Marit's point of view at the end of The Seventh Gate, before Haplo wakes up.

Disclaimer: I (unfortunately) do not own the Death Gate Cycle, the four worlds, or any of the characters pertaining…damnit.

Beautiful Scars

She cradled his head in her lap, running gentle fingers through his tousled hair. She felt a smile touch her lips as he turned his head into her touch, murmuring something indistinct beneath his breath. Sleep had erased the worry lines from his face, making look more like the young runner she had known about nine years ago.

Oh, how he's changed, she thought. Oh, how we both have. She didn't know any longer whether to regret it or not. The Haplo she had known certainly wouldn't have done the things this new Haplo had done, like risking his life, nearly losing it, to save everyone on the other worlds. Mensch. Humans, elves, dwarves. Lesser beings, or so they had all thought. Disobedient children to be led around by the hand. But Haplo had seen past that old prejudice, grown from sneering observer to compassionate protector. She didn't know half of what had happened to him in the four worlds, but she planned to find out. They had all their lives after this to learn, after all.

Haplo stirred and Marit paused in her ministrations to see if he would wake, but he merely sighed, snuggling closer to her. She smiled gently, and returned to running her fingers through his soft hair, brown at the roots and white at the tips, like hers. Like all their peoples'. She still remembered how, all those years ago when she knew Haplo to be truly asleep she would let her guard drop and let her fingers roam through his twin-colored locks. Usually she only allowed herself the luxury when they were staying in a squatters' village, a place that was safe enough to find true sleep and where the softest touch wouldn't alert him to wakefulness. She had missed the soothing action after she had left him, how her fingers would stroke the thin air seemingly of their own accord before she stopped them with an angry thought.

That hadn't changed about him, his hair, although that was about the only thing that hadn't. Her fingers trailed down his face, which had hardened over their years apart from the tough lives her people were forced to live inside the evil of the labyrinth, and then from his recent trials. So much to discover, and for a brief moment she had feared that she would never be able to. She had felt her heart stop when he and Alfred had appeared in the small clearing, collapsed on the ground and covered in blood, barely even breathing. She had feared for the briefest of moments that he had died. Her arms tightened unconsciously around him, one hand brushing across the long, jagged scar on his chest, the one that had torn through his heart-rune. She raised her other hand to her own head, brushed aside her bangs to feel to rough edges of the scar that split the joining rune tattooed on her forehead. They were both of them the same in that, they bore scars as the price of their survival. And as she looked into the scarred soul of the man she loved she realized that his scars made him even more beautiful than he had once been.

Yes, she decided as Haplo's eyes finally fluttered open and found hers, in spite of the scars, or even in fact because of them, he had grown to posses the most beautiful soul she had ever seen.

So, meh. Another little drabble from little old me. Good or bad, let me know. Read and review! Thanks! Ja ne!