She cried on and off for the next few days, wondering if she could actually be foolish enough to cry over a man. But the return of tears that she thought she had lost was such a welcome relief that she indulged herself, over and over, simply for the sensation it provided.
Eventually, the memory of Duran began to fade, growing further distant just as the man; and she realized the truth of it. She was crying not for him, not for her kingdom or her people, but she was finally, well and truly crying for herself. For everything she would never be, and everything she didn't know she wanted; for a future she was scared to imagine or hope for.
They had entered the Desert of Scorching Heat, skirting at the northern edge, just at the base of the mountains where cool breezes trickled down from the heights to provide some sense of coolness to the arid, sweltering air. Hawk's eyes were focused firmly ahead, but Lise found herself gazing north despite herself. The Sand Fortress of Navarre was directly south of Rolante, she recalled; a relatively short distance as the crow flew. So every step they took closer to his home, was a step closer to hers as well.
"We're so close..." Lise pondered out loud one day. "I don't know if I could ever go back to the castle, but somewhere in those mountains, there is a place called home. We've come full circle in more ways than one. We could be there together, Hawk."
"I can't let the people I care for suffer. I have to try, however I can," Hawk reminded her. "I can't let Bigieu go so easily."
Lise wanted her revenge still; but now she craved peace as well, and her heart hurt that the man beside her might not want that as well. She was scared to force him to choose between his people and herself; she was terrified of losing him, of finding herself alone once again.
She didn't have the courage to face that possibility. But slowly, she began to find it.
The mountains called to her on the wind, and every night, she pushed the idea a little more strongly, nagged just a little harder, and Hawk impassively refused to budge. As the days ticked by, they grew closer and closer to their destination, and Lise's inner turmoil mounted.
Finally, one night, she knew she was reaching a breaking point. The mountains curved south here, following down to the Fortress; and continuing the same direction they were going would lead them to the path to climb the mountains. They were just a short distance away; the next morning would bring them to Navarre. It was now or never, and she had to give it one last push.
Neither found themselves able to sleep that night; instead, both chose to wait outside instead. "Let it go, Hawk," she told the man staring murderously to the south, his eyes burning to rival the fire of their camp. "There is nothing to be found there for either of us. Let's move on, make a future somewhere else."
He turned to her, his expression now lacking any sort of warmth or affection. "Maybe not for you," he said snappishly, "but there's still things left that I care about."
Lise's mouth practically dropped open at the selfish cynicism that dripped from Hawk's words, so totally unlike the man that she had gotten to know. Suddenly, pride filled her, pride in herself and who she was, and she straightened imperiously. "Well, it's what I want to do," she told Hawk stubbornly. "Maybe I'll go without you."
She expected encouragement, or perhaps him begging her to stay. but that was not what she got. He paused in surprise, and looked at her… strangely. "I can't let you do that, Lise," he said in a strangled voice.
She looked at him with incredulity. "What did you say?"
"I can't let you do that." Was it her imagination, or was there a sudden quiver of fear in Hawk's voice? "You said you would come with me to stop Bigieu."
"Well, maybe I changed my mind," Lise replied petulantly. "Maybe I'm not sure anymore."
"Is that the way it is, Lise?" Hawk seemed to be growing angry. "After all we've been through together?"
"It is," Lise affirmed, holding her head up high. The two lovers met, eye to eye, lost alone together in the deserts of Navarre.
Without warning, Hawk hurled himself at her, knocking the wind out of her as they crashed backwards onto the night-chilled sand, Lise wincing as her right side smashed against the edges of their traveling trunk bed on the way down. She pulled her legs to her chest inside the tangle of bodies they had become, and a forceful push sent the man reeling backwards.
She jumped to her feet, but he recovered quickly, though, ducking and twisting to grab her right leg and pull it out from under her, her arms flailing as she tumbled to the ground once again. "What are you doing?!" she shrieked at the man who had become her closest friend, as she pointed a kick at his stomach that he neatly dodged.
"Lise, Lise, I'm sorry, I have no choice," he cried at her as he neatly grabbed her around the waist from behind. He had the advantage, she realized. His reflexes were lightning quick, ambidextrous hands moving with neat precision, and the only reason she had ever stood a chance against him had been her spear, and his unfamiliarity with her fighting style. Now her spear was yards away, and he knew her techniques like the back of his hand.
