wintersday (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wintersday) wrote2021-02-15 05:39 pm
wintersday) wrote2021-02-15 05:39 pm
Fic: One More Last Chance
Title: One More Last Chance
Fandom: Homestuck
Major Characters/Pairings: Aradia/Vriska
Wordcount: 333 words
Rating: PG
POV: Second person
Summary: A thief plays a game of cards against an unusual opponent. (Fantasy AU)
The day before your execution, the woman in the red dress joins you for a game of cards.
She’s wearing a half-skull mask that doesn’t conceal her curling horns or her smile, and her hair falls loose and lustrous over bare shoulders. The single lantern hanging outside your cell hollows her face and throat with velvet shadows and throws a rectangle of amber light across her painted lips – red, of course, deep dying-star rust, and it seems fitting somehow that death is a peasant, not a queen. You wonder if it satisfies her, breaking nobles beneath her boots, bringing kingdoms low.
If that’s what she wants from you, you think, she’ll be disappointed. You don’t beg. You bet. You win. With your luck, there’s no need to cheat, and there’s not a noose you can’t slip out of. But though you can look her in her burning eyes and your grin doesn’t falter, though you let your gaze slide from her smiling mouth to the places her gown conceals, the truth’s grip tightens with every card you play. You’re here, behind bars of reinforced steel, with a gallows waiting outside and only an executioner to mourn you. Your hands are empty of swords, of dice, of lockpicks. You have no tokens left to bet but one, and she’s winning.
“Handmaid’s luck,” you mutter, as she sweeps another round of cards towards her pile: the Black Queen’s Ring, the Golden Moon, the Burning Ship. That was a bad hand for you to lose.
“No,” she says. “Not luck. The outcome was set from the moment the deck was shuffled.”
But there’s a gleam in her eyes, behind the pits of the mask, that reminds you of light glinting off a turning key. She flips a card and lays it down: the Sun. You’re not sure what it means. You’re sure it must mean something.
“In that case,” you say, leaning forward across the table, “Wouldn’t you rather beat me in a game of skill?”
Fandom: Homestuck
Major Characters/Pairings: Aradia/Vriska
Wordcount: 333 words
Rating: PG
POV: Second person
Summary: A thief plays a game of cards against an unusual opponent. (Fantasy AU)
The day before your execution, the woman in the red dress joins you for a game of cards.
She’s wearing a half-skull mask that doesn’t conceal her curling horns or her smile, and her hair falls loose and lustrous over bare shoulders. The single lantern hanging outside your cell hollows her face and throat with velvet shadows and throws a rectangle of amber light across her painted lips – red, of course, deep dying-star rust, and it seems fitting somehow that death is a peasant, not a queen. You wonder if it satisfies her, breaking nobles beneath her boots, bringing kingdoms low.
If that’s what she wants from you, you think, she’ll be disappointed. You don’t beg. You bet. You win. With your luck, there’s no need to cheat, and there’s not a noose you can’t slip out of. But though you can look her in her burning eyes and your grin doesn’t falter, though you let your gaze slide from her smiling mouth to the places her gown conceals, the truth’s grip tightens with every card you play. You’re here, behind bars of reinforced steel, with a gallows waiting outside and only an executioner to mourn you. Your hands are empty of swords, of dice, of lockpicks. You have no tokens left to bet but one, and she’s winning.
“Handmaid’s luck,” you mutter, as she sweeps another round of cards towards her pile: the Black Queen’s Ring, the Golden Moon, the Burning Ship. That was a bad hand for you to lose.
“No,” she says. “Not luck. The outcome was set from the moment the deck was shuffled.”
But there’s a gleam in her eyes, behind the pits of the mask, that reminds you of light glinting off a turning key. She flips a card and lays it down: the Sun. You’re not sure what it means. You’re sure it must mean something.
“In that case,” you say, leaning forward across the table, “Wouldn’t you rather beat me in a game of skill?”