Cinder's fury was magma.
That Schnee… that stupid, impoverished Schnee…
Acting so high and mighty, so judgmental, so powerful, so… argh! It had taken all of Cinder's considerable willpower not to use the Dust in her dress to immolate that little bitch. How dare she. How dare she!
Cinder stormed through her newly-redecorated wing of Schnee… no! Of Fall Manor. It was hers, now, serving her, bent to her will.
"I can smell a pretender when I meet one."
Cinder roared in hatred. Her voice echoed through the empty halls.
This wing of Fall Manor was the first, the only one occupied for now. She didn't have enough possessions to fill the others. Yet. Even this one looked sparse, but she'd made an effort. In places where enormous paintings had hung, she'd put up trophies from her private collection, weapons or other tokens seized from defeated foes. Guns… swords… a set of pistol-maces…
She'd fill the others in time, she knew. It was inevitable.
That whelp was wrong. Cinder was the one who belonged. None of them had power over her—and they never would. She wasn't a Brandaris, she was better than them. She wasn't a Huber, she was their superior. She would rise above. They would submit or she'd lay them waste. They would belong to her, or they would fear her and bow—either was fine.
"You're just as much of a brute as I am."
Screaming in fury, Cinder whirled on an empty plinth and tapped the Burn Dust in her dress. In moments, the plinth was reduced to ash.
The fate of all who'd oppose me, Cinder thought viciously.
She continued on, striding over plush carpeting, past walls and alcoves and columns recently repainted in warm reds and yellows—nearly the opposite of the icy whites and blues of its former occupants. Cinder was the fire, after all. She'd consume everything in her path.
She stormed into the master suite. Her boytoy started at her entrance. The collared, effeminate thing whimpered, then started the elaborate greeting she demanded of her pets. On other occasions, Cinder might have indulged herself, but she would have ruined him if she did so tonight. She didn't mind that, per se—toys like him were fungible—she just wanted to reserve her fury for her preferred targets.
She stormed into her private sanctum. It was lavishly appointed. The bed was oversized, host to a dozen pillows, set off by gauzy drapes, with a mattress as soft and lush as a cloud, and covered in sheets with a four-digit thread count. The rest of the room was just as overdone: half a dozen mirrors in four different orientations with solid gold frames, dressers full of clothes she'd never wear, stacks of makeup that went halfway to the ceiling…
The anomaly was the sewing setup that dominated one corner. Compared to the rest, it was utilitarian—well-supplied, certainly, with only top-of-the-line equipment, but arranged to be usable rather than purely aesthetic.
Cinder would never let go of sewing. By sewing she'd survived childhood; by sewing she was armed when she appeared defenseless. It was almost meditative for her, to settle into the old routines that guaranteed her safety.
She was contemplating if it was time for her to do some sewing when she heard a sound somewhere between a croak and a clatter.
Her anger flared at the sound—but fear dampened that reaction. There was no way that was… no, how could it be?
The sound came again, unmistakable, unignorable, from the enormous master bathroom. Cinder's fury, which at one point she swore could have consumed the manor, deflated like a punctured balloon. She forced herself to swallow and opened the bathroom door.
There was a grimm inside.
She recognized it as a Seer. Like a jellyfish with spiked tentacles and a crystal ball for a body.
How had it gotten into the Manor? Not on its own, it couldn't have. Even getting up to Atlas, the most well-defended piece of territory on Remnant, should have been almost impossible. Someone must have brought it. But who, why, how…?
It croaked at her again.
Of course. The mystery was part of the message. The reminder. You are not your own. Look how easily I can get in. Look at how I can demand your attention when I want it.
Message received. "Alright," Cinder said, stepping aside and waving the Seer in to her bedroom. It floated past her with no apparent means, eerily motionless and silent except for its croaking and the occasional clack of spike-against-spike.
Cinder closed the bathroom door, gathered her courage and the fading remnants of her anger, and sank to one knee. "I'm ready for you, mistress," she said.
