It's as if the world is gone, fading into a black oblivion. It's loud, but all I hear is the ringing in my ears. I am numb, but I suppose that's good. I don't have to feel anything. I don't have to hear anything, either. It's probably better if I just sleep. Sleep is such a beautiful thing. That's all I want right now. To close my eyes and never have to open them again.

I start to do it, but I stop. No. I can't do it. I have too much to live for. I can't sleep. I can't. I can't. I can't. My eyes are heavy, but I force them open. They want to close, but I keep them open again. Over and over until I can't anymore. I let sleep take me, hoping, praying, that I wake again.

I dream of black nothingness. Is this what it's like to be dead? I wouldn't know. I've never been dead before. Is there really a place beyond Earth with everlasting life? I wouldn't know that, either.

I get my wish. I wake up again. No longer am I numb. Instead I get shooting pains up my side. I gasp and wheeze until I can feel tears in the back of my eyes. I cannot cry. I can't.

I try to sit up, but my side won't allow me. I feel blood dripping into my eye so I reach an arm up to my head, but I immediately drop it a suck air painfully into my lungs. My right arm is broken, probably in more places than one.

I turn my head to the right and I see the battlefield. It's filled with bodies. Some dead, some suffering, just like me. There is no one standing. No one looking for me. I'm not surprised. I'm not important.

The wind blows my hair across my face. I can feel the blood soaking through my uniform and just by that I can tell that if I don't get help, I'll be dead in a matter of hours. My breaths are quick and sharp. That's when I remember Louis.

Where is he? Is he alive? We got separated during the battle and I got wounded shortly after. If he's dead, I'll never forgive myself. I twist the ring he gave me around my finger with my thumb. It's not an engagement ring, but it's the closest he can get without the councilmen freaking out on him. I remembers the day he had given it to me like it was yesterday.

Corinne laughs as Louis picks her up bridal style and spins her around the palace garden. "Stop, Louis! You know I hate spinning!" she says.

Louis smiles and lays her down on the ground, coming immediately after. "No, you hate not being in control. When you spin you can't rely on your abilities to help you from falling down. That's what your fear is, Corinne. You're afraid inability and in control."

"Am not,"

"Are too," Louis laughs and stares into her crystal blue eyes. His smile suddenly fades and he sits up. "Corinne, I know we've been talking about marriage and things like that, but…" His voice trails off.

Corinne furrows her eyebrows and sits up as well. "What?"

He sighs. "I don't think we should get married. Not yet, at least."

"Why? Is it… is it me? Is it something I did?"

Louis waves his hand in front of her face. "No! No, no. It's nothing like that. It's just..." he pauses for a moment searching for the right word. "it's just that my councilmen don't necessarily trust you."

Corinne mocked a laugh. "Because I'm not a royal?" she asks.

Louis puts a hand up in defense. "No!" He realizes her words are true and sets it down. "Well, yes."

The blonde rolls her eyes. "Need I remind you that your own cousin, who was also a royal, tried to kill you on your birthday?"

"Exactly, but they won't listen to me. I got the next best thing after that." He pulls out a black box and opens it to reveal a pink and gold ring. "It's an eternity band. Do you like it?"

Corinne's shocked face spreads into a smile. "Oh, Louis, it's beautiful. Will you put it on me?" Louis smiles and slips the ring onto the ringer finger of her left hand. They both lay down together again on the ground. Corinne smiles while absently twisting the ring around. "I love you," she whispers.

"I love you, too, Corinne."

I couldn't help but smile, remembering that day. It was nearly two years ago when I was nineteen and he twenty. We were both so happy and we still are -were- but now I'm afraid four years of knowing each other will be shattered.

I take in another sharp breath. The pain is so unbearable, I can barely breathe without wanting to sob. I can only pray Louis or someone, anyone, will find me soon. I don't know how much longer I'll be able to live.

Tears are rolling down my cheeks by the time the sun is setting. Every hour, it gets worse and worse. I know I won't be able to last through the night. I don't want to die, but with the extent of my injuries, I'm not sure I'll have a choice.

It's already starting to get cold. It was excruciatingly hot this morning so I took my coat off right before the battle happened, but now it's getting bitter cold for the night. Hypothermia will take me if my injuries don't do it first. Just my luck.

There are so many dead people. Some I recognize as Musketeers from Paris and most are in the army sector. I remember when the Spaniards let off that cannon, killing at least fifty, and set off a wildfire of angry French military men.

