Open Post: The Arms of the Emperor are Never Idle

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon spends her mornings in the practice yard, bright and early, despite the cold. She jogs and stretches to get her blood pumping and her muscles warm before she draws her sword, and then after drills she brings Tally her coffee, and then after that it's back to more sword—unless Tally hauls her off to some other activity, which she pretends to hate but is secretly devastatingly grateful for. The absolute worst part of this place is all the time. Endless stretches of time, with barely any work to be done.

In some ways it's just like the Ninth—except on the Ninth she knew her exits. They were few, sure, and near-impossible, but she knew them: buy her way out, fight her way out, trick her way out, or truly earn it.

None of those apply, here.

She breaks for lunch, and wanders the halls trying to locate various Clues and Mysteries that might end up giving her a way out, and mostly just finds people. More and more people.

She's not antisocial. She likes the people here, more than she's openly liked anyone in her life, individually or as a group. But a gnawing restlessness keeps her on the move rather than letting her time fill up with idle conversation as so many here do. She's always hunting for something to keep her busy, to wear out her body so that when she sleeps her mind is forced to rest rather than serving her a lovely buffet of the worst things she's ever seen and even worse things she hasn't, the things she was yoinked away just in time to miss.

Sometimes it even works.

[This post is open in perpetuity until something happens to make me close it, at which point I will edit it and say so! Feel free to find Gideon in the morning doing sword drills, or tooling around inside, opening and closing drawers and trying peel the wallpaper off in case there's flesh underneath.]

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[tallyyoungblood]

Tally gets on the floor and does a quick roll, not wanting to have to practice it right after being knocked over just yet. "Like that, but after you knock me down? I feel like a cat," she giggles. "I meant it, though, you're good at this stuff. Obviously." She gets back up again.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon squints at her. "Not terrible. You moved, which is the first point: if something knocks you down, the last thing you want to do is stay still. But the second point is to get back up, so you can hit back. Try it again, but this time try to put your feet under you as you come up." She demonstrates—doing a forward-roll, as Tally did, rather than rolling backward as she had before, and tucking her feet under her so she rolls upward into a crouch. She stays in the crouch, so Tally isn't just rolling around at her feet like, apparently, a cat, though it's hard to imagine Mothwing being so undignified. She also tucks the compliment into her back pocket, to think about later.

[tallyyoungblood]

"Okay. I totally got this." Tally tries her best to copy Gideon's motions. Her bubbliness proves a blessing and a curse: she's awake and aware of her movements, but maybe too aware. It turns out that pretty gracefulness at least partially comes from not thinking too hard about where to put your limbs. The enhanced reflexes help to compensate, but not enough to keep her from stumbling a few times before she starts to get it.

"The operation totally doesn't give me muscle memory," she complains. "I'm going to have to get it myself. Utterly naff." She goes into another roll and manages to get into a crouch, if a totally wobble-making one.

[ninth_cavalier]

"Yeah, completely bogus that you can't do everything right immediately on the first try," says Gideon, dryly. She moves around Tally as she tries it again, tapping on an elbow when it's sticking too far out, or a knee when it's too far in. "Good. That's better."

[tallyyoungblood]

Gideon's touch feels electric in her bubbly state. Part of Tally wants to fuck up worse to get Gideon to touch her more, but that feels dishonest. She's determined to have no gigantic, life-ruining lies this time.

"Maybe you should, like, try to stab me now?" she asks. "With something not as sharp, maybe? For motivation?"

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon straightens up, regarding her thoughtfully. They should really go through basic blocks, first, and how to shift your weight properly—but if she'd been forced to do all this rolling around bullshit before she ever picked up a sword, she would have started biting people. "Yeah, okay," she says. She looks around, and to her surprise finds a few wooden practice blades—worn as if from medium-use and then not particularly well maintained—leaning in a corner. She picks one up, and tosses the other to Tally. "Head's up," she says, after she's already thrown it.

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally catches it. "You're not going to get me on reflexes," she says, smirking. The wooden blade is surprisingly heavy, even when Tally shifts it so that she's holding it by the handle and not the blade, which is how she'd caught it. She can't resist doing a couple of swishes through the air before she readies herself properly.

"Okay, just, like... knock me over again but then try to get me," she instructs. "Or I guess surprise me. Um, whatever. You're the teacher."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon makes a little face at that—Teacher is a weird little old man made up of countless human souls, actually, but they don't have time to unpack all that, because instead she's flicking out the flat of her blade, sideways, at Tally's unprotected side. "You make claims about reflexes, you better be ready to back them up."

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally dodges, but just barely. She feels the blade against her side for a nanosecond before she darts away. She laughs, exhilarated again.

"This is so bubbly-making," she says. "But you always make me bubbly." She tries the same move back on Gideon, but she can already tell her swing is clumsier, unused to the weight of a sword in her hands.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon blocks it easily, and aims a blow at Tally's other side. She'd had a plan for a better followup than that, but she's distracted, trying not to read too much into what Tally's saying. "I do?" Tally had said things like going on dates and kissing boys were bubbly-making too. "Is that good?"

