5 Things Meme-of the Ficlet Variety
This entry is part 44 of 51 in the series 365 Challenge
Gacked from penknife:
You post a topic, list, category, whatever, in comments. (examples: "Five SG-1 Mission Reports That Were Less Than Entirely Truthful", or "Five Times Bruce Banner Lost His Toothbrush," or "Five Ways Nikola Tesla Failed to Take Over the World"). I'll answer with a list of ( Read more... )
Justus found her on the mats, running the series of stretches and katas and maneuvers that turned into strangleholds and broken limbs on a battlefield. Hand to hand combat was one area in which the teams particularly excelled.
“Kilter said you wanted me,” he commented cautiously. She could hear it just behind the casual tone and at-ease position.
Shift spared him a glance. She had considered questioning him but rejected the idea. He didn’t need that from her. She didn’t really need that from him. A quick hack through the files yielded enough data to conclude that Justus and Red Wolf arrived at the same time. One was processed; the other was offered to her. And she thought her own history was messed up.
“You’re fourth,” she finally said, naming the rank she had given him weeks ago. “Do you know what fourth does?”
“Sear’s been filling me in.” Sear now occupied third rank, but she had been fourth not so long ago. It was complicated, fourth-like any of them weren’t-but Justus had the temperament for it, brash aggressiveness and protectiveness wrapped up in cautious reason.
He looked and felt like a team member, but a team member who remembered. They were rare. Twelve percent. She had trained him to do what he had to do anyway, but he remembered.
She shifted then, from cool, lean acrobat back to the dark auburn. She’d been wearing the skin when she trained him and Justus always reacted instinctively to his conditioning. He did now, tension flaring as he realized she intended to use that conditioning. In fact, she threw herself toward him and nearly swept his legs from under him. Reflexively, his hand caught her wrist and he rolled with the punches, literally, then caught her on top of him, knife inches away from his throat.
Neither of them were out for the count, their tight pinning and hold of the other a farce when both of them could send this sort of position back into lethal combat at a moment. And Shift had the advantage. He had her arm twisted back, knife arrested, but she could shift her molecules and body fluidly out of his grasp if she wanted to. She didn’t.
“When this is all over,” she said quietly, fiercely, “you will make yourself a life again.”
“What-”
“You’re mine, Justus,” Shift cut him over, caught his gaze in hers. “I never lose one of my own. I will not lose you.”
His jaw set, eyes hard and unyielding. “You have no idea,” he bit out, but she cut him off again.
“I don’t care.” She thinned her wrist and pressed the knife that much closer. “You will make a life for yourself. I don’t care if you fell from heaven’s purity to become the worst of sinners. You. Will. Not. Stay there.”
He stared at her, uncertain and uncomprehending of why she had him down on the mats, why she was forcing the issue. “That’s my choice.”
She felt that sharp, dark amusement bubble up, lift her brow. She wrestled herself back up to sitting, and he warily let her go. “Do you really want to owe Shift?” she demanded lightly.
She heard his breath catch, knew then that he realized she was pulling rank, weight, and a whole lot more they most days pretended didn’t undergird their entire trainer and protégé relationship. But she was also offering him a way out, the very choice she had given to him when she accepted him as her own. Do you want my protection? she had asked. She had told him then there would be a price for it, that no matter what she had to do for it, she would not lose him. It was never a small price to be paid.
He set his jaw and she knew he had accepted this, however resignedly. “No.”
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