Chance Encounter

‘Oh no!’

She ran towards the prone lad, dropping to her knees to cradle his head. The youth looked up at her, blearily, still spitting blood.

‘Fa... Farah..?’ whispered the boy, desperately.

‘Close, but no cigar.’ she gave him what she hoped was an encouraging smile, but inside she despaired.

*Oh God, he’s going to die here. This poor kid just saved my life, and now he’s going to die. It’s not fair.*

She wished that she had a medipack at least, then she could have patched the boy up a bit, but she knew full well that she had used her last one up only half an hour previously. She stroked his silky, black hair away from his face, doing her best to mask her misery.

‘... haven’t you... got lovely eyes...’ muttered the lad.

She hid another frown. She couldn’t remember the last time anybody had ever commented on her eyes before. Compared to his sapphires, hers were just muddy brown puddles. But he was staring into them, as though he could see some most wonderful treasure through her dark pupils.

*Poor bugger’s probably delirious.*

She cradled his head as he continued to a gaze at her. She had to admit to herself that it was a little offputting. She wasn’t used to men looking her straight in the eye. They were usually too distracted by her guns, or her... other assets. She was impressed with him for not having addressed her breasts so much as once, in spite of his youth or his general air of impudence. The lad convulsed briefly, coughing blood as he did. She held his head steady until he became still again.

*Looks like this is the end. Might as well make sure the poor thing goes out as comfortably as possible...*

‘Is there anything I can do?’ she asked, softly.

The youth smiled weakly.

‘...suppose a little kiss is out of the question..?’ his voice was barely a croak, his lips bubbling with blood.

She looked down at him, her little wounded saviour, prostrate and bleeding in her arms. She felt as though she was in a Pre Raphaelite painting. In spite of the blood, he was extraordinarily beautiful.

‘Not necessarily,’ she murmured, ‘but aren’t I a little old for you?’

‘Not necessarily,’ aped the youth with another faint smile. He smacked his lips against the globby blood that filled his mouth. ‘You don’t have a drink of water on you?’ he added.

‘Just water?’

‘Yes. Good for what ails me.’

‘Oh.’ She reached behind herself and fumbled in her backpack, retrieving a half-full gourd of water. She opened the stopper and brought it to his parted lips. ‘Here you go, kid.’

*For all the good it’ll do you...*

She watched as the youth drank thirstily, gulping down several throatfuls of her water.

‘Hey...’ she pulled the gourd from his mouth. ‘Take it easy with that. It’s all I’ve got.’

The boy wiped his mouth.

‘There’s plenty of fountains round here for you to fill up again.’ The water seemed to have perked him up a little, and there was no more fresh blood rising to his lips as he spoke. ‘So there’s no need for you to panic.’ He smiled at her again. His strength seemed to be growing by the second, and the cuts on his arms appeared to be older and more scabbed, as though several days of healing had just occurred since he’d drank.

‘I wasn’t panicking.’ She sat back on her haunches as the youth propped himself up on his elbows, watching her. ‘That really IS good for what ails you, isn’t it?’

‘Yep. I’d have been a goner if you hadn’t had any,’ he replied, merrily. He sprang to his feet, curving his spine backwards in a catlike stretch as he did. ‘You’re a lifesaver,’ he added.

She stood up, amazed again, and wondering whether this stranger was, himself, entirely human. ‘Likewise, I’m sure.’

‘Then we’re even.’ He rolled his pelvis and shoulders, and finally patted at his ribcage. ‘Nothing broken,’ he told her, brightly. He picked up the fallen sword that the smaller Beastie had been carrying and tossed it to her. ‘Here.’
She looked from the sword to him, incredulously.

‘Sharp steel’s the best thing for getting rid of those Sand Bastards I know,’ he explained, ‘as loud and impressive as your... fireworks are.’

She arched an eyebrow at him. ‘An automatic shotgun is hardly a “firework”.’

‘What’s the matter,’ he grinned, ‘don’t know how to use it?’

