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ms0milk · 2 months ago

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𝟏𝟕 | 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐚𝐥𝐥 (𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐧𝐞 & 𝐭𝐰𝐨.)

ー✧ prince!bakugou x royal guard!reader

"He does not grab you by the collar or threaten you with his teeth and when you grasp his hand to steady yourself from an awkward step, he is the boy who makes magic for you in the dark."

slight cw panic sequence. (I) reader agonizes after yesterday's kiss and of course the ball is today. blue mages haunt you, red wing captains stalk you, the wrong prince finds your hiding place (II) bkg will not let you embarrass yourself alone. ballgowns, blue fire, champagne, pearls, a song from home, relief and peruro. dance my love, or die. 7.7k

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Captain Hawks has one job and you’ve made it so much more difficult than necessary. He’s had one job for fifteen years. Red feathers brick out southern wind from the hiding place he’s made above your window and he glares through gusts and goggles to watch you finally return to Prince Touya’s room. You crumple in a pile at the foot of the bed when the door clicks closed. You’re rotting. Sulking. The Alderan dragon everyone’s so worried about, you who his king assigned him to watch– you, the girl with wet eyes and hair full of hay.

You kissed your prince last night. He knows the feeling.

Hawks takes a sip of coffee and grips the barrel of his mug to keep ocean wind from throwing it off the roof. The king is right to worry about you. You have spent one week wandering palace grounds, greenhouses, pantries, walkways and stables and never once guarding your prince. Weird bird, are you the chicken or the egg? Did you stop guarding Katsuki because you’re the spy Enji thinks or because not even the red wing captain could follow you undetected? Because you know better than to keep close to your charge when something is stalking? Hawks winces in a particularly strong breeze. It’s the latter.

Two eyes burn suddenly from your gloom to the parapet fifty meters outside your window where the captain spills his coffee in a rush to stay out of sight. What he wouldn’t give to be warming a bed back in town but instead Hawks rolls his eyes, flat on his wings behind a gable wall. You rise and jerk your curtains closed, glare like black fire.

Princess Fuyumi runs clear through a ten foot portrait propped up in the hallway to be dusted. She’s cold, she’s sick of sending maids to find you and the ball is today. Master Aizawa is securing perimeters somewhere too far away to be helpful, Uraraka’s finalizing guest lists, and Bakugou is getting stitches because he’s good for nothing else. The princess shakes paint flecks from her hair. She rips canvas from her belt and throws the standing frame to the ground.

Kirishima has never dressed for a ball like this before because parties in Aldera usually require armor. What do you do at a Ball if not wrestle? Do Takobans dance Peruro? Sero and Kaminari assure him he doesn’t look silly in white. Todoroki sits outside beside the sea. Deku holds his hand tight to keep him from jumping in.

In the king’s rear guard, Shinsou nurses a broken finger. Enji derives gross entertainment from screaming at soldiers all dressed in blue and it smells like the king came home for this party. The queen cannot be found. Few people think to look for you. No one minds blue fire.

An already tedious afternoon dissolved when a boy crossed your path on turret stairs, your hiding place from prying eyes. You didn’t have the heart to bark when he stumbled through Excuse mes and My Ladys. The quiet wasn’t helping. You could trust Bakugou with his champion for a day but your prince’s hands still danced on your skin the longer you let thoughts linger.

The little footman continued, melting, as you raised your head from between your knees. He carried a box under his arm and waited for your permission to move in the tight stairwell, “From Princess Fuyumi.”

Inside the box under the arm of the boy on the spire stairs was a dress.

You spent last night between pickle barrels in the distillery and hid in the morning where you knew your prince wouldn’t think to find you, curled in the deepest sconce of the north wing watching staff fly past. Today is the ball. It’s why the princess ordered you a dress and it’s why you’re pulling gold lace through your fingers by candlelight. Aizawa’s training pit echos pretty like the sea when it’s empty and the uniform room has a mirror. It’s a dark little annex off the main ring without those Takoban windows Captain Hawks loves so much.

All week, you growl through the effort of fastening garters to a stocking. Another. All week he has followed you and all week you kept his attention off your prince. If Bakugou had just stayed away, if he’d just hated you properly. You lean back to inspect neatly laced boots– Alderan dancing knots– boots so delicate they couldn’t be made for actual dancing. What will he wear tonight? You force a hand through wild braids.

Soldiers can fight armed or barefisted, fire cannons and crossbows, deliver first aid, hunt, guard, salute. You would be the head of your kingdom’s army and so you must know one thousand more important things, like how to string a corset and when to use forks in a line on pretty tables. Silk the color of blood gathers all the heat of your chest and keeps it close. Does the heir of Aldera waltz Takoban? You take the buttons at the ends of your sleeves in your teeth to fasten them closed. What will he look like in their blue costumes dancing with their pretty ladies? Can you remember how to count rhythm in threes? Can you even look at him?

More important than a soldier, court mages, even more important than a champion, you are trained as Head of Royal Guards. You are poison tester, navigator, weaponmaster and seaman, you judge the safety of the room by the shoes of its hosts and you wear fine clothes at fine parties to accompany your masters like a trophy. A prized hunting dog. You will be beautiful for one night and you can no longer avoid your job; assassins love to hide at parties.

“Steady,” you whisper to the gods.

It’s been a few years but you know how to wear these clothes and you know how best to move, and you wince when the sheath of a dagger chills the skin under your ribcage where it hides. You sparkle unsettlingly in the gown and grunt through the effort of untucking stubborn skirts from hilts and scabbards. Wielding a candle to examine yourself more closely in the mirror, you judge the shapes impractical clothes make when they’re meant to fit only you. Pleats of red fall over themselves from your waist to your ankles and in your reflection a bit of fire stirs, because in a cold kingdom this gift was made of love.

You are blood red tonight from neck to heel. Gold tassels align themselves like military badges across your shoulders and the sleeves of the gown bleed to lace at your wrist where two green buttons wink. You can’t help staring. Jeanist’s dragontooth gleams on your breast.

This is an overstuffed week. Hedonistic, anxious like a blood clot heart attack. You are stalked, you are tested and attacked, you’ve pretended not to feel, you did half your best, you snacked instead of training and sat in pleasant company you love, why wouldn’t a ball punctuate this disaster? Something about preparing for war in the dark makes this bearable. Something about fastening a knife to your thigh keeps you from thinking about Bakugou Katsuki and the formalities waiting for you upstairs. Someone is watching you.

A man clears his throat outside the doorway, careful not to stand where you might see him but you are too focused to be caught by surprise. “What do you want?”

“Apologies, Captain.”

At that, air falls loose from your nostrils. Your lips don’t dare part to make a sound. Your self-important posture doesn’t have time to settle before red pleats freeze and the candle cracks like a knuckle in your palm because the horror of this hadn’t occurred to you. That voice will never leave.

“Y/n?” the flame mage murmurs again.

Why would Aldera want you back? Playing princess instead of posting sentinel. Knowing you’re spied upon and letting Bakugou find you, day after day, letting him help you house spiders, letting him spar, letting him smile, letting him sit beside you– you knew what was watching you– something worse than flying captains. It’s why this horrible place remains horrible and the cold like frost can never be shaken off the back of your neck. It’s why the queen hides in stables and why your blood runs black in the instant you understand yourself through your reflection.

Your two shoulders fly through the doorway first so that when the blue mage attacks your legs will be spared enough to carry you upstairs. You can outrun him, you can outrun anyone. You should have paid more attention to ball preparations this month instead of languishing in your prince’s backwards attention. You should have killed yourself to kill him before his body hit the water. Why wouldn’t an assassin slip through the cracks of your distraction? And why wouldn’t it be him? Unkillable.

The candles inside the changing room are doused and shattered so that you are the only possible flammable thing in this dusty arena and you pull the knife from your hip as you soar over the threshold.

It would have flown hard when you released it– might have even killed a ghost– if you hadn’t seized up as the figure came into view. White hair, tall with sunken eyes, only slightly shorter than his father. You right yourself to land on your new dancing boots, and their heels wail two lines through the sand at the edge of the arena.

Prince Natsuo doesn’t have the energy to be surprised by you. He is not fazed by your drawn weapon and doesn’t flinch in the dark, but he remembers your name, “Captain Y/n?”

Like a cat your eyes go wide and your knife clatters to the floor. Half-fresh braids fall over your shoulders in a deep and rigid bow. Your fists bunch the soft material at your hips and you consider dropping to your knees in the silence and dust of the sparring pit so far away from any party he should be attending. Your heart beats to a new fear, “Highness,” you stammer to the ground, “I–”

“Do you dance, Captain?”

