Follow Up, Part Two. :-)
Continuing with the follow-up to Latin_Doll's prison fics. :-)
Part I
Butterflies are Free
Part II
The light changes through the afternoon, turning sallow - the yellow-green of storm light - and Polly hopes that it means rain is coming, or at least clouds to block the stars and make their escape that little bit easier.
Finally, finally, the light deepens to the searing copper of sunset. Polly realizes that she has been gripping her sword, white-knuckled, all day. She switches hands, briefly, flexing her fingers and shaking some feeling back into them.
The sun sinks lower, still, until it fades below the horizon.
“Soon,” Mal breathes, so quietly that Polly isn’t really sure she’s heard it.
Polly nods in the deepening darkness, knowing that Mal can see her moving. She shrugs off her red jacket and wraps it around her sword, tying the sleeves tightly to make an easily draggable bundle.
Outside, the light flickers. A moment later, Polly nearly jumps out of her skin when thunder growls loudly overhead.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Polly thinks, not knowing who or what she’s thanking.
They leave when the rain is bucketing out of the inky sky, bouncing hard off the strand, making the river shudder and splash. Mal passes through the gap easily, wisps of mist and fog, easily overlooked on a wet night such as this. Polly wriggles through on her side, anxious to feel the rain on her face, aching for the icy river water that will maybe, maybe, make her feel clean again. Even just a little bit.
She creeps upstream, towards the ford, finding a place where the water looks deep enough to swim, but shallow enough that she won’t lose her footing and be swept away. She wonders if she is too close, if the lights of the keep, reflecting dimly off the choppy water, will catch her, but she isn’t about to turn back.
She crawls on her stomach, nudging the bundle of her jacket and sword forward foot by foot in front of her. She hopes, hopes against hope, that the rain, the dark clouds, and Mal’s hovering, misty presence drifting around her, are enough to keep her from being seen. She hopes that the guards on watch tonight are the sort to huddle in the lee of a wall to keep out of the rain, rather than stand at the edge of the parapet actually looking for enemies who couldn’t possibly be out on a night like tonight.
Her fingers find the water’s edge, and she gasps, shocked at the cold. She crawls into the water. It is deep enough, here, to chill her to the waist, but she bends low over the waves, holder her crumpled jacket against her scalp, her sword bundled into it in a likely-futile effort to keep the weapon from rusting. The rain soaks through her already drenched shirt as she feels her way across the narrow river.
When the water is shallow enough that she is crawling on her knees to keep herself low, when she is close enough to the far shore that she can reach out and touch it, dropping the bundle of wool and steel onto the rain-drenched stones, she dunks her head under the icy water. For the few short seconds that she can stand it, she rubs at her raw, tingling scalp and her face, trying to scrub at least some of the grime away.
She comes up gasping, ineffectually shaking water out of her eyes as the rain pounds against her naked scalp.
She crawls out of the water, inching over the strand and dragging her bundle beside her, making her way, torturously slowly - as slowly as she had moved when she’d stolen the scissors - towards the high grasses that she can just make out ahead of her, and then further, as the dripping grasses close around her and the lights of the keep fade away, leaving her in darkness.
“Mal,” she whispers to the night. Of course, there is no reply. Mist has no voice, after all. “Mal, there’s a problem,” she continues, despite wondering if Mal can hear with no ears. “I can’t actually see anything anymore.”
Of course, this means there’s a reasonable chance that any guards around the place can’t see her, either, but that doesn’t make getting to the cover of the woods any easier.
In the long grass, Polly stops moving. By feel, she shakes out her sodden jacket and shrugs it on. Taking her sword in her hand, she prods at the darkness, feeling her way with the blade. Her shoulders are screaming with tension, so certain is she of the cross-bow bolt aimed between them, and she has already begun to shiver violently from the cold and rain.
After what feels like an eternity, her sword knocks against a tree. Polly crawls under the canopy, groping for the trunk with shaking hands, grateful for the shelter it provides. She blinks water vapour out of her eyes, forgetting for a moment that it’s Mal hovering around her like a low hanging cloud.
She shakes her head and leans against the bole of the tree, pulling her knees up under her chin, and shivering. She looks back towards the keep, still far too close for comfort, and sees torches moving at high speed along the ramparts.
I can’t stay here, she tells herself, just as Mal coalesces out of the air.
“We can’t stay here,” she murmurs, urgently, and then she takes a real look at Polly. “Gods,” she comments, softly. “You’re not doing too well, are you?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Polly answers. “We gotta go.”
Under the trees, at least, the rain is not so heavy. They move from trunk to trunk, from bracken to low growing shrub, keeping to the undergrowth as much as they can. Mal is leading Polly, almost like leading a blind man, Polly’s hand on Mal’s shoulder so she doesn’t get lost. But her night vision slowly improves and she can make out the darker shapes in the darkness, the tree and bushes she needs to avoid, on her own.
Polly, who is gritting her teeth to keep them from chattering, who is stumbling even when there are no roots or rocks to trip her, understands, at some deep level, that the only thing keeping her warm right now is her rage. She finds herself almost, almost hoping that they come across a patrol, a way of getting a little of her own back.
She stops, when she realizes this, letting go of Mal’s shoulder and pressing her naked forehead against the rough bark of a tree. Her elbow drives back, hard, when she feels a hand on her shoulder, and she turns, sword already coming up, even before she registers that it’s Mal. Mal, who has stepped back, quickly, a darker shape only visible because of the white in her uniform, not some enemy soldier.
“I’m sorry,” Polly whispers, and discovers that it’s true. “I didn’t mean-”
“I know,” Mal answers, just as softly, still hanging back.
They watch each other for a while, and Polly wonders what is going through Mal’s head. She wonders, too, what must be going through her own head, and whether or not she’ll ever feel entirely safe again.
