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Writers: Avery, Heather
Date Posted: 16th September 2019

Characters: K'yne, Erivana
Description: K'yne and Erivana discuss the Saibra situation
Location: Dragonsfall Weyr
Date: month 12, day 22 of Turn 9
Notes: Mentioned: Saibra, R'enh
Follows "Side A", "Side B," and "Rewind"

K'yne

K'yne, who was seated in his chair, had one hand shoved into his hair and the other around a bottle of liquor that he had opened after Saibra left. His eyes flicked up at the sound of footsteps, relieved that they belonged to Erivana this time, and that they were not Saibra storming back to tear him apart some more. He winced, for the first time realizing that the raised voices might have woken Erivana. "Hey," he said simply, not sure what else to say or how much she had heard.

She was a tiny bit surprised to see him. He was sitting in a chair now and well, his clothes were still on and he didn't look like he had just put them back on after Saibra scurried out... and he _was_ still here and he hadn't followed her back to her weyr. Even though she was yelling. That probably hadn't been foreplay for an invitation back.

"Hey," she echoed in a soft voice. Thoughts swirled in her head, but she didn't just want to blurt out, *why did Saibra scream at you?*

Instead, nodding at the bottle in his hand, she said, "Long day of drills?"

"I wish," he said, lifting the bottle to his lips. "The Weyrwoman decided to come by for a visit." K'yne said, because he just wasn't the type to beat around the bush or to lie, ever.

"Is everything all right?"

The brownrider shook his head. "I have no idea." K'yne rubbed a finger over his lips before raising the bottle again. "I haven't spoken to her in a couple of months, she just showed up unannounced and...." He trailed off, unable to tattle on Saibra, even though she had angered him. "Wasn't acting like herself."

She bit her lip and, despite the pressure in her bladder, stepped closer to find a seat and sit down. "Huh," she said. She tried - and failed - to keep a neutral tone.

He arched an eyebrow at her. "How much did you hear?"

She considered saying nothing at all. She considered throwing at him, 'I know you kissed'. But then she'd have to explain 'and it made me feel awful and I don't know why because I don't have a claim on you'.

Instead, she went for, "I heard raised voices, and then I heard her yell that she hated you."

"Ah, yes, that's not the first time she's said that, nor the loudest, either," K'yne said, bottle raised to his lips again. It was as if he and Saibra had been put into each other's lives to torment each other until they died.

Her eyes widened. "But I thought you two were - " she said before she cut herself off sharply.

Blue eyes flicked up to her. "Thought what?"

She froze, trying to judge his feelings from his eyes, something she still didn't have practice at. Even after having lived with him for a bit, now.

"There's a lot of rumors about what you two are to each other," Erivana finally said. "They say you've been secret lovers for Turns. That you were lovers while she was weyrmated to your brother. That you're actually the father of her son. Or that she hates you because you rejected her and she doesn't know how to handle rejection because goldriders get everything."

She looked uncomfortable as she spoke. She hoped he wouldn't be angry with her if she was just repeating out all of the rumors... and they all were centered on Saibra being unfaithful or terrible, but that's how people spoke about goldriders, a lot. Like they were conniving and flawed. Like they were bad, and trouble.

"It's all gossip and speculation, but people see that the two of you must have been close, once," she dared to add.

K'yne had never heard all of the speculations before, it actually amused him enough that he chuckled, but it faded rather quickly. The brownrider traced the mouth of the liquor bottle with his thumb as he looked back up at Erivana. "Let me clarify it for you then," he said, gesturing for her to sit. "We're not secret lovers, we were not lovers while my brother was alive, and Kaibren is not my son. I have never rejected Saibra, because she's never offered, until tonight."

