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chernabogs · 6 months ago

Note

“kiss me. take me from this place. ’” for the writing prompt with Lilia and reader 👀👀

I went a bit of a different approach with this where the prompt isn't written in, but is instead what this whole fic builds off of. I couldn't find an appropriate place to put the words based on the content, so I hope this is ok <3

HOOKED

Inc: Lilia, Baul mention, Reader (spoken second person here). Warnings: Heavy discussion of PTSD including a detailed PTSD-attack. Read at your discretion. WC: 2.5k Summary: Many of those who came from the era of Briar Nation before Briar Valley believe the silent suppression approach is both more mindful and correct in terms of etiquette. Lilia is not exempt from this, even when he knows it's a ridiculous belief.

There is a stigma against seeking help that Lilia would argue is the most ridiculous belief to have been ingrained in the older generation. Rather than communicating one’s thoughts and emotions to others, many of those who came from the era of Briar Nation before Briar Valley believe the silent suppression approach is both more mindful and correct in terms of etiquette.

Of course, he’s not exempt to this.

The difference between himself and the rest of his generation is that he’s the largest hypocrite to exist among them. He encourages his children and those nurtured by his hand to speak their thoughts and to be aware of how they feel in the moment. Meanwhile, he’s shoving every stressor he’s experienced into the nooks and crannies of his mind, where they sit and stare at him expectantly as he tries diligently not to look back.

Perhaps in time, he tells himself.

He wasn’t quite aware of the term ‘post-traumatic’ until he heard it spoken of on one of his trips abroad forty years back. By fate, be it cruel or kind, there was a conference occurring in the hotel he was staying at that he took upon himself to quickly visit. Uninvited and for free, of course, but that’s beside the point. At the time glamour still wasn’t as illegal as it is now, and so it didn’t take much concentration for him to conceal the pointed ears and sharp teeth he has to blend in with the crowd of well-dressed folks with degrees too long to remember. That day he played a clinical psychologist, a physician, a biologist, and someone in forensics all in the span of a few hours. It was an exercise in acting he quite enjoyed.

Back to the main focus, though: Post-traumatic, or PTSD, as it would come to be called.

It was new, it was fresh, and it made the pinpricks of discomfort crawl across his skin the more he listened to the psychologist whose name he didn’t recall describe it. Glasses—the man had large, coke-bottle glasses on his face, which kept glinting under the fluorescent glow of the lights while he spoke about the consequences of war on the mind. His hands would wave in the air with each sentence and his glasses kept glinting as the pinpricks grew to daggers until finally Lilia just got up and left the room. He went to the hotel bar, got smashed for the first time in god knows how long, and spent the rest of the night staring at the colourful glasses on the shelves until he was finally asked to leave.

Glasses had described it as presenting in several ways. Recurring dreams (he dreamt of it at least once a week, a dragon’s shriek, and then the sudden nothingness), avoidance of external reminders (he didn’t immediately go back to Wild Rose even when it became accessible), persistent negative beliefs about oneself (no comment), self-destructive behaviour (no comment), sleep disturbances (no comment). If he and Glasses had engaged in a one-on-one conversation for all of a minute he wagers the man would’ve tried to recruit him to be studied.

Glasses did miss the mark on a few things, though. Granted he was basing his work off of a human’s experience in war, not that of a fae like Lilia. Glasses had said that PTSD could make someone feel as though they were trapped in a prison that was their own mind—but prison felt like a very child-friendly way to describe it. To Lilia, it felt more like a fish on a hook. It pierces into his body and pulls at the flesh, ripping into his muscle and making sure it’s the only thing he can think of coherently. Sometimes he’s so numb that he hardly notices it’s there, until something triggers it, makes the string the hook is on yank upwards, and then he isn’t able to do anything because all he’s stuck on is that fucking hook.

Sometimes in the late evening when he finds himself sitting with Baul on the man’s porch there will be a sound—a twig snapping, a tree falling—that will make both of them tense and look around. Their eyes will meet, an unspoken look of understanding will be shared, and then it’s back into the next topic of conversation. Maybe if he told someone he was caught, if either of them told someone, they’d be able to wiggle that hook free. But that’s not mindful or correct in terms of etiquette, isn’t it?

Perhaps in time, he tells himself.

_________________________________________

It’s because the sky is blue.

It’s the simplest, most common thing in the entire world that never changes no matter what occurs. The sea changes colour, the leaves change colour, the earth changes colour, but the sky somehow consistently stays blue.

He’s been having a bad week, and he knows you can tell because he hasn’t been poking fun at you as often. He hasn’t felt like gaming, he hasn’t felt like socializing as much, and he’s been going for walks more than usual. His boys can tell as well—the close scrutiny Silver has had him under is almost endearing—but they also know better than to react too much.

You don’t. He likes you mainly because you know barely anything about him. You’re not as aware as his boys may be. You don’t know the Right General: the man who destroyed armies and fucked up on the biggest task he was given (in his mind, at least). You know Lilia: the vice Housewarden of Diasomnia who hangs upside down in hallways and plays screamo on a guitar.

He's also developed a bit of a soft spot for you.

Well. Perhaps more than a bit, but that’s semantics.

This is also why he doesn’t say no when you invite him to go into town with you for a few errands. It’s a simple task that he’s done with you many times before, but today it feels like a huge commitment he isn’t sure he should have done. This is because he can feel it tugging in his head—the gentle pull of a thread that’s done before whatever is on the hook is yanked up to the surface. He’s trying hard to ignore it, trying hard to focus on your voice as his hand taps his thigh and he keeps looking around the woodland path.

“—and so, Ace is paying for it, because he was the one that went and dumped the grape juice on it in the first place.” You look down at the red-stained garb in your arms as you frown. His gaze goes to it only for a moment before he hums and looks away again.

“How much of a fight was it to get him to agree to that?” He asks, pushing to keep the conversation going and to keep you talking so that he has something to focus his attention on. The trees around you feel both familiar and foreign in this moment. “If I recall correctly, our dear Ace is as good at negotiating as Azul when it comes to his own money.”

You give a laugh at that which allows a brief blanket of warmth to drape itself on his shoulders. “Combined with Deuce, we managed to get him to agree quickly enough. I don’t think dry cleaning costs that much though, so it isn’t like this is going to break his bank.”

“Ah, you would be surprised.” A smile touches on his lips which still doesn’t quite reach his eyes as you both continue walking. You direct the conversation to other matters going on around the school and he falls into an attentive silence, letting you talk away so he can focus on your voice.

It’s when you step out of the forest and into a meadow clearing, when his eyes inadvertently go upwards to look at the blue sky, that the world shuts off. The sky had been like this—clear and blue—right before it had all gone to shit. Sunny, slightly cooler, with the sounds of a thousand bodies moving and the heady scent of grease in the air. He can see the glinting of light (glinting like Glasses had been), he can feel the tension grow in his body, taste saliva and copper in his mouth. In a manner of a few seconds, he’s sucked up out of the forest around NRC and into a sub-level of his own personal hell where he’s now sitting and watching all of his mistakes play back.

He's fighting against that hook. He’s squirming, wiggling, and biting as it pulls him all around. The world is black. He’s sitting on a silver chair and there’s a television in front of him and it’s playing that day at Wild Rose as the sky becomes a thunderous grey. He wants to scream and change the channel, but the hook has pierced the back of his head and is jutting out of his mouth. He can’t speak, can’t breathe, can’t do anything but watch as the same shit happens again and again and—

“—Lilia?”

His head turns as much as the hook allows. He can taste the rust from it as it stays in his mouth, but his eyes go wide when he sees you in the corner. The hum of television static and his quick breathing are all the sounds he can hear as you stand there in those shadows. Something garbled leaves his lips. You move a few steps closer, close enough that the light of the television reflects on your features, which wear a mask of your own fear as you kneel by his side.

You shouldn’t be here. You weren’t there, not when it was all unfolding, so you shouldn’t be in the same basement of horrors he’s currently in.

Your hand rests on his arm. It’s as though a thousand needles erupt where your skin touches and he recoils in that chair, jerks to the side, and causes that hook to split more skin. You move back quickly, and he can see what he thinks might be panic on your face.

“What can I do?” You ask. It’s such a simple question and he wishes so deeply to tell you an answer but what can you do? What can he do? It isn’t mindful or correct in terms of etiquette, right? He shakes his head. Panic turns to a touch of worry, of frustration, as you move to sit cross-legged beside his chair.

“I... don’t know what’s going on.” You say slowly. He listens as he forces his breathing to regulate. The dim hum of static is still coming from the right side of him as he keeps looking down at you. “But I’m going to sit right here, okay? I’m going to sit right here until you can tell me what I can do to help. And if there’s nothing I can do, then at least I can keep you company until you’re ready.”

Ready? Company?

He keeps looking down at you until he finally turns his head back to the television where those scenes are still playing. Beyond the television, he can see the outline of trees forming in the dark room.

The two of you sit there for what feels like an extraordinarily long time. The hook has stopped tugging, and the trees are becoming more visible in the darkness as the show comes to an end. He can hear birds chirping past the static, he can smell woodland instead of grease. He isn’t tasting rust anymore. A small, strangled hum leaves him, which catches your attention.

“Yeah?” You ask, scooting forward on the floor beside him to look up at his face. You’re so goddamn endearing when you look up like that, and he hates that you’re in this room with him right now. He needs to leave because he needs to get you out of here as well. You barely know anything about him, and he isn’t ready to ruin the perceptions you have quite yet.

“Can I touch you?” You ask.

“Yes,” is what he manages to choke back beyond the hook.

You stand back up and your hand comes to rest on his cheek. He doesn’t feel daggers like he did before, but he does still tense, which makes you stop again. A heartbeat passes before you lean down so your lips are by his ear.

“Breathe,” you whisper, and he does.

“Focus,” you whisper, and he does.

“Come back,” you whisper, pressing your lips to his temple, and he does.

The television shuts off and is pulled back into the shadows by something he can’t quite see yet, but he feels he will come to meet very soon. The chair he sits on vanishes and is replaced by a rock with a bubbling creek at his feet. The hook unlatches itself and is reeled back up for another day. It’s like he’s waking up from a dream as a groggy feeling settles over him.

Neither of you speak for a long moment as he continues to sit on the rock and your hand moves to rest on his back. A sense of embarrassment forms in his chest that he knows shouldn’t be there, but it exists anyway. Embarrassment, shame, and heavy, heavy exhaustion. His tongue licks his dry lips as he clears his throat to speak.

“How long?” He asks.

“It’s been an hour.”

An hour. That feels shorter than usual as he rolls his shoulders and gets to his feet. His hands are trembling slightly, and he appreciates you not mentioning it despite the way your gaze lingers on them.

