Assorted Ficlets

## FICLETS

The page where I keep short bits of writing that are less than 1000 words (at least, that's the plan. :P)

The pieces listed are in chronological order.

### **THE MAN IN THE MIRROR**

Lux sees the man when he’s gone on ahead.

Nyssa has been ‘window shopping’ for *ages* now, and even if it hasn’t been that long it still totally feels like it, so Lux has wandered further down the street. He won’t go too far – he can’t – but it helps create the sense that he’s actually making some progress instead of just standing still. However, he hasn’t taken more than a few steps before the path is blocked.

It’s someone else window shopping, he thinks to himself as he looks up at the looming figure. But something about them is… it seems different. Whoever they are, they don’t look like they’re looking through the glass – they look like they’re looking *at* it. Is it the glass itself? Then the person reaches up, and traces the glass with a hand. Lux can’t see their expression, but he can feel the intensity radiating off of them like a wave.

He stares, and the person must be able to sense his staring, because they slowly turn around to face him. Lux feels a thrill of fear – he knows not to approach strangers, and this person is definitely a stranger – but doesn’t move. He should step away, and check to see that Nyssa is still nearby (why wouldn’t she be?), but doesn’t.

The person looks to be a man, but not a man like any Lux has seen before. He – the man – looks haggard and dusty, but in a way that goes beyond the words. He looks like an archaeological dig, like the one Lux likes to read about, only in human form. He wears a ragged dark coat that conceals most of his body. His hair is matted and falls down to his chin, there is thick stubble on his face, and a weariness under and around the eyes that looks almost painful.

The man looks surprised to see Lux. What was he expecting, if anything? But, after a moment, he holds up a hand – the same hand that he had placed against the shop window – and gives an awkward wave, fingers contorting out of time like they’re out of practice with the motion. Lux for his part, isn’t sure what to do. Don’t talk to people you don’t know, obviously, but this doesn’t really count as talking, does it? He waves back, resisting the jitters that he can feel trying to make their way into his hand and settling for a generic little wiggling motion.

It doesn’t feel like a very special gesture to him, but the man smiles. The smile is small, and crooked, but it seems to alter every aspect of the man’s image; his hair becomes no less matted, but suddenly the soft curls it consists of seem that much more pronounced – and while the dirt and eyebags do not disappear from his face, they suddenly take nothing away from how the man’s warm brown skin seems to glow in the late afternoon light.

“Lux!”

Nyssa’s voice. Lux turns to face her, only to watch as her eyes widen and she paces quickly towards him. Question on the edge of his lips, Lux turns back to the man he waved at – only to see nothing at all. There is no man standing in front of a shop window, looking at what he can make out of his own reflection – there isn’t even a figure making its way down the street, away from the scene. There is only an acrid tang of smoke, carried by the breeze; and it, too, vanishes as quickly as it appeared.

### **“ARE YOU READY TO SING?”**

The music that played over supermarket speakers was never normally so… soulful.

Well, that was probably the nice word for it.

In practice, it kinda sounded like a cat trying really, *really* hard to hit some high notes. (While also maybe sitting at the bottom of a well.) But, oddly enough, Lux found that he wasn’t so bothered with how the lone voice over the supermarket’s speakers sounded from a technical perspective. It definitely grated on him, and it was piercing enough that he almost regretted having taken out his headphones to hear it better, but it was still… it still had something about it that made him want to listen. There was a real energy and passion behind it that even *he* could pick up on – like the singer was someone who loved singing more than anything else in the world, and this was their last chance to do it, before… before… Lux wasn’t sure. The train of thought reached its last stop around there. But it was compelling enough that it stopped him from just ducking out of the abandoned supermarket – compelling enough that he began looking around the aisles for any sign of other people.

It was perhaps two o’clock in the morning, and under normal circumstances, the place would be completely empty. In fact, under normal circumstances, Lux wouldn’t even be here. But Nyssa was ill, and they’d run out of milk, and Lux hadn’t been able to get to sleep that night anyway… he might as well have done something with his time. And he was almost thirteen, which meant he probably should have been going to the store on his own more often, anyway.

