Disclaimer: Nope, nothing you recognise belongs to me, although I'll take Gawain if he's going spare and needs a home : )

Things changed so quickly that Lucy sometimes felt herself mentally scrabble for purchase in the wake of her conflicting emotions. Perhaps she had become too accustomed to the tentative calm at the fort; perhaps it had become too easy to pretend that there was not a world of bloodshed just beyond the wall. Either way, that fragile almost-peace shattered only days after she had waved at Dagonet as he carried Bors back to Vanora's bed and laughed with Llynya.

Llynya has not laughed in days, and Lucy couldn't really blame her for her lack of humour. This was supposed to be a happy time- a hopeful time. The knights had fulfilled their time of duty, or slavery as it should more accurately be termed, and they had been due to receive the papers that would release them from the stranglehold that Rome had upon them. Instead they were gone again, and most of the few soldiers that remained at the wall were of the opinion that they were unlikely to return.

Lucy only hears bits and pieces, whispers and rumours, but she has a vague idea of what is taking place and fears not only for the absent knights, but for her brother and his family as well as herself. If Rome is truly abandoning Britain then she and the people closest to her have been handed a death sentence. There is nowhere to flee to: to go north is to face the Saxons and to hope that death comes before you have to witness what happens to your companions. The Woads ventured ever further south these days, and while their methods were cleaner and did not revel in bloodshed in the way that the Saxons did, they were no less deadly. The coastal villages on the west coast are the best bet when it comes to protection, but having grown up around Romans, Lucy knows that her accent is strange and her manners different to the villagers that have kept their distance from the stranglehold of Rome.

Danny wants to leave for the coast, one of the few places that might provide some semblance of safety, but while Lucy loves him, she has been uncharacteristically stubborn about leaving the fort. Her brother argues, threatens to tie her up and physically force her to leave; Anni, his wife, worries and uses soft words to try and persuade her, and Eleanor their daughter merely looks at her with confused blue eyes and very nearly shatters her resolve by saying nothing at all. Llynya and Vanora won't leave, and that in itself is enough to keep Lucy where she is. If the knights don't come back; and they will, she thinks, they have to, both women will be alone. Vanora can't just pick up and run like she can - not with almost a dozen children, and Llynya's baby is due almost any day. Llynya has no-one; no family, few friends and couldn't easily flee even if she wanted to. Lucy can't just leave them - she won't. They will go together or not at all.

Danny packed his belongings, tucked his daughter into her travelling fur, and left a week after Arthur had led his men on a conquest that was as futile as it was deadly. Lucy kissed them goodbye, ignored their pleas for her to join them, and watched her brother and his family depart in their rickety cart. She had cried then - sobbed as though her heart would break, and fell asleep on her straw filled mattress in what was now her empty house. Tucked under her bed is a piece of paper that holds the name of a village that a friend of the uncle of the physician at the fort lives in. That is where her brother has fled to, and that is where she hopes to go to eventually. It is supposed to be a pleasant, safe place with fertile land and good fishing - a little too good to be true perhaps. Tucking her head into the lumpy pillow, Lucy counts the stars she can see through the broken slats of the roof and prays to the gods to kep her family safe.

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It was another week before the knights returned. The days before were at once hectic and strangely quiet. The Roman soldiers still trained, they still got drunk in the tavern, but it was as though their hearts weren't in it any more. More than three quarters of the army stationed there had left, and Lucy was fairly certain that they wouldn't be coming back. Llynya joked about her swollen belly and laughed off concern over the shadows beneath her eyes, Vanora was tense and snapped uncharacteristically at her children. Every day there seemed to be fewer people at the fort, every day there seemed to be a little less hope, and every night Lucy curled herself up on her little mattress in her house that suddenly seemed as huge and silent as the night sky above.

When the knights returned it was as though the sun had suddenly come out from a black cloud and brought life to the people at the wall: the stable boys scurried around the stables, kitchen maids flitted into the kitchens. There was an energy that seemed to spark and rejuvenate the people, and Lucy raced to the top of the battlements when she heard the watchmen cry out. She wasn't the only girl to look eagerly for the knights and make a mental head-count, and she wasn't the only one who cried out when the limp body slumped across the saddle of one of the approaching horses came into sight; but she was the only one who dared whisper his name. Dagonet.

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Everything after that sudden agonising realisation passed blessedly quickly. She was not there when the knights were given their papers by Bishop Germanius - few were. Vanora and Llynya led their pale, exhausted, partners away after Dagonet was lifted from his horse; the gaunt young boy that tried to keep hold of the dead knight's hand pulled away by a slender woman with a beautiful face and bruises on her arms.

