After Cya gets ready for a date and Almost Out the Door for a Date and Trying Again and Blind Dateand Catching Up and Getting to (re-)Know him
and Also Needs a Title.

Cya reached over the table and tapped Manus on the top of the head. “Okay. Rule one. No pouty faces in public.”

“I thought rule one was ‘don’t attack you?’”

“That’s rule one for Kept. This is rule one for boyfriends.”

“Oh, so there’s a completely different – wait, what?”

Cya waited a moment for him to catch up, one eyebrow raised in her best teacher face. A moment later, he smirked slowly. He always had been one of her smarter Kept.

“So, does that mean pouty faces are fine in private?”

She grinned at him. “You’re clever. Yes. Look, the real rule is – if we’re going to consider dating, then we’re dating as adults.”

“So I can’t expect you to tell me what to do?” She thought he might look a little sad about that one.

So she gave him her best toothy grin, the one she’d been getting a lot of practice with lately. “Oh, I didn’t say that. But that’s for private. We date as adults, we can play as adults if that’s what you want, and once in a while I’ll probably tell you what to do. I mean, I am dictator – ah, Mayor – of a city-state. I can be pretty bossy when I want to be.”

He grinned at her, the sadness clearly gone. “I wouldn’t know anything at all about you being bossy, Miz Mayor. Nothing at all. So – you mean it?”

“I mean it. No sulking in public. It’s ridiculous.” She winked at him, because some part of her was still remembering him three decades ago and wearing her collar, and she wanted to make sure he knew she was teasing.

“No. Uh.” He shook his head, looking flustered. Some part of him might be remembering that, too. “I mean. Uh. Dating? You’re interested? I figured once you saw it was one of your former, um. ‘Kept du Jour’ that you’d be gone.”

“Look, you’re doing what? Being judge and ambassador for a nearby city-state? Look, that’s impressive. It’s impressive for people twice your age and, dead gods, I hope that didn’t sound as condescending to you as it sounded from here.” She ducked her head, realizing she was blushing and wishing she could in good conscience burrow through the floor and run away.

He chuckled. “Look, that’s kind of what I’m worried about.”

“…me being condescending? ‘Cause I don’t think I’m usually that bad to my peers.” Then again, her closest peers were a formerly-insane samurai, a currently-insane goblin, and a cowboy with a fidelity issue.

“No. No, ‘cause I mean, you remember the world Before. You’re got a lot more life experience than I do. Why would you have any interest in, well, me?”

Cya looked at him over her glass for a minute. Then she put her glass down and looked at him a little more. “Something I learned – well, far more recently than I ought to have, I think, is that people grow up at wildly different rates. From the sound of things, you grew up. Me, I grew up about when I finished this city. So… we’re pretty close to on par.

“Besides.” She gave him her brightest smile. “You already know all of my sensitive spots and I already know how to make you squirm.”

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After Cya gets ready for a date and Almost Out the Door for a Date and Trying Again and Blind Dateand Catching Up and Getting to (re-)Know him.

Cya looked at Manus over her water. The waitress was hovering nearby; she gestured the woman over and placed her order, let Manus place his. She ordered wine from the local vineyard because she was proud of it (and because there wasn’t that much other wine to be had, although she’d recently opened up trade with a place a couple days’ travel away). He ordered whisky.

“You get why I built it?”

“I thought I knew back then. I mean, it pisses Regine right off. The school, especially. Kids that go from your school to her school – oh, it makes her mad.” He grinned in that way that shared in the schadenfreude of Regine’s anger.

She smiled back, because she had been trying to piss Regine off, although it had been a tertiary goal.

“But I mean, that’s the school. You could’ve built a shell around it and called it good, but you have like a whole nation here.” He sipped his water. “I get it now. I didn’t, then.”

“Yeah.” She looked out the window. There was a park behind the restaurant, and through a decorative screen of ivy, she could see kids playing. “I wanted to build safety.”

“That’s pretty cool, you know.” He cleared his throat. “So. Warwick, he said you were looking for someone to date. I don’t remember… well, you didn’t date before, did you? I guess I might have missed it…

“I didn’t,” she confirmed. “This is, well. It’s a new thing.”

“And… you probably weren’t looking for old Kept.” He looked down at the table.

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After Cya gets ready for a date and Almost Out the Door for a Date and Trying Again and Blind Dateand Catching Up.

Cya studied Manus thoughtfully. “You like Montana?”

