kh_drabble | (no subject)

Challenge [207]: Here Comes Trouble (second entry)
Title: from the dark
Word Count: 456
Notes: Origins and new beginnings. Because I really couldn't resist.

Lenera is important, she likes to think.

She can't escape that what she is is always going to be a little less than extraordinary, but she doesn't really want to, either; she doesn't need to change herself to be great, she'll just carry greatness back with her.

This battlefield is not the perfect camouflage. Not for her, dressed in her crisp, white uniform to match her crisp, clean face, carrying the wounded and the dying back to the tents. Her skirt is made for delicate things—the bloodstains look out of place.

"Nurse," one man cries, and she focuses on his face instead of the torn flesh of his leg, oozing something sick and yellow. "Oh, Death, you are merciful and beautiful," and she smiles a little. This one is a poet. He likes to go on saying pretty things the delicate bend of her neck, and the other girls laugh at him, coquettish, but they still flinch when they change his bandages.

He dies a few days later. It would be more honorable, maybe, to die by enemy fire, but the enemy brings the infection with their guns all the same. Lenera doesn't see the difference.

-

Why didn't you stay away from all this? he had said to her, late one night.

Because I can trust no one else with something so precious as a life, she replied.

-

It's a stupid idea, yes, but she sneaks out at night anyway, his still form weighing her down. Everyone else got a proper burial, she's not going to deny him for her own selfish safety—not just because things are worse than ever, and there are guerrillas in the trees, and the men have to be dragged shrieking into the tents some days, raving about soul-eaters, creatures of shadow—

No. She can run as fast as any man, and she knows how to dig a grave. Her arms are strong and steady.

She's just laid him down when she hears it, except she doesn't really think she hears it as much as she feels it, this eerie chill over her flesh, like tendrils of smoke crawling up her arms. She drops down into the shallow hole, crouching behind her patient and waiting it out, but.

It's just blackness, after all. It tastes like war.

-

Larxene gasps into life with the realization that breathing hurts. She runs her hands across her chest, down her ribs, and feels nothing. No pulse, no beat. There's something coppery dripping into her mouth, making her sputter. She rolls out from under the dead body, licking her lips clean and sighing contentedly at the fresh air up top.

The sky is ablaze with rifles, and Larxene decides that she wants to play, too.