“Come on,” Mal murmurs, finally. “We should be able to find a cave or something somewhere in these mountains. We can lay up for the day. It’ll be dawn soon enough anyway.”
Polly, whose sense of time has always relied on where the moon, the stars, the sun are, doesn’t know whether or not Mal is right about the approaching dawn. She doesn’t know how long they’ve been trudging through the woods, but she nods and pushes herself away from the tree, willing herself to trudge a little longer.
Who’s the sergeant around here? she asks herself, but without much conviction. They’ve been… missing… for more than a month. The letter would have reached her family by now. MIA. In Borogravia, that usually means ‘dead’, no matter how you spell it. Polly shivers, suppressing another cough, and prays for a cave.
Miraculously, they do find one. Not much more than a crevice in a rock face, but big enough, once they’ve squeezed through the opening, that they can curl up on the ground and sleep a while. There are even leaves, covering the cave floor, offering a soft, if mouldering, mattress for the two of them.
“I’ll take the first watch,” Mal volunteers, quietly.
“Wake me when you’re ready,” Polly answers, nodding, grateful.
She curls up on her side, drawing her knees up against her chest, her arms wrapped around herself, trying to hold onto what little heat she has. She falls into sleep, tumbles into it, exhausted, to the sound of Mal settling among the leaves, nearby.
She gasps, shaking her head, dizzy from the blow. She can taste blood in her mouth.
“Van, come on,” the other guard chides. “She’s only a girl, go easy on her.”
Sergeant! I’m a godsdamn sergeant, you bastard! her mind screams, furiously.
Her broken lips shape the words, “Thank you,” instead.
“Let’s try this again,” the one called Van suggests. “What were you doing in the Mule Valley pass?”
Polly hesitates, breathing hard, her head still spinning. Was that what they called it?
“I asked you a question,” Van growls, and Polly tenses just as-
Her eyes snap open in the shadows. The blow has woken her up.
“Polly?” Mal whispers. “You alright?”
“I’ve been worse,” Polly answers, catching her breath, remembering where she is. We’re free! she thinks, and for a brief moment her heart sings. Her body is stiff and sore all over, although that is nothing new, and her clothes are clammy from the night’s rain. She shifts, uncomfortably, rolling her shoulders, arching her back, trying to get at least a few of the kinks out.
“My turn?” she asks, sitting up in the leaves.
“You can sleep a little longer if you’d like,” Mal offers.
Polly glances towards the narrow cave-mouth, and sees the daylight slowly slipping away.
“I think I’ve slept more than enough already,” she answers. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
Mal shrugs.
“You need the sleep more than I do. What?” she adds, seeing Polly’s sceptical look. “You do.”
Polly sighs.
“Get some sleep, Mal,” she answers, settling her own sword across her knees.
This time, when night comes, it is clear, with a sliver of moon hanging in the western sky, just above the dying rays of the sun.
“Mal?” Polly whispers. She brushes her hand over Mal’s arm, lightly, carefully, almost not wanting to wake her up.
“Mm?”
“Sunset,” Polly informs her, softly.
“Mm.” There is a brief sigh and then Mal is sitting up, running a casual hand over her scalp as though there was any hair there to fix.
“Come on,” Polly whispers, getting to her feet. “Maybe we can find a… a berry bush tonight,” she shrugs. This early in the year? Not likely. “Or something.”
Mal’s mouth quirks in the gathering gloom.
“Hope springs eternal.”
For days, they travel by night, creeping through the woods, sleeping in shifts while the sun is overhead. They slake their thirst when they can at creeks and streams, and forage for food by moonlight. They are rarely very successful, but they find enough to keep them alive, at least. Sometimes Polly wonders if they’ll ever get home. Sometimes she wonders if Mal knows where she’s going at all.
“Well?” she whispers one night, after the waxing moon has set. “Do you?”
“Fun fact about vampires,” Mal informs her, quietly. “We always know where home is.”
Polly blinks at this.
“Really?”
“Yep. Where do think that business about sleeping in coffins full of our native soil came from?”
“Huh,” Polly comments. Afterwards, they walk on in silence.
Polly wakes up one day to the touch of Mal’s hand on the fuzz that used to be her hair.
“Sorry,” Mal murmurs, pulling away.
“You don’t... you don’t have to stop.” But touch is so awkward between them. Polly wonders if it will always be this way, if one or the other of them will always end up flinching away uncertain or afraid.
Some time, early in their second week, the monotony is broken.
They are lucky. They see the sentry in a shaft of moonlight before he turns, and it is Polly’s sword that cleaves into his neck, arterial blood spraying as he dies. They riffle through the dead man’s pockets, finding a half-full flask of something - water! They strip off his sword belt, which Mal wraps twice around her waist. His dark coat is three sizes too big for Polly, but Mal says that it will work as ‘protective colouration’, so Polly shrugs it on over her tattered uniform.
When they have taken all they can, they leave his body on the ground and they run. It is miles before they slow enough for Polly to think of anything but the next step.
When they do slow, at last, it is to the tune of breathless laughter, clinging to each other, panting, against the bole of a tree.
“So,” Mal asks, against Polly’s ear. “Does this make us looters?”
“Milit’ry rule,” Polly answers, gasping. “’S only looting if it’s from your own side. Otherwise it’s, it’s pillaging and perfectly... perfectly okay.”
The lean against each others’ shoulders, getting their breath back, slowly, and Polly can’t help but recognize how good it feels to hold and be held like this, and how awful, too, because she can count every one of Mal’s ribs through her jacket.
“How messed up is it that we’re laughing about this?” Mal asks, eventually, still a little breathless.