He turns to you as he shoves them in his pockets, and he forces his lips into a smile. It’s a good thing he’s an expert at fake smiles to the point that he does this without a thought. “Do you mind if I...?”

“Not at all.” You reply quickly, grabbing your stained clothing from the ground. When you rise, you look worried. For a moment he fears that you may ask what just happened right now—but you don’t. You just offer him a slight smile back and hold your clothes a bit tighter. “Will you text me when you get back?”

“Yes,” he replies automatically, feeling a bud of relief blossom in his chest when you nod and step back onto the path. This is immediately replaced by guilt. “Thank you.”

The words feel dead and heavy on his tongue, despite the way they seem to soothe your own anxiety.

“Always.” You murmur in response as he watches your gaze linger on him a moment longer. He so wishes to ask you to stay, to explain to you what this all was, but he stills the words in his throat.

He likes you mainly because you know barely anything about him. You’re unaware of his past, much like his boys, and your perception of him is one he’s carefully gifted to you himself. The abruptness of this attack may have broken a crack in the pristine image which unsettles him.

He isn’t ready to discuss it yet. Not with you, not with his boys, not even Baul. He’s the largest hypocrite to exist for a good reason.

He continues to watch you until you vanish back into the forest, and it’s only with your departure that he finds himself able to breathe properly. The back of his skull aches and all he wants right now is to go to sleep for a few hours. His smile drops to a grimace as he turns and begins to go in the direction opposite of you.

Perhaps in time, he tells himself.

#lilia vanrouge #twst lilia #twst #twst fic #twisted wonderland fic #lilia vanrouge x reader #twst x reader #thank youuuuu

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coolbattlegirl · 2 months ago

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Even the Bravest of Knights Must Rest

“I’m begging you, Malleus-sama! Please, please return back to your usual self!”

“Please forgive me, Malleus-sama.”

Malleus’s eyes fluttering open, casting an eerie glow in the dimly lit room. The echo of Silver’s pleading voice from the dream clung to the corner of his mind like a vice, unwelcomed and persistent. His eyes swept over the grand hall of the dormitory, eventually catching sight of that familiar glint of silver hair among the sea of slumbering students.

Slowly, he rose from his throne, his movements slow and silent, aside from the faint click of his heel against the stone floor. The sound, barely audible, seemed to echo loudly against the stillness he had woven over the school.

As Malleus approached, his gaze remained fixed on Silver, scanning the boy’s body for a flicker of movement, any sign that he had awakened. But Silver remained still, the only movement being that of his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm. Malleus’s green eyes lingered momentarily on Silver’s face, half-expecting to see the defiant glare and resolute frown from their encounter in the dream. But of course, there was no trace of it now.

He had not expected such defiance–least of all from Silver, whose loyalty had always been as steadfast as the sunrise. For him to stand against him, his prince, in that fragile space bordering reality and dream… That had been quite the surprise.

And yet, as he now stood over Silver’s slumbering form, he realized that he couldn’t truly be surprised by the events that unfolded. Because that was how Silver was. Stubbornly loyal and righteous, even if it meant going against someone he cared for.

“Yes… that is exactly how he is…” Malleus couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle. To think he had been angry at Silver earlier in the dream.

Kneeling down beside Silver's still form, Malleus reached out a clawed hand, smoothing down a stray strand of silver hair, an old habit he used to do when Silver had been much younger. And for a fleeting moment, Malleus was taken back to Lilia’s small cottage that was tucked away in the forest of Briar Valley, the scent of the wildflowers, the small hand that clung to his hand, and aurora eyes that looked up at him with innocent trust.

A faint smile crept up on his face at the memory. It had almost been like yesterday when Silver had been but a small toddler running around and climbing into his arms. As Malleus moved his hand away, his gaze shifted and he caught the faint glow coming from beneath the folds of Silver’s dorm blazer. Malleus’s eyes narrowed slightly, the corners of his mouth now dipping into a subtle frown as he regarded the glow.

“Ah, yes… How could I forget,” he reached down and eased the fabric aside to reveal the source: a delicate gold necklace with a crowned-shaped pendant. Its light pulsed gently as he scrutinized it. It was faint, practically invisible, but he could sense its resistance against his magic.

“Now where could he have come across such an intriguing artifact?” Malleus murmured as he lifted the pendant to take a closer look at it. He would have disregarded the necklace as nothing more than a regular piece of jewelry had it not been for the fact that it had played a hand in allowing the trio and the perfect’s familiar to slip away.

After a small staring contest with the inanimate object, magic began to pool in Malleus’s palm as he directed his focus on the small charm. He supposed that it mattered very little where the necklace came from. Regardless of its origin, it was an annoying thorn in his side. And while he did feel a bit reluctant to destroy something belonging to Silver, it would be best to get rid of it.

Only… it resisted.

The dim glow that surrounded the crown pendant intensified almost instantly, pushing against his magic. Malleus blinked, faltering in his attempt before he furrowed his brow and tried again, pouring more of his magic into this attempt. But the pendant held firm, its glow unyielding to his magic.

“...How stubborn,” Malleus muttered under his breath, frustration underlining his voice. It seemed that this nuisance wouldn't be disappearing anytime soon.

Finally relenting, Malleus dropped the necklace, letting it fall back onto Silver’s chest. His eyes narrowed as his gaze lingered on the object, silently debated his next course of action. If he couldn’t destroy the necklace, then perhaps he could weaken it–isolate it from the other students. With his decision made, Malleus slipped his arms beneath Silver and lifted him effortlessly.

And as silent as a ghost, Malleus carried him towards the far end of the dormitory, passing numerous hallways until he found himself ascending the spiraling staircase that led to the dormitory’s secluded tower. The tower had been a homage to the Witch of Thorns, a replica of the fabled tower described in her legend, but it had fallen into disuse. The journey upwards was unhurried as he climbed the tower, the air around them beginning to thicken with magic–so much so that it almost felt suffocating.

Reaching the top, Malleus pushed open the wooden door to the secluded chamber. He rarely frequented this area of the dormitory, but everything was the same as he remembered.

The room was sparsely furnished, with only a bed draped in dark velvety fabrics being its centerpiece. Stepping inside, Malleus passed by the thorn-like carvings adorned on the stone walls, their design curling elegantly towards the ceiling. The room was a bit dusty, but that wasn’t anything a cleaning spell couldn’t fix.

Malleus crossed the room, careful to not disturb the sleeping boy as he gently lowered Silver onto the bed. The mattress dipped slightly at the sudden weight, causing Silver’s head to loll gently to the side and his hair to spill like moonlight on the dark fabric.

Not quite satisfied, Malleus adjusted the pillow underneath Silver’s head and made sure to straighten the fabric before he gently draped the blanket over Silver, tucking him in as he used to when the boy had been younger. How nostalgic it felt doing it once more.

Now content with the arrangements, Malleus stood up and stared down at Silver before his attention was torn away by that familiar, and annoying, glow from the pendant. His hand twitched, almost tempted to make another attempt at destroying it, but he held himself back. There would be little to no point in trying again when the result would be the same. This solution was hardly a solution to the bigger dilemma he faced, but it would have to do. For now at least.

Malleus let out a fond sigh, his clawed hand finding its way back on Silver’s head to smooth the other’s hair.

“I’ll let you play the knight in shining armor a little while longer, Silver,” Malleus murmured, a hint of affection threading through his voice, “And when you’re finally done playing…” Malleus’s voice was softer now, barely above a whisper as his eyes traced over Silver’s peaceful face.

“When you realize that even the bravest of knights must rest eventually… I’ll be here. Waiting.”

Straightening himself, Malleus cast one last look at Silver before turning to leave. The door closed behind him with a low echoing thud, and almost immediately, thorned vines began to creep along its surface.

As he descended the staircase, he paused mid-step, tilting his head as he felt the slightest ripple in the air. It seemed that someone had entered uninvited.

How rude.

#twisted wonderland #malleus draconia #twst silver #silver vanrouge #lilia vanrouge #diasomnia #twst fic #twst fanfic #my writing #what I think happened after silver and malleus's confrontation in Sebek's dream #not enough angst for me #I need more suffering #they're brothers you honor #and then ortho came in like a wrecking ballllll!!!!!l #the way I changed the ending multiple times

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kiame-sama · 5 months ago

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First of all I'm loving your world building, it's all so easy to understand yet intertwined with each other it's amazing! Só far my favorite part is how the Unicorns treated humans, I wonder how this love of unicorns for humans and humans for unicorns began.

The queen of hearts still being my favorite I every AU I past by but in this one specifically there is no way of comparing, especially by the rules, which by the way are very funny, about pregnant women and how they have a pass to commit crimes lol

Riddle trying so hard to keep the human safe is so damn cute and dangerous and I LOVE IT!!!

The impact of the human kind in the culture and all is very pleasing to read. Please tell me, the humans of that world had any kingdom or they only lived in villages (probably protected by the unicorns or the fae)?

Thank you for this AU, my obsession for TW never got this high before (⁠⊃⁠｡⁠•́⁠‿⁠•̀⁠｡⁠)⁠⊃

Humans lived primarily in villages or hamlets as the more people there were, the more attention they would receive from the monsters living nearby or from the wild beasts that occupy the 'untamed' parts of the land. Most of the time, this attention was negative as the beasts of Twisted Wonderland are truly monstrous and can easily kill a village of these soft Humans with little effort, as even many of the animals are magical/ have magic. Sometimes this attention is positive, as it was in the early Queendom of Roses and in Briar Valley, because it allowed Unicorns and the Fae folk to discover these little gatherings of humans and protect them from those that would do these soft creatures harm.

Before humans were mostly adopted by these stronger species, they had to live light and be ready to travel should their presence become noticed by any threats. It wasn't easy for them to pack up and leave everything they couldn't carry, but such was the lives Humans lived in Twisted Wonderland. To be noticed by any magic user was to have a target put on you and your family.

Before Humans became more prevalent in the cultures of the large Kingdoms/Queendoms of Twisted Wonderland, they were counted among the few that couldn't use magic and were mostly driven away or hunted/killed if they got too close to a village/city of magic folk. Many species used to hunt humans or would even feast on them occasionally.

There are only a handful of species that never hunted Humans. Unicorns and Dragons. Unicorns were more peaceful and even sought out Humans as Humans were emotionally easier for Unicorns to be around and there was a certain allure Humans had that interested the Unicorns. As far as Dragons go, Dragons have slaughtered Humans in the past for being too bold as to steal from the Dragon or even trying to take other Humans back from the Dragons. The Dragons were not known to eat the Humans- as many Dragons actually kidnapped Humans to keep in their hoards- but their history is not as clean as that of the Unicorns.

