Disclaimer:

Author's Notes: Thanks to Justacat for beta and to Shade for cheerleading.

Story Notes: Written for the One Night Stand challenge on ds_flashfiction. Not funny at all, despite having a pun for a title.

Her room was the prettiest. He made sure of that. He filled it with his watercolor paintings and flowering plants he could fuss over, talents he nurtured in hope that they'd brighten her life. He brought her treats, once he'd learned to cook well enough. And when he dropped something, in his earnest attempts to please her, she didn't notice.

He read to her, when he was there, from all the books she'd loved - the thick histories, the musty tomes of law. He read until his voice was hoarse, until he'd memorized parts of the books by heart, but the intelligence never truly returned to her eyes while he did it. She was petulant, bored, frustrated...

Until he gave up on her books and started reading his childhood favorites, the books she'd read aloud to him whenever he was ill. Visiting hours flew by to tales of Gulliver and his Lilliputians, of pirates and treasure, and all the other adventure stories he loved, and her eyes would light up when he arrived.

"The RCMP accepted me this time," he told her one day. "I passed all the tests."

She glanced up from the luridly colored pictures in the book they were reading. "The RCMP? What's that?"

"The Royal Canadian Mounted Police," he explained carefully. "I'm going to be a policeman for the Queen."

"Like them?" Her finger stabbed at the page. "Like them? And you should be calling me 'milady'. You said."

"Y-y-es, milady," he whispered hoarsely, "It's like being a knight, yes."

"Wow. My very own knight!" She beamed at him proudly, and his heart hurt.

"I... I have to go to, well, to school first. Then I'll be one."

"I hate school." She made a face. "But you'll come read to me every day, won't you?"

He closed his eyes, struggling to hold back the tears he never let her see. "I can't. It's far away, in Regina, hundreds of kilometers." He opened his eyes, reaching for the atlas. "I can show you in the big book of maps..."

She intercepted his hand with her own. "Can I go too? I can... can dress up like a boy and be your square and att-attend you during your virgil!"

"I'm sorry. There aren't squires there or vigils. And... and I need you to stay here and get better for me."

Her small, increasingly birdlike hand tightened on his fingers. "Then... you shall carry my favor, gallant sir."

He tried to smile. "I'd be honored, milady. But I'm not a knight yet..." He folded her other hand around the crumpled, dirty handkerchief she was offering. "You keep it until I am."

Thirteen and a half weeks into his tenure at Depot, he received the call. He requested - and received - compassionate leave and drove home without stopping, without even changing out of his uniform.

He stopped in the doorway of the sterile hospital room, watching her for several moments. She had the book about knights clasped to her chest with one arm as she stared out the window at the sunset; the other cuddled the stuffed wolf he'd sent her tightly to her side. She'd been so strong before; now... now she looked as if the faintest breeze could snap her as easily as the accident had shattered her mind.

He must have made some faint sound. She turned her head listlessly to face him, and he hastily composed himself, pasting on a falsely-happy grin, the one he hid all his feelings behind. "Milady," he exclaimed jovially. "I have returned!"

He stepped into the room. Her eyes lit up, and she reached out to him. The book slithered off her chest, off the bed, hitting the floor with a smack. He sank to one knee beside the bed, bowing his head and kissing her hand.

"You're... you're a knight now?" Her little-girl voice was like the whisper of a ghost.

He nodded, not trusting his voice with the lie, unable to force words through his throat. He rose as her happy, proud smile faded and her face crumpled. "What's wrong, milady?" he asked urgently. "Are you in pain?"

"I lost it," she wailed faintly. "I lost it!"

It took him an hour to understand that she'd lost "her favor," to get her to understand that anything she gave him would do just as well as the ancient, soiled hankie she'd intended him to have, and when she shoved her stuffed wolf into his hands, he accepted it with all due gravity. Her smile returned, and she giggled joyfully at the sight of him standing there, saluting her with his right hand, the toy held firmly in the crook of his left elbow.

"Tell me about your virgil," she insisted, once she'd painfully caught her breath again.

"Ah... yes... my vigil." He paused. "It was... it was an amazing experience, milady."

She fell asleep halfway through his story. He kept talking, holding her hand.

He'd been long silent, still standing beside her bed, barely moving, when her breathing stopped.

A nurse came in not long afterward. He told her he wasn't going to leave, not yet. He remained in his place, told the doctor, when she came in, the precise time of death and refused - again - to leave.

When he let go of her cold hand, the sun was just rising. He couldn't see it, not from that west-facing room, but the sky was growing lighter. He laid her hand gently on her chest, picked up the stuffed wolf, and left the room.

Arrangements had been made years earlier. Dry-eyed, he made the few calls necessary to complete them, then checked into a motel. He slept through the entire day and the night, curled on top of the cheap, polyester bedspread, on a bed that was far too short for him, the stuffed wolf cradled in his arms.

He woke in the morning and checked out of the motel. That afternoon, after her funeral, he drove back to Depot, where he worked even harder than he had before, wearing the mask of happiness he'd always worn for her.

The chapel floor was cold; it hurt his knees. He raised his head, refusing to feel foolish. The few lights cast halos in his vision, and he raised his right hand to rub his tired eyes. Only a few hours more and he'd be a Mountie.

He could complete this vigil, would do whatever the RCMP required of him. He'd finally be what his mother had always wanted him to be when he grew up...

He hugged the stuffed wolf more tightly to his serge-clad chest with his left arm, and when his tears started, he let them fall.

End One Knight's Stand by Heuradys: heuradys_fox@comcast.net

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