There was a tenseness to his jaw as he thought back to the original incident that had set them at odds with one another Turns ago. "Right after K'fel died I went to Saibra. I had always loved her, since we were teenagers, but she only ever had eyes for K'fel after he won her first Flight. When I went to check on her and offer comfort, she turned to me in grief, and then one thing led to another and..." he waved his hand, sure that Erivana could fill in the rest. "Immediately afterward she was angry, angry at me, for taking advantage of her in a weak moment. She hated me for that moment for Turns. When she came to Dragonsfall I decided to transfer down here as well, not solely for her, but because I wanted to continue being close with Kaibren and Saidrene. Kaibren barely remembers K'fel, I've been the closest thing to a father he has ever had."

He stopped for another drink from the bottle. "Things settled down between myself and Saibra right after she had a miscarriage and I was there for her, just as a friend. She was there for me when I found out that I had a son after all. That's all we've been to one another." Even though he had loved her all along. "I honestly have not thought much about her in the past couple of months, and then she showed up tonight."

Again, her mouth went off before her brain could stop her. "The way you two were kissing, it looked like you two really were..."

Her tone was odd, shadowed in a way he never would have heard from her before. Was it accusation? Jealousy? Longing? Some mix? She didn't even understand it.

To cover it, she went on, "So you two were only together the once, before. But today she came to you and - and you rejected her? But why, if you've loved her all along? Just for her weyrmate's sake?"

So she had seen, K'yne thought, he had wondered when he heard the door creak. "The kiss was unexpected," he said, "she has never done that before."

That left the harder question- why had he rejected her if that was what he had been waiting or all along? He'd lost count of how many dreams he'd had about the goldrider over the course of his life. "I didn't reject her for R'enh's sake," even though he wasn't sure what his Wingleader would have made of it, "I rejected her because of you."

The greenrider's eyes widened. "I'm sorry...?" she said aloud, unsure she'd possibly heard him right.

She was the vessel for his child, she lived with him to protect that, but really, there was nothing else tying them. Maybe the first tentative stages of a friendship were beginning. They'd been a certain amount of... she guessed companionate was maybe the right word to use... in his weyr the last few sevendays, but she didn't think that for him it had ever shaded beyond two people getting closer in shared space.

So for K'yne to say something about _her_ being his reason...

"But if you've wanted her, then you should have her. We're not actually weyrmates, you could have anyone you want."

"Maybe it works that way for some dragonriders, but it doesn't for me." K'yne said. Even though the rumor mill apparently had him pegged as a man who would sleep with his brother's weyrmate behind his brother's back, that was not who K'yne was, he had a black and white sense of right and wrong and it was hard for him to stray into the gray.

"Saibra did not come here because she cares about me," a little snort accompanied the statement. "She came because she was looking for validation and as soon as she'd had it, she would have been upset, not at herself but at me, and then she'd have gone right back to R'enh, because that's where she really wants to be. I'm not falling into that trap again."

How did he explain why it felt wrong to sleep with another woman in his weyr while he was living with the mother of his child? It was true, they were not weyrmates and there had been no exchange of promises between them but still.... "It just didn't feel right to do that to you," he said with a small shrug of his shoulders. He didn't know how else to explain it.

"You're welcome to be with whoever you want, whenever you want. This is your weyr, if you'd rather bring a girl home..." she said in a bit of a quiet tone. Her throat felt like it had a lump in it. Like it was hurting to say the words that she was thinking.

K'yne shook his head. "I've not had a desire to bring anyone home." He already had brought someone home, he thought. "I know it's expected of a bronze or brownrider to succumb to every woman that wants to be in his bed, but I am not easily swayed by bouts of passion or emotion. If I want something, I know." His blue eyes were searing.

"Succumbing to someone? Really, I thought you'd be the pursuer," she said. "I remember you saying you didn't have anyone long-term, but this is a Weyr, people have casual partners all of the time, and I don't want to keep you locked to me just from any obligations."

"I don't have casual partners 'all the time,' you should know that. You've seen how fabulous," his voice dripped with sarcasm, "I am at small talk."

Her lips quirked slightly despite herself. "Well, you're handsome enough maybe that doesn't matter. Who could blame the Weyrwoman for throwing herself at you?"

"I don't know, I haven't seemed to have had the same effect on my current roommate." K'yne said lightly, an eyebrow arched.

