ᴋɪᴅᴀɢᴀᴋᴀsʜ "shonen hero disney princess" ɴᴇᴅᴀᴋʜ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
adlantisag) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
rockpools2016-07-24 12:51 am
adlantisag) wrote in rockpools2016-07-24 12:51 am
kida + riza; futurology fic
She knocks on Riza's door. Her feet take her there almost without her asking, following the hazy path of torches along the walls, listening to the sounds of celebration dimming the further she goes. The halls are as windowless as the rooms. This deep in the castle it feels like the sun can't reach her, a bit like home.
Her fist is raised to knock a second time when the door opens. Kida's struck by the relief that floods her at the sight of her friend, the golden hair and the doe-brown eyes.
Doe-brown, she thinks. That hadn't been a colour, before.
"Kida?" Riza's voice is uncertain but warm, and the door opens completely. She's dressed for bed in a long nightshirt and loose pants. She looks smaller than Kida knows her to be.
"I." Her voice halts; she wishes speaking were easier, but she isn't sure how to decipher her own emotions. She dearly wishes Pearl were here. Since she isn't, and this won't make itself easy, she tries again, more straightforward: "I came to see you. I missed you, and I—"
Riza's already stepping back, the invitation a silent one, and Kida moves to fill the space quickly. When did she get used to happiness being fleeting? There are hands wrapping around her wrists. Riza embraces her, and for a long moment Kida just lets her head fall into the other woman's shoulder, lets the memories of Mik'tas' grime fade in Riza's sharp, clean scent. She breathes deep. They both do.
When they pull apart, Riza looks at her expectantly, and Kida realizes she truly had no other reason to be here, might be interrupting Riza's rest, and yet. She wants to be here, with Riza, is that not enough? Kida has never asked permission to want before, why begin now?
"Could you," she begins, just as the other woman seemed poised on the edge of speaking, "show me how to do my hair as you do?" She gestures to the back of her head, her finger making some kind of twirl that she hopes conveys what she means. Riza's expression softens, so it must.
"Of course. I'd be happy to. Here, sit. I'll brush your hair." She's guided over to the standard little desk they all have, Riza's not so different from her own save for being neater. Avoiding her own reflection, she looks at the assembled items before her: a brush, some images she can't identify, several ammunition cartridges. A scant few pots she assumes to be surface-world cosmetics, but isn't certain. She almost asks, but thinks better of it. Riza pulls a second chair up behind her and leans forward to collect the brush. A strand of her hair sweeps across Kida's shoulder once, then back with the movement. She looks younger in the lamp-light, Kida decides, or perhaps it's just the act of seeing her like this, sleepy and soft in the night hours. They're both silent but for the soft noise of the brush as it passes in long strokes. Kida's hair, fresh from the shower, obeys. Riza seems to understand what Kida can't quite express to her, that she's having difficulty sorting through her thoughts.
Finally: "I feel as though I am peering at the world through a lens."
Riza looks up at her, Kida meeting her eyes in the mirror. "This is new?"
"It has been growing."
A beat. "What changed?"
"Me. My perceptions."
Riza makes a thoughtful noise, eyes falling back to Kida's hair. Kida thinks on the last few months: the visit to Atlantis-that-was, the heartbreak, the devastation, Nalawi, Mik'tas, and now Pearl's disappearance. Feeling as though a bottomless gap had opened between herself and those she had come to love most.
"Is there someone you respect above all others?" Kida asks, thinking of her father. Riza's eyes are almost gold in the lamp-light when she glances up sharply, round like coins. "Yes," comes the answer.
"Have they ever betrayed you?"
Riza's mouth thins, eyes clouding over from a memory, and Kida files away that question for later.
"People are," Riza begins, choosing her words cautiously, "unpredictable. Even those you think you know best."
Unspoken, but not unheard: especially them.
