What Is Done In the Waiting (Alice/Uncas) 3/3
Disclaimer: I make no profit off this story it is simply a way to amuse myself and anyone who is bored enough to read it.
Summary: Alice/Uncas. "She wants him to come for her, to walk through the proverbial fire, to save her. She wants him to be the Nathaniel to her Cora. She wants to live." Alice excerpts up to the fateful cliff scene.
Companion fic to 'What is Said In the Silence' (Uncas's story) and although it can be read alone I suggest you go read the other first (or after). It can be found here. Chapter 1 , Chapter 2
Warning: Adult themes will include death, sex, and a heavy load of angst. Rated PG13.
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"What is Done in the Waiting"
Part Three
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Last time:
And she feels something now. Something other than despair and overwhelming grief. She feels desire. Desire for wanting life. Desire for him. She is desperate to feel anything other than the grief, so she takes hold of the desire and lets it flood her, washing away anything else.
She lets it rise inside and something foreign and desperate and hungry is unleashed. She wants him. And she is so desperate with the wanting that it is not want at all but need. Desperate hungry need. To forget and to feel. She is deranged with need.
She presses her lips harshly against his. When he opens to her the hunger only grows. He tastes of smoke and life. Or perhaps it is herself that she tastes on him. She doesn't know. She can't tell anymore. It seems as if they have always been like this, connected. She can't remember where she starts and he ends.
It should not be perfect. She is tired and afraid and so horribly sad. It should not feel good or right or any of those things. It should not be perfect at all.
But it is.
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She presses her lips hard into his. As if the desperate press of skin on skin can take away all of her pain. As if the force of her lips and teeth and tongue can make everything else disappear.
When he pulls back the look in his eyes speaks of confusion and the beginnings of regret.
She doesn't think she can stand it if he pulls away now, when she needs him the most. She doesn't think she could stand to be alone with only herself and the memory of her fathers still body. She needs him.
"Uncas."
She says his name in a voice that sounds nothing like her. But she supposes she is nothing like her old self. Because the old her would never beg a Indian for anything. And yet that is what she does. In that one word she begs and pleads for him to stay.
And he does.
And when his tongue tangles with hers she has never been so grateful because with his touch comes the forgetting that she craves. But she needs more than just the touch of his mouth to hers, she needs much more. She craves him.
She makes quick work of the laces on her own dress and then reaches for his shirt, desperate to see him. To touch him. Beneath her hands he feels like molten silk, like something dangerous but exciting at the same time. She marvels at how frail her hands feel against the coiled strength, the solidness of him. Heat scores its way through his skin and across her palms. She knows she is playing with fire and will get burned but in this moment she doesn't care. She wants more. She needs more.
She guides his hands to her dress and together they pull it over and off. Her fingers stroke their way across the markings on his chest, faded black on skin of bronze. His own fingers fumble along the back laces of her corset. She intertwines hers with his and together make quick work of the corset and then her chemise.
He looks at her, his eyes drinking her in, roving hungrily over every part of her. She is still covered by her sleeveless white slip and yet she feels naked. Laid bare. In all of her life she had never felt more exposed. In all of her life she had never felt more desirable. The way he looks at her makes her feel small and feminine.
He is everything she is not. The hard planes of his chest, the swell of the muscles in his arms, the stark lines of his neck. She is fascinated by the differences between them, his hardness to her softness. She is aware with every fiber in her being that she is female and he is male. Her veins thrum with it.
She can't stop touching him. Her hands are everywhere, desperate greedy hands. While he touches her with something like reverence, his hands soft and gentle, as if he's afraid she will shatter in his palms like the delicate porcelain doll he must think she is.
So it is left to her to guide his hands, to show him where and how to touch her. It is left to her to reach for him and guide him to her and fit them together. She knows that she will not shatter, not in this moment. In this moment she is desirable and beautiful, if only in his eyes. In this moment she is deliciously filled up, with lust and with him and with life. In this moment the terrible loneliness from before is gone. In this moment she is invincible. So she takes what she wants, consequences be damned.
