Vanja Lays Low

Dustown - Pin’s & Needle’s Fight Club
78th day of Autumn

Tonight, at Pin’s and Needles, Vanja is just watching the fights.

Earlier in the week, after the disaster in the sewers, Vanja had come to fight. To remind herself she was still strong. She had been thrown into a table, then, though. The force nothing to the warhammer that had collapsed her chest earlier that night, but her vision still going briefly white from the pain.

After a hit like that, witnessed by so many, Vanja knew she would have to pretend a longer recovery. To be absent for a few days, before returning. To be seen injured, though the bandages around her ribs are just for show - she had healed herself as soon as she’d gotten back to the Majestic. Laying low meant seeming injured sometimes, not being suspiciously magically healed after each fight. It didn’t mean never fighting.

It was frustrating, though. Maddening. To have to sit and watch. To seem so weak. But learning to lie, to be a decent actor was a valuable skill, too.

It was something she should have realized earlier. That she should have thought of herself.

Today, the two fighters are both men. They usually were. Vanja isn’t the only woman who fights, but it was much less common. And as much as she could pretend otherwise, she didn’t blend well into this crowd. Another thing she’d been naive to ignore.

It was the same reason they would notice her absence, though, Vanja rationalized. It was better, really, to keep up some kind of presence, at a place where she was a regular.

When she’d shown up tonight, Pin, the little gnome, had hailed her from the bar. Needle had flipped to a new page of his book.

“The return of the Red Menace!” he croaked, “Bets on Skau Vanja?”

Several onlookers indicated bets - holding coin in the air, or hollering across the room at Needle. As Vanja entered the room, she allowed a clap on her back to send her stumbling, and she cried out.

“Sorry. Not this time,” she said. She’d lifted her tunic to reveal the swaths of linen around her midsection.

“Damn,” said a man next to her - Gunnar. She’d fought him before, and won. He grinned with a set of broken teeth - an old injury, though Vanja had cut her knuckles on them. “Well, it was bound to catch up to you, eventually.” Gunnar laughed, “Good thing it wasn’t that pretty face, huh?” He feigned a strike at Vanja’s head, and she blocked automatically, laughing herself.

“Good for you, Gunnar,” said Vanja, “you know you like to look.” She tossed her hair back - she’d left it mostly loose, another indicator that she wouldn’t be fighting.

So, for now, Vanja just watched, resisting the urge to move, to be on her feet, to release her anger and resentment and endless fearsick energy in a flurry of blows, in sweat and adrenaline and blood. The bandages were a good cover - they reminded her she was supposed to seem hurt, as she sat, perched on the edge of the same table that days earlier had cracked her ribs. How many times had that been, now? Three. Maybe more. It was a lucky thing, really, the riverlight. She had taken it for granted. She’d taken a lot of things for granted, recently.

Vanja laughed at herself. She had been so stupid, and her mouth was sour from the anger of it.

She could do this, though. She would learn this lesson too.

She’d lay low.

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Vanja Lays Low