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: 1146

pairing: winter schnee/cinder fall

fandom: RWBY

characters: winter schnee, cinder fall

extra tags: child abuse, non-graphic descriptions of (healed) physical injury

//

i.

It starts as an accident: Winter brushes the fingers over the poorly-concealed scars on her neck, Cinder hisses through her teeth and damn well nearly bursts into flame, and neither of them speak about it again. This tenuous thing between them is still so new, so fragile.

Still, she senses the questions on Winter’s lips — what happened to you? Why won’t you let me touch your neck? — and she despises herself a little more every day for being unable to answer. There are things about her past she hasn’t told anyone who isn’t long-dead, and she cannot imagine herself letting them spill from her lips any time soon.

They’re lying in a patch of shade together and admiring the particular blueness of the sky (an exercise in futility; the sky is always fucking blue — Winter admits she doesn’t understand it either, but it’s ‘nice’ and ‘a soothing recreational activity’, so they’re both doing it) when she brings it up. At her behest, Cinder rolls onto her side to look vaguely at Winter’s face so they can talk properly about it, and instantly regrets it. She’s looking at her with that weird, sad expression, the kind that says she’s spent too much time in her own head.

“About your neck,” she starts, and Cinder groans, “I’d like to apologise if I caused you discomfort. Or pushed a boundary, or anything similar. You mean a lot to me, and I —” she pauses, catching her lip between her teeth, “I don’t want to push you.”

Cinder sighs, sensing a moment of rare vulnerability coming on. “You didn’t. Seriously, Winter, it’s not that big a deal. You’re fine, just forget about it.”

“I’m not stupid,” she says earnestly — debatable, “I know there’s a reason you keep your neck covered, and I’m not asking you to tell me why, I just want to — respect you, really. And I haven’t been doing that very well.”

She has, is the thing. She’s stupidly respectful. It’s been drilled into her bones since she was born. Cinder doubts she’ll ever be able to work it out of her. She sighs, shakes her head. “You are, as I said, fine. I’m not, like, in deep personal agony about it. It was a little disruptive, and that’s all.”

“Hmm,” Winter says, like she doesn’t believe her. Which is fair enough, Cinder supposes, given literally everything about her. “Well, I’d still like you to know that I’m sorry.”

She rolls her eyes. “I accept your largely pointless but otherwise well-meaning apology and clear you of all guilt for your actions.”

Winter elbows her. Cinder elbows her back. The sky burns the same shade of blue as her eyes as the sun sinks below the dunes.

ii.

It happens like this: Cinder’s fingers settle on a thick scar on Winter’s hip when she kisses her, Winter stiffens, pushes her away, and then apologises profusely for about half an hour afterwards.

Cinder does not ask, because Winter probably wouldn’t tell her, but she knows enough about her childhood to assume. She’s grateful, then, for at least one thing Ironwood has done.

She settles her head on Winter’s shoulder in the aftermath of her apologies and says, “No, shut up, I’m the sorry one.”

Winter scoffs. “You haven’t done anything. I overreacted. You can — I don’t have any issues with you touching my scars, I just — got scared.”

She wraps her hands around Cinder’s back regardless, threading her fingers together. Cinder hums into her shoulder, nose pressed just underneath a purpleing bruise on her collarbone. “Alright. You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. I’m not upset with you.”

She says it, Cinder’s paranoid mind thinks, like she’s trying to convince herself while she speaks. Then again, she always sounds like that. She sounds weird and nervous and uncomfortable when she isn’t in military uniform and/or on a battlefield; it’s just who Winter is. If she was upset with Cinder, she’d make it known. And she’d do it gently, because both of them understand the other in a way that should probably disturb her.

“You’re sure,” Cinder echoes.

iii.

“You can touch my neck,” Cinder says tightly, “if you want.”

Winter looks up at her, nods once. She doesn’t move the bindings around her scar, doesn’t try to kiss it — a relief; Cinder thinks she’d have burned the whole room down if she did — but nips marks into the hollow of her throat, her pulse point, the crook of her neck, her collarbones.

Military precision, Cinder thinks, always military precision.

iv.

She takes the bindings off. Winter wears a shirt with hip windows that Cinder drools over a little, but only a little.

She doesn’t know what does it. Maybe it’s the oppressive heat in Vacuo, maybe it’s the walls they’ve been breaking down, maybe it’s just fucking timing and instinct. Either way, Winter does not stare at her scars, and Cinder does not stare at hers, because they haven’t spoken about it but they understand.

Well, mostly: one night Winter props her hands on her hips, thumb brushing her scar, and says, “It was a letter opener, if you’re curious. He was a shit marksman.”

Cinder looks at her, nods. “Electric collar.”

Winter does something funny with her mouth. “Dead?”

She nods again. “All four of them. I did it myself.”

“Good,” she says grimly, “good.”

v.

“How old were you?”

Winter twists to face her, apparently deciding that this is an answer that requires eye contact. They haven’t spoken about her missing eye or arm yet; they likely never will. “For my hip? Fourteen.” She smiles, and it looks a little wrong, a little twisted. “I told my father I wanted to become a huntress and he threw a letter opener at me. He was aiming for my leg. He thought he could stop me from trying permanently.”

Cinder whistles lowly. “Sharp fucking letter opener.”

“He was a shit marksman,” Winter repeats. “Ironwood wasn’t.”

They haven’t spoken about the — entire fucking right side of her body yet. The bridge of her nose, the burn scars, the marks from where laser fire tore through her flesh. They likely never will.

Cinder nods. “I was — I don’t know. Your age, maybe younger, maybe older. I don’t know how old I am, really.” Winter winces. To drive the point home, she adds, “I was an orphan. I was sold.” Because she’s feeling particularly spiteful, “To a hotel in Atlas.”

Winter hisses through her teeth.

Just because she can: “I killed them all.”

vi.

“I’m not going to talk about it anymore if you ask me,” Cinder says, worrying her lip between her teeth, “but the name of the hotel was The Glass Unicorn, and I burned it down when I came back to Atlas.”

Winter’s fingers twitch against the scar on her throat, the only sign of emotion to slip past her mask. “Good.”