Tied
Gaidal is not so naïve as to think that Birgitte will always be his.
Gaidal is not so naïve as to think that Birgitte will always be his, but that doesn't stop him from doing things – small things – to keep her with him. Untold numbers of shopkeepers have stared askance at the grisly features of the stocky swordsman, pawing through trays of ribbon, sifting through carved wooden combs. Invariably, the question comes – "Would this suit golden hair?" – and then most watchers turn away. Some shopkeepers jump to assure Gaidal that his choice is a good one, but one woman asks the color of his lady's eyes.
"Blue," he says, but he gives no elaboration because he doesn't know the words, and he smiles – a lengthening of the broad, toothy gash on the bottom half of his face – when she pushes an embroidered ribbon into his dark hands. Silk-threaded cornflowers dance across the blue satin spilling through his fingers.
"Thank you," he says when he pays. "I've no eye for pretty things." Just for her.
Birgitte smiles slyly when he asks her to close her eyes. She does so, and then puckers her lips dramatically as if to receive a kiss. He pays her no mind (she's silly, sometimes, but always affectionate) and takes her hand, pressing the ribbon into her palm and curling her fingers around it. Her face softens when she sees it, and she begins to blush. His crass, unflappable, unabashed lady, who likes to sit and take ale with soldiers, who knows all the bawdy tavern songs and has thought more than once of composing one herself – she blushes like a girl at her first dance. His kindness sets her face to blazing. It scares her, because she knows it means he loves her and it means she loves him as well, and a part of her knows it's never happened before – this feeling of finally being complete – and a part of her knows it's happened with every turn of the Wheel.
So she kisses him in thanks, and drags him down with her to lie on the cool, hard earth. She lays her bow aside, and both his swords follow: the first things to be discarded, and the only things kept close as the hours slip away into full night. When the moon rises, she sits up and turns away from him. Her long, golden hair spills over the white skin of her shoulders, and she fishes his gift from the pile of her clothes, then smiles back at him and asks him to tie up her hair.
He's more than happy to oblige her simple request, and he relishes the feel of her hair sliding between his fingers like silk, and the sight of her bare back in the moonlight. He stores the memories away, knowing each night could be the last. He doesn't know that she's already decided that not even death will part them. He doesn't know that they are tied together, and to the turning of the Wheel.
All he knows is that he loves her, and that she is beautiful, and that these small things might keep her with him, because he is not so naïve as to think she will always be his.
AN: I finally started my second read-through of WoT, and I couldn't get this little idea to leave me alone, so I thought I'd go ahead and get it out of my mind. Hurray for fluff!