Speech =``...´´

Thoughts = [….….]

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``I was not expecting you to follow me…´´

Was the first thing he said as he sensed a certain familiar presence approach him from behind, the sound of her footsteps echoing softly, almost imperceptible to even the most saged hunters in the cobbled stoned ground.

Souls however were far harder to hide, and this was not the first time she had done it.

He did not need to turn around to know that the woman in questions was smiling back at him with that playful grin of hers, though at least controlling herself from it becoming a fully broad. She did not answer right away, nor he minded that she did so..., continuing to wait silently where he stood.

She soon reached him, standing right next to him as they both looked at the layout of the fields still covered under the cover of darkness, a few hours before the coming of dusk. Though both of them could see well past the shrouded veil that most mortals could not until the first beams of light arrived..

She was tall and of slender, even with her plated armour and the endless gems and golden crests embedded into it, making her more regal, even though it had lost some of its glamour as scars and scratches covered most of it by now.

Her blue eyes were glowing with a timid brightness of a fresh new sky, calm and soothing to anyone who became lost staring at them. Her golden mane was let loose behind her shoulder plates, falling down her back, resting softly against the cool metal. The wind brushing softly for a rare time without the odour of death and burnt out candles, toying with and making her hair glint like a small star under his eyes. Revealing in the process her heritage as her sharp ears were revealed to the world.

She had been his friend…

His nemesis…

And now…, perhaps something else.

``You were not expecting the war-council to end up in such a quarrel either, did you?´´

Her voice was soft like the a cool breeze of summer, yet with a level of seriousness behind them that always spoke of who was in control. Her golden brows softened a bit while those desirable lips that had uttered so many orders and rallying cries time and time again parted ways to deliver a simple, though no less vexing reminder of what just happened..

His eyes narrowed behind iron helmet, a cold, rough sound of raspy air pushed out through his lungs into the cool metal.

Still, he knew he should have seen this coming..

``They are idiots…, wasting breath and time in their petty needs when everything is crumbling around us like a house of cards´´

He growled, making no effort to hide his distaste and annoyance at the poor expectacle he had been witness of. War made for strange bed partners…, even more when extinction was on the line. Solidarity and patience had bred a rare kind of circumstances where freedom and

that did not mean that option did not come with its own baggage...

She nodded at him, no longer smiling though not bitter or angry as he was. She merely understood where he was coming from.

``Things are bad, but not that bad...as far as I know you came up on top from your ordeal in your side.., the enemy was fully destroyed. A big blow...´´

He looked away from the field and gazing once more into those waiting blue orbs.

``We took loses as-well…´´

A bitter thing to acknowledge, though one that was bound to happen anyway. But that was not what he truly meant..

``You did what you could..´´

``Perhaps…., no matter how I cut it…, how I look at it from different angles…, the answer is still the same. I had to do it...´´

``And you don't like that…´´

It was not a question, but rather a statement.

``No one would….´´

He admitted, tired...raising one metal clad clawed hand before his eyes and staring at it. Imagining the blood that had drenched it, the lives it had taken.…, both with the spin of the blade or the pull of a pawn from a table.

``To lose them, is not easy...it never was..´´´

``You have always care for them…, I know´´

He gritted his teeth, though not out of frustration. It was more than that…

So much more..

``The are...like my children. A father should not send their own kin to die for him..´´

Ironic, wasn't it? After all this time, that was one of the few thorns in his side. Poking at him, endlessly and without mercy of compassion. Even after all he had accomplished, all the power he had gained through the years in this worthless existence…, that piece of humanity only served to wound him.

They were merely thirteen generations in this ancient butcher house that had dared to call itself world…..

Finite..and dying all too quickly...

His thoughts were interrupted when he felt her pull his other hand towards her, placing it above her armoured chest, small and slender digits of silver caressing and holding with warmth the blackness of his own gauntlet.

His body should have become rigid, his eyes turned wrathful before they attempted to rip out his hand from her grip because of her brazenness...

But he did not, he could not…, not to her.

The pain in her eyes…, he was all too familiar with it.

Two sides of the same damn coin...

``You are no less for doing what must be done, the fact that you don't take pleasure on it speaks of your true self more than anyone or anything. What is done, is done...we can not change it, but we can move past it…, not for our own sake, but theirs as-well..´´

``We won that battle, not the war...´´

``Perhaps you are right, but it takes to take the step to do it so that it may happen. Their contribution granted us a chance to take a step closer to the end of this conflict..Their sacrifices were not in vain..´´

She was right…

She had always been right, even when she was not…,

How cruel was fate to only leave such a person right next to him, while a legion worth of fools and bootlickers remained behind him.

With their petty goals, and their petty rivalries and their rampant stupidity...

He closed his eyes, taking a long, deep breath as he felt his shoulder lose some of their tension. It was not a sin exclusivity of mankind to be stupid even to the end, but he was ashamed to see it affected their kin a lot more than the rest.

``Then tell those fools that! I bet that if you were to piss on a cup you could convince them it was wine, and yet, when I offer them water with kindness and no strings attached they dare look at it with suspicion and spit on it, claiming it to taste sour..´´

She smiled, snorting a bit….