“It is, isn’t it,” Polly confirms. She leans her head against the tree trunk briefly. “We need to get going again, don’t we?”
Mal nods in the dark.
“Let’s go.”
Hours later they find a copse of spruce trees, the closest thing to shelter they can hope for this close to dawn.
“I’ll take first watch,” Polly volunteers, struggling out of the newly acquired coat.
The branches of the tree are so low that she can’t sit up under them. Instead she lies down, draping the dark fabric of the coat over both of them, hoping that it will help them blend with the ground. She listens as the birdsong around them settles back to normal, the dawn chorus waking as the sky lightens through the branches. She thinks about getting home, about telling Paul about the different birds she’s heard singing while, er, visiting Foreign Parts.
She is surprised when Mal, turning over in her sleep, slips an arm around her waist, burrowing against her back. For the space of a breath it’s almost as if everything is normal, that they’ll be fine. Polly laces her fingers with Mal’s, almost afraid to move, stretching the moment for another breath, and then another. She wonders how long it will hold.
Finally, when she is beginning to have serious trouble keeping her eyes open, Polly rubs her thumb gently over Mal’s knuckles to wake her.
“Hmm?” Mal mumbles, stirring at last. “My turn?”
“If you don’t mind,” Polly whispers, turning over onto her back.
Mal glances up at the low-hanging branches.
Carefully Mal slides her body over Polly’s, switching places with her.
“Hi,” she whispers, arching her eyebrows, the ghost of a smile touching her mouth.
“Hi,” Polly answers, softly, feeling her heart crack at the touch, realizing that it’s all she can do to keep breathing against the panic as Mal’s weight, slight as it is, rests briefly on her ribs. Why can’t everything just be the way it was?
Ha, she thinks, bitterly. And while I’m asking for things I can’t possible have, I’d kinda like a pony as well.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
“For what?”
For being afraid of you? her mind suggests. For not being sure if I can ever really love you again after what we’ve been through? For knowing that I don’t deserve this concern and for taking it anyway?
“For… for everything,” she answers, not wanting to go there just yet. When we’re home, she thinks. Or at least back in Borogravia. Then maybe it’ll be… safer. To talk about what’s happened to us.
“Mal?” Polly asks, after a while. “How much coffee do you have left?”
“Enough,” Mal answers, softly. “If I’m careful.”
After that, the monotony descends again.
Polly is glad of it, even if it does give her too much time to think. She can tell, now, that they are moving higher into the mountains, towards the border. There are more caves, for a start. Sometimes she thinks she sees the Kvetch, looking like small, scurrying haystacks, flitting between the trees, but she’s never sure. The spring is turning slowly into summer, the rain falling more often during the day than at night. Polly is becoming used to sleeping through thunder. Home is starting to look less like a desperate dream and more like a real possibility every day.
“Mal?” Polly whispers one morning, as dawn is beginning to break outside their current, cramped and tiny cave. “Why did you come back for me?”
Mal’s head comes up - she has been counting coffee beans again - and her expression suggests that Polly has grown a second head. The suggestion is so strong, in fact, that Polly has to resist the urge to reach up to her shoulder and check.
“Polly, why do you think I came back? What kind of a question is that?”
“I don’t-” she tries again, choosing her words more carefully. “I can’t be… sure,” she says. “It’s just… You could have gotten out so easily on your own,” she smiles bitterly. “You’d probably be home by now if… If you didn’t have me.”
Mal nods, slowly, avoiding Polly’s eyes.
“I thought about it,” she says, confesses, finally.
“Really?” It’s strange. Polly had expected to be hurt by that revelation. Instead, she finds that she’s relieved. “Why didn’t you?”
Mal shakes her head, seeming lost for words.
“I… I just couldn’t,” she says, after some thought. “I don’t… I don’t really know why.”
So not because you love me, Polly finishes for her. That does hurt, a little. But at least they’re starting out on even footing again.
“I-” Polly begins, wondering if she really wants to go down this road at all, let alone here and now. “If our positions had been reversed…”
But Mal shakes her head.
“They wouldn’t have been,” she says, flatly.
“But what if-”
“Please, Polly?” Mal’s expression is strained around her eyes. “It’s done and over and I really don’t want to go back there. I don’t even want to think about it, if I don’t have to. Not yet. Please?”
Polly swallows.
“Not yet,” she answers, and a little part of her is relieved. “Okay.”
“Get some sleep, Pol.”
“No, Mal,” she answers. “It’s my turn on watch. Besides, you need the rest.”
Mal shrugs.
“Suit yourself,” she murmurs, curling up on her side. “Wake me when you need me.”
Later, when Mal wakes her for the night, Polly asks a question.
“How far are we from crossing the border?”
Mal pauses, thinking - or possibly referring to the internal homing device that, supposedly, is what is guiding them back to Borogravia. Her mouth quirks.
“Maybe,” she murmurs. “Maybe tonight. If we’re careful.”
Polly stares.
“Are we really that close?”
“I think so,” Mal answers. She chews her lower lip. “There’ll be border guards,” she points out.
“We’ve avoided them so far,” Polly ventures. She can feel her hope flaring into life and she fights to keep it damped, fearing that someone might see, and find them, if she lets it shine too brightly.
Mal nods.
“Let’s hope our luck keeps holding.”
There are watch towers along the border, dark shadows stretching towards the sky. Like at the keep, the forest has been cut back from around them, offering a clear line of sight for any soldier watching by the light of the newly risen moon.
“Bugger,” Polly curses, quietly, from her position beside Mal under a hedge.
She knows that, beyond the watch towers, there is more forest - the demilitarized zone - and then they’ll find the towers of Borogravia. Even Polly could feel the pull of her home soil now, it was so close. So bloody close. But they had to cross this wide expanse of meadowland before that could become a reality.
