So I Need To See You Again

When the glitter in the snow shifted from the dusting of sweet silver that marked the reluctant truces that fell with night into the golden drops of daybreak, the storm of Rewven would begin. The north was unfairly picturesque, even on the brink of war. Could one even still call it the brink of war when there had been countless skirmishes in the northern mountain region for most of the current reign?

Pretty peaks of mountains that belonged in fiction, a pretty line in a poem or song, or the gentle dusting of rich purple pigment in a painting. The pine that kept its scent even once reduced into pigment. The clouded nights that plunged the various camps into total darkness and the dawns that broke that veil as though the gods in heaven above refused to stay and witness the carnage to descend these frozen lands. If one were to see this camp on high, somehow missing the preparations of war, they might have seen a painting. Without the preparations of those most trusted and most honourable knights and warriors of the empire, sworn to at the very next daybreak see the heads of treasonors freed from their necks, it really would look beautiful.

But the battlefield was no place for beauty, at least not as it was deemed by court, by the heights of society. Works that depicted war were for the masses; they were pulp to feed the myth of the grandeur of knights, those above a common station yet below a noble one.

War held no beauty in their eyes.

They cared not for the softness in the eyes of men that said what very well might have been their last words to those others here they cared for, words they refused to acknowledge the potential finality of. Not the tender frowns, or tight jaws of those that wrote what might be the last words their dearest of loves ever received from them. Not the young upstarts deemed worth having in this grand moment of honour, who polished or sharpened metal while their leg bounced or foot tapped.

Society back in the capital would talk endlessly these next few seasons of this war, of this justice. They would preen at praises they didn’t earn, steal the merits of their staff, boast of stealing a hero of the storming from a rival, all while gagging behind their fans at the thought of bodies dead and perfectly preserved in snow. They would never see the sweetness, the longing, the beauty of something they could not conceive of as anything but foul.

They did not see the too bright blood that dotted the snow in the same sombre way as Daren. The commander of all these men, who did not need the reminder of how close they all were to being no more than that spec. Nor did they see it in the same irritation of Lilia.

“You should tell your men not to bleed on my snow.” She said in her usual flat affect, words that cut like barbed and twisted metal, words that flayed better men to bones they wanted to see her skinned for exposing, words that eased the tension in Daren’s shoulders.

The casual words of a lover who refused tenderness tended to do such a thing. Calm and reassure, bring one such as Daren back from the brink of thoughts and worries better left unthought.

She wasn’t even supposed to be here, a woman in the army camp was unthinkable. Her wandering alone was entirely against the agreement made. Lilia was far too great a talent with a knife and a needle to let languish living the life of any other noble lady in the capital. Daren had pushed for years to have women do more than exist as pretty features in court, they were literate and as politically intelligent as any man, most of them more than. It was a waste not to use them. Lilia was a regal quality jewel compared to all that he had done in that regard, an honest to the gods surgeon, and if this all went right, she’d at last be his jewel.

“They do love to just bleed everywhere, don’t they?” He rolled his eyes with a shake of his head as he half looked to her.

She knelt down in the snow, brushing the simple skirts she wore as she did, keeping the fabric close to shield her legs from the bite of snow, snow that was pure enough for her needs wasn’t exactly a threat to staining her skirts. Not that such a sensible dark colour would stain. It would make sense to wear something in a war camp that would show every bit of blood that she’d stop from spilling to its last drop.

“I still don’t understand that,” he noted absently, watching her press the snow tightly into balls that would stay frozen as they were for far too long.

“Most people don’t,” she shrugged as much as she could while packing the snow, “it was simply my mistake for thinking you more capable than most,” she teased with half a smile.

This was normal enough for her. Yes, the situation was magnified, and if she were not perfect, she might jeopardise a lot of the work Daren had done lately, but how different was this to preparing for new batches of recruits at the duchy, or in the capital. It was the same list of tasks to complete, completed with the exact same efficiency.

More than any of it though, she wanted to believe it was normal. Lilia needed to believe in this being just another moment that she had run into Daren as she went about her work and he dearly avoided his own. Daren would contest her accusation if it were made, but safe as it was in her head, he remained unaware and enjoying a sight he loved more than he thought was fair: Lilia trying to save anyone she could.

“That is hardly fair,” he retorted.

“The closer the snow is together, the harder it is for its temperature to equalise with the warmth inside a tent and the longer it lasts,” she explained, packing another ball of snow. “With all the blood I am sure you fools will haphazardly spill in attempts to save each other or gain glory, I will need as much clean stuff as I can get,” she rattled off with not enough thought and too much bite, too much implication laid heavy in her words.

