A/N: FINALLY HAHA WHITE WINGS REFERENCE TIME

Rayla, meanwhile, struggled with a crazed monster who thirsted for her blood.

"Callum-" Rayla grunted while being slapped across the face with a racing white-hot pain. "I-it's me-!"

"I don't know anyone," Callum growled as he dove again, slamming her body onto the floor and turning her over so her eyes locked with his. 

"I don't want to fight you-"

But Rayla was muffled by the helm of a gun that Callum socked into her jawline, instantly shutting her up as she writhed in pain and her world started to fade out.

------

"I'd climb every mountain

Swim every ocean

Just to be with you

And fix what I've broken

Oh 'cause I need you to see

That you are the reason,"

Callum sang, his voice honey. Rayla rubbed her eyes in a fantasy to see Callum beaming back at her as he held onto her waist and through her into the air, when she looked down to see she was wearing a teal blue dress that flowed down like a river to her ankles.  

She raised her eyebrows as a way of saying, 'go on.' His voice was almost hypnotizing, light and silvery. 

Callum continued to sing as he stood by her, brushing a lock of her hair behind her ear before kissing her gently on the cheek. 

"There goes my hands shaking

And you are the reason

My heart keeps beating

I need you now

If I could turn back the clock

I'd make sure the light defeated the dark

I'd spend every hour, of every day

Keeping you safe,"

Rayla snuggled into Callum's warm embrace underneath the stars that decorated the sky as if someone had sprinkled them on. 

"I love you so much," Rayla chided and Callum wrapped a black and blue scarf around her neck. Rayla hesitated as she felt the material of the scarf in her hands. "Where did you get this?"

"I stole it from Lujanne-" Callum began, about to laugh when Rayla interrupted.

Rayla paused. "Wait, what?"

"Lujanne," Callum shrugged. "I made it for you,"

Rayla tried to remember.

Where had she heard this?

Something's wrong. Again. Rayla thought and she racked her brain for more information but to no avail.

The scarf.

"Rayla!" Callum called, his feet crunching in the snow. She turned around to find him holding a black and blue scarf in his hands. He smiled, placing it around her neck. "It's going to get colder. We don't need anyone else getting sick."

"Who are you to take care of me, bread eating human?" Rayla joked, pushing his side as he sat down in the white snow next to her. She held the scarf in her hands, rubbing her hands around the material. "Did you make this?" she asked.

He nodded shyly.

"Where'd you get the material?"

Callum suddenly broke into a smile and smirked mischievously as Rayla suddenly got the hint.

"Is it from Luja-"

"I stole it from Lujanne!" he said gleefully.

-------

Rayla bolted awake to see that nothing had changed.

It was as if she had only blinked for a second when Callum's eyes crashed down to hers and she mentally scolded herself for reacting to it.

"Callum," Rayla said thickly, trying to swallow the sob that bound to erupt in her throat. She had felt helpless plenty of times, sure. She had felt helpless when she only had one hand, she felt helpless when Viren had taken Zym, but she had never felt like this before-- everyone was fighting their own battles and she was stuck with... with this. 

She was stuck on her own, with her boyfriend who could have been so much more if he hadn't been so stupid... but this wasn't her decision, it was his. And she was going to let him get away with it.

Why? Because that's the thing about first loves. Your very first love, nothing else is the thing that impacts you the most. No matter what happens, you can never stop thinking about them. No matter how short a time it is, one second, a minute to a year, they're still your first love. But to Rayla, Callum was more than that. 

Rayla had grown up in a family where weakness was considered reckless and irresponsible. If you were weak, you might as well have been dead, because that's the way people treated you. Rayla had tried so hard to stifle and swallow her sadness and to bottle them up, but tears could never do you any good. No one could do you any good-- that was, until she met Callum.

Because Callum was different. Callum had accepted her and had chose to see her side when she had first attacked him while searching for King Harrow. And when he had said that he was prince Ezran, that was when the world turned upside-down and gave her a realization that-- not only humans were stupid, but just as selfless. They knew what they had to do for those they loved, so when Rayla found out that Callum had lied, it gave her an insight that maybe there was something left.

And then it was the small things, the small things like when his eyebrows furrowed whenever he drew, or his expression matched the thing he was drawing, or the way his laugh would go-- soft, and then all at once until he practically couldn't breathe that she had noticed. Of course, it had surprised Rayla when she was riding a boat to escape her former foes, Soren and Aunt Amaya, but that didn't mean that it didn't mean anything to her. But when she went on that boat, she had expected them to scream at her for being so helpless-- after all, she was supposed to be an assassin! And yet, here she was, about to barf on a boat. 

But Callum was different. Callum, instead of making fun of her or throwing her out, had chosen to ask about her. "What's Xadia like?" he had asked. His eyes had been full of curiosity and hopes which almost made Rayla laugh. He had asked about her-- the one who had tried to assassinate him not even 24 hours after she had chased him around the castle trying to kill him, and to her, that was insane, out of this world. She was never asked by anyone in her family about herself, well, besides those every now and then talks with Runaan about being stronger. Besides that, no one had ever bothered to ask her about herself-- so of course, she managed to stop herself from snapping.

Which is why Callum was so... so different from most fo the people she knew, because not only was a mage, but against dark magic.

"I'm not letting you go, Callum," Rayla said, her voice strangled. "It's okay to feel hurt some times. But you need to let it go to feel better- can you do that for me?"

Callum laughed, a menacing, sour laugh and shook his head. "You think that I need to let my anger go?"

"Yes." Rayla said, her voice brittle. "I do. You're bottling up all your feelings inside and you need to stop."

Callum simply shook his head and without a second warning lunged at her again as her head thumped against the floor as he brought out the gun out once more, but before he could do anything, Rayla shook her head.

She grabbed the gun in Callum's hand and held it to her forehead and Callum blinked. 

"It's okay. It's okay," she trembled through heavy breaths. Her eyes brimmed with tears but she smiled when for a second Callum's forest-green eyes stared back at her. "I love you. It's okay."

She felt Callum's grip loosen against the handle, but he gripped on even tighter. "Well I don't."

And Rayla pulled the gun towards her forehead again. Even though she knew that Callum could shoot her, at that exact moment, she didn't care. As long as he was safe.

"It's okay, it's okay, I love you." Her hands were painted in blood and she was wounded, scars and bruises and chipped glass pieces caking her skin. "It's okay. You're okay. I'm okay,"

And he pulled the trigger.