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sabraeal · 10 months

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All That Remains, Chapter 11: The Prince and the Princess [Part 1]

[Read on AO3]

Written for both Obiyuki Bingo and also a very, very overdue birthday gift for @lusakina, who has nearly waited a year for me to be able to sit down and write this. It’s a slightly shorter chapter than these typically are, but this one needed to be more of an interlude between parts...

With a flourish of the pen, the girl escapes.

That is how a story would tell of this, wouldn’t it? A grand climax racing into the gentle arms of a denouement. An exultant cry of victory followed by a blank page.

Our fingers straddle the border between two words; one in which there is the possibility of failure, and the other which brings us the relief of success. It is so easy for us to turn the page, to shift from those dire hours to the moment of safety. A girl escapes, and in the space of a breath, she is far away, only pale echo of that danger buried beneath the next step of her journey.

There is no time to dwell on the between; on the sleepless hours wondering whether you will awake to the sounds of stomps and shouts, of whether you can afford to stop to catch a breath or must chance a push onward, hoping your own legs won’t give out beneath you. On the page there is only room for failure or flight, and anything in between...

That is where the story abandons you. Escape is only a small sliver of survival, and the the rest, the rest--

Is living. And oh, that is by far the hardest part.

Lata taught her how to ride on one of the sparse spring days in Lilias; Shirayuki had been the one to ask, only a day or so before, and he had huffed, at least it might make you more useful. A tepid response, one she thought had been as polite a refusal as a man like him could come, until she bumped into him in the courtyard, mouth wrapped halfway around a good morning, before he hauled her off to the stable.

Unlike most of her studies, riding did not come easy. No, instead it came in fits and starts; months of taking two steps forward and ten steps back until one day her amiable little mare broke out into a canter, and Shirayuki kept her seat. Good, the professor had grunted, hunching his furs up around his ears. I thought I might just wash my hands of this and let that poor excuse for a knight cart you around like luggage.

Please, my lord, Obi had called from his perch on the fence, a gloved hand pressed courteously to his chest. She would be my precious cargo.

Whatever he chose to call it, it was baggage, and if there was one thing Shirayuki refused to be, it was a burden. Riding might not come easy, but she had kept with it until not even Zen could find a flaw with her seat, and yet--

And yet, beside Kiki she sits a graceful as a rock in a bucket; unlikely to tumble out but by no means proficient. At least, not the way she thought she was. That’s the difference between learning a good seat and being born to it, she supposes, which wouldn’t matter at all if the moment Kiki slowed them to a trot, she didn’t feel as if her own backside would fall off.

“Catch your breath,” Kiki tells her, voice raised no louder than the susurrus of leaves around them. “We’ll need to keep moving.”

A protest hones itself to a point at the tip of her tongue-- there’s no need to stop, it wants to say, I won’t slow you down-- but Kiki only stares at her, kindness leaving her no quarter. The fight sloughs off her like a skin-- no, like a gown, ill-fitting and heavy, made for someone else. Another Shirayuki, one more used to saddles and stirrups, who spent her days toiling in the gardens and summers riding across the North, who hadn’t been afraid to throw a blanket over dewy grass to stare up at the stars.

Not the one who had wasted two seasons trying to slip into a smile that pinched at the seams. Who hadn’t let her friend simply disappear while she chose which spoon to stir her tea.

Nails bite into the flesh of her palms, sharper than she ever kept them in Wirant. She’d needed them short, then; longer ones were liable to break, for dirt to get caked deep within the bed, but in the palace...

Ornamental, Haki had called them, hanging polished nails over the divan. The same as Shirayuki had been, when all the flounces settled. Nothing more but another face to decorate its halls.

Her breath steams in the air, a gasping specter that dissolves as soon as it appears, never quite solid enough to grasp. Glancing over her shoulder, the lights of Wistal still shimmering past the dark ribbon of the river, she feels much the same. Insubstantial. Hardly real. That if she just reached out she could touch those glittering lamps as if they were no more than shards of wunderocks, meant to settle in the palm of her hands and never burn.

The city’s so tame from so far away.

“We should go back.”

It’s barely more than a whisper, a toneless sigh into the night, but Kiki’s stare cuts to her, sharp as the blade at her waist. “Shirayuki. You have just fled the palace and its protections.” The night blurs the details of her expression into shadow, but the angle of her brows says sharp, skeptical. “Are you really so eager to return?”

“I-I didn’t say we should go back t-there.” She skips over her words like a stone on a still pond, hands clenched tight around her reins. “I just meant...the market. Or maybe one of the pubs. Somewhere...”

Somewhere there’s something left of him, she doesn’t say. There’s no point when Kiki is already shaking her head, gold shimmering silver in the moonlight. “You do understand, don’t you? We cannot go back. Not to the palace, not to the market...not to Wistal at all.”

“But that was the last place Obi was seen,” she insists, stomach as knotted as the leather strap in her hands. “If we’re going to find anything, it will be there. If we leave now--”

“Obi has made some...questionable decisions in the past” --the wrinkle between Kiki’s brows discourages further inquiry-- “but if he was trying to slip out of Wistal under the Watch’s nose, he wouldn’t stop for a drink.”

Her mouth works-- wasn’t he supposed to be a slither-outer? a man who abandoned his post to make a fool of himself in every tavern before he’d crawl back into our good graces?-- but that venom stings even her own lips, a set of lies too raw a wound in her to even scrape out a single sound. To pretend she could believe that of him for a moment, even just to win her way--

You do know that house plants don’t drink champagne, she informs him, poking her head around the improbable girth of this fiddle leaf fig. Even if it does reside in a manor house.

Gold flashes up from where he crouches, startled, flute hanging limply from his fingers. It’s only a moment before it smooths into an easy confidence, into a grin that’s right at home with all these silver platters and crystal glass. It’s either this or off one of these fancy little balconies, and I got to say, there aren’t ladies walking out from beneath these leaves. Well, except you, Miss.

His playfulness is contagious. You could just drink it, if you need to. I doubt this would give you anything more serious than a case of the hiccups. She leans in, conspiratorial. In my professional opinion.

You may be the granddaughter of a bar, Miss, but never on the streets I’ve visited. A corner of his mouth twists as he levers himself to his feet. Then you’d know that the only knife you carry with you is a sharp one.

--It would be a betrayal. Another way for her to turn her back on him, to forget the man he’d become over these past six years, the one who-- who--

So, it was worth having? Just asking makes her stomach lurch, like holding her foot over a precipice, trying to judge the distance down. It’s just a necklace, just Obi, and yet she’s tangled up in anticipation, breathless for that tilt of his head, that soft flicker of a smile.

Of course. Both fondness and confusion add an airiness to his laugh, as if his answer were as certain as the ground beneath their feet, or as necessary as the air between them. It would have been just for the fact that you lent it to me.

--It’s impossible.

Not that he loved her; of course he did, but in the way a key loved its lock, or a hand might miss its pair. The way she felt when she walked the streets in front of her grandparents’ old pub and heard laughing through the glass. She was a best-worn glove, a favorite meal, a half-remembered chorus to a lullaby.

She was home, the same way he was for her. And to think of it as the same as the knights in the palace tapestries, kneeling at the feet of their mistresses and longing, to think of it as desire...

They’re mistaken, is all. Of anyone, she knew him best. If his feelings had changed, then surely she would have noticed, she would have known--

You don’t know anything about me, Miss.

Her breath catches, painful in her chest. “But we don’t know where to look. If there’s a lead, then--”

“There’s nothing left to find of him there.” Each word hits her like a whip crack, a lash she’s not braced to take. “They will be looking for you, Shirayuki. Not now, but in the morning...”

In the morning, one of Haki’s maids would bustle into her chambers, throwing curtains wide and informing her of the gowns the consort had set out for her perusal. But today her hands would sink into the covers and find no flesh beneath it, no young lady to dress as her mistress pleased. No, there would only be a haphazard bundle of silk and velvet and down, and then, then--

Kiki’s eyes narrow as she gazes back, a hunter gauging the distance between her and her target. “It will take them time to search the grounds, to realize...”

That she was gone. No, that she, of her own volition, had left.

Kiki’s mare nickers as she leads her head around, back to the road ahead. “We should use what time we have wisely.”

It is simple to have purpose when there is trouble at your back, when there is the promise of menace nipping at your heels. One step yields to the next with such ease that it becomes nothing more than an instinct, heedless of fear and of good sense. Forward is so much more tenable as a directive than a decision.

Second thoughts are the luxury of those whose stories have an after.

