(no subject)

[rui]

dusting off my long-unused journal for a fic meme, because why not?

give me characters at least, and a prompt or picture is bonus! you'll get...something! a drabble or short fic. cause i'm bored and i need a thing to do.

Comments

would you believe me if i said that this wasn't where i'd intended this ficlet to go.

[hollowchild]

Training with Sophie was rarely boring. Drills and repetition were plentiful in the swordsmanship lessons at the Citadel, and while that had its place, it wasn't particularly fun.

Of course, it hadn't been that fun at first. Sophie dragged him out of bed before dawn, when the city was dim and sleeping and only the bakers and milkmen were even considering being awake. At the beginning, they just ran. Sophie was more fit than Connor, and she didn't have to say anything about it. She was neither too harsh nor too soft, just there, matching his pace.

Then, one morning, when their run had become easy, she slapped his shoulder with the flat of her palm, grinned, and said 'tag'. He didn't catch her that morning, or the next, or the one after. But on the fourth day, his fingers brushed the back of her shirt, then caught it, yanking as she turned a corner. Then they both went careening into a snowbank as physics took over. Connor had apologized profusely, but Sophie had merely laughed and rolled to her feet, extending her gloved hands to pull him up. After that it was always tag, alternating between chaser and chased until they were both too winded to continue.

As the snow melted and spring came, even tag posed less of a challenge. They had to give each other head-starts after each tag, or it was altogether too easy. Or, at least it was until one day just as Connor was closing in, Sophie jumped up, fingers catching on a wall so that she could haul herself up and out of reach. Connor had skinned his hands and knees trying to follow her, and she had waited on the wall until he got up before racing off again, running along the ledge before leaping down on the other side. He didn't catch her that day, but once he found her she did show him how to climb with leverage instead of depending on brute strength. It was just plain fact that there was more of Connor to lift than there was of Sophie, but Arthur's tireless weapons practice had strengthened his arms for the task. Once he mastered walls, she shimmied up a drainpipe, waiting patiently on the roof as he tried to follow her, and once that was simple too she made him chase her all the way up to the roof of the Welcome Hall, where he found her sitting, waiting to be tagged.

Connor didn't, sitting down beside her instead. The horizon was stained and paling, and they watched the sunrise in silence. Sophie's shoulder leaned against his, but Connor kept his hands on the tiles of the roof.

"You didn't tag me," she commented, once the whole orb of the sun had lifted over the horizon.

Connor made a face. "It's not really winning if you stop and wait for me."

"Isn't it?" There was that twist to her mouth, the one that meant she was asking more than one question. He blinked in confusion, and she blushed. Eyes averted and cheeks burning, she lifted the closer of his hands from the tiles, placed his palm flat against hers, their fingers aligned. Her fingers were just as hard-callused as his, for all her hand was smaller. "You're it," she said, a peculiar and unsmiling inflection to the words, raw and sweet as blood.

For a moment, neither of them moved. Beyond the wind stirring their hair, it was utterly still.

"Oh," Connor said. "Oh."