DISCLAIMER: I don't own Jane and the Dragon.
Note: Final chapter! Hope you enjoyed the ride, massive thank you to people who reviewed.
Two weeks to the day Jane and her overgrown lizard had disappeared into the thronging, dark night, Gunther's pale grey eyes searched the evening sky. The winter sun hung low against the horizon, sending vibrant tongues of pale orange into the darkening expanse above his head, broken by smeared patches of cloud. Every bird wheeling across the sun's fading embers had his heart beating foolishly, had his hand reaching for the window to pull himself up, but his tactless gaze would signal his mistake every time and he would lean back on the bench once more, feeling his face grow tight and his chest empty. Each time he would scold himself furiously - Dragon was obviously a different size and shape to a faraway bird. His desperation was driving him to madness.
Desperation certainly seemed the word for it, although he had never placed such an irrational feeling in his capacity before.
The days after she had left had been hellish. He had managed to pull out the fine stitches in his side whilst struggling against Smithy and screaming at her retreating back - he hadn't even noticed until he returned to his room. Indeed, it had taken him some time to summon the will to leave the courtyard. His vision was filled with her bright green eyes, with that twisted, burning gaze she had fixed him with as he pleaded with her. For a moment, he had been so sure that she was going to agree, that she was going to fall into his arms and stay with him. But she was Jane. And, of course, Jane would never do such a thing. She had stepped calmly away from him with unbearable serenity and grace, and the loss of her warm skin beneath his hands had driven him mad. And even when Dragon carried her off into the darkness, he had been so sure she would return. He had never screamed so loud in his life, and she must have heard him. She must return.
Only the knowledge that the rest of the castle staff were standing around him, looking on in horror, made him bite back his cries. Still, he had stayed crouched there in the courtyard for another hour or so, clinging to that last hope that she would change her mind, before the cold realisation washed over him like the evening tide on the shore. She was not coming back. Perhaps she never would come back. Perhaps Dragon would return hours or days or months later with her bloodied carcass. With the image heavy in his mind he had risen, declining Smithy's offers to help - the other man had been keeping an eye on him from his workshop, which he had barely noticed then but felt a strange gratitude for now - and returned slowly to his rooms. The scrap of paper and the smudged, sketchy dragon was still lying on his bed where he had left it, and he had looked at it for a long time before he felt warmth seeping over his thigh and became aware of just how much his wound had bled. He put his hand over it numbly, sat down on the edge of the bed, the drawing crumpled in his other hand. He remembered thinking that he should be careful not to get blood on it.
He supposed it must have been some ugly cosmic joke that his luck struck then rather than earlier, and Sir Ivon knocked on his door a while later to check on him. He let the older knight fuss around him, tentatively pulling aside his bandages and demanding to know what happened and never mind, just stay still and he'd get the court physician and not to move a muscle. Gunther had already begun to feel somewhat detached from himself - it was the most logical plan, after all. When his mother hand died he had carefully stepped apart from the seething, eroding grief in his chest and let blankness settle over him. When his father had first struck him across the face he had done the same thing. And now it seemed only right that, now she had gone, he follow the traditional route. When the physician arrived and gave him something thick and unpleasant to drink, he gulped it down and let the dark fog rush through his mind.
Over the next week he had stayed in bed, as per the physician's orders. Apparently he was 'too agitated' to resume his duties. He did not feel agitated. He felt... static. He lay still and watched the sun rise and set through the small window above his head. The nights felt oddly more active - he would see her, see blood, see their enemies rushing over her like a flood, and he would wake in a frenzy. After four nights he managed to persuade the physician to give him more of the thick, unpleasant drink, and the dreams were somewhat muffled.
He could not blame her, as much as he wanted to.
Yes, she had been stupid, and reckless, and arrogant, and careless, and selfless, and terrible - but she had to go. If she had not gone, she would not be Jane. If she had not left him screaming and swearing and crying in the dirt courtyard, she would not be everything that he felt so horribly strongly about. He still could not pretend that it hadn't cut him to the bone to be left like that, to not even have had a chance to explain himself, to ask her what she had meant when she had looked at him and said 'Because I cared to', as if it wasn't the most intimate and personal thing anyone had ever said to him. Or when she had let him put his arms around her on that first night and simply breathe her in, as if he had never understood what air was until that moment. She had just... gone. Her absence loomed over him, fuller and larger with every passing second. Gone, with only 'I'm sorry'.