“Now what?” she asks. At the keep there had been thick clouds and heavy rain, and even if there hadn’t been, the moon had been new in the sky. Now it was only a few days past full, and the sky was clear.
Mal glances at Polly, considering, then her mouth quirks.
“Protective colouration,” she whispers, tugging on the dark cloth of Polly’s stolen jacket.
Polly can’t help but crack a smile.
“What, you want me to just waltz up to one of the towers and declare myself to be… uh…” she checks the sleeve of the coat. “One of their own privates?”
“Why not?” Mal whispers, grinning. “You could announce yourself as Private Vatti... Seems it’s a common enough name around here.”
They look at each other for a long time.
“I think,” Polly murmurs, eventually, “that I’ll save that as a last resort.”
Mal nods.
“Good,” Mal says, softly. Carefully, she unbuckles the sword belt from around her waist. “Here,” she offers. “You’ll look more official this way. Or at least less like you’re looking for a fight.”
Polly buckles on the belt, switching her own sword for Mal’s.
“Thanks,” she whispers, looking up to meet Mal’s eyes. “You’ll be dissolving, then?”
Mal nods.
“I’ll be right above you,” she answers.
Polly’s mouth quirks at the thought.
“You don’t think they’ll find that a bit odd?”
Mal raises an eyebrow.
“Frankly, my dear sergeant, I’m hoping they don’t find us at all.”
“Me, too,” Polly murmurs, fervently, closing her eyes in the night. “Oh, gods I hope this works.”
She feels Mal take her hand, gently, and opens her eyes again.
“Be careful,” Mal whispers, rubbing Polly’s fingers between her own.
“I will be,” Polly answers, hesitantly reaching out to run her hand over Mal’s faintly fuzzy scalp. Her heart jumps when Mal leans into the touch, and Polly wants to pull her closer, to kiss her once for luck, or to prove that her heart isn’t empty. But she doesn’t.
“See you on the other side,” Mal whispers, beginning to fade.
“See you soon...”
Polly takes a deep breath.
The two towers closest to her are lit by torches, their light spilling into the darkness. Polly can see a slim space, maybe three feet across, where none of the light from either tower can reach. This would be considerably more comforting if there wasn’t a nearly full moon hanging in the sky.
Polly eases onto her stomach, twisting the sword belt so that the sword can drag awkwardly behind her. Counting on her dark coat, and Mal’s misty presence, to cover her, she begins the long crawl across the field.
She has done this before, dragging herself towards the enemy’s position, hoping they don’t spot her before she gets what she needs. The tension between her shoulders, the painful likelihood that she won’t survive the endeavour, the way her knees and elbows are screaming at her in protest as she knocks against unexpected stones in the ground, they are all very familiar.
Nothing to it, she tells herself, aiming for the relative darkness between the towers. Done this a thousand times… Well, okay, more like twice. But still. I know what I’m doing- her knee connects with a small, unexpectedly sharp, rock. Godsdammit, she curses, wondering if that one broke the skin as she continues across the field.
She is vaguely aware of Mal’s presence, as a slight dampness against her scalp, but she doesn’t look up. The narrow path of darkness between the pools of light is getting narrower.
I can do this, she thinks. I was able to get those bloody scissors while they were- But she forces herself not to finish the thought, not wanting to remind herself of what the guards had been doing while she had been invisible, trying to get hold of anything that would help them get out. She feels a pang of regret for not having kissed Mal when the chance had presented itself.
Too late for that, now she tells herself, firmly. Come on, just a little further.
And so she goes a little further, and then a little further than that, until the darkness begins to get darker, and the towers are at her back, and the woods, thank you, thank you, thank you, are looming up before her once more.
She creeps into the forest, letting the undergrowth close around her. There will be paths somewhere, she suspects, but she doesn’t want to find them. Instead, she crawls under the spreading limbs of a cedar and waits, knowing that the mist around her won’t be mist for long.
“Identify yourself!” The words are growled not far from her left, the language so close to her own she could almost speak it in her sleep.
She swallows.
“Identify yourself,” the voice comes again.
“Van Vatti,” she responds, getting to her feet. She takes one step, then another, trying to remember how to walk like an overgrown boy. “’Thought I saw something moving out here.”
The man - Oh, damn, Polly realizes. He's a sergeant. - grins nastily.
"Yeah, right, kiddo," he goes on, siting along his crossbow. "Try again."
Behind him, mist fountains up into a familiar shape.
A bone twisting crack later, and the sergeant is lying at Mal’s feet, his neck lolling horribly where it has been broken.
“What took you so long?” Polly hisses.
Mal gives her a look.
“You’re very welcome,” she answers, bending to retrieve the fallen crossbow. “Let’s get out of here, shall we?”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Polly answers, fervently.
The moon creeps higher, crossing the dome of the sky and beginning its slow descent towards the horizon. The sun will be up before it sets.
Below, Polly and Mal creep through the forest towards what they hope are the watch towers of home.
The stars are only just beginning to fade, the sky turning grey in the east, when they come to the edge of the woods. Across the wide meadow they see the watch towers, hung with the black and purple of Borogravia’s flag, red-uniformed soldiers keeping their eyes out.
She glances at Mal.
“Do you think we’ll have to sneak into our own country?” she asks.
“Hopefully not,” Mal murmurs. “You might want to lose the enemy colours, though.”
“What? - Oh, yeah.” Polly unfastens the buttons and shrugs the dark jacket off her shoulders, letting it fall to the ground.
As it happens, they don’t sneak. They walk out of the forest in the grey light of false dawn, just two more soldiers in red uniforms coming off watch as the sun comes up, like a great big fish.
They cross into their own country and, as the stories say, they go home.