The Seer gave a sudden squeal. The crystal ball atop it cracked. Its tentacles writhed, then curled up towards its body like the legs of a dead spider. The grimm dropped helplessly to the floor, dying and in pain.
Cinder watched it unflinchingly. This was part of the test, she knew. She didn't dare avert her eyes.
The Seer went still, but didn't dissipate immediately. From the crack in its body, black smoke billowed, far more than could have fit in such a small space. Then again, magic had no use for such petty concepts as volume.
The smoke coalesced, resolving into a ghastly feminine figure. The figure had traces of austere beauty and wore inviting attire, but no one on Remnant would have found her attractive. The woman's skin was pale as death, her nails and sclera blacker than tar, her eyes red and malevolent as a dying sun. This was the Witch. This was the Queen of the Grimm.
This was Salem.
Just a projection, to be sure—the genuine article was continents away—but even that spoke to the Witch's uncanny, unfathomable power.
"My mistress," said Cinder, bowing her head in supplication.
"So you do remember," said Salem with false lightness. "I was starting to worry."
"Of course I remember," Cinder replied. "Without you, I am nothing."
The image of Salem hummed in consideration. "Rise," she said.
Cinder obliged, but kept her head bowed. It was easier not to look into Salem's eyes. There was an alien power in them, something barely human enough to be unsettling, with enough harnessed energy to sear with a look alone.
"It's been a while since we spoke," Salem said, and though her voice was gentle, it held no hint of tolerance. It was a rug placed over a spike pit: a genteel decoration poorly hiding a threat of sudden death. "I was beginning to think you'd… forgotten."
She didn't specify what she thought Cinder had forgotten. She was forcing Cinder to guess and grading Cinder on her answer. Cinder's sense of peril intensified.
"Of course not, mistress," said Cinder, hands rigidly at her sides. "You sent me to exploit the Kingdoms' dependence on Dust, to concentrate the Dust industry into a single company that you could control."
"…and?" Salem said expectantly, a single eyebrow arched.
Cinder swallowed. "That you could control and destroy. If civilization can't survive without Dust, and relies on one entity for that Dust, then knocking out that entity brings civilization to its knees overnight. Even the possibility of a Dust shortage leaves blood running in the streets. An actual shortage would rip society apart. Every Kingdom would crumble, all at once, at a snap of your fingers."
"I admit I'd begun to worry about your memory," Salem said. The gentility was receding from her voice, leaving only the edge. Cinder felt herself quailing inside. "I hadn't received any reports in some time. Let me ask directly, then. How long until you're ready to destroy Fall Dust?"
"By your will, I could destroy it at any time," Cinder said with a bow as obsequious as her tone.
"Really? Then why do I sense hesitation?"
The bow kept Cinder from meeting Salem's face. Hopefully that kept the Witch from noticing Cinder's flinch. "No hesitation, mistress. Everything I have built, everything I own, belongs to you in turn."
"A rote recitation," said Salem flatly. "Look at me, Cinder."
With vast reluctance, like her body understood the danger and was fighting her mind over it, Cinder raised her head until her eyes met Salem's pitiless orbs.
"I've indulged you long enough. This time, I expect a straight answer. What doubts are you feeling?"
"I-it seems like a waste," said Cinder, the words bursting out of her in the hopes they would be enough. "To pour all this money and effort and time into a company, just to burn it down… we could do so much with it!"
"'We'?" Salem repeated.
"Yes, mistress. Something like this is an asset, you can use it to further whatever goals you…"
"And how do you presume to know what my goals are?" Salem demanded.
Cinder fell as instantly and completely silent as if she'd been struck dumb—a feat the Witch could probably accomplish.
"It seems to me," Salem went on, slowly, dangerously, her voice a snake slipping through the undergrowth, "that you don't want Fall Dust for me. You want it for you."
Salem's eyes narrowed ever so slightly, but the effect was pronounced. The red blazed in that pale face, furious and threatening.