He didn’t like going alone – Nyssa would normally take him along – but he’d reasoned that it would be alright tonight, because no-one was ever in there during night hours. And when he’d gotten in, it had looked as though he’d been all by himself, and that had been great! But then he’d heard the singing, faintly, through his headphones. And then he’d taken them off to listen, and now he couldn’t *stop* listening, weird enough as it felt.

“***I SAW IN YOU WAS LIFE WAS MISSING***,” scream-yelled the voice over the speakers, “***YOU LIT A FLAME THAT CONSUMED MY HATE!***”

Even as he appreciated the passion, Lux winced at the tinny yelling. The song sounded so… angry. He wasn’t sure he liked it.

Okay. He shook his head, reaching for his headphones and beginning to pace down the aisle he was standing in. So maybe the novelty had worn off. That was fine. He could just put his own music back on, and quickly grab the milk, and maybe some snacks for him, and some marmite for Nyssa (because she liked marmite, especially when she wasn’t feeling well), and then go home. Easy-peasy. But then, underneath the tinny speaker shout-singing, he heard something else. It sounded like… like the same shout-singing, only not over a speaker. Like he was hearing it in person.

And it was getting louder as he walked.

He stopped in place. For an instant, he was torn between wanting to walk backwards, and wanting to walk forwards. But, ultimately, wanting to walk forwards won out. Mostly because the milk was in the same direction as the voice.

The prospect was a nerve-wracking one, but that was okay too. He could just ignore whoever was singing – pass them by as he collected his things. Then he could go home, and finally get some sleep. Maybe even make a post on social media about the whole experience in the morning.

But then, when he turned the corner, he stopped in place again.

Standing just outside a little booth – presumably where someone who worked at the store would normally speak into the microphone to make announcements over the speakers – and holding a long trail of wires in her hand was a girl. A girl, who looked like she was about his age, although he’d never been good at telling how old a person was. Her head was thrown back to the ceiling as she sung without a care in the world, and her body was arched so far backwards she looked like a person trying to make the shape of an upside-down ‘L’.

She was still singing.

“A THING OF BEAUTY,” she yelled into the air above her and the wires in her hand, “WILL NEVER FADE AWAY! WHAT YOU DID TO ME-”

*A thing of beauty, indeed*, Lux thought to himself as he watched her, without really thinking about it. (Weird to not think about a *thought*, but that’s how it was – it was one of those thoughts that just SUDDENLY popped into a person’s head, with seemingly no context or lead-in.)  It was probably a kinda objectifying thing to think about someone he’d just met, but it was the honest truth – she *was* very beautiful. Most of her face was still visible from the angle she was standing at, and it was definitely a nice face, even if Lux couldn’t put his finger on what exactly it was about it that appealed to him. But even beyond that, there was this… *energy* that she had. A magnetism that was pulling him in. Like she was a walking supernova, and he was seeing her burn from half a galaxy away.

Oh, man. That sounded poetic. Where had he even come up with that? *Why* had he even come up with that?

The girl, he noted between bouts of slightly panicked self-reflection, was still singing.

Lux stood and watched, silently. He no longer wanted to separate himself from the whole situation, but at the same time, he wasn’t quite sure what else to do. Try to get her attention? No, that would distract her and stop the singing and that… well, just didn’t really want to do that. Ignore her and move on, as per his original plan? Well, if she didn’t know he’d ever been there, maybe that would be fine, but something about just leaving without letting her know that he *had* been there felt… uh, what was the word? Voyeur- voyeuristic. Yeah, that.

Fortunately – and also very unfortunately – his dilemma ended up being decided for him when the girl violently spun around on the spot, belting out a lyric and triumphantly hurling the wires up into the air, prompting the shop speakers to screech out loud and Lux to clamp his hands over his ears. As he watched, she threw her arms up into the air, letting out an exhilarated yell, before pulling herself back upright and- catching full view of him standing there, watching her. She paused, face still stick in an energized grin, and all Lux could do was dumbly stare back. He could feel his cheeks and ears burning in embarrassment.

The wires fell to the ground with a clatter, echoing out through the now-silent store.