Erivana went still like a hunted wherry again. Her mouth worked but no sound came out.

He tilted his head, blue eyes studying her expression. "Does that surprise you?"

"Of course it does," she said, when she could make her mouth work again.

"Why?" He asked.

"You're nice to me. Nicer than you had to be. A lot of dragonriders who get a girl pregnant don't move her in. But I thought all this was obligation. I mean. We're not...you've never said you wanted..." She began to twist her hands together nervously.

"I never said I didn't. You are beautiful, Erivana." K'yne's gaze never wavered from hers.

A crimson flush spread across her face at the way he was looking at her, suddenly serious and intense and focused on _her_. She'd seen him focused before but it always seemed to be on other things - his duties, his dragon - and this felt overwhelming. "I'm just another girl," she demurred.

"Not to me," he said, sitting the bottle aside.

Her eyes tracked to the bottle and she felt a little light-headed, wondering if she should take a drink, knowing the Healers had told her to stick to juices. She resolutely stared at it as she asked, "Would you have looked twice at me before I was bearing your child?"

That was a fair, but tricky question, K'yne thought. He had been living in his own little world of solitude before Erivana had told him that she was pregnant. Sometimes the best things in life were unexpected. "I don't know," he said, always truthful, even painfully so sometimes. "I tried looking at you twice after that first flight, but you were shy... and called me sir."

"I've always been shy," she admitted. Shy. Rodenty. Easily overlooked. She knew what they said about her.

He figured as much. K'yne stood and extended his hand toward her with an invitation in his eyes. "Why don't we work on that then?"

More a typical greenrider? The kind of girl who throws herself at any handsome man? The thoughts hovered on the tip of her tongue but she didn't say them. She was too astounded by his invitation, the way it seemed like maybe he was offering her something for the now. Something not that was her first attempts to not be a virgin, and not just from the flightlust. Was it him dealing with anything the Weyrwoman had stirred up in him? Just placating her after the way she'd acted like the burden on him she knew she was?

"Work on making me less shy?" was what she asked.

The corner of his mouth twitched. "Making you less shy, with me," he clarified.

It seemed like he was going to change things, and Erivana didn't do well with change. She liked things to be predictable and understood, and that's what they'd settled into. This was different and it scared her. But, hadn't she felt the jealousy twist in her gut? Why would she feel that if she didn't want a little?

She rose to her feet and reached her hand out to him. "We can," she said, a hesitant tone.

"Only if you want to, Erivana. I'm not trying to force you into anything," he said as he took her hand.

"I know. You've always been very courteous," she said, and barely managed to bite back the reflexive 'sir' of formality because of her nerves.

**Ouch,** he winced. **'Very courteous'?** "Look, Erivana, if you don't see me... I don't know, romantically, you can just tell me." There was an age difference, they were only in each others' lives because she was pregnant, maybe that was all it was for her.

She bit her lip again. "Do you see me that way? Romantically? I didn't think you would. I mean, you're older, sophisticated, a Wingsecond, have had a whole, interesting life...you're out of my league."

She blurted out, "I'm newly graduated and I barely know what I'm doing and I've never _had_ a romantic interest before, I don't know what it's like or how to _know_."

**Me? Sophisticated?** K'yne had a hard time believing that or that anyone would see him that way. "I desire you physically," K'yne admitted. "And I would like the chance to see if there could be more."

She swallowed, a rush of insects fluttering in her stomach at the thought of him desiring her, astounded and taken aback. Wasn't this what she wanted? Wasn't he offering her what he'd denied Saibra? And yet...and yet.

"What if we just...curled up together and napped?" she asked.

K'yne did not know if he could sleep, but he knew that he could hold her while she did. "We can do that," he said.

"Thank you for being patient with me. If you're even half as patient with our child...you're going to be a good father, K'yne," she said all in a rush.

"I hope so," he said, curling an arm around her shoulders and pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

She turned her head up and brushed her lips against his lightly. Then she yawned, and blinked. "Shall we?"

Last updated on the September 23rd 2019

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