Difference between revisions of "Backup: Kingdoms and Thorn Snippets"

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(Created page with "== Everything the Light Touches == === Intro. Punching Holes in the World === "Silver, what are you doing?" Wolf asked curiously. But Silver didn't answer. Quiet did. "She'...")
 
(Wolf goes to visit Skylight in studio)
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It was a good as a hug from Skylight. Wolf found herself smiling.
 
It was a good as a hug from Skylight. Wolf found herself smiling.
  
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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.
 
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.
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"I'm not <em>telling</em> you," Wolf said sharply. "We're free now."
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"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."
 
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."

Revision as of 08:49, 19 September 2017

Everything the Light Touches

Intro. Punching Holes in the World

"Silver, what are you doing?" Wolf asked curiously.

But Silver didn't answer. Quiet did. "She's punching holes in the world."

It made Silver falter, made Wolf's eyes go wide, and they looked like the very young children they were.

"Everything the light touches is hers to keep or destroy."

Skylight/Math Intro

Could you not hold that so close?

"Skylight," he called, watched as one figure detached from the rest. He knew her by more than shape, but also by the light flaring and streaming through her body as she moved.

Her dimensional patches, as she called them—her light, as he did—had always been controlled by her motion. The slight swinging of her arms sent swirls of light through her insides. They settled as she stopped beside him, hand sliding to her hip, head tilted downward so she could look at him. He assumed she was looking at him. It was hard to tell when he could make out the shape of her but couldn't see her eyes.

He pointed at the diagram where he'd marked the structure's weak points. He used soft charcoal pencils that left more lead on his paper where he could see it. Ink and ordinary pencil lead had matter and substance but not enough to make more than the faintest of lines to his vision.

"Two patches, here and here."

She seemed to follow along with his gestures, her body a little tenser and leaning just a little closer. She raised a hand before his face, and he watched the liquid light bubble up on her palm in a shimmery rectangle, more energy than pure matter, and capable of making whatever it touched vanish forever.

She was so close to him, he could taste the scent of her shampoo and the sweat she'd worked up in training. He could hear her breath and feel the way her body had warmed the air between them, large as the space was.

"How large?" she asked. A perfectly reasonable question. A tactical question. This was mission prep after all.

"Could you not hold that so close?" he asked, still staring at the hole in the world she'd made.

Her head angled away from the dimensional fluid across her palm and toward him. "Why?" she asked, voice so even and serious, he assumed it was sincere.

Which of course it was. This was Skylight, not Ice Queen. She could certainly lie by omission but she generally always meant what she said.

She studied him a long moment while he found he had no words and no actions. He couldn't bring himself to touch her with her power activated as it was, and his throat was dry and his head empty of what to say. He could feel her attention like a palpable thing, as if he could see that she was staring at him instead of just having her head pointed in his direction.

The moment stretched, then she gently closed her palm, matterlessness sinking back inside her and fading as she held still.

He started breathing again and shook his head. He didn't point at his eyes, didn't mention his sight, but they both knew what he could and could not see, and in her tiniest of head shrugs, he realized she'd determined the answer for herself.

"A little larger," he finally answered. "Twice a handful."

"That's not an exact measurement," she said, deadpan.

That caught him by surprise, and he lost a quiet laugh.

The tension in her shoulders softened just a little, and he wondered if she were smiling.

It was a legitimate complaint and he made himself spit out the actual math. It's what he was named for. It was why he'd learned it.

She looked at the paper as he spoke, nodded. It was all easy and the opposite of dangerous. He couldn't really say why it was so hard to catch his breath until she moved away again.

After mission

Are you here to tell me I shouldn't have done that?

Is that what you think? Your job is to make tactical decisions.

My job is to make assessments. You do tactical.

Do you think I'm here as your fourth?

Silence for a moment, sits on his desk

Why did you trust me to cover you? That was an entire building.

...

I can't see your face. You're going to have to do something if you want me to know what you're thinking.

Kissed him, surprisingly soft, mouth gentle on his, pulled away and hovered a breath away

Felt her face, kissed her

Wolf + Skylight Post-Rebellion

Wolf goes to visit Skylight in studio

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?