After a while of his mind circling in this manner like vultures around a corpse he had driven himself out of his room. He still could not train - his arm was still too weak to allow him to pull a bowstring taught or wield a sword - but he could go downstairs at meal times and settle himself on the bench in the corridor overlooking the courtyard to watch the skies. Which was where he spent most of his time now. He had brought a book with him in order to show a pretence of sitting there to read, but it had seemed such a pathetic facade that he usually ended up leaving the book abandoned on the bench beside him. He would sit up as long as he could until his body screamed for sleep or Sir Theodore passed by and gave him one of those looks, filled with just enough reproach to send him back to his room.
Two weeks to the day she had gone, as the sky darkened to a deep, blood-red at the horizon and a black-purple mouth overhead, Gunther caught sight of a slowly approaching shape. He sat up, leaned forwards on the bench, watching as it drew nearer. He heard a door slam somewhere nearby, heard running footsteps, a few brief shouts. Gunther rose slowly to his feet, crossed the corridor to the window, remaining close to one of the archways. He had thought about it over those long days and nights - he had always imagined that he would rush down into the courtyard as Dragon landed, fall to his knees, take her cold body in his arms and feel the world crash down around him. Or he would rush down into the courtyard and Dragon would barely have landed and she would be there, and she would look at him with that laughing smile she had thrown him since she was eleven years old. He had not expected to be so... frozen. He gripped the stone window ledge with one hand, his eyes narrowing as Dragon came into view, growing from a black speck to a green, glinting body, became aware of Sir Theodore appearing in the courtyard alongside Jester, Smithy, Pepper, Rake, Sir Ivon... Dragon angled downwards, and a flash of scarlet met Gunther's eyes, and his legs almost trembled with the shuddering sigh that swept through him. Dragon had landed, his scales marred with dark marks, his underbelly scarred, and Smithy was reaching out to help Jane climb down... He heard the high tones of her voice among the others, and his heart shook.
She was alive. She was there.
He still could not move. He watched in a teetering silence as she spoke to the others, her tired face lined with dirt and blood, he watched the slightly awkward way she carried herself, as if one arm was not quite well. Bruised ribs, he thought, as if speaking to himself from a distance. She fell off the frog. She was smiling, shaking her head at something Jester had said, and then all at once she was going. Walking with Sir Theodore towards the stairway to her tower, still talking quietly, and Dragon was following Smithy towards the stables, and the courtyard was suddenly empty and silent. And Gunther stood there, staring at the spot where she had landed, like a word that could not decide whether or not it should be spoken.
That night he did not speak a word to anyone.
He spent the rest of the evening hovering between his room, the corridor and the courtyard doorway. From the doorway he watched her room light up with candlelight and made out flickering shadows on the walls. Below in the courtyard he could hear Smithy's voice and Dragon's low growl filtering up from the stables - Dragon, it seemed would be sleeping at the castle tonight. He wondered briefly if the beast was injured, but dismissed the thought almost immediately. Jane would have insisted on staying with him, and he certainly would not have been able to fly if he were in any danger. Smithy went to and fro from the kitchen for a while before retiring to his forge. As he worked Jane's mother appeared, hurrying across the castle grounds and up the stairs, and soon afterwards Sir Theodore took his leave of her quarters. Lady Adeline remained in Jane's room for a good two hours before emerging, carrying a basket of something. Gunther watched her from the corridor as she disappeared into the castle for a few minutes. Almost as soon as she was out of sight, Jester emerged from the shadows of the courtyard and hurried to the stairs to Jane's tower with quick, silent footsteps. He cast a furtive glance over his shoulder before dashing up them. Shadows moved on the fragment of wall Gunther could make out through Jane's window. Soon after, Lady Adeline re-appeared, visited the kitchen for a brief spell, and returned to Jane's room laden down with a tray and accompanied by Jane's father. Gunther watched them climb the stairs once more, slightly agitated by Jester's prolonged, unaccompanied stay in Jane's rooms. Of course, he had always known that they were close, but surely he was not about to have Jane slip away from him and into Jester's hands... unless she had preferred him the whole time, and her attention to him had only been a courtesy, or a reflection of some personal guilt... He tried to push such thoughts from his mind, comforted by the fact that Jester did not depart her tower upon Lady Adeline and Chamberlain Milton. Unless he was hiding somewhere in the room, waiting for them to leave...
