"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
No matter what shape Vastra takes, she has a predator’s instincts. She watches Svedka approach but she’s watching him too - noting the scars. She thinks she can guess which ones she had left and they are dwarfed by the newer ones. There’s a faint stirring of… jealousy? Perhaps? In her stomach when she sees his shoulder and knows she’s not the one who had left that mark. There’s some concern, too, and she cannot decide which of those two emotions - concern or jealousy - is the worst. She’d prefer to stamp them both down.
But that smile is the same and his huffed words bring out the start of one in her face too - chased immediately away by an eye roll.
“I wasn’t sure you wanted to be found. You didn’t exactly give me an address before you went running off into the hills.” It was hard to believe it had been so long - and Vastra is irritated by the sense that she should have come sooner. Hadn’t she offered to become his tutor of sorts? She had certainly dropped the ball on that one. Instead, she had gone to find Chel, coated in both her blood and his and boasting a few new scars of her own.
It was certainly a wonder how Chel had turned out as wild as she had.
“I’m Vastra, by the way. Since you didn’t ask that before propositioning me either.” Her voice is rough, as it always is, though there’s a light in her stormy eyes that hints that this is her attempt at a jest.
It’s an effort not to just ask if he’s ready for round two, or shift and launch herself at him to see what instincts are lying beneath his surface. Since it has been so long, she reasons, it’s only polite to at least exchange names first.
