A/N: It's official, I will ship anything that moves. Rereading Paolini's books has only reassured me of this fact, and has brought you the following femslash mashup of everyone's favorite girls. When I wrote it, I had some actresses in mind for the characters, and I figured I should share my Inheritance Cycle dream team.
Trianna – Tabrett Bethell
Angela – Zooey Deschanel
Nasuada – Zoe Saldana
Arya – Charlize Theron
Each little one shot has the snippet of lyrics I was listening to when I wrote it. Read and review!
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"Come on, skinny love, just last the year."
Arya's lips sear against her skin, hot breath drifting from her ribs to her breasts to her neck, and Nasuada pulls the elf's leather breeches flush to her body like she's clinging to the reigns of a runaway horse.
For a second, Arya has a passing idea to whisper something immature in her frenzy, something she (probably) doesn't mean, something like "I need you, please don't leave me."
(Human lives are fleeting, fallen feathers. Arya wants to fall just like them, to die just like them, but she waits for a sword instead. She's always holding a blade in her hands.)
Of course she says nothing aloud, but her heart thuds against her sternum when Nasuada takes her cheeks in her hands, fingers suddenly chaste, and stares into her mystifying elf face like she's lost in some nightmare maze and the only real thing she's ever known is the frightening, unnatural green tint of Arya's eyes.
She is afraid, and Arya is more afraid of hurting her, and they're both afraid of being alone (because it's infinite and empty like death magic or poison in the water.) Arya leans down slowly and kisses her even more slowly, and they resume their aching rendezvous with fervor when Nasuada's tongue wets her lips.
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"Make us laugh, or nothing will. I set a fire just to see what it kills."
The teeth nipping her earlobe are suddenly dagger-like and sharp, and Nasuada can feel Trianna exhale wantonly as she hisses in pain. The sorceress enjoys her games more than most men (more than most adolescent boys) and she makes a show of being dominant to her mistress in the bedroom.
It is a show that Nasuada endures until she is weary of being pinned. (Lacking patience has always been her downfall; she has no time to be tolerant.)
She grabs Trianna's snake-braceleted wrist and throws her roughly against the headboard. (Dark blue eyes are open like a scolded child, and Trianna is gasping in fear and arousal.) Nasuada palms her chest, a lioness ready to pounce.
"What did I tell you about biting?" she asks.
Trianna squirms. "No marks."
"That's right," Nasuada murmurs. "No marks." (She doesn't have to say good girl for Trianna to hear it in her overheated body.)
She unties the lacey dress on Trianna's shoulders, and sinks her teeth so deeply into her flesh that they both scream. In the morning, Trianna wears a pulpy, bruised war-wound above her breast, failing to keep it hidden by her only conservative dress.
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"I'd wear your black eyes, bake you apple pies."
She would rather flay her skin than admit any desire to be a domestic woman, but some cobwebbed corner of Trianna's heart wants to cook and serve dinner at a proper hour, and wash a bucketful of soapy clothes, and cozy up under fur blankets when the day's work is completed. Barring sex, Trianna loathes any physical exertion that dirties her hands or makes her sweat, but, as she mindlessly untangles the thorny, curled vines in Angela's tent, she feels peaceful and carefree, and that is a hard task for a woman as high-strung as Trianna to accomplish.
"Have you finished with the twist-corn?" asks Angela from her desk. She's scratching out notes with her quill, messy hair falling between her breasts in ringlets tighter than the vines of her corn.
Trianna gently smiles (her back is turned, just to be sure no one can see how absent she truly is) as she says, "Yes, dear."
(Her fingers stop unraveling the plants, stunned at the tone of her own voice. The scratch of Angela's writing ceases just as abruptly.) The petite witch rises from her wooden desk and glides with purpose to her guest, feet delicately brushing the thick rugs.
"Sincere," mumbles Angela to herself with a concerned frown. She doesn't elaborate, doesn't need to explain her confusion at such a genuine response (it's like her heart is right there, throbbing at her feet) from a sorceress as prickly as Trianna.
After tucking back a strand of Trianna's hair, touch ghosting her ear, Angela threads their fingers together. It's such an innocent action that she should be disgusted, but she finds it appealing, even calming. Angela looks awed for the first time in Trianna's memory.
For a moment, Trianna wants to be Angela's housewife more than she has ever wanted to seduce her way to power, and this both alarms and reassures her.