He decided to stop his thoughts there.
Gunther's side was beginning to protest and he was forced to sit down on the bench across the corridor for a while, his weakness doing nothing to improve his mood. The damn wound was the reason he had been unable to follow Jane on her task in the first place, and its continuing aches and pains had his temper flaring up within moments. He could just make out her window from his seated position, could see as the candles burned out and were replaced by new ones. Time crawled on and the night grew darker, until her window was the last flickering beacon in the blackness, casting a small rounded patch on the courtyard floor. No-one came to light the candles in the corridor and Gunther did not bother, instead sitting there in the darkness, his eyes trained on the glow ahead of him. The air grew cooler and stiller. He pulled himself up to his feet and crossed to the window again after another few hours, aware of his body's weariness. But he could not leave yet, not yet.
Finally, after his legs had grown stiff and his side and shoulder were both aching insistently, forcing him to hold on to the window to steady himself, figures appeared on the stairs leading to her tower. He could just make them out against the inky night - Jester went first, carrying a lantern, and in seemingly high spirits. He was talking in a low, enthusiastic voice to Lady Adeline, who carried the empty tray. Chamberlain Milton brought up the rear, his old face tired, his hands clasped behind his back. The trio made their way back towards the castle, through the silent grounds and away. Gunther turned his gaze to Jane's window once more, the sight of an un-reproached Jester departing from the tower filling him with relief. Even as he did so, she appeared in the small space. From the distance between them he could only just make her out, her face dark against the candlelight behind her, which lit her hair like a fiery lion's mane. He could see a thin line on her face, running across one cheek - a cut? It did not seem deep, but he could not tell from so far away. He felt himself pulling back against the window frame, retreating into the shadows like a coward. It was, truly, highly improper for him to be eyeing her window like a burglar. Worse, since she was currently only wearing a white nightgown. Perhaps the closest thing to a dress he would ever see on her. It mad her look strange, almost unearthly. She was leaning on the windowsill, like him, holding her side. He wanted to shout across the courtyard, demand to know how and why she was hurt, but he kept his mouth tightly shut. She was looking his way, and for one terrifying moment he thought she had seen him, but then he realised that her gaze was directed down towards the stables. She was only there for a short while, as if checking something, and then she was drawing away and closing the wooden shutters, and he was plunged into darkness as the light from her room disappeared. He stood there for a while longer, as if waiting for a signal, and then finally withdrew to his own room and settled down on his bed.
There was no question of going over to her tower. She would be tired after her journey, she would not want to see him. And he did not know what he would say, or what he expected her to say in return. Instead he spent an uncomfortable night in his own room, rising early to retrieve some breakfast before the others got up. Pepper, sleepily making arrangements for the royal family and the others, did not say much. He went into the courtyard afterwards and rested a hand on his bow, considering feigning practise to have an excuse to stay, but knowing that his shoulder would not bear the strain he was forced back up to his room to wait. Her tower was silent anyway, her shutters closed, and the stable doors were also firmly shut to give Dragon some peace.
If it hadn't been for the King, he doubted he would have ever seen her again due to sheer apprehension.
As it was, Caradoc was quick to announce a feast that night to celebrate the end of the war, and to welcome home the last of the knights of the Kingdom. Gunther was simultaneously relieved and frustrated. For one, he would be able to see her within the crowd of the guests, and he would be able to gauge her health and attitude towards him without having to approach her directly. For another, they would not be able to truly say anything. They would dance around one another with petty small talk and be interrupted time and again by the guests or by Jester or by Pepper, and he would have to be polite and proper and silent...
It was the best chance he was going to get, really. He had to take it.
The feast was everything he had expected. The Great Hall was decorated in the country's colours and the King and Queen glided across the space between dances, greeting and bestowing and introducing as they went. There was a small band of musicians in one corner and tables spread out at one end of the Hall, always filled with people, while Pepper and her assistants scurried to and fro with course after course. Wine flowed and the chatter of the guests filled the huge room like a tidal wave, only ever subsiding when someone giddily rose to their feet and banged on the table and raised their goblet to the kingdom, or the knights, or the royal highnesses, or the feast, or something equally important. These offhand remarks were, for the most part, unrehearsed and more often than not slurred through drunken lips, but were always met with cheers from the attentive audience.