You do, and you quirk an eyebrow at the floor. It’s becoming increasingly clear, for how threatening this country is, that its eldest princess actually took all the reason at birth. Swallowed it from the room with her first cry and left kings and countrymen to stumble on their words, for even when you are not threatening him at knifepoint there’s a dread just behind the prince’s every word. Your Alderan senses are dulling in this kingdom. Your ghost never sounded so nervous. “I’m sorry, sir,” you lift only your head from the stiff bow, “I don’t understand.”

Prince Natsuo’s suit is blue trimmed silver. He is white trousers and shining bells, military honors, rope tassels, broad like his father, beautiful like his mother and dressed like a blue glass bottle. He’s never spoken to you and seems to have trouble even looking at you now, like a rabbit the dog runs past in a hunt.

You soften, “May I escort you to the party, sir? You’ve made a wrong turn,” rising fully as the prince gathers his thoughts and keeps well away from you– no. Less away from you and more just to himself. Like pouring a cup just full enough to tease the tension at the rim, Prince Natsuo is bursting with nothing to say.

All week you hid from spies and all week Alderans made it their job to find you, to be near you. Today you hide from just one man and suddenly every person in the cold kingdom knows exactly where you are. Winged captains weather the winds to watch you and squire boys can retrieve you from tall towers. Maids predict which hidden paths you’ll take from the kitchens to ask if you’ll need a bath– intercepting you without issue or sweat. Are you that predictable? Unsubtle? Obvious and lacking, or does horrible Takoba deserve a little more credit? Her skittish prince can track you down to the darkest corner of his castle like it's only natural to hide from festivities instead of attending them.

“Please excuse my being started.”

“It’s your job,” he musters just as you scoop up your blade and tip it back into its sheath amongst skirt folds. “Thank you– for your job.” He’s fidgeting, not murderous, and his voice no longer sounds like a monster. The prince scratches gently at a bauble on his chest as you peer through the dark, “I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry, Bakugou’s heartbroken voice parrots. Don’t cry. He pleads with his hands on your cheeks. You can’t change what you’ve done. Bakugou Katsuki can haunt you til death, but you don’t get to hide from him.

“Your Royal Highness, it would be my pleasure to escort you upstairs.” You square yourself to the blue bottle prince, “Humble Y/n, apprentice to the Captain of Her Alderan Majesty’s Royal Guard. My apologies. You had to come all this way just for a proper introduction.” And extend your hand to him, a polite smile on your lips. To death then. You’ve survived worse than a party.

Natsuo does not take your hand. He pops something off of his chest, drops the something in your hand and straightens his suit jacket, content with or oblivious to the fact that his sister inherited all his good social reason. You eye him first and then study the metal on your palm that glints in dim moonlight– candlelight– and tense as the room’s circle of sconces suddenly blink to life one by one.

Of the fifty candles in the training room ring, the first five from the entrance miraculously catch bright warm fire. Six, then the seventh, one by one around the edge of the room. Natsuo rushes to pat out your panic, “Magic candles.”

“Magic candles,” you repeat, which makes much more sense than a drowned magician. You exist at the edge of complete catastrophe, always prepared to fight that man who was too bored to kill you, but magic candles make sense. When have you ever seen a servant in this cold place spend their time lighting candles?

“And a medal,” Natsuo continues. You follow his line of sight to the object in your hand. It’s silver. It fits right in the cleft of your palm. The inscription around the edge is in a language you don’t know but what is clearly the moon sits in the center. A comet streaks across it and together they make the emblem of the House of Todoroki. “The medal of honor.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“It’s yours.”

“It certainly is not,” you say, the air sort of floating from you instead of being pushed out by your voice. Eleven, twelve candles, a quarter of the room is lit. The badge warms in your fingers but you no longer look at it and extend your hand back to the prince in a gown that already makes you too ridiculous to breathe. He shakes his head and you push your open palm a little farther like a plea.

“I’ve seen you. I heard about…my father’s arrival in your training exercise and I, I didn’t, I don’t think my sister’s champions would have been fast enough to stop him if you hadn’t. You kept my mother from the mad magician and I doubt anyone has thanked you and I, I just– my father wouldn’t allow honors on your gown and mine is more than I deserve.” He straightens his jacket again and continues to struggle with eye contact. Twenty-two, twenty-four, twenty-seven candles come alive in the cold arena and the ring of light reaches the pair of you at the far end. “It’s much less than you’re owed.”

Prince Natsuo bows to you deeply and turns so quickly that arena-sand clouds his feet. He does not accept your escort and he doesn’t turn around. He only strides across the room, thirty-three candles, and out the dark but open doors. It’s easy to imagine him judging his own performance just where you can’t see him; he exudes the nervous energy of someone who cringes when they turn your back to you. You’re smiling before you realize. Fourty.

It’s slightly warmer than you’ve felt all month, in clinging red skirts and candlelight. Aldera is always bustling so Takoba is loney in comparison, but maybe there is comfort where you have never looked before. Comfort in red gowns. Comfort in sweaters beside the sea, comfort in silver soldiers and a training room where you are not their commander. That thought is a shock and you clutch the comet in your hand at the edge of the room. Forty-five.

Aizawa’s training pit warms by candlelight under its glass ceiling. Oppressively tall and so much like drowning, the stars blink down at you from their thrones like dappled moonlight on waves. You fasten the comet pin to your bodice with eyes tilted to the sky. Your first night here the sky was the only one who knew you. You smooth your hands up your hips and rest both palms at your waist where Bakugou held you, bleeding, poisoned, his forehead slipping off your shoulders with sweat and the lurches of the horse. A ten minute ride from the edge of the forest to the city gates, it was only the sky watching such desperation. There was comfort in that, under the threat of death. Comfort in your loss of rank here, in anonymity.

Rescued from a crowd, rescued from punishment, rescued from the sea, from cliffs, from sickness, from solitude. Saved by magic, saved by strength, by yourself and by your prince, over and over again in this wet kingdom.

There is comfort in teaching strangers to fear you and you blink through the memory of your cherrywood halberd soaring through a dinner party. The loss of its weight at your back makes you ache and your ears start to itch as the rest of the night replays itself. Forty-seven. Bakugou pressed close between your legs at the lip of a table. His thumbs smoothing your cheeks over like parchment and his cheeks flashing red at a realization– at everything you now realize he was trying to say, to show you. You’re grateful for the privacy of the stars again so that no one can ask why you smile in an empty room.

Forty-eight. Dying for a person is so much worse than dying for a cause. You thought it might be the end when the blue flammed mage forced his hand around your mouth or when a garden screamed in ashes under his boot. When he– he took you by the shoulder and branded the shape of his palm to your flesh, when your arm was relieved of its socket– everything, all of it came so much easier than the moment your prince stepped forward to face him. Easier than Bakugou collapsing in a burning clearing, easier than counting the decline of his heartbeat through the clothes on your back, easier, so much easier than retching up seawater together on the sand.

Prince Bakugou is agonizing. Forty-nine, he’s upstairs, gilded, waiting for you.

You shake your head like unnecessary thoughts might come loose with the movement. For one night your worry can be in not staring after your charge– not tasting his lips when you wet yours at the edge of the party– and not in hallucinations of murderous mages. A comet and a dragontooth remind you of the weight of a heart. The last candle around the glowing arena beats to life beside the first and it is time for a ball.

You would have smoothed your skirts over the daggers hidden among them. You would have checked your hair again in the mirror and tested the fit of your boots with a few secret skips. You’d have imagined the warmth of Bakugou’s hands and his magic, to ease the ache of watching pretty blue ladies waiting to dance with the barbarous and beautiful prince. You would have attended and served quietly, you would have dreamed of home if the flame in that last pretty candle wasn’t flickering in a clear and lonely shade of blue.

Fifty.

“Find cover!” you hiss at the squire who collapses to the floor rather than get knocked down the stairs in your charge, “Douse the rugs!”

You call over your shoulder and hurdle the staircase railing rather than waste time sprinting to the bottom. If all of your training boiled down to a single skill, if there was only one chance, one thing you could be trusted to do in the blink of an eye it was arming yourself.

A shortsword shines in your fist as you sprint, its wall hooks worse for your wear after being ripped from the armory on your warpath. The scabbard is fastened sloppily to your left hip. Cruel images of half-scorched bodies, croaking victims that need both your hands to carry them to safety, your prince– they necessitate the holster which whips your thigh as you tear through a quiet castle. Quiet, so quiet, too quiet for a ball, idiot, you should have known. Every single light in the castle blinks to life in the very last lilacs of sunset, and every single one of them quivers with blue fire.