"Could it be that you are under the mistaken belief that you serve yourself? Do you maintain the illusion that you don't need me? That you have enough power to do without me?"
"Of course not," said Cinder in a rush, but without conviction. She knew Salem would see through that gauze-thin denial.
The image of Salem swelled, growing to giantess proportions to force Cinder to look up at her. "Let me make one thing perfectly clear, Cinder. It doesn't matter how much money you stack up. It will avail you nothing. It's meaningless. It's so much dross, to be burned away when the crisis comes.
"What is money, really? A promise? A representation of long-ago labors? No, Cinder. In the end, money is just a tool humanity uses to divvy up its gains, a justification for some people to live well and others to live poorly. It is a tool of division and prejudice. It matters only to the people using it, and only as long as everyone agrees.
"But in the end, when the grimm run free in humanity's midst, the only difference between rich and poor is a few fleeting seconds between their times of death."
Uncanny darkness seemed to emanate from behind Salem's image. Normal darkness is the absence of light. This was the consumption of light. Everything in the room became dull and drab except Salem herself and her reflection in each of the room's six mirrors. She stood out all the more with the shocking paleness of her skin and the ferocious glow of her eyes, like she was the only real thing to be found. She looked more the Queen of the Grimm than ever.
"This 'Fall Dust' corporation you've made is naught but human artifice. Like all human artifice, it's moments away from falling to ash and being forgotten. Whatever power it gives you, it gives you only over other humans, and even then, only those humans who allow it. It's false. It's a foundationless temple. It is nothing, and so are you.
"This is power," said Salem, her voice resonating with force. As the light in her eyes grew, all other sources of light in the room were snuffed out. "This is might. This is what sets the course of history, what raises and overthrows kingdoms, what determines who lives… and who dies. This is what I have in abundance, while you are in poverty, no matter how lush your trappings."
Cinder couldn't fall to her knees quickly enough. "Of course, mistress," she murmured, her lips scraping against the floor. She willed sincerity to fill her voice. "Without you, I am nothing."
"Don't. Ever. Forget it."
The darkness retracted back into Salem's image. The lights in the room reappeared. Cinder found she could breathe again, even though her breaths came as gasps. When she finally got the nerve to look up, she saw that Salem's visage had returned to lifelike proportions—though, with Cinder on her knees, the Witch still loomed above.
"You will have power," Salem said, her voice calmer and without the ring of the arcane to it. "True power, the power that endures when civilization crumbles. But you will only get it through me, and that means you will do as I command."
"Yes, mistress," Cinder said, pressing her forehead to the floor, rugburning herself on the most luxurious carpet money could buy.
The moment stretched out painfully, as if Salem was measuring the sincerity of Cinder's groveling, and letting Cinder squirm while she did it. At last there was a satisfied hum from above. "I'm glad we had this little chat," said Salem. Cinder dared to hope the worst was over. "Now, I'll be sending Watts your way."
Cinder's fist clenched in anger. Not Watts, that smug, insufferable know-it-all—
But when she raised her head to object to Salem, she saw Salem waiting. Judging.
Just in time Cinder recognized the test. "I'm sure he will be useful," she choked out.
Salem gave a noise of approval. "He will be useful in furthering my ends," she said deliberately. "Just as you are. It is a happy coincidence that his mission will help you accomplish yours."
Happy was the last word on Cinder's tongue. She knew better than to say that. "Of course, mistress."
"Be a dear and give him the information he needs, won't you?"
Cinder would rather eat glass. "I will, mistress."
Salem kept her waiting, piercing her all the while with those unholy eyes, before nodding. "Good. We'll speak again soon, Cinder."
Salem's image dissolved into wisps of smoke, curling into nothingness in the air above. Cinder still felt the weight of her gaze, the lingering oppression of her presence.
Power was freedom. Power was zero-sum.
