Accidental Death

Writers: Miriah, Yvonne
Date Posted: 21st October 2015

Characters: J'ackt, Alina
Description: J'ackt checks in on Alina after Satai's death in Threadfall.
Location: Dolphin Cove Weyr
Date: month 1, day 3 of Turn 8
Notes: Mentioned: Ikalis, N'vanik, Cyradis, Saidrene

J'ackt

Alina

Everything carried on as normal. Alina and Imarith went through the rest of the Fall with the Queen's Wing - or at least, half the Fall, since she was sent back down to the Weyr with the rest of the first flight of greens. Then it was stripping Imarith of her straps and sending her off to the lake while she herself filled firestone sacks. Her dragon needed a scrub once that was done, and then Alina had to deal with a distraught Ikalis. Feeling guilty, Alina escaped her friend's sympathy with the excuse of a headache. Ikalis had obviously seen through the lie, but was from a dragonriding family and knew enough to let her be.

She stopped for a quick rinse in the hated bathing pools, then slunk off to her weyr to change. And then she sat on her bed, staring at the wall, trying not to think about Satai. The way she'd looked before Talureth had taken her /between/ for good, or the way Thread had eaten Talureth's fragile wing into nothing.

He had watched the skies, waiting impatiently, while the rest of his class fought with the Queen's wing. All the while he had paced, anxious, frustrated and worried. Zith had been frustrated as well, his instincts held back by Panitath's command to stay in the Weyr. He had wanted to fight, to flame the Thread with the others. To hunt it, to kill it. J'ackt had had difficulty keeping Zith calm enough for his own thoughts.

When Zith had suddenly keened, J'ackt thought his heart was going to stop. His mind went immediately to Saidrene and Alina and was unashamedly relieved when he was told by a mournful Zith that it had been neither. He should have been up there! He didn't want to fecking die, but this waiting was torture. He was going to have to talk to N'vanik about this. Screw Cyradis and the mindhealers.

After they had returned, the worry had eased, but seeing the faces of his classmates and the horror of what had happened rattled him. Before he knew it, he found himself at Alina's weyr, knocking hard.

She startled, then stood with a frown. It had to be Ikalis again. **I'll send her away again,** she thought as she reached for the door, and was surprised to see J'ackt on the other side of it. "Um. Hi."

He walked in without waiting and immediately began examining her face, taking her chin in his fingers and turning her head from side to side. "Are you hurt?" He didn't stop for her to answer, instead looked over her to see if there was any visible injuries.

"Stop that!" She batted his hand away, irritated at being manhandled but also made nervous by his touch. "I'm fine. Everyone's fine, except J'rell got 'Scored. And-- Satai."

Relief made the tension in his shoulders visibly ease. He did let her go and took a step back. "I heard about Satai from Zith." His lips thinned. "What happened?"

}: We should have been up there. I could have flamed it. :{ Zith was mentally snarling, furious that he had not been allowed to participate and that his clutchmate had /betweened/. }: We will go next time! You must do whatever is required. We fly! :{ J'ackt pushed the thoughts away, but his irritation showed on his face, his jawline tight.

"It was-- Satai wasn't _careful_." Alina backed up to sit back down on the edge of her bed, her fingers curling into fists around the thin sheets. "She and Talureth were flaming, and this clump of Thread came down from the Wings above and hit Talureth's wing. And it... vanished." That memory would stay with her for a long time. She shook her head. "G'dori /betweened/ to get to them, but I think Satai panicked when Talureth did, and they went /between/." She bit her lip, staring over J'ackt's shoulder as a lump formed in her throat. "And I just... watched."

He listened as she spoke, then leaned slightly against her table as she continued. He took a breath, peered at her and then spoke simply. "She wasn't ready and that's not your fault. You were ready. You survived and didn't panic. She shouldn't have been in the Wings yet."

"I know that." It came out sharper than intended, but it was easier to be angry than burst into tears. Alina took a deep breath wished she didn't have any emotions at all. "I just wish... I guess it doesn't matter. It's happened, and she's gone."

