Title: forked tongues and plumbean feet
Author: Jade Sabre
Notes: Ages ago Perahn gave me the prompt on Tumblr, and I decided to turn the five-sentence meme into a five times fic, and now it is finally seeing the light of day. The Shepard here is the same one featured in "the fire of service and battle," which contains some background headcanons that finds their way into this fic. Not required reading, but maybe helpful. Also, I wrote the entire thing to "Water Under the Bridge" off Adele's 25, as it has a good beat and felt appropriately dance-y.
A thousand million thanks to my beta LoquaciousQuark for going over this with a fine-toothed comb and helping me prod its ballooning shape into something resembling a structured piece of fiction. In the process it has become something near and dear to me; I hope you enjoy.3
if you're gonna let me down
let me down gently
don't pretend
that you don't want me
our love ain't water under the bridge
one.
She's never going to get the hang of this.
"No," Catie says for the thousandth time, "you have to turn your head before you turn your body. Like this."
She demonstrates the spin again, but the connection craps out and Emma just sees a blur of motion that jaggedly resolves into her sister's face as she comes closer to the camera. "Right," she says, fingering the end of her ponytail, damp from where she's been chewing on it. "But—"
"You just have to pick something to focus on before you turn," Catie says. "It just takes practice."
She's been practicing, spinning round and round her tiny bedroom, but she's never going to be as graceful as her twin, with her circles upon circles of perfect pirouettes, and she knows it. Maybe if she was on a real dance team at a proper high school she'd have some potential, but as it stands she's just arms that won't hold still in a nice round way and legs that can't turn fast enough to keep time with the beat. The extra gravity probably doesn't help either, but she can only lay so much blame on external forces. She's just no good at it, and that's that.
She's chewing on her ponytail again without realizing it, and Catie wrinkles her nose. "You're going to have awful split ends if you keep doing that," she says, and then she brightens and starts babbling about what some girl at school told her was the best thing for split ends, and did they have it on Earth? because if not, she could send her some, but if so, maybe Grandmother would let her take—
"It's winter," Emma says, mostly just to shut her up. "The tram doesn't come up here when there's so much snow."
Catie shudders. "So you can't get out, even if you want to?"
"Sure, if I had to," Emma says.
"Don't you want to?" Catie says, and now she's nervously running her fingers over the carefully braided twist in her hair, perfectly pulling away from her temple. "Uncle Albert's got three extra bedrooms, or we could share."
"Sure," Emma says again, but the thought of leaving the quiet safe solitude of Grandma Shep's little house for the loud boisterous crowd at Uncle Albert's, exchanging snow for alien pastures and the security of knowing where she fits for the mire of social strata that Catie describes—
"Have you heard from Mom?" she asks, and pretends not to see the hurt in her twin's eyes.
"I've told you, she never messages me without messaging you," Catie says, but there's no real heat to her exasperation and her disappointment is enough to drown them both.
"Oh," Emma says, and then, "I have to go," which is a bald-faced lie and they both know it. She lives in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do and Catie will never, never understand why, and it hurts her, too.
"Oh," Catie echoes, graceful even in rejection. "Okay. Talk to you tomorrow?"
"Okay," Emma says. And then— "Miss you."
"Yeah," Catie says, her mouth twisting wryly as her image reaches for the off key. "Miss you too."
The screen goes dark and for a moment Emma sits alone in the silence; and it taunts her, filling her head with the noise of never ever and not good enough, her utter insignificance in the face of an empty galaxy full of stars.
Get over yourself, Catie says, her voice as loud and clear as if she was sitting right next to her.
And she's right, of course, and Emma scowls at her even though she's not here to see it. But her heart lifts and it chases the darkness away, and it'll be enough to last until they see each other again.