Epilogue
***
Comments? Pretty please? I want this to be good. :-)
Part I
Butterflies are Free
Part II
The light changes through the afternoon, turning sallow - the yellow-green of storm light - and Polly hopes that it means rain is coming, or at least clouds to block the stars and make their escape that little bit easier.
Finally, finally, the light deepens to the searing copper of sunset. Polly realizes that she has been gripping her sword, white-knuckled, all day. She switches hands, briefly, flexing her fingers and shaking some feeling back into them.
The sun sinks lower, still, until it fades below the horizon.
“Soon,” Mal breathes, so quietly that Polly isn’t really sure she’s heard it.
Polly nods in the deepening darkness, knowing that Mal can see her moving. She shrugs off her red jacket and wraps it around her sword, tying the sleeves tightly to make an easily draggable bundle.
Outside, the light flickers. A moment later, Polly nearly jumps out of her skin when thunder growls loudly overhead.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Polly thinks, not knowing who or what she’s thanking.
They leave when the rain is bucketing out of the inky sky, bouncing hard off the strand, making the river shudder and splash. Mal passes through the gap easily, wisps of mist and fog, easily overlooked on a wet night such as this. Polly wriggles through on her side, anxious to feel the rain on her face, aching for the icy river water that will maybe, maybe, make her feel clean again. Even just a little bit.
She creeps upstream, towards the ford, finding a place where the water looks deep enough to swim, but shallow enough that she won’t lose her footing and be swept away. She wonders if she is too close, if the lights of the keep, reflecting dimly off the choppy water, will catch her, but she isn’t about to turn back.
She crawls on her stomach, nudging the bundle of her jacket and sword forward foot by foot in front of her. She hopes, hopes against hope, that the rain, the dark clouds, and Mal’s hovering, misty presence drifting around her, are enough to keep her from being seen. She hopes that the guards on watch tonight are the sort to huddle in the lee of a wall to keep out of the rain, rather than stand at the edge of the parapet actually looking for enemies who couldn’t possibly be out on a night like tonight.
Her fingers find the water’s edge, and she gasps, shocked at the cold. She crawls into the water. It is deep enough, here, to chill her to the waist, but she bends low over the waves, holder her crumpled jacket against her scalp, her sword bundled into it in a likely-futile effort to keep the weapon from rusting. The rain soaks through her already drenched shirt as she feels her way across the narrow river.
When the water is shallow enough that she is crawling on her knees to keep herself low, when she is close enough to the far shore that she can reach out and touch it, dropping the bundle of wool and steel onto the rain-drenched stones, she dunks her head under the icy water. For the few short seconds that she can stand it, she rubs at her raw, tingling scalp and her face, trying to scrub at least some of the grime away.
She comes up gasping, ineffectually shaking water out of her eyes as the rain pounds against her naked scalp.
She crawls out of the water, inching over the strand and dragging her bundle beside her, making her way, torturously slowly - as slowly as she had moved when she’d stolen the scissors - towards the high grasses that she can just make out ahead of her, and then further, as the dripping grasses close around her and the lights of the keep fade away, leaving her in darkness.
“Mal,” she whispers to the night. Of course, there is no reply. Mist has no voice, after all. “Mal, there’s a problem,” she continues, despite wondering if Mal can hear with no ears. “I can’t actually see anything anymore.”
Of course, this means there’s a reasonable chance that any guards around the place can’t see her, either, but that doesn’t make getting to the cover of the woods any easier.
In the long grass, Polly stops moving. By feel, she shakes out her sodden jacket and shrugs it on. Taking her sword in her hand, she prods at the darkness, feeling her way with the blade. Her shoulders are screaming with tension, so certain is she of the cross-bow bolt aimed between them, and she has already begun to shiver violently from the cold and rain.
After what feels like an eternity, her sword knocks against a tree. Polly crawls under the canopy, groping for the trunk with shaking hands, grateful for the shelter it provides. She blinks water vapour out of her eyes, forgetting for a moment that it’s Mal hovering around her like a low hanging cloud.
She shakes her head and leans against the bole of the tree, pulling her knees up under her chin, and shivering. She looks back towards the keep, still far too close for comfort, and sees torches moving at high speed along the ramparts.
I can’t stay here, she tells herself, just as Mal coalesces out of the air.
“We can’t stay here,” she murmurs, urgently, and then she takes a real look at Polly. “Gods,” she comments, softly. “You’re not doing too well, are you?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Polly answers. “We gotta go.”
Under the trees, at least, the rain is not so heavy. They move from trunk to trunk, from bracken to low growing shrub, keeping to the undergrowth as much as they can. Mal is leading Polly, almost like leading a blind man, Polly’s hand on Mal’s shoulder so she doesn’t get lost. But her night vision slowly improves and she can make out the darker shapes in the darkness, the tree and bushes she needs to avoid, on her own.
Polly, who is gritting her teeth to keep them from chattering, who is stumbling even when there are no roots or rocks to trip her, understands, at some deep level, that the only thing keeping her warm right now is her rage. She finds herself almost, almost hoping that they come across a patrol, a way of getting a little of her own back.
She stops, when she realizes this, letting go of Mal’s shoulder and pressing her naked forehead against the rough bark of a tree. Her elbow drives back, hard, when she feels a hand on her shoulder, and she turns, sword already coming up, even before she registers that it’s Mal. Mal, who has stepped back, quickly, a darker shape only visible because of the white in her uniform, not some enemy soldier.
“I’m sorry,” Polly whispers, and discovers that it’s true. “I didn’t mean-”
“I know,” Mal answers, just as softly, still hanging back.
They watch each other for a while, and Polly wonders what is going through Mal’s head. She wonders, too, what must be going through her own head, and whether or not she’ll ever feel entirely safe again.
