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yurishippingolympics2024-07-16 11:56 pm
a1c0bb) wrote in yurishippingolympics2024-07-16 11:56 pm
Entry tags:
Ship: Sato/Watanabe from The Many Sides of Voice Actor radio <3 link to ao3 fic here!
Edited 2024-07-18 03:44 (UTC)
"Why even bother, Gwendolyn dearest?" Alice leans back in her chair, squeaking. "Haven't you heard of XKCD?"
"For God's sake, not everyone is into your little brother's metal bands," Gwen snaps, typing away furiously at her keyboard. If she types any harder the keys will probably evaporate, Alice thinks, and then Colin'll have to replace them. What a grand time they have down in the O.I.A.R.
"Luke doesn't always do metal," Alice defends, because above all else she's a good older sister. "And besides XKCD isn't—"
Gwen slams down the enter button with the force of the Almighty smiting a lesser demon. "Stop distracting me!"
"Case is running," Alice says, pointing to Chester the computer chattering away. "I'm working. On the clock. You know me, real nine-to-five girl. Remind me which of us is trying to come up with an entirely new way of filing cases that go to computer hell and die a quick and agonizing death as soon as we touch them?"
"I am trying," Gwen hisses, "to create a better filing system. The manual's too heavy for some of us to lift—"
"Not my fault Sam has noodle arms—"
"—And if I propose a more efficient way of organizing cases," Gwen says, "we actually have a chance of getting through our backlog."
"I'm sorry, our backlog?"
Gwen grits her teeth. One day Alice'll get her to have an apoplexy and then she'll finally know peace. "Yes. Our backlog. As a department."
"Never took you for a team player, Gwendolyn," Alice says, resting her chin on her fist.
"Why else do you think I'm working on this?" Gwen snaps, and for the first time actually turns to look Alice in the eye.
Oh. Her eyes are bloodshot. That can't be good.
"Are you staying up all night again?" Alice says.
"Obviously," Gwen says. "This is a night job."
Motherfucker. "Staying up all day," Alice corrects.
"Why do you care?"
Oh, this is bad. "Isn't a girl allowed to be concerned about her 'work bestie'?"
"Not when it's us," Gwen says, and turns back to the computer.
That — stings, for some reason. Alice doesn't bother dwelling on why. "You wound me!" She clutches at her heart. The more dramatic the better. "Gwendolyn my love, how cruel your barbs can be—"
Gwen slams the manual down on the desk, then in a single whirl of motion pushes Alice against her desk.
What.
What?
This close Alice is noticing — stupid things, things like how Gwen's eyes are glacier blue and how some strands of hair are escaping her small professional bun and how Gwen's hands are warm and how she can see the way Gwen's breath jumps in her throat and —
"You," Gwen says, and is Alice imagining it or has her voice jumped up an octave? "Should shut the fuck up."
"You want to fuck me so bad it makes you look stupid," Alice says on complete instinct as fast as she can, because she hasn't been on Tumblr for a decade for nothing.
Gwen releases her. Alice sags on the desk.
Gwen's blushing, she notices. Alice would have a zinger for that, except it feels like her own cheeks are on fire. God, biology is so dumb. It's not like she's actually attracted to Gwen whatsoever.
Alice does wonder if Gwen would blush harder if Alice ran her thumb over her mouth, though. Just to mess up her lipstick.
"I'll be working on this for the rest of the night," Gwen announces. She's still just standing there. Alice's heart is still banging out tunes in her chest. "So we can actually have a coherent filing standard. Tell Colin for me."
"I really think you should look at that XKCD," Alice says.
Gwen rolls her eyes and finally, finally, sits back down at her own terminal. Alice sucks in what feels like her first breath in five minutes. "I'm still not interested in metal."
"It's not—"
I'll be honest, I had no clue what I was asking for with this prompt, but I'm really enjoying the result!
a/n: if this happened to me i think i'd commit a murder
Franziska hasn't gone to an arcade in years.
Before everything had come crashing down, Papa had taken them after a successful trial: they would go for pancakes at IHOP, karaoke at the hotel next to it, and then, sometimes, the Tom's World arcade. Miles didn't like how loud it was; he usually ended up watching from a corner or providing dry commentary on Franziska's youthful attempts to shoot basketball (like he was any better, the absolute hypocrite) or hiding in the bathroom. Papa usually stood by the counter. Sometimes his aura of silent menace ensured that he was surrounded with five or more stuffed animals by the end of the night, presented by terrified employees who understood that Franziska's Papa was the God of Prosecutors and deserved animal sacrifices in his name.
