Pairing: Polly/Mal.
Rating: C

Disclaimer: The author makes no claim to owning the rights of anything to do with Terry Pratchett or Discworld.
Note: Since I'm sure all of you have read Latin_Doll's beautiful and heartbreaking works (There'll Be Children and No Butterflies Here, Except Maybe One), you must all be wondering what happens next.
At least, I was certainly wondering what happens next. To the point of pestering her madly and finding out that she did not want to write action.
So. I asked if I could write a follow-up (and by 'write', I mean "post something that I've already started writing").

Butterflies Are Free
by Amazon Syren

     “I’m so sorry,” Mal whispers against her throat, the brush of her lips a horrible parody of a kiss.
      “Please,” Polly whispers back. “It’ll be alright.”
      But she feels her skin rip, the muscle of her shoulder tear, just at the base of her neck, and the pain is crippling for a moment. She tells herself that she’s been through worse, and she has, but she’s never been this afraid, never known this bone-numbing terror, not even on the battle field. Not even at the sound of heavy boots outside their cell.
      Her head is swimming from blood-loss, and she can feel herself slipping away—
     
      Polly gasps in the dark, panting, her breath forming misty clouds in the chilly air.
      “Pol?” a whisper comes from across the room, and Polly reminds herself that Mal never really sleeps these days.
      “H-how much time do you have?” she asks, softly, fearing the answer.
      When the guards had taken Mal away, they’d given her coffee. Polly had grasped at that fact like a straw when she’d heard it, but over the course of the next four days, when, mercifully, no guards had come for either of them, she had realized that it meant something else.
      It meant they might know about the coffee.
      “Mal?” Polly ventures, again.
      Polly hears Mal swallow audibly in the tiny room.
      “Another day? If I hold tight.”
      “Do you think they’re waiting to see if you kill me?”
      To that, there is no reply.
      Not that Polly had expected one.
      Mal had spent most of the last few days curled in on herself, just breathing, and Polly hasn’t been able to bring herself to get close. A cough rattles in her chest, but she suppresses it as best she can.
      “That cough sounds bad.”
      Polly laughs, hollowly.
      “I’ve had worse,” she answers. Briefly, she wishes that she wasn’t so afraid, wishes that she could bring herself to crawl the short distance from her wall to Mal’s, to curl up beside her and share what warmth they have between each other. She swallows, hard, against the lump in her throat and asks, “How are your wrists?”
      “I’ve had worse,” comes the answer, tinged with bitterness.
      “I’m sorry.”
      Sorry for what? she asks herself. For getting the shackles off? For being the one who was left behind.
      She already knows the answer to that.
      “I can bend my fingers again,” Mal informs her, and this time her voice is almost cheerful.
      The better to hold you down with, my dear…
      “Oh,” she answers. “That’s good.”
      Polly goes over what they have.
      1) Two military issue uniforms, somewhat threadbare
      2) One set of silver shackles that only one of us can touch
      3) One short length of scrappy, but remarkably strong rope, cut in two and fraying badly at the cut ends
      4) One pair of hard-won scissors
      Hard-won indeed. That time, it had been Mal paying the price to buy them more time. Polly can hear the sound of Mal’s bones, cracking under the pressure of the heavy boots, but she pushes the memory away.
      She hesitates a moment more before adding
      5) One vampire, going through dangerous levels of withdrawal
      to the list.
     
      “Mal?”
      She waits, wondering if there will be an answer this time.
      “Ask,” Mal says, after almost too long a while, her voice resigned. “Ask whatever you want.”
      Polly closes her eyes, and the darkness gets a little darker, though not much.
      “Can… Can you get out…?” she asks, trying to swallow the hundred questions lurking below that one. If you can, why are you still here? If you could... would you take me, too?
      A sigh in the dark.
      “Not yet,” she answers, finally.
     
      This had been the other half of their plan – their stupid, suicidal famous-last-stand. There was a hatch, big enough to slide a half-empty tin plate through, in the bottom of the door. The stolen scissors, whatever Mal had endured during those endless hours while Polly sawed through her own bindings thread by thread, picking the locks on Mal’s shackles… it had all been for this. Bound by silver, Mal couldn’t transform. Free, she could. She could get herself through the hatch in the door, reach back through and take whatever sharp implement Polly had managed to take, and pick the lock of the cell. Or at least, that had been the plan.
     
      High, high above them, the grey of false dawn begins to filter through the cruel joke of a window.
“What do you mean?” Polly asks.
      Silence, again.
      Then, “In case you hadn’t noticed,” Mal answers, “they haven’t fed us in a while. It’s not exactly helping the healing process.”
      It was true. There had been water, because prisoners are no fun when they shrivel up and die, but there hadn’t been any food since Mal got brought back to the cell.
      “I don’t think,” Mal went on, “that I could pull myself back together again if I let myself go.”
      If I let myself go...
      Polly shudders in the dark, her hand creeping to the scabbed over wound on her neck. What if Mal let herself go? She felt her hand close reflexively around the scissors, still lying by her side. Could they work as a stake?
      Gods, she thinks, realizing what she’s contemplating. She forces her fingers to relax. A week ago – only a week ago – Mal had rested her head in Polly’s lap and Polly had run her numbing fingers awkwardly through Mal’s hair. I know I loved you once. I remember.
      “Was this for nothing?” she wonders, aloud.
     
      She hears Mal scoff, listens as she struggles into a sitting position, the hiss of her breath signalling the brush of her still-raw skin against the stone floor.
      Polly turns her head enough to see Mal, her arms draped across her knees, her ravaged wrists hanging free. Her eyes are bleak.
      “Was it, sarge?”
     
      Sarge, she thinks. Not Polly. That hurts, even after this much pain.
     
      In all the time they’ve been here, Mal has only cried once. When she had bitten Polly. A treacherous part of Polly wants to see Mal cry again, wants to see her cool-as-a-cucumber composure, what’s left of it, crack just a little.
     
      Maybe that’s why she sits up, and looks at Mal.
      Maybe it’s because she knows they’ve only got one day left, if that, before Mal does this anyway, and that’s why she reaches for her collar and begins unfastening the buttons, exposing the angry welts that remain from the last time she let Mal anywhere near her.
      Maybe it’s because a little part of her thinks that, possibly, if she felt guilty enough, Mal might come back for her if she got out.
      Maybe that’s why she bares her throat and asks, “Will this help?”
      Or maybe there’s another reason, but Polly can’t see what it is anymore.
     