She stared at him. He stared at her. Both of them were staring, and *neither of them were saying anything*-!

“Hey!” Said the girl in a voice that was still mostly a yell. “Hey, wow! I had no idea anyone else was in here, hah-hah!” There was a strained rasp to her words, and sweat was pouring down her brow, but her eyes were bright as she looked him up and down. “So, what? Are you night shift?” She frowned, seemingly struck by an emotion other than euphoria for the first time. “I had no idea this place had a night shift.”

Did he look like a night shift worker to her??

“N- no!” Lux protested, not sure why he was protesting it like it was such a bad thing. “I- I just wanted to buy some…” he trailed off as his brain chose that precise moment to forget exactly what he’d been doing there. “…stuff,” he finished lamely.

“Huh,” mused the girl, before shrugging. “Well, guess that makes sense. You want to buy stuff, you come to the store. One plus one is two, and all that.”

“R- right,” Lux agreed, nervously. Then, in a moment of total impulse, he spoke up again. “I, um, liked your singing, by the way.”

It wasn’t *quite* a lie, but it felt like enough of a deviation from the truth that he was uncomfortable with saying it. After all, the noise over the speakers, for how strange and novel it had been, had also been super loud and grating on his ears, and he knew he wouldn’t have been happy to put up with it for very long.

But then, why was he saying anything? Maybe it was just the novelty of seeing someone hijack a shop’s speakers to go to town on them. Maybe it was because he thought that her voice – by itself, unfiltered by crackly amplifying speakers – didn’t sound that bad at all. Maybe it was because he didn’t like it in a literal acoustic sense, but instead in the way that a person likes a beautiful, massive, obscene bit of graffiti on a wall. It’s not the ‘done thing’ but shouts out to the world that it’s here, and it’s unapologetic in its identity.

Whatever his reasoning, it seemed worth it, as the girl beamed at his words.

“No kiddin’?” she asked him. When a shy nod from Lux revealed that he was not, in fact, kidding, she smiled even further – almost so wide that it looked painful. “Wow, thanks! Didn’t figure I’d have an audience for it, but-” she shrugged, still grinning. “Guess that made it better. More authentic, you know?”

“…Do you do this a lot?” Lux asked, not quite sure what else to say, gesturing to their surroundings. He didn’t say anything else, but the girl seemed to get what he was talking about. She shrugged again.

“I mean… I guess? Every once in a while, sure. It’s not like I do it every day, because someone would deffo come in and figure out what I was doing and try and get me to stop.” She paused. Considered. Wiped some sweat from her forehead. “I mean, I guess *you’ve* come in now, but I’m pretty sure you’re not gonna try and get me to stop. You seem chill.”

Lux held up his hands. “No!” he said, hurriedly. “I- no, I wouldn’t get you to stop.” He huffed. “Don’t think I could if I wanted do, anyway.”

“Ah, don’t sell yourself short!” The girl turned her head a little away, and waved a hand in a gesture that Lux was pretty sure meant ‘no big deal’. “You look scrappy enough.” Then, she turned back to him. The grin was still on her face, but something had changed in her face. Lux wasn’t sure what, but her eyebrows looked weird.

“Um…” began Lux, but the girl interrupted him.

“Do you wanna join me?” she asked. Leaving Lux to process the question, she turned around and scrabbled on the floor to pick up the wires that she’d dropped. Wires that, Lux figured as he watched, were probably how she was getting her voice onto all the speakers.

(His suspicion was confirmed when the girl pulled the wires back close to her mouth, said ‘testing testing one two one two’, and was met with the echo of her own tones once again across the shop speakers.)

He wasn’t sure what to do. How was she even allowed to do this? She probably wasn’t. Why would she want him to do it with her? What if he didn’t? What if he did?

“Can’t think of anything?” the girl asked him, drawing him out of his thoughts. Her face had changed again – Lux couldn’t place any specific change, but something about it… it looked kinder, now. “That’s okay,” the girl continued. “We’ve got a little bit before we have to leave. You can think.”

