YURI SHIPPING OLYMPICS 2024 - BONUS ROUND 7

[a1c0bb]

For this round, we want to see prompts that are based on settings or locations! For your prompts, please provide a location or setting. It can be as specific or as abstract as you want, and can be in any medium you prefer!

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]

Not for the first time, Winter wakes up alone. The only sign that the Prince was here in the first place are the sheets, tangled around her legs, and the slightly ajar window at the other side of the room.

She sits up blearily, running a hand through her hair. There’s no hope for the sheets, she’ll have to get them washed. “Cinder?” she calls experimentally, just to double check — Cinder has a habit of forgetting where she is in the middle of getting dressed, and it’s caused problems for them in the past — and gets out of bed when no response comes, kicking her way out of the sheets.

The other side is still warm. She can’t have left more than ten minutes ago. It’s a miracle she didn’t wake Winter up in the process; she’s always been a light sleeper.

//

Winter gets dressed and makes her way to the training grounds without much preamble. Technically, she’s on sick leave. Realistically, she’d rather die than miss a day of training, even if she's just sitting in.

There are a few knights hanging around the entrance to the stables when she reaches the grounds, a few of the Ace Operatives she knows and a few she doesn’t. They all go quiet when she approaches.

Winter glances between them, anticipating the usual mix of guilt and defiance. Most of the other knights don’t like her very much, and she’s more or less made her peace with that. “What?”

“Where’s the Prince?” Harriet says immediately. Elm slaps the back of her head; she swats Elm’s forearm in retaliation.

Winter raises an eyebrow. “Somewhere on the grounds, surely.”

(Cinder goes missing at least once a week. They’re all used to it.)

“Look for her,” Harriet snaps back, which earns her another slap and a warning look. That’s what’s unusual, Winter decides; this isn’t the kind of tension she’s familiar with. Whatever they’re keeping from her, they’re doing it intentionally.

“Fine,” she sighs, “where’s my horse?”

//

Winter heads to the usual place.

The midday sun is high overhead by the time she arrives. Cinder is sitting in a pool of shadow at the edge of the copse, watching the silhouette of the castle in the distance. She doesn’t look up when Winter’s horse pulls up beside her, doesn’t look up when Winter extends a hand to her and says, “They’re looking for you. And they’re being bloody weird about it, too.”

“Weird is Harriet’s default,” she says idly. “I notified them of my departure, actually. I have something to ask you.”

Winter dismounts somewhat ungracefully — she’s on sick leave, after all — and crosses the grass to sit beside her on the log she’s commandeered. They must look ridiculous like this, the knight in her riding leathers and the Prince without her regalia, hidden away in the shadows.

“Go on, then,” she says, “ask me.”

Cinder glances at her out of the corner of her eye. A smirk plays at the corner of her lips, far more familiar than this weird melancholy. “Later, babe. Watch the castle with me.”

“You’re being odd,” Winter says pointedly, but she sits with her anyway. “If you’re going to ask me to marry you, wait until I’m not on sick leave.”

Cinder laughs. “Okay,” she grins, “I’ll wait.”