“Let’s just say… I like what you’ve done with the place. I’m not old enough to remember Montana,” he admitted, “but I like the Cloverleaf region. You’re still here, though. When I was here, I thought maybe you’d move on.”

“I hope you’re not disappointed.” She struggled to keep anything out of her voice. Life had been easier, in a manner of speaking, when she just wasn’t feeling things.

“Oh, not at all.” He looked at her. “Something’s changed in you.” He flopped a hand. “Thirty years, a lot has changed, I’m sure. I’ve grown up, changed, I imagine you have too. But you’re a lot more animated.”

“I’ve been, ah. Learning a lot about myself.” She shrugged. “So you stuck around?”

“I worked for a caravan for a while. I’m pretty good as a guard, and there were trade caravans that were having trouble with bandits and Nedetakaei, wyverns and wolves. And that worked out fine, but when I talked a bandit out of attacking, he decided that I should be working for him for a while… so that was about four years.” He grinned, lopsided and not at all abashed. “Turns out I like working for people. I probably should’ve figured that bit out a while ago. But I didn’t like…” the smile slipped. “Well, I didn’t like what he was doing. So I moved on, which took some work, let me tell you. Did a few other things before I ended up with this judge-like gig. I like it.” He leaned back in his chair and looked at her. “I get why you built a city, now.”

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After Cya gets ready for a date and Almost Out the Door for a Date and Trying Again and Blind Date.

“You look good.”

It was no surprise he was handsome, of course; for one, he was from Addergoole, where handsome was the norm, and for another, she’d picked him to be her Kept, which almost always meant that they fit within her two very specific types.

It wasn’t what she meant, in this case.

He smirked back at her and pretended to misunderstand. “Good genes.” He brushed away her response before she could say it. “I’ve been doing well. Doing good, too.” He ducked his head and grinned up at her through a sudden fringe of brown-black hair, a trick he’d excelled at thirty years ago and seemed to have been practicing. “Turns out your lessons stick.”

She sipped her water and studied him. “I’m not looking for someone to teach lessons to, right now.”

“If you were,” he teased, his smiled wide, “You’d be at Addergoole and not on a blind date, right?”

“Exactly. You know, there was a time when they tried to threaten me to stop Keeping people.”

“I can imagine. It was probably a little worrying for them, having someone they distrust scooping people up every year.” HIs smile turned a little crooked. “Not that your Kept don’t benefit.”

“Well, that’s the idea…. half the idea,” she admitted. “I like having Kept around, too.”

“I’d noticed.” It was his turn to sip his drink. “You know I liked being around, too? I mean, most of the time.”

“I guessed. I’m not good with – with emotions.” It grated to admit that, but if she’d learned anything with all the work she’d been doing with Leo, it was that. “But you didn’t seem miserable, at least.”

“I knew I wasn’t ready for the world, I just, well, didn’t think what I was ready for was a collar.” He shrugged a little. “It was a good year. And, like I said, you rubbed off on me.”

“Doing good, you said.” She eyed him thoughtfully over her cup. “What sort of good?”

“Oh, you know, building walls, mending fences, working as a diplomat-slash-small-town sheriff and judge. Pretty much I tell people that the black cow is Farmer Gonzales’ and the white cow is Farmer Jones’, and they both agree to let me make that decision, and the I do the same thing between Neihart Mt. and the next two city-states that aren’t, well, here. I do a lot of talking.”

“I don’t remember you being all that talkative.”

“I’m not, normally.” He smirked crookedly at her. “But it turns out I’m good at it, and they needed someone who wasn’t from around there. Since I’m from the East Coast…”

“Oh, dead gods, I didn’t strand you, did I?”

“Oh, hey, no. I never wanted to go home. And you offered to have your teleporter take me anywhere, remember?” He shook his head. “We’re good. I just wanted to stay here.”

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After Cya gets ready for a date and Almost Out the Door for a Date and Trying Again.

She had agreed to meet him in one of her favorite restaurants, in the back left corner booth. When she got there, she found herself staring.

By arrangement, she was wearing a dark red dress and a gold net in her hair. There was a man in a top hat in the suggested booth.

A familiar man.

The top hat had a red flower in the band; it was either her date or there was a series of coincidences too huge to be likely going on.

There were a lot of people who looked very similar, she reminded herself. One of their great-grandchildren was the spitting image of Leo’s half-brother Yngvi, for instance.

“Hello. I’m told that there’s geese flying south.”

