linchpin. [nel + murdoch]

[Nel Sayo]

"Not like that, I didn't," she said, and a tremor hit her voice so that she paused, focusing too hard on speaking evenly, and not on walking out the door.

Against her better judgment, she twisted to look down at him again. He knew -- she knew that he knew -- the difference between the kick she'd sent at his legs and the slap he'd dealt her. One had been about frustration, and one had been about dominance.

She didn't realize that her words could have caused him that much damage. Nothing she'd ever said to anyone had hurt them; she had no idea the kind of power words like that could have over people. But she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, eyes watching him still.

"And I apologized. You don't want me here except to use me, and I don't wanna be used. And that's pretty much the end of it, isn't it?"

[Murdoch]

He tilted his head just a fraction of an inch as if he'd look at her, but the motion never completed itself, so his eyes stayed on the table.

He'd gotten used to her, used to having her around these past few days, to her stupid constant chatter and the cool feel of her beside him while he slept. He didn't want her to go.

But he was used to disappointment.

"Sure," he said with a humorless bark of laughter. "That's the end of it." He was what he was, and if a requirement of her staying was that he change that, well, they were both better off with her gone.

[Nel Sayo]

Something like regret twisted her mouth, but he wasn't looking at her to see it. She didn't want to leave. But she was learning to be disappointed.

"You know if you'd just talked to me like I was a real person, it might've been different," she said, and went to the table he kept staring at, and plucked up the coins. Her ten percent. Betrayed the fact that she'd been watching him, that she even noticed the coins at all, but she knew well enough it might be awhile before she saw more of those, and she had to make up for the fifteen she'd spent to keep Sam's ass out of jail.

Silyras was too big for her, too fast. Too many things to see and people to hurt her; she'd go South, probably, maybe find a coastline that looked pretty in Spring.

"So I'll see you."

No, she probably wouldn't.

[Murdoch]

His eyes did flinch up to hers when she came up beside him, and some shred of betrayal still lingered there from the memories she'd forced on him, kept alive by her insistence that he pretend to be something he wasn't. It hadn't even occurred to her yet that he could have apologized, could have smiled and begged and played it off and had her laughing again in moments, and still not been a better person at the end of it. That he wasn't simply conning his way back into her good graces was the only mercy he had to show her.

"Oh, cut the shyke," he sighed, shoving up from his seat and crossing over to stir up the fire, then dragging his shirt off and folding it in his usual nightly ritual. "Does that even mean anything? 'Talk to me like I'm a real person.' Right. Because I've made such an effort to hide my true intentions from you. I mean, if you think about it, I've been pretty abysmal. Lied to your face constantly, stolen from you, molested you in your sleep and sold you out to your enemies. Yeah, I'm a horrible petching human being, don't know how you've managed to survive this long in my company. A right cruel bastard I've been," he growled, kicking off his boots and flinging them across the room so hard they slammed into the wall with a thundering crash.

He should have. He should have done every one of those things, and now he was angry with himself for it. Didn't know why he still didn't do it, because it's not like he'd accomplished anything by not being the worst sort of person in the world. But they'd made a deal, and he'd stuck to his end of it, and to the slaves pits of Ravok with her if some unknown and unstated change of conditions was enough to make her leave.

"Just get out if you're going," he ground out between his teeth, unbuckling his belt and rolling it up to place on the mantle beside his shirt.

[Nel Sayo]

That was more like it.

Now he sounded like Syon.

"You are a horrible person, but I thought you were also my friend!" she snapped.

But he was angry. The resounding crash of his boots hurtling into the wall made her shoulders twitch, but she didn't flinch. Wouldn't flinch. Instead, she slung her bag onto the table and paced over to him, shoving him hard in the arm so that he'd turn away from the fire and look at her. He was angry; they only got angry when they cared.

She just looked at him for a minute. Waited, maybe, to see if he'd hit her again, or throw something, or growl at her to get out; she just looked at him. And maybe she could really see him, despite all the bullshit and the sarcasm and the wheeling and dealing, maybe she could see something in him that nobody else could. Or maybe she was just naive.

"I don't mind the horrible part," she murmured. "But the friend part is kind of important."

[Murdoch]

He just blinked down at her like she was crazy, though he didn't throw anything else or scream or anything. Friend? Really? Gods, she really was nuts.

"Yeah, well, then don't invite me out to dinner with idiot rubes," he sighed, frowning down at her. "I don't care how good a friend you think I am, that's just puttin' a wee baby deer in front of a starving wolf."

He ducked around her and filled the pot with water enough to make some tea - enough for both of them, since it looked like she might quit her whining and stay for a while longer.

[Nel Sayo]

She sighed back at him when he walked away from her. This wasn't going to work; she knew that, kind of innately, even as she watched him fill the teapot with enough water for two. It wasn't going to work at all. She'd slice into him again; he'd hit her again. It would only get worse.

"I'm gonna go anyway," she said, a bit thickly, before there was tea. Before he had her laughing again. Before the ache in her cheek went away. "So. Just. I'm sorry, again, for what I said. And. Yeah."

She was definitely nuts. He couldn't be her friend; she was beginning to understand, at least a little, that he probably couldn't be anyone's friend, and wanted to try even less.

She left the fireplace and went back to her bag, counting out a few of the coins she'd picked up off the table.

"For food and stuff, 'cause I finished off your melon this morning for breakfast," she muttered.

[Murdoch]

He rolled his eyes, though he was facing away from her so she couldn't see it. Sorry. Right. She didn't even know what she'd said, which meant she couldn't be sorry for it, anymore than he was sorry for hitting her.

So he just shrugged when he heard the clink of coins, and didn't bother looking back at her. Whatever she was looking for wasn't to be found here, apparently. He suspected the only place she'd find it was dead at the bottom of the sea.

[Nel Sayo]

If he was listening for the tock of her footsteps toward the door, he'd hear them. But they didn't go for the door directly; tolled, instead, right up behind him.

She was a stupid little girl, and eventually she'd learn that not everyone who hit you didn't mean it. And not everyone who yelled at you cared. Some day she'd remember with more clarity the years before Sy stole her away, but not today. Because there'd been some modicum of peace before all this, some breath of being unafraid.

Her arms snaked about him from behind, in a hug. They slept like this sometimes, or had, with her cheek pressed to his back. When they slept, there wasn't any fighting. Or lying. Or hurting. That's what she wanted to remember, not the rest of it. When he was asleep, he was just himself, while she was there, and she'd miss that.

There wasn't anything left to say, no argument left to be torn apart between them. She hugged him anyway, because her heart was too big, and she left pieces of it everywhere she went.

[Murdoch]

He froze when she hugged him - not because he wasn't used to the feel of a woman's arms around him, or even her arms around him. He stiffened because she meant it. Knew what he was, and hated him for it a little, but she still meant this.

His arms lifted slowly to cover hers where they wound around his waist, and for a heartbeat it was comfortable, and familiar, and good. For that brief second, he remembered what it felt like to let someone get that close.

And he remembered the sharp stab of pain, the hot spurt of blood that followed trust, always followed it.

His hands tightened around her wrists and he shucked her off of him, spinning her back towards the table and her things with a low growl. He reached up and gripped the mantle above the hearth so tightly that his knuckles turned white, trying to still the urge to kill the person who'd gotten that close even though every tortured nerve in his body screamed that it was the only way to be sure he was safe. Muscles tightened, and the scars the criss-crossed his back stood out white against his tawny skin.

"Get out," he hissed between his teeth, something desperate in it now, memories choking the breath out of him and making him pant harshly in the quiet of the room.