[A/N]: *jumps out of hole* Hello! Here I am again! It's nice to have seen you guys! Have fun with this chapter! *crawls back into hole*
Arbitration belongs to Ashe O'Hara and Dennis Svensson.
Once the group had returned, Gwen at once took to the 'kitchen'. Somehow, she felt... connected to the people there. Even to Dylan, who continued to send her withering glares whenever he thought she couldn't see it. Cerys she hadn't seen in quite a while, but the half-elf cared not for that one, if she had to be honest.
Gwen and Ivor arrived there only to find Brigid by herself. The woman looked up in surprise at the sight of the deer slung over the latter's shoulder as though it weighed nothing and the former limping after him.
"What happened?" she asked, getting up from her seat but then just standing there, uncertainty visible on her round face.
The half-elf scratched her cheek and forced herself to respond. "I didn't kill it in one go, so I had to run after it. And my leg's still not healed, or so it would seem."
Brigid helped Ivor lower the animal to the ground before casting a helpless look in Gwen's direction. The other frowned at that, but said nothing as she found a piece of rope lying with the other kitchen equipment after handing the rabbits and fox to Brigid. She launched that over a branch that hung at the edge of the clearing, missing a few times but succeeding in the end.
"Uhm... what are you doing?" the girl asked as she watched Ivor help Gwen make a loop in the rope to hang around the deer's neck.
"Skinning and cleaning will go easier if we hang it up," Ivor answered. He moved to grab the other end of the rope to hoist it into the air, but the half-elf pushed him out of the way and did it herself. He smiled and shook his head at the sight of her mouth, set in a grim line as she put her all into lifting the body from the ground.
Once it hung from the branch and she had made sure that, despite it creaking in protest, it wouldn't give, Gwen looked around for some sort of counterweight for the rope. Brigid came forward and held out her hand, and the half-elf tilted her head in confusion.
The girl's cheeks flushed and she waved her hand up and down. "I can hold it?"
"I doubt you can hold a deer long enough for me to skin it," Gwen replied with a raised brow, which only caused Brigid's blush to deepen.
Just in time to save the elf from more of her jeering, Ivor reappeared, though neither of the women knew when he had left them, with a strained look on his face and a counterweight in his hands. Gwen eyed it with derision and asked, "Couldn't you just as well find a pulley along with that?"
"It's either this, or nothing," he replied as he dropped the heavy object to the ground with a thud. They stared at it, Brigid and Ivor wide-eyed and Gwen exasperated, as it sank deeper into the earth, its weight forcing the soil to the side.
While the elves continued to stare, Gwen bent down, pulling the rope along with her, and tied it around the ring on top of the weight.
"Have to do everything myself here," she muttered under her breath as she pulled out her knife and began to cut the hide around the neck before moving it down to its stomach in one, swift stroke.
Brigid decided to sit and watch in silence while Ivor reached out to help the half-elf keep the deer steady.
"You have done this often, haven't you?" the girl asked, her chin resting on her knees as she hugged them to her chest. A grunt and a shrug was all she got as a response, but she smiled anyway.
Nobody said anything afterwards, all eyes on Gwen's knife as it separated skin from meat with strong yet deft strokes. One hand moved in flurries as she cut the membrane while the other pulled the hide back to keep it taught. The answer to Brigid's question should have been obvious to even the most inexperienced skinner, the way that she did not have to take her time in order to make sure she made no mistakes.
Once the largest part of the skin had come off, the half-elf wiped at her forehead with her arm. With all the nonchalance she could muster in that moment, she said, "I've had to fend for myself out in the wilderness for far too many years. I do have to admit, this is my first time with a deer. But in the end skinning is just skinning, no matter the animal."
She regretted her words the moment they had left her mouth, by the way that her companions lowered their eyes. As if to avoid showing her the pity in their gazes, because that made everything better. Hadn't they wanted to teach her that they all had their sad tales? Then why did they act as if her life had been so much worse?
"Why did you join the Squirrels, Ivor?" she heard herself ask.
Ivor looked up and met her angry look with a surprised one. He didn't seem to understand, but he indulged her anyway. His gaze went to Brigid before it found the half-elf again, and in a soft voice he said, "Not for revenge, that's for sure."
"Why then?" Gwen pushed on, not satisfied with his response.
"Because..." he began, frowning. Frustration became visible on his face. "Because I had no where else to go, after... After that. Just like many other Scoia'tael. And I promised that I wanted to help create a world in which such things don't happen anymore. So that there won't be any more children out there who take to murdering because they don't know what else to do or where else to go."
So many who didn't seem to have a choice in the matter, either. Gwen skinned the deer's legs so that she didn't have look the others in the eyes, knowing that if she did they would see the pity in them. For the first time, she understood how they felt around her, and it made the whole situation even worse, though she had caused it herself.
