Interlude: Gunther

OOOOO

It was dusk when Gunther clattered into the castle courtyard at the head of a small, straggling column of mounted men. It had been three weeks since his disastrous conversation with Jane in her bedroom; since she'd collapsed in his arms and he'd laid her back on her bed, hardly able to discern whether he'd been more furious with her, or with himself.

He'd only seen her once since then, stopping at her chamber door the next morning and glancing in, to find her still asleep... or unconscious... whichever she had been. That afternoon he'd ridden out, along with a few dozen others, in a last push to seek out and capture, route, or kill whatever bedraggled remnants of Edgar's "army" might still be lurking within Kippernium's borders.

Some twenty days he had been gone - it felt like twenty years. As he reined up his steed and slid from the saddle, he was exhausted, sore, and chilled to the bone. All around him, other men were dismounting as well. The courtyard was full of shouted greetings and running feet as loved ones flung themselves at one another; a happy cacophony of noise. For his part, though, Gunther stood still a long moment, right where he was; leaning into his horse to steady himself, his forehead resting against the beast's strong, warm neck, his eyes closed.

God, he was tired.

But breathing in that warm, earthy, equine scent helped to steady and ground him.

It didn't do anything to drown out the sound of the name that had been beating in time to his pulse for the past twenty days, however.

Jane. Jane. Jane.

He was about to see her again.

My Jane.

OOOOO

When he raised his head again, scanning the courtyard, there she was. His breath hitched; caught in his throat. The face he'd seen every time he'd closed his eyes over the past many days and nights - hard and long and grueling days and nights - was right there, large as life, and staring straight back at him. Her green gaze unflinching, unyielding.

He swallowed convulsively.

She appeared to have entered the courtyard at a dead run, though she'd skidded to a halt by the time his eyes fixed on her. She was in her dusty old practice clothes, sword stashed over her shoulder. She was breathing hard, one hand pressed absently to her side - it looked as if she might have gotten a stitch there. Though Gunther, eyes narrowing, couldn't help but jump immediately to more sinister conclusions. What if it were related to her injuries somehow? She had to be exacerbating them by even being out of bed - let alone the fact that it looked like - good Lord, could she really have been training? Completely unacceptable - if Jane herself couldn't be counted on to act in her own best interests, someone around here should have been thinking clearly enough to step in. What about her parents, Pepper? He was going to read them all the riot act.

Then she was crossing the courtyard toward him, moving slowly, deliberately. No frenzied rush like what was happening all around them; but there was no doubt where she was going, and she never broke eye contact with him. Her gaze was searching; intense. She was, he realized with a start, scanning him for signs of harm exactly as he was doing with her.

Her wild hair was bunched at the nape of her neck, but several flame-colored tendrils had escaped and were pasted to her forehead, cheeks and throat with sweat. He could tell that there were still large swaths of her body that were bandaged beneath her clothes. Her face was pale - too pale underneath her smattering of freckles, and her eyes sported dark smudges - almost rings - of fatigue. It didn't look as if she'd been sleeping any better than he had himself. And she looked thin. Thinner than usual, that was. Almost... gaunt.

It hit him, then, what she'd been doing - what she must have been doing. Punishing herself for being unable to ride out with their little hunting party. Hating the fact that she wasn't recovering as quickly as she would have liked; hating herself, quite possibly, for what she likely considered to be weakness, that trait that Jane despised above all others.

Not eating, not sleeping, pushing herself to the brink of exhaustion with training exercises, too soon - far too soon - after she'd nearly... nearly...

How utterly in character for her. His hands clenched at his sides. In that moment he halfway wanted to crush her to him, halfway wanted to light into her and shake her until her teeth rattled.

Damned infuriating woman. God-be-damned infuriating Jane.

She stopped an arm's length away from him - raised a hand as if to touch his face - then let it fall back to her side. Mere inches separated them; mere inches, and an enormous, yawning chasm of words unspoken and emotions denied.

"You were leaning on your horse," she said at length. "Are you -" she broke off, swept him again from head to foot with her eyes, swallowed hard - "are you well?"

"Yes," he said, his voice more curt than he'd intended. "Just tired. And you?" Unbidden, unwanted, a powerful string of images blasted through his brain - the same images that had kept him lying awake on his bedroll for the past dozen nights even as his companions had slept deeply, worn out from riding and fighting, snoring around their fires.

No such reprieve for him. One after another the images had paraded across his consciousness, in torturous, inescapable clarity, just as they were doing now.

The haunted look on Jane's face in the courtyard on that fateful morning as she'd demanded to know why, why was he acting like he cared now, when it was too late?

Jane a bloodied wreck, holding onto the iron ring of Edgar's whipping post as if for dear life; the heart-ripping way in which he'd had to cajole her into letting it go.

The expression that had flashed across her face when he'd asked her if Edgar had forced himself on her; it had been brief, little more than a flicker across her features - but unmistakable nevertheless.

Jane as she'd clung onto his hand, lying face-down on that little cot in the alcove off the kitchen, fighting desperately to retain her hold on him, to keep him from leaving her in order to pursue his mission of revenge.

Jane staggering into him on the battlefield; the shock and bewilderment he'd felt when he'd registered her presence there being swept away in the next instant, when her legs had buckled, by horror and panic such as he'd never known.

Her eyes when he'd pulled her into his arms there on the muddy, churned-up ground while Dragon had stood guard over both of them; they'd been so huge and dark in her pale, bruised face - and so deeply, fundamentally wrong. Glassed over and... distant, somehow, as if she were halfway out of her body already.

The barrage of emotions that had assaulted him in that moment; fury and grief and a maddening, white-hot thirst for vengeance - but more than anything else, simple fear. Fear with every beat of his heart. Fear, fear, fear, fear, fear.

Jane as she'd thrashed and flailed in her delirium, half-shouting, half-sobbing the same frantic plea over and over again - Gunther, make him stop, make him stop!

And then, of course, the image of what he had not seen, but could picture clearly enough nonetheless - could picture and had been picturing with obsessive, heart-breaking, gut-wrenching clarity over the past several days. Jane thrown to the ground, all of her frantic efforts to fight, to defend herself, going for naught as Edgar forced himself onto - into - her pinned and struggling body, stealing something from her that she could never get back.

All this he saw in an instant before he forced himself back into the present, forced himself to ask, around the sudden blockage in his throat, "are... you well recovered?"

"I am -" he caught the flicker of hesitation in her face and voice; someone else might have missed it, but he knew her well - "getting there."

God, he ached to pull her into his arms. Instead he said, "you might get there faster if you were to actually put down your sword and rest a while."

"Yes, well," she took a step backward, "I appreciate your concern. I supposed I should go and... ah... greet Rake and Jester and Smithy as well."

"I think Rake might be... occupied," Gunther said, in a half-hearted attempt at brevity. Jane followed his gaze to where Rake and Pepper, a short distance away, were embracing each other so tightly that it looked as if they were trying to meld themselves into a single being. A trace of color tinged her cheeks.

Gunther was glad to see it. She'd been far too white.

"Oh... right," she said lamely. "Well, just Smithy and Jester then. I will -" her eyes locked back onto his for just the briefest instant, then darted away again - "see you later, Gunther. I... am glad you are well."

She turned and was lost almost immediately in the crowd.

"I love you, Jane," he whispered after her, heard by no one but himself.

OOOOO

(A/N: Yes, it's short, I know. RL has been interfering but I have not forgotten this story! :)