Chapter Text
The harsh winds of Belobog's evening blew hard against the windows of the Supreme Guardian's office at Qlipoth Fort. The sun was nearly invisible in the orange-hued skyscape and yet the sole denizen of the room was still at her desk, diligently filing away administrative task after task with no hopes of her chores ending any time soon. Almost as if to save her from the monotony of work, she heard a series of knocks on the door, whose pattern didn't quite match the people who would usually come to her visit. It was accompanied by a cheerful yet mature voice:
“Hey Ms. Guardian! I have some, ehm, “private” delivery to your name, very very urgent!”
“Serval? Sure, come on in, the door's unlocked.”
Bronya hadn't failed to catch the obvious comedy in her voice, and was subsequently quite surprised when she saw Serval barreling into the office with a box full of...bottles? The white-haired girl looked at her guest with a puzzled expression.
“So what is the matter with these boxes? Surely you would not bribe the Supreme Guardian, would you?” Bronya asked, a hint of sarcasm mixed in with genuine curiosity. She was, quite frankly, the last person who could ever be offered booze. The few memories of drinking she had shared in the past always ended in her waking up without remembering how she fell asleep in the first place.
“Nah, I wouldn't dare, you're about as clean as they get. These little babies are a gift from our dear Underworlders! So like, a lot of them have grown to reaaaally respect the hell out of you after your little face to face with that IPC woman. Turns out people down there love a woman with pride and guts!”
“B-but I didn't even do all that much,” protested Bronya, a look of confusion on her face, “they should better spend their resources for themselves, a full box of liquor is simply overkill!”
“See, they knew you'd say that, and they told me to tell you 'put a sock in it and relax for a little. You work your ass off for all of us so you should take it easy from time to time Ms. Guardian!' or something like that.”
Bronya was shocked, but more than that she felt genuine warmth in her heart. While simply sitting down in her office was nothing compared to the grueling work of the Overworld's frontline soldiers or the Underworld's many fighters and scavengers, it would have been dishonest to not recognize how much of a toll it was starting to take on her, mentally and physically. And simply having her work acknowledged by the very people she had promised to protect was the greatest gift she could have received. In the end, she gladly accepted the box of liquor, even inviting Serval to try out the first bottle together. However, she had to refuse. Something about her shop needing maintenance and whatnot. The Supreme Guardian was left alone again, bottles of alcohol in hand and still too much work left to be done, so she simply placed the gift in a corner and sat back on her chair.
A few hours passed, and as she kept on knocking more of the comically convoluted files on her desk, Bronya's eyes wandered once, twice and thrice again towards the little curio she had just received, temptation whispering in her ear
Maybe I should take a break...I-I mean that is what was asked of me wasn't it? And wouldn't it be utterly, ridiculously rude to not heed the advice of my people? Argh, but this paperwork is urgent, and I know tomorrow will only bring more of it...but one glass couldn't hurt...could it?
…
The cold, windy night of Belobog had completely submerged the administrative district. You could still see a few people passing by, illuminated by the streetlights and orange-hued geomarrow heaters strewn around the streets. There was, however, one person who would noticeably stand out during the days, yet now felt at ease in the relative darkness of the night.
Seele was walking through the district at a brisk, relaxed pace, letting her dark blue cape flow behind her amidst the wind. Yet if this slowed her down, she did not show it, making her way towards Qlipoth Fort with the ease and habit of someone who had visited there more than a few times. Passing by a few familiar guards, the girl made her way towards her destination: the Supreme Guardian's office. She knocked. Once, twice, thrice and a fourth time after a beat. Bronya had told her once that she liked to memorize people's patterns of knocking so as to better prepare herself for who would come inside, which is why Seele found it useful to invent this specific arrangement of knocks. That way, she would know it's her.
And yet, there was no response. Strange, the guards had told her the Supreme Guardian was indeed at her office, and it would be pretty hard to run away with those high windows of hers. Seele knocked again, still with no answers. She began to worry.
This idiot...I swear if I find her asleep at her desk again I'll-
With a mix of worry and anger, she pushed the door open with a nonchalant “I'm coming in” to present the bare minimum of politeness. She expected to find the white-haired girl at her desk, maybe asleep or maybe so absorbed she had tuned the outside world out of her senses. But she wasn't there. Instead, Bronya was sitting in front of the desk, on the ground, a bottle of nondescript liquid in her hand and a blushed look of daze mixed in with the very obvious effects of alcohol consumption on her face. As her eyes lazily meandered around they made contact with Seele's purples, which had the effect of suddenly making her a lot more focused. She stood right up from her seemingly uncomfortable position and hopped, skipped and jumped with all the excitement of a teenager in love towards Seele, embracing her in a surprising, tight hug.