But Franziska loved arcades. The constant heavy music, the flashing lights, the mysterious stains on the floor — well, those were minor points of detraction. Far more important, though, was that arcade games were a solo challenge. Something she could learn all the hidden corners and fault lines in, and then crush them to little bits of dust.
Perfection.
Franziska always held her head up high whenever she left an arcade. It was a nice chaser to a trial in which she had also, obviously, won. Usually she didn't even need to whip the machines all that many times.
…
It's been a long time since she's visited. Papa's — dead. Miles Edgeworth is not, but sometimes she feels like if she doesn't keep looking at him he'll disappear too, and she'll just be no one. A stupid little girl with a whip too big for her. It features in most of her nightmares that aren't about Papa or the gunshot wound in her shoulder or Papa-and-the-gunshot-wound-in-her-shoulder.
Anyway, this is a deeply depressing mood altogether unfitting for a place like the arcade, so she's not gone since. But Franziska has been — better, recently. Her flight back to Germany isn't for another week, and her brother is smiling, and Maya Fey had texted her to ask if she wanted to "try another burger joint??? theres GOTTA be one u like i swear it on the burger king himself".
Franziska may not have won the trial against Sister Iris, but sometimes she thinks she's won something far more important.
— Which is stupid and sappy and sentimental, so:
"Miles Edgeworth!"
"Yes, Franziska?"
"I want to go to Tom's World."
His expression melts into something vaguely — fond? "Alright, Franziska."
This uncharacteristic bout of sentimentality, however, is quickly dashed as soon as they get there.
Franziska stares at the screen in quiet, horrified disbelief. She blinks once, and then again, just to make sure she's seeing right, but she is:
まよい 100597
FVK 100581
SOME OTHER FOOL 52210
(A few months after the Big Top case: "Nick, look, F-V-K! Do you think it's Miss von Karma?"
"I doubt it. You really think she'd lower herself enough to play Taiko no Tatsujin? Here?"
"I dunno, I think she'd like it. And only a von Karma could get that kinda score."
"…If you say so."
"Hey!"
"Anyway… I'll play one round to show you how it's done, and then you're up. Alright?"
"Okay! But watch out, Nick. I think I was born for this thing."
"I don't think the ghosts in your blood cry out for arcade drums."
"There you go with your narrow-minded cultural assumptions again — oh, look, it's starting!")
Franziska whips the screen.
"Ma-yo-i," Miles Edgeworth sounds out behind her, squinting slightly, apparently unfazed by the brief flash of red and blue the screen had deployed in its weak attempt to defend itself from Franziska. "Isn't that Maya's Japanese name?"
It is. Franziska had checked every single member of the Fey family's legal documentation for the Turner Grey case, triple-checking Maya Fey's for obvious reasons. She'd done it again when she'd flown back for the Elise Deauxnim case, just in case she bumped into Maya Fey and had a chance to demonstrate that she knew what the other girl's blood type was. Foolishly there had not been, but Franziska was still holding out hope.
"Miles Edgeworth, you don't think…"
"I could text Wright to check," Miles offers.
"Absolutely not!" Franziska whips the floor. "You will spend the rest of the night smiling at your phone if you do so!"
"That is patently untrue," Miles says, petulantly.
Franziska scowls up at the screen.
Some part of her knows she should feel — indignation, rage, the urge to reassert herself as absolutely perfect. And she does, of course. But something about it being Maya Fey who's beaten her —
Franziska is curious about Maya. She can admit that much. They are the same age, and yet Maya is so much stronger than she is; can stay strong for her little sister, can wear a carefree smile after spending days hosting wayward spirits, even after Maya's own mother —
Well.
And now she's good at arcade drums, too?
Franziska pictures it. Maya with drumsticks in either hand, laser-focused on the notes flying by on the screen, beads in her hair swaying as she hits with beautiful, precise violence. Her mouth still greased from the burgers she'd no doubt had at the store at the neighboring intersection. Maybe she'd be smiling. Maybe her eyes would light like twin fire.
"—Franziska? Franziska?"
Miles Edgeworth is, of all cliches, waving a hand in front of her face. Franziska whips the ground again.
"Miles Edgeworth!"
"…You want me to get tokens for this, don't you?"
