Title: In the Shadow of the Valley Author: GoddessofBirth Rating: G Disclaimer: Don't own anything but the original parts

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The girl only looked back once. She knew they made a curious sight, perched at the crest of the hill in the night sky. A slip of a girl leaning against a giant of a man, his arm around her shoulders, both armed to the teeth. The wind buffeted them, swirled the girl's dress around her legs and whipped her long, brown hair against his chest. As she stared down at the ship the man pulled her tighter against him.

'Are you sure, Girl?'

After yelling and threatening had failed to convince the man to leave the girl, the crew had tried other methods. Only with the man, though, never with the girl. She was to be revered, protected, sheltered like the innocent they knew she must be, even if she must be an innocent drenched in blood. The man would be the target.

He was given the hardest jobs, the most degrading work, and increasingly, the most dangerous positions when they hit planetside. The crew had stopped speaking to him, openly snubbed him, even the little mechanic he had secretly come to think of as a younger sister. If this had happened to the man when he had first come on the ship, he wouldn't have cared enough to be bothered; for it to have happened after he had been accepted as a son of the ship was slowly breaking his spirit.

But he tried, tried so hard for the girl, because he loved the girl more than anything, and the girl loved the ship. She loved the ship, and her brother by blood, sister by marriage, father by choice and protector by sacrifice. However, what the man didn't understand was that the girl loved him most of all.

When she could no longer stand to see his soul bleed, unseen, from every pore, she steered the ship planetside. In the dead of the night, she rose from his bed and quietly packed. Moments later she leaned over him and kissed the sleep from his eyes. He was confused at the hour, unsure when she told him to gather his guns, but slowly more than just his love for her began to light his eyes again.

'There is a ship landing two miles east, over the hills. They have recently lost crew and will be willing to take a matched pair.'

Noiselessly, the girl and the man made their final preparations. The girl left her brother a note. The man left a few empty casings and a shirt with a knife wound. They slipped through the ship's corridors and out of her airlock unseen and began their trek across the rocky terrain. As they reached the summit of the nearest hill, she paused.

The girl only looked back once.

'She is certain.'

The man and the girl resumed their journey and soon the ship was lost in the shadow of the valley.