(Set in the three-day gap within Chapter Ten of All Hallowed, while Blade is recovering from his crash and the remainder of the team is still combating the fire.)

STEADY AS THE BEATING DRUM

Windlifter was humming something, soft and low but the sound carrying nonetheless, as he rolled towards the main hanger. Even in the muddled light - the grey of the smokey predawn and the dull yellow of the sodium lamps - Blade could see the ash and soot dulling his Lieutenant's paint, and grimaced. His empty rotor hub ached.

Behind him, within his hanger, Nick was still asleep, murmuring softly in his dreams. Blade had left the door open a few inches after rolling out onto his helipad, unable to sleep from the dull physical ache of his healing injuries and the persistent mental itch of irritation at his grounded state. His place was in the air with his team, dammit, not on the concrete with his nose stuck to a barely-functional radio!

As though sensing Blade's agitation - which would not be the strangest thing Windlifter had ever managed - Windlifter paused, turning just enough to regard Blade from the corner of one eye. Oddly, he didn't stop humming; if anything, the soft sound became louder, and the vague familiarity of the tune itched in Blade's head the same way his aggravation did.

With almost any other vehicle, Blade's steady stare would have been enough to break them into quivering nerves, but Windlifter held his ground, not shifting in the slightest, the faint strains of his humming drifting on the air to Blade, who finally heaved a sigh and rolled down the hill from his hanger.

"What," he snapped, as soon as he'd gotten within a few body-lengths of the big Sikorsky. Infuriatingly, Windlifter hummed another few measures of the song before finally replying.

"You are out of balance," came the calm response.

"Really? I hadn't noticed," Blade growled back, putting perhaps more sarcasm in the words than was strictly necessary. He would have flicked his rotors for emphasis, but... well, that was the root of his problem, wasn't it?

Windlifter, rather than dignifying his petulance with a reply, closed his eyes and began humming his song again, slightly louder than before, and Blade resisted the urge to bite him in the nose. He hadn't had nearly enough coffee yet to deal with Windlifter's esoteric nonsense.

But the thought of coffee lead to the thought of the Main Hanger, which lead to thoughts of movie nights, which lead -

"You old fraud!" Blade snorted, as precisely why the song sounded familiar suddenly occurred to him. "That's from Pocahontas!"

"I'm aware," Windlifter answered, not batting an eye at the 'fraud' comment. It wasn't true anyway, which Blade would readily admit. After he'd had his coffee.

"I cannot remember the last English stanza," Windlifter continued, "and so the song is stuck in my head. I was hoping to recall the lyrics and make it less... persistent."

That was... alarmingly logical, actually. Frowning a little, Blade racked his memory, following the recollection of the music. Nick could probably recite the entire song from memory, but Blade was loathe to wake him in order to discuss a Disney movie - especially when Nick had been the one to force him to join the rest of the team in watching it anyway. Blade certainly didn't want to admit he'd enjoyed that inaccurate, romanticized drivel.

"Something to do with spirits and balance," he answered finally, and Windlifter's humming rose half an octave in surprised approval.

Blade's vague recollection was evidently enough to trigger his Lieutenant's memory, though, because, to Blade's surprise, he sang the verse aloud. His voice, soft and deep, make the lyrics echo like a prayer.

"Oh Great Spirit, hear our song,
Help us keep the ancient ways,
Keep the sacred fire strong,
Live in balance all our days."

The sound resonated through him, frame-deep, and Blade exhaled sharply, just as the sun finally rose above the eastern crest of the valley, its light refracting scarlet and gold through the smoke. The brilliance of it seemed to burst over both of them, and for a split second, Windlifter all but glowed in the light.

Then Blade took another breath, and his Lieutenant was gazing back at him, ash-streaked and desperately in need of waxing, softly and absently humming music from some Disney fallacy of history.

But the persistent itch of aggravation had dulled, Blade realized, and the tension it had brought with it had ebbed away, taking most of the aches in his body with it.

"Balance, huh?" he asked, wryly.

Windlifter, infuriatingly, only hummed in response.

[END CHAPTER]

Steady As The Beating Drum somehow managed to get itself lodged quite solidly in my head, despite my not having watched Pocahontas in... 5-10 years? - and as Windlifter was in residence at the time, it earwormed him as well. In this case, both my and Windlifter's earworm were courtesy of something called the Zeigarnik Effect, in which the brain recognizes an unfinished mental process (such as being unable to follow the lyrics of a song all the way through) and basically puts the song on repeat in an attempt to recall the entire thing. An easy fix is to listen to the entire song, although other 'cures' for being earwormed include getting fully absorbed in some other task and, apparently, chewing gum.

(My preference is watching song vids on YouTube, particularly in other languages. Love the Mandarin Chinese version of Drum!)