The guard who had set them up had an amazing sense of the dramatic.

“Oh, but only in the… Cya?”

“Manus?” She sat down across the booth from him. “I thought it might be you. I didn’t know you were in town.”

“I wasn’t. That is, well.” He ducked his head. “I’ve been working in Neihart Mt., but Warwick, he travels there for the city. And he said he had a friend he thought I should meet….”

“He said something similar to me. Well…” Cya smiled crookedly. “It’s been a while. Twenty, thirty years…”

“Thirty-three, since you Kept me.”

“I was thinking since I’d seen you.”

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After Cya gets ready for a date and Almost Out the Door for a Date.

The first date was… awkward.

No, the first date wasn’t. The second one was awkward.

The first date, he’d looked at her, dressed up instead of the way he’d met her, and cleared his throat in a sort of panicked noise. “I didn’t realize you were the Mayor!” He stood up so quickly she thought that he might have a speed-based power. “I, uh. I have to go – I have to go. I’m sorry. But I – no. You’re the Mayor.”

She’d gone running after that, back into her “plain-clothes” with her hair twisted up in a scarf so its trademark red wasn’t visible. The guards along the city wall knew who she was, of course, but they weren’t going to gossip about the Mayor and the angry look on her face. They liked their jobs.

The second one, then. She’d been a little poised for trouble. She’d made sure he knew she was the Mayor. She’d picked a place that her power said he and she would both enjoy.

And she’d Found him, after all. He was someone who could like her, who she could like.

And they found they had almost nothing to talk about. She worked in education, urban planning, and the explosive business of protecting her territory. He was a wanderer, a vagabond, who fixed things as he wandered through. “I like your city,” he said, and probably meant it, “but how do you – I mean. Don’t you get bored, being in the same place, year after year?”

“But it’s not the same place,” she’d protested. “It’s always changing. Always evolving. That’s the trick. A city, one with people, is never static.”

They’d stared at each other in mutual incomprehension and found safer topics to cover until the check came.

The third one had lasted several dates and a few trips home. The fourth one had even met Leo.

This time, she’d let one of her friends in the Guard set her up. It couldn’t, she figured, be any worse than her own attempts.

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After Cya gets ready for a date

Cya was too old for this.

“Go.” Her Kept gave her a gentle shove towards the door. “Listen… ma’am.” He seemed to suddenly realize he was giving her orders. “Just ah.” He coughed. “I was serious. Remember that he’s probably sane, okay? I mean, unless you were doing your trick specifically for someone who wasn’t.”

Cya raised her eyebrows at him, which really wasn’t fair of her. “Do you think I’d forget that?”

He heroically didn’t squirm. “Yeah? I mean. No offense. But I know you’ve told me your crew is a lot more stable than they used to be, but I also know you built a city with your bare hands. And I know what kind of person you’ve been Keeping for – for forever. I mean, I’m that kind of person. And I know what I’m like.”

She tousled his hair – dark hair, this time – and gave him an affectionate smile. “I don’t think I went looking for someone who needed me. But my subconscious does weird things with the Finding sometimes. Thanks, sweetie. I’ll try to remember he’s a normal person.

Normal. She was surprised to find how nervous the thought made her. He was right, Barzillay was. She didn’t have a lot of experience with normal – with normal adults. Normal kids, sure. She’d been teaching for decades. But normal adults?

Remember that he’s sane. What would he do when he realized how much she… wasn’t?

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Okay, I’m not actually sure when this is. It’s in a timeline we’re exploring where Leo and Cya actually talk. <.<

And then Leo told Cya she should try dating.

Cya was too old for this.

And maybe, some rebellious part of her brain muttered, she was too young for it.

She checked herself in the mirror for a third time. She gave her Kept-of-the-year a kiss on the cheek. She checked the mirror again.

Her Kept, one of the more clever of the twenty-somethings she’d Kept over the decades, chuckled gently at her. “You look beautiful, you know. You always do. You look regal tonight.”

“Too much?”

“No.” He smiled crookedly. “I could wish it was me, but -”

“But.” They’d had that conversation. She gave him another hug. “The night’s your own. Do not do anything that will make the city guard have to come find me. Or make me have to come find you.”

“Yes, ma’am.” As far as Kept went, he was one of her better behaved, so he only smirked at the unneeded admonitions. “And you, Mayor Cya, make sure to give him a chance, and don’t try to fix all of his problems in one day.”

“…Have you been talking to Leo?”

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