The King had started the feast with his own, far more composed speech, in which he had praised his knights and their country's allies for their sacrifices and their work. He had singled out Jane in particular, at which point Gunther had finally caught sight of her. He had arrived quietly alongside Sir Ivon and remained on the outskirts of the minglers until they had been seated for the King's arrival and welcome. He had looked for her red hair, but had been disappointed. She was not sitting with he and Sir Ivon at the table, either, and it was only when the King gestured that he saw her - she had entered the room late, with her mother and father flanking her, and had been standing at the back with them until the speech was over. She was wearing a tunic of deep blue, embroidered at the hem and sleeves, and with a high collar. He had not seen it before - perhaps it was a new compromise with her mother, an alternative to her knight's tunic. Her hair had been pulled back into one long braid. She straightened as the eyes of the court turned on her, inclined her head with a smile to the King's praise. Her smile made the cut on her cheek bend slightly, like some odd second smile, and Gunther noticed for the first time a pale bruise on her jaw. But her posture was good, carefully avoiding any indication of injury, and her face seemed open and joyful as she approached the table with her parents. She was seated with them, far away from him, and he tried to ignore the fact that she had not looked at him.
He was distracted by Sir Ivon letting out a cheer and clapping him on his good shoulder. Apparently the King had said something of merit regarding himself, and he scrambled for a moment before bringing himself back to the moment. He should have expected it - this was his first feast after the war, too, since he had not attended the last one. King Caradoc was proud of his King's Guard - of course he would mention each of his two highest ranking knights. Completely lost as to what the King could have found to compliment - he had, after all, been carried off the battlefield unconscious rather than in triumph - Gunther hurriedly stood and bowed, waiting for the King to move on before resuming his seat. Sir Ivon nudged him with a wide grin, pushed a cup of wine towards him. He took a glance towards Jane, but her gaze was directed at the King.
The feast was brought underway and the Hall filled with the roar of music and conversation, and Gunther found himself grateful to listen to Sir Ivon's many battle stories as he waited for the evening to be over. Already he was regretting coming, although he could hardly have refused this time. Somehow, being close to her and still making no contact was even worse than waiting for her in the corridor the night before. It was as if they were both deliberately ignoring one another. He tried not to look to often, but he was certain she had not turned her attention his way once in the evening. The dancing began, and she was pulled off by the Princess, and he remained beside Sir Ivon with the group of knights who had congregated to exchange stories. He had just decided that it seemed an appropriate time to slip away when he felt a touch on his shoulder and turned to see Pepper, holding a jug of wine with both hands, bending down towards him. He shook his head slightly.
"Thank you, no."
"Wait!" the girl hissed back, remaining where she was. "I think Jane is tired."
He blinked at her. Obviously Jane was tired. He felt his eyebrows drawing into a cold frown and attempted to soften his features. Pepper, although always shooting him irritating, knowing glances, was always kind to him and far more talkative than the others. She had always spoken to him when they had walked on past with nothing more than a nod. He had a suspicion that she knew more than he - and perhaps even Jane - did regarding their personal emotions. So he sighed through his nose and twisted fully on the bench, careful of his side.
"She is tired," he repeated. "I see."
Pepper cast her eyes skywards. "I think she will retire soon, Sir Gunther," she said, raising her eyebrows meaningfully.
Before he could reach for any comprehension of her words, she had moved on to Sir Ivon and was offering him wine. He thanked her, despite his confusion, and turned his gaze to the dancers and the crowd of spectators. He had not seen Jane since the start of the feast, and his uncertainty had kept him from seeking her out. She was not among the dancers - unsurprisingly - and he could not see her hair among the crowd. He muttered a curse. If she had worn it loose he would have seen her in an instant. Tamed hair was alien on her. He returned to Pepper's words, ran through them once more. And then hit upon a suspicion - had it been some sort of message? Had Jane wanted Pepper to tell him that she was leaving soon? Or more likely Pepper simply wanted him to know that he was missing his chance...
She will retire soon...
