Work Text:
Winter hadn't picked out the dress. Her father hadn't, either—he preferred to outsource that particular task to a stylist, and approve his selections before big events like this one. It had seemed silly to her, as a child. A lot of effort for something that didn't really matter.
Now, on her seventeenth birthday, painfully aware of just how important it actually was... it felt a lot worse than silly.
Her father liked to get her and her siblings on the news as much as he could. This was doubly true in the aftermath of scandals, or bad press, or upticks in White Fang activity. How could anyone connect the name Schnee to a predatory merger when it was already so powerfully associated with eleven-year-old Weiss, looking and singing exactly like an angel?
From a PR perspective, Winter was at best dubiously effective. The aura of sweet innocence that surrounded Weiss, largely against her will, because she was so young and delicate-looking—that Whitley deliberately cultivated, because even at seven years old he understood that it made him useful—consistently failed to materialize around Winter. The stylist hired a makeup artist to soften her jawline and the blade's edge formed by the bridge of her nose. He made sure to drape lace detailing about her shoulders, to camouflage their breadth, the defined musculature of hours upon hours of combat training. He had her hair teased into floating gossamer ringlets, and bemoaned that it could never achieve the same texture as her sister's when it had to be bleached to the right color.
He'd wanted her to bleach her eyebrows, too. Partly so that it would be less obvious that her hair wasn't naturally white, but mostly because thick and stark black as they were, they made her look unapproachable. (Winter suspected that unapproachable might be a polite euphemism for resting bitch face. Which would at least explain how it could possibly be a bad thing, when she did not particularly want to be approached.)
Anyway, Winter had eventually managed to convince her father that over years of having to treat them near-constantly, to keep their natural color from peeking through, it was practically guaranteed that someone would get bleach in her eyes at some point. She acted as though this fear was outweighing her natural embarrassment over such an inconvenient physical defect, and to this day she still had no idea if she'd been lying or not.
The stylist had made no objections to being overruled. A good reminder that he didn't actually care what her eyebrows looked like—his opinions were merely a proxy for her father's, transforming abstract goals into specific brands of makeup and clothing. Sometimes she caught herself forgetting that he was an autonomous person, and treating him as an appendage instead. Sometimes she wondered at how anyone could possibly step into that role by choice. This man wasn't born shackled to her father, could have lived out a full life without ever meeting Jacques Schnee, never needing to care what he wanted. She couldn't imagine having that kind of freedom—let alone giving it away.
Winter stripped down mechanically, shedding the navy blue boxers she'd taken to wearing under her everyday clothes. Technically, she didn't need to, because the the hem of the dress fell to just above her knees and the boxers stopped at about mid-thigh. But she'd already gotten into trouble last year for forgetting to sit with her ankles crossed, and it just wasn't worth risking her father's reaction if somebody decided to aim a camera up her skirt. So she bore through the frilly white underwear with only a slight grimace. Her black sports bra she actually couldn't wear under the dress, because the material was gauzy white, guaranteeing that the darker color would show through. And besides, it was off the shoulder anyway. She'd have to deal with one of the excruciating strapless bras instead.
(She daydreamed, as she did this, about General Ironwood. The flat planes of his broad chest, his narrow hips. The way he sat with his knees jutting to either side. His bold black brows that made him look serious, responsible, dependable.)
The dress was obnoxious to zip up by herself. Winter left it open, and walked into the next room where her hair and makeup team were. They zipped her up, and sat her down in front of a wide mirror under too many lights, and went about painting a doll's face over her own.
That was always what it felt like. Wearing somebody else's face. It should have been comforting, shouldn't it, the way the artificial softening of her features made her look more like Weiss, more like her mother, and less like her father? Shouldn't she want her eyebrows to be dainty white, the way she wanted her hair to fall to her shoulders like snow?
(Shouldn't it make her angry, to have her face sculpted into a more pleasing shape, more palatable for strangers' consumption? Shouldn't it frighten her that her body belonged to so many people more than her? Shouldn't she break the mirror, tear the dress, sprint out of the room and hide until the party was over?
Shouldn't she at least feel something?)
"You'll be a real knockout in a few years," said the makeup artist, as she often did. "I hope you don't worry about how hard we have to work, to get this look right for you. There's nothing wrong with you, you're just better suited for something more mature, and that's not really appropriate yet. But one day you're going to kill with a bit of Allure Red."
Winter said nothing, because she didn't want to smear the glossy Perfect Pink before the makeup artist had the chance to set it.
She remembered little of the party, except for the sick churning feeling in the pit of her stomach, every time she caught a glimpse of her reflection. The prickling of cold air on her bare legs, freshly shaved. The sense of being not clothed, but framed, placed on display for a room full of eyes.
A smiling older woman complimented her for inheriting her mother's figure. Winter smiled back, lips curving into a perfect pink bow, then ducked into the nearest bathroom to throw up.
Her military dress uniform consists of navy blue slacks, a starched white shirt with a high collar and a blood red tie, and a dark jacket with silver buttons. She can wear boxers and a sports bra underneath it easily. There is no difference whatsoever between her version of the uniform and a male Specialist's, except in the details of how it has been tailored to fit her. It displays her body only in the same way a jeweled sheath displays a sword. Not as a delicacy to be consumed, but as a finely honed weapon.
It isn't uncomfortable, and so it doesn't occur to Winter to notice that she never exactly chose it, either.