Who: Casse

Where: Eh…Unnamed Room

When: Flash Forward/Back

A sound tickled her ear, as she realized her chest took slow shallow breaths. What had happened? Her eyes were closed - felt like ten-pound weights attached to each of her eyelids. It felt like thousands of needles were pricking her. The training through instinctual by months, years almost, kept her expression from relaying even an ounce of pain.

Moments flashed in her mind. Parry and thrust of a sword. Dirt and sand and something else were flying into her eyes. The roar of a crowd. A man, feral, and dark, taunting. A cry of pain and the shame that followed the outburst.

Everything stopped in her mind, fading to black. The sounds swirled in her ears, drowning out scant thoughts that tried to form and her nose was suddenly filled with so many scents it was like she could feel the room itself breath. She shuddered and tried to push it all away, curling her form inward. The movement laced with an odd tingling sensation throughout her whole body let her also realize she was lying on a mat with blankets and a pillow.

"You're dead, Casse."



She stilled completely, fighting against the pain and the odd tingling sensation, but even more fighting to simply open her eyes.

"Good," she grunted, struggling with even breathing. "I'm free," she said half with a small gasp for more air. "Of Valhallara."

The voice laughed and she knew it was male. She wasn't sure how she knew it exactly. Casse was just suddenly sure he was male, later twenties, hadn't bathed and had just finished some strenuous activity. There was a spicy scent and something that smelled like worn leather. She hadn't any idea why she suddenly knew it all, it was just suddenly implanted in her brain like some insane download.

"To walk away unnamed and shamed? To let them think you've gone on to the hall of the gods?"

Casse's thoughts jumped in humiliation and rage, but not before her breath became raspy and then began a horrid cough that jerked her body forward, causing her to curl her shoulders toward her legs from a full laying position. Fire surged through her lungs and spread through all the area around it, forcing her to stay with her forehead on her knees.

"Agh." She stated into the cloth over her legs between the next lapse in coughing not caring that it wasn't the most lady-like sound anyone ever heard, slowly beginning to attempt a sitting position. Everything hurt much to much to care at all about societies justifications right now.

"Here."

She opened her eyes to slits again. Heavy weights tried to stop her, to pull them back closed to the reverie from the stinging pain that felt like tiny needles. It was though enough to focus that she realized she was in a very dark room, somewhere in the back of her head she suddenly knew it was sixteen feet by thirty, dim, the air full of dust, and they the only people in it. Two….people?

Something in her sense told her something was wrong with him. Like a warning. She tired to laugh to herself that it was like "spider-sense" but the remark with the memories was sorer still than amusement it might have caused. Besides this hurt like hell. It was like having some dozen hangovers at once. It was worse than…..No, nothing was worse than the morning after the ship.

Nothing could ever be that bad.

"Drink." The voice said calmer, most adjusted, but a touch impatient this time.

Casse eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness, and on the glass of water being held out to her. She raised a hand, and her finger fitted around the glass before her mouth open, along with her eyes -wide- and the glass fell, water untouched, and shattered on the floor, splashing water and fragments of glass in all directions.

Her eyes, a very bright blue, so pastel it was almost silver-white with a trace of faint blue in it, were locked on hand as her fingers spread wide. Bright blue. Her hand appeared bright blue. It was like looking at some weird science project. A large thundering sound reached her ears and she looked around confused, her eyes landing on him at once.

His face, the dark complexion, even in the dim room, was unmistakable. The noise escalated, faster and faster, like a drum beat.

Her eyes lightened even more, her pupil seeming to become smaller. She suddenly moved agile towards the end of the bed, the thundering sound continuing, and an onslaught causing her to crumple in mid spring, looking like a misshapen tuck-role, that somehow crumpled and fell side ways on the blankets with a moan of pain in retribution of the ill taken action.

"Well, that's settled. You don't want the water."

Casse's teeth were biting into her lip, trying to control the moans of pain that left her prone figure as she moved to sit up, unwilling to be invalid any longer to this man. His eyes seemed to follow her every moment, and his movements to have no sound. Something about him seemed very off to her, but she couldn't tell what. It was just a strong feeling.

"You! You-you-you," she couldn't seem to form another word. It stammered from her lips, chattering a pain through her Jaw, her checks, her throat, her temples scorching. Her mind was playing faster than a tape now, and still not going fast enough to catch up with everything that was happening.

"Me." He nodded simply, without hesitance or a denial. She hated him for it, so purely it struck her like a surprise. Yet somehow she always had. He stood finally, causing her to realize the pad she was on was on the ground. He took steps away into the dark before coming back. "Suppose you start with tell me how you're still alive."

"Right after," Casse rasped, seeing shades of red, pushing herself up along one wall, a wall of fire coursing through her legs as she tried to stand. "I still a spear up your ass."

"You already tried that, m'dear. I believe it ended with you on your back, and with the front end of a poison tipped sword directly in your heart."

"I'm a slow learner," she said, cutting her teeth on her lip due to the pain. Blood flowed lazily into her mouth but she barely felt it as a hand searched out the skin over her heart. Her finger traveled the skin under the make shift tunic that had blood on it in varied places and was tied simply for cover. "I'll take you on again."

"You're not in the shape to take a kitten on," the masculine voice bit back at her. He was telling the truth, but Casse also frequently only ever heard what she wanted to hear. "And you weren't even ready when you walked out there."

Her finger found it. A long scar, scab, line -twisted- without stitches or any bandaging, sore but closed up. She looked down towards where her hand was realizing in a shrink of shock that her whole body was a fuzzy blue color now, highlighting the air around her. Te room began to spin, and she realized somehow the thundering pounding she couldn't get to go away or figure out what was, was suddenly.

It was her heartbeat.

Why was it so loud?

She was aware of arm encircling her, but her sight faded in a pool of blackness, but a voice followed her and she fell lower and lower in the darkness fading only slowly.

"I've been watching you for years, Casse. Since you first arrived. I know everything about you. Parents, family members, the way you like to dress, the food you like to eat, the words you whisper when you sleep…the silent dreams you keep inside. You've got a destiny, and we're going to make it come true."

no tags….flashback