“Come on,” Mal murmurs, finally. “We should be able to find a cave or something somewhere in these mountains. We can lay up for the day. It’ll be dawn soon enough anyway.”
Polly, whose sense of time has always relied on where the moon, the stars, the sun are, doesn’t know whether or not Mal is right about the approaching dawn. She doesn’t know how long they’ve been trudging through the woods, but she nods and pushes herself away from the tree, willing herself to trudge a little longer.
Who’s the sergeant around here? she asks herself, but without much conviction. They’ve been… missing… for more than a month. The letter would have reached her family by now. MIA. In Borogravia, that usually means ‘dead’, no matter how you spell it. Polly shivers, suppressing another cough, and prays for a cave.
Miraculously, they do find one. Not much more than a crevice in a rock face, but big enough, once they’ve squeezed through the opening, that they can curl up on the ground and sleep a while. There are even leaves, covering the cave floor, offering a soft, if mouldering, mattress for the two of them.
“I’ll take the first watch,” Mal volunteers, quietly.
“Wake me when you’re ready,” Polly answers, nodding, grateful.
She curls up on her side, drawing her knees up against her chest, her arms wrapped around herself, trying to hold onto what little heat she has. She falls into sleep, tumbles into it, exhausted, to the sound of Mal settling among the leaves, nearby.
She gasps, shaking her head, dizzy from the blow. She can taste blood in her mouth.
“Van, come on,” the other guard chides. “She’s only a girl, go easy on her.”
Sergeant! I’m a godsdamn sergeant, you bastard! her mind screams, furiously.
Her broken lips shape the words, “Thank you,” instead.
“Let’s try this again,” the one called Van suggests. “What were you doing in the Mule Valley pass?”
Polly hesitates, breathing hard, her head still spinning. Was that what they called it?
“I asked you a question,” Van growls, and Polly tenses just as-
Her eyes snap open in the shadows. The blow has woken her up.
“Polly?” Mal whispers. “You alright?”
“I’ve been worse,” Polly answers, catching her breath, remembering where she is. We’re free! she thinks, and for a brief moment her heart sings. Her body is stiff and sore all over, although that is nothing new, and her clothes are clammy from the night’s rain. She shifts, uncomfortably, rolling her shoulders, arching her back, trying to get at least a few of the kinks out.
“My turn?” she asks, sitting up in the leaves.
“You can sleep a little longer if you’d like,” Mal offers.
Polly glances towards the narrow cave-mouth, and sees the daylight slowly slipping away.
“I think I’ve slept more than enough already,” she answers. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
Mal shrugs.
“You need the sleep more than I do. What?” she adds, seeing Polly’s sceptical look. “You do.”
Polly sighs.
“Get some sleep, Mal,” she answers, settling her own sword across her knees.
This time, when night comes, it is clear, with a sliver of moon hanging in the western sky, just above the dying rays of the sun.
“Mal?” Polly whispers. She brushes her hand over Mal’s arm, lightly, carefully, almost not wanting to wake her up.
“Mm?”
“Sunset,” Polly informs her, softly.
“Mm.” There is a brief sigh and then Mal is sitting up, running a casual hand over her scalp as though there was any hair there to fix.
“Come on,” Polly whispers, getting to her feet. “Maybe we can find a… a berry bush tonight,” she shrugs. This early in the year? Not likely. “Or something.”
Mal’s mouth quirks in the gathering gloom.
“Hope springs eternal.”
For days, they travel by night, creeping through the woods, sleeping in shifts while the sun is overhead. They slake their thirst when they can at creeks and streams, and forage for food by moonlight. They are rarely very successful, but they find enough to keep them alive, at least. Sometimes Polly wonders if they’ll ever get home. Sometimes she wonders if Mal knows where she’s going at all.
“Well?” she whispers one night, after the waxing moon has set. “Do you?”
“Fun fact about vampires,” Mal informs her, quietly. “We always know where home is.”
Polly blinks at this.
“Really?”
“Yep. Where do think that business about sleeping in coffins full of our native soil came from?”
“Huh,” Polly comments. Afterwards, they walk on in silence.
Polly wakes up one day to the touch of Mal’s hand on the fuzz that used to be her hair.
“Sorry,” Mal murmurs, pulling away.
“You don’t... you don’t have to stop.” But touch is so awkward between them. Polly wonders if it will always be this way, if one or the other of them will always end up flinching away uncertain or afraid.
Some time, early in their second week, the monotony is broken.
They are lucky. They see the sentry in a shaft of moonlight before he turns, and it is Polly’s sword that cleaves into his neck, arterial blood spraying as he dies. They riffle through the dead man’s pockets, finding a half-full flask of something - water! They strip off his sword belt, which Mal wraps twice around her waist. His dark coat is three sizes too big for Polly, but Mal says that it will work as ‘protective colouration’, so Polly shrugs it on over her tattered uniform.
When they have taken all they can, they leave his body on the ground and they run. It is miles before they slow enough for Polly to think of anything but the next step.
When they do slow, at last, it is to the tune of breathless laughter, clinging to each other, panting, against the bole of a tree.
“So,” Mal asks, against Polly’s ear. “Does this make us looters?”
“Milit’ry rule,” Polly answers, gasping. “’S only looting if it’s from your own side. Otherwise it’s, it’s pillaging and perfectly... perfectly okay.”
The lean against each others’ shoulders, getting their breath back, slowly, and Polly can’t help but recognize how good it feels to hold and be held like this, and how awful, too, because she can count every one of Mal’s ribs through her jacket.
“How messed up is it that we’re laughing about this?” Mal asks, eventually, still a little breathless.
“It is, isn’t it,” Polly confirms. She leans her head against the tree trunk briefly. “We need to get going again, don’t we?”
