Interlude: Gunther

OOOOO

Keep breathing.

(– I hate you –)

Keep breathing.

(– I HATE you –)

Live.

(– How could you –)

Live.

(– do this –)

Live.

(– to me!?! –)

Damn you, Jane, LIVE –!!

"Aaugh!"

The sound, a mix of frustration and despair, was ripped from him as he stopped pacing long enough to drive a fist into the wall near the foot of Jane's bed, bruising his knuckles and earning a quietly reproachful look from Pepper into the bargain.

Three days.

He braced his forearm against the wall and dropped his head onto it with an exhausted, miserable groan. He couldn't take much more of this. It was… God… it was breaking him. He couldn't think of any other word for it. It was breaking him. How much more could he be expected to endure? It had already been three days…

Three days since Jane had fallen against him on the battlefield, crashing into him from behind and plunging him into the most horrific waking nightmare of his life. Three days since he'd gathered her battered, bleeding body into his arms and hurled himself onto Dragon's back, crushing her to him as hard as he could, as if he could somehow hold the life in her by force – and feeling all of the resistance – all of the vitality – pouring out of her anyway.

Three days since Dragon, in his frantic haste, had landed so hard that Gunther'd been thrown right off, holding onto Jane and twisting himself so as to land beneath her on the hard-packed earth of the castle's courtyard, shielding her from the impact as best he could and – he was almost sure – cracking one of his own ribs in the process. Struggling to right himself and get back the breath that had been so brutally knocked out of him, he'd realized, his heart missing a beat, that her eyes were open again – open and fever-bright – locked steadily on his own.

The impact must have jolted her back to consciousness.

"Jane!" he'd gasped.

Suddenly the pain in his chest, screamingly vivid as it was, had seemed a whole lot less important. Moving carefully, slipping a hand behind her head to cushion it from the ground, he had reversed their positions; so that she was the one who was prone on her back, with him leaning close over her. Then Dragon had been there too, his gigantic head filling the whole of Gunther's vision, blocking the rest of the courtyard from view.

"Jane! Jane, are you all right!? I am so sorry about the landing, I just –"

"It is fine," Jane had whispered, her voice cracked and barely audible. "I love… love you… Greenlips."

Her eyes had shifted to Gunther then, but he'd seen immediately that the awareness – the lucidity – had already been fading from them. He had taken the hand that wasn't cushioning her head; pressed it against the side of her face, cupping her cheek and burying his fingers in her tangled, sweat-damp hair.

She had swallowed hard, then murmured, "I… am… cold… Gunther," taking great care, it seemed, to enunciate each word.

"Jane," he'd croaked again, and without really giving any thought at all to what he was doing, had lowered his head just the few more inches necessary and pressed a gentle kiss right in the center of her forehead. Pulling back a second later, he'd found that she was actually smiling up at him; a sweet, sleepy smile.

"Gunther –" she'd breathed, and then her breath had caught – hitched – and she'd been slipping away from him again, the light in her eyes distant now and dim… fading away and then gone.

"Jane!" His voice had been sheer desperation. "Jane, no! No, no, no, no, nonono…" and then he'd been crying, dropping his face to her chest and crying like a child, for all that each sob to rip its way out of him caused such a spike in the bright, hot new pain in his ribcage that the world seemed to darken and almost pitch away.

And then, in a matter of a second, he'd found himself flipped flat onto his back with one of Dragon's enormous clawed feet pressing him into the ground and the green-scaled face, lips pulled back into a furious snarl, mere inches from his own.

"You listen to me, shortlife, and listen well," Dragon had growled; "you do not have the luxury of tears right now. You are the reason Jane is like this, and you need to do something about it. Fix this, NOW!"

A heartbeat later Dragon had thrown back his head and was bellowing for help in a voice that shook the castle, while Gunther had gathered Jane to him again and fought his way back to his feet, and then Pepper was running toward them, her face ashen, and then –

Then the three most horrendous days and nights of Gunther's life had ensued.

OOOOO

Three days without sleep in any real sense. Three days without food in any real sense. He would not leave her side for either. Every morning Pepper would hand him a bowl of porridge, and every evening a bowl of broth, which he would automatically bolt down, without actually tasting anything. Three days of watching as the woman he loved fought through violent wracking chills and pendulumed between brutal bouts of delirium and periods of such prolonged and profound stillness that over and over and over again he had feared her already dead.