But she would be DAMNED before she would give up. A lurch forward made him lose his balance enough that she wriggled free, but not before he caught her tunic in a fistful of fabric. He yanked on his flimsy hold to pull her to face him, and she looked at the friend who was now an enemy.
She felt fear creeping into face even as she tried to hide it, and as she stared at him in confusion, she noticed tears in his own eyes. "Lise, I love you so much, I'm so sorry," Hawk whimpered, letting his grip loosen enough for Lise to wrench free of his grasp. She knew she should grab her spear and run, but only stood there, stunned, trying to figure out what had just gone wrong.
He wavered unsteadily like he was drunk. "Don't you love me too?"
Lise only looked, pensively, for a long moment, overwhelming emotions warring within her for the one who had been the closest to her for so long. "I do, you know I do..." she whimpered, her voice sounding pathetic even to herself.
He stepped close to her, his right hand on her shoulder with that soft touch she knew well; the touch was meant to soothe, but she found herself involuntarily tensing. Hawk leaned in to whisper softly to her, as he had a hundred nights before.
"I love you, Lise," he told her, "but I love Jessica more."
As he finished the sentence, his left fist flew forward to punch her in the face. Lise staggered backwards, only to hit the ground... no, not the ground, the rock wall behind them, she realized, even as her knees shaking beneath her threatened to drop her to the ground. As the sky spun around her, a hand - hers, she realized distantly - reached up to probe her face. Nothing broken, she knew, as the hand probed the nasal bones, but blood leaked out of her nose like a drizzly faucet nevertheless.
A plaintive voice spoke up, the voice of a Lise long ago, a Lise that did not truly know how cruel humans could be. "You hurt me," the voice wailed. "You said you loved me, and you hurt me."
"It was the only way," said another voice, one she thought she knew - Hawk, her mind said, but Hawk would not say these things, so that couldn't be right. "It was never Jessica she wanted, it was you," said the voice, the voice that was no more Hawk's than were the arms that were now pinning her to the rock with all their strength. "She told me if I brought you to her, Jessica would be free." Instinctively, she grasped for her spear, but realized even as her fist clenched that it was nowhere near. "It was never even about the Amazons, not even about the Stone of Wind, not even about your father or brother. It was always you, because she saw, saw that you could be the one to stop her. The Goddess wants you, and Bigieu wants you more." The arms grabbed her wrists to pin her hands behind her back, and with a sharp shove, pushed her to her knees, her forehead barely above the ground and he behind and above her. His arms held hers firmly, his legs weighed hers down, and as strong as she was, with every wiggle she made, he shifted to pinion her back in place.
"It won't hurt, Lise," the man who might have been Hawk told her. Lise's face was pressed right side down against the blanket they had laid out by the fire, its fabric soft against her cheek - the same fabric, she realized, under which the night before they had made slow, teasing love. "She doesn't need you to hurt, she just needs you gone. I'll ask her to do it quickly, or maybe she'll let me do it myself. It'll be better, I'll go easy on you," the Hawk-voice told her, and Lise felt a length of rope, one of the many things the thief carried with him, being bound around her wrists. "No elaborate sacrifice rituals. Just a quick slit, and it will all be over, Lise, all your pain will be gone, and mine," he told her. She flinched from a wet droplet, and realized his tears were falling on her neck, as he suddenly yanked the ropes around her wrists tight.
She screamed then. She screamed as the rope cut suddenly, sharply, into her wrists with a dull, chafing burn, screamed in surprise more than pain. She screamed because suddenly, she knew was a prisoner, she knew she would die just as every other Amazon had, alone and forgotten. Behind the scream, she wanted to laugh; what a shame of a princess she was.
With the pain, with the humiliation, came darkness. It was the darkest she had ever felt, and in that darkness, she found... something. She reached for it inside her mind, it seeming so close, but then slipping away before she could latch on. Sudden, uncontrollable blind anger filled her, the desperate need to fight back.