She handed the hide to Brigid for safekeeping somewhere else before she began to work on cutting the meat from the body, handing piece by piece to Ivor who had given up holding the deer and instead collected the flesh. If the Squirrels had been impressed with her work in the kitchen before, they would only be able to gape at what she would prepare for them today. Her mother had never had any trouble taking down a deer, which she would then use to make dinner for the two of them for more than a week. With a whole group of Scoia'tael to feed, this dear would fill their bellies for one evening, if worked into a stew. Gwen did not want to think about the joy she felt at the prospect of sharing her mother's cooking with other people.
"You can start skinning those," she quickly told Brigid, gesturing at the dead animals that the girl had placed off to the side before continuing with the deer. Though she tried her best to keep her mind blank, she couldn't help but remember how her mother had always wanted to become a cook. Too bad the humans shunned elves.
Brigid had finished skinning one of the rabbits when Gwen heard footsteps approach her from behind. Almost she expected to see Iorveth stand there when she turned around, though why she thought this she did not know. However, the lack of clinking armour tipped her off just before she came to stand face-to-face with a young elf whose pale hair looked so bright that the half-elf could only blink a few times.
Having spent most of her life either in a human-infested city or by herself in the woods of Aedirn, Gwen had no talent for guessing the age of elves. The elf that stood before her, staring up at her with big blue eyes, looked more like a girl of perhaps fifteen or twenty years old, but could just as well be older than she herself was.
"I... I came to... I was..." she began, the fingers of her left hand pulling on those of her right as she searched for words. "I wanted to thank you. For, you know..."
Only then did Gwen realise that this was the elf she had wanted to save in Flotsam, the one who had gotten caught and the humans had wanted to hang. She had tried so hard to forget everything that had happened that day, that she had even forgotten the face of the girl who had caused her actions in the first place.
She bit back her initial retort, feeling the eyes of Ivor and Brigid on her back all the while. The pity would fade and they would start to hate her again, or so Aderyn had told her. Unless she acted now to help change that. If she wanted to. Did she, though? She did not know.
"You're... you're welcome," she said anyway, and raised a brow when the blonde elf smiled at her with cheeks that almost seemed to glow.
"I was worried that you'd hate me," the stranger continued, having found her tongue again. "That's why I didn't come any earlier. But now I'm glad that I've said it."
Gwen could feel her own face lighting up as well, and she sputtered a bit before turning away abruptly, lifting her knife to the deer again. She swore that her insides warmed up after hearing those words, but she feared what that might mean.
The feeling faded soon after, together with the presence of the elf whose name she did not even know, who had skipped away not much later, giggling as she did so. The half-elf had tried to find the sound irritating, but she hadn't been able to concentrate even on that thought as she hacked away at the body.
And though it had faded, she had not forgotten. Sitting at the edge of the camp, between semi-civilisation and wilderness, during her watch - the first one given to her since joining - she could recall the warmth just by thinking back to that moment. It made her squirm, and she didn't know whether she despised it or enjoyed it, but it made for a nice contrast with the cold of the metal pressed against her wrist.
The metal gleamed in the moonlight that shone down on it from between the leaves, and she swallowed hard, contemplating what she should do. Her left arm still sported the bandages that she, or someone else, had wrapped around it after that time with Iorveth. Goosebumps appeared on her skin at the thought of that dream, and whether it had been a dream at all. For some reason she believed that perhaps it had been just that after all. Was this what hope felt like?
A sigh escaped her lips as she eyed her right arm again, still mostly free of recent scars and scabs. At least self-inflected ones. She closed her eyes, bit her lip, and without thinking she lifted the knife and did what had to be done.
center~~~~/center
She ignored the stares and the whispers as she made her way through the camp. Much to her surprise, the anger at her existence had already started growing again, slowly but surely, but it surprised her even more that she had become indifferent to the glares. Hatred did not fill her like they used to, and she paid them no mind as she searched Iorveth.
Ciaran had come to her, his hair drenched from the rain that hadn't stopped falling since dawn. He had given her a look of surprise but had not commented on her appearance, instead only telling her that the commander wanted to speak to her. She had nodded and had watched him stalk off before getting up and leaving her post.
The unit leader raised an invisible brow at her when she appeared before him, but he did not seem as perturbed as Ciaran had been. In fact, he beheld her with disappointment in his gaze as he said, "I see that you could not stop yourself."
Another part of her dream that had truly happened, then.
"I take it you do not like it?" Gwen retorted, raising her bare right arm to run it through her black locks. Locks of which the edges clung to her cheeks and the back of her neck, the shortness of them still startling the half-elf when she found she had run out of hair to run her fingers through.
"I suppose it is better than defiling your skin," Iorveth admitted, though he obviously did not like it that much better. "Though I do hope you realise you now have nothing left to cut."