The world is getting dark now, but I'm pretty sure it's not from the sky. My vision is going black and I'm certain that if I sleep, I'll never awake. It's not easy to keep my eyes open when I could simply close them and be done with this all.

No. That's out of the question. I can't give up. I can't give up.

It's getting harder as my clock ticks. Every minute I lose hope that someone will come for me. Every second I'm afraid I'll die alone. Every passing moment I'm afraid I won't get to see my friends ever again. That's when I hear it.

A sound. A person. A call. The voice is so far and obscure, I don't know who it is or what they're saying, but I know this. There is hope. Hope only if I can help them find me. I'm hidden by these men all dressed the same in practically a mass grave. The only chance I have of surviving is if I can get their attention.

"Help," I say, barely above a whisper. It hurts to whisper, let alone yell. I try again. Nothing.

I figure the person has probably moved on. I know that I'll die now. I close my eyes and silently sob until I'm gasping in pain. I hear him again. The voice is distinctly male. I know it's Louis and he's calling my name.

I need to help him find me. I raise my left arm -the uninjured one- and wave it slightly. Nothing. The pain of that one movement is excruciating. There has to be another way. I can't yell. Or move.

"Corinne!" he calls. I can tell he's close. Then I get the idea.

I lift my left arm as carefully as I can and I use the light my eternity band is reflecting as a signal. First it's nothing. Nothing. Nothing. I lose even more hope.

I hear him before I see him. His gasping breaths. His footsteps. It's amazing how the simplest things are amazing when you're on your deathbed. I can feel his eyes search for mine and when they finally meet, he collapses to his knees and crawls toward me.

"Oh, my Lord, Corinne. I thought I'd find you dead." His voice is raspy, like he has a cold. There's a cut above his eyebrow and his sleeve is cut off with a bandage replacing it, but I'm just happy to see him alive and well. "What happened?"

I wince as he touches my broken arm. "There's this thing called war. It's very serious."

"Snarky and sarcastic even in the face of death, I see." It's meant to be a joke, but there's no humor in his voice. Louis shakes his head. "I'm sorry. I was just going frantic searching for you." He grabs something out of the bag he'd been carrying. A blanket.

Louis must've grabbed a medical kit for me after he had been treated and went out to search. "I assumed you might be cold." he says.

"Well, you assumed right," I let out painfully.

He places the blanket on my chest. It's thin, but I couldn't have it any better. Louis lifts my shirt up and I jump back at his touch. "What are you doing?" I ask.

"You need that wound cleaned and I'm going to do it."

I gasp. "No you aren't! Get someone else!"

He just rolls his eyes. "This needs to be cleaned now or else you're either going to bleed to death or die of infection. Neither would be very good." I begrudgingly nod my head in consent.

Louis removes the blanket and takes out a pocket knife. I was about to ask what it was for, but I figured it out when he ripped open the front of my blood-stained, white shirt. Only my chest is covered so I can feel the cold wind on my bare stomach.

Louis takes out a bottle and pours some of it onto my wound. I didn't expect so much pain so I sobbed and begged him to stop. He didn't. He kept pouring it onto the wound despite my good hand trying to stop his. It eventually becomes too much pain, that I start hitting and kicking him.

"Stop!" I whine in my fit of tears. He ignores me for a few minutes, but then snaps and slaps me across the face. This scares me because Louis had never, ever done something like that to anyone before.

His expression is snarled. "Corinne," he growls through gritted teeth. "you need to cooperate or you are going to die!" After that, I still cry, but I stop hitting him. That was probably the first time anyone had ever stood up to me before.

He stitches it closed. After he was done I never felt so awful, yet amazing at the same time. The sun is nearly completely down and the temperature is dropping rapidly. I try to not let him know that I'm cold because he's done so much for me already, but I can't stop my teeth from chattering.

"Here," he says, pulling off his own shirt.

"No," I shake my head. "You need it, Louis."

He doesn't listen and lifts my back up so he can slide the shirt under me. He buttons it closed and lays the blanket on top of me. "There,"

I sigh and take his hand with my good one. Words cannot describe how much I love him. His smile, his eyes. Every little thing he is, I love. He takes care of me without thinking at all of his own well-being. He knows when I'm tired and sick. He loves me no matter what.

"Thanks," I say.

Louis touches the cut on my forehead and grabs some alcohol from the bag to pour on it. It stings, but I don't cry. He takes a little rag and wipes the blood away. "It won't need stitches. You'll be alright."

