BONUS ROUND 4 - FOOD

[scallioncreamcheesebagel]

In this round, we want to see prompts inspired by food!

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]

to participate, reply to this post!

Comments

PROMPT: TEAM OC

[scallioncreamcheesebagel]

Hunger

FILL: Team RWBY

[hopelessgemini]

fandom: RWBY

ship: winter/cinder

content warnings: child abuse (starvation, electrocution, physical violence) no depictions, just mentions

-

The worst part of all this is that Cinder is too weak to even be able to steal effectively. She knows her aura is the only thing keeping her insides from being entirely cooked by the shock collar; she knows it won’t last much longer without food, but she can’t even fucking get up. She just — has to lie here and wait until someone finds her, wait until Rhodes comes to save her, wait and wait and wait and wait and —

A knock sounds at the door, and then the whole thing blows down. Cinder flinches away, but can’t really make it any further than that. She’s trying to conserve her energy. If she’s dragged back to work she needs to be able to do something or they’ll kill her. They’ll just kill her.

She’s ready for it to be Madame or one of the evil kids or even Rhodes, but instead it’s a teenage girl. A teenage girl with white hair, a sword, and a split lip.

“Oh,” she says.

Cinder gapes at her. The girl looks at her for a moment longer, and then something large and white rushes past her, bounds directly over Cinder’s head and smashes directly through the window over her head. She ducks her head and covers her neck, trying to avoid the inevitable spray of glass, but nothing comes.

“You’re the servant,” the girl says. “They torture you.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m running away from my parents,” she says.

-

She picks Cinder up and puts her on the huge white thing. The huge white thing somewhat resembles a Beowolf. But that can’t be right. Cinder thinks she’s dying. When she opens her eyes again they aren’t even in Atlas; they’re down below, in a city she’s only seen once, and the girl who basically kidnapped her is saying “Come on, I took my father’s wallet, we can get something for you to eat.”

She looks up at the underside of the sky. “What are you doing?”

“I’m running away from my parents.”

“I know.”

“We’ve been here for a week. I saw you on the first day, they were torturing you on the second, and then they locked you in the basement.” She pauses. “Do they do that often?”

A week. Cinder lets herself sit with that. A week. The last time they shocked her it was for daring to ask for food. “Yeah,” she says.

The girl’s eyes narrow. She gestures to her split lip and says, “My father hits me. I — I couldn’t put up with it anymore. So I’m running away.”

“To where?”

“I’m going to go to Argus. You’re welcome to join me. I have — not family, but my — my butler goes there. I’m going to try to find him.”

“Your butler,” Cinder echoes.

The girl makes a complicated face. “Yes.”

-

They sit on the pavement outside some fast food chain and eat. Cinder has literally never had a better burger in her life; Winter — as in Winter fucking Schnee — keeps wrinkling her nose before she takes each bite.

“I memorised the train timetable before I left,” she says merrily. “I’m going to get to the coast before I figure anything else. You’re welcome to come as far with me as you’d like. Klein would be more than willing to take you.”

She pauses. Her face falls a little, then resumes its tentative enthusiasm. Cinder doesn’t know what to say to any of this, so she just nods.

Fill: Team OC

[static_prevails]

Ship: Deshavi/Ymira/the Captain (PC), from Mount & Blade
Words: 703
Notes: This is part two of a six-part story. Content warning for brief implied suicidal ideation.

Part 1
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

——

On the twenty-second day of the siege, the civilians are turned out of the castle.

“You could go with them,” Lord Fudreim tells you. “Leave behind your armor, and the Swadians will think you’re a camp follower. It would pain me to lose you, but you were only caught in here by chance. You deserve the choice.”

You refuse. You belong here with your soldiers. Still, you make the same offer to Deshavi and Ymira.

“And leave you? Not a chance!” Ymira says. “What kind of ungrateful wretch would that make me?”

“A living one,” Deshavi tells her. Then, turning to you: “I’m not leaving either.”

You watch from the walls, together, as the castle gate is opened and the crowd ushered through. They are mostly women, a few children. It’s a mercy, in theory - the hunger to come should only fall upon soldiers - but it’s also pragmatic. Every mouth outside the castle is one less mouth to feed within.

The Swadians are pragmatic, too.

“They aren’t letting them past,” Deshavi mutters.

Sure enough, a row of men forms up, blocking the road. Their captain, on horseback, approaches the refugees. They exchange words that you can’t hear, and he brandishes his sword at them before abruptly riding away.

They look back. The castle gate is closed behind them. There is nowhere to go.

You watch them into the evening as they form a makeshift camp in no man’s land. When the sun sets, there are no fires.

In the morning, they approach the Swadian lines again.

After an hour’s negotiation, a few of the Swadian men enter the crowd, picking and choosing among them, and retreat with all of the children and half as many women. These, they take beyond their earthworks and release onto the road. The rest remain blocked in.

In the evening, when Ymira and Deshavi each let their day’s ration of bread fall over the parapet, you pretend you see nothing.

On the twenty-fourth day of the siege and the refugees’ third day outside the walls, it begins to rain.

You watch them, again. Negotiations had reached an impasse the day before, it seems, and they make no attempt to approach the Swadian lines. Instead, they huddle against the castle’s walls in whatever corners they can find. It’s a poor protection against the wind and water, but it’s the best they can manage. Even when the storm has passed, the air remains frigid.

They speak to you, sometimes. They ask for food. They ask for shelter. One of them, a servant from your own company’s camp, makes conversation as if nothing were wrong. Another, who you recognize as a garrison wife, begs you to intercede with Lord Fudreim, with the gatehouse guards, with anybody.

“Lord Fudreim has given his orders; there’s nothing I can do to change them,” you say, to yourself as much as anyone else.

She picks up a rock and throws it. It reaches barely halfway up the wall.

“You’re leaving us to die! You sit there, warm and dry in your castle, and you leave us out here to die!”

You don’t respond. She’s telling the truth.

That night, in a quiet voice, you tell Ymira and Deshavi: “Stay with me in my quarters. I don’t think I should be left alone.”

In the morning, one of the women - the conversationalist - is dead.

A Swadian herald approaches the castle under flag of truce. He brings an offer: if Lord Fudreim will furnish the refugees with dry clothes and a day’s provisions, the Swadians will let them through.

“They’re just going to steal the rations the moment they’re out of our reach,” Lord Fudreim says in the council chambers.

Lord Gerluchs nods in agreement.

“I’ll do it, though. Gods have mercy, we’ll all starve if I let them back in, and this has gone on long enough.”

There are no objections.

True to their word, the Swadians let the ragged crowd pass by. True to Lord Fudreim’s prediction, they relieve them of everything they’re carrying before they do.

You hear the servant woman’s voice making pleasant conversation with you from behind a skeletal face that night, and the next, and the next.