Work Text:
Magallan releases a cluster of survey drones from her outstretched hands, sending them off like a puff of dandelion fluff. They take to the sky with near-soundless grace, spreading out as they climb until they split off and venture in the directions of the compass rose. Topographical data and images flicker across Magallan's tablet, and Aurora looks over her shoulder.
Maybe she gets a little closer than necessary.
To the casual observer the Sami icefields don't offer much. If you don't know what you're looking for, the sheets of ice blend into a solid mass of white, so bright in the months-long sun that you can hardly tell the ground from the sky on the brighter days, the snow shining like a mirror. Precipitation is even more rare than the hottest deserts, and while deserts at least pretend to have landmarks in the shape of dunes, the ice offers no such bounty. Topography presents itself in maximums of one or two feet, the occasional boulder jutting from the surface. Originium crystals larger than Rhodes Island occasionally feature on the horizon, but even they are dwarfed by the vastness, made small under the endless heavens.
What you really have to watch out for is what's under your feet. Chasms open up in the ice, leading into the depths of Terra; uncharted territory within uncharted territory. The scars in the earth provide the only permanent landmarks, and that's where the survey drones come in. With Magallan's tech and Aurora's arctic knowhow, they've ventured farther than anyone before, and still the edge of the world is ever beyond their reach.
Magallan points to a waveform on her tablet. "The drones are picking up a pressure system. From the looks of it, we've got a snowstorm headed our way."
Aurora bites her lip, trying to keep her nervousness from showing. "A catastrophe?"
"I'm not detecting that much airborne Originium particulate, but it'll be a bad one regardless. Help me set up camp?"
Aurora pumps her fist, flexing her bicep. "I'll take care of it! You still have data to collect, right? It'd be a shame to call the drones back so soon."
"I appreciate it," Magallan says, turning back to her tablet.
Aurora turns her back to hide her rosy cheeks and busies herself with her shield, using the extended claws to rip through the ice. Chips fly into the air and clatter on the sheets with sounds akin to breaking glass, and soon Aurora has dug out a square section of the ice, three feet deep and eight on each side. The shelter goes up fast and she sets the heater on high, and the interior warms up while Aurora steps back out to slam pitons into the ice, buckling the shelter down.
Setting the shelter takes the better part of an hour since she's working solo. By the time she's finished, the storm front is much closer, a wall of black shading the sun. This is the only nighttime they'll experience on the ice sheets, such is Terra's inclination towards the sun. She grimaces at the roiling clouds of snow and puts her jacket on. The cold won't be enough to hurt her—it never has been—but that doesn't mean her skin is immune to the crystal blender of a Sami blizzard. There is no wet, only dry knives measuring in the billions.
Her heart leaps into her throat as she goes to call Magallan back to the tent. She's gone. Her drones are still in the sky, trickling back into view as they return to their launch point, but Magallan is nowhere in sight.
"Magallan?" Aurora calls, but her voice is lost to the wind. She listens for a response.
"Magallan! Winter! Can you hear me!? Magallan!"
She tries her radio. Either Magallan's is dead or out of range.
The howl of the blizzard answers, a shockwave of force extending from the clouds and buffeting her, coat flapping in the wind. Magallan isn't her, isn't as resilient to the cold. Protective clothing or not, she can't survive without shelter. Aurora begins running, tracking the flow of survey drones to the last location she saw her partner.
"MAGALLAN!"
Her Oripathy is in the lungs—every time she yells Magallan's name, her breath bursts painfully out, yet she does it, again and again and again.
"WINTER!"
There. On the ground, a piton, and extending from the loop of that piton is a rope. Aurora follows it with her eyes, it trails across the snow, a black lifeline in the white.
She runs. The line is taught—that's never a good sign. Tension exists in ropes as a tell, if it's tense, whatever is at the other end is being kept there under duress.
The ropes they use are braided nanofiber, incredibly strong and resilient, lightweight. 300 meters, and this one is extended nearly to its limit. Then it suddenly disappears, and Aurora nearly falls off of the ice shelf and into the abyss. A massive chasm miles across, hidden in the snow like a needle in a haystack. It extends to either side into the crystal fog, and plunges so deep that all Aurora can see is black.