Seed-sized wall carvings flow through their forms, animated by your speed. Stone does not creak when you step over it, hardly any servants linger in empty hallways and the thought that one squire boy will be the firefighting force for the whole castle is horror compounded by horror. “Captain Hawks!” You bellow with the last bit of air between strides.

He’s watching you, he didn’t abandon his assignment for a party. You burst from servants’ paths onto the exact blue rugs you knew the stairs would lead to; your Alderan senses might be dulling but this castle is no longer a maze. Takoban cluelessness can take over all it wants. All it needs to do is get you to the ballroom in this stupid fucking dress. One by one, sconces yawn in innocent blues and burn so hot and so quickly that wax weeps to the floor.

A window in the line takes your pommel to its pane as you retch the sword’s hilt through the glass and shout, “Hawks!” louder, between flying shards, into the night, “Fire!”

Candles instead of your dress, a candle instead of your flesh. He could be anywhere, nearby, outside, straddling corpses, you don’t know the rules his magic follows and every step you take without bursting into flames is a second you can’t waste. Your prince will fight to the death, you cannot let him. Your prince will die for his friends, you can’t bear to lose a single one. Send me instead, you beg. Me, wait for me.

You soar down two flights of twisted stairs and lurch at a tight corner before colliding with a laundryman and his blue candlestick. “Run,” you seeth without stopping, vaulting over both the man and portrait strewn across the floor beside him, ripped at the center and trailing flecks of paint. The last turn is towards the right leg of the grand staircase, entryway and ballroom dead in your sights. Red wings don’t appear and so you hook your hips, and your gown with it, over the lip of the banister.

Hardly a breath escapes the closed ballroom doors. Why are there always too few guards here? What ball makes no noise? What kind of monster could kill a room of people without making a sound? There are clicks, you panic as the banister ends and dismount the slide into a sprint. There is the bone chilling image of the blue mage clicking over corpses with the heels of his tall black boots– the body of your prince lying charred and bloodless before he could even let loose a spark.

Your dancing boots make the loudest sound in the entire palace as you run your legs harder, to carry you farther, until finally your hands are flat on the ballroom doors and your biceps scream under orders. The elven silver budges only slightly. There should be footmen outside to let guests in and the anxiety of their absence gives you an unnatural strength, enough to force one gilded door open a crack and slip into the destruction with your weapon raised.

Find him, find him, find Bakugou first, soft sunny hair and pomegranate eyes, the boy who barks laughter, he who wields the magic of old gods, your heart, find your prince, get him home.

Silver foot bolts shriek over marble as you force your way inside. You are a cacophony always. You are blood splattered across the edge of the dancefloor when you burst into the party.

“Highness!” You shout into the blue before realizing the silence of the ballroom doesn’t come from death. One thousand pearls startle immediately at the beast and her raised sword. Gowns of lace, suits of glass, feathers, freckles, masks and tiny shoes, bells, fans, crystal flutes of pink champagne, and not a single person speaking over a hush. Two hundred eyes watch the Alderan dog prepare to fire again into a party.

Balls in Aldera breathe life to the city. Any comfort you felt for Takoba dies with your entrance. Waiters roll between guests with trays of cake and wine, and the winter floral decorations must have cost a fortune for petals to be sewed and draped and weeping from the walls because this certainly was meant to be a ball. Your fingers ache for the weight of your halberd for the first time since you lost it in the sea.

There is no mage when your heckles fall. No mage when your shoulders droop and your sword with it, not when you search the ballroom for your Alderan sun, not a single shock of white hair taunting from the windows. Every candle in every abra, every chandelier, sconce, cup, spike, or lamp, is a melancholy flickering blue above the sea of silent guests.

Your weapon falls slack. You exhale as the swordpoint chips the floor.

The queen sits on her throne beyond leagues of distracted dancers and servers and bards, with her hands folded and her husband beside her tense, hunched, and licked by fire where you startled him out of his seat. The great ballroom window blinks with its audience of stars. Just outside and over the cliffs, the maws of the sea applaud.

You jolt, as do the guests closest to you, at the sound of metal crush but it is only Uraraka in her uniform, catching the tray of a server who panicked at the sight of you. Shinsou’s hair isn’t hard to pick out from his post beside a waitstaff door and he thins his lips instead of speaking. No one speaks. There is no laughter, there is a single violin playing from a fifteen piece band– did you scare the trumpets too?– weeping a waltz for the dancers who crane away from their partners to watch what you might do. Their every gown is white, blue, green– silver like sea foam. Their hair obeys them and folds into smooth shapes at the tops of their heads so that their noble throats can be struck sick by the air of a room above the sea. You are the only foul red thing here.

The flame of worry collapses in your chest along with your heart. Quietly, blue fire watches back without laying a finger on anyone.

Oh.

“Y/n?”

There you are.

The ring of dancers at the center of the room curl around in their timid waltz, revealing new faces from the back of the crowd. Kirishima in a fit white suit, too focused on not crushing his Takoban partner to even realize you’ve arrived and then Mina, full of worry with her hands in Fuyumi’s and both perfectly placed in the seaside painting with their layered dresses of white. She makes to break away from the current, to rescue you, but her prince beats her to it.

The prince of Aldera climbs trees in the summer to reach the best apples. He likes to bathe at night. He is slightly shorter than his mother in her favorite boots and it bothers him, but never enough to say anything. His fingertips sparked when he kissed you.

He is cloaked in red. An abandoned partner jingles angrily as he drifts through the tides and calling your name is the easiest thing in the world, “Y/n.” He glows. You have hidden from this all day, and tonight his war cape arcs sanguine circles around him.

The Sun approaches, he glides to you like picking up a stray is part of this dance. He takes up your swordhand in his, weapon clattering to the polished floor and with a magic-heavy hand at your waist the scabbard belt falls away. Hair pushed straight back and two red earrings dangling, Bakugou rolls his eyes, “It’s a dogshit party,” and a few pieces of hair fall over a stitched gash on his cheek, “but I doubt a swordfight will fix it.”

You don’t understand and you don’t try to speak through volley after volley of embarrassment.

“Won’t,” he rumbles, “won’t let you look crazy alone.” Prince Bakugou Katsuki steadies his palm just behind your waist and draws you onto the dancefloor, hand in hand. He is more than beautiful. Polished boots, white suit and golden embroidery– each button in his vest is flanked by a small Alderan sun. Dragons prowl along the hem. His red cape you thought lost, rocks you with homesick.

“Highness,” he steps to a rhythm in fours, heel toe, toe, toe heel forward into the fold of your dress to guide you back into the stream of dancers. “I didn’t– I–” Your feet barely make the proper shapes to keep up for your Alderan heart is a grease fire not a hearth. Bakugou holds his head high to the side with the posture of a king. His pupils occupy their lowest corners so he never need take his eyes off of you.

You, his war criminal.

“Sir,” you manage and wince when you dare a peek past his shoulders towards onlookers.

He is embers, “I have a surprise.” He does not grab you by the collar or threaten you with his teeth and when you grasp his hand to steady yourself from an awkward step, he is the boy who makes magic for you in the dark. Bakugou Katsuki’s ears are scarlet even as he stares ahead, sweat pearls between your fingers and he sweeps you close, albeit awfully tight, through the steps of a Takoban dance. His face catches light from the candles above and the shadow of his pale lashes sweeps over both cheeks.

A corded thigh slips between yours and back again to the tune of one sad string. The rhythm doubles for four steps and calms again. You could dance the continent around for all the etiquette training you’ve endured but something about the lack of ghosts here, something about your heart beating out of time with the song, about red eyes and a clenched jaw, the hand fingering notches on the small of your back like it might a cello– you are suddenly on the catwalks again with your lips smiling into his, you are holding back tears, you are clicking teeth and stumbled steps and hands cupping cheeks, and your heart bleeds all over the dancefloor. Your voice cracks, “I’m so sorry,” and it is the loudest thing in the room.

“The candles are blue at the queen’s request,” he rumbles, sacrificing posture to watch you properly, to correct you. “That must…I, I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have let them.” Bakugou raises his right shoulder in invitation for your hand to rest there but your fingers lift from his arm as he turns you both, and settle on that small new wound at his cheek. You breathe deeply as your chests slot together, no fight in sight. Your relief almost comes in tears.

Party guests do not stop staring, especially now that the foreign royal has spirited his beast to the dancefloor. At a distance, familiar faces train gazes your way. Little doctor Shuzenji and Aizawa beside her nursing a pink champagne flute, both ribboned in their bests. Uraraka offers you a tight lip at the edge of the dancefloor. Fuyumi boxsteps in line nearby, the lonely violin picks up pace, hand in hand with her youngest brother and attempts to lean in to whisper to you before Bakugou cages them both out with his shoulders.

