Disclaimer: The Deathstalker series and all the characters in this story belong to Simon R. Green.
Authors Note: It has occured to me that there is literally no Deathstalker fanfic out there on the Internet so this poor offering is an attempt to remedy that. This story takes place shortly after the events in the novella 'Ghostworld' which is a prequel to the Deathstalker series.
Investigator Frost easily deflected the weak punch aimed at her mid-section. "Wrong!" she snapped, irritation causing her mask of cool indifference to slip. "You're not supposed to lean your weight into your blows. Use the movement of your hips to give your strikes power - like I've been telling you. Repeatedly."
Her opponent seemed to wilt under the critism, "I hopeless at this!" Diana Vertue wailed in frustration.
"You aren't hopeless," Frost corrected her. Pause. "…But you are pretty bad."
"Can we take a rest, please?" Diana begged shamelessly.
Frost frowned; she wasn't the least bit tired; in fact their sparring (if you could call it that) didn't even have her breathing hard. But looking over her so-called pupil she could see that the young woman was panting for breath, sweat pouring down her face. "A short one," she said grudgingly and Diana gave her grateful look and slumped down on one of the benches that lined the training room and, grabbing a water bottle, started gulping thirstily.
Frost could have told her that she'd just wind up with a stomach ache drinking that much water that fast but she held her tongue. Let her figure it out for herself, I'm coddling her enough already.
Indeed she didn't know what had possessed her to agree when the young esper had come to her and had hesitantly asked the Investigator to teach her some basic self-defense. She certainly didn't have the patience required to be a good teacher and it was difficult to explain things that were so deeply ingrained they were practically instinct. It made her uneasy truth to be told, but she consoled her conscience by telling herself that she was hardly giving away Investigator secrets. What she was teaching Diana (or trying to) were the very basics of fighting, which were common knowledge.
Diana certainly needed the help; hell, the girl hadn't even known how to make a fist properly when Frost had started teaching her! Being so vulnerable was utterly foreign to Frost who had been recruited by the Investigators at the age of nine and her combat training had begun immediately after. It seemed that espers were kept as harmless and given as little combat training as possible. It wasn't something she had consciously noticed before; espers were generally beneath her notice except when their telepathic abilities were needed to deal with aliens or other threats to the Empire.
But Diana was a…unusual circumstance thanks to their experiences on the planet Unseelie - and that was what Frost truly found disturbing. Because she found that she couldn't ignore Diana, that there was always the faintest touch of her presence in the back of Frost's subconscious no matter where she went or what she did. It wasn't limited to Diana either as she had quickly discovered, she also shared that tenuous link (for lack of a better word) with the other two people who had heard the song of the Ashrai on Unseelie. As an experiment she had tried reaching out to Carrion, the former Investigator who had stayed on the dead planet, and had discovered that though distance weakened the link it didn't break it all together. She had sensed the faintest brush of his consciousness against her's, his way of showing that he was aware of her. She then felt a faint sense of smugness from him at her discovery and she had quickly broken off contact and had pointedly refused to re-establish it again. She didn't particularly want any sort of bond to a known traitor anyway.
She had refrained from making the same kind of contact with Captain Silence. She wasn't sure what to make of Diana's father yet as she had only joined the crew of the Darkwind a few days before the Unseelie mission. His manner towards her was scrupulously polite and correct but she sensed an absence of the usual fear that most people felt in the presence of Investigators. Frost found the lack of fear unsettling. The two of them kept circling around each other like two strange wolves trying to get each other's measure.
"Break's over," she said shortly, "Let's get on with this."
"Yes m'am," Diana answered rather sullenly, getting up reluctantly and rejoining Frost in the sparring ring.
"I don't have to be teaching you," Frost pointed out, impatient with such childish behavior.
"Why are you teaching me?" Diana asked unexpectedly, "You're an Investigator and you don't seem to enjoy this much more than I do - you could have refused. Actually," she admitted, "I sort of expected you to." The look she fixed Frost with was clear-eyed and probing. She wasn't using her esper abilities – she had quickly learned not to do that during their first lesson when she had tried to read Frost's mind and the other woman had struck her hard enough to knock her to the ground – but the esper was good at reading physical cues as well. It was a little disconcerting how quickly Diana could go from the naïve girl barely out of childhood to the professional esper who had seen and learned much in her short life.
It was a perfectly legitimate question, Frost agreed though she wasn't sure even she knew the answer to that. She wasn't sure what prompted her to feel so protective towards Diana. It wasn't just these lesson; in the past when several of the bolder crew members looked like the might be inclined to take advantage of the pretty young esper they were always stopped by Frost's icy, challenging stare and quickly decided to take their interest elsewhere. No one was foolish enough to mess with someone an Investigator had claimed as theirs.
Was it because, despite their differences, Frost could see the similarities between them? Was it because she was moved to feel some pity? Those answers seemed too simple. Maybe it was because something in the back of her mind whispered to her that Diana would leave the Darkwind soon and strike off on her own in a dangerous universe. It filled Frost with a sense of urgency to give Diana those skills she would need on her own.
"I'm teaching you because you need to know," she answered simply and left it at that. "This time remember what I told you," she switched back to the lessons to prevent any further discussion, "Use your hips when you punch. Leaning into your blows puts you off balance…"
She didn't want to look too closely at her reasons, because she had the suspicion that they might be considered inappropriate, even treasonous by some. Because Investigators weren't supposed to feel any emotion beyond their enjoyment of the kill. Because sometimes at night Frost dreamed that she was still a child and there was a younger girl, quiet and shy, clinging to her hand and looking up at her with big, trusting eyes. The girl didn't call her by her Investigator designation; she called her by a name that Frost had almost forgotten - the one her parents had given her. And woven through those vivid, disturbing dreams was a faint song, whispering to her that she was not the same person she had been – none of them were, and that they would never be the same again.