It is all happening so fast. There is no time to linger, to explore each others bodies and learn every nuance of pleasure. There is only the desperate press of flesh on flesh.
She is afraid to stop.
She is afraid that any hesitation will make the warmth over them, the fantasy of it, the crazy lack of rational disappear. She is afraid that if they stop, if only for a moment, it will burst the warm safe bubble that makes everything, all of this, possible. So she stores all of it away, every detail. She drinks in every little sound he makes, every gasp, every foreign word in his native tongue. She wants to remember his scent, the cadence of his heartbeat, the feel of his skin, so that when reality crashes back in she still has something to hold onto.
The Alice from before would never have been so bold. The old Alice would have never touch him, taken him, loved him. But the old Alice is dead, lying on a field side by side with her dead father. This new Alice is born out of grief and blind desperation and can remember nothing of the well bred woman of before with her rules and guidelines and proper behaviors. She knows none of that. All she knows now is him beneath her and the scorching ache inside and reaching for that something that has been building.
She stares down at where they connect and the sight of it catches her breath in her throat and her body tightens painfully and ohhh...
She can't breathe, she can't think. She can't even remember her own name. She is floating into a vast nothingness that resonates into every beat of her heart and every molecule of her being. She rides out the shudders of release in a daze until the last shivers fade. And despite the cold and frigid mist from the falls she feels warm for the first time that she can remember.
She could feel the soft pant of his breathe in the hollow of her neck, the telltale warmth of his release. Her body feels heavy and slow, her mind struggling to catch up. Slowly things stopped spinning and begin to focus around her. Reality comes crashing in along with the shame. Crushing shame and overwhelming guilt.
She feels the tears rise to cloud her eyes and bites the inside of her cheek hard and tries desperately not to cry. But it is no use. She turns away from him so he will not see her tears fall, so he will not witness her shame. He reaches for her, pulls her close, holding her tight. It does not help. If anything the comforting embrace cause her tears to fall faster. She feels nausea burn its way up her throat. She feels violently ill, lightheaded, filled with the of stinging bile of self-disgust.
She shivers in the thrall of something so devastating, so overwhelming that her chest physically aches. Her tears slow, salty on her lips, and she feels the inevitability of it all, the hopelessness.
And there it is again, the feeling of helplessness, of utter uselessness. She is incandescent with it.
There is only desolation and despair. Then finally there is the numb that she has been craving. She lets it wash over her, she looses herself to it. Relief. She sees no other choice than to withdraw inside of herself.
She stares vacantly through him as he dresses her, her thoughts in a whirl spinning and dancing at random. He is wrapping the corset about her waist when she feels the spark of rage ignite. She stands, ripping it from his grasp, and hurls it into the falls watching as it disappears from view. Even though it is gone she does not feel lighter of freer. Instead she feels a heavy weight settle further on her chest, constricting like an iron cage. She feels the rage replaced with numb and her knees buckle beneath her.
She is so overwhelmingly tired.
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He leaves her with the others than disappears to the surface. She is gone as well, living in some dark recess of her mind.
Too many emotions too soon have left her drained dry inside. She stares down at the wet stone floor and the ruined edge of her hem. Time escapes her. Hours or brief seconds later he crouches down beside her, Chingachgook.
His sharp eyes miss nothing and she can't help feeling like he has come to defend his sons lost honor in a bizarre alternate universe. He takes in her flushed face, disheveled clothes and hair. If she was not so swept up in herself she would have blushed underneath his scrutiny, a fallen women with a scarlet letter.
She knows what he has come to say. It is what her father would say to her if her were here. That they are from different worlds and different cultures, a kind apart. Without sense.
Pale face no good for Mohican. Fair hair make heart of Uncas weak like water.
The words themselves are so much more the harder to hear because she knows that they are true.
Uncas must go to can-tuck-ee. Uncas must find Delaware woman and make Mohican children.
