THIS HAS SPOILERS FOR THE FOURTH AND FIFTH BOOKS. DON'T READ THIS UNLESS YOU'VE READ THE ENTIRE SEIRES ALREADY.
So. I'm doing this cuz there's only a small handful of passable Gendra fics on here and some of them were downright horrid, so I decided an intervention was needed. All right, here goes.
Oh, and I don't own Fable Haven. That's Brandon Mull's deal- otherwise the whole Navarog business would NOT have happened and the series would be far less thought out. I only own my words, my head cannon, Aqua, and Ember.
"Talking"
'Thinking'
[Author's note]
"So, where are we going?" I asked the 19-year-old next to me, my hand entwined with his.
"You'll see w-when we get there, Kendra. I promise it will be worth the wait," he reassured me, giving me that cute smile of his. The sun was just teetering on the brim of the horizon, staining the few clouds a beautiful orangey color. There were a few people on the tree-lined sidewalk besides Gavin, my longstanding boyfriend of two years and me.
"I'm sure it will be wonderful," I told him, and he leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek.
"Just a little farther, and we'll be there," Gavin let go of my hand and put his arm around my shoulders.
All these years later, and I still don't know how I believed it when Navarog was pretending to be Gavin. Gavin could have never acted that way- he was far too sweet.
I nuzzled his ear with my nose. We were passing fewer and fewer people as we walked, the sun now barely kissing the horizon and burning a bright red. Then Gavin slowed, giving slight pressure to my shoulders to signify for me to slow down too. We stopped, and I looked at him.
The shadows cast on his face as the sun slipped out of sight reminded me of the pictures of antagonists in anime when they had a particularly evil moment, but I knew Gavin wasn't bad. The only time I thought he could possibly ever want to hurt me was when I wasn't actually face to face with him, but a stingbulb-Gavin-slash-Navarog that looked like Gavin. Of course, the fact that the pseudo-Gavin had transformed into Navarog's dragon form, tried to kill me and Mara, trapped a wounded Warren in a magical knapsack with Bubda the Hermit Troll, ate Dougan, and tried to kidnap me and Seth (along with the Obsidian Waste vault key and a unicorn horn) didn't help the matters. He had been evil, and then karma had intervened and he had been eaten.
Although, when all that was happening, Gavin (the REAL Gavin- the one right next to me) had been trapped in the Living Mirage's dungeons. It had been hard to hear that Gavin was still alive after his cutting betrayal (or what I thought was his cutting betrayal), but eventually I forgave him and we started dating. But I'm going off-topic.
I turned to face him, the sun giving us its last, dying rays.
"Kendra, close your eyes. I'll t-tell you when to open them. Trust me," Gavin added at the end, even though it was completely unnecessary. I would trust Gavin with my life.
I closed my eyes, filtering out the remaining light. I felt him put his hands on my shoulders and gently steer me forward. After a few steps, I felt the last rays of light shine on me and I could hear the soft sound of... water? The path sloped up in a slight arch, and the arms turned me to the left.
"Open your eyes," he whispered in my ear. I did as instructed, and felt something light expand in my chest.
We were on a small, quaint bridge, under which ran a wide, shallow stream. The very place where we had shared our nervous first kiss. The last rays of the sun disappeared, the stream glinting in the light of the moon. It seemed as though it was just me, Gavin, and the night, even though we were less than a three minute's walk from the edge of town. The stream wound its way into the distant mountains, nothing but a glittering sliver line.
"Oh Gavin, this is beautiful. It's amazing," I said to him, really meaning the words. He pressed me into his side, both of us leaning on the railing.
"I thought I should take you here on the a-a-anniversary of our first kiss, two years ago. You're just as g-gorgeous as you were then, and will forever be." I snuggled a little closer two him and smiled, knowing what he was alluding to. We had both become Eternals when Zzyzx had been locked up again, knowing full well that everyone else would age except for us. Of course, at the time I had had no idea that Gavin was still alive. I had honestly been thinking of Bracken, but I'm so glad I found the right guy in the end.
"Kendra, when we kissed, I p-promised myself I wouldn't let you slip away. I vowed to myself that I would ask you to marry me on this very spot." I turned rigid, staring out at the stream. Was he saying what I thought I was saying?
"Gavin, are you-" he turned me to face him, cutting me off, and swiveled to look me in the face.
"Kendra, I promised myself. And, two years ago to the day, I've p-plucked up enough courage to ask." He got on his knees, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a black velvet box. I was frozen.
"I'm asking you, if you will have me, and love me even half as much as I love you, to stay with me for forever. Kendra Kaitlin Sorenson, will you marry me?" [I actually have no idea what her middle name is. I just made one up] He opened the box, and sitting on the black fabric laid a small, beautiful, clear diamond on a silver band. The moment stretched out like taffy, my mind startlingly blank. My eyes were open wide, gazing at my boyfriend. His face faltered with my non-reaction.
'Did. Gavin. Just. Propose?' I thought to myself.
'He did. He totally did,' I thought back.
He wants to marry me. GAVIN WANTS TO MARRY ME!' [I actually think like this to myself. Does anybody else do this?] The thoughts roused me from my numbing blankness.
"U-U-Unless, I m-mean, you're not r-r-ready for-"
"OF COURSE I'M SAYING YES YOU IDIOT," I tackled him in a hug, cutting off his words. I watched the ring, now freed from its box, fly into the air. Gavin's available hand reached for it, strained under the weight of my tackle hug, and he brushed it with his fingers. It bounced on the bridge, flopping its way to the edge. It caught a dip in the slight mesh on the small bridge, throwing it next to one of the railing supports on the outer lip over the water.
