Your name is Dave Strider and—oh fuck your boots are soaked through and your feet are getting wet. Great. At this rate, with the rain coming down in sheets like this? Yeah, there is no fucking chance you're gonna get a fire going to dry off tonight. Scowling, you tug your hood further over your face—like that's going to do much—and trudge onward through the forest. It's going to be a long, miserable night, that's for sure.

A brilliant flash of lightning illuminates the entire wood around you for an instant before it's followed by a low, rolling thunderclap. The wind picks up and you heft your shield on your back, hunching your shoulders and trying not to shiver. It's late spring, almost early summer, but it's cold in this storm. Not for the first time, you think almost longingly of the warmth of the tent you left behind, the warmth of the tent and the fire and the hot food cooked over it. But that tent was the tent of a Dersite knight, and man, you are sick of being a Dersite knight.

At least you're not a Dersite knight anymore. You deserted yesterday evening, and you've been making your way away from the warfront as fast as you can ever since. You're fucking exhausted by fighting their shitty wars for the crown's glory and nothing else. The orders you received to put a tiny farming village to the torch were the final straw—no fucking thank you. War is horrible and you want no more part in it. You're done.

God, though, this rain. You're soaked to the skin and honestly, this cloak is probably leeching more heat than it's retaining, but it's not like you're about to take it off or anything. Instead, you're just going to keep squelching through the mud on this goddamn forest floor and hope that you're not leaving a trail that'll be easy to follow, because if you are you're fucked because your former "brothers in arms" will hunt you down and execute you for being a deserter. A traitor's death, for the guy who was once third in line for Derse's throne. Hah. Your family has probably disowned you by now. But you don't care. You couldn't keep living like that, in the goddamn army. You couldn't do it. You can't do it.

An hour or two pass like this. You give in to the shivering and keep trudging on. The forest is really dark now—you have a feeling the sun has finally set, too, behind all the clouds—and you can hardly see where you're going. In fact, you are surprised you haven't tripped over more tree roots than you actually have.

A little light near your foot catches your attention, and you stop, looking down at it. It's a glowing mushroom, innocuously shining at you in the rain. It looks entirely too pleased with its fungal self and you kind of want to kick it, except you notice another one a foot or two away, and then another one after that, and then—

This is a path. A path made of weirdass glowing mushrooms, but a path.

Paths usually lead somewhere, like to warm houses or to villages or to anywhere that isn't in the middle of a fucking thunderstorm in a foreign forest and yeah okay wow you're desperate enough to get out of the rain that you're now following a bunch of glowing mushrooms wherever they might take you. Part of you is yelling that this is a bad fucking idea, that you're being an idiot, but the much louder part is thinking that there might just be a fire at the end of this path, or at least maybe a little cave where you can hide out the night. That would be cool, being somewhere without water falling on your head.

After maybe ten or fifteen minutes of sludging through the rain following the lights, you stumble upon a little clearing that's got something better than your imagination could have given you:

A cozy-looking, well-lit cottage. With smoke rising from the chimney.

Smoke means fire. Fire means people. People might mean shelter from the storm.

Fuck yeah.

Your feet have carried you down the path through its little picturesque flower garden and up the steps to the front door before your mind catches up with your body and clamors at you to wait, you moron, does this not seem suspicious at all? It's way too convenient to not have a catch.

But before you can debate the pros and cons of this cutesy little cottage, the door swings open and you see a girl. She's wearing a long dark skirt and a too-large blouse and has big round spectacles that frame big green eyes, which are currently looking inquisitively at you.

"Oh, gosh," she says. "You're soaked to the bone! Come in, sit down by the fire, warm up!"

Damn your feet. They have once again acted of their own accord and now she's closing and bolting the door behind you. Admittedly, so far her cabin doesn't seem too suspect—there are no dead bodies littering the floor, no blood smears on the walls, and you suppose that if you need to flee you can. But in the meantime, it is warm and cozy in here, and there is a wooden stool resting conveniently right in front of the hearth. Perfect.

You lose yourself in staring into the flames for a long moment, until there is a soft "ahem" from behind you and you turn to see the girl again. She's holding a bowl of ... is that hot soup? Seriously?

"I'd just finished making dinner when you showed up at the door," she explains, a little mysterious smile playing about her lips. "If you'd like some, there's plenty...?"

Your stomach growls as you sheepishly accept the bowl and she starts to turn away to get her own, presumably. "Thanks," you say, then look around. "Are you the only one around here, or what?"

She stops, looks at you with a mysterious glint that you're not too sure you are comfortable with shining in the depths of her eyes. Something about the way one of her brows rises suggests an ominous feeling like that you get when wandering alone at midnight, as if there is power in her that you cannot fathom. "Yes," she answers, "but don't take that to mean you can just waltz on in like you own the place. You are my guest, Sir Strider."

