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kitshunette · 8 years ago

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For @exskullsior as part of the @aftgexchange, hope you like it! :D

Jerejean Fantasy AU

Jeremy is a summer nature spirit who wandered too far from home and got lost in Riko’s kingdom, a cold dark land plagued by eternal night and winter. Upon news of his presence, the King sends one of his Raven Knights to retrieve Jeremy and bring him back to him – the Knight of Three, who has the strongest wings and an obedience burned through pain; who flies through the blizzard until he sees a golden dot below, a pulsing light glowing with despair against the ice and snow that only wants to extinguish it.

Jean, who sees the summer spirit lying still on the white land, and decides not to go back to Castle Evermore.

(More under the cut)

There was a time when Jean lived in a house of pale stone and wood, upon a modest hill encased between a lazy river and golden fields below. He had parents, he thought, although their faces and voices now escaped his memory. He didn’t remember if they loved him, or if he loved them – and even if he did, that feeling was long gone, sucked into the darkness of Evermore like everything else. Jean remembered a time he had tried to escape the empty beast lurking at every corner of the cold castle, running from the feeble light of one torch to another, clinging at the childish belief that he would be fine if he stayed around the faltering flames.

But the empty beast was not a monster he could run from or fight – the empty beast was all the dark corridors of the castle, the moans of ghosts and laments of the living, and sometimes it was also claws and fangs and the hollow and cruel eyes of the young King tearing his mind apart.

Jean remembered that he used to look at the sun rise and set, far away beyond the mountains. The sun was a thing, he was convinced of that, a fiery orb casting warmth on the land and sprinkling the river with diamonds. He remembered the last part – the silver reflection rippling with the current, a thousand mirrors in liquid form. The warmth part, though, was more speculation than actual memory. Jean didn’t know what warmth meant anymore. His skin only knew the icy bite of the blizzard and the wet coldness of black stones.

The Raven Kingdom was a land where the sun never rose, and winter never ended.

And yet, right at that moment, Jean was looking at the sun. Not per se, not really, the shattered pieces of his memories were still pretty convinced that the sun was not, in fact, a small humanoid form glowing golden light. But even from across the white field, he could feel something. His skin crawled from that something, and Jean could feel his wings flapping uneasily behind him, animated by a separated will that both wanted to cross the field and dig a hole in the snow and never come out of it again.

“Find him, bring him back.”

His body jerked forward, and for a moment he could feel a gashing pain ripping through his left cheekbone. His hand rose to touch it out of habit, but as usual, he couldn’t feel anything different through the thick leather of his gloves. Not even drips of blood that would have faded quickly against the red fabric.

The humanoid sun was crouching on the ground like he was trying to roll up into himself, and Jean felt like watching a baby animal trying to survive a storm without proper shelter. There wasn’t much to do usually, except for putting a quick end to its misery.

Jean mused over the option for a second. Then the glowing form moved, and a pair of golden eyes were staring at him. Lost, scared. Kind. Fierce.

“What would a summer spirit be doing here?” Jean had asked in surprise. Riko had looked at him with his hollow eyes (always so empty, even when they were bloodthirsty), and the black crown on his head glimmered with a sinister light. The raven on his shoulder whispered something in his ear, and the King snickered; a brief maddening sound that rang wrong in the cold air.

“Who cares?” he said. “I want him.”

“Please help me.”

It was barely a murmur, and the summer spirit lowered his head, as if it had cost him all his energy to just say those three words. He seemed to shrink a little more on himself, and Jean noticed that his glow was fading rapidly.

He’s going to die, Jean thought, and he knew it to be true. Nature spirits never survived long far from their land, and this one was very far from his. Part of Jean wondered how the hell he had managed to end up in that wasteland. Part of him was already wincing in anticipation of what Riko would do to him if he went back with a dead body in his arms.

The spirit wobbled on his legs, and Jean almost reached out to catch him before he could fall in a messy heap in the snow. But instead of tumbling down, the glowing man stood up. Slowly. And then took a step forward and crashed against Jean’s chest.

Warm.

The golden eyes were staring at him again, and then he felt two hands against his head; the faintest brush against his jaw, and then suddenly his face was on fire – but not the painful kind, not the kind that made him want to scratch his skin off with his nails. The good kind. The warm kind.

“You looked cold,” the summer spirit smiled faintly, and Jean noticed that his skin had almost stopped giving off that golden light.

He’s going to die.

Like that baby fox Jean had tried to save years ago, that he had sneaked into his room in the castle and wrapped inside his blanket. That he had fed with whatever he could carry under his shirt from the dining hall.

That Riko had skinned alive and thrown to his ravens.

The mark on his left cheekbone pulsed, and Jean pressed on it like he could subdue the pain with his hand.

He’s going to die.

Jean caught the spirit when he eventually collapsed, and gently lifted him in his arms. He weighted nothing. Like an empty shell waiting to be filled again.

The mark pulsed again, more insistent, and Jean ignored it. He looked at the sky, and saw nothing but clouds, as usual. And tiny shapes flying far in the distance, circling around the sharp and deadly towers of Castle Evermore.

“Just give up,” Kevin had told him one day, when he had found Jean sitting under a torch – too scared to make a run for the next one at the other side of the long corridor, too stubborn to listen to the whispers calling him from the shadows in-between.

“No,” he had said, and Kevin shook his head sadly, but still gave him the torch he was holding. Kevin didn’t need it. Kevin had stopped fighting a long time ago.

Jean cast a last glance at the ravens cawing above the Castle, gave his wings a couple of tentative flaps, then took off in the opposite direction.

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