“Seele!! It's you! Ahhh I can't believe it's you! I'm so happy, so happy! Hehehe...”
“B-Bronya, don't get so close like that, what is wrong with you?!”
Despite her attempts at pushing her away, Seele found herself unable to do so. She wasn't weak, not by any means, but the girl in front of her was gripping her so tightly that she would have had to hurt her to free herself, and that was a less pleasant alternative than simply dying from embarassment. So she had to survive this frontal assault compounded by Bronya's childish giggling and constant bouncing.
“Are you d-drunk? Geez, you know you're a lightweight, why would you even drink alone?”
“See, it was a gift from MY people! And I, the Supreme Guardian of Belobog, have to honor the gifts of ALL my subjects! It's my...sacred uhh, whatcha callit, DUTY. Yes! So I HAD to drink that entire bottle, it was urgent and crucial!”
Seele put aside her utter bafflement at the embarassing spectacle in her arms and tried to make sense of her own frenized feelings: this was getting worse and worse. It's not like they never hugged or anything, but Bronya was usually a lot more chaste with her bouts of physical affection, and so now, Seele was forced into confronting a number of aspects of the girl in front of her, such as the softness of her body or the dizzying smell of her perfume, both of which were enough to make her head spin.
Maybe I should just never move again...wait no, NO, what is WRONG with you Seele, she's drunk! Get yourself together!
Having realized things would only grow more dangerous the longer this hug went on, Seele finally weaved herself with great difficulty out of Bronya's death grip and walked towards the bottle to pick it up, intent on finding out what manner of poison this was.
“Wait this is- it's Underworlder Rhum?! Someone gifted this to YOU?! Those idiots, once I get my hands on them I'll- URGH! And you said you drank a whole BOTTLE?! What is wrong with you??” Her tone exuded obvious rage but thinly veiled within was genuine worry for the drunken girl. Any beverage as potent as Rhum should be consumed carefully and possibly by people who can already take a few shots, so the idea of an extreme lightweight emptying an entire bottle on her own was utterly terrifying to Seele. However, she had not immediately realized that her usual angry facade wasn't as easily readable to Bronya in a state of inebriation, who started tearing up as a child would after being severely told off by their parents.
“I-I'm sorry...I just, I wanted to t-take a break and so I, uh, I drank one glass, and it felt so nice and relaxing and so I drank another one and another one and, and, and I- I'm sorry, I'm so sorry please don't be mad, please don't leave me, Seele please, please don't abandon me, not you too. I need you, I-, I-”
Bronya was starting to choke up drunken sob after drunken sob, crying big, wet tears messing up her thin layer of makeup. Seele, who now wished to quite literally shovel her way to hell from shame, only remembered one time she had seen her crying as much as she did today: the day after her mother had passed away. At the time, she had held on to her facade. She had to. Bronya was now the Supreme Guardian, a very young one at that. She had to keep an image of strength and steadfast resolution in the face of a difficult but promising future for Belobog and its people. During the private funeral she had not cried, and during her official statements she had not cried. Only when it was all done, when everyone else was out of reach, had she finally allowed herself to cry, alone.
Except she wasn't. Seele was there to escort her to her chambers that night, and she had seen through her ploy, through that strong, rigid wall she put up, stronger even than the ones Gepard could summon. Bronya did everything to keep it up but it didn't work. Seele wasn't the type to fully break a sturdy structure like that, but she could find the slightest hint of instability, the smallest little fault, and weave her way towards that weak point to make the whole thing crumble, and crumble she did. That night, after an intense bout of arguing between the girl who tried to hold it all in and the girl who told her she would always come to her rescue, the end result was Bronya letting herself be vulnerable and cry into the arms of the one person she could never hope to hide anything from. It's not like Seele was a particularly good listener or even the emotionally smartest person around, but she had made her a promise in front of that orphanage, and that promise held true. She would always rush to her aid, no matter the problem, no matter the issue.
So her next action almost came naturally to her, admittedly accompanied by the shame of having caused these tears in the first place. But nonetheless, she carefully closed the distance between them and pulled her into a soft hug. Not like the clingy one she was trapped under before, but a gentle, reserved one, to make sure Bronya wasn't being constricted or held against her will. This was merely a proposition, a way of saying “I can hold you like this if you want to, and if you don't I'll leave you be.” Whether she was capable of understanding the nuance of that gesture, Bronya didn't make it clear, but she reciprocated the hug much more tightly, desperately grappling the backside of Seele's clothes as she kept sobbing into her shoulder. The blue-haired girl carefully brought her hand to the beautiful white hair of the girl in front of her, carressing away gently in an almost maternal movement, picking up the tricks Natasha would use to calm down the many crying children she had to deal with over the years, including her.
