It is dusk. The light is nearly gone from the sky. The air is turning cold. I can hear his voice again. Shouting my name, my name, always and only my name. And this time I can hear something else. Pounding.

Pounding.

At first, disoriented, barely half conscious, I think it must be the sound of my own heart that I hear. But then, finally, slowly, I begin to understand. It is not my heart.

It is the pounding of footsteps. Footsteps approaching at a run. With only moments of light left in this long, bloody, horrible day, can he have spotted me at last? Can I dare to hope? Can it be so?

It is.

He is moving too fast and with too much purpose to be very badly compromised; I can tell that before I even see him, simply from the sound of his gait. After years of training together, and keeping the king's order together, and more recently, riding into battle together, we know each other very well, after all. Particularly in a physical sense. Physical... not intimate. They are very different, and oh how I regret my standoffishness now, now that all is said and done and I will likely never have the chance again.

But that is not important anymore. What is important is that he is not badly injured. Probably scratched and bruised and dinged-up some; no one comes through a battle untouched, no one. But nothing serious, nothing like... like...

"JANE!"

He is very near now, and I know for certain what I suspected moments ago; he has seen me. He is closing in. Before, he had been calling my name; hoping for an answer; searching, searching. This is an entirely different sort of cry. It needs no response because he is no longer looking for me. This is a cry of recognition. Panicked, horrified recognition, but recognition nevertheless... and I am grateful for it.

It is inconvenient that my eyelids seem so determined to slip shut again, just now. This is not a good time! I struggle to keep my eyes open but my vision is darkening when I catch my first, peripheral glimpse of him. He is running all right... as I watch, he vaults over a body in his path, slips on a scrim of blood, goes to one knee. He is barely down a second, though, before he virtually launches himself back to his feet and toward me again.

I have not gotten a good look at his face yet. He is moving too fast and my vision is blurry anyway; infuriatingly out of focus. And my eyes keep trying to drag themselves shut. I am trying so hard, now, to hold on for him. He will never know how hard.

He falls again right before reaching me; goes to his knees and scrabbles over the final few feet that separate us, aiming a savage kick at one of the nearby bodies that litter the ground around us. I hear more than see his boot connect with the dead man's jaw; the sickening crunch of facial bones being obliterated. It is the man who inflicted most of this damage on me, interestingly enough. I wonder if Gunther has intuited that fact somehow, or if the body was simply a handy outlet.

"Jane." His voice is jagged as he reaches me. "Jane. JaneJaneJaneJane..."

I open my eyes. Wait, open my eyes? When did they close? Gunther is crouched over me with an expression on his face of almost physical pain.

"Gunth..." I break off, coughing. My throat is so dry. Speaking hurts. Swallowing hurts. God, everything hurts.

"Jane." His eyes are nearly black with panic. "Oh, God. Oh, no. Oh, God. No. Nononono." He reaches a shaking hand toward me - then pulls it back as if afraid I will break if he touches me. I have never seen him this way. He looks half-deranged. My appearance must be worse even than I had thought.

He twists around, shouting behind himself. Alerting unseen others that I am found. Calling for help. Turning back, he reaches for me again; pulls back again; suddenly raises both hands to clench in the jet-colored hair at his temples in a gesture of the purest despair I have ever seen. Sucking in a deep, unsteady breath, he rakes both hands roughly through his collar-length hair and tilts his head upward, toward the darkening sky. I can see the hard lines of his clenched jaw. I can see cords standing out in his neck. I can see that his whole body is trembling.

Still, for the most part he looks physically whole. I drink him in with my eyes. I am so grateful, so grateful, so grateful. A deep sense of peace, and an even deeper lethargy, begin to spread through me. I try to follow his line of vision, but with no success. What is he staring at? Clouds? Sunset? The evening's first stars? It is no use. I cannot see as far as the sky.

I let my eyes fall shut again; I hear my breath escape me in a little sigh. Each time before, when the darkness took me, it just... well... took me. It overpowered me, and my own will, my own choice, had had little to do with the matter. This time is different. This time I am giving myself over to it. I have not the strength to defy it, nor even the will any longer.

I got what I wanted, after all.

I saw him again.

This time, I submit.

It feels almost as though I am melting into the ground. And then -

"Jane, no. Jane. No!"

I blink my eyes open again. Slowly, slowly. It is such a struggle now.

He has leaned down again, bringing his face so close to mine that our noses nearly bump together.

