Warning for dark themes. (Blood, death, war, etc.)

A few months later...

"Jade!"

You're given only a second's warning before someone behind you seizes your arms and spins you around to grasp your hands, more or less dragging your startled form into the center of the market square and all the dancers there. Jake's grinning ear-to-ear and you're laughing as you try to get your feet back under you, stumbling as he doesn't give you too much time to adjust to the fast-paced steps.

"Jake!" you scold, playfully, because you're not actually annoyed at him and you know he'd never let you fall. "You're supposed to ask me to dance!"

"And you'd have said yes anyway, so what's the point?" He gives you his characteristic devil-may-care grin—the one that has more than one girl (and boy!) swooning, even though he's oblivious to it all—and lifts you for a second, executing a perfect turn as you let out a whoop and try not to lose your hat. "Besides, I wanted a partner who wouldn't step on my poor, beleaguered feet."

Of course, you are more or less required to step on his foot after that. It's sibling law! That's how this works! But you take pity on him and don't put your full weight on him for long. He adopts a wounded look and at the next swell of music, dips you over his arm without warning—seriously! No warnings at all today!—for his revenge. You yelp and clutch his shoulders and in the process, you do lose your hat, and dive after it because that's your favorite hat and you don't want it to get trampled in the middle of the midsummer's festival!

"Jade!" Jake dives after you just as you grab the ribbon and pull it back towards you, barely avoiding getting kicked in the head twice or thrice. He hauls you back to your feet and with one arm around your waist, wags his other finger in your face. "Be careful! Or you'll get squashed flatter than a pancake, in the midst of all this bother!"

You stick your tongue out at him. "Then don't make me drop my hat!" Honestly. Mister protective big brother here. You're fine! Just for good measure, you step on his foot again. He rolls his eyes, and you laugh.

And then everything goes blurry and reforms and he's still holding you close, but no one's dancing and the sky is darkened with smoke. Your laughter dies in your throat. You choke and cough and he thumps your back, drawing you closer into his body as if he can shield you from everything by withdrawing further into the alleyway as soldiers march past, all with drawn swords. Some of them are red and you nearly throw up, except you know you have to stay still and quiet so they don't notice you.

Somehow time speeds by and you're sneaking away as quietly as you can, hand in hand with Jake. Grandpa's gone. You're not sure how you know that exactly, but you can feel it in your bones—oh. Oh. That's right, the burning building that collapsed, the beam that he pushed you and Jake out of the way of, the—yeah. Grandpa's gone. The back alleys and streets of your hometown are eerily haunted by distant screams from the main road. The smell of smoke is everywhere.

"Well, well, well. What have we here?"

Your blood runs cold as you hear a sword being unsheathed. A soldier just turned the corner in front of you. There's nowhere to run except back, and back is a terrible place. Jake squeezes your hand so hard it hurts

"Going somewhere?" the armored monster repeats, hefting the blade. It's red. You wonder what horrible things a person has to go through to get that leer, the enjoyment in the fear of other people. There's a deep-seated pit of terror in your stomach. Your legs feel like jelly as you shrink back, behind Jake. He lets go of your hand to put a protective arm in front of you.

"Let us go," he demands.

"And why should I do that?" The soldier lurches forward a bit. Is he drunk? You think he might be drunk. Maybe that explains the look on his face, like he's relishing the panic and fear and horror. Maybe. You don't think anything should excuse that, though. Oh god oh god you're going to die you're so afraid right now, neither you nor Jake knows anything about fighting—

"Let us go," Jake repeats, more emphatically. "Get out of our way, and we won't give you any trouble."

The man's eyes under his helmet slide from Jake to you, eyes sweeping you slowly from head to toe. "I could let one of you go. Leave her here, boy, and I'll give you a fifteen minute head start, even. Should be long enough."

Jake stiffens and steps in front of you fully, putting himself between the soldier and you. "She's fourteen, you sick fuckwad!" he snarls. "Have you no fucking decency whatsoever? You all prattle on about fighting for some big grand ideal and yet when it comes down to it, you're a sad, pathetic lot of scumbags, every last one of you!"

