Disclaimer: Most definitely not mine. All belongs to Tamora Pierce and maybe her publishers? I'm not claiming the characters or setting within - and in no way am I profiting.

Notes: Set during "Wild Magic", during the chapter "Buzzard Rocks." Just something that started nagging at me. This is my first posted fic set in Tortall, so... don't hurt me.

"Will you stop being ridiculous?" It was Alanna who was behind him, not Daine. The girl had all but fled to groom the ponies, after he'd yelled at her out of the shock. And fear, he realized. Fear that she was, in fact, dead.

"Why would I do that?" He queried, over his shoulder, not looking at her.

"You're scaring the children, for one," he saw the knight gesture back at the camp and the Rider trainees, out of the corner of his eye, "and you're annoying me."

"My apologies, Lady Knight," he said, dryly, only to earn himself a cuff on the back of the head.

"Stop," she admonished. "You're behaving like one of my children - and three of them is more than enough for me."

"Shouldn't you be yelling at Daine for being ridiculous?" He asked, actually chancing a look at her.

"She's a student. You aren't. She"-

"Was dead. She stopped her heart."

"Who's the healer?" Alanna demanded tartly, from over his head. "I know she stopped her heart. Because student mages usually do stupid things. Were you ever a student, master mage?"

"I never actually killed myself," he pointed out, for the sake of argument. "My..."

"Didn't you ever try?"

"Not deliberately."

"And you know full well she didn't do it on purpose," Alanna argued back - her obstinate streak was more well known than his. "She's alive."

"Only by having a healer at hand to give her heart a jolt."

"And she likely won't do it again, now that she knows better. She's not stupid - unlike some people."

He turned around to tell her exactly what he thought of that, only to see her grinning at him. He scowled and her grin only broadened, looking more like that of a Corus street urchin.

"And to think my life used to be sane before that girl," he meant Daine and knew Alanna understood, "came along."

"Children have a remarkable way of disrupting things," the woman pointed out, calmly. "And besides - I find 'sane' to be rather boring."

He snorted and rose to his feet, brushing off his clothes as he did so. "You would," he retorted and she kicked him, lightly.