Judgment
By: Manna

…xOx…

Chastity: Part I

Nobody saw it coming.

The attack came out of nowhere. A group of bandits, bigger and better-trained than any Lyn had ever seen, thought they would overtake a group of people and a few wagons of supplies. Several hours passed before the last of the scum met their demise on the end of someone’s weapon.

The rag-tag army emerged victorious, with minor injuries. They marched for several more miles before stopping; they had to get away from the corpses of the men they had slain. Eliwood wanted to bury them; Lyndis refused to help, and Hector, for the first time in weeks, agreed with her instead of his old friend.

Evening came, and dinner was served. A terrible dinner it was, but food was food, and nobody had the right or the energy to complain about its tastelessness.

Lyn prodded gently at her temple as she zigzagged her way around the camp. She had been grazed by something—perhaps an arrow or a sword—sometime during the fight. It didn’t seem to want to stop bleeding. Suddenly, she came across Serra and Rebecca. She paused, crouching down to wipe the blood from her hands onto the grass; she couldn’t help but overhear the two girls as they talked.

Maybe she exploded because Nino was close to them and could hear everything they said. Maybe there was more to it than just that.

“Really?” Serra was asking, eyes wide, hand to her mouth. “One of those filthy bandits tried to… to cop a feel during the fight?”

“Yeah, he did.” The archer flipped her pigtails behind her shoulders and snorted, turning her nose up. “But I showed him!”

Giggling, the thin cleric shook her head, nodding knowingly, “He probably couldn’t help himself… You were just so pretty that he had t—”

“Don’t you dare…!” Lyn stood, so angry that she could hardly think straight. She took the few steps that separated her from Serra, and she pressed her forefinger right into the middle of the other girl’s sternum, the blood on her hands staining her white dress. “Don’t you dare give him any excuses! Don’t you dare!”

With every word, she pushed harder until Serra was on the ground. Only afterward did she turn to Rebecca, not touching her, but glaring at her so fiercely that the other girl wondered what in the world either of them had done wrong.

Her voice came out in a hiss, hardly understandable to the others, “There is no excuse for what that man tried to do, no excuse at all! How can either of you make light of it?! What if you had been alone and he had overpowered you? Would you be making light of that situation, now, in front of Nino? Would you even have the courage to admit that it had happened?” A long, frustrated sigh left her lips as Rebecca merely stared.

Serra stayed where she was, indignant but not stupid enough to stand back up, yet.

Lyndis turned back to her, “Beauty had nothing to do with it.” She started to calm down, started to lose what precious little energy she’d had to begin with. “He just wanted to use and hurt a woman. He could care less as to what she looked like.”

With that, she turned on her heel and left. Half of the army had gathered to gape at her, to watch her yell at Serra and Rebecca. They all thought she was crazy, she knew, and most of them would forget about it sooner rather than later. She was, perhaps, relieved to know it.

The horses were all tethered by the river, and she joined them, hands swishing in the cold water to try and clean the blood off her hands and face. Blood continued to slide down the side of her head. She might have been grateful for it, but it didn’t distract her from the way she had snapped at the other girls.

Finally, she gave up and sat next to one of the trees that grew by the water. “I was too harsh,” she whispered to herself, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around her legs.

“Lady Lyndis?” His voice was hesitant.

“Hello, Kent.” She turned her head slightly to look at him, seeing exactly what she knew she would: concern.

He took a few steps closer, looking strangely odd without his armor on. “Milady, are you okay? You did not act your usual self at—”

“I wasn’t going to let them make light of that!” Then, quieter, she looked away, patting the ground next to her, “Sit down, please.”

He obliged, though she had no way of knowing if he did so because he wanted to or because she had asked him to. Kent was one of the best people that she had ever known. He had been there almost from the beginning, and sometimes she wondered if he cared for her more than he would admit. There were little things that he did…

She was so lost in her swirling thoughts that she jumped when he pressed his handkerchief against the side of her head. Little things, she thought, a ghost of a smile flickering across her lips before she thanked him quietly.

They had a special kind of friendship, one of quiet understanding and mutual respect. They knew a lot about each other, but not nearly enough, and Lyn predicted that they would remain friends for a while longer, until one of them found the courage to ask the other if they could become something…more.

“How long has this been bleeding?”

She shrugged as he continued to press the cloth against her skin. “It isn’t important,” she said.

“I was worried, milady.”

She could only imagine that he had been, considering he had been the only one to follow her. “I must have looked like a lunatic.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” He smiled, just a little bit, but it left as quickly as it had come.