"Well, now, that's rich," the soldier starts, snapping upright with a menacing look. "You wanna defend your words, pretty boy?"

Jake glances back at you. "Jade," he whispers. "Get ready to run."

"What—" you start, but he cuts you off.

"I'll be right behind you," he promises. Your heart lurches and your panic increases tenfold because that's what Grandpa said right before—right—

"I love you!" you whisper desperately.

"I love you too," he breathes, edging backwards as the soldier, now babbling about the greatness of the Dersite army and something you don't want to hear. Jake's pushing you with him, towards the far wall of the alleyway, and you can see a pile of debris and crates you could use to climb up onto the rooftops. "Ready," he whispers as your back touches the wall, "and GO!"

You duck and start sprinting. Jake's right behind you, he's behind you, he is, but you hear a sharp yell and the soldier's running too, and—

A hand shoves your back forward. You recognize it as Jake's just as you grab the edge of one of the crates and precariously scramble up on top of it, clambering to the top as fast as you can and turning around to offer a hand to Jake—

"No!" you scream, horrorstruck and wide-eyed. He's on the dusty ground, kneeling, wide-eyed just like you, but there's a sword sticking straight through his body, from his back out his middle. The man who wields the sword is standing behind him. You scream again, your voice tearing itself from your throat with enough vehemence that it hurts. "No!"

"J—jade," he gasps—you can hardly hear him, and then his voice breaks into a pained keen that dissolves into a bloody cough. The soldier behind him smirks and pulls the sword out and there's a horrible squelching sound, or maybe that's your imagination, you don't know, but the fountain of blood and the armored boot that collides with your brother's side aren't imagined by any stretch, and neither are his cries as the damn soldier keeps kicking him, kicking him and—

"FUCK YOU! LEAVE HIM ALONE!" you scream, tears streaming down your face as you scrabble around the damaged rooftop for something, anything, and come up with some ceramic roof tiles you throw as hard as you can. They hit the soldier's helmet and he whips around and snarls at you and you freeze with fear as he storms toward your pile of rubble, and with the heaviest heart in the world you know what you have to do—you scramble to do it in time, but just barely before the monster can get to you you've shoved the top crate away from the cracked wall and the whole pile goes cascading down, along with any chance you had to get back to Jake, and then—

—and then—

And then you wake up, tears clogging your throat as you fly out of bed with a gasp that's far too loud in the oppressive silence of your home.

It takes you a minute to realize where you are, just like it does every time you have one of these dreams. It's dark, save for the dappled moonlight streaming in through your window—you hate closing the curtains. It's too dark if you do that—and throughout the cottage you can't hear anything, just the occasional sound of the wind in the trees outside or the faint hooting of the owls. Normal nighttime in the forest, then.

You draw your blankets around yourself, pull your knees up to your chest, bury your face in your hands, and choke on a sob. It's been almost four years and this still haunts you from time to time. You think you might be getting closer to getting over it, but every month or so you still wake up from one of these awful nightmare-flashbacks—you can't just call them nightmares, not when they're so vivid that they're like reliving that day—and no remedy or spell you've found has worked to get rid of them.

"Jake," you sob, voice cracking. "Jake—oh, god, Jake," and the tears fall easily, like a downpour just started above your head. "Jake, Jake, Jake."

What you wouldn't give, what you wouldn't give to just have him here so you could fling your arms around him and breathe in his scent and feel his arms around you and know he's okay. What you wouldn't give to see him again, to cling to him and tell him you love him. Oh, god, Jake...

"I miss you," you whimper, rocking yourself back and forth in tiny movements as if that'll make anything better. You let your head fall back in a silent howl of anguish and cover your face with your hands again, feeling tears drip from your chin onto the growing wet spot on your sleeping gown. "Oh god, I—I miss you so much..."

