Strongjaw & The Dish

10

He'd been here since almost the second he got into the mansion. He'd been chopping away at the fighting dummy and though he'd left a huge pile of wood shavings and chunks of oak all over the place, he didn't feel even a little bit better.

He'd tried so hard to give her space like Pike said. To not pop her bubble. To keep away. But every day he saw her he wanted to kiss her and hold her and laugh like they used to. He wanted to be a hero from one of those pretty stories Tary had told him on their journeys. Riding in on his white horse with shiny armor to save the damsel in distress.

He hadn't known then what a damsel was. Tary said it was just a word for a lady who needed help but Keyleth said it was a word that made people think that a woman needed rescuing because she was a woman and how could a mere woman possibly handle trouble herself and ... well, she'd gone on for like a really lot of time about it. Grog would never use that word but, still he wanted that last part. The part where the lady said 'my hero!' and she kissed the handsome knight and they rode off together and lived happily ever after.

Instead she looked sad and scared when she didn't know he was looking and mean and pissed when she did. She never smiled anymore. His chest hurt when he thought about it. Tears ran down, snot soaking into his mustache as he grit his teeth and kept swinging at the dummy until it finally broke in half, the top part cartwheeling across the sand, sending up puffs of those soft grains until it slowed down and slid to a stop just shy of the far side.

He heard footsteps and instinctively wiped at his face with his free hand and sniffed hard to hide the fact he'd been crying. Not that it wasn't manly, because it was stupid to think a man couldn't do anything he wanted, just like it was stupid to think a woman couldn't be strong and brave and kick ass, but because he didn't want to worry whoever it was coming down to check on him.

"Oh. It's you." Trisha stopped at the bottom of the stairway. "I heard the ... fighting." She looked away, her brows coming together and making that line of unhappiness over her nose again.

"Yep." He said as he forced himself to walk away from her and drag the wooden dummy half out of the sand and throw it off into a corner with a loud clatter. He didn't look her way because it made that chest pain worse. He listened though, for the sound of her leaving. It didn't come. "You um... want to fight?" He said. "I mean, I gotta stay ready to defend my title and Woody there was like... no help at all." He sounded so casual he was actually really proud of himself.

"I don't think I'd be much better." She chuckled, as if she'd been joking, but even he could tell there wasn't any real heart in it. "I don't seem to have a very good record lately with fighting goliaths. Pretty damn useless actually..." She wrapped her arms around herself and her head bowed.

"Okay, that's it!" He growled and with the fires of rage behind him, he threw his bloodaxe aside and closed the distance between them, swinging out at Trisha with his fist. Thankfully, he'd been right when he'd assumed she'd react without thinking, simultaneously glad and frustrated that she ducked under his fist, then proud when her elbow met his lower back as she side-stepped him and dropped into a defensive posture.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" She looked around quickly, memorizing in an instant no doubt where every possible exit, every weapon, every item she could use to her advantage was. If he weren't blind with fury he'd have offered her a thumbs up for smartness. As it was, however, he wasn't that clear-headed. Turning deftly he sprang at her and caught her by her arm, twisting his body and falling at the same time, using his greater weight to throw her across the sand.

Just like ol' Woody, she bounced and flopped, sending up gouts of sand before she came to a rest, instantly rolling to her feet and darting to the wall where she grabbed a broadsword and turned it to get the weight settled right before she spat out the glob of blood from a busted lip.