She knew that he wanted to ask what Serra and Rebecca might have done to deserve her wrath, but… He said nothing, choosing to stay silent as he brushed her bangs away from the cut that made its way across her temple.

Sighing, she closed her eyes. “Rebecca told Serra that someone tried to…touch her…during the battle.”

She could feel him stiffen beside her, “Someone…on our side?”

“No, no… I would have killed them already, myself, if that were the case.”

“It…happens.”

“I know. That doesn’t make it right.” She turned her head to look at him, and his hands left her temple, fingers clutching the bloodied handkerchief tightly. “Serra said that it was because Rebecca was so pretty that the man tried to touch her.”

He nodded, but said nothing.

“Nino was standing right there… I know she’s no child, Kent, but what if someone tried to do that to her? Would she spend the rest of her life thinking that it was her fault for being pretty, for making men want her?”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” She turned her head again, resting her chin on her knees as she watched Sain’s horse crop at the grass.

A long moment of silence passed between them, and he pressed the handkerchief against the side of her head again, his touch careful, gentle. “I…understand your concern. Though, milady, if I may say… I doubt that Jaffar will leave her side long enough for anything to happen.”

She smiled, though it was sad. “And you’re always with me, Kent…but that does not mean that something could never happen.”

He seemed to pause at her words, one of his fingers brushing against her ear. “Lady Lyndis,” he said, his voice earnest, “I would never let something like that happen to you.”

She didn’t look at him, but one of her hands unwound itself from her legs and patted his knee before returning to its position, and she smiled gratefully, though there was a sadness behind it that she couldn’t hide. Her silence was, perhaps, a response that he had not expected, nor one that he had wanted to hear.

When she blinked, he was kneeling in front of her, his hand still pressed to her temple, but his brown eyes looked at her, filled with troubled concern. “It…” He swallowed, and she felt his hand begin to tremble just the smallest bit. “It already did,” he whispered slowly, regretfully, as if it pained him to speak such a thing.

She watched him for a moment, not saying anything, but suddenly she lowered her eyes, choosing to stare at his boots, instead. “You didn’t think that the Taliver would destroy my people and waste—” she spat out the word, “—the women, did you?” She exhaled, her breath uneven, “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair.”

A lot of people knew that her tribe was dead. Wil, though, hadn’t known until very recently, when he had heard it from someone else. She wondered who had informed him, and she would almost bet that it had been Kent.

Either way, she had known Wil for a long time, almost as long as Kent and Sain. She had never mentioned her tribe’s demise to him, nor the deaths of her parents. Maybe it wasn’t healthy of her to keep everything to herself, but she didn’t need the pity. And really, what made her so special, anyway? Others had lost their families, their friends… It wasn’t as if she was the only one.

She had seen a lot of terrible things on the day the Lorca met their end. She had seen people crumple from the poison, had seen swords brutally shoved through bodies, had seen babies and little children skewered, thrown, smashed against things and trampled by horses that the Taliver had stolen from her people.

Sometimes, before her tribe’s destruction, one of the boys would dare a friend to touch one of the girls. It was a silly game, perhaps a little lewd and no doubt inappropriate. She had been weaving with a friend, once, when a young man their age ran up, patted her friend’s backside, and then ran away.

Her friend had shouted after the lad, but sat down smiling, confessing moments later that they were planning to be joined together as husband and wife, soon; he only had to ask her parents for their permission.

The way the Taliver had touched her friend, though, was different. They were hungry, bloodthirsty. They had killed her young husband and her newborn son. She’d never be able to forget the way her friend had protested at the invasive hands, at the loss of her clothes…

She’d never forget the way the girl had screamed, had cried and begged and pleaded.

And she would never be able to erase the image or the sound of the man’s axe as it sliced through flesh and bone; he had finished with her, and her purpose had ended.

It wasn’t long before he noticed her standing there, before he grinned at her shaking legs and trembling hands.

She ran.

No other time before or after that day had she run so fast or with as much desperation. Her life—no, more than that—depended on it, after all.

She ran straight into another man, bigger than the last; it took him no effort at all to take her by the shoulders.

She hadn’t been able to move, had hardly been thinking straight. She wanted to get away, but how could she when she felt so heavy? She tried to kick at him, but her foot only barely moved. She was losing strength with every breath, and she wondered, foggily, if she could still stand up if the man let her go.

Kent bit his lower lip, his eyes uncertain as he watched her, taking in every expression that crossed her face as she remembered that day. She hardly even knew that he was still there, and might have forgotten completely if he hadn’t turned the handkerchief over, patting at her still-bleeding cut.