I close my eyes and nod. "Did we win?"

He chews on the inside of his mouth and nods. "We lost a lot of men, though." It's quiet now. Only our breathing and the slight rustling of the wind fills the air. Even though he won't admit it, I know that he's cold.

"Louis, you should take the blanket. I'm fine."

He shakes his head. "No, you need it. I'll be alright." I was about to respond, but he cuts me off. "Corinne, really it's fine. Wait, do you want some water?"

I think about it for a moment. Do I really want water? Do I really want to take something else away from him? "No, I'm alright."

Louis rolls his eyes. "Shut up and drink the water." He takes his thermos and lifts my head to meet the spout. I don't take much, but I felt better than before and I realize I was on the brink of dehydration. Louis puts his thermos back in the bag and breathes heavy breaths. A few long moments pass before he speaks. "I thought you were dead. You… you always find a way to live, but I still had this feeling you were…" his voice cracks. "gone."

I take his hand and let him twist my ring around. "I thought I lost you," he continues. "I can't think of life without you, Corinne." I blink away tears as he speaks. "Don't ever leave me. Promise me that."

I shake my head. "Everyone has to go sometime, Louis. It's a part of life."

He puts his face close to mine; to the point I think I can hear his heartbeat. "That's the really sucky part of life," I crack a smile and he continues. "Promise you won't leave me any time soon." Louis gently sets his forehead on mine and stares into my eyes. "We can leave together in our late eighties after seeing our children get married and having their own children. Promise we'll go together after seeing all we need in life."

"I…" I'm not sure if I can promise this to him. Can I promise to stay alive that long? No, but I can try. Can I promise to love him and stay with him? There's no question. "Yes."

Louis traces my jaw with his hand and kisses me. I wrap my good hand around his neck while his stay on the side of my face. I remember our first kiss. I was young, only eighteen at the time.

Corinne smiles as she looks out at the sun setting on the horizon. Evening was always her favorite time to ride in the balloon with Louis as it was the most beautiful part of the day. She looks over at him and smiles, casually leaning over the basket.

"You're going to fall out, you know," he says. "and I'm not going to save you."

The blonde mocks a gasp. "Really? That's an awfully rude thing to say to someone who's saved your life more than the years you've been alive."

He laughs. "I'm just saying, Corinne, that it would be tragic for my rescuer to die."

Corinne walks toward him, wearing a smirk. "Really? Is that all?"

Louis gulps. "Yes…" She can tell he's lying.

"Are you sure because," Corinne now stands toe-to-toe with him. She inches in until their noses brush. "Louis, I want you so desperately to love me. I want you to be possessive of me around other men. I want you to be mine." Corinne stops abruptly as the words leave her mouth. There's only an inch between their lips and she briefly considers backing out, but the blonde is too determined to make this happen. Corinne closes the gap between them, but only for a couple seconds before stopping.

"Louis?" she asks.

He stands there for a moment, wavering on whether that's what he wanted. There's no question. Louis smashes his own lips against hers and pins her back against the rope on the edge of the basket. His hands trail down her back to her hip while her own squeezes his arms.

They stop a few minutes later. Louis stares at Corinne lovingly and takes her hand. "I'll make a deal with you," he says. "If you stay with me, go to every ball with me, be the legitimate reason I have to reject marriage offers, then I'll do everything you ask of me."

Corinne bites her lip and nods. Their lips meet again and they don't stop until the light fades away under the horizon.

Three years later and we're still together. We stay like that for a couple of minutes before he stops and kisses the top of my head. "I should make a fire so we don't freeze to death in the night."

Louis walks off a bit until he finds some wood from what I presume was a wagon before it was exploded by a canon. He comes back and takes a match from the bag to light the fire. It takes ten minutes before there's an actual flame and I feel relief when I see Louis warming himself. It's bitter cold and I know for a fact that he couldn't survive through the night unless there was fire.

Louis starts making a bed of twigs, weeds and grass and when he's finished, he comes and eases me up into his arms. "If you stay on the ground," he begins as he lifts me off the dirt. "then the ground practically sucks the little heat you have in your body out." Louis puts me down on the bed and covers me with the blanket.

His usual happy expression is like stone. I never knew he could be so serious. "We need to splint your arm. If we don't it'll heal crookedly." He takes a couple of sticks and puts them under my arm. It burns like Hell, but I know this is necessary. Louis wraps my arm in gauze and cuts the blanket in half to use as a sling. After he finishes, Louis sets down by me and puts my head in his lap. He brushes hair out of my face as he studies my eyes.

