a/n:

This drabble is a bit of a test run. The unnamed Original Character is someone I'd like to use for a fanfic I have in my head and have started working on. However, I know OCs get a bad rep and wanted to kind of give her (and my writing style) a test run. She would have an actual name in the fic but I figured leaving her without a name would work best for such a short one shot.

Konnorónhkwa = I love you in Mohawk

PS The title of this drabble is inspired by a line/track from the wonderful film "The New World" directed by Terrence Malick and starring the gorgeous Q'orianka Kilcher. Specifically I'm referring to the John Smith (Colin Farrel) quote "I thought it was a dream...what we knew in the forest. It is the only truth."

In any case, please enjoy! Reviews and critiques are always appreciated.

In all the years that they'd known each other, (and in whatever months they had spent together), they had never quite matched up at the right moment.

Of course, their ever being together was something that could easily be debated. They were much more like spectres floating through each other's worlds, too wounded to ever allow themselves to be touched truly, intimately. It was only natural that it was when they had created something out of themselves, molded within each other, something real, something tangible, that their childish games at kissing and hiding had fallen to pieces.
At first he'd mistaken it as the result of a leisurely winter, chalked up the softness of her thighs to a good hunt and relished in the easy way her hips gave in to his hands.
But then her belly began to lose the sweetness and softness so characteristic of her and the skin swelled and grew taut beneath his fingers.

She had tucked herself away into the forest - spooked after his hand lingered too long - and did not return for three days, meeting him behind the red manor.

"How long has it been?" His voice was soft, but she felt the cut of steel in his eyes.

"Long enough for you to finally notice." Fear and panic had forced the remark out of her, but it was too late now to take it back.

His brown cheek tensed as he clenched his jaw, turning his face away from her, towards the treeline. The light reflected off the snow highlighted the line of his nose, and she followed it up to his eyes, shaded by black lashes.

"Are you expecting me to leave this alone because you have become angry? I am the one who has been lied to."

Now she leveled her eyes on him, for once swallowing down her irrational, excessive affection for him. They'd gone beyond the point of discussing possibilities, of futures and hopes. She'd had a dream, months ago - of sleeping next to him in the longhouse, of being woken by a child's hand on her cheek. But then she'd woken up in the empty manor and walked off into the woods. And now she knew that her dream had been just that - a dream.

Bothered by the way her gaze lingered, Connor turned to her again. Her hair was in a bun, inky locks tied back just as they were when they'd first met. He was different, cheeks smeared with warpaint, his hair given up in a symbol of war, but she realized that he had always been the same, would always stay the same. The warrior fighting a neverending battle.

"I am -"

"No." His voice was stern.

Despite all efforts to throw away affection, her chest tightened, feeling the distinct melancholy that came with goodbye.

"Yes." There was no more waiting for him to move his eyes off the crosshairs. "And there will be no other ones. I cannot do this again, I cannot keep doing this to myself."

"Then don't do it in the first place. Don't do it at all!" His eyes blazed but she recognized the desperation there, the same one she'd felt that morning, before picking the pennyroyal that sprouted up along the dirt trails.

"It is done."

That night he dreamt of her, hair braided, a gorgeous creature at her brown breast. Her hooded eyes drifted towards him and she smiled.

"Konnorónhkwa, Ratohnhake:ton."

In the distance, by the longhouse door, he saw his mother's shape silhouetted by the white sun