Kida swallows, gathers her hands in her lap, threads her fingers together. Riza keeps brushing. Kida doesn't have that much hair, Riza is merely drawing this out, waiting for her. It's noticed and appreciated. Time—time is what Kida wishes she had more of, constantly.
"I feel as though all the things I knew are false." After the first admission, the words can't seem to stop coming, like floodgates opening. "I feel as though I know nothing, like I am a child again, naive and uncertain. I try so hard to learn, constantly, I do not cease, and yet the mountain grows only bigger, the chasm only wider, and I—"
She grits her teeth shuts, huffs out a breath through her nose, counts the lines on her knuckles. Riza doesn't stop brushing.
"All my control, all my power is gone. I have nothing left to grasp." She flexes her hands into fists. "Everything is taken from me."
Pearl is gone. Perhaps tomorrow it will be Riza. She's glad she came here, savours it. Riza hasn't stopped but when Kida lifts her head the other woman's eyes meet her dead-on, full of grim understanding.
"You're still here," Riza says. "And I know that as long as that's true, you won't stop learning and growing." Kida is reminded of Koltira's words to her, about Mik'tas: but you did find some of them. Hope from despair; why can't she summon up that courage? It was easier to be brave when the world felt smaller, when she was less aware of her own shortcomings. She feels like she's floating, with nothing to tether her except soft hands in her hair, the tug of the brush. Disconnected.
The opposite of loneliness, she knows, is forging connection. Being here, like this, feels better. And yet just this was monumental effort. To say: I don't know what I will do. I don't know where to go. I don't know who I am anymore.
The person she was before ALASTAIR feels leagues away, another woman entirely, a girl. Little queen of a little city, only beginning to guess at what was outside.
She tells Riza about Mik'tas. More than she'd told Koltira: all of it, from the infuriating pace of it to the slimy mud to the endless, suffocating rain. The back-breaking work, day after day, and her "team-mates", those whose names she remembered. The ones who lived and those who didn't make it. She tells Riza about the landslide, and her hands tremble. In exchange, Riza tells her stories about war in the desert. Things Kida is honoured to be told and yet uncertain she wished to hear. Her heart pulls in her ribcage. Suffering shared is halved, or so it goes. She accepts Riza's half and slides across her own.
As the words dry up, Riza finally lifts Kida's hair up in a sweeping tail. "Watch me," she says, then twists it all, wrapping it around itself. Then she reaches for the desk, picking up a small metal pin that she uses to secure it all in place. So that was the trick: ingenious.
"I have about three dozen," Riza says, divining her thoughts. "You can have half."
"I only need one," Kida protests, to which Riza only smiles. Laughter suits her better than sorrow. "Trust me, one isn't enough."
Kida smiles with her, glad to see the heaviness in the air dissipate, feeling unburdened for the first time in a long time. She looks at her reflection, admiring the slope of her own neck, now revealed by her hair held up. This will be much better for missions.
Realizing their time is up, Kida stalls a bit, collecting the pins she's been offered. She doesn't want to go back to her own room, her empty room. She could go to Hellboy, but she's happy—here. Right here. Her hands pause over the desk, and this time, she actually turns in her chair to look at Riza. Her friend. Her friend.
"May I...?"
She doesn't need to finish. Riza's smiling again, moving away and back to the bed, pushing the two pillows farther apart to give Kida her own sliver of space. Kida rises, turns down the lamp until the light is dim, hardly enough to even see. At first they lie side-by-side, Riza admitting that she hasn't had a sleepover in—she doesn't finish the sentence, but Kida imagines a very long lapse of time. She isn't sure what a 'sleepover' is, but she can guess. When they talk now, it's freer, quieter, happier. She tells Riza that Hellboy is her lover; Riza laughs and says finally. She snorts and asks how Riza is finding ALASTAIR's men. She can't see Riza's nose turn pink in the dark, which is lucky for her. They talk about home. Riza describes the streets of Amestris. Kida describes the ruins of Atlantis. The talk until they whisper, like children.