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"It's the wrong kind of place to be thinking of you."
Something in Angela's unfiltered smile conjures up images of blood in Arya's underused imagination. Not the gushing blood lost on battlefields, but the blood of ancient family ties and nobility, of incomprehensible power so old no one can uncover the origin.
(She is so, so much older than the other humans.)
And when Arya finds a kindred spirit, even one with a different world view and a different mindset and a different kind of magic, she cannot help but draw herself closer by the invisible thread that connects them.
(Angela told her once, Your eyes are the color of avocado innards. The exact same color. And Arya, battling a sneaking suspicion she was being mocked, had laughed in surprise.)
She says not a word, and Angela says not a word, as they roam their curious hands. They kiss hotly, quietly in the elf's barren tent, not because they fear being discovered, but because they don't particularly feel like dealing with the repercussions.
(It's just that they're too old to give a damn.)
They don't allow emotion to permeate their skin, they choose to ignore everything but the violent need of their bodies, and they fall deeper, deeper, deeper in lust. (They can recognize the mirror-image effect they have on each other: for Arya, magic is a burden, for Angela, magic is uplifting.) As opposite sides of the same coin, they are grateful for the opportunity to release the tightness inside them, no strings attached to their scarred marionette arms.
Angela is smiling, and Arya pretends she's young again.
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"Love, love is a verb. Love is a doing word."
Trianna is striking, even by elvish standards, but the general consensus of the Ellesmera visitors is that her feline smirks are too obvious, too open to her disgraceful cravings and base intentions. Elves prefer a coy, more coquettish attitude toward sex, even if they would never admit it to the other races. Elves enjoy playing cat-and-mouse.
Arya disagrees.
(Simplicity, honesty, and the make-me-scream-your-name truth is all she wants.)
"You look lovely in your dress, Shadeslayer," whispers Trianna. Her wavy brown hair ghosts against Arya's arm and the elf almost balks when she processes her compliment. Arya is sick to death of being told she's beautiful, but Trianna says it without respect (she's no lady) and without adoration. Her lips are much too close to Arya's throat and propriety dictates that she speaks from an acceptable distance like all of the nobles and high court of the Varden. The distance is more than physical (they legitimately fear her) with those people, with everyone but Trianna and her overt, obvious sexuality.
So when, by accident, Arya has dragged Trianna into an unoccupied armory, and when, by no fault of her own, Arya has ripped the clothing from her body, she feels no need to elaborate to her human plaything that etiquette is a measure both necessary and beneficial for keeping order in the world.
Because that is a lie, and Arya needs Trianna to tell the truth.
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"There is love in your body, but you can't get it out."
Her tent is cacophonous when Nasuada allows her advisors to coach her, and the old men never fail to argue about both trivial and monumental matters with the same conviction for each. They spurt out their adages and wisdom to Nasuada, who leans vexed in her chair, until Angela manages to shoo them away, half playful and half threatening as usual.
When the women are alone, Angela tugs lightly at the sheer scarlet shawl (the thin fabric doing nothing to warm the chilled flesh) on Nasuada's shoulders, saying, "Did you think they'd ever leave?" Her voice is sultry and winsome. "You should learn to tell them no."
Nasuada is trying not to lean into her touch. She always tries not to.
(She's not being unfaithful, she reminds herself. There is nothing permanent between anyone here, and she knows damn well that she's nothing but a single note in Arya's song, another conquest on Trianna's list, but it doesn't bother her like it should.)
"They know," Angela murmurs as if reading her thoughts, and Nasuada's head snaps up on impulse. Her eyes are wide and accusing as Angela continues, "I've never told them, either of them. They just know what it's like to be in the same situation."
(Ingenious subtlety, Nasuada thinks. The witch is ever resourceful with her words.)
Very lightly, Nasuada takes Angela's hand in her own and pulls the blue-eyed woman down into her lap where she sits, passively surveying her face.
After a deep breath, Angela pouts her lips, barely pressing them to an ebony cheekbone. "They don't often tell you you're pretty, do they?"
(The concept of flirting is so alien to woman who has been raised as Nasuada has been raised that even Angela's simple comment stirs up a desperate longing in her chest.) She kisses her forcefully in response. Angela doesn't flinch; instead, she tightly winds her arms around Nasuada's neck. "Ravishing, even," Angela pauses kissing to say.
Nasuada lets them waste no more time talking.
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