Going to war is the same as suicide, he thinks as he sees the reflection of her deep blue eyes off her too-shiny, too-unused sword. The firelight before her dances behind his eyes mixed with pictures of her face and her smile and he thinks that maybe, just for a second, she looked back at him.

(He needed her to stay he was lost too and maybe, just maybe they could heal each other with time.)

She didn't.

She wants to walk for miles on end, leaving soft, erasable footprints of sweat and determination in the sand. She wants to feel the rush of intense power deep behind her eyes and dance a waltz through her mind before shimmering down her spine as she cuts ruthlessly through the enemy's blood and sinew with her brand-new sword. She wants sweat mixed with pain and blood falling down her face as she screams unheard battle cries into the darkness while she beats relentlessly on the trespassers. Because every good story has an enemy, doesn't it, and she just wants to be a good story.

She wants to spread her pink-like-sunrise petals that are caged in the broken place of her heart and bloom again.

He can't let her go but he knows he must. Her eyes, dark as cold, cold winter and sharp as an arrow scratch him softly across the heart, leaving a wound when she pauses from her polishing to stare at him, calculating. Her breath comes out in short puffs as she throws her shoulders, her neck, her soul into cleaning her (so unused, too fresh) sword and she stares. She's awake but she's still not there and he wonders if she will ever come back from the dead.

(Because when Lionel died, he dragged her down too.)

She doesn't believe in fairytales, not anymore (not since him) but she would like to have a noble ending. She wants to write her name in blood and pride across Gielinor, the world at war. She wants the whispers in the market stalls and behind closed doors when they think they're alone to speak of the ladykiller, the one with the sword and the face and the pride. She works to change the whispers from the I'm-so-sorry to the what-have-you-become? She wants to run, lungs taptaptapping a chorus line along her ribcage, run away from the city from the world from her friend from the graveyard.

As she polishes the sword beside the fire and he sits by her, a too-fresh reminder of what the world snatched away from her bleeding hands, she just wants kill something and know that it's okay.

(She doesn't have the courage to even kill a stray cat, but she's never let that stop her before.)

She doesn't seem to notice the tears, making zigzagged lines down her dirt face like a child's jigsaw puzzle missing a piece, but he does. The sound of metal on metal and a rag, scraping roughly down the jagged edge of a blade almost drowns out the plinkplinkplink of tears on metal.

(Almost.)

He watches her work and they still don't talk (what would he say? I need you?) and he wants to shout, I lost him too, he was my brother. I need someone to hold onto when the night comes! But he can't speak, just watch the tears rain down along her sword and wish he had something to piece her back together with.

(Just how long will it be before it's blood on the sword instead of tears?)

She does not regret the day she left, even as the hollowness crept up inside his eyes as she hugged him goodbye.(She tells herself this, anyway.) His heart beat a soft rhythm against her too-skinny chest as they held each other.

(It started to rain, and she couldn't tell his tears from the rain on her shoulder.)

(She was thankful.)

And when he uttered a weak please in the place where a goodbye should go, she just adjusted her backpack once more and gave him a thin-as-paper smile from rose-pink lips.

(He made her look like a rose when he was alive. When he left, she just became paper.)

The rain sang quietly to her though her metal helmet, and once again she was glad, because it stifled the sounds of his sobbing as she walked away, boots squelching through the mud, her head aimed down but eyes looking up..

She was going on an adventure.

(Though it didn't seem so appealing anymore without Lionel.)

Every day, he stared tiredly outside his window, watching as the elderly, solemn army messenger made the rounds with the lists of the deceased in his hands and sorries dribbling off his lips. The trolls with their half-baked plots and their unintelligence still raked their sharp claws down Gielinor, tearing families bit by bit until all the broken pieces crashed into the mud.

(It seemed to rain every day since she left to take his brother's place in the war.)

When the soldiers, tired and muddy and bloodstains running deep across their hands and carrying empty, horrified eyes instead of a backpack returned home, he walked aimlessly, head down and hands in his pocket among the frenzied sobbing and hugs of the reunited families and lovers, he looks for deep blue eyes and messy brown hair and a sharp, white sword.

(She never comes home.)

(He isn't surprised.)

They don't speak of the ladykiller behind hushed doors. The soldiers barely speak at all, blood dripping down from their eyes to seal their lips shut. Violence is the monster, and once you shake hands with the monster you can't pull yourself from the endless dark trench of despair. She doesn't see pride or glory in the eyes or the hearts of the men she fights with.

Only regret.

He wondered, sometimes, when the sun came out, if she died with a spark in her eyes, like the one his brother used to bring out of her. She was such a pretty flower, thriving in the sunlight and affection until the shadows came and she was choked with weeds, petals falling slowly to rest on the ground as she wilted.

(The news of death hadn't reached Taverly yet, to bring him closure, but he could feel the loss of a flower no matter how far away he was when it died.)

She fought brutally, the girl who couldn't even kill a cat. She did not feel pride, though, when her sword slashed through muscle and bone of another creature. (Blood spilled down the sides of her dull, grey sword.)

(She can't even remember when it was white with fresh innocence, smithed and polished from a fire mixed with tears.)

(Has it been that long since she was free?)

The monster shook her hand and refused to let go, pulling her deeper into his pit with every slash of her sword. The commanders said things like a brave soldier. Loyal and valiant but the words tasted bittersweet on her tongue, felt rough to the touch. (The blood was everywhere.)

(It was all she could taste.)

(Would Lionel had wanted her to die like this, a pink rose with streaks of red?)

The day was surprisingly clear when the sword finally reached her throat.

Somehow, when she woke up in the morning, back pressed into a scratchy pile of wool, dirty with sweat and tears, she had known it was the day. She felt something primal stir within her, building vibration along her bones before finally buzzing, sharp and loud, along her brain.

It was the sound of freedom.

(She would be free of the monster.)

(The commander gave her a strange, sad look when she volunteered to go search the camp for plans, but didn't stop her.)

(He just saluted and watched her footprints disappear into red-tinted snow.)

She supposed she had died bravely, finding intel against the trolls for her realm. The blood spurted from her chest like a morbid fountain in a square and she almost smiled as the cold started in her toes.

(The monster's hand was slowly slipping.)

She didn't think of all the trolls who died at her hand, or the men she was leaving behind. She didn't care if they made it out, either, or wonder about their loved ones back home. She just dropped her still-grey sword on the ground in a pool of her own blood and listened as the beating of the drums swelled louder and louder in her head.

And when she finally closed her eyes, she didn't think of pride or any of those silly notions. She didn't think of Lionel, or the brother she left behind, or the state of the war.

She just thought that maybe she should have never left home.

When the messenger came, wrinkled knuckles rapping on the door at the break of dawn, he didn't need to hear the words. He just nodded and took the death certificate.

(His eyes were dry. All the tears died when she did.)

He just walked back over to his canvas, feet slow and sure, where he painted a single pink rose streaked with red.

(He set it on her gravestone, next to his brother's, even though she really wasn't under that dirt.)

(He was glad he gave it to an empty shell of her. He couldn't bear to feel the pull of her real body, her flower, nestled so deep within dirt she could not bloom.)

(And when it started to rain, well, he didn't go back for the painting.)

He just let the streaks of red drip into the dirt where her memory lay.