Special thanks to Lady Mystiquea for telling me that, once again, I'd started calling her Emma. Really, I am trying!

I think it's fixed now, but I've been wrong before…

They arrived quickly, it was only an hour's ride, and the fight had just begun. As they approached, Rynn realized she no longer felt fear. Staring down the slight hill at the smoking buildings and chaotic scrimmage, so similar to the battle in her nightmares, she felt detached. A cold rage was welling in her stomach and gripping her heart. She wanted to kill those bandits for everything they had done and all the lives they ruined. She wanted to destroy them. Beside her Raoul raised his hand, and they were off.

They must've been quite the sight to the bandits, trained soldiers riding in to exterminate them. Yells came in relief and in fear as they stormed in. A few bandits turned to run, but Rynn just shot them a manic grin, because the other half of the force was charging in from behind.

A tall bandit with scared hands and sleeves bloodied with villagers blood raised a sword to her, and she attacked without mercy. Her axe slammed down with enough force to chip his sword. Snarling, he went for her horse, but she got him first. Deflecting the sword she followed up with a chop to rip open his throat. He fell with a gurgling scream and she turned away.

There were far more bandits than one would expect, she would later reflect. But her thoughts were completely tunnel visioned. Hacking and chopping she wielded the axe with a vengeance for her family and her friends. The bandit's faces merged into those of their SouthRidge counter parts. Green eyes easily looked blue, missing teeth and bulbous nose blurred all too quickly into a snarling, flat nosed beast. Beside the soldiers she fought without restraint. While the men of the Own often fought to maim, Rynn fought to kill. The bandits were to die, by the noose or by her axe, and she didn't let them wait. Heads rolled as her favorite shot became apparent.

A horse-riding bandit came at her from the side. With a shield and broad sword he, perhaps, thought himself invincible. He was indeed one of the best fighters of the lot. He laughed cruelly as his blade sliced into her shoulder. She screamed at him. Gripping the axe with two hands she slammed it savagely into the shield, splitting it like firewood, and taking the bandits arm with it. The one armed bandit slumped in his seat, and she beheaded him without a second thought.

It was then that the battle began to slow down. With their leaders dead, Raoul himself having taken out the Headman, many bandits surrendered. Rynn beheaded one more before Raoul called them back. The remaining bandits had surrendered. Rynn glared as they were bound and jailed by a few soldiers. How dare they. How dare they think that they – worthless murdering monsters! - deserved to live for one more moment! Swinging out of the saddle as Raoul walked over, Rynn realized too late it wasn't a good idea. Leaning against Clover she clutched her shoulder as the world spun and her vision was covered in stars.

"You need to see the healers," came Raoul's voice. She took a deep breath as her vision cleared again. He put an arm around her shoulders to steady her. Even with his help, her vision swam with every inch-like step.

"Damn bandits," she cursed, loose tongued by the pain. "Damn, life-stealing murderous bandits! Cowards, surrendering like that," she ranted to the quite Lord. The world kept spinning, but Raoul's arm was firm. "Kill the lot of them, I say. Kill them, they don't deserve to breathe!" There was something wet on her face, but she wasn't sure if it was tears, sweat or blood.

"Isn't that a bit harsh," said Raoul fairly. Fair trial and justice were, after all, in the Code of Honor.

"No, kill 'em for Lisa and Alex and Susie, Ma, Dad, Jonathan," she listed off as she staggered blindly up the hill. "The baby, Lucas, Aubrey, Sam, Lucifer, Andrew, Harper," Rynn continued in a voice choked by either sadness or anger. "Henry, Max, and Francine, Nathan, Kevin," Raoul listened in horror as she kept talking. What sort of a list was that? A list of family, people she felt she had to protect? He hoped so, but it sounded horribly like a list of the dead. "Westly, Hannah, Isaac, Toby, and Brennet," she finished. Blood had stained her clothes all the way from her shoulder down to her boot and she leaned into him completely. The wound looked to be really deep. As she began to fall once again, he knew time was becoming important. Picking her up suddenly, she finally fainted, as he had expected her too, and he strode quickly the last few yards into the healer's tent.

Men were sitting all around in various stages of healing. Truthfully, there weren't that many of them. George had a bandage around his stomach and was lying in a cot in the corner and Bart had a few stitches in a hit above his eye, but there was only a dozen other men in the room. They quickly freed a bed for his blood-drenched squire. The healer left off finishing up a broken bone, darting over to see how bad it was.

"Blood loss," he muttered with a curse. With a banana-yellow Gift he slowed the bleeding and took a better look. "But, she'll be fine, just a bleeder." Raoul nodded, and turned to examine his other men.

XxXxX

Heavy smoke covered the battling road. The fire in the stable was roaring, sending sweltering heat waves over the crowd and turning the mild, almost rainy weather into something much nearer a blistering summer day in a desert. Around her dead bodies were already tripping the fighters on both sides. Blood stained the dusty ground, turning the dirt into red-tinted mud beneath their trampling feet. Rynn was fending off a huge man beside Westly when she heard it.

Above the roar of the battle, a horrible scream sliced through the air, a torturous cry of agony. There was one familiar cry of "HELP!" mixed within the noise, but Rynn didn't need any more.

"It's Ol' Lucas, Wes!" she cried as she blocked a swing for her stomach. Wes took the next attack for her, but by the time the man lay dead, another fire towered above them. The inn was in flames, billowing smoke now filled the street and both sides were running for clean air towards the fief for clean air. Rynn stared. "No." But an arm grabbed her as she tried to run back.

"Come on!" yelled Westly. He was choking and so was she, on the harsh ash. He didn't need to say more, his face finished it for him. Lucas was dead.