One shape stands out—Magallan, hanging at the bottom of her rope, some 30 meters down. She's attempted to climb up but hasn't made it more than a fraction of the distance—now her arms hand listlessly and she spins, not dead, but certainly on her way.
Aurora slams a piton into the ice and slides down her rope, stopping at Magallan's elevation, and then waits for the wind to slam them into each other so she can clip their ropes together.
Magallan's eyes are half-lidded, sleepy, and dark bruising is already forming on her cheeks. "Lara?" she whispers. "I f-ff-fell off a cliff."
"I'm going to get you out of here!" Aurora says. She yells it in her face—good—Magallan startles awake. "You need to hold on to me, and don't you dare fall asleep!"
Magallan nods, eyes wide with fear. "O-okay."
Aurora's arms burn as she hauls herself up the rope, Magallan on her back. Each foot of elevation gained is torture, muscles burning, but her hands remain strong, muscles taut. She loses herself to the repetition of it, hand over hand, feet for leverage. The sky is so far away, have they really made any distance? "Magallan, are you awake?!"
Her voice comes out as a shiver. "Yeah."
"You need to tell me what happened! Keep yourself conscious!"
"I-I went looking for a drone. It's s-s-signal disappeared, and I w-wanted to know why." Magallan chuckles, her breath cold on Aurora's neck. "T-t-t—turns out the air pressure differential from the c-chasm caused it to get sucked in. I was rrr-really stupid, I'm sorry. Lost my f-f-footing since I was l-looking at the tablet."
It feels like hours later that Aurora pulls them over the lip of the chasm and rolls onto her back, holding Magallan to her chest. The howl of the wind is deafening, a moaning, screaming mass of the dead. "Hold on to me, I'll get us to the shelter!"
Her arms are heavy but her legs are fresh. She braces Magallan over her shoulders and begins running as fast as she can, each step bouncing the Liberi on her back. She'll be covered with bruises for weeks, but she'll be alive, and at this point that's all Aurora cares about. Magallan is more awake now, the constant pain of being bustled across the landscape jolting her to lucidity, and she babbles ceaselessly about statistics, figures, scientific findings, topography. She knows all too well the existential threat of both her hypothermia and the incoming storm, and keeps herself awake, trusting Aurora to beat the storm.
The black cable leads them to the shelter and Aurora all but dives inside and latches the door, zipping it shut before dumping Magallan onto the floor. "Did you get injured during your fall?" Aurora says, stripping Magallan's outer layers off. They're safe from the storm, but frostbite and potentially broken bones are still a threat. Magallan tries to help, but gives up after struggling to remove a glove, instead letting Aurora roughly pull her layers off.
"The spool kept the fall from breaking my spine," she says as Aurora grips her arms and legs, pressing against her ribs in search of breaks or pain. "I think scrapes are the worst of it, I got banged against the cliff face a bit though."
"I can see that," Aurora says. Sure enough, Magallan sports a few abrasions on her face from the ice, as well as on her ribs from her jacket's zippers. Aurora strips her further and then rolls her sideways, into a sleeping bag, and sets the internal heater to high. Magallan starts shivering—a good sign.
"W-w-what are you doing?"
"We need to get you warm before the storm hits. The tent is insulated, but even a little bit of heat loss could be devastating for you right now, not to mention if we lose power." They could be here for days. Aurora doesn't think, her face set in a grim expression until she's naked, and she zips herself into Magallan's sleeping bag with her, rolling so Magallan is on her chest. Aurora hugs her close, her blue lips are recovering, but still press coldly against her neck.
The storm hits, the tent dampening the howls only just. The fabric rattles but stays firm, and Aurora's breathing begins to even. Magallan's toes—icy against her calves—begin to warm, but her fingers—shoved into Aurora's armpits—still burn with cold. The tent is buffeted by hail, snow piling up on top of them, yet they remain safe and warm. Aurora counts the seconds, counts Magallan's breaths until she's sure she won't be leaving the icefield alone. It takes many minutes before Magallan's breathing returns to normal, shivers abating.
