A/N: Hi, everyone! It occurred to me recently that, since I write a lot of side scenes for my adventure story The Imperial Guard, I should create a place to put the ones I'm really happy with. I have quite a few to put up, so I'll be updating this a lot at first, but then I'll just toss them up as I write them.

To the lovely people who have been reading Imperial Guard, welcome and enjoy. Newcomers are equally welcome, but these probably won't make a great deal of sense to you if you haven't read Imperial Guard. (And, of course, you're welcome to read that, too...)

This scene takes place during chapter fourteen, while Cat and Chris are learning to fight together. Enjoy!

"Those Fairy Tale Endings"

It took two sleepless nights of practicing among the cold, red leaves for Catalin to realize something he’d been thinking for a week: “I think I’m sick of rice.”

Chris stopped his spear in mid-swing, raising an eyebrow. “Good. It’s not substantial at all, and it’s not even that good for you.”

“I didn’t say I was going to stop eating it.” Catalin leaned heavily against the closest building. “Just that I might be sick of it.”

“You don’t have to stop. Just have something else with it.” Chris shrugged. “There’re other things you like, right? You’re way too skinny.”

Catalin nodded vaguely. He liked other things besides rice. But if he told Chris that he kept forgetting that he was allowed to eat anything else, he wasn’t sure if the boy would laugh, or feel sorry for him, so he simply didn’t respond, sliding down the wall and hitting the frozen ground.

“Tired?” Chris asked.

“Understatement,” Catalin said. “I can’t move anymore.”

“… we can take ten minutes.” Chris sat next to him, with a wan smile. “Hey, tell me a story.”

Catalin turned to him, eyebrows raised. “Story?”

“Yeah! You probably know some interesting ones, right?” Chris nodded. “Besides, it’ll wake you up some.”

“… I know some,” Catalin said quietly. “But sorry. I don’t know any happy stories.”

“That figures,” Chris laughed.

Catalin rolled his eyes. It wasn’t for lack of trying. Rakan would tell him stories when he was little, but he never told stories with happy endings. They were always epic tales of love and selflessness and sacrifice. He was big on sacrifice. And when he finished, he would gently tease Catalin for being upset: “What’re you crying for? Everyone got to live happily because of what he did, didn’t they?” and Catalin would rub the tears out of his eyes and try to explain himself in frustration, but his own logic never made sense to him.

The reason came clearly to him one day, that creating a new era was no use if you didn’t get to live in it yourself, but it was already years too late to tell Rakan that.

Celeste liked to tell him about her successes, her victories, but a cheerful bit of the middle isn’t much use when you know the ending. Sometimes, they weren’t happy, but those were different than her normal stories. They were quiet, disjointed, and always seemed to start with, “You know, Catalin…”

“You know, Chris…”

“Hm?” Chris looked at him, expectant. “What?”

“… nothing,” Catalin mumbled. “Just that I don’t really know anything about all that.”

He knew this much: that no story had only six characters. That there were always countless people, some people you think are good, some people you think are bad, and some people that would never be involved, connected in those little ways that strangers always seem to be, even if only because they saw the same fireworks. He knew that beginnings were always the same, middles always intertwined, but there were a thousand different endings, so how could they possibly end the same way?

But from the way he heard it, most things did.