To Lily, red was just a vibrant color. The shade found in the last of the poppies growing on some shining island in the southern territories of the globe; in between the rays and whispers of the sun’s fall through the sky. The color of the flag she carried, of rubies and vases and passion.
A color, she swore, just a color.
___
“Get down!” Silence erupting into huge dark clouds and red-hot pain and noise overhead, Lily didn’t hesitate to hurl herself to the ground, tiny pricks of dullness pressing through the tough copper of her breastplate as burning coals scattered across the ground beneath her.
Head sharply ringing, eyes squinting through the ashes, she still didn’t bother brushing the grime off her face even as it pressed insistently across her cheeks, into her ears and inside her lips in a wash of bitterness. Now squeezing her eyes tightly shut, she held her breath and listened to screams circulating all around her, permeating the temperate air she couldn’t believe she and Declan had smiled at only hours earlier.
She lifted her head from the cover despite herself before crying out as she was roughly grabbed and slammed back behind the boulder. “Stay down,” someone – Wells – nearly shouted into her ear. Annoyance slipping away as quickly as it came, Lily gritted her teeth and nodded her head as another bomb erupted, closer this time. The heat of it shuddered through the air; she could feel it clawing across the side of her face, a sickly smell of burnt wafting lazily through the air as Wells furiously cried through the comms, trying to reach the General – Declan, Lily realized with a burst of horror, if he– if he–. She curled in on herself, shaking, green wisps of power escaping her hands and coursing across the surface of her armor as though to comfort her. Calm down. She inhaled deep, gritty breaths through her nose, clutching Wells’ hand beside her and only then noticing the deep gash in his shoulder; forcing her hands to still Lily reached up and centered the energy around the wound. Wells barely spared her a glance as her green energy knitted it together as fast as she could manage – long gone were the days he flinched at her abilities. Finished, Lily dropped her exhausted arms and pressed them to the ground as it shook beneath them, trying to collect her thoughts. The men are completely scattered. Declan isn’t here, isn’t responding. Not dead. Not dead. I’m safe. I’m with… Wells. Captain Wells, he knows what to do–
She could hardly stand listening to Wells gasp desperately into their messaging system, couldn’t bear either the silence that responded or her own inaction; for it was her responsibility to take on this role, she who outranked Wells and should be giving the orders, if only her arms would stop shaking, the green stop spilling uselessly from her fingertips, the carnage and fear and blood around her stop being quite so red, red red…
She had to clamp her teeth viciously down on the inside of her cheek to keep herself from shrieking as a heavy object smashed to the ground in front of her, Wells cursing as the comm was knocked from his hands and flew into the oblivion surrounding them on all sides. “Get back! Back!” she shouted, barely understanding, comprehending… stretching out her hands, she poured her soul into the green, green power, willing it to overcome the red, the blood… feeling the energy clamp around the bomb about to kill them, she only barely managed to hurl it away before it erupted just above their heads, sending her ears into a new bout of terrible ringing.
“We’re surrounded!” Wells cried, dragging himself to his feet, ankle bent in the wrong direction. Lily wanted to heal this, too, but couldn’t even fathom summoning the energy – she lay limp and useless on the ground, body wracked with tremors… Never had she been trained for this… never had she witnessed any Mage rebound from such a release of power as quickly as she needed to now, except Declan, who was not here, might not ever be again…
Wells had his firearms ready, a smaller and a larger, each gripped in one bloody fist, frame tipped awkwardly against the boulder now riddled with cracks, fit to crumple with the next explosion. Pulling herself to her knees took everything Lily had, darkness creeping across the expanse of her vision as Wells attempted to aid her without dropping his guns or falling over.
Wells looked at her expectantly. For direction – what did he want? A final motivation, a daring speech reassuring him to accept their coming demise? Lily had no words for him, no lifesaving magic, barely able to summon even the green sparks that tumbled uselessly from her fingers to the muddy battleground beneath them. “Thank you,” she murmured instead, “for being my captain.”
She wanted to say more, but knew from his eyes that he understood. A ghost of a smirk graced his face, a shadow of the grin he gave when first commissioned to her and Declan, young and rookie and unaware like all of them were. But it was enough.
He threw her the smaller gun. Lily would tease him for that when this was over, she thought, and then cursed herself for thinking it, because this was the end; this was silence, perhaps, darkness and finality and red. Death, she thought with a burst of panicked hysteria, was such a large thing for such a little life.
There was something admirable about the way they stood together, no less than all the times they had before. Guns cocked, a lame captain and his powerless Mage commander, not thirty-five years between the two of them, hunched over a broken slab of rock and ready to die.