At some point, you cry yourself to sleep again, or at least into a light doze. When you open your eyes again—they're all gross and your face is covered in dried tears and you need a hot bath—you see the first pale hints of dawnbreak faintly in place of the moonlight. Numb and tired and cold, you swing your legs out of the bed and hold the blanket around your shoulders like a cloak as you walk to the window to look outside.

Dave's out there, doing some exercises and drills and stuff. You kind of expected that—after a while of being, well, very not a morning person, he confessed he felt kind of unproductive if he kept sleeping in, and he started getting up really early. Probably as early as he had to get up in the army.

Your blood runs cold.

The army.

No, no, no, no no no no no nononono—

"Oh, god," you choke out again, wondering why you never thought to ask him if—it's been a year that he's been with you and you unwittingly gave him the keys to your heart and you don't even know if he's no better than the man who took Jake from you—what if he's just like them and you just didn't see it and now—

You whirl around and panic, because you don't know what to do, you don't you don't you don't, and because you need to do something you hurry across the room and lock the door with a snick that makes you feel marginally safer and alone, even though he's still outside, and then your knees decide they're done for now and buckle and you slide to the floor, trembling violently. You take a shaky breath, and another, and another. This is horrible this is horrible this is horrible you want Jake back you want him back!

You're not sure how much time passes as you sit there, alternately crying a little or just shivering and being unable to comprehend how any of this is fair. At some point, when the early morning light has grown stronger and the sun isn't near the horizon anymore but is visible above the treeline, you stand and, feeling like death itself, shuffle across the room to the enchanted wash basin—all the water in it is always clean—to wash your face and mouth.

For a moment you consider a wild fantasy that hurts so much that you can't bear it—what if it were you and Jake living out here together, instead of you and Dave? You can just see him dancing you around the kitchen as you wait for water to boil, or excitedly poring over magic texts with you in the living room—but then you feel the tears coming again, so you push the thought away hastily and splash more water on your face.

Then there's a knock at the door, and you freeze.

"Hey, Jade? You awake?"

Shit shit shit shit shit! Shit!

"Yeah," you call back as steadily as you can. Oh fuck, that wasn't very steady at all. Oh no he's going to ask if—

"...Are you okay?"

The concern in his voice feels real, so real that you really, really want to open the door and fall into his arms and let him convince you that you'll be okay like he always does. God, he makes you feel like it's actually okay, like you'll be alright, like there's something you have to live for other than just existing, and you can't believe you've let yourself fall for him for real. All those jokes about your fairytale knight and being engaged and you deliberately ignored that he'd been in the army and pushed this question so far out of your mind it never even surfaced consciously until you saw him practicing drills in the aftermath of a nightmare—

"Jade?"

"I'm—I'm fine!"

He tries the door. Your breath catches in your throat as the lock rattles, but it holds firm.

"Jade! What are you doing? Why's this thing locked?"

"I said, I'm fine! Go away, Dave!" Fuck oh god your voice just broke you're so screwed. You bury your face in your hands again, hoping that they and the blanket can muffle the sob that refuses to be swallowed.

"Let me in," he demands. You don't move, instead going rigidly still.

"No!"

"Jade! What the hell? Are you okay?"

You don't answer, pulling the blanket tighter around yourself and huddling into a smaller ball on the floor. Stupid, stupid, stupid, how could you think you could be friends with a knight how could you let yourself forget that he was a knight how could you let yourself actually love him!

How can you be sitting here not wanting him to leave!

Part of you is already breaking down and sobbing some more. Part of you refuses to believe there's even the possibility that your best friend—that Dave could ever have done anything like that. The rest of you isn't sure, and is terrified because of that uncertainty.

Dave tries the door again, frustratedly shaking it when it doesn't budge. "Let me in," he says again. "Jade. Please. What's wrong? Did you have another nightmare? Are you okay?"

You lift your head, your vision swimming with tears again. You feel hollow you feel numb you feel horrible you miss Jake you want to be held.

"Dave?"

"What is it?" he asks, anxiously, like he really, actually cares for you. The worst part is, you think he might.