"Six of them," Franziska decrees. "This will not be an easy fight."
Miles pauses, then, and looks at her for a second. Then two.
"What is it?"
"Did you just say it wouldn't be easy?"
"Yes," Franziska says. "Do you need your hearing checked, little brother?"
"No," Miles says, shaking his head. "I just… You…"
"Speak up!"
"You really like her, don't you, Franziska?"
He escapes to the token machine before Franziska can start whipping his face into a nice cream.
Oh well. She looks back up at the screen.
Maya Fey is going down.
Edited 2024-07-18 05:17 (UTC)
a stanley parable-esque competition between two people each trying to take control of the narrative / be the one telling the story
Edited 2024-07-18 09:23 (UTC)
challenging people to fights is how winter shows affection
//
“Fight me,” Winter says.
Cinder blinks at her, props her hands on her hips, tilts up her chin. Winter has always made her feel a little off-balance. “What? Why?”
She looks her up and down, tugging her bottom lip between her teeth. There’s something behind her eyes, Cinder thinks, something dark and wanting that Winter likely hasn’t acknowledged for herself yet. “Come on,” she challenges, “I know you want to.”
“I don’t do that anymore,” Cinder says automatically, sizing her up. Winter is a good four inches shorter than her without heels, but almost definitely physically stronger. She has broad shoulders, strong arms, and she was on the fencing team in high school and college. “Fight people, I mean. Why are you even asking me in the first place, huh? Decided the image isn’t worth it?”
Winter squares her shoulders, which is how Cinder knows she’s hit a nerve. “You don’t do that anymore,” she echoes, “so why are you looking at me like that?”
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
The corners of her mouth curl up. Smug isn’t a good look on her, but it’s at least a little hot. Cinder allows the discomfort to settle low in her gut, draws herself up in anticipation of the blow.
Winter folds her arms over her chest. “Fight me. If I win I’ll take you on a date.”
The blow doesn’t come. The tension in her stomach has nowhere to go. “I told you, I don’t fight people anymore,” she mutters. “If you want to ask me out just do it like a normal person.”
That stupid fucking smug smile doesn’t falter. “You and I both know you would have run away.”
“Not if it was you,” Cinder says.
Neither of them were expecting that to come out of her mouth. Winter’s eyes flicker for a moment, weird smugness fading; Cinder curls her hands into fists to stop herself from clapping them over her mouth and/or punching Winter in the face.
“Fight me anyway,” Winter says, and that’s that.
The concept is simple: put a phone into Winter’s hands and see what she does with it. Cinder does it most days, anyway — her lack of boundaries tends to win out against her protectiveness over her possessions, and Winter never seems to mind. She just sort of lets things happen to her where Cinder is concerned.
The actual execution turns out to be a little harder, mostly because Winter grew up under an actual manor-shaped rock and has no idea what most of the apps on either of their phones even do. Cinder conveniently forgets this until she turns to her on the couch and says, “What is this? I don’t understand.”
“Oh,” Cinder says, remembering, “it’s a game.”
“Well, yes, I gathered that. What’s the objective?”
“Oh,” she says again, “I forgot you needed orders to do, like, anything.”
“Not everything,” Winter mutters, frowning adorably. She holds Cinder’s phone out to her with an expression somewhere between expectant and pleading, and because it’s funny, Cinder takes pity on her.
“You’ve just gotta walk around and do tasks. You’ll catch on, don’t worry.”
“Tasks,” Winter echoes — she should have known that would be the word she latched onto first — “and how, um. How do I use the controls?”
//
“I think I’ve been murdered,” Winter announces.
Cinder glances up from the book she’s been pretending to read and glances over Winter’s shoulder. She has, it seems, indeed been murdered. “Huh,” she says. “Yeah, that’s just how it goes. Who did it?”
She scrunches her face up, frowning. “I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings.”
“Probably how you died in the first place. Come here,” she says, holding her arms out, “they’re gonna vote someone out, I want to see who.”
WInter’s confused expression doesn’t vanish, but she presses into Cinder’s side regardless, holding the phone screen out between them. “So, this is. Space wink murder?”
“Something like that,” Cinder agrees. She’s never actually played wink murder, but it sounds posh enough to have made up the majority of Winter’s childhood, so she doesn’t say anything else on the subject. Even though there’s probably only so many times you can play a murder game with three people before it gets boring. “Man, I hope you get impostor next round. I can’t wait to see you figure out how to do that.”