#kiame-sama #yandere #x reader #yandere x reader #reader insert #tw yandere #Humans Are Extinct TWST AU

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linkemon · 2 years ago

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Confession headcanons

Friendly reminder that English is not my first language. You can check my Masterlists both in English and Polish here.

Consider supporting me on Ko-fi. You can also check out my commissions if you're interested.

Other headcanons from this series can be found here.

Part 2 | Part 3 of the confession headcanons.

This part contains: Malleus Draconia, Idia Shroud and Kalim Al-Asim.

Malleus Draconia

• Malleus' confession of feelings involved a number of obstacles and misunderstandings, although happily resolved.

• He wrote about you many times in letters to his grandmother. And although it made him realize the fragility of relationships with humans, grandma was also very happy knowing that her grandson had experienced such deep love. She really wanted to meet you, even though you didn't know it at the time.

• Draconia's biggest fear and block from telling you how he felt was the fear of loss. In various aspects of it. He was aware that he would certainly outlive you, and from time to time the thought of you returning to the world you came from floated in the back of his mind. In addition, you were his first real friend, not counting the people who were with him every day. Rejection could cost him the entire relationship.

One most ordinary night, he simply realized that the risk was worth trying to tell you how he felt.

• Malleus sprang into action with eager vigour. Unfortunately, these efforts were somewhat misdirected. It took Lilia to clearly explain to him that the customs adopted among fae do not necessarily translate to humans. He was forced to do this, as it were, because after you threw away his family generational necklace, the clouds over Diasomnia were darkening day by day and a disastrous downpour with lightning was brewing.

Meanwhile, you were simply afraid that Grim would destroy such a valuable and expensive gift. You had absolutely no idea of the additional meaning it carried.

• The second attempt was definitely more successful. Malleus gave you the rose seeds he grew in Briar Valley. Planted in Ramshackle, with his magic they turned into a field of red flowers. Combined with the moonlight and the fireflies dancing around you, it created a wonderful atmosphere that you will remember for a long time.

It was then that the fae confessed to you that he had been smitten with you from the very beginning but it was your friendship, so precious to him, that turned into something more. The fact that he knelt down in front of you and promised to give you everything you wanted made you think for a moment that he was going to propose to you. Initially, that's what he planned, but Lilia talked him out of it...

Idia Shroud

• It's not that Idia didn't know what love was. He had played so many otome games that while he wasn't an expert, he certainly wasn't a noob. However, without Ortho's help, he would not have correctly recognized its signs in real life.

• He started by avoiding you. The rapid heartbeat and red tips of his hair were becoming more and more frequent and it was difficult for him to control them. So he found the best solution he could come up with, which was to lock himself in his room. He avoided you as much as he could all over campus.

• His brother, although he quickly understood through data analysis what was happening to him, did not think it was good to raise the topic too early. Initially, he wanted to give Idia time. Time was clearly running out because the robot, seeing you once again look sadly at the tablet and gave it a wide berth, decided to act. He prepared a series of tests to convince your older brother that you reciprocate his feelings. Of course, Shroud hid under the blanket, mumbled to be left alone. Although he pretended to be uninterested, the speech actually sparked hope in him.

Maybe this time he wasn't a total knight nerd and side hero? Maybe he could play the lead role for once?

• He did what he does best. He designed a program that allowed him to send a request if you wanted to be his girlfriend. At worst, he was going to pretend it was a mistake.

When he saw that instead of checking the tick box, you had come to Ignihyde, he immediately paled. You had to knock on the door, telling him that you wouldn't leave until he explained to you what was actually going on and how this confession related to his constant avoidance of you.

Idia just stuck his head out of the crack, stammered and said that he was like the worst NPC you've ever seen but if you let him have some time, maybe he'll become a main character worthy of you.

Kalim Al-Asim

• Friendzone should be his middle name. From the beginning of your relationship, he sent you signals that you considered romantic. Until you started spending more time with him around others and you found out that Kalim treated them the same way he treated you. That's when everything started to get confusing for you.

• When you tried to tell him that you liked him very much, he replied that he liked you too. When you said more, he said more, more. And when you said he was more than a friend, he said you were his best friend. He did all this with such a wide smile on his face that you didn't have the heart to explain to him the true meaning of your statements. You knew the sincerity of his words. Few people in the NRC matched him in truthfulness. But it was incredibly frustrating for you.

• Grim knew exactly what was happening, seeing your hearty eyes every time you left the desert dormitory. He calculated in his head how many cans of tuna he would get if you got together with the prefect of Scarabia. This prompted him to not-so-subtly blurt out to Kalim that you were romantically interested in him. In return, he received a promise of a container of fish delicacies.

• The boy was in great shock but in a positive way. He didn't know what to do with all his joy, so he grabbed the first flowers in a vase he had at hand and ran towards the flying carpet. You weren't expecting him at all in the evening, dressed in your pajamas and ready to go to bed. He hugged you so tightly that he almost knocked you over and that was before he even remembered that he hadn't told you why he actually came...

#twisted wonderland x reader #malleus x reader #kalim x reader #idia x reader #malleus draconia #kalim al asim #idia shroud #headcanons

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anonymousewrites · 1 year ago

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Nature of the Human Soul (Book 1) Prologue

Platonic! Hazbin Hotel x Teen! Reader

Father Figure! Alastor x Teen! Reader

Prologue: Dying in the Roses

Summary: (Y/N) meets their death.

Mouse Note: Welcome to Nature of the Human Soul! I'm so happy to get to share with you all! I put a lot of work into this new series, and I'm very happy about it. Just a quick reminder, it is a found family/platonic series, so no romance amongst any Hazbin characters and the MC. That would be weird since the MC is seventeen. But other than that, I'm ready to have some fun, and I hope you are, too! As always, please comment your thoughts below. I love interacting with readers, and it is such a motivation to write. So, please, sit back, enjoy!

(Y/N) limped out of the house they’d been raised in. Their own blood stained their stomach and hands as they tried to hold their wound closed, mixing with the blood that was not their own.

(Y/N) didn’t care. The ordeal was finished. They were finished. There was nothing left for them, and they’d done everything they’d wanted to—needed to.

(Y/N) stood at the edge of the patio and stared out over the garden they’d grown up in. Apple trees lined the edges of the yard. Flower bushes grew around the patio. It was all so perfect.

They despised it.

(Y/N) took a step forward and held onto the railing as they stepped down off the patio. They could do it. They could make it out of the garden.

Just once. Just once.

(Y/N)’s strength failed, and they stumbled.

Come on, just once.

Another step, and (Y/N) collapsed. They fell back into the rosebushes decorating the yard. They couldn’t even muster the strength to cry out at the pain of thorns pricking every inch of their skin.

(Y/N) lay among the briars and petals, staring up at the bright sun above them as their vision turned black.

They were dying.

And they had never made it to freedom.

What a fucking joke.

Taglist:

@kyalov

@pandaquick

@boredwithlifeatthispoint

@jaytheaceenby

@paastaboi

@bettybabys

@gxdoesstuff

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bitethedustfools · 6 months ago

Text

TWST Story Idea (17)

Yuu's Misadventure in Twisted Wonderland

A lonely coffin lay in the middle of nowhere. It was glazed in a black hue, and elegant golden patterns decorated the lid. Along the designs, a keyhole rested in the middle, while a mirror was positioned where the face would be.

Despite being called a mirror, it strangely emitted a dull white light, flickering like a dying firefly amidst the darkness. Then, without warning, the lid rattled loudly.

Thud, thud, thud!

Someone was trying to open the lid of the coffin to no avail. The lid was too tightly shut, barely a crack could be seen, even though the person inside had been kicking and slamming it with all their strength.

That person screamed for help, crying and begging to be saved and let out of this endless darkness. There was even panting inside as anxiety set in, knowing that the oxygen was limited.

And then—

Bam!

The lid finally slammed open, and a figure sat up with a gasp, taking in big breaths like someone who had nearly drowned.

Their hair was in disarray, their face messy from crying and sweating. Blood smeared their swollen hands, used to try to slam the door open.

Yuu was finally free.

However, they did not know where they were. There were only trees as far as the eye could see, and what seemed to be a track made by a carriage near the coffin.

Why were they in a coffin? Why was there even a carriage in this place and time? Did they fall off? But then why didn’t anyone come to retrieve them? Wait, isn't this human trafficking?

Though baffled and confused by the state they were in, Yuu ultimately decided to seek help and began following the path.

If only they had picked the right way, they would have ended up at NRC, and their new life—though chaotic—would have been better than the other path. But they were slowly heading somewhere else.

Everything went wrong from there.

Yuu learned that this was not the place they were familiar with. The buildings were colorful, each following a certain theme. The people were handsome and pretty, and their hair had various shades as though dyed, but it wasn’t. Somehow, Yuu could sense that it looked natural.

Ironically, Yuu, who looked the plainest, stood out the most among them. The people were alarmed to see a foreign child with dried blood on their hands and a shabby appearance, like a fugitive.

Yuu ran the moment they felt a sense of dread bubbling in their belly. Any attempts at communication failed, not because the people didn’t want to listen or understand, but because they couldn’t understand each other’s language.

This was where Yuu learned about magic. In the midst of running away, they were taken off guard by magic that obstructed their movement and, therefore, were taken to the court of the Queen of Hearts.

(Insert drama here. Will it go like Alice in Wonderland or take a different plot? How will Yuu be treated? No thoughts about Yuu being from a different world since they don’t understand each other’s language.)

Yuu somehow escaped. Finally nourished by the food provided by the jailers, they wandered without direction, only stopping to sleep in the wild with no shelter. The fear of waking up in the Queendom of Roses terrified Yuu.

And then, they entered a new place…

-----

Yuu’s situation involved going to new areas like the Shaftlands, the Scalding Sands, and other regions, encountering all sorts of dangers and predicaments. Some people were kind to Yuu, while others were not.

(Extra points if higher-ranking people, like Leona’s family or Malleus’s grandmother, take a liking to Yuu. Bonus points if Yuu becomes a therapist or friend to the family members of NRC students.)

Yuu took on different roles each time, often the most difficult ones, like a prisoner, a lab rat, a servant, and more.

Yuu’s luck was atrocious, leading them to some of the hardest places to get into on Twst, like the Briar Valley, the Coral Sea, and the Isle of Woe.

There was even a time when Yuu nearly got taken by the Playful Land and almost converted into one of their puppets. But their luck was also unusually good, as they managed to escape each situation—though not without suffering.

Due to their time in the wild and the language barrier, Yuu became a bit feral.

Their final destination would be NRC, where Yuu showed pure animosity toward Dire Crowley. They also met Grim in the wilderness before attending NRC. Because of Yuu's personality, Grim reluctantly became their pet therapy companion and was allowed to attend alongside them.