The words wound, piercing through the thick numbing fog. She knows he sees her as weak. He is right. She has always been weak. Even though the words themselves are hurtful his eyes are gentle his expression knowing. There is a great sadness about him, the last father of a dying race.
He leaves her then and she slips again into the whirling fog of her mind.
The truth was that she did not regret it. She was trying her best to feel shame at the deed but even that emotion was fleeting. Even though she had been taught her whole life that giving of her flesh outside of a marriage bed was a sin, evil in the eyes of god, she could not help feeling like it had been the most natural thing in the world. If she had the chance to do it all over again, she would do it all the same.
In truth it was the most beautiful act she had ever done, giving of herself, sharing that part of her with another person. She had never felt so close to another.
She had cried because she had already seen the end of it. There was no future that contained a life for them, together.
She had cried for her lost father and the dozens of others dead.
She had cried because she had known with overwhelming surety that she would not make it home.
She would die, here.
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They enter with fearsome cries and faces painted in black and the wind at their heels. It smells like smoke and death. The flickering light of the dying fire makes their faces only more heinous and fierce.
The faces of monsters.
The others have leapt into the falls. To stay would mean slaughter. Chingachgook is gone. Nathaniel is gone. Uncas is gone.
They tie their hands and loop a rope around their necks. She lets them. To her right Cora struggles, cursing them.
It does not matter anymore.
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Her wrists, bound together, grind a soundless rhythm to match her footsteps. Her feet feel heavy, weighted. She is so exhausted. The terror that swims through her veins tires her further. It is an effort to feel so much for so long. Despite herself she finds her shoulders relaxing, her lids lowering, her step slowing. It is easier to block out the uncertainty and fear and focus solely on the exhaustion. She is numbed with exhausted. She welcomes the numb.
Thick stands of trees give way to an open plane, home to a small village full of people. They gather around, herding them to the center. The heat of the bodies surrounds and smothers her, suffocating in its closeness. She wishes fiercely for the cool horizon of the falls. She listens vaguely as they decide her fate. The words mean nothing to her, she understand none of it. She can't bring herself to care, even as Nathaniel comes for Cora and she is left alone. She is far beyond caring anymore. Even Duncan's screams as he disintegrates to flames seem like something happening to someone else, away from her and outside of where she is.
As they leave the village, feet climbing higher and higher, her stomach lurches with familiar fear and something else that feels like the beginning of the end.
The taste of finality lingers, filling her mouth.
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Her body is pushed and tugged along when she is too slow for their liking. Her hands left free. It angers her that she is so weak in their eyes they do not even bind her, but the anger is brief and fleeting. She would attempt escape if only she could muster the energy. They are right in their estimation, she is weak and pathetic. She stares blankly ahead at the back in front of her. Somewhere inside she registers the crunch of gravel beneath her feet and the rhythmic shift of bare shoulder blades in front. But it is all overwhelmed by the numb that blankets her.
Up ahead their leader sulks, like a child deprived of a trinket. Underneath the numb she is fiercely glad that Cora is no longer beside her, even though it means she is alone. Unbidden the image of him plays across her vision. She wants him to come for her, to walk through the proverbial fire, to save her. She wants him to be the Nathaniel to her Cora. She wants to live.
As they reach the top of the climb, a narrow path upon a sheer edge, somethings shifts in the air surrounding, something so subtle and slight she almost ignores. But the feeling remains, pulsing and pushing at her. Something is about to happen. This is the moment when everything will change.
A gunshot rings out, then a shout, a scream, and from around the bend he comes. The elation she feels swiftly dies as she realizes that he is alone. There are too many. She now hates herself for her wish for rescue. She does not want anyone to die for her. Somehow he fights his way up to her. His eyes meet hers, dark and full of promises, and she wants to tell him to leave her, that she is not worth dying for. But the words refuse to come.
Beside her the leader draws his blade, eager lust painted across his face. Then everything happens far too fast. Their limbs tangle in a deadly dance of steel and skin. She has never been so afraid. Or helpless. Or without.
