A/N: WARNING. I suggest you all prepare yourself for quite the blow.
*Reginald*
My men were fighting with a vigor in the dark night that almost scared me to watch. Their heavily muscled and armored arms were flashing all around the courtyard as they cut down the enemy with a vengeance to rival that of wild wolves protecting their territory. I almost chuckled at the thought.
This was all of our territory.
An archer started to fire down on the men and I did what I do best and aim my own arrow at his jugular.
Thwack, he's done fighting.
The other archers in my group were scaling the walls to get the vantage point they needed to aid their comrades while I fired from behind the foot soldiers. They new I wouldn't ever hit them so even when my arrows whistled past their ear or ruffled their hair they ignored it and kept on struggling on. Across the courtyard I could see Gabriel's Uncle trying to organize a phalanx in the ciaos. Sure the rows of shields with spears lunging over the top and bottom would have been quite the feat to conquer. Except my men were doing quite the job of preventing them from forming even a three man phalanx.
"Atta boys! Fight!" I encouraged with vigor equal to their own.
Black shadows of arrows began to find their marks in the enemies ranks from above and I knew my archer were secure.
Leveling one of my own arrows I aimed at Captain and let it fly. He must have known it was coming because he dodged to the left. The arrow missed his heart but still managed to imbed itself into his left forearm in between the bones.
"Lucky little man." I smiled.
Elyse would be free tonight.
Of everything.
*Elyse*
"How can you ask for nightmares?" I gasped and the others behind me were murmuring in equal shock and agreement with me.
"How?" Fleischer leveled his tundra frozen tawny eyes with mine and smirked letting my gift tell me everything I needed to know.
Fleischer wanted to give everyone nightmares. Well, plague the world with nightmares so strong that you could not tell they weren't real, so that every time a person fell asleep their worst fears would happen over and over and over relentlessly until the person either went insane or pledged alliance to Fleischer. But that wasn't all- Fleischer wanted to be able to turn the nightmares on or off for individual people at will.
No wonder he needed all of the Flowers at once- he was asking for a lot of power- power that a single Flower even on the best of full moons could not give. Not even two or three Flowers could.
I shuttered as the dark twisting nightmares fluttered across my eyelids.
A mother digging a grave for her newborn by hand.
Bears mauling a hunter and his wife in their sleep.
A child surviving the fire that badly burned them and killed their family.
Many more flashed before my eyes and I couldn't help but cover my eyes as they increased in how absolutely horrifying they were. Not that it helped to cover my eyes. If anything it made them feel more real and even more terrible.
"I won't do this." I whimpered and tried to block out the images by opening my eyes and looking up at the comfort of the moon.
A golden glow washed across my skin followed by Fleischer's favorite new sunny toy. This time he must have splashed half the fluid on me.
I shrieked impossibly louder than before with the sun searing my face, chest, and throat.
As the sun extract crept under my skin it reached above my heart and slowly burnt it's way through my muscles and bones like a hungry monster that had lava for hands.
"Elyse?" Mother whispered in alarm as I continued to scream on top of my lungs, "Elyse, honey?"
I had to stop screaming. Now. The others didn't need to know how much it hurt they would become to frightened. So I clamped my teeth together and settled for whimpers of pain despite the continuing agony.
"Take her over there." Fleischer sighed, "She just won't learn as quickly as some I'm afraid."
After the guards tossed me against a pillar to come down off the pain I heard a large blast from a not so distant part of the castle.
"We're under attack!" A tired guard huffed running up the corridor.
Mother took the opportunity to make a wish and just before she and the others disappeared Mother shouted "Go home, Elyse!"
So Mother knew the plan too.
Fleischer's troops appeared in the corridors and were making a desperate attempt to secure Fleischer before Reginald could burst through the defenses, "Take His High Majesty to the Strong Room as fast as you can!"
Fleischer was still staring at where Mother had been and was smiling in strange admiration and humor, "Good work Reginald."
"You Highness, come now." a soldier prodded.
With an odd accepting look, Fleischer nodded at his soldiers, "Kill Gabriel Hartman when he arrives as planned."
My Gabriel?
My Gabriel was already dead- wasn't he?
You couldn't get much more dead than a spear through the chest- honestly you couldn't.
Yet Gabriel wasn't a common name in FaLeon or Corona.
The sun extract interrupted my thoughts as it soaked into the tissues of my heart and made my pulse jump into overdrive. My blood felt like it was getting thicker as it tried to race through my veins.
