So I couldn't help it. It's been dragging its feet through my brain and I wanted to at least start it though I imagine my main focus will still be on Hush and Glass however, I do have a fondness for this idea. I thought, hm, the titans are soldiers in a sense. What if they were 'real' soldiers in a war? This is that story, for better or for worse and it's set in the future so we've got some very absurdist weaponry going on here and so on...but that's later.
Soldiers have to be trained first after all.
And anyone who knows my writing at all will know what direction this is headed in romantically—wherever romance is, though it will be very gradual. Friendship first this time, very much so...and trust...and so on.
Let me know what you think please. I think I've never really seen another story like this in TT so, that might be interesting. This is short, just to wet the appetite and let me know how everyone reacts.
Absolutely AU, hope that sits alright with most of you.
Without You
Prologue: In which you intrigue me
The first time we met it was hard to tell if she hated me or not.
"We don't have any other options," she'd said to me, gesturing about the room with her free hand—fencing gear under the crook of her other arm. I think I made a sort of scoffing noise but she either missed it or ignored it as she stepped back to the edge of the circle.
"This won't take long," I muttered more to myself than to her but the way her brow knit before she settled her helmet over her face told me she'd heard it regardless. I admit her form was nearly perfect and as each of us vied for dominance in the white-chalked circle, our parries and thrusts became much more elaborate. Normally only used for show—or more truthfully to prolong the often brief spars—I found myself boxed into my first defensive corner ever...and my blood was rising.
"It's been about twenty minutes. How much longer do you think?" she inquired with a bite that confirmed my previous suspicion that she'd heard my own comment. I grunted a non-verbal response as she barely avoided a reckless attack on my part.
That one could have really hurt her and I knew she was aware of it.
I didn't care.
If she knew she knew to be on guard. That was as much as anyone here could ask for.
"No answer?" she nearly taunted, voice edgy as she managed to land a hit to my right side. Just as quickly, I returned the favor. Match for match, if one of us struck the other gave fair reply to a point when it seemed we were entirely incapable of breaching an everlasting standstill—well, everlasting until one of us tired out.
Confidently I told myself this was the kind of challenge I'd been waiting for and if it was from some over presumptuous new pup then fine, so be it. She'd get hers. Of course I wasn't hardly much older—a year or two maybe? But maybe it was in that year or two that she gained the extra respect or grudging admiration. She was young to be here, a military academy...and a girl at that.
Unheard of.
But being unheard of didn't make you special, I thought as I felt the edges of fabric at the corners of my eyes bunch a bit at the side but I wasn't worried. I knew it would hold. It always had.
They had made sure it would before they...gave it to me.
And suddenly I was angry that she would be giving me such a hard time. Maybe the heroes in old stories went seeking glorious challenges but that was not what I was there for. I was there to excel and I brooded a little spitefully as I pushed on, nearly landing another thrust, but not quite.
She was fast.
"How long?" she asked again, landing a hit. It was like she wanted to show me she'd earned an answer this time.
Fine.
"As long as it takes," I shot back, eyes burning behind the mask as I responded with an unorthodox combination of patterns three and twelve, winning myself another strike to even the score yet again.
"I don't lose," her voice dropped as our foils clashed, bringing us closer than we'd been so far and I could feel the heat radiating off of her in thick waves—just like she could probably feel mine.
"Neither do I," I said plainly and used the brace to propel her backward.
Her foot stumbled near the edge of the circle...but did not step over it and I thought I heard her laugh shortly, dryly...like someone who knew more than they let on.
It unsettled me and without waiting for her to come at me again I made a tactless dive with the metal point—a tactless dive that she tactfully evaded with a sidestep too elegant to be a soldier's motion.
Not wanting to focus on my past, I focused on pretending I knew hers.
She was rich probably, had a loving family with an overprotective father figure and a doting mother who had intensely discouraged her daughter's decision to go into a military academy with the impending war and Factions rising up all over the damned planet. She had a happy life like most of the deluded children that came running in the doors of this place, the capes of colonels blinding them to the reality of what it was to fight in a war.
To be at war.
In a sense even I didn't know what that was though...not yet...but that was what I'd come there for...come to the academy for.
She is well off, I went back to imagining the back-story for this increasingly taxing girl and even as I fabricated every inch of my opponent's history, I knew not a bit of it was true and felt worse for it, irritated.
No, not one bit of it was true at all.
The fact was probably that she was an orphan, nothing more or less tragic than that...a war orphan.
She was far too thin to be one of the deluded ones, I thought as incidentally our wrists collided in a parry gone wrong.
I could feel her wrist bone.
A war orphan, I thought again but I didn't have the pity I probably should have.
There were too many to pity.
That was everyone else in this training base. Those who dreamt of heroic deeds and prestigious recognition stood or barracked with those who had no dreams left and it only seemed fitting that it was the will to fight—and indeed in some, the desire to fight—drew them all together.
Not us, I remembered dutifully as I blocked a particularly strong attack, raising my eyes to where I imagined hers were behind that netted helmet. I think she felt my gaze but that didn't stop us from our rapid-fire exchange.
Executing, repelling, blocking, defending and so on, it continued until the whistle of our instructor pierced our heated little war. A part of my mind nudged at the irony and the black humor in my metaphor but I pushed it aside as I removed my own face guard, beads of sweat rolling down my skin. My opponent had a similarly flushed look about her, some shorter parts of her hair being plastered to the side of her jaw and forehead. The class was being dismissed but her gaze held me there and I shifted the helmet from one hand to the other.
"What's your name?" she walked up to me, not a hint of what was to come there yet...just another peer who happened to be good with a foil. That was all she was.
"Robin," I told her like I'd told everyone else when I'd gotten there three years before.
"Well, well...two of a kind," she laughed to herself and then left me there, twirling the foil in my hand idly, puzzling over her words and the room still smelling of its usual sweat and sauna-like residue...and something else, something a little like vanilla.
Some of it was made clear when, the next day, I found out her name.
Raven. Two of a kind indeed.
It was only on the day that entry scores were posted—the end of that week—that I realized she hadn't once commented on the mask that covered my eyes hiding the blue behind them and burying everything else in my past with it, hadn't asked why or what for...hadn't made fun or the like.
In fact, she hadn't even given it a glance.
And intrigued against my will, I could not sleep that night.
Review and let me know what you thought so far please! I know it's different, but maybe it doesn't totally suck? Sigh. I probably should've had castle read it first and tell me.
-Rei