Title: Sometimes
Summary: Buri doesn't always like change - especially when it deprives her of something she wants.
Note: written for the International Day of Femslash!
In Port Udayapur, everything changed. Thayet and I were sharing a room, which is what we did when we went to inns. Alanna, well… in the beginning she shared a room with the Dragon. Understandably, I suppose. If you were into strong charismatic men who could teach you Shang, why not share a room with him? But after Chitral, she kept a room for herself. Sometimes Thayet and I would come in with her. Sometimes Thayet and I would keep our own company. My favorite nights were when we stayed on the road, away from inns and people and the logistics of how many rooms to request. Out on the road I could lay my bedroll near Alanna's, and no one seemed to think anything of it.
Well, Thayet did. But she generally kept her opinions to herself.
Sometimes I would fall asleep after a low, quiet conversation with Alanna. We'd talk about everything – her training as a knight, what she wanted to do with herself once she was back in Tortall. And she didn't think it strange when I answered her questions with a shrug, saying that it depended on Thayet. She was a vassal to her king, to the prince. So she understood what it was like to devote yourself to someone else's goals.
But then there were times I would tell her: I want to save the world, too. I liked helping those children, for all that they were a burden on our resources and Thayet didn't eat as much as she needed to when she could give her rations to someone else. I wanted to go somewhere and fight for the rights of the people who were oppressed, so no one would have to feel the way I did in Sarain.
One night – one blessed night in all that we traveled – there was something more than idle conversations in our bedrolls as we drifted off to sleep. She got up in the middle of the night and walked away from the fire. Thayet was on watch, and when I sat up, she nodded her head in the direction the Lioness had walked. "Talk to her," she mouthed.
And I did. She had found a clearing and was sitting on a fallen tree, staring at her hands – mending them with her magic. "Why do you go somewhere private for that?"
Her body jerked at the sound of my voice, but she relaxed just as quickly. "Liam doesn't like magic."
"So you hide it from him?"
She peered at me in the moonlight. "It's easier this way."
I shrugged and sat next to her. "You don't get as much sleep this way."
"I haven't had much sleep in ten years. Sleeping and training don't go well together, you know."
I didn't know. I've never seen a formal knight-training program. But I didn't tell her that; sometimes Thayet says I'm cantankerous and contradictory, and sometimes Thayet is right. Arguing for the sake of arguing with someone like the Lioness is stupid.
"I'm going to miss this," I said, instead. "Just the five of us, traveling together. Fending for ourselves."
"It's nice," she admitted. "But I miss home."
"Won't everything change when you get home?" Thayet had plans to sell her jewels and open a school. I guessed that meant that I'd be helping her.
Alanna nodded. "Change isn't always a bad thing, though."
Sometimes change isn't bad – like when you leave Sarain to build a life elsewhere. The Doi woman told me that change would be good for me, that life would have so much to offer once I reached my destination. But sometimes change isn't good. I didn't know how often someone like Alanna, serving her king, would be able to slip away from heroic deeds in order to spend time with a girl who helped a former-princess educate the commoners.
A part of me wanted to be her – to be that good with a sword, to be able to protect everyone so well, to run off into a mountain pass knowing that I'd likely get killed but be stubborn enough to live and succeed at my mission. Coram says it was stubbornness that got her through. But I think there's more to her than pigheadedness. Sometimes I think there might even be more to me than pigheadedness.
I don't know why I did it, but I kissed her that night. I'd never kissed anyone. I'd never even thought of kissing someone. But I pressed my lips to hers and delighted in the fact that she kissed me back. We sat like that for a long time, locked in one solid kiss that seemed to be made up of little kisses that meant different things.
"Aren't you a little young for this?" she asked huskily when she finally broke away.
"No," I said with a scowl.
We sat up for another hour. Eventually she got back to mending her hands, and I watched. I guess I was more like Liam, a little afraid of the magic. But it was part of her, and I loved everything about the Lioness.
But as I mentioned before: everything changed. After traipsing about Port Udayapur with Thayet, looking at bolts of cloth and scarves and jewelry and a hundred other things I couldn't have cared less about, we went back to our room and slept. But something woke me in the night – the low murmurs of two men who didn't realize that their efforts to keep their voices low were spoiled by the thud of their boots.
I climbed out of bed and opened the door a crack. The innkeeper was with a giant man, and they had stopped at Alanna's door. After a brief exchange of words, they knocked and she answered, and before I knew it the giant had her in his arms. He lifted her off the floor and carried her into her room.
All I could think of, as I crawled miserably back into my bed, was the expression of sheer delight on her face as she hugged this man. I'd never seen her so happy before. Not even when we'd kissed in the clearing on the way back from the roof of the world. I hated that fellow, for making her so happy. I rather hated myself for not being what she wanted.
Sometimes everything changes. This was one of those times that change wasn't very good.