He would have too, if what he had just said was not so damn close to happen anyway.

``They are scared.., they don't know what future is awaiting them, what decision will turn sour and damn them to a cruel, bloody death.

``We all die…, for men who drank the kool aid of glory in death through battle they have proven rather meek. They were always so full of themselves before the dark times, but perhaps beating peasants was all they knew...´´

Truly pathetic…., how surprising that he was able to make such good moves with such a poor hand.

`` I know you know…, but is still hard to fight, to sacrifice so much for something they cant yet grasp on while trying to bury those insecurities in a ditch. Its just a few of us who truly are not fighting to just remain alive another day, but win ourselves our future...´´

He felt anger writhed inside him, pulling away his hand from her this time before he poked at her chest with one clawed digit. Though rather softly...

``We are All sacrificing our lives for the cause, millions of men, women and children living, fighting and dying in fear. Do we have to pause everything and grant them a minute of silence to each and every of them to appease them?´´

She bit her lip, but shook her head.

``They are their leaders, short sighted or not they have a right to voice out their displeasures more often than not…´´

All too true...

``The only right they had was to die by my hands, nothing else…´´

She did not flinch, she merely cocked her head to the side, her ears folding a bit like a cats. One of her golden brows raised.

``But you spared them..´´

He found himself having to take a double take on that in his mind, for she had not lied. In a sense, he was the own architect of his present displeasure. He really had gone out of his way to spare as many as he could when he knew that it was too late to try take the coming storm alone.

Something that those spared had loathed him for and those that followed him questioned time and time again.

Sometimes, a good deed does not go unpunished. Sometimes your body was riled with maggots that were too lazy to move on their own and you were unable to pull them out either.

He disliked both, but there was little he could now about it.

If only he had been able to start his campaign a century earlier...

``I did, yes...though not out of the kindest my heart, don not misunderstand my intend, dear. I had to, for there was no other way…´´

``I know, and I am grateful for that..´´

``Why..?´´

She looked away from him and back to the field, her lips becoming sealed for a moment as thoughts started to delve behind the depths of those ocean like eyes.

``Because once this is over, the people will know that there is more than Black steel and molten iron running under that armour.., that there is no better leader to lead us through this and any challenge that await us than you…´´

Her words touched something inside him, something old and thought buried. The beliefs of a dreamer, the naivety of a child.

But that was a foolish dream, one that he could not allow himself to fall prey to again.

There could not be true despair without hope to rot him from within.

``They would never allow that to happen…, you know that better than anyone´´

What had happened between them was a rarity, a glitch in the system.

He would not believe it would happen again.

``You can not change thousands of years of corruption and manipulation in a few decades, especially when you spent half of them killing them and burning them to the stake while the other half they became subservient to you in a bigger and more terrible war…´´

``I ran out of time...´´

She nodded. She had been there, she had been in the thick of it when it happened.

When everyone else was still blind to the true threat.

``We all did…, and we now pay for the sins of our fore-fathers…´´

``A curse that some carry more than others...´´

He cursed out, his voice filled with poison as the darker parts of him started to come up, like a festering wound that someone had unknowingly poked..

After that a moment of silence stretched between them once more, allowing them to stew their thoughts and words for themselves.

He was grateful that no one was here to see them like this...

`` It will be a struggle, an up hill battle..., not something that you wish to hear yourself after everything that has already happened...´´

``And yet…´´

`` In time I know that they will see just what I saw that day…´´

A flash of melancholy and hope flashed in her eyes, her lips were no longer stiff as she stretched one of her arms forward, holding and caressing his arm with hers.

``What I still see…´´

The scent of leaves and the warm touch of the sun of midday. The winds of winter blowing kindly through fields of brown and green, underneath the corpses of a thousand naked trees that had lost their cover as snow started to fall down.

A cage, the taste of blood and innocence, iron, tears...and that cage.

His first act of defiance against his father...and not the last he was proud of.

It had been so long ago….

``I thought I was the one for the dramatics and reminisce, not you...dear.´´

He growled with a half mock, kneeling down a bit so that the two could be at the same heigh, something a bit harder to accomplish as she was still holding onto his arm.

Earning a shy smile from hers in turn…, the hue of her eyes only making more palpable the redness in her cheeks.

She really was a lady of summer, bright and pure….a fire that would never vanish while he was the cold and unmourned winter.

``That was a long time ago...´´

She replied.

His eyes softened, almost settling into an apologetic stare as he felt the claws of time try to pull him back at those memories at the edge of his mind. The look of those weary yet hopeful eyes of blue meeting his own through those bars..his hand stretched out, waiting for her to take his offer, to walk away…

Back home...

``Yes, in another life…´´

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A/N

Here comes another chapter, I hope you like it..and if not? Then I am sorry, I will try to do better next time.

Feel free to comment to give some feedback.

Delta hears from Nu when speaking to Alpha that boss man is playing pet and master at the Academy, Delta makes her mission to join the fun, for there can only be one true pet. Chaos ensues..