I decided I ought to post this up here, since it's pretty innocent…mostly
Just a bit of crackish fun with one of my favourite couples! It's so much fun to mess with Gwendel's mind. O:-)
Redheaded Distractions Pt. 1
Gwendel Von Walter sat in his office going through the reams of paperwork that had accumulated in his and the Maou's absence and he sighed. He wasn't quite sure what to do about Annisina. He'd left her in charge of the castle partly to give her something to do, but mostly to keep her safe. Konrad's apparent disappearance had shocked them all, and he hadn't been quite sure what kind of situation they were going into, so he thought it better to make sure that she was too busy to think about things like trying to "help" in their search with her inventions and thus putting herself into availability as a target. When he'd seen what she'd done to the castle while he was gone, though…
He shuddered, his hands twitching. Those inventions were NOT cute, and seemingly none of them did what they were supposed to do, turning them into a hazard for all who walked within or without the castle walls. He had to get her to get rid of them (none of the soldiers would dare, for fear of them exploding or having some kind of anti-tamper mechanisms in them, and honestly, Gwendel couldn't blame them) but thus far he hadn't been able to bring it up with her.
Gwendel shook his head and forced himself to go back to the paperwork. He could worry about Annisina and her horrors later, this paperwork wasn't going to do itself, and Yuuri wasn't around to do it either, so that left only him, as usual.
By noon he was deeply engrossed once more, which was probably why he never heard the door open and then close again, or the slight clicking of high heels on the stone floor in between the rugs that were strewn around the room. He did notice when two large stacks of papers were moved aside and a red-cloth-clad seat sat down in the middle of the desk.
"What are you doing!" he objected, looking up into the sparkling, mirthful blue eyes of his childhood friend and tormentor.
"I'm fetching you for lunch," she said matter-of-factly, "You've been skipping too many meals recently; you're getting positively thin."
"I'm fine. If you're so concerned why don't you have the maids bring something in here and I'll eat it while I work," Gwendel shrugged, looking back down at the paperwork and preparing to get back to work, derriere on his desk or not.
"I think not. You will get away from those papers for half an hour or I'll just have to get you to help me with the castle's defenses some more," she said, throwing him an angelic smile, "I have some wonderful new ideas! I was thinking, what about if we made certain stones under the portcullis sensitive to weight so that if someone steps on them they'll be a trigger for something - like say a cauldron of boiling oil right overhead? Then maybe we could…"
"Annisina….." Gwendel growled, cutting her off, "Did it occur to you that if we do that, we'll be just as likely to end up sending boiling oil down on our own troops? As well as the wagons which come every day to bring supplies to the castle? Come on now! Be reasonable!"
"But Gwennie, it's such a good idea!" she grinned, enthusiasm entirely undaunted by his criticism of her "wonderful idea".
"Annisina, I need to work," he sighed, still reading and signing papers, studiously attempting to ignore her.
"I hadn't wanted to do this, but since you leave me no choice…" Annisina sighed, then leaned over the desk and drew something thin and gauzy out of her dress. "You're coming to lunch whether you like it or not, Gwendel Von Walter, and I am going to take you there… with this!" With a flick of her wrist the gauzy thing uncoiled to become a thin, strong rope which wound around his middle, trapping his arms at his sides. "I call it "Control-kun", isn't it wonderful?" she beamed.
"Annisina, this is not funny!" Gwendel protested, struggling against the rope to absolutely no avail. It had him tightly bound from shoulders to waist, and far enough down the arms so that he couldn't lift them from his sides.
"I think the look suits you quite well," she beamed, leaning down to kiss his forehead, giggling. "Now come along, Gwennie, it's time for lunch!"
Gwendel quickly found - to his great dismay - that not only did "Control-kun" keep him tied up, it also made him do what Annisina said. He found himself standing up from his chair and following her, even though his mind was sending frantic signals to his legs not to.
"Annisina, what is IN this thing? What spell did you put on it? Annisina! Damnit let me go! I'll come to lunch, I promise, but this is too much! I'm not some kind of prisoner or a dog on a leash!"
Annisina looked back on him, her expression vaguely surprised, but what she saw there obviously tweaked something within her, because she sighed and with a flick of the wrist she loosened the bonds somewhat. "You promise you'll come with me right now down to lunch?" she asked suspiciously.
"I swear," Gwendel said, "just for goodness sakes let me GO!"
"Well, I suppose if you swear," she said, flicking her wrist again and untying him, the coil of rope coming back into her hand as obediently as if it were a puppy returning to its mistress. "But I'm not putting Control-kun away, just in case. Especially since it seems to be so…effective," she smirked.