No. I wasn't supposed to die like this! There had to be a way to stop my heart from stopping in it's feverish race to pump my charring blood through my veins.
Maybe if I could crawl into the moonlight...
Suddenly I hated my lavender dress. It would be almost impossible to crawl in across the twenty feet of shadows.
However I summoned up my strength as my body shook with each new miniature seizure that wracked my body from the burning ferocity on my heart and skin and forced my weak arms under me. Then I drew my legs up to move forward. With every muscle movement it felt like I was being lit on fire and the seizures were making it almost impossible to move. Locking my arms straight I began to crawl as fast as I could bare.
By the time I was halfway there my shaking arms were threatening to collapse.
Four feet from the edge of the moonlight I fell flat on my face. Digging at the cobbled ground of the courtyard, I desperately inched my way closer to the light as my heart threatened to burst. Suddenly the soldiers were screaming and rushing all around me as my body agonized in it's ever strengthening waves of fire. The battle was probably reaching the corridors to cause such ruckus.
Blackness tinged my vision as my heart started to skip beats causing my blood to stall then rush on painfully.
I reached out my hand to touch the light of the full moon.
Blackness engulfed me.
*Gabriel*
The edges of my vision were tainted red as I sprinted down the dark corridor. Elyse was all I had left in this world and I wasn't going to let even the King take her from me.
Up ahead I could hear a battle going full swing in the Hangman's Courtyard. Mentally I kicked myself for stopping to talk to the General- I should have just kept going like I hadn't heard him- now Elyse was in the middle of a raging battle with no protective gear.
I reached the opening to the corridor that was open to the courtyard and ducked just in time to dodge a barrage of crossbow bolts. Once I cleared the surprise from my mind I crawled along behind the half wall that separated the corridor from the courtyard. There was a place where the half wall had a pillar jut out of it to hold corridor roof. That is where I raised my head above the wall to get a bearing on my surroundings.
My first impression of the battle was that it was going poorly for Reginald, but then I noticed his archers climbing the castle walls silently like assassins. Wow, they were good.
Ducking back behind the wall I crawled to the next pillar and stuck my head out just enough to see. Amid the commotion a piece of lavender caught my eye. Focusing harder I could just make out a prone feminine shape through the whirling bodies of the fifty or so men guarding the courtyard.
Elyse.
Getting back below the wall I ran at a crouch around the corridor- which wrapped all the way around the courtyard with its half wall and pillar design- so I could get closer to Elyse before I tried to join the fray. On the side closes to Elyse the moonlight shone through until it was two inches from the top on my side of the half wall. About twenty feet away was the still form of Elyse, her fingertips just barely out of the shadows and in the moonlight, and her body frozen in an apparent struggle to reach the light.
Without a second thought I vaulted the wall and scooped up Elyse and headed for the corridor behind the gallows. Shouts roused up behind me and I could feel the men with crossbows aiming in between my shoulder blades.
They all missed.
I landed behind the half wall and crouched, laying the woman I loved down in the moonlight, and gently stroked her face, "Elyse?"
After a frightening second her eyes fluttered open. For another even more frightening second Elyse's gently glowing eyes were gold and unfocused but faded steadily to a clear silver. Once her eyes were their normal color they looked around nervously until they met my eyes and froze.
"Oh goose-nuggets." Elyse whispered and closed her eyes, "This can't be happening. No one puts a battle on time out for hallucinations- oh golly, I'm going to die."
"What on earth are you talking about, Princess con capelli d'argento?" hopefully that would convince her she wasn't dreaming.
If anything it had the opposite effect.
"Okay. You must be a ghost then." Elyse nodded to herself, "There is no way my brain would be speaking gypsy to myself as Gabriel."
Reaching out I stroked Elyse's pale face, "Ghost's don't carry people off of battlefields."
"I saw you die." Elyse pointed out quite plaintively.
"You saw me almost die." I corrected with a small grin.
The light of recognition flickered on in Elyse's eyes before she scrunched her nose and said, "Must you always sound like a know-it-all?"
All I could do was grin like an idiot.
My Più fidati e amato was safe.
*Elyse*
Gabriel.
His curly dark brown hair plastered to his head, his face covered in dirt and sweat, and he was once more wearing a FaLeon soldier's uniform.
But Gabriel was alive.
