Chapter Six: Sola Myn

Amber wouldn't meet my eyes. My heart broke at the attempt to hide her thoughts from me. I didn't press. Romans ran in brutal battles as part of their reputation even in modern times. I held my emotions back. The vault door in my mind swung shut with an almost audible metallic slam. With my emotions locked up, I felt the normal numbness that I came to learn to survive. When Amber did look at me after what felt like an eternity of waiting, it was as if someone set a series of C4 charges on the door of the steel vault and blew the door to nothing. I couldn't help myself as I picked her up and held her close. After a moment, I realized what I'd done and moved to let her go, but Amber only held me tighter as I tried to draw away. I fought not to react to this insistence on contact because she normally hated unexpected contact. I just smiled and let the tears come as I put my head in the crook of her shoulder.

I don't know how long we stayed like that, drawing strength from each other with the chaos of battle long gone and no immortals to keep us on our toes. I could feel Amber begin to recover as she stayed in my arms for a little while longer.

When the legionnaire looked at me again, the pain still hung in her eyes, but it was somehow lessened now. "Clades Variana…" Amber said quietly. "(Vestia, guard me.)"

A rock settled in my stomach at the Latin from her lips. I shivered as I thought of the dreaded battle she just mentioned. In the back of my mind, Sun Tzu and The Patriot blended together in my mind.

"If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you shall lose every battle."

Mel Gibson's character stood as he looked out the window of a house looking at the battle not a thousand yards distant. "Going muzzle to muzzle with Red Coats…it's madness!"

I shivered as I thought of Amber's usual attitude of battle surgery as opposed to my direct and ruthless Hammer and Anvil. I blinked as it hit me. Romans were like Red Coats in a way. They were so used to doing battle to break morale quickly and be done. Guerrilla fighting would be an entirely new beast to the unit unless they knew history, like The Maccabean Revolt of Greek infamy or Purim when Jews gave Persian forces a time under complete legality directed by Xerxes. I shook my head at the irony. "If they would have listened to you, the Romans wouldn't have been massacred."

Amber looked up at my words and seemed to struggle to understand for a moment. Then, the fog lifted from her eyes, "Nichole…"

"I'm here," I said gently as I ran a hand through her long brown curls. "You're safe." I closed my eyes for the time being and drank Amber's presence. "We're safe and together. That's all that matters." I then noticed the tips of wolf ears peeking out of her hair. I wanted so badly to scratch them but restrained myself. I wasn't sure how she saw me, and if I touched her ears without permission, I could easily lose more than a hand for the offense. "You really are Wolfie now." I said with a soft laugh.

Amber blushed and scratched her ears as she found the grass a little away from us interesting suddenly. "Would you believe me if I said I woke up in the woods outside Rome being licked awake by Lady Lupa?"

I shrugged, "Considering I've talked with Lord Ares, pissed off The Lady of Doves, was given my blades by The Grey-Eyed One Herself…"

I could feel Amber's anger. "You accepted help from that prideful bitch!"

"Easy!" I said with wide eyes. "She's not like The son of Appollo tells it; she's actually helpful. Back on track, we just dealt with Moon Bitch together," I said with a slight frown as I spoke. "I believe you." I raised an eyebrow at the question. "How long were you with The She-Wolf?"

Amber smiled. I couldn't blame her. The beautiful and frustratingly tactical fighter always had a weakness for wolves for as long as I'd known her and likely longer. "I ran with her pack for many moons," she said with a sigh. Then, she looked at me worriedly as if I might judge her for the ways of wolves she picked up while she trained with Lady Lupa. "I mean I think it was around a year!"

I looked her in the eyes and gently cupped her face in my hands, so she couldn't easily break away from my gaze. "Do I look upset?" I asked with a soft frown. "You did what you had to do." I shivered at the carnage I unleashed on Ephialtes and the advanced Persian forces a few days before. "We both did."

Amber surprised me when she squeezed my hand. "All I could think about was surviving so I could get back to you."

The Roman faded away as she looked up at me, and for the first time since we reunited, I truly took her in. War made her brown eyes hard. Amber's muscles twitched and rippled on her face as if she were trying to rapidly cycle through a torrent of emotions as our eyes locked. Her face bled with small cuts from branches and a few scapes from rocks or briers. Sculptors would have thought to correct these imperfections and wounds, but I thought she couldn't be more beautiful as I got lost in her eyes. I sighed and brushed some bits of greenery from her hair. I had my best friend back. With a startled "eep!", I remembered the kiss she gave me before we left Thermopylae. You don't know when Artemis replaced her, idiot! I thought as my rational brain started to catch up with my emotions. Artemis WOULD do something like that if it suited her purposes, like getting you to join The Hunt. I closed my eyes and breathed. Amber is making you crazy. Think! Artemis HATES romance. Why would she use romance to get you to join her? She could pretend to be Amber and break your heart like… I groaned and held my head. My emotions and rationale would chase each other in circles if I let them. In addition to that, all this thought of potential romance nearly brought HER back to my mind. I needed to finish this decisively and leave no room for questions.