      “You don’t want to do this,” Mal says, but her eyes fasten on the healed-over gash in Polly’s neck.
      No, Polly thinks. I don’t.
      “Can you think of anything else?” she asks, instead.
      Mal doesn’t answer, but stares at the crusted blood, unblinking.
      Polly sees her swallow, sees her force herself to look away, staring at the stone walls.
      “Maybe,” Mal says eventually.
      Polly watches her chew her lip, then stop suddenly, to reach up tentatively, pressing her fingers to her mouth, checking, perhaps, for traces of her own blood.
      “What if I can’t stop?” Mal asks. “You remember last time,” she continues. Her mouth quirks, bitter and ironic, “I know you do.”
      “I could stop you,” Polly offers.
      Mal’s hollow, dismissive laugh is an answer all on its own.
      “Do you really think you could, Polly?” Mal turns her head, to meet her eyes. “Did you think, even for one moment, that those scissors could stop me? Even if you did get them into my heart?” She shakes her head. “It needs to be wood, Polly. Nothing else works on a vampire.”
      The words sting, suggesting that she should have known better.
      She should have.
      “No,” she lies. “I thought I could appeal to your better nature.”
      Mal’s mouth quirks, but it’s more of a grimace than a smirk.
      “Not much of that left, I’m afraid,” she answers, quietly.
      “Better some than none,” Polly says, trying to swallow her fear.
     
      “I don’t—” Mal begins, then tries again. “I don’t want to kill you, Polly.”
      Polly blinks at that. Ever since the last time, she hadn’t really been sure. She still isn’t sure. But a little part of her has to admit that it’s nice to pretend it might be true.
      “You don’t?”
      “No.” Her mouth quirks and she raises an eyebrow, briefly. “Are you suggesting that I should?”
      Polly can't answer that. In fact, she finds that she can’t even look at Mal anymore. Not right now, not with her own guilt swimming in her mind.
      She turns away, looking at her knees, instead.
      "If it's going to happen anyway," she murmurs. "I'd prefer you to do it while you've still got some control left."
      She hears Mal sigh, heavily.
      "If it's what you want."
      "Oh, fuck you," Polly answers, echoing Mal's own words, twisting them bitterly. What the hell had happened to them here?
     
      Polly hears Mal stumble to her feet, hears her ragged breath, her uneven steps as she moves closer, and then Mal is beside her, and Polly can’t suppress the shudder of terror that rockets down her spine any longer.
      She gropes for the scissors, suddenly needing them very badly.
     
      “Looking for these?”
      Mal has them in her hand already.
      Polly closes her eyes, not wanting to look at Mal’s expression. She nods, mutely.
      "Can't say I blame you," Mal murmurs. "It’s okay to be scared."
      Polly feels Mal peeling back the collar of her shirt, exposing her flesh again. She feels her heart racing in her chest, painfully aware that Mal can hear it flinging itself against her ribs, she can’t seem to get enough air.
      And then there’s only pain. Not the tearing touch of Mal’s teeth this time, but the unexpected edge of a blade against her flesh.
      Polly gasps, her eyes flying open in shock. She sees the bloody scissors in Mal’s hand.
      “I—I thought it would be easier for you than the alternative,” Mal explains, before lowering her mouth to Polly’s pierced and bleeding shoulder.
     
      Mal doesn’t touch Polly while she’s drinking. A hand out to steady her, but nothing more. Polly wonders if this is meant to make her feel better. She might have wondered for longer, but, too soon, the waves of dizziness begin washing over her, and Polly feels herself slipping out of her own body again.
      Maybe she’ll kill me, after all, Polly thinks, feeling the pull of Mal’s mouth on her shoulder, feeling her own body growing weaker.
     
      But then she feels Mal’s lips press hard against her shoulder and experiences the strange sensation of her own blood clotting, her flesh healing over once more. When Mal pulls away, she licks her lips carefully, not wasting a single drop, avoiding Polly’s eyes again, even though she can’t hide behind her dark hair any longer.
     
      Polly puts her fingers to her shoulder, searching for a wound that isn’t there.
      “What did you—?”
      “I told you,” Mal says, meeting her eyes. She isn’t crying this time, Polly notices. “I don’t want to kill you.”
      Polly looks away, still breathing hard. Somehow that thought isn’t as comforting as she thought it would be. She notices Mal’s hand, still holding the blood-stained scissors, her wrists which bear the heavy traceries of scar tissue, but nothing more.
      “It worked,” she breathes.
      Mal drops the scissors, examining her own wrists.
      “It worked,” she confirms, relief in her voice. She sighs. “It would have been a bloody waste if it hadn’t,” she comments, and Polly can’t swallow the hysterical little laugh that wells up in her throat.
      “Yeah,” she answers, a little breathlessly. “Lucky thing, that. Um.”
      “Um.”
      “Okay.” Polly forces her mind to think. “Okay,” she says again. “Can you do it?”
      “I think I can,” Mal answers. Polly watches as Mal’s hand slowly dissipates, turning to mist in the gloom, and then re-condensing once more. The scars are still there, but Mal wiggles her fingers experimentally. “I can do this,” she confirms.
      Polly nods, allowing herself a brief moment of hope. This might work, after all.
      But, then, it might not. Hope is such a fragile thing.
     
      She sighs.
      “We have no idea,” she points out, “when the guard changes around here.”
      Mal glances up and up, towards the faint light of the window.
      “Dawn,” she observes. “The night watch will be going off duty around now,” she continues. “Stands to reason, doesn’t it?”
      Polly shrugs.
      “As good a guess as any,” she concedes, her hand feeling its way over the cold, stone floor. Her fingers close on the scissors.
      She forces herself to stand, as Mal shuffles back, getting to her own feet, her eyes on Polly’s hand.
     
      “Come on,” Polly says, her head spinning. She takes a step towards the door, stumbling on legs like jelly, and is surprised when Mal puts out an unexpected arm to catch her, steady her.
      “I’m- I’m fine,” Polly says, pulling away, as shaken by the touch as she was by Mal’s need for her blood. “I’m okay.”
      “I’m sorry,” Mal murmurs. “I didn’t think—”
      “No, it’s alright. Really. I’d have fallen, otherwise.”
      Mal nods, tightly.
      "Let’s... Let’s get on with this."
     
      Polly takes a step towards the door, then another, willing herself not to stumble again. The door is not far, but when she reaches it, Polly sinks to the ground gratefully.
      She forces the tip of the scissors under the flap of the hatch, prying it inwards and up.
     
