::Pain::

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A/N: Ok. First to Gwen, even though I know that you'll be ignoring this. Sorry about how bloody b!tchy I've been acting the past week or so. It's just that my life is acting a bit screwed up at the moment, and the way I express it is through my writing, so I am getting kinda worked up. Extremely so. There're some things in my head which are driving me on sleepless nights, and I'm beginning to feel a little tired. I think I need to lay back for a bit. Whatever, it's just that I mean to say I'm sorry, also that it's not that I don't want to do the A/U, it's just that I'm afraid that I'll do something wrong to the thing. I've put a heck of a lot into this fic, and if I spoil it, I don't think I'll be able to forgive myself. Apologies to you, at any rate. Secondly, don't mind me if these few parts of the fic will be a bit bizarre, especially when it comes to Daleria. Blame it on my current messed up self. I'll revamp it when I sort some things out. Until then, those people who read this, don't mind me. I'm having a really bad life right now. What really counts first, eh? And I don't mean this fic. Sigh... That's what I'm listening in the background. Eagle eye cherry, are you still having fun and wishing it was. Don't mind me. I just need to get some stuff out my system... Big time.
Below is property of Eagle Eye Cherry:
You are on your own
You do as you please
Having so much fun
Gone and lost your reason
After all is said and done.
Are you still having fun?
How were you to know when you've gone astray?
That happiness would go like a lost emotion
You have always gone your way.
Are you happy today?
Well you know when you've been defeated
You don't care and you thank no one
Feeling low you will always need it
Are you still having fun..?

Beauty and grace is what touches me most
Good times can put me in fear
I always feel safe when things are bad
So I cannot let you come near
It seems that I thrive on the dark side of things
I always feel alive when the death bell rings
Now you have come and bring out the tears in me
Pain never makes me cry
But happiness does
It's so strange to watch my life walk by
Wishing it was
Wishing it was more like a fantasy
Where everyday surprises me
Wishing it was

*

Rapieratce decided to ignore the captain, and retreated to tell the others of the latest outcome and planning. Daleria sighed heavily. Life was not helping her out in the least at that moment. She was struggling desperately to stay upright and keep her hopes up, but the captain could not help but wonder if she would be going, sinking down in the end. Daleria felt she already had. Everything was so confusing, she felt that she was simply stepping, running blindly in the dark without knowing where she wanted to go to in the first place. She somehow felt weary, even though she had slept well enough. But it still was as if there was a weight on her, in her very blood, and something screamed at the back of her head to fix something, though it did not say what. It was almost as bad as living in a nightmare gone wrong. Everything rebounded back at you when you tried to ward it away. Some hopeless feeling was all that existed inside, nothing else. The bright light of hoping and wishing had exhausted long ago, burnt up in a smouldering concoction that withered and faded away as it crumbled into a dusty ash before her eyes. The weight on her heart expanded to her soul, and it took all her energy to simply keep going on, to keep her head up high and her eyes off the ground and catch onto her own life and cling to it before she let it slip away in oblivion. How she wanted to let go, after all that she had loss and misplaced, destroyed and ruined in the short space of ten seasons. Daleria wanted to fall on her knees and weep. She wanted so badly to lie back and simply let tears trickle down her face, to let herself go completely and loose herself to the blackness all around her, to run away to the recesses in her mind that hid away and did not come out in the miserable light of day. She wanted to crawl away on all fours and lay back to fade away into sweet oblivion, run away and never come back. Yet when she thought of doing that, fear struck her in her heart. Afraid of loosing what miserable little that she still had then in what remained in the scraps of her life. Fear, that acute, relentless, absolute fear of change. Everything had already lost footing, and all that had held meaning in her foolish life slipped away into an endless black hole. Afraid that she would never able to live how she wanted to live after all of this was over. Pain never scared her. Change did. Yet it seemed to plague her in an endless stream, refusing to move away, time and again, coming back to attack her vulnerable self. Woe it was that she could do nothing to help herself. Pity never got anybeast anywhere, and she most unfortunately knew that was true. Daleria refused to pity herself. She refused to let out all that she had kept inside for so long. Not because she would not. Only because she could not.

'Dale? Dale!'

The captain was brought back to the present by a frantic paw being waved in front of her face. Sergeant Longrunn shook her slightly. Daleria looked strangely wistful and faraway to him, and she looked as if she was about to walk away muttering to herself if nobeast were to stop her from doing so. The sergeant was really starting to worry about her. Maybe the affair in the cell really did hit her harder than he had expected it to. Ever since that she had seemed to have zoned out, quietened a slight bit though not obviously, and placed a barrier between herself and everybeast else. It was scaring him. Maybe the young one really had been scarred more than he thought she had. Finally, after a little more violent pushing on his part, the captain finally slipped out of her reverie, to his utmost relief. Her response was less than alert though.

'What? Oh. Longrunn.'

'Dale? Are you feeling all right, m'gel? You look... pale.'

Looking up at him ,as if puzzled, the captain blinked once with an absurdly blank look on her troubled face. Shaking her head slightly, she replied slowly. Daleria still looked as if she were in some kind of daze and was yet to snap out of it, though, and by then Longrunn was looking severely worried about her.

'Me? No. I'm fine, I assure you.'

'Maybe you should go sit down...'

The captain nodded slowly, still looking withdrawn and preoccupied.

'Right.'

Moving away slowly, Daleria left Longrunn to himself and tottered off to her ground sheet, where she simply lay down and looked at the darkening sky with a blank look on her face, a odd glint in her unfocused eyes that scared Longrunn slightly. He absent mindedly mused to himself.

That gel... She looks ready to give up at any bally moment, not that anybeast would blame her for what she has had to go through... We should a keep a helping hand out for that 'un... Let her be all right, for her bloomin' sake. The blinkin captain looks absurdly fragile from this point of view. She looks as if she would break at any blinkin time, wot. Why won't she come to terms that we will always be here to lean back on? She has friends jolly well all around her, each and every one of us is a friend to her. And yet she seems so bally afraid to allow us to help her. So afraid to leave her blinkin independence alone and lean back on others for some bally assistance. It's almost as if she's scared that we will slip away just like... Like the major. Woe to that day! I think that she had better hope for recovery from her escapade those seasons before when Clandestine was around. Those two were inseparable in the bally short time that Clandestine was around. To think about it, Clandestine was the only blinkin one she actually allowed herself to let go and lean back upon... And then she fell, and everything crashed back down on the poor gel. Just like her family, wot. Maybe she's afraid that if she depends on us overly so, that we will all blinkin fade away as well. She needs help, that un. If only she would accept it.

Longrunn hoped against all hope that they would all get back to the mountain intact. In mind and in body.