There was nothing she could do - not really. When dawn came Dagonet would be laid to rest with the knights that had fallen before him . Another body buried in the ground of a country he had been forced to protect. Lucy swallowed hard and waited until it was dark before she went to the room that had been allocated for keeping the dead before they were buried. She had been there before - once as a child when her brother had dared her to; a skinny, terrified girl who had fled after only a moment, convinced ghosts were chasing her, and again as an apprentice healer, who had lasted barely half a morning tending the wounded before throwing up, and being told in no uncertain terms that she should find other methods of employment. Now, however, the hallway was silent; a few torches illuminated the darkness and sent shadows flickering across the pale stone, but the big room was silent and almost empty as she entered it. A few candles cast a warm glow upon the body laid upon the bed by the wall, and Lucy had to tread carefully, for most of the room was cloaked in darkness. Trying not to trip on the uneven floor, she picked her way over to her friend. Dagonet's large form was almost completely covered by a dark red blanket: Roman cloth, she thought. Probably belonged to Arthur. It didn't really matter or make any difference, but it was a gesture of respect - a little thought that showed that the body beneath it had been thought of as more than just a slave. His head was uncovered; eyes closed and skin pale, he almost looked like he was sleeping.

Dagonet looked peaceful - that at least was something, Lucy thought to herself. Let him find happiness in the next life.

The faint movement in the corner almost went unnoticed, but Lucy reacted swiftly when she heard the almost imperceptible scrape of a shoe against stone. Tugging her worn knife from her pocket, she backed way from the sudden threat slowly.

"You won't be needing that." Tristan barely glanced at the little blade Lucy wielded as he stepped out of the shadows. "Nothing but the dead here, girl."

Lucy took a step backwards and bit her lip nervously. The room had seemed big before, but now the shadows slunk around the man that had emerged from them like the cats from the stable, and the room was just him suddenly. Taking a step backwards, Lucy watched the scout warily.

"I just wanted to say goodbye," she whispered.

He didn't say anything in reply, but something that could have been sympathy, sadness, anger or a hundred other emotions, briefly flickered in his eyes before he regained his usual inscrutability.

"Say goodbye tomorrow." He was very close to her, and Lucy could smell the oil that softened the leather of his hauberk, the faint odour of his sweat. "It isn't safe to be out alone at this hour."

"I'm not afraid." She was horrified to hear the squeakiness of her voice, the childishness of her words. "I just wanted to…"

"Say goodbye." He didn't seem concerned by her nervousness, and Lucy watched him pad towards Dagonet's body. He looked at his friend's corpse for a moment, said nothing, and pulled the blanket over the big knight's head carefully. "He wouldn't want you to risk your life just to say goodbye."

"You came," she pointed out, before turning away. "You…" she didn't get any further than that. One moment the scout was several yards away, the next he had pinned her against the wall, the breath knocked out of her and his breath hot against her cheek.

"Don't ever turn your back like that," Tristan hissed. He tightened his grip on Lucy's wrists and she squirmed against him; angry, frightened and shocked. He held her pinned against the wall for several seconds before releasing her. In the faint light his dark eyed gleamed, the markings that marred his high cheekbones thrown into sharp relief. "Never turn your back on your enemy." Abruptly he released her, and stepped back as she fell to her knees. "Back away or incapacitate them first if you have to, but never turn away."

Lucy rocked back on her heels and watched the scout disappear into the shadows. "Are you my enemy?" she asked quietly. He glanced back but did not reply; golden eyes a brief light in the darkness before he was gone. She gave Dagonet a last kiss goodbye, tucked her shawl close around herself when she ventured outside, and hurried home as fast as she could.

Settled as best she could be on the rough mattress, Lucy didn't fall asleep for a long time. Her wrists ached a little, and she wasn't quite sure what she felt about everything that had happened that night. She had said goodbye to Dagonet, and that had hurt. Knights often died - Rome treated them as little more than talented cattle after all, but Dagonet had been a good man, a kind man, and it seemed horribly wrong to think that he would never have a chance to have the peaceful life that he deserved. Tristan had been angry at her - why? What was it to him where she went? it wasn't as though they were lovers or friends or anything else that would cause him to take notice of her. He had no right to order her about, and it isn't the memory of the press of his body against hers that is keeping her awake, she tells herself. The first pale light of dawn is creeping over the hills before she finally gets to sleep, and even then her dreams are muddled and confusing.