Understanding hit him at last and he rose swiftly from the table. She was retiring soon, and true to custom, since she was technically still Lady Jane, someone would offer to escort her to her room. Her parents may do so, or otherwise... He excused himself from Sir Ivon's current story, the older man's reproachful shouts bouncing off his ears as he strode away towards the crowds of people. She was no longer sitting at the table, which meant that she must be standing talking to someone. He wove his way through the guests, his eye fixing on every blue fabric or flash of deep bronze within sight. People kept reaching out to stop him, forcing him to pause here and there to return a greeting or exchange a few pleasantries before moving on. He passed the musicians, his pace slowing, straightening to glance over the heads of the crowd - and abruptly, there she was. She was over by the archway leading to the grounds, listening to something the Princess was saying, her mother by her side. He began to make his way over, barely refraining from shoving his way through the slow groups of guests. His ears snatched at their words as he drew nearer. She did look tired, despite the fact that she was still smiling as the Princess spoke. She was placing her weight more on one side than the other, somewhat gingerly.
"But you must stay a little longer," the Princess was imploring. "We still have to sing, to welcome back the knights!"
"Truly, Princess, I cannot," Jane said ruefully. "Although this feast is perhaps the grandest I have seen, I must visit Dragon."
"And get some rest," Lady Adeline put in.
Gunther could almost see Jane bristling at her mother's concern and fought down a smirk. She had not noticed him coming yet, her attention on Lavina's disappointed face.
"Yes, mother. But we will speak tomorrow, I promise. For now, I'll take my leave-"
"Good evening, Princess, Lady Adeline, Lady Jane."
His voice sounded strange to him - he felt as if it was the first time he had spoken in several years. He cleared his throat as the small group turned towards him, returning his greeting. He looked at her, found her gaze meeting his at last, and he felt his mouth turn instantly dry. He could not decipher her expression. If she turned him down, at least he would know her feelings. He could not bring himself to paste one of those cheerful, chatty smiles over his face, but he tried to make his tone friendly as he spoke.
"Congratulations, Jane. I hear you have saved the Kingdom."
Jane's cheeks reddened slightly and she huffed, shook her head. "No, not-"
"She will not be able to tell the tale again tonight, Sir Gunther," Lady Adeline cut in, even as the Princess nodded fiercely in contradiction of Jane's words. "I'm afraid Jane was just about to retire."
"I see." He watched her green eyes flickering, watched her hands folding and unfolding before her. "Perhaps I could escort you to your rooms. If, of course, Lady Adeline is content for me to."
There was a beat, in which his heart stuttered and his face hardened, and her tongue flicked across her lips. She looked towards her mother, smiled again at the Princess.
"Fine, yes. Thank you, Gunther. Sir Gunther. Alright."
He heard their goodbyes dimly, offered his thanks to the Princess for the feast, followed Jane away towards the doors to the grounds as she took her leave. He walked a step behind her, watching her rigid shoulders and her lifted chin, searching for tension in her neck.
She led the way down the steps and into the cool night air. The gardens were lit with lanterns, chasing the darkness away to linger overhead like a spectre. They were alone - the feast was still in full swing, and it was not yet time for the guests to start peeling away from the crowd. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs, not turning around, but waiting for him. He reached her slowly, aware of the hesitance between them, aware of his own silence. He felt like he should speak, but he couldn't. She was suddenly foreign to him in every way, as if her new tunic had slipped a mask over her face. He stood beside her, her gaze directed at the ground. She suddenly reached up and tugged at her braid, pulled it loose, clawed her hair free with a sigh. It sprang free like a living creature, and he had a sudden, hard memory of its soft, coarse texture beneath his fingers.
"I'm sorry."
He wondered if he had heard her correctly. She had spoken so quickly, so suddenly, that once silence had returned he was not sure she had done so at all. She lifted her face and he met her eyes once more, for only the second time in weeks, saw her mouth quirk jerkily. She ran a hand through her hair, pulled it out of her face.
"I'm sorry for leaving," she repeated. "I would never have... If there was any way..." She stopped, wet her lips, sighed roughly. When she spoke again, her voice was smaller. "It was horrible. It was the worst thing I have ever done. To leave you like that."
The air was trembling around him. He swallowed hard, trying to remember how to talk, blown away by the sudden, emotional, direct words.
"It was your duty," he managed. "But yes. It was... difficult."
He almost laughed aloud at the inadequacy of his words. He tried again as she stepped forwards, moving slowly along the path that ran through the castle gardens, towards her tower.
"It was selfish of me to ask you to stay," he said, keeping his pace level with hers. "I was... concerned. But I should not have doubted your skills. Here you are, after all."
"Here I am?" she let out a short, humourless laugh. "Only by luck. If I could go back, I would never have... Well, you were perfectly justified, anyway. Had our places been reversed, I doubt I would have taken kindly to the plan either."
