In honor of Sukko, as well as to honor the noble goal of our good friend GeminiAlchemist, I dedicate this fun little read to him and any other fan of Akko and Sucy. At first, I was gonna send him the idea, but then, I decided to just make it myself. Fingers crossed everyone likes it!
Enjoy!
"Next time, listen when I say turn back." Sucy groaned as she, gritting her rows of shark teeth, managed to slip her lithe body out from under the pile of branches that caved in over them.
Akko, watching her girlfriend work, picked up on the fact that she needed a certain type of mushroom that only grew in mythical places like Arcturus Forest. Good news, it grew there, and they should be able to locate a source the same day. Bad news, they soon discovered that none were in range of the Sorcerer's Stone that powered magic at the school, so their being out any further would be completely reliant on Sucy's ley line router attached to her broom, a risk Sucy didn't feel like taking. But Akko, being as sweet as a cube of sugar and twice as stubborn, opted to stay out and keep going, even though Sucy reminded her repeatedly that there was a flying cockatrice around these parts, and a broken ley line router would spell certain doom for them.
Needless to say, they were found, and that giant mutated bird's pecker closed in on their overweight broom and bit off the router, causing the two to plummet headlong into the dense canopies. Next thing Sucy knew, she was buried under a bunch of broken twigs and branches. Sucks, but at least that cockatrice left them to it and decided to take a hike, evidenced by the ensuing silence.
Just her luck. 'I swear, if that girl blames this on me...' Standing up, the puce-haired witch began to dust herself off, but upon hearing no reply to her sagely, life-saving advice, that was already a red flag in the alchemist girl's head. Her chest swelled with worry, though she was pretty good at masking it with a simple raised brow. "Guinea pig?" She starkly remembered Akko holding her in a death grip when they hit the trees, so either she was giving her the silent treatment, or something bad happened. Sucy preyed it was the former.
But it was when she crept closer to the pile that she began to hear... sobbing? "Hey Guinea pig, you alright?" Dumb question. Akko never cried unless it was a heartfelt moment. And this was far from that.
"Y-yeah..." It filled the ghastly girl with no small amount of relief to hear that idiot's voice again.
Feeling her instinct take control, Sucy immediately reached for her hip, but was hard-pressed to find that her wand was nowhere to be found. The only other alternative was to move that pile by hand, and so sighing and rolling up her sleeves, she got to work.
"Oh! Owowowowow...!" Some way into the job, Sucy immediately stopped pulling on a particularly large branch when she heard Akko's cries of pain, but her girlfriend was still buried under a hefty pile of dead wood, and that simply won't do.
"Where does it hurt?"
"Agh, my knee. I think I hit it on the way down. These branches certainly don't help."
"Great." Sucy grumbled, racking her mind for ideas. They definitely weren't walking back. "Do you still have your wand, Guinea pig?"
There was a pregnant pause of winces and grunts of pain-stricken effort, but Akko's bruised hand did manage to break free of the foliage to present her wand, still fully charged. Sucy reached over and took the wand, muttering a 'Thanks.' and receiving a shaky thumbs up as a result. That girl certainly knew how to keep her chin up in a bad situation.
A well-placed spell not only removed the pile from atop Akko, but made a small wooden shelter for them to take refuge in.
As it turns out, the fall dealt a hefty blow to Akko's knee as it made contact with a thick branch, and the tonnage of wood that fell on them only served to render her leg even more inoperable. She wasn't going anywhere, that's for sure. Couple that with the fact that their ley line router was busy turning into cockatrice shit, neither of them knew healing magic advanced enough for a broken leg, and the fact that they were way outside the range of the Sorcerer Stone, and you have yourself a stranded duo.
To their luck, they were both alive, neither were in any immediate danger, and they at least had the magic in their wands, so those were a few pluses. With a magic flare fired skyward, it was hopefully just a waiting game. But now that the worst had passed, it was time for Akko to receive her lecture. And by god, Sucy wasn't going to be gentle.
"Akko-"
"Sucy, I'm... I'm sorry."
That only made the puce-haired girl go from a simmer to a boil. "Okay, stop! Just stop right there!" An apology won't fix this! "You keep insisting to help after I tell you to stop, you insist we should keep looking when you know there's a giant ass cockatrice out here that we can't outrun on one broom, we crash with no way to get back, and all you have to say is you're sorry?!"