They grapple on the edge, a seasoned warrior and the son of the last of the mohicans. She is conscious then of his youth, he can hardly be much older than her. She wants to cry out at the unfairness of it all, but her throat feels raw and dry and robbed of her voice.
Their movements are fluid, a beautiful deadly waltz. Then, with a a move so quick her eyes cannot follow it, he is brought to his knees. Inside she is screaming, crying hysterically. Outwardly she is frozen. And she knows, this is what everything has been building toward. This is the moment.
His face is expressionless, an empty void where emotion should exist. He holds him, her... her what?, lover? would-be-savior? by the throat. Sunlight glints off where the line of the blade touches skin. Time slows down abruptly and she can count the drops of sweat on his brow and the angry lines around his mouth. His eyes tell stories of vengeance and revenge. Everything seems brighter and fuller, the air thicker and heavier. Then, as she sees the subtle twist of his hand on the handle, time roars back alive.
There is a burning, tearing, tingling sensation streaking down her legs that has her knees buckling as if it was her flesh under the knife. Then all she sees is the blood that follows, so much red. All she can see is him... choking, gasping, dying.
There is a strange roaring in her ears that drowns out even the thick tremor of her heartbeat. She wants to close her eyes, to press her fists so tightly to them that all she will see are dancing spots. But something compels her to keep them open, watching. The same compulsion has her stepping forward to watch as he sails over the edge. The sight of him soaring downwards, his body melding against the rocks, stills something inside her. She is suddenly and inexplicably collected, composed and serene. All the fear, hate, sorrow of before has fled leaving a calm center. An overwhelming clarity fills her to the brim. Her toes tremble at the edge. The wind pulses at her back, urging her forward and over. Urging her to follow.
She can hear it... drip drip drip.
She sees red mix with the ground. Muddy brown. He holds out a hand of red, the other clench tight around the handle... drip drip drip.
She stares down at it for a long moment. She watches how the red darkens underneath his nails and fills the crevice of knuckles... drip drip drip.
She can read his eyes, no longer stoic or as hard. His head tilts, questioning, beckoning.
She turns away.
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She had spent her whole life idle, standing by and watching as things were done around her and to her.
She watched as her mother died and her father left for the continent. She watched Duncan court Cora even as she wished fiercely it was her hand he was determined to win. But she was frozen only capable of watching, and hated herself for doing nothing.
They followed her father to this land and journey across. Then as the red warriors attack with faces dipped in black and screams of war she is immobilized by terror. She stands by helpless and without. Without a way to stop it or fight it or make it disappear. All she could do was wait, wait to be saved or wait to die.
He saved her, this man with gentle hands and smiling eyes. Even as she is frozen in horror as death follows them to the fort and outside it, he is there. When she watches her father fall and break and all the blood that follows he is there to gather her off the ground and take her to the cool safety beneath. There in the cave, for a brief glorious moment, she stops waiting and takes hold of him and tries to forget. But she can't forget. And when they come with eager hands and faces smeared in smoke he is lost to the falls and there is no one to save her. The one who killed her father ties their hands and marches them away and she is helpless. She is helpless and she stands by waiting, always waiting.
And now she watches as he fights for her. She watches as he dies for her. She watches as he falls. And when the man with eyes filled with death reaches out his hand wet with red she knows that the time to act has come.
She is tired of doing nothing, of always waiting. And now, at last, she is finally ready. Ready to stop waiting and to do because this time it is he who waits for her. She turns to face sky and the edge of nothing and yet everything.
He waits for her below and above and within, all around. She is ready.
She leaps.
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There is sky all around her merging with earth.
There is the smell of sunshine.
There is the pounding of her heart and the blue black of his hair.
Then there is nothing.
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Fin
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Keep your eyes peeled for another multi-chaptered fic (I'm currently working on) that will explore what-ifs. What-if Uncas was not pushed off the cliff? What if Alice had not committed suicide? What if Magua did what he had intended before, take her home as his unwilling bride. How would the story unfold? Stay tuned!