He studied her face. She looked tight, sad, almost distressed. He felt his stomach twist slightly and found himself reaching out to stop her, all of his worst fears coming to the forefront of his mind. She glanced back at him, slowing to a halt, her face cast half in shadow. He knew his grip was tight on her wrist, but his fear would not allow him to soften his grip.
"I noticed you were... hurt. Jane, are you... Are you alright?"
Her face seemed to suddenly melt into a warm smile, and he felt his fear fly off him like cobwebs. He let his grip loosen, let their pace resume as she spoke.
"Only bumps and bruises, Gunther. I just mean that I had a close call, and realised that I should have listened to you about bringing back up."
"What happened?"
He doubted she had told this to the court. He had already heard from Sir Ivon, who had in turn been told by Sir Theodore, how she had chased their enemy out into the wilderness and taken them out in small groups, only engaging those who would not run. Dragon had seen the others off beyond the mountains before returning, only a few stragglers surviving the conflict. He knew the grand narrative, but what she was referring to seemed to be a moment of weakness, a possible failure, that she would have hesitated to tell Sir Theodore. Her arm was around her side once more, cradling herself. She shook her head once more, struggling over beginning.
"Towards the end, they grew used to our strategy. They drew us out and ambushed us. When Dragon took off there were arrows being fired, and I dodged them but I fell and... well, I dropped my sword, and I had hurt myself and could not get up..."
Gunther almost did not want her to go on. He could see it already, could hear her screaming in pain as she landed, could see the enemy soldiers closing in around her and lifting their weapons. He sank his teeth into his lip, forcing himself to listen. If they had hurt her, if they had kicked her while she was down... She had taken a breath and was continuing.
"Anyway, a soldier reached me and put his sword against my throat. I had no escape, no weapons, no-one to help. The only reason I still have my head is because one of their horses had spooked and rushed right past us, almost over us, and he flinched and I managed to move." She touched her cheek, indicating the cut. "He missed. And by the time he tried again, Dragon was back."
She smiled grimly, glanced over at him. He took in the scratch on her cheek with new understanding and found that he hated it even more now. It seemed to smirk at him. She had come that close to death, barely escaped by a hair's breadth. The thought chilled him to the bone. She reached for him suddenly, touched his arm, drew his gaze to her eyes rather than her scars.
"You were right, Gunther," she promised lightly, smiling. "And that is the only time I will admit it, so enjoy it while you can."
He managed to snigger a little, felt some of the tension drain from his limbs. "Don't worry, I'll be sure to remind you."
"What of you? You seem much better."
"I am. I hope to join you in the training yard in week or so."
He paused. They had reached the staircase leading to her tower, and she was starting up the stairs. She turned when she noticed he had stopped, raising her eyebrows quizzically. He gestured at the stables.
"Did you want to visit Dragon? I could leave you to your privacy, if you-"
"No, no, he flew back to his cave hours ago," she replied waving away his words.
She continued up the stairs, and he followed cautiously, aware that she had not explicitly asked him to come or to go. He did not want to overstay his welcome, nor did he feel ready to leave her. There still seemed to be a distance between them, a lingering space he had yet to cross. He was taken once more back to the night she had remained beside him in his arms, so close that he could feel her heartbeat against his, and wished once more for that comfortable, uncomplicated contact. There had been no stunted talk then - it had all seemed so simple, so obvious that she should stay with him all night long, as if there were nothing strange or improper about it. Now he felt as if they had stepped back from each other somehow. She pushed open the door to her room and disappeared into it, and he heard the hiss of a match as she went about lighting her candles. He hovered outside for a moment before entering, lingering in the doorway like an unwelcome ghost. She was holding her side, her brow furrowed tightly, her lips in a firm line. Her armour and bag were slung on the floor in one corner; the sheets of her bed were rumpled. A small green toy shaped like a dragon sat on the shelf above the fireplace, where a small flame was still flickering. She raised her head and he pulled his attention away from her belongings, met her sharp, green gaze.
"I think my bandages are too loose."
He ran through the words again in his head. "Your ribs?"
"I hurt some, I think, when I fell. It is not bad but... well." She moved her hand over her side slowly, wincing as it made contact with painful areas. "I think the bandages need to be re-dressed."
"Should I fetch your mother?"
Jane's nose wrinkled almost comically. She hesitated a moment longer, and then cocked her head slightly. "If you like. Unless you wouldn't mind... Of course, if you do not feel comfortable I can call her, but..."
