YURI SHIPPING OLYMPICS 2024 - BONUS ROUND 4

[a1c0bb]

for this bonus round, the theme is historical fiction! prompts inspired by specific moments in (real or fictional) history.

this round will end on july 15th

Fills can be in any format, and you can fill your teammates prompts, but you cannot fill your own prompt.

You can post as many fills and as many prompts as you want!

for your prompt post title, please use the following format:

PROMPT: TEAM [TEAM NAME]

for your fill post title, please use the following format:

FILL: TEAM [TEAM NAME]

POINTS - BONUS ROUNDS
For prompts: 10 points each (maximum of 150 prompt points per team per round)
For fills:
First 4 fills by any member of your team: 100 points each
Fills 5-10: 50 points each
Fills 11-20: 40 points each
Fills 21-50: 30 points each
Fills 51+: 25 points each

Comments

FILL: Team Anime/Manga

[hopelessgemini]

word count: 1049

pairing: winter schnee/cinder fall

fandom: RWBY

characters: winter schnee, cinder fall

extra tags: vampires and all associated content warnings (allusions to death, murder, violence and blood), allusions to death of children, toxic as fuck yuri

//

“I know you’re here to kill me,” Cinder says gleefully. She runs her thumb along the corner of her lip, sucks blood into her mouth, and Winter watches the movement, transfixed. “You’re not very subtle.”

Her mouth works, searches for something to say, and comes up with a response entirely on its own. Her mind is still fixed on Cinder’s lips, which is, she supposes, at least half of the charm effect. “I wasn’t going for subtle.”

“Hmm.” She tilts her head to the side. Beautiful, Winter thinks, and shakes herself. “You should try it sometime. I think it’d suit you.”

She swallows thickly. There isn’t a sharp retort to that. Her fingers close around the hilt of the stake and find themselves too weak, too unsure; the angle isn’t right, she’ll drive it into Cinder’s chest and miss something vital, make her angrier, make her kill her —

A finger turns up her chin, drawing her gaze to Cinder’s eyes. Winter looks away, flushed and halfway to angry. “Determined, aren’t you?”

“You killed a whole village,” Winter says, finding her footing.

Cinder’s expression hardens. She steps back, away — a mistake, Winter thinks desperately, an opening, and finds her grip on the hilt of the stake again — and says, “Do you think I do anything without a purpose, Schnee?”

Vampires are indiscriminate killers; of course they don’t. Her purpose was that she was hungry, or that she was angry. Her purpose was that they were in the way. Winter grounds herself in this, thinks about the blood smudging Cinder’s lipstick being hers, and does not find herself quite so sucked in. She tilts her chin up angrily, meets Cinder’s eyes. “Yes.”

A smirk twists up the corners of her mouth. “You really are Atlesian, aren’t you? Ironwood through and through.”

She killed Ironwood too. Winter draws herself up as tall as she can from her position on her knees on the floor, flipping the stake in her hand. It’s an open threat, and possibly a stupid one, but she’s suddenly blindingly furious and she can’t bring herself to care.

“And you’re proud of it, too, aren’t you?” Cinder smiles, shows a flash of blood-streaked fang. “You know how old I am? Twenty-six. I burned down the village you’re avenging because they hung me, Schnee.”

“You killed children,” Winter snaps, blinking back the image of Ironwood’s eyes, dead and cold and empty —

“I let the children go.” Her voice drops, cold. “I burned down the village who murdered me, but I let the children go because I like to believe that the person I was when I died would have wanted them to live. And you —” Cinder’s hand raises, and Winter’s strength saps from her; her hand opens, her stake rolls away — “and every Atlesian hunter like you would think that it was good that I died, that it was just —”

She cuts herself off, hissing between her teeth. Winter slumps forward, clutching at her throat like she can stem the flow of non-existent bleeding. “It doesn’t matter. You’re not — you weren’t a prisoner here. Now — I’ll make up my mind.” Cinder eyes her. “But I was close to giving you my protection before you had to go and ruin it.”

It’s not a charm, Winter thinks, because the way Cinder says you like she’s remembering the taste of her blood on her tongue would be maddening anyway. She straightens, finding Cinder’s eyes again across the grand hall, framed in the starlight filtering through the window, and finds nothing but draining magic. No spell, no trick. “Kill me and you’ll bring the wrath of Atlas down upon your head,” she says, an empty threat.

Cinder smiles. “Do you really think so little of me? Go to sleep and pray that I don’t keep you here forever.”

//

Winter barricades her door and both of the windows in her quarters. It’s probably a useless endeavour, but it helps her feel safer. She barely sleeps as it is, eyes fixed on the moonlight filtering through the drawn curtains, praying a shadow doesn’t fall over them while she’s unconscious.

When she does eventually fall asleep, she doesn’t dream. She supposes it’s a blessing, but still — somehow — she aches to see Cinder’s face, aches for that strange fondness she’s glimpsed in candlelight before. She awakes tangled in sheets and covered in sweat, convinced Cinder is in her room with a blade to her throat, and falls asleep again with her breath catching and twisting in her lungs.

When the sun finally rises, she packs her things and gets ready to leave.

Cinder stops her at the door to the house, standing carefully out of the path of the sunlight. Winter only notices her when her hand snaps out to catch her forearm, only stops herself from swinging her suitcase into her face and bolting when her voice comes purring out of the shadow: “I told you to stay here, didn’t I?”

She turns her head. She can’t quite see her face. “You didn’t tell me I was a prisoner. I will do as I choose.”

“I would like,” Cinder says carefully, “to speak with you a while longer. You’ve been here almost three months, and still I know nothing about you.”

That — gives Winter pause. She’s been hunting vampires since she was fifteen, and not once has any one of them spent time trying to learn about their prey, to connect to them before they kill them. It forces her to reassess what she is to Cinder, how she slots into her view of the world.

She tilts her chin up. “If I say no, will you kill me?”

“If you say no, I’ll think about it very strongly,” Cinder says. Winter hears the smile in her voice. Her breath hitches a little, almost without her permission. “I won’t harm you if you try to leave, but I won’t help you either. The weather can be — cruel this time of year.”

“So, what? You want us to hear each other out? That’s not —”

“I told you when you arrived.” Her fingers tighten on Winter’s forearm; not hard enough to hurt, but enough to be a reminder of her strength. “I’m far from the worst one of us. I’d go so far as to call myself kind.”