You took the fall for us pt V; JDL Capt Neyes Cmdr Ivanova - PLOT

Posted on Sun Jul 20th, 2014 @ 6:23am by Admiral Rochelle Ivanova & Captain Landon Neyes

1,596 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: In the Dark

=/\= Part V =/\=

“No!” She screamed, “No! Landon!” Her cries came hoarse and full, throaty as she locked her tiny hands into fistfuls of his shredded tunic. She could feel his heart beginning to slow against her shaking frame. There was a hot wetness spreading through the tattered and torn remnants of her night shirt, steaming against the chilled satin of her porcelain skin. It was blood. His. Pouring from the wound across his abdomen like her own that saturated her leg and the snow beneath them.

He held her fast, close, tightly. "I'm sorry." He choked.

“You can’t! Landon, please!” She yelped, her voice high with panic but hushed by her inability to draw a useful breath. She felt her resolve, her grip on this life, truly beginning to waver, to fold, to defy her demands. Her eyes cast upwards, searching the snowy skies and bitter heavens in a silent prayer – but divinity would deny her too. No God would come to sake the forsaken pair. He held her tightly against him, soothing her body as her tears began to flow freely, as her heart failed to gallop, but instead slowed to a limping jog and her shoulder quaked with her sobs against his chest. “Please…” She begged, listening to the sounds of the oncoming tribe.

"Loving you... was the best thing I've... ever done." He managed to force his lips to smile. The world was getting darker, she sounded so far away.

“Oh God… “ She strangled a sob as she listened to him, shaking her head as if it would defy their coming fate. Her lips found his forehead then the bridge of his nose, his lips and his chin. Each kiss feather soft as she tried to convey her heart when words otherwise failed her.

Clicking her heels nor wishing on stars would save them now. It was over. Could she have done it over again she’d have stayed with him that night, bore her soul and allowed him to free her from the binds that tethered her. She’d have taken him as her own, held him, protected him as she did now – but that night was in the past and never meant to be. “I can’t…” She couldn’t watch him die, be torn apart by the raging fiends that would turn them into a tributary feast not unlike pouring a forty for the comrades they’d destroyed.

The wind blew savage again, drawing her attention the cliff where salvation taunted them several hundred feet below and then back to him, back to the man she wished she’d allowed herself to love sooner – the one she wished she could have saved… The one who set her free.

The horde was almost upon them. The sounds of their screams and warcries filled the air.

"Don't... can't take you... don't let them." His eyes lazily moved out toward the horizon beyond the cliff's edge. "Please."

His tears ran from his eyes in a desperate effort to tell her he wouldn't die, knowing she was at the mercy of those creatures. Frozen orbs laced his cheeks. The images flickered in his mind and it made him sick. The blood pooling at their feet was already cold, and he could feel himself slipping from the world. But he wouldn't let her be taken...

He reached for his dagger, trying to stand again, raising it toward the monsters on their doorstep. "Can't...." He choked on the air and collapsed before he could rise to his full height. His weapon useless on the ground.

"No..." her head shook as she fought for her breath, "No." Rochelle coughed in pain and panic, tugging at him as he fell, dragging her with him into a terrifying heap of broken hearts. She touched his face, untangling their limbs as they fought to rise again against the impending darkness. With a shiver, her lips found his cheeks, whisking away his tears without care for her own.

"I won't... let them take us." Her hands guided him, holding him to her as she looked once more towards freedom. "We'll fly away." The little Commander's voice was hoarse and raw as she returned to his eyes and face, feeling them both threaten to extinguish right there. The cliff beckoned her closer, but she couldn't and wouldn't make her last escape, the so called flight, that would best the horde and save them from their grim fate as dinner. "Together." She hushed, touching his chin.

"Together", Neyes nodded, pulling himself up to stand with her. He moved to the edge, looked down and then back at Rochelle.

When the savage horde charged, either in response to their posture, or simply out of unfettered rage, Landon pulled her close and held her back to the edge. He wanted the last thing she saw to be the sky, and his smile sending them away. He felt her shake, and even if it was an unsuccessful gesture, Landon did his best not to look scared.

Here, eyes met his, and he kissed her with all the love he had left. "I'm not afraid."

“Neither am I.” Her lips whispered to his, returning his kiss, the love, the emotion as the strangest sense of calm began to settle over her flame kissed soul as she wrapped her arms around the strength of his neck. There, in his embrace, she felt the fear drain from the very essence of her being only to be replaced by what could only be described as serenity. There was fearlessness creeping back through her veins, tangling in her tattered heart as she poured herself into that last living act that day as the snow whipped about them and they stood at the edge of oblivion. Andrea would be proud of her. So proud of this brave young woman that she’d help release into the world.

He waited until the last moment, suspending their time like a hourglass in space. Her hair whipped around her like a fire in the hearth, telling of her spirit. His throat clenched with each breath, weathering the ice and frozen air, but not his love. Even in the storm, he knew no greater peace in the seconds before they fell.

A savage hand touched his back, and Neyes let his weight roll forward. The sky turned over behind him, and the Vindicator camp came into view below them. From space a planet looked like a hidden world, microscopic lifeforms moving beyond sight on the surface. At the distance now, he could see the crew moving about, unaware he and Ivanova were above them. The blood in his heart went cold, an icy wind snapped at the back of his neck and his shoulders. Clamping his eyes closed, he imagined holding her in a place warm and safe.

It wasn't enough time.

Rochelle sucked in a breath at the sudden feeling of weightlessness, and kept her eyes closed, not squeezed shut, but simply closed as she gave herself to him, to the storm, to the open hand of death that waited for him. It was shortly after they’d taken flight that her heart sputtered and stilled in her chest, the song bird sang no longer. The pain she felt, the heartbreak, the memories – all of it perished and resigned itself to the warmth he’d placed within her aching breast. Landon Neyes had given her a gift no one ever could; freedom.

The whine of transporters, the roar of a ship’s engines, the screaming battle cry of the Vindicator pierced through the white voids of the sky sending the horde scattering in fear at the sight of the great vessel and the magic it threw so wantonly. She shrilled her bitter cry against death, chasing him back into the shadows as she snatched away the falling lovers.

Vindicator had never been meant for atmospheric flight. She quaked as her thrusters valiantly clawed against the thick oxygen rich air, the snow threatening and conspiring to down her by freezing her hull and engines – but the ship would have nothing of it, the pressure rift she created throwing trees and moving rocks as the crew was rescued.

A wave of crushing force blasted away soil, snow and cloud alike. With unseen power the air ripped outward around the massive hill of the Vindicator, clearing the sky and exposing it to the starry light above her. Silhouetted by the new burst of illumination, the hulking ship barreled through the atmosphere above the Noturan canyon, and a thunderous roar boomed with her movement.

Had she been able to see it, the view would have brought Rochelle a new sense of wide eyed awe.

The storm would not conquer them and the planet itself would be denied their final resting. Instead the ship would take their broken bodies and hold them tight to its savage heart, back to where they belonged in life and in death… Back to the warm reality of her corridors, back to everything they had known and used as an excuse to forsake the love they’d fought for so very long.

Just as quickly as she appeared, the Vindicator leaped once more for the stars leaving nothing more than the roar of her engines echoing through canyons and reverberating through the caverns, leaving them to be forgotten by time and space, leaving nothing more than the blood stained snow as finite proof that they’d ever been there.

And even that would soon be gone, forgotten and hidden beneath the snowfields.

=/\= End Log =/\=

 

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