His heart did a strange skip in his chest. He nodded dumbly. "Of course, of course... What should...?"
"There are more bandages over there."
She pointed to a trunk in the corner, already turning away from him and reaching for her tunic. She took it by the ends and began to pull it up over her head, whimpering slightly as she moved, and he hurriedly turned around. His eyes fell on the white linen roles resting on the trunk and he picked them up, fumbling, trying to calm his breathing. When he turned around she had taken off the tunic, still wearing her leggings beneath it. She was unwinding a roll of linen which reached from her waist to her shoulder blades, her back turned to him still. He could make out bruised skin emerging from the fabric on her back - she had fallen hard. Hardly daring to breathe, he stepped towards her. She finished unwinding the bandage and screwed it up in her hands, crossed one arm over her chest. He stopped just behind her, furiously attempting to keep his eyes from straying, breathing in her fiery hair and her smooth, pale back. He could see the reddened, scraped skin on her side where she had hit the ground, could see the angry bruises and the dried blood, and he felt that hot anger in his stomach once more. Someone had fired arrows at her, someone had ripped her from Dragon's back and put a sword to her neck. Her neck which was currently just before his face, smooth skin marked with a faint trail of freckles...
"Gunther?"
"Where should I start?"
He managed to keep his voice level as he spoke, hoping he had covered up his pause. She indicated her stomach and he reached around her to begin. He tried to work quickly, unable to avoid flinching every time she winced. He had once fallen from a horse during training and broken two ribs, and he remembered how much it had hurt. Like fireworks exploding whenever he breathed. How she had managed to keep her composure throughout the evening - how she kept it now - was beyond him. He wound the linen strips as tight as he dared, terrified of causing more damage, her skin quickly disappearing beneath layers of fabric. When he had finished she turned her head, and he found himself inches apart from her. His heart leapt dangerously once more and he froze, felt the whisper of her breath against his cheek.
"Thank you," she said quietly.
He offered her a jerky nod and turned away, carrying the bandages back over to the trunk. He remained there, staring furiously at the stone wall as she moved around the room. She eventually cleared her throat and he faced her slowly, relieved to find that she had pulled on a loose, warm tunic. She sat down carefully on the bed, still holding her side, and he took a step towards the door.
"I should leave you to rest," he said, ashamed of how ridiculously formal he sounded. "I'm sure you're tired."
"I am." She held his gaze, her red hair almost breathing around her, as if it had a life of its own. "Don't go."
He stared at her for a moment longer, as if to give her the opportunity to change her mind. Then, as if imitating her actions on that night, he stepped out of his boots and pulled off his belt and dress sword, laying them on the ground. He crossed to the bed as she indicated and sat down on it, leaning back against the headboard. Like a puzzle piece falling into place, she settled against him on her uninjured side, and his arm was around her shoulders, and it was as if he could finally breathe properly after two weeks of holding his breath. Painted in the warm glow of the fire and the dying candles, they sat together and listened to the distant music from the feast and the mutter of the wind outside. Her hand reached out to rest on his chest, as if claiming him, and he let himself melt into her touch.
"Gunther?" she said after a while, her voice low and tinged with sleep.
"Mm?"
"That night after the battle when... when you almost..."
She trailed off, uncertain. He felt he knew what she was talking about. She could only have meant that time when he had hardly known if he were alive or dead, when his world was defined by scorching heat and rushes of icy coldness and sheer, blinding pain, and reality came in brief flashes like a hallucination. It was not pleasant to remember... aside from the fact that, when he had opened his eyes, she had been there above him, and her green eyes had been swimming with tears and her face had been smudged with dust but she had still been more beautiful than the stars, and her cool touch had been skating over his face, and she had been looking at him as if she would never see him again, as if everything was spilling out of her that she had kept away from him all those years.
"Yes," he said.
"Did you hear me?"
Her hair had been swinging down and had cocooned them in a hazy red sphere, and he had been surrounded by her earthy, dragon smell. "Yes. You asked me not to die."
She made a small noise in the back of her throat, her head resting against his shoulder. "I just wanted to say... thank you. For not dying. Thank you for staying with me."
Filled with an odd sense of confidence, he turned his head and planted a soft kiss against her forehead. "That's what I was going to say," he said.
The End.
Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it. See you next time.
SUPRNTRAL LVR.
