#jerrad lockwood

[raivaryn]

"Really, you? Solaris? You ride a Battle Hawk."

He caught her skepticism from a distance. It was late, and the day's patrol had been pleasantly dull. The rest of the Dog's company had already left for their bunks, but two of them had remained chatting on the catwalk not too far from him.

"That's right. This isn't just any Hawk, Raine." Lockwood watched as the younger man leaned against the rail beside her with an unearned ease. "It's hot off the line, peak condition, and ready to earn some battle scars."

Just as you are, Lockwood found the bitter thought. Stern was a new pilot, a risky hire that was proving more risky by the day. He was arrogant, and it made him unreliable on the field. Lockwood wondered if he had even seen combat drills. The man came from money, that much was clear, and Lockwood couldn't help but wonder if he had lied about his credentials in some way.

Their conversation fell to tones too quiet for him to hear from his place in the shadow of his cooling 'Mech. What passed for dusk on this world cast lingering pinkish-orange rays through the filter of the 'Mech Bay's shuttered windows. They danced over the heads of Stern and the Boar, lighting her face while highlighting the conditioned hair of the man too close beside her. Lockwood heard her laugh at something he said.

The Dog folded his arms, and leaned his weight against the wall. Pilots like Stern never lasted long. There was no room for his kind of hotheaded mistakes in combat, and it was more than once that either the Boar or himself had needed to compensate for his poor judgment. Taking him on was a liability.

Another laugh, and this time Stern joined her, using the moment to step ever closer. Her laugh was lighter this time, Lockwood noticed, and something about it made his shoulders tense and his jaw clench. A brief memory played in his head, of grasping hands, hot breath and a steamed windshield. He thought of clearing his throat.

Instead, he heaved a sigh. Running a hand down the back of his head and resting it at his neck, Lockwood stubbornly met his folly: Jealousy.

After all, he and the Boar had never exchanged so much as a tender word, let alone any form of promise. No kiss between them had been virtuous, only laden with lust, and what happened in her cockpit had stayed there.

It was for the best, he reminded himself. Mercenary work was no place for relationships of that manner.

Something he needed to remind Stern of.

He cleared his throat as the two laughed again, successfully cutting them off. He earned a glare from Stern as he approached the two pilots from the shadows.

"'Ey Commander," Raine gave him a half-assed salute dripping with sarcasm. "Still owe me a drink, yeah?"

"Yeah, yeah," Lockwood felt a tinge of gratification seeing Stern stand aside at his approach. He felt the man's glare turn to surprise with Raine, and held back his own smirk. "Let's get it done with."

[raivaryn]

My muse is dead, and your muse is visiting their grave 3 years later. My muse walks up behind yours and says “I’m sorry”. How does your muse react? X3

The sun heated her neck as she held her head in reverent regard to the unmarked gravestone. Though the summer sky was still crisp and deeply blue, the clearing was already dimming under the forest’s vigil. An early evening breeze funneled up her coat sleeves, brushing warmth from the leather with its faint chill. The merchant’s trail that wound up from the valley below was already under dusk, and she was seasoned enough to recognize a cold night on the horizon.

Thelina lamented faintly, “You old bastard.”

Though the dull stone marking the shallow grave bore no testimony, the recollection of that ill-starred night was as clear as air, and even after three years, the face of the man she buried here remained burned into her memory.

It was a stupid job. Ambushing a lord would have been an appealing pursuit in their earlier days, when they hungry to prove their worth and  less versed in common sense. As fate would have it, such an opportunity came to them only after years of sellsword work grew them wise to the risk. But the repopulated guard had preoccupied their prospects that harvest season, and the barren winter was growing cold and desolate. Gold was gold, and an opportunity was an opportunity.

A gust through the trees drew Thelinia from her rumination. The clearing was sufficiently dark now, and the ambient warmth it had collected from basking in the day’s brightness was beginning to disperse with the coming wind. Yet she stayed, a hand at rest over the pommel of a rapier, with the same question that held her here every time.

"How did we let it happen, Jerrad?"

Much to her surprise, an impossibly familiar grunt answered. Disbelieving her own ears, she gripped the hilt of her blade. It was a softened, drawn-out sound, and had it not carried his trademark coarseness, she wouldn’t have known. She couldn’t have identified remorse in its timbre.

She couldn’t have helped herself from turning around.

Even in the shadow of dusk, she could not mistake the man who now stood before her.

”..Jerrad.” The breeze carried it from her lips as though it had gone unspoken. Thelinia took him in across the silence between them, finding confirmation in the passing beats of his physicality. His garb was as worn and weary as he was, and she noticed the strap of his eye-patch disappear into his hairline where before it had flattened a line across it.   Even his age held up to the passage of time, and in the sunset’s last rays she could see a sparse few strands of grey peek out of disheveled brown hair.

"Thel… I’m sorry."

The words caught her unprepared, and she shook herself free to respond, “It’s been three years. You were dead. I buried you, with my own hands..”

He nodded, a tired gesture, and gave an affirming grunt.

Thelinia looked again to the grave behind her, almost expecting him to be gone when she turned back. He remained, and she took it as opportunity to approach. She stopped just short of him, close enough to meet her eyes to his single good one.

Her fist landed him hard across the jaw, reeling him back a step to catch himself. She let him grip the wound and recuperate himself, allowing the man to stand straight and point a wholly unamused leer against her own glower.

“Let’s get a drink.”

Jerrad grunted, this time as gruff and surly as she had best remembered it. Without another word necessitated, the Dog and Boar set down the merchant’s trail as they always had.