Tierce

Rudra thinks that he's strong, but she's wrong. He just wants to forget.

He wears his ridiculous costume not because he really loves it, not from a sense of fun or to make others smile - though he does use those excuses if anyone asks. No. He wears it because he can't bear to see his own skin, to catch a glimpse of the scars criss-crossing his hide, and remember how he got them, who he got them from, and what he did to earn a scar, rather than death.

She's the strong one, because she sometimes whispers the names of her opponents into the night, repeating them like a mantra, a memorial to the dead, a plea for forgiveness. She remembers every single one. He doesn't. He doesn't want to. He can't bear what he had to become to survive, so he tries to put it out of his mind, buries the guilt and the shame in jokes and sideways smiles that don't always reach his eyes.

She's stronger because she remembers, because she doesn't try to push it away, hide from what they both did, pretend it never happened. When she wakes in the darkness, silent and staring, her muscles rigid with fear, he puts a wing across her back and whispers to her of good things, of what their life is now, and what it could be in the future; anything to push away the darkness, to escape the memories that lurk just beyond consciousness.

He knows that she is not the light of his life, the delight of his eyes, his one true love; or any of the other nonsense that that wildclaw bard is always squalling about. He did not approach her because he longed for her, or even because he particularly trusted her. But there was a look in her eyes that said she had no more taste for that life than he did, and had the resolution to do something about it.

He had seen some of her matches. She was not a favorite among the masters, because she finished her matches quickly. Too quickly for their taste. They liked to build the crowd into a frenzy, liked to see blood first, the slow overpowering of an opponent, or a fierce battle between two evenly-matched dragons. She was like lightning; darting in, finishing the job and leaping away. Her adversaries were usually gone before they knew she had moved. But she won too many matches for the masters to have her culled, as they had done with others who would not play the game. She was a surprise. She was so small, so fragile-looking, that neither the audience, nor her foes, ever took her seriously - not until it was too late. She had won many a bet for the masters that way.

Not like him. He was a crowd favorite, because he played up. He knocked his opponents over, darting behind and around them until they tripped on their own tails. He made them look foolish. He would jig and dance and laugh, bobbing his head, waggling his wings, flashing his clownish colors. The crowds ate it up, roaring with approval when he ducked beneath a lunge or pirouetted away from a slashing claw. He made them laugh, right up until the last moment, when he fell on his enemy and seized them by the throat.

Tierce did not escape because of her. He escaped because it was that, or death, inevitable as the sunrise, and he has always been a survivor. They went together because they were the only two brave enough, desperate enough, to try, not because they wanted to begin a life together. He knows that they share no more than an easy companionship and a past no one else can really comprehend, but he's okay with that. It is much more than he had ever expected to have.

Still, he knows he will never leave her, because who else could know him as well, could accept what he was and what he is now? Who would hold her and sing of better things when the nightmares were too much, who would make her smile despite herself, despite all the scars she carried, inside and out?

And who else could show him how to be strong?