Backup: Kingdoms and Thorn Snippets

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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?

Fire Oil / Anantea

CITY OF MERHA, LOWER MARKET, REPUBLICAN YEAR 240, MIDSUMMER

She could have been beautiful, Anantea, but nature had conspired to give her looks too forbidding to be beautiful—dark brows thick and furrowed, features stern and plain despite their symmetry, shoulders and hips too square and boxy to be considered inviting or to incite desire, and the raw power in her movements best befitted a man.

No, the weapon seller decided, she was not beautiful, but she had something else, something he'd made his livelihood on identifying in others.

"Lady Anantea," he began, ignoring the glare of his partner, Zakon. "You do not wish this lady's dagger of self defense. You want for a finer weapon."

One of those eyebrows came up as her grey-eyed gaze narrowed on him. It made something inside his chest flutter as he felt the lock in of her dangerous attention. It was this he'd found in so many, again and again and again, this ability to be dangerous.

She was not dressed as a lady, but he knew her for one, despite her failure to introduce herself as such. There was not only power in her motion but grace well engrained from thorough training of one sort or another, and she'd left a piece of engraved stone jewelry around her neck, too finely wrought to belong to any but one of high rank.

"Please." He bowed low, sweeping his arm out slowly. "Come see my finer wares."

Zakon scowled, but did not argue as Anantea slipped the silver dagger back onto his tray and the demand in her eyebrow shifted to curious interest. Zakon and Baruk had spent years in this shop together, selling to the fineborn and the mercenary alike. It was Zakon's duty to lend them respectability and the job of Baruk's eye to locate the more dangerous of their clientele and pick out those willing to spend more money in the back rooms.

She followed easily enough, listened to his usual pratter to narrow down her interest in weapons. She remained bored at the suggestion of heavy weapons and light explosives, eyes flicking toward his face with a hint of interest when he moved to poisons.

"My most reliable." He gestured at a shelf full of various bottles and containers and vials, differing in size and shape, some decorative, others more subtle and unlikely to be considered dangerous by the unsuspecting.

"My most dangerous." His hand moved up a shelf. The red glass was a reminder to be careful in the handling.

"And this"—Baruk paused to caress a graceful vial—"is Fire Oil." A worthy choice for the lady Anantea, he thought. Poison had been known as a woman's weapon for many excellent reasons, and he doubted she had come for mere self-defense.

Anantea raised her chin, eyes thoughtful. "I'm familiar with its properties," she said.

"Ah." The weapon seller hid his surprise. Yes, she appeared quite knowing. Perhaps she was mercenary or assassin, but he had learned long ago, he'd rather not know who his clientele were, only what. "And how many have you killed with it?" he asked, conversationally, considering how much instruction should go with its purchase.

But she surprised him again. "No one," she said as matter-of-factly. She touched one nail to the crimson glass. "It's an unpleasant way to die." Her gaze did not meet his, but rather veered off into something in her own memory.

"Indeed it is," he agreed, head bobbing. It drew her attention again, eyes shifting in his direction. "Perfect for revenge, no?"

She flicked away the vial in dismissal and moved past the shelf of poisons toward his display of blades and knives, her gaze taking them in with a professional glance, hands sliding behind her back in a military at ease. The lady was a study in conflicting signals. "If I kill a man, he'll know it's coming." She glanced at him, eyebrow rising in impatience.

Baruk quickly returned the Fire Oil to the shelf and hurried to her side. He did not miss that her gaze wandered in its direction one more time before she engaged him in discussion of the blades.




She moved confidently through the market with her purchases, pausing and lingering beside a table of scarves and bracelets, finely wrought and expensive, before dismissively waving off the sellers and moving on again. She knew the appropriate ways to behave and handle herself were she really the lady pretending to be someone else in the Lower Market of Merha.

She wasn't a lady though, not of a noble house, and even the graceful mannerisms and finely engraved "stone" at her neck were the products of her weaponized upbringing, not wealth.

She passed the last stall before the Market turned toward the left and the Caravan's Port spread in organized chaos to the right, full of modern vehicles and bicycles interspersed with horses and older means of transportation.

"Dágavech," a blonde called, every part of her body and leathers covered in the dirt of travel. "Asakíto." An offer of safe passage through the desert.

Skylight raised an eyebrow, tossed the first of her purchases toward the blonde's left hand. Caught, as she expected. "Baezeká." She didn't wait for a response, just slipped back into the crowded market while the Ice Queen cursed fluently in another half dozen tongues.

Fire Oil / Skylight

Get Up

THORN REPUBLIC, BASE 5, REPUBLICAN YEAR 238, EARLY SPRING

"Get up." Wolf's voice was harsh and cold, and Skylight moaned at the way it made her head pound worse. But there were Wolf's hands on her shoulders, sharp fingers, grip painfully tight as she ordered again. "Get. Up."

Skylight rolled over on the concrete floor. Stomach acid boiled up in the back of her throat. Her skin was hot and breath came so hard, so difficult. She coughed up blood, pressed her palms against the concrete, and shoved.

Had Wolf not been there under her arm, carrying her up, she'd have crumpled back to the floor.