Mal nods in the dark.
“Let’s go.”
Hours later they find a copse of spruce trees, the closest thing to shelter they can hope for this close to dawn.
“I’ll take first watch,” Polly volunteers, struggling out of the newly acquired coat.
The branches of the tree are so low that she can’t sit up under them. Instead she lies down, draping the dark fabric of the coat over both of them, hoping that it will help them blend with the ground. She listens as the birdsong around them settles back to normal, the dawn chorus waking as the sky lightens through the branches. She thinks about getting home, about telling Paul about the different birds she’s heard singing while, er, visiting Foreign Parts.
She is surprised when Mal, turning over in her sleep, slips an arm around her waist, burrowing against her back. For the space of a breath it’s almost as if everything is normal, that they’ll be fine. Polly laces her fingers with Mal’s, almost afraid to move, stretching the moment for another breath, and then another. She wonders how long it will hold.
Finally, when she is beginning to have serious trouble keeping her eyes open, Polly rubs her thumb gently over Mal’s knuckles to wake her.
“Hmm?” Mal mumbles, stirring at last. “My turn?”
“If you don’t mind,” Polly whispers, turning over onto her back.
Mal glances up at the low-hanging branches.
Carefully Mal slides her body over Polly’s, switching places with her.
“Hi,” she whispers, arching her eyebrows, the ghost of a smile touching her mouth.
“Hi,” Polly answers, softly, feeling her heart crack at the touch, realizing that it’s all she can do to keep breathing against the panic as Mal’s weight, slight as it is, rests briefly on her ribs. Why can’t everything just be the way it was?
Ha, she thinks, bitterly. And while I’m asking for things I can’t possible have, I’d kinda like a pony as well.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
“For what?”
For being afraid of you? her mind suggests. For not being sure if I can ever really love you again after what we’ve been through? For knowing that I don’t deserve this concern and for taking it anyway?
“For… for everything,” she answers, not wanting to go there just yet. When we’re home, she thinks. Or at least back in Borogravia. Then maybe it’ll be… safer. To talk about what’s happened to us.
“Mal?” Polly asks, after a while. “How much coffee do you have left?”
“Enough,” Mal answers, softly. “If I’m careful.”
After that, the monotony descends again.
Polly is glad of it, even if it does give her too much time to think. She can tell, now, that they are moving higher into the mountains, towards the border. There are more caves, for a start. Sometimes she thinks she sees the Kvetch, looking like small, scurrying haystacks, flitting between the trees, but she’s never sure. The spring is turning slowly into summer, the rain falling more often during the day than at night. Polly is becoming used to sleeping through thunder. Home is starting to look less like a desperate dream and more like a real possibility every day.
“Mal?” Polly whispers one morning, as dawn is beginning to break outside their current, cramped and tiny cave. “Why did you come back for me?”
Mal’s head comes up - she has been counting coffee beans again - and her expression suggests that Polly has grown a second head. The suggestion is so strong, in fact, that Polly has to resist the urge to reach up to her shoulder and check.
“Polly, why do you think I came back? What kind of a question is that?”
“I don’t-” she tries again, choosing her words more carefully. “I can’t be… sure,” she says. “It’s just… You could have gotten out so easily on your own,” she smiles bitterly. “You’d probably be home by now if… If you didn’t have me.”
Mal nods, slowly, avoiding Polly’s eyes.
“I thought about it,” she says, confesses, finally.
“Really?” It’s strange. Polly had expected to be hurt by that revelation. Instead, she finds that she’s relieved. “Why didn’t you?”
Mal shakes her head, seeming lost for words.
“I… I just couldn’t,” she says, after some thought. “I don’t… I don’t really know why.”
So not because you love me, Polly finishes for her. That does hurt, a little. But at least they’re starting out on even footing again.
“I-” Polly begins, wondering if she really wants to go down this road at all, let alone here and now. “If our positions had been reversed…”
But Mal shakes her head.
“They wouldn’t have been,” she says, flatly.
“But what if-”
“Please, Polly?” Mal’s expression is strained around her eyes. “It’s done and over and I really don’t want to go back there. I don’t even want to think about it, if I don’t have to. Not yet. Please?”
Polly swallows.
“Not yet,” she answers, and a little part of her is relieved. “Okay.”
“Get some sleep, Pol.”
“No, Mal,” she answers. “It’s my turn on watch. Besides, you need the rest.”
Mal shrugs.
“Suit yourself,” she murmurs, curling up on her side. “Wake me when you need me.”
Later, when Mal wakes her for the night, Polly asks a question.
“How far are we from crossing the border?”
Mal pauses, thinking - or possibly referring to the internal homing device that, supposedly, is what is guiding them back to Borogravia. Her mouth quirks.
“Maybe,” she murmurs. “Maybe tonight. If we’re careful.”
Polly stares.
“Are we really that close?”
“I think so,” Mal answers. She chews her lower lip. “There’ll be border guards,” she points out.
“We’ve avoided them so far,” Polly ventures. She can feel her hope flaring into life and she fights to keep it damped, fearing that someone might see, and find them, if she lets it shine too brightly.
Mal nods.
“Let’s hope our luck keeps holding.”
There are watch towers along the border, dark shadows stretching towards the sky. Like at the keep, the forest has been cut back from around them, offering a clear line of sight for any soldier watching by the light of the newly risen moon.
“Bugger,” Polly curses, quietly, from her position beside Mal under a hedge.
She knows that, beyond the watch towers, there is more forest - the demilitarized zone - and then they’ll find the towers of Borogravia. Even Polly could feel the pull of her home soil now, it was so close. So bloody close. But they had to cross this wide expanse of meadowland before that could become a reality.