She knew who would do anything to save a single soul in this camp tonight, and it was not her. It wasn’t doctors Castelian, or Rydern, or their assistants, not the young men that hardly looked enough to hold a sword, or the veterans who could take another loss, it was Daren. Lilia knew that if anyone was brought back mangled beyond potential repair because he was stupid and sacrificed himself, it would be him. She knew it in the way you know the sun will rise, knew it like a law of the universe that was immutable, no matter what she said, or did, or wanted, he would never change it, so there was no point saying anything about it at all. If Lilia said something, if, when, — she begged the gods above for, if, he pulled the move of a grand hero to be immortalised in tale and song, his last thought would be of betraying her wish.

She simply could not do that to him.

“Yet they will still melt,” he knelt down beside her to help, only to have her bat his hard and calloused hands away. The cold would have him grip his sword tighter than he needed, it would damage his hands where it stilled hers.

“A box outside tonight, one buried in the snow,” she revealed the trick, swaying on her crouched feet, pressing her side into his.

It was a meditative really to watch her work. Daren had always thought so, right from the first day he had seen her embroidering in the imperial gardens. He recognised the stitches she was using from his own body, the stitches of a surgeon. When he had peered over her all too focused shoulder, he couldn’t help but laugh. Her practice looked enough like flowers from a distance, but it was the same practice that the apprentices did. He had seen their abandoned cloths of the same stitches and sutures in less pretty patterns enough times he had rushed into the infirmary.

“How much snow do you think you’ll need?” He asked her, pushing back what little affection he could so openly tonight.

The real question Daren wanted to ask went unsaid. How many do you think we’ll lose? How many men are you prepared to stitch up? How far do you think the fighting will reach? How much closer will blood spilt from wayward arrows get to her? The blood they now avoided was spilt by a northern arrow, one that had flown far too close to the medical tents.

Far too close to her.

If there was anything Daren couldn’t stomach about war, about this campaign he had pushed so hard for her to be brought on, it was the idea that it might seal her doom.

“More than I prepare.” She said as if it were obvious.

To her, it was.

She knew it was all too likely that he was one of the men she would need to plug wounds with salt and snow as she raced to stitch him up. Perhaps that thought made her think to gather more still. Lilia also just liked her hands numb, it made it easier to pretend that so much of her future didn’t rely on outcomes she couldn’t alter.

Ever so briefly she cursed Daren, if only in her mind. How dare he, even for a second, let her think it was possible to change what life she could have as a duke’s daughter. How dare he force her here, where she might forever blame herself for his final breath. She wished she could yell at him, scream at him, beat his chest until he listened and acted as he should. He was a commander of these forces, there was no reason to risk his life tomorrow. He should coordinate the attack, not participate in it.

“You’re probably right…” he trailed off.

There were too many things Daren wanted to say, just in case.

It was another painting the capital would write off, that wouldn’t be seen for the sweet devotion of the subjects to those that bothered to look. The beauty of a face pained by wounds that were entirely anticipatory, watching more a mask than a face refuse to anticipate those very same pains, those very same wounds. Daren burning the image of his dear love into his mind, Lilia freezing her hands so they might save him.

They only got their happy ending if tomorrow was a success. Daren would sooner die than see it fail. Simply for the sake of his honour and for the empire, but when it succeeded, when they rode back to the capital and he bowed before the Emperor and offered a reward, a boon. Only then could he gain the assent their noble fathers both denied. The Emperor’s word was law, and if the grand hero commander of the siege asked for a bride, would he deny him? He would not, Daren had already been assured of that by the Emperor’s aide.

He just needed to live.

“You should get some sleep,” she turned her face to his, eyes wide and shining, brow creasing, betraying all the care she held for him, all the need she had for him to come back and not to her table. “While you can at least.” She tried to lessen the care that she betrayed unwillingly.

She tried to turn back to the snow, he stopped her with a hand cupping her cheek. Her eyes wavered but stayed on his, she had always liked his eyes, red-brown that shone like rubies, a jewel as cheap and common as brown eyes were too.

The words lingered on her tongue, but she couldn’t say them. ‘Don’t you dare think of dying on me,’ she tried to say, but her jaw locked tight. Tight as his own.

Lilia and Daren wanted to believe the other was having the same thought: ‘I need to see you again.’ They just couldn’t. If either believed the other was thinking of it right now, it was easier to call it distraction. Distraction, which could not be had considering the situation than them not thinking of it.

Lilia and Daren each wanted to lean into the other, steal a moment that they might never again be able to take. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t taken such liberties before, and as anyone who had ever loved would say, they maybe should have.

They didn’t.

He left, he tried to sleep, at the very least he rested.

She stayed, packed snow until her fingers stopped working, turned blue from her efforts.

Now they had to see each other again, if they didn’t there was too much unfinished business. That was what repeated in each of their heads like a prayer; no, not like, it was a prayer. The most devoted prayer either of them would ever ask of the heavens, while they still could, while the gods still graced the camp.

Come morning, it was out of the hands of heaven. Come morning, no prayer would matter. Come morning, the only hands that could affect anything were their own, the hands they had trained so hard for a day such as tomorrow.

Hands that would never feel right again if they never held the other once more.