Some of you have noticed that these aren't quite drabbles anymore... ehehe... well you'd be right XD Such is the power of reviews, ladies and gents hehe. I wrote the two shorts thinking "nah, no one will read this, I'll just get the thoughts out of my head so I can focus on other things" but then... well you read it and reviewed hehe. And made me very happy. And happy me gets inspired, and inspiration leads to, well, here XD Thank you ever so much – and I hope you continue to enjoy the chapters :D

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She held his hand all the way back from the castle, but he could barely feel it.

He was shocked to the core. They had made a mistake somewhere and Swiftie had paid for it. He felt sick to the stomach at the thought of it, but then somehow he just couldn't take it in, couldn't process it. Ben had always prepared for the possibility that Swift would die – everyone did, after all, and as a soldier your chances of death were a lot, lot higher – but he never expected that it would end like that.

At the entrance to the sewers, Rose announced that she had an errand to run. "I'll be back soon," she assured him.

Ben looked at the princess and wished he could see her face. She was wearing a detailed hood attached to an embroidered shirt, shielding her face save for the tip of her nose, her chin and lips.

"It's probably not a good idea to be wandering alone around Bowerstone right now," he said.

"Scout will be with me," she said, ignoring his roll of his eyes, "and if I don't go now who knows when I'll get a few minutes to myself to do it? I'll see you inside shortly." She leant in to kiss his cheek and dashed back up the steps, Scout at her heels.

True to her word, she arrived at headquarters around ten minutes later, a bag of supplies looped around her wrist and a health potion in one hand.

"Ben told us what happened," Walter said to her as she entered. She uncorked the potion and downed it quickly, making a small noise of disgust. "Swift was a good friend," Walter continued sadly. "He died like a true soldier."

"A true soldier?" Ben said with a short bitter laugh. "Let's not pretend there was anything noble about the way he died. He was tortured, humiliated and murdered."

"And he didn't give Logan anything or we'd be dead now. I call that noble."

"It was just a matter of time before Logan did this," Page said solemnly. "Before he decided to hunt us down. We have to fight back."

At his left, Ben heard the princess tut slightly under her breath. Ben made a mental note to question her later – clearly from the way Rose was still plying herself with health potions, Page's attack on Reaver's manor didn't go quite to plan.

"We're still not ready, though," Walter said. "We need more allies. And thanks to Swift's efforts we know exactly where to look."

"Before he was executed, the Major managed to send us a message," Ben explained to Rose.

"A soldier still loyal to the old guard brought it to me," Walter added, "at great risk to his life."

"What does it say?" Rose asked. Ben smiled a little.

"Well this is Swiftie we're talking about so it's rather straightforward," he said fondly. "'You will find allies in Aurora'."

"I still don't understand how anyone there could help us," Page said. "Aurora is a dead land. There's nothing there."

"Or at least, that's what we've been told," Walter said. "It's still the only lead we have anyway."

"Can we get on with the plan?" Ben said impatiently. "I have the overwhelming urge to shoot someone."

"First thing, we'll need a ship. You and Ben will get hold of one while Page and I make sure the rest of the fleet doesn't follow."

"You'll need to go via the back alleys," Page said. "And they'll be crawling with soldiers."

"Not a problem," Ben said. "I know my way around the place. I'll meet you at the back of the sewers," he said to Rose. "We're going to show Logan just what traitors can do."

"Wait," Rose said as Ben went to leave. "This is all well and good, but I have suggestion."

Ben stopped in his tracks and went back to his place by the map. "Go on," Page said.

"We wait," Rose said. "We keep our heads down and stay silent, only for a few days."

"Haven't we waited long enough?" Page said impatiently. "Logan could do any amount of damage in "a few days". There isn't the time to waste!"

"I have to say I'm in agreement with Page on this one," Walter said. "It will take time to get to Aurora – we can't afford to sit around and do nothing."

"Logan will be expecting retaliation from today's display," Rose said. "You said yourself soldiers will be swarming the city. He's waiting for our reaction and preparing for it. He'll have soldiers all over the place in his paranoia. Meanwhile, we wait. His soldiers will get impatient and disgruntled and be easier to overcome."

"They're hardly as elite as they claim," Ben said. "They won't be difficult to fight."

"That as may be, but I have another reason," Rose said. "Major Swift's execution was hardly by the book. No trial, no evidence – just a death at Logan's word. He was a popular officer and popular figurehead for the army. People will already be questioning the truth behind Logan's actions. Reacting now will only confirm his words, but by waiting a few days we will allow that doubt to grow more – is there really a threat of rebellion, or has Logan just become a paranoid tyrant? Dissent will grow in the ranks of the soldiers, separating those loyal to our cause from those loyal to Logan's."

"I... never thought of it like that," Page mused aloud.

"Then we will wait?" Rose asked.

"We will wait," Walter agreed. "Three days from now we'll meet back here and head for Aurora. Until then, we'd best keep our heads down – no doubt Logan has men putting posters of us up around the city as we speak."

Page shooed them from the room after that, stating she needed rest after the day she had. Ben snorted but otherwise didn't respond. Rose had wandered over to the guards at the headquarters' perimeter and was talking to them seriously. Walter said he was going to the safe house the Resistance had set up to make sure the remainder of the Swift Brigade and any other "deserters" were safe.