“Do what?” Winter asks, perfectly innocent.
annoying year 8 theatre kid weiss just makes sense. annoying theatre kid cinder fall also just makes sense.
//
“Oh my G-d, you don’t even sing,” Cinder says emphatically.
Winter regards her with a raised eyebrow, perfectly confident. “No,” she says coolly, agreeably, “but my sister does.” She raises the violin under her elbow, the sheet music in her right hand. “I play violin.”
“So, what, you’re going to provide backup?” Cinder snorts, propping her hands on her hips. She’s learned over the past five years of doing theatre at Emerald’s behest that it makes her look more confident than she actually feels. She’s good at that, the projecting confidence bit. It makes people look her way.
Winter smiles at her in the dim backstage light, all teeth. She used to find the whole awkward crooked smile thing charming, and then she decided she disliked Winter Schnee for reasons mostly out of either of their control, and now it’s just annoying. “I’m auditioning separately.”
“You can act?”
She shrugs. “We’ll see, won’t we?”
“Who convinced you to do this, huh?”
Her smile doesn’t falter. “My sister isn’t old enough to be cast as the lead. She told me I had to at least audition, and, well.” She shrugs. “She’s twelve. Twelve year-olds are persistent.”
Cinder, who hasn’t spoken to another twelve year-old since she was twelve herself, rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I bet.”
The lights on the stage flicker on. Auditions have begun. Winter glances between her and the stage like she’s trying to figure something out, asks: “What part you do you want?”
Cinder shrugs one shoulder — rolls it back, really, and eyes her. “Why do you want to know?”
“If we’re going to be playing romantic partners I’d like to know beforehand,” she says loftily.
“You think they’ll let you do that with a violin?”
It’s not meant to sound like a challenge, but it comes out like one. Winter raises an eyebrow, flashes her that same awkward smug grin. “We’ll have to see, won’t we?”
//
winter got points for an unconventional approach to the audition process and ironwood let her play the lead because she might not be able to sing but by g-d is she good at violin and by g-d do her and cinder have insane chemistry. cinder was practically guaranteed the lead role since she's the drama teacher's special little princess
“Admiring her arms, are you?” Weiss asks next to Winter’s ear.
Winter jumps a mile. Out on the field, Cinder raises her bow and hits a perfect bullseye. If she turns to find her in the crowd, Winter doesn’t see, because she’s too busy stammering her way through a half-baked excuse to her little shit of a sister.
“I, um — she’s my competitor, I have to study her technique, it’s only — why do you care, you’ve been ogling Ruby for the past half an hour,” Winter says hotly. It’s not that bad of a cover, she thinks; it’s worked on other people before.
Weiss raises an eyebrow at her. “First of all, I don’t ogle, thank you very much. I stare respectfully. Secondly, you are distinctly not doing that. You are staring at her arms and drooling a little.”
“I’m not!” she protests. Weiss fixes her with a glare.
“Seriously, if you’re going to stare at Mistral’s fucking star babygirl or whatever, I really don’t care —”
“Well, obviously you do, since you’re —”
“ — just do it where it’s less evident,” Weiss says, slaps a quiver into her hands, and flounces off.
Well, ‘flounces’ isn’t really the right word; the competition field is all but caked in mud and even Weiss certainly couldn’t properly flounce in that —
A hand claps down solidly on her shoulder. Winter jumps another mile and whirls around for a second time, nearly slips and falls backward into an ocean of mud when Cinder Fall fixes her with an entirely different kind of look.
“Enjoy the show?” she asks, because she’s a little shit, and “You’re gonna have to match my score if Atlas wants to stand a chance. Sorry, babe.”
“I can do that just fine,” Winter says, hands curling around the quiver in her arms.
“Uh huh,” Cinder says, eyes trailing down her body. “And how was my form?”
“Shit as always,” she lies.
“Great arms, though.” She smirks, tilting her chin up. Her hair is falling out of the neat ponytail she tied it up in this morning, covering one eye in neat dark waves. She’s gorgeous, Winter thinks distantly, imagining Weiss chastising her for staring in the back of her mind.