      “That’s far enough,” Mal murmurs. She glances at Polly, briefly, already starting to dissipate. “Thank you,” she whispers, before the mist claims her entirely. Polly watches as the mist that is Mal flows slowly through the hatch, leaving her alone in the cell.
      She waits for a moment, listening, then:
      “Mal?” She strains her ears for Mal’s reply, waiting expectantly for Mal’s pale hand to reach through the hatch for the scissors. “Mal?” She tries again, feeling a chill seeping into her body that has nothing to do with the cold cell. She forces the hatch open as wide as she can, peering through the inch-high slot. All she sees is the opposite wall. Not even a trace of mist remaining.
      No, she thinks, her heart almost forgetting to beat for a moment. No!
      She throws the scissors to the ground, the hatch napping shut, and slams her fist against the door.
      “Godsdammit, Mal,” she whispers. “Godsdammit all!”
     
      Alone, maybe permanently this time, in the bare stone cell, she feels the hurricane come, gulping one ragged breath after another, as her eyes blur with tears and the sobs fill her throat, choking her.
     
      She thinks of Lofty and Tonker and wonders, not for the first time, if there were times in the grey house when they wished their own pain on each other, just to keep from being hurt again. Maybe there were enough other girls in the Working School that they never had to do that, that they could always be there for each other.
      She thinks of Mal – Mal, who must be long gone by now – and wonders if it's possible to love someone again after you’ve wished crushed hands and broken ribs on them because it would mean it wasn’t happening to you.
     
      Maybe, she considers, maybe the reason Mal didn’t want to kill her was because, in this place, killing her would have been a mercy. And maybe Mal had decided that Polly didn’t deserve such a thing.
      She digs her nails into her palms as her body shakes, wracked with weeks of unshed tears. It is a few seconds before she realizes that the sound her ears are picking up is the tread of boots on the stairs.
      Too heavy to be Mal.
     
      Fuck! she curses, mentally, wiping her eyes angrily with her palm. She shoves the scissors down the side of her boot, wincing as the blades scrape against her skin through her thinning socks, but not stopping. She crawls over the stone floor, huddling on her right side in the corner to conceal the small heap of rope, the silver shackles, that had been piled there. It is, perhaps, a sudden strange fancy that makes her reach for the silver chain and clasp both of the shackles around her right arm.
      Her arm that is now a club.
      You never know, she thinks, wildly, as her heart pounds in her chest and her stomach lurches. It might buy me a minute.
     
      She curls around the scraps of rope, the scissors pressing against her right calf, the shackles heavy on her arm. She hears the key turn loudly in the lock and fights the urge to vomit, wondering which of the many, many painfully uncreative methods the guards will use to ask her where Mal had disappeared to.
     
      “Oh, this is interesting,” and Polly flinches, involuntarily, at the sound of the guard’s voice, speaking a mountain dialect common to a dozen countries around Polly’s own. The voice is half amused, half threatening, and one hundred percent malicious.
      “Where ever did your vicious little friend get off to?” the guard continues, and his subtext sniggers like a Strappi and says ’I’m going to enjoy making you tell me’.
     
      Heavy boots on the stone floor, and Polly knows he’s right behind her. She wonders how many are watching from the door, but she doesn’t hear anyone else.
      “Where is he?” the guard asks, and his voice is almost reasonable while, at the same time, carrying a note of warning that isn’t reasonable at all.
      “Maybe he finally got tired of your hospitality,” Polly suggests, bitterly, still facing the wall.
Her breath hisses hard between her teeth when his boot connects with her kidney. She had expected it, and gritted her teeth against it, and it still hurts as much as it had the last time they’d taken her out for questioning. She swallows hard against the bile in her throat, knowing that, if she gets out of this, she’ll be pissing blood for a while.
     
      “Try again,” the guard suggests, casually, his boot pressing lightly against her tailbone, telling her where the next blow will connect. Probably.
      “I don’t know,” Polly answers, tightly, waiting for the pain to explode along her spine, unprepared when, instead, the blow cracks against her ribs.
      “Where is he?” The guard growls, all amusement gone.
      Polly considers, briefly, the foolishness of lying down. If she’d been waiting, scissors in hand, when he came in – but, no. His friends would have out numbered her, even if she’d been able to get one down, even if she'd been able to steal his sword. Polly curls in on herself, not answering, waiting for the next blow to land.
     
      “Now what have we here?” the guard asks. His boot lands heavily on her left shoulder, pressing down, offering her the choice of turning over or ending up with a dislocated shoulder.
      She fights it for a moment, knowing that, since this is going to end worse than it began, she may as well delay things as long as possible. Eventually, though, she feels bone grating on bone and has to turn onto her back. Polly glances furtively towards the door and is surprised to see that there is no-one there.
      How— They always come in groups—
     
      The guard nudges her jaw, almost but not quite gently, with the toe of his boot. She can feel the grit against her skin as he presses his sole against her cheek.
      “Your friend left you something to remember him by,” he continues, casually, taking in the shackles on her arm.
      He kicks her shoulder, hard, and Polly feels the bones crack under the force of the blow, pain lancing through her body, before numbness settles in. She won’t be using that arm for a little while.
      “Why ever would he want to leave? After all,” the guard continues, settling his boot on Polly’s chest and leaning his weight heavily on her. “We’ve been so nice to you.”
      Polly closes her eyes, swallowing hard. They've done this one before, it's as familiar as being kicked, but so much worse. Her ribs scream under his weight, and she can't get enough air, she may never be able to get enough air.
     
      Nice, he’d said. Despite all the evidence, Polly knows that it’s true, after a fashion. They have never taken her clothes off, for example, even though she’s a woman. They have never gone nearly as far as they could go.
      She wonders, briefly, if voicing her awareness of this will change anything. She wonders, almost numb with terror, if they intend to stop being nice now that Mal has gone.
     
      The thought is enough to make her struggle, flailing her good right arm, heavy with silver, against his knee.
      She hears the bone crack, registers the knee giving, just before she feels his weight come down hard on her ribs, driving the air out of her lungs. Polly claws at him, fighting for breath. Her fist drives hard between his legs, but not before his own hand cuffs her heavily across the jaw, and she tastes blood again.
      “Bitch,” he gasps, hoarsely, as her fist connects and his eyes go wide in pain, and his head pitches forward, and there is blood dripping from his mouth. Polly struggles, wriggling against his weight. Dead weight, she realizes, and turns her head sharply towards the door.
      The open door.
      Mal’s right hand is still raised, frozen. In her left, there is sword.
      The spell holds for no more than a moment, before Mal is crossing the room on hasty steps, helping to drag the guard’s body off of her. Polly sees the dagger buried in his neck.
      “You came back,” she comments, gulping air, trying to keep the surprise out of her voice as she struggles to her feet.
      “I can’t bloody well fight my way out of here alone,” Mal tells her, hurrying her out of the cell, careful of the clinking, silver chains.
      Alone, you wouldn’t have had to fight, Polly thinks, and feels a wave of something – not love, but maybe gratitude? – wash over her.
     
