Disclaimer: I do not own them. That honour goes to Martin Baynton, Weta, and Nelvana. I do, however, love them dearly.

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Jane had grown to love his hands.

When they were children, it had always been easy to read his every emotion. They had flickered across his face like ripples in the fountain, and he never even seemed to realise. But what was true of the boy had change in the man, and now his face was a mask of infuriating indifference. In battle or peace, drunk or sober, alone or surrounded by others, his expression never changed. He might laugh, or smile, or frown, but the underlying mood was unchanging. I do not care.

Jane could do the same, although for the sake of her friends she tried not to. Indifference was a form of armour, she knew. If you did not allow yourself to grow attached to the knights you fought with, it hurt less to see them struck down in battle. Gunther had turned that armour into an art form, distancing himself from others, his stoicism inspiring awe.

But he forgot about his hands. All the emotion he blocked from his face seemed to flow through them, unchecked, while he faced life without so much as a flinch.

They would shake, at the end of a particularly fierce battle, when he stumbled back to camp to find her there already; more if she arrived after he did. When someone called out a crude remark in her direction, the kind she had learned to ignore years ago, his hands would clench, or his grip on the hilt of his sword would tighten until his knuckles turned white. When she took a wound, his hands would be steady as they wrapped her in temporary dressings, pale as they waited for someone with more experience to arrive and treat her. His index finger tapped when he was bored, he gripped things tightly when he was in pain, but too proud to admit it, and pressed all his fingertips together when he thought.

She loved them best in the dark. They were strong hands, as rough and calloused as her own, but, as they touched her, trailing heat and sweat and need, she could read those hands like a book.

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A/N: Short and, well, hopefully sweet. Damn I love my Gunther/Jane. XD