“Great arms,” she agrees before she can stop herself.
fallmaiden: oh youve gotta be kidding me
Winter_: What
fallmaiden: since when did you write fanfiction lmao
Winter_: What
What do you mean
fallmaiden: since when did you write gay fanfiction
Winter_: What
fallmaiden: ????
dont be dumb you know what im talking about(
Winter_: Again I ask: What
fallmaiden: the yuri g-ddamn shipping olympics schnee
why are you in the yuri shipping olympics discord channel
and why are you writing
and i cannot stress this enough
GAY FANFICTION
on company time
Winter_: Oh
Why not
No one has told me not to
fallmaiden: YOU
OF ALL PEOPLE
IN THE G-DDAMN YURI SHIPPING OLYMPICS
Winter_: My sister asked me to
And she just got out of hospital
So I’m being nice and humouring her
fallmaiden: BY WRITING YURI????
Winter_: Correct
fallmaiden: what team are u on
idk why i asked i can just check
girl what the fuck is that
Winter_: Sapphic relationship from the book series I like
Why
fallmaiden: oh right i forgot you read weird smut
Winter_: It’s a YA series I’ve been following since I was 13
My sister is on the same team
Speaking of which, Transformers has yuri?
fallmaiden: oh you know it
Edited 2024-07-18 23:01 (UTC)
and a short one to close out the night
//
“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Winter mutters.
Weiss, barely six, gives her a double thumbs up from the sidelines. Cinder, tied to her leg, just looks at her weirdly. “I didn’t talk you into anything, Schnee.”
“I was talking to my — you know what, never mind. Are we going to do this?”
She grins, strangely sharp-edged for a thirteen year-old. Pretty eyes, Winter thinks distractedly. “Oh, you have no idea. You’re good at running, right?”
Winter draws herself up, puffs out her chest. “Fastest person in my age category five years in a row. Why?”
Cinder just rolls her eyes, bracing her hands on her knees. Winter’s skin tingles where her fingers brush her thigh, tingles when she looks up through her hair and her eyelashes and smirks. “Think you can keep up?”
i don't even know these people but i'm losing my entire mind this is so funny. i started cackling at YOU. OF ALL PEOPLE. IN THE G-DDAMN YURI SHIPPING OLYMPICS
This was a mistake.
Nightfall doesn't stop to wipe at her tears. She hates how easily she cries around Yor. It's like seeing her kind, gentle smile just — unlocks something inside Nightfall, something she's been trying to keep down in all her years as an agent.
It doesn't even happen around Twilight. No, around Twilight, Nightfall is always perfect. Always performing at the best of her skill. She has to in order to impress him, after all.
But Yor — Yor Forger, wife of Loid Forger, a city hall worker who is nothing and no one —
Nightfall dodges another attack, then lunges to swipe at Yor's ankles. Low blow, maybe, but Nightfall is a spy at heart, and she's starting to realize that absolutely nothing in the standard fighting regimen can bring Yor down.
Yor catches her by the wrist — even though Nightfall is moving so fast that from any outside perspective she'd look like a blur — and hauls her upright, like she's holding a cat by the scruff.
Nightfall kicks at her.
Yor laughs — a gentle, tinkling laugh, oh god Nightfall hates her so much — and drops her. Doesn't even do her the favor of pretending to be surprised. Nightfall scrambles to put some distance in between them, to assess her next move —
It's too late. In the blink of an eye there's a hand on her throat, and grass under her back, and Nightfall is staring up into Yor Forger's brilliant ruby eyes.
There's something dark in them.
Nightfall blinks. She knows she can be biased, thank you very much Handler, but — no, she's not imagining things. Yor has the tip of her small knife to Nightfall's throat, is gazing down at her with nothing but blank darkness curling behind her face, like a predator looking down at its prey, like Nightfall's nothing —
She should be — calculating. She could tell Twilight that his wife was inhumanly good at fighting and was surely a risk to the operation. She could tell Handler. She could finally have her place…
But Nightfall isn't thinking about any of that. There is only Yor's kiss of metal on her throat, and Yor's ink-black hair falling around her like a curtain, and Yor's thighs bracketing her own, and Yor's eyes boring into her own.
"Do you yield?" Yor says. Her voice is the same and yet unrecognizable.
Nightfall should be terrified.
"No," she whispers.
The knife presses harder against her throat. Oh god. Oh god. Yor's face is inches from her own.
"Do you yield?"
Nightfall stares at her and — and wants —
She lifts her hand to try to pry the knife away. Yor slams her fingers down between Nightfall's own. A burst of pain fractals out through her bones.
She can't breathe. Not because of the knife. Yor's face is making her dizzy.
