Driven By Instinct

9 - Lullaby

He couldn't deny that he felt something hard and dark rising in himself as he pressed against her, but his disquietude was enough to stifle his carnal urges for the time being. "Vica," he said again, gently.

Whatever he was about to say next was interrupted by something small and sharp dropping onto his skull from above. He glanced down at it as it bounced down to the grass at his feet.

An acorn?

He looked up to realize that in the tussle, somehow he and Vica had ended up standing almost directly in front of the base of an oak tree. The dryad had balanced its weight on several branches, but one of her hands was still raised in a tight fist. An angry chitter left her angular mouth, and a second later, she grabbed another acorn to lob it at his skull again.

"Don't make me go over there," he said, and the dryad immediately shrank back in undisguised fear. The last thing he noticed before something struck his chin was that the dryad still hadn't let the acorn go. 

The headbutt had been a decent attempt, was the thought in the back of his mind as he wrestled Vica over to the trunk of the oak tree. Her lack of height was what had made it futile. She had had to lunge not only forward but up to land it. Otherwise, it might have stood a chance of dazing him for a second. More worrying was the fact that there was a clump of black hair still clutched in his hand. Hair that was no longer connected to Vica's head.

He let the strands fall to the ground the instant he and Vica slammed against the tree. With one hand, he pinned her wrists above her head, and he used the opposite forearm to press against her throat. He applied just enough force to avoid choking her as long as she didn't press forward too hard - but of course, that was exactly what she did as she continued to try to lunge at him. The rest of her body was trapped powerlessly against the tree, but she seemed insensate to the fact that she was crushing her own throat against his forearm as she tried to close her teeth around any part of him that she could reach.

With nearly no other options remaining except to render her unconscious, Constantine knocked his forehead against hers and used it to press her head firmly back. That would have hurt her, he thought. Should have. Again, she seemed unaware as she panted noisily into his face, their hot breaths mingling for a tense eternity as he pressed into nearly every part of her body to restrain her movement. Her eyes bore into his with a ferocity that made something catch in his throat. Despite the situation - if he wasn't certain that she would bite his tongue off for it, he would have kissed the breath out of her until she turned blue.

Or maybe a lost tongue was worth it, he thought -

Several objects suddenly struck the top of his head. Constantine nearly convulsed with frustration. "I'm not going to hurt her," he said instead, calmly but loudly. "Unless you do something to accidentally make me hurt her, Vica is safe." He was speaking to the dryad hovering several feet above him, but he kept his eyes firmly trained on Vica's. He had a feeling that if he looked away, she would find another way to hurt herself to get at him. All for a f*****g wood nymph, he thought. 

Seconds passed. When no more acorns came hurtling down at him, he tried again. "Vica," he said quietly, still locking stares. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not going to hurt the nymph. Blink twice if you understand me." An agonizing wait stretched on, and then finally with a silent crow of triumph, Constantine saw the woman's eyelids flutter closed and back open. Twice. "I'm going to let you go, but only if I know you're going to stay calm. Do you understand?" 

Another blink. Two blinks. Quicker this time, and Constantine thought he could see her pupils starting to contract back to normal. "I'm letting you go now, Vica." But this close, just a hair's breadth away from her parted mouth, he wasn't sure if he wanted to let go. Now wasn't the time though, he knew, and with great effort, he shifted his weight away. He resisted the urge to press his lips to the side of her neck as he drew up, knowing that the slightest infraction might trigger another outburst.

He kept his forearm against her throat in case her acquiescence was a facade until he was sure she would remain still. He lowered his arms to his side, hands uncurling. The silence hung heavy between them, broken only by the crisp autumn breezes shaking the tops of the trees. A few green-golden leaves fluttered down and came to a rest at their feet.

Constantine took another step back, tensing automatically when Vica twitched. She made no other movement, however, following him only with her eyes, and he forced himself to relax. Appearing ready for a struggle would only encourage one, and if she came at him again with wild abandon, he wouldn't have much choice other than to render her unconscious before she hurt herself. He much preferred her awake and fully cognizant.

When the silence had stretched on for so long that it became awkward, Constantine tilted his head and craned his neck down, making a show of peering into her face with great curiosity. "Are we going to be all right, Vica? Are we done?"

She was either still unable to speak or simply chose not to, the slight tightening of her mouth the only clue that she had detected his patronizing tone.

Constantine paused, the beginning of the lilting smirk that had been growing on his lips dying quickly. It seemed she wasn't herself yet. Not only that, but now that it was quiet, he could taste the barest scent of something familiar in the air: blood. He knew his body well enough to know that he was not wounded anywhere, and the dryad had scampered away before he could do anything other than frighten it a little. That left Vica, and he suspected he knew where she was injured. "It's a little early but we can stop here. Let's make camp and put something in your stomach."

Constantine slowly took another step back, and he saw Vica's shoulders rise as she took a deep, steady breath. Distance was good then, he thought. He would give her space so that she could calm herself. He continued to watch her surreptitiously out of the corner of his eye as he turned and picked out a conveniently elevated flat rock. He couldn't go putting his hands on the mage to see her injury without triggering another episode; he would have to wait until she was controllable. His skin prickled at the memory of the animal rage in her dark eyes. That had been beyond his expectations.

