Backup: Nuclino
Kingdoms and Thorn
Snippets and Works in Progress
Arc Snippets
Arc's father's mansion. She had invited reinforcements and her team members wandered through with wary affection and skeptical eyes in the vacuum left by Arc's narrow glare and bitter frown.
There's a cold that sinks down inside her and settles in her bones, aching through her muscles, the ones that hurt from training and training to become a hard, strong thing instead of a soft, small girl who from the first had always been well cared for.
Unwritten stuff
- opening drabbles - Skylight, Laiha
- also Skylight - is this close enough, dagachietek (Lorden, Ice Queen sister, comparative case)
Maybe Drabbles
"I swear, I thought nothing could crack that girl's composure."
Ice Queen shot the young officer a dark look. "We're not robots."
Skylight ignored them both, tight-lipped, hands pressed even more tightly over Wolf's bleeding stomach as Wolf struggled to hold still and not cough up blood. Tears had made tracks on Skylight's face. Her eyes were dark with fury.
"Go, get help," Ice Queen shoved the startled officer in the direction of useful. "There's a medic in camp."
"What are you going to do?"
"Go, dagach!"
She took no weapons. She needed none but herself to kill Wolf's shooter.
dialogue
"A guy'd have to be crazy not to want you."
"Augment's not crazy. Bridge isn't. Math certainly isn't."
"Math's with Skylight. Doesn't count."
"Point is, Stream, I don't care if he wants me. I don't want him. He's the most infuriating, self-entitled, self-centered brat that ever asked me out."
"You mean that slept with you."
"Shut up."
"I'm just saying—"
"If he knew what was good for him, he'd quit wanting me. You know exactly what I'm capable of."
"Yeah, and I wanted you."
…
"Don't tell me things like that."
"Ice Queen—"
"Don't."
Skylight planning (scene)
She pores over papers late at night, satellite images he understands, sheets full of data of various industries, political news materials. He sees her ask for more, call up contacts, watch the television feed blaring in tongues he couldn't speak himself, no matter how familiar they've become. It's a relentless cycle in between the handlers giving Wolf new orders and S telling them all how to make it work.
He sees the moment she leans her head back against the wall in an almost resigned line, her shoulders squared to do battle with Wolf over details, and he knows what she's going to say. It's going to cost in blood.
Skylight (snippets)
She sees the other teams before they're split up into easily manageable groups. She isn't quite as attached to the ones she's with as the admins seem to think she is.
But she made a logical decision based on the children around her, their abilities, their personalities and temperaments and the girl they'd somehow fallen into line behind. She's figured out that this is where she will likely fare the best.
She's not here for the same reasons the others are. At least, that's the impression the marshal gets when he picks the little girl out of the ragged line of street kids they've gathered in.
"You. Little girl." He reaches for her, and she flinches back, grey eyes narrowing. Her eyes strike him as oddly aggressive, fearlessness at odds with the motion of her body.
Ice Queen takes the blood (snippet)
They don't really talk about the things they do for each other, Ice Queen thinks as she studies the group of them, falling into line for mission prep, the same way they've always done for years now, long enough that everyone knows their part, exactly which part of their soul they're going to sacrifice for everyone else.
Arc will take the men because she always does, kissing and drawing them in with her eyes and pretty promises and making them do whatever she wishes. Skylight takes the lives, deciding which great houses to ruin, which cities to bring famine to, which political leaders to grind into dust, which targets to let die. Wolf takes the decisions, defines the parameters, agrees or disagrees with Skylight's recommendations, takes the cost. It's her choice how much blood gets spilled and her conscience that gets the blame for everything on their hands.
Ice Queen takes the blood. She's vicious so they don't have to be and thinks it fitting that her sister is the ruthless one, Skylight.
WIP: Skylight
[scenes] tie
"What is this?" Skylight asked, voice curious and soft. He felt the weight of her hand on the tie as she felt its texture.
"It's a tie. Formal wear." He rolled his eyes. Math had always been more comfortable in pants and a sleeveless shirt for training.
But then Skylight's fingers worked their way into the knot of his tie and tugged slightly, experimentally, and his stomach did a flip over as his breath became slightly more difficult and he stilled to keep a little room between it and his neck.
"You just love finding new ways to terrify me, don't you?" he asked dryly.
Her head dipped forward, and suddenly she pressed her face to his neck and jaw and he could feel her smile.
…
"We need to put our game faces on," he said softly between ragged breaths and brief, sweet kisses, "and greet Anadia's guests."