Gwen shrugged and looked off to the side, her hand moving by itself to touch the bandages on her left arm. "Let's say it signifies a new start. But never mind that. You wanted to speak to me?"
"Yes," he replied, almost reluctantly, "I have decided to add you in with the regular training groups. But first of all, show me how your wounds fare."
Without waiting he reached forward, adamant on ignoring her stuttered protests. Before she could pull back, his glove touched the skin of her wrist and the half-elf couldn't stop the wince that escaped her throat, her mind automatically going back to the dream. For some reason she simply refused to believe that it hadn't taken place in reality. Just because she told herself that it hadn't happened whenever she thought of it did not mean she truly believed it yet.
Surprise appeared on the commander's face, though soon it faded away. Instead, Iorveth narrowed his eye at her. "It still bothers you?"
Of course it still bothers me! Gwen wanted to scream at him, but she feared that he might realise that what had happened with Loredo wasn't the only thing gnawing at her. Perhaps she should have said that anyway, for she had no idea what else she could say, and instead stood as if frozen to the ground, silent.
"There's more to it than that, is there not?" the elf spoke the dreaded words as he took a step closer, though he no longer touched her. "You have been acting awfully aloof around me lately. It has been strangely quiet without you yelling at me."
He wanted an answer, Gwen knew as much, and she feared what he might do if he didn't get it. He might... No! He wouldn't do any such thing! She had seen his contempt at Loredo's actions, had heard his anger. He couldn't possibly justify it if he were the one doing the damage.
"I... I had a dream," she heard herself say, much to her horror. "I think."
"A dream? Are the inh'eid creatures that do not normally get these?" Iorveth all but spat at her, though the half-elf noticed the confusion in his voice all the same.
She sucked in some air, reprimanding herself for opening her mouth in the first place. Now she had to get the rest over with, too, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't get past repeating the word, "You..."
"I? I what? What could I possibly do in one of your dreams that you..." but even before he finished his sentence, his voice trailed off. His eye widened and he took a step back as though she had hit him, but it didn't take long before it narrowed again. "Do you think so lowly of me as to believe I would do such a vile thing?"
Though he kept his voice relatively low, Gwen could hear the venom that laced his words. For a moment she considered trying to calm the storm even before it truly began, but the thought disappeared just as fast and so instead she said, "Oh, it's good to know that, after murdering, pillaging and torturing, raping is where you pull the line."
"You think I do all that for entertainment? Because I enjoy doing such things?" Iorveth growled.
Gwen lifted her shoulders in a nonchalant shrug. "You could always, you know, stop doing it if you hate it so?"
The look he shot her might have caused her to evaporate on the spot if she hadn't met it with a scowl of her own. Gwen couldn't help but wonder where all the friendly progress the two of them had managed to make had gone.
"Excuse me, my lady, for not having the option to live with the king's mistress and to turn a blind eye on all the injustice done to others of my race. That you decide to turn a blind eye to it all because you can simply fall back onto your filthy dh'oine blood is one thing, but the seidhe out here never had such a choice to begin with!" While speaking, Iorveth had once more closed the distance between the two of them so that he could all but yell into her face.
In his anger, he gripped her shoulders with gloved hands and pushed her backwards. A tree blocked their path, however, and with a thunk and a wince, Gwen's back hit the trunk, though Iorveth didn't seem to realise this. Her initial irritation faded, and the half-elf began to feel afraid at the anger in Iorveth's green eye, burning with a hatred that her own might once have mirrored. Now she could only feel sadness for what he had done in the past, and fright for what he might do in the future. The very near future, to be specific; that which concerned her.
Other elves had started to gather around the couple by now, attracted by the noise of raised voices, one of them that of their leader. Somehow Gwen managed to notice that, unlike last time when Iorveth and she had found themselves in such a situation, their faces betrayed their concern instead of their anger.
"Please let go of me," the half-elf murmured. When the man didn't budge, she raised her hands and grasped his wrists, trying to tug them free with force instead.
In his blind hatred, however, Iorveth resisted her hold and dug his fingertips deeper into her shoulders, eliciting another wince from her. This time the sound seemed to bring him back to reality, and he blinked his eye once before it landed on the face of the woman before him. Their gazes met and he at once took a step back, holding his hands in the air.
"I apologise. I should not have done that," he stated in a voice that sounded as if it were made of stone before he turned and stalked off. Though not without calling over his shoulder, "Talk to Ciaran about training."
Gwen and the other elves could only watch Iorveth's retreating back as he pushed his way out of the ring which had formed around the scene. It didn't take long before Brigid wormed her way through the crowd in the opposite direction, reaching the half-elf with red cheeks and panting as though she had just outrun an arachas on her way here.
"W-what just happened?" she managed after a few gulps of breath.
The other only shrugged as she stared at where their commander had disappeared.