Night passes into day, and what once seemed a steady, sustainable pace turns relentless. Kiki turns them off the main road at first light-- we can cover your hair, but two women riding hard is a rare enough sight still-- leading them first through fields of tall grass and wildflowers, so many Shirayuki is tempted to ask for a rest, if only to replenish her stocks--

But the grimness of Kiki’s jaw stills the words on her tongue.

It’s not long until fields give way to scrublands, and scrub gives way to the first stirrings of a forest, its canopy blotting out the sun’s heat as it climbs to its zenith. To her eyes, it seems untouched, a primordial kingdom of leaf and bramble and vine, but Kiki quickly picks out a hunter’s trail in the brush, leading them deep into its cool embrace.

It’s only then that Kiki lets their pace slow, that she lets her mare come to a panting halt. “We’ll stop here. The horses need to rest.”

There’s no block for her to dismount to, but Kiki provide a knee-- and then a net of arms in short measure, once Shirayuki’s leg fails to swing over and becomes a slow, terrifying slide.

“Sorry,” she gasps, clutching hard to her shoulders. “I didn’t realize that my, er, I mean...everything’s numb...?”

Her only consolation is that Kiki’s huff is at least amused when she finds her feet. “No need to apologize. We rode for a long time. Longer than we should have.”

Obi used to complain that too much time in the saddle made him bow-legged-- like some sort of hedge knight, Miss-- but it’s not until she hobbles across the clearing, too much space between her thighs, that she understands it.

“Oh, did we? That’s good. I mean--” there’s no comfortable way to rest; to stand means suffering her trembling legs, to sit only worsens the numbness “--I thought so, but if we were really riding for so long, then we would stop to switch out the horses...”

Kiki shakes her head, expert hands never slowing as she rubs down their mounts. “They’ll check the roads first, the post stations where it’s likely we’d need to stop. And any groom worth his pay will know these are from the royal stables, which means he’ll be the first to tell them what he knows.” Her mouth gives a wry twist. “Horse thieves always pay well.”

“But we’re not...” Kiki spares her a long, dubious look. They certainly hadn’t asked to borrow a pair of His Majesty’s finest mounts. “Are you so sure there will be anyone coming after us? Izana said that if I left, that I would be-- I’d--”

It should go without saying-- even now, the burden of his gaze weighs on her-- if you break this agreement, there will not be another offer.

She clears her throat. “I don’t think he’d be sending anyone for me.”

“Not Izana.” Kiki stretches out the words with care, the kind that warns of a ‘but’ before it can round the corner. “But Zen will turn over the whole city to find you.”

“Ah...” She hadn’t accounted for that, no. Not for Zen, who so often complained of tied hands, of how his brother’s wants ran roughshod over his own, using what little power he could bring to bear. “But Izana would never let him. Not when he was so clear...”

“Which is why this will all happen so quickly.” Kiki turns to her, as grim and serious as she had been in the stables. “Before Izana can hear of it.”

Her fingers tremble against the trunk, bark biting into flesh to keep her upright. “N-no. He can’t do that. When Obi disappeared it took him weeks to even get a single search party...”

Beneath the black of her jacket, Kiki’s shoulders tense. She does not speak but brace, and that is enough to draw Shirayuki up short, to remember--

A knife strapped to a belt. A seed pressed into her hand. Ah, she’d forgotten how easily a healed wound can run fresh, if she only pulls off the scab. “But he never sent anyone. Not for Obi.”

“Shirayuki...” A sigh soughs through her teeth. “We should go.”

But it cannot last forever. There always comes a time where fear banks, when tempers have cooled and the ceaseless war drum of the heart fades. And all that is left...

Is you.

Day fades into night again before Kiki allows them to truly rest, not just pause to catch a breath or let the horses drink. Their pace had been slow through the forest, careful as they picked their way along the knotted trails, but their mounts are exhausted, pulling at their leads as they plod into the clearing. Shirayuki can hardly blame them; she nearly balks until Kiki reaches for her, more falling from the saddle than dismounting it.

No matter how she might insist that she bore the mark of Tanbarun in her strong shoulders, or that heaving bags of soil from the cart to the greenhouse made her as capable as any of the male scholars, Shirayuki is hardly heavy. A girl her size might make Suzu stagger-- I can’t leave him on the walls by himself, Obi had confided once, grin peeking over his scarf, he’s got more in common with a sail than stone-- but even with the brunt of her weight slumping over her like a sack, Kiki is only driven back a step, solid when she plants her on the ground.

“You’ll have to forgive the accommodations,” she huffs, one half of her mouth hooking into a smirk. “I’m afraid it falls just short of royal.”

There’s no silk sheets or pillows of down, that’s for certain. But Kiki lays out her cloak to cover the soft sponge of the forest’s undergrowth, plumping her pack to make a kissing cousin to a pillow, and oh, what Shirayuki would have given for such luxuries during that breathless flight across the border, all those years ago. She stumbled upon that forgotten manor after a half dozen nights of only rocks and roots to lay her head on, with just that little hood to keep her warm.

“Ah, don’t worry about me,” she murmurs, unclasping her own cloak from around her neck. “I’ve slept on worse.”

Kiki’s smile stretches tight over her teeth. “Of course.”

Never one to need to fill the air with noise when silence would do, Kiki gathers their leads, nickering quietly at their mares as they tamp at the ground, impatient. Lata had taught her how to care for tack-- as any good horseman should, he sniffed, turning up his nose at the university’s groom-- but there’s a practiced efficiency to Kiki’s movements, almost meditative, that suggest any of her fumbling might only get in the way.

Still, Shirayuki isn’t about to stand idle. Not anymore.

“If you’re going to take care of the horses...” Her slippers shuffle, uncertain, beneath the hem of her skirt. “Should I gather some wood for--?”

“No fire.”

Shirayuki blinks. Wistal may be warm, even into its winters, but its nights still grow cold late in the season, enough that some mornings leave a lick of frost on the windowpanes. “But it will get cold soon. The sun’s already--”

Kiki shakes her head, sharp. “We can’t risk the smoke.”

She doesn’t so much snap as rasp, a dire note scraping her voice raw. Kiki has stood tall before kings and traitors both, and yet her whisper is nothing more than a live nerve that her desperation skins open. And it-- it seems so silly. They aren’t running from some first’s prince’s wounded pride, from four dozen of the kingdom’s most loyal knights and a half dozen dogs, but...

“But it’s only Zen.” It’s strange that she’s the one to say it, that in this twilight of her escape, she’s the one to speak sense. “He won’t hurt us. He’ll just...”

“Convince you.”

Her mouth falls slack. “I...?”

“Zen loves you.” It’s stunning how easily Kiki can say such a thing when Zen never had, when it had always been something hidden in the wrinkles of his smile or the longing in his eyes. “The fear has never been that he would hurt you. It is that you will listen.”

Shirayuki wants to protest, to say there would be nothing he could say to convince her to abandon Obi now that she’s set herself on his trail--

But even now her heart leaps to her throat not in dread but anticipation as she imagines Zen stepping into the light of their fire. Hope sears as he kneels before her, the fire casting his pale hair golden as he tells her, it’s all been a mistake. The anguish would turn itself to earnest apology in his eyes, and he would say that they can do this together, if only she would come back with him, if only she would stand by his side.

A breath shudders from her lungs, so full of wanting it burns.

It is so easy to say that she would not turn her back on Obi again, but three months ago, she would have sworn no one could get her to forsake him the first time.

“Right,” she rasps, chest tender beneath the hand she presses to it. “No fire.”

Oh, how easy it is for the doubts to set in, when it is only your tender heart to stand against them.

These are not Lilias’ nights, so cold that even a warm pan beneath the pallet and a heap of furs can’t keep the chill out, but they do have to press close beneath the weight of her cloak, tucking it tight around their shoulders and back, scrunching to keep their feet beneath it. It’s hardly the first time she’s had to huddle for warmth under the blankets, tucking deep into open arms to keep out the elements, but she’s used to a warmer body beside her, a furnace wrapped in flesh. And Kiki, well--

What do you expect? Obi lilts into her ear, as soft as he always spoke beneath the stars. Miss Kiki’s got a reputation to keep.

Her body is weary, bruised and battered from the ride, but even still-- her heart leaps when Kiki lays next to her, the sweet scent of lilac wafting from where her hair knots at the back of her neck. For a moment, it feels like that night so long ago, when snow had pressed at the inn’s windows, and her heart had raced from how close she had come to-- to something in that room. Not with Kiki, but with Zen, the pillows collapsing in among them and the urgency to see, to know had pressed her in for that next kiss. Her lips stung from it, tingled, and she had wanting nothing more than to say something, to ask if it was right that she felt so torn between her head and her heart.