Skylight made a low, humming sound in her throat, concession without agreement. She kissed him a little longer, fingers tightening on the knot and he couldn't tell if he couldn't breathe because of the tie constricting his neck or because of her mouth on his.
She pulled away and leaned her forehead against his again, breaths audible and warm against his face.
"Leave me room for oxygen," he told her.
The tilt of her head, the exact angle of her hip jutting under his hand as her fingers danced down the length of his tie, smoothing and adjusting—it was what Ice Queen called her scheming smile. He'd never felt that one before and almost reached up a hand, but then she was sliding out of his grip, fingers stopping at the edge of his, loosely grasping and tugging him behind her.
…
"Keep the tie," she ordered as she moved ahead of him and disappeared into the walk-in.
Math had been in the process of loosening it and gritted his teeth but stopped anyway. "Would you like to add a please with that?"
"Not particularly." Skylight's form reappeared out of the closet, hand leaning on the doorframe. "Did you want one?"
…
"What exactly are you going to do with this?"
Skylight noted he didn't really look down at the tie. He kept his eyes on hers as she pushed him back to sit on the edge of the bed, her hands on his shoulders. She stopped to take in the amused look to his raised eyebrows and the half-unbuttoned shirt, then slid her fingers between the tie and his neck.
He caught in his breath audibly, though he tried to keep it soft and unnoticeable.
"Is this too close?" She leaned in to ask the question, murmuring softly against his ear, and reminding him of when she'd pinned him with shards of her own power.
Half the time she couldn't tell if the tension between them was fear or desire. She watched him swallow and wondered if he couldn't tell either.
"Is this close enough?"
…
"How long are you going to leave this on?"
"I haven't decided yet."
She pulled the tie just slightly tighter, cloth warm and soft and thick over her fingers.
He made a choking sound she'd never heard from him before, desperate and needy, then "Skylight…"
She shuddered at the thickness in his voice, the faint break at the back of it, and leaned over to kiss him, swallowing down the sound of his quiet groan. She pressed him down onto his back and followed him down, dizzy on his trust.
…
She groaned, want burning under her skin, and slid her hips up against his. She hated his pants and hers and had to straighten again to free up a hand to fumble on their buttons.
[scene] going to Riving
"Who does Riving belong to?"
He could see her toweling off her neck as she came toward his desk, then she was leaning in from behind, one hand on the back of his shoulder. He wondered if she'd figured out yet how easily that drove every rational thought out of his head. The air heated between them and his skin grew tacky under the pressure of her hand.
"Um… Justice has a wayhouse there," he managed to get out.
Skylight hummed low in her throat, one finger out and tracing over the map on the table. Light streamed through her arm with the movement, and he forced himself to watch it and focus on her conversation, not her nearness.
She paused, head tilting toward him.
It took him a moment to think of what she might be looking at him for. "He's a thirty-four."
The faint swirls of light drifting through her dark form stopped altogether as she stilled completely. "I see."
Think, Math, think, he told himself. A thirty-four. Shift's. He winced then and sought for words to reassure her. Not that he would have thought she'd need them. Skylight wasn't known for her compassion.
But she had other things.
"From what I can tell, he's like you," Math finally said.
And that brought her around entirely. Her attention was always so intense when she focused fully on him, grip firmer even than usual. "You know him?"
"I know of him," he corrected. "He's as careful with his own as you are."
"That's not saying much, Math," Skylight replied, soft and bitter, head turning away.
… hurt …
"Steady," she said again, tone gentling.
"I think you underestimate how careless other dimensionals can be. Mirage gave her own brother a wound on his neck that will never heal."
[fodder] beautiful
"Skylight." His voice was thick and it was heady to hear her name filled with so much want.
She leaned down and kissed him hard, fingers working into his hair to draw him close. She kissed him until her lungs and throat began to ache and she was dizzy and needy and his hips moved against hers, hands sliding upward over her back as he groaned.
He moved upward a little more. She felt the tug, then her hair was falling down thick around her face and over her hands and she pulled away, desperate for air and breath again. She reared back, enough to flick her hair back out of her way over her shoulders, then reached for another kiss.
"Gachanta," she whispered, breathing out the Kachan word without intention or thought. She watched his brows furrow slightly with puzzlement, then effort as he shifted his attention to focus on the rhythm of their movement. He had no reference for beauty, not as others had, no understanding of what she saw when she looked at him pushing up against her, head back, eyes wide and clear and locked onto her face.
