#smallandsundry

She doesn’t lose.

Somehow. Somehow, she doesn’t lose. Maybe it’s the fact that she’s used to hauling Qrow’s dead weight around, or that she grew up tossing bushels of hay twice her size around; maybe it’s just luck. For some reason, after taking one hard hit to the shield in the first pass and landing a middling one of her own the second time around, she manages to set her weight into her stirrups and surge forward at the right moment and pop her opponent, in all of his plate armor and gaudy livery, straight out of the saddle and onto the ground.

She wins, and she doesn’t know what to do, and she’s sitting on her panting horse near the stands with sweat in her eyes and her whole body aching, looking for Ruby or even Jaune, when a page appears in front of her and grabs the reins just under the bit and starts marching her and her horse towards the center of the jousting field.

“Excuse you--”

The page ignores her, and Yang bristles and considers the sword at her hip-- not that she knows a thing about using it-- but her indignation is cut off when she realizes she’s being presented to the lord presiding over the tournament and also, inconveniently, the crown prince and his sister.

White noise fills her ears-- she’ll be found out, she’ll be thrown out, Jaune’s forgeries will fail them all and they’ll be executed or sent to some prison forever, or bound to some useless lord’s land-- and she’s doing her best to sit tall and calm in her saddle while the page presents her to the lord while also clocking her chances of escaping and getting Ruby and Jaune and disappearing.

The lord stands from his chair, not quite ornate enough to be a throne but just tall enough that his head sits higher than the prince’s, taking advantage of the prince’s youth and slim stature. He has a beard and an insufferable look about him, and he speaks in a booming voice that Yang’s sure he’s intentionally deepening.

“--and the favor of the princess,” he finishes, just around when the buzzing in Yang’s ears quiets. She hasn’t found an escape route, and she glances back up to the dais without meaning to. The princess is standing, and the lord bows, and Yang remembers a split second too late that she should bow as well. Her armor clanks and saddle creaks as she does, awkwardly, from atop her horse, and there’s a murmur through the crowd. Surely she’s just given herself away as a lowborn daughter of a farrier and a farmer, good for little but hauling hay and shoeing horses.

Instead of the call for her arrest that she expects, a different murmur runs through the crowd, excited and twittering, and she chances a look up towards the dais. The princess is standing-- for all the good it does her; she looks impossibly small even compared to her brother, who’s all of fifteen years old-- and holding a rose lazily in one hand.

“Am I supposed to do something,” Yang mutters out of the side of her mouth.

“Take off your helmet,” the page whispers urgently, and Yang clatters to do so, nearly dropping her shield as she does and earning a ripple of laughter from the crowd, a sneer from the men on the dais, an impassive raised eyebrow from the princess. Her hair is white, as white as the embroidery on her gown, and her mouth sits in a motionless straight line.

Yang holds her breath and waits for the reveal of her lowborn status, of her forgery, but instead all she has is the page snapping his heels together and standing up at attention as he barks out “Sir Yang Xiao Long, from Gelderland!”

The princess doesn’t move, staring impassively down at her even as the other nobles start to fidget impatiently and Yang’s shoulders start to ache under the rigidity of her posture. When she finally does move, it’s without looking away from Yang, without turning; she blindly holds the rose out to a page in the dais and a dull roar runs through the crowd, growing in volume as the page scampers down and offers the rose to her.

Her cheeks go hot as she numbly accepts the flower, still looking up at the princess, who’s settled regally back down into her seat and is watching Yang silently. One of her eyebrows twitches again, and Yang smiles in spite of herself and-- entirely contrary to her own better judgment, for all that she even has any better judgment-- raises the rose to her lips and makes a show of saluting the princess with it.