Kylo had to be very careful with hiding his thoughts around his Knights.
Under all normal circumstances were their minds to be an open book to each other. It was essential in battle, with the sharing of a thought so much faster and more effective than the angry bark of a command in the midst of things. Having this wordless connection had saved not only his men's life but his own on more than one occasion.
Except now Kylo has to hide the truth from one of them, and that rankles him deeply. His men trusted him implicitly, and he trusted them. Just not with this.
Not with the girl. Not until he knew what she was and what would have to be done with her.
"You seem perturbed today, Leader. Why?"
Ria was one of his female knights, and she was greatly observant. Any one of them however, could and surely had noticed that he held a rather odd disposition today.
"Something is amiss," he tells her as they work their way through the busy village streets, "I don't know what it is yet, but I can feel it. There is a disturbance in the Force and it is of growing concern to me."
Ria doesn't answer, but her hooded head nods. He can feel the eave of her presence in his mind passing through, and he brings up the vicious fight he and two of the others had held with the mermaids the day before.
"They have been very riled up recently," she agrees, "very bold."
"Too bold. So let's be quick and get back to our posts. You go to the blacksmiths and put in the order for our metalwork. Your armor needed repairs did it not?"
The darkly wrapped head nods again. Ria's face was covered in the style of the east and she was a large woman, taller and broader than many of the male knights. Swaddled as she is there's only a few in the village who knows her real gender. Precisely the way she likes to keep it, and that makes her dealing with the blacksmith herself a very convenient and authentic excuse to get rid of her for a few minutes.
When Kylo's alone in the market he hurries to put in the other orders. Making requests for the food and equipment and routine supplies that his Knights will need. They never have to pay for it; all of these are part of the villagers debt to them for keeping them and their shores safe.
Then comes the awkward part of Kylo's visit. He will need to buy the mermaid girl clothes. Clothing that he has no idea will fit, she'll like, or won't attract undue attention to his purchasing.
That last part gives him pause, but when he reaches the tailor an idea forms. He barks at the man, demanding far more brusquely than he normally would to be served in private. The other customers scurry away, and he orders the visibly cowed tailor to prepare him a replacement to his cowl. No need to explain that it had gotten torn, the man hastens to nod and disappears into the back of his shop where all the specialty fabrics are kept.
Giving Kylo a few moments to find what he's looking for on his own. There are skeins of loose fabric laying around, and he slips off one of his gloves to test the softness of them. The girl's skin rips like wet paper, anything too rough and he knows he won't have a prayer in getting her to keep it on for more than a moment.
Then a simply dress hanging with other garments for sale on a railing catches his attention. It's a sheath-like garment, loose and very light. Soft though, and with a few embellishments that catch the eye. Something slightly nicer than a common peasant's dress, and inappropriate enough for the advancing season that Kylo assumes its presence won't go missed for a while.
He natches the garment and tucks it away with the other provisions he'd been gathering from this expedition.
That was the easy part, he knows. Getting the feral girl to actually wear it will be far more complicated.
"Where in all the hells did you go off to?!"
Kylo slams the front door to the watchtower closed behind him, his anger ratcheting up sharply up seeing the girl's bedroom door high above him open and afternoon light spilling in.
She had gotten out. Somehow, despite every precaution he had taken and her own bodily limitations, she had gotten out.
No dead girl lay crumpled at the bottom of the stairs. Somehow she had crawled down or-
Or someone had been in here and taken her.
The thought brings a twist on panic to mingle with his anger. For a moment all he can do is think, race his mind through his not insubstantial list of enemies for which one of them would dare to be so bold as to enter his private sanctum and steal from him.
And then he feels her. Her nothingness, but now as he's become more familiar it's a nothingness tinged with something unknown. A unique signature, and its coming from one of the lower rooms of the tower.
"Oh bloody hell, are you in my kitchen?"