He clears his throat, “Captain,” the second-loudest thing in the room, “will you dance with me?”

It’s not your best, admittedly, but the thought your four-step is poor enough your partner needs to clarify does lighten the mood, and you nod. Half your focus is sacrificed to keeping calm in such a full room and the other half is completely at his mercy.

“Peruro?” Bakugou raises those flaxen eyebrows, his lips led by yours. The dance peruro. Destructive and certain to give the Takoban King an aneurysm. Something like comfort slips in. Your eyes widen suddenly and your prince with you. What does he see? you wonder. You nod again.

The waltz will reach its climax soon and Bakugou leads you through a perfect Takoban rhythm until the second he dips forward to whisper, through your hair and over the silence of this cursed party, “Mind your ears, dragonne.”

You shudder immediately at the name, hand in hand, chest to his. Something in your perfect center bursts in white flame and you throw your eyes down to your skirts.

“Dance!” Bakugou’s voice cracks like a whip of thunder above the soggy party and he lifts his chin over your head. The vibration of every syllable rumbles from his ribs to yours and his growl is smoke on water, “or die.”

The next second a horn howls one crescendoed note and every hair not squeezed into your silk dress, prickles. You jerk your gaze back up to Bakugou, unsure what expression you might be making, “How?”

But your prince is still grinning wide so you must be too. “Bribed em,” he leans close and as one confused violin trails off, another trumpet joins the fray. Dancers look around distractedly and onlookers whisper, louder, slightly louder, to be heard over the addition of percussion to the building swell of tuning instruments. A pair of cymbals crash like earthquake, a waitress topples over.

Shinsou shakes his head in the corner of the room and rubs his face, fondly entertained. The king is out of his seat again. Suddenly a fifteen piece band is making the sound of home. The band vibrates under an arc of camellias and the small woman seated at the front pulls a flute from her suit jacket. The herding call of her shepherd’s pipe gathers the cacophony and just as quickly as the group disrupted the peace, they hush behind seventeen beautiful whispers of the pipe, clear and bright as stars. It is the quiet start of Mitsuki’s favorite drinking song. Fear of crowds melts from you like bedtime stories.

faire of the fields

the girl who plays for me

dance and i will watch you

dance and i will join,

you who

teaches beasts to love

send us all to war

She draws the final note long and low, violins become fiddles, trumpets repeat the tune, a drummer growls, two pipes build, and the flute cheers back atop a flirty melody of three before the brilliant song erupts. Bakugou clasps your hand tight and throws you from his grip so that you might twirl and glow under his arm but the rules of peruro dictate a little more focus than that.

The closest dancers to you shriek when Mina barrels through them and pulls you out of his hold. She squeals with two gloved hands on your waist, “Miss firelight!” Her dress envelopes yours and the spinning doesn’t stop until you’ve tripped a man at the edge of the dancefloor and very nearly toppled over yourselves.

Over the curve of her shoulder you snort, shocked by your own glee, as Takobans try to adjust their waltz to the Alderan rhythm and inevitably four-step themselves into a fervor. Kirishima towers over your prince and barks with laughter trying to get the man to spin under his arm. Shinsou is no longer brooding at his post. He is hand in hand with Kanminari, flecked all over with petitfour cream, who has led him into the fray.

“Lady Mina!” you bellow and take up her hand in yours. You fasten your waists together and both of you fly into the tide. When was the last time you put the blue mage’s voice away? How long has it been since you last danced Peruro? Singing while stepping, laughing, diving for bystanders and squealing when drunk guests toppled over themselves to be the one to lift you into the air. You steal your partners in peruro, and fight to keep them. It keeps the room from feeling small, from crushing you. When you are thrown whoever catches you gets the next dance and the songs never end.

Euphoria threatens to spill over the fire Katsuki started in your heart. Flame mages are far from your mind under blue candlelight.

The queen does not move, but she might be smiling. Fuyumi yelps when her champion scoops her up from behind and places her on her shoulder. Even the youngest Todoroki and his freckled champion tut about together to the rhythm. You hope no one tries to steal the blue prince; he might not survive it; and make eye contact with Natsuo while you completely butcher Mina’s three step dips. He stands at the base of his parents’ thrones, unmoving, but pink with excitement.

Takobans, even servants, lingering at the edge of the crowd cannot outswim the rip current. They belong to a quietly stubborn nation who will attempt their delicate hop skips even to the bleat of an Alderan horn. Only cowards leave a dancefloor and it is the first respectable tradition you’ve seen here.

In a flash of red across the room, your prince takes up two stiff women in each arm and you almost spit in laughter as they go purple under the instruction of the barbarian prince. The polished floor vibrates. It’s too loud to think, a mix of happiness and screams of indignation as pretty lords and ladies are pulled into the fray by those countrymen only slightly drunker than they.

Peruro is a game and so when Sero Hanta and his cheeks tattooed with lipstick kisses, plucks you from your partner, Mina can hardly complain. The flutist roars her approval and her fiddlers breathe life into the happy song behind her. Trumpets pluck, bleat, and howl complex harmonies that prove you’re Alderan from the sheer intoxication of the sound.

Sero’s long arms wrap behind you and you’re off your feet before you can speak. “Return of the Red Captain!” His grip on your sides is more ticklish than hell and you giggle and squirm as you fall into a dip. His palms hit something hard, the dagger concealed in your gown, “Are you armed?” He chuckles and tugs you up and close, back to chest.

“Me? Never.” You peek over your shoulder, both laughing, and he peels you from him so tight you spin away three times fully and far enough away from him that Kirishima poaches you without difficulty.

His Alderan fire rolls off the warm parts of him in waves of pine smoke and happiness. How many yards of fabric it must have taken for Takoba to stitch his suit– the cost– you can’t imagine. He hoists you onto his shoulder before you can think a moment longer.

Your red pleats swell in the air and settle with your hips on his broad shoulder. The hidden sheath under your bodice taps his ear. “Are you armed?!” He hollers and spins once to make you squeal and grip tight to his hair. Princess Fuyumi covers her mouth to hide laughter and you beam at each other from your shoulder seats, over the sea of Takoban heads. The champion shrugs you into his arms and back onto your feet. The new heels of your dancing boots click like bells every step you take.

Eijirou is a wonderful dancer, and difficult to burgle. He throws his hands above his head and the pair of you clap, kick one leg out and turn, eyes always locked and teeth shining. With your next kick, your hip checks a short man attempting to dance Takoban and knocks him into another pair. Eijirou’s next clap, behind his back, startles a woman so badly she covers her ears and the whole room reeks of home. Drown in it Takoba, dance or die.

Your friends are safe. There’s nothing to fear from shitty parties and you spare a thought for the servants you must have traumatized on your rampage down here. Wers and mers, the window you broke– Kirishima’s hands are at your waist because you are distracted, you are searching, and before you can brace yourself he has thrown you clear into the air.

No matter how much you hate it here, the ballroom is beautiful and Natsuo might be a wonderful king. His decorations shine in the queen’s candlelight. Early winter flowers are strung by the thousands to garnish balustrades and window frames, they erupt from iridescent vases and hang in an arch over the howling band. Bundles of pearls dot every corner and swallow the moonlight. Silver shells and whistles, inlaid cuffs, white wigs, Takoba is most beautiful by moonlight. There’s no sun here. Did you ever think you’d hate him? That you’d miss him? Where is he? Your prince likes plums best because they’re sour and he blows on dandelions when no one’s watching and he works construction with his men when the city needs repair and he hates how dry paper feels on his fingers. The daggers at your hip cool in your descent.

“Red suits you, dragonne!” Bakugou roars and you land square in his arms to the coo of a shepherd's pipe. You blink and his, him, he– he stares. He is terrible at piano and walks with his head down after rain to keep from stepping on worms. He mends his own clothes because his father taught him how to sew. “You,” he attempts to speak, “Captain, you,” but the high of the dance dissolves from him even as the music swells because you stare and bring your fingers to the wound on his cheek.

“You’re beautiful,” you breathe. He does not find his words in the space between your faces. Your prince goes pink. Enough of the room is dancing now that you need to read lips to truly hear anything but he understands your every thought without effort as he lets you down. There’s a hand on your back to keep you close. I’m afraid. It hurts to be so close to you. He presses his forehead to yours.

“Y/n, ’m sorry.” You fight yourself not to fight the closeness. It’s rotten work. Your gown matches his suit perfectly and pressed together you spin in the chaos and climax of a beautiful song.

The prince rolls figure-eights against your forehead with his own. Two much less focused dancers jostle your duet and Bakugou sweeps a foot forward to trip the leader before lifting you over the pile of men and returning to the dance. You glow red in his arms above him, halo of the moon.

