promptfic: ada/aunor, irritable

[sword_logic]

“I have a report on progress in the Botza district,” Aunor announces, heat whirling around her as she comes to a stop precisely five feet shy of Ada. There’s a thunderous expression on her face, eyes bright like forge-hot metal. She’s come here spoiling for a fight she hadn’t gotten somewhere else, that much is clear. Ada will not give her one. She lifts her chin and folds her hands together.

“Then by all means, deliver it,” she replies coolly.

Aunor talks. In clean, precise figures, in maps displayed by her Ghost, in notes crawling across the legend and the holoform skyline, she talks. Ada listens with only half her processors. With the other, she thinks about how a Guardian has never seemed quite so human to her until this: Aunor and her heated irritation, the little frowns that cross her face, the annoyed pull of her lips. The other half of Aunor’s mind is far away, too, and in this shared half-presence, Ada thinks she could stand to have more reports delivered by Aunor.

“–could see the rest of the underground cleared out by year’s end,” Aunor finishes. Her voice has fallen back into calm. Not controlled or leashed, but genuine, like she’s worked herself out of whatever she’d worked herself into.

“Thank you,” Ada says. Aunor nods at her, once, crisply, and turns to leave. She walks out nothing like how she walked in; her steps are slow and soft, no deliberation, and Ada can see her gaze catching on the schematics she keeps neatly arranged in the hall, the way her hair falls against the back of her neck.

“Miss Aunor—”

She turns, surprised. Her eyes are still bright. Ada feels coolant cycle through her cheeks and blinks, brute-forces the overclocked system to underclock instead.

“You have a way with reports,” Ada says. “The Vanguard should send you more often.”

A small smile flits across Aunor’s face, just the barest curve of her mouth.

“I sent myself, ma’am,” she replies, “and I can do it again, if you’d like.”

Ada resolves to replace her coolant modules soon.