Questions Unasked

By: Jamie (Ptrst) (SlytherinHeart)

Summary: Alys finally gets the courage to ask the questions she had wanted to for ages.

Rating: G

Author's note: A fan fiction based on Dragon's Bait by Vivian Vande Velde. Takes place after the end of the book

She looked up at him. The one who had found her when she was helpless and most alone, and instead of taking advantage of her, helped her do what needed to be done. "Selendrile?" she asked. Of course, he responded immediately, looking back at her almost before she had said his name, and giving her one of those looks she could never identify.

"Yes, Alys?" he asked. She had finally convinced him to humour her in some of her pesky human etiquettes.

She decided to finally ask him the question that she had wondered about almost since she met him, but that she had always been too busy, afraid, or insecure to ask. "Why is it that nobody else can tell that you're not a human?"

His face was expressionless for a moment, or maybe it just had an expression she couldn't identify. "Because they couldn't know," he said simply. She was mystified. "When you first saw me in my human form, you knew that I was a dragon, and in some small way, you were grateful. Everyone else... if they knew I was a dragon, they would be terrified, and had no reason to believe that I was anything besides what I appeared to be."

"But your eyes -"

"What about them?"

"They're not a... human colour."

"Humans don't check the colour of eyes as a sign of whether someone should be trusted. I acted human enough for them, and that's what mattered."

Alys couldn't deny that, after the first night at the inn, Selendrile certainly acted human enough. She knew that, if she hadn't known the difference, his actions wouldn't have given him away even to her; and she was certainly watching him closer than anyone else. Except...

"Why were the women so immediately charmed by you?" she asked so abruptly that she almost blushed. Almost.

He hesitated. Not a dragon hesitation, a sign of some mysterious, alien emotion, but a human hesitation. He didn't want to answer her question. "Because I didn't care about them."

She choked on air at that, though she coughed silently so as to not let him know. "Pardon?" she asked in a faux-innocent voice, mocking slightly the one he had used on her on multiple occasions. She restrained herself from smirking at him.

Again, he hesitated. Then, to her surprise, he sighed - something he no doubt picked up from her. "I purposely stopped you from being - what did you call it? Charmed? - Because I knew that it would have been the cruelest thing in my power to do, if I had. My intentions were never to be cruel to you, whatever they may have seemed."

She smiled. "And now?"

"What?"

This time, she actually did blush. "Did you purposely charm me now, out of cruelty?"

"No," he replied. "That was strictly unintentional. And most definitely not cruel."

And it wasn't.