The man told her that she looked different than the others, prettier, perhaps, because she didn’t appear to be quite as savage. He said that he was glad. And he smiled, two rows of perfect teeth. He was clean-shaven, his hair neatly combed and tied back. She wondered why he was with the Taliver at all. He looked nothing like the others.

But then she found her back against one of the gers, and she knew.

She struggled, but she hardly had any strength left, and certainly not enough to fight him. His hands slid up the slits on the sides of her skirts, pulling the entire thing up with him as his fingers wrapped around the back of her legs, squeezing and rubbing at her skin. He didn’t care if he hurt her; he lifted her off of the ground, wedging his knee in between her legs before settling her on it. His fingers were rough, but not in the calloused sort of way. No, he lifted the front of her dress and let his hands knead and pinch at her breasts. Everything he did hurt, and she might have cried, but if she did, it didn’t affect him. When she struggled, he only hurt her more, pulling her back into place by her hair or even her breasts, if that was where his hands happened to be at the time.

Suddenly, awareness flashed across her mind as she felt a gentle touch on her elbow. She was crying, now, though silently and with only a few tears. Perhaps remembering was simply too much for her. Slowly, she let her eyes meet Kent’s, and he took his hand back, looking apologetic. He hadn’t meant to startle her, she realized.

Slowly, she relaxed, tried to smile for him, and let her arms fall to her sides as she got to her knees and leaned against him, her forehead pressing against his shoulder. He didn’t touch her. Perhaps he was afraid to.

The man had eventually thrown her to the ground after one too many tries at escape, and his mouth had explored, his teeth biting at her breasts so hard that it made her shudder with pain.

He tried to tell her that she wanted him; he could tell because her nipples were hard.

His knee had wedged between her legs, again, pressing against the inside of her thighs as he used one of his hands to pry them apart. He said that he was almost done with her, that he would kill her afterward to save her from a life of shame.

The words scarcely left his mouth before a horse, one that belonged to a friend of her father’s, galloped by, fear making the whites of its eyes show. It leapt over them, treating them as if they were a hedge or a bush.

Its back hooves clipped the man’s head, and he fell on top of her. She remembered the relief that had coursed through her to find that he was not breathing.

It took a lot of effort to get out from under him, to pull her dress and shirt back down over her body.

Lyn blinked, slowly, and let her eyes close. “It’s okay,” she whispered, her palms flat against Kent’s chest. She could feel the heavy thudding of his heart and his slightly harsh breathing, but he seemed to calm down when her thumbs lightly stroked the fabric of his shirt. “It’s okay,” she kept saying. She reached in front of her, took both his hands in hers, and pulled them around behind her before speaking softly, “He didn’t take me.”

At her words, his arms wrapped the rest of the way around her, holding her carefully, gently, as if she were fragile and might break if he held her too tight.

Kent seemed to understand all of the things that she didn’t have to say. It could have been worse, much worse.

Some of the Taliver had made the women do sexual favors for them, killing them as soon as they were satisfied.

She had been lucky. Surely it was luck that sent the horse flying down that little space between those two gers. A space not wide enough for it to pass; if it had, her legs or head might have been trampled. But no, the horse had been forced to jump, and because she was lying on the ground, she had been spared the impact of its hooves.

She hugged Kent a little closer to her, and felt the weight of his head lightly resting against hers. “I’m sorry to ask this,” she said softly, her breath warm even through his shirt, “but will you please not mention this to anyone?”

“I will never speak of it to anyone.” Then, after a long moment of silence, “Something like that will not happen to you again.”

She pushed against him, gently, and he let her go. “There is always the chance that it could h—”

The light touch of his hand against her jaw silenced her, and she looked into his brown eyes; the earnestness that she saw there was not new to her, but the words that he spoke nearly made her burst into tears, and that…was something new.

“I shall die, first.”

…xOx…

Author Notes:

Touchy subject matter, to be sure. But as mentioned in E (Chapter Five) of “Arpeggio”, I firmly believe that this type of thing is very plausible. It’s sad, of course, but realistic, I think. Anyway, this was more friendshippy than anything, but I think that Lyndis and Kent need a firmly-grounded friendship before a romantic relationship can be established, anyway. Kent and Lyn are close at this point (I hope it's obvious, but sometimes I don't make things obvious enough), and it's hinted that they love one another, but neither of them is willing, yet, to take the leap to turn that close friendship into something more.

I think Lyn is only easily trusting on the surface. There is a lot she doesn’t tell people, and this is shown by the fact that Wil, who was in Caelin for a year with her, didn’t know about her parents. And by not telling anyone the extent of what happened, I think perhaps she would feel alone, even with all of the people she cares about around her.

Take care, everyone, and please leave feedback if you have the time.