A/N: So, I managed to injure my shoulder recently. I was stupidly trying to overexert myself doing yard work. My arm has been immobilized until further notice. Thankfully I keep plenty of one-shots floating around on my computer. Anyway, my longer works are on hold while I'm healing. One handed typing is a total pain in the butt…
Anyway, hope you enjoy this…and please don't mind my delay in chapter length content…we will be back to normal stuff after my arm can leave the stupid sling…
Oh, I suppose I should offer a warning, this piece was written way before Contract Bound, and also touches upon the topic of character death…although, in this one, it's not Keiichi who dies.
Grasping Thorns
Majestic skies colored in hues of orange, gold, and blue. Cloudless, the expanse could go on forever, and no one would even know it. It was beautiful, eye-catching and peaceful...it contrasted dangerously, with the reality around her. Confusion was setting in as battle cries and harsh yelling tore apart other otherwise peaceful air.
Screams of terror and fury rang out, unified by one singular cause.
Defeat any and all opposition. Protect the heavens unflinchingly. Carry out orders dutifully. Win the war, and come back home safe. If even half of the immortals could do such a thing, it was victory well earned. Lind knew the truth the moment she set to flight, not all those who carried fighting wings would return to their families again. Some would falter, others would lose hope, and even more still would charge head first into battle, and cull as many hellions as they could before they fell.
Lind one one such goddess, leading the fruitless charge of many. The glinting of metal, the supersonic speed, the sounds of silence, and the clash that followed after. Those were the things she remembered most as she fell from the heights, slipping into darkness.
Even her angels could do no more than fall by her side, two entities of duo nature, just like the Valkyrie herself.
However, if one were to truly know her, as her angels did, they would know her last thoughts were not of the battle, nor of the bloodletting that was sure to take place upon the recovery of her body. Her mind was not with her capable platoon, she didn't need to think of them, as they were strong warriors. They were trained to be powerful, able-bodied, and ready to take flight into the skies at a moment's notice…
Ready to fight, and destined to one day fall.
Her thoughts were different, far away, in a place that many could only dream of. They rested within one woman, a goddess, who waited for her return. A goddess with the softest of kisses, and hottest of tempers. A woman who knew exactly what she wanted, and demanded it on any given day. Loyal, and stubborn...but equally timid in strange ways. The goddess who had a front for everything, but deep down cried over insignificant things, or sometimes nothing at all.
Lind would never understand her lover, for all that she tried...
The scent of flowers hit her nose, and absentmindedly, she realized she'd hit the ground. Her hand reached out, covering the rending hole in her gut, feeling the sticky fluid of life itself drain from her. Even then, the silver haired woman was too far gone to feel fear, too distant in her apologies that she could never speak.
Words that would never be conveyed, in spite of their absolute importance.
Instead of muttering anything at all, giving whispered words to the air, or rattling out her love's name once more, she rested quietly in the hilly grass. Her lungs burned, sweat dripped from her eyes, and the war above her grew to be a distant, haunting harmony. Even that seemed fitting, noble, or at least the fate she'd come to expect…she wondered if Peorth expected it too…yet even that question was one that would never gain an answer.
It was the day when not even the angels of the most stoic Valkyries cried. It was the day they fell, one by one, raining feathers upon the land that would mark their graves. There was nothing else she could do but close her eyes and accept her fate.
Grasping a vine in her hand, wondering of such a thing would ever be understood…if such a feeling could reach the brown haired woman, she died quietly in the grass, grasping thorns.