He stomps across the floor, determined to look as forbidding as he possibly can despite the slightly humorous realization. Of course that's where the girl would go. She probably made a try to open the front door, but Kylo had thoroughly barred that from the outside. Then, judging by the more often than not tipped over or disturbed piece o furniture, she had made her unsteady way over to the source of her mealtimes.
"You."
Kylo glares down at the girl. She glares right back, her lips pulling away from her teeth as she bares them at him.
The corners of Kylo's lips twitch up. She's a mess. Somehow she had gotten into the jam pot and now she's covered with it. The effect rather takes some of the threat out of the low, angry sounding hiss she makes as he approaches.
"Jam, bread, and bits of last night's dinner. Gods, you've really been a pig while I was away, haven't you?"
The food is even matted into her hair, and she coots away from him leaving a messy trail of crumbs behind.
"Your knees are bruised," he points at them with a flick of his finger and she holds the pot closer to her chest. "I take it you feel several times on your way down? Lucky you didn't break your foolish neck, m'lady."
If there ever was a time she looked less ladylike it was now, as she starts to rebelliously scoop jam up by the handful and shovel it into her mouth. Her eyes dare him. Double dare him. Challenge him to just try and take away her sweet treat.
"I take it your legs are becoming more useful to you? How lovely. You know that I'm going to have to clean you off before I can dress you, right? How much of a challenge are you going to make that for me?"
Massive. Seemingly impossible because she kicks at him, shoving at his shoulders when he bends down to take the jar cradled to her bosom away from her.
Kylo stands up then and crosses his arms. No doubt the wounds on her back and legs will need attending to. When he was in town he had bought a healing ointment, but it needs to be applied to clean skin. Clean, and not something covered in sugary apple preserves.
"This is ridiculous. I think you must be doing this on purpose, making me stoop so low as to be your personal maid."
The girl growls. Huffs. Shoves another messy handful of sweet into her mouth.
"You eat like an animal."
The observation may be redundant, but the girl still wrinkles her nose at him. Kylo stands up, frowns down at her, then starts to tidy up the room while making a show of ignoring her.
"You really had gotten into everything, hadn't you?"
Even the wooden flour barrel had been tampered with, and small finger shaped indents mark its surface though apparently didn't meet her liking. At least the pickled fish she hadn't been able to reach, or Kylo doesn't doubt she'd be covered with their pungent brine alongside the jam.
When the kitchen is straightened up, Kylo starts to unpack what he'd brought with him. One of the items he'd hoped to tempt her into good behavior with was a fresh fish pie. Not at all to his liking, but he can see how the girl's head picks up as he unwraps it and the smell drifts over to her.
The jam pot drops from her hands and she lunges forward. Her legs bow out underneath her but she's learning to walk already, and only Kylo wrapping his arm around her waist holds her back from presumably diving face-first into the pastry treat.
And then how the girl howls, her hands smacking wildly at him as he drags her to one of the rearmost rooms. He drops the sticky, thrashing body onto the cold tiled floor of of the bathroom and she immediately scuttles into the corner, curling up tight around herself.
One of the advantages of the watchtower that had swayed Kylo into choosing it for himself was that it had the luxury of indoor plumbing. The water comes from a large cistern up the hill and, though fresh and pure, tended to be unfortunately frigid. He starts to draw her a bath but frowns as the icy temperature bites at even his touch.
"You." He turns to the still cringing girl. "You will wait here while I heat up some water. Try to do your very best not to make too much of a nuisance of yourself."
He picks up a comb and debates how lethal of an instrument it could be in the wrong hands. Somewhat, but nothing he couldn't handle, surely.
The girl snatches the comb away from him when he offers it. She sniffs it and looks up at him, prompting another eyeroll from Kylo.
"You brush your hair with it, m'lady, not eat it."
He pushes an image into her mind of her combing her tangled, sticky snarl of brown hair. The girl blinks and Kylo leaves her to it to heat up a few buckets of water on the fireplace.
In the girl's credit, she had tried.
By the time Kylo gets back to her, two steaming buckets tugging on each hand, she had pulled her hair as straight as the sticky jam coating it would allow. Several clumps of it were stuck through the tines of the comb, but it appears that she had gotten the core concept of what he'd expected her to do.