But instead she had stared at the nape of Kiki’s neck, where her hair parts around skin like waves around a breaker, and worried. The same as she does tonight, as she does the next, and the night after. She is a font of concerns, an endless well of anxiety that burbles through the early morning hours, ceaseless until the sun rises.

You understand, don’t you? Even now, she feels Kiki’s fingers at her ankle, a single thoughtful tap on her boot. What all this might cost when it’s over?

If you break this agreement, Izana warns her, his tone implying fine print, there will not be another offer.

Think about what you might lose, the silence urges her, sounding more like Kiki than any words ever have. Think about what you might not get back.

Her fingers clench tight in the wool of Kiki’s tunic. But what about you? she wants to ask into the soft skin of her nape. What do you lose, coming with me?

Kiki is a royal knight, an aide to the second prince, the heir to Seiran. Soon to be married, too, after her father’s summit. One so important that it even peeled Zen’s aides from him, one Kiki herself is supposed to be handling the arrangements for.

And yet here she is, with her. Because a princess needs her knight. Except Shirayuki has never wanted to be a princess, and Kiki...

Must have her reasons. Good ones. The kind Shirayuki wants to know, to understand--

But instead her body betrays her one last time, and all its anxiety abandons her for sleep.

Oh, how stories never speak of this part, of that space between the wanting and the knowing. A woman wakes from her thousand year slumber in the arms of her true love. Children outsmart a witch and find their way home without a single wrong turn.

A girl escapes the garden of a sorceress, and stumbles straight onto the trail of her boy. No doubts, no second thoughts, no leads that have gone cold over the long months she spent, a prisoner in paradise.

How much easier it must be to suffer knowing that there is purpose to it in the end. How much easier it is to go forward, when every step will lead you true.

It’s impossible for her to say how many days it take for them to travel through the forest, or how many more there are before Kiki leads her back to a road. Obi had always been the one with the map in his head, unerringly leading them through hill and dale and drift; Shirayuki had only followed, putting her boot prints beside his own, a matched set.

It’s only the hangings above the inn’s door that give her pause when they pass it, that remind her that they’ve been here before. They’d run across this very courtyard with rain dogging their heels, standing in front of the desk soaked entirely to the skin. The five of them, traveling back from Tanbarun, breaths caught up in laughter as they skidded to a stop in the tile. It’s impossible, she thinks, that they could have been so young only such a short time ago.

“How about it then?” Kiki grunts, voice rough from disuse. “Would you like a bed tonight?”

Her back would certainly appreciate it. “They had baths here, too, didn’t they?”

For the first time in days, Kiki’s mouth curls toward a smirk. “You know, I think they did. Good ones, too.”

Strange, is it not, how we never know the precise moment the story finds us again?

Steam curls thick in the air, a palpable curtain between her and the bath. A welcome one; it’s been so long since Shirayuki last removed her dress that the cuffs stick to her wrists. It’s a miracle of the humidity-- and her own ingenuity-- that it peels away, leaving pink skin in its wake.

“Oh.” The warmth of the bath clings to her as thick as any cloak, coaxing out a sigh. “Where...?”

“Leave it,” Kiki urges her from farther in. “The maids will look after it. If there’s anything that can save those things.”

She hums, uncertain, letting the fabric hang from her fingers. This is her own sweat, her own mess; it hardly seems right to expect someone to clean it...

But she wants to deal with it even less. “All right.” The gown drops into the fog, lost. “I’m coming.”

When it is not just our own will that moves us forward, but the narrative, pushing us inexorably to the next turn of the page.

It’s a good, solid scrubbing that Shirayuki gives herself; she’s no stranger to the sort of dirt that a body can gather over a day’s work, but this, this is a week’s accumulation of grime and filth. It doesn’t wash away so much as flake, chipped off by the application of horsehair and grit until the only think left is pink, scoured skin beneath.

“We’re alone,” Kiki assures her through the partition, one pale foot sliding a sudsy bucket beneath. “If you want.”

Shirayuki blinks for a moment, staring down at the bubbles uncomprehending--

“Oh.” She reaches up, unwinding the towel from her head. It’d be generous to call what’s under it brown, let alone red, but with a good wash, well... “Thank you.”

Kiki hesitates. “I’ll meet you in the bath.”

Even in the most mundane of moments, the times in which we feel the most off the trodden path, lost and left with only our hopes to guide us, we can be so close that only a step would traverse the space between. That only a breath could speak it into being.

How many times must we come close to relief, and then never know it? How many doors must close while we hope for a mere window, all unknowing?

If Shirayuki had thought the steam thick before, it is nothing to how it rises from the actual bath. It might well be a curtain for how well it shields the edge from her; she risks a few toes at first to feel for it, and with a steeling breath, sinks a whole foot right down to the knee.

It’s hot, enough that the fresh skin these prickles with pain before the heat soothes it away. Her other leg follows, then the rest of her, sinking down into its warm embrace.

As much as it stings, it’s pleasant as well. As if she’s been made new again, the Shirayuki of the palace washed away, and leaving behind only her.

And then, when we least expect it--

“Caw, caw,” the crow says, swooping down to the little girl, “Good day, good day, little one, what brings you here?”

“Well, well, well.” A lithe body slides into the pool, tawny trailing after her like a comet’s tail. “Didn’t think I’d find a fine young miss like you here.”

--We are found once again.

For better or for worse.

#obiyukibingo23 #obiyuki #akagami no shirayukihime #snow white with the red hair #fairy tale au #all that remains #snow queen au #my fic #ans #this took so long because i truly wanted to join back up with the story frame before it finished #and i tortured myself for SO LONG thinking this chapter wouldn't be long enough without it #and then like halfway through the first scene i was like #oh no the whole pacing of this chapter is literally like...an interlude #the point is that this is the part of the story where the narrative has abandoned shirayuki #because this isn't the INTERESTING part #and it can only come back in at the end #YES IT TOOK ME LIKE 7 MONTHS TO REALIZED THIS #I DUN WANNA TALK ABOUT IT

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lbibliophile-mcu · 2 years

Text

Riddle of your Heart

[Snow Queen AU]

He’d thought that maybe there was something between them; they hadn’t admitted to more than friendship yet, but he’s seen the looks. If they’d had just a little more time… But they hadn’t.

When Bucky finally returns from his long mission, Tony is excited to see his friend, a giddy hope fluttering in his chest. Perhaps now is their chance.

But Bucky has changed. His smile when he greets Tony is polite and distant.

Tony is hurt, but blossoming feelings can fade. More worrying, is how Bucky ignores their friendship, ignores Steve’s friendship.

Something is wrong. Tony will fix it.

---

Also on AO3

Inspired by the TSB August party titles game.

For: Whumptober 2022 - day 18: lets break the ice @buckybarnesbingo - C2: "what did you do?" @avengersbingo - rescue mission

#bbb2022 #whumptober2022 #no.18 #let's break the ice #mcu #drabble #snow queen au #tony stark #bucky barnes #winteriron #bingo fill

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being-luminous · 2 years

Note

For a prompt, maybe something to do with a fairytale AU? I read The Snow Queen the other day, and an AU based on it could be really cool ;)

Thanks for the prompt! I did my best to keep it short, but it got away from me a bit! After a bit more editing, it may end up on ao3, perhaps with an updated ending

Anyway, hope you enjoy!

– – –

Ice cracks as the castle’s doors swing open.

In the threshold, there is a girl, just barely on the cusp of adulthood. She looks like every other miserable soul who’s passed through these doors: Face a mask, and a good one, too. If he didn’t know better, he’d think she wasn’t afraid at all, but he knows better; everyone here is afraid. Her hands are bare, clenched into fists at her side. Draped over her shoulders is a brown coat with a fraying hem and worn patches on the elbows. It’s too big for her.

A gust of wind tosses her unbound hair—at least, the stuff that isn’t hidden under a dark red cap—into her face.

She steps inside, and the doors creep shut behind her, creaking all the way. Her boots slip on a patch of ice, and she only just catches herself, arms pinwheeling through the air.

Harry doesn’t move—not to warn her, not to help.

He stays where he is, leaning against a pillar of ice. He might as well be a part of it. But for the fog of his breath, the way his chest rises and falls, he could be a statue—one of many that crowd the once-grand hall. Each one formed by his husband’s magic. Each one twisted by their shame, their greed, their fear.

Slowly, the girl picks her way across the hall.

She keeps her eyes forward, doesn’t falter even once. And all the while, Harry watches.

He doesn’t follow.

He already knows how this will end.

One way or another, this girl’s foolish heart—and it must be foolish, for her to have ended up here—will stop. On display in his husband’s keep or cooling on the floor, what difference does it make?

