veryroundbirdfics | Arknights | Not Every Love Burns

Rating: Mild
Words: 919
Characters: W, Theresa
Relationships: Theresa/W
Summary: W has never quite understood what Theresa wants from her, but that's by design.
Notes: For 2021 Arknights WLW Week day 6.

Weird as this place is, there's a lot of advantages to having a solid home base that isn't, you know, literally anywhere out in the open in Kazdel, everyone's least favorite hellzone, which is to say: getting back from a mission, W can have a stretch, splash some water on her face, clean up, and get a square meal and some shut-eye with a whole bed to herself and without Ines smacking her in the face with her hand five times.

And, also, there's other little things.

W finishes scrubbing her face free of soot, and splashes a little water through her hair, giving herself a look-over in the faint reflection in the sheet-metal wall. Probably fine.

As she turns out of that hallway, though, there's footsteps and a swish of black skirts—and then the footsteps stop ahead of her.

"Ah," says Her Majesty, the King of Kazdel, "you missed a little spot."

And she bends, smiling, to rub a smudge of soot off of W's face with her thumb, and W, the hardened mercenary, feels her heart melt like a thermite bomb.

She still can't quite look Theresa in the eye, so she just turns her head a little into Theresa's hand, like she's trying to make sure she didn't miss anything. Her hands are so soft—and W shouldn't be thinking like this.

So W just says: "Well, it happens, you know. Boom! It's not a successful mission if I'm not covered in it, right? They'll think twice about going head to head with us again." And grins, wide and toothy, and laughs. After all, if she can give Theresa anything, it's that, right? She wants to see people smile.

Theresa doesn't quite smile back, though—or, rather, there's kind of a sad tinge around her expression that W really actually hates, now that she's seeing it, and rests her palm against W's cheek.

"I know there were casualties," she says, quietly.

W shrugs, but her insides kind of twist—is this... comforting? Is she being comforted? Like, she did get along with some of the ops out there who bit it, and like, hung out sometimes when they were off-duty, but: "That's how it goes, sometimes, Your Majesty," she says, nonchalant. Even if they could have been called "friends" by someone not a merc, when you're a merc, you know not to get overinvested. "Sucks, but that's how it goes."

Part of her is like—okay, maybe she could just lean into this. Her Majesty's clearly in the mood to try and soothe some hurts. Why talk up like it's fine, if what she wants is vulnerability? Except—

...except, someone like Theresa shouldn't be waiting on someone like her. Except, for Theresa, and for her ends, this is who she needs to be, right? She can't be letting sentimentality bleed into her life or it'll start bleeding out her life.

So she smiles through it—but Theresa doesn't smile that radiant smile back, but cups W's face in her hands, in a way that makes her feel like she's going to die. "W," she says, "when I said I'd like it if all of you would smile—"

She looks away, and shakes her head, slightly. "I didn't mean it like this."

Honestly, though—even though W's face has frozen in a sort of non-expression, if Theresa wanted to see W smile in genuine happiness... this might be the closest she's felt in her whole life, balanced on the machete's edge between fear and hope. If she wanted, she could stand on her tiptoes, lean up, and—

Theresa looks down at her, though, with that perfectly gentle gaze, and W has to look away again, like she's been looking at the sun. "What I want," says Theresa, "what I really want... is for everyone to have a place where they can be at peace. Not just to be able to smile, but to live without fear of the kind of loss and destruction we see every day."

W gives a perfunctory little chuckle, but her heart's not in it. "...is that so, Your Majesty?"

"I told you—we're not in Kazdel. There's no reason to stand on ceremony," she says, and for a moment, W thinks Theresa might bend to kiss her forehead. "Maybe it's an even more extravagant hope I have. I know, even though there are so many who follow me—that many of you don't think it's possible."

"What?! Show me those traitors and I'll fix 'em," says W, in exaggerated mock-shock, and Theresa finally crinkles her face in a laugh.

"I'm sure you would," she says, corners of her mouth turning upwards. "But for now," she goes on, "if I could take on every burden, be anyone, do anything for those who follow me, I would."

Her thumb brushes W's cheekbone, lightly. "There's no one here beneath my attention, W."

W's breath catches in her throat. She's not sure what's being offered, but she—cannot, cannot, find out, because there will be no going back from it. It will destroy her, and it will remake her into something new, and that—that, she can't do, right now.

"Yeah," she says, and ducks her head away, rubbing her face a little, like she's self-conscious of more smudges. "I'll, uh—I'll keep that in mind."

Every night for the rest of her life, though, she wonders what she could have said instead. But on the other hand, it probably wouldn't have made any difference.