Relief hit me so hard it kicked the remaining sun out of my system and filled me from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. All the air I seemed to have been collecting in my lungs since Gabriel died- was that why I was so tense?- all rushed out of my lungs at once. Secretly this was the happiest I had ever been about being wrong.
Slowly I sat up and Gabriel rocked back to give me some breathing room, "What a twisted mess."
"Yes this is a twisted mess." a familiar voice tisked from behind.
Gabriel spun around and hissed, "Uncle."
"That's Captain to you, boy." the man snapped back, "Now stand out of the way, so I can finish this Flower once, and for all."
I took a good look at Captain. He had jet black short hair and a sturdy jaw to match his wide shoulders, but there was no way he had a single ounce of fat on his immaculate form. Captain must have been Gabriel's Father's younger brother to have such a great metabolism. Captain couldn't have been more than twenty five the way he looked.
Gabriel stood and drew a rather deadly looking blade from its sheath but left the swords twin at his side, "Her name is Elyse."
Captain drew his own sword. It was a little longer than Gabriel's own sword with a longer pommel so it could be wielded with both hands. The blade itself was about three inches wide and went straight out like a regular sword on one side, but was a saw on the other side. Gabriel rubbed a spot on his hip gingerly.
"So you remember her well." Captain sneered.
Gabriel smiled in a fierce way, "You won't remember this sword- I promise."
Captain crouched with his right foot forward and his left hand behind his back.
Gabriel crouched too, but his right foot was almost equal with his left and Gabriel's left hand was held out as if to help him hold his balance..
Then they just waited.
Both kept waiting for the other to make a move like two predators just waiting for the other to make a mistake.
Captain moved first. His right foot inched left and his torso became a smaller target. This was good enough for Gabriel and he closed the distance between them in the blink of an eye, ramming his pommel into Captain's chest. The other man staggered back a step and swiped the saw side of his sword at Gabriel's exposed underarm.
Gabriel yelped in surprise and jumped back out of reach and looked at the red stain gathering on his shirt.
"Your right- I won't remember the sword of a dead man." Captain barked humorlessly.
Gabriel leaped forward and plunged his sword into Captain's exposed shoulder, then used the flat of his sword to smack the man's gloating expression from his face. Captain parried the second blow and slashed at Gabriel's abdomen. Gabriel dodged and continued to attack his former leader, slashing at his arms and legs.
With a movement hidden from my view, Captain suddenly had his sword at Gabriel's throat, "You are getting better Gabriel but don't forget that no matter how hard your Father tried he could never beat me. You are just a weak hearted as Adam and now you're as dead as him."
Gabriel swallowed compulsively. The same fear was in his eyes now as when I had last seen him- the fear he would lose everything.
Standing I began to slowly make my way over.
I knew what needed to happen.
"Don't try to be human Flower- you'll just die all the more painfully." Captain snarled not taking his eyes from Gabriel's exposed throat.
His words rolled off of me like rain against a window pane as I continued forward.
The tip of Captain's sword pressed against Gabriel's neck drawing a thin line of scarlet on it. Fear tried to make my determined progression halt but my heart beat against my fear driving it out.
"I will kill him, little girl." Captain said, his angry voice tinged with the faintest hints of awe.
As I continued to walk on I gave him a small smile, "That is Princess con capelli d'argento to you, Snake."
Everything that happened next seemed like it was coming out of my head rather than happening for the first time.
Captain took his sword from Gabriel's neck and ran his sword through my abdomen with as much force as he could muster. Simultaneously Gabriel stabbed his uncle through the straps of his breastplate and on through his lung.
Captain's hands lost their grip on his sword and he staggered to the right before collapsing against the corridor wall.
"Elyse?"
Gabriel grabbed one of my arms with his gentle but rough hands and helped me rest against the half wall.
"You beat him." I tried to keep the pain from my voice but I guess it showed a little too plainly on my face.
"Only by losing you." those clear blue eyes became stormy grey as tears rolled down his cheeks freely, "I'd rather die than lose you."
"Either way one of us is dead." I giggled weakly and put my left hand into the moonlight.
"What are you doing?" Gabriel asked with the alarm he was trying to bury clear to my trained eyes.
Gesturing at the sword, I breathed just deeply enough to say, "Borrowing time."
I know this sucks but there is more to the story. There has to some sort of 'Oh my goodness' this late in Elyse's story and this is just how it happened to come about.
Happy New Years!