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

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

It's easier when he's distant. Then she can pretend she's stronger, he's weaker, and that she can do all the things that she should to protect herself. From far enough away, Vesper becomes whatever shape she needs him to be to survive the day. Cruel enough to leave. Cold enough not to come back. Quiet enough to answer only with the words she puts in his mouth, arguing with the memory of him. It's simple, really. She already knows she's got a good imagination, having conjured his care the whole time when it'd actually been nothing more than controlled indifference.

Standing here now though, close and real, he doesn't adhere to the thing she's made of him among the ruins of her feelings.

A fight is not what she expected when she followed him out here, only because she has no intention of doing anything more than taking whatever blows he'd deal. She planned to carry the marks she earned away with her, the last gift she'd receive from him. Each short word that escapes him to scrape the air comes like the wind up, but what lands leaves her reeling in an unexpected way.

These aren't the same lips that sneered at her over the woods and whistled nonchalance with leaving. These ones curl like something that's grown too near a fire, wilting away from the blaze with all the distress of reaching. Worse, the yell is barely audible.

"Wh—" Confusion fractures the sense of calm she'd wrangled and everything inside her slips, losing footing like she's just stepped over an edge. It's always been a fall when it comes to him. Her hand that's still around the untaken bottles flexes, the glass sliding through her fingers and screaming against itself as it clatters onto the ground. Breath slams against her ribs, hard, like something trapped willing to batter itself free.

A defiant step is taken towards him, the demand slung wildly at his back. "What else would it be for!?" Her volume lifts to grab hold of him as her amber chases him through the dark, and before long she's pursuing him for fear he'd be swallowed away, rapidly discovering a distaste for distance.

Uncertain she'd managed to haul him back, she desperately calls out the one thing she meant to keep to herself. "Why did you send the pegasus to me?" It's strangled like nothing else she's said so far has been. It's fresh, not healed over and jagged with the scar of time. She had started to grow used to the silence. She'd begun to bury him in it, as best she could. She'd have made quicker work of the grave by now if she didn't keep digging it back up. Some days are taunted by the echo of his dismissive words, and the dirt flies quickly over her shoulder until she's worn herself out on it, as liable to slump into the pit as place him there. Other days, she packs the ground back in, gritting her teeth with a stubborn insistence that it had to have been something, that she couldn't have been that delusional. The only real certainty she actually had was that he was gone, at least, until the pegasus.

Nothing all the while, and then that, offered up like a yell disguised as a whisper. For what though? When she yelled back, the silence continued just the same, like he only meant to prove he could fill it if he wanted. "That was you, wasn't it?" The note came with no name, and the gesture didn't make sense, not when he'd made it clear how little he thought of her. This muddied that clarity, and it would not be the first time she'd fabricated hope with him, but despite the lack of sense, he suits it best. Very few know how much it would have meant to her, and no one else would have dressed it up in stardust.

It'd been the first, genuinely happy day she'd had after months of loss and hardship. A rare moment of freedom, where she'd been nothing but wind, and the world could not contain her or bother her. It'd helped her map the region, and it's become a revisited thought that always leaves her smiling. Even now, a part of her can't help but warm to the image of it. "Why reach out to me if you intended to ignore my reply?" The first, uncautious, rebellious thing flares up inside her. Not practiced, not resigned, but raw and running away with her.

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

Not for the first time, the weight of everything Colt refuses to say comes down between Vesper’s shoulder blades like a pair of knives, finding the same old seams and opening them with an accuracy she’s never known she possesses. He keeps his shoulders square beneath it and his spine straight, carrying on through the grass as though there’s no blood warming the back of his shirt.

The first demand thrown after him doesn’t slow his stride. An answer rises anyway, crowding close enough to touch his tongue before he thinks better of letting it out. Her anger is still there, hot and bright around the edges, but beneath it stands the thing she’s built from his absence, patched together from every silence and sharpened memory until it bears his face without resembling him at all. She’s made him cruel enough to survive losing, and Vesper doubts there’s much he could say now that would strip the costume from him. Nothing except the bare truth, perhaps, and even that would probably look like another trick in his mouth.

