#some other highlights of this au! since this is an evo au magneto is the sorcerer east of the sun west of the moon

[words-writ-in-starlight]

SO HOW ABOUT THAT ANGST FOR KITTY/PIOTR EAST OF THE SUN, WEST OF THE MOON AU, HUH?????

YO SO YOU SENT IN “GOTTA STAY QUIET TO AVOID DISCOVERY” AND I STARTED TALKING ABOUT WATCHING THE X-MEN MOVIES TO COMPLAIN AND HERE, TAKE THIS, I DON’T KNOW.

If Kitty’s being totally honest here, and Kitty prides herself on being totally honest, she did not completely expect to live through this deal.  It’s not that she expected the bear to break his word--or at least, she would never have said as much to his face--but she’s heard stories before, of maidens and monsters and bargains, a year and a day of company traded for her family’s welfare.  And she wasn’t anticipating death, but also she would not have been surprised by dying, which she feels is an important distinction.

But when they came to the ice-bound palace, Kitty was as healthy as ever, if starting to go white and numb with cold, and the bear turned his great metal head to her and asked in a low rumble, “Are you cold, honored lady?”

“No, Lord Bear, I’m quite warm,” Kitty lied outright, because she prides herself on being honest but also is not an idiot.  She’s not entirely clear on the exact nature of the beast she’s sworn herself to, even after a full day in the palace, but on the off chance that the question was a test, she delivered the lie as steadily as possible.  The bear hadn’t said anything, merely observed her with his impossible blue eyes, glowing like stars imprisoned in his cold clockwork armor, and he had nodded and brought her inside.

Kitty’s spent the past several hours wandering the halls, since then, and hasn’t seen a single living thing, not even her host.  If he even counts.  Even riding on his back, on the journey to the palace, Kitty hadn’t been able to see even the slightest hint of flesh and blood under the armor, nor hear breathing or a heartbeat, or anything but the click and whir of metal.  A--something, a wisp of wind in the shape of a servant, brought her a cloak, so perhaps the bear saw through her lie after all.  The cloak is the finest thing Kitty has ever touched in her life, deep blue and lined with soft white fur, as warm as if it had been laid out in the summer sunlight, and she’s been rubbing her cheek against the collar absently as she walks.  There’s a crisp, clean scent to it, like the oncoming edge of a blizzard or a thunderstorm.

The cloak is good for Kitty’s nerves, in a strange sort of way.  Foremost, freezing to death has never appealed to her, as a way to go, and she’s fairly sure that the cloak wouldn’t have been forthcoming if her host meant to let her die of neglect, or throw her in some kind of dungeon, or add her to a collection of frozen maidens to decorate his castle, or whatever clockwork bears do with peasant girls.  More than that, though, the cloak alone must be worth a small fortune, immaculately well-made and perfect in all ways, and Kitty did trade herself into an uncertain future in this icy palace for the assurance that her family would be well-compensated.  Forget fixing the roof and buying new quilts--if this cloak is a sample of what the bear can give without a second thought, her family will be able to buy a whole new house.  

If she’s smart, and if she can keep being smart for a year and a day, Kitty might even live to see it.

The sky outside grows dark, and Kitty wonders if she should just pick a carpeted room and curl up under the cloak before it grows too dim for her to navigate the palace.  Some of the rooms even have furniture, although most of it looks untouched.  There was one a few doors back, on the left-hand corridor, with a couch in it that looked plush and comfortable, and it would be a huge improvement over the floor of her family’s cottage.

The return of the wind-servant makes her jump nearly out of her skin, but it comes bearing a lantern that glows with the same cold blue light as the bear’s eyes, and the wall sconces burst to life as it passes.  Kitty skitters to one side to let it pass, and it stops in front of her, invisible except for its lantern, and bobs there for a long few moments before Kitty rallies the nerve to talk.

“Um,” Kitty says, “do you want me to come with you?”  The lantern bobs toward her, and then further down the hall, and Kitty follows.  “Do you have food in this castle?” Kitty asks the lantern, for lack of a more obvious place to direct her questions.  “You’re made of wind and your master--is he your master?  Lord Bear seems like he’s mostly made of metal, so maybe you don’t have to eat, but I haven’t eaten all day.  If you have a kitchen, I could try to cook, but on the other hand I might burn something down.”  

The lantern, of course, doesn’t answer, except to keep leading Kitty deeper into the castle, lit by the cold blue magic of the sconces as they flare in its wake.  But after a maze of corners, Kitty sees warm golden light ahead, and the lantern floats into a room illuminated by a roaring fire.  It’s a dining room, Kitty realizes, but not the grand hall she peeked into before, set up as though to receive kings.  This is a private dining room, maybe for family, with a fire casting its warmth over the table and single place setting, and on the table rests a small banquet, fit to feed a dozen people with more individual types of food than Kitty’s ever seen.