Perhaps there was something quite pathetic, too. But still… as she and Wells fired mercilessly at the black-clad enemies charging towards them with their bombs and hatred and tidings of red red blood, Lily felt something like pride.
___
When Declan came to their aid, it was too late.
Blinking weakly up towards the smoke-and-ash-stained sky, Lily couldn’t bring herself to bother sliding tired irises up towards her General as she heard him shouting. Something warm and wet crept in a puddle across the ground beside her, but not beneath – Wells, she thought, Wells is dead, not me. Glarily lazily down, she watched, as through in a trance, as one thin stream separated from the mass and sloped down a small hill of dirt towards her, brushing against her arm, staining her armor. Still unwilling to look even as Declan desperately shook her, she could hardly breathe as a cold fist curled fingers of ice around her heart, for Wells was dead, dead and gone, and then panic forced its way inside her in a downpour, and now she breathed too much, ragged gasps forcing their way out of her ash-filled lungs. Gentle hands lifted her slowly, settling her down on the rough fabric of a stretcher, but none of it mattered, because Wells was not beside her, and she didn’t notice the green light again spilling out of her hands, forcing the soldiers’ and the medics’ hands off her, until Declan’s own blue energy carefully but firmly pried off her grip and forced her limbs still.
She knew, deep in her heart, that Wells’ death was not a sure thing – but she could not bring herself to ask, couldn’t even suggest it, could only bring tearful eyes finally up to meet Declan’s stricken face hovering above her and hope he understood.
“He’s okay.” Declan said quickly, squeezing her hand as more energy attempted to force its way out of her and the medics fit a heavy brace around Lily’s neck. “Wells is fine. I saw to it myself; you know I’ve never failed.” Lily knew the smile plastered across his face was false but relaxed despite herself; true as it was that Declan was famous among the mages for his skill at healing. (FIX THIS WORDING)
And now, now she saw, as she forced her head up against the brace and Declan’s protests, that they carried Wells’ limp form in the stretcher in front of her.
And God, the blood. Lily had seen it so many times, though this was more than she had ever seen; never had there been such a large amount of the substance… she could swear it covered everything, falling from the sky like rain droplets, climbing down Declan’s forehead and the slope of his nose, though she was sure some of it must have been simply conjured from the terror-ridden confines of her mind. I could have done more. I could have been like Declan, more powerful. I should have done more.
The stretcher was set down eventually; Lily didn’t know after how long – she might have blacked out. She could hear waves roaring somewhere beyond… they were back on the ship then, she surmised, then realized from the too-familiar too-bright lights that they were in the med bay. Declan was sitting down next to her. A few beats of silence then, clearing his throat heavily, Declan asked, “Are you hurt?” Realizing with relief that the neck brace was absent, Lily minutely shook her head, watching imaginary blood drip from the cracks in the ceiling, from the ends of hanging lights. She kept her eyes fixed on it… the shade of red was incredible, now she had time to inspect it so closely…
“Lily?” Declan’s voice was softer than she had ever heard it. “Wells is in the private ward, getting some rest. He’ll be alright in a few days. I promise.”
She didn’t respond. He sighed. “Do you want to get out of here?”
Lily nodded.
___
The smashing of pressurized shower water on porcelain snapped Lily out of her trance – staring stupidly at the mist floating through the air as water hit the ground, like the heaving waves outside, Lily sharply inhaled and, gazing around the small bathroom at Declan’s position rummaging through the sink cabinet, asked, “What are we doing here?”
Declan turned to her in concern, looking as though one might at a patient in the mind-healing ward of First Headquarters. “You need to wash that stuff off your face.” He walked towards her, briefly touching her head under the guise of removing a stray strand of hair, though she knew from the glow of blue in the corner of her eyes that he was checking, perhaps for the second time, for brain damage. “I told you this. Don’t you remember?”
“I – yeah, yes, of course.” She stammered, accepting the sanitary wipes in his outstretched hand and scrubbing the dirt off her face.
“Your arms too, Lil.” He looked plainly down at her arms; she flinched as her eyes followed and landed on the red stains dotting them. “I don’t think the wipes will do the trick for that – see, I turned the shower on, you can…” he gestured towards it. She didn’t move.
Having made to leave, Declan turned again as he didn’t hear a response. “Okay?” She looked at him. “Okay.” He nodded, and smiled at her, and shut the door behind him.