"You're beautiful," she whispered again, in a language less intimate but more undeniable. "You're so beautiful to me."
His hands were on her hips and his breath was coming fast as he watched her almost worshipfully and she moved over him, finding the angle that tightened her muscles and faded her vision and made her grip him tighter to anchor her as she panted with so much want she felt like it was bursting out of her skin.
[scene] Wolf/Skylight meeting again at Rhosia estate
Wolf loped up over the paved path through gently sloping landscaped hills and patches of garden enclosed in brick. Sunlight pattered through the tree leaves overhead. She didn't much love the Rhosia estate, for all Skylight took to it like it was her long lost home.
(It was, after all. They would have adopted her had she not disappeared as a small child.)
The place represented something Wolf couldn't quite put her finger on, but she resented its firm clinging to normalcy and what might have beens, when what might have been had not occurred and reality wouldn't bend to the whims of an old and wealthy family merely because they wished it. Maybe she only resented it because she must pass the watchful eyes of the matriarch of the house before being permitted to see her own.
Anadia Rhosia may have once hoped to raise Katia to adulthood, but it was Wolf who had, and she hadn't named her Katia.
She found herself scowling and forced a smile to her face before she ducked in the perenially open doorway of Skylight's training studio, noted its emptiness, and moved through to the inner door where she knocked a distinct pattern and went in.
The slashes of silver grey fluid were expected. She raised her hand as sharp and quick as Skylight had shot out hers and caught the energy behind the patches with a swift close of her fist. The light went out, the energy dissipated. Wolf tilted her head and smiled at Skylight's flat, exasperated gaze.
"Hey there," Wolf said easily enough, enough for Skylight to mentally wave her off and return to pulling her long dark curls into a loose bun at the base of her neck.
She sighed loudly and spread her hands. "What? No hi, how are you, nice to see you too?"
Skylight finished her hair and raised an eyebrow. Wolf slid her hands to her hips and arched one back.
"Are you looking for the Ice Queen?" Skylight asked simply.
Wolf scoffed. "I'd sooner get tears from a rock than from Ice Queen."
"But not hugs," Skylight countered.
Wolf crossed her arms and leaned against the wall with a huff. "Who said I wanted a hug?" She blew a stray wisp of hair out of her eyes.
Skylight just looked at her for a moment, then stepped forward to place one hand on Wolf's shoulder. "Wolf," she said warmly.
It was a good as a hug from Skylight. Wolf found herself smiling.
It was good to see Wolf, for all Skylight had never been inclined to touch and hug, like Ice Queen had. The side effect of a childhood full of avoidance of anything that might put a patch-shaped hole in a human being. That and avoiding touching her roommate during their learning years when Arc was more likely to electrocute her on accident than anything else.
Wolf had never had that problem. She didn't now as she leaned in and wrapped an arm around Skylight's shoulders briefly, forehead bumping into Skylight's temple. A half hug compromise that surprised her not at all.
"So Commander Hill found you," Skylight surmised.
"You," Wolf said, lifting an admonishing finger, "have to stop doing that." But her cheeks dimpled with a grin not quite held back.
Skylight shrugged and flicked an amused eyebrow. "You value my ability to make accurate deductions."
As a team fourth, it had been a necessary skill. Her job had generally fallen under protective enforcer in the field and tactical assistance in the mission prep phase.
...
"I'm not telling you," Wolf said sharply. "We're free now."
Skylight let that sit a moment, then took Wolf's hands in her own as if they were still young girls. "Freely, I have pledged to you my loyalty," she stressed. "I am yours to command, as ever."
Wolf stared at her for a long moment, mouth flat, gaze troubled. "Sometimes I don't want to command you. I am also free," she said quietly at last. She frowned then, withdrawing her hands to cross her arms as earnestness sparked in her eyes. "You don't have to do what I say just because I ask it. You know that." Her tone turned downward in the manner of a Kachan question. It had always been their team's language of privacy.
"Does a mother cease to be a mother when her children are grown?" Skylight asked, amused again.
Wolf narrowed her eyes, unamused on the surface, but it was a familiar reaction from their years of banter and exasperated disagreements. "She stops ordering them around."
"Until she says we are doing this as a family," Skylight countered. She gave a moment for Wolf to respond before stressing again, "I'm yours, Wolf. I will ever be yours. That's never going to change."
...
I cried, just not around you.
Why not?
You were all mine to watch over and comfort, not to show weakness and a soft belly to.
I would never mistake tears for weakness. Remember the day that Quantum cried? I doubt any would think her weak.
