Dead Men
Author: Amata le Fay
Title: Dead Men
Story: Ether Lands (RP)
Flavor(s): Summer Challenge TV Tropes Bunnies 4 (blue and orange morality), Teaberry 23 (because I could not stop for Death/he kindly stopped for me)
Toppings/Extras: None
Rating: PG13 (mild swearing, references to massacre)
Word Count: 470
Notes: Extremist pseudo-feminist nihilism is apparently Drake's thing now. You may need Origin Stories to get it-just rumors about Audata/Drake's past-mainly because I haven't set down any solid backstory yet. So the events in this may just be a rumor.
“You didn't have to kill 'em, y'know that, right?”
Audata sat on top of the caravan, legs crossed underneath her crimsons. She idly traced a dark finger along the gold embroidered threads as the red bled over and into them. Mama'd say the dress was ruined, but Audata thought it was perfect. Dying 'em with death. “I had a point to make. What's it t'you?”
Cyane shivered, turning away from her sister and towards the ether as it rolled into the horizon with the rest of the clouds. Sun rays were filtered purple by the smog. It made their skin otherworldly, deep bluish umber, and the pools underneath the overturned wagon could be waved away as water if you didn't look too close. The rest hurried out of her mouth. Audata still had a gun. “Sane people don't do things like that.”
“Who said I was sane?” Audata laughed a bit too long. “I live by my own damn rules.”
“You changed since you came back. You're a bad girl.” Cyane stared. “Made me a be a bad girl with you.” Better a bad girl than a dead one, she thought fleetingly, then, and shivered again.
“That's how they want you to think.” Audata breathed out the ether that had got into her lungs, one long breath and swirling smoke came out. “They deserved it all. Forcing us into marriages, stealing the gold that was rightfully ours and giving it to pigs to lord over us. And calling that the natural order, when everyone knows natural is the killer reigns over the prey. So don't talk of good and bad. They defined good and bad, and the definitions are arbitrary.”
The words cut Cyane, words that were foreign to her, long and scholary. Where had Audata been since she got taken by the robbers, that she learned those words? What had she seen, what had been done to her that made her able to massacre and make it right to herself? She slept at night. She talked about shooting up more, taking to the seas and getting boats of scholar gold. Before she had just been a woman-lover, now she wasn't a woman at all.
“That ain't what mama meant by changing the rules on the men,” Cyane murmured. “You know.”
“Mama wasn't never prepared to do anything.” Audata stood, jumped down from the top of the caravan. “I already tried mama's way. Didn't do the trick. You comin' to buy the ship or not?”
“Where'd you try that? When?” Cyane jumped down. “Audata-”
Click. In a whirl, Audata had loaded, cocked, and aimed. After a moment, she grinned. “Audata was the Highwayman Who Called Himself Death's little prize-bride. I'm Drake Zephyrson, and I answer to no man, nor any woman who would serve one. You'd best well remember it, sister.”