This is not Fanfic

Backgroud: D&D in space, with high tech.  Cordelia, the Charisma-monkey and face of the group, has a piece of magical cyberware that can let her get taller or shorter; Krellit's 'sunsword' is roughly a lightsaber, but powered by magic rather than technology.  This all happens on the team's ship, after A'rance went on a one-man commando raid (followed, shortly thereafter, by the rest of us).  I have streamlined things, mostly my own extremely repetitive statements.  Also, keep in mind that this is all in-character perspective, not what I actually think.  Me, I was having a blast.

"A'rance," Cordelia said in her very best reasonable voice, "can we talk?"  His features still set, the elf nodded and Cordelia gestured him to lead the way into the stateroom.  As the door slid shut behind them, she burst out, "What in God's name did you think you were doing?"  She was aware that this was not, perhaps, the best tack to take, but most of her usual poise seemed to have deserted her.

"The right thing," A'rance said, and that was all.  He looked, she noted dismally, completely unrepentant.

"You could have been killed, you bloody idiot!"

A'rance made the gesture she'd learned to interpret as his people's version of a shrug. "That is unimportant."

"It's not unimportant to us,"  she said.  "We need you."

"Who knows what the lich could have done, had I taken the time to let you all 'get prepared'?" he replied, and for the first time an emotion showed faintly in his voice: scorn.  "We let it out; it was our responsibility to handle it."

"I am not arguing that part." Cordelia said.  "All we wanted to do was wait long enough that we wouldn't all die."

"We did not all die."

"Right, because we had an archbishop and four paladins to back us up.  Charging off alone like that, you could have been killed.  He had a priest, and God knows how many undead minions, and guys in powered armor."

A'rance made that odd dismissive gesture again and said, "I was handling it."

Cordelia rolled her eyes.  "You were running away when we got there," she said, and she thought that hit home.

"I was not running away," A'rance said.  He sounded like he believed it, too.

"Sure looked like it to me."  She put her hands on her hips, wishing she'd thought to get enough taller that she didn't have to look up to see his face.  It was awkward, dealing with Big Folk all the time.  "All we wanted was a little prudence, A'rance, is that so much to ask?"

"You may call it prudence, Ekaterin, but I call it cowardice and I will not be a coward with the rest of you."  She gaped at him as he stepped around her to wave the door open, realizing in a part of her mind that it stung almost as much to hear him call her by her false name as it did to be called a coward.  He...well, elves didn't stomp, much, but he was making a good go at it as he left the stateroom; she followed, taking the opportunity to get taller as she went.  She tried to ignore the fascinated stares of the rest of them, but it wasn't easy--Krellit, especially, was beginning to rise from his seat. 

"A'rance!" she said, putting as much of a whipcrack into her voice as she could manage.  "Turn around and say that to my face."

He stopped and turned.  "I did," he said, "and I'll say it again.  You're a coward."  Trying to read his face, it was only the sound of the sunsword igniting that made her look; and perhaps it was the widening of her eyes that warned him enough to get out of the way of the skewering blow Krellit was aiming at him.  Cordelia felt the strings of control, not firmly grasped even at the beginning of the conversation, sliding out of her fingers entirely, and when she spoke her voice was much closer to a wail than she would have liked.  She could hear Khae casting something off to one side, but the wash of magic slipped off her mind like water running over a forcefield and she had no attention to spare for him.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" she asked her lover.

"Defending your honor," Krellit said, his eyes fixed on a suddenly-wary A'rance.

She--barely--resisted the urge to roll her eyes.  "When my honor needs defending, I'll let you know.  A'rance--"  But he was turning again, until Krellit stepped into his path.

"Um, guys?" Charsi said.  "I think we all just need to calm down.  We were just worried about you, A'rance."  Khae'd cast calm emotions,  then, and Charsi had gotten caught in it.  Cordelia really couldn't blame him for the spell, though she had her doubts as to the advisability of unannounced spellcasting given that Krellit still had an active sword pointed in A'rance's general direction.

"I will not defend myself to you," A'rance said.  "It needed to be done, and I did it.  That is what it took to shame you into helping me."

"If you'd been killed, it would've been for nothing," GS put in, and Cordelia fought down the urge to snap Don't help. 

"As it is, we tipped our hand and nearly got killed so that we could not inconvenience the lich all that much," she said.  "We couldn't find his bloody phylactery!  He'll be back within a month."

"But not here," A'rance said with the air of having settled the question.

Cordelia said, "No!  And we don't know where he is, so we can't destroy him once and for all!"  Khae muttered something that sounded like Oh yes we can, but she ignored him.  "Not to mention, you disobeyed a direct order."

"Who elected you queen?" A'rance asked, and she almost gasped.  She fervently hoped that he didn't realize just how close to home that one had gone, and pressed her attack.

"Irrelevant," she snapped, throwing all hopes of control to the winds.  "When I tell you to do something, sir, you do it."

A'rance shrugged once more.  "You are upset.  I will go, and we will discuss this when your attack dog--" he gave Krellit a measuring glance "--has been brought to heel."  Krellit, his expression a strange mixture of thought and anger, shrugged himself and stepped to one side, thumbing off the sunsword as he did so.  He made an extravagant gesture with his free hand, managing to pack into it the sense, if not the words, that A'rance shouldn't let the door hit him on the way out.

The elf was waiting for the airlock door to open fully when Cordelia caught up to him.  She took his arm and was in the process of saying his name when he spun, grabbed her by the shoulders, pulled her close and kissed her. 

Several thoughts went through her head, so fast she could hardly process them: Oh dear god I had no idea and This has let the fox in the dovecote, all right and I should be pushing him away and she was just getting to the point of Actually this is rather pleasant when he pulled back, looked into her face for a long second, and then turned away with desperate speed, slipped into the airlock, and punched the 'close' button with rather more force than was really necessary.

Cordelia, for the first time in a long time, couldn't think of anything to say.  By the time she'd gathered her wits and turned around, Krellit's stateroom door was sliding closed.

tags: do not tell me about your character  

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