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rainbowfic2013-01-19 12:48 am
crossfortune) wrote in rainbowfic2013-01-19 12:48 am
Entry tags:
promises come due
Name: Mischa
Story: fragments of stars falling
Colors: white opal (wish)
Supplies and Styles: none.
Word Count: 946
Rating: R (narrator swears. a lot.)
Warnings: quite a lot of background violence, child/teenage soldiers
Summary: Zorya, an old friend, and old promises called in.
Zorya hears the footsteps long before the man walks up to join her, and she doesn’t turn her head, doesn’t bother to either greet or salute him at first, simply inhaling her cigarette. She’s been a chain-smoker for centuries, picked up the habit somewhere between high school and college, before her grad project, and refuses to let the collapse of civilization and her own changed body change her habit.
“Tch, old man.” she finally grumbles, glancing down at him through the haze of smoke, but refusing to salute, despite his rank. But then, he’d known her complete disregard for formality and authority long ago and still come after her and somehow talked her into this bullshit, he could deal with it. She wasn’t going to pretty up her manners for anyone, no matter how many soldiers glared at her: as far as she was concerned, she was here for one and only one thing, and it had nothing to do with her lack of ability to kiss ass. “If I’d known you’d get me into this uniform bullshit, I’d have let you get eaten. Too much trouble.”
Ilyas abd Ra’uf’s dry chuckle sounds almost the same as the first time she heard it, if a little roughened with age but still strong. “I find myself thankful every day that you did not do so.” His back is still straight, dark eyes bright and lively in his dark, aged face, though he has shrunk several inches over the years, sword at his side: ready to fight, until the moment that they take his sword from him. Won’t be too long now, she judges: really healthy and kicking for a seventy-three year old, stubborn old bastard - had to be to put up with her- but still seventy-three. Old even for her time: old even before the stars fell and the world ended, and the only supreme field commander this ragtag army’s ever had who has lived long enough to see the possibility of being forced to retire from active duty in the field rather than be sent back in a dozen and more pieces. Alexia had hoped to cure old age once: yeah, good fucking job with that, but at least Ilyas is smart enough to not ask her any goddamn questions as to why she still looks exactly the same (if even more of a grumpy, tough bitch) when he was seventy-three as when he was seventeen. Zorya isn’t sure whether he has any inklings or not, but as long as he doesn’t ask any questions, it ain’t her problem.
(not like she’d fucking answer them, anyway)
“Hmph. Don’t count on it a second time.” Zorya drops the remains of the cigarette and grinds it out beneath her booted foot. Ilyas laughs.
“I wouldn’t waste your promise on that, old friend.” he says, looking past her, and Zorya snorts. Shit, of course he’d remember that, and here she was kind of half-hoping he’d have had the memory shaken out of his damn stubborn head by now, how many times he’s fallen on it. Fucking figured that a promise she’d made to some half-delirious kid would get held over her head half a world and fifty-six years away: wasn’t like she’d expected him to live long enough to call it in, or her to ever see him again, not after she dumped him outside the nearest medic’s tent and taken the fuck off like a bat out of hell before any white-wearing do-gooders tried to conscript her and she’d have to light them on fire for being stupid.
Yeah, fucking right, Zorya: like you could really get away from that so easy. There was a reason she didn’t make promises, or least one of the many reasons she didn’t. She shakes her head irritably at herself.
“The fuck are you calling it in for, then?” she follows his gaze, to see the small group sparring, and her eyes are caught by long golden hair, belonging to the girl fighting in the midst of them. Lilia, and she smirks to see that the girl hadn’t managed, and would never manage, to get the mud entirely out of her once-white uniform. “...Ain’t a babysitter, old man.” she grumbles, a moment later, at the look in Ilyas’s eyes.
“I’m not asking you to be a ‘babysitter’, Zorya.” he remarked, with the infinite patience that always ground her nerves. Stupid Zen old man, not that he’d even know what the word meant, and her fingers itched for either another cigarette or for something to punch, preferably while on fire. Standing around here was never her style, and they both knew it.
“Get to the point.”
Ilyas sighed, and in that sigh, was every year he had lived, every student and adopted daughter he had lost. “I won’t ask you to be certain to bring her back alive, either. All I want is for you to support her.”
Zorya snorted. “Won’t go easy on her, even if she is a little girl.”
For a moment, the two of them watched Lilia push herself back up, sparks of light running up her blade, and Zorya almost shook her head. Fifteen years old and soon to be given command of an army: a child leading this entire fucking mess, when the only things she should have had to worry about were high school and her own peers.
