happily ever after - eight x marina

Extra Notes: so this was born from a simple 'what-if'. Has a pinch of Five/Marina. It can be kind of connected to 'beautiful oblivion' in the sense that Eight's premonition was not meant for him. I'm thinking of a Les Mis AU next...how that sound?

Marina runs. In the few seconds that it takes for her to realize that Five is about to take a stab at Nine, she also realizes that she's nearly useless compared to everyone else. Well, compared to Nine at least.

So, she runs, throwing a yell of defiance to the wind to attract Five's attention. Everyone watches in awe, and in that second where Five blinks and Eight's eyes widen, it suddenly dawns on her exactly what she's doing.

It's too late to stop now. She launches herself onto Nine, landing right on top of him with enough force to elicit a yelp and a groan, and he opens his eyes to lock with hers for just a moment, before the pain explodes in her back and he's yelling 'NO' and she's simply making a choking noise in the back of her throat at the pure force of the stab.

Five yanks out the blade, eyes wide, and the force pulls Marina back, off of Nine and on her side on the ground next to him. She can feel the wound, just bellow her heart. It has punctured a lung, she knows from the way blood is beginning to bead around the corners of her lips and fill her mouth.

How ironic. Marina - the only Loric with a breath underwater legacy - is drowning.

"Are you okay?" she asks, voice weak and shaky.

Nine just stares, eyes wide.

"MARINA!" Eight screams, running to her. He shoulders past Five, who is standing in his way, staring at the scene before him, and drops to his knees. "Marina, are you - don't - why did you do it?"

He seems to be unable to decide on a question as he pulls her into his lap.

Marina says nothing, just coughs. Eight's eyes widen as a spray of blood peppers her lips.

"Don't go," he tells her, voice so low she can barely hear. "You'll be okay. We'll get help, Marina, I promise you'll be alright."

She blinks slowly, everything blurring slightly as they open again. It doesn't feel so bad anymore, her back. She can feel Eight's warmth against it, and that almost numbs the pain.

"Mmhm," she hums. Everything is starting to fade.

Five collapses next to Eight, moon eyes staring down at her. "Marina, forgive me, it was Nine - it was supposed to be Nine, I promise, Marina - "

He breaks off, head falling to his hands.

But Eight pays him no heed. It is Marina, with her back sticky with blood against his knee, and her tangled hair against his palm, and her own palm, resting against his shaking elbow, that has absorbed his world. It is tragically beautiful, the way she stares up at him with blood beading around her lips, the way her neck arches as her head falls back against his hand.

He cups her cheeks. "Stay with me."

Her eyelids flutter, and he desperately scrabbles for something that will reawaken her, will keep her with him, make her stay. "I love you," he says. She absently hums in reply.

For a second, he thinks of her voice, of her telling him a tale that she found in a book in her school in Spain. A tale where, an evil witch gave a poisonous apple to a beautiful lady, who had lips that were red as blood (the red of her lips is blood), skin as white as snow (her skin turns to snow, as the blood behind it seeps from her lips), and hair black as night (her hair is not black as night, not usually, but, shrouded in shadows, he can pretend that it is so).

-:-:-

"So what happened in the end? Did she just...just die, and then that was it?"

Eyes roll. A hand comes out to smack him playfully on the shoulder. "Eight, how many times did i tell you to wait till the end of the story? You're so impatient. Anyway, after the dwarves found her dead, they put her in a glass coffin and shrouded her with roses. They left her in the forest, so her beauty may be everyone's to witness. A prince came, and found her body. So beautiful was she, that he laid a kiss on her lips. She came back to life, then. And they lived - "

"Happily ever after!" he finishes for her.

For the second time that day, a hand smacks him upside the shoulder.

-:-

He wonders if she remembers. He wonders if she'll understand.

And, as he leans down and gives her a soft brush of his lips against hers, he wonders if Snow White's lips tasted like blood, like hers do.

"Come back," he whispers against the blood and the tears and her lips, those wonderful, wonderful lips, that he has dreamt of ever since their first kiss in India — no, ever since he met her and laid eyes on them. Back then, her lips had not been as red as this - not by half. And they had not tasted so red, either. They had tasted more like a river green - and looked more of a pale pink.

When he draws away, his lips smudged with sticky blood, he half expects her to open her eyes and spring away from his knee, fully healed and with no trace of blood anywhere - and then they can live happily ever after (or, well, something akin to it, seeing as they're two aliens fighting for their homeland).

But, it is not to be had. A defeated sob escapes, and his shoulders shake. "Come back to me," he whispers.

Her hand comes to rest upon his cheek, so lazily it would seem like barely an effort at all, if it didn't shake so much. A quivering thumb sweeps across his cheekbone, wiping away the tears and smudging mud over it. Her bloodied lips move, and though not a single syllable escapes, he likes to think that the words are 'I love you'. (And he pretends that it's logical, despite the fact that her lips shape a sentence with much more syllables)

It doesn't matter. He'll never know.

(He'll never know that the words were always supposed to be "I'll never forget you," but they were actually "Happily ever after")