hopefulbadger
patreon
Jaune to Joan Chapter 26
🕑 Added 2022-07-19 18:26:44 +0000 UTCChapter 26
“Joan! Joan! Joan!” Cinder cried out, slapping Joan’s cheek gently.
“Huh? I- Ah?” Joan’s eyes flickered open weakly.
“Brothers! Don’t fucking do that!” Cinder yelped.
“Hey.” Joan flashed a weak smile.
“Hi.” Cinder sighed and fell back onto her ass, completely relieved.
“I- You- Your grimm! It’s!” Joan noticed and rushed to sit up a little too quickly. She fell back onto her elbows, barely able to keep herself up.
“Aura, your aura!” Cinder murmured to herself and rushed to grab the tray of food she had brought in. She placed it by Joan and pointed to it. “Eat! You need it!”
“Huh? I- I’m not… not really hungry.” Joan half lied. She was hungry, but she didn’t feel much like she was ready to eat. Her stomach felt queasy, week and like she could be easily upset by almost anything.
“I don’t care.” Cinder shot back with the same steely confidence she always had… though… to Joan, it felt much softer- no, not softer, caring.
“But-”
“You exhausted your aura, you exhausted it healing me.” Cinder held up her left arm. It was human. Mostly human. Grimm made up her hand, and some of the necrotic goop seemed to weakly be fighting up her forearm, the strongest strands almost to her elbow. “Well, not healing… but… assisting me in healing myself.” Cinder clarified.
“I- I have a semblance.” Joan rejoiced and looked over herself as if she were a new woman.
“You do, and it means nothing if you don’t keep your aura healthy.” Cinder kicked the tray closer.
Joan turned her head back to Cinder and quickly grew red and flushed. Her breaths hastened and shortened. Something deep in her core seemed to twist pleasantly.
“What, what are you staring at?” Cinder huffed and put a hand on her hip. That hand then quickly felt around at her hip before her head shot down and hands rushed to cover her chest and the tuft of hair at her core.
Joan snickered.
“What!” Cinder barked.
“Nothing, it’s- it’s just funny; it’s nice.”
“What’s nice?”
“Being the one actually wearing clothes." Joan smiled. "I get why you liked it."
"I didn't like anything!" Cinder turned her nose up.
"Oh? So, am I just supposed to forget evey time I caught you with a hand down your dress while teasing my plug?"
"Sh! Shut up!" Cinder huffed and stormed over to Joan's closet to steal a dress and put it on. "Much better."
"Aww, I was enjoying the view." Joan teased.
"Shut up." Cinder looked away, but her eyes still flickered back as if to say 'but, really?'
Joan nodded and pretended she didn't. They sat there a moment, just absorbing the silence.
"Why!" Cinder barked out of nowhere.
"What?"
"Why!"
"Why what Cinder?"
"Why! Why did you save me? You- you don't have your collar anymore. You could have just run. Why did you save me?"
"I- I didn't mean to. I didn't know what my semblance did, you know I didn't even know it was my semblance till-"
"Bullshit! I saw you look back, I saw you think of running for the door. Why didn't you?"
“I just didn’t.” Joan shrugged.
“No, WHY!” Cinder demanded more forcefully, her anger flaring and feeding the grimm that had been so successfully fought back.
“I- because! You! You didn’t deserve it; to turn into that. And… and…” Joan glanced away.
“And what?”
“I- because I care about you!” Joan huffed. “I care about you, okay?” Joan’s confusion came though as a hint of anger at the clearer confession of her feelings.
“No.” Cinder shook her head simply.
“What?”
“No.” Cinder repeated cold and distant, disbelieving.
“No what.”
“No, you don’t. And even if you did-”
“I do-” Joan interrupted.
“You DON’T! Even if you did, care? Even ‘LOVE’.” Cinder scoffed at the term, queuing Joan into the fact that she had heard, even half gone. “That is not what those things make people do.”
“Yes it is.”
“NO! It isn’t!” Cinder’s flames raged momentarily. “Care? Love? What candyland do you live in Joan!”
Joan pouted and patted her hands on the ground before trying to stand. She nearly fell back down, but she stayed up with the aid of a wall. “What else could those things be? What else could they ever make people do?”
“Care? Care does nothing but make people blind- blind and careless! And Love? Only all the worse!”
“Cinder… how could you-”
“Love is a beating for the laundry not being done by eleven! It’s a shock collar! Mind tricks and stolen eyes!” The half maiden began pacing in circles, turning her back to Joan only to come back with another horrible example of what being ‘loved’ was to her.
“Cinder…” Joan sighed.
“At it’s best, love is senseless murder! Revenge on and on forever and-” Cinder growled her very human, very frustrated growl. “It’s! It’s… it’s plenty of things, but it is most certainly not saving someone’s li-” Cinder stopped dead in her tracks as Joan stumbled into her. The woman new to knowing she was a woman wrapped her arms tight around Cinder.
“It can be other things too.” Joan whispered.
“I-” Cinder seemed to shake in Joan’s arms, maybe a violent reaction to trying to swallow down such a stunningly different world view?
“And I care about you.” Joan offered as soft and gentle as she could.
Cinder shook harsher. She felt like a human earthquake in the making as she turned to face Joan, her eye locking with hers. “Well! Well I fucking care about you too! You beacon brat! So alright? There! I said it too! Are- are you happy?”
Joan just smiled and nodded. “Yes, I think I am.”
End of Chapter 26
Comments
Juliet Taylor Briar
AaaaaaAAAAAAA