...
If you wish to take this mission, I will stand behind you and teach them why you do not trifle with those who take the name of the wolf.
I don't want the world to fear me.
What do you want then? Tell me, and I will give it to you.
If I ask you for the nations?
Have I failed you yet?
[scene] do you remember color
"Do you remember color?" she asked, voice low and thoughtful, fingers soft on his shoulder. Her other hand moved firmly up the back of his neck, then tangled in his hair.
He had to think about, think back to before he could see the thick and thin of mass and density and bone. He found himself tightening his grip on her back, letting the warmth of her skin beneath his hands and her breath against his face ground him in the moment before he sank into other memories, the ones that went with how he lost that sight in the first place.
"I remember," he said, a little rougher than he'd like.
He'd never liked to show vulnerability to Skylight, a woman harsh as she was warm. He'd never been able to keep it from her.
She was warm now, voice gentle as she asked him, "What do I look like to you?"
She'd known forever that he couldn't see her the way others did and that she, of all of their team, gave away the most to his vision. How could he tell her that though, in any way that meant something new? He traced fingers up the swirling paths of light through her arms and over her belly and between her breasts. He heard her breath catch and found the sparser mass of her loose curls so he could pull her down close and kiss her.
"I just see," he said at last. "Mass."
It was how he got the name Math in the end. He'd learned numbers and pencil dust and graph paper to better use his vision for something useful, like geometry and physics on the fly during a mission. Like where Skylight should fling her light to best effect.
But it made him curious. "What color are you?" He gently threaded her hair through his fingers. He loved the texture of it, silken soft and rippling, thicker to his touch than his sight.
"Brown," she said. "My hair's dark brown. Some think it's black."
He tried to imagine that, superimposed it on the faint cloud of matter he associated with her hair and dragged up old memories of dark brown hair on others.
"And your skin?"
"A bit more gold than yours. Darker a little." She pressed her hand into his chest and stared at it, as if comparing.
"I don't remember—" He could almost remember, but it was so long ago and he'd never focused much on himself.
Skylight hummed low against the side of his head as she leaned against him. She shifted in his lap and he swallowed hard at the way that felt. "Your skin is about the color of an almond shell," she said at last. "Do you remember those?"
He nodded. His grandmother used to give him almonds whole and taught him how to crack them.
She dragged her fingers up and through the back of his hair, and it hurt a little from how tangled she'd made it already, but he didn't begrudge the small pain. "This is about the color of the almond skin, the brown part."
She was darker than him on both fronts then. "Golder?"
"Yes."
He imagined her gold and dark brown, so others might call it black, and superimposed that over soft hips and square shoulders and that unyielding set of her jaw when he ran his thumb over her mouth. He paused.
"Are you smiling?" he asked, surprised and wondering at the way that made him a little dizzy.
But, "Yes," she said again, and he could hear it in her voice, her smile as she pressed her forehead to his. "Do you remember the green of trees in winter?"
"Yeah."
"That's the color I prefer to wear. White shirts sometimes. The standard ones."
They all wore the standard shirts. Part and parcel of being military in practice if not in name.
He could imagine it, see her in his mind's eye in the colors he'd almost forgotten, and she was as beautiful as she felt to him, every angle fit together just so into the strength he'd always associated with her.
He ignored the light flowing through her body in liquid streams, rising toward the edges of her shape and falling again inside her. He could see the universe inside her, knew how easily it could erase the one in which he lived, but he trusted her to keep it within when he dragged her down and close to press his hand to her hip and his lips to her mouth.
She dug her fingers into his shoulders and gripped him tight as she kissed him back, and she was fire in his veins, sweetness in his mouth, and a growing ache in his lungs because he didn't want to stop and breathe.
[list] possible scenes
- asks Stream about moving to the garden, training, peer relationships stay peer, older than his brother, act like they aren't
- talks to Katia Vamarr, does he ever change his mind, he's a blockhead no, you'd need a new trainer, know of one, wouldn't recommend, she's crazy, what they did to them wasn't pleasant
[scene] meeting the commander
Glass Springs was a small town, not exactly prime location for Commander Justin Hall to be seeking a lauded military operative who had apparently kept her skills active, according to the dossier in his hand. But it was not without civilization. He rode the public transport down streets that were well-paved through a market not overly crowded past well-built small houses to a larger estate set well back behind a screen of trees that somehow managed to not strike him as overbearing and ostentatious. The lack of iron gates perhaps had something to do with it.
