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Jade is heading down a palace corridor when she hears the clanking. It sounds like pans being dropped on the floor.
She turns towards the door she's walking past just in time for it to open a crack, Kit's face appearing in the gap. “Jade,” she hisses. “Come on.”
Jade eyes her warily. “What is it this time, Your Highness?”
Kit wrinkles her nose at the title. She's fourteen and already determined she hates the role she's in. Jade, fifteen and aspiring to a knighthood she cannot truly earn unless the rules change, understands this fiercely.
“I found something!” Kit whispers, still keeping her entire body hidden behind the door. “Come on.”
And Jade follows, because she always does. Drawn eternally to the sparkle of Kit's eyes.
When she's round the door, she stops and stares.
Kit is wearing a suit of armour. More specifically, Kit is wearing a suit of armour that is several times too big for her, which explains the clanking. The cuirass is down almost to her knees. The vambraces extend over her hands.
The armour is also, Jade realises, Ballantine's.
“What are you doing with that?” she whispers, shutting the door hastily behind them.
Kit grins, her eyes sparkling bright. Despite the armour's clunky ridiculous size, she looks like her, happy in a way she never is in court dresses. Recognition aches in Jade's soul at the feeling.
“I wanted to see what it felt like,” Kit says. “I thought you might wanna, too.” She steps aside, clanking, reveals a pile of more armour pieces behind her.
Jade gapes. “Bloody hell, Kit, how did you even–”
“I stole them,” Kit grins. “Airk helped carry it after I threatened to tell on him.”
“For what?”
Kit shrugs. “Anything. C'mon. Try it.”
Jade hesitates. Eyes the pieces. They shouldn't be doing this. They'll be in trouble if they're caught. Jade more than Kit, probably, because Kit's the princess. Unless it's Sorsha who finds them.
But, but. Jade has always looked at Ballantine's armour and ached with longing at the shiny pieces, the fight-scuffed parts, the details engraved in the breastplate. Always looked at it and wanted.
She wants to be a knight, really and truly. Wants to wear armour and fight, to lift a weapon in defence of everyone who needs it. Wants to fight for Kit and be her sword. Wants to fight with Kit, alongside her. Wishes they lived in a world where that were possible.
And also, Kit is asking, and Jade sometimes thinks she'll do anything Kit asks if she smiles like that, all sparkling green-blue eyes.
So she pushes a chair against the door behind them, and reaches for the armour pieces.
It's fumbling, everything too big and not fastening right. She knows the theory of it, but not the practice. Kit helps her, and then she helps Kit get hers on halfway correctly, and then they stand looking at each other.
The armour swamps them. Jade is lost in chafing metal. Kit looks absurd, really. But her grin shines brighter than the armour. She looks so completely Kit. Entirely herself.
Kit shakes her head as she watches Jade, exhales. “You look like a real knight,” she says, and she sounds almost awed, for a second. “If their armour was too big. But still. Look at yourself.”
She turns Jade round, clumsy with her hands lost in gigantic gauntlets, faces the dusty mirror on the wall. Jade understands know why Kit chose this room, some abandoned servant's quarter.
She stares at herself. It doesn't fit, but it looks like it could. She looks like a child dressing up, but when she straightens her shoulders, lifts her chin, stares– there's a knight in there, somewhere. A knight in her bones. She looks like she belongs in armour just like this, if it were only tailored to her.
Kit stands beside her, grins. “You're a knight, Jade.” Mischief sparkling– “Or should I say Sir Claymore?”
“I'm your knight,” Jade replies. “Your Highness.” And then, remembering Kit's wince– “Or should that be Sir Tanthalos?”
Kit grins, almost bashful, before the smile drops. She drags an armoured foot against the floor. “Princesses can't be knights.”
Jade shrugs, or tries to. The armour is crushingly heavy. “Neither can I, really. Not with the Shining Legion.”
“You're a real knight, though,” Kit says, all surety. “You're a real knight to me.” She looks at them in the mirror again, grins. “Maybe in this room we both are.”
Jade smiles back at her in their reflection. Tries not to let adoration show on her face.
She wants to be Kit's knight. Wants Kit to be hers. Wishes they could spar for real, that someone would let Kit be what she wants.
Wishes they could ride out in shining armour together, defending people, singing in taverns full of other knights like them.
Thinks of pulling Kit in by a cuirass that fits, brushing their lips together. Laughing at the clank of metal. Helping each other shed each piece to sleep, curled up in the same bed somewhere that feels like home.
It's an impossible fantasy. But right now, both of them smiling in the mirror, armour gleaming– Right now, Jade lets herself believe it.