Lily stepped forward and slowly placed her arms in the shower. She froze again for a minute, relishing in the coolness of the water against her skin after the heat of that island and the bomb– she quickly moved to wash the blood, not bothering to remove her armor. The red substance stuck to it stubbornly – she had to roughly scrub it off the white surface. The blood on her skin slipped off easily, too easily, as though it hated her quite as much as she hated the feel of it on her, hated what it meant…
She found, again, that she entered a daze as she exited the tiny shower, armor now entirely soaked through and dripping. A few moments passed. Declan knocked on the door, and she called for him to enter.
If he was taken aback by the sight of her, clad in soaking armor, change of softer clothes left ignored on the counter, then he didn’t show it. Lily leaned back against the wall and stared down at her arms, her hands – the dried up filth had burrowed its way beneath her fingernails, she just couldn’t pry it out – would it stay there until the next island to conquer, the next battle? Her insides squirmed at the thought of it; vomit swallowed down her throat as Declan spoke.
“Lily.” He said, stepping towards her. “Enough. It’s gone.” Lily blinked up. “It’s all gone,” he repeated insistently. The man gently took hold of her arm, pointing at her hand. “You’re still scratching at it. It’s gone – no more to clear off.” He sighed heavily and leaned against the wall beside her. Silence fell, not quite uncomfortably – but she felt she had to say –
“I’m sorry.” Lily said quietly.
Declan turned to her in shock. “What?”
She looked at him miserably. “It was my fault. My fault the men died, and Wells almost–”
“Stop.” Her mouth clicked shut. “God, Lily, it was my fault. I’m sorry. I – we got trapped in the canyon beside the river. I was leading the civilians from the village. I jumped up of course, but they – I couldn’t lift them all up fast enough and I couldn’t leave them, the scum were using their drivers to break the dam, trying to drown the civilians. It was my fault.”
“It wasn’t, you couldn’t have left them!” She cried.
“No different than you leaving Wells alone.” He retorted. “We’re both sorry, and we’re neither to blame, and Lily, I can’t even tell you how proud I am.” (FIX THIS)
Lily ducked her head, tears welling again.
“But that’s not all bothering you, is it?” She felt Declan shift, felt his concerned stare. “Do you want to talk about it?” In a quiet, unusually soft voice, like something was different this time, like he was treading on something precious.
Her feet were starting to slip in the growing puddle of water dripping from her armor, body sliding down the wall, but she made no movement to right herself. “This… this is meant to be normal,” she finally forced out.
Declan didn’t need any explanation. “It is.”
She finally slid down enough to hit the ground with a thump. “It’s not right.” She said quietly. “I hate it.”
“I do, too.”
“And I hate – I hate the color red.”
He was quiet for a moment, surprised. “Well, you look alright in it.”
Lily stared down at her armor, shining white. She smiled a little despite herself and brought her knees up to her chest. Neither said what they were thinking, sneaking around the unsaid subject, the heavy words tucked neatly between short sentences and halfhearted jokes. She knew Declan was doing it, going along with it, so she could feel better, and that gave her a heavy sadness she couldn’t quite describe – because God, she was young, and he was hardly older than her, he and Wells, and she felt them all children, playing pretend in a game of war with for-real consequences and death and blood a color they once associated only with pretty flowers and gemstones and something other than this.
___
But Lily knew, and her General knew, that they would eventually have to talk about it, what they were really thinking.
She sensed him gearing up to it as they walked from the bathroom to their connected quarters, each soldier she saw alive on the way a fresh burst of relief, but he seemed only to summon the courage as she slipped under the covers of her bunk.
“It means something.” He said, standing next to the door, head ducked towards the ground. “What happened there. What happens anywhere we’re sent. I know it, you know it. Wells. All of us.” She had wanted to discuss it all along, but now it was really here; he was really here, facing her and talking about it, she felt a tightness in her chest and wished for him to leave.
“We do whatever we can to survive. To make sure our soldiers survive, and each other.” He murmured, barely audible. “We all know the price, how many ways it might happen. I know you don’t like to hear it. I hated this talk when my General gave it to me, but he needed me to know, and I need you to know.” He paused. “We all hate the sacrifices. It’s not a matter of heroics, or glory. It’s awful – but we do it because we know the cost if we don’t.”
“I just – Lily, just know it means something.” He finished, letting out a sigh and gripped the doorknob to leave.
Lily shifted underneath the covers, stared after him as he left and whispered, far too quietly even for a Mage’s enhanced hearing, why do we have to be the ones to pay the price?
Eventually, she closed her eyes and slept dreams tinted red.
___
Red was the color of grief, of loss. Lily saw it too many times after that.