Disclaimer: Believe it or not, i'm not Kohta Hirano.
Warning: M for gore. Like, heavily romanticized gore.
Prompt: Originally meant for Femslash February 2021 Day 1: Red, but i wrote it on paper and didn't feel like typing and editing it until now.
The amount of blood the two of them encounter on the battlefield is perhaps surprising.
Joan gets more of it, the way she fights. She swings her sword as wildly as she never did in France. She cuts and slashes and stabs, and turns the ground beneath her feet to red mud.
But the sword she bears isn't the only weapon in her armory. Joan wields fire, the very flame that killed her, as hot and red as the blood in her veins.
More, maybe – Anastasia has seen her in battle. The fire that still consumes Joan's soul has no pity for her enemies. Their flesh bubbles and blackens and crisps, and often boils away before it has a chance to splatter over her lithe body.
Sometimes Anastasia gets distracted watching Joan fight.
Anastasia doesn't much care for the blood, herself. It's alright, for what it is, but she doesn't care to soil her clothes. Not anymore. Not with the bodily fluids of the people she slaughters.
No, Anastasia prefers to freeze her foes from a distance. She can blacken their flesh with ice as well as Joan can with fire, and the blood freezes in spikes. Sometimes Anastasia freezes the blood in spikes big enough to pierce her victims' skin from the inside. Sometimes she draws frozen blood far out from their bodies, into glorious scarlet works of art.
Perhaps they aren't chiseled into the fine details of the ice sculptures Anastasia has seen at court, but she believes they are every bit as beautiful.
She never thought she could be a soldier.
She doesn't want to be splattered with blood.
But Joan doesn't mind it. Sometimes Anastasia thinks Joan even relishes being doused in it. Perhaps the lifeblood of others soothes the inferno that sears her soul even now.
Anastasia would like to soothe Joan's pain.
She could cool the fire before it consumes Joan. She could ease Joan's suffering. She knows what it's like to be betrayed when you should be lauded.
She knows what it's like to die afraid, surrounded by people who hate you.
What she doesn't know is how to say this, any of it. She doesn't know how to tell Joan how beautiful she is, or how wonderfully the blood shines, or how much she wants to make Joan smile.
So she doesn't tell her any of it. Joan isn't like the soldiers Anastasia and her sisters flirted with in Russia. She's special, unique, lovely, and Anastasia, for all that her father provided her with, has never had anything really real. Deep down, she knows that she doesn't truly understand.
But Joan is lovely, and when a battle ends and she returns dripping with the blood of her slaughtered enemies, Anastasia is there. When Joan moves to wipe herself off, Anastasia takes Joan's hand between both of hers and licks the blood from Joan's palm. Joan lets her, even looks for her now.
When the world went to war, Anastasia had wanted to be a nurse. It was her dream to tend wounded soldiers, restore their spirits. Now, she wonders whether the battlefield can bring its own balm, or whether there is any balm to be had.
All she knows is that when a woman goes to war, she is glorious in the carnage she wreaks.