Failing Saving
Title: Failing Saving
Theme: Senshi/Shitennou: Day 22, Forget-me-not, sm_monthly, January 2009
Genre: Drama/Angst
Rating: PG
“Please!” a voice cried through the door. “PLEASE!”
Nixie hesitated, her hand already resting on the door.
It was too dangerous. A woman, - a girl really - all by herself in these dreadful times. Death knocking on all doors. She could not chance it.
The frantic pounding had dimmed to hopeless slaps.
Faintly, she heard, “Please…”
Flinging the door open unbalanced the person who had been leaning on it. Somebody stumbled into Nixie, and she did not catch him so much as land on the floor cradling him.
Delirious, he looked into her eyes. “Thank you,” he whispered, green eyes closing soon afterward.
~
He moaned as she pressed at his neck, encountering the swollen glands.
“Your name,” she said softly, as her hands traveled his hair line, lifting his head up and cushioning it more comfortably.
“Alistair,” he panted, looking her in the eyes, as if he wanted her to remember him, as if he wanted to matter.
“Nixie,” she whispered back. Though he had not asked, she knew it mattered.
~
He thrashed on her small cot of a bed in the bare single room. Throwing the blankets to the floor, his moans joined the others coming through the walls.
Quickly, she wrung out the rags in her hands and ran to him, her simple dress swishing around her ankles, too slowly for her movements.
She tried placing them on his head, on his body to cool him, to ease his fever and his headache, but he only mumbled to himself: “I can’t… it’s too much… it hurts…”
“I know,” she soothed brushing down his naked chest with the cloth.
It was then that she saw the first spot of red.
~
The next day, the spot of red had turned black. She held back his long curly hair from his face as he threw up into a bucket.
“I’m dying.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He fell back onto the cot; she let go of his hair and kneeled in front of him.
Weakly, he smiled. He fingered her blue hair gingerly, afraid of touching her too much. “I wish I had known you before I was dying.”
~
Alistair screamed once more, and all Nixie could do was cry for him. Every time he squeezed her hand, she gripped his just as tightly.
In a moment of delirium, he said to her, “You tried to save me.”
A smile wobbled through the tears.
“But who will try to save you?”
~
At first, Nixie had tried to hold him down through the convulsions, but he was too strong and too big, weak and sick as was. Instead, she held a hand as tightly as she could with both of hers, willing him to die, willing him to let go, willing him peace.
She cried the entire time.
When the spasms finally stopped, the tears did not.
~
As the sun rose the next day, she dragged his body out and down the street. Pick-up would take care of it.
Entering her room once more, Nixie slumped against the door, hugging herself. It was then that she felt the first bump under her arm.
~
Feeling her spasms strengthen, Nixie thought of Alistair. She always did at the end.
“How many more times will I try to save you? How many more times will you not save me?”
------
Nixie means "water sprite"; Alistair means "man's defender."
According to wikipedia, a myth behind the naming of the flower forget-me-not is that a medieval knight & his lady were walking by a river. He tried to pick the flower that she admired but fell into the river due to the weight of his armor. Throwing the flower to his love, he shouted, "Forget me not!" The flower supposedly used to represent tragic romance. Now, it typically represents true love and memories.