[She should be frightened. Or angry. Or anxious, or something. Instead, as she watches him rise, she's content. She feels as though gears have slid into place with a click she can feel in her bones.]
[The lack of metal is nice; it makes for more of a challenge. And she's prepared. She shoots up into the air and then sideways, Pushing against a coin she's lodged in the hollow of a tree - pulling it after her as she goes twisting past him, turns in midair, and begins to fall.]
[ No; it feels right. This is the way it should be. A Mistborn killing another Mistborn is at heart wrong, jarring, the way the world should not work. They're better when it's play. When it's the two contesting one another.
He takes a handful of coins and scatters them; they'll be hard to push far enough away so he can't use them, with the grass. A couple he shoots at Vin, a probe to see how she'll respond.
And he'll continue in that vein for a minute or two, just testing, practicing. He's lost a little of his incredible steel accuracy: she will notice this. ]
She doesn't try to pull them away from him, not really. As she's falling, she turns and shoots her own towards the ground, pushing against it with hands and feet in turn, so she can fly again. The coins he shoots at her she sends off in random directions, all but one, which she sends directly back to him. She expects him to push back: a test of strength. He'll win. She remembers Kelsier's lessons and chooses, this once, to discard them.]
[A wholly silent show of trust.]
[She frowns when she notices and circles around him, inspecting his technique from several angles, still encroaching on his personal space with her coin emissary.]
[ The coins are incredible to handle. His mind tunes out; he stops thinking about the individual ones, stops consciously using Allomancy and goes to pure instinct. Some deflected, some pushed back, a living constellation of forces and movements. His mind tracks a hundred things at once. He's learned the science behind it now, too, and it makes it more beautiful, to his eyes.
They are graceful. There's never been any Mistborn he's fought who was close to her. Even Kelsier; Zane loved sparring with him, too, but there's just something more here. And she's gotten even better since last time.
Falls into a steep ravine; jumps from tree to tree and meets her midair; lands, more than once, in a rough arc that uproots grass and scars the stone. The sun moves too fast, in this place, and soon it's sliding into sunset. He plays games with the blinding, near-horizontal light, the steep shadows. Tries to blind her.
But in the end he's not playing for keeps. He won't try too hard to win. ]
[They're the same, in a hundred ways; different in a hundred more, but maybe the similarities will start to matter most with time. They are both creatures touched by Ruin, both children who have fought it back tooth and nail, who have bled and cried until they became who they were meant to be. They have been beaten and ripped apart and damaged beyond repair, and they've sewn themselves back together because that was the only way to save the people they loved.]
[After a while, she fights with her eyes closed. She can feel the sun on her eyelids, the spin of coins past her head, can smell grass in the wind and pollen in the air. She can sense herself living, and even though really, it's a lie, for this minute in time it's true enough.]
[She knows he's not trying to beat her. It's - refreshing. As thanks, she doesn't try to humiliate him. Because, in her own way, she's missed him.]
[When she knocks him to the ground in the end and lands lightly next to him in a crouch, she's smiling in a way that she very rarely does, bright as a new sun.]
[ He isn't quite smiling, but it isn't because he doesn't feel the same way. He is the calm of a day after the storm, sweet wet grass and drops scattering sunlight into prisms of color.
He reaches up a hand. He doesn't need her help getting up. He's just asking for it. ]
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no subject
[The lack of metal is nice; it makes for more of a challenge. And she's prepared. She shoots up into the air and then sideways, Pushing against a coin she's lodged in the hollow of a tree - pulling it after her as she goes twisting past him, turns in midair, and begins to fall.]
no subject
He takes a handful of coins and scatters them; they'll be hard to push far enough away so he can't use them, with the grass. A couple he shoots at Vin, a probe to see how she'll respond.
And he'll continue in that vein for a minute or two, just testing, practicing. He's lost a little of his incredible steel accuracy: she will notice this. ]
no subject
[A wholly silent show of trust.]
[She frowns when she notices and circles around him, inspecting his technique from several angles, still encroaching on his personal space with her coin emissary.]
no subject
They are graceful. There's never been any Mistborn he's fought who was close to her. Even Kelsier; Zane loved sparring with him, too, but there's just something more here. And she's gotten even better since last time.
Falls into a steep ravine; jumps from tree to tree and meets her midair; lands, more than once, in a rough arc that uproots grass and scars the stone. The sun moves too fast, in this place, and soon it's sliding into sunset. He plays games with the blinding, near-horizontal light, the steep shadows. Tries to blind her.
But in the end he's not playing for keeps. He won't try too hard to win. ]
no subject
[After a while, she fights with her eyes closed. She can feel the sun on her eyelids, the spin of coins past her head, can smell grass in the wind and pollen in the air. She can sense herself living, and even though really, it's a lie, for this minute in time it's true enough.]
[She knows he's not trying to beat her. It's - refreshing. As thanks, she doesn't try to humiliate him. Because, in her own way, she's missed him.]
[When she knocks him to the ground in the end and lands lightly next to him in a crouch, she's smiling in a way that she very rarely does, bright as a new sun.]
no subject
He reaches up a hand. He doesn't need her help getting up. He's just asking for it. ]
no subject
[She reaches down and takes his hand, clasps it, and pulls him up.]
no subject
I'd like to do that sometimes.
no subject
[A natural thing, she means. A right thing.]