As long as Salem had power over her, Cinder was not free. If the power Cinder gathered benefitted Salem, then it was taking away Cinder's freedom. The only way to truly escape, to find her own liberty…
Had to wait. She had to be patient. Husband her resources and Salem's remaining good will. Just like with Madame, Cinder had to appear obedient, to grin and bear episodes like this, until she found her opening to break free for good. And that meant doing what she wanted to do anyway: smash Remnant's other Dust companies and grind them beneath her heel.
Her face twitched in irritation and reverberating anger.
Starting with those ridiculous Schnee sisters.
"Miss Schnee is preoccupied," Ilia said, disappointing the miner in front of her. "I don't know how long she'll be."
"I get that, I do," said the miner, in the voice of someone who doesn't really care to get it, "but the supe told me to go get Miss Schnee. What would you have me do?"
"I'd have you go back to the supe and tell her Miss Schnee's occupied," Ilia repeated with a silent prayer for patience. "She has been for most of the…"
Winter's yelling—with words indistinct but mood unmistakable—escaped the closed door behind Ilia.
"…morning," Ilia finished as her face scrunched up in embarrassment. Of all the days for this to happen, it had to be this day, this anniversary, the day when her nerves were shot just from the sun coming up…
She gathered herself, trying to see the miner off before she lost herself. "I've had to cancel several other calls or appointments while this has gone on. It's not that she's ignoring the supe, she just has other things on her plate right now."
"Well, the supe told me not to come back without her," the miner said stubbornly, a donkey's tail swish-swishing behind him, and merciful gods was it hard for Ilia to hold in a barb about that confluence of personality and anatomy. "She said it's urgent, can't wait."
It always was. Luckily, before Ilia actually said that, another volley of yells arrived, cutting her off as she cringed. "Tell you what. Go back to the supe and tell her I'll have Miss Schnee down as soon as she's done."
The miner still looked suspicious.
Ilia raised her scroll and, moving it to projector mode so he could see, took down a note matching her promise.
"Well, alright," the miner said at last, "but don't be surprised if the supe comes up here on her own. She's in a tizzy, lemme tell ya."
"I'll tell her the same if it comes to that."
Far slower than he was capable of, the miner exited the office. Ilia didn't sigh her relief until the door clicked shut behind him. The morning had started rough when Ilia saw the date, blowing up her mood with the surprise and force of a land mine, and it had all been downhill from there. Just what was it that had Winter so…
The yelling stopped.
Ilia turned her head to eye the door behind her and waited. Shortly, the door swung open, and a harried-looking Winter came out. While her outfit and hygiene were up to her standards, she looked and sounded like someone who'd been yelling for the better part of two hours.
"Do you need more coffee?" Ilia asked her.
"That's the last thing I need," Winter said hoarsely. There was a soft shimmer as Winter engaged her Aura. Well, that was one way to repair a sore throat, Ilia supposed. "I'm wound up enough as-is."
"I understand. Okay, I dialed in to the 0900 supply call for you—here's the digest—and I cancelled the 0930 since both you and Miss Schnee were unavailable, so there wasn't much point. Oh, and the mine supervisor wants you to come down as soon as possible."
"Right," said Winter vacantly as she looked over Ilia's notes. "You've gotten good at this."
The words startled Ilia. They were quite a change from the early days, when Winter had hardly bothered to conceal her impatience with Ilia. With how infrequently Winter complimented anyone or anything…
…that just made it more embarrassing. Oh, how proud Ilia was making High Leader Khan, all her revolutionary's skills rusting while her secretarial skills were better than ever. Well done, well done indeed!
Maybe soon she could hang up Lightning Lash and just be an office drone. And hey, while she was at it, why not turn in her chameleon scales, if she wasn't using them?
Shaking off her unease, Ilia refocused on a Winter who looked unsettled, still. "If you don't mind me asking, ma'am, what was all that about?"
She saw the muscles in Winter's jaw flexing. "My sister made a mistake. An egregious one. I don't wish to discuss it further."
"Of course not," said Ilia. Intriguing as that tidbit was, as much as Ilia could justify being curious—as assistant and infiltrator both—she could let it go for now. "Will you be heading down to the mine, now?"