Somehow, the girl lives.

He finds her in the garden (or, where the garden used to be—nothing grows here now, not anymore), throwing rocks at the castle wall. As he approaches on silent feet, she throws another, then begins to pace. Her boots crunch against the snow. Long dead stems crumble like ash beneath her feet.

“I thought you’d be dead by now,” Harry says.

The girl jumps, whirls with a yelp, and falls. She sits up, bracing her hands against the frozen ground as she glares, face flushed. “Well?” she demands, flustered. “Aren’t you going to help me up?”

Harry tilts his head. “Why would I?”

“You made me fall!”

“So?”

With a huff, the girl pushes herself to her feet, brushing snow from her long coat. “You’re very rude,” she informs him, shoving her hair away from her face. Her knuckles are cracked by the cold. Her eyes narrow. “Who are you, anyway?”

Instead of answering, Harry says, “You’re not wearing any gloves.”

The girl crosses her arms, winces when her hands curl into fists. “I’d noticed.”

Harry hums in reply. He thinks of the gloves sitting on the table by the bed in the room that was once his, the one he shared with his husband. They were a gift. They were warm.

He doesn’t offer to get them for her. “My name’s Harry.”

The girl blinks, looking startled, like she didn’t expect such a common name. “Hermione,” she says in turn, and Harry frowns. He’s heard that name before. It's familiar, and it shouldn't be. She sticks her chin in the air and stands as tall as she can, projecting confidence. “I’m here for my husband.”

Ah. There it is.

Of course she is. The only people who come here are the ones who want something they think his husband can give them—power, love, wealth. Each one is turned away empty handed; the lucky ones get to leave, after.

“You can’t take him,” Harry tells her. Shattering this dream is a kindness, one he rarely bothers with anymore.

She’ll give up soon enough.

The ones who live always do. They understand how futile the journey is, and they decide their lives are worth more than their desire. But the girl surprises him. “Yes,” she says, glaring, “I can.”

Pride, then.

Not surprising at all.

“There’s no shame in walking away,” Harry tells her, voice flat. “The Dark Lord always wins.”

The girls stalks closer. “This isn’t about winning,” she spits. She pokes him hard in the chest, and he sways with it, surprised. “I came here to bring my husband home. I won’t leave without him.”

Harry rubs his chest, frowns. “Then you’ll die here, too.”

He turns to leave, only stopping when a hand latches itself to his wrist. “Wait! He—he’s not dead.” She takes a deep, trembling breath. “I know it.”

“Oh?”

“It’s true. I was told so.”

Hmm. “Frozen, then,” Harry says, unmoved. In truth, there isn’t much difference. “Either way, you won’t get him back.”

For a long time, she doesn’t move. She just stands there, hand on Harry’s wrist, breathing. “I want to see him. Can I?”

“I suppose,” Harry says eventually.

No one has ever asked before.

They usually don’t get the chance. “Follow me.”

“Tell me about him,” Harry says as they walk back to the castle’s door.

“His name is Ron,” Hermione tells him. “Ron Weasley. We met when we were children, and we married just last year. He’s—"

“I meant what he looks like,” Harry interrupts, voice flat.

“Oh.” Her voice is small. Her cheeks flush again. “Well, he’s tall. He has red hair, and the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. He has freckles all over. He doesn’t like them, but I—I think they’re—" She stops, takes in a gasping breath.

Eventually, Harry stops too. He turns to face her, waiting for her to recover.

“Is that enough?” she asks, bravado masking tears.

Harry thinks back. “Yes,” he says, and then he changes course from the entry hall, turns toward the cellar instead.

Ron Weasley came to them two months ago. Or, rather, he was brought—dragged through the halls by a pack of wolves seeking his husband’s favor. He was trespassing, they’d said as they tossed him to their lord’s feet.

He wasn’t wearing a coat, Harry remembers.

He’d been holding a flower.

Theft, his husband had said as he plucked it from the boy’s hand, a smile on his horrible face as he crushed it. Greed, which demanded only the harshest of punishments.

Stupidity, Harry had thought as he looked away.

A burst of cold, a gasp, and the deed was done. The wolves had dragged the body away—to the cellar, his husband commanded, because the entry hall was full.

When she sees her husband’s body, Hermione grits her teeth and marches right up to him.

She lifts a hand like she’s going to strike him, then stops. She clutches her hand to her chest instead. “I hate you,” she says, frayed at the edges. “You idiot. How could you? You swore to me”—she shakes her head, glares through tears—“you promised.”

Harry feels the faintest stirring of curiosity. “What did he promise?”

She sucks in a breath, holds it. “To come home,” she says eventually, voice thick. Then, angry again: “Why was he even here?”

He isn’t sure if she wants an answer or not. He decides to give her one anyway. “He stole a flower.”

She stills. “What?”

“They grow at the edge of the Dark Lord’s hold, when summer meets the eternal winter. He was caught stealing one.”

Her shoulders slump. She blinks, and tears fall. “You idiot,” she says again, softer this time. She looks over, catches Harry’s gaze and laughs, rubbing at her face with her too-large sleeve. “I told him about them, you see, said I’d give—that I’d give anything to study one. And he…”

“He wanted to bring one to you.”

She nods, lips pressed tight together. “I—I’ve been so furious with him, this entire time. I swore to myself that I’d find him, just to tell him off.”

Harry’s lips twitch.

He’s familiar with the feeling.

But she isn’t done. “This entire time, I’ve been so…so angry, because I couldn’t understand why he’d do something so stupid. I couldn’t understand why he’d leave me, and I hated him for it, but…”

“But?” Harry prompts, something stirring in his chest.

Instead of answering, she steps closer to her husband’s frozen form, puts her hand on his, presses her forehead to his chest. She takes a shuddering breath, closes her eyes. “I wasn’t really angry, you know? I just…I miss him,” she says, soft. Then, softer still, “I want him back.”

This feeling, too, Harry knows.

He remembers it well.

He feels it. His eyes sting, and he begins to cry.

The next time he opens his eyes, everything is different.

He feels as though a weight has lifted, like he’s been living in a fog, and for the first time in a long, long time, he’s seeing clear. The cellar—once so dark—is flooded in light from the nearby torches, from light that pools in the ice that covers the room and makes it glow.

He can feel their warmth.

A hand touches his shoulder, and he flinches, scoots back to press against the wall, but there’s no threat. Just Hermione, one hand raised, a look of wide-eyed concern on her face. “Your eyes…” she says, voice full of wonder. Harry lifts a hand to his cheek, feels tracks of ice where tears fell. “They’re green.”

Her eyes, he sees now, are brown—dark and rich as soil in spring. In the fire’s light, they shine.

Her face is kind. She looks tired.

She holds out her hand, and he takes it, lets her pull him to his feet. A hand on his shoulder steadies him. “Are you alright?” she asks, frowning.

Is he?

“I…I think so.” He touches his chest, feels his heart beating, feels warmth. His eyes sting again. “Hermione”—his gaze slips, lands on the reason she’s here, and the breath is stolen from his lungs—“I’m so sorry,” he says. Without thought, he moves to stand before her husband, eyes wide and chest tight.

It’s like she said—his eyes are blue, like a summer sky.

His face, too, looks kind.

“If you’re going to tell me it’s hopeless again—“ Hermione begins, on the edge of anger again.

“I’m not,” he says quickly. He lifts a hand, hesitates. “I think…”

He knows this magic.

He has loved his husband much longer than he hated him. He knows every part of him, even the awful ones. Even this. He can fix it, or—he can try. He takes Ron’s hand in his, thinks of warmth, thinks of light. In his head, he hears Hermione’s voice. I want him back, she’d said.

The magic greets him like an old friend.

It knows him, just as he knows it. His husband doesn’t love him now—he doesn’t love anything—but he did, once.

It’s enough.

Slowly at first, the magic drips from Ron Weasley’s body to the floor, harmless as rain. It pools at his feet, and he gasps, stumbling forward. Before he can blink, Harry is knocked aside as Hermione throws herself into her husband’s arms, sobbing into his neck as she clutches him tight.

He gives them as much time as he can. Eventually, they need to leave. “Come with us,” Hermione says at the gate, eyes bright as she clutches Harry’s hand in hers, Ron a steady presence at her side.

He’s cried more in the past hour than he ever has before. “I can’t.”

“Harry—"

“So many people have been hurt here,” he says. What he doesn’t say is: I watched it happen, and I did nothing. I could have stopped it. “I can help them. I have to help them, and—" He hesitates, but when she squeezes his hand, he takes a fortifying breath and says, “I can’t leave now, not without…’

He can’t say it, but apparently he doesn’t need to. Her gaze drops. “It’s him, isn’t it.”

