#celileo

The alert that the group hiding away in Driftveil City had been dreading finally sounded. Urgent voices commanded them to hurry up and gather their things: Einarr’s men had found them. No one needed to be told twice to get a move on, but some had suffered worse in the original raid and were still recovering from things like amputated limbs and wounds that had somehow gotten infected, despite the hard work that the doctors had done to prevent them.

In one doctor’s tent, Dawson looked up from stitching up a patient who had managed to get his wound to open up again. Only, it wouldn’t stop bleeding. He groaned as the sirens went off. “You’re going to have to deal with what I was able to get done, Leo,” he grunted as he stood up.

The blond mage stared at his stitches – all seventeen of them. He’d never had them before, so he didn’t know if they were going to hold out or not. Instead of questioning Dawson’s work, Leo nodded. “Thank you,” he responded graciously, then called upon his rare purple Dragonite to carry him to safety. For one blind like she was, Leo sometimes forgot about it, as she seemed to get around better than his other, more clumsy pokemon.

Though, something bugged him. Before climbing on to Lilac, Leo poked back in to the tent to see that Dawson had his arms full of supplies. They fell left and right, and he would stoop down to pick up the scattered things only to have more scatter about. “Come on! You’re going to get hurt!” he urged.

Dawson looked at the things on the ground and sighed. How was he to know if there would be supplies where they were going?

Peeking in from behind Leo, another made her appearance. “I thought you might be in here,” she sighed. Celil slipped passed Leo and helped Dawson pick things up. “You can store them in my bag,” she told him, smiling gently.

Dawson nodded. “Well then, doesn’t that make things easier?” he teased. It may have been a dire situation, but Dawson couldn’t pass up on the opportunity to make his favorite patient get all flustered.

Leo seethed from the tent door. “Hurry up you two!” he growled through grit teeth. Leo hated how Dawson was always flirting around with girls. Hadn’t he learned that most weren’t very receptive to them? Besides, Leo had feelings for Celil, and to see the reaction Dawson drew from her compared to how relatively cool and collected she was around Leo, it made Leo insanely jealous. How come she wouldn’t get all cute and flustered when he tried to flirt? <Maybe ‘cuz you suck at it> he thought with a frown. Celil looked over her shoulder as Dawson stuffed things into her Mary Poppins bag. “You go on ahead, Dawson and I will catch up to you on Draco,” she urged. The last thing that Celil wanted was for Leo to get hurt – after all, he was one of the few people to defeat her in a Pokemon battle, she’d be damned if he got really hurt or died and she survived.

Reluctantly, Leo nodded and drew out of the tent. He rode away on Lilac, but that didn’t stop him from looking over his shoulder every half a second to see if Celil’s own Dragonite hadn’t taken to the sky yet.

Dawson took a long look at Celil, and things seemed to lose their playboy demeanor. “Go on without me,” he said finally. “I’m going to stick with those on foot, in case any of them need treatment.”

“No!” Celil retorted instantly. She stared, mouth agape at the suddenness of her outburst. “What if you get hurt?” she asked timidly.

Dawson tried a cocky smile, but it didn’t quite make it to his eyes. He reached out and caressed Celil’s cheek in his hand, “No worries, I’ll meet up with everyone at our next destination in one piece.”

“Promise?” Celil asked, choking on her voice. Dawson nodded, “Promise.”

Leaving Dawson with her bag and the supplies he would need in it, Celil stepped out of the tent and whistled for her Dragonite. The beast landed with a loud thud and lowered its head for her to climb on. “Milena said Iccirus City,” she ordered, then with a nod, Draco flew to the north.

It was a long flight, but when they landed, Celil was greeted with a tired hug from those who had already made it there. The on-foot teams hadn’t made it, yet, leaving those who had flown in a state of constant worry.

It must have been a week before the first of those who had fled on foot (or, on mount, as it seemed) would arrive in Iccirus City. The marshes had proved to be a challenge for them, but not so much as Twist Mountain and Chargestone Cave. The doctors stationed hurriedly gathered the new arrivals and ushered them to get taken care of.

The next several days would see the arrival of nearly everyone. Some had been left behind when they had made the choice to take a different route, but they hadn’t been seen or heard from in days according to one group.

Then, the news came: those that were there were the last to arrive. One of the groups had gotten caught in a trap set by rangers who had known the terrain of Twist Mountain.

They said that there had been no survivors.

Upon hearing the news, most seemed to break down. Among those to not make it was Dawson the flirtatious doctor. Inwardly, Leo cheered – this could be his chance to win the girl. Celil hadn’t heard the news yet, as she had been working the kitchens to make sure that everyone was fed, so he thought it might be a good idea to share it with her. After all, she would find out anyway.

When Leo entered the kitchen, the smell of several different kinds of foods hit his senses. There were bowls floating while whisks stirred their contents, and other containers that shook themselves to mix their contents together. Hoping that he would not startle the focused chef, Leo knocked on the wall, announcing his presence.

Celil turned, and almost instantly, all the bowls sat themselves down and seemed to try to act as though they hadn’t been floating moments ago. “Leo!” she greeted with a warm smile. Flour had settled on her nose, but Celil didn’t seem to mind, or notice for that matter.

