A crunch of feet on the hoary frost, crumbling the silence away. I looked up, my grip unconsciously tightening on the handle of my polearm on my side. The thoughts in my head still tumbled there, persistently twining around each other like hibernating snakes of poison.

‘So you’re here.’

‘What is it to you.’ I retort blandly.

‘Nothing.’ He stopped right in front of me. ‘It is nothing at all, to me.’

‘Here’s the mesos you lent me the last time.’ A chink of coins as a brown sack dropped onto the ground next to where I sat. ‘And the Steelies you gave me.’ A velvet covered package flumped into my lap.

Without thinking, I looked up quickly. ‘The Steelies? What will you use to train then? Since the last time your brother borrowed mesos from you-‘ Then I stopped, the words dying in my mouth. I had asked too much.

‘I have my ways, don’t you worry.’ He answered, as blandly as I had greeted him. ‘And I’m using Ilbies now. They are so much more slicker than Steelies.’ He clicked one out of the loading slot of his claw and flashed it at me. But instead of only admiring his new Ilbies, my attention was drawn to the rest of his attire.

New Mambo claw, new Pirate set, the cloth and metal pristine and clean where it had been slightly grubby and scratched before, with that barely perceptible glow of the well-scrolled…

Ilbies? Mambos? Completely new set of armour? ‘But how did you- how?’ He could never in a million years afford things like that, what with his father’s debts still left unpaid, and his n’er-to-do brother continuing to add to the debts with nary a care.

What if he had joined the ranks of the Hacker gangs? I had heard of stories, from people who told of how those they knew suddenly turn up rich and well-to-do when they were struggling to find a living before. What they did was illegal and dangerous, yet precisely because of that, it seemed to draw the most desperate and the destitute to test the teeth in its maw.

I looked up into his eyes, trying to search for answers there. But I knew that I could never find answers in those hard brown eyes.

‘I told you, I have my ways.’ He turned away. ‘Besides, didn’t you say that you didn’t want anything to do with me and my meso-siphoning family?’

I opened my mouth, but nothing came in defence of the truth. So why did I keep feeling that niggling worry at the back of my mind, and why do I keep hearing that soft little voice that keeps questioning how he could have afforded all that? I wanted to tell him my worries, badger him until he answered…

‘I will return the other five million to you by next week. Then I’ll owe you nothing.’ He turned, then paused. My heart sped up to see him turn back, perhaps he would say that he might not make that deadline after all, and he needed more time? I’d be able to see him for a longer period then, wouldn’t I..?

‘Then again…’

‘I could give you half of it now.’

‘No, I don’t want it!’ I stood up and cried, shocking him in mid-action as he drew the small sack of mesos from his pouch. I moved forward to grab his hand, pushing it back to the pouch and forcing him to drop the mesos back there. ‘I don’t want it back at all! I’m sorry I said all that, I wasn’t thinking! You know how I always shoot off my mouth before I think!’

‘I just, I just want you back.’ Then I covered his mouth with mine, and for one heart-stopping moment, felt him kiss back as well…

But it never happened.

I only nodded numbly, took the sack of mesos from him silently, and let him walk away quietly. I saw him mingle in the crowds of the cold marketplace, my eyes following him through the milling crowd until I saw him join the side of a girl with features as stunning as an exotic bird.

She laughed to see him, and pointed to one of the market stalls, as if showing him some bargain she saw that could be easily resold for a quick profit.

Then I knew. In one week and two million mesos later, he will truly mean nothing at all to me.

——————————————————————————————–

Lyrics from Say It Right by Nelly Furtado.

This took me roughly two hours to write, right after I played the song three times over end on end. Hmm.
Like Nezzy (He said Nezzy, so Nezzy it is. >>;) said, ‘You have too much time.’

And too much imagination too. But the song is simply too… nice. Wouldn’t leave me alone until I did something about it, eh. Thus my first ever song-fanfic. XD

I’m going to regret submitting this, I bet, but oh well. *shrugs*