"Shouldn't people be looking for you? Making sure you're not dead?" I ask.

Louis shrugs. "He has someone to check on me every hour."

I nod my head and close my eyes until I feel Louis shake me. "What?" I ask.

"Don't sleep," he says. "It scares me."

I look into his eyes and grasp his hand. "Louis, I'm so tired. It'll just be sleep. I promise."

He clenches his jaw and nods. I can tell he's afraid of me sleeping; that I'll never awake. I clench his hand and smile before closing my eyes. Then I fade into the dark.

I'm at home. I'm eleven years old with an old red dress and messy hair. My mother is baking bread and father is out in the barn, while my little brother, Teddy, plays on the floor. The sun is setting and beautiful rays of blue, pink, and orange fill the sky as I sit on my front porch, listening to the sound of the wind.

I inhale and close my eyes. That's when I suddenly hear a scream. It's from my mother who is now trying to drag me inside. Eight men on horseback are riding into the farm with guns and swords.

Father runs out of the barn and cautiously walks toward the men. "Is there a problem?" he asks.

A man hops off a horse and approached him. "Why, yes there is. You have my money."

"What money?"

The man grabs my father's collar. "The money you and your little group took from me!"

My father stared him down. "You stole that money, Effie. You had no right to it. Now leave me before I get the others!"

He laughed. "You mean your precious Aramis, Athos, and Porthos? Well, guess what?" Silence. "They're already dead."

My father's tensed up. "You killed them. You killed them!" Something snapped and he started punching the man, who easily was knocked out. The seven other men jumped off their horses and went after him.

"Run, Marie!" father called out to us. "Take the children and go!"

The man who my father knocked out got up a minute later and eyed us. "Your precious family. It would be a shame if something happened to them."

"No, no. Don't do anything to them! Do whatever you want to me, just leave them alone!" he pleads.

The man smirks devilishly and whispers to his men. "Raid the house."

Father heard him. "No! No, please, no! I'll do wha-" he's cut of when they hit his head on the ground several times.

Four men bust down the door and approach my mother and I. She holds Teddy close to her chest while I hide behind her body. "Go away! We have nothing you want!" she shouts.

One of the men scowls. "Actually, you do have something we want." he eyes Teddy.

My mother shakes her head and holds Teddy closer to her. "No! Don't touch him! Take me!" They grab him from her arms. Mother fights back, but is quickly slapped and shoved to the ground. I go after them shoving, kicking, clawing, anything that I could. They push me back and slam the door in my face, leaving shortly after.

I see a figure on the ground outside my window. My father. I run to him. "Daddy?" I say.

He's barely conscious, blood coming from his head. "Baby, oh, Baby, you're okay."

"They took Teddy, Daddy."

He stiffens. "Take care of your mother, Baby. I'm not going to be around anymore."

"No, Daddy. Don't go."

"Follow your dreams. Remember, true courage is pursuing your dreams, even when everyone else says it's impossible." he coughs. "I love you, Baby." That's when he takes his last breath, me holding him in my arms.

"Daddy, no!" I scream. "No, please don't leave me!"

I jolt up and scream in pain. It was a dream, but it wasn't a dream. It was real. It was a memory. That's exactly how my father died.

"Corinne?" Louis pulls me into his arms. "Corinne, it's just a dream."

I shake my head. "No it's not. It was real."

He puts his head on my own and I start to cry. Louis cradles me and I just hold onto him, letting myself go, for once.

"Whatever happens, Corinne, know I love you. We'll make it through this thing and we'll get married. In secret without the advisors knowing. Say yes and I will make it happen."

I let tears fall as I nod my head. "Yes, yes. Of course."

"Don't let go," he says. "You have a reason to fight. Fight for me. Fight for France. Fight for what you believe in." Louis lays me down.

We fall asleep together and I'm glad that I'm with him. A few hours ago, I highly considered dying, but now I know that's not an option. I will stay with him. I'll stay with him until our late eighties when we go together after seeing our children wed and have their own. There is no plan beyond this, but I know as long I'm with him everything will work out.

When I know he's asleep I whisper, "I love you," And then I sleep, knowing that I'll wake again.

A/N: I've been working on this and it turned out WAY longer than it meant to. It wasn't even that hard to write. Thanks for reading. Review!

Sincerely,

Weatherbug02