"That is better," he says grimly. "You keep looking at me, Jane. This is not right. Not RIGHT. I did not spend the past three hours looking for you, just to watch you lie here and die. That is unacceptable, do you hear me? Entirely out of the question. Help is on the way and you are going to lie here and look at me, Goddamnit, until -"

He breaks off, frowning, glancing away down the length of my body. Mutters, "hold on," and withdraws from my line of sight once more. I hear the sound of fabric ripping. I start to slip away again almost immediately; it is the most natural thing in the world to do, after all. The darkness is all around me now; enveloping me, lapping at me, like cool, soothing, enticing waters. I want to sink into it, I want immerse myself in it, I want -

"Aaaaaaugh!" My eyes fly open again, my whole body jerking taut as the hoarse, anguished cry is ripped from me. I realize what he has done as lights explode across my vision followed by sickening blooms of darkness. A second later he is hanging right there above me again, and my theory is confirmed.

His body is bare from the waist up. He ripped off his shirt and is holding it hard against the gash on my side, applying pressure as I myself had tried to, back when the wound was fresh and I still had the coordination and the strength.

It feels as if he has set my side on fire. I have a sudden insight that he probably soaked the fabric in alcohol. He carries a flask everywhere, including into battle. It hurts. It hurts. Oh God, it hurts.

"Stop!" I gasp. Pulling on reserves of strength I did not know I had, my hand flies up, seemingly of its own accord, thwacking into his chest, trying frantically to push him away, to make him cease, disengage. It would have been both hands if my other arm were not broken. My fingertips streak his skin with my blood. "Gunther! Please! Uggnh! Please! Stuh...stop!"

"I will not. I cannot. I am so sorry, Jane. I would take it from you if I could. Now hold on."

"Ugh... no..." Still pushing against him with all the limited strength I have, my eyes slam shut, my head twisting from side to side in a desperate, futile attempt to negate this new and horrible pain. "Please. Gunther, please! Stop stop stop stop..."

"Jane. Jane." His voice is implacable. I can almost hate him in this moment, even though I think - I know - that if our roles were reversed I would be the one doing everything, everything I could think of to keep him from leaving me, and pain be damned.

Then he takes his other hand and presses it to the side of my face. I gasp again, at this unexpected contact; at the warmth and strength and steady solidity of it. Instinctively I turn toward it, press into it, drawing what power I can from it and into myself. His fingers plunge into the tangled, sweat-damp hair at my temple; his thumb is stroking the line of my cheekbone, gently, absently. My whole body shudders and I sigh again; my own hand falls away from his chest. The pain is still awful but the fight has gone out of me.

How did he know to do that?

"Jane," he says again. I force myself to meet his eyes, blinking hard to try and regain some focus.

I swallow hard and whisper, "yes?"

"Tell me what you need. What do you need from me to help you through this?"

"Stay... where... I can see you," I rasp out. "And also... uhm... water." My lips are so dry they are cracked. My throat is parched.

Unexpectedly, he barks out a staccato burst of laughter. "And you would," he says, "immediately ask for something impossible. Of course." There is an edge of brittle humor to his voice, but it is stretched very thin. Behind it I sense a gulf of... what? Fear, perhaps. Or desperation. The things I would be feeling, if our roles were reversed.

"I do not -"

"Shhh." His voice is gentle again. "It is only that I will have to pull away a moment to get the water-skin. You do not get to use that as an excuse to try and steal yourself a little nap, do you hear me, Jane? No going all lazy on me now. Stay awake."

He shifts position, sitting upright and pulling his hand away from my face - I almost cry out in protest at its loss. Though I notice that the other hand - the one that is causing me such burning agony lower down on my body, remains as steady as ever. I bite my lip against the pain; bite it until I taste blood. My breaths are coming shallow, rapid and harsh.

Then he is back in my line of vision, holding the water-skin with one hand and yanking free the stopper with his teeth. His eyes are steady on my face, making sure I am being a good girl and staying awake as he said.

He places it down beside me, very carefully - water is a precious commodity out here on the field of battle. He leans close again. "Jane, stop." He skates his thumb across my lower lip, wiping blood away. "You are hurt badly enough as it is."

A second later, the horrific pain in my side eases. Swamped with relief, I realize he will need both hands to give me the water. Slipping one beneath my head to raise it a few inches, he holds the skin to my mouth with the other, allowing me to drink. There is a part of me that wants to gulp it down as quickly and as greedily as I can - I am so very, very thirsty - and another, more calculating part that wants to drink slowly and draw it out for as long as I can, knowing that after he puts the water skin away, he will inflict that awful hurt on me again.

Gunther, however, is having none of it; either one. He controls the water carefully, and when he eases my head back down I start to panic, knowing what is coming. "Please," I whisper, hating that I am begging, unable to stop myself, "please Gunther, please do not -"

"You know I have to," he says quietly. "I am sorry, Jane."

"No - AAAGH!"

It is too much. This time the world does tilt away into blackness.