She has to get up. She has to —
"Mama!"
"Anya!" And the darkness, whatever it was, flees from Yor's expression in an instant. She stands up. "What's wrong?"
"Um." Anya's expression darts between Nightfall (still on the ground) and Yor. "Um, Bond, um, he saw… I mean! Bond fell asleep on Papa and he needs you to carry him to bed."
"Of course I can carry your father to bed, Anya," Yor says with a smile. "Alright! Thank you for the exercise, Fiona!"
A brilliant smile in Nightfall's direction, and then she's gone.
"I meant Bond!" Anya yells in Yor's direction, then turns to Nightfall. "Um… Miss Fiona… are you okay?"
Nightfall does not think she will ever be okay again.
"Yes," she wheezes. "Just — help me up."
"Oui!" Anya pulls on her arm. Nightfall stands and brushes grass off of her.
Oh. Her wrist might be sprained. Oh well, the daily life of a spy is never easy.
"Bye-bye then, Miss Fiona!"
Nightfall puts up a stoic hand in response, strides over to the gate of the lawn, and leaves.
(She dreams about Yor.)
Oh man I love what you did with this one. The first line was the perfect hook.
(ocs, because I couldn’t think of anyone that fit but the prompt was far too good to pass on)
See, the thing is that Penelope was trying to be normal.
No matter what Liv might say, she does not have a “thing” about Ayla Chandrasekhar. She does not! They don’t even run in the same circles half the time, why would Penelope care about her at all? Ayla can go off and do — whatever she wants to do with her theories and essays and conspiracy board pinouts all by herself, Penelope doesn’t mind. She doesn’t even think about Ayla half of the time. Most of the time.
It’s objective surprise, and nothing more, that motivates her march down the hallway to where Ayla is flipping through a notebook.
“What are you doing here?”
Ayla looks up at her. Blinks. She looks completely unsurprised, somehow, which grates against Penelope’s sensibilities.
“Studying,” she says. “You can’t look at my notes.”
“I wasn’t going to.” Seriously, why is everyone convinced that Ayla is some sort of kind loner angel who also happens to be a genius? She’s never been nice to Penelope once since they met the second time.
“Okay,” Ayla says, and looks back down at her notes.
Penelope waits ten seconds. Then twenty.
“Is something wrong?” Ayla asks, not even bothering to look back up.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Penelope points out, resisting the childish urge to stomp her foot.
“Yes I did,” Ayla says. “I’m studying. The test is starting in seven minutes, you know.”
Penelope knows. The clock in the proctoring classroom is visible through the window blinds. “I meant, what are you doing taking the AMC?”
Ayla actually looks up at that. Considers Penelope. Her head tilts to one side, just slightly.
Penelope stares back at her. Now that she has the opportunity she can’t stop herself from looking, from cataloguing the curve of Ayla’s bangs over her cheek, the soft glow of her skin from the setting sun, the dark brown of her eyes boring into Penelope’s own: so clear and wide and open and yet telling Penelope absolutely nothing.
“Why do you ask?” Ayla answers, finally.
“Because you don’t — do this kind of thing,” Penelope says, frustrated. Isn’t it obvious? Doesn’t everyone know this? “You’re a writer. You do school competitions. This — this is math, and it’s an external thing! We don’t even have an IMO club, I would know! You don’t like math!”
“Hey, be careful!” someone yells off to the side — a fellow student, from the looks of it. Penelope must have hit her while gesticulating. Whoops.
“Sorry!” she yells, then turns back to Ayla. “So yeah, I don’t see why you—”
She stops. Ayla’s staring at her again, but this time she’s… surprised? Caught off guard? Her lips are very slightly parted, and she’s looking at Penelope like —
Like —
Penelope searches her emotional library and fails.
“I didn’t know you were paying so much attention,” Ayla mumbles.
“What?”
“I didn’t — never mind.” Ayla sighs. Penelope blinks at her, trying to parse, still failing. “Aren’t you going to review?”
These days Penelope can’t close her eyes without seeing circular quadrilaterals and tangent lines and similar triangles in the darkness. “I don’t need to,” she says.
“Huh.” Ayla smiles at her (Ayla smiles at her!). “Confident as always, aren’t you, Penelope?”
Penelope has to take a moment to process the way Ayla says her name. Penelope. It flickers on her tongue like air.