"Did you ever... did you ever kill people?"

He's silent. Your heart sinks like a stone into an abyss of dread, and your fingers dig into your arms as you clutch at yourself, hating yourself and hating him and hating this whole world.

"I was on the battlefield plenty of times," he says after a moment, with effort. "It's—it's kill or be killed out there. Hah—" it's the disparaging, humorless snort of fake laughter that he always ends up bitterly letting out when he talks about the war. You hate that you know him well enough to know that talking about the war hurts him and that bitter sarcasm is how he responds to being hurt. You hate that you want to make him stop hurting. "You forget who you are. You forget literally every fucking thing you've ever known because there are people trying to kill you and there's blood and there's your best buddy's guts on the ground next to you and shit's on fire and people are screaming and dying. It's not fucking glorious. It's literal hell."

He pauses again. You hold your breath. You don't know if he'll say anything else or not. There's a soft thump from the other side of the door and he sighs deeply.

"So. Yeah. I've killed people. I'm not proud of it, but I have." His voice isn't coming from above you anymore, and you guess the thump was him sitting down on the floor.

The battlefield is different, though. You understand kill or be killed. You would've killed that man if you could, if it'd have saved Jake, if you could've saved Grandpa. You understand doing what you have to do to survive.

The malicious laughter and the cruel smile still ring in your memory. You feel a chill run down your spine as you draw the blanket closer still, clutching it so tightly around yourself that your knuckles go white. Almost against your will, you find yourself wondering—had Dave... has your Dave ever laughed like that? Smiled like that?

He can't have! Your—he's—he can't be that kind of man. You won't believe it. But you have to know.

"Have you ever ... killed people, not on the battlefield?" you ask almost timidly. You're afraid to ask, afraid to know, in case the answer is yes.

"Fuck no!" He sounds almost shocked that you'd even suggest such a thing. You feel an unexpected flurry of hope and warmth. "God, no. Look, I gave less than two shits about politics back in the capital, but when I got out there I got into so many arguments with my goddamn commander about avoiding cities in general. Look, I know you probably think oh look it's that asshole Dave, the soldier knight douche who probably goes around killing people for fun, but—ha—as if. You wanna know something?"

He pauses, blows out a breath. You can just imagine him running his hand through his hair like he does when he's frustrated or nervous and fidgety. "I was the fucking laughingstock of my division. The pansy princeling who didn't want any of this knight bullshit but couldn't leave because of his family. Like I actually give a fuck about them, you know. Look, Jade, I didn't ask for any of this, and I know I've done some shit that I regret, but I'm not some fucking murder-loving freak who goes around slaughtering people who have nothing to do with the war anyway!"

He's very defensive, you note. Maybe he'll keep talking and you'll find out why.

He doesn't, though. After a second, you're about to finally respond, except you hear his voice then, so quiet you almost can't make out the words.

"That's why I deserted."

"What is?" you ask softly. There's still that spot of hope in your chest that's making you want to get up and open the door and look at him and see him and hold him and let him hold you, but you can't yet, not until he finishes talking.

"We had orders," Dave says. "To set a village to the fucking torch for 'allying with Prospit', which was for some idiotic bullshit reason defined as not wanting to lodge Dersite soldiers in their homes. I didn't want to do it. The commander was mad as shit at me. Said he'd make me lead the charge. So I was like fuck you and left."

You're quiet for a second, relief making your heart pound and blood roar in your ears. Then you push yourself to your feet, kind of unsteady because you've been sitting down so long, and unlock the door. After a second, you pull it open, and there he is, sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall outside your bedroom. His hair is mussed as can be; you just know he was running his fingers through it like you thought earlier. It makes you want to smooth it down, but you don't.

He looks up at you as soon as the door opens, his eyes going wide. "Jade," he says, and would keep going, but you don't have words right now. Instead of fumbling for them you drop the blanket and let yourself fall to your knees and lurch forward into his lap, flinging your arms around his neck and burying your face in his shoulder.

