*The first chapter is going to be tiny but they'll get longer for sure. None of my stories have any sort of slash in them

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters or phrases from Inkheart.

"Dustfinger saw the knife go into the thin back. He caught the boy before he fell to the ground, but he was already dead…"

Everything seemed to fade into the background, unimportant. The pounding of the rain, beating down steadily. The hissing of the fire. The shouts and screams of dying men. The smoky haze that stung his eyes as he stared down at the boy.

The boy… with shaking fingers he pulled out the dagger embedded in the thin back. Meggie was sobbing beside him still clutching the boy's hand.

Dustfinger turned around. There, standing behind him with a wide grin on his face and a maniac glint in his eye was Basta.

Dustfinger put a hand to his face, tracing the scars, it was Basta who had made them, Basta who had killed the boy, Clouddancer, and many others.

The boy's last moments kept playing themselves again and again in his head. The boy talking to Meggie, Basta aiming the knife, the warning he had tried to shout before the bitter wind had carried his words away.

He took a staggering step towards where Basta was standing feeling like he should do something anything to make him feel the same pain that he, Dustfinger was feeling.

The very idea was laughable, Basta had never loved anyone. Part of Dustfinger pitied him another was envious.

Everything seemed hazy, unreal, as if this was just another of his nightmares. In his chest there was a dull, throbbing pain. Was this what it felt like when your heart breaks? Dustfinger felt that it must.

He had been so careful, so guarded with who he cared about, for exactly this reason. "You're a fool Dustfinger," he said to himself. He had known, love someone and you're vulnerable, love someone and you'll get hurt. But he had ended up loving the boy like a son all the same.

A sudden cry startled him out of his thoughts. He looked up from the trampled, muddy ground to see Basta lying on in the dirt, and Silvertongue pulling his sword from Basta's dead body.

Silvertongue, who's daughter was sobbing her heart out clinging to the boy's body as if she would never let it go, who had never raised a sword in his life before this day never mind killed a man. He really was the Bluejay of the stories today.

He stumbled back to where Meggie was standing with the boy's body. His dark humor was gone the instant he caught sight of the boy, pale as the ghosts he was so afraid of, eyes empty without any of the joy they had held in life, and always fidgeting hands now still.

Resa had come towards Meggie trying to comfort her and he once again held Farid.

Suddenly he heard a slight fluttering noise. The sound continued frantic and unsteady, faint, but still there. A heartbeat?