Deep breath. Hands on her hips. “If I don’t get into the AIME, I’ll eat my sock,” Penelope declares.
The slope of Ayla’s grin turns… fond? No, she’s imagining things.
“Well then,” she says. “I’ll give you one hint.”
On instinct Penelope leans forward. “What is it?”
Instead of answering right away, Ayla tilts toward her. Closer. So close their noses almost brush. Penelope could just — could just take a step and —
“I’m not doing this because I want to,” Ayla whispers.
Penelope jolts, but Ayla is already five steps away. The bell is ringing. Time to go in.
“Good luck, Penelope!” Ayla calls behind her. “I hope you beat me!”
Penelope stares after her for far too long.
i took the amc for the entirety of middle and high school and had ZERO homoerotic encounters so this is my way to cope
CURRENT SCORE: 11 (WINTER SCHNEE) / 23 (CINDER FALL)
“Do you really have to write it on the board?” Winter groans, sinking down into her seat.
Penny nods, putting the cap back on the pen with a decisive click. She glances over at Winter, sunk down at her desk, and back to the whiteboard. “It’s an efficient way of keeping track of the status of the competition,” she recites, “and besides, Mr Ironwood says it’s a good motivator.”
“I’m sure it is,” Winter mutters. She drags her hat down over her head for good measure, effectively shutting out the sight of the office and her objective failure for the next twenty minutes. Either until Penny asks her to look at something, or her boss walks in and announces some new ridiculous crime.
Penny keeps rambling to herself, no doubt re-arranging her files into a new and interesting kind of order. “It’s impressive that Miss Fall has managed to pull all this off without leaving a substantial record behind, really. It must be unimaginably difficult to erase your presence entirely.”
“I’m sure there’s a file somewhere,” Winter says to the inside of her hat, “but how do you go around digging through important government documentation to justify arresting a petty criminal?”
“You ask nicely?” Penny suggests.
//
CURRENT SCORE: 14 (WINTER SCHNEE) / 39 (CINDER FALL)
“Can you think of anything else that might have been taken?” Winter asks.
Watts shakes his head, clutching his own hat to his chest. He reminds her a little bit of a weasel, Winter thinks. A particularly slimy weasel. “No. Just the two monitors.”
She glances around the ransacked room, noting the scorch marks on the ceiling, the grooves in the floor. This is just a security room in the back of a relatively un-Cinder-ed mall, nothing special at all. There’s nothing that would warrant this level of sloppiness, and it doesn’t match Cinder’s style at all. “And you’re sure you saw her?”
His face contorts a little. “I’m sure,” he says snippily, “and it sure would be nice if I had my security monitors so I could prove it to you.”
She folds her arms, determined not to back down. “Surely the files from the tapes back up somewhere.”
“I’ll be sure to send them to the station when I find them,” Watts says, lips curling, and Winter takes that as her cue to leave.
She steps out of the room, gesturing for Penny to follow her. He makes a loud noise of complaint that she ignores as she marches down the hallway outside of the security room, following the trail of scorch marks back to the entrance. Vine and Elm shoot her questioning looks that she waves off as she gets back in her car. “We’re not getting any more out of him. You can try if you want.”
“It was probably a set-up,” Penny says helpfully, sliding into the passenger seat.
“Fall hates Watts,” she adds, off Elm’s questioning look. “And I assume he hates her too. If he’s trying to implicate her in a crime she didn’t commit it’s probably stupid thief in-fighting.”
“Do thieves even have in-fighting?” Vine asks, raising an eyebrow.
Winter shrugs. “Watts was a suspect in a case Fall was involved in a few years back. I assume he thinks we’ll follow it through and give him a chance to pay her back.”
Penny makes an amused noise as they pull out of the mall’s car park, inspecting the notes she’s propped up on the dashboard. “You really know a lot about her, don’t you?”
“It’s when she started beating me,” Winter mutters, curling her fingers around the steering wheel. “The fifth case. Right around when we stopped working with the police.”
Like being a private detective is much better, but whatever, as Weiss would say — and has, on multiple occasions.
“The fifth case,” Penny echoes, “the one with the stolen lab equipment, I remember. So you think he thought he could trap her?”
Trapping and arresting Cinder Fall is something Winter has only managed to do a little over two dozen times, and she’s always gone within 24 hours. Embarrassingly, she’s still considered the best person Ironwood has at his disposal.