#disney twst #twst grim #twst wonderland #twisted wonderland #disney twisted wonderland #twst yuu #yuu #writing prompt #writing ideas #fic ideas #Angst and comedy everywhere #Yuu's life is terrible in NRC?#Dont worry I gotchu #lets make it more harder for Yuu

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raven-at-the-writing-desk · 1 year ago

Text

The First Fairy Tale

ahdbalidbaidf I'M SUCH A SUCKER FOR UNREQUITED KNIGHT X PRINCESS STUFF (even if it's not clear whether or not Lilia's crush persisted beyond childhood in canon) SO. I'M WRITING THIS… 😭This fic is purposefully ambiguous about the type of love Lilia feels in the end for Meleanor. It’s up to the reader to interpret it as they please. This piece was inspired the story of Madame Red from Black Butler. You don't need to know either to enjoy, but if you do happen to know them then I think you'll appreciate it more. There’s also some references to a few Disney films besides Sleeping Beauty—can you find which ones? I also purposefully repeated some phrases and blended a few references together to give the fic a “dream-like”/deja vu feeling. There was going to be a wedding scene opening with “There wasn’t a cloud in the sky” in reference to We Don’t Talk About Bruno, but I had to cut that since the fic was getting long. Even without that and some other cut scenes, I think this is the longest fic I’ve written before. It’s almost 8k words!!

... Do you remember? I told my first fairy tale to you, my most beloved. ***Spoilers for book 7 part 5 of the main story!***

Imagine this...

In a castle forgotten by time, a lone figure walked among the creeping thorns. The plants swallowed the grounds, yet he moved swiftly and stealthily, passing over briar as easily as water over stone. Not a single movement was wasted as he traversed the brambled floors.

His ponytail—black streaked with red—fell in his path, the slight whip of it the only trace of his presence. He had traded his battle armor of old for plainclothes long ago, but still hadn’t filled into them yet. To shed the life of a general for that of a civilian was no simple task.

The small, doughy creature pressed against his shoulder sleepily lifted its head. Upon the infant’s crown was a cap of shockingly silver hair, the same color as moonlight. The boy thrusted a pudgy hand into his cheek, delivering a soft pap to the hardened veteran.

“Tch…!” Lilia pulled away brusquely. “Troublesome little creature, aren’t you? Hold still. We’d have made it out of here by now if only you weren’t so…”

Weak, defenseless, frail, vulnerable.

An array of potential words rose to fill in the gap. He settled on the least abrasive one he could muster.

Something cute.

Children like cute, right…? Right.

“… squishy.”

The infant—no, Silver, he corrected himself—seemed curious about the response, staring up with sudden interest. Lilia’s skin prickled at the sensation. He averted his eyes to an interior that had seen better days.

Once a shining jewel to house the crown princess, Wild Rose Castle was abandoned now. The thorns had invaded, climbing the walls and digging themselves into every nook and crevice. Furniture and weapons devoured, flags and tapestries consumed, meeting a similar fate as the nation that had once proudly flew them.

Ruins entombing stolen time.

What had once been a palace teeming with history, with life, was left a barren wasteland. All that remained were shadows of the past which clung thickly to the thorns. One misstep, and they would cut into him, bringing both pain and searing hot memories.

Funny, that: how the natural forces were unrelenting and indiscriminate. Yet the trace of an enchantment in the air suggested otherwise, its telltale tingle palpable. He knew the bramble had come from magical means.

A fairy's spell lingered. Some bygone blessing or curse, told in the tattered remains of a hazy vision and a wish for more halcyon days. Parents wanting to spare their child from the horrors of war.

Lilia's grip on Silver subconsciously tightened.

What rotten luck. I return after all this time to pay my respects, only to find Wild Rose Castle in this sorry state. How the mighty fall.

Silver fidgeted in his arms, as if sensing that something was off. A bit of saliva dribbling from the corner of his mouth, a soft whine gurgling up.

“You’re fussing again already?” Lilia frowned. He awkwardly laid a hand on the infant’s back. Are all infants this incorrigible? "The journey will be a long one if you aren't able to settle."

The infant turned its head, his cheek fitting neatly into Lilia's palm. There was a coo, then a sigh of contentment.

Still shaking off the sleepiness.

"... You're so needy," Lilia grumbled, noting the drool wetting his skin. Silver blinked at him with large, iridescent orbs. "I don't understand. Do people actually find this endearing? To find such joy in raising their young is..."

He hesitated to finish his sentence.

What did a man like him have to say on the matter? Long-lived as he was, that kind of love was something he had ever experienced for himself.

A gentle, warm hand to guide him through the darkness. The love of a parent.

Yet here I am, a loveless fae robbing a baby from its cradle. Just as the humans believe we do.

What irony.

Sadness nipped at Lilia as his thoughts turned to Silver. If anything, the little one had more power to shape the world around it than he ever could.

It was for this sort of creature that the Dawn Knight made a prayer for the future. It was for this sort of creature that Baul's rigid heart shifted. It was for this sort of creature that she...!!

Lilia's fingers had clenched into a vice grip on Silver. The infant cried out, squirming uncomfortably in his new guardian's grasp.

"Shoot...!! Er... there, there. It will be alright."

He clumsily rocked the baby back and forth. It was too vigorous, for Silver bursted into tears. His wails echoed off the desolate walls of the castle, piercing loud in Lilia's ears.

The fae jerked back, holding Silver at a safe distance from him. His grasp, precarious.

This is proving to be much more challenging than I initially thought... H-How do I silence it?!

Lilia glanced around helplessly at his surroundings. Everything was encased in a cage of thorns: antiques, drapes, even the axes mounted for decoration—to liven up the room. They were impossible for him to reach, else he could swing them around to amuse the boy.

Pieces of the past far out of his reach.

It’s not an option. A human babe is not like a fae babe. Lilia’s head swarmed with stress, Silver’s sobs only multiplying his worries. What do I do? What… would she do?

Meleanor…

The name of his princess emerged. Along with it, a scene blossoming in sepia shades.

Her, in a regal black gown and dripping in green gemstones and finery. Him, in a general's armor. A princess and her knight, straight out of a fairy tale.

She was humming while caressing a large egg, a marbled violet flecked with green, dark webbing laced the shell. It conformed perfectly to her chest, pulsating with a strange warmth as she ran taloned fingers over it. Another role she had adopted: mother.

A low chuckle rose from the back of her throat. "Fufufu Look, Malleus. Our dear Lilia has taken the time out of his busy schedule to come pay us a visit."

"It's been quite some time since I last heard you giggle like a schoolgirl. Nice to know that you remain in good spirits." He arched an eyebrow. "... But since when did you decide to name the child? I thought the medical mages hadn't even determined a gender for your heir yet."

"Oh, some time ago," she replied flippantly. Meleanor was always like a storm, unpredictable and acting on her own whims. "I don't need anyone to tell me what my child will be. I already know... my Malleus will grow up to be an upstanding, beautiful man just like my Raverne."

She had a dreamy, faraway look on her face. A slight blush to her high cheeks, a shine to her eyes, a kind smile at her lips. Completely unlike her, the tomboy who snuck out of the castle unsupervised and caused trouble for all the servants.

So utterly smitten.

For that moment and that moment alone, Lilia would have believed her a patient princess awaiting a knight in shining armor's rescue. Not him, but her beloved.

Raverne.

He had to bite back a terse laugh, mask it with a joke. "Your Raverne? Hold on now, you've got to share him with the rest of us. We'd simply crumble without his wisdom."

"I don't intend to share what's rightfully mine.” A teasing smirk he knew well had found its way onto her pert mouth again. “I'm a very possessive woman.”

"As I’m well aware. Alas, I serve such a cruel mistress of evil.”

She chuckled, resting a hand on her egg. "... When Raverne returns, we shall arrange for tea. The two of you can regale me with the stories of your journeys. It gets to be so dull trapped in these castle walls. Oh, and of course, Malleus will be joining us. He has yet to experience our cozy little get-togethers.”

Their group. Their trio. The three of them. And now a new member. An expansion of the family unit—no, rather, the realization that something didn’t belong among them.

His heartbeat quickened.

"There you go again, making rash requests of me. You really ought to be more considerate of others. I came all this way out of the goodness of my heart, only for you to bark more orders at me. Don't I get to take a break?"

"I am being considerate," she insisted. "I'm considering Malleus. He is invited. You cannot uninvite him."

"That's not the point. Agh, what am I going to do with you?" Lilia ran a hand through his hair. The frustration was familiar—but so was the fondness that chased it.

“My, my. Such insolence. I’m afraid you’ll be stuck with me for a long, looong time. You should be less stubborn and more kind to your princess,” she purred, her words touched with dry sarcasm. “Isn’t that right, Malleus?”

“I’m too kind to you. Too patient as well,” Lilia sighed. “… It’s you who is headstrong.”

“I must be. I have a country and now a family behind me. A scorned mother’s rage is insurmountable, you know.”

He should have said something back. Played into their usual banter. But he didn’t—couldn’t bring himself to. Lilia looked away quickly, but not quite quickly enough.

“Oh? What nerve you have to avoid the gaze of your princess.” She dropped her playful tone. “Something weighs heavy on your mind.”

“… I can never hide anything from you, can I?”

“You will inform me at once.”

“So you can obliterate what ails me?”

“So that I may put you at ease." She lifted a hand, gesturing toward him. "That is the duty of a queen to her people… and, more importantly, of a friend to another."

Friend.

It stung right down to his bones, hurting more than a blast of righteous lightning. A reminder of what he was: a footnote, a supporting cast member in her grand story. Without that, he was nothing.

An outcast.

His stomach clenched. He forced down a bitter pill and spoke.

"I was just wondering what it must feel like to be in your position, Meleanor-sama," Lilia whispered. "Mother to a nation, and to a child. To wholly devote oneself to the service of others... I will never know what that is like."

At this, she laughed darkly. "I am strong. I have to be, because I have people to protect. You have that strength as well. You wouldn't be able to serve as one of my generals without it. There are just some things in this world worth risking your life for, hmm?"

"I don't understand. My loyalty will always lie with you, with Briar Country... but for a child, I cannot...!!" Lilia stopped himself, reining his emotions back to calm. "I've never known how that kind of love feels. I'm not capable of it."

Meleanor narrowed her eyes as she listened to his woes. Unwise men would think her contemplative. He knew better—she was scheming.

"... Let me tell you a secret, Lilia," she said at last. "A dragon's egg needs its parents' love to hatch. However, true love is a special spell. It's more powerful than any magic, and able to be cast by anyone. If you are able to protect me, then that alone is proof enough that you are capable of 'true love'."

"You make it sound so simple, but is it really like that? The children of man say that fae cannot tell an untruth, yet you so expertly reassure me with lies."

