strangetrip | [EP] musketeers don't hide

The longer Constance was here, the less she could let herself believe it was all some fever dream. She was here, stuck in an inn in the Americas almost four hundred years in the future. As much as she wanted to be home, she didn't have the means to get there, and she wasn't going to sit around doing nothing. She hadn't done that while her husband was at the front; she wouldn't do it now.

She needed to learn about all the new technology – a new word, one she'd learned from River Song – and learn English, and she wasn't going to do either hiding away in her room or in the kitchens, although after a week watching the inn's unnerving cook and preparing things that didn't include chicken, for whoever was hungry, she thought she was starting to get a feel for the stove and ovens, and the rooms cooler than most cellars without being underground.

Today she'd made several meat pies and some with fruit, similar to the apple pie many had had the day they arrived, and taken them to the cafe. After setting them out for people to serve themselves, much as she would've at the garrison, if the cadets... or Porthos gave her the time to, she sat at a table nearby with needle and thread. A seam in her overbodice needed repair, and it with only the one outfit it was the only mending she was comfortable doing in public, regardless how little most of the women here wore.

She looked up as she heard someone come in, threading the needle by feel alone, and offered them a friendly grin. "'ello." It wasn't much, and she'd have to switch to French for anything else, but a simple greeting she'd heard often enough to offer in English. "Il y a de la nourriture, si vous la voulez," she added, gesturing toward the pies with a tip of her head.

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He was showing off now, and Constance laughed, the bright sound dimming with memories of her favorite show-offs. Porthos and Aramis were more likely to use their guns for it, but gambling on their skills had earned them coin more than once, not that they needed the excuse. And they would've been the first to challenge him to some kind of pistols versus knives just for the fun of it.

Athos was far more practical, and would've feigned disinterest in any such games (while watching intently from one side), but she could imagine him appreciating how finely crafted the dagger was.

Constance wasn't Aramis. Or Porthos. Or Athos. So her reaction was different too. She bit at her lip, considering, the same flash of enthusiasm in her eyes she'd once given for pistols and for swords. She leaned forward, drawing the dagger from its sheath at her back – slowly, because men that at ease with weapons could react to potential threats before they had a chance to think – and held it the way he'd held his. "Enseignez-moi?" she asked, pointing with her free hand to his dagger, and then at herself.

"I can be reasonably sure you're not asking me to stab you," Vax told her, slipping Whisper neatly back into its sheath and setting his plate aside on one table.

"That's a sturdy little pig-sticker," he smiled, the expression showing pleasantly surprised that the unassuming baker woman had that in back of her apron the whole while. He looked at how she held it, reaching carefully to hold the hilt in the one hand and rearrange her fingers just slightly with the other. He gave her wrist a bit of a firm wiggle to loosen her up. "Lead with your index and thumb for throwing," her tapped those first digits. "But follow through with the whole of your arm," he took his hand back to pat at his own elbow and shoulder. He demonstrated the empty-handed gesture he'd use to toss the dagger at an unsuspecting pie plate on another table. Not that he was recommending she start throwing sharp things in close quarters...

Oh, she knew that look, and Constance expression turned almost smug. Aramis had worn a similar one the first time he saw her wield a sword. And many of the cadets had before they learned not to underestimate Madame D'Artagnan.

No, Constance wasn't going to start throwing knives inside – she did have the sense God gave her, thank you, even if some people she could name didn't seem to use theirs. But she let him adjust her grip, focusing on how it felt, cool steel under her fingers and the way the weight of the dagger balanced. She watched just as carefully his motions as he demonstrated a throw. Maybe sometime soon she could find a place out of the way where she could practice. Then wouldn't D'Artagnan be surprised when she got home and had learned a new and useful trick.

She aped her new teacher's actions, not letting go of the dagger obviously, but the rest, to get the feel of it. It felt awkward, not quite right, and she shook her head, trying again more slowly.

"You're sitting," Vax pointed out constructively from around his continuation of the meat pie. "It's not a leisurely activity. You've got to get the right posture for the follow-through, at least while you're still figuring it out."

"Stand." He knew it was all babble to her, so Vax slowly exaggerated his gestures as he rose from his own seat, set back his shoulders to draw the line of his torso upright, put his weight on his rear heel, and mimed the throw of his fork - without releasing, of course.

It wasn't a sword-fighting stance, but it wouldn't be, would it? But between D'Artagnan teaching Constance, her watching him train with the others, and seeing the cadets at practice, she knew the importance of having the proper posture for the act. She didn't have to understand what he was saying to hear similar instructions in her memory.

She stood, the flick of her hand adjusting her skirts so practiced it happened subconsciously while right then she wasn't thinking about them or that sort of proper. Her gaze traveled from him to her imagined target and back several times as she adjusted her stance. When she felt it matched his, the arm holding the knife moved through its arc once again. That did feel better, and she smiled briefly, before the eagerness to learn something new faded under more pressing matters.

"But you didn't come in here for me to pester you. You wanted food." She waved him back toward his plate. "I can wheedle lessons from you later."

He still didn't know what she was saying, but the universal feminine shooing of eat, eat! came through easily enough. He would've asked more about her martial training, if he could have - and it seemed to him she understood how to go about beginning to learn the forms of combat, so that she probably had experience in another discipline. He'd seen that trick done with skirts before - and always by dangerous women.

"Maybe we'll teach each other a thing or two," Vax'ildan suggested (as if it were an original thought), though he helped himself to a slice of fruit pie for the time being. It seemed then that they'd have all the time they wanted for lessons.

[EP] musketeers don't hide

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