      “That’s the third bloody guard I’ve killed this morning,” Mal points out. Her eyes, Polly notices, are glowing faintly in the dim hallway. There is a second sword leaning against the outside wall of the cell. “I don’t fancy being around here when the corpses start getting noticed.”
      Polly grips the hilt of her newly-acquired sword, almost but not quite shocked at how remarkably happy – happy? – she is to have a weapon in her hands again.
      “Right,” Polly says, agreeing fervently. “Have you found a way out?”
      Mal’s mouth quirks, grimly.
      “In a manner of speaking,” she answers, turning towards the stairs. “Come on,” she continues. “Follow me. And watch it with that silver.”
      Polly follows, her ribs still on fire, thinking about the dead guard in the cell. Whatever it is, she thinks to herself, it has to be better than staying.
     
      Polly follows Mal up the narrow, winding stairs, moving as silently as she can, stifling the coughs that threaten to burst from tortured lungs. Mal stops at the top of the staircase, going unnaturally still. It is a moment before Polly realizes that she is listening.
      “Two heartbeats,” Mal reports in a whisper Polly can barely hear, and gestures to the right. Mal’s body blurs, then, the way she did only a few days ago, when she distracted the guards long enough for Polly to get the scissors. She is back before Polly fully comprehends that she had stepped out from their cover.
      “All clear,” Mal whispers. “Come on.”
     
      All Polly can do is follow wondering, again, why Mal was risking so much when she could have gotten out on her own so much more easily. She wiggles the fingers of her left hand, bends her elbow, gingerly. Well, she thinks. At least I’m getting some feeling back. Granted, much of what she can feel in her left arm is pain, throbbing from her shoulder all the way to her fingertips. She knows that her shoulder would be blue-purple before the morning is out, but at least she can use her arm again.
     
      They creep along one narrow, disused corridor after another, Polly griping the chains in her left hand to keep them from rattling, until she stops bothering to remember where they’ve been. Noticing the distinct lack of blood and corpses, she wonders, briefly, how Mal went about killing the other two soldiers she’d mentioned.
      Polly pushes that thought out of her mind, not really wanting to know.
      “Wait here,” Mal hisses, just once, in an alcove outside a door. She blurs again and, when she’s back, she is wearing a grim, if somewhat more self-satisfied, smile. “Come on. Not much farther.”
     
     
     
      “Are you serious?” Polly asks, when they reach what appears to be a dead end.
      “Yep.”
      Polly looks dubiously at the three-hole latrine – surprisingly not unlike the urinals back at the Duchess – that they are standing over, and suppresses a shudder. It’s not as if she’s exactly clean right now given that the last time she had anything remotely like a wash had been two days before they’d been shaved, and it had, in actuality, meant being pissed on by one of the guards.
      “How far down is it, do you know?”
      “About ten feet?” Mal hazards.
      Polly sighs. It’s not as if she won’t be landing on something soft.
      Eugh.
      “Alright,” she says. “See you down there.”
      She hands Mal her sword, climbs onto the latrine box and, carefully, trying not to breathe, lowers herself into one of the holes.
      The drop, once she’s lowered herself as far as she can, is still about five feet. Or so her knees suggest when she lands, squelching messily, in a good two feet of... er... softness.
      Eugh.
      Gods, I need a bath, Polly thinks. A steaming hot bath full of water, with mountains of soap and a bloody fucking loofah sponge—
      “Hey,” Mal hisses, from above. “Get out of the way.”
      Polly stumbles a few steps into the noisome dark, as two swords drop, one after the other, down the hole, landing point-first in the thick muck.
      “Grab ‘em, will you?”
      Polly nods, and her hands close, gratefully, around the twin hilts. A small part of her tells her not to give them back, to find her way out on her own.
      She tells it to shut up.
     
      A moment later, chilly mist starts pouring into the dark below the latrine and drifting around Polly’s knees. A moment more, and the mist fountains up, coalescing back into Maladict.
      “I am never going to get used to you doing that,” Polly comments, forcing herself to hand back one of the swords.
      “You’re not required to,” Mal answers, possibly shrugging, although Polly can’t really see much in the gloom. “Follow me.”
      “Wait, what? I can hardly see down—” Polly gropes in the darkness, listening for Mal’s squelching footsteps. She finds a shoulder, at about the right height, with her hand.
      “Mal?” she whispers, bringing her sword up.
      There is an annoyed silence, broken only by the squelch of boots in muck.
      “No,” Mal answers, finally. “It’s your fairy fucking godmother.”
      “Oh,” says Polly. “Good.”
     
      They are walking steadily down hill, Polly notices. She assumes this is a good thing as, presumably, the latrines in a Keep actually have to drain somewhere. Slowly, she becomes aware of a dim light suffusing the gloom. She can make out Mal’s shape ahead of her, first, although she isn’t sure if that’s merely because her eyes are growing accustomed to the darkness. Then she feels the movement of air, faintly, against her face, not quite as foul as it has been up until now.
      “Do you think they know we’re gone, yet?” Polly whispers.
      “Almost undoubtedly,” Mal answers, quietly.
      Which means they’ll be looking for us, now, Polly finishes, silently. And we’ve just killed a few of their mates, so they’re not going to be happy with us. She feels her stomach clench with familiar fear. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
      And then there is light – a blindingly bright, uneven column of it – ahead of them. Polly feels hope flair, briefly, painfully, inside her before she realizes that the column is probably far too narrow for a human to squeeze through.
      Shit, she thinks. And then, mentally groaning at herself, How bloody appropriate of me...
     
      The crack in the stone is, Polly judges, just under five feet high. It does, however, get a bit wider towards the bottom, where a steady stream of yellow-brow glop is flowing sluggishly through it. She can see the gully, running across the stone-littered strand, where it joins the river, although she can’t see much else because the light is glittering off the water in a way that makes vision impossible.
      Polly blinks hard, pulling back from the crack in the wall. She considers the gap and decides that, if she lies down on her side, she can probably wriggle through it.
      “Wait,” whispers Mal, as Polly gets to her knees. She leans her sword against the damp wall, dissolving quickly.
      Polly wonders, as she watches Mal re-constitute herself on the other side of the wall, whether Mal can see – or even sense – anything much when she’s in her mist form.
      “All clear so far,” Mal whispers, urgently. “Pass me the swords and get through, fast.”
      Easy for you to say, Polly thinks, handing their weapons through the gap. She rolls onto her right side and, reaching through the gap, forces herself through.
     