A tall man shifts between rushing servants on the catwalks. Your prince beams below you, king of the sun. It's a pretty party. It is perfectly loud. A polearm is readied on a scarred arm in the dark and no one minds blue fire.

The flutist picks up speed, spurred on by the tambourine, and each note from each instrument cuts itself off to make time for the next. Every place you touch one another aches. If it would just stay like this forever, dancing, knowing without speaking, you could kill any enemy. The sky would learn to kneel, if only you could keep the adoration of winespilt eyes.

A series of gasps, a yelp, and Kirishima’s sweet laughter punctuate the thought. Bakugou was meant to wear fine clothes like these. Sparks like fairy lights twinkle where sweat beads on his jaw and you would have given nine lives to kiss him one more time. He will be a good king too. There is a scream.

Your hand on his shoulder bunches the fabric of his cape, and you lurch forward to lock your other hand around his back. Your foot is dead behind his before he can blink and with a surge of momentum from the dance, the last swell of fiddle, a prayer for old gods, luck from the sea and something like love, you knock the prince over your shoulder and onto the ground into the thickest thrall of dancers.

He laughs the whole way down and holds you where he can to keep from knocking your heads together. The sound is molten gold. You would sin to hear it always.

He is still laughing, howling, bursting with joy when he hits the ground and you with him in your perfect dance peruro. He doesn’t notice the whine of dropped instruments or revulsion of the crowd because he cannot look away from you. On his back, on the floor, beneath you, Prince Bakugou lifts his arm to cup your face and freezes in the new and sudden silence.

The impact of the spear shattered a chunk of floor beside your prince’s heart where it landed. Missed, you grin feebly. He’s okay. He is perfect and wide-eyed and beautiful, and the blade of your cherrywood halberd shines with blood from its home through your chest.

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#bakugou x reader #bakugo x reader #welcome back >:)#a hymn to black water #fantasy bakugo x reader #fantasy bakugou x reader #bnha x reader #mha x reader #bnha fantasy au #mha fantasy au #fantasy bakugou #fantasy bakugo

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ms0milk · 2 months ago

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𝟏𝟖 | 𝐃𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞

ー✧ prince!bakugou x royal guard!reader

"He glows like fairylight at every place sweat pools. You don’t realize he’s carrying you, running, sprinting, because you don’t realize how much blood you’ve lost– how many pieces of you Takoba took on your warpath."

cw reader does her job detrimentally well, mortal wounds and soulmates cradled in pools of their own blood. ambush from an undead mage and the carnage that follows. descriptions of violent burns, be warned. rage, revenge, sparks unleashed in anguish, the muddy little girl who loses spars in the bailey and un unshakable harrowing greed. a second ghost crashes the massacre, halo of the moon 6.6k

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The second your blood waters the dancefloor, baubled lords and ladies stumble backwards and through a crowd half–too drunk to realize something has gone wrong and half-too whelmed by music still howling. The ball devolves at impossible speed.

Bakugou pulls you onto your side and underneath of him faster than you’re able to slip down the spear towards the bite it carved from the floor. It’s nearly the length of your arm, it’s meant to fell boars, it’s meant to be hilt deep in a monster at the bottom of the sea and you are meant to be dancing, pretty and red in his arms. His hand jerks behind you to burn the blade from its shaft without taking his eyes off the rhythm your shocked lashes flutter. With a single singed fistfull of spark, the wood splinters, it panics, it clatters to the ground.

“Eyes,” he is still, not calm, beside you in a white suit that laps your blood hungrily up its hems. His fingers grope at every warm and suddenly limp part of you, trembling through the pleats of your red dress to pull your hips nearer, to cup your cheeks again– your jaw, to press hard at the flow of blood from the faucet your own blade made from your ribs and cry wordlessly when your firelight eyes contort first then dim with the pain. Bakugou shields your body with his on the bloody dancefloor, “Y/n!”

“Get clear,” you murmur into his palm as your head drops to the marble.

Shrieks and glass shatter the air when the first blue candles melt in clumps from a chandelier. Bows die on their fiddles. The ballroom might be a graveyard already for all your prince knows– for the terror that sounds off in every direction– but his captain’s blood feeds the prowling dragons of his jacket and you are the only person here who cannot die.

When Uraraka throws her princess over her shoulder the masses succumb to chaos. “Cover the throne!” Aizawa cries, Queen Rei! Majesty! Open the doors! Raise the alarm! Soldiers struggle through the sudden current of fleeing guests to reach their royals at the back of the room. Glass shatters, pearls burst from snapped jewelry when hundreds of people threaten violent stampede and you are right to hate crowds. Shuzenji.

“Y/n!” Kirishima cries. Shuzenji, the doctor. Bakugou’s gaze flies up towards the panic, he prays through the chaos with eyes the color of treason. He keeps you near with useless hands the color of heartbreak. “Attacker on the catwalks!” The champion shields both of you with the width of his shoulder but Bakugou isn’t paying enough attention– he isn’t– Kirishima’s saying something and your eyes have closed.

“What happened?!”

“Y/n!”

How did you know?

Agony from every direction. A burnt cackle floats above the clamor like foam. There is a ghost at the party. He walks unwaveringly forward through servants that startle and shove past each other and he tilts his head to muse over panicked ants in their pretty glass box. The ghost shakes out his throwing arm with a smile. Every now and then he makes a candle drink its wick whole and catch blue on curtains or a fleeing gown and that makes him smile too.

“Katsuki!” Mina screams over you but her prince is frozen between kneel and rise, staring, begging through the seagreen throngs. He needs the doctor. He knows he knows he knows he knows. You lost consciousness too quickly. You whisper to thunderstorms. You prefer rye. You– you’re– he– Bakugou’s breath doesn’t come. If you are moved wrong once from the floor you will die. The ghost is bored.

There is a shriek worse than the others when a woman and her teal silk slip go up in flame from heel to crown. Not far ahead of her, two men choke as blue fire blankets melt their tongues to their throats.

Any order the guards had maintained falls away under threat of cremation. The delicately dressed masses panic to every corner of the room and even more begin throwing their bodies at the unmanned elven doors. Enji should be executed if he is not killed tonight, for keeping his family so prisoner in a palace where doors open only inward.

None of you should have come to this place, he shouldn’t have allowed it. A blue comet arcs overhead and Mina throws her friends under a wave of her hand and the shield of her magic, “We have to move!”

Bakugou’s breath doesn’t come til it does, because as his champion makes to lift both him and his red captain off of the ground, the Todoroki Champions come harsh into focus. They defy the crowd, Shinsou soaring, Deku crackling black, Uraraka– she carves escape from the wall of people climbing over each other at a crack in the doors, with her princess over her shoulder and the doctor small under her arm. Breath becomes thunder.

You are scooped tight into his arms before he can explain to Kirishima, in tears, or Mina or Sero armed above them, as their prince cradles his wounded captain like porcelain and bursts from the ground.

“Kat– wait!”

The old doctor winces as she is spirited through fleeing coats and gowns and armor, through the smoke, and startles at every immolating shriek in every scalded throat. How many has he killed? The fire smells familiar before it smells like flesh. The yolk of Fuyumi’s heart breaks on Uraraka’s shoulder.

It is the death of a prince sixteen years ago, it is Rei’s final smile, it’s Aldera’s first trip to the sea, it’s a curtain of white hot stars that shine brighter the closer they burst in their warpath. When Bakugou lands he takes Uraraka with him, hard against the pearlescent wall.

She drops her princess before she is crushed by impact or runners, and growls, but the body in Bakugou’s arms keeps her from striking. “Get her out!” He roars, again pressing the weak bundle of you into her chest at the edge of a cannibalistic crowd. A bloody spear juts from your bodice like a lighthouse. Your fingers still twitch in pain but your face has gone slack and your wild braids fall without purpose over your prince’s sleeves. A child shrieks. A woman throws her daughter above the chaos and through the pathetic opening in ballroom doors and goes all up blue, arms still outstretched, behind her.

The champion isn’t given a choice. Fuyumi’s trembles as she wretches Uraraka’s arms around you, “We will!” princess promises prince. Shuzenji is steadied on Fuyumi’s back and Bakugou has never seen the old woman shake; she cannot look at blue fire. He keeps the women and you now with them, tight against the wall inside his chest and not one of you questions why you haven’t gone up in flames, only when.

He cups Uraraka’s face in a blood-soaked hand but speaks to the doctor, “Keep her alive.” And rips his cape from his shoulders with the other, “No one’ll hurt you. Won’t get close.”

