Blood. It surrounds him, mixing with the chill of the late night air and the battle cries all around him. It’s the center of his attention; obscuring everything else from his vision. All he can see is black and red, motionless bodies lying in a flowing red sea.

It rains down from the sky, swirling with the first few drops of rain that have begun to fall. Silent, yet it fills his ears in a way that he would never be able to explain. The air smells of death and rust, the crimson substance stains the concrete and his clothes.

The battle around him carries on, though he’s all but focused on it.

Blood pours from a deep gash that runs across his chest and shoulders, a red waterfall cascading into the river below. The pain is great, he’s numb, but at the same time he can feel the stinging sensation. He can hardly breathe, every time he draws in a raged breath he whimpers, and little rivers of blood fall from the sides of his mouth.

Someone lets out a blood-curdling scream that echoes through the chilled air, an ethereal voice seems to call out from somewhere. Or maybe he’s just hearing things. He doesn’t know.

The gash in his chest is deep, and the blood won’t start coming. His hands and face are pale and cold as a sheet of ice; he’s trembling more than he ever has before. The pain continues coursing through his veins, but it’s not what’s bothering him.

There’s another pain, one that hurts far more. He stares through the warriors around him, at a certain unconscious mass on the blood-stained concrete. Though they’re lying face down, he knows it’s her. She lies there, unmoving, and he wearily starts towards her. His legs are like lead and gelatin all at the same time, she’s everything now. He can no longer taste the blood that leaks from the corners of his mouth, he can no longer hear the cries al around him, he can no longer feel the pain, and he can no longer see anything. Except her.

Whether he feels it or not, the pain is still there, rippling through his body. But there is another pain.

Finally, after what seems like hours, he crouches down beside her, and pulls her unconscious figure onto his lap. Her head lolls to the side, coming to rest against his chest. It’s faint, at first, but he can feel it all the same.

She’s breathing; ragged breaths come in rapid spurts from her mouth. Her body is cold, pale, and shaking even worse than his. And then the blood comes back into view, vivid against her ghostly skin. His hand quivering, he reaches up and places a hand to her cheek. Her skin is cold as ice beneath his fingers, fragile.

When he turns his hand over, the blood sticks to it, crimson and foreboding.

He holds her close, gently rocking her back and forth, teeth clenched and eyes closed. He wants to open them and see that she’s ok; that she’s not covered in blood; that they’re not in the middle of a battlefield; that they’re still together. But he knows that it won’t be so. Life has taught him a few things, one of which being the difference in fantasy and reality.

He’s here, and nowhere else. She’s bleeding, she’s not ok. It’s raining, he hates the rain.

There is pain. It seeps through the air and vibrates through his limbs, yet there is still an even greater pain. The pain of knowing that he might lose her, that she might not make it through, unbearable.

Which makes his heart soar in his chest even higher when she cracks one eye open, and mutters, “I’m ok.”