Just like that, the happy little daze you've been in snaps away and you're on your guard again. "Okay, two things," you frown, putting the bowl down in your lap and shifting your weight ever so slightly so that if you need to, you can get on your feet and sprint the hell out of here before this girl can so much as blink. "How do you know my name, first of all?"

She throws her head back and lets out a merry laugh. "You just confirmed it. I didn't really know until this moment."

Damn. You feel like an idiot, kind of. But she still hasn't explained how she guessed your name was Strider, then. So you'll wait for her to answer here before you continue.

"What's the second thing?" she asks, tilting her head to one side.

You press your lips together and give her a look that says clear as day come the fuck on. You're not saying a word til she's given an actual answer to your first question. The second thing is sort of a follow-up anyway.

Instead, she shifts her weight from side to side, stirring her own bowl for a moment. "But then again, it isn't 'Sir' anymore, is it?"

Okay, that's it. "Right. What the fuck?"

She blinks and her posture changes, becomes more open and less coldly regal and more chipper and friendly. "Wasn't it obvious? I thought it was obvious. The mushrooms weren't a dead ringer? Or the garden?" Suddenly she doesn't look all mysterious and forboding, she just looks like a dorky girl in some too-large clothes as she bounces on her feet, staring at you and waiting for a moment before she finishes speaking. "I'm a witch!"

You immediately glance at the door. Witches are known to everyone as bad news. But ... then again, so are renegade knights. And if she has magic, there's no guarantee you could make it before she spelled you anyway, if you tried to run. You're stuck here, unless she wants you to leave. Great.

"We outlaws have to stick together, you know," she adds, then frowns. "Why are you not eating? Do you not like it? It's my grandmother's recipe, you know, but it's been a while since I made it... is it not good? I have bread and cheese too if—"

"No, stop," you interrupt her, running a hand through your wet hair. It comes away dripping and you look at it with disgust for a moment as you try to gather your thoughts, which seem way more content to be spinning wildly out of control. "Stop. Hold the fuck up. You know all this about me and I don't even know your name or what's going on or—"

"Jade."

"What?"

"My name," she explains, plopping down onto thin air and hooking her heels onto the lower bar on a stool that doesn't actually exist. "It's Jade."

"Jade," you repeat. "Uh, nice to meet you. I think."

She laughs and blows on a spoonful of her soup, sipping on it carefully before she responds. "Sorry, I guess I did come on strong there... you see, it's been a while since I've had a visitor at home, so when I had the premonition you were coming I got really excited, but then it was so rainy today I thought there was no way you'd actually show up, so I didn't really think about how to not freak you out..."

"Premonition?" you ask. How much does she know about you, anyway? She's not doing a very good job of not freaking you out, honestly. This is weird.

"Argh!" She puts the bowl down on a table that matches her stool in amounts of existiness, with a bit more force than necessary, and buries her face in her hands for a second, thick hair falling all around. Then she pushes it back and shakes her head, offering a hand to you with a bright smile. "Okay! Let's try this again. Hello, I'm Jade, you're a traveler who's soaked to the bone, you can come in and stay the night and keep on going in the morning when the storm has cleared up, and I just want to tell you that it's okay that you're a deserter because I'm technically an outlaw too, so no worries there. Did I do better this time?"

You take her hand and shake it firmly, raising your eyebrows at her. "Aside from still knowing more about me than you should, and also having weird magic furniture," you say drily, "yeah. Better."

She beams and keeps holding onto your hand for a moment too long, letting go just before it becomes really awkward. You take a tentative sip of soup and discover that hey, it's actually pretty good. Okay. You can live with this. Hot food, warm hearth, roof over your head, yeah, this is good.

"Oh," Jade interrupts your thoughts, eyeing you critically as if she's measuring you in her mind, "and if you want to change out of those wet clothes, I think I have some that might fit you. My brother's."

"I thought you said you live alone," you frown, although the thought of a change of clothes is really, really appealing.

"I do," she says in a clipped voice. You're getting the feeling that her family is a touchy topic when she sighs and adds, "He's dead."

Oh. "Sorry," you mutter, dropping your gaze for a second. Yeah ... this war is bullshit. It's taken a lot of lives on both sides and honestly, it's more than a little pointless, and that's coming from you, the guy who was third in line for the Dersite throne before he left the army. You've breathed politics since you were born, and ignoring the fact that you fucking hate politics, you know your way around them pretty well, and yeah. This war is bullshit.

"It's ... not okay," she frowns, then shrugs. "But I'm coping."

You kind of wish you could sympathize, could comfort her. But you haven't lost family to the war, just friends in the army, and that's not the same as being a civilian who lost a family member. Your family is all nice and safe back in the capital city. Dirk is being a nice crown prince, Roxy is running the spy guild, and Rose is doing ... whatever she does. You were never too clear on that anyway. She was always big into the politics thing, which you tended to avoid like the plague.

