BONUS ROUND 1: THROWBACK PROMPTS

[a1c0bb]

In this round, we'll be using prompts from last year's bonus rounds! You can either come up with a prompt based on the previous themes, fill a prompt from previous bonus rounds, or fill a prompt that's been posted this year!

Here is the tag with all the previous bonus rounds!

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]

If you're filling from a 2023/2024 prompt, please link to their prompt in your post!

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PROMPT: TEAM HONKAI STAR RAIL

[ai_sana]

Mythology:

A deity who longs to be human and a human who seeks to be divine.

FILL: Team RWBY

[hopelessgemini]

ship: winter/cinder

fandom: RWBY

genuinely quite proud of this one

-

“So,” Cinder says, “how do you kill a god?”

Winter frowns at her. “You don’t.”

-

When Salem couldn’t answer, Cinder killed her. When Ozpin couldn’t answer, Cinder killed him too. The thing about gods, she’s learned, is that they don’t lack mortality, just the awareness required to fathom it. Anyone stupid and powerful enough could be a god. And that’s what she’s aiming for.

Well, it’s not so much the power as the longing for divinity. And the power, a little bit, but mostly the divinity. Winter doesn’t seem very divine — or, well, she seems as though she’s actively rebelling against the concept. Her body strains and stretches around a human form, leaking out bright white light whenever her hands touch something. And she seems to hate the light, hate the light for being light, hate the frost that trails in her wake and the condensation that drips from her open mouth.

Cinder thinks it’s a little hot.

She fights her for a while, actually, just to test the limits of this divinity. Winter is stronger than her by far — unlike the old gods, who were slow-moving and complacent, near-eldritch beings drifting along the endless ocean floor of a new world, Winter is fresher, younger. She’s almost toying with Cinder, by the end, and she would have probably killed her if she weren’t so obviously curious.

“What are you?” she asks, once.

“A human,” Cinder says. Her blade drips with white-gold blood.

“You killed Father Time.”

She flashes her a red grin. “It wasn’t that hard.”

Winter frowns. “What did you want from him? What couldn’t he give you?”

“Oh, you know.” She struggles a little in Winter’s grip. It hardly seems to bother her.

“I don’t know,” she says plainly. “That’s why I asked you.”

When Cinder gives in eventually, Winter shows her mercy — she pauses with the point of her blade, an icicle sharpened to a fine point, levelled directly at Cinder’s throat; pauses, then hums. Steps aside. “You want to become a god.”

“Lucky guess,” Cinder says, spitting out blood. Winter smiles at her, and the sun parts the clouds for the briefest, brightest instant.

“You’re in good hands, then. I don’t want to be a god anymore.”

-

Her divinity is a curse, she explains, passed all the way down from Father Time to a girl who trusted her enough to give her a gift. “I never wanted this. I — she — the girl who gave this to me trusted me immensely.” She looks at Cinder searchingly. “I don’t want it anymore.”

“You’ve repaid that trust and then some,” Cinder says. It’s not an empty platitude, either; she really, earnestly means it. Winter is a lot of things, but mostly war, the peaceful death of the cold, swords and hunting dogs and snow. A lot of young women in Atlas choose her as their patron, and the kingdom can never quite seem to hold them.

WInter smiles wryly. “That’s the thing; I haven’t. But it doesn’t matter now. I can’t —” she falters, swallowing, suddenly vulnerable, “I can’t do this anymore.”

“Right,” Cinder says. “Well, I’m simple. I want power.”

“You’re refreshingly honest.”

“I’m an evil bitch.”

Winter pauses, tilting her head. Her eyes glow in the setting sunlight. “I don’t think you are.”