I'm baaaaaack. Sorry for the wait... Just so you know, I didn't get bored with this story, nor am I having writer's block. I really didn't have time to sit down and write.

As always,

Hope you enjoy!

~ No rain, no flowers. ~

His right hand was numb – the hand he took hold of her shirt with, the hand she grasped at. Tiny invisible needles were poking at his skin, making it incredibly uncomfortable. Had he brushed past the wrong plants and bushes? The memory of the sky girl's soft skin pulling at his fingers calmed the sensation away. Such milky skink, like that of an innocent babe.

Did one leave a child to fend off by itself in the woods?

But she was not his offspring, nor his woman and definitely not his responsibility. She was nothing. Nothing but an insolent little girl with no sense of danger. She belonged with her doomed people. He belonged with his and had to figure out how exactly to reclaim his rightful place. So, shaking his hand to set the blood in motion, he pushed the sky girl out of his mind as fast as she popped there.

In the Sky people's camp, Vivian was laying in bed, examining a leaf. She was pondering on colors and how humans perceive them. She had the strong belief that everyone saw colors differently. When you are young, you are told a certain shade is called 'red', but is what you see truly the same red as everyone else's? Is it even the same hue or a different one all together? She believed in soul mates and their ability to see the world in the same colors, almost as if with the same eyes. Someone out there would look at that leaf she had holding and marvel at its vibrant color, would look at the sky at dusk and sigh in wonder.

"Are you ever going to tell me what happened out there?" She moved her eyes away from the leaf and noticed Chloe looming over her bed, arms crossed and brows furrowed.

"What happened where?"

"Vi, please. You know me better than to think I don't notice things. It's been over a week since you hadn't stepped foot into the damn forest. Something scared you out there? Was that grounder bastard involved?"

"No, he saved me actually. Again..."

"So? Why are you here sulking?"

"I'm not sulking."

"Excuse me! I thought staying in bed all day, sighing and staring emptily at things was categorized as 'sulking'. But by all means, you're definitely not doing it."

"Isn't staying safe what you wanted?"

"Yes, but not if you're miserable. Come on! Stop beating around the bush! Tell me what's going on already; you'll do it sooner or later anyway."

"Maybe I finally realized I was pushing my luck. If Roan wouldn't have been there I'd be dead a couple of times now…"

"Fine, don't tell me! But you are coming to the waterfall with me."

"Why? You hate it out there."

"I do, but I heard all these amazing things about this place where the water just slides down the mountain side. I have to see it for myself."

"You don't have to do this for me, Clo. I'd rather stay in. Please..."

"Oh, I'm going with or without you. It's your choice if you let me get lost out there or not."

"Do whatever you want. I'm not moving from this spot."

"Hmp. We'll see."

With that Chloe left the room. It took about four minutes for Vivian to follow. Her friend had impulsive moments when she refused to back out of something she said, even if she knew it was a bad idea. She had indeed planned to reach the waterfall alone, had Vivian not gone after her blonde friend. With a smug smile on her face, Chloe told her to lead the way.

It was nice being out in the woods again. She hadn't realized how much she missed it until she was there again, surrounded trees and grass and flowers. Vivian knew it was probably all in her head, but she could almost feel the life pulsating trough every root and vine. It made fell alive in turn. She only wished she could transmit the feeling to her friend, who looked disgusted by everything green. Maybe she was just seeing it in a different color.

It all happened very fast.

One moment she was listening to Chloe's chattering, something about a very handsome guard who was tailing her everywhere and giving her presents. The next thing she knew, they were surrounded by six black shadows. They were grounders, but their faces were… wrong. Bumps would trace their disfigured and twisted heads and their eyes held something primal, brutal that made Vivian's blood run cold. But it was their smiles that truly made the girls terrified for their lives. Such deranged upturned mouths that screamed of some cannibalistic terrors. They were not grounders; they were nightmares in the flesh. And they were closing in.

Vivian pulled out her gun, but hesitated. That would be something that would haunt her for the rest of her life. She would go back to that moment often and hate herself for not pulling the trigger sooner. In the seconds that it took her to fire, the creature before her launched an assault, spinning its spear threateningly. She heard Chloe's gun firing and she followed suit, but it was too late; metal hit flesh and a scream erupted from her throat.

Roan could recognize that voice anywhere, even in the form of that blood-chilling scream. The little sky girl was in trouble. He was dashing trough the forest before he had the chance to register what it was exactly that he was running into. Reaper territory. Somewhere in the back of his brain he knew it was likely he would get there too late. If those atrocities have found her, she'd be dead. Loud bangs filled the silence of the forest and he followed them. He saw the sky girl pointing her little weapon at a reaper, but she wasn't fast enough. She got hit in the stomach with the blunt end of a spear and fell on her ass. Roan set in motion, hitting reaper after reaper without mercy.

The first one fell silently with a clean slice of his throat, not able to scream his pain away. He stabbed the second in the back and he let out a grunt. The remaining two noticed him and charged, clearly not knowing what they were getting into. One dagger in each hand, he sliced at them, dodging the spear one was wielding. Blood was dripping from the beast's blade and it fueled Roan's drive to kill. He kicked the other reaper and he fell to the ground. While he was winded, Roan attacked the one with the spear; got close enough and sliced his throat with both his knives. One last plunge of the blade in the last reaper's chest and it was done.

