Ficlet: Epiphany
Title: Epiphany
Author: ctquill
Word Count: 651
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Allan
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers for 3x12, character death. (I know the gang might not have kept watch after S1 thanks to Will's ingenuity, but bear with me.)
Summary: Allan realises how much he's changed.
Disclaimer: Characters belong to the BBC and Tiger Aspect.
Allan slouched against a tree, his hand resting on the hilt of one of his swords. His eyes had long since adapted to the heavy darkness that surrounded him. If he turned his head to the side, one of the tree trunks opposite looked a little like a shapely wench--there was the line of her leg and there the arch of her back. If he angled his head the other way, he could make out her hips and a nicely curved bum.
He rubbed his hands together, trying to restore some feeling to his fingers. Time was, he'd have snuck off during his watch, especially on a night like this; found a warm hollow to doze in or even wandered down to the nearest village to see what comforts he could scrounge there.
Time was, he'd have been in the back room of a tavern taking coins from the enemy. He'd have used his watch to count his silver.
Allan a' Dale might be a liar, but even he wouldn't have called himself reliable.
He'd been responsible for them, for his friends, at those times. Some nights he'd stayed and done his job and some nights he couldn't be bothered. It hadn't occurred to him then--or if it had it had been too big a thought to fit inside his head--that he held their lives in his hands.
Later, he'd known it, alright, and the power had intoxicated him. For a while. Drunk on black leather and silver coins and resentment and a throbbing in his fingers that felt like Robin's heart. But when everything got a bit too real, it had struck him--the fear, the biting fear that came with that power and that responsibility. He'd never been one to consider consequences, and now he had that heart pulsing in his hands along with his own blood, and he had to decide whether to shield it or crush it.
Sobriety and power were terrible companions.
The others might never have known that he wasn't there while they slept; but he did. How could anyone trust you if you didn't trust yourself?
So here he was, freezing his arse off and scanning the midnight trees for movement and listening for a break or shift in the texture of the night-time sounds. Vigilant. And he didn't even want to be elsewhere--warmer, yeah, but not anywhere that wasn't protecting them.
I would die for them
The thought stilled his mind, solidifying, seeming to bend the rest of him around it.
He nearly had, of course, many times, but at the beginning it was just a lark, a game, with a dose of gratitude. Then it was to prove himself, to earn something they'd never promised him he could have back. Now it was this...this certainty. In these people. In himself.
I would die for them.
Allan, the survivor, smiled.
*
A few weeks later, the memory of that night is bitter on his tongue, blending with the taste of his own blood. His leg is screaming agony, the arrows keep singing past him like he's caught in a deadly rainstorm, and he keeps running. He forces himself on despite the rising blackness and swimming trees, despite the bruises on his arms and throat from John's fingers, the scraped skin on his wrists from the ropes, despite how easy it would be to give up, to just sink.
He keeps running through the nausea and pain, through air thick with feathered shafts and his own laboured breathing. Even as the bruising impact of the ground under his feet ceases, even as he falls into the crimson darkness, he repeats the words again and again, chanting them in his head.
I can't stop. I have to get to them. I have to warn them. I have to stay alive long enough. I will live for them.
I will live for them.