Battle

Jason watches Katie’s eyes, never tired of looking into them and seeing her heart. He doesn’t move as she approaches, her touch on his face and lips feeling like an electrical current, causing him to be lost in the moment.

As she draws closer, he returns the kiss passionately, a tingle running down his spine as Katie’s hand moves through his hair. He wraps his arms around her and pulls her to himself, unwilling to let the moment die before expressing his feelings through the strong embrace.

Finally though, he pulls away, reaching up to run the back of his hand over Katie’s cheek. “I gotta go,” he whispers.


Carson’s eyes follow Misty’s every move. Her words aren’t surprising, and they seep through a crack in the unstable wall around his heart. “When will you learn that no one likes someone like me leaning on them…” He takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Despite is own words and defiant battle not to recall what he’d been told days before, it comes back anyway, ringing in his ears. “Maybe all you need is that one person to put faith in you, to trust you and show you hope. Well guess what, Carson, that one person is me.” If there was anyone who would argue with him about his worth, it would be Misty.

He grits his teeth against the rising emotions, but they’re to a point almost uncontrollable. He’d thought hours earlier that he would never have to feel this again…it would have been over…forever…but he’d been brought back. What was there here for him? He was but a cowardly rat.

As Misty checks his pulse and glances at him, he catches her eye. His own seem dull and lacking fire, but somewhere…somehow…in the very depths of his gaze lies a dying ember, just waiting for a chance to catch fire once more.

“And the untouchable heart is silenced. Not by sword or by dagger. But by the very sight of her, who has come to conquer. For she had waged the battle to end the war…the war that beats within the warrior’s soul.”