Questions were still burning in his mind, but as the girl kept staring at him, and he finally found the courage to meet her eyes (and they were deep blue, so deep that they evoked a feeling of getting lost in a deep ocean, which was normally what bothered him about looking into eyes anyway but these ones seemed more purposeful about it), there was one that seemed more important than any other in that moment.

“Who…” he began. Fumbled. Halted. Stared again. “Who are you?”

The girl kept smiling. Held out her free hand. Extended it to him. He slowly reached out his own, still cautious – as soon as he was close enough, she leant forward and seized it in a shake before he could react.

“I’m Ana,” she said. “Who’re you?”

Lux gripped her hand as firmly as he could.

“I’m Lux,” he said back. “It’s, uh, nice to meet you.”

Ana gave his hand one final shake. When she released it, he could still feel a weight on his hand, like something in their handshake had stuck there permanently.

It was a comforting weight.

“Nice to meet you too, Lux,” said Ana. “And I’ve just got one more question for you.”

She held up the wires with a smirk.

### A MECHANIC'S FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Esme has been left alone for about three minutes when a tall woman she does not recognise marches into the workshop, makes a beeline for her, stops right in front of her, and loudly requests: “Make me a leg!”

“Um…” Esme pulls her goggles away from her eyes, letting them tighten around her forehead with a slapping noise. She doesn’t *think* that this person, whoever she is, is asking to be literally transformed into a leg. Probably.

The tall woman is standing in front of her. Silent. Waiting for an answer.

Esme’s gaze darts to the ground. “You mean a… prosthetic?” The woman *looks* to be standing on two legs, but she’s also wearing tracksuit bottoms, so Esme can’t actually tell.

The tall woman’s face brightens. “Yeah!” Then, without any prompting, she leans down, yanks one of her tracksuit legs right up to the waist to reveal a prosthetic that goes up past the knee, fiddles with a mechanism, pulls the prosthetic away from her body, rears up, and slams it down onto the table in front of Esme, sending mechanical pieces flying everywhere. Esme feels cold steel on her lips as one of the bolts she’d taken out hits her in the face.

She looks back at the woman, who is standing upright on the remaining leg. That must require a lot of balance.

“Looks like you’ve already got one.” She jokes, before turning her attention to the leg that’s been thrust into her workspace. She gives it a once-over. It looks basic, if functional – there are signs of slight modification, but prosthetics aren’t really her area of expertise, so she couldn’t say what the modifications were *about* off the top of her head. “You want another?”

The woman nods.

“I want a war leg.”

Esme raises an eyebrow.

“A *war* leg.”

“Yeah.” Suddenly, the woman is gesturing and splaying her arms. “Like, a leg made of folding metal bits that has a gun in it. I was thinking I could kneel down-” she makes a dip with her shoulders and arms before straightening back out, “-and I could shoot blasts out of my knee, like, sha-*bam*! And it’d be made of, like, metal that wouldn’t bend or anything when I kicked someone with it, and the toes or something could be studded so when I kicked something it’d be like hitting it with a hammer, and-”

Esme holds up a hand, and the woman falls silent. She considers. This shit sounds absolutely ridiculous – hell, making anything that’s both lightweight and strong is a feat of engineering, never mind the rest of whatever this woman had just babbled at her. That being said, it does sound… interesting. From a certain perspective. And it’s not like this new “job” has given her anything all that strenuous to do so far. Maybe it’s just that her tolerance has been shot through the roof after both building a functional set of wings under duress, and then spending the following months maintaining both them *and* her leg braces on a budget that would have considered shoestrings luxurious. Ghastly enough as it is to admit, she could use the challenge.

Besides, if she backs down from something as paltry as a war prosthetic, what makes her the world’s greatest engineer?

“What did you say your name was?” She asks, as she picks up the prosthetic on the table and eyes the woman, beginning to think in distinctly non-abstract terms such as measurements.

“I didn’t!” The woman chirps, managing to plant her hands on her hips, which is kind of impressive given that she’s still standing on a single leg.

Esme stares at the woman for a few more seconds, waiting for something; namely, an actual name. But the woman doesn’t say anything. She just stands there like an oversized rock with a goofy grin on her face.

“…Are you going to?” Esme prompts.

