Chapter Text
"So, what was your hometown like?"
Velvet's used to Weiss's interest in her life; they come from two radically different ends of some bonkers spectrum of lifestyles, where one end (Velvet's) is radical self-acceptance, anti-cop sentiment, and a Scroll full to bursting with communist memes, whilst the other end (Weiss's) is... well, to be honest, Velvet doesn't like to think about what that end entails, exactly. All she knows is that it was exactly what a young shark Faunus without any clue as to her heritage didn't need. So, Velvet entertains her with stories of growing up in the deserts of Menagerie, of her time running along the trash-strewn beaches of Kuo Kuana, of her years shooting up like a weed under the relentless freckling kisses of the bright and vibrant sun.
Sometimes Velvet can tell she can't quite wrap her head around how different their lives are, yet have somehow ended up on such an intersection as to be able to call each other friends. Velvet just goes with the flow about it all.
"Well, we didn't have a hometown, really," Velvet starts, attention half-drawn to sets of plans scattered about her desk in her dorm. She's got big plans to improve Anesidora's projector and fix the information compression problems; drawing a flat 2D image into a 3D projection has always been a sticking point, but she's nearly got it down to the extent that her wireframe tests very nearly reveal the dents and dings and imperfections that it'd previously ironed out by mistake. Accuracy is key, and she crawls ever closer to a perfect 1-to-1 copy each and every day. It's just really boring work, is all. "We lived outside of the nearest town by a couple of miles, but we went there pretty regularly, so I guess you could call it that."
Weiss hums, letting herself fall back onto Velvet's unmade bed, the handwoven blankets of orange and black brought straight over from the homeland and still gritty with red dirt to prove it. "What's it called?"
"Desert Sands. Very original, I know."
"You know a lot of the people there?"
"Shit, they trade us meat and gas for potatoes and carrots and tomatoes, not to mention almost everyone there immigrated in a group with my grandparents. I know that town like my own family."
"What's your favourite thing there?"
That pulls Velvet up short, and she worries at her bottom lip as she stares as a variety of absolutely godawful equations. Thank the maidens Weiss has given her something meaty to say, because she can't bear the idea of redoing all this horrible maths. "Uh, probably the inn, as everyone else who lives there would say. Can't go wrong with a good old fashioned pint and a few rounds of pool."
"Even as a kid?" Weiss says, and Velvet can hear the raised brow even though she can't quite see it.
"Even as a kid," Velvet agrees. "My mam had a couple of pints and my da flirted with the guys and I'd go out with my siblings to meet our friends and raise a little hell. Not very often, but often enough."
Weiss goes sort of quiet, in a way that Velvet recognises as an intensive processing of what she's just heard. She wonders, briefly, if Weiss can even imagine that sort of freedom after a childhood spent locked in the same old rooms of the same old house--even when it's as big as the Schnee manor--and then pushes that thought away. If Weiss wants to ever get into all that, it'll be in her own time.
"Describe it to me?" Weiss asks in a very little voice after a few seconds, and Velvet nods. She can do that. She remembers those halcyon days like they were yesterday.
"Trench, I swear, if you don't repaint those window sills I'm gonna sneak down here and do it myself, asshole."
This was about as typical an entry as Taffeta Scarlatina could ever make, shouldering open the dark wood door into the Desert Sands Inn with a grin on her face and children in tow, Ash bringing up the rear and trying to pretend he couldn't see everyone turn in their seats to look to the new arrivals. It was one of those establishments with a big boxy interior and just a handful of rooms to the side, where the only three doors led into the toilets and the kitchens and the stairwell to the rooms above, and much like everything else on Menagerie, nothing ever matched; the doors had been collected from a variety of sources, the floorboards uneven and scratched and recut, the paint on the walls patchy with mismatched shades and covered with picture frames in some last-ditch attempt to hide it. No two stools matched, no three tables carved by the same hand, but that was the price of the community effort--everything you ever needed, maybe just not in the way you always expected.
"Taffeta," Trench greeted from behind the bar, turning to fetch a pair of glasses without prompting whilst making sure not to jostle the hanging bottles overhead with his great buffalo horns, split like a strange middle parting on the top of his head. "You're welcome to it, to be frank; Cinna doesn't have a clue where she's put the paint, last we saw it."
Taffeta rolled her eyes, letting go of Velvet's hand to pat her between her ears instead, the ten year old quick to laugh and duck away. "I'm sure. Not at all like I said I have some lying around the last three times I was here. You really that scared of scraping all that flaking paint off?"
"Well," Trench said after a moment, leaning under the bar for a second. "I did get some in my eyes last time, and boy, that hurted. You want your usual?"
"Pint of porter for me, and something weak for my pretty boy, lest he forget which way is up," Taffeta agreed, shooting a wink Ash's way and cackling when he blushed. "And some juice boxes for the kids?"