He swallows, chest tight. “Yes.”

She shakes her head, despair written across her face. “What if you can’t fix him? What if—‘

“I have to try, Hermione,” Harry says, because he can’t not. Because—“I miss him. I want him back."

Her voice goes soft. “Oh. Oh, Harry”—she throws her arms around him—“please be careful.” She squeezes extra tight, then pulls back so she can look him in the eye. She holds his gaze steady, lifts her chin. “And when you’re done, come visit us.”

Laughing, feeling lighter than he has in years, he says, “I will.”

#harrymort #snow queen au #prompt fill #anon #my fic

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sunpoppa · 2 years

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"He was beautiful and he was graceful, but he was ice- shining, glittering ice. He was alive, for all that, and his eyes sparkled like two bright stars, but in them there was neither rest nor peace."

#oc #commissions open #art #original character #artists on tumblr #snow queen au #d'mari

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tendonart · 7 months

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🧟🧟‍♀️🧟‍♂️Happy Friday 13🧟‍♀️🧟🧟‍♂️

The guys exchanged hats

#adventure time #adventure time fanart #adventure time simon #adventure time betty #simon petrikov #betty grof #golb #marceline #Simon golb #snow queen #magic man #ice king #ice queen #at au #adventure time swap au

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veigascc · 1 year

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I didn’t really feel like writing it all down again so I just took a screen shot of it I will post more of this au if I get more ideas

#my post #au idea #xiaolin showdown #snow queen au #jack spicer #chase young #chack

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zu-is-here · 2 months

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✧ Dreamtale x The Snow Queen ✧

[3/5] Happy anniversary ♡

Dream & Nightmare by jokublog

#zu art #dreamtale #kai!nightmare #gerda!dream #snow queen!nim?#crossover #the snow queen #dream!sans #nightmare!sans #passive!nightmare #anniversary #undertale #undertale au #utmv #I wanted to make something special for this day and found my old (literally December 2020) idea of this crossover *^*#it was a surprise for me that Kai and Gerda ''are not relatives but love each other like siblings'' which is so Dreamtale coded??#enjoy╰(*´︶`*)╯♡

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sp00ky-scary · 16 days

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hai guys :] finally settled on some eah designs, perhaps I may even go into detail about some of my au soon

design notes under the cut MADDIE USES THEY/THEM BTW, thanks ^_^

omg design notes

bonus cerise sneak peak, the next group is cerise cedar ashlynn and hunter

#talking like anybody gives a shit about my eah stuff lmao #digital art #fanart #redesign #ever after high #eah #ever after high au #raven queen #apple white #maddie hatter #briar beauty #snow white #my art

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the-1-bigshot · 4 months

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Come one, come all

Cool designs huh? They're not mine! They're from this awesome multi animator project I helped work on and you should check out now!:

youtube

Happy holidays

#the 1 art #deltarune #pink addison #tasque deltarune #spamton deltarune #maus deltarune #queen deltarune #ralsie deltarune #berdly deltarune #deltarune berdly #animation #multi animator project #deltarune fanart #deltarune au #deltarune noelle #snow grave #Youtube

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spikedru · 3 months

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hi. consider this

#my art #btvs #its technically a spuffy fic but there is a fairytale au with dru using a magic mirror to kidnap angel into fairytale land #where she is queen snow white #and its very interesteing i love it #but also what if snow white au for buffydru .............

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via-the-cryptid · 7 months

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I can see bubblegum meeting simon befor betty with her girlfriend finding him and all, and i see this playing out two ways. if bubblegum realy does try to sabotage betty alot marcy would hide who simon really is from her, as he is the best bargaining chip. Or simon and bubblegum because BFFs, much to everyone's concern. (They both self destructive nurds who lose themselves to there research)

Marceline does her best to simply Not Mention the connection between Simon and Betty to Bubblegum (and at this point they’re both still kinda salty with the other), but Bubblegum does eventually make the connection and when she does… yeah, it’s not pretty.

This is the guy that the Snow Queen has been tearing apart Ooo over for the last thousand years, and he’s in her grasp. This is the Snow Queen’s only weakness.

Bubblegum, of course, wants to exploit it. She thinks that if she can hold this ‘Snow Prince’s’ safety over Snow Queen’s head, then SQ will bend and do whatever she wants, specifically leaving her Kingdom alone. As long as Bubblegum has the Snow Prince, she’s safe from Snow Queen.

except she’s not.

because y’know what happens when Snow Queen finds out that this princess really does have her prince, and she’s keeping him hostage? oh, HELL no. Snow Queen is ready to throw down, and she ends up attacking the entire Candy Kingdom and freezing a good half of it at the least during her rescue mission. Bubblegum’s plan fires spectacularly, because she didn’t account for just how crazy Snow Queen would go over the matter of the Snow Prince’s safety.

(Simon thought he was friends with this princess, but it looks like he was only a pawn this whole time. He can’t help but be glad to see Betty for the first time in a thousand years, even if the crown has taken her over. At least he knows this is one person who doesn’t want to use him.)

#adventure time #snow queen au #betty grof #simon petrikov #petrigrof #petrigrof role swap #princess bubblegum #bonnibel bubblegum #marceline abadeer #answered asks

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sabraeal · 7 months

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All That Remains, Chapter 12: The Prince and the Princess [Part 2]

[Read on AO3]

Obiyukiweek 2023, Day 3: Declaration

Also written for @lusakina, who has created a Fell Birthday Wish Bargain with Jordan, so that one of them always gets D&R, and the other always gets this, and thus they can trust that they will regularly get their favorite fluff and favorite angst in short order. Which has paid off doubly this year, since the stars aligned and both their requests worked for Obiyukiweek, and thus their fluff & angst combo is back to back!

Once upon a time, there was a little girl.

Ah, but that is how stories begin, isn’t it? A girl, a boy, a prince, a witch, a troll with its mirror; a person, their decisive trait, the inciting event. A simple call that we rise to answer, a familiar tune that entices us to listen to the refrain.

But this story has already had its start. The journey is long underway, filled with high and lows, reversals and betrayals. This girl has had all the disappointments of a thousand lifetimes in but a single step, and yet, yet—

Her story is not yet done. Oh no, not nearly.

This is not how the story starts, but how it continues; how it makes miles into inches, and months to moments. How it turns interminable nights with doubt nibbling at the shadows into but a breath:

The girl walks for days and nights, with only her snowdrop for company.

The girl walks for days and nights with only her snowdrop for company. For as much courage as that delicate stem imparts wrapped around the shell the of her ear, the little flower is a poor conversationalist, not much given to the small talk the others in the garden had been. There are none of the tiger lily boasts or the babble of baby’s breath, but merely a comfortable silence, a knowing that if the girl spoke into the empty air, she would be heard, if not answered.

It is a comfort, one of her few now that summer’s bounty has long given way to autumn, and her precious shoes are long behind her. Mud squelches between her toes more often than not, cold as the dew that drips from the forest’s canopy. But she cannot stop, not while her boy might breathe. Not while she might yet be able to clutch his hands in hers and ask him to help tend their roses.

The only rests she allows herself are those to sleep and eat, though more and more often she finds her dinner on tree branches and on late-bearing bushes or hidden down between tree roots. There’s no need to stop then, to lose more time than the picking, but one day—

One day, the skies open, and the snowdrop’s dire prediction of thunder or snow sends her scurrying toward a cave’s mouth, lost beneath the scrub. She crawls inside, dry if not precisely warm, and chooses to wait out the storm.

It is pure chance that she is not the only one.

Despite her tutors’ high hopes, Shirayuki had never become the great appreciator of art that they seemed to expect from a princess. Even with every inch of the royal palace swathed in the country’s greatest works, the only commentary she could summon up when prompted was, it’s pretty. Or worse, I think I like it?

She had grown used to the rictus of Haki’s polite smile, all signs of pleasure dying as she offered her unsuitable assessments. It’s not about the quality of the art, the consort had tried to explain, too many times to count, it’s about how it moves you. About what it means.

Haruka might have huffed, might have made his disappointment known by the curve of his mouth and the clench in his knitted fingers, but he would at least pause as they passed, raising a hand to not quite brush over a haloed figure. This would be Adam, first of the Wisteria line— with a squint, she could see it the nose that would eventually smooth into Zen’s, and the cheekbones Izana would wear so proudly— painted as the sun god, breaking through the clouds. It’s an allusion to the way he wrested the power of the kingship from the previous dynasty, whose device was lightning descending from a cloud. Their divine right came from the claim of kinship with the sky god, who would throw bolts from his heavenly seat to punish the unworthy.

