Jane wakes with a start, sitting up so fast that Gunther snaps his head towards her, he had been staring out the window; no doubt lost in thought.
"Are you alright?" He asks, an eyebrow slightly arced in mild concern.
"You let me sleep all night." Jane reproaches, ignoring his question entirely. It was a stupid question to keep asking each other really. There was never going to be an 'alright' in this situation. She makes a mental note not to do so again whilst stuck in this room.
"You needed it." He responds dismissively, no real infliction in his voice or face.
"And you don't?" Jane asks him disbelievingly.
"I already slept, it was your turn." He returns to staring out the window even as he speaks. His face passive. Slept? She thinks. Fainted, for a couple hours, more like. While she had actively panicked at the thought of him not waking up again.
She doesn't argue back out loud, however having no real desire to get into anything. She just shakes her head and pulls her legs down taking a better look at her surroundings now that she can actually see by the light of day.
The bed is a lavish red-orange color like a sunset and the posts on the bed are high and bare although she can make out where the swaths of fabric must have adorned it. Now just bits of torn fabric recklessly left behind dangle from one of the four posts. The dresser is solid wood and nothing more, simple elegant, useless to her in her current predicament. The rest of the room is bare.
Gunther hasn't moved from his vigil at the window, she wonders over to see what is going on outside. She stops just beside him looking down into the courtyard where soldiers are mulling around doing morning activities. Nothing of real importance seems aloft and this makes Jane feel antsy and annoyed. How can so little be going on just below when her life feels like it's unraveling before her? She wonders what everyone is doing back at her castle. Are they looking for them yet? Do they know? Does Dragon know? How must he be feeling? Her parents, her friends... Perhaps they aren't even aware as of now. She loses herself in these thoughts as she stares aimlessly at the outside world past the wooden planks and metal bars. She realizes that she is instinctively searching the sky for Dragon when her heart skips a beat as a flock of birds pass by her limited vision.
"I doubt they know yet." Gunther speaks, guessing her thoughts correctly; they must line up with his own. "My guess is that the others are only just reaching the Castle. We were days away." Jane blinks a couple of times, taken slightly aback as she turns towards him.
She catches his eyes for a split second as he turns back to the window. His eyes are dark all around like a thunderstorm today rather than the soft murky gray they usually are. The circles under them, not all together unusual for him, are also darker than normal. She remembers the promise to herself not to ask if he was alright, the answer being so utterly obvious.
"What do you think they will do?" She asks but gives him no time to answer. "I wonder if Sir Theodore and the others have any idea who these people are and where we could be."
"Perhaps." He says, but there is no emotion there, not a shred of hope. He doesn't turn toward her, his arms crossed over his chest fingers playing idly with makeshift bandage she had set around the wound on his upper arm. The bits of sunset colored fabric, the same as the bed, twisting and twirling back and forth between his fingertips.
She can still feel the terror from the night before when Gunther had stopped responding. The same as a wound, as if she's simply bandaged her feelings to prevent the terror from bleeding out. But the wound still lies there, unhealed and vulnerable. It may bleed again at any provocation.
It was all a cruel joke, having fought to get some semblance of solace and then being impudently and immodestly terrified of what was happening once again. She felt more helpless in that moment than at any point when she had been physically bound that day. Moreso than being dragged into or out of that hall, moreso than being forced to watch him fight odds stacked against him. She had called his name, crawling towards him certain that this was it and after everything she was going to lose him. Not because they'd take him from her or in the arena. But here on the cold floor of some foreign room while she could do absolutely nothing. No bargaining or fighting was to be had. She'd simply lose everything right then and there.
She resisted the urge to shake him, taking his head and cradling it in her lap. Choking back on what might certainly have become tears, because he was breathing. He was alive and had, it seemed, fainted probably in exhaustion and pain.
She'd settled herself down and let him sleep, checking to make sure he wasn't becoming feverish. She laid his head carefully back down on the ground, making sure that he was facing sideways. Worried about the heavy blow he'd received when he'd been bashed with the shield, but his breathing and heartbeat remained steady and strong, his face relaxed in a way she had never seen it.
When they had brought them water and food, Jane had made sure to clean his wounds and bandage him up as best she could. She ripped some the fabric from the bedding in order to make the bandage on his arm. The wound on his abdomen had been shallow enough to not require a bandage. He hadn't stirred much when she'd cleaned his wounds, but he'd moved enough for her to know he wasn't comatose. The relief was as immeasurable as the terror had been.
She looks down now, at her own wrist and the bandage tied around it, a match to his own. She had taken care of her own injuries afterwards whilst he continued sleeping.
The rustic color of the bandage hides any blood that might be seeping through well enough. She picks at the loose ends dangling from the knot that keeps it together. She had been rather close to nicking something vital and was very grateful that she had not. She'd certainly bled enough without that. Her sleeve bore the evidence still, in rustic color steaks of dried blood. It sticks grossly to her skin, and she wishes she could just rip her clothes and toss them through the window and be rid of that reminder and this mess. If only it were that simple. She'd have scars, they both would, forever brandished with the reminders of these events. If they even made it out of here alive or …
She moves away from the window when the urge to throw herself through it- not that she could fit- becomes more appealing than staying in the room.
But of course, just as she had discovered that night before, after mopping up both of their wounds, there wasn't much else but the window to give her attention to. So, she tackles the only thing in front of her. She makes the bed.
It is a silly task she knows Gunther still needs more rest no matter what he says, he looks almost haggard. But there's comfort in something simple and familiar. Even if the bed itself is foreign to her.
