Oh Captain, My Captain

When Roana had tried to halt her, to tell her there was still work to be done, Ashe had bared the fangs of a wolf with an animalistic snarl, stared at her with deadened eyes before ripping from her grasp with Ronin's bracers held against her chest. There was no more work to be done. Not right now. They had fought and bled and defeated the spire demon.    But they had still lost, hadn't they?    'Live.'    The sight of him rising to the stars swam in her vision.    A roguish grin.    Brilliant laughter on a wave-crashing shore.    Nestled together in the boughs of a fallen pine.    Hanging on his arm when she couldn't stand.    Loopy belladona smiles.    Borrowed time.    Stolen time.    He had stolen her that time.    Ashe limped on. The tears just kept coming, she thought distantly that they should have run out by now, but silently, they. just. kept. falling. Remi had gotten quite the distance ahead of her - stronger than her, he'd taken that explosion well. Ashe wanted to fall to her knees, to just.. stop. Her brother had stopped. Shouldn't the rest of the world have stopped too?    Percy found her then, trotting up to her. She slowed and reached her hand out - burned, bleeding, her whole right arm - and leaned her weight against the lame and bleeding stallion as he came up beside her. His hide was peppered in blood and scratches and superficial burns, his muscles quivered, but the faithful stallion huffed a hot breath against her neck. She might have mumbled thanks to him, she wasn't sure, but they continued on. Despite her burns, cuts, her left arm near useless, legs, arms, ribs, face, all bleeding, her feet kept moving. Tugged forward by that ever present tether to Kalt , perhaps the only thing keeping her lucid just then.