"Move." Wolf's voice was as hard as the concrete.

Skylight hated to fail her leader. Her vision was blurry and she couldn't find her arms and her legs, but she swayed forward and her legs stumbled forward in an attempt to catch her.

Wolf pushed with her, kept Skylight's arm slung over her shoulders, and demanded, "Move," every time Skylight tried to stop and retch. "Move," every time she tried to pause, almost fell, almost had to stop if it weren't for her leader's voice in her ears. "Move."

She moved.

She kept moving. Hours of walking around in circles, stumbling toward the trash can to throw up more of what she didn't have in her stomach, Wolf pulling her back to continue moving. Her dizzy fever began to slowly sink into the white noise rhythm of her migraine, and Skylight finally realized they were in the main training area. Her shirt was sticking to her body, her pants were spattered in blood—her own blood, she thought hazily—and Wolf's shoulder under Skylight's arm was stiff and tense as she shoved Skylight forward every time she dared to slow down.

"What happened?" Skylight tried to ask, but her tongue was thick and her lips cracked with dehydration. "Wolf?" she managed to croak out in a voice she didn't even recognize.

It was Math's voice that answered, his usual easy tone gone for a flat recitation of facts. "You were poisoned. You should be dead."

She tried to stop then, process the words, but Wolf shoved her forward unforgivingly and caught her before she tumbled right off her feet.

"You have to keep moving," Wolf said. But her tone had softened from concrete to to a firm plea.

"Your light is burning out the poison," Math added.

Her light. The patches of dimensional fluid Skylight's body generated every time she moved, fluid that could wipe anything that wasn't her out of existence altogether.

As long as she moved.

Grimly, she made herself step forward, one foot in front of the other, and again and again. She leaned on Wolf with purpose at last and helped Wolf keep her alive.

---

She dropped into a cold bath, amazed in a distant way that she didn't immediately shiver in shock. The world around her still felt very detached and unreal, until it snapped into focus abruptly with a glimpse of Arc hovering above her and the sharp shock of static electricity Arc zapped her shoulder with.

Skylight hissed, then carefully leaned her head back against the side of the tub to stare upward at Arc's straight frown and crossed arms. "I'm not really in the mood," Skylight told her roommate dryly.

Arc's left eyebrow twitched upward, but otherwise, she said nothing.

Skylight didn't ignore her—she ignored very little, having decided early on that excellent observation skills would help keep her alive—but she stopped reacting as she settled into her bath and let the cold water numb out the remnants of filth and fever that clung to her limbs. Poisoned. It wasn't the usual way people tried to kill Skylight, but it was an altogether unpleasant experience. She stared with an expression even flatter than Arc's into the mirror on the bathroom wall.

Realization bubbled up and she laughed once, low under her breath. "So that's why I can't get drunk."

"You just now figured that out?" Arc snapped rhetorically and moved jerkily to settle on the stool they kept under the vanity.

It wasn't a large bathroom, but it was saved from military utilitarianism by the needs of their missions. They'd installed various implements to help them doll up or strip down as required.

Skylight watched Arc recross her arms, brows furrowing, mouth twisting into an unhappy shape, eyes dark with figurative stormclouds. "You're not allowed to die."

Skylight raised her own eyebrow in skeptical surprise. "Noted." She should actually be washing up. Instead she flexed her hands against the sides of the tub and simply continued to soak in the chill. "It's not actually on my agenda to die."

"Noted," Arc returned, tone much darker than Skylight's.

Every muscle hurt. It wasn't a new sensation for Skylight. She'd always trained longer and harder than anyone else on their team and caught extra hours when she couldn't sleep, but even the attempt to reach for her wash rag made her wince. She set her mouth grimly, but never got the chance to force the issue.

Arc knelt beside the tub with an ease Skylight would be missing for days and soaped up the rag to wash Skylight herself. She was gentle when she pushed Skylight forward off the back of the tub to do her neck and shoulders. When she tried to go lower on her back, Skylight gasped at the pain and shook her head, once, curtly. Arc eased her back to a resting position again.

"You get cleaner with hot water," Arc noted, disapproval subtle in her voice, layered over with a neutrality that always meant concern.

Skylight imagined being immersed in hot water and shuddered. "I'll pass today."

Arc let it go without comment. "Let me help you up."

Ice Queen was the one who swore up and down, left and right, worse than any stereotypical soldier Skylight had ever heard of. The very idea of standing up made Skylight want to give Queenie's vocabulary a workout.

She kept it down to one. "Dagách," she gritted out as Arc pulled her up. She nearly fell into Arc's arms getting out of the tub, and it struck her abruptly how many weeks of medical leave she was probably looking at. "Bed."

Arc helped her through the door and to her own bed across their shared bedroom where she collapsed face down onto the covers, wet and naked and uncaring.

"I'm useless," she muttered angrily into the pillow.

Arc's weight sank down on the bed beside her as she sat down on the edge, and Skylight had to force her shoulders to untense, her hips to lie still and not betray the spikes of pain through her muscles.

"You were almost dead," Arc said, low and clipped and angry. "I think you can survive a little uselessness."