Yeah. Just fucking great.
“That is the last that she would want.”
Story: fragments of stars falling
Colors: white opal (wish)
Supplies and Styles: none.
Word Count: 946
Rating: R (narrator swears. a lot.)
Warnings: quite a lot of background violence, child/teenage soldiers
Summary: Zorya, an old friend, and old promises called in.
Zorya hears the footsteps long before the man walks up to join her, and she doesn’t turn her head, doesn’t bother to either greet or salute him at first, simply inhaling her cigarette. She’s been a chain-smoker for centuries, picked up the habit somewhere between high school and college, before her grad project, and refuses to let the collapse of civilization and her own changed body change her habit.
“Tch, old man.” she finally grumbles, glancing down at him through the haze of smoke, but refusing to salute, despite his rank. But then, he’d known her complete disregard for formality and authority long ago and still come after her and somehow talked her into this bullshit, he could deal with it. She wasn’t going to pretty up her manners for anyone, no matter how many soldiers glared at her: as far as she was concerned, she was here for one and only one thing, and it had nothing to do with her lack of ability to kiss ass. “If I’d known you’d get me into this uniform bullshit, I’d have let you get eaten. Too much trouble.”
Ilyas abd Ra’uf’s dry chuckle sounds almost the same as the first time she heard it, if a little roughened with age but still strong. “I find myself thankful every day that you did not do so.” His back is still straight, dark eyes bright and lively in his dark, aged face, though he has shrunk several inches over the years, sword at his side: ready to fight, until the moment that they take his sword from him. Won’t be too long now, she judges: really healthy and kicking for a seventy-three year old, stubborn old bastard - had to be to put up with her- but still seventy-three. Old even for her time: old even before the stars fell and the world ended, and the only supreme field commander this ragtag army’s ever had who has lived long enough to see the possibility of being forced to retire from active duty in the field rather than be sent back in a dozen and more pieces. Alexia had hoped to cure old age once: yeah, good fucking job with that, but at least Ilyas is smart enough to not ask her any goddamn questions as to why she still looks exactly the same (if even more of a grumpy, tough bitch) when he was seventy-three as when he was seventeen. Zorya isn’t sure whether he has any inklings or not, but as long as he doesn’t ask any questions, it ain’t her problem.
(not like she’d fucking answer them, anyway)
“Hmph. Don’t count on it a second time.” Zorya drops the remains of the cigarette and grinds it out beneath her booted foot. Ilyas laughs.
“I wouldn’t waste your promise on that, old friend.” he says, looking past her, and Zorya snorts. Shit, of course he’d remember that, and here she was kind of half-hoping he’d have had the memory shaken out of his damn stubborn head by now, how many times he’s fallen on it. Fucking figured that a promise she’d made to some half-delirious kid would get held over her head half a world and fifty-six years away: wasn’t like she’d expected him to live long enough to call it in, or her to ever see him again, not after she dumped him outside the nearest medic’s tent and taken the fuck off like a bat out of hell before any white-wearing do-gooders tried to conscript her and she’d have to light them on fire for being stupid.
Yeah, fucking right, Zorya: like you could really get away from that so easy. There was a reason she didn’t make promises, or least one of the many reasons she didn’t. She shakes her head irritably at herself.
“The fuck are you calling it in for, then?” she follows his gaze, to see the small group sparring, and her eyes are caught by long golden hair, belonging to the girl fighting in the midst of them. Lilia, and she smirks to see that the girl hadn’t managed, and would never manage, to get the mud entirely out of her once-white uniform. “...Ain’t a babysitter, old man.” she grumbles, a moment later, at the look in Ilyas’s eyes.
“I’m not asking you to be a ‘babysitter’, Zorya.” he remarked, with the infinite patience that always ground her nerves. Stupid Zen old man, not that he’d even know what the word meant, and her fingers itched for either another cigarette or for something to punch, preferably while on fire. Standing around here was never her style, and they both knew it.
“Get to the point.”
Ilyas sighed, and in that sigh, was every year he had lived, every student and adopted daughter he had lost. “I won’t ask you to be certain to bring her back alive, either. All I want is for you to support her.”
Zorya snorted. “Won’t go easy on her, even if she is a little girl.”
For a moment, the two of them watched Lilia push herself back up, sparks of light running up her blade, and Zorya almost shook her head. Fifteen years old and soon to be given command of an army: a child leading this entire fucking mess, when the only things she should have had to worry about were high school and her own peers.
Yeah. Just fucking great.
“That is the last that she would want.”