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His arms itched.
It wasn't the itch of a poisonous plant, or that of some of the more insidious drugs or anti-personnel chemicals he'd run across as a mercenary. Those went away quickly enough, thanks to his nanites. This was a deeper-than-skin itch, a tingling that felt hot all the way through muscle to bone.
In three places, on each forearm.
Of course his arms felt different, Tyr told himself. He didn't have to wear gauntlets any more to protect the tender skin where each bone spur once protruded. He didn't have to remember not to flex his arms *that* way when he was upset while still around people who were on his side.
Who might, almost, be considered friends now.
At first, he'd turned his wrists cautiously, noticing the different pull of muscle on joint, of tendon on cartilage. He hadn't realized how much smaller his arms looked without the gauntlets; it was as if his arms belonged to someone else, someone smaller, and had been grafted onto his body.
His hands were still his own.
Shirts felt different. The slit sleeves left cool drafts floating up his skin, chilling him unexpectedly. He compromised by rolling them up for a while, but ultimately he gave in and told the ship to give him different clothes. The ship had scanned him and complied, and he supposed he was grateful that it had not exercised its occasional sense of humor in so doing. The new clothes were as nondescript as his former garb, in similar dark colors, and without a resemblance to a uniform, so he was satisfied.
But his arms still itched.
The gold edition of Trance suggested cremes to make the skin less sensitive, and he'd tried one, but it only numbed the surface and banked the fire beneath. After a day he'd put the creme aside, determined to wait out the odd sensation.
"Still?" Trance asked him as he turned his arm and glanced at it for the thousandth time.
"Yes." He surveyed her. "Do you still miss --"
"Every day." They were alone in the passageway, perhaps alone on that end of the ship, in the time between shifts as the Andromeda drifted between systems. "Will you let me try something?" She looked as if she expected him to say no.
"What?"
"It's something we do with our children. It won't hurt, and it might help."
"You have children?"
"No, but I used to be a child." She waited.
His arms flared into heat and irritation again.
"All right. Do what you will." He held out one arm.
She placed careful hands on his wrist and elbow, leaned down and kissed the places where his spurs had been. Three slow kisses, barely touches, with her eyes shut as if she were concentrating on the creation of a universe.
He could feel the touch of her lips all the way to the bone.
When she straightened, the irritation was gone.
Astonished, he held out the other arm, and she repeated her actions, pausing a little longer on one place that he realized was the one that had bothered him most. He'd broken that spur as a child, and it had taken a long time to grow back properly.
And now his arms felt like ... his arms. He flexed the muscles, made fists, turned and moved them. "What did you do?"
"You won't believe me if I say."
"I certainly believe this."
She tilted her head, almost in the way that her younger purple self would have done. "I kissed them and made them better."
"If that is the power of your kisses, my lady ..."
She put her fingers over his lips. "I don't think you want to go there.." And went off down the passageway toward the galley.