It's easy camaraderie, of the kind she sorely missed, of the kind she's only rarely had, and never before. ALASTAIR has taken so much from her. Yet, when she falls asleep surrounded by the safety of Riza's presence, she thinks that if it has given her this, it's enough.
Her fist is raised to knock a second time when the door opens. Kida's struck by the relief that floods her at the sight of her friend, the golden hair and the doe-brown eyes.
Doe-brown, she thinks. That hadn't been a colour, before.
"Kida?" Riza's voice is uncertain but warm, and the door opens completely. She's dressed for bed in a long nightshirt and loose pants. She looks smaller than Kida knows her to be.
"I." Her voice halts; she wishes speaking were easier, but she isn't sure how to decipher her own emotions. She dearly wishes Pearl were here. Since she isn't, and this won't make itself easy, she tries again, more straightforward: "I came to see you. I missed you, and I—"
Riza's already stepping back, the invitation a silent one, and Kida moves to fill the space quickly. When did she get used to happiness being fleeting? There are hands wrapping around her wrists. Riza embraces her, and for a long moment Kida just lets her head fall into the other woman's shoulder, lets the memories of Mik'tas' grime fade in Riza's sharp, clean scent. She breathes deep. They both do.
When they pull apart, Riza looks at her expectantly, and Kida realizes she truly had no other reason to be here, might be interrupting Riza's rest, and yet. She wants to be here, with Riza, is that not enough? Kida has never asked permission to want before, why begin now?
"Could you," she begins, just as the other woman seemed poised on the edge of speaking, "show me how to do my hair as you do?" She gestures to the back of her head, her finger making some kind of twirl that she hopes conveys what she means. Riza's expression softens, so it must.
"Of course. I'd be happy to. Here, sit. I'll brush your hair." She's guided over to the standard little desk they all have, Riza's not so different from her own save for being neater. Avoiding her own reflection, she looks at the assembled items before her: a brush, some images she can't identify, several ammunition cartridges. A scant few pots she assumes to be surface-world cosmetics, but isn't certain. She almost asks, but thinks better of it. Riza pulls a second chair up behind her and leans forward to collect the brush. A strand of her hair sweeps across Kida's shoulder once, then back with the movement. She looks younger in the lamp-light, Kida decides, or perhaps it's just the act of seeing her like this, sleepy and soft in the night hours. They're both silent but for the soft noise of the brush as it passes in long strokes. Kida's hair, fresh from the shower, obeys. Riza seems to understand what Kida can't quite express to her, that she's having difficulty sorting through her thoughts.
Finally: "I feel as though I am peering at the world through a lens."
Riza looks up at her, Kida meeting her eyes in the mirror. "This is new?"
"It has been growing."
A beat. "What changed?"
"Me. My perceptions."
Riza makes a thoughtful noise, eyes falling back to Kida's hair. Kida thinks on the last few months: the visit to Atlantis-that-was, the heartbreak, the devastation, Nalawi, Mik'tas, and now Pearl's disappearance. Feeling as though a bottomless gap had opened between herself and those she had come to love most.
"Is there someone you respect above all others?" Kida asks, thinking of her father. Riza's eyes are almost gold in the lamp-light when she glances up sharply, round like coins. "Yes," comes the answer.
"Have they ever betrayed you?"
Riza's mouth thins, eyes clouding over from a memory, and Kida files away that question for later.
"People are," Riza begins, choosing her words cautiously, "unpredictable. Even those you think you know best."
Unspoken, but not unheard: especially them.
Kida swallows, gathers her hands in her lap, threads her fingers together. Riza keeps brushing. Kida doesn't have that much hair, Riza is merely drawing this out, waiting for her. It's noticed and appreciated. Time—time is what Kida wishes she had more of, constantly.