      “Gods,” she chokes, trying to scrape herself clean against the rough stone of the keep. “That’s bloody disgusting. And this is a soldier talking.”
      They are under what appears to be an overhang of the keep. Polly notes the smoothness of the stones littering the ground, the nearness of the river which, despite being relatively narrow, is still running fast. She decides that the overhang must be due to centuries of wear from the river rising during spring flooding.
      A month ago, she realizes, we wouldn’t have been able to get out this way.
      “Okay,” she whispers. She looks around, trying to think. There are, she sees, shallow rapids not too far away. But Polly is fairly good at the more survival-prone type of military thinking, and knows that if she thinks it’s a perfect place to ford a river, someone else will have thought that, too. She looks down the other way and sees, to her dismay, that the river has a rather cut-off look to it at this end.
      “I didn’t realize there’d be a waterfall,” Mal murmurs.
      “Doesn’t matter,” Polly answers.
      There is a wide, open field across the river, because no-one with a keep to defend is going to make it easy for the enemy to sneak up on them, but beyond the field is thick forest, and that’s where she knows they need to be.
     
      “Look,” she says. “They’re looking for us already, right?”
      Mal nods.
      “And it’s broad daylight.”
      Another nod.
      “I think,” she says, slowly, “that I’ll have to wait until nightfall.”
      “You?”
      “Well,” Polly falters. “You can do your dissolving thing and get out of here now,” she points out. “I can’t do that.” She sighs. “I figure if I leave the bloody red jacket here, I can wait inside—” Not that I want to, “until it’s dark enough that I can sneak out.”
      Mal gives her a look.
      “Your attempt at noble self-sacrifice is very flattering, sarge,” Mal informs her. “But if I’d had any intention of just leaving you here, I wouldn’t have gone back to the bloody cell in the first place.”
      Polly swallows.
      “Oh.”
      It’s all she can think of to say.
      “You're right, thought," Mal points out. "We’re less likely to be found if we go back under.”
      She doesn’t sound as though she likes the prospect any more than Polly does.
      Polly thinks of the trenches they’ve shared before, of the stink of rotting bodies half buried in the mud, of sleeping, and more than sleeping (although her mind skirts that memory, not sure if she can go there anymore) with the foul, inescapable, reek choking every breath, and bearing it because, well, that was life.
      This is life, she thinks. Or something like it, anyway.
      “Okay,” she answers, lying down again, and wriggling back into the filthy darkness.
     
      They squat together in the... well, if Polly thinks of it as ‘mud’ she can stomach sitting in it a little better, leaning their backs against the damp stone wall. Polly digs the scissors out of her boot and begins to pick the locks on the shackles again. She watches the light gleaming through the gap, watches as it changes, turning from the silvery light of dawn to the glaring gold of noontide. The shackles drop from her wrist landing, without so much as a clink, in the foetid mud. She lets the scissors drop beside them.
     
      “Here,” Mal whispers, almost too softly to hear. She presses something small and hard into Polly’s hand.
      “What is—”
      “Food. Sort of.”
      Polly looks at the tiny, dark oblong in her hand.
      “Where did you—”
      “Just before we left.”
      Polly puts the coffee bean in her mouth, sucking on its bitterness. The stink around her is so strong she can barely taste the coffee, but it helps.
      “I take it,” she whispers a moment later, “that this is all you brought?”
      “’Fraid so,” Mal answers, and Polly curses inside her own head.
      “Does that mean you’re a bit more stable now?” she ventures, instead. She can almost feel Mal smirking.
      “I assure you, sergeant, you’re perfectly safe,” she answers, with a sigh. “From me, at least.”
      After that, they fall into silence once more.

      The light changes through the afternoon, turning sallow – the yellow-green of storm light – and Polly hopes that it means rain is coming, or at least clouds to block the stars and make their escape that little bit easier.
      Finally, finally, the light deepens to the searing copper of sunset. Polly realizes that she has been gripping her sword, white-knuckled, all day. She switches hands, briefly, flexing her fingers and shaking some feeling back into them.
      The sun sinks lower, still, until it fades below the horizon.
     
      “Soon,” Mal breathes, so quietly that Polly isn’t really sure she’s heard it.
      Polly nods in the deepening darkness, knowing that Mal can see her moving. She shrugs off her red jacket and wraps it around her sword, tying the sleeves tightly to make an easily draggable bundle.
      Outside, the light flickers. A moment later, Polly nearly jumps out of her skin when thunder growls loudly overhead.
      Thank you, thank you, thank you, Polly thinks, not knowing who or what she’s thanking.
     
      They leave when the rain is bucketing out of the inky sky, bouncing hard off the strand, making the river shudder and splash. Mal passes through the gap easily, wisps of mist and fog, easily overlooked on a wet night such as this. Polly wriggles through on her side, anxious to feel the rain on her face, aching for the icy river water that will maybe, maybe, make her feel clean again. Even just a little bit.
      She creeps upstream, towards the ford, finding a place where the water looks deep enough to swim, but shallow enough that she won’t lose her footing and be swept away. She wonders if she is too close, if the lights of the keep, reflecting dimly off the choppy water, will catch her, but she isn’t about to turn back.
     
      She crawls on her stomach, nudging the bundle of her jacket and sword forward foot by foot in front of her. She hopes, hopes against hope, that the rain, the dark clouds, and Mal’s hovering, misty presence drifting around her, are enough to keep her from being seen. She hopes that the guards on watch tonight are the sort to huddle in the lee of a wall to keep out of the rain, rather than stand at the edge of the parapet actually looking for enemies who couldn’t possibly be out on a night like tonight.
     
      Her fingers find the water’s edge, and she gasps, shocked at the cold. She crawls into the water. It is deep enough, here, to chill her to the waist, but she bends low over the waves, holding her crumpled jacket against her scalp, her sword bundled into it in a likely-futile effort to keep the weapon from rusting. The rain soaks through her already drenched shirt as she feels her way across the narrow river.
      When the water is shallow enough that she is crawling on her knees to keep herself low, when she is close enough to the far shore that she can reach out and touch it, dropping the bundle of wool and steel onto the rain-drenched stones, she dunks her head under the icy water. For the few short seconds that she can stand it, she rubs at her raw, tingling scalp and her face, trying to scrub at least some of the grime away.
      She comes up gasping, ineffectually shaking water out of her eyes as the rain pounds against her naked scalp.
     
      She crawls out of the water, inching over the strand and dragging her bundle beside her, making her way, torturously slowly – as slowly as she had moved when she’d stolen the scissors – towards the high grasses that she can just make out ahead of her, and then further, as the dripping grasses close around her and the lights of the keep fade away, leaving her in darkness.
      “Mal,” she whispers to the night. Of course, there is no reply. Mist has no voice, after all. “Mal, there’s a problem,” she continues, despite wondering if Mal can hear with no ears. “I can’t actually see anything anymore.”
      Of course, this means there’s a reasonable chance that any guards around the place can’t see her, either, but that doesn’t make getting to the cover of the woods any easier.
      In the long grass, Polly stops moving. By feel, she shakes out her sodden jacket and shrugs it on. Taking her sword in her hand, she prods at the darkness, feeling her way with the blade. Her shoulders are screaming with tension, so certain is she of the cross-bow bolt aimed between them, and she has already begun to shiver violently from the cold and rain.
     
