𝐝𝐮𝐧𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐬 ❨ original ❩

𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞

SURROUNDED BY FOUR WHITE WALLS, there was nothing else to do but stare at them. To look at the paint that had started to chip off as time passed, or gouged by other prisoners - anything to pass time, slowly going mad, theorizing absurd meanings from the wall's blank stare.

During the last few days before the Dune War Thomas had spent all of his time is the single cell, however there was no such thing as solitary. He heard voices everywhere. They called to him from the corners of his dark cell. They filled the silence between his heartbeats. They screamed from the deepest recesses of his mind.

The door slid open, and Thomas' heart stopped. His eyes locked on the guards boots, and he braced for the rush of fear, the flood of desperate panic. But as he rose up onto his elbow, peeling his shirt from the swear-soaked cot, all he felt was relief.

The guard cleared his throat as he shifted his weight from side to side. "Number 454 is here to see you." He was much younger than Thomas expected, and his uniform hung loosely from his lanky frame, betraying his status as a recent recruit.

As the guard stepped aside a girl entered. Rey smiled for the first time in weeks, and Thomas almost had to look away, as if something that nice didn't belong in such a glum and gray place, as if he had no right to look at her expression.

There was a warmth her brown eyes and hair brought to her features, a simple frame for that smile and eyes that held more love than she would ever admit to. However, the tension that controlled her face had always been part of her life.

The traces of the girl she had been lingered in Rey's smile and the thinness of her body. She was still a child, hiding her delicate side behind a paper wall.

She released a sigh of relief before running to the boy and embracing him. His hug was stronger than anything she had ever known in that moment, as if holding her wasn't quite enough, he have to feel every ounce that she was press into every ounce that was him. In that moment of feeling him so close Rey was awake somehow, more alive than she had been in so very long.

She snuggled in, "I missed you." She began as she exhaled a shaky breath. "God, I missed you so much!"

In that moment the arms squeezed a fraction tighter and Thomas breathed more slowly, his body melting into Rey's as every muscle lost it's tension.

She could feel him press his forehead into her temple and he asked, "So now that you've got me, what are you going to do with me?" She turned into him smirking. "Put you somewhere you can't get hurt."

With time to think, the full reality of what had happened hit Thomas like a falling boulder. Ever since Thomas had entered the prisom, Rey had been there for him. Thomas hadn't realized just how much of a friend she'd become until now. His heart hurt. He tried to remind himself that she wasn't dead. But in some ways this was worse. In most ways. She was going to be apart of the War.

After their long embrace, the pair moved towards his bed.

Rey frowned as she sat, then focused on Thomas. "Do you think it's the right thing? The War?"

"I don't think there is a right or wrong anymore," He replied, hearing the numbness in his own voice. He desperately wanted sleep. "Only horrible and not-quite-so-horrible."

Rey was suddenly struck by his immediacy now. As they settled in, he pulled her head down to use his arm as a pillow; the other rested protectively over her. No one had held her like this in such a long time. Since her father died and she stopped trusting her mother, no one else's arms had made her feel this safe.

"We stay close, we stick together..We get through this." He spoke, one of his hands curling her hair behind her ear softly. "We get out...Or we die trying."

"False hope," she said with a humourless exhale before the small upift of her lips slowly began to fall. "Guess that's better then no hope at all."

Thomas felt his spirits lift, but immediately squashed them back down. Getting his hopes up was something he'd sworn never to do again.

Rey couldn't help it. She was pessimistic. It was difficult not to be in the environment they were in. She knew that night soon was about to become a memory. This person who was now lying with her was going to become a silhouette once they parted their ways. Their conversation would become nothing but a record that would be played over and over in her head. Promises made to stay alive would soon fade away with time and all that would remain is its fragment. People tend to say a lot of things, commit in the heat of the moment, make you believe that not every goodbye mean they won't meet in the future but that's how it was in reality. Rey knew now that words should never be trusted.

"You might die... Or worse." She replied quietly, as if her thoughts weren't willing to take flight. "I might live."

The girl stared at the bottom of the bunk above her - featureless and darkly fuzzy in the shadow  - where Simone was currently breathing like a boy with ungodly amoutns of phlegm lodged in his throat. "I just wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now and live in it forever."

"I know." She heard him speak as he wrapped his arms around her tighter and she let her head rest upon his chest. All her thoughts stopped as if her heart took over from her head when they were close. Next he squeezed as if he needed to check she was really there with him, really there and really real... and Rey was, body and soul. She doubted anyone else ever felt the way she did about being in his arms, though the girl pitied them if they did love this much and lost, because that's a pain that kills soft and slow.

"You will win." Thomas spoke rather suddenly as he continued to curl the soft strand of hair. "I'll make sure of it. I promise."

In that moment, a thought occurred to Rey. If she won, that would only mean one thing. Thomas wouldn't be there. He would be gone. Dead. And she would be alone. She realized only one person would be damaged beyond repair if he died. Her.

"There is no winners, Thomas. Only survivors."