Title: Modern Day Knight (TVverse)
Characters: Sonia (random OC girl), Morgan
Rating: PG (for some violence)
Spoilers: None
Word count: 1, 348
Summary: When her boyfriend turns out to be less than knightly, a young woman is saved by a very unusual rescuer.
Author's notes: Done for the 'Morgan' prompt @ dresdenflashfic.




Sonia’s friend, Kayla, made jewellery. In high school, she’d made them each a pendant out of a Scribble tile. Kayla’s was a K. Sonia’s was an S. Kayla’s had half a heart and the letters B, FRI on hers. Sonia’s had a half a heart and EST, ENDS on hers. When you held them together, they said Best Friends. They both still wore them, ten years later.

Sonia’s necklace was on the ground in the alley now. Eli, her boyfriend, had torn it off when he attacked her. She wasn’t sure how it was he’d managed to sprout fangs and why he had bit into her neck. Somewhere in the back of her mind was the word ‘vampire’, but that was lost amongst the thoughts of pain, terror, and, oddly enough, worry that she was wearing her crappy, only-wear-when-there-is-absolutely-nothing-else underwear and if she died, that’s what she would be found in.

When Sonia was little and played pretend, she was always rescued by a knight on a white horse, with blond hair and a killer smile. Eli had blond hair and a killer smile. He had a horse too – a beige one – but that was close enough for her. He’d even rescued her, sort of. He’d caught a clothes rack about to fall on her head. Maybe it hadn’t saved her life, but it had prevented a nasty headache.

Somehow, all of this made the betrayal even worse. When she played pretend, the knight never tried to kill her.

She knew she was screaming, but couldn’t remember having deciding to do that. She was clawing and kicking, too. It didn’t seem to be helping. Just when she was starting to get really woozy, something happened. She couldn’t say what, just that one minute she was picturing the cast of CSI photographing her nasty panties and the next she was on the ground and Eli was in a very large dent in the brick wall.

Her head lolled to one side and she could see a man coming down the alley, one hand outstretched, the other holding a sword. He walked down the alley like he owned it and had a long beige coat that was billowing behind him.

The man said something – something about a broken truce and having warned Eli about something. Sonia was finding it hard to focus. Eli made a howling noise that wasn’t human and charged down the alley at the man with the sword. There was a lot of flashing and punching and sword swinging and then, with a swift, almost graceful motion, the man with the sword lopped off Eli’s head.

Sonia screamed again, then she passed out.

* * *

When she came to, it was to find the man with the sword kneeling beside her. He was pressing something to her neck. He was a youngish man, she thought, but there was something ageless about him, too. He had smooth, dark skin and hard eyes that made him look old.

“Help is on the way,” he said.

“Okay,” she said.

“I apologize that I could not intervene sooner,” he said. “I had to wait until he did something in order for the truce to be broken.”

“Okay,” she said. His voice was nice to listen to, calm and deep, like some actor whose name she couldn’t remember at the time.

She must have been crying, because he wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb. He did it in a way that seemed to be less about comforting her and more about putting things to order.

“Where’s your sword?” she asked. She wondered if she’d imagined that part. She wondered if she’d imagined the whole thing, actually. Eli, or Eli’s body, was nowhere to be seen in the alley.

“In my pocket,” the man answered. His lips twitched a little and his eyes looked amused, but it was a quick flicker before it returned to a more neutral expression.

“Must be a big pocket,” Sonia said.

“Indeed,” he said. A siren was wailing in the distance, growing louder every second. He looked down to the mouth of the alley then back to her. “Is there anyone I can call for you?”

“Kayla,” she said. “Kayla Song. She’s my friend.” She rattled off the phone number. He had to lean in to hear her as the ambulance pulled up with the siren blaring.

He nodded and didn’t ask her to repeat the number. “She’ll be there,” he said.

The EMTs arrived and pushed him away. Sonia was happy to be left to their care. The man explained that he’d found her in the alley, injured, and called 911. She thought it sounded pretty convincing, for an outright lie.

* * *

It was nearly a week before they let her out of the hospital. It wasn’t her physical injuries that held her back. It was her mental state they were worried about. The shrink thought she had Acute Stress Disorder.

The doctors had decided the wounds on her neck came from a turkey fork. She’d been attacked in an alley with one. That’s what they told her, anyway. She disagreed, but that didn’t get her anywhere. In the end, she finally lied and told Dr. Holstein that yes, there weren’t vampires, no one carried around a sword in the middle of Chicago and since Eli’s body hadn’t been found, he couldn’t have been decapitated in the alley. It was easier and it got her out of there.

She sometimes wondered if she had imagined things and the doctors were right. Not even Kayla believed her and Kayla believed in UFOs, every conspiracy theory going around and that Clay Aiken wasn’t gay (until, of course, he was).

After some combing of the Internet and library, she started to think she wasn’t as crazy as she first thought. She decided to prove it. That was how she’d ended up, here, at the post office, in front of the box she’d rented.

A week earlier, she’d put an ad in all the local newspapers. It simply read:

To the man with the sword who saved my life in the alley beside Franco's– Thank you.

It had the post office box number on it, too, and she’d forced herself to wait a week to allow him to find it if he wanted to get in touch. If he didn’t, she’d be no better off. It would neither confirm, nor deny what had happened. After all, maybe he didn't read newspapers or didn't want to be found. If he did get in touch, though, it would confirm it all and that would be worth it.

Her box was full of letters. The first few were from men who interpreted ‘sword’ as a metaphor for something else and had somehow assumed it was some sort of personal ad. She ignored them. The next was from a man who made swords, offering her a deal. The next few were from religious groups wanting to save her soul. Just when she was starting lose hope, she noticed a small envelope tucked in the back of the box.

On the front were the words: To Kayla Song’s Friend. Inside the envelope were her Scrabble tile necklace, and a little note. It read:

It was my pleasure.

Sonia left all the other mail in the box and hurried home to call Kayla and let her know she wasn’t completely insane. Somewhere out there was a genuine knight, with a sword, who went around saving lives.