WARNING: VIOLENCE AND GORE. PLEASE READ WITH CAUTION.

Acting on instinct, the jester pulled the woman to him before the shell went off, flying them back and making their ears ring. They had been lucky and were outside the kill radius, but their ears rung and Robin could feel his whole body shaking. "Are you all right?" Robin shouted, struggling to be heard.

"Yeah!" Capala shouted back. To her credit, she recovered quickly. They took a few seconds to get back on their feet, but when Puck stood up his left leg crumpled under him.

"I can't stand on this one!" Puck shouted. He noticed, then, the cuts and bloody marks scattered across both their bodies, pieces of wood and rock buried in their skin.

"Let me carry you!" Throwing his arm over her shoulder, Capala guided him through the trees as the screams became more and more common. The explosion grew more rapid in their firing, and in the distance Robin began to hear gunfire. Far away, a tree fell and the splatter of blood filled the air, making Puck even more nauseous.

"Help me!" came a feeble voice. Robin and Capala shared a look before following the sound. They found Barla, blood streaming down her face from a head wound as she lay pinned under fallen debris. "The rebels," she said, gasping for breath in her panic. "They're coming!"

"We know!" Capala shouted. Leaning Robin against a tree, she started lifted the debris off the dryad without any hesitation. Barla flailed wildly, panicking and hyperventilating until she squirmed free.

"Thank you," she whimpered. "We have to get the others."

"Do you know where they are?" Puck asked, trying to ignore the stabbing pain in his calf. He knew something had been broken. He started to sweat, his eyes tearing up from the pain. "Cap..."

Capala came to his side, lifting him up as Barla spoke. "There's some farther up. The ones by the trod..." she took a shaky breath. "They're gone."

Robin swallowed. "We have to keep going," he insisted. "Aster..."

"And the others," Capala said. "We save as many as we can."

Barla nodded. "Then lets go."

They ran from the approaching sounds of mortar shells and gunfire. Each foot they advanced, the assailants behind advanced two more. Along the way, they rescued as many as they could, lifting debris, staunching wounds, and having the ones with arm wounds help carry the ones with leg wounds. Soon, they came to the centre of the forest, where they had last seen Aster.

"Aster!" Puck shouted. "Where are you?" He caught a glimpse of a familiar frame through the trees. "Aster!" he cried, and pulled away from Capala, crawling towards the older dryad and losing the iron officer in the trees. He avoided walking on his bum leg and travelled using a mix of falling, crawling and limping to get to Aster, faster than he could have imagined.

In this particular grove, Aster faced off against four gun-wielding assailants. With a flick of her hands, massive trees roots erupted from the ground and impaled the soldiers, their blood exploding in a gory shower. Aster finished her work and turned to see Robin staring at her, open-mouthed. "I thought dryads were neutral!" he shouted. "I thought you couldn't fight!"

"Just because we don't doesn't mean we can't," Aster replied. She relaxed her stance and started to run over to Puck, her eyes full of worry.

But Robin saw it before she did. Before he could warn her.

Behind her, a soldier hiding in the bushes leapt out and emptied a volley of bullets into Aster's body. Puck watched as her eyes flew wide, her body contorting as each iron projectile flew into her skin. making her stumble and fall to the ground. Blood began to pool in the dirt.

A pained, wretched scream tore itself from Robin's throat. "No!" With vision blurred by tears, he crawled to Aster, the pain in his leg incomparable to the shocking pain in his heart. He stumbled to Aster's side and took her in his hands, trying to make eye contact with her. Distantly, he acknowledged Capala catching up with him and leaping from the trees, causing several approaching soldiers' guns to combust. "Aster," he whimpered, tears falling from his eyes and onto Aster's dress. "Look at me. Aster?"'

Aster coughed. Her thick brown eyes started to turn faded grey, and she tossed her head around like she couldn't quite see him. "Robin," she choked out, dark brown blood like sap bubbling up in her throat. "Robin, I'm dying."

"No," he cried. "No, you're not. You're going to be fine."

"Puck," she persisted. "I love you. I love you, and you're going to be okay. Take the dryads. Get...get out of here."

"You're not dying," Robin insisted, his fingers digging into her skin. "You're not! You can't die! I need you!"

"I know." With a sudden, final moment of clarity, Aster looked at Puck and smiled. "Until we meet again." And then she breathed her last, eyes turning grey and her limbs falling to her sides. Puck started to scream wordless cries of pain and sorrow as he shook her body around, willing it to breathe again. Snot bubbled out his nose and tears obscured his vision. His whole body ached with pain and suffering. He screamed.

"Robin!" Capala shouted. She grabbed his shoulder, but he pushed her away.

"She's dead!" he howled. "She's dead!"

"I know!" Capala forced him to look at her, grabbing his chin and turning his head. A bloody gash stretched from the corner of her mouth up her cheek, and her clothes were stained and torn beyond repair. "But I need you!"

