Pairing: Tilda/Magda
Characters: Tilda, Magda
Rating: B

Disclaimer: The author makes no claim to owning the rights of anything to do with Terry Pratchett or Discworld.

Surrender Challenge Entry
by Beau-Nasty

Had they had the inclination to stay, either or both might have proved a military asset. One’s ability to land a punch that could knock a man’s teeth down his throat and out the other side, and the other’s eerie pyrotechnical proficiency were qualities that recommended them. Conversely, two soldiers who’ve never looked up surrender in their personal dictionary might be seen as a liability- though it depends by what criteria you define surrender.

They had met in a classical fashion, eyes catching across a crowded room, and had been unwilling or unable to surrender that gaze. It was a circumstance that had backfired on the steely matrons of the Girl’s Working School. They had stood the abominable miscreants on stools at either side of a classroom full of starched and dewy-eyed girls, one of the two wearing a chalked sigh that said ‘Thug’ and the other ‘Liar’, and had inadvertently brought together two of the squarest pegs society could have produced. Every effort to subdue and subordinate the pair had then resulted in a grimmer and more glorious grip on their new, unified self.

The resistance was manifest in different ways, of course; Magda very loudly and very vehemently refused surrender, while little Tilda Tewt quietly dared them with her ‘do-your-worst’ eyes, and later handed them their insignificance in a burning brand. But neither lost sight of their Reason: they clearly had to be together, and it was a crying shame for anyone who couldn’t understand.

Or you could look at it another way- they had become experts at surrender and it was a wonderful thing. It had been no mean feat to give up the parts of Magda and Tilda that were too worn and threadbare to be of use and to streamline them with those parts of Tonker and Lofty they had found along the way, but it had paid off. Then, they’d been able to surrender all that back-breaking weight of anger, loss and loathing to the blaze which coloured the Grey House so fantastically. Ignorance and frustrated longing could be surrendered to the heat between them, and every day they were surrendering more completely and irretrievably to each other.