Trench didn't even pause, turning about to fish out a variety of colourful cartons adorned with a collection of cartoon characters, and Taffeta lifted Velvet up to plop her onto one of the few cushioned stools, Chiffon quick to use her older, longer limbs to scramble her own way up. Trench offered the drinks out freely, letting them decide between orange and passionfruit flavours, before noticing the new addition on Ash's hip. "Oh? This the newest Scarlatina?"
Satin--hardly a year old--was clinging to her da's loose shirt, dark eyes looking about in wonder, and Taffeta smiled before reaching over to brush her loose, light hair out of her eyeline. "Sure is. Gettin' real big already, so we thought it was high time to meet the folks around here. She won't be the last, though." At that, Taffeta leant across the bar, dropping her voice low. "Would you believe me if I said Ash is already askin' for the next one?"
"Slander," Ash shot back, face still pink. "I just said four is a rounder number than three."
Trench made a face, glancing pointedly away. "My girl woulda mounted my horns on the wall for that one. We had just the one and she swore off the rest before I could even consider it. Count yourself lucky."
"Cinnamon's a good kid," Ash offered, rearranging Satin to sit a little nicer in his lap. "I think that all worked out in the end."
Taffeta rolled her eyes, watching as Velvet picked the orange juice for herself, leaving the eldest to the passionfruit. "Doesn't that imply we have so many 'cause you don't think just one was good enough? Chiff's a darling, if a bit of a pain in my ass, huh, baby?"
Chiffon ignored them both to instead help Velvet punch the straw into the carton, and Ash grinned. "Just one was perfect, but you told me yourself that you don't think I know when to fold."
"You don't," Trench interjected, pouring out a pint of something dark and bitter enough to linger on the tongue. "When we played poker last year... phew. Thank the maidens it was a couple's night, else you woulda been walking home absolutely stark--"
"--drunk," Taffeta quickly interrupted, glancing towards the kids who stared back with wide eyes. "Been walking home absolutely stark... trashed. Wasted. Uh, Trench, what's on the menu today, whilst it's on my mind?"
As they discussed the menu (Taffeta eager to point out the contributions of the family crops, asking, overly sweetly, and who traded you those lovely chickens? they must have been very generous), Chiffon turned to Ash in her seat, legs swinging freely, bumping into the overly-varnished wood of the bar. "Da? Can me 'n Velv go out and play?"
"Sure can, kiddo," Ash said, though he was quick to grab Chiffon's arm before she could throw herself off the stool with the straw still in her mouth. "Woah, take that out first before you end up swallowing it. You remember the rules?"
Chiffon nodded, face cast all seriously. "Don't go outta town. Be back before dark. If someone tries to bully us, punch 'em in the nose."
"And?" Ash added, drawing his brows together.
Velvet chirped up. "Cops aren't friends!"
At that, Ash broke out into a grin, as bright as Velvet's and twice as toothy. "That's right. You go have fun, and don't eat too many snacks; we're having dinner here before we go home."
Chiffon slid free of her stool, turning about to help Velvet down too, and then the pair scampered towards the door with a harmonised yes da! before pulling it open to the main road outside, the sunlight blisteringly bright, the sky an endless, cloudless blue overhead. The paint on the windowsill peeled off and flecked away, and under their shoes, the ground crunched.
Everything tasted of oranges.
Weiss sits silently.
"Did you get back before dark?"
Velvet snorts, sitting back in her chair until it creaks dangerously below. "Just about, though my mam didn't look all that impressed. Still, can't do much about it; we didn't even have, like, landline calls back then, let alone Scrolls and shit."
Weiss laughs to herself, rolling over and tucking her legs up onto Velvet's bed until she's curled atop the blankets, running a thumb over the wool quietly, repetitively. Truth is, they still smell of Menagerie, of home; Velvet could wash it a thousand times, but the earthy scent of hot summers and prickling scrublands sticks like its own aura.
"I'm jealous," Weiss says simply, and then she draws the blankets up to partly cocoon herself, tight across the ribs, loose about the ankles. "Will I... would you show me it, sometime? If I went there?"
It's sweet. Velvet wishes she could travel through time and show it to Weiss from the start; she wishes she could have told her what she would have, in the future. Look, see? This is real. You can have this too. Happiness doesn't only exist for people far away; you get to feel this, too.
"Of course," Velvet says with a smile, instead. "Bold if you to think my parents don't demand they meet every single last one of my friends."
Weiss grins back, all shark-toothed and sharp, and Velvet likes how it looks on her face. It took her team months to eek it out of her more often than every couple of weeks, but now, it's practically daily. "I'm afraid the offer doesn't extend back to you."
"Thanks the maidens," Velvet says, very seriously. "Because if I ever meet your dad, I'm setting his car alight."