The lesson had been but a few moments, an aside while moving between more important topics, but for the first time, she understood why Zen had called him his favorite tutor, why he had said that prowling through the galleries beside his even strides had been one of the only good parts of rainy days. The marquis would never be emotive, but this talk made him animated, less an unforgiving edifice and more a man. She’d almost dare to call him approachable.

So it’s a…painting we like? She’d dared a quick glance at him, searching for some sign of approval. A good one?

His shoulders heaved with his sigh, but still, he nodded too. Yes, a good one.

And yet, when she sees that trailing tail on the water and the slender body that precedes it, rising from the depths of the pool with the same smile as a snake gives its prey, her only thought is of the fresco in the front hall. Nymphs, Zen had explained once, blushing; sirens, Haruka had corrected later with an awkward cough, meant to recall the hundred daughters sent to the third king of the Wisterias, tempting him to name a queen among them.

But it’s not a potential queen that prowls toward her now, sliding right up beside her, one arm pressed against the tile to hold her steady. “Come here often, Little Miss?”

“Um…?” Shirayuki’s never been one to be good with faces, let alone names— that had always been Obi’s forte. Just one of the many services I provide, Miss, he’d tell her, grin honed to a gleaming edge, I’ll remember your grudges good enough for both of us. And yet, there’s something about this woman, a familiarity in the way she moves, in the precise slant her smirk takes. “No, not really…?”

“Shirayuki?” There’s not so much as a ripple as Kiki cuts through the steam, her damp hair clinging to her shoulders and back, floating where it meets the water. The light casts her in shadow and sepia, and oh, if only that fresco painter still lived, he would itch to commit her to plaster as well, nymph or siren or seamaid. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, Kiki!” She bobs higher in the pool, water splashing over her siren. “Ah, yes, I’m over here. Sorry, I didn’t mean to lose you.”

“It’s not your fault.” The tone is kind, but her body is tense, gaze wary where it lingers on the woman beside her. If she were some sort of sea creature, it would be one that hunted her own kind. “I shouldn’t have left you to—”

“Ah, it’s Blondie!” The siren surges out of the water, close enough that her breath stirs the hair on her neck. “And I bet when this is dry, it’s red, isn’t it, Little Lady?”

Kiki rises out of the water, no longer a nymph or seamaid but a goddess, blinding where the light halos around her. Limned as she is, Shirayuki sees the moment her jaw clenches, hand dropping to her hip only to find it bare. “And who are—?”

“Wait.” The woman’s eyes are wide enough to catch the light, flashing like two golden coins, and oh, there’s only one other person with a color like that. “You’re Obi’s friend. Torou!”

A great crow swoops down, settling on a stone scattered on the cave floor, just across from her. She thinks nothing of it, not at all, until it winks.

Caw, caw, it says, and because she is yet a child, and a child does not yet know what she should understand and what she should not, she hears it as, “Good day, good day, little one! What brings you here?”

Careful, the snowdrop whispers in her ear, always wary. Crows are tricksters and worse.

Were she a woman grown, the warning might spook her, might convince her to turn her shoulder and forget this crow-speak entirely. But she is yet a little girl, and children are the most accomplished tricksters of all.

“I am looking for a boy,” she says. “Have you seen him?”

“Well.” There’s a flutter of eyelashes before Torou moves, her sudden stillness all turned to a sinuous slink. “That’s putting it a little strong, but sure. We’re friendly.”

“Torou.” Kiki tries the name on her tongue, but no familiarity lights on her face, even if her shoulders do ease. “Strange that we meet you here. Again.”

“Not so strange, Blondie.” They may not be friends— Obi had begrudgingly called her a colleague, when pressed— but her mouth slants, so like Obi’s it makes her breath catch. “Last time we stumbled onto each other, you were coming from Tanbarun while I was going to. And this time, well…” Both her brows arch, too innocent. “Looks like we both might be heading toward.”

Shirayuki’s heart flutters in her throat, fear spiking through her like a rabbit with a fox outside it’s den, but Kiki’s face might well be made of marble for how little it gives away. “How do you figure that?”

Torou tips her head, smile spreading like butter in a hot pan. “Where else is a lady knight going to take a runaway princess?”

It happens between one blink and the next.

Kiki stands still as a statue, bath lapping around at waist, the dim light turning her skin from flesh to stone, a masterpiece so perfect it would make Viande’s masters despair. Water pools in the round of her belly button, winking in the light, and— and it’s a small detail to catch on, but Kiki is so rarely vulnerable like this. Even without leather and steel, she is armored by her station, by the prestige of Seiran, but now—

Now she lacks both, all of it left behind with her duties in Wistal. Because of her.

Salt burns, right at the corner of her eyes, threatening to let more than just a drop squeeze from them. Shirayuki ducks her head, trying to settle the sting with just a small flutter or two, but there’s a splash, hard enough that the water rolls up over her shoulders, and when she looks up—

Kiki has a knee pressed between Torou’s thighs, lips strung around her teeth in a snarl so fierce Izana’s best hounds would quiver.

“Just where,” she growls. “Did you hear that?”

It is so easy for a little girl to trust a crow, is it not? For her to simply ask what she needs, with not the slightest hint of fear. A trickster he may be, but there is little danger while she is healthy and hale, and he so much smaller than she. Were he to cross her, she could simply catch her neck between her two hands and twist. Not a thought that occupies the little girl’s mind, of course, but surely it passes through the crow’s, the complex calculation of all smaller, weaker things that must share their path creatures who smile with sharp teeth.

Perhaps it would be different if it were a snake, or a tiger. If there were some way for harm to come to her, perhaps the little girl might not trust so easily, not so soon after she had escaped from the sorceress who had twisted her will to adorn her garden.

Ah, but no, not our little girl. She would refuse to let her heart to be trampled, to walk around wounded and bleeding and call it strength. To close herself off from the crows and tiger and snakes and sorceresses because they might bite or peck or bend her to their will.

So often we would call that foolish. A sign of a soft thing not ready to face the harshness of the world. A child that needed to be protected, lest she hurt herself.

And surely, you will find, her snowdrop agrees.

It was impossible to live in Wistal and not know of Kiki’s skill. The guardsmen used to line up when she was in the yard, waiting their turn to take on the indomitable heir of Seiran. Shirayuki had seen it more than a few times passing from the pharmacy yo the main palace; men twice her size would charge at her, voices raised to a battle cry, and Kiki would dispatch them without a hint of sweat beading her brow, one right after the other.

Miss Kiki might look like a princess, Obi told her once after Sereg, steam curling up from his mug, but if I had to face either her or Sir in a real fight, I’d take the big guy every time.

Because he’s bigger?Slower, is what she meant, but it felt cruel to call Mitsuhide that when both Zen and Obi had done it more than enough over Kiki’s recent engagement.

That, he allowed with a shrug, but also… He smiles, like a throat around a knife. Sir wouldn’t be fighting to kill.

Kiki was lethal, that’s what he meant to say. And she’d understood that, the same way a man might know it’s dog could kill, given the reason. But it’s not until now, when Torou turns her head and the light glints along the flat of a small blade, pressed intimately across her neck, that Shirayuki realizes: she’s dangerous, too.

“Kiki…” It’s mean to be a warning, a plea, but it’s a squeak, the whole world feeling as if it’s escaped its moorings. “Don’t…”

“My, my.” Torou’s laugh is as languid as the stretch of her limbs. “Now you got me wondering where you had that one squirreled away, Blondie.” Her finger traces over the knob of Kiki’s wrist, suggestive. “Maybe even what else you got hidden up there too.”

Kiki huffs, one corner of her mouth tugging up her cheek. “Thought you said you didn’t like the dangerous ones.”

Her smile hones as sharp as the knife at her throat. “Oh, honey, you should know by now…I lied.”

A thin line of red beads where metal meets flesh. “I would not suggest doing that with me.”

Shirayuki is close enough to catch the hitch of Torou’s breath, to see the thin sheen of fear stretch across the gold field of her eyes before it fades into bravado. “Boo,” she groans, “you’re just as boring as I remember, Blondie.”

“You wouldn’t like me to get interesting.” There’s not a trace of humor when Kiki says, “Now answer the question. How did you know?”

Torou heaves a sigh so heavy her eyes roll too. “Oh please, like anyone between Yuris and Wirant hasn’t heard about the Second Prince’s wayward little wife-to-be. Doesn’t take a genius to see a red head and the heir to Seiran and do the math.”