“There, there...I'm really sorry Bronya. I'm just, urgh, I'm worried about ya. You take on so much work for yourself and in your best attempt to relax you go pull a stupid stunt like this. Maybe I should use all that useless crap on your desk to sharpen my scythe eh? Call it cutting down on your workload?” a wry smirk appeared on her lips as she let out her joke, although her intent was at least semi-serious. If she could, she really would reduce that whole desk to smithereens, as retribution for causing Bronya so much pain.
“N-no”, the girl in her arms pathetically whimpered in-between two sobs, “it's all...important matters...it's for Belobog...If I don't do well, i-if I'm lacking then people will- everyone will hate me. And y-you will hate me too...please don't hate me Seele, I'm begging you, please don't.”
“I won't, princess. Didn't I give you my word? I'll always be there for you, so don't fret over little ole' me, i'm not that easy to lose. And frankly, I doubt anyone could ever hate you for a good reason. I don't think you quite get how much people under and over ground appreciate you for all the shit you put up with, and all the work you do for the good of Belobog. You're kind, compassionate and a good leader.”
The white-haired girl kept on wetting Seele's shoulder with her tears, and trying to get a grip on reality, she pulled back ever so slightly to look directly at her. Or the best approximation she could manage while being unable to focus her eyes on anything.
“You- you're wrong. I'm selfish. The t-truth is I only do it for myself. I'm scared, I'm so scared Seele. I'm scared people will e-eventually...abandon me. I'm scared my efforts will- they'll never amount to enough, enough to save our home. I'm scared she, my mother, would never be proud of me- even despite her madness, I'll still never be h-half the leader she- she was...”
“Bullshit.” Seele's words harshly cut through Bronya's sobs, her shoulder shaking at the slight raise in tone, prompting the blue-haired girl to choose her next few words a bit more carefully.
“Look. I can't- I obviously won't tell you how to feel about your own mother. About the things she did, the person she was and her role as a leader. It's way out of my wheelhouse. What I can tell you is how I- how we all feel about you. You were placed in such a difficult position after the whole stellaron mess, and you rose up to the occasion. You listened to people's complaints, brushed off the unwarranted criticism and worked your ass off to make this city, OUR city, better for it. I won't say what I think about Supreme Guardian Rand's tenure, but I'll say what I think about Bronya's. You are a great leader, an even greater woman and I lo- I...appreciate our friendship all the more for it.”
Too close. She had almost inserted something that did not need to be told amidst her consolation of the girl. See, the average outsider could easily assume these two girls had been going steady for a while, but things were not as simple. Seele wanted to protect, help and support Bronya through her efforts and work as Supreme Guardian, but also in everything else. Seele wanted to always be there for her. Like, some would say, a wife. She loved her, like a romantic kind of love. But these feelings were both new and confusing for the Underworlder, and so she had long since given up any attempt at expressing those.
“I would make a terrible girlfriend.” “I doubt she sees me that way.” “Bronya's too busy anyway.” “Love is stupid, who cares.” “God she might not even be gay-”
These and other such thoughts consistently weaved through her mind each time she tried to accept her feelings and the impossibility of them ever amounting to anything tangible. But this was no easy task, and the occasional verbal slip-up was all it took for the people around her to realize she was very much hopelessly in love with everyone's favorite Supreme Guardian. One rather embarassing anecdote during a drinking game with Luka led to her spilling her guts to the redhead who, surprisingly, didn't mock or tease her too much for it, but he did find it useful to say “Dude, you're joking right? Everytime you two are together people think you've already tied the knot. I'll bet my right arm she's into you!” to which she could only reply, “You have no right arm...shithead.”
Back to the present, and Seele was glad her almost confession could not be detected by the confused, sobbing girl in her arms, who in the meantime did manage to calm down a little bit. She was still crying, but was noticeably shaking less, although it was perhaps due to the accumulated fatigue of the day and the emotional toll of the night.
“Seele...” she had steadied herself enough to talk again, her eyes still unfocused, and her cheeks still blushed from the alcohol, which gave her a strangely alluring look that Seele had to ignore as if her life depended on it.
“I...love you so much. You're the most important p-person in- in my life...if you ever left my side I'd- I wouldn't- I don't know what I would do...what I would become.”
She means it in a friend way she means it in a friend way she means it in a friend way, Seele subconsciously deluded herself to not immediately blow up on the spot. After all, if this was a true confession, it would be terrifying. But also great? But also not cool. Drunk confessions don't count. She had already forgotten the amount of times she kept drunkenly confessing to Natasha, and those DEFINITELY did not count, gods no.
