Work Text:
The way south from the Friendly Arm Inn was longer than Gilmar had anticipated, and rather more full of gibberlings and bandits and godsforsaken ogres besides that, and so they had had to make camp just north of Beregost, close enough that they could just about see the town in the distance but far enough that they couldn't possibly press on.
Gilmar had insisted on taking first watch, well aware that he wouldn't sleep any better here in the wilderness than he had the previous night in the inn, where he'd spent half the night too tense to sleep and the other half jolting awake from nightmares every few seconds. Better, he'd thought, that he use his restlessness to keep their little group safe, better to be useful than simply lie awake in misery.
"Thinking hard, Gilly?" Imoen said, as she dropped down to share the log he was sitting on. She tucked herself close to his side, staring out into the darkness with him.
"Oh, you know me, Immy, that's the only kind I can do," he joked idly, making an exaggeratedly dimwitted face at her. "No, just... wondering. Jaheira said- and I do know that they both traveled with Dad for a bit, but- she said they were meant to look after us, as though..."
"Well, what's wrong with that? They seem nice enough, and- I mean, I don't know, maybe it'd be good to have someone looking out for us right now."
"No, you're right, it's- I just wonder," Gilmar began, pausing to get his thoughts in order, "I suppose I just wonder when exactly they worked this all out, because they don't seem old enough to be anyone's parents, do they? They barely look older than I am."
"Does it matter? Really matter, I mean, not just bug you?"
Gilmar sighed, bumping his head against the top of Imoen's. "Not really. It just feels a bit odd, especially since-"
Imoen gasped, loudly, and Gilmar immediately clapped a hand over her mouth.
"Quietly, Immy, they're sleeping, you menace," he hissed. She licked his hand, and he flailed backwards, landing sprawled in the dirt beside the fallen log. "Imoen!"
"Gilly!" Imoen replied, mockingly. "Lemme talk, you big dummy."
"Not if you're going to wake the whole forest!"
"So which one of them do you have a crush on, then?" Imoen continued, ignoring his admonitions to instead smirk down at him.
"Shut up and go to bed, Imoen."
"It's Khalid, isn't it? He's so your type."
"Firstly, I am absolutely not looking at any part of the married couple we are traveling with. Secondly, if I were thinking anything like that, it'd probably be about both of them because look at them. And thirdly, go to sleep, Imoen, or I'm going to dump you in the first river we see on this journey," Gilmar hissed, sitting up and levering himself back onto the log. "I need to focus on watching for danger."
"Good luck with that, you've never focused a day in your life," she replied with a grin, standing up and walking over to her bedroll. "Night, Gilly."
"Good night, Imoen," Gilmar replied with an eyeroll, though the effect was rather tempered by the fond grin that accompanied it. Imoen was a menace, certainly, but she was also Gilmar's little sister, and his closest friend. There were worse things in the world than for her to have seen through him in an instant.
Besides, better that he be distracted by the sturdiness of Khalid's hands- a marvel, when the man was so often trembling- or the elegant natural grace of Jaheira's movement, than that he be distracted by the far worse things that weighed on his mind right now. The less he thought about Gorion's death, the better.