      After what feels like an eternity, her sword knocks against a tree. Polly crawls under the canopy, groping for the trunk with shaking hands, grateful for the shelter it provides. She blinks water vapour out of her eyes, forgetting for a moment that it’s Mal hovering around her like a low hanging cloud.
      She shakes her head and leans against the bole of the tree, pulling her knees up under her chin, and shivering. She looks back towards the keep, still far too close for comfort, and sees torches moving at high speed along the ramparts.
      I can’t stay here, she tells herself, just as Mal coalesces out of the air.
      “We can’t stay here,” she murmurs, urgently, and then she takes a real look at Polly. “Gods,” she comments, softly. “You’re not doing too well, are you?”
      “Doesn’t matter,” Polly answers. “We gotta go.”
     
      Under the trees, at least, the rain is not so heavy. They move from trunk to trunk, from bracken to low growing shrub, keeping to the undergrowth as much as they can. Mal is leading Polly, almost like leading a blind man, Polly’s hand on Mal’s shoulder so she doesn’t get lost. But her night vision slowly improves and she can make out the darker shapes in the darkness, the tree and bushes she needs to avoid, on her own.
      Polly, who is gritting her teeth to keep them from chattering, who is stumbling even when there are no roots or rocks to trip her, understands, at some deep level, that the only thing keeping her warm right now is her rage. She finds herself almost, almost hoping that they come across a patrol, a way of getting a little of her own back.
      She stops, when she realizes this, letting go of Mal’s shoulder and pressing her naked forehead against the rough bark of a tree. Her elbow drives back, hard, when she feels a hand on her shoulder, and she turns, sword already coming up, even before she registers that it’s Mal. Mal, who has stepped back, quickly, a darker shape only visible because of the white in her uniform, not some enemy soldier.
      “I’m sorry,” Polly whispers, and discovers that it’s true. “I didn’t mean—”
      “I know,” Mal answers, just as softly, still hanging back.
      They watch each other for a while, and Polly wonders what is going through Mal’s head. She wonders, too, what must be going through her own head, and whether or not she’ll ever feel entirely safe again.
      “Come on,” Mal murmurs, finally. “We should be able to find a cave or something somewhere in these mountains. We can lay up for the day. It’ll be dawn soon enough anyway.”
      Polly, whose sense of time has always relied on where the moon, the stars, the sun are, doesn’t know whether or not Mal is right about the approaching dawn. She doesn’t know how long they’ve been trudging through the woods, but she nods and pushes herself away from the tree, willing herself to trudge a little longer.
      Who’s the sergeant around here? she asks herself, but without much conviction. They’ve been… missing… for more than a month. The letter would have reached her family by now. MIA. In Borogravia, that usually means ‘dead’, no matter how you spell it. Polly shivers, suppressing another cough, and prays for a cave.
     
     
      Miraculously, they do find one. Not much more than a crevice in a rock face, but big enough, once they’ve squeezed through the opening, that they can curl up on the ground and sleep a while. There are even leaves, covering the cave floor, offering a soft, if mouldering, mattress for the two of them.
      “I’ll take the first watch,” Mal volunteers, quietly.
      “Wake me when you’re ready,” Polly answers, nodding, grateful.
      She curls up on her side, drawing her knees up against her chest, her arms wrapped around herself, trying to hold onto what little heat she has. She falls into sleep, tumbles into it, exhausted, to the sound of Mal settling among the leaves, nearby.
     
      She gasps, shaking her head, dizzy from the blow. She can taste blood in her mouth.
      “Van, come on,” the other guard chides. “She’s only a girl, go easy on her.”
      Sergeant! I’m a godsdamn sergeant, you bastard! her mind screams, furiously.
      Her broken lips shape the words, “Thank you,” instead.
      “Let’s try this again,” the one called Van suggests. “What were you doing in the Mule Valley pass?”
      Polly hesitates, breathing hard, her head still spinning. Was that what they called it?
      “I asked you a question,” Van growls, and Polly tenses just as—
     
      Her eyes snap open in the shadows. The blow has woken her up.
      “Polly?” Mal whispers. “You alright?”
      “I’ve been worse,” Polly answers, catching her breath, remembering where she is. We’re free! she thinks, and for a brief moment her heart sings. Her body is stiff and sore all over, although that is nothing new, and her clothes are clammy from the night’s rain. She shifts, uncomfortably, rolling her shoulders, arching her back, trying to get at least a few of the kinks out.
      “My turn?” she asks, sitting up in the leaves.
      “You can sleep a little longer if you’d like,” Mal offers.
      Polly glances towards the narrow cave-mouth, and sees the daylight slowly slipping away.
      “I think I’ve slept more than enough already,” she answers. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
      Mal shrugs.
      “You need the sleep more than I do. What?” she adds, seeing Polly’s sceptical look. “You do.”
      Polly sighs.
      “Get some sleep, Mal,” she answers, settling her own sword across her knees.
     
      This time, when night comes, it is clear, with a sliver of moon hanging in the western sky, just above the dying rays of the sun.
      “Mal?” Polly whispers. She brushes her hand over Mal’s arm, lightly, carefully, almost not wanting to wake her up.
      “Mm?”
      “Sunset,” Polly informs her, softly.
      “Mm.” There is a brief sigh and then Mal is sitting up, running a casual hand over her scalp as though there was any hair there to fix.
      “Come on,” Polly whispers, getting to her feet. “Maybe we can find a… a berry bush tonight,” she shrugs. This early in the year? Not likely. “Or something.”
      Mal’s mouth quirks in the gathering gloom.
      “Hope springs eternal.”
     
     
     
      For days, they travel by night, creeping through the woods, sleeping in shifts while the sun is overhead. They slake their thirst when they can at creeks and streams, and forage for food by moonlight. They are rarely very successful, but they find enough to keep them alive, at least. Sometimes Polly wonders if they’ll ever get home. Sometimes she wonders if Mal knows where she’s going at all.
     
      “Well?” she whispers one night, after the waxing moon has set. “Do you?”
      “Fun fact about vampires,” Mal informs her, quietly. “We always know where home is.”
      Polly blinks at this.
      “Really?”
      “Yep. Where do think that business about sleeping in coffins full of our native soil came from?”
      “Huh,” Polly comments. Afterwards, they walk on in silence.
     
