This was never supposed to be nothin' but a little somethin' to do

COLT

She's a runner, she's a lover, always stuck in her ways
Pull her closer, think you know her, now she's turning the page
She gave a warning if it's storming, she'll be gone with the rain

The campsite inevitably quiets as twilight turns dark and the stars wink on. Colt glances over at the rising smoke as the embers are doused, not having lingered for the fire or the conversation, her mind already a heaping dose of company. She considers just staying where she is the whole night, hat brim hiding the reminder glinting up above her, and how nice if that could be enough. The hillside would make a fine enough bed, she thinks, aside from the dew that'll collect—a problem for tomorrow her, today already full up. She sighs though, and where she leans over her knees in the meadows, she flicks the shredded bits of grass from her hands. This isn't her first attempt at quieting his presence, and while she hasn't found any solution, she knows it won't be sitting here and unraveling while the thread of him is close enough to pull at.

Getting to her feet with all the hurry of thaw in the dead of winter, Colt grabs something out of her saddlebags and then makes her way towards where she'd last seen Vesper. Her approach carries the wariness of someone reaching for a blade, having learned once already how cleanly this one could cut. "Vesper?" she tugs carefully on the dark with its name, peering through it in the search of motion. "Got a minute to talk?" Her voice is low and thin, and while it could be attributed to the day's work, it's been worn through by the scrub of salt that's attempted to scour him away.

Behind her, glass tinkles as it shifts in the hold of her hands, complaining of the tension she feeds into it. 

---

Set first night of the PQ

When she's in it, she's all in it, ain't no holding her back
When I'm with her, she's a river moving steady and fast
She's afraid of all the ways her heart is broke like glass

I need your hand but I don't want to burn it

Vesper knows she’s coming before the grass begins to whisper beneath her boots. Her mind reaches him first, familiar even through the discipline with which he’s spent the day refusing to look directly at it, and the cards in his hands go abruptly still, but only for a moment before his fingers resume their quick, complicated work, splitting and folding the deck through itself in patterns too precise to be called idle, as though nothing in him has changed at all.

He’d kept the herd between them whenever he could, found work on the opposite flank when he couldn’t, and made himself scarce once camp was raised. It had been easier beneath the sun, with orders to relay and unicorns to turn, than it is now with the dark drawn close around them and the memory of a desert still dry at the back of his throat. Her note has done nothing to soften it. If anything, those few spare words have sharpened the understanding he’d carried north only to find her gone.

Icewater surges through his veins at the sound of his name. His blue eyes flick up beneath the fall of pale hair, finding her through the darkness while the final card slips neatly into place. There are several answers waiting behind his teeth, all of them sharp enough to finish what he’d started between them, to puncture what he'd been letting go soft in the last few weeks until her note had made clear his foolishness. But Vesper has no interest in giving the camp a spectacle, especially not with Sunjata’s fucking hEars close enough to collect every brittle piece of it.

"Yeah," he answers at last, the word low and level despite the cold still moving through him. "Got one." He squares the cards against his palm and tucks them into his coat, then rises with the smooth, soundless ease of a shadow pulling itself loose from the ground. Rather than invite her closer, he gestures towards one of the moonlit meadows beyond the reach of the tents and the listening dark, already turning that way with the expectation that she’ll follow.

No I don't deserve it, I don't deserve it

COLT

She's a runner, she's a lover, always stuck in her ways
Pull her closer, think you know her, now she's turning the page
She gave a warning if it's storming, she'll be gone with the rain

The sound of cards fluttering is what sets her gaze in the proper direction as she probes the dark. His response cleaves through it with all the tidiness expected of someone gone sharp, and the glimpse of sterling that flashes as he shifts feels more appropriately like the knife edge of him than the adornment of his constellations. She's glad then, that it's difficult to pull his outline from the evening. Looking at him straight makes it too easy to find the places she'd once held and traced with such affection, and far worse to discover those lines have gone unfamiliar with new shadows and creases, creating the stranger's face he's worked to make himself into.

His departure surprises her more than his agreement, and as he starts to leave she hesitates just a moment, glancing back towards the cluster of tents. She quickly comes to much the same conclusion as he does, not keen on entertaining the entire camp with the bruising she'd be receiving. The fact that what's behind her back would be better left here than carted around scarcely matters beneath that truth, and it's already traveled this far with her, not having had time to stop by a room before coming here, what's a little more to save face. Tearing her attention off the last possibility of retreat, she looks to the inevitable hurt walking just ahead of her, and jogs to catch up to it. Might as well be done with it.

She glances sidelong at him after falling into step. Moonlight gives a section of his eyes a shine to focus on amid the murk, and silver sculpts part of him away from the shadows, gilding the swing of his arms and the wrinkle of his clothes like he can't help but shine a little. "Did you get my letter?" She hopes it'd made its way to him, at least offering up that thank you as a holdover until she could do it right, proof she'd listened. She'd have written before Longnight if she had any idea where to send it, or that it was wanted any more than the feather she'd sent his way had been, the silence of that response rather telling. "I wasn't sure if it'd reached you." She has come to believe she has never been able to reach him after all this time.