Without moving her expression, she flourished the sword, and, adopting her usual Fencing stance, lunged towards the youth. His hand was a blur as he drew his smaller sword and blocked her, trying to force her sword from her hand. She fought against it, stepping in to him. Still in a deadlock, she reached across with her free hand and brushed a strand of hair from his eyes. Her patented move normally unnerved any opponent, male or female, but this one remained resolute and poker faced.

‘You’re stronger than I expected,’ he muttered.

‘Silly boy,’ she replied, ‘is that why you’re using your weaker hand to fight me?’

The youth flicked a quick glance down at their hands grasping their locked swords, then met her gaze once more.

‘So are you.’

‘Like you said,’ she cooed, ‘we’re even.’

She withdrew her sword, and, with another flourish of steel, sheathed it safely on her back, alongside her shotgun.

‘That was fun!’ grinned the lad, sheathing his own sword. ‘Shall we get going?’

‘As homely as this ledge is...’ she replied with a half smile, ‘but what’s all this “we” business?’

The strange youth gazed across the great, ruined hall. ‘Well, the only way to go from here is Down, so we might as well do it together.’

She stood next to him, surveying the hall for herself. ‘There’s a switch over there.’ She pointed to another square switch on the opposite side of the hall. It would have been easy to reach, had somebody bothered to leave a floor directly beneath it.

‘Hmm.’ The youth scratched his chin, playfully. ‘Ten foot jump, a fall to our deaths if we miss... should be a piece of cake.’

She crossed her arms. ‘For me, perhaps.’

He flashed her a mischievous grin. ‘Race you?’

And before she could answer him, he had sprinted off in the direction of the switch.

---

She ran after him, and had almost caught up with him by the time he reached the edge of the bridge and took off along the wall again, kicking against the switch and backflipping onto another precarious ledge.

‘Show off!’ she called after him, ‘there’s a perfectly good rope here!’

And to illustrate the point, she threw herself from the bridge’s edge, caught the handily located rope, swung from it once, then kicked against the nearby wall to change her direction, somersaulting from it as she did and landed neatly next to the boy.

The youth applauded her, politely. ‘I still won, though,’ he added.

She shuffled along the edge until it grew wider. ‘What do you suppose that switch did, anyway?’

She was answered by a great rumbling that seemed to take up the entire hall.

‘Oh dear,’ muttered the youth. The ledge beneath them began to tremble.

‘Run!’ they ordered one another, both breaking into a sprint along the ledge as they did.

She didn’t have to look behind herself to know that the ledge was beginning to break away under their footfalls as they ran. She concentrated all of her energy into making her legs pound as fast as they possibly could, not entirely where it was she was hoping to flee to. She was vaguely aware that there were a few jutting beams in the wall she was running towards, and, above them, what looked like a tunnel’s entrance, just big enough to crawl through. Now if only she could make it before everything fell away...

The ledge disintegrated. The boy, also heading towards the tunnel, managed to run along the wall again and grabbed the edge of the tunnel’s mouth before he fell. She had to jump, reaching out in front of herself desperately, and managed to catch hold of the beam beneath the tunnel. Cursing, she pulled herself to her feet, and had just jumped up to the tunnel’s lip when her wrists were caught. She looked up furiously to the youth, dangling from the tunnel from his waist. He smiled again, apologetically this time.

‘My Lady...’

‘How dare you!’ she spat, ‘do you really think I can’t make a simple jump like that? After everything you’ve seen me do?’

‘You can’t. It’s the tiniest bit too high for you.’

She fumed. He was probably right, although she had no idea how he knew it.

‘Nevertheless, I’m perfectly capable of doing this myself. If you wanted a damsel in distress, I think you might have come to the wrong place, Young Man.’

The youth didn’t answer, but began to pull her up to the tunnel. She struggled, furiously.

‘No! Let me go! Put me down, you horrible little...’

Beneath her, there was a crumbling noise. She looked down, briefly. Between her dangling ankles, she saw the beam she had been standing on come away from the rotten wall and fall, clattering to the distant floor below.

‘How...’ she stuttered as she pushed against the wall with her boots, helping the youngster drag her to safety, ‘how did you know that was going to happen?’