The woman raises an eyebrow. “To… what?” She asks.

Esme’s mind is momentarily filled with flashes of beating this woman over the head with her own prosthetic. But she resists the urge (mostly because she doesn’t fancy her chances in a fight), and instead replies with a cold look. She’d like to raise her eyebrow in return, but whatever skill that lets people control their facial muscles so easily is one that’s never come naturally to her, so that’s not really an option.

Thankfully, after another moment, a couple of synapses fire off in the other woman’s head, and she snaps her fingers.

“*Oh*!” She exclaims. “My name’s Gaia!” And she holds out a hand to shake. Her balance is still infuriatingly impeccable.

Esme reaches out to shake the proffered hand. “Gaia,” she repeats. The name has the same number of letters – and syllables – as her own. One of those interesting, irrelevant details.

“Esme Moore,” she says. “And, as long as you can help me figure out away to do it on company time, I’d be happy to give you a hand.” She eyes the prosthetic again. “Or, in this case, a leg.”

As their hands shake, there is an enthusiastic glint in Gaia’s eye that makes Esme think that maybe, just maybe, they’re more alike than she first thought.

### **SESSION ONE**

*Transcript: [REDACTED] session [REDACTED] with [REDACTED] on behalf of [REDACTED]*

*\\_*

*[Microphone is turned on]*

*[Sounds of shuffling]*

*Speaker 1: “Can you state your name for the record, please?”*

*Speaker 2: “…You already know it.”*

*Speaker 1: “Actually, I don’t. I was only ever given your first name.”*

*Speaker 2: “…Huh.”*

*Speaker 1: “Besides, the recording of full names is protocol for preliminary sessions such as ours, even if I don’t always agree that it’s one-hundred percent necessary. I’m bound by convention to not let you leave until you give me your name.”*

*Speaker 2: “Who came up with that one?”*

*Speaker 1: “I couldn’t tell you, other than that it wasn’t me.”*

*Speaker 2: “I thought you weren’t being officially licenced to us.”*

*Speaker 1: “…That’s a fair point. Alright. You don’t have to give your full name. But can I at least refer to you by the name I know you as?”*

*Speaker 2: “‘For the record’?”*

*Speaker 1: “For* my *record. And because I don’t want things to get too impersonal.”*

*Speaker 2: “Funny. I don’t want things to get too* personal*. Guess we’re at an impasse.”*

*Speaker 1: “Oh no. You got me. I guess we’ll have to just sit here in silence for an hour a day.”*

*Speaker 2: “Wha- A day? I thought these sessions were weekly!”*

*Speaker 1: “They are now, but I have jurisdiction to adjust my scheduling if I feel it’ll be beneficial to a patient.”*

*Speaker 2: “Shit. Okay, well, I can assure you that I wouldn’t find coming here every day ‘beneficial’.”*

*Speaker 1: “Tell that to the blank cheque that the Supreme Commander wrote up for me. I say something goes, it goes.”*

*Speaker 2: “…I still have rights as a patient.”*

*Speaker 1: “Yeah. You do. And, if this really doesn’t seem like something you’re interested in, you’ll be exempt. But do you really want to go and tell her that you flunked out of therapy within minutes? I bet that’ll go down an absolute storm.”*

*[Shuffling sounds]*

*Speaker 2: “This is blackmail.”*

*Speaker 1: “This makes me question why I wasn’t hired sooner.”*

*[A sigh]*

*Speaker 2: “Fine.”*

*Speaker 1: “Thank you. Now, Dante, is there… anything you’d like to discuss?”*

*Dante: “…What, you’re not gonna take the reins on this one?”*

*Speaker 1: “Not when I know as little about you as you do. I thought, for our first session, we could see if there was anything that you wanted to raise to me about… anything. It doesn’t have to be anything big, if you don’t want it to be.”*

*Dante: “Anything?”*

*Speaker 1: “Anything.”*

*Dante: “Well… I guess there’s this thing.”*

*Speaker 1: “…Go on. Whenever you’re ready.”*

*Dante: “I, uh, recently got strongarmed into these stupid therapy sessions. …You don’t have anything to say about that?”*