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally's glad that she's exerting herself, so she has an excuse for her face going a little pink.

"Um, of course it is. That's what we've been trying to do this whole time." This time Tally gets hit, but she doesn't flinch or fall over. The pain sings through her. "Bubbly equals not pretty-minded and useless. You're really good at making my heart beat fast. You know, with all the coffee and stuff like this." Tally's also distracted now, even as the world shimmers with bubbliness. "Are you going to knock me over or what?"

[ninth_cavalier]

Oh, sure, right, adrenaline. Gideon's good at adrenaline. She reaches out and grabs Tally's sword-hand, using her grip on it to yank her close enough that the blade itself is useless, and Tally's well inside her own guard. She glances up into Tally's face and gives her a quick grin. The tattoo above her chrome-silver eyes is spinning especially fast today. "Your wish is my command, whirlybird."

She tangles their legs together in a modified version of her first trip, one that could, maybe, if you squint, be mistaken for a dance move where you dip your partner—only at the bottom of the dip she drops Tally unceremoniously onto the floor.

[tallyyoungblood]

Gideon's closeness and the nickname are so distracting that Tally falls like a hoverboard going off the magnetic grid, totally forgetting to dodge for long seconds. Whirlybird makes her feel warmer than Tally-wa ever had. It's--it's unique. Belatedly she rolls, heart pounding. She's lost her sword somewhere along the way.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon plants a boot in Tally's path, stopping her belated roll, and leans down, leveling her own practice sword at Tally's throat.

[tallyyoungblood]

Oh, wow. Gideon totally looks like some kind of avenging angel from this perspective, like that woman from the Rusty movie about a drought apocalypse.

Tally gazes up at her. "Would you do other stuff to keep me bubbly?" she asks suddenly. She hadn't thought it was possible, but her heart beats even harder.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon blinks. "Um." What is she being asked, right now. "Yes?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"You're not even going to ask me what?" Tally asks in amazement, slowly getting out from under the sword. "You're not just saying that because I'm pretty, are you?"

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon shrugs. "I said I'd help you, didn't I?" Though now that she thinks about it, she's not sure she ever did, aloud; she just kind of started doing it. She circles Tally, weighing the practice sword in her hand. "And no, actually, you being pretty--like, scientifically capital-p Pretty on purpose rather than just normal person hot--probably makes me less likely to help you out. I'm contrary like that."

[tallyyoungblood]

"So you're saying... you like me for me?" Tally looks at her with wide eyes, turning to track her movements but also trying to send a message of sincerity.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon snorts. "Yeah, duh," she says, and then strikes, flicking the light wooden sword at Tally's knee.

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally jumps back, then turns to aim a strike at Gideon's shoulder. She's not concentrating on the sword fight very much, though, because her memories are icy-clear right now. Both David and Zane had kissed her first, made the first move. She'd done it a few times when she'd kissed uglies way before her fifteenth birthday, let alone her sixteenth, but not when it really mattered. The way Gideon makes her feel sometimes makes her think of Shay, the desperate want to belong to someone. They're teetering on the edge of friendship and flirting in a totally butterflies-inducing way.

"Then would you kiss me?" she blurts out, surprising herself. "I know you have your, um, Harrow at home, so it doesn't have to be anything serious. I just... want to." Magnus had definitely made a good point that she shouldn't use Gideon for pure bubbliness purposes, but this isn't that. This is just Tally asking for what she wants, even if she's not entirely sure she knows all the reasons why she wants it.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon dodges the strike, then commits an absolute combat faux pas and stops dead, staring at her. "Harrow and I aren't," she starts, and then stops, and then, in case she misheard, "You want me to kiss you?"

[tallyyoungblood]

For a moment, Tally thinks about pushing Gideon over, but she already looks totally pushed over. It's both concerning and utterly gratifying.

"Yes," she says, committing. "I know I said you were ugly, and I'm really sorry. Like you said, my, um, soft-core panopticon totally fucked me up. But obviously that's not the prevailing opinion any more. Um, that I have. I like you for you, too." She starts nervously twirling the sword in one hand, then stops herself.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon grins, wide and shit-eating, ducking past Tally's nervous sword-swinging and--probably obnoxiously--into her space. "Won over by my irrepressible charm, huh? My huge guns? My beautiful big butch bod? Or is it all the swordplay that's got you hot?"

She's close enough she could kiss Tally, now. She doesn't--she just stares up at her, at the chrome of her eyes, the tattoo whirling at her eyebrow. "Because you like me, huh?" she asks, quieter. Shit. Can it really be that simple?

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally laughs a little in relief at Gideon's smile. Her mind feels utterly ugly. She thinks she could remember every detail of the Smoke right now if she wanted to, but she actually wants to think about the present moment, for once.

"It is kind of the swordplay," she teases. "Totally bubbly-making." She looks into Gideon's beautiful golden eyes and finds the vulnerability there, less evident than it might be in a pretty's but much more authentic. It feels like a prize she's won.

"I do. You make me feel like myself."