kel/Dom, but it feels direspectful to Tobe. But, as a very intelligent woman so aptly put it: "Dumbledore would be happy to know that there was a little more love in the world." And I think Tobe would too.
Although the Dumbledore/love thing is really interesting, if he loved once and it doomed him, why was he so adamant about loving and the power of love? Love does have the power to blind, as well as the power to bind. (Like it?) And I'm not even going to try and read the Harry Potter fanfic section, I don't want to know how many Grindelwald/Dumbledore stories there are, although I wouldn't mind knowing how many were there before JKR confirmed it.
Please review! If I get 20 reviews I will continue (although I should also update my other two stories in progress as well).
And yes, I do realize I switched somewhere from present to past tense, but I like it how it is and am too lazy to fix it. Oh, and the people from the beginning (the names cluttered up the dialogue so I kept it as nameless banter) were Wolset, Dom, Wolset, Dom, Fulcher, Wolset, Dom, guess what? This was Neal, Dom, Kel!, Kel again, Neal, Kel, Dom