Renevere Mars: Part Three

Episode 28: Reunion

At first it was just distress, an emotion with no context. Worry. And something that felt like love...

Someone was breathing heavily, like they were in pain. Ren was also in pain. Her right arm ached and pulsed like it had been caught in the garbage disposal. Her left foot was oddly cold, and a sharp pain shot through her when she tried to move her leg.

"Ren?" Duren panted. It took all of her effort to see him. He was crouched on all fours on the floor beside the create she lay atop of. A cold breeze hit the back of her head from the cellar door ajar behind her.

"Did you do it?" she managed to mutter, though she couldn't feel her features or make her lips form shapes correctly. He looked up at her, face very close to hers where she lay at a higher perch. His eyepatch was still flipped up, and a drop of blood rolled down his cheek, leaking from the black eye. He swallowed hard and flipped down his eyepatch, gaze shifting above Ren, behind her really, to the stairwell where the battle had just occurred. It was utterly silent. The wind whistled over the cellar stairs. Slowly, gradually, Ren rolled her head from resting on her left ear, facing Duren, to her right. Moonlight illuminated the cement wall behind the stairwell, splattered in blood. A pile of limbs and flesh was strewn before the door, but she could only see a sliver. She closed her eyes and completely without her permission or say so, she dove back into the dark abyss.

"Come on," Duren was saying somewhere far away. "You've got to be strong enough to-... hold on..." he grunted. He hoisted her up onto his back. Somehow her arms wrapped around his neck and her legs around his waist, as if by instinct. Her head lulled and her vision swam, but she held on. It left his arms free to hoist up Sam under one arm, and then Cara under the other. They moved like that for a long time, the air going chilly. Ren didn't dare open her eyes for fear of returning nausea. She clung to consciousness only with her arms and her legs. She just had to hold on.

There were sounds and sensations but the next time she fully awoke, the sky was a pale color, not yet morning but close. There were a few early birds already singing in the tall pines that towered above. She was lying on her side where she could see two forms on the forest floor near her, sharing a blanket. Sam and Cara, still unconscious. Her right arm was bandaged, and so was her leg. She looked over her shoulder, pleased to find she could do so without her vision spinning.

Duren sat up against a tree, eyeing her, mask discarded somewhere. He looked oddly stoic, until Ren realized he must have stayed awake the whole night. Of course, he would have to. They had just attacked Hashu Manor, who could call reinforcements, send more guards into the woods if they had any left Duren hadn't already taken care of.

"You need rest," she said, managing to prop herself up on her elbows.

He smiled at her fondly, breathing a laugh.

"Seriously," she said, sitting up the rest of the way with effort, "it's your turn."

He didn't say a word, merely tilted his head back and let his eye drift close. Did he just fall asleep just like that? she thought, crawling over toward him. And just in time too, because as she closed the short distance between them he collapsed to the side. She caught his head and shoulders in her arms, wincing as her right arm suffered from the injuries.

She lay him down and looked him over, like he had obviously done for her. But he hadn't a scratch on him. She lifted his eye patch gingerly. She could see the dried blood there, but all seemed well now. She returned his eyepatch to its rightful position, thinking with a smirk to a far off memory when she had almost dared to lift his eyepatch while he was under her cha, another training exercise, only to be caught in the act by him, of course. Things were different between them now, she realized. She hadn't noticed it as it happened slowly over time, but looking back she could feel the change. They hadn't been equals back then. Not in battle or in rank, that much hadn't changed, but in all the other ways. It was in how they could understand each other with just a look. And trust each other. And tend to one another. It was in how, as soon as she awoke, he let go of the single thread of consciousness he'd clung to and dove willingly into sleep, knowing she was there and so he would be safe.