"Good girl," he praises.
Good girl then, but she had once more recoiled when he'd come too close. She fought back unnecessarily hard as he picked her up, and her thrashing only grew in intensity as he carried her to the full bathtub.
It wasn't until he'd plopped her in, her resisting limbs nearly dragging him down with her, that she'd quieted down.
"Water. Don't tell me you've forgotten it already."
Indeed she hadn't, because she immediately sinks below the surface. Kylo watches her watching him, and her expression becomes increasingly frustrated. When she breaks the surface again she gasps, sputtering out the water she had just inhaled.
"You can't breathe that anymore? I hadn't assumed you could, but..."
But what? But another piece of the puzzle. And the way her legs twist and her hips roll from side to side makes Kylo assume that she's trying to change back into her natural form.
Unsuccessfully. Kylo reaches for the bar of soap and the girl is too distracted by her failure at becoming a mermaid again that she doesn't notice when he sits himself next to her on the top.
She squawks when he touches her back, though. A large wall of water is slapped his direction as she retreats to the opposite side of the tub. Kylo sighs, now throughly soaked along with the floor.
He picks up the second bucket of hot water and pours it in, heating the bath up further in the hopes that the warmth of it will calm her down.
The girl watches him. Watches the falling water as it sparkles in the sunlight from the window above them. She reaches out to catch some in her hand but recoils when it proves too hot to touch.
"I can wait you out, m'lady. Don't ever doubt my patience."
She may be plenty stubborn, but he is more so still. The girl scowls, makes angry huffs, and occasionally kicks more water at him in an effort to get him to leave. It's only when he does so to bring in a third now heated bucket that he finds her starting to grow more tolerant of his presence.
The bath now is hotter than he himself would like, but the girl practically unfolds, sliding down into the bath like a piece of kelp being drawn across the bottom of the ocean by the tide.
She dips her head under again, this time having the sense to hold her breath. When she comes back out she sighs, glaring at him only halfheartedly as he approaches her again.
He picks up her hair, coating it in the washing cream lightning quick before she has the chance to pull away. Then she dips back under the surface again, effectively taking over the task of rinsing off her hair for him.
For a few minutes she floats like that, content or at least less fussy than her unusual waspish self. Then she scoots up, sitting in the tub, and swishes her arms about.
"Are you playing with the water?"
For all the world that what it looks like she's doing. There's even a slight smile on her face, though perhaps that's Kylo's mind playing tricks on him. She certainly seems in a better mood though, and even tolerates him swiping the soapy washcloth over the worst of her wounds with only an annoyed whine and another wall of water splashed in his direction.
Then she flops back again, relaxing against the back o the tub with her head and chest above the surface. Water droplets flow down the front of her body, tracing in two lines along the side of her face only to merge in the space between her breasts.
Kylo clears his throat, his cheeks burning at the unspeakable thoughts that try to push through his mind. She's a very, very convincing human girl. Naked, soaking wet, and languishing in his own personal bathtub. He should go. There are countless obligations he must attend to that take place in any other room of the tower than this one.
"I'll leave you to it," he says, rising.
He places a towel nearby, and the girl looks at it than him again.
Then she sinks under the surface again, her body twisting and turning about in the water.
Kylo leaves then, feeling oddly out of sorts from this bizarre sequence of events her just participated in. One task of the day complete, though. The girl was clean. Next is dressing her wounds then dressing her, and now Kylo finds himself guardedly optimistic that a strategically timed fish pie will go a long ways to assisting with both.
Author's note:
Still having fun with this I hope? Well I know I am! Soon i may have to actually give this story a plot, even if it's a wee one. And this story is quite popular on archive of our own but not so much here, so if anyone felt like leaving a comment or two you'd totally make my day! : )
As always, you can also find me on tumblr at lost-inthesunlight and on twitter at Ava_Avdal where I have a very pretty cover picture up for this chapter if you'd like to see!