"You're questioning me? Laughable. I am a woman of my honor, unlike you with all your tall tales."

"They're not tall tales. They're real stories of the danger I was in. Danger that, mind you, I got in half the time on behalf of your demands."

"Is that so?" Meleanor had smiled at him then, her teeth gleaming in the dim candlelight. Long lashes fluttering against the emeralds of her eyes. "Then you wouldn't mind sharing a story or two with Malleus."

Lilia bristled at the thought, an old wound reopened. There was a burst of relief that accompanied the dull pain.

I can't sing her lullabies. I don't have her strength either. No partner to speak of, no family to look to. What I do have is...

He pressed Silver into him, keeping a hand rested reassuringly on the infant's upper back. Muffled cries and a warm wetness pooled on Lilia's shoulder. His steps slowed, coming to a steady pace.

The first words were the most difficult to get out.

"... Once upon a time, there was a princess living in this castle." His voice was slow and deep and sorrowful. Not a song, but a longing croon for days he could never return to.

They entered a corridor lined with paintings. The sound of Silver's sobbing funneled into the passage, a greeting to the dour faces of important officials portrayed in each frame. Horned, with raven hair and reptilian eyes, obsidian scales dotting their skin, milky and smooth as wax.

Lilia lowered his head to one as they passed--a woman upon a throne, scepter in hand, her pointed features dappled by moonlight.

"She was many things. Selfish, impetuous, and stubborn… but also brave, strong, and beautiful."

So beautiful.

That had been his first impression of her. A single pale rose amid a garden of thorns.

She was tiny in those days, still trotting about in small, polished heels that clicked with each step, her black dress swishing about. A scaled tail—fluffy at the end--poked out from under there, proof of dragonic heritage. Her long hair was slicked back, proudly displaying a pair of horns and the scales that crowned her forehead.

When she wailed, the skies turned stormy. When she beamed, the sun came out. Her expressions so lively as she spun around in her skirts, the fabric unfurling like the petals of a blossoming flower.

A princess both adored and feared by her people.

"She befriended an unruly ragamuffin.” Lilia's lips quirked, unable to fight them from tugging up. “He was without loved ones, so the princess extended a hand to him."

Lilia had stolen glances at her when he was convinced she was distracted. During royal processions, tending to the horses, when they crossed paths in the halls.

He never let himself stare for too long. To do so was nearly a death sentence. The guards would be upon him in an instant—or worse, she would.

But without doubt, she did.

She would look back, letting a telltale grin take shape when their gazes met.

Him, the nobody picked up by the royal family on a whim. A hopeless squire boy, a knight-in-training, a ward.

Him.

She noticed him.

Picking up her skirts, she'd made a beeline over. Grinning like a gremlin, she would inevitably set a tragedy into motion.

"Lilia, I'm sick of studying! Let's play instead."

"What? I don't want to. Besides, I have training to tend to."

"Oh, don't be such a spoilsport. That's an order from your princess, so you can't refuse!"

“And that's the way the story always goes, a princess and her knight." He passed a glance at Silver. The infant's crying had quieted, and he returned the look, eyes wet with wonder.

Lilia sighed. "... I guess you wouldn't know that, would you? Well, it’s not as though she were your average girl.

"A wicked princess, that’s what she was. There was not a day when she wasn't making mischief and pulling the knight into it with her."

She had had many games, not all of them clearly defined or with rules. Sometimes she changed them on the fly. Sometimes she played without guidelines at all.

Pretend escalated into full-scale magical duels. Scavenger hunts spanned the entire castle grounds. They’d race to see who could relieve the gallery of the most apples in the least amount of time, dig through the treasury for the biggest gems.

On particularly lazy days, a roll across the lawn was enough to amuse them. Petals were plucked, sugary honeysuckle trapped between their teeth.

"You have something stuck in your hair," she'd tease him, picking loose petals out. "Let me get that for you, my most loyal retainer."

He'd hold still, as commanded, let her take as long as she wanted tidying him up.

When the guards combed the garden for them, they’d squish into shrubbery and lay low until the coast was clear. Sometimes their lids would grow heavy and collapse—and when they roused, stars had spilled into the sky, and they’d count constellations until the morning.

Starlight dappling her noble face, her fiery spirit ablaze.

How many diplomatic meetings had they crashed? How many ancient items had they broken? How many headaches had they collectively caused?

Lilia chuckled faintly.

… Those were the good old days.

He continued down the path laid before him, the paintings seemingly chugging along in slow succession. Both people and time passing him by.

"There was another as well. A clever, kind-hearted duke who also warmed up to the knight. The three of them formed a most formidable group.”

“Are you two at it again? You never stop, do you?”

The voice came from the top of the stairwell.

"Raverne. So good of you to join us," Meleanor said breathlessly—she had been running about. She slicked back a strand of glossy raven hair and beamed toothily. It wasn't the smile of a princess, but of a dragon yet to be tamed.

He quirked a brow. "Am I joining you? Whoever said that?"

“If you’re jealous, no need to play coy," she teased as the Dragon Duke descended the stairs. "You’re welcome to join us anytime.”

"The princess has already roped me into her antics," Lilia sighed. "Why not make it a party of three? We can all get scolded together later. Misery loves company."

"A tempting offer." Raverne lazily tilted his head to one side. He always had a languid way of moving, like a curtain of night veiling the day. "I think you've got me convinced."

"Why did you agree when Lilia asked and not when your princess did?" Meleanor demanded, stomping a foot.

Raverne shrugged. Effortless, defiant. "Perhaps you're not as charming as you think you are."

Any other person would have faced her wrath. Anyone else would have been forced to tango with lightning.

Not Raverne. He was too hard to stay mad at, and too easy to forgive. His presence alone smoothed over tensions, settled storms.

“He’s a dreamer,” the dusty old court advisors would remark with disdain.

“He’s a dreamer,” Lilia would say, eyebrows raised in surprise.

“He’s a dreamer,” Meleanor would sigh, the stars in her eyes.

Now, she just smirked at him. "I'll have to demonstrate to you just how charming I can be."

She had looked at Raverne differently in that instant. Her eyes did not glint at the sight of new prey to toy with, but with keen interest. There was something else too, an undercurrent of some tender feeling Lilia couldn't quite place.

Meleanor had never looked at Lilia like that.

Only Raverne.

He shook his head.

I should have known then... I was fighting a losing battle.

"With time, they grew ever closer. Unexpected feelings arose. The knight came to love the princess.” Lilia's feet came down upon the bramble that knitted over the floor. He could not feel it through his boots, but it felt as though he was still being pierced in the chest.

Silver blinked as Lilia plodded along. The gentle rise and fall drying his tears.

It had been a heady spring day, another escapade dodging servants and sneaking beyond the gardens. The flowers had blossomed, the same as the princess. She had grown lovelier by the day, her spitfire attitude untempered.

His flower of evil.

They were crossing a brook then, Meleanor lifting up her skirts to float to the other side, Lilia hopping on rocks to cross. He could have flown with her if he tried, but he was feeling cocky, had wanted to shown off the fruits of his training.

One misstep, and Lilia went flying forward, crashing into her. Their bodies collapsed against one another's as they roll, roll, rolled into a field, blades of grass and stray petals collecting on them. When they at last came to a stop, they laid on their lacks and laughed until their lungs hurt.

Lilia had stared at her again. Her smile, a powerful spell. She caught him in the act, demanded what he was looking at.

"You have something stuck in your hair," Lilia told her as they sat up. "Let me get that for you, my most benevolent princess."

"Stop stealing my lines," she giggled back.

Only if you stop stealing my heart first, he thought. But Meleanor was selfish, and once she had claimed something as her own, she refused to return her new treasure.

Lilia reached--and produced a single white daisy between his fingers. Kneeling, he offered the token to her. "Here. For you."

"Prankster. You planted that so you could appear impressive," Meleanor chuckled, accepting it. "... However, the gesture is sweet, so I thank you for it."

She held the flower to her nose and inhaled its scent. Her lashes fluttered against her cheeks, lips brushing the velvet-soft petals of the daisy. Wind weaving its hands through jet back hair, spots of sunshine dancing across her.

The entire universe was conspiring against him, it seemed.

He remained kneeling, remembering his place. Him, the knight. Her, the princess. But if that was the case, then weren't they perfectly suited for a fairy tale?

Lilia steeled his courage and let the words he had been holding in all that time loose. "M-Meleanor-sama! I... I like you. Not just as a friend. More than that. P-Please accept my feelings!"

Rare surprise dashed her beauty. A crack of light, dawn chasing away the darkness. “Lilia...?"

Here was his weakness, more terrifying than any enemy their country had faced. One young lady, and he folded like a paper crane. His heart in her hands.

And she squeezed.

"I'm not sure if I enjoy this joke. What we had before... I liked that."

More delicate than he had ever heard her speak. Like she was afraid of breaking this.

"This isn't a joke. I'm... I'm serious about you! Please answer me!!" he pleaded. "Will you be mine?"

At once, her face fell. The daisy, and his heart, slipped from her grasp.

"Oh, Lilia," she whispered, a hand clamped over her mouth. "I'm sorry. So, so, sorry."

A resounding rejection, chased by a dreadful loneliness. It had been nothing like the storybooks had promised. Lilia almost wanted to weep at his juvenile naivete.

He hushed, the awareness of it all consuming him.

So this is love.

Love, and the lack of it. How it hurt him so, as it had from had the start. He was always alone, no matter how many people he surrounded himself with.

Was that really love then?

The thought struck him like a fist to the gut.

I thought I loved you. But maybe that wasn’t true love. Maybe I was desperate to be loved back. To have someone to call my own, when I had no one at all before. Maybe I clung to the first person that showed the slightest bit of attention to me.

Even so, my heart ached for you. Longed for you. Believed it was meant to be. Dreamt of you. I wanted to give you my everything.

Lilia tucked the infant’s cheek to his chest. Felt the child’s warmth, his physical presence. The steady drum of something buried deep in him.

There was a wobbly yawn in the silence. Silver, tuckered out from crying, awaited the next part of the story.

The breath Lilia held released. The words, painful as they dropped from his lips.

“But she had eyes for another: the duke. The knight watched as his two best friends fell in love.” Lilia’s nails dug into the cloth that swaddled Silver. “The princess and the duke were happy, so the knight, too, was happy. And why wouldn’t he be? The woman he loved the most was going to marry the man he loved the most. It was a happy ending for the trio."

He had been summoned by the princess that fateful day. Returning triumphant from the battlefield, adrenaline running high, he hadn’t even bothered to make himself presentable first. His hair was a mess, his armor stained with the remains of slain foes.

She waited for him beyond the door.

“Melea… Oh.”

His princess was seated beside Raverne. She clung to his arm like a vine on a trellis, beaming like the moon on a cloudless night. Meleanor was drunk on the Dragon Duke.

