**Written for FanFic 100!**
Almost a Warrior
Prompt: 064. Fall.
There is danger lurking. Peggotty can sense it. She looks up from weeding the garden, hurls a handful of the unruly thorns aside and pauses, listening – almost breathless in rapt attention.
Yes – the sound comes again, more surely, more threatening. There it is – the rustle in the bushes, the steady advancement of Something. Something small, admittedly, but something exceedingly ferocious. Peggotty carefully rises to her feet and turns around to survey the little yard behind the Rookery. It is Autumn time – everything holds a dead and sepulchral appearance – but it is through the sparse and arthritic tree branches that the stonyhearted nurse detects a flash of stealthy white.
One less trained than Peggotty might mistake it for a common newspaper hat. But then you don't get hired in Peggotty's position without a deal of perception.
Peggotty will be afraid no more! She has her Davy to protect!
"Who goes there?" she cries, hoarsely, raising herself to her full breadth and height. "Show yourself, or be ready for a thrashing!" For a moment, all is silent.
The high-pitched squeal, as though from a wild animal, erupts; the white fin darts from the underbrush, with startling focus, and a weapon – looks supisciously like a hazel twig – is brandished ferociously.
"I shan't be afraid!" says Peggotty and throws handful of dead leaves, like artillery from a firing squad, at the Thing.
It immediately collapses and dies tragically, and there stands Peggotty HEROIC.
"Why, Peggotty," says David, brushing the leaves from his greatcoat and taking his laughing nurse's hand as he stumbles off the ground, "you are almost a Warrior! And you didn't even know I was there, did you!"
Without either confirming or denying this last statement, Peggotty says, "Ah, well I've got to keep in training, my dear! How else can tiresome old Peggotty be of use if it ain't to protect those as she loves? Especially," with a fond nuzzle of Davy's nose, "her darlin' boy?"
"I don't believe you are afraid of anything, Peggotty," David remarks, critically.
""I'd protect you from everythin', Davy, or give it all up trying."
"Really?"
"Yes," says the good nurse, with an edge of true determination and resolve in her simple voice, lent by the truth in her words. "Why, if need be I'd protect you from…from the Devil himself."
And so she did.