Skylight muttered imprecations in Kachán while Arc ignored her.

They didn't touch. It would hurt like a fire if Arc did, but she didn't and wouldn't. They had never touched for comfort or sentiment. They sat beside each other in relative silence until Skylight's body finally fell mercifully asleep.

---

Skylight woke buried under a pile of blankets. Every muscle screamed the moment she so much as breathed and shifted beneath the weight of them.

She lay still for a moment, drew in one soft, long breath, let it out, then drew in another. She could do this. She could get up off the bed before she stiffened up worse.

One blanket disappeared and a shirt landed on the back of her head.

Skylight sighed in exasperation. "Queenie."

"You want me to come in and dress you," Ice Queen's unrepentant cheery grin appeared over the folds of blanket as Ice Queen bounced up to sit on Skylight's nightstand, "or do you want to do it yourself?"

Skylight stared flatly at her chosen sister. She forced her arms beneath her and pushed up slowly, scowling at the immediate pain and stiffness. If there was anything Skylight hated, it was weakness.

"Wolf's pacing and growling outside the door," Ice Queen started in, a running stream of commentary Skylight could latch onto to help drown out whatever else she didn't want to notice. "She looks just like a wolf, even doing that snarly look whenever anyone gets too close."

Skylight had almost made it to sitting. A breath gasped out of her without permission, and she let it, swearing with it. She'd always known the limits of her own body, and she knew she'd finally hit them.

"Math's brooding in the cafeteria," Ice Queen went on as if she hadn't noticed, but her cold blue eyes flitted to the side, noting without subtlety. "I don't know if he feels responsible for you, or he's just worried. Arc's glaring at everyone. Of course."

"Of course," Skylight said ruefully as she let her back fall to the wall to hold her up. She was upright. The cost wasn't entirely worth it, but she was sitting up and her limbs were slowly dropping back to a constant grumble instead of the shrieking agony they'd given her on rising. "Arc is a protector."

Ice Queen shot her a skeptical glance—eyebrows lifting, chin dropping in a very pointed demand.

"Fine," Skylight said, scowling again as she stared at Arc's bed across the room instead of at Ice Queen.

Ice Queen snickered as she slid off the nightstand. "You," she said, swiping the shirt with actual hands instead of power, "are too independent for your own good." She pulled it down over Skylight's head and helped Skylight slowly get her arms through the sleeves. "You know Wolf's going to want a report after this."

Skylight hadn't thought that far yet, and if anything could convince her she wasn't doing as well as she hoped, it was that. Skylight was known for always thinking farther ahead than anyone else, having contingency plans behind her contingency plans, missing as little as possible for anyone to miss. She leaned her head back and furrowed her brows, trying to remember past the poison to what came before.

"The last thing I remember is gearing up in the jet," she stated bluntly. It wasn't a good sign and she wasn't surprised to see Ice Queen frown soberly. "I remember that. I remember jumping."

"Jumping. Bishdá. That's no good." Ice Queen finished adjusting Skylight's shirt.

Had Skylight more strength, she'd have swatted her hands away, but she didn't. "I take it we left a jet after the one where we jumped."

"Maybe it'll come back," Ice Queen said, not answering directly but answering all the same. "Let Bridge scrounge around in your head."

Skylight almost cussed back at her. The last thing she felt like right now was having a telepath rifle through her memories while she was already feeling vulnerable. "Help me up. I want to get breakfast."

"Stubborn." But Ice Queen allowed Skylight to lean heavily on her shoulder, even if she winced and sank a little beneath the amount of pressure Skylight could bring to bear, and helped her grit her teeth and walk.

---

She ignored them all when Ice Queen finally dropped Skylight off on a cafeteria bench and Wolf brought her a bowl of soup without comment. Arc's disapproval hung heavy through the air, and enough of something was beginning to tickle in Skylight's memory that she could guess why. That overprotective streak of Arc's came out mean whenever she felt one of the others had risked their life when Arc's would have been just as easy to risk instead.

But this was Skylight, and she knew—as certainly as she knew what made her roommate tick and triggered those narrowed eyes and sparking flashes of electricity—what would make her press for her own self at risk when she felt Arc wouldn't do.

Tactics. Arc could work people, better than Skylight and always could, but it was Skylight who could drop in a hot mission, gather intel, and change tactics on the fly. It was Skylight who turned them into pieces in the puzzle of her plans.

"You okay?" Stream asked for the third time, his mouth quirked in a sad frown that she was still ignoring him.

Everyone else was studiously giving her space as long as she refused to acknowledge their existence. But Stream was hard to be angry at, so she sighed and said shortly, "I'll be fine."

That drew an amused snort of disbelief from Wolf, and Ice Queen and Arc's attention.

Skylight stared flatly at Stream, who had the decency to rub the back of his neck as he turned red. Just break the uneasy silence, why not, and give another opening for too much attention for all the wrong reasons.

"Augment." She asked her second because he could make the whole trip back to her room easier.

He gave her a quick questioning look, arms ready to carry her if need be. She shook her head.

Augment sighed at her, tucked her arm over his shoulder, and boosted her own body's strength as they headed back.