It was impossible to say what was worse; the fits of delirium themselves, during which she cried out things that ripped his heart into jagged little pieces – "No! Stop! Please stop! Gunther! Gunther, oh God, make him STOP!" (little could Gunther know that far from reliving a vicious rape as he imagined, she was simply repeating the same nightmare in which, over and over now, she was subjected to the sight of his own demise) – or the aftermath of these outbursts when, utterly exhausted, her battered, fever-ravaged body would slump against the pillows as pale and lifeless as a corpse… scaring him to the foundation of his soul every – single – time.

Then there had been the time – two days ago now, he thought – that Pepper had insisted upon calling in the town healer to help with Jane's care. Gunther had had misgivings from the beginning (he knew something of the man from when he had lived in town himself, and his impressions had not been favorable) but they had grown exponentially when the healer walked – or to be more accurate, shuffled – into the room. He'd looked older than God, for one thing… and for another, he had pronounced – the moment he had stepped through the door, without even properly looking at Jane he had pronounced – that the fever would need to be bled.

Gunther, who had been on the far side of the room, had actually vaulted over Jane's bed, placing himself squarely between the old man and his would-be patient, and his hand had hovered threateningly over the pommel of his sword as he'd snarled that she had lost too much blood already, and if the healer took so much as one step closer, Gunther would bleed him.

Aghast, the man had left forthwith, but not without a parting shot; "you had best say your goodbyes then, boy," he had told Gunther reprovingly, "because you are killing the girl."

Those words had gnawed at Gunther ever since. He didn't hold with the idea of bleeding a fever – but was there a chance, any chance at all, that his rash protectiveness might have cost Jane a shot at an effective, legitimate cure? He didn't think so… and when Sir Theodore had arrived later that same day, limping, from the battlefield, he had confirmed that Gunther had probably saved Jane's life… shaking his head in disgust and calling the old healer a charlatan. He had even managed to smooth a few of Pepper's ruffled feathers, but he hadn't had much time to spend in Jane's room. His duty kept him by the side of the king, who had also been wounded – not as badly as Jane, but badly enough – in the act of slaying Edgar himself.

He had stayed long enough, however, to report to Gunther that the invaders had been utterly routed and were in full, chaotic retreat – thanks in large part to Dragon, who had returned to the battlefield shortly after Jane had been carried indoors, in a rage the likes of which no living human being had ever witnessed before.

He had also very gently broken it to Gunther that Sir Ivon would not be returning from the battlefield – Gunther's mentor had fallen that day.

So now there was this bright, fresh, new grief to deal with as well.

And despite Sir Theodore's assurances, his self-recriminations continued to eat at him.

He hadn't protected her well enough at the banquet. He hadn't forced her to tell him what was going on the next morning, even though it had been patently obvious that something had been terribly wrong. He hadn't prevented her leaving the castle for Edgar's camp. He hadn't discovered where she'd gone in time – hadn't reached her until she'd already been beaten, raped and flogged. Hadn't prevented her from leaving the castle – AGAIN – to follow him onto the battlefield. Hadn't even known she'd been standing right behind him until she'd fallen into him, for God's sake! And then, on top of everything else, he had chased a healer away.

This is my fault, this is my fault, this is my fault, this is my fault…

It was like a mantra, running circles in his brain.

And God help him, he couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't. He couldn't. He couldn't.

The first sob caught him by surprise. He hadn't cried since that moment in the courtyard. He hadn't expected to cry now. He was trying, damn it, trying so hard to stay strong for Jane. But he was so tired, and so hurt, and so scared. Once that floodgate opened, he couldn't close it again. He doubled over – it didn't hurt his ribs as badly as it had three days ago in the courtyard, but it still hurt plenty – and then he was sliding down the wall, crossing his elbows on his knees, dropping his head forward onto his arms, and sobbing, and sobbing, and sobbing. It took a long, long time for him even to realize that there was actually a word interspersed with the great, gasping, shuddering sobs that were wracking his exhausted body from top to bottom.

The word was "Jane."