The transport dropped him there and he found himself walking a paved path under shade trees and over a well-trimmed landscape, carefully pruned shrubs and inviting benches welcoming him to linger.
He was a military man, however, with business to conduct. He moved on efficiently and turned at the sign to a path that led around behind the house to a series of smaller buildings and cottages, one of which promised to be the training studio he'd heard of.
The door was open, cool air wafting out, and he saw a figure inside.
"Katia Vamarr?" He hovered on the threshold, struck by the woman who looked up at him.
She was not particularly beautiful, too boxy and muscular for that. Her build was athletic enough, her clothes loose-fitting standard military training clothes: the dark green pants the color of summer foliage, the off-white tank top contrasting with golden brown skin and impractical thick dark hair rippling over her back. Her grey eyes were keen, taking him in with a razor sharp glance, and her mouth was a straight slash somewhere between neutrality and displeasure.
"The door was open." He gestured with the words at the frame.
She nodded coolly.
He stepped inside. The studio itself was impressive, dark engraved panels alternating with wood and artistic but durable green metal. Light sconces were embedded at regular intervals around the walls. Hooks held various standard training weapons on one wall. The floor on the far side was lined with padded mats, but the center of the room was paneled flooring and a ring at its center, more engraved charcoal colored metal embedded around it.
"Not your standard studio."
Vamarr shrugged, if indeed Vamarr it was. She had been hanging throwing knives on the wall when he caught her, if deduction served. Now, she turned fully and waited with a slightly arched brow.
Hall wasn't especially patient himself. "Are you Katia Vamarr?"
"It's one of my names," she said after a moment. "I prefer Skylight."
Skylight. It was listed as a callsign in the folder he kept. "Very well," he agreed, for all it seemed a strange choice. "I came here with an offer."
"A job offer, commander?" The other eyebrow rose and her tone was even cooler.
"How did you know I was a commander?" Hall countered, comfortably enough. Laying out his intentions wasn't a problem.
"You're not the first commander I've met," she replied.
"I'd heard something about that," he agreed.
...
"You weren't told not to offer me directly?"
[scene] wrote you something
"I wrote you something." His voice was soft, hesitant against her ear.
"You did?" She leaned in closer against him, skin warm against his, felt him stumble over the next inhale before he kissed her shoulder and leaned away to open the drawer of his nightstand one-handed and dig around for something. His brow creased in conversation, then eyes opened slightly in accomplishment. She wondered if he had any idea how she could read him like this, his face an open book mere inches away. He couldn't see his own features, even his own shape in a mirror. He probably had no idea.
He closed the drawer and slipped a paper into her hand not wrapped around his shoulder. "It's not very good."
But it was for her.
She took it and slipped open the folds to read it. [ read it ]
"I like it when you get sentimental." She kissed him warmly, sliding arms around his shoulders, pulling her fingers through his hair, and wrapping one leg better around his waist to press herself close—hips and breasts and with a breath and slide upward, arching into him so she could hear the way he reacted and feel his shudder of want.
[scene] conversation
Skylight stretched out on the bed, intel strewn over the covers. Math's eyes widened slightly in his own version of an eyebrow raise and she caught the edge of a smile, neatly smothered before she'd normally comment.
They'd been dancing near the precipice of actually talking about this for long enough that her patience ran out abruptly. "Are you going to hover in the doorway or come all the way in?" she asked brusquely, even as she returned her attention to the photographs Wolf had tossed her way earlier. They weren't pretty. Little intelligence from the Merhanni region was.
"Logris?" Math asked, voice quiet as he shoved off the doorframe and did come in.
She paused to watch his progress toward the bed, careful steps that seemed at odd with his usually easy motion. This was her and Arc's room. There were hidden dangers for one with his sort of vision.
"Clear," she commented, dropped her gaze.
It sped him up. He was there already, hand touching hers lightly in confirmation of his presence. He sat on the bed, leaning back against the wall, legs thrown over her feet with no concern for the casual intimacy and whether it was too much. They were team members and that went deeper than any potential relationship change to something more personal.
It was too much, swelling in her chest, filling the space between them with the voice of their unspoken words, and at the same time, it was altogether too little. She reached out without looking, blindly, fingers reaching to twist into his and cling.
His hand was warm and after a breath—she listened for the softness of his exhale—and a moment's hesitation in her own, he closed his grip on hers.
They didn't speak. She read satellite images, the shape of lands not her own that she knew as if they were, and whenever she glanced over, he was reading her, eyes tracking the way she shifted when she exchanged one set of pictures for another.
