if you could only see the beast you've made of me

[tearsthrulife]

If asked, Rahne wouldn't say that she's gotten soft. After years spent on various teams, she doesn't think it would be possible to lose that edge and the instincts that have been instilled in her, even in a place that isn't much more than a permanent vacation. What she has done, though, is begun to relax a little in the months she's been here. Even

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[first_worde]

Rupert had been heading home to his quite poshly retrofitted snow-hut when he heard... uncomfortable noises coming from off the path. Heading away from the lights of the boardwalk, he found blood in the snow. The day suddenly had the potential to be not quite as dull as the rest of them. He had his rifle halfway off his shoulder, pressing through the trees, when he actually caught sight of what had made the mess. Or at least the mess that had been made, since the shaking redhead curled over a few feet from it hardly seemed in a state to have been responsible.

"Rahne?" He walked around the remains, giving them a wide berth, and caught her by the shoulders as he knelt, turning her bodily away from it.

"Bloody hell, what is this?"

[tearsthrulife]

Whatever it is that she and Rupert have been doing, he's both the first and last person Rahne wants to see right now. He isn't supposed to know what she was capable of back home -- and he wouldn't, if this place had lived up to its name -- yet at the same time, it's somehow preferable to someone from home finding out.

It takes her a moment, head turned over her shoulder in the direction of the body, before she can bring herself to look at him. She does, though, and as soon as she meets his gaze, it's all she can do not to completely fall apart then and there, like she hasn't come close enough to doing that anyway. "My father," she manages, as much of an explanation as she's capable of just yet. "Back home, I - this isn't supposed to be here."

[first_worde]

Compared to all this, a letter wasn't so bad, really. Rupert wasn't much prone to thinking about to do in a given situation. He was better at just taking the most forthright action available at the time.

He pulled her against him and into his lap, then lifted her bodily, standing. Sod this for a game of soldiers.

"Neither are you. Come on."

[tearsthrulife]

Rahne tries to ignore the way her stomach lurches as she stands, all but falling against him once she's on her feet. Regardless of what they've been doing these past couple months, just having him so close is strangely comforting, and she's too unsteady, too shaken by this to handle it on her own. He might not know yet what, exactly, this being here means, and he might not have any interest in sticking around when she tells him, but right now, she's willing to take what she can get. It's selfish and it's awful of her, but it's nothing she can help.

"What about -" she begins to ask, then turns her head to look down at what remains of the corpse on the ground, gesturing towards it with her chin. "I don't want anyone to think it happened here."

[first_worde]

"I'll get someone to deal with it," he said, scooping her legs up. She was a wreck. While he perhaps wasn't the best equipped to handle the emotional fallout, he was more than well enough equipped to get her out of there. Damsels in distress, he could do.

"Let Vimes know and his lot can take care of it. You, I'm getting out of this cold."

[tearsthrulife]

Not very good at doing that whole damsel in distress thing, Rahne opens her mouth for a moment to protest, but she hasn't got the energy to. Besides, she's cold and it's warmer in his arms like this, and staying on her feet was a struggle anyway. It doesn't matter, in that moment, that whatever they've been doing hasn't exactly been serious, because he's here, and she hates that someone else has to see but isn't sure she could handle it on her own, either.

"As long as they know it was an accident," she says, closing her eyes for a moment as she draws in a deep breath. "I never meant to hurt him."

[first_worde]

"They'll never think that," Rupert said, frowning, starting back through the trees the way he'd come.

"You haven't a speck of anything on you, even if were capable of it. Things turn up here all the time, no one will think you've done it."

[tearsthrulife]

"I was capable of it," Rahne says, insistent. After these past couple months and especially his helping her now, it seems only fair that he know what really happened here, even if she isn't too thrilled with the idea of telling him. The trouble is managing coherency. "What I could do back home, I... I was more than capable of it."

[first_worde]

Well, it would figure, honestly. How many of the girls he knew on the island had been Something Else? Hell, even Angua had been a werewolf. His brother's wife was a vampire, for Godssake. They'd been a copper and an army corporal, respectively, but not their whole lives. Anyway, he knew some army corporals.

"Hush," he told her, shouldering through a particularly snowy bough and starting along the lit path to the compound.

"You're badly shaken. That's nonsense."

[tearsthrulife]

"It isn't," Rahne insists, shaking her head. It would be easy, so easy, to not protest and let things lie, tell him later when she wouldn't be so worked up, but she can't. Not after what she did, not when he's taking care of her because of it. "I... I changed. He was standing in front of the wings, I didn't know what I was doing, I couldn't help it."