Summary: Alice/Uncas. "She wants him to come for her, to walk through the proverbial fire, to save her. She wants him to be the Nathaniel to her Cora. She wants to live." Alice excerpts up to the fateful cliff scene.
Companion fic to 'What is Said In the Silence' (Uncas's story) and although it can be read alone I suggest you go read the other first (or after). It can be found here. Chapter 1 , Chapter 2
Warning: Adult themes will include death, sex, and a heavy load of angst. Rated PG13.
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"What is Done in the Waiting"
Part Three
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Last time:
And she feels something now. Something other than despair and overwhelming grief. She feels desire. Desire for wanting life. Desire for him. She is desperate to feel anything other than the grief, so she takes hold of the desire and lets it flood her, washing away anything else.
She lets it rise inside and something foreign and desperate and hungry is unleashed. She wants him. And she is so desperate with the wanting that it is not want at all but need. Desperate hungry need. To forget and to feel. She is deranged with need.
She presses her lips harshly against his. When he opens to her the hunger only grows. He tastes of smoke and life. Or perhaps it is herself that she tastes on him. She doesn't know. She can't tell anymore. It seems as if they have always been like this, connected. She can't remember where she starts and he ends.
It should not be perfect. She is tired and afraid and so horribly sad. It should not feel good or right or any of those things. It should not be perfect at all.
But it is.
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She presses her lips hard into his. As if the desperate press of skin on skin can take away all of her pain. As if the force of her lips and teeth and tongue can make everything else disappear.
When he pulls back the look in his eyes speaks of confusion and the beginnings of regret.
She doesn't think she can stand it if he pulls away now, when she needs him the most. She doesn't think she could stand to be alone with only herself and the memory of her fathers still body. She needs him.
"Uncas."
She says his name in a voice that sounds nothing like her. But she supposes she is nothing like her old self. Because the old her would never beg a Indian for anything. And yet that is what she does. In that one word she begs and pleads for him to stay.
And he does.
And when his tongue tangles with hers she has never been so grateful because with his touch comes the forgetting that she craves. But she needs more than just the touch of his mouth to hers, she needs much more. She craves him.
She makes quick work of the laces on her own dress and then reaches for his shirt, desperate to see him. To touch him. Beneath her hands he feels like molten silk, like something dangerous but exciting at the same time. She marvels at how frail her hands feel against the coiled strength, the solidness of him. Heat scores its way through his skin and across her palms. She knows she is playing with fire and will get burned but in this moment she doesn't care. She wants more. She needs more.
She guides his hands to her dress and together they pull it over and off. Her fingers stroke their way across the markings on his chest, faded black on skin of bronze. His own fingers fumble along the back laces of her corset. She intertwines hers with his and together make quick work of the corset and then her chemise.
He looks at her, his eyes drinking her in, roving hungrily over every part of her. She is still covered by her sleeveless white slip and yet she feels naked. Laid bare. In all of her life she had never felt more exposed. In all of her life she had never felt more desirable. The way he looks at her makes her feel small and feminine.
He is everything she is not. The hard planes of his chest, the swell of the muscles in his arms, the stark lines of his neck. She is fascinated by the differences between them, his hardness to her softness. She is aware with every fiber in her being that she is female and he is male. Her veins thrum with it.
She can't stop touching him. Her hands are everywhere, desperate greedy hands. While he touches her with something like reverence, his hands soft and gentle, as if he's afraid she will shatter in his palms like the delicate porcelain doll he must think she is.
So it is left to her to guide his hands, to show him where and how to touch her. It is left to her to reach for him and guide him to her and fit them together. She knows that she will not shatter, not in this moment. In this moment she is desirable and beautiful, if only in his eyes. In this moment she is deliciously filled up, with lust and with him and with life. In this moment the terrible loneliness from before is gone. In this moment she is invincible. So she takes what she wants, consequences be damned.