*Speaker 1: “I almost always have something to say. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to rise to what’s obviously bait.”*

*Dante: “And how do you know that wasn’t bait? Maybe that really was something I wanted to talk about.”*

*Speaker 1: “…Alright. I’ll bite. So, you were strongarmed into therapy sessions-”*

*Dante: “If you ask me how that makes me feel, I’m going to throw up.”*

*Speaker 1: “Relax. I was going to ask why the concept pissed you off as much as it does.”*

*Dante: “Pissed me off?”*

*Speaker 1: “Well, you obviously don’t want to be here. I guess I was curious as to why.”*

*Dante: “What, you can’t figure it all out by yourself?”*

*Speaker 1: “…Dante, I’m not omniscient. I’m an out-of-practice therapist, and this is our first session. And, as my client, anything you have to say is important to me.”*

*Dante: “…And what happens if I don’t want to volunteer that information?”*

*Speaker 1: “Then we don’t talk about it.”*

*Dante: “…I don’t believe you.”*

*[Chair scraping against floor]*

*Speaker 1: “Dante-”*

*Dante: “Save it. I’m sorry. Nothing against you, personally, but I just don’t want to hear it.”*

*[Footsteps]*

*Speaker 1: “You haven’t even heard anything yet.”*

*Dante: “I know what you’re going to say. And I’m not interested.”*

*Speaker 1: “You* think *you know what I’ll say. There’s a difference.”*

*Dante: “You think so?”*

*Speaker 1: “Yes.”*

*Dante: “…Fine. I guess* I’ll *bite, then. What did you want to say?”*

*Speaker 1: “…That pain is a funny thing.”*

*Dante: “Pain?”*

*Speaker 1: “Everybody processes it differently. Some people suffer in silence. Some try and be funny about it. Some drag others down with them. And some… some find comfort in it. …There’s comfort to be found in anything familiar – is it so shocking to hear that that includes pain? Making peace with yourself, aside from being hard work and a form of suffering in its own right, is scary. It feels like an unknown. Like things could get worse as well as better. And to that end, a person can rationalise to themselves that it’s better to truck on through the shitty situation they’re in because they know it, and can manage it. Better the devil you know that the devil you don’t, right…?”*

*Dante: “…The devil I know…”*

*Speaker 1: “You really think change is that much of a risk?”*

*Dante: “…I still have plenty to lose.”*

*[Door opening and shutting]*

*Speaker 1: “…Plenty to gain, too, I’d wager.”*

*[Microphone is turned off]*

*\_/*

### **THE HANDS-ON APPROACH**

One of the first things that Victoria had learnt over the course of her career was that, typically speaking, laying hands on one’s client was a no-go zone. It was something you had to learn quickly in a profession that had a person in regular one-on-one meetings with people who were often not only emotionally volatile, but also actively resentful of her and the work she was doing. They’d try to goad her; to taunt her; to bait her into a fight, or at least an altercation, in the hopes that they’d get her to lay a hand on them – at which point *she’d* get into a whole load of trouble, and *they’d* escape any further sessions. As such, ‘don’t fucking raise a hand to your clients, no matter what chicanery they pull to try and get you to do just that’ was an instinct she’d had to cultivate in the same way that a typical army unit cultivated blind obedience, and for the same reason: grim necessity.

Another one of the first things that Victoria had learnt, in a similar vein, was that it was generally a bad idea to let your clients lay hands on *you*. Granted, in this case, it hadn’t been learnt so much as reinforced; it was less about abusing the superiority of a client-therapist dynamic, and more about self-preservation and the general idea that it was in a person’s best interests to not be injured or killed on the job. Thankfully, she’d gone her career (thus far) without bringing any actual weapons into a session with intent to use, but she knew that it was a small comfort. The human body was riddled with weaknesses (the eyes, the nose- hell, the jaw was basically a knockout button for anyone who could throw a half-decent punch) that anyone could exploit if they felt so inclined.

Both of these factors rammed around in her head as she stared at the patient in front of her. The six-foot-something woman in front of her, built like an Amazonian, who was… suggesting full-contact physical sparring.