He pretended casual indifference as he sharpened a dagger on his whetstone until Vica finally relented and sat down. He noticed she stayed at the base of the tree, and when he glanced up at her from where he worked atop the raised rock, she was slowly stripping the leaves from a fallen branch between her knees. She raised her own eyes as if feeling his gaze, and after a few seconds of locking stares, she lifted the half-stripped branch and made a small swishing motion in his direction.

"Abracadabra," she said dryly. "Break your neck."

Constantine smiled despite himself and returned his attention to his sharpening. Aside from the mildly expectant look in her eyes as if she really did hope that he would proceed to spontaneously snap his neck at her command, Vica seemed like herself again. A little worse for wear with her hair wild and unkempt from their tussle and paler than usual, but at least she looked human. "After this," he promised amidst the sounds of scraping metal gently clawing the air. "I can't stop in the middle."

"Alakazam. You can swallow it."

Constantine's hands stilled abruptly, resuming their work only after he realized that she was talking about his dagger. Something sensitive and raw was still running through his body and riding his nerves after the struggle, and his mind had waded immediately into indecent waters when she had said the word 'swallow' with her pert little mouth. "Sure," he said calmly, continuing to push the blade against the whetstone. "But you'll have to kiss it better."

The twig sailed flimsily through the air, landing only halfway between them.

"Where's your friend?" Constantine asked, keeping his eyes on his work and ignoring her apparent attempt to skewer him.

"Not your concern."

"It is." Constantine lifted the dagger and observed it in the light of the clouded midday sun. "I don't know what tricks dryads have up their sleeves. You can talk and look, but don't touch." He sent her a glancing look. "I don't need you scheming with little wood spirits for help. Makes my job harder than it has to be."

"She's a child. Go to hell, Constantine."

"In due time. Not now."

"Let me know if I can be of help." Vica was stripping another fallen branch again. "Wouldn't want to hold you back."

Several minutes passed, the quiet woodland atmosphere broken only by the scraping of metal on stone. When Constantine was satisfied with both his progress and the timing, he slowly leaned back and propped himself up with his elbows lock and his hands behind him on the grass. He turned his head to look at the mage. "Come here."

"Are we leaving?" Vica remained where she sat.

"Maybe. We should look at your head first."

"Look at your head," she retorted.

Constantine sighed and rose. When he began walking over to Vica, she too scrambled to her feet, but she didn't move away from the tree. He paused a few feet away, not hearing or seeing but most definitely feeling a presence watching him. "Don't," he warned, looking up into the branches overhead. "I'll play nice if you do."

Silence answered him, and he took the last few steps forward to stand directly in front of Vica. "Turn around," he said softly. "Let me see it."

"No."

"And why's that?" he asked patiently.

"It's not your concern."

"It isn't?"

"No. Why are you doing this? Stop it."

Constantine raised a hand and placed it on her shoulder, giving it a slight, angled pull towards him to encourage her to turn her back. "Just turn around, Vica."

She resisted, and when he put more strength in his next nudge, she grabbed at his wrists and attempted to shove it away. "I said no. I'm not dying. Your prize pig is going to make it to the fair, so stop that."

"You don't have to tell me that. Let me see how it looks anyway." Constantine thought back to the clump of hair that had fallen away in his hand. Unable to loosen his grip, the woman in her desperation had simply jerked her head forward with so much force that the hair had torn out of her scalp. Not only that, but then he had forced her back into a tree: slamming his forehead against hers would have pushed the bleeding back of her skull into the wood. "This is pointless," he informed her. "You're not getting one over me by leaving your head bleeding."

"What is your problem?" she demanded, swatting away his hand once more. "It's not your business."

"It is. You're hurt," he said almost cajolingly, pitching his voice at a timbre that he knew could weaken the sturdiest of knees. They weren't in bed but surely something like that could be multi-purposed, he thought, including when he had to convince someone to let him play nurse. A second later, Vica's reaction informed him quite adamantly that trying to ply her with his voice had been a mistake. He caught her raised fists in his hands, keeping them still. "Vica."

"You don't give a damn about hurting people!" she hurled at him, her dark eyes flashing. "That's what you do, isn't it! All the time! It's all you do!"

"Yes."

Vica sneered. "Just wanted to be sure."

"This is different."

"Why!"

"Because I didn't mean it this time." Constantine's voice was low and smooth, and the frankness of his words made Vica's wrists slacken in his grip in stunned surprise and the rest of her body grow still. He was glad. Without having to look up, he had known that the dryad was poised to throw with a handful of acorns.

"Just leave it. Leave me alone."

"I will. After I take a look." He gently pressed forward and deftly turned her around with a dextrous manipulation of her hips and wrists that she had not been prepared for. He was brushing aside her hair and inspecting her scalp a second later.

There were several small patches of stripped scalp, but the bleeding had mostly already clotted. A few clumps hung around the roots of her intact hairs, and Constantine couldn't help but briefly run his fingers through her black locks. She twitched at his touch. For some reason, her reaction made him loosen his hold on her immediately, and she sidled out of his grasp. "That probably hurts," he said unhelpfully. "We're not far from the river if you want to rinse it." Applying a poultice was impossible. The rest of her hair would only get in the way.

"It's fine," she snapped. "Let's just go."

Constantine allowed himself to be pushed aside, and he watched the woman as she stalked away with a grimace furrowing her brow. He looked up. "Leave her alone," he said warningly.

An acorn thumped down at his feet.