"What else can I do?!" the brunette cried, tearing up again.
"Nothing! Do! Nothing!" Hell if that was the first time anyone ever told the dunce that. But if it took a broken leg and her girlfriend to give her this advice that'll likely save their lives and others, then she'll just have t be the one to give it. "No matter how much you want to help, half the time, you only make it worse! Screw the damn mushrooms if it means you don't have to get hurt!"
That made Akko look up. "You're mad because-"
"Because you damn-near got yourself killed! Yes!" Once Sucy got that off of her chest, her anger started to fizzle out. Scooting a bit closer to her girlfriend, the pale girl wrapped an arm around her lover's shoulders. "I love you, you idiot."
That just drove the knife further into Akko's chest and worked it from side to side. It wasn't that Sucy preferred to work alone or that she didn't want her help. She just didn't want to see her girlfriend hurt. And Akko, with her lack of caution, logic, or mindfulness of others, was synonymous with trouble. And this was no exception.
"I love you too, Sucy. I just wanted to do something for you..." It was worth saying.
But good intentions wasn't gonna cut it. Sucy groaned and rolled her red eyes. "You do everything for everybody. Especially when they don't want or need your help. Sure, I'd have probably came back empty-handed if I looked for the mushrooms myself, but at least I'd have come back knowing your whiny butt is waiting for me. And knowing you're not in danger."
This was a dance that Sucy learned to dance time and time again. Akko threw caution to the wind and did something stupid, someone or everyone paid for it, but this time, Akko couldn't fix it, and there was no big lesson to be learned here other than Akko is an idiot that needs to learn how to listen.
But speaking of listening... "Hey, do you hear that?" Akko asked, sitting up, looking up from the shelter entrance.
A moment passed, and... "Akko! Sucy!" It was Diana!
Akko made to get up, but she was promptly pushed back down by her girlfriend. "Just sit down before you hurt yourself even more, Guinea pig." Sucy grumbled before she herself got up to flag their savior down.
Huffing and crossing her arms like the chile she was, Akko decided to follow some advice for once and obeyed. Tis a start.
Thank god for Diana.
Not only did she find them and healed their injuries, but she also agreed to keep it confidential. Lotte would've likely lost her mind, the other students would bring it up first in an interrogation -except for Constanze- and the faculty would've no doubt separated them. Miss High any Mighty's logic was that if a near-death experience with absolutely nothing to show for doesn't teach Akko a lesson, then nothing ever will. And Sucy very much believed her.
Stepping back into their room, Lotte was nowhere in sight, likely finding somewhere more private to read the more saucy bits of that dumb Night Fall series. Most importantly, none the wiser.
Sucy looked forward to a long night of appreciating what she had almost lost, but first, she needs to make sure her message got through. "When I tell you it's a stupid idea -heck, when anyone tells you it's a stupid idea, listen to them! Chances are, they're not as thick-skulled as you!" There was no way around the fact that Akko's monumental lack of thought almost got them killed again, and now, they had nothing to show for it except for a broken broom and a near-death experience that didn't count for squat.
But they're safe, and they're back at the dorm. Sucy sighed, seeing her girlfriend's downcast expression. "Okay... I'm done being mad." Climbing into her bed, the puce-haired girl beckoned her girlfriend to join her. "Come here, Guinea pig."
Glad that this didn't lead to a rift between them, Akko smiled a tiny smile and joined her in bed. She was expecting just a warm and tight hug, but Akko was pleasantly surprised when she got a big wet kiss on the mouth, and a loving moan to boot.
Sweet as it was, it only drove home the point to Akko just how much she made her girlfriend worry. She might just have to stop being so stubborn.
"Promise you'll learn to mind your business every once in a while, Dummy." That wasn't a request, but Sucy would be lying if she said that Akko's boar-headedness wasn't one of the brunette's most lovable qualities. For some reason.
"I promise I'll try."
And just like that, Sucy's smile fell. "Not good enough."
"I'll try really really hard?"
This wasn't getting anywhere. "You're ruining the moment."
"Okay fine, I will."
"That's my girl." Sucy knew that might as well have been a bold-face lie, if Akko was even any good at lying, but damn, was she glad that her brown-haired dunce was safe.