The endless battlefield really is endless, and Winter gets sick of it after a day. She’s discovered that if she tries to skip ‘training’, someone high up and significantly deader than her sends a Valkyrie after her, so she’s begun experimenting — it’s been a long time since Cinder last came to check in on her, and she misses her.
(She thinks she could even convince her to stay over if she tried, which would mean — a lot. Cinder’s presence is comforting, especially so in death. Sometimes Winter catches sight of her ferrying bodies off the battlefield and earns herself a brief smile, the back half of a wave.)
Today, she volunteers for cleanup duty.
People on cleanup duty usually wind up getting shot at anyway, she reasons. It’s not that much of a risk, it technically qualifies as training, and she thinks she’s got Cinder’s schedule down.
She wants to see her again. She doesn’t want to fight; she’s fought all of her life, and it took dying to discover that she may not have ever needed to in the first place. She thinks part of her belongs with Cinder; she thinks that maybe in another life they might have —
Winter steps out onto the battlefield and walks directly into her.
“Oh, there you are,” Cinder says. A stray javelin shoots past her left ear and she plucks it out of the air neatly, sets it down on the floor before Winter can even think about reeling backwards. The last dregs of the day’s combat are dwindling into nothing around them; soon they’ll have an actual job to do.
It doesn’t matter. She’s found her.
“Here I am,” Winter says dizzily. “I was looking for you.”
“Missed me, huh?” Cinder grins. “Well, I missed you. Hey, are you free after this?”
“I was hoping you might be.”
She glances up at the endless sky, a different kind of smile quirking at her lips. “I’ve been meaning to come find you. You know how hard it is to find a dead guy in this place?”
“Do you know how hard it is to find a Valkyrie in this place?”
“Point taken.” Cinder offers her arm. “I’m free for forever, practically.”
FILL: Team Anime/Manga
The endless battlefield really is endless, and Winter gets sick of it after a day. She’s discovered that if she tries to skip ‘training’, someone high up and significantly deader than her sends a Valkyrie after her, so she’s begun experimenting — it’s been a long time since Cinder last came to check in on her, and she misses her.
(She thinks she could even convince her to stay over if she tried, which would mean — a lot. Cinder’s presence is comforting, especially so in death. Sometimes Winter catches sight of her ferrying bodies off the battlefield and earns herself a brief smile, the back half of a wave.)
Today, she volunteers for cleanup duty.
People on cleanup duty usually wind up getting shot at anyway, she reasons. It’s not that much of a risk, it technically qualifies as training, and she thinks she’s got Cinder’s schedule down.
She wants to see her again. She doesn’t want to fight; she’s fought all of her life, and it took dying to discover that she may not have ever needed to in the first place. She thinks part of her belongs with Cinder; she thinks that maybe in another life they might have —
Winter steps out onto the battlefield and walks directly into her.
“Oh, there you are,” Cinder says. A stray javelin shoots past her left ear and she plucks it out of the air neatly, sets it down on the floor before Winter can even think about reeling backwards. The last dregs of the day’s combat are dwindling into nothing around them; soon they’ll have an actual job to do.
It doesn’t matter. She’s found her.
“Here I am,” Winter says dizzily. “I was looking for you.”
“Missed me, huh?” Cinder grins. “Well, I missed you. Hey, are you free after this?”
“I was hoping you might be.”
She glances up at the endless sky, a different kind of smile quirking at her lips. “I’ve been meaning to come find you. You know how hard it is to find a dead guy in this place?”
“Do you know how hard it is to find a Valkyrie in this place?”
“Point taken.” Cinder offers her arm. “I’m free for forever, practically.”