Kaze no Stigma, set 02
Title: Finding Places Author/Artist: shiegra Fandom: Kaze no Stigma Claim: Nanase/Ayano/Yukari Themeset/Prompt: Set 02, #12 Ratings: PG13 at most Link to Archive Post
12: Why
Yukari catalogues things. It's who she is and what she does; it's why Kirika is so impressed by her neat, precise reports, her orderly mind putting things in rows, in places, slotting them into questions and coming out with answers.
First there's Nanase, with her patience and her dark humor and her willingness to be hauled around on whatever crazy theory Yukari has most recently come up with. They work together perfectly; in her early days, when there is nothing but their laughter and Nanase’s quiet strength behind her she cannot fathom how either of them ever existed apart. Nanase is friend, and precious.
And then there's Ayano; the girl with hair like a satin spill of blood and amber eyes--she's too quiet, too uncertain. Yukari can work with her, and talk at her, but she can't coax her into eating with them, or going places with them. But Yukari has never backed down from a challenge, and even in the early days, before she knew her for what she was, the stark loneliness in Ayano's eyes made her ache. So: it had to be fixed.
Nanase had been easy to pull into her life; she accepted it with the same amused, long suffering grace she accepted everything else. Ayano's pride pushed them away; she's challenge and also precious and so cute when she blushes!
Yukari has no shame and little scruples. She catalogues everything but what will make her such an excellent detective one day is that for all her boxes and categories and neat mental lists, she has no problem when they spill over the lines.
When Ayano stands over them with fire licking her hands, facing down a snarling, writhing monster of shadows to defend them, Yukari does think, protectorr. But before that, at the hesitant, too-often-wounded brightness to Ayano's eyes when she asks them if they are all right Yukari thinks, on an oddly proprietary whim, to be protected.