"Sorry," you say again, because you're oh so terribly eloquent, right?

"Don't worry about it," she shakes her head, standing. "I'll go get them for you and we can hang what you're wearing up in front of the hearth, so it'll be dry by morning. Then you can eat and I'll show you to your room for the night—it's kind of small, sorry—and you can be on your way by morning and that'll be that."

"Yeah, thanks," you nod at her retreating back, feeling distinctly like there's some part of this conversation that went the wrong way. "That'll be that."

In the morning, you walk out of the little spare room Jade let you sleep in and are faced with a window that shows a small lake instead of a forest floor. The sky is still very dark and the water is still pouring down. As you watch—flabbergasted because really? Now, still, when you're warm and dry? Fuck you, weather—lightning flashes across the clouds and thunder rumbles ominously.

You shake your head and head downstairs to the kitchen. You're really not looking forward to trudging through that for another day, but it doesn't really look like you have a choice. Unless Jade will let you stay again, but you can't really ask that of her.

"Good morning, and no," Jade says as soon as you enter to find her cooking breakfast. "I'm not sending you out in that. You can just leave tomorrow, Dave."

"I never told you my given name," you grumble as you accept the plate she hands you—it's got toasted bread and some fried eggs, and there's jam and butter and cheese on the counter. Sweet. "Thanks."

"Oh, oops," she laughs, sheepish, as she flips a piece of toast and presses it to the pan. "The premonitions strike again! Sorry. I promise I don't actually know that much about you, just little bits and pieces. But I guess in return you can ask me anything you want to know?"

As you stuff a piece of bread into your mouth and seat yourself at the cluttered counter, you consider that offer. What do you want to know about her?

"For starters," you say after you swallow, "what's your full name, anyway?"

"Jade English-Harley," she answers with a quick grin in your direction, fired over her shoulder. Okay, that was an easy one. Jade English-Harley. You mull the name over for a moment as you ponder what else you want to know.

"You're a witch?"

"Yes," she perks up, twirling around to beam at you as she clasps her hands together. You're not entirely sure, but you think you might also have seen little green sparks fly from her fingertips as she did that. Weird. "Mostly a hedgewitch! I do small enchantments, potions, healing spells, the like. Although I'm trying to get my hands on some texts to learn about other kinds of spellcasting. But yes, witch, that's me. It's not a bad life, really!"

"Hm." You stuff another bite into your mouth. This witch sure knows how to make a damn good breakfast, at least. God, you're hungry. "You usually talk about all this magic stuff to every traveller you meet? I mean, I'm not turning you in or anything because hell, they'd just arrest me too, but c'mon, that can't be a safe way to live your life."

Jade gives you a long-suffering look and a sigh. "Dave, I already knew you weren't going to turn me in, or else I wouldn't have said a thing! That's how premonitions work, you know. They give me enough information that I know how to act or what to do."

"Oh." That makes sense, you guess. "So that's a no?"

"That's a no," she confirms. "To most people, I'm just a weird girl living alone in the woods, no magic involved. But then again, most of the time I never get visitors anyway. The forest road was never popular to begin with, and it's even less so now that there's the war traffic down south, you know?"

"Yeah," you agree. The war traffic changes a lot of things. Most of the towns the army had you stop in were totally transformed into army stops and nothing else—over the years, they had just lost their character as every customer who wasn't a soldier left for places that weren't swarmed by said soldiers. It's pretty dismal, honestly. "I know."

She eyes you with an expression you can't quite place, something a bit pensive and curious and also very knowing, before she turns back to the stove. Silence—well, silence other than the sound of sizzling food and the rain outside—falls. Maybe you should say something, try to restore the conversation and mood and shit? ... Nah, fuck it. You return your attention to your food.

Seconds tick by. Jade starts humming to herself, which you guess is nice because usually when people hum it means that they aren't mad or in a bad mood, and talking about the war can always put people in bad moods, so you're glad that she's not. And at least her voice isn't terrible. Some people you marched with... eugh. That's one good thing about deserting. No more dumbasses who think they can sing marching songs.

The sound of a plate being placed upon the counter next to yours brings your thoughts back to the present, rather than wandering the musty old barracks you used to live in with your fellow knights. Jade is perched next to you on a stool of her own—a real, tangible one, this time—and is busily slathering jam on her toast. When she finishes, she takes a moment to observe her handiwork, pleased, and then she notices a bit that's thicker than the rest or something and has to spread it over the entire slice all over again. You can't help but snicker a bit, and without really thinking she lightly elbows your side and says "Shush, you!"

"I didn't say anything," you shrug like the true smartass you are, raising your eyebrows and shrugging. You get elbowed again for your troubles.

