Prompt: Introduction

Characters: Mikkel, Sigrun

Their new captain did not impress him, however impressed she might be with herself. She was loud. She was clueless about (or deliberately ignored) any and all social cues, inflicting her shouting and her uninvited backslaps on everyone else whether they were welcome or not. As a matter of fact, she didn't even seem to be interested in learning about her own team.

"Aren't you going to read them?" he asked, appalled, when she tossed the personnel files to the side with barely a glance.

"Can't read Icelandic," she dismissed him in turn, waving away his concerns with a flick of her hand as if shooing an annoying insect. "Besides," she added as an afterthought, "I hate reading."

This did not improve his opinion of her. She wasn't even going to ask their employers to provide duplicates in Norwegian? Besides, what sort of military employee signed up to lead an international team when she couldn't even be bothered to learn Icelandic? Or maybe (here he entertained himself with his own private joke), she was trying to cover for the fact that she couldn't read, at all.

Needless to say, he made a point of committing all of the files to memory well before the arrival of the rest of the team.

Common sense told him to back out of this mission entirely, but that wasn't an option. That wouldn't stop him from having words with the man who, with the entirety of the Norwegian army at his disposal, had still thought it a good idea to put her in charge.

"She's an idiot," he said to Trond, unprompted, when next her name came up in conversation.

Gallingly, Trond only snorted. "I fail to see how that's a count against her."

Well, he thought, resigned, at least it wasn't any worse than what he'd dealt with before. If he didn't want them all to die in the Silent World, he'd probably end up having to do at least half of her job for her—and, if the experience levels of their junior crewmates were any indication, everyone else's as well.

One problem with that: she refused to let him.

She was reckless. She pushed the scout to his limits, she pushed Emil out of his comfort zone, she pushed the entire crew into territory they didn't know was safe. She brought back junk, plastic cases and books about golf, ignoring all of his advice about being selective. Worse, whenever he tried to inject some common sense, she talked right over him. There was no way her timing wasn't deliberate—she wanted him to know who was in charge.

Finally, after several days' worth of insults to everything from his combat skills to his ability to cook an edible meal, he reached his limit. What would she be eating, without him? Certainly far worse than "inedible sludge." For that matter, did she think she could have tended her own wounds? He certainly didn't.

The conflict between them had escalated. Now, it was nearing its breaking point. They might have managed a brief reconciliation, a truce, but it still stung that he'd pointed them in all the right directions, on his own initiative, yet had still needed her support to go forward. He expected that they would have several more conflicts before they truly worked this out, if ever.

The Silent World had other plans.

That night, he watched her get thrown into icy water with a troll as big as their tank and still do everything right, not panic, call for a rope, see to it that the vulnerable members of the crew got to safety before she even considered her own. Then, the rope went slack in his hands, and he watched her get thrown back into the water, watched her fight for her life against a monster that viciously tried to drown her every time she tried to take a breath.

He thought he would have to watch her die. Worse, the last thing he'd said to her outside of strict survival was a joke about his own insubordination, at her expense—a joke that now seemed to him to be in grossly bad taste.

Then, she surprised him again.

She made her own escape, just in time to stop him from doing something he would later be forced to admit would have been exceedingly stupid. She refused medical attention even though she was coughing too hard to speak, took seamless advantage of Emil's (for once) perfect timing, and took no rest until they were back at the tank and she had confirmed that everyone was safe.

Could he have led half so well, had he been in her place?

That ceased to be a rhetorical question after she collapsed.

Icy water, near-drowning, an earlier fainting spell, reopened wounds: all had taken their toll. She started out shaking with cold but by the end of the next day was burning with fever, skin hottest to the touch around her wounded arm. He did what he could for her, removed her wet clothes and wrapped her in blankets; heated liquids, body heat; antiseptic, fresh stitches, clean bandages; medicine for infection, for fever, for pain…

She needed real help; she needed a doctor, and all that she had was him. Nevertheless, he gave her what treatment he knew how to give, made her swallow as much hot broth as she would drink, held wet cloths to her forehead and neck while everyone else tiptoed around the tank and spoke in hushed voices. The authority he'd so long coveted hovered dauntingly in front of him all the while, a burden he now realized he didn't know how to shoulder.

He thought he'd learned his lesson about giving her due credit. As it turned out, he was once again proved wrong.

"Hey."

He blinked awake to find her staring back at him; he'd fallen asleep beside her, on the floor. Sweat soaked the bedding but her eyes were clear, unclouded by fever, and when he rested a hand against her forehead her skin had cooled back down to a normal temperature.

"Want to know something funny?" she continued as if she hadn't noticed his touch at all, as though she were picking up a conversation they'd left off only moments before. "I used to think you were a bit of a snob. Thought that the rest of us were somehow beneath you."

"Well." He allowed himself a small smile as he withdrew his hand, satisfied. "I suppose that I did."

"Yeah." She rolled over a bit, staring up at the roof. "Guess I could be a bit of a jerk too."

He considered his answer carefully. Denial would have been a lie and an insult to her apology, but neither did he want to risk their fragile peace with blunt affirmation.

"I suppose," he said at last, "that it's possible we've both been… a bit too honest."

She snorted at that. "Maybe we should give this another shot."

"Indeed." He held out a hand. "Pleased to meet you. My name is Mikkel Madsen, and I look forward to working with you."

"Sigrun Eide." For someone who'd spent the last three days in a high fever, her grip was surprisingly strong. "The same."