"My drones!" Magallan suddenly shouts, but Aurora keeps her from escaping.
"You're not going out there. And your hands—can you even move your fingers yet?"
Magallan tries. A twitch, but not much more.
"Nothing for it." Aurora grabs Magallan's hands and sticks them between her thighs, clamping down.
"Lara, what're y— oooohhh my god that feels good."
Aurora isn't sure if she wants to cry because of the cold, or gasp at the way Magallan's fingers are worming against her skin. Either way her breath hitches, and Magallan looks up through brown bangs. "You okay?"
"F-fine," Aurora says, the accompanying shiver not from the cold.
Magallan stills, head resting on Aurora's collarbone. "Say, your heart's beating awfully fast."
"I. . . was really worried about you."
"That was an hour ago. I've had my ear to your chest this entire time, you calmed down, and now it's going hard again."
"I—"
Magallan winks at her and begins to move her hands, pushing them up until they're nestled right against Aurora's pussy. Her fingers are warm, and Aurora can feel them like firebrands against her folds. Magallan giggles in delight, "Oh you're wet wet."
I'm not! Aurora wants to say, but it's far too past that point, isn't it? Magallan's hands are already sticky with evidence of the contrary. "Of course I am," Aurora says, body overflowing with heat. "You're like my hero and I really admire you. Going on this expedition was a dream come true."
"Are you sure that seeing the auroras was the only reason you wanted to go on this expedition with me?"
Aurora looks away, at anything other than the woman nestled against her chest. Her eyes settle on the lantern, the single source of light now that the raging blizzard has blotted out the sun.
"Come on," Magallan chides, kissing her cheek. "I want to touch you, but only if you want that too. I think you're cute, and I was almost giddy when you asked if you could come along. You were so nervous, and your voice was so soft and pretty." She leans in close, and Aurora turns her head so their lips brush against each other. "I wouldn't have said yes to anyone else," Magallan whispers.
Aurora looks into her golden-brown eyes, unblinking. "I love you, Winter."
"Ditto," Magallan says, and slides a finger into her.
Aurora jerks against the sensation, and as soon as she thinks she's used to it, Magellan adds another finger, and then a third.
"My fingers are small compared to you, I hope this isn't too much?" Magellan asks, though the smirk on her lips shows that the question is mostly in jest.
Aurora has to remind herself to speak, lost as she is with the way Magallan's fingers curl inside her with each thrust. "You feel. . . really good." Then she sits up, or tries to until Magallan pushes her back down. "Wait, I want to touch you too!"
"Later, I wanna reward my savior first!"
Aurora closes her eyes to focus on the way Magallan feels inside her, each thrust rocking their bodies as one, Magallan's palm pressing against her clit, force multiplied by her knee keeping constant tension on the spot while her fingers piston, relentless.
Instinct tells her to cover her mouth as she comes but Magallan's smile is so tempting, so encouraging, that Aurora locks eyes with her and climaxes in full view, mouth open as she gasps and cries out, writhing. All the while she never breaks eye contact, letting the woman on top of her see every bit of pleasure she's feeling, lets her observe it with the eye of a scientist and care of a lover. Magallan fucks her straight through the aftershocks, never once letting up until Aurora's muscles are spent and she falls back against the floor. Her chest heaves great breaths of air, Oripathy-damaged lungs in tandem with the strength of her orgasm conspiring to leave her lightheaded.
Magellan licks her lips, Aurora splayed under her. "God I wish I had my strap. You're so strong and powerful, seeing you under me all embarrassed is really getting me off."
Aurora summons her strength and flips Magallan onto her back. "We might be stuck here for days," she says, already kissing a line down her chest. Magallan arches under her tongue as it finds her nipples, then trails further south over her stomach until Aurora buries herself in feathered curls. "I'm sure we can find a way to attach the ice hammer to your hips."