“Now what?” she asks. At the keep there had been thick clouds and heavy rain, and even if there hadn’t been, the moon had been new in the sky. Now it was only a few days past full, and the sky was clear.
Mal glances at Polly, considering, then her mouth quirks.
“Protective colouration,” she whispers, tugging on the dark cloth of Polly’s stolen jacket.
Polly can’t help but crack a smile.
“What, you want me to just waltz up to one of the towers and declare myself to be… uh…” she checks the sleeve of the coat. “One of their own privates?”
“Why not?” Mal whispers, grinning. “You could announce yourself as Private Vatti... Seems it’s a common enough name around here.”
They look at each other for a long time.
“I think,” Polly murmurs, eventually, “that I’ll save that as a last resort.”
Mal nods.
“Good,” Mal says, softly. Carefully, she unbuckles the sword belt from around her waist. “Here,” she offers. “You’ll look more official this way. Or at least less like you’re looking for a fight.”
Polly buckles on the belt, switching her own sword for Mal’s.
“Thanks,” she whispers, looking up to meet Mal’s eyes. “You’ll be dissolving, then?”
Mal nods.
“I’ll be right above you,” she answers.
Polly’s mouth quirks at the thought.
“You don’t think they’ll find that a bit odd?”
Mal raises an eyebrow.
“Frankly, my dear sergeant, I’m hoping they don’t find us at all.”
“Me, too,” Polly murmurs, fervently, closing her eyes in the night. “Oh, gods I hope this works.”
She feels Mal take her hand, gently, and opens her eyes again.
“Be careful,” Mal whispers, rubbing Polly’s fingers between her own.
“I will be,” Polly answers, hesitantly reaching out to run her hand over Mal’s faintly fuzzy scalp. Her heart jumps when Mal leans into the touch, and Polly wants to pull her closer, to kiss her once for luck, or to prove that her heart isn’t empty. But she doesn’t.
“See you on the other side,” Mal whispers, beginning to fade.
“See you soon...”
Polly takes a deep breath.
The two towers closest to her are lit by torches, their light spilling into the darkness. Polly can see a slim space, maybe three feet across, where none of the light from either tower can reach. This would be considerably more comforting if there wasn’t a nearly full moon hanging in the sky.
Polly eases onto her stomach, twisting the sword belt so that the sword can drag awkwardly behind her. Counting on her dark coat, and Mal’s misty presence, to cover her, she begins the long crawl across the field.
She has done this before, dragging herself towards the enemy’s position, hoping they don’t spot her before she gets what she needs. The tension between her shoulders, the painful likelihood that she won’t survive the endeavour, the way her knees and elbows are screaming at her in protest as she knocks against unexpected stones in the ground, they are all very familiar.
Nothing to it, she tells herself, aiming for the relative darkness between the towers. Done this a thousand times… Well, okay, more like twice. But still. I know what I’m doing- her knee connects with a small, unexpectedly sharp, rock. Godsdammit, she curses, wondering if that one broke the skin as she continues across the field.
She is vaguely aware of Mal’s presence, as a slight dampness against her scalp, but she doesn’t look up. The narrow path of darkness between the pools of light is getting narrower.
I can do this, she thinks. I was able to get those bloody scissors while they were- But she forces herself not to finish the thought, not wanting to remind herself of what the guards had been doing while she had been invisible, trying to get hold of anything that would help them get out. She feels a pang of regret for not having kissed Mal when the chance had presented itself.
Too late for that, now she tells herself, firmly. Come on, just a little further.
And so she goes a little further, and then a little further than that, until the darkness begins to get darker, and the towers are at her back, and the woods, thank you, thank you, thank you, are looming up before her once more.
She creeps into the forest, letting the undergrowth close around her. There will be paths somewhere, she suspects, but she doesn’t want to find them. Instead, she crawls under the spreading limbs of a cedar and waits, knowing that the mist around her won’t be mist for long.
“Identify yourself!” The words are growled not far from her left, the language so close to her own she could almost speak it in her sleep.
She swallows.
“Identify yourself,” the voice comes again.
“Van Vatti,” she responds, getting to her feet. She takes one step, then another, trying to remember how to walk like an overgrown boy. “’Thought I saw something moving out here.”
The man - Oh, damn, Polly realizes. He's a sergeant. - grins nastily.
"Yeah, right, kiddo," he goes on, siting along his crossbow. "Try again."
Behind him, mist fountains up into a familiar shape.
A bone twisting crack later, and the sergeant is lying at Mal’s feet, his neck lolling horribly where it has been broken.
“What took you so long?” Polly hisses.
Mal gives her a look.
“You’re very welcome,” she answers, bending to retrieve the fallen crossbow. “Let’s get out of here, shall we?”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Polly answers, fervently.
The moon creeps higher, crossing the dome of the sky and beginning its slow descent towards the horizon. The sun will be up before it sets.
Below, Polly and Mal creep through the forest towards what they hope are the watch towers of home.
The stars are only just beginning to fade, the sky turning grey in the east, when they come to the edge of the woods. Across the wide meadow they see the watch towers, hung with the black and purple of Borogravia’s flag, red-uniformed soldiers keeping their eyes out.
She glances at Mal.
“Do you think we’ll have to sneak into our own country?” she asks.
“Hopefully not,” Mal murmurs. “You might want to lose the enemy colours, though.”
“What? - Oh, yeah.” Polly unfastens the buttons and shrugs the dark jacket off her shoulders, letting it fall to the ground.
As it happens, they don’t sneak. They walk out of the forest in the grey light of false dawn, just two more soldiers in red uniforms coming off watch as the sun comes up, like a great big fish.
They cross into their own country and, as the stories say, they go home.
Epilogue
***
Comments? Pretty please? I want this to be good. :-)