      Polly wakes up one day to the touch of Mal’s hand on the fuzz that used to be her hair.
      “Sorry,” Mal murmurs, pulling away.
      “You don’t... you don’t have to stop.” But touch is so awkward between them. Polly wonders if it will always be this way, if one or the other of them will always end up flinching away uncertain or afraid.
     
     
     
      Some time, early in their second week, the monotony is broken.
      They are lucky. They see the sentry in a shaft of moonlight before he turns, and it is Polly’s sword that cleaves into his neck, arterial blood spraying as he dies. They riffle through the dead man’s pockets, finding a half-full flask of something – water! They strip off his sword belt, which Mal wraps twice around her waist. His dark coat is three sizes too big for Polly, but Mal says that it will work as ‘protective colouration’, so Polly shrugs it on over her tattered uniform.
      When they have taken all they can, they leave his body on the ground and they run. It is miles before they slow enough for Polly to think of anything but the next step.
      When they do slow, at last, it is to the tune of breathless laughter, clinging to each other, panting, against the bole of a tree.
      “So,” Mal asks, against Polly’s ear. “Does this make us looters?”
      “Milit’ry rule,” Polly answers, gasping. “’S only looting if it’s from your own side. Otherwise it’s, it’s pillaging and perfectly... perfectly okay.”
      The lean against each others’ shoulders, getting their breath back, slowly, and Polly can’t help but recognize how good it feels to hold and be held like this, and how awful, too, because she can count every one of Mal’s ribs through her jacket.
      “How messed up is it that we’re laughing about this?” Mal asks, eventually, still a little breathless.
      “It is, isn’t it,” Polly confirms. She leans her head against the tree trunk briefly. “We need to get going again, don’t we?”
      Mal nods in the dark.
      “Let’s go.”
     
      Hours later they find a copse of spruce trees, the closest thing to shelter they can hope for this close to dawn.
      “I’ll take first watch,” Polly volunteers, struggling out of the newly acquired coat.
      The branches of the tree are so low that she can’t sit up under them. Instead she lies down, draping the dark fabric of the coat over both of them, hoping that it will help them blend with the ground. She listens as the birdsong around them settles back to normal, the dawn chorus waking as the sky lightens through the branches. She thinks about getting home, about telling Paul about the different birds she’s heard singing while, er, visiting Foreign Parts.
      She is surprised when Mal, turning over in her sleep, slips an arm around her waist, burrowing against her back. For the space of a breath it’s almost as if everything is normal, that they’ll be fine. Polly laces her fingers with Mal’s, almost afraid to move, stretching the moment for another breath, and then another. She wonders how long it will hold.
      Finally, when she is beginning to have serious trouble keeping her eyes open, Polly rubs her thumb gently over Mal’s knuckles to wake her.
      “Hmm?” Mal mumbles, stirring at last. “My turn?”
      “If you don’t mind,” Polly whispers, turning over onto her back.
      Mal glances up at the low-hanging branches.
      Carefully Mal slides her body over Polly’s, switching places with her.
      “Hi,” she whispers, arching her eyebrows, the ghost of a smile touching her mouth.
      “Hi,” Polly answers, softly, feeling her heart crack at the touch, realizing that it’s all she can do to keep breathing against the panic as Mal’s weight, slight as it is, rests briefly on her ribs. Why can’t everything just be the way it was?
      Ha, she thinks, bitterly. And while I’m asking for things I can’t possible have, I’d kinda like a pony as well.
      “I’m sorry,” she whispers.
      “For what?”
      For being afraid of you? her mind suggests. For not being sure if I can ever really love you again after what we’ve been through? For knowing that I don’t deserve this concern and for taking it anyway?
      “For… for everything,” she answers, not wanting to go there just yet. When we’re home, she thinks. Or at least back in Borogravia. Then maybe it’ll be… safer. To talk about what’s happened to us.
      “Mal?” Polly asks, after a while. “How much coffee do you have left?”
      “Enough,” Mal answers, softly. “If I’m careful.”
     
     
     
      After that, the monotony descends again.
      Polly is glad of it, even if it does give her too much time to think. She can tell, now, that they are moving higher into the mountains, towards the border. There are more caves, for a start. Sometimes she thinks she sees the Kvetch, looking like small, scurrying haystacks, flitting between the trees, but she’s never sure. The spring is turning slowly into summer, the rain falling more often during the day than at night. Polly is becoming used to sleeping through thunder. Home is starting to look less like a desperate dream and more like a real possibility every day.
     
      “Mal?” Polly whispers one morning, as dawn is beginning to break outside their current, cramped and tiny cave. “Why did you come back for me?”
      Mal’s head comes up – she has been counting coffee beans again – and her expression suggests that Polly has grown a second head. The suggestion is so strong, in fact, that Polly has to resist the urge to reach up to her shoulder and check.
      “Polly, why do you think I came back? What kind of a question is that?”
      “I don’t—” she tries again, choosing her words more carefully. “I can’t be… sure,” she says. “It’s just… You could have gotten out so easily on your own,” she smiles bitterly. “You’d probably be home by now if… If you didn’t have me.”
      Mal nods, slowly, avoiding Polly’s eyes.
      “I thought about it,” she says, confesses, finally.
      “Really?” It’s strange. Polly had expected to be hurt by that revelation. Instead, she finds that she’s relieved. “Why didn’t you?”
      Mal shakes her head, seeming lost for words.
      “I… I just couldn’t,” she says, after some thought. “I don’t… I don’t really know why.”
      So not because you love me, Polly finishes for her. That does hurt, a little. But at least they’re starting out on even footing again.
      “I—” Polly begins, wondering if she really wants to go down this road at all, let alone here and now. “If our positions had been reversed…”
      But Mal shakes her head.
      “They wouldn’t have been,” she says, flatly.
      “But what if—”
      “Please, Polly?” Mal’s expression is strained around her eyes. “It’s done and over and I really don’t want to go back there. I don’t even want to think about it, if I don’t have to. Not yet. Please?”
      Polly swallows.
      “Not yet,” she answers, and a little part of her is relieved. “Okay.”
      “Get some sleep, Pol.”
      “No, Mal,” she answers. “It’s my turn on watch. Besides, you need the rest.”
      Mal shrugs.
      “Suit yourself,” she murmurs, curling up on her side. “Wake me when you need me.”
     
      Later, when Mal wakes her for the night, Polly asks a question.
      “How far are we from crossing the border?”
      Mal pauses, thinking – or possibly referring to the internal homing device that, supposedly, is what is guiding them back to Borogravia. Her mouth quirks.
      “Maybe,” she murmurs. “Maybe tonight. If we’re careful.”
      Polly stares.
      “Are we really that close?”
      “I think so,” Mal answers. She chews her lower lip. “There’ll be border guards,” she points out.
      “We’ve avoided them so far,” Polly ventures. She can feel her hope flaring into life and she fights to keep it damped, fearing that someone might see, and find them, if she lets it shine too brightly.
      Mal nods.
      “Let’s hope our luck keeps holding.”
     