His hands are the last thing to leave you. The fireproof cape is fastened over Uraraka’s shoulders with Fuyumi holding tight close behind and your blood ensures victory because his hands are warm with it. Strings of flowers pop as they succumb to fire, violins wheeze in the heat. He has to fight. When Bakugou dares one more glance you are the ache of the last dragon in his friend’s arms. His fingers linger on your stomach, the lift and fall there where fire is meant to be and he is ten again, on the battlements, watching you lose spar after spar in the muddy bailey below.

The Alderan prince is airborne faster than any mage might follow and he fires five missiles at the catwalks through a clenched fist. At the height of his arc he twists to face the stubborn doors in collision. Kirishima and Kaminari are busy below him collecting wounded Takobans to pile behind Mina’s growing greengrey shield. Sero and Shinsou cut through the air, flying like acrobats on ribbons between the chandeliers towards the mass of armored guards at the back of the room. Aizawa backs the queen against her throne and beside him, the king stares without moving. Not one lick of fire slips from him.

Bakugou hits the doors and the shrieking masses at exactly the same moment, foam and teeth to pull him under. They will kill themselves to escape, they will kill each other. Silver nails dig into whatever flesh is nearest for purchase over thighs and shoulders. The bodies never stop. Bones break unmistakably, wigs and shoes succumb to flame almost at random, the laughter– Bakugou fires every pearl of sweat on his knuckles down into the marble he is pressed against and the new destruction creates enough space underneath to breathe. One wrong move, you’ll hemorrhage, you’ll burn, worse, you will crawl out of paradise to get up and fight for him if he doesn’t get you out now.

Deku fails at every turn to keep the Todoroki prince behind him against the great window of starlight. The champions are smart to keep their royals far apart, the prince thinks as he digs his fingers into the only marble seam in all of Takoba. Magic the color of greed, pink, white, orange, and gold, detonate the lower hinge of the ballroom door.

The crack of escape becomes a maw as the door, fifty feet, buckles over itself and slips to the side supported only by its highest mechanics. “Go!” He cries under the crowd, he pulls lords to their feet, his jacket is ripped from his frame, he lifts the wounded through to safety, he tackles diplomats before they are hit by blue comets and he remembers to breathe when Uraraka erupts through the thinning throng in her armor, barely grazing the floor as she soars from the ballroom and into the chill of the entrance hall outside. Fuyumi grips her cape and the doctor with it and all four of you are launched by magic into the night.

You are safe in her arms. You are ten years old in the bailey on a rainy day and you are the only one of Jeanist’s recruits soaked in mud. You are gone. Bakugou is a boy watching you always.

The ghost pouts over the guardrail before he drops from it. He is lean like his mother. His white hair tickles the collar of a blue suit as fire bursts forth under his feet to slow his descent. “Begging your pardon, Majesty.”

Everyone but the king, comes to terms with horror. Enji freezes where he stands with arms outstretched in commanding order among his men, and flame dies from him on the stairs of the throne. His wife is quick to her feet, silent. Natsuo does not move. Confused Alderans are the only actors in the room for just a moment.

“Attack!” Aizawa barks. The second the master’s eyes fall on the mage, his fire dies beneath him and gravity snaps that lithe beautiful body to the ground. Bakugou erupts alongside scattered soldiers. He catapults from the elven doors on magic every violent calculation of fireworks. He is the one who shot you. He is the one who dragged you to the sea. The blue mage is dressed for a ball and catches himself easily in a landing against the filthy ballroom floor. He is the douse of your bonfire heart and your prince will have his head.

“You don’t listen,” the mage drawls. His suit jacket is the blue color of dusk, so dark it would be black if he weren’t framed by the night sky in the window behind him. He raises a lazy arm towards the guards mobilizing from the throne ranks like it might be the easiest thing in the world to order their surrender. Who wouldn’t submit to such delicate blue eyes?

A flame rears from his open palm. The mass of it could rival any dragon and the heat kills sixteen soldiers so quickly they cannot make a sound. When the light dies, armor hisses in puddles and bone. “I have a question,” he clears his throat. There’s no time for Bakugou to pivot in the new chaos. The prince releases pressure from his fists to slow ascent and clips warped weapons from how close he hugs the floor.

When eyes fly to master Aizawa he is suddenly wrestled between his queen and his own soldier who means to kill her, no longer watching the mage. The Takoban soldier drives a blade through his master’s arm and only falls when he is slit by Aizawa’s knife. The damage is done. Forces rush to pull the traitor off the platform of the throne, but they are grappled in turn by the surprise of more traitors in their own silver uniforms. Soldiers who eat and sleep and live and love together, begin to kill each other and Aizawa is as far from focused.

Why!? Bakugou seethes as his feet hit the wall in front of him. You would know, you would see it. He retches his head against gravity and stars shoot from his fingers towards the back of the flame mage, but their hidden attack– the chain of explosions they’ll make upon contact– let loose before even getting close.

“You’re just flammable, princeling,” he coos in his dark suit. A blue flower stands sadly in his lapel, “I am ignition.” Again the bombs detonate five meters too far to do damage in the waves of heat that reach from him in every direction.

Some sort of peace is found in the ambush. The guests have either fled from or hidden in the reaches of the ballroom. No attacks touch the undead mage and to his horror, Bakugou realizes that every other mage in the room is struggling against a new civilian enemy.

Cowering dancers pull weapons from their blue silks and strike at the soldiers attempting to help them. Kaminari hardly pushes Mina down fast enough to avoid the mace of a lady who was dancing only minutes ago. Shinsou is trapped at the base of the throne between treasonous soldiers, corpses, and suddenly armed diplomats and Master Aizawa can’t be seen– he’s been struck– the king does nothing, Bakugou doesn’t understand but you would.

You fire weapons into crowds. You remove unpleasant guests from his mother’s council. There’s no room for shame when you have never been wrong. You creep into the battlements at home to watch the stars and not once in twenty years has there been an intruder at the castle. Bakugou did not die the first night in Takoba because you, soggy with river water, trembling with cold, kept him behind your back– pinned him tight to the ground– when the fires started. He didn’t die in the gardens because you would pluck him from hell if he tried. Not even his own champion moves so quickly.

On the debris scattered floor, Bakugou considers strength. How much of his invincibility is not his at all? And how much of his complete and total inability to think now is yours too?

“Your sweaty guest could tell you all about this one,” the ghost tuts. The elegance of his stride almost distracts from the scars that rot and steam under his cuffs. He rummages in his sleeve, the silver buttons glow with heat, and twirls a vial between long fingers. “Call it derealization. How does it feel now, Master? How did it feel Alderan? To have your magic sucked and twirled down a drain out of your reach with just the nick of an arrow? The twist of a little knife dipped in an even littler bottle?” He pivots when a fallen beam catches blue in proximity to his stride and leans closer towards the throne in the clearing he has made around himself. “How does it feel to learn? The easiest part of this whole night was paying Takobans to kill you.”

Whatever solutions Bakugou had come up with for the confusion of this hellnight, evaporate. “Eijirou!” He shouts. His champion flies unheard over marble towards the ghost and all his blind spots, skin splintered like armor, when his prince’s voice cracks over the din of combat, “the girls!”

His attack might have hit. Kirishima, out of all of them, can withstand the most heat and he hates to reveal his friend’s position, but something so much worse is surely happening. Uraraka, surrounded and suddenly swarmed by assassins disguised as diplomats fleeing fire. You, cold in her arms and patrolling guards not quick enough through the maze to help her. The fact– the horror of a thought that scant castletown staff might have already fallen to the mage’s infiltrators.

Kirishima abandons his path towards the mage and dives under the incoming strike of a turncoat soldier. Newly armed with a broadsword, he careens through the crack in the great ballroom doors and into the dark of the castle, understanding his prince all too clearly.

“Do you want to know why?” Ash drips cruelly from the stitching along the ghost’s jaw, “Why the king returned home– who sent for him? Aren’t you curious?” There is something so smothering in his whine, like sadness will suffocate every person here before smoke. “Doesn’t anyone want to know why I need Alderans? Or do you already know? Clever boys. You already know what will happen when the prince that you promised the world you put down, claws his way back from hell to kill the heir of the Aldera. Of course you do,” he sucks his teeth, Natsuo goes white beside his mother who hasn’t made a sound. The queen keeps her son behind her even as her soldiers struggle to keep traitorous daggers at bay in a sea of noisy silver.

The ghost raises his hands again, right towards your calculating prince and left towards the royals on their frozen thrones. King Enji stares, unblinking. Rei’s hands fly from her sides and trace frost through the air.

“A beautiful, unwinnable war.”

“Touya!”

“Mama.”