Dazed, she allows another wind-servant to usher her into a chair, and it pushes it into the table properly, and more invisible hands begin to pile her plate high with a sample of everything, fill her glass with warm spiced wine, and it’s all absolutely amazing.  If this is Kitty’s last meal she doesn’t even care.  She eats some of everything, and rather a lot of a few things in particular, until she’s so full that her stomach aches and so tired she could fall asleep right in her chair.  But the wind-servant with the lantern returns, or maybe a different wind-servant with a different lantern, and Kitty sighs and stands up, pulling the cloak around her.

The lantern-bearer brings her back through the maze to one of the rooms she passed--one of the rooms she peeked at through the cracked door and immediately abandoned as too private to be investigated.  It’s clearly a master bedroom, with a magnificent four-posted bed piled high with blankets and soft pillows, and when the lantern stops at the open door and gestures as if to say after you, Kitty has to take a long moment and breathe before she can force herself over the threshold.

It’s a fine room, fit for royalty, with massive curtained windows and furniture made of dark wood accented with blue cloth and silver fixtures.  There is a low fire burning in the hearth, and the room is warmer than the rest of the castle, although not as warm as the dining room.  

There is a nightgown laid out on the bed, and the wind-servant sets down its lantern and scoops it up, holding it out to Kitty.

“I can dress myself,” Kitty says, and she’s proud that her voice doesn’t shake.  She takes the nightgown--soft, she notices a little numbly, and made of a nicely woven fabric that drapes over her arm and sways with her movement.  She doesn’t know enough to identify the fabric, but it seems warm, at least.  The wind-servant bows and leaves, and Kitty has reason to be grateful that the room is so chilled.  She can’t change slowly, no matter how much she wants to.

She keeps her socks on with the nightgown, because it’s too cold to take them off, and curls up on the bed, sitting up against the headboard with the cloak wrapped around her, on top of the blankets.  Kitty means to stay up, to see what’s going to happen to her, but--

As soon as Kitty settles against the pillows, the lantern left by the wind-servant goes dark.  The fire vanishes as quickly and completely as a candle blown out, and it leaves the room impenetrably black.  Kitty startles, and there’s a terrible weight on her limbs, as if she’s been frozen after all, and for a long moment she can’t do anything but struggle uselessly against the weight of what must be magic, her bargain locking her body into place better than any shackles.

Kitty has barely managed to slow her breathing from its ragged, panicked gasping when the door opens.  The lights in the hall must be gone, too, because she can’t see anything, not even shadow-on-shadow, as if she’s gone blind.  She strains to listen past the racing of her own heart and--

Heavy metallic footsteps, and the click-whirr of clockwork.  Kitty fights to speak, but whatever magic holds her prisoner has locked her tongue against her, strangles her when she tries to make noise, and so she listens to the great steel bear cross the room toward the window.

The sound of metal hitting the ground, one piece at a time, makes her heart stop.  There must be something alive under the armor, then, and she tries to be reassured by the solving of this mystery, but Kitty can’t really manage it.

It takes several minutes for all the armor to hit the floor, and then footsteps move back toward her, but--not a bear.  She can only hear two feet, and the figure sounds much smaller than the creature who carried her on his back this morning.  As it reaches the bed--he? the bear?--Kitty clamps her eyes shut and tries to look asleep.

She hears the figure move, and a hand reaches out to tug the cloak a little higher on her shoulder.  The hand doesn’t touch her, doesn’t even brush the nightgown, and Kitty tries not to hyperventilate.  He seems--kind, at least, for a given value thereof, but she’s still not an idiot, and she’s not sure she would have made this deal with a man, instead of a bear.

But he doesn’t lie down on the bed.  Instead, she hears a very soft scuffle, of cloth on stone, and--

Kitty lies there in the dark, awake, and listens to the breathing of the man who isn’t a bear as he settles on the floor beside the bed.  She doesn’t know if he falls asleep.  He doesn’t snore, and his breathing is steady, but no slower than it was when he was taking off the armor.  Maybe he’s lying there awake too, listening to her listen to him.

If Kitty sleeps all night, it’s no more than a light doze, and she’s awake when the man rises from the floor again.  He doesn’t touch her, just hesitates once he’s standing--he feels tall, she has the sense of being towered over--and then goes back to the window.  She listens to him resume his armor, and listens to the bear leave.  As soon as the door closes behind him, she blinks, and discovers that she can move, and realizes that there is silvery dawn light creeping around the edge of the curtains.

Curled up under the cloak, Kitty closes her eyes, and finally slips into unconsciousness.