He turned to the sky girl and saw her eyes wild with terror. She was scared of him, of what he was capable to do, of what he was raised to be: a warrior, a king, a killer. She would stay away from him after what she had witnessed him do, after seeing him covered in blood. The thought angered him and it angered him more that it affected him in the first place. Her pleading, desperate voice made him realized he'd never been so wrong in his life.

"You gotta help her, please!" His eyes moved to the figure the girl was hovering over. A young blonde woman with an arrow sticking out of her stomach – another sky girl perhaps. "Roan, I beg you! I'll do anything. Help her!" He closed the space between them and crouched before them. He ripped the girl's shirt and examined the wound. She didn't have long.

"I'm sorry."

"What? No! There has to be something. Help me get her to camp!" Her hands moved from place to place, unsure from where to lift the other girl, but Roan knew it was pointless. It was too far away; the girl had a couple more minutes left before her organs would stop one by one, blood constantly raining from her veins. His eyes met with the dying girl's and, after her cold blues stared into his for a moment, she let out a weak sigh.

"Vi, it's alright…"

"No, Abby can heal you. Just hang in there a little while longer!" The blonde caught her friend's hands and went to talk, but it turned into a cough, blood spilling from her mouth. "Chloe, please! Hang in there just a-"

"No, Vi. You listed here! You have to do something for me." She broke into more coughs. She was turning paler by the minute. "You have to live! Promise me you'll still be your happy-go-lucky self! Promise me you'll survive!"

"We'll both-"

"Promise me, Vivian! Now!"

"I… " Her eyes met Roan's, in one last desperate plea to save the girl. He wished there was something he could do, he really did. He knew the anguish of losing friends, he could relate to her in that particular moment. But nothing could repair the damage to her internal organs. Even if the sky people had a way to do that, the girl was not going to make it that far. Vivian knew that, but was unwilling to accept it. He broke eyes contact, moving his gaze to the dead reapers instead.

"You stubborn girl… promise me!"

"I promise…"

"Atta girl." A weak tug at his clothes made Roan look back on the dying girl. She wore a smile, but the pain was written everywhere else on her blood stained face. "Thanks for watching over this one. I know she can be a handful." The only thing he could do was nod.

"Chloe, I don't know-"

"Shh, just live for me too, okay?" Roan watched as tears burst out of the sky girl's eyes. She didn't answer her friend, just tightened her fingers around her hands. He felt like an intruder in some intimate event, like he was seeing something he was not supposed to. He wondered if his mother's soldiers felt the same when it was him standing over his friend's body, pleading to the queen to spare the others.

The blonde, Chloe, was long gone when the sky girl stopped crying. Her red eyes just stared at the corpse of her friend. It was eerie, one girl in tears, the other with a bloody smile. Roan wanted to get out of reaper territory. It was getting dark and it was a wonder no others came after the noise that the guns made. Best not to wait around for them. He also noticed blood pouring over Vivian's left arm. She had a wound somewhere and it needed to be closed before she suffered her friend's fate. But the sky girl was glued to her deceased friend and Roan didn't know how to get her away from it without sounding like a complete heartless bastard. Nevertheless, they had to move.

"We have to go."

"I'm not leaving her here."

"We can bury her some other place." He sighed and lifted the body. Warm blood was still dripping from the blonde, mixing with his already stained clothes. He heard the clumsy footsteps of the sky girl behind him and made his way closer to his cave. They could bury the body somewhere in the forest, maybe under that old elder tree.

"Could we burn her? She didn't really care for the mud…" He sighed. It was getting dark and a fire that large could attract anything in miles. On the other hand, no one would see the smoke.

"Sure, we'll build a pyre by the river."

"Thank you." He was about to tell her he didn't do anything to deserve thanking, he hadn't saved her friend, but something stopped him. Maybe it was pride, maybe it was stubbornness to accept he liked having the girl around or maybe it was out of consideration to her already fragile state of mind. Whichever it was, it annoyed him. None of what was happening was helping his goal; none of it was aiding him in his quest.

But even with all that he still gathered wood and piled it together. He still sat there as the sky girl broke into violent sobs when the flesh on her dead friend started sizzling and melting. He lifted her and guided her to his cave, despite her uselessness. He sat her down and inspected her wounds. The gash on her left shoulder was leaking blood heavily. His knife heated and a cloth in her mouth he bought the metal close to her wound but didn't press it to her skin. His eyes lifted to her face. She reminded him of a broken doll, with no will of its own. She sat where he placed her, she didn't oppose to him manhandling her and she didn't care for the pain that was to come. His eyes narrowed as he lowered the blade. Vivian let out a scream and tried to pry herself away from him but he had her in an iron grip. Well, at least she wasn't entirely dead, still had some spunk in her.

He offered her his cot leaving him to sleep on the cold ground even if his muscles were sore. He didn't throw her out the next day when she just laid there crying her heart out. By nightfall he thought he'd stab her if she kept sobbing like a child. Life was tough, people got killed. And she was not honoring her friend's last wish; she was not living, she was withering away. Roan was close to kicking her in the stomach when she suddenly got up. She sat on the other side of the fire and for a while she just stared down at the flames. Her words surprised him.

"I want to get stronger." His eyes scanned her face with curiosity. The sadness was still there, her eyes were still filled to the brink with tears but she refused to let them fall. He noticed her hands clasped tightly into fists on her lap. When her head lifted and her pleading eyes met his he knew he was getting into something either tedious or thrilling. "Will you help me?"

So... I have some fun chapters planned ahead :))

Thanks too all of you who read/ followed/ favorited/ rewiewd. You always make m day.

greaserslady, I'll keep an eyes for your story :D

*Hugs*