"Matters to you though, doesn't it." He moved to sit down near her, but not next to her. "You've never seen death like that have you?" He turned his head to look at her. "Seeing it isn't easy. It never is. And it doesn't get better." He rubbed at his chin. "It's okay to get upset 'bout it. Start to worry if it stops upsetting you."

"I don't know about that." She looked away and stared resolutely at the wall. "It's not like more people I know aren't going to die. And Imarith has a green hide, not a gold one. Greenriders... there's a reason there's more of us."

"You're not going to die." His words snapped out with a surprising vicious certainty and his fist clenched on his leg.

She fought the lump in her throat that made her want to cry and tried to think of something else, but couldn't. "Maybe, maybe not. Either way, Satai won't be the only person I see go like that. She-- she was looking at me when she went /between/. Imarith and I were the last things she ever saw."

"No, she probably won't be. I reckon we'll see a lot of it." J'ackt was a realist about the chances of never seeing another death. He reached out a hand to turn her chin back to his, hesitated, then dropped it. She didn't like it when he touched her. "You'll see a lot of blood and wounds and death. But just makes you be more careful, I figure. So you're not next."

**But I will be, at some point.** Alina took a deep breath. "I wish you'd been there. They shouldn't have grounded you."

That stung. J'ackt's eyes narrowed. While he was in no rush to become Thread fodder himself, he hadn't liked being grounded either. Zith had hated it and railed at him the entire time. "Well, I wasn't." He spoke stiffly.

She sighed, oblivious. "I just... I don't even know. I don't want to be here, but it's too late to get out of fighting Thread now, isn't it." She glanced at J'ackt and forced a small smile.

He rose slowly off of the bed. "Alina, stop it." He glared down at her. "You're not her. You're not a bloody fecking coward. Don't act like it."

Alina recoiled, her expression darkening. "Excuse me!?"

He scowled down at her, meeting her dark expression with one of his own. "I said you're not a fecking coward. Satai was. She was a whining little kid who let what she was afraid of killing her and her dragon. " He jabbed a finger towards Alina. "You're not her. You might be afraid of something, but you fecking face it head on. You're a fighter. She wasn't. Don't even try to compare yourself to her just because your dragons are the same shaffing color."

"That's not what I said at all!" Alina shot back. "I'm facing reality, and don't you _dare_ call me a coward for it!"

"Facing reality?" He snorted. "That you could die? Sure we all could! I could die the first time I fly Thread. So could N'vanik and Cyradis and everyone else in that wing. The difference is, they don't fecking obsess over it!" He altered his voice to a higher pitch. "Poor me, I've got this dragon that loves me no matter what, but I don't want to be here because it's 'dangerous' and I'm not in my old life in a hold, where I'll be wedded to a man probably twice my age and who'll beat the whershit out of me when he drinks." His voice shifted back to it's normal deeper timbre. "You're here, Alina." His eyes narrowed. "It
could be a lot fecking worse. You ain't getting out of it unless Imarith _dies_. Now you either suck it up and deal with the risk and make the best outta it or go ahead and wish death on your dragon. Pick one, cause you can't have both!"

"You insufferable wherry's _ass_!" Alina's hands clenched into fists, her emotions swinging wildly between wanting to cry and wanting to smack him into tomorrow. "I just watched someone die and _that_ is what you say to me!? You know _nothing_ about me or what my life was like or what happened, and don't you _dare_ talk about Imarith like that again!"

"People die all the fecking time!" He'd seen it at a young age and had even caused it, so it had jaded him early. He faced her down easily, his own voice rising to match hers. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. You can't fecking change it! And you didn't even _like_ Satai, but you're acting as though you've lost your best friend! She's dead because she was weak! Her dragon is dead cause her fear was more important than survival!" He prodded her further, seeing the clenched hands and Alina's temper rising further. "And you're going that way too! You're so busy being afraid of what's around you that you're wishing it on Imarith! Do you even love her? Or is your holder life so important to you that you don't care?"