Thoughts of my first and only romantic relationship made my stomach turn. I wanted to scream. As my mind clouded with fresh worries of how Amber might treat me, I felt the temptation to keep her at arm's length because I didn't need another emotional vampire to try and bleed my tattered heart dry. Where did these thoughts come from?! My mind roared. Has Amber ever tried to break you down and remold you into something you are not? Has she ever had any trouble talking to you or you, her? Can you trust her with every secret and know she shall not betray your confidence unlike that witch? Do not fear her! Embrace her!

I blinked as my ears caught a sound to bring me rushing out of my thoughts with the beauty of it. Amber was laughing at me! "Your face, they say I have bad Resting Bitch Face!"

The laughter died when our eyes met.

In the few moments of eye contact, we had a lengthy conversation about the past for both of us. I knew her pain as well as she did, and Amber knew the deepest fathoms of my mind as our minds folded together in a "dance". If I focused, I could feel her heart beating as if it were mine. She knew my pains and lifetime of disrespect, and I knew her lifetime alone with only her mom and Ben who actually cared about her. I felt how her brother thought of her and shivered at the uncomfortable parallels with my own brother. Passively, I promised myself I'd beat her brother bloody if I ever met him. Then, the real pain came that she left only when The Father (Strange instincts roared to call him The Grey Heretic and nothing else.) pushed her into Ygdrasil and sent her to The Imperial Roman Frontier of the first century AD as he had sent me to The Hot Gates during Xerxes I's campaign against Greece. Amber was broken, rebuilt by Lady Lupa, and broken again at Teutoburg Forest with only thoughts of me to keep her from going to The Cliff.

I breathed hard as my head spun when sensation of my own body began to come back to my awareness. I was on my hands and knees. I squeezed my eyes shut and slowly rose to my feet. I could hear tears hitting the grass as I stood. When I opened my eyes again, I saw Amber walk up to me, smile, and move to kiss me. Unbidden, a hand shot up to stop her. "Damn, that was way more intense than we'd write about," I said as I felt my cheeks heat up at some memories from the stories. "Give me a minute."

I looked up to see Amber's ears pinned back with a slight pout on her face as she rocked from foot to foot in movement that reminded me too much of the "Nervous but Flirty Schoolgirl" type of character from Anime.

I only thought it was a pout. When she ran up and collided into me with quiet sobs, I cursed myself a fool for being unaware. I pulled her into a tight hug and hoped I did enough to correct for my misread. "Shshshsh…"

"Mom and Ben…"

I gritted my teeth and held her as she cried fresh tears. Sola Myn Bond, emotional whiplash, I growled under guarded thought. It made the pain brand new. "They're in Ygdrasil," I said gently. I bit my tongue almost to bleeding to stop myself and let her cry. I won't make the mistake of The Kermit Reject. "Let it flow," I encouraged, "Don't box it up."

After a few minutes, Amber began to quiet. She looked up at me in a moment of confusion. "It doesn't hurt as bad."

"Many hands make light work." I said softly before I reached up and gently wiped her eyes of tears while she did the same for tears that I wasn't even aware of. I laughed softly as I remembered Amber had a fondness for writing in scenes where she would wipe my tears away in the stories we wrote together.

Amber punched me in the arm. "That was for being a general ass and not calling me through Ygdrasil when you needed me!"

I held up my hands. "You know how I am, Ames," I said to her as I took a half step back. "I hate asking for help. Besides, it's not my fault Leonidas and Xerxes called a one-on-one, and I had to go into the lines of Persians and remind the Greeks to stop gawking!"

Amber raised an eyebrow and put a hand on her hip.

"Okay," I said after I caught her eyes. I nodded slowly and sighed. "I caused it by screwing with the timeline, but it's not like I created Dark Dan."

Amber shocked me by grabbing my tunic uncomfortably close to breasts which I still wasn't quite used to being there. I blushed feverishly as my brain clogged with thoughts, ninety percent of them "naughty". Then, she kissed me. "That was for being there all those times I needed you."

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