She manages to get a splinter whilst tucking in the covers and recovers the book that had apparently found its way under the bed the previous night. Just the thought of sitting and reading it makes her stomach churn. She'd always enjoyed reading but it felt like a cruel punishment at the moment when what she wanted was action. She wanted to be gone of this place and set in motion a plan to be on her way back to her home. To no longer feel the terrible emptiness and terror even at this early day while doing something simple like making the bed or thinking of sitting and reading a book.
She's still staring blankly down at the small book in her hands unable to take in anything, when a loud noise makes her suddenly jump, her heartbeat speeding up.
The grating pitch of the outer gate down the hall being opened is such that it catches her off guard, despite the fact that she knows what it is. She had heard it the night before when they had come to deliver the water and food. Gunther having been passed out at the time, looks tense and suspicious, braced for whatever is happening.
"Probably food." Jane answers his unspoken question. But they are both still tense as the sound of footsteps gets closer.
And sure enough, the hatch that they used to give them their food and water is opened. "Tray." Says a deep voice from the open hatch. Jane and Gunther share a look but neither says anything. She's on her feet now, book abandoned. "I need the water pitcher, too" And when they still don't answer, he sighs. "Or you don't get your food." He doesn't seem to want to play games or taunt them like the solider from the night had. Still that solider had just left the food tray and the water, he hadn't asked for anything in return, save some unsavory things that Jane would best forget.
Gunther goes over to grab the stuff. Jane stops him, with a hand on his arm, silently giving him a stern questioning look.
He rolls his eyes at her and moving out of her grip picks up what they asked for and hands them over. "Here." He tells the guard. They are replaced with identical versions, but with water and food.
Jane and Gunther wait until the telltale pitch of the outer gate to move or speak again.
"Well, there we go." He plops down cross legged on the floor, back against the bed. "More bread, Joy." Gunther says dryly, and stuffs some into his mouth. Jane watches him her arms crossed.
"Don't look at me like that. Are supposed to starve ourselves? Until they have a valid reason to come in, is that the plan?" His tone is overly incredulous and mocking. "It needs work. Right out of a sweeping tale but unrealistic, do you not think so?" It is so, that Jane honestly considers taking the water and dumping it over his head, they would bring them more and even if they didn't it might still be worth it. Despite her withering stare and wasteful thoughts, he just plows on. "Weak with hunger and armed only with a broken pitcher of water and a bent tray we will kill out feeder- and his armed escort," He's practically having fun with it now animatedly gesticulating, piece of bread in hand. "Fight our way through a castle we only got a glimpse of, dispose of anyone else we meet along the way and make it all the way back to Kippernia on our wits and by out running their horses." He leans back against the bed the energy seeming to leave him as quickly as it had come. Instead, now he just sighs, sticking another piece of bread into his mouth and almost disinterestedly keeps adding to the list as if he cannot help himself. "Outsmarting any hounds, they might set after our trail. Surviving in the woods on nothing but-"
"You're right," Jane finally cuts off his tired tirade, his eyes snap up to hers, eyebrows raised. "You've certainly given this a lot of thought, and yet your plan is terrible and certainly in need of work."
He rolls his eyes at her, an unamused smile curling at the corner of his lips. 'My plan.' He mouths this, shaking his head. "If that is not your fabulous plan then what is? We could just die of starvation I suppose. I'm sure our death will really stick it to them." A lot of the artificial amusement from before leaves his face with the last pronouncement. Jane would have under normal circumstances risen to the bait. But she had realized something as he had gone on and on. He clearly had gone over all of this in his head, exploring and exhausting possibilities and outcomes. That same turning wheel of thoughts that relentlessly spun in her mind. Chasing the spark of ideas to their inevitably disastrous results. "Let me tell you something. If I am going to die, I am not dying hungry. At least not, if I can help it."
"And we are not going to die." She tells him sternly. Sitting down across from him. That kind of lack of hope would certainly kill her faster than whatever they had in mind.
"Well." He starts, letting out a small sigh as he breaks the eye contact. "In that case, eat up. You'll need all of your strength and wits if you're going to come up with a better plan than starving ourselves."
He offers her half the bread, and she takes it.
5 years, 5 YEARS.
OH BOY. Fair to say it's been a while. I feel like I've changed so much and yet not at all. I'm definitely 5 years older. lol These past few years must be strange for all of us to be fair. The whole world has been wild.
I am unsure if anyone that read this, 5 years ago, is still here. I hadn't been able to finish this chapter and then when I did, I wanted to have more done. But I hadn't read in a long time, and I hadn't written either. And I feel like I've as much at a standstill in some ways as I left Jane and Gunther, in all my half-written stories i have of them, let alone anything original. But then I read a romance book the other day. Which I don't do, I'm much more, or was at least, much more of a fantasy and YA type of girl who loved the romance in those stories, and the fanfiction of that. But i just had stopped reading and writing just fell out of it.
And reading again. Made me long for Jane and Gunther and writing and the love I have for them. I've thought about these stories often. But I'd open the docs and read and stare and get nothing out of it. and then the other day bam I read all day and then wrote all night and finally figured the part where I had been stuck, for so long.
I don't write linearly so i have bits and pieces and I've had this, chapter almost done for a while. This isn't new exactly all new writing its mostly old. But I needed to edit it and align the upcoming chapters. And I was happy to come back to this world with any amount of renewed vigor.
Ive said it before, in this story or one of my others. I don't give up on them. I think about them all the time, they live in my head of their own accord.
So, here I am 5 years, after my last update, even longer since I first uploaded. and even longer since I first wrote the first 2 chapters. Which I just wrote for myself and then on a valentine's day I decided why not, I'll upload it. And now breaking through such a long writers block I look at the date and, Here we are, practically to the day.
So if you forgive my long and rambly authors note. I do have the next chapter ready.
And if anyone actually reads this, please let me know.
See ya'll for sure next week.