"I suppose I should," said Winter, and before Ilia's eyes she seemed to slump. She didn't actually—her posture remained as firm as ever—but the energy left her, like a fizzy drink gone flat.
She looked like Ilia felt, really. Ilia didn't like that.
Winter shook her head. "It's fine. It's just… nothing good happens today."
Ilia's heart skipped a beat. "What?" she said dumbly.
"It's my business," Winter said brusquely; her voice sounded like a curled-up hedgehog looks. "I'll try not to let it affect my performance."
"Today's not a good day for me, either," Ilia blurted out.
Winter was halfway through stepping past Ilia's desk when those words hit her. She stumbled; it was the least graceful Ilia had ever seen her. She looked at Ilia with a frown.
Ilia shrank beneath the gaze. Why had she even spoken up? She hadn't planned to say this, she'd never told this to a human—not since the first time, the disastrous time, from then on she'd only ever told Faunus, only when she had nothing to hide…
And here, now, she had plenty to hide.
"Is that so," said Winter, toning it so that it wasn't a question.
Ilia recognized it as an out. Winter was offering to end it there. Ilia wanted to take that offramp so badly. If she could reset this, pretend it'd never happened…
But she couldn't. There was an opportunity here. Her mission was to gather information, after all, and if she could gather some on the Schnees, something so close to their vulnerabilities… well, what kind of spy would she be if she missed an opportunity like that?
"Yes," said Ilia. "I don't often tell people about it, it's awfully personal… but you look like you're the same way. You don't tell people why today's bad for you, either."
Winter was only too careful in making no response. Forced neutrality like that was as good as a 'yes'.
"So," said Ilia, gathering her nerves, "I'd be willing to trade. I tell you why today's a bad day for me, and you tell me why it's a bad day for you."
Winter betrayed nothing, studiously stoic once more. She was a true Atlesian, after all. Ilia remembered how the pre-Great War Kingdom of Mantle had pursued as state policy the suppression of emotions. Self-control, self-discipline, self-denial, perfect rigidity.
Defeat in the war hadn't destroyed those instincts, not in certain parts of society. Those traits were still prized. Winter could have been their poster child.
And yet, as someone who made her way through life hiding within her own skin, Ilia suspected what might be raging beneath that frozen surface.
Winter sounded like she was being choked, but one word escaped. "Okay."
That put the pressure squarely back on Ilia. Emotions swelled within her.
Her grief was like a wound that never healed—no, like a foreign body that'd been healed over. It never went away, and when it was jostled, it tore her up all over again. These days it came along with shame, humiliation, rage, because of the other things that had happened that same day all those years ago.
She felt the crawling sensation, again, the feeling that her scales wanted to change color on their own. No. Had to stay neutral. Had to pass. Had to… suppress…
Like Winter did.
It was a baffling thought. Ilia had to keep herself in check, keep her emotions bottled up, as a matter of survival. Winter was just doing that because others… expected her to…
This discomfort was not an echo of something remembered. This discomfort was from that unexpectedly unpleasant comparison.
"Never mind," said Winter with a wave of her hand. "It's a distraction, and neither of us really want…"
"The mine collapsed."
The words burst out of Ilia on their own. She'd seen Winter trying to call off the exchange, and had acted without thinking. Now Winter was frozen in place mid-retreat.
"There was a mine collapse," Ilia said. She was committed, now. "I was in school—I was so young. They didn't even… didn't even tell me directly, they just made a, you know, a general announcement, but I knew. When they said… I knew."
Emotions. Couldn't word.
"People I knew… were in there," she managed. "They didn't…"
She couldn't say any more. Couldn't be any more truthful.
Mom. Dad.
It was all so wrapped up together. The shock and the grief of the moment. The shame when she'd lost control of her scales, turned blue from sorrow in the midst of a group of human children. The rage at her "friends'" betrayal and contempt. The vicious satisfaction of breaking that girl's face. The humiliation and mortification when she'd been called to account for that, when every Faunus stereotype was rubbed in her face over something anyone on the planet would have done in her shoes…
And the burning, hideous anger she'd nursed ever since, like glowing embers that seared her insides but which she couldn't let go.