Meanwhile, Bronya's sobs finally came to a light stop, although tears were still dotting her frankly adorable face, despite the smeared makeup and sloppy expression she showed. Seele still kept her hold, once again not too rigidly so as to restrict her. But it felt right. So she kept hugging her, patting her head to and fro, and, feeling particularly daring, she even brushed her lips, ever so slightly, against the white-haired girl's vulnerable forehead, in a kiss so light she might not even have felt it. But she did. And in doing so, Bronya immediately brought her eyes against Seele, a look of embarassment and confusion made apparent on her drunken visage. The sober one also realized this might have been a bit much, but it just felt like the right thing to do? Once again, her mind flashed back to how Natasha would usually calm the children who were scared, sad or traumatised during the frequent attacks from the fragmentum legion, and simply replicated some of those gestures. It was definitely not because that face looked insanely kissable and the only way to not do something compromising was to give her a peck on the forehead. No sir, no way.
“Geez, don't overreact like that. It was just a k- hmph?!”
But she could not even finish her weak excuse before Bronya decided to plant her lips right on Seele's, in a move most certainly motivated by the alcohol, but also one that was definitely long overdue, for the both of them. The kiss was clumsy, desperate and frankly, kinda bad. It was made woefully apparent that this was the Supreme Guardian's first foray into any sort of mouth-to-mouth action, which didn't come as a surprise, but the inebriation added another layer of incredible incompetence to the act. Her lips sometimes lost grip, sliding pathetically to the sides of Seele's chin and cheeks, and when they hit the mark, they would try to toothlessly bite the other lips, almost as if it were some outlandish wrestling match.
And yet, it was an ethereal, almost blissful moment for the both of them. As Bronya drowned in the full apex of her emotions, Seele herself was in the throes of a fantasy that threatened to shatter her bleeding heart. This was everything she had dreamed about, for so many nights. Her softness as she clung to Seele's back, her fragrance infiltrating her senses, the taste of her pretty pink lips erasing any and all doubts from her mind. It was all so much, too much, outlandishly much. But Seele's rational mind soon kicked in as she realized she couldn't just make out with someone drunk, no matter how good it felt.
So she quickly pulled away, holding Bronya by the shoulders in an effort to distance the two of them, only to realize she had to stop and reset her breath as she had forgotten to breathe during their little joust. Bronya looked wholly unresponsive and unpresent, like a robot whose circuitry had been toyed with a little too much, and Seele had to shake her a good amount to grab some sliver of attention.
“W-we can't do that idiot. You're- you're obviously drunk. I'm not letting you do anything you'll regret...” Seele's blush was painfully obvious, as was her inability to make eye contact with her, but the girl in front of her seemed to vaguely acknowledge that, while a surprisingly lucid yet sad smile rose to her face.
“Oh...of course, I shouldn't have- I didn't- I thought you...I mean...there was no way you- you felt the same...”
And before her tears could resurface, Seele cupped the messy face in her hands and looked the girl straight in her eyes to try and make sure the next few words she'd say could get through her alcohol-addled mind:
“Idiot. That's not what I said. I'm just saying...these things should be talked about sober. You're piss drunk out of your mind right now, so take the time to sleep it off, and if you still remember this whole...thing, we can chat it out. Okay? Alright?”
Through the squished head in her palms, Seele managed to get a few shy nods which was enough to satisfy the both of them. However, as soon as she took her hands away, she realized Bronya's posture was failing and her eyes closing. Immediately adjusting her arms to shoulder her weight, Seele held the white-haired girl right before she could fall and hurt herself.
“Geez, you really went and fell asleep? You're giving me so much work, idiot...”
Despite her tone, Seele carefully picked up the sleeping girl in her arms, as a groom would hold her newly wedded bride – although that image was enough to give the poor girl a severe case of the flush as she struggled to not stare longingly at the teary, messed-up face that was the object of her dreams for so long now. She still held unto her sanity while bringing Bronya back to her bedroom, accessible through a side door in her office.
“Let's get you to bed, princess.” Exercizing the utmost delicacy, Seele lowered the other woman's body down unto her bed, making sure her head lay comfortably on the soft pillow. It probably wasn't the best to leave her both fully clothed and also letting her sleep without an ounce of water, but at this point, waking her up might have genuinely been a herculean task. She would simply have to deal with the hangover and wrinkled clothes as punishement for her stupid drinking, hoping it would dissuade her from such reckless actions in the future.
But as she started making her way out the door, she could hear a soft whimper emanate from the sleeping beauty, with newly apparent tears on her face flowing down and wetting her white pillow as she mumbles a few incomprehensible words in her breath, only some of which made her way to Seele's ears:
“Don't leave me...mother...”