“C’mon, doc!” The woman – *Gaia*, Victoria reminded herself forcefully – urged, extending a fingerless-gloved hand and beckoning with her fingers like the antagonistic rival from a cheesy old coming-of-age movie for thirteen-year-olds. “A bit of roughhousing always makes *me* feel better.”

Not for the first time, Victoria leant back in her chair and silently wondered what the hell this kid was going on about.

“I suspect,” she said, evenly, “that if we actually did ‘spar’, as you put it, you’d flatten me without a second thought.”

Gaia stopped beckoning with her fingers, but traded it in for bouncing around on her heels like a boxer, which didn’t strike Victoria as much better. (Or, if the squeaking was anything to go by, like it was doing her prosthetic leg any good.)

“Don’t put yourself down,” Gaia urged. “You’ve got a look about you – like you could get some good hits in if you really wanted, you know?”

At that, Victoria had to raise an eyebrow. “You honestly get that impression?”

“From you?” Gaia replied straight away. “Hell yeah. You got the…” she gestured vaguely, like she herself wasn’t sure what she was seeing, only that she was seeing it. “Look about you. I dunno.”

“Hmm,” Victoria mused, stalling a little. “…Is that something you could tell about anyone?”

“Anyone?” Gaia echoed. “I mean, yeah, I guess. It’s like… threat assessment. You see someone and you basically kinda see all this stuff about them that, uh…” she stopped bouncing on her heels, and began to pull one of her hands through her matted hair. “Like, you’ve got this look in your eyes and this tension in your hands like you could catch a flying snake in midair, I guess.”

That… was a new one. But Victoria felt as though she was a little more certain what was going on, now.

“Those might be survival instincts,” she offered. “Sizing up anyone you meet and discerning whether or not they’re a threat.”

Gaia visibly perked up, and Victoria had to marvel at just how strongly this young woman could resemble a giant, over-enthusiastic puppy dog when given half the opportunity.

“Yeah?” she asked, in complete earnest. “You think so?”

Hmm. Maybe there was a middle ground that Victoria could find.

“Well, in my case, you were pretty on the money,” she admitted, folding her arms and playing up a little bit of a cocky smirk. “I’m not going to pretend as though I put any real attention into learning CQC, but back in the day, I slung guns every once in a while.”

Gaia raised an eyebrow. “Slung guns?” she echoed. “You put guns in slings?”

“No,” Victoria corrected, gently. “I slung guns as in, I was a gunslinger. Someone who was quick and skilled with shooting a gun.”

“Ooh,” Gaia breathed, before nodding. “That makes much more sense.”

Victoria laughed. It felt a little detached from proper decorum, but she couldn’t help it – when facing someone as authentic as Gaia, it was beneficial to be authentic in kind.

“I’ll tell you what,” she offered, stretching in her chair before slapping her hands to her knees and standing up. “I’d rather not break all my bones and embarrass myself in a spar with you. But, if physical activity is something that you think helps you focus, and improves your mood-”

“Yes!” Gaia blurted out, clenching her fists for emphasis. “Both of those things!”

Victoria made sure to nod and take the interruption in stride. “If that’s the case, then I can take you to a shooting range,” she offered. “I won’t be as good as I used to be, of course, but I’m sure I could give you some pointers. And you could learn a new skill on the side.”

She half-expected Gaia to scoff at the proposal – give her some shpeel along the lines of ‘why would I ever need a gun when I’ve got THESE guns’ before kissing her own biceps, or something like that – but she was pleasantly surprised when Gaia all but jumped forwards with a massive grin.

“Cool!” she exclaimed. “Some of the guns Jacen uses look super awesome, but he never lets me use any of them.” She frowned. “He’s afraid I’ll break them. Or hit somebody, probably. Or maybe even shoot myself by mistake.” She huffed. “Pur-*leeze*. Getting shot stings like hell, there’s no way I’d do that to myself.”

“I’m sure he’s speaking from a place of genuine concern,” Victoria assured Gaia, stifling another laugh (and another marvel at this woman’s constitution, to describe a gunshot as something that ‘stung’). “But not to worry-” she added, with a wink. “-I’m a professional.”