He had never seen her so happy.

“Lilia! You’re here at last,” she called, waving him over. “Just in time.”

He glanced from her to Raverne. “In time for what?”

“For our exciting announcement.” Meleanor wasn’t looking at him. Instead, she gazed adoringly at the man beside her. Somewhat shy. “Would you like to tell him? Or should I? Ooh, this is quite exciting."

Raverne smiled softly—but Lilia could sense the slight discomfort in his eyes, the way they darted to his. Guilty acknowledgement, an awareness of betrayal.

I'm sorry, he seemed to say.

Lilia’s blood ran cold.

“I think you ought to tell him,” Raverne suggested. His voice was gentle, but they felt like a slash to the throat, cutting deep.

Then Meleanor announced it, unable to contain the secret any longer. "We're getting married!!"

She showed her left hand. The flash of the silver band upon her fourth finger was unmistakable. A ring, binding them with a promise.

Together forever, those two.

Lilia’s world violently tilted. The castle crumbling, the sky collapsing around him. Yet he, the trained soldier, dug his feet in and stood his ground.

You've been bested. Admit it. Admit defeat...!!

He said the only word he could.

"Congratulations."

Lilia could make out the light at the other end of the tunnel now. The world beyond the walls and castle corridors. He knew the end of the story was fast approaching, and how it would sap his strength, his will to fight on.

Still, he continued.

“The new couple were soon expecting a baby. Someone much like yourself.” Lilia prodded at Silver’s flabby chin. “You’ll be graced with his presence soon enough. The princess’s legacy, Malleus Draconia… My responsibility these past 160 years.”

Silver gurgled.

“So enthusiastic. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into,” Lilia softly chided. “We fae and humans…”

… can never hope to understand each other.

"We fae and humans can understand each other," Raverne would have countered him. "We can make it a reality."

Tiny hands wrapped around Lilia’s finger. His touch, fragile.

You can afford to be hopeful. It drew a bitter chuckle from his handler. Brief reprieve before the plummet into something deeper and darker than the night that guarded them.

“… In a period of great unrest, the duke went missing. The princess was beside herself with worry—yet she remained stalwart for her people, and for their child. She wished every night for her husband to come home safely.”

They had magical might, but the humans had numbers. Each battle, an exchange of hard blows, casualties high on both sides. Reports rolled in as frequently as bodies did.

The people grew concerned, and so she had donned her mask to reassure them. Stoney faced and strong atop her tower.

“We will recover the missing couriers. We will secure our land and resources. We will beat back the outsiders. Briar Country will rise victorious in the war. Man will rue the day they came upon our shores. This, I swear to you as your princess!!”

Uproarious cheering and applause for her, their sovereign. A goddess of victory.

But he, watching from the shadows, knew better than that. All those years roughhousing with her, and he knew.

The face she showed the public and the face she made in private were two sides of the same card. Princess, mother, wife, friend. So many roles, all of them she played with such strength.

Meleanor only slipped when she thought no eyes were on her. When the servants had all retired for the night, and the moon and its stars came out.

Pressing his back to the wall, Lilia shielded his candle’s small circle of light from view. The hallway was drenched in darkness again.

A few paces away, her chambers to which she retreated every evening with her egg. With her dear little Malleus.

He listened.

Soft whimpers sounded from the abyss. Sounds and sights she would not dare show her people.

A leader such as she could not afford to be weak. The same leader who clutched her child to her and furiously prayed for a happy ending.

“Raverne, where are you? Come home… Come home, you idiotic, idealistic man!!”

CRASH!! BANG!! BOOM!!

Lightning lit up the sky. Lilia's flame trembled before righting itself.

Her voice dropped to a devious coo. "... I'm sorry, Malleus. Did that scare you? There, there. It's alright, your mother is here. Your father will be too... and when he does, I shall give him an earful for being away for so long!!"

He listened, for he was the only one who could. He listened until his lids began to droops. He listened until he had to tear himself away.

Before he knocked upon her door. Before he could tell her he was here, to please let him in. Before he could confess, “I miss him too.”

Hold her. Cry with her. Dream with her.

Ask for Raverne back.

“I will never wish for anything more than this. Please. Please…!!”

He had listened then, but no one had listened to him in return. Not even the stars.

Cruel celestial beings, he cursed—if they would not grant his wish, then he would take matters into his own hands.

Raverne…!!

Lilia swallowed thickly. His footfalls had grown heavy, as if weighed down by cinder blocks.

Silver sleepily gummed his finger. Oblivious as to what was to come.

“The conflict escalated.”

It had all happened so fast. Flying by, a blur. Time was not a concern to most fae—a year was barely the blink of an eye. Everything blending together into an indiscernible mush, taken down with ease.

But war never became more palatable. He had simply trained to become numb to it all. The strong smell of iron, the corpses piled high. It was sensory overload, the taste of too many things at once.

A crimson-eyed demon stood at the boundary of a burning village. Inhaled the fumes, smoke and flesh wrapped in fire. Witnessed the leaping flames stretching to the sky.

Who had lived here? Who had died here? Lilia thought of neither.

Had to, or he would fall to his knees and wail.

He held a small cloth doll, long black hair and red dress. Somehow it had survived the carnage. The lone survivor of a massacre. The rest had been slaughtered or evacuated from the area.

Abandoned, just as he had been.

His gaze lidded, fingers closing around the doll. "… As if it were a day. Everywhere I go, it will be in a blink of an eye. Far Cry Cradle.”

Memories arose, pulled by the strings of magic. They exploded across his vision like fireworks. Tinted green and blue and pink.

There was a ghostly child walking among the ruins, smiling as they clung to their mother, doll in their other hand. Daily life making the rounds in the village, helping with chores and playing games. Story events on fast forward.

Then came the knights stomping in their silver suits, masked fae cloaked in black. Buildings caving in, bodies falling, the clang of weapons colliding.

Screams.

Red, red, so much red.

The child horrified, dropping the doll. Staggering steps backward.

He barely cast an eye at them. Surveying the scene straight out of a hellish dream, he sought out a familiar shadow. Had he walked among them, seen the same things he had?

To no avail.

Lilia blinked, and it was the end.

He had not treaded along this path.

“… Damn it, Raverne.” He gripped the doll harder—as if to squeeze out its secrets. Making me hunt you down like this...

“General Vanrouge.”

Lilia did not turn. “Baul.”

“Sir.” He saluted to his superior. “The troops are rested. We are prepared for the final march to the Eastern Fortress.”

“… Yes, I understand. Let’s move out.”

He let the doll fall to the ground. His hands now freed, he pulled his hood up.

“General?” Baul called tentatively.

“The weather is chilly today, don’t you think?” The question, dismissive. Lilia slipped his mask back on—a beastly bat, glaring, teeth protruding.

His tears hidden from view.

Baul nodded. “… Yes, it is. I will remind the men to bundle up, sir.”

He looked away. “Good.”

Lilia firmly set his jaw. “War came knocking at their door, claiming many lives… and threatening to take the princess and her child too.”

There was something automatically off about the fortress when they slipped in. The infiltration too smooth, the corridors too quiet.

Combing the building yielded few results. There was no Raverne, no Dawn Knight. Only cowering staff and scattered humans in iron armor piloting sputtering metal monstrosities.

He cut them down the same as the rest. A mad boar, seeking a true challenge.

"Where are you?! Show yourself...!!" Lilia's demands were hollow in the empty hallways.

A demon snarling for sacrifice, the humans called him. A heartbroken dreamer, seeking the love that he had lost, his troops would whisper amongst themselves.

They found him at the end of a trail of carnage. Panting, sweating, hoarse. The lines between man and monster converged in Lilia Vanrouge.

Then the message was delivered, striking fear into the fearless fae.

"... What?"

The weapon in his hand faltered as realization ripped through him.

“Wild Rose Castle is under siege?!”

"She summoned her knight to her side.” Lilia’s voice quivered, growing small. You’re weak, he snarled at himself, so very, very weak.

Silver, too, seemed to sense the shift in him. He rubbed his cheek against the fae’s finger. Was he trying to comfort himself, or his newfound caretaker?

“The princess asked of him to take her child to safety somewhere far, far away. To forget her. It was her final selfish request for him.”

He had found her seated upon her throne, one arm curled around her precious egg, the other grasping her scepter. It was a sight so familiar, so safe, his chest lifted with relief. Lilia ran to her, calling her name.

"Meleanor-sama!!"

Her arm swept out in an arc, face twisted with fury. On command, a bolt of lightning crashed down in his path.

"Tch...!"

Tucking and rolling, Lilia darted off to the side, narrowly dodging the strike. Where he had once been was a massive scorch mark on the tiled floor.

“You’re LATE, Lilia!!” Meleanor roared. "What if something had happened to me or Malleus before you had arrived?!"

"Hah. As though you would allow that to happen," he scoffed. "You would kill the Silver Owls dead if I weren't here to stop you."

It was their usual game, a playful chase, the exchange of pokes and prods. Today, Meleanor had no such humor. Her expression turned from rage to one of eerie calm.

Lilia shivered.

"They've come for us," she whispered, hugging her egg tightly.

They had always known this day was a possibility. Now it was here, so palpable it was unreal.

From the bridge that ran to the castle came ugly chants twisted with hatred. Hot, oppressive, heavy. The sound like smoke snuffing out the daylight.

“Kill the witch!”

“Seize the castle!”

“Bring me the spoils!”

Horror raced through him.

“Let’s get you to safety, princess. Quickly, before they breach the drawbridge. My men can only hold them off for so long—”

She rose from her throne, descending from her dais. Her stride was not urgent, not eager to flee—the pace closer to the kind one might set for a garden stroll.

Meleanor faced her knight with a small smile. The same one she offered right before suggesting some sort of mischief.

“Lilia.”

“Princess…?”

“I refuse to run.” Her eyes flickered like green fire. “I will stand and fight.”

Panic pulsed in his ears.

“What?! Of all the foolish, hard-headed decisions you’ve made… This is absolutely the most foolish and the most hard-headed one!! I won’t let you go out there. I can’t. You’ll be…!”

A fist closed around his throat. The word died there, half-formed.

“What is it that you wish to say? That I will be hurt? Killed?” Meleanor challenged. So steadfast, so brazen. “You think so little of your princess.”

“This is NOT the time to argue the technicalities!! We need you safe and well, Meleanor-sama. Think of your people! Think of Raverne, your child...!"

Think of me.

She bared her teeth. “What is my power for, if not to protect those I love?”

Her gaze lowered to her egg, then to Lilia. “... You must flee to Black Scale Castle. They will not be able to follow you that deep into the mountain range.”

"I won’t abandon you. If you will stay, then let me fight alongside you as your sword and shield!"

