A/N: Yukiko, genfic. Her relationship with light and fire.

Thermodynamics

She might be oblivious sometimes, but she isn't stupid. 'The Amagi Challenge' isn't the only nickname she has at Yasogami High, just the politest.

The others - usually started by boys she's ignored or Chie's chased away - are less flattering. Yukiko's never cared for the 'Challenge' title ("Makes me sound like a mountain," she tells Chie) but better that than 'frigid bitch'.

'Ice queen' isn't much better. It also isn't remotely true - but she doesn't expect anyone to understand that.

"I wish I was more like you," Chie says, while Yukiko's being fitted for a new kimono.

The translation is clear: I wish I were more graceful, more refined, more feminine. A long list of qualities that Yukiko honestly can't stand, that make her skin itch and burn. In sixteen years of good breeding and high expectations, she's experienced nothing but a sense of compression - of being squashed and molded and made to fit in a space she shouldn't. Doesn't.

Yukiko looks at Chie, a clumsy, wonderful bundle of wild gestures, and thinks, be careful what you wish for. But she still smiles - because even with Chie, even now, that's what she does.

That night, as always, she goes upstairs and climbs into bed and dreams of the inn: glowing ashes raining from the roof, flames leaping up the walls.

"Jeez, I don't know how you can stand this heat!"

Chie lies on her back on the grass, aggressively waving one of Yukiko's ornate fans at her face. The movement's abrupt and fragmented, because nothing Chie does flows smoothly; too much stop and start energy, like the jerk of a puppet's strings.

Perhaps it's the kung-fu movies, Yukiko thinks.

"You never even sweat." Chie pouts, then pokes her in the side. "Not fair."

There's a lot of things that aren't fair, really.

"I have to go back to the inn soon," she tells Chie. "You can keep the fan."

She has the sense of being caged, bars pressing down against her back, and in her dreams the inn still burns. She has this stupid, childish idea about leaving Inaba and getting a job far away; spends far too long researching it, fills out endless sheets of paper.

"Have you thought about marriage?" her mother asks one day.

"Of course," Yukiko says.

Later that evening, she throws the papers into the furnace at the back of the inn and watches them curl and turn black under the flames.

It's Chie's fault.

Chie's the strong one, everyone thinks so. Which means Yukiko's the graceful, beautiful (helpless) princess trapped in the castle tower, waiting and waiting, someday my prince will come.

Then he does - except there are three of them and the princess doesn't exactly want to be rescued.

That night, feverish and alive, Yukiko welcomes the sensation of warmth around her, imagines red wings beating at the cage and melting the bars.

There's so much she can't show, even with Chie and Yosuke and Souji. Some things never change and Yukiko was raised to be beautiful - not to move and touch and grab hold of the world. She'll never know the person she thinks she might be underneath, if things had been just a little different.

But that's fine. Konohana Sakuya trills wordlessly at the back of her mind, and Yukiko thinks, you'll give voice to it.

Konohana Sakuya, Yukiko finds out, probably could burn down the inn if she asked nicely. Good thing she changed her mind, she thinks, and laughs until Chie pokes an elbow into her ribs.

(Turns out Chie's the ice queen. In a strange way, it makes sense.)

But there's fire of a different sort, too: a warm glow, starting behind the eyes and bound up into the flow of the blood through the veins. Yukiko holds out her hand, feels heat spiral up her spine and through her fingertips; watches the bloody gash on Souji's head knit and mend in seconds.

"How does it feel when you do it?" she asks Yosuke later, because he can heal too, she's seen him.

He pauses, tips his head. "I guess...like I'm on the edge of a cliff, about to jump and fly. You?"

"Oh, basically the same," she tells him.

"Kinda weird, isn't it?" Chie says. "Fire and life together."

They're the same thing, Yukiko thinks, and smiles.