A/N: Sorry this is so short. I wanted to end it there. Next one will be longer.
The girl sitting across the table in the bar from Torn was giggling uncontrollably, and her fingers danced on his thigh underneath the table. She had long, purple hair, obviously dyed, and azure eyes. Her skin was fake-tanned to the point where it didn't even look normal, and she had scars on her arms. Despite this, she was pretty, and she smiled at him drunkenly.
"Excuse me." It was the black-haired barmaid.
"Me?" Torn slurred.
"Yeah, you. You with her?" the woman motioned to the girl near Torn – what was her name? He had forgotten. Maja, that was it.
"Um… close enough. Why?" Torn asked.
"Well, you'll have to take her out. We can't have her passing out in here."
Torn sighed. "Yeah… whatever…." He turned to Maja. She was getting up to leave. "Hey, you want a ride home?" he asked.
She shook her head. "….no…I'll… I'm gonna….get there…."
"Heh…" Torn muttered. "You just do that. Fucking ho."
"That wasn't very nice."
Torn jumped and turned around. "Ashelin!" He gasped. "What the hell… shouldn't you be in the hospital?"
She shrugged. "I got released. I tried to call you on your radio, but… I guess you weren't answering it."
He grinned apologetically. "Sorry… I was a bit… preoccupied."
"With your 'fucking ho'?"
"No… I just needed to think… I was just walking around," he explained.
"Oh… well… you want to go walk around some more? And… y'know… talk?" she asked – almost shyly, it seemed.
He stood up. "Gladly. Not like I have anything to do here."
"Then… why were you here in the first place?" she asked.
He shrugged. "Nothing better to do… I thought I'd visit you in the hospital, but then I figured I'd probably better just not bother you so much."
She smiled. "It wouldn't have bothered me. I was bored."
Torn laid a bill on the table and followed her out into the nighttime quiet of the port. "So… what did you want to talk about?"
"I figured… you deserved to know some stuff."
"You THINK?" Torn retorted.
"Don't be childish," she snapped.
"You lied!" he said.
"I just….didn't want to be treated differently."
He looked at her, first with a glare then a softer glance. "But you are different, Baron's child or not."
"No!" she cried. "I'm not!"
He didn't press the subject, but only breathed the night air in deeply as they turned a corner onto a less crowded street. "So… what else do I need to know?"
She shrugged. "Stuff…. About the Bahzre… How old are you?"
"Seventeen… you?" he asked, hoping this might be relevant to whatever she was trying to say.
"Seventeen next month," she shrugged.
"And…?" he asked.
"Well, two years ago, my twin sister Natasha and I were sent out into the desert to be trained for a special section of the Krimzon Guard. We were to be trained personally by a man named Wendel." As she spoke, Ashelin could see it all in her mind.
She and Natasha walked a few feet behind the tall man, only a few years their senior, as they went deeper and deeper into the desert. The sisters giggled and talked quietly, until he turned and glared at them.
"Wendel… kept us there, in the desert, against our will for almost two years. Then, one day, he sold us to the Bahzre for a bag of gold coins. Natasha and I were kept in a Bahzre prison, near death, until at last I managed to escape. Natasha was too weak, and she opted to stay and try to spy on the Bahzre. I ran, and she stayed… it was the day before we were to be executed."
"Why?" Torn asked.
"The Bahzre have always lived in exile in the Wasteland. Their mythology says they are doomed to live there until they can make a suitable sacrifice to their gods. They must sacrifice two girls: the Children of Fire and Ice." Ashelin shivered in spite of herself, but whether it was from chill or fear Torn did not know. "I am the Child of Fire…. Natasha is Ice." A sound, what may have been a stoppered sob, leaked from her throat and sounded like a soft keen of pain. "I left her there… to die." She turned away from him, looking out over the water.
"Ashelin," Torn murmured, reaching out to touch her slender muscled arm where gooseflesh was raised.
She turned, so quickly that she startled him. Her liquid eyes held the tears fast and allowed none to fall. Neither moved for a long moment, and then the quiet was gone as she allowed a cry to tear itself from her throat, and suddenly she was in his arms, just as she had been when she was wounded, and – was it possible? – the wound in her heart pained her so much more than the cuts on her back.
He did not kiss her – did not give it a thought – but simply held her. She did not cry, not tears as one would normally cry. She simply allowed herself to be held, to be helped, to be healed, for the briefest moment before pulling away, and it was that moment that meant more than anything in the world.
She pulled him into the shadows, nearer the wall of a building, and stood on tiptoes to whisper in his ear, barely audibly, "I killed Wendel."
