zg_shadows | All the words not said...

"Sulien Maneater, Adren Ahroun of the Fianna, asks entrance to your territory," she howled as loudly as she could, which wasn't very. She was close enough. It would carry.

Then she dropped back down to homid form and leaned her back against one of the blunt spurs of granite that jutted up like broken teeth from the long grass. Her knee ached from the long walk uphill, and she shifted her weight to ease it a little, hoping that no unseen watchers saw the weakness.

The sun continued slowly crawling its way back down the dome of the sky. The tough tussock grass waved in the wind. She crossed her arms and looked stolidly ahead. She could wait. She had nothing better to do.

Finally, the air shimmered by one of the other stones. She turned her head and he was there, leaning against it in a pose the twin of her own, his expression carved from the same granite that formed the bones of this land where they had both grown up. He watched her, not speaking.

"I'm guessing you'd rather I stayed away," she said quietly.

"Don't you dare make any assumptions about how I feel," he replied, equally quiet, his voice bitter.

This conversation was already spiralling out of control. That had probably been inevitable, all things considered.

"Then why don't you tell me how you feel." Whatever was required of her, she could do. If he would just let her know what it was. Anything. Almost anything.

"I don't think that's a good idea. Do you?"

"Mm." She had, somehow, not been thinking of the wider implication in her words. She glanced down briefly, grimacing. She would have to do better than this. "You have a point."

She looked back up at him, holding his gaze, noting the drawn look of his face, the new creases at the corners of his eyes. He had, she had heard, locked himself away with enough whisky to half-kill even a Garou at the news.

He hadn't told her to leave. She sat down at the base of the stone, carefully, so that he wouldn't see her legs tremble. She watched his face as her mind ran in circles, trying to find a path through the thorns.

"Do you love him?" he asked suddenly.

"No."

"Do you like him?" There was an edge of incredulity to his voice.

She considered Daniel; his odd sense of honour, the suspicions she dared not let herself discard.

"Not sure."

"Then why?"

"Thought he was kin."

"I guess I can hardly fault you for that," he said with a twisted half-smile. She felt a humourless grin twitch at the corner of her own mouth in response to his bitter self-mockery. Something hurt inside her.

"I don't know how this works," she admitted at last.

"No. They didn't hand me a script either." There was something vulnerable about his eyes, now, as he looked at her. He still hadn't moved.

Nothing's changed, she wanted to say to him. Nothing's changed. But she couldn't say that, not here, not now. She could only desperately feel her way around the apology she didn't dare speak.

"Words aren't my strong point," she said instead.

"They never were, as I remember." He was still looking at her, a wry twist to his mouth, as she looked at him. Ten years of memories hung in the air around them. Time stretched with their shadows on the grass and still there was nothing she could say.

Finally, he sighed. "Do you want to go for a drink?"

It wasn't all right. It wasn't anywhere near all right. But somehow they would get through this.

Togeth... alone.