"You have already done plenty for me. Do not mean to play the role of martyr too." Meleanor straightened, looking the part of a regal ruler. “You must go. I have guests to receive.”

"Argh, you stubborn princess!! How will you fight by yourself when you have your child to consider?"

"That," she laughed softly, "is a simple riddle."

His eyes sharpened with recognition of her next scheme. Meleanor wordlessly deposited the egg into Lilia’s arms. It was warm, humming from within the shell.

A life yet to be born, wishes yet to come true.

“I am entrusting you with Malleus,” she murmured sadly. “Please take care of him in his parents' absence."

“Don’t speak that way!!" Lilia snapped.

Don't speak as though we will never meet again, as though this is the final page of our story.

“In the first place, I could never… I can’t raise this child. I don’t know what it is like to love—not the way you and Raverne do. I’ve never had parents. I can’t be one, not when I don’t understand that kind of love!”

Meleanor’s face softened. “But you love me, don’t you? And you love Raverne too.”

He nodded. Slow, hesitant. “We were young. It was a long time ago,” Lilia mumbled.

“You love us,” she grinned, “so surely you are capable of loving our child, the product of our love—and Malleus will feel that. He will respond to you.”

“I’m not…”

“You are deserving of love, Lilia.” This, Meleanor spoke firmly. “Do not let yourself believe otherwise. I shall never forgive you if you do.”

The shouts were growing louder. The castle shuddered, stopped, and shuddered again. Doors being rammed at, forced open.

“Go,” Meleanor hisses. “This is an order from your princess. You cannot refuse.”

She had told that to him many times before. In dreams, in their games. Now, it hurt to hear more than any blow he had taken from battle.

Something in him gave, and instead of stepping away, he stepped forward. Inching closer to the woman out of his reach, but never touching her.

“I’m scared,” Lilia confessed, quiet as snowfall. “What if I lose you like we lost Raverne?”

Then I will be alone again.

“Be not afraid,” she reassured him. Meleanor did not meet him in the eyes.

“Do you promise we will meet again?” he pressed. The egg felt as molten as magma against his armor. “Do you swear?”

BAM!!

The grounds shook—the Silver Owls had successfully taken down a set of barricaded doors.

The cries had reached a fever pitch. Boots trampling upon the sacred grounds. Louder than ever.

Meleanor’s expression darkened, turning grave. It was the look of men at midnight, alone in the woods. Hollow, haunted, unsure of their fate.

No.

“No…!!”

He launched himself at his princess, a hand outstretched for hers. She made no effort to reach for his.

Did not have to.

Lilia fell short, his foot snagging on something. He instinctively twisted his body, shielding the egg in his arms from the floor. His gaze tore to his ankle, where bramble has sprouted up and tangled itself with him.

More thorns crept up around him, swallowing the ceiling, the walls. They latched onto his limbs, dragging him away, away from her. He grunted, struggling against them, against his fate.

Her doing, her magic.

"... Farewell, Lilia."

Tears prickled. His voice raised, pleading with her.

"Meleanor-sama, don't do this.”

She walked past him and ahead, forever out of his grasp.

"Farewell, Malleus."

He tried again, even knowing it was futile.

The bramble was weaving together, forming a tough wall between him and her.

"Meleanor-sama...!"

Through the last opening, a perfect circular window, she uttered her final words to him. That knowing, daring grin. Eyes beholding a gleam brighter than starlight.

"May the Night bless you."

And then she was lost to him forever.

"MELEANOR!!!"

Lilia laid a hand upon the ajar doors to the fallen castle. Fingers curled. At last, he had made it to the frame separating the inside from out.

“... That was the last time the princess was ever heard of. The end to her tragedy.”

He summoned his strength and broke free, entering the waiting night.

The moon, a spotlight for the two.

Silver bristled as he felt his first cool breeze. Still, he did not fully burrow into his blanket—for his glimpse of the stars stilled that instinct. That's right, Lilia thought, of course he would be enchanted. It's his first sky.

Many firsts.

"If you like that, you'll be excited to know that it's always changing. There are a number of new skies to see. It follows us wherever we go."

So we will never be alone.

The sky, so sprawling, so grand. So accustomed to everything and anything.

His small, lonely, insignificant existence was nothing compared to it.

Ah.

A single tear rolled down his cheek, landing on Silver's nose. The infant stilled, feeling the wetness upon his skin.

Lilia furiously wiped it away, then rubbed at his traitorous eyes. The sadness failed to recede, the memories welling. Promises, hopes, dreams dredged up. Yesterdays calling out to him.

"... You lied, Meleanor,” Lilia rasped into the night. “You told me I would be stuck with you for a long time. So why… Why did you have to leave us so soon?”

A thousand swords stabbed into his chest. The pain radiated outward, a bloody bloom.

"It’s not fair," he sobbed, hanging his head. "It’s not fair at all. Meleanor, Raverne… You’ve gone off together to a place I cannot reach, a place I cannot run to. You’ve left me behind. How am I meant to go on like this?”

I'm scared. I’m scared of the dawn and the tomorrows it will bring. Tomorrows without her and him in them. Tomorrows I must face alone.

More tears, plip, plip. A light drizzle upon Silver's face.

The infant stared up through aurora eyes. Not understanding, not knowing anything.

"How could I...”

Lilia’s voice caught on something sharp. He took a trembling gulp.

How could I learn to love you? When your kind, your very father, has taken nearly everything from me?

"... Hey, Silver."

The child cooed, as if in recognition of his own name. More likely, just responding to the sound of Lilia's voice.

Silver, the color of his hair. Silver, the shine of cloud linings. Silver, the start of something new.

"Tell me. What should I do?" Lilia's forehead and his touched.

Silver kicked his bendy little legs at the contact. Flailed his arms.

“Please guide me. I’m lost." He choked up. "I’m… so lost.”

Be the moonlight that guides me in the darkness. When all hope is lost and the stars have gone out, there will always be a silver light illuminating the path out of the black forest.

Show me the way, Silver.

“Show me if I can truly love you from the bottom of my heart.”

Lilia hugged the child to him. Felt his heartbeat, the same throbbing warmth that had radiated from Malleus’s egg.

After all that time alone amid the bramble… He was here. He was alive.

Up until her final moments, she had been thinking of them. Of this. The people she cared for, a baby not yet born.

The love he had let go, the love he had lost, the love he was he had to learn… It slipped away from him so easily, like grains of sand sifting between his fingers.

Lilia sighed with his entire body. The wind, drying his tears. He looked again at the child he had taken.

Silver giggled when he saw Lilia’s face. The boy’s eyes were clear. An unclouded, colorful aurora.

A weight in his chest lifted.

“… Did you enjoy that sad story?”

No answer, but a bop on his nose. Unintentional, he was sure.

Lilia rubbed at the place where he had been struck. There was no wound, no mark. Just a rapidly fading warmth where Silver's small fist had connected.

“… Silly thing,” he groused. In spite of himself, a stuttering chuckle rose from his throat. “If it will keep you from making needless noise, then I will tell you as many stories as you like. You need only promise to not laugh if I shed another tear.”

Silver squealed—close enough of a confirmation for him.

Lilia tried smiling. The corners of his mouth quiver before giving up.

Meleanor’s parting words floated to him. “May the Night bless you.” With that, it was the end of her tale.

The very same words uttered anew, a blessing for the boy once blonde. A fresh chance, the beginning of a new story.

Lilia looked to the horizon.

The first rays of sun were peering through the darkness. Gold streaking black in small slivers. Dawn had arrived.

A new chapter to their fairy tale.

219 notes · View notes

anandabrat · 29 days ago

Text

Briar-Rose

Happy @b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange, @madronash! I was so excited when I got your name, and writing a story without telling you all about it has been a great exercise.

I hope you like this story - I'm hoping to do your love of symbolism, drama, and hard-earned not-quite deliriously happy endings justice. We talked about the basic idea when I had it a year ago, but it's changed quite a bit since then, as stories are of course prone to doing. (I may have been forced to rewrite nearly the entire first chapter this evening due to to some helpful 4 AM brillance the night prior, for example.)

I'll be posting this story in chapters over the next however many weeks... there should be six in all if the story stays put!

Chapter 1: Prologue

Helena crests the final hill and gasps, alone in her car. Gasps, and lets her suspicions about the stakes of why she is here blossom in her mind.

Why, for instance, Pete had called on Myka’s behalf, with no explanation at all despite Helena’s increasingly pointed and frantic questions. “Just get here, as soon as you can,” he’d said, and practically hung up on Helena without a goodbye. This event was in itself alarming enough for Helena to get into her car and drive from Wisconsin with a scribbled note stuck on the fridge and an overnight bag that she couldn’t help but imagine that Myka would have been horrified by, such was the disarray and haphazard contents.

She’d only remembered to call her job and feign illness halfway across Minnesota. She’d done a twelve hour drive in nine. She’d called Myka ten, twenty times and hung up before she’d need to leave a message, but after hearing Myka’s cheerful, businesslike request for her to do so. She couldn’t stop catastrophizing as she sailed along the roads so straight and dull she normally had to fight torpor. She imagined a thousand maladies, hundreds of reasons why Pete might call instead of Myka, but beneath them all, like a bass line counterpoint, was the continual thought, why isn’t Myka tired of all of this yet?

And now she is here, and she gets her second visual confirmation that things are very wrong even by the Warehouse’s standards. Because even with the Warehouse… indisposed… she’d expected a crowd there. To join a circle among the people she had hoped largely to avoid, with whom she shares a complex past, to be trying fruitlessly to keep herself from staring hopelessly and awkwardly at one person in that crowd…

But instead, there is only Pete, leaning on his car, staring at her, waiting for her to emerge.

Helena steps out of her car smoothly, because she cannot be seen to be hesitating, steps past him with a nod of acknowledgment, and stares at the place where she’d last seen the Warehouse. She wants to fold her arms over herself, and since she can’t, ends up twisting them behind her back, hoping he will not see.

Thorns sprawl from the ground. They spread to the sky, a forest of wicked sharpness, fifty, a hundred, two hundred feet high. They cascade, tumble, multiply - Helena fancies she can actually see the wretched things growing. New shoots springing from the parched ground, fully grown brambles deepening, darkening, ossifying. Even if they were not ludicrously oversized, even were it not for the location, she imagines she would be able to tell this was artifact magic. She can almost smell it, at this point. It is a sixth sense she wishes she had no need to hone.

She is not surprised. She is, underneath a layer of stubborn refusal to engage with the Warehouse any more than is strictly necessary, grudgingly intrigued in spite of herself. But most of what she feels is profound irritation. Irritation, and fear, but she is good at ignoring that. She puts that practice to bear.

Irritation then, that she is once again ensnared. What else can she possibly be expected to do to free herself?

