The Armor (Prince Harry fanfic #1)

Chapter Six

The sun began to rise upon the horizon, the sky a purple turned orange, with the moon fading off and the brightest stars dull. Lucy entered, quiet and almost half dead. Harry had his back to the door, eyes open as he stared through a silver leading to the outside world. He whipped around after feeling that Lucy might escape like water slipping through his fingers. She was covered in blood.

"What happened?" he asked, barely above a whisper but managed to fill the lifeless room.

"Hmmm?" Though the blood covered her arms, inching up, splashed against her dark clothes with brown globe shaped droplets and touching white shoes, Lucy didn't realize all the blood, like she was immune to it.

"You're covered in blood."

Lucy's eyes traveled down, grasping a hold of the situation. In a quick second, she laughed, and sucked back in that feeling. "What if I told you," she let a giggle escape her lips, "that this happens a lot?"

Harry was puzzled and that set Lucy ablaze with laughter, holding her stomach in pain as she wheezed out the bubbles of laughter that popped into the air. Her face was red and her body shook, but her eyes betrayed her; there was no happiness inside of her. Only pain shined in her eyes. However, familiarity beckoned questions, like she had been covered in blood before. She had this pain before. She laughed before through the pain.

As Lucy's laughter quieted down, bit by bit, Harry finally could speak over her without yelling, "What happened?" He knew the look in her eyes; he had seen it before. It was the sight of death.

Lucy smiled still before she sighed, looking off her hands. Blood crusted upon her, under her fingernails and into her fingerprints. It plagued her skin, like before. The blood had even crusted into some of her scars, on her legs and arms, cutting deep into her almost gone soul. "I need to get the blood off." Her voice was distant. Her eyes on focused on her fingertips, telling the world who the killer was.

Harry moved ever so gently on the cot, which squeaked. Her eyes snapped up to him and he froze. "Everything is going to be all right."

She smiled at him. "No, it isn't. The world wasn't all right before and the world won't be all right in the future. We're all just fucked." She walked over to her cot, looking for something.

"What happened, Lucy?"

"The woman is dead. The baby is alive."

The words hit him hard, how bluntly she had them, how nicely the words came off her tongue. She was hard with anger, shaking in deep pain, but she held herself together. She knew the words; she knew the life. She was together, but she wasn't. He wasn't either.

Lucy continued, "She bled out in the afterbirth. The people know." She laughed again, looking up to the sky. "They say it isn't my fault; apparently it happens a lot. I could've been better. I could've done better." How did she say those words? Why did she believe that when Harry had seen her do the most? She had been perfectly calm and collected during this; she had been calm now.

He knew what to say but he knew it wouldn't help. "You did all that you could." The words just tasted bad in his mouth, like some poisonous lie. He had heard these words before, told to him when a child, heard in the military when one of his comrades died. They never helped. "You weren't trained for this." He moved, just to touch her slightly, to pressed her fingers to her back, in a reassuring gesture, but she back away quickly, putting distance between them. He waited.

Her fingers curled into her palm, her fingernails cutting deep but not drawing blood; no more blood for her. "I have done better. I could've done better." She took off her shirt and let the crusty mess fall to the floor in one boom. Blood had seeped onto her stomach, slightly pink. "There was a lot of blood." She knew humans could bleed like that, but the woman bled a lot; it was everywhere.

"Lucy..." he tested the waters.

She whipped around. "Don't. I'm not broken. I'm not shattered. I am just used to death." Her eyes didn't water; her voice was strong. She was strength.

He dared to ask, "Why?" The weight was heavy in question, so much life put into a moment, however she lived, what made up her life until now.

They had only known each other for three days, put together by coincidence, yet his life hadn't been this good until she showed up. His heart broke as she let a piece of her armor come off, one tiny piece, and she shined so brightly underneath, the sun of life.

Her eyes softened. "Oh, Harry, you may be Prince Charming, but you're not my Prince Charming."