Two Todorokis regain themselves. As flames scream out from the mage’s fingertips, Rei’s incalculable wall of ice splits the room in two. It cracks marble, shatters chandeliers, it butts the ceiling and grips through the stone so hard that dust plumes from the weakened foundations. At the same time, the youngest Todoroki, and his champion, burst into the open air, rocketed forward by his own frozen and rising pillars. Bakugouwinces as he ricochets through Takoba’s new obstacle course. His skin chaps from violent heat and shocking cold.

Shoto makes an egg of his undead brother, cased all in ice as he flies past. Deku isn’t more than two seconds behind him and in a flash of black light, the casing shatters like the person inside couldn’t possibly remain in anything but pieces. Unsatisfied, two familiar ribbons jolt over Bakugou’s shoulders. The three of them shoot higher together into the night, between and against the pillars of ice and the playground they made of the party. Sero is faster. He smirks, bloody, in the clearing Mina made for the injured. His magic reaches through obstacles, over his prince and whips like bandages around the ghost’s broken prison.

“Heel, Blasty!” Kaminari grunts because every fighter in the room realized at once that the mage’s fire would always be stronger than his brother’s cold. The cracked pieces of ice become water in an instant and when Kaminari lets his magic loose up Sero’s ribbons, that same water boils. Cracks of lightning blind the dim room lit only by moonlight and sad stray blue candles.

Bakugou’s magic punches him to the ceiling. His burnt white vest and a tattered shirt glow, the sweat down his neck, at his jaw, down his sides, sting and pop and crackle. Starfall, yeah?

Before the scent of burnt flesh can drift out to sea, the prince bears his weight and magic down on the place the mage should be in smoking tatters. If this ghost is the reason you stare down dark corridors, Bakugou is the reason you never rest. Mage or prince, he won’t forgive either. He lands in a dehisce of pink and golden sparks, “Fucking die!”

“In due time.”

When the prince detonates, the mage holds him close. As Bakugou hangs he thinks of Aldera.

There are too many days without sun in the summer, and too many without thunderstorms in winter. Your prince loves spring best, wet and warm. Which is your favorite? He cooks like staff in the kitchens when the chefs away to have their babies; there is always a baby being born in Aldera. It balances out all the idiots that get killed in the forest. Did Jeanist send you on patrols too? To keep clueless hunters away from the unicorn nests? Does Eijirou know? Does Kaminari gossip with you in the potions pantry? Does Sero joke with his captain like he does with his prince? Who do you tell about your life? Mina? The queen?

Bakugou has never been able to escape from love. At every turn, he is held hostage by it. It is his friends yapping about their days, their fears, their anger, it is worry and exhaustion and forgiveness. You are the only one of which he couldn’t draw a perfect map.

Your prince detonated five meters too far to do any damage because the mage is ignition. The mage holds him up by the jaw, dazed over the lip of the platform of ice. “Now you finally know,” his long fingers trace the air around the prince’s chest where flammable sweat bursts without permission from proximity to blue heat. He jerks and grunts in the mage’s grip, “how that destructive magic of yours feels. They called me destructive too, s’ why my father tried to have me killed.”

Bakugou’s fist bursts from his side in his concussed haze but the mage, the ghost, the undead prince, heats the fingers holding his face up to scalding and on instinct he clutches at his captor’s wrist instead.

“And so I perfected destruction. I am sorry that you have to die– and that your little red thing got in the way the first time.” He grins as Bakugou thrashes against the ice, half blinded by his own unwilling sparks and half deaf from the wringing of his misfire. “My friends and I make such an unfathomable fortune from this little elixir. Enough to raise an army for hire, enough to bring down every magic-blind kingdom– maybe derealization will hit Aldera after you die. Maybe it’ll be dripped into the queen’s favorite ales as she wages war for her dead son. Wouldn’t it be beautiful? Watching the continent that relies so much on its odd affinities be forced to take up clubs and spears like animals? A world without magic.”

The mage pats his unmarred breast pocket where the vial lies. In flashes Bakugou is flush to your body on horseback. The poison beats through his heart in place of blood, just enough to steal his sparks and not enough to kill him. He is weak but safe in sunsoaked blankets beside you. You don’t need magic.

“You’ll take me there princeling. Your head will start the war that kills Takoba.”

“You’re so fucking chatty.”

As long as you’re alive, the world doesn’t need magic. You’ll show them. You’ll teach them. Bakugou’s frame begins to tremble with sparks as the last white skin under the mage’s grip burns to the muscle. He has a lesson to teach first, his very last one.

“Katsuki!” There is a guest at the cursed party. When Aizawa soars into the mage’s range behind flying blades he snatches the back of the prince’s collar, dipping, ducking, half-conscious, and clear off the edge of the platform. The fall of the guest’s blood is the only sound she makes.

The sudden plummet shocks Bakugou’s consciousness into some semblance of function, the Takoban master’s arms around him, and together they crash into the bodies piled below to break their fall. A sea of battered soldiers, Deku, Shinsou and all his armor– collectively wheeze under the weight of impact.

There’s nowhere to hide in Takoba. The ghost smokes from every rotten seam high above the crowd and flames lap his lips in frustrated exhales. His nightblue suit cannot withstand him. There’s nowhere to hide, not one crack for the bugs, not for maids, not for mages and Bakugou’s eyes go wide when the ghost begins to breathe fire.

Queen Rei is not fast enough, her son is not fast enough, their ice doesn’t fly– his Alderans– Mina is battered among wounded civilians and traitors alike, her magic withers. Sero and Kaminari, the last soldiers, Natsuo, his father, weeping lords and ladies– the night sky shines back in Bakugou’s eyes.

The image is framed by it, stars, always. A blue mage unleashes hellfire from his jaw to start a war. The body of Aldera’s Captain, blades and arms drawn close to her face, launches off the catwalks like she might have learned to fly, like she might be a dragon.

Your silk dress is torn at your knees, the bodice ripped to tatters, and your prince’s cape is woven in strips around your chest and the wound there. Your body arcs with the promise of a deadly impact. You hang in the stars the moment that time freezes for him, like a painting his mother would wear. The hunter is caked in her own blood. You are beautiful above him, eyes the color of arson. You are greed like he’s never seen. You are ten years old in the bailey on a rainy day and you are finally victorious with a guttural cry and a squire pinned in mud beneath your staff.

“I can’t take more than you have Y/n. This could kill you.”

The cape does its best to bandage the leaking wound under your shoulder. Your halberd and its marksman missed your heart, missed both lungs, and still punched you through the collarbone, blade doused with poison.

“How badly do you want to live?” The doctor had asked, fingers trembling. One hand clutched the spear your body pushed out with two rounds of recovery magic.

War hummed outside the closet Ochako used to hide you. How did you ever have the energy to dance peruro? “Will is dwindling,” you’d groaned back. You reached for the princess who nodded in her silly beautiful ballgown and took up your hand with her mother’s ferocity. The three of you held your breath in the dark. The sky would learn to kneel.

Your first dagger bends inside the mage’s back as it hits bone and the second is swung and retched like sunrise, through his throat. It would have killed him too, had the heat off his skin not melted the metal to its hilt in your fist.

The ghost makes a point to grasp you tight when he reaches over his shoulders and snatches up silk. He doesn’t forget to warm his hands up to branding. “Monkey–” he gasps at the exact same moment as the great ballroom window shatters behind you both into thousands of violent shards. You snatch something before you go, tucked away inside your bandages. Red feathers punch through the immediate chill of midnight sea air and you are yoked into much more temperate arms.

Captain Hawks beams above you, “You called?” His lips form the words you can’t hear over his speed and you are all too quickly tossed, wound yowling, out of his grip and over a bridge made of ice. The hands that catch you this time reek of caramel.

“You rotten,” he gasps, face full of you, “horrible asshole.” Bakugou glides, over ice and under fire that has lost its mark in the new chaos. Pieces of window sink into jackets and coats and flesh. Salt suddenly plagues the fresh air, chill from the goddess. He holds you as tightly as life will let him.

Clingy, you swell. Landing is the worst part as always. Your prince hits the far edge of the throne area on sparking boots and swerves circles on their heels until the momentum dies enough to let him straighten. Blood trickles from one ear and the skin at the underside of his jaw is burnt and bubbled in the shape of four long fingers and a thumb. The hands under your thighs won’t release you. Not without a promise. “Get out,” he breathes, “disengaged, run.”

“You’re welcome.” He shakes his head and you with him, smiling, “Don’t go where I can’t see you, Highness.”