She drums her fingers on the steering wheel as they drive back into Mantle proper, bracing herself for the lecture she’ll no doubt receive from Vine for abandoning him and Elm to Watts when they get back. “I think he thought she’d be stupid enough to fall for it,” she says. “I think he doesn’t know her at all.”
Penny hums, tapping her fingers on her chin in time with Winter’s on the steering wheel. “That does give me an idea, though.”
//
CURRENT SCORE: 15 (WINTER SCHNEE) / 39 (CINDER FALL)
Cinder glares up at her from her position on the ground. It looks a little bit glorious, Winter thinks, and shakes the image out of her head before she can follow it any further. “Good bait, huh?”
Winter smirks at her, flicking dirt off the edge of her sword. Ironwood let her keep it when she quit the Atlas police, saying it added to her image, and she has to agree. It’s great marketing, too. “Good bait,” she echoes. “Detective Polendina had the idea.”
Cinder huffs hair out of her eyes, squirms against the rope holding her hands behind her back. “Don’t act smug. I let you catch me.”
“Why? You like being tied up?”
“I told you not to act smug. Maybe I just like seeing your stupid face.”
“Mm,” Winter hums. “Anyway, I’ve called for backup, so. You’re trapped. Any confessions before we take you in?”
Cinder is, generally, a lot better at smirking than her. She looks up at Winter through her eyelashes, lips curling up, and says, “If you ask me nicely I’ll give you my phone number.”
“So I can call you in your prison cell?”
She shrugs, grins. Her shoulders curl backwards, her hands shift — and Winter is grateful that her first instinct is to throw herself forwards to pin Cinder down when she sweeps an arm out, knife in hand, rope curled through her fingers.
//
CURRENT SCORE: 15 (WINTER SCHNEE) / 39 (CINDER FALL)
“You’re pleased with yourself,” Penny remarks.
Winter folds her arms over her chest. “She’s been in custody for 72. That’s further than we’ve ever got before.”
Penny covers her mouth with a hand, turning away. “She keeps asking to see you, you know?”
She thinks of Cinder on her knees in the burnt-out shell of the mall’s old camera room, smirking up at her. Thinks of the way her eyes lit up when she realised she’d been caught, the way she fought Winter when she tried to break free, all knives and teeth — “Yes, well. I’ll keep questioning her.”
“I think she likes it when you do that,” Penny says, still facing away. She’s scribbling something on the whiteboard, free hand pressed flat to the surface.
Winter bites her lip to keep herself from smiling. “Well, she shouldn’t.”
warnings: death, violence, blood. cinder fall kills a man
//
Winter raises her sword, mouth pressed into a hard line. Up on the elevator, Ironwood’s gun is still up, aimed directly at her — and that’s the thing, she thinks; he won’t hesitate to shoot her from up here, he won’t give her a fair fight. The most she can do is keep him away from the kids, because he won’t give them a fair fight either.
Fuck, it’s always the most she can do. It’s always the same, isn’t it? Leave and let Ironwood take that gun into the gate; leave and let her father sink his claws into Weiss and Whitley, leave and leave and leave —
The elevator docks at the bottom of the cavern. Ironwood steps off, towards her, she thinks this is it, I’m not surviving this, and then a spear of fire burns straight through his chest.
He screams, she thinks. Or maybe Winter is screaming; maybe both of them are. She staggers back as he lurches forwards, staggers out of his grip as he reaches for her — he’s walking towards her, blood leaking from his mouth, clutching at his chest, gun forgotten —
A second spear of fire shoots through his neck, sends him toppling forward. Winter catches a glimpse of his eyes going wide with shock, then blank.
“You’re welcome,” a voice says, and Winter discovers that she’s fallen to her knees when a hand tilts up her chin. Cinder Fall locks eyes with her and hums, “Consider the debt repaid.”
Her mouth works; she searches for words and comes up empty. The only thing that surfaces is, “Why?” and again, “Why?”
Cinder smirks down at her, flame licking from her eyes. “For the Academy.”
“The Academy — the —”
“We owe each other nothing,” she says, stepping away. “Not anymore.” She tilts her chin down, looking past Ironwood’s body and the blood pooling on the ground underneath him. “A life for a life.”
“A —” Winter feels for her swords, gasping for air. The world seems very far away all of a sudden. “A — you killed him because — because I was seventeen once? You —”
“A life for a life,” Cinder repeats, eyes narrowing. “Run before I change my mind.”
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