She caught the ledge, and he allowed her to do the rest of the climb herself. He blinked at her, a little embarrassed.

‘It just looked too rickety to hold your weight...’

She hauled herself into the small tunnel. ‘Oh.’ She granted him a smile, which appeared to relieve him. ‘So now I’m fat as well as useless.’

The boy turned from her and commenced the crawl through the narrow tunnel. ‘Not at all, My Lady.’

She followed him. She found herself looking up at the blue silken trousers as he crawled in front of her. Even in the dim light she could appreciate the way that the delicate fabric shifted like water over the tight muscles of his thighs and perfect young buttocks as he moved.

*Why don’t men wear silk more often?*

The ‘Lady’ comment concerned her. Yet another thing he seemed to know.

‘Why do you keep calling me that?’

‘Well, you are, aren’t you?’ He gave her a quick glance back from under his armpit. She quickly flicked her attention to his eyes, as nonchalantly as possible.

‘Aristocratic, I mean,’ he continued, ‘a Lady at the very least, I’d guess.’

‘Then I am the least of your expectations,’ she answered. ‘How did you know?’

‘The way you hold yourself,’ he replied, ‘the way you talk. I suppose it takes one to know one... Ah! Here we are!’

The young man crawled out into the tiny, high ceilinged chamber and stood, offering her down a hand, which she ignored.

‘Ah, so you’re a Filthy Aristo too,’ she grunted, crawling out of the tunnel into the dark room, ‘that explains a lot.’

‘Why we’re so alike, you mean?’

She began to feel the walls of the chamber for a door, or switch. ‘No, it explains why I find you so insufferable.’

He tutted, feigning disappointment. She found herself smiling again.

‘I’m afraid,’ she added, ‘I simply can’t stand other Poshos.’

‘Oh, you’re one of Those Girls...’ he teased.

‘Don’t you “Those Girls” me, Little Boy...’

‘One of Those People, then,’ he corrected himself, ‘who rejects those that they share traits with, because they think anybody too much like them is going to be Competition. So you just end up misunderstood, and lonely.’

‘I happen to like being alone.’

‘Then that’s something that makes us different for starters,’ he replied in the blackness, ‘I hate it. I avoid solitude at all costs. But I think it likes me.’ He laughed slightly, sadly. ‘Wretched thing follows me everywhere, no matter what I do...’

‘Um...’ She felt the draught of the tunnel on her calves and stopped. She was back where she’d started. ‘I hate to tell you this, Little Lord Fauntleroy, but I don’t seem to be able to find any way out of here.’

‘What?’

‘Check yourself. There’s no door, no trick wall, nothing.’

‘What do mean, there’s no way out?’ he tutted, ‘we can’t get down the other way!’

She rolled her eyes.

‘Well, what do you want me to do about it, Kid? I’m not the one who collapsed the floor.’

‘How is that my fault?’ he cried, incredulously.

‘You pushed the switch.’

‘That was your idea!’

She smirked a little, despite her predicament. She had irked him, at last! Somehow, the irritation in his voice was even more attractive than his usual louche confidence. It was... vulnerable. She liked it.

*I’m definitely going to have to piss this Kid off more often!*

She felt his arm accidentally brush hers slightly in the darkness. It was warm, and firmly muscled. His skin was surprisingly soft. She closed her eyes at the touch, but wasn’t sure why.

‘So,’ he whispered, ‘what do we do know?’

*____*____*____*____*____*____*____*____*____*____*____*____*____*____*____*

(Well well well... still no sex, eh? Not so much as that little kiss she promised him... I think these two would string out the flirting till it reached Critical Mass, I'm afraid, but we'll see what happens in the next chapter...

N.S. - Bingo re the Boy! Thanks for your review. Really spurred me on to write chapter 2. And, yes, as you might have guessed, I like him too, although I prefer English accented, flirty SoT Princey-poos to Mean 'n' Moody WW one.
Altogether now... 'No no no. That didn't happen. Let me start again...'

Aunt Fanny xxx)