Leo smiled, “Hey there Baker Lady.” He felt out of place here in the kitchen. Food wasn’t too different from science; bad things happened if you messed up either way. But, in science, there was typically an explosion if you messed up. “Last of the groups arrived today,” he told her, watching carefully for her reaction.

Celil seemed to brighten a little bit, but reeled back from expressing too much. “I’m glad,” she responded. “So, everyone was able to make it here safely, I take it?”

“Uh,” Leo started, trailing off awkwardly. “Well, no.”

A mournful expression crossed Celil’s face. “Oh, that’s too bad…Do we know who was lost?”

Leo nodded, “They say that a few of the servants who had helped everyone escape from the academy were lost, and the doctor that stitched me up, Dawson.”

It was hard for Leo to tell what was going on in Celil’s head as the information sank in. She stood motionless, not blinking, and it didn’t even look like she was breathing. Something seemed to pop, and then a window blew in, followed shortly by all the other ones in the building. The glass flew everywhere: in the food, on the floor, in their hair. It cut at their skin, which seemed to snap Celil out of her frozen trance. “T-that’s too bad,” she managed to stutter finally.

Leo stared, in awe. What had just happened? “Yeah, they’re holding a service for them tonight,” he informed her. Suddenly, he felt as though sharing that information had been a bad thing to do. “Do you want help cleaning up?”

“No.” Celil answered firmly. “I’ll handle it.”

Leo nodded and backed out. Something told him that doing anything to upset Celil more at this point would only end badly for the both of them. When the door shut behind him, he took off to see if there was anyone else that needed aid. At least he could be useful for someone.

Inside, Celil hadn’t moved. The glass was rising from the floor and moving to the waste bin, but the only sign that Celil wasn’t a statue was that tears had filled in her eyes and were streaming down her cheeks.

Time dragged from that point to when Celil finally made herself join the others at the funeral service. Everyone was perfectly somber, some even cried. When everyone cleared away, Celil still stood there.

She stared at the marker they had made for Dawson. Conflicting emotions were boiling within her, waiting to explode.

“You promised…” she muttered. “You promised you would make it here in one piece, and you didn’t! I thought I could trust you, but you’re just like the rest of them! A dirty, filthy, lying bastard!” She was shouting by the end of it, but Celil hardly cared who heard her. What she said next was a stark contrast in volume in what she had done moments before. Celil sank to her knees and leaned forward, resting her head against the tombstone for Dawson. “You promised…” she sobbed.

For hours, she stayed like that, pressing her forehead to the cold stone and weeping. The sun was beginning to rise when she finally stirred. Tears were still falling, but not as they had before. “I loved you…” she admitted. And, with that something seemed to break within her. “I never told you why I would never accept your requests for a date, even though you said you’d be there to listen. Truth is, I was scared of falling in love again, because it ended so poorly last time. H-his name was Thad. He was my best friend, and falling in love with him happened so naturally that I didn’t even see it coming. W-we were expecting a baby…”

Celil sat up now and watched the shadows creep over the stone as the sun rose. “But, Thad had a history of loving women and leaving them. I don’t know why I thought it would be any different for me, but I did…and he left me, just like he left them…I was scared you would do the same. But, I already loved you, I was just scared to admit it…”

Tired, Celil let her eyes fall shut. Sleep wanted to take hold of her, but she fought it a little while longer. “I love you, Dawson,” she whispered. Already the world was warming up with the dawning rays of the sun, and if she imagined it just right, it felt like she was being pulled into a warm embrace. “Well then.”

Wasn’t that the damndest thing? When your heart ached so much for them that it played their voice in your head, but it sounded so real that you just wanted to look around and see where the person was? Celil had experienced that after her parents had died. Eyes still closed, Celil let herself smile tiredly. Even though she knew he wasn’t really there, it was nice to pretend.

“Oh, Dawson,” she breathed as her head sank. Sleep was getting harder to avoid.

“Yeah?”

Now, that was weird. The voice didn’t usually respond. Looking up, Celil saw what she was sure to be an illusion. Because, though they had said that the group Dawson had been leading had all perished, there he stood, albeit, pretty beat up. Dawson kneeled down and pulled Celil against him. “I had no idea,” he whispered into her ear.

The world seemed to collide around Celil at that moment. He was real? He was there? “Dawson…?” she began, pulling away from his embrace to see if he was really there. She placed her hands on his cheeks and stared into his eyes, searching for a sign that would be solid enough evidence for her to believe that this was a dream, or some apparition of her mind. But it was him. He was there.

“Yeah?” he asked again, eyebrows raised expectantly.

Celil let out a short laugh. She clung to Dawson like her life depended on it and kissed him furiously. “I love you,” she gasped between breaths.

Dawson smiled and ran his fingers through her tangled hair, “You su-”

I was lying in bed, and I had the crazy urge to draw. So I did. And it turned into CeliLeo sad feels. Mind the slant because I cannot write straight to save a life.

My sister was watching Les Mis earlier, and I've had the "Drop of Rain" song stuck in my head, so this went from being a joyous reunion drawing to Celil dying in Leo's arms because HEY it's war.