It is all happening so fast. There is no time to linger, to explore each others bodies and learn every nuance of pleasure. There is only the desperate press of flesh on flesh.
She is afraid to stop.
She is afraid that any hesitation will make the warmth over them, the fantasy of it, the crazy lack of rational disappear. She is afraid that if they stop, if only for a moment, it will burst the warm safe bubble that makes everything, all of this, possible. So she stores all of it away, every detail. She drinks in every little sound he makes, every gasp, every foreign word in his native tongue. She wants to remember his scent, the cadence of his heartbeat, the feel of his skin, so that when reality crashes back in she still has something to hold onto.
The Alice from before would never have been so bold. The old Alice would have never touch him, taken him, loved him. But the old Alice is dead, lying on a field side by side with her dead father. This new Alice is born out of grief and blind desperation and can remember nothing of the well bred woman of before with her rules and guidelines and proper behaviors. She knows none of that. All she knows now is him beneath her and the scorching ache inside and reaching for that something that has been building.
She stares down at where they connect and the sight of it catches her breath in her throat and her body tightens painfully and ohhh...
She can't breathe, she can't think. She can't even remember her own name. She is floating into a vast nothingness that resonates into every beat of her heart and every molecule of her being. She rides out the shudders of release in a daze until the last shivers fade. And despite the cold and frigid mist from the falls she feels warm for the first time that she can remember.
She could feel the soft pant of his breathe in the hollow of her neck, the telltale warmth of his release. Her body feels heavy and slow, her mind struggling to catch up. Slowly things stopped spinning and begin to focus around her. Reality comes crashing in along with the shame. Crushing shame and overwhelming guilt.
She feels the tears rise to cloud her eyes and bites the inside of her cheek hard and tries desperately not to cry. But it is no use. She turns away from him so he will not see her tears fall, so he will not witness her shame. He reaches for her, pulls her close, holding her tight. It does not help. If anything the comforting embrace cause her tears to fall faster. She feels nausea burn its way up her throat. She feels violently ill, lightheaded, filled with the of stinging bile of self-disgust.
She shivers in the thrall of something so devastating, so overwhelming that her chest physically aches. Her tears slow, salty on her lips, and she feels the inevitability of it all, the hopelessness.
And there it is again, the feeling of helplessness, of utter uselessness. She is incandescent with it.
There is only desolation and despair. Then finally there is the numb that she has been craving. She lets it wash over her, she looses herself to it. Relief. She sees no other choice than to withdraw inside of herself.
She stares vacantly through him as he dresses her, her thoughts in a whirl spinning and dancing at random. He is wrapping the corset about her waist when she feels the spark of rage ignite. She stands, ripping it from his grasp, and hurls it into the falls watching as it disappears from view. Even though it is gone she does not feel lighter of freer. Instead she feels a heavy weight settle further on her chest, constricting like an iron cage. She feels the rage replaced with numb and her knees buckle beneath her.
She is so overwhelmingly tired.
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He leaves her with the others than disappears to the surface. She is gone as well, living in some dark recess of her mind.
Too many emotions too soon have left her drained dry inside. She stares down at the wet stone floor and the ruined edge of her hem. Time escapes her. Hours or brief seconds later he crouches down beside her, Chingachgook.
His sharp eyes miss nothing and she can't help feeling like he has come to defend his sons lost honor in a bizarre alternate universe. He takes in her flushed face, disheveled clothes and hair. If she was not so swept up in herself she would have blushed underneath his scrutiny, a fallen women with a scarlet letter.
She knows what he has come to say. It is what her father would say to her if her were here. That they are from different worlds and different cultures, a kind apart. Without sense.
Pale face no good for Mohican. Fair hair make heart of Uncas weak like water.
The words themselves are so much more the harder to hear because she knows that they are true.
Uncas must go to can-tuck-ee. Uncas must find Delaware woman and make Mohican children.