"I feel as though all the things I knew are false." After the first admission, the words can't seem to stop coming, like floodgates opening. "I feel as though I know nothing, like I am a child again, naive and uncertain. I try so hard to learn, constantly, I do not cease, and yet the mountain grows only bigger, the chasm only wider, and I—"
She grits her teeth shuts, huffs out a breath through her nose, counts the lines on her knuckles. Riza doesn't stop brushing.
"All my control, all my power is gone. I have nothing left to grasp." She flexes her hands into fists. "Everything is taken from me."
Pearl is gone. Perhaps tomorrow it will be Riza. She's glad she came here, savours it. Riza hasn't stopped but when Kida lifts her head the other woman's eyes meet her dead-on, full of grim understanding.
"You're still here," Riza says. "And I know that as long as that's true, you won't stop learning and growing." Kida is reminded of Koltira's words to her, about Mik'tas: but you did find some of them. Hope from despair; why can't she summon up that courage? It was easier to be brave when the world felt smaller, when she was less aware of her own shortcomings. She feels like she's floating, with nothing to tether her except soft hands in her hair, the tug of the brush. Disconnected.
The opposite of loneliness, she knows, is forging connection. Being here, like this, feels better. And yet just this was monumental effort. To say: I don't know what I will do. I don't know where to go. I don't know who I am anymore.
The person she was before ALASTAIR feels leagues away, another woman entirely, a girl. Little queen of a little city, only beginning to guess at what was outside.
She tells Riza about Mik'tas. More than she'd told Koltira: all of it, from the infuriating pace of it to the slimy mud to the endless, suffocating rain. The back-breaking work, day after day, and her "team-mates", those whose names she remembered. The ones who lived and those who didn't make it. She tells Riza about the landslide, and her hands tremble. In exchange, Riza tells her stories about war in the desert. Things Kida is honoured to be told and yet uncertain she wished to hear. Her heart pulls in her ribcage. Suffering shared is halved, or so it goes. She accepts Riza's half and slides across her own.
As the words dry up, Riza finally lifts Kida's hair up in a sweeping tail. "Watch me," she says, then twists it all, wrapping it around itself. Then she reaches for the desk, picking up a small metal pin that she uses to secure it all in place. So that was the trick: ingenious.
"I have about three dozen," Riza says, divining her thoughts. "You can have half."
"I only need one," Kida protests, to which Riza only smiles. Laughter suits her better than sorrow. "Trust me, one isn't enough."
Kida smiles with her, glad to see the heaviness in the air dissipate, feeling unburdened for the first time in a long time. She looks at her reflection, admiring the slope of her own neck, now revealed by her hair held up. This will be much better for missions.
Realizing their time is up, Kida stalls a bit, collecting the pins she's been offered. She doesn't want to go back to her own room, her empty room. She could go to Hellboy, but she's happy—here. Right here. Her hands pause over the desk, and this time, she actually turns in her chair to look at Riza. Her friend. Her friend.
"May I...?"
She doesn't need to finish. Riza's smiling again, moving away and back to the bed, pushing the two pillows farther apart to give Kida her own sliver of space. Kida rises, turns down the lamp until the light is dim, hardly enough to even see. At first they lie side-by-side, Riza admitting that she hasn't had a sleepover in—she doesn't finish the sentence, but Kida imagines a very long lapse of time. She isn't sure what a 'sleepover' is, but she can guess. When they talk now, it's freer, quieter, happier. She tells Riza that Hellboy is her lover; Riza laughs and says finally. She snorts and asks how Riza is finding ALASTAIR's men. She can't see Riza's nose turn pink in the dark, which is lucky for her. They talk about home. Riza describes the streets of Amestris. Kida describes the ruins of Atlantis. The talk until they whisper, like children.
It's easy camaraderie, of the kind she sorely missed, of the kind she's only rarely had, and never before. ALASTAIR has taken so much from her. Yet, when she falls asleep surrounded by the safety of Riza's presence, she thinks that if it has given her this, it's enough.