Ben wanted to go with him, but he knew right now he would only worsen morale amongst the men. He stamped angrily to one of the corners of the headquarters where a makeshift room had been cordoned off behind some crates, two wooden pallets acting as beds.

Ben sat down on one of the beds, his elbows resting on his knees and his head in his hands. It couldn't have happened to a more brilliant person. Major Swift: blunt, to-the-point but good natured and a wicked sense of humour. A superior you could rely on (and they didn't come around often) and one you could be proud to say you died for.

But it wasn't to be. Because Swift died for them. And that hurt more than Ben could say.

Ben didn't notice someone had come around the piled crates until they sat beside him. He felt an arm go around his shoulder and he leant into Rose's embrace (he would know those legs and boots anywhere).

"Do you... want to talk?" Rose asked hesitantly. "I know you and the Major were close."

Ben let out a little huff of laughter. "He saved my life. Both literally and metaphorically. He was the reason I joined the army. And now he's gone." Ben snorted. "And here I am in the corner of a sewers moping about it."

"What do you think he would say? Right now?"

"Something like, "Chin up, Benjamin, there's work to be done – chop-chop!" But of course," Ben said with a sigh, "we've got to wait, haven't we."

"I'm sorry," Rose said.

"No, no, it makes sense. I'm just being an idiot – as usual. Ignore me."

Rose poked Ben in the ribs. "You are not," she said punctuating the word with another poke, "an idiot. Believe me, I didn't really want to wait – I want to get this over quickly. But -,"

"You're thinking with your Queen head," Ben supplied, turning his head to kiss her shoulder. Rose poked him in the ribs again.

"I was thinking about what was best, not about what I wanted," she said.

Ben sat up and looked at Rose, but whatever he was going to say fled from his head when he saw her face. "Hopping hobbes, what the hell happened?"

Rose's hood had fallen back, allowing Ben to see the crooked bump at the bridge of her nose and a line of a scar across her face. She covered it self-consciously with her hands.

"Don't fight with a ceramic mask on," she said, running a finger over the broken lines of the scar that dotted under one eye, over the bridge of her nose and under the other.

"What happened?" Ben asked again, moving her hands out of the way and cupping her face, gently running his thumbs over the edges of the scars.

"We were fighting in a sort of arena for Reaver's entertainment," Rose said. "Apparently he had been expecting us. In any other circumstances it would have been sort of fun I guess. Hollow men, hobbes, mercenaries – nothing I couldn't handle. I wanted to take that bloody hat and mask off before we started, but Page told me to keep it on lest Reaver recognise me and shoot me on the spot. A mercenary whalloped me on the head and the hat pushed down on the mask which broke my nose and cut my face," she said. "I had a healing potion on me, but I didn't get the opportunity to straighten my nose out before I healed it."

"And earlier when you drank a potion?"

"I was planning on re-breaking it and trying to sort it out. In the end I just settled with getting the scars to heal." Rose reached up and prodded the slight lump at the top of her nose. "How does it look?" she asked.

Ben leant in to get a closer look. "Well, I don't profess to be an expert on broken noses – though I've had my fair share," he added, rubbing a ridge in his own nose, "it looks like it's healed. You've not got any swelling around here or your eyes and -,"

"No," Rose said, "I meant how does it look? How do I look?"

Ben smiled, and ran his thumb over the scar and the ridge in her nose. "You look beautiful. Dangerous, but beautiful."

Rose smiled, and it was like sunshine breaking through the clouds. "Dangerous? What kind of dangerous?" she said.

Ben snorted with laughter. "I call her beautiful and she likes being called dangerous better. What was it the other day we were saying about strange and troubled?"

Ben froze suddenly as he say those words, remembering who it was who had first said them. "Shit," he swore, his hands dropping away from Rose's face and turning his head away from her, his eyes burning and throat tight.

Rose made a sympathetic noise and rubbed his arm soothingly. She stood up suddenly and dragged the other pallet across the floor. "Lift your feet up," she instructed.

Ben did as he was told and lay on his pallet. She pushed the two together and lay beside him. She pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead, each eyelid, his nose and then his lips before shifting up the pallet slightly to hold him, his head tucked under her chin and resting on her chest.

"Tell me about him," she said. Ben felt and heard her voice under his ear as she spoke and sighed into her cleavage.

"You knew him," Ben said, a mite sulkily.

"But not like you knew him." Ben smiled a little at that and wrapped his arms around her waist.

"I met Major Swift in Bowerstone, nearly four years ago. I was just ending my career as an accidental pirate, but I appeared to have offended my employer in the process since he saw fit to have a number of my crewmates chase me through the streets after my head..."

As Ben went through a number of tales of his adventures with Major Swift, he felt grief but not pain. He realised then why Rose had suggested he talk – by remembering and sharing the times he had with the Major he was celebrating the life he had rather than just seething over how he died. Rose for her part just listened, running her fingers soothingly through his hair and occasionally laughing with him.

He didn't know when he fell asleep, but he awoke some time later still wrapped in her arms. She was asleep now as well, her lips parted as she breathed deeply, her face soft and relaxed. Ben carefully shifted them both so it was her in his arms (since that was the way it was supposed to be) and watched her sleep for a while. Yes, they had lost Swift, and it was going to be hard without him, but all was not lost.

Like Swift, she was a superior you could rely on. And one he would be proud to die for.

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Hope Ben wasn't too OOC here, but I think with Swiftie going the way he did some slight OOC-ness was permissible.

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