Sweat gleamed on golden skin. It shimmered in the sharp artificial light with sheen unlike any other in the room. Sweat was almost a compliment to it, where it insulted, stank and discoloured the skin and clothes of students around, it highlighted the smooth golden texture.
Weiss looked at her feet. She swallowed, balling her fists and breathing in deeply. The grotesque stink of sweat filled her nostrils, revolting her, as it should. Sweat should not have her revering its gleam. It should make her gag, its scent putrid, its shimmer on flesh and stain on cloth drawing a scowl from her.
But as she looked up, her breath fell short again. Ruby's huffing struggle for fresh breath beside her faded to the background. The stink of her full-black outfit, which swathed her with twice the heat, barely nipped her nose. Yang's wry remarks at everyone's lack of fitness fell flat on Weiss' ears, unheard.
Pyrrha rose.
Her hair, like a stream of rosepetals, glided over her shoulder as she turned. With it it swept the moisture from her shoulder, drying pristene tan skin. Weiss tightened her fists, feeling her nail sink into her palm with harsh, cold bites.
It wasn't enough to distract her. She looked on, trying not to bite her lip as the girl's soft lips parted in a smile.
That smile. The one she knew so well. The one she once saw each morning when she sat up in her bed back home, bordered by gold and glorious text upon paper that served great injustice to her truth. The one she saw on the front of cereal boxes. The one she saw in her childhood fantasies.
That smile.
She knew its every intricacy; knew the curl at the left edge and the way it glistened when wearing photoshoot makeup; knew the tiny nick on the lower left lip from some unknown scar. She longed to know how it felt.
Red spread over golden cheeks and fingers gently brushed a stray crimson lock from her eyes. Weiss gulped. She tried to clear her throat, tried to say something. She felt like a sinner, gazing upon the face of a warrior goddess with prayers falling short in her throat like half-remembered pages of religious text.
She knew the words she longed to say as well as she knew that smile. Words she practiced in front of posters when she was fifteen, words she muttered to herself when writing in that childish diary she abandoned long ago.
Words that disappeared, that vanished in a puff of smoke as gleaming eyes flicked away from her. Grass green that cut off their connected gaze.
Fingers curled into Pyrrha's. But they didn't belong to her, their sticky white skin that squeezed gently against perfect gold.
Weiss sighed, staring at her feet once more.
Naivety, she realised, was difficult. Unattainable dreams were as hard to ignore as the beat of her racing heart as she watched Pyrrha softly walk away, hands linked with another.
Weiss turned, and she walked away.