"I see."
At some point, without even noticing, Ilia had closed her eyes. She reopened them at Winter's voice. Winter looked… not exactly pitying, not really, but sympathetic.
Ilia realized that trying to distance herself from things by calling them "people I knew" had fooled no one. Why oh why had she thought that bringing this up was a good idea? Volunteering her shame, putting it before another's eyes…
"There's more to it, but that's the big thing," Ilia said, wiping her face to hide herself from Winter's gaze. "Losing… those people… ruined my life. Nothing's ever been the same."
"A mine collapse," Winter repeated. When Ilia finally recovered enough composure to glance up, she saw that Winter had averted her eyes and was staring at the wall. For a moment Ilia thought it was because Winter didn't want to look at her. Then she thought maybe it was because Winter didn't want to be seen. "I remember when that happened."
A sound escaped Ilia—part cruel laugh, part broken sob, part undefinable. "You do?"
"Yes. That's when I knew I had to leave."
The words bounced off of Ilia's brain. "Huh?"
Winter moved around and sat down in the chair opposite Ilia's, but she didn't look at Ilia. She continued looking elsewhere—or, given how her eyes seemed unable to focus, it might be said she was looking nowhere. "When the mine collapsed, my father knew within a few hours. His response made my… episode just now look like a friendly chat. Everybody caught a piece of it. Two staffers got fired, our butler took a pay cut, and mother…"
She cut herself off. Ilia wished she hadn't, and also wished the conversation was over. It was unbearable, but she needed it to go on. That was a working definition of Hell.
"The worst part of it," Winter continued, "is that he wasn't even mad about the collapse itself. He was angriest about how it made the SDC look. As if the worst thing about it was the optics! He… he said he would have been fine with a collapsed mine if no one ever knew about it."
Ilia felt the look of horror rising on her face. She'd thought she couldn't possibly hate Jacques Schnee any more, but that was a hole with no bottom.
"He even went so far as to suggest that the White Fang had collapsed the mine on purpose to hurt the SDC."
"That's ridiculous," Ilia said, unable to stop herself. She nearly clapped a hand over her own mouth; her skin crawled as shame swept through her.
Winter didn't seem to notice, still staring into nothingness. "I know. The White Fang was still in its pacific phase then. Even I knew at the time that he was being absurd. When I heard that, I couldn't help myself. I… spoke out of turn."
She didn't speak for a long time. The words, and their implications, hung in the air.
Ilia wished Winter had said more, had said something specific. As it was, Ilia's imagination was running wild at what Jacques' temper might have done to a young Winter.
Ilia knew how young she'd been when the mine had collapsed, and Winter wasn't much older. Winter hadn't even been in her teens. Aura or no Aura, a child in a situation like that…
Winter took a heavy breath, and another, gathering herself as her eyes drifted closed. "That's when I knew I had to get out. I couldn't stay, couldn't be around… that any longer. I sought out Huntress training. I knew, if I could just make it to seventeen with enough skill to get into the Academy, I could get away from him. Even Jacques couldn't take on Atlas Academy. I could escape."
She shuddered. Ilia wanted to retch.
"A lot of other things happened," she said, in a faster, firmer voice than she'd used before, "but nothing that would change my mind. I wanted to be out of the Dust industry, out of that house. So I escaped. And all of it started on this day, years ago."
She opened her eyes and looked at Ilia, who found herself paralyzed. "So, to one way of thinking, it was the best day of my life. It was also the worst. Strange, the way those go together.
"My only regret is that he didn't get to see all of this," she said, and her voice and face took a vicious turn that took Ilia off-guard. "He would approve of exactly none of it. He'd have a stroke just reading our business plan." She smiled; it was nearly a snarl. "I would have liked to see that."