Kiki’s grip slackens on the hilt of her knife, her eyes uncertain as they dart toward Shirayuki, a question that she doesn’t even begin to have the answer for. Torou, as sharp as Obi ever was, doesn’t miss it.

“Listen, Blondie.” Her slender fingers fold neatly over the arm at her throat like tiger stripes. “I got a head up because I know who Nan— Obi hung around. None these peddlers and pilgrims are gonna know a lady from the louse, let alone think they’re breaking bread with someone who might’ve been a Highness. And I’m sure not going to be the one letting them know any different.”

The tension spills out of Kiki between one sigh and the next. “All right. I’ll believe you.” Water sloshes as she pulls black, knife disappearing beneath the surface. “Don’t make me regret it.”

“Yeah, yeah, or you’ll make sure I do.” Torou rubs a hand over her throat, palm coming away smeared. “Heard it. Now that we’ve got the small talk out of the way, tell me…”

She leans in, smile all mischief. “Where’s tall, dumb and handsome? Gotta say my bed’s been a little cold lately, wouldn’t mind a big guy like that to warm it up for me.”

Shirayuki doesn’t realize she’s gaping until water laps over her teeth, rousing her enough to gasp, “You mean, Mitsuhide?”

“Oh, is that his name? Yeah,” she sighs, wistful. “Mitsuhide. That’d sound all nice wrapped up in a moan, wouldn’t it?”

Kiki folds her arms under chest, mouth twitching. “He’s engaged.”

“That so?” A plucked brows quirks with her grin. “Well, I can work with that. Engaged isn’t married, after all. Wouldn’t be the first guy I’ve had one last hurrah with before he clamps on the old ball and chain.”

There’s a shift in the water, one that starts from where Kiki stands and ripples out; Shirayuki stiffens, sure that she’ll see metal flash and blood drip along its edge, but instead—

Instead, Kiki laughs. Loud enough it echoes off the rafters, filling the whole space like church bells. “I would love,” she hums, “to see you try it.”

“You know,” Torou grouses, shoving her head through the collar of her dress. It’s an effort, with all that hair. “That’s when most women bring out the knife.”

“Really?” Kiki shifts back on her hips, utterly casual where she leans against the wall of their room. Dinner steams on the table where the innkeeper’s wife left it: three bowls of stew and hearty bread, though Shirayuki’s the only one who has bothered to sit herself in front of it. “I think it would be entertaining. Haven’t seen him try to climb out of his own skin like that in years.”

Shirayuki could count on her hand the number of times she’d seen Obi blush; whether it was natural inclination or the cast of his skin, she couldn’t say, but his embarrassment almost never showed itself on his cheeks or the tips of his ears, but in the hunch of his back or the set of his jaw. It’s what Torou does now, the sharp angles of her shoulders forming pickets up around her ears.

“So the magic is gone, is it?” Torou mutters into her shoulder, pouting like a scolded child. “Sorry for you princess. Shoulda known that sort of thing never outlasts the happy ending.”

A corner of Kiki’s mouth hooks into a grin so sly Shirayuki finds herself blushing. “Far from it. Just found better things to wrap my hands around.”

Gold flashes, molten and curious, before Torou sashays over to where Kiki leans, hair trailing water where she walked. “Well, maybe if he’s not one to be tempted, you might be…eh, my lady?”

Her purr sets Shirayuki’s skin tingling, but even a hefty application of batting lashes doesn’t move Kiki to more than a snort. “Pass.”

“Ugh.” Torou tosses herself into the nearest chair, ladder back knocking into Shirayuki, setting a small spray of stew across the table. “You really are no fun, Blondie.”

That only hones Kiki’s smile to a point, like the dagger Obi showed her once, meant to slip between armored places. A stilletto, he called it. Viandese. “I’m sure you’ll learn to live with the disappointment.”

Her eyes roll, smooth as coins along cobble. “I’ll never understand what Nanaki saw in the lot of you. Maybe job security or something just as boring. How he didn’t just up and die from the lack of fun, I can’t—”

“Wait!”

It’s not until Torou’s wrist sits clenched between her fingers, pulse fluttering against her fingertips, that Shirayuki even realizes she’s spoken. Her voice is raw where it scraped its way out, hope digging its claws deep into her throat.

He was seen leaving with a woman, my lady. The lamps had carved deeps shadows across Kai’s face, his sweet face grim, but—but—

“Obi,” she gasps. “Is he with you?”

There can’t be more than a breath between the ask and the answer, but time bends once her lips wrap around that final rise, running honey-slow, so viscous she swears she can feel it stretch against her skin. Torou’s eyes round, jaw going slack, and oh, there’s time enough for her to count the muscles that contort to make it so, for her to see the words etched in gold before flesh could form them.

“Him?” That narrow wrist breaks her hold as if it were wet paper, cradling against the the valley of Torou’s chest. “No. He’s done with me, he said, and I don’t come crawling to any man, let alone that one.”

“But you’ve seen him.” Her fingers itch to bury themselves in that dress, to hold her only lead in her grasp and simply shake until answers come out. “Recently? If he told you—?”

“That was years ago. You were there. Well” —her head tilts, one way and then the other, indecisive— “in the next room over. After what happened at the manor, he didn’t want me ruining his new gig. Gave me the big kiss off. No actual kisses,” she clarifies, at Kiki’s inquisitive brow. “But you know. It’s been real. Have a nice life. Don’t try to find me or I’ll kill you. That sort of thing.”

Kiki’s mouth twitches. “Touching.”

“But Kai said…” There’s not enough air for her to speak, not at anything more than a whisper. “They had said he left with a woman. If it isn’t you, then…?”

When Torou looks down at her, there is pity in her eyes, so heavy she thinks she would stumble under it, were she on her feet. “I haven’t seen him,” she admits, more gentle than Shirayuki ever thought she could speak. “But I….I think I know someone who has.”

My wings take me far and wide, little girl, far and wide, the crow says, a showman among birds. Look at them and you can see how strong they are, how long. Why if you were a grub or a louse or even a little mouse they might blot out the sky when I fly overhead, and you’d feel a little tremble in your knees and a little water in your belly.

She asked, the snowdrop says, its little voice fierce, whether you’d seen her boy.

I’ve been to all sort of places, all sorts. His spindly crow legs pace over the stone, tack-tack-tack, undaunted by the sternness of a small flower. Here, there, and everywhere, more places than you’ve ever heard of, and even more you’ve never dreamed! Well traveled, that’s what I am, little girl, that’s what I am, so if I haven’t seen it, it can’t be anywhere meant to be found.

But my boy, our little girl presses, heart so far up her throat she could have coughed it into her hands. Might have too, if she thought giving it away might help her. You must have seen him too.

I’ve seen all that’s to be seen under the sun, he tells her, but with one great ruffle of his feathers, he deflates. But I haven’t seen a boy like yours.

Hope crumbles in her hands the way ill-baked cakes would, dry and grainy and unpleasant, leaving nothing to her but crumbs and a sandy taste in her mouth. Would that she have never asked, she might have held on to it a while longer, might have trudged on thinking that she could hold him once again, but—

But perhaps, the crow says, a twinkle in his beady eye, I know someone who has.

Kiki's face is as still as a death mask, her hand absently reaching at an empty hip. “Who—?”

“How?” Shirayuki doesn’t so much speak the word as it shivers out, so delicate a breath could scuttle it to the four winds. “Where?”

“Tanbarun.” A shoulder lifts, the wide neck of Torou’s dress slipping off it. “In the castle.”

“The castle…?” she echoes. “Why…?”

Miss. It’s a puff in the air, a warning that soon Lilias will give up this tenuous summer for autumn. Shirayuki turns anyway, eyes slipping from the burning horizon to trace Obi’s silhouette in the fading light. If this all doesn’t work out…

You mean the Phostyrias? They’re so close now; even in the gloaming, the road to Wirant glimmers, lit as bright as day in the darkest night. Another year and Oriold will shine just the same. I suppose we’d have to go back and look at our notes, see if there’s a more likely hybrid would could pursue. This one appears to be hearty enough, and without any of the orimmalys’s poison, but there were quite a few promising lines to choose from.

Miss. There’s a smile in his voice, as fond as the warmth in her chest that answers it. That’s not what I meant.

Oh. Shadows hang heavy from his brow, clinging close to the curve of his cheekbone, and it makes it harder to see the question in his eyes, to divine just what he’s trying to ask. You mean if the whole project was scuttled?

An uncomfortable possibility to ponder; she’s spent so much of her tenure on coaxing sprouts to grow, on convincing stone and seed to graft, that starting over would be daunting, to say the least.