'No!" she screamed, but he drug her away. A bandit forced her to refocus, but the dream didn't care. It wouldn't let her mind flee into the peace of pure, instinctual fighting. No, it fast-forwarded to the end, to her return to the bloodstained streets and charcoal-house town. She stepped through the debris, finding her way by steps, not familiar sights, to the inn. It was a shell with only a few blackened logs stuck up on the right side and a bit of the back. The fireplace stood alone by where the bar counter should have been. And there, showing beneath chunks of ceiling, a skeleton lay in a distorted heap of blackened bones. No.

"No, no." she was muttering, unable to tear her eyes away. "No." Her hands were shaking uncontrollable. Her hair was hanging loose around her face as she fell to her knees, not caring as they burned on the ashes that were still hot. "No!" she screamed, clutching at her face as she sobbed. "LUCAS! LUCAS! NO!" she screamed, anguished and broken as she stared at what remained of the man who had taught her to use and axe and how to play cards. The kind man who always had time to talk and liked to take her on his knee to tell her old stories and funny tales. A pile of bones, burned alive. There was blood on her hands again. It was her fault. She should've rescued him. She had heard him. She - something was shaking her shoulders. Hands were grabbing her, and she jolted awake.

Rynn jerked away as her eyes flew open. Smoke was in the air and Raoul and a healer were standing over her. What - ? she reached for her stone but it wasn't there. She had screamed aloud for the first time in four years. But her thoughts were flickering between the dream and reality. Her hands… She held them in front of her, wiping them furiously on the bed sheets. The blood was there! She could feel it! Her breath was hitching in her throat. "No, no," she said desperately. "No!" but her hands were suddenly held by Raoul.

"Calm down, Rynn," he commanded. "It's alright. You're alright. Deep breaths. That's it," he told her. He had never seen anyone react so badly to a common skirmish. Rynn forced herself to obey, taking deep shuddering breaths, but her hands still twisted in his huge bear like palm. "Now, what is wrong?"

"Blood," she told him, her eyes still wide and distant, obvious very much in her dream world. "'S all o'er me. On m' 'ands. On m' shirt. It won' come off." Her breath hitched and she tried to pull away.

"Your hands are clean," he spoke with reason.

"No, I can feel it. 'S al'ays dere. Never goes 'way," her irrational voice was panicked, the eye of every man in the room was on her.

"Always?" he asked suddenly as her words tilted his view of the situation. What was she freaking out about if it wasn't the fight? Frankly, he had been shocked at her reaction. Rynn had fought very well. He'd even been a bit put off by her willingness to kill.

"Always." she repeated, her eyes glazed.

"When did they get dirty?" he asked, playing along in a hope for answers. It seemed she was becoming more lucid though. Her eyes had stopped flitting around at least and her breathing, though fast, wasn't as hitched.

"At SouthRidge."

By this point Raoul was really hoping Rynn wasn't turning out insane. That would hardly go over well. She took a deep breath.

"I am so sorry," she said, as her mind seemed to become completely focused. "I-I didn't mean to freak out. It's just a night mare, sir!" Rynn was suddenly realizing just how big a scene she had made. She was in a healer's tent, it appeared, and a good dozen men were all staring at her. Raoul noticed her gaze and held her hands firmly.

"Rynn, I need you to explain now. And I want the full answer," he told her forcefully. "What was the nightmare about?"

"And I was d-dreaming about the battle at SouthRidge." Her voice was once more the polished talk of a noble. He wondered absently why she'd grown up speaking such rough common.

"The one you helped the injured with?"

"Helped the injured?" she asked, truly confused.

"The blood on your old clothes," he prompted.

"Oh, that wasn't from the injured," she muttered. It was so embarrassing. No real warriors had night terrors about old battles! Looking down she studied the bed linen. "At least, not the injured you're thinking about. That was from battle." He raised an eyebrow, wondering how lucid she really was. "I fought," she explained slowly.

"How old were you? Ten?"

"Yeah. Almost eleven then, sir," she continued to explain in a very quiet voice. "Everyone fought. I come from SouthRidge, a fief so small most nobles don't even know about it. My mom, seven months pregnant, fought with my three year old brother hanging onto her apron. Grandma fought and so did grandpa even though he walks with a cane. The villagers fought, girls and children, with whatever they had." He still looked doubtful so she tried another angle.

"Did you ever wonder why I, a girl, fight with an axe, the weapon most men say is too awkward or heavy?" she didn't wait for an answer, but looked him in the eye. "It's because that's what we had. I had a wood axe, so that's what I learned with. I fought and killed. That's why I have nightmares. I was ten and beheading bandits. My n-nightmare was about Lucas. He was burned alive eight yards away from me, calling for help. Of course there's blood on my hands sir. I've dealt with that."

"Really? Because you seem so over it to me," came a sarcastic voice from a man blocked from view by Raoul's large form.

"Look," she snapped, embarrassment shortening her patience. "I don't complain to you folk about it!" The man had the audacity to laugh at her.

"That's not 'over it'," he chuckled belittlingly. "That's ignoring it. Totally different."

"Then what is over it?"

"Not having nightmares or flash backs." It was David. The whole room seemed to agree against her. She shrank back against the headboard. "You shake like a leaf every time we head out. Why?"

"I donno," she tried to evade the question. "Just reminds me of our messenger."

"There, exactly. That's not over it at all!"

"But, what can I do about it?" she asked, suddenly feeling like a very small child.

"A lot of things. But realize, being over it is when it doesn't bleed anymore. Same as a physical wound, scars hurt sometimes, but they don't reopen."

I think this one's shorter, so I'll update sooner, I think… Anyways, tell me about problems or any other comments. Thanks for reading!