"Shut UP!" To her horror, hot tears suddenly welled in her eyes and her breath caught in a sob. And then she couldn't stop, too angry and hurt and embarrassed about breaking down in front of someone to force any words out. Instead she grabbed whatever was nearest and threw it as hard as she could at his head, only it was an old sock with a hole in the heel and it didn't even make it the distance between them before fluttering to the ground. Outside, on her ledge, Imarith suddenly took up her keening again.

Zith acted quickly, moving to comfort the keening Imarith. He landed beside her on the small ledge, hunching his body to fit but wrapping a wing over her much smaller body and pressing close.

Finally. That was much better than the fecking morose, numb acceptance that she had begun with. Even though he had purposefully pushed her, he hated seeing her cry; J'ackt just knew that she'd be able to get things done after she got that mess out of her system. The sock would have almost been humorous if it had been another situation. He stepped forward, knowing that he risked getting pummeled by the angry girl and wrapped his arms around her, tugging her against him.

"What is _wrong_ with you!?" She barely resisted, although she didn't hug him back. There was a roaring in her ears that might have been Imarith keening or the sound of her own pounding heart. She hated him. She felt torn into a million, raw-edged pieces. She couldn't imagine being anywhere else.

He held her easily, his hand lightly stroking her back to calm her much like he would Zith while he was stressed. "Sometimes," He spoke softly, his voice low. "it helps to explode a little." Faranth knew it helped him more than once. "Sometimes we have to."

"You know nothing about me!" She pressed her forehead into his shoulder, which was probably getting damp. She hoped it was. "You have _no_right_ to say things like that to me!"

"Nope. Not a thing." He lifted his other hand to stroke her hair, liking the texture of it as it slid against his fingers. He liked to think that he knew her better than she thought, but perhaps he didn't. He simply didn't like to see her fighting spirit muted. "No right at all." He murmured an agreement. He realized that she was actually letting him hold her and that she was a most pleasant armful. It surprisingly wasn't a sexual feeling, though he was attracted to her without a doubt. He just liked wrapping his arms around her and he probably wouldn't get another chance after this.

"You're horrible." Except when she said it, Alina wasn't sure if she meant J'ackt or herself. She'd done nothing when Satai died, and as much as she hated it, J'ackt was right-- she had no right to mourn her. She pressed her fingers against her eyes but now that she'd started crying, she couldn't seem to stop.

"Usually." He agreed, feeling his cloth on his shoulder dampen further and his arms tightened around her in more of a hug instead of a hold. He didn't hug often; if he thought about it, he could probably count the times he had embraced someone like this (outside of sex) on one hand. He also had to admit that it felt good. He rested his cheek on the top of her head and just closed his eyes.

After a while, the sobs subsided. Alina felt numb and wrung-out, and increasingly aware of J'ackt's arms around her. He wasn't even doing anything, just holding her, the heat of his body and strength in his arms creating a barrier between herself and the rest of the Weyr. It was the first time she'd ever felt protected at the Weyr, ever since she'd arrived.

But like all good things, it had to end. Alina closed her eyes and forced the words out. "You... should go."

He didn't want to. J'ackt gave a soft sigh, his breath ruffling her hair before he looked down at her face still buried in his shoulder. He wanted to do more than hold her, but as much as he wanted that, she'd made it clear that she did _not_ want him; he wouldn't push. "Alright." But he didn't let go immediately. It took a minute or so to relax his hold around her and slowly take a small step back. He looked down at her face, red streaked and puffy from crying and before he could stop himself, he cupped her cheeks and wiped her face with his thumbs. He looked down at her mouth, tempted and started to bend, but stopped, drew back and then let her go. "Get some rest, Alina." He then took another step back and before the temptation got to be too much, hurried out of the door and closed it behind him.

She stared at the closed door for a moment, then covered her eyes with her hands. Whatever had just happened, she wasn't sure if she felt better, worse, or more confused than ever before. But at least she wasn't thinking about Satai anymore.

Last updated on the October 26th 2015

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Accidental Death