Title: Not Yet by Lightning

Title: Not Yet by Lightning

Chapter: Twelve

Author: Jade Sabre

Notes: A shorter chapter today, folks, and one of the last things I wrote. This is yet another example of the huge debt I owe/the huge amount of hero-worship I give to "The Smell of Destiny," which might possibly be my favorite NWN 2 fic ever.

We're exactly halfway through at this point! As always, reviews are lovely and greatly appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.

12

Contrary to popular belief, Sand was not stupid.

Oh, they all professed to believe in his intelligence, especially when there was a question of minute detail that needed resolving. Oh Sand, Khelgar and I have a bet going, how many days can an orc go without eating? Hey you, elf, is this potion going to poison me? Sand, is it all right if you combine slaadi tongues and fire beetle bellies? The questions were endless, but when it came to matters of importance, no one ever wanted to listen to him.

That was all right, for the most part; his job was to keep Nevalle informed of Laura's movements, not to have his genius recognized by her infuriating companions. Sorceress-sitting was a pain, but the girl was too great a danger to herself and others for him to leave her alone for prolonged periods of time. And since Laura didn't like her, and she didn't have anywhere else to go, he usually stayed at the Keep, doing his research and trying to weigh the costs and benefits of putting Qara under a permanent sleep spell. He always made sure that his opinion was heard—after all, someone had to give the Captain decent advice—but he left most of the petty bickering to the others. The more they spoke, the more information he gathered; the less he spoke, the less they remembered that he was ostensibly spying on them.

Oh, and the details he espied. He could hardly be spared to remember them all, having research and books and troop movements to memorize, but he savored the best ones—Neeshka's penchant for stealing Casavir's pants, an escapade which he overheard her drunkenly bragging to Khelgar; Elanee's attempts at writing love poetry for one of the Greycloak elves—for moments when their idiocies grew especially vexing. They would yell at each other, and at him, and he would sit back and think, oh, ranger, if you only knew how much I know…

Oh, he knew about Bishop. He had done a bit of research and come to his own conclusions about the man's origins—he didn't know the whole story, but one hardly had to when it came to these sorts of affairs. One would-be assassin is very much like another, and Sand hadn't spent years in Luskan with his head under a rock. (Well. Technically speaking, it had been under a rock—underground, in the lowest levels of the Towers—but that was clearly beside the point.) He didn't share his knowledge with anyone, of course, mainly because he knew his limitations and knew that the ranger, while no match for his magic, could simply sneak up behind him and slit his throat at that would be the end of it. And really, that wasn't much of an end at all. He was well aware of the fact that he might die on this quest, but he preferred to think it would be in a blaze of glory.

But he wanted to tell Laura.

The girl had been coming to him almost since he first joined their team and casually but clinically mentioned that he had a potion that would almost eliminate the monthly rounds of cramps and bleeding that afflicted human females. He did it as much for her as for himself—the smell of menstruation in close quarters was enough to clog his nose for days, and he found the sharp, bitter scent of iron distasteful. She almost cracked a smile when he told her it was also a contraceptive, as if laughing at the idea, and she and Shandra both made use of the potion on an irregular basis, generally waiting until the last minute before asking him for a new dose.

After Shandra's death, Laura became much more forgetful, to the point where Sand found himself reminding her during the first few months. He supposed the lack of companionship was what distracted her, filing it away as an example of her reactions to the events around her—after all, it wouldn't do to have her suddenly snap without warning, although she made it so very difficult to read the potential signs. Neeshka's heritage seemed to alter the normal cycles, while Elanee's cycle was, as it was with all elves, much longer. So he wasn't entirely surprised that Laura, with little reason to remember, forgot.

Then she started coming with a regularity that didn't surprise him either—she was, when she put her mind to it, a very orderly sort of girl. He attributed it to a reorganization of priorities—a reorganization of her life, brought on in a subtle but definite way since defeating the first Shadow Reaver. The other signs were there—she spent more time in the chapel than she had ever spent since the place was first built, and she was freer with her words, as if realizing that the others needed a sign that she was there, and there for them. He applauded this newfound sense of leadership in his reports, and thought that was that.

So when he first noticed the new scent, the one that clung to her skin underneath layers of soap and scrubbing, he thought that his nose had perhaps failed him for the first time in his life. His second thought was no, that's ridiculous, what you're smelling is obviously what's there, silly to blame a human's stupidity on your perfectly functioning nose. But the salty-sweet musk that wrapped itself around her like her lover's arms was so entirely unexpected that Sand, for once, had no pithy comment to make, no witty remark to expose her to embarrassment. And oh, she would have been embarrassed. He generally tried to spare her such indignities, but when Bishop was the one who matched her scent (much more powerfully, as if he didn't care if it lingered, strong and tangy against the muted softness of her scalded skin), well, the girl deserved whatever she got.

But no remark came, and when he watched her, she behaved exactly the same as she always had. There was no new partiality, no misguided attempts to defend his reprehensible actions—in short, there was a complete lack of the loverly tenderness he expected to find in a girl flushed with her first affair. She behaved most practically, and Sand found himself admiring her all the more for it. And really, who was he to question where she took her pleasure?

Still, he felt obligated to—tell her, or warn her, or remind her that he was, in fact, watching, and that he was not, contrary to popular opinion, stupid. So the next time she came for the potion—they were alone, in the library—he handed it to her and said, "I trust you, you know."

She took the potion from him, her face as unreadable as always. Sand had spent many years among humans, but there were still nuances of expression that escaped him, and with someone as skilled as the Knight Captain, he really had no choice but to accept what little he saw. Her scent had the same whetstone tang as Nevalle's, growing stronger by the day, mixed with the metal of long-simmering anger, the cloy of her nighttime activities, and underneath it all, a whiff of the feminine, a clean aroma that added curves, softening all the others. "Thank you," she said, to his words or the potion, he wasn't sure.

"You've made good decisions so far, aside from taking on that idiot girl—" who was nowhere in sight, and hadn't been for half an hour, which meant he probably should go looking for her "—and I trust that in the future you will continue to do so."

"Mm-hm." He didn't have to be able to read her face or catch the whiff of confusion to know she was perplexed by his sudden verbosity—normally she came, took the potion, and left the beaker behind for reuse—and so he watched her face carefully as she drank.

"And I trust you will stay clear-headed, and not allow any—attachments—to cloud your vision."

She hesitated, for the briefest moment in which the air was flooded with—not-quite-guilt—cloying sweetness mixed with the edged smell of resignation, confirming all his suspicions, and then she finished gulping down the potion. "Of course," she said neutrally. "I do my best."

"That's all we can ask for, dear girl," he said, plucking the flask from her uncertain grip.