#presented mostly without comment

Everyone else called it “wrong”, but Jemma loved her cousin Lance and he’d tried so hard to live with them when he came back. She’d seen him struggle with trying to be normal – but he couldn’t manage it. He was too damaged and scared and powerful from whatever the King’s sorcerers had done to him – what they had had him do – and so he’d gone into the Wilds.

If the raiders are made up of the wild men like him than they village would never stand a chance – but Jemma doesn’t think so. They aren’t skilled enough, aren’t good enough to be that.

The village waits for Sir Gonzales to come, hunkering down and hoping this too will pass.

But Sir Gonzales never comes.

The raiders keep attacking.

She attends the town meeting, deciding what to do, though she knows she won’t help to make the decision. Still, her property, the property she worked with her Will before his death, is well outside of town and at risk.

May – whose husband was one of those killed in the first attack by the raiders – speaks loudly about learning to defend themselves and fighting back. Hand – with all her property in the center of the village advises to move the outermost families in and to cut their losses – to wait it out.

But as Coulson tries for a compromise between the two women, it’s Mack’s mumbles about the wild men that gives her the idea.

Her cousin is dead – she knows because before he would drop by at least once a season and help her fix up the house after her Will passed away. He hasn’t been by in over a year now, and as much as she misses him and part of her thinks he could’ve lived longer in the village than in the Wild – married Miss Morse as he was planning to before he went away to war – she knows he was happy there in the mountains. She knows because he told her, just as he told her stories of the other men and so she knows they aren’t bad men – despite the things that Mack is implying.

She doesn’t do anything about her idea until nearly harvest, however.

The attacks have continued – have gotten worse even. She’s living in her brother’s house – which is slightly awkward since he only married Daisy shortly before the raids started and she very much feels as if she’s imposing, but it’s not safe to stay outside the village anymore.

May also got her way, and they are learning to fight – but they’re farmers and need to work during the day and their prospects are looking increasingly dire as Sir Gonzales continues not to return and the raiders circle.

Finding out Daisy is pregnant though, that’s what finally forces Jemma to move – as afraid as she is, and she is – not of them but of the other things in the Wilds and, of course, the raiders – she’s not going to not try everything she can think of to protect them.

So she packs a small bag and goes into the Wilds.

Lance told her – never directly but in the details of his story – how to get to one of the meeting space where the wild men meet.

Even wild men need company sometimes.

She hopes she won’t have to wait long, before someone shows – she hopes they don’t avoid the area when they hear her or see her or smell her.

It’s an easy enough place to find – though she’s glad she’s wearing some of Leo’s pants or the brambles probably would’ve never let her through – but there’s no one there.

So she waits.

And waits.

And waits.

It’s not quite dusk when she starts to worry. She’s only brought enough for two days, maybe three if she can manage to forge and find a water source in the meantime, but the note she left only said two days and she’s afraid someone will try to find her if she’s not back by then.

She’s not sure what she’s going to do if no one comes.

Come back, she supposes.

And keep coming back until she meets someone who can –

The hair rises on the back of her neck and there’s no change in the air or the birdsong or anything but suddenly she is very sure that she’s not alone. She turns her head, not getting up off her rock for fear of startling whoever it is but she can’t see anyone, not by turning her head either direction and then she does pivot on the rock and –

Still no one.

Her heart is pounding now and she – she remembers how Lance could move, after he came back, how he could hide and no one could find him. She has to swallow twice and wet her lips before she can manage to force the words out, and they aren’t as confident as she wants but – she cannot see whoever it is and she’s more nervous now than she was before when the whole concept was abstract.

“Blessings upon you,” she manages, voice only shaking a little as she offers the traditional greeting. It doesn’t matter what corner of the kingdom the wild man came from before this – he’ll recognize it. She hopes.

There’s movement out of the corner of her eye and she turns and her breath catches in her throat.

“And upon you,” says the most handsome man Jemma has ever seen. And then he just stands there. She’s still sitting mostly on the rock and he seems as tall as the trees – she’s not surprised, anymore, that she couldn’t see him before. He’s wearing a mismatch of linen and leather in greys and greens and browns and even while she stares at him he seems to blur a little around the edges and melt back into the forest.

He’s regarding her curiously, but he hasn’t said anything and she has planned a whole speech – which she’s forgotten in the face of, well, his face.

“We need help,” she finally says, standing on shaky legs and finding that he’s still tall enough that she has to tilt her head back to meet his bemused gaze. “I know that you – that all of you – don’t like to interfere or be involved and I do understand why but…could we give you something for your assistance? Land or…or crops or blankets or anything? I don’t – I cannot promise more than I myself can provide and I’m not very good at weaving but I can barter for it if you’d like and I do think the rest of the village would be willing to make the agreement if you – if you would help us?”

He grins, teeth brilliant white against the tan of his skin, and steps forward and around her, settling on one of the rocks close to the one she’d been perched on. “You want to make a bargain.” He considers his words, obviously rolling them around his mouth before settling on, “No, not a bargain. A deal.”

Jemma nods, unsure. Lance was more confident, more settled once he’d started to live mostly in the Wild but she hadn’t – he wasn’t like this. “Yes,” she agrees, when it appears he’s not planning to say more.

“You want the raiders dead?” he asks, head tilted towards her.

She recoils because – because she does. They killed Andrew and Eliot and Rose and Danny and so many others already and they could kill Daisy and her unborn baby and Leo and – she takes a deep breath, not quite ready to face the ferocity of her own thoughts. “I want them…gone,” she decides on, biting her lower lip, “and if you have to kill them for that to happen then yes. But just…just away from here would be enough.”

“Ah,” he says, leaning back and smiling at her, “that changes things.” She’s not sure what he means and before she can ask he’s extending a hand towards her. “You can call me…Grant, by the way. What is your name, miss?”

Her gaze drops, embarrassed, even as she reaches out to take his hand. “Jemma, I’m Jemma – I’m sorry I didn’t –“ his fingers are under her chin and he’s waving her apology away as he tilts her head up.

“I think that the price for getting rid of your problem will be a wife, will your village do that for me, Jemma?”

She blinks, and stutters and – she’s never wanted to get married again and she cannot agree on the village’s behalf if she herself won’t do it, even if she suspects one of the other unmarried women will be happy to take him and – she nods. “Yes, if you can get rid of the raiders than I think suits will be accepted. And if no one else will than I will. But…” she considers him, his fingers under her chin are warm and oddly comforting, “but don’t you need to talk to the other men first?”

He grins, and now she’s close enough to see how his pupils aren’t quite round and his eyeteeth are long and behind his mess of black hair his ears come to delicate points – or maybe he only just let her see and – “Oh dear,” she breathes.