She had thought herself trapped by his strength, but she whipped her body backwards to send him sprawling on the ground beside her. But his hands still held the end of the rope, holding her like a leash as she tried to wriggle away. She caught a momentary glimpse of his face, suddenly terrified and panicked at the prospect of losing his prize.
Lise slithered like an eel, Hawk struggling to catch the slippery girl; and Lise suddenly realized, horrified, that he was winning. She worked her left hand free, but the rope yanked even tighter on her right hand, her spear hand, and he jerked her towards him, nearly wrenching her arm out of its socket.
Part of her wanted to give up; she was losing, and she knew it. She didn't stand a chance unless… there needed to be something to tip the balance. The darkness beckoned her once again, as something just on the edge of her vision; a magic darkness she was afraid to embrace, afraid to reach for, afraid to know and understand. But she had been through darkness already.
She did not know magic; Amazons did not know magic. But there it was, nevertheless. As her arm was yanked helplessly, her mind reached for it… and this time, it found what it was looking for.
She let her body go limp; Hawk pulled her roughly to him, and forward onto her knees. Lise only smiled. He jerked her to her feet like a rag doll, and grabbed her left arm as she offered no resistance. Lise looked deep into the eyes of the man she had once called beloved, and saw him filled with fear, anger, and suffering. She could find only pity for him.
He wrapped his arms around her firmly, as if to throw her over his shoulder; clearly he thought her defeated. She gave him a minute to let that idea take hold, bracing herself, building strength inside herself; and suddenly Lise let that darkness explode out from somewhere deep inside of her.
Hawk never knew what hit him, but suddenly all his strength drained to nothing. His grip was as weak as a child's, and Lise easily pulled free, tearing the rope from her wrist scornfully. In their desperate tug-of war, they had squirmed some distance, and now, just behind her, she saw... her spear.
She reached for it like a mother for her child, and as soon as her fist closed around the haft in an intimately familiar way, she felt as if the life had flowed back into her. She knew what she was doing, and why, and turned down to the one who wanted to stop her, now cringing on the floor before the goddess of destruction she had become.
"You FUCKER!" cried Lise at the pathetic creature lying in the dirt before her.
"You do understand, don't you, Lise?" Hawk whined at her. "Either you live, or Jessica lives, not both." His face went pale, as he realized she didn't care.
Lise held her spear to Hawk's throat, the Navarrese now quivering with real fear as he saw his life slipping away only inches away from him in his reflection on that long, sharp blade. She paused for a long moment, watching the fear sink deeper into his eyes and bones, and she contemplated how sweet it would feel to have her blade slice smoothly through the tanned throat just underneath it.
She thought of the screams of the Rolantic dying in the halls of their home, the broken backs of those laboring in Navarre still. She thought of Koren gurgling his last under the panicked gaze of his young and beautiful wife. She thought of herself, her body squirming under this man where only hours before she had wrapped herself around Duran just as easily. She contemplated all the pain she had seen and endured, and all the extreme ways she could make this one man pay for it.
Abruptly she stood up, slamming the butt of her spear against the ground with decisive finality. "You're not worth it," she declared.
Relief crossed her lover's face. He moved as if to get up, but Lise dropped him down to the ground all over again with a swift kick to the balls. Her last glimpse of Hawk was him yelping like a puppy, hands cupped between his legs, as she turned away, this time east, towards the rising sun.
She did not know where she was going, but the mountains were calling to her once again. And slowly peace fell over her being, as the last Amazon disappeared into the world.
The End
--------------------------
Really, that's the end? Yup. D'ya hate me now, for not telling you what happens next?
Well, what do you think? Does she go back and look for Duran, or does she trudge through life on her own? Is Rolante lost forever, or does she find a way to bring it back? Does she forget, maybe even forgive, or go give Bigieu (and Hawk) the whupping they deserve?
Any, and all, are possible. Going back to the SD3 storyline… she could be the one to find the fairy and save the world blah blah, or she could be somewhere on the sidelines. But I've already done a novelization, and though it might be entertaining to do an AU-version of the same, I'm not sure I'm up to it. This was intended to be a open-ended piece from the start, with an ending that was intense and invigorating, without truly being "happy".
So, use your imagination to fill in the rest ;)