Gwendel held back his shudder until she was looking away and headed for the door. Even lunch away from the desperately overdue paperwork was worth it to keep from being tied up and dragged there. Besides the horrible humiliation of appearing at the lunch table tied up with Annisina holding his "leash", the lack of control had been positively frightening!
With Annisina's clicking steps close behind him, Gwendel waked down to the dining room, resigned to his fate. Luckily, with so few nobles in the castle since most of the usual contingent were out supporting Yuuri, there was no one there to see, except for the two of them and the maid who served lunch. Gwendel had to privately admit to himself that he was hungry, but he never said a world of that out loud, just ate as quickly as he could manage while still remaining polite, and then stood up to get back to work.
"Where do you think you're going?" Annisina asked testily, looking up from her lunch which she was still eating politely and daintily.
"Back to work, I'm done eating," Gwendel said, frowning at having to state the obvious.
"You're not allowed to go back to work until I'm finished," Annisina shook her head, patting Control-kun, "Where are your manners, Lord von Walter?"
"Okay, fine, I'm not going anywhere," Gwendel sighed, pushing his empty plate away from in front of him and wishing he had his crochet hooks and wool on hand. Gwendel hated to just sit.
Desperate to find something to do rather than just staring blankly at his empty plate, he let his gaze sweep over the room. He found two spider webs in high corners, a third hanging from the chandelier, and a strange smudge in the middle of the ceiling whose origins he didn't even want to contemplate. Disturbed now as well as bored, he forced his gaze down. There wasn't much point in examining the paintings or tapestries, neither had been changed much in the past fifty years; the most recent addition being a mere ten years old, which was still enough time to put it well into the realm of the familiar, so Gwendel found his gaze drifting to his dining companion.
The first thing that caught his eye was that nasty bit of rope or whatever it was, slung casually over her shoulder as she ate and obviously within easy reach (and thus preventing his escape) but when he let his eyes take in more than just the threat to his sanity, he found himself bizarrely fascinated. He'd never really taken the time to watch someone eat before, as far as he could remember, and the expressions which crossed Annisina's face as she took small, polite bites and chewed neatly before swallowing… He found himself becoming almost hypnotized by the rhythmic motions and forced himself to look elsewhere. Unfortunately he found that his eyes didn't want to leave her pert, cupid-bow lips. That was almost more disturbing than anything else that had happened today. He had obviously been spending far too much time worrying and not enough time crocheting if his mind was beginning to wander like that again. He evidently needed to regain his focus. His eyes slowly glazed over as he continued to watch her lips move, and his mind drifted back to a long-ago argument with his uncle. He'd been a hotheaded adolescent at the time, and furious with his uncle for trying to run his life…
"But why Uncle? I'm perfectly within my rights if I want to make a move, and it's not as though Mother objects!" young Gwendel protested.
"Gwendel von Walter, you know better than that! Think about your bloodline! You are my brother's heir, and will soon enough be head of the Walter household. How do you think it would look to your subjects? AS for your mother, you ought to know by now that she cares little or nothing for appearances and is hardly the right kind of role model! Listen; until you reach your majority, I am the one who will lead you on issues related to the house von Walter, and this is my final…"
"Gweeeeendel…"
An insistent female voice interrupted his train of memory just as he was reaching the point where he might remember what the argument had been about. It seemed important for some reason. He looked up and realized that Annisina was standing next to his chair with a stern-leaning-toward-angry look on her face and slapping Control-kun against her leg threateningly.
"I said: why are you staring at me!
Gwendel paled. How was he going to explain his way out of this one?
Annisina continued to slap the rope/invention against her leg impatiently as she waited for a response.
"Come now Gwendel, surely all that paperwork hasn't fried your brain completely."
"I was watching you to see when you'd be finished eating so I could get back to work," he snapped, covering his sudden confusion with his habitual irritability.
"Is that so? Well obviously you weren't paying very close attention then, because I finished lunch a couple of minutes ago. No, I think my first assessment was right, you've definitely been doing too much paperwork. I'm absolutely appalled! What if you were in a state like this and there was an attack? I think this demands immediate intervention, so no, you are not going back to work, you are coming with me. Willing or unwilling, I don't much care," she added, shaking Control-kun threateningly.
Gwendel was still feeling wary enough of her to get up quickly from his chair and nod for her to do whatever it was she was waiting to do with him. He felt almost fatalistic as she left the room, checking over her shoulder to make sure he followed.
He really wished he could remember what had been so important about his memory earlier, and what had sparked that argument with his uncle. All he did know about it for sure was that it hadn't been an argument that he'd won. Any argument which ended with his uncle invoking "the pride of the Family von Walter" had always been a loss for him. Even now, after the man had long stepped down from his position as regent, they tended to disagree about issues of the management of the family estates. Especially when so much of Gwendel's time lately had been taken up with the Maou. At least now he had an ally though. Hