"You always picked up first when The Bastard and I started singing. Didn't take much to get you singing and following I limped off."
Different voice. Â Different speaker. Â Sharp and steel and bright like the other one in the cave with Hammer. Â Older, sharper, more weathered, all the warmth a reflection of fury. Â Matched to someone sitting against a wall with a wineskin in their lap and a brass snow-blind mask perched on their head.
"I'm sure it had nothing to do with the bark of your long-arm there and the stench of blood."
Different voice. Â Different speaker. Â All the warmth of sincerity and sorry wrapped in smooth hands and burnished to a bright enveloping shine. Â This one matched to a young roe tending a fire in the back of this different cave. Â White haired, red eyed, smooth features and a wry smile on his face.
"DI ran for the house. You ran after me. Mommy's boy. Daddys' girl."  Trouble pushed off the wall and sat down next to the fire. The face was weathered and worn but the bright blue eyes in it betrayed a certain intensity normally reserved for birds of prey and pack hunters.  Her smile was stained red from the wine and didn't help the comparison to raptors and prey-seekers.
"I'm acquainted with the stereotypes and we both know they don't fit. Â Besides: Â Dad never liked my singing..." Muttered Jekkim.
Trouble laughed, shifting to lounge in front of the roaring gold and yellows of the fire. Â The elder winced in pain as she shifted position. Â The explosion had been unkind. Â Most of her winter attire was missing and replaced with heavy bandages and braces around the chest that betrayed broken ribs and blooms of red. Â "Which is damn strange considering what you do with it."
"Well. I don't have a lifetime of concussions and love taps to scramble my speech."  'Jekky' popped back onto his haunches and met Trouble's stare.  "I'm thinking if you'd never dented his skull things might have been very different for him." Red and blue with the same intense focus.  Really, the only difference between mother and son, other than the hairy, slightly stronger jaw on the younger roe, was the smoothness of the face, the depth of the smile lines compared to deep crevices on the elder that betrayed a lifetime of frowns, snarls, and scowl as she responded.
"I don't. The Bastard knows where his heart is, out of everyone I ever known he's always been sure of where his blood was running and was willing to eat the consequences of it."
"So why'd he run at you? Yannow. The night home burned down."  Soft and careful.  Different from the sister who was blunt and knew what was owed.  The brother seems to be the one who inherited what little social graces existed in the two elders.
"Wanted me dead." said Trouble
"Simple answer." nodded Jekky. Â It really was, after all, a simple truth and that he'd asked for.
"Everything's that simple with him and me. How you get to that simple choice is the complicated part and it's noneyah." Grumbled Trouble, pulling generous gulps from the wineskin.
"It's more than noneyah. Otherwise we wouldn't be here."  Jekky pointed a finger laden with brass rings across the fighter at Trouble in accusation. "You put five holes in his chest and he still managed to break your leg, survive,  limp this far along, and get in a fight on you in the frozen end of the world for what seems to be, as he'd put it 'shits and giggles'."
"HAH. You shoulda seen what I did to him when we first met. He almost walked away from that as well."  Trouble's smirk was all teeth and confidence.  It was satisfaction festered into a swollen wound of pride.
"Oh lords and ladies. Not this again."  Jekky's own face was contorted in long-suffering pain.  Trouble ignored it.  Maybe it was the wine talking.  More likely she knew this wound and was picking at it on purpose.
"For one he still had both of his eyes back then." grinned Trouble.
"And then you shot him in the head."  Jekky mimed shouldering a rifle, firing, and then fell backwards onto his haunches in a sitting position. "Yeah. I've heard that even before the house burned down. Dad's thick skull is kind of infamous."
"I'm a good shot, Jekky. We both know that if I'd hit clean he wouldn't have a head."  Trouble grumbled and suckled on the wine skin again with a mournful sigh. "He knew what he was looking at and was starting to duck and cover before I was was done pulling the trigger. Quick one, The Bastard.  Already knew what a rifle was, even then."
"Not quick enough to avoid losing his eye." Chuckled Jekky.
"Har. No. The lead only grazed his skull and made him mad. Runs fast when he's pissed and wants to tear someone's head off." Toasted Trouble, raising the wine skin in tribute.
"What, like yours?" Â Jekky had unhooked a long-stemmed pipe from his belt and was hooking it into his teeth as he chuckled. "You know the only reason you're alive right now is because Di shot his leg out before he got to you, down there on the road?"
"That's your fault for planting your powder packets at poor points." Accused Trouble.
"Trying to judge how much boom to use when both of you are harder to kill than a mountain isn't an easy task." Lamented Jekky in return. Â This dance of accusation was all too familiar. Â Mother and son arguing over explosive content and placement. Â Long ago it had been commonplace.
"No, I guess it isn't."  Trouble rolled onto her back and turned blue eyes towards a black and smokey ceiling.   "He lost the eye because even if he's fast, I'm faster if I'm trying to recover from a black powder bomb."  A blue eye bored into Jekky accusingly.  "Bullet grazed his skull and blurred his vision.  Got him right in the face with the butt end of the Long Arm as he rushed in. Crushed most of his face and got him tied up before he could wake up."  She was grinning as she dredged the past up.  Far too fond of forgotten phantasmagoria.
"This isn't really answering the question, Mom. Â I know you two met while you were getting ready to flay Dad alive. Â How's that get us to the second time you tried to bury him for sport?" Â Jekkim's warm voice did have a glitter of bronzed edge inside the warmth. Â Even the hint of it was enough to make Trouble look over with a questioning brow raised.
"Reason The Bastard and I started shacking up is the sweet nothings he whispered while he was hanging from a tree next to my campfire while I played with that skinning knife. That's where the deal came up and through.  That's why the story matters."  Another sigh at the stalagmites from the blonde elder, who motioned for a hit from Jekky's pipe. "We'd both lost a lot of friends in the wars of the time. Both of us were short an Oath Circle. So we agreed to follow this one along whatever path it lead.  The Bastard's honey tongued mush mouth talked me out of pulling his skin off and instead offered me a partner for pulling it off other people for money.  You and your sister are still alive so it didn't turn out completely sour."
"Doesn't sound like the kind of pact I'd expect out of either of you. really. It's almost sweet."  Jekky's time to grin now.  Wide and amused and full of schadenfreude fueled joy.Â
"Sweet until you understand we both knew we were blood sick and mad as a hatter at the time. So we agreed the moment we thought things had gone far enough death was going to be on the table.  We'd get our chance for another fight the minute we figured the other had gone 'off their nut' as The Bastard put it." There was an ugly finality wrapped around Trouble's words, squeezing at the implications as Jekky continued to laugh.
"Sounds like his kind of deal. Take it you both had enough leeway to judge for yourself what 'far enough' was."
"I'm a little more romantic Jekky.  Give your old mother some credit.  You get your habit for fancy words honestly."  The wink from the crystal blue eye was the kind of thing that gave children nightmares.  The kind of wink that warned the things that spawned you might just be human. Jekky shuddered. Â
"So what'd you say that cracked it into more than just a deal?."
 "I told him as long as we were both alive we'd have nothing else to fear except each other."  The sigh after those words was filled with blood, wine, and joy that still had a little sweetness after years of sitting in the dark.
"I think you and me have a different idea of Romantic, mom."
"I'd hope so." Â Trouble pushed off this cave floor and leaned against the wall again, wincing where cracked rib met bruised flesh and hard stone. Â "And then one night it was over and we were both trying to kill eachother again, right where we'd left off. Â He thought I'd lost a screw and I thought he'd done what he promised never to do: Gone soft and forgotten what fear was." Â The rictus grin on Trouble's face mixed pain, suffering, and hate into a bitter, wine soaked draught.
"And yet here we are. Â With you two still dancing." Murmured Jekky.
Trouble nodded. "Here we are. Fifteen years later.  I'll give him that much: He's not gone soft.  I think he mighta forgotten what fear is like though.  Who else would pick a fight over a Twelves Damned lantern?"
"You feel like explaining that 'why' next?" Â Grunted Jekkim as he poked some life into the guttering fight.
"Next time, Jekky. Â Next time. Â Now be a good boy and get me another skin of wine."