The words wound, piercing through the thick numbing fog. She knows he sees her as weak. He is right. She has always been weak. Even though the words themselves are hurtful his eyes are gentle his expression knowing. There is a great sadness about him, the last father of a dying race.
He leaves her then and she slips again into the whirling fog of her mind.
The truth was that she did not regret it. She was trying her best to feel shame at the deed but even that emotion was fleeting. Even though she had been taught her whole life that giving of her flesh outside of a marriage bed was a sin, evil in the eyes of god, she could not help feeling like it had been the most natural thing in the world. If she had the chance to do it all over again, she would do it all the same.
In truth it was the most beautiful act she had ever done, giving of herself, sharing that part of her with another person. She had never felt so close to another.
She had cried because she had already seen the end of it. There was no future that contained a life for them, together.
She had cried for her lost father and the dozens of others dead.
She had cried because she had known with overwhelming surety that she would not make it home.
She would die, here.
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They enter with fearsome cries and faces painted in black and the wind at their heels. It smells like smoke and death. The flickering light of the dying fire makes their faces only more heinous and fierce.
The faces of monsters.
The others have leapt into the falls. To stay would mean slaughter. Chingachgook is gone. Nathaniel is gone. Uncas is gone.
They tie their hands and loop a rope around their necks. She lets them. To her right Cora struggles, cursing them.
It does not matter anymore.
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Her wrists, bound together, grind a soundless rhythm to match her footsteps. Her feet feel heavy, weighted. She is so exhausted. The terror that swims through her veins tires her further. It is an effort to feel so much for so long. Despite herself she finds her shoulders relaxing, her lids lowering, her step slowing. It is easier to block out the uncertainty and fear and focus solely on the exhaustion. She is numbed with exhausted. She welcomes the numb.
Thick stands of trees give way to an open plane, home to a small village full of people. They gather around, herding them to the center. The heat of the bodies surrounds and smothers her, suffocating in its closeness. She wishes fiercely for the cool horizon of the falls. She listens vaguely as they decide her fate. The words mean nothing to her, she understand none of it. She can't bring herself to care, even as Nathaniel comes for Cora and she is left alone. She is far beyond caring anymore. Even Duncan's screams as he disintegrates to flames seem like something happening to someone else, away from her and outside of where she is.
As they leave the village, feet climbing higher and higher, her stomach lurches with familiar fear and something else that feels like the beginning of the end.
The taste of finality lingers, filling her mouth.
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Her body is pushed and tugged along when she is too slow for their liking. Her hands left free. It angers her that she is so weak in their eyes they do not even bind her, but the anger is brief and fleeting. She would attempt escape if only she could muster the energy. They are right in their estimation, she is weak and pathetic. She stares blankly ahead at the back in front of her. Somewhere inside she registers the crunch of gravel beneath her feet and the rhythmic shift of bare shoulder blades in front. But it is all overwhelmed by the numb that blankets her.
Up ahead their leader sulks, like a child deprived of a trinket. Underneath the numb she is fiercely glad that Cora is no longer beside her, even though it means she is alone. Unbidden the image of him plays across her vision. She wants him to come for her, to walk through the proverbial fire, to save her. She wants him to be the Nathaniel to her Cora. She wants to live.
As they reach the top of the climb, a narrow path upon a sheer edge, somethings shifts in the air surrounding, something so subtle and slight she almost ignores. But the feeling remains, pulsing and pushing at her. Something is about to happen. This is the moment when everything will change.
A gunshot rings out, then a shout, a scream, and from around the bend he comes. The elation she feels swiftly dies as she realizes that he is alone. There are too many. She now hates herself for her wish for rescue. She does not want anyone to die for her. Somehow he fights his way up to her. His eyes meet hers, dark and full of promises, and she wants to tell him to leave her, that she is not worth dying for. But the words refuse to come.
Beside her the leader draws his blade, eager lust painted across his face. Then everything happens far too fast. Their limbs tangle in a deadly dance of steel and skin. She has never been so afraid. Or helpless. Or without.