"You were thinking it," she says, taking a small bite from her bread. You roll your eyes but shrug, conceding the point, and let the companionable silence fall again.

It's kind of surprising you, honestly, the fact that you feel such an honest camaraderie with her already, but then again, she did take you in and give you food, dry clothes, and shelter during a big storm. You don't trust her with your life yet, but you do kinda like the girl. Normally you don't like people so soon after meeting them, but you guess these circumstances aren't exactly your norm, either. You're really fumbling around in the dark here, is what you're trying to get at with these rambling thoughts. You're on the run, you don't know where you're going, you're totally clueless.

Well, that's just great. You have no idea what the fuck you're supposed to do now, honestly. Maybe you should have thought this through better before you deserted. Rose always said not thinking things through or planning things out was one of your biggest weaknesses.

Rose always ...

Shit. Rose. It's sort of just starting to hit you that you have no idea when you're going to see your family again. You have no idea when you're even going to see Derse again.

You really, really didn't think this through, did you?

Shit.

Okay.

You'll sit down and plan out your next five thousand moves before you leave. This storm doesn't seem to be letting up anytime soon anyway, so you have time for that. You'll figure out where you're going and what you're doing with the rest of your miserable little life now that you've gotten away from the front lines and then you'll just do that. Yeah. Okay. And you'll write Rose a letter. That's step one. That's what you'll do soonest, as soon as you get the basics taken care of. Right.

God, you are so not ready for this whole 'living on your own' thing, are you? Come to think of it, you've always had other people around, making plans and ideas. You've never had to do everything for yourself.

Holy shit, companionable silences over breakfast are a bad idea. You're about to have a fucking meltdown over here because you've been left alone with your thoughts too long. And you haven't even gotten to the bad ones, either!

Your appetite has diminished greatly. You push the last bits of your food around on your plate and glance at the girl next to you, wishing desperately for this silence to stop. You can't deal with it much longer.

"So, uh, Jade," you say a bit too quickly and too suddenly to be entirely natural. She looks over at you questioningly, and you scramble to find words to actually make conversation, because guess what, you didn't think this part through either. "Um, what exactly should I do all day? I mean ... this is your house and all, and you're letting me stay, so is there ... fuck, I don't know, is there anything I can do to help you out or something, or ...?"

She looks a bit surprised, her lips turning into a round little "o" for a second, and then she giggles, covering her mouth with one hand sheepishly. "Um, well, if you really want to help, we could split some of the chores. That way they'd all get done faster and we could have some time to sit and talk some too! It'll be nice, we can have tea and get to know each other a little or something."

Chores. Just like at army camp, huh? "Yeah, sure, sounds good to me," you say lamely. It's not that you mind helping, though. You are all for having something to do.

Jade claps her hands gleefully. "Yay!" she beams. "Okay, do you mind maybe chopping some extra firewood for me? The stockpile by the house is running low, but there's a lot of logs out back in the storage shed."

It's raining ... a lot ... and she wants you to chop firewood. Hopefully your lack of enthusiasm doesn't show on your face, but wow, you were hoping to not go out in that deluge. Damn. You asked for this, though. Went and put your foot in it again, Strider.

It must show on your face anyway, because she laughs. "Sorry, sorry, stop looking at me like that! I forgot to mention the spells. You won't get wet, and the wood will be all dry, too, promise!"

"Oh, good," you say with relief. "That sounds a hell of a lot better. Yeah, I can do that. Now, or what?" Expecting 'as soon as possible' you start to stand, but she grabs your arm and tugs you back down.

"After breakfast!" she chides, frowning at you. "It's not that urgent. And then while you do that, I can take care of some stuff in the house—witchy things," she adds when you look at her questioningly, "and after that, well, I guess I'll just spell the laundry dry, and we can make lunch, and then sit and talk for a while in the living room. How does that sound?"

"Sounds great to me," you say, settling back onto your stool. You'll eat the rest of this and then go outside, sure. You can do that. Now that you're pointedly not thinking about anything, your appetite has come back in full strength!

It occurs to you then that as someone who has been living outside the law for a while, from the looks of it, Jade might be able to help you out a bit in terms of figuring out "what the fuck do I do with myself now". You figure you'll ask her about that this afternoon, after all the chores are taken care of. But for now, you're not thinking about that. You'll just sit here and enjoy your breakfast and the presence of some pleasant company, and outside, the rain keeps falling from the grey sky.

AN: Hello and welcome to this little fic! In this AU, lovingly called "tdaifodstuck" (tdaifod standing for "the dersite army is full of dicks"), we'll be taking a new spin on knight!Dave and witch!Jade. It's going to be a relatively short story but hopefully a good one, with fluff and cutes and angst and possibly death too :D all that fun stuff.

Thanks for giving it a read! If you'd drop a review, that'd be even better. :)

Updates are probably going to be weekly - so, every Friday.