Well, there’s any number of labs here that might be happy to have an extra set of hands, she allows. Or maybe I might help Yuzuri in the green houses before trying my hand at my own—

That’s not what I meant either. Trust me, Miss, Obi says, entirely too amused. I know you could find work anywhere. The problem is stopping you.

He shifts, the shadows swallowing him until only the shape of him remains. I meant, if this whole thing with Master doesn’t work out. If you do all this and Elder Highness gives you a polite shoo out the window. Where do we go if…?

Her breath catches. You mean if I…?

If she stops being a curiosity, and starts being inconvenient. That’s what he means. If Izana can’t be trusted to keep his word.

Tanbarun. It’s not until she says it that she’s knows it’s true. It’s my…it used to be my home.

He’s silent for a long moment. Well, he snorts, I suppose it’s not like Prince Raj is going to ask you to marry him a second time…

“The real question,” Kiki hums, unimpressed, “is what were you doing there?”

Torou lifts her chin, curling a hand beneath it. “I already said I wasn’t. I just know someone who saw him there.”

“You know someone who was in the castle.” It’s not a question, not from Kiki. Oh no, it’s a statement, so full of doubt it nearly drips. “Someone who also just happens to know who Obi looks like. And we’re supposed to…?”

Believe that, she doesn’t say, but the implication hangs heavy enough.

“Hey, my source is legitimate.” A bejeweled hand flutters in the air, pressing tight over Torou’s heart. “He’s supposed to be there.”

One elegant eyebrow arches, matching Kiki’s tone as she asks, “And just how did you come across this…source?”

“Why, he’s my sweetheart,” Torou tells her smugly, both her eyebrows waggling. “One of the prince’s men, works right in the castle. And the last time we had a little rendezvous, he told me that he saw Obi himself, strutting right through the royal hallways without so much as a slouch.”

My little crow wife. The crow puffs proudly, as if that were an accomplishment in itself. The little girl didn’t know much about crows and how they lived; perhaps it was. She lives inside the castle’s rookery, the best of His Majesty’s messengers, that’s what they say. No one can fly as high or as fast as my little wife! The king himself asks for her by name.

But what, our little girl rasps, does this have to do with my boy.

Everything, he quarks, because my fast and tidy little wife told me not a week past she saw a boy, just like yours. Dressed as fine as a dandy, sweeping bows and calling to his betters. An impressive sounding boy, one of the finest feather.

But how can that be? Her fingers brush over the snowdrop’s petals. Her boy is a good one, a fine one, that is true, but to think of him in silks and cambric, to think of him with fine manners and a great bearing— a season cannot be enough to wrought such changes. He is no fine knight or lord, he is just my boy.

Are you sure of that? The crow cocks his small head, curious. Surely a boy that belongs to so discerning and worldly a girl would be worthy of prizes and titles aplenty.

The girl frowns at that. She was not so discerning a girl before she was taken in by the sorceress and her garden. She was not so worldly before she traveled so much of it.

Perhaps, the crow muses, he only needed a little polishing. Perhaps— his beady eyes sparkle, full of mischief— he only needed a little push.

A push? Her small mouth purses in a pout. But what could have pushed him?

Are you sure you care to know? the crow asks archly, a sly shine to his clever beak.

I do. They were so happy, after all, with their windows that called across from each other, with their little roses both their hands tended. At least, that is always what the little girl had thought. I do.

Then I can tell you, he says, magnanimous. He has forgotten you for a princess.

Rain patters against the glass, a lulling rhythm, if Shirayuki were in any mood to allow herself to be lulled. Instead she twists on her pillow, a groan stifled in the down, thoughts refusing to settle. It’s the most comfortable bed she’s had in weeks, and the softest she’s like to see for many more, and yet, yet—

“There’s a catch,” Kiki grunts, cold and stiff beside her. “There’s always a catch with people like that. She wouldn’t give us what we want for free.”

“But…” Her lips press together, steadying. “It’s the best lead we have.”

The only lead, really, but there’s no need to say it, not when Kiki is already sighing, resigned. “It could lose us days if she’s spinning us some yarn. Weeks, even, if he never even came this way.”

“I’ve already lost us more than that,” she murmurs, barely able to bring her voice louder than a whisper. “The trail’s already gone cold. If only we’d gone last summer, then maybe…”

Maybe we would have a chance. Shirayuki bites her cheek to keep from saying it. Kiki stiffens anyway.

“All right,” she says after a long moment. “It’s up to you.”

Shirayuki stares at the back of her head. “It is?”

“I’ve already not listened to you once.” Kiki shifts, just enough that their eyes meet. “I don’t mean to make the same mistake again. Even if it might lead us on a fool’s errand.”

It is hard for us to understand, is it not? To choose to keep our hearts as open as our eyes, to walk willingly into hardship. Would we dare the world to do its worst so soon after feeling its lash? To say, it is not what you do to me that makes me, but what I allow myself to be.

Perhaps that is why stories choose them. Or rather, why we choose to tell their stories. We are so different from these little girls, these children with their hearts on their sleeves and their soft flesh bared to the world. We long to be them once again, to trust in our story—

No, to trust in ourselves. To once again believe that should we fall, we will be able to stand up once again. To accept that, so often, we must be enough, all on our own.

How hard it is to take that leap. How unfair it is that so often, we must.

Few decisions are ever made well in the small hours of the morning; there is something about the lack of light that makes desperation run long in the tooth, that makes those few hours until sunrise feel like an hourglass dripping life’s blood. Shirayuki knows this, resolves in those few moments between when the room falls silent and when Kiki’s breath gives way to sleep to wait until morning to choose. But—

But, well, sleep has never come easy. And without Obi…

Ah, she can’t remember the last time she’s had a good night’s rest. Even in the palace, a soft mattress and cool sheets could never calm the racing of her mind.

Her feet swing down to the floor, breath hissing when she finds how the night’s chill has settled into the boards. But still, she stands, pausing only to light a candle before she pads down the hall. It’s quiet there, still in the way the dormitories were when she stumbled back late from the lab, only Obi’s hand on her back to keep her upright. And yet—

Yet she doesn’t hesitate to knock at Torou’s door. It’s possible she could be abed; that’s where she should be, after all. But after an evening of lop-sided smiles and one-shouldered shrugs, Shirayuki doubts that this is where Obi and his friend might differ.

There’s no answer. Still, she tries again. It takes at least three for Obi to answer for a stranger, and if Torou has a special knock to bypass the hassle, Shirayuki hardly knows it.

On her third knock, she simply tries the door. It’s unlocked, opening easy under her hands, and when she steps in—

Ah, there’s a knife at her neck. A sharper one than Kiki keeps.

“Oh,” Torou sighs, slipping in back into her boot. “It’s just you.”

She tromps back to where she’d been sitting, a deck of cards dealt out for two hands. As a daughter of a bar— granddaughter, Obi’s so quick to tease— she knows more than her fair share of games, but this one escapes even her.

“So,” she drawls, picking up a card. “What brings you my way? Must be something for you to slip the leash like that. Hate to think what Blondie’ll do if she finds her little princess has wandered off on her.”

Hurry up, she’s telling her, and oh, she’d had her whole speech planned from the moment she walked in the door, a tidy thing that would lay out expectations. Boundaries. Guidelines. But now—

Now she just shuffles at the threshold, fingers lacing and unraveling as if that might help her string her thoughts together. It, unfortunately, does not. “I…um…”

Torou glances up, incredulous. “You’re not my type,” she reminds her, “so don’t think you can stick around.”

“No, I wasn’t— that’s not what I’m here for.” Shirayuki clears her throats, letting the vibration order her thoughts. “I just want to…to say…”

Will you take me there? the little girl asks. I must see him myself.

It is very easy to ask that, the crow tells her, more gently than he is wont. But it is much harder to do. Are you ready for that— for it to be hard?

The little girl plants her feet, bare on the stony cave floor, and meets that beady gaze. Yes.

“Great,” Torou hums, setting her cards aside. “I’ll send word that my sweetheart should expect us. I'm sure" --her smile stretches until it's all teeth-- "that he'll be thrilled.

#obiyukiweek23 #day 3 #obiyuki #akagami no shirayukihime #all that remains #snow queen au #my fic #ans #oof finally we're about to get to the derring and the doing!!#i got to do some fun tweaks to the snow queen frame this time around #and also step back on the narrative frame a little #i did a nice reread and realized i really started to get very set in the pattern that every other scene had to be frame #like the more stressed out shirayuki is the more i clung to the frame #and so this time i let the scenes breathe much more #let the main story run into itself a little bit #and i think it sort of works for how Shirayuki is feeling #she was so tightly controlled in the palace #and now she's starting to breathe again #and the narrative's doing the same to the plotline

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