They grapple on the edge, a seasoned warrior and the son of the last of the mohicans. She is conscious then of his youth, he can hardly be much older than her. She wants to cry out at the unfairness of it all, but her throat feels raw and dry and robbed of her voice.
Their movements are fluid, a beautiful deadly waltz. Then, with a a move so quick her eyes cannot follow it, he is brought to his knees. Inside she is screaming, crying hysterically. Outwardly she is frozen. And she knows, this is what everything has been building toward. This is the moment.
His face is expressionless, an empty void where emotion should exist. He holds him, her... her what?, lover? would-be-savior? by the throat. Sunlight glints off where the line of the blade touches skin. Time slows down abruptly and she can count the drops of sweat on his brow and the angry lines around his mouth. His eyes tell stories of vengeance and revenge. Everything seems brighter and fuller, the air thicker and heavier. Then, as she sees the subtle twist of his hand on the handle, time roars back alive.
There is a burning, tearing, tingling sensation streaking down her legs that has her knees buckling as if it was her flesh under the knife. Then all she sees is the blood that follows, so much red. All she can see is him... choking, gasping, dying.
There is a strange roaring in her ears that drowns out even the thick tremor of her heartbeat. She wants to close her eyes, to press her fists so tightly to them that all she will see are dancing spots. But something compels her to keep them open, watching. The same compulsion has her stepping forward to watch as he sails over the edge. The sight of him soaring downwards, his body melding against the rocks, stills something inside her. She is suddenly and inexplicably collected, composed and serene. All the fear, hate, sorrow of before has fled leaving a calm center. An overwhelming clarity fills her to the brim. Her toes tremble at the edge. The wind pulses at her back, urging her forward and over. Urging her to follow.
She can hear it... drip drip drip.
She sees red mix with the ground. Muddy brown. He holds out a hand of red, the other clench tight around the handle... drip drip drip.
She stares down at it for a long moment. She watches how the red darkens underneath his nails and fills the crevice of knuckles... drip drip drip.
She can read his eyes, no longer stoic or as hard. His head tilts, questioning, beckoning.
She turns away.
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She had spent her whole life idle, standing by and watching as things were done around her and to her.
She watched as her mother died and her father left for the continent. She watched Duncan court Cora even as she wished fiercely it was her hand he was determined to win. But she was frozen only capable of watching, and hated herself for doing nothing.
They followed her father to this land and journey across. Then as the red warriors attack with faces dipped in black and screams of war she is immobilized by terror. She stands by helpless and without. Without a way to stop it or fight it or make it disappear. All she could do was wait, wait to be saved or wait to die.
He saved her, this man with gentle hands and smiling eyes. Even as she is frozen in horror as death follows them to the fort and outside it, he is there. When she watches her father fall and break and all the blood that follows he is there to gather her off the ground and take her to the cool safety beneath. There in the cave, for a brief glorious moment, she stops waiting and takes hold of him and tries to forget. But she can't forget. And when they come with eager hands and faces smeared in smoke he is lost to the falls and there is no one to save her. The one who killed her father ties their hands and marches them away and she is helpless. She is helpless and she stands by waiting, always waiting.
And now she watches as he fights for her. She watches as he dies for her. She watches as he falls. And when the man with eyes filled with death reaches out his hand wet with red she knows that the time to act has come.
She is tired of doing nothing, of always waiting. And now, at last, she is finally ready. Ready to stop waiting and to do because this time it is he who waits for her. She turns to face sky and the edge of nothing and yet everything.
He waits for her below and above and within, all around. She is ready.
She leaps.
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There is sky all around her merging with earth.
There is the smell of sunshine.
There is the pounding of her heart and the blue black of his hair.
Then there is nothing.
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Fin
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Keep your eyes peeled for another multi-chaptered fic (I'm currently working on) that will explore what-ifs. What-if Uncas was not pushed off the cliff? What if Alice had not committed suicide? What if Magua did what he had intended before, take her home as his unwilling bride. How would the story unfold? Stay tuned!