The image of Jacques keeling over from looking at SDR was a miraculous one. It shook Ilia out of her doldrums. "Couldn't happen to a nicer guy," she said with heat to match Winter's.
Winter gave a bark of a laugh that nearly knocked Ilia from her seat. Winter looked startled at herself, but not quite embarrassed. "I think we can both agree that Jacques didn't die a moment too soon."
"Hear hear," cheered on Ilia. "Did you know? There was a petition in Menagerie to declare his death day a local holiday."
"That would be in poor taste," said Winter with no disapproval at all, "but totally understandable. I almost regret he died how and when he did."
"Really?"
"Because he died still thinking he was a winner," Winter said in words that dripped scorn. "If only he'd been forced to see what a bastard he was first… but that's greedy of me."
"Greedy would have been wishing you did it yourself," said Ilia, and for a moment she'd thought she'd gotten carried away, gone too far—but Winter seemed anything but turned off. Ilia adjusted tacks just a little. "He might be dead, but we can still murder his memory."
"Indeed," said Winter gleefully, and she leaned closer and whispered like a child sharing a secret. "Did you know he wore clip-on ties?"
"No way!"
"Absolutely," said Winter with the giddy look of someone getting away with something. "He had dozens of ties, all red, all clip-on. He couldn't tie them himself, but he'd never admit that to anyone because he was worried how it would make him look, so he just used clip-ons."
"What an ass. What a pretentious ass. You know, people had to cancel travel plans after his funeral."
"Why?" said Winter with intrigue.
"Because hundreds of people had planned trips to Atlas to piss on his grave," Ilia said, losing control of her tongue in the heat of the moment. If the vulgar language offended Winter, she gave no sign, instead looking cheerier than ever. "But he was buried on private property people couldn't get to, so they had to call their trips off."
"I happen to know where he's buried," Winter said conspiratorially. "And what security there is like. Arrangements could be made… for select individuals."
Ilia laughed. "You see now? We were both feeling awful, both down in the dumps, but look at us! The day is already much better, and all it took was thinking about Jacques burning in Hell."
Winter couldn't help herself; she laughed, too, more freely than Ilia had ever seen from her, had ever imagined from her. When Ilia saw that, she was happy for a moment… and then panicked just as quickly.
I'm not supposed to be thinking like this. She's not supposed to look like this. I'm not supposed to be making her happy. She's not supposed to look this good happy. I'm not supposed to care whether she looks good or is happy, never mind both!
Oh, no…
At last, Winter seemed to sober up. "Thank you for that," she said quietly, the simple words rocking Ilia back in her chair. "I do suppose I need to get to work, though. Going down to the mines needs to come next."
"I can come with you," Ilia offered thoughtlessly, dragged on by her own momentum.
Winter started. "You said you didn't like Dust mines. You didn't want to go in there. I needed you to go inside once to understand it, but I don't require that again."
The fact that Winter had registered and honored Ilia's preferences made her feel warm inside—warm enough to push on. "Maybe not, but you sure look like you could use some extra support this morning."
Winter blinked repeatedly, as if she had trouble processing that someone would show concern for her. Maybe that was true. Ilia didn't like the implications if it was.
"I… appreciate it," Winter said with difficulty. She took a breath and seemed to regain some amount of her lost verve. "Okay, let's go see what's on the supe's mind."
A look of no-nonsense determination came over Winter, something close to her default expression. It wasn't as nice to see as her laughing face, but it was still…
No, no, no, no!
Under no circumstances am I supposed to be attracted to a Schnee.
Ilia could make excuses for herself. It wasn't actually Winter that she was attracted to. She was just in a good mood from their mutual roasting of Jacques, and emotionally raw from everything before, and it was such a contrast to how she normally felt on this day that everything felt better than usual.
Ilia was self-aware enough to know when she was lying.
One of Ilia's friends in the White Fang, Yama, had always told Ilia she was the quietest but messiest of all disasters. As she plunged into despair as deep as her elation had been high, Ilia knew that assessment was correct.
Next time: Unmasked