Without waiting for his reply, she offers up what she's been holding, the weight of it becoming unbearable for her, deceptively heavy when in her hands. It's a bottle of rum, and a smaller jar is bound to it with twine, red liquid sloshing inside. The exteriors clink together faintly with the force of the gesture. "It's Torchline's lucky rum," she explains simply. "I figured that would be a favorite," comes out quieter, expecting that's his preferred home still. Of course the luck dissipates the moment it leaves the coast, but maybe there are remnants to be picked up, at least by the tongue if nothing else.

"And Hak Etme dream cactus juice. Just the juice, no spines," she adds on as explanation for the other, smaller container. "They pair well together, or so I've heard." She shrugs, not the type to drink rum, as he well knows. If she were in a position to ban it entirely from the desert, she would, but there's a pointed need to keep content what help she has on her side, and barring people from their favorite flavor of vice isn't it. She does require it be stored away from the other liquor at least. There are enough daily reminders of him without adding another trigger pull to the gun leveled at her head.

"No basket, but still fits what I said I'd do." She buries the gratitude and the consideration placed in the gift beneath the reminder of the sharp words they'd traded a year ago. She's been turning them over in her mind, especially as of late, ever since the nightmare she summoned him to. The steady grind of memory brings the cutting edge back, and she hopes one day she'll cut herself enough on it that it might finally sever whatever keeps reaching for him, be it memory or channel.

Lifting her chin faintly, she leans into the certainty she's crafted and rehearsed, depending on it to guide her through this. "You didn't have to come all the way north just to tell me not to call you. I won't be doing it again." She'd already told herself that once before, but maybe saying it aloud to him would make the difference. If not, she might have to ask Safrin to cut the option of him out of her, save them both the pain of it happening again.

When she's in it, she's all in it, ain't no holding her back
When I'm with her, she's a river moving steady and fast
She's afraid of all the ways her heart is broke like glass

I need your hand but I don't want to burn it

Her hesitation catches against him before the grass whispers beneath her boots, a brief tug backward toward the tents before whatever pride or stubbornness keeps her moving wins out. Vesper feels the shift as cleanly as a current changing beneath dark water, and by the time she falls into step beside him, he’s already aware of the way her attention begins to travel over his face.

It moves like something searching through wreckage, finding the shape of what used to be there beneath everything time and distance have laid over it. The dislike that follows has teeth. She looks at him and sees a stranger wearing familiar bones, some poor imitation of the man she’d once known well enough to touch without thinking, and Vesper keeps his eyes ahead rather than let her see how easily the thought slips beneath his ribs.

At the question, he glances down over his shoulder, one pale brow rising beneath the moonlight. Oh, he’d gotten the letter. It hadn’t taken a telepath to find the hooks buried in it, not when she’d taken something he’d once said and twisted it around until the point faced him again. Gratitude offered like settlement on a debt she resented owing, polished up enough that she could wave it between them while making it plain she still meant to use him whenever necessity outweighed whatever remained of her regard. "Yeah," he says dryly. "I did."

His gaze returns to the meadow ahead, though he stops when she does and turns once the glass begins to complain between her hands. He doesn’t bother looking down at what she’s brought. Instead, Vesper looks at her properly for the first time since she found him, and the familiarity of her face only sharpens how little of the woman beneath it he recognizes now. Her explanations wash past him while the thoughts beneath them press louder, each careful choice wrapped in old resentment and something softer she’s trying to bury beneath it. His attention drifts along the contours of her face, searching without meaning to for whatever piece of her might still fit the memory he carries, until the mention of the missing basket snaps his eyes sharply back to hers.

Even the freckles scattered across his nose seem to flinch with the movement. A dry laugh leaves him, low and brief, with none of the hurt prickling beneath his skin allowed anywhere near the sound. Of course this is what she’s chosen to make good on, the bitter little promise thrown between them after she’d called him into her bed and he’d finally snapped that being useful wasn’t the same thing as being wanted. Shame on him for thinking he was owed anything more than her annoyance; then and now.

For one distant second, he can see the easier path. He could take the bottles, give her some flattened version of thanks, and let the night swallow the rest before either of them has the chance to make it worse, but then she goes on. Rather, her mind does.

Vesper straightens slowly, not with the jerk of a man struck but with the gradual rise of something realizing the trap has already closed around it. Surprise is rare for him, rarer still when the person standing in front of him is thinking loudly enough to paint every wall, and yet he stares at her as though she’s managed to become something impossible all the same. "You think I came all the fuckin’ way north to tell you not to call me?" His lip twitches beneath the weight of everything trying to force its way out. The smile that finally pulls at his mouth could be mistaken for cruelty, though there’s too much hurt behind it to be anything so clean. "Fuck you, Colt," he all but whispers, before turning to stalk back toward camp.

No I don't deserve it, I don't deserve it