     
      There are watch towers along the border, dark shadows stretching towards the sky. Like at the keep, the forest has been cut back from around them, offering a clear line of sight for any soldier watching by the light of the newly risen moon.
      “Bugger,” Polly curses, quietly, from her position beside Mal under a hedge.
      She knows that, beyond the watch towers, there is more forest – the demilitarized zone – and then they’ll find the towers of Borogravia. Even Polly could feel the pull of her home soil now, it was so close. So bloody close. But they had to cross this wide expanse of meadowland before that could become a reality.
      “Now what?” she asks. At the keep there had been thick clouds and heavy rain, and even if there hadn’t been, the moon had been new in the sky. Now it was only a few days past full, and the sky was clear.
      Mal glances at Polly, considering, then her mouth quirks.
      “Protective colouration,” she whispers, tugging on the dark cloth of Polly’s stolen jacket.
      Polly can’t help but crack a smile.
      “What, you want me to just waltz up to one of the towers and declare myself to be… uh…” she checks the sleeve of the coat. “One of their own privates?”
      “Why not?” Mal whispers, grinning. “You could announce yourself as Private Vatti... Seems it’s a common enough name around here.”
      They look at each other for a long time.
      “I think,” Polly murmurs, eventually, “that I’ll save that as a last resort.”
      Mal nods.
      “Good,” Mal says, softly. Carefully, she unbuckles the sword belt from around her waist. “Here,” she offers. “You’ll look more official this way. Or at least less like you’re looking for a fight.”
      Polly buckles on the belt, switching her own sword for Mal’s.
      “Thanks,” she whispers, looking up to meet Mal’s eyes. “You’ll be dissolving, then?”
      Mal nods.
      “I’ll be right above you,” she answers.
      Polly’s mouth quirks at the thought.
      “You don’t think they’ll find that a bit odd?”
      Mal raises an eyebrow.
      “Frankly, my dear sergeant, I’m hoping they don’t find us at all.”
      “Me, too,” Polly murmurs, fervently, closing her eyes in the night. “Oh, gods I hope this works.”
      She feels Mal take her hand, gently, and opens her eyes again.
      “Be careful,” Mal whispers, rubbing Polly’s fingers between her own.
      “I will be,” Polly answers, hesitantly reaching out to run her hand over Mal’s faintly fuzzy scalp. Her heart jumps when Mal leans into the touch, and Polly wants to pull her closer, to kiss her once for luck, or to prove that her heart isn’t empty. But she doesn’t.
      “See you on the other side,” Mal whispers, beginning to fade.
      “See you soon...”
     
      Polly takes a deep breath.
      The two towers closest to her are lit by torches, their light spilling into the darkness. Polly can see a slim space, maybe three feet across, where none of the light from either tower can reach. This would be considerably more comforting if there wasn’t a nearly full moon hanging in the sky.
      Polly eases onto her stomach, twisting the sword belt so that the sword can drag awkwardly behind her. Counting on her dark coat, and Mal’s misty presence, to cover her, she begins the long crawl across the field.
     
      She has done this before, dragging herself towards the enemy’s position, hoping they don’t spot her before she gets what she needs. The tension between her shoulders, the painful likelihood that she won’t survive the endeavour, the way her knees and elbows are screaming at her in protest as she knocks against unexpected stones in the ground, they are all very familiar.
      Nothing to it, she tells herself, aiming for the relative darkness between the towers. Done this a thousand times… Well, okay, more like twice. But still. I know what I’m doing— her knee connects with a small, unexpectedly sharp, rock. Godsdammit, she curses, wondering if that one broke the skin as she continues across the field.
      She is vaguely aware of Mal’s presence, as a slight dampness against her scalp, but she doesn’t look up. The narrow path of darkness between the pools of light is getting narrower.
      I can do this, she thinks. I was able to get those bloody scissors while they were— But she forces herself not to finish the thought, not wanting to remind herself of what the guards had been doing while she had been invisible, trying to get hold of anything that would help them get out. She feels a pang of regret for not having kissed Mal when the chance had presented itself.
      Too late for that, now she tells herself, firmly. Come on, just a little further.
      And so she goes a little further, and then a little further than that, until the darkness begins to get darker, and the towers are at her back, and the woods, thank you, thank you, thank you, are looming up before her once more.
     
      She creeps into the forest, letting the undergrowth close around her. There will be paths somewhere, she suspects, but she doesn’t want to find them. Instead, she crawls under the spreading limbs of a cedar and waits, knowing that the mist around her won’t be mist for long.
     
      “Identify yourself!” The words are growled not far from her left, the language so close to her own she could almost speak it in her sleep.
      She swallows.
      “Identify yourself,” the voice comes again.
      “Van Vatti,” she responds, getting to her feet. She takes one step, then another, trying to remember how to walk like an overgrown boy. “’Thought I saw something moving out here.”
      The man – Oh, damn, Polly realizes. He's a sergeant. – grins nastily.
      "Yeah, right, kiddo," he goes on, siting along his crossbow. "Try again."
      Behind him, mist fountains up into a familiar shape.
      A bone twisting crack later, and the sergeant is lying at Mal’s feet, his neck lolling horribly where it has been broken.
      “What took you so long?” Polly hisses.
      Mal gives her a look.
      “You’re very welcome,” she answers, bending to retrieve the fallen crossbow. “Let’s get out of here, shall we?”
      “I couldn’t agree more,” Polly answers, fervently.
     
      The moon creeps higher, crossing the dome of the sky and beginning its slow descent towards the horizon. The sun will be up before it sets.
      Below, Polly and Mal creep through the forest towards what they hope are the watch towers of home.
The stars are only just beginning to fade, the sky turning grey in the east, when they come to the edge of the woods. Across the wide meadow they see the watch towers, hung with the black and purple of Borogravia’s flag, red-uniformed soldiers keeping their eyes out.
      She glances at Mal.
      “Do you think we’ll have to sneak into our own country?” she asks.
      “Hopefully not,” Mal murmurs. “You might want to lose the enemy colours, though.”
      “What? – Oh, yeah.” Polly unfastens the buttons and shrugs the dark jacket off her shoulders, letting it fall to the ground.
     
      As it happens, they don’t sneak. They walk out of the forest in the grey light of false dawn, just two more soldiers in red uniforms coming off watch as the sun comes up, like a great big fish.
     
      They cross into their own country and, as the story says, they go home.