FAN FICTON
This scene takes place a few days after Kilroy was wounded in the first and only battle of his fighting career. He‘s been staying in the Healer’s Hut as he waits for his body to heal.
The following night was one of the worst in his life. Debilitating emotion hemmed in his mind, and injuries and illness restricted his body. All he wanted was to stand up and walk away from the exhaustion and the pain, to think rationally and clearly again. But it never was that simple.
If only he could forget the fighting, and wounds, and traumas, the abandonment, the ruined relationship with his father. No matter how much he wanted it all to go away, this was a part of him now. Kilroy would have to learn to live with it.
And now that he knew about the horrible corruption his society held, he could a find new purpose to replace the old broken dreams. He would have revenge. He would have revenge on his forcefully ignorant father, and the self-righteous camp the leaders, the stallion-colts who thought they were brave and tough, the mare-fillies who thought they were so popular and kind, everyone who thought they were smart, and that they understood. People who thought that they had the right to control and manipulate Kilroy’s life. He would him give them a taste of their own medicine!
No one would expect him. They all underestimated him, only saw him as an antisocial scribe with no useful skills. He would show them how much damage a little scribe could cause.
He would do all this... as soon as he could walk again, and could move without pain, and could breathe freely. Again, easier said than done. His fever had risen into delirium the night before, and again he had found himself laying in the mud, watching blood drip down his leg and down the tree and from a hand and into the mud.
The morning, however, brought improvement, with the fever much decreased. Kilroy entertained himself with thoughts of revenge, as he stared at the wall, feeling too miserable and weak to even braid the loose blanket threads.
Light headed and dizzy, he could not bring himself to eat the food he was issued. Instead, he surreptitiously passed it to the patient next to him. At this point, there was too many patients for the nurses to notice. He wouldn’t be able to pull this stunt next week…
As the hours wore on, he found himself aggravated at nearly everything, making hollow observations of the sullen silence and the pitiful sounds that periodically broke it. He though longingly of the cool mat in his tent, that smelled fresh from rosemary sprigs and never had felt like a trap before.
It was about noon when a young red-headed centauress entered the hut. She was visually stunning, her hair bright in the sunlight, and Kilroy felt his eyes drawn to her.
“Avery!” came one patient’s voice, bright and cheerful. The two lapsed into conversation, and Kilroy’s meandering focus left them.
He was so tired... energy was so fleeting these days, and his eyes slid shut.
Kilroy felt a light tap on his shoulder. “Hmm?” he half moaned, half asked. He forced his eyes open. “Oh!” he exclaimed, excited by the presence of Avery’s glimmering golden eyes.
Kilroy did not sit up, because he knew it was bad for his wound and he did not want any setbacks.
“Would you like some soup?” Avery asked.
It took Kilroy a couple moments to process that. He gritted his teeth and sat up. “Would I... yes...that would be very nice,” he muttered, cheeks flushing. Why would someone... he felt an incredible range of emotions.
Kilroy had never done anything for Avery, but here she was, bringing homemade soup to the patients in the Healer’s Hut. He knew the time it must have taken, and the thought, and more poignantly, the care. Kilroy knew he would have to spend a lot of time to try to understand this.
Avery handed him a bowl, and he reached out for it, hand trembling. Avery noticed this, and bypassed the hand to put the bowl directly in his lap.
Kilroy grasped the bowl and looked up at her. She smiled back invitingly.
“Thank you,” Kilroy said, after a beat, eyes beginning to well up.
“It’s nothing,” Avery said kindly, before moving on to the next centaur.
Kilroy lifted the bowl to his lips with exaggerated care, but then hesitated, trying to swallow back the lump growing in his throat. He had begun to think that simple kindness was not real, it did not exist in his new world view... This, this was everything. He had never been so happy to be so wrong.
He watched her from behind the bowl as she moved down the line, studying the side profile of her face, lightly dappled with freckles, cool golden eyes looking forward at the centaur she was talking to. Autumnal beauty compared to his barren winter body…
He sipped at the soup a little. It tasted like a home, the sort of home he would want to live in some day. It more than food. It felt like a communication to his isolated mind. Kilroy clung to the bowl tightly like it was a life line... Perhaps he was being melodramatic, but hadn’t he earned the right?
When Avery came back up the line, Kilroy had finished his food, reclining in an air of content bewilderment.
“Thank you very much,” he told her, mustering up as much strength as he could behind the words, so that it sounded more like a confident politician than a sick scribe.
“I’m glad you liked it,” she said, taking the bowl. But she did not stop there, though she could have. Gently, she placed her hand on his shoulder, and assured, “Heal up, and this will all be over soon. Things will get better, I promise. I believe in you.”
Kilroy looked up at Avery’s beautiful face, unable to speak. The tears in his eyes blurred it into a crystalline montage of red and gold and white. Her words, though similar to Fig’s, had a completely different meaning.
When Kilroy’s father told him that he would be out of the Healer’s Hut soon, he spoke as if he didn’t understand the gravity of his injuries, as if the whole battle had been nothing more than a fun hike, with the minor misfortune of scraping his knees bringing it to an end. What did he know of the death of dreams?
But somehow Avery understood. Avery comforted him that things would get better... because she believed him. She believed in him. She took a leap of faith in someone she hardly knew. She trusted that his story was not over. Kilroy recognized that she expected great things of him. And he knew he would be forever indebted to her for it.
So when Avery left the tent, Kilroy felt happy for the first time in days. He acknowledged that there had to be more to his future than revenge. He enumerated several new goals for himself.
He would endeavor towards peace. Anything short of peace could not be tolerated- he could not let war destroy anyone else, nor validate the forceful few.
He would carve out a new life for himself. He was happy as a scribe, but he would have to reveal the new, sharp pieces of himself if he wanted to achieve his goals.
He would not let his peers follow the degenerate path of violence and the sort of cruelty that even lead to war. He would do this by any means necessary... Whatever it took to stop the hawkish stallions who had encouraged his enlistment.
He would see Avery again, and get to know her better. This goal was a different sort than the rest, but it was not any less important.
But there was another goal, darker and older than the rest, and it drew power from different place in him. Whether it was stronger remained to be discovered. He would still have revenge, on the corrupt camp governance from taking everything from him, from his dreams of old to his virility. He would crush everything his father and his cronies had built. Nothing would stop him, short of return to the past. Of course he knew that was impossible.
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