Besides forget Myka’s phone number, of course. Or Pete’s.

Helena stands in front of what she assumes is still, underneath the cacophony of vegetation, the Warehouse, and she does not sigh, because that would require a level of comfort around her companion she does not possess. Her body feels tight, like an overwound guitar string. Her fingers fold into each other again and again. She has to remind herself not to hold her breath. To look her companion in the eye, steadily. She has always had excellent control over herself.

Pete looks tired. Very tired. He’s paler than Helena has ever seen him, and his eyes are red. He also looks angry, and he’s not working very hard to hide it. Angry with her, surely. Helena can’t blame him, after the last time she saw him. After any of the times she’s seen him.

He must hate her. But she will not let him know how much this bothers her.

Instead, she lifts her chin slightly. “Alright, now that I’m here,” she says crisply, “can we please stop with the mysterious messages, as though I’m not even more well-versed in the Warehouse’s quirks than you and everyone else who works here? What is going on? Where is everyone?”

“She’s in there,” Pete answers, hearing what Helena doesn’t ask, gesturing vaguely at the thorn forest. “Or, I think she’s in there. Maybe. I don’t really know, not for sure…” He frowns, at the Warehouse instead of Helena this time. “I have to assume she’s in there. She’s not answering her phone. But damnit, we bagged it!” he mutters to himself.

“Bagged what?” Helena asks impatiently.

“The…” He looks at Helena as if he is suddenly re-evaluating the wisdom of calling her.

She sighs exasperatedly, despite herself, and runs her fingers briefly though her hair. “Yes, I know. Enemy of the Warehouse, or friend, or savior, nobody seems to be able to decide quite which. Can we please assume for the moment that I’m trustworthy, even if the Regents don’t? You must have thought so when you called. Or perhaps Artie did. Where is Artie?” Not that Helena wants to see him. She would be quite happy never to see Artie again.

“In there too. I think. And Claudia. I went for doughnuts. I…” he looks chagrined. “Myka was sad. Doughnuts make her happy even though…” He shakes his head. “I should have been there.”

Helena does not point out the obvious, that it is good that someone was on the outside. She is not Myka. It is not her job to reassure him. “What did you bag?” she asks again, with as much patience as she can manage.

“Last week. This lady’s house went just like… well, like this.” He gestures at the Warehouse and the forest of thorns covering it. “It got flagged because she’s a scholar on fairy tales and this is just like in -”

“In Briar-Rose?” Not Grimms, she thinks, please no. Myka asleep for a hundred years? What if she dreams? What if -

“Sleeping Beauty, yeah,” he nods. “Um. I tried to go in after her, and so did Mykes, but it didn’t like that, so Claud got online and -”

“It didn’t like that? What didn’t like it?”

Pete rolls up his left sleeve and shows Helena an angry red cut with half a dozen stitches. “Fairy tales have rules.”

“Did Myka -?” Helena cannot help the alarm in her voice, but Pete shakes his head.

“No, not a scratch on Mykes, so you’d think if anybody’d have gotten whammied, right? But anyways Claud looked up the lady and it turns out she had like a whole lifelong thing for this guy in the history department, and we brought him over, he was like eighty or something and he just walked right in and we waited around and after a while they both came out and everybody was fine. They were just fine! They were happy, even, they thanked me and Mykes for helping them find each other and… we bagged the book, it’s been in the stacks for like five days, I have no idea why it went off again.”

Helena hears that Pete is dancing around something. “You don’t know why it went off again. Did you ever find out what caused the artifact to activate in the first place?”

“Not for sure,” Pete says carefully. “Myka had a theory.”

“I’m certain she was right. She’s very clever.” Helena has no right to be proud of how clever Myka is, and wishes she hadn’t said that last bit.

Pete doesn’t notice. “I hope she wasn’t,” he says bitterly.

“Why?”

“Well. The old lady was obsessed with that story, for starters, but she, um, she’d been taking a copy of Grimms’ with her to the, um, to the hospital, to read while she had… chemo, and Myka thought that maybe the thorns in the book were like, a metaphor, right, for overgrowth? So maybe because the old lady had cancer, the book like, read it in her, and made… cancer vines? I didn’t really get it honestly but Artie got super excited and he’s really smart too and maybe…”

Helena’s throat is bone dry. She waits for a long time before speaking. “So you think Myka has…” Helena swallows hard. “Cancer. And that’s why she’s been whammied.”

“No!” Pete explodes. “I don’t! I mean, she’s been gone more than usual lately, yeah, and she doesn’t wanna talk about it, and she put that thing with the lady and the book together really fast even for her, but that doesn’t mean, I mean it could be a hundred other things, it’s the Warehouse we’re talking about here, right, I mean it could be because she had blackberry tea at breakfast for all we know, and we don’t even know for sure it’s Myka who got whammied, it could be Artie or Claudia or Steve or -”

If Helena thinks about Myka being trapped in a state of slumber or having cancer for another moment, she will lose all semblance of composure. “And so your grand plan,” she says nastily, “is to see if I can waltz in there, and not be torn to pieces?”

“Well, I’m sure as hell not her Knight in Shining Armor.”

“I believe it’s a prince, actually. And neither am I.”

“No friggin’ kidding,” he shoots back. “Knights and princes don’t hide in Wisconsin and let their ladies cry in the car all the way home.”

Helena blinks determinedly, and closes her eyes. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” You have no idea what it cost me to stand in that driveway and let her drive away. None.

“Look, whatever the hell you’ve gotten into, whatever possessed you to ditch her like that…I don’t care. You gotta sort that out right now. Man up or, you know, the lady man up. She might not be my princess, but… she’s my best friend. And I can’t fix it, and you can.”

He swallows, and blinks himself a couple of times, reaches in his pocket, and holds out a piece of paper. “I made you a list.”

Maybe he did see. See her perfectly for he coward she is. “Noble Steed,” she reads. “Shining Armor. Bright Sword. Ah. The consummate Gallant Knight. How do you know I need these things?”

“The first old man told us. He had on like, an old cardigan for armor, so I think it’s pretty loose. And Myka says there isn’t a dragon, and it’s only in the Disney version. Because I was waiting for green fire and it never happened. But it’s the Warehouse, who knows. Maybe you’ll find a dragon.” He sounds equally scared and eager at the prospect. Probably, he would like her to be roasted by a dragon, but that would deny him Myka back.

There’s a last direction scrawled at the bottom of Pete’s list. “I may have trouble with this last.”

Pete rolls his eyes. “It definitely won’t work without it. True love’s first kiss,” he sing-songs, and this might be the first time she’s heard that particular phrase spoken bitterly, “is the only way you wake up the princess. That’s how you bust her out. After the dragon. Everybody knows that.”

“Surely not,” Helena replies. “And if Myka heard you calling her a princess, she’d…”

Pete stares at her. “She’d kick my ass, right. But why not? Way you two look at each other, I figure… I mean, I called because…”

“Well, in that sense you’re…” Saying it aloud goes against everything in Helena. “You’re not wrong. But firstly,” she modifies, “that is not the way princesses are typically awakened in fairy tales, not historically. Nothing so… Victorian, dare I say. And secondly, I don’t qualify. For the task.”

“What, because you don’t believe in true love? Pretty modern of you, for an eighteenth century lady. Or because you don’t love Myka? Because that’s crap, anyone can see -”

“Nineteenth century, thank you very much,” Helena interrupts coolly. “And it is, frankly, none of your business, but even if I did believe in such foolishness… true love’s first kiss?”

Pete grunts, and pauses for a moment. Then he shrugs. “Look, all I know is, Myka is only gonna let one person rescue her, and it sure as hell isn’t me. So figure it out. You’re the genius. What I do know is, there’s rules to fairy tales, and if you don’t follow them, everyone loses.”

And point to Warehouse, there’s the match gone, Helena thinks. Helena can live with Myka crying all the way home, barely. She cannot live with Myka lost forever, even she is almost certainly the wrong person in every regard to do the finding. “Fine. I’m your man. But I hope you have equal confidence and better luck in Artie, Steve and Claudia’s true loves, if this maelstrom won’t admit me.”

She turns and stares at the tangle before her. Damn you, Warehouse. Helena has a thousand questions, but evidently all of the answers are to be found inside. If Myka has cancer, why is Helena is finding out about it only now? Why is Pete only finding out about it now? Does Myka herself know?

And the question she dared not ask herself before. What if Myka dreams for a century? What if she comes out like Helena?

And the one she barely dares ask herself. Surely Myka does not believe in true love of the first sight, fairy tale or any other variety, any more than Helena does. What on earth will happen when and if Helena succeeds in making it to her side? Whether she is awake or asleep seems trivial. Helena is reasonably certain Myka will not be interested in any aid Helena has to offer, either way. Not after the way Helena left things.

But Pete is right. Helena’s feelings aren’t important in this moment. Myka is the only thing that matters now.

Pete gives her a single nod.

She nods back, takes a deep breath, and strides forward with far more confidence than she feels.

She feels equal parts relieved and terrified when the vines peel back to admit her, then close behind her with a noise like a thousand snakes slithering in the grass. Gathering. Waiting to strike.

She avoids the Umbilicus. Bombs make her nervous enough without sharp things growing all around and potentially into them, and a cane as wide as a subway tunnel has conveniently cracked the wall open near enough to the ground to scramble in. The area inside is a jungle gym, and Helena scrambles over and under, and finally scales a vine up into Artie’s office. She squeezes through a hole in the floor, gathers herself and her breath, and finally makes her way to the balcony outside.

The Warehouse is always a strange, undeniably alien world. Now it resembles a landscape both more terrestrial and also more out of scale than ever more. Some shelves have already buckled under the weight of the brambles growing on top of them, and the pyramid has disappeared entirely, now an extremely large thicket. A river seems to have sprung up somewhere nearby, and flows most of the way down the center aisle, until it disappears in the far distance. Helena can see - of course, what else - a castle, far more beautifully and elegantly mossy and decrepit than any real castle, beckoning in the distance. Well, at least her path is clear enough.

“So it’s just you and me, then,” Helena says aloud. She knows it can hear her. No reason to pretend otherwise.

Her words seem to echo, even more cavernously than usual for the place - though surely it should be muffled by the forest of vines. Canes as wide as redwood trees split the concrete. She can hear leaves whispering as they unfurl along shelves.

“And don’t think you can confuse me with talk of dragons,” Helena says, louder, to steady herself. “I know my adversary.”

She almost swears she sees something large shift by a collapsed shelf, move deeper into the shadows, though it could be just a trick of the light.

And so Helena begins to traverse the Warehouse, alone and unarmed.

#b&w gift exchange 2025 #bering and wells #myka bering #helena wells #warehouse 13 #my fic

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