"I'm sorry," you mumble. "I'm sorry."

"For what?" he asks, holding you close. The way his arms are so tight around you makes you think that you're not the only one he's trying to comfort here. You press him closer and take a shuddering breath.

"For doubting you. I trust you, I do. I—I'm... I love you. I'm sorry."

"You had every right," he shrugs slightly. "I don't blame you." His voice is almost as hollow as you feel, though, and that alone is enough to tell you he's still kind of shaken, kind of upset. You slide one of your hands up into his hair and scrunch your fingers through it gently, letting yourself relax into his arms again, like you always do.

"I had another nightmare," you say after a minute, feeling like you kind of at least owe him some kind of explanation "And then I looked outside and I saw you and I guess I was still really thinking about it and..."

His thumb rubs circles soothingly into your back, between your shoulderblades, as he gently shushes you. "It's okay," he says. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"Neither did you," you say.

Dave surprises you when he turns his head and kisses your hair. "Love you too," he says instead of answering, not really. He seems to struggle with words for a moment. You let him take as long as he needs, just clinging to him the way he's clutching you. "But... Jade... you know I'd never hurt you," he finally says, sounding distinctly unhappy. "Right?"

"I know," you assure him, pressing your face into his neck. "I just... I don't know. I panicked. I had to ask you if..." if you're no better than a murdering monster, because I doubted you just sounds terrible. You don't want to say that to him! "I had to know that you're better than them. But I shouldn't have doubted you."

"I don't blame you," he says again as he draws you tighter to his chest. "It makes sense. I come from the same damn place. You had no way of really knowing."

"But you're not like them," you say, surprising yourself with your vehemence. "They're horrible and you're amazing. You're nothing like them!"

He lets out a dry, kind of humorless chuckle. "Thanks."

"I mean it," you tell him. "I really, really mean it."

Dave sighs deeply. You have a feeling that he's thinking about his time in the army, a time that you know troubles him a lot. He doesn't like thinking about it, but you made him first thing in the morning. Guiltily, you lift your head and kiss his cheek in apology.

"I came up here to ask if you wanted breakfast," he says suddenly. "Do you?"

"Yeah," you answer, "but I want to stay here for a minute first. Can we? Please?"

His arms tighten around you, and you can't help but think there's something protective about the way he tucks your head under his chin and presses you close. "'Course," he murmurs quietly. You hug him as tight as you can, because you're sitting here oh so very vulnerable in his arms, and he's trying to protect you because he's a wonderful person, and you love him.

But this is alright. He's holding you, and he's not a monster and he never has been, and he's the best friend you could've asked for and he's here, and when he's holding you, you know it'll be okay.

AN: Well, if you hadn't guessed, angst won by a landslide hehe!

Jk, this chapter would've been upsetting either way. For the record, since summer when I started planning this story, the outline for chapter six has read "6. flashbacks. flesh out jade's backstory. bab no ;n;". But ye! Angst did win and that means I'll probably have the big plot going soon.

That said... I still have to do some work on plotting out the details and chapters, and that's work that's prioritized below calculus and chemistry and all that. College is difficult, I tell you. So if I don't manage to update fast, thaaaat would be why. :/

Edit - Now that I'm not half asleep, I remembered that I wanted to include some actual notes in the AN this time. For one, the whole war and Jake's death thing. I don't intend to say Dave is a paragon of virtue, or that the one soldier Jade remembers too well is an absolute demon. All characters have moderately or less moderately grey moralities. However, Jade herself tends to view morality as a more black-and-white construct, mostly because she's not been around people for extended periods of time for years and she's hella lonely and wants to cling to ideals. The soldier who killed Jake probably had to dehumanize himself and get drunk off his ass because the idea of killing civilians is frankly terrible, and that's the only way he could do it. The point of this rambly note is to say that (as is probably obvious): the outlook of the character does not necessarily reflect the outlook of the author.

Anyway, thanks for reading! :) Reviews are fodder for the writing canon! ((see what I did there))