(328 words.)
"You had to run away to fucking Tyvia," Billie says through chattering teeth, shivering in the corner in her too thin coat.
The automatic protest, that he would hardly call it running away and that he certainly hadn't asked her to follow, hovers on his tongue for a moment before he lets it die there unsaid. Instead he shrugs and turns back to the fire in front of him, prodding at the wood and kindling until the flames blaze and lick out onto the hearth. "You could always sit closer," he says mildly.
Billie stays where she is, frowning. The ease with which they had once interacted is long gone now, and though she was the one to seek him out, she regards him with a level of wariness that he doesn't remember from even their earliest days.
Daud sighs. "It's good to know the years haven't made you any less stubborn, but you've come an awful long way just to freeze to death in my front room."
Her frown deepens into a scowl, but she stands and comes closer, sitting near enough that he can watch her shivering slow and eventually stop without turning his head. She relaxes slightly as she warms, uncrossing her arms and leaning back, and the silence, if still not exactly comfortable, is less strained now than it has been since Billie appeared half-frozen on his doorstop and he stood back without a word to let her in.
"Why did you come all the way out here?" she asks after several long moments.
"To discourage visitors."
She rolls her eyes. It's a look so familiar that he almost smiles.
"I wanted to leave everything behind me for a while, try and forget what we'd done," he admits. Maybe running away wasn't so inaccurate after all.
"Hm, I can understand that," she says with a nod. She turns her head to give him a half-smile. "You really couldn't have done that anywhere warmer, though?"