At those words, Robin started. He couldn't abandon her now. He still felt dazed and sick, but her words did just enough to bring him back to reality. He swallowed, nodded and staggered to his feet, staring down at Aster's body. Capala reached out and took his hand, making him look at her once more. "We're in this together," he said.

"Yes," Capala said softly. "We are." Hooking his arm over her shoulders again, she carried him back to the dryads, back to the running. They hurdled through the woods, charging for the other side so they could get to the Wyldwood and lose the attackers in the Nevernever.

Too late, too late, they heard the cry of another mortar. Everything exploded, sending wood sinking into Robin's skin and making pricks of blood dribble out. Terrible, heart-wrenching screams rang in the air, but no one could see the damage until the dust cleared. When it did, Puck saw several dryads impaled on shreds of wood that had flown into their limbs, chests, heads. Others maintained smaller, but still painful wounds. Robin crawled over to the nearest dryad, one who literally had their arm ripped off and who was shrieking like a banshee.

Puck's eyes went wide at the splatter of blood on the floor. "Help me!" the dryad screamed. "Help me!" Over and over, as tears streamed down her face. Robin tried to lift her up, to wrap something around her stump or lift the wood off her leg that pinned her to the ground, but to no avail.

"There's another one coming!" someone shouted. Puck felt Capala's hand on his shoulder.

"We have to go!" she shouted. Robin saw she was crying, her eyes red and her lips quivering. She lifted him up with trembling arms and leaned him against her.

"Don't leave me!" the armless dryad wailed. "Don't leave me! I don't want to die!"

Puck felt Capala start to sob. "Neither do we," she said, weeping. They turned and abandoned the dryad, making her scream all the louder, and as they ran away they heard anther mortar land. When it did, the screaming stopped.

"Look!" One of the dryads shouted. "The other trod!"

Sure enough, the wooden door stood only feet away. Racing towards it, Capala flung it open and they all ran through.

On the other side of the door, once they shut it behind them, waited eerie silence. Faint, muffled booming came from the door. Here, the only sounds were the sounds of faery creatures, waiting for their next meal. And Robin preferred even that to what he just experienced.

"Come on," Capala sniffled, readjusting Puck's arm over her shoulders. "We're not safe yet. We should get as far as we can before nightfall."

They did, of course, stop to bandage all the immediate wounds. Once the adrenaline wore off, screams of pain wouldn't do much for their safety in drawing every living thing to their location. But after fixing everyone up, they travelled as long as they could manage without food or water. Robin saw they had maybe ten percent of the original population of the forest. All the people he had said hello to that morning? Dead.

When night fell, everyone stopped to make camp. Any dryads with glamour left conjured up some water and edible plants. They didn't mind too much, eating any plants or bugs they could find, but Capala found her and Robin a bird to eat. Neither spoke. The woman kept glancing at the jester, her eyes filled with worry and concern. Capala turned the roasting spit, the bird's flesh sizzling in the flames. A little farther away, the dryads' camped together; close enough to watch over the dryads, but far enough away to give the fey some privacy.

"...Are you okay?" The soldier asked, after a few minutes. She paused. "I guess that's a bit of a stupid question."

"It is." Puck swallowed. "How do you do it, Cap?" he asked. "Go through something like that, and just...be normal."

Capala took a moment to respond. "Because I've lived through scenes like that before," she murmured. "I'm a soldier. It's either suck it up, or die."

Another few minutes passed. The trickster bowed his head and spoke. "You know, the fey aren't supposed to feel. We're dreams, mythologies, mystical beings created by mortals to live out their fantasies. Humans, at least, back when they created us, were simple creatures. They liked food, fighting, and fucking. So that's what we do. What we're born to do. Or rather, created, since we're rarely born. But we don't appreciate it. We accept our lives as normal, and claim superiority over humans when in all actuality, they could be considered superior to us, regardless of magical abilities.

"I have been called "human" more than a few times, and each time I wondered what that really meant. I felt, and when I cared for Meghan I felt even more so. Now I understand it means I am real. Most fae know nothing but hunger, whether it be for power or sex or food, desires given to them by their human creators. That I can feel pain, regret, rage and joy means I am real. Not a fantasy, not a dream, but real."

Robin raised his head, and Capala could see water shining in his eyes. "But now I wish I wasn't real. I wish I was just a two-dimensional character, who only cared about their greed and their survival. I wish I didn't love anyone. I wish I was dead."

A few seconds passed. "We can't control who we are, Robbie," Capala said, her voice low. "We can't not feel. And it hurts. But for every time it hurts, there is a moment to balance it out, when we are happy. We can't let the sadness control us, but we can acknowledge it exists and work from there."

Puck looked up, meeting Capala's gaze. "Thank you, Cap." He smiled softly. "I wish you could have known Aster. She would've liked you."

"...She was a good person," the woman said quietly. "I just wish things could have been different."

The trickster sighed. "Don't we all."