Disclaimer: Not mine. Never were. Phooey.

A/N: Originally written for 'Challenge #004 – Duellist' over at ygodrabble on LiveJournal (community (dot) livejournal (dot) com (slash) ygodrabble), although this is the extended, non-drabble version. Regardless of that, ygodrabble is the first community I've ever moderated and everybody who has participated in these challenges so far is lovely, so a big THANK YOU to them. Come and join the party too! We're low pressure, it's lots of fun, and I have solemn promises from everyone not to bite (too hard).

A Miracle Fibre Called Courage

© Scribbler, June 2010.

'People are made of flesh and blood and a miracle fibre called courage.' ~ Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960.

Fencing without a mask was insane and stupid. Pegasus knew this because that was exactly how his instructor had phrased it since he was six years old. The mask couldn't protect you from all injuries, but going without turned a relatively safe sport into something dangerous.

"Only an idiot thinks anything involving the verb 'to stab' can be considered anything but dangerous," his instructor sniffed. "It's just a case of healthy respect, lad. Don't take stupid chances and you won't be rewarded with stupid injuries."

Father had always championed fencing and horse-riding as wonderful for improving the posture and the mind. They also suited his interpretation of 'good breeding'. Alongside elocution, painting and Latin, all of which were included to turn him into a proper gentleman, both sports had formed part of Pegasus's education from the moment he could parrot a pluperfect verb or hold a brush.

Pegasus wasn't sure he enjoyed horse-riding. He'd been told he enjoyed it, but that wasn't the same thing. He definitely didn't like Latin, and though he excelled at public speaking and art, they didn't set his soul alight. Fencing, however, he adored. There was something about duelling one on one, just your own skills between you and defeat, which elicited a thrill he couldn't get from perfect dressage or knowing how the doomed Pompeians shouted "We're all going to die!"

It helped that Cynthia Delos was regional junior fencing champion.

She was magnificent. He wasn't bad, but she left him in her dust. Father disapproved of course – he said a woman wasn't supposed to be stronger than a man in anything – but in this Pegasus defied him. He hadn't seen her since they were children, which made sense after Father's comments. Pegasus only rediscovered her by accident, when his instructor took him to a competitive duel to show him what fencing should look like.

"Watch Miss Delos, boy," he instructed. "She knows what she's doing. Are you watching?"

"Oh yes," Pegasus said breathlessly. "I'm watching."

He attended all her subsequent matches that summer as well. She was poised for the nationals, her star rising with all speed. He sat in the audience, willing her to victory. When she beat her challenger he leapt from his seat with applause, but then he faltered, embarrassed, until her other admirers overtook his bumbling congratulations. She sometimes looked disappointed as she vanished behind them, which made him wonder what she actually felt when she won. Who was disappointed by victory?

He tried to speak to her, but he didn't have the courage to do more than watch from a distance and fall more and more in love with her. His carefully constructed education hadn't included how to talk to girls; especially girls who struck like lightning in a duel but flowed like honey when just walking. He had romantic notions of romance and devotion from his classical texts, and somewhere in his brain was the knowledge that real life wasn't like that, but it hardly mattered when he was unlikely to ever get off the starting blocks and find out what was fact and what was fantasy.

She favoured the sabre, which was heavier than the foil he preferred. Sabre-fencing was quick and unpredictable. Fencers stayed out of reach until they intended to attack. Then they closed in and struck impossibly fast. Pegasus learned a lot from watching her – how to fool opponents into letting their guard down, how to tempt them forward and, just when they thought they'd won, retrieve victory with a dramatic flourish. Her style was theatrical, spectacular and never boring.

He felt like a love-struck idiot – struck dumb, that is. At the national championship, waiting outside and psyching himself up, he resolved to talk to her afterwards. After all, they'd talked when they first met, before these wretched hormones got in the way. It'd been easy then. He was too sensitive, that was his problem. Father was always saying –

"So, will my admirer utter a word this time, or continue the stalker-in-training act? I preferred it when our parents hovered over us as children. At least then you were obliged to speak to me."

She was behind him. He stared, flabbergasted. Her smile turned him into a landed fish.

"Hello, Pegasus."

"Nang…"

"Cynthia, actually." She tilted her head as her name was called over the tannoy. "Darn, I've been summoned." She bit her lip. It was a tiny thing, but it turned her from a distant goddess into a sixteen-year-old girl about to face the toughest duel of her life. Yet her words belied her nervousness – about her own victory, at least. "Please don't stay away when I win. I'd love to speak to you properly for once. We could … catch up. Or something. Go for something to drink afterwards. We could sneak off to McDonalds. My chaperone thinks that place is vulgar, so I love it out of contrariness. What do you say?"

"… Ngggh …" All that elocution for a noise like a dehydrated hyena. He could have cheerfully battered himself unconscious with his own shoe if it would get him out of this embarrassing situation. He wasn't acquitting himself very well and it was mortifying. "Phhhraahh…"

Cynthia hesitated. Then she darted with that lightning speed to kiss his cheek. She was gone in an instant, but the skin burned where her lips had been. Pegasus touched it, mouth open wide enough to catch flies.

She didn't win. She lost, and in more ways either of them could've predicted.

"A freak accident!" people gossiped. "Never seen anything like it. Must've been the angle of the strike. They do get very fast in these duels. Landed funny. Did you see it? Such a shame. So much potential. She'll never walk again, poor love, let alone fence. What a waste. Ah well, what's for dinner?"

Pegasus didn't see her afterwards. He heard the ambulance pull away, but the flashing lights were a mottled, blurry mess to his eyes.

"Well, at least this will cure you of this obsession nonsense," huffed Father. "What you need is a filly from good stock, my boy; someone who can run a household and pop out a son or two to carry on the family name."

Father didn't understand. How could he? Pegasus barely understood the depth of his feelings himself. He wouldn't until he lost everything and tried to defy the universe to get it back.

But that was in the future, and this was now. And now it took him an embarrassing three weeks to visit her after she got home from the paralysis institution her parents sent her to so she could learn how to cope with her new disabilities. He'd hesitated, but that wasn't all it was. Her other admirers had all fallen away during her rehab. He half-expected bitterness, or at least anger and frustration, but she smiled when he was led in. she looked so frail, and yet so radiant, that he lost his words again for a second.

"I thought I told you not to stay away," she croaked from her chair. She would always be sitting down now, but somehow she still looked as elegant as she had lunging and parrying.

"I had good reason." He handed her the box. "It's a small project I've been working on. The entire concept needs refining, but I wanted you to know … I, um, made it for you after an extremely odd dream." A nightmare of fire and desert wilderness, but she didn't need to know that. Someday he might visit Egypt, but that was a far-flung future, and if she couldn't go, he never would. He explained the cards and the game he'd come up with. He emphasised the strategy aspect, remembering her tactics at drawing out opponents and fooling them into defeating themselves. Her eyes filled with tears. "You may not be able to fence," he said at last, "but you can still duel in a different way …" He had called it duelling as a salve, but now he worried whether it had been a mistake to remind her of what she'd lost.

He needn't have worried.

"Thank you," she whispered, clasping a tiny painting of an Amazon warrior with blonde hair. "Thank you so much." She kept on thanking him, but her smile was all he needed. It was all he thought he'd ever need, and he would make any sacrifice, offend anyone and defy the stars themselves to keep hold of it.

Fin.

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