Her next question catches him differently; his long steps lose their rhythm, then slow to a stop, and for a moment he remains facing the darkness ahead while the shape of what she’s asking spreads through her mind behind him: wings opening beneath her, wind tearing clean through months of grief, the world dropping away until nothing could reach her. Warmth breaks unexpectedly through his chest at the knowledge of it, quick and treacherous, and he turns his head just far enough to catch her outline over one shoulder. " 'Cause I heard about what happened to your ranch."

The words come low, without any of the edge he’d been carrying a moment before. He swallows against the warmth before it can reach his face and fixes his gaze somewhere beyond her instead. "Thought it’d be useful for what you were doin’ up north." His jaw shifts, restraint pulling tight again, though not quickly enough to stop the rest. "And I thought it’d be somethin’ nice," he adds, softly. And it had been, he can feel that much in the bright contour the memory leaves inside her, and perhaps later, when there’s enough distance between them to make it safe, he’ll allow himself the small satisfaction of knowing he’d given her one good day.

For now, another image catches in her thoughts, softer and smaller than the pegasus but carrying its own ache: feathers, a message sent into silence, and the certainty that he’d chosen not to answer. Vesper turns a little more, though he still offers her only his profile. His brows draw together as he gives his head a slow, genuine shake, blue eyes stealing one cautious glance in her direction before dropping back to the darkened meadow. "What reply?"

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

Thunder has descended upon her. Those clouds from earlier finally broke apart into something that means to howl.

It's her pulse, and it tears through every last plane of her, roaring over the promises she's made to herself too many times to count since he left. Barricades she set to avoid the risk of vulnerability around him again, already shown how that ends, but they shudder when he stops like some of the weather got in anyway. Behind him, she matches the standstill, dreading departure as surely as reunion.

Abruptly, everything drops away. No clawing breeze, no trembling sky, just the dark meadow and the quiet starlight. His gaze glints like the sort of glow in the dark you'd put a wish on. Her throat moves, but the burn that's found the back of her head eats through the words until just a frayed sound is all she can manage. It's a familiar rush of heat—not anger—grief.

It's a loss so staggering an entire region hasn't managed to fill the hole it left in her. Her ranch, her home, everything that she had been for her whole life, consumed by the endless hunger of the world. She hadn't even gotten a chance to fight to save it, and all she's been able to do since is fight. No one's been able to offer enough, or apologize right, or understand it properly. Just him, silently reaching out over the space set between them and offering her the first good thing since she'd last held him. It breaks her open so thoroughly she visibly sags.

Her legs drop her down, a hand reaching back into the grass to take her weight and find something sturdy. If he leaves now, she won't have the strength to keep up, struck like a bird on a window. The hand that isn't trying to keep the ground steady threads into the wig-hair, cheek settling on her palm as her elbow angles against a drawn-up knee. "It was," she manages, softness and sincerity cracking through the low sound of her voice as it tries again. That hardly does it the justice it deserves, but it's the only judgment she can dole out at the present, given her state.

Gradually, the pressure of the storm seeps back in, tight and cold and threatening to numb her as she sits in the brunt of it. Countless days wasted on wondering, pulling apart reason and sense and want until none of them even resembled themselves by the end. All of it, to still end up so wrong, and left with no certainty about what the right of it even is when he's still halfway gone across the meadow, and fully left before then. His question settles, sliding her stare from some dark, distant shape on a horizon she can't fully see, back to the glitter of his gaze in the night. Always drawn back to that, in the end. "I kept two feathers," her voice stays small, as if half of it has already been stolen by the wind before it even leaves her lips. "One for me, one for you." Hers, stuck in the hat she wears, treasured more than most anything else she still possesses. "I asked Jack to pass it along to you." She'd not trusted herself to add words to a note, not when all she had was a hunch he was even behind it. The feather would have meant more than enough, or so she thought.

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