It teetered for a moment, taunting us with its indecisiveness. Both of us held our breath, using our full mental capacity to will it to stay on the bridge. If we had had Jedi powers, the ring would have zoomed into my stomach with so much force that I would have had the breath knocked out of me.
It teetered on the edge...
It was going to come back up in half a second...
A quarter of a second...
A tenth of a second...
Aaaaaaaaaand….
It teetered back and laid on the lip of the bridge. Gavin and I exhaled with relief, sufficiently creating enough force to send it over the edge. I reached out my hand to snag it, but I was an inch short and far too late.
We both froze, eyes stuck at the spot it had disappeared. My mind was trying to get me up to speed on what had just happened, since nothing had really sunk in yet.
'So, Kendra, Gavin's asked you to marry him, you said yes, and then you tackled him, and the ring dropped off the edge because of it, and now it's gone and you're both partly in shock.'
'Thanks, brain.' I told it sarcastically. Gavin looked at me.
"That went surprisingly well," he said, unbelief in his voice. "I'm your fiancé, but we're down a r-ring. However, if we're going to live forever, I'm sure we'll get more money to-"
"Lost something?" Our eyes raced back to the edge of the bridge, where a tiny, pale hand was currently clawing for a handhold.
"'Cause I've got something that might be yours," it carried on, sounding slightly out of breath. "But I'm gonna keep it if it's not." An identical hand reached onto the ledge, this one attached to a ring. No, not any ring. THE RING. I let out a squeal of equal parts excitement, happiness, and relief, scrambled to my knees (kneeing Gavin in the stomach in the process [Sorry Gavin]) and bolted to the edge just as a face framed by short blue hair appeared over it.
"AQUA THANK GOODNESS!" I cried.
"Yeah, yeah," she said, standing up. "So it's yours?"
"Actually, Aqua," Gavin said, rubbing his stomach and sitting on his haunches to talk to her ('when had he gotten over here? Oh who cares anyway'), "I believe that's m-mine. Thanks for saving it; Kendra nearly g-gave me a heart attack when she tackled me. But since w-when were you supposed to be here? I told you to stay-" Aqua, in all her blue-haired fairy glory, folded her arms across her chest in a sign of defiance and yet another creature shot up from behind the edge of the bridge.
"Like she gets all the credit! I came up with the idea, IT'S TOTALLY MINE, and it's not like we could have just ignored that you were flipping PROPOSING to Kendra tonight! Plus, it's not like we could have been super far away anyway!" This one had the same skin color and fiery red hair. Her wings were small and elegantly patterned, shot through with streaks of gold and red. They were quite similar to her sibling's wings, as Aqua had pint-sized blue-and-green gauzy wings attached to her back.
"Ember, I t-thought we had gone over this," Gavin told our protectors. They were one of the perks- well; sometimes they were perks, other times not so much- of being an elemental. Our protectors were siblings, and they preferred the form of fairies. They took their jobs very seriously, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Ember, too, folded her arms over her chest in a very good imitation of a totem pole.
"And I thought that we had made it clear that we wouldn't leave you alone because you might go off and get yourself stabbed."
"Yes," Gavin agreed seriously, "we have enjoyed a high stabbing r-rate over the last couple days." I rolled my eyes,
"Yes, the total of stabbings is hovering at zero. Very dangerous." Gavin eyed the ring Aqua was holding- wait, no. That's my ring. At the realization that I was now engaged, the world did a weird tilting thing and I couldn't quite figure out which way was up.
Strong arms grabbed me around my waist and held me to said arm's chest.
"K-K-Kendra, are y-you alright?" Gavin said worriedly. I fought to keep my voice steady,
"Well, I'm engaged to the boy of my dreams and I'm gonna spend forever with him, so yeah, I think I'm alright." The world was slowly righting itself, but I saw no reason to pull away. Evidentially neither did Gavin, because he tightened his hold on me. He put his nose into my hair and closed his eyes,
"I'm never letting you go. I l-love you, Kendra. A-Also, I think it's about time you put on t-that ring. Aqua, if you would," he opened his eyes and held out his hand, which Aqua deposited the ring in.
I held up my right hand, and he gently slid the silver band onto my ring finger. I held it up and admired it, the diamond twinkling softly in the moonlight. Gavin whispered,
"It's b-better than I imagined."
"No, it's perfect. Absolutely perfect," I corrected Gavin. He smiled at me,
"Not as p-perfect as you are. And I get such a gorgeous girl forever, so that's a b-big plus." He leaned down and lightly touched his lips to mine.
"Forever," I agreed.
Well, there goes. It's done. I like it. This is my first published fan fiction. If you guys really like it I might [no promises] do a second chapter of the wedding. Please review- I need some feedback. No flames, though. Flames are for Natsu. Oh, speaking of Natsu, I'm working on a NatsuxReader fanfiction right now. Fairy Tail, not Fable Haven. This will probably be my only Fable Haven fanfic, unless whoever reads this really likes it and tells me so. Then I might [MIGHT! I have no current plans] do another. So, in short, review, critique, tell me how much you loved it, and if this is published elsewhere I will find whoever did it and feed them to Arcnologia. MTheAwesome OUT!