Disclaimer: All usual disclaimers apply, I don't own the rights, I don't get money and this is for entertainment only. Please excuse any errors; they are entirely mine.
Not beta-ed, AU story
After the Battle
by Strut
The young man raised his head and woozily looked around; there was a stillness over the ravaged land. The ground all around him was torn, the scent of the wounded earth, and smoke wafted by his nose. As well as the nearly overwhelming smell of blood and other even less pleasant smells. His stomach clenched, then he coughed and spilled what little he had in there.
The buzzing in his head faded and slowly, other sounds crept into his dazed awareness. Moans, groans, weeping and soft, yet gut wrenching wails.
He slowly, painfully, worked his way into a sitting position, carefully pushing his long, tangled bangs out of his eyes with one hand, he held his aching stomach with the other. Squinting, he forced his eyes to focus, looking for his partner amongst the bodies of those surrounding him. He saw familiar clothing and dragged himself over to his sentinel.
No…
He didn't trust his poor eyesight. It saw no movement, but his faulty eyes couldn't be trusted. He reached out and touched the still figure. There was no pulse in the neck and the body was already cooling. Tears blinded him as he slumped over his sentinel. Death would take him soon and he would once more be beside his partner, only this time in the afterlife.
He waited.
When death did not come as quickly as he'd thought it should, he gathered stones and covered the body. And waited some more, watching without seeing as the others –the ones that could- gathered their sentinels or guides and left. Left by dying beside one another, or moved off the field of battle, to regroup. Or go home. The battle was over. So was the war. No one needed to tell any of the survivors that. They already knew.
He stayed there. Waiting, until it seemed he was the only thing left alive in the area. Sitting on top of the burial cairn he'd raised over his sentinel, in the gathering dusk, shattered tree trunks with limbs blown off took on the appearance of huge hands and arms poking out of the ground. The young guide shook his head. There were scattered smaller versions dotting the ground, only these really were hands and arms, stiffened by rigor. Unburied, because both the sentinel and guide had died, either during the battle or shortly after their partner had died.
The guide didn't understand why he was still here. By all rights he should have followed his sentinel to death. He dropped his head, he'd failed. Failed to keep his sentinel focused, fighting.
Alive
He deserved to die for that sin. Only he hadn't. Perhaps he couldn't. His heart ached and tears spilled uselessly down his face, making twin trails through the dirt and blood.
A full moon rose high above him, illuminating the battle field in a lovely blue light.
The guide stood on shaky legs and stepped away from his sentinel. The man had died fighting, like a warrior sentinel should. He deserved better than a guide who couldn't properly protect him. And who didn't even have the grace to die when the bond had been broken.
Angrily he pulled his forearm across his eyes, wiping the tears away. More followed until he stumbled blindly across the field, tripping and falling over the bodies and cairns of the more worthy sentinels and guides that now dotted the field.
Sick, he dropped to his knees and dry heaved. When the waves had past, he forced himself to his feet again, not knowing or caring what direction he was headed. To the enemy or straight off a cliff, it didn't matter.
Sight still blurred, he stumbled into something solid. And warm. Startled, he quickly stepped back.
The thing was a man and the uniform he wore was that of an enemy soldier. The guide sighed and dropped his head, relieved. So this is how it would end, he clenched his fists and waited for the death blow. It didn't come.
He looked up and into the visage of the soldier. The face was angular, the hair short-cropped and brown, though blue-hued in the moonlight. The big man looked back at him.
The guide swallowed hard.
Sentinel
Guide-less sentinel.
Just as he was a sentinel-less guide.
The story -though unspoken- was clear. Somehow the sentinel had survived the loss of his guide, just as he'd survived the death of his partner. Two misfits. Two lost souls in a field of lost lives.
Turning, they walked from the battlefield, shoulder to shoulder, but not touching. They strode off together , undecided and uncertain of the future.
The End.
Or perhaps just a beginning.