Rei catches the threat before you do and her ice pierces the back of a man in blue satin racing closer with a longsword in hand. It is a horrible thing to jump from your prince’s arms. Shuzenji was right, your heart might not make it. Your prince crowds you away from screams of fire and the threat of veiled assassins, but he is bleeding all over his fine clothes. His chest threatens to burst from its vest and send its sun-shaped buttons out like birdseed. It’s impossible to focus over the whip of wind in the now-open ballroom above the sea. You’ve lost too much blood.

“Old man!” Captain Hawks screams over every hellish iteration of flame mage’s attacks. His blue fire, horrifyingly, is searching just for you. Red wings swoop, the captain is a swallow hunting for a perch, “Wake up! Your Majesty!”

The king’s men have done well to protect him. They have swarmed his giant useless body to keep attackers away, they have fallen at his feet in droves and piles while he stares through blue fire. Shuzenji was much the same, frozen at just the sight.

“King Enji!”

“Please!”

The blue mage’s voice creaks like a campfire. His body is losing the fight with his magic and you have never seen something so horrifying. Obviously the nightblue suit is magic, but his flesh blacks like meat in patches the longer his fire rages from mouth, hand, and chest, “Well?” Orange light crackles just slightly at the sound almost a voice, “Father?”

The awful syllables are punctuated with flame. The last chandelier shatters, the queen and her son choke on the heat thrown towards them before they can react. Traitors are caught in the cross as the mage makes to kill his family. His horrible family. His horrible father suddenly offers red fire up just as high as his wife’s melting wall. The king’s face is still hollow but light licks his edges and the mage is thrilled for long enough to forget about you.

Defense is bleak. Kaminari can only electrocute so many turncoats before the puddle of champagne he’s using as conductor dries up. Mina is barely conscious; she’s been hit by something, and Sero makes as many trips as possible with a bruised Shoto to evacuate unconscious guests before he comes back for his friend. There’s no way to tell how many traitors were among the ranks of the castle tonight. It’s impossible to count how many remain, hiding under the guise of injury, and how many have snuck deeper into the castle to wreak the mage’s havoc. Bodies litter the floor.

“Eijirou?” Your prince whispers as he both keep you tight behind him and traces the path of the king’s errant flames. Enji’s fire arcs like the crash of waves into a melting, smiling mage alone above the dancefloor.

“With Uraraka and the princess.”

Aizawa never got back up. Deku carries him out the crack in the doors alongside his prince and the last of their refugees. Instead, Shinsou is the general leading Takobans through their ranks to retrieve their royals. Not a single reinforcement has come from the depths of the castle besides a bleeding foreign captain.

Bakugou nods and instead of threading a path of escape through your fingers, you watch him. You reach for him.

Hawks abuses blindspots like a demon and primary feathers become blood red swords faster than opponents can counter. He’s not fireproof though, and the mage must know because the winged captain hasn’t been able to land once since arriving. Blue and red flames wash overhead, spurred by the air off the sea through the broken window and mers if it’s not colder than death when you’re not dodging meteors.

“Highness.” Your hands catch the swell of his temples when he turns to face you. He is even more the Sun soaked all in blood and his brows are desperate with thought. “No one’s coming.”

You think he tries to reach for you, "And we're going home." You think he really does mean it.

You nod in the shadow of debris he’s tried to hide you in before you move away, before you smile, before you command the sky, "Yessir."

Sharp under his right arm, you drop, pinch the wrist of the silent assassin behind him and drive forward until her elbow breaks. The next seaglass woman doesn’t stand a chance. She throws a punch towards your bandaged shoulder and with all the momentum her body contains, you wrench your palm under her chin and over her head. She’s gasping on her back just in time to avoid the canonfire your prince releases to cut down the men with their weapons raised to you. He’s hiding injuries. You shouldn’t be faster on the draw in this state.

“Cover Shinsou’s retreat!” The sun will obey you. You call back as his face falls. Does he know? How hard it is to leave him here– do you hide your heart properly? Did you do a good job?

It is exciting to be alive again. Traitor-soldiers fall to your simple defenses. The joint lock of a wrist or shoulder and a brief stint with the air over your back is enough to keep men down. Training you mastered at ten will bend a kingdom to your will. If the flame mage needs Alderans for war, he will fight for you, you will do, and the others will have time to escape. Your prince is calling your name. Explosions shower the path you’re carving through the ballroom with golden sparks. It was a decent party. Peruro– Bakugou, your prince is a wonderful dancer.

“Captain!” Your Alderans hold shock like water out of a sieve. The three of them stare after you, Mina slumped with an arm over Sero’s shoulder, Kaminari with his arms raised in attack ahead of them. It feels so good. The mage’s soldiers attack anything that moves, you’ve always hated it here, and it feels good too, to strike them. You don’t need a weapon, you couldn’t properly hold on in this state. The last pieces of your halberd smolder between corpses. The air is a tangle of limbs in your wake. You are Aldera’s Red Captain, back from the dead. Attackers in blue silk fall under your dancing shoes.

King Enji finally takes an offensive step and claps his hands to bring two crashing plumes of fire together on either side of the mage as he dances down the last of Rei’s ice. The force of the impact is purple and white out the window over the sea. The castle must be breathing fire, must look like a dragon from the town below, like Alderans were invited to the party.

You relieve a man of his shortsword and only regret for a moment, turning tight and running him through with it. The meat of your shoulder weeps with exertion.

Shinsou will force the queen and her family through the crack in the ballroom door, he has her under a shield now, racing. Your friends will follow, Hawks– he– the captain hits the ground like a horrible beat of thunder in your path, his wings singed in both red and blue. You jerk your head back to the war of flames overhead.

The blue mage takes advantage of the shadow of the catwalks in moonlight and his father fires indiscriminately upwards. Ceiling crumbles. The overwhelming scent of the ocean pulls in howls and gusts of wind through the shattered holes in the room. If you were stronger you would tackle the ghost back off the cliff into the sea.

“Y/n!”

“Fall back! The king– he’ll–!”

No one else can tell just how badly the ghost is melting. When you struck him, nothing burnt. You could cling tight just like the night in the gardens. The heat only came to his skin when he needed it to– to burn your prince, to catch your knife. It cannot exist all at once, he is not the surface of the sun, he is in pain. He begs and bargains for his magic. He is a monster but he is much more easily killed than you. The only horror here is in how badly Takoba hates its king and how easy it was to ensure no one came to help him.

“Touya!” You scream over the boom of crown molding cracking the floor to pieces nearby. You heard it from the queen, “Prince Touya!” Tight in your fingers and high overhead, you hold the vial you plucked from his breast pocket.

Suddenly his father is much less interesting. Blue fire and a midnight suit dive for you but you have studied dragons. You lurch behind the closest mountain of debris because marble does not conduct heat well; it hardly even wilts as blue bears down on it from every sweltering direction. You crouch through hell, through the screams of your name, through the mage’s last breath and dive out of cover the second his magic pauses for air. The king is quick to charge across the floor now that his son has landed and the stolen vial is tucked back tight between your bandages.

Pearl hot flames lick your silk hem and you hardly leap to the platform of the throne fast enough to avoid either fate, red or blue, mage or king. The dance peruro is destructive. You twist out of the path of a thrown dagger and roll when the floor gives out beneath your shoes. Fire only dreams of touching you. You are soaked in the warm puddles that remain of Rei’s wall, and up again. Run, to every corner of the room, make the mage look for you, and let the blind king kill everyone in your way.

The last Todoroki clears the crack in the elven doors under Shinsou’s orders. It was a beautiful, horseshit party.

Stars every color of the rainbow pour like tears through the fire of the night as a soldier takes you off your feet. They are wild, face burnt from ear to nose, and their blade would have driven through your throat hard enough to shatter if Bakugou hadn’t hurtled them out the window and into the sea. He glows like fairylight at every place sweat pools. You don’t realize he’s carrying you, running, sprinting, because you don’t realize how much blood you’ve lost– how many pieces of you Takoba took on your warpath.

Whose turn is it to apologize?

There is cheering, someone calling you think. When flames lick the prince’s heels he covers your head with a magic-calloused hand. You’re bleeding onto his pretty clothes and Shuzenji was right.

The prince vaults over a falling chandelier with magic on the balls of his feet. He’s faster than before, he’s not growling or screaming, but he’s still alive under the hand you press to his chest. You knew he’d follow you. You think you’re at least owed one or two chances to play general because in just a few more jerking strides your prince, and you against him, break clear through the elven door as if from guns. The last two Alderans almost free.

You aren’t awake to note the path refugees take through the castle. Not awake to share Shinsou’s anxiety around every corner or to count the bodies in the halls. Bakugou carries you deeper into the bowels of Takoba among his fleeing friends. He keeps you safe in strong arms and you no longer plan on dying.

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