Slide
By icecreamlova
Niko's Funeral II

- : -

She was in the forge, pounding metal.

The muscles of her back stretched and contracted, outlines sharply defined by her perfectly fitted shirt. Her tools glittered in the dim light. She paused, for a moment, to wipe gleaming sweat off her brow, and said, "Are you going to stand there the entire evening?"

"Caught," Briar said, stepping across the doorway. He padded, still soundless even after all these years, to her side, blinking away motes and sparks of soft white magic.

As he drew near, he could see the faint quiver of her hand, the way she gripped the metal just a little too tightly. But he could sense nothing from her - hadn't been able to, since Tris and Sandry's connections slammed shut - and her blow, slamming metal against metal, was still perfect from long force of habit.

Briar stared at the play of shadows across her face; the play of muscle beneath skin; and said, "Daj."

She shook her head - he saw a flicker of Niko, of a casket being lowered to the ground, and remembered how he'd witnessed that moment just two hours ago.

Her blow was too hard; automatically, Briar's hand closed around her wrist - not forcefully, because it would take her almost no effort at all to break free and pay him back for any use of force. Fury escaping her ability to hide it beneath her perpetual sea of serenity, Daja spun to stare at him - and he could see through her eyes as she saw him. The swollen red around his eyes, though he had not wept as Sandry and Tris did; the slight trembling in every portion of his body.

Daja tugged her wrist free, laid down her tool, and took a step until he could see her long, lovely eyelashes. "I don't hug, like Sandry does," she warned.

"I don't want you to," Briar told her, and it was true. It was, to him, suddenly very clear why he had come here.

"Aren't you supposed to do this with one of your girls?" Daja asked - it was clear to her too.

"Aren't YOU supposed to with one of 'em as well?" Briar retorted.

Daja shook her head. "It's about the person. Usually a girl, because," she said quietly, "we are far more interesting."

She kissed him.

She kissed him, and he kissed back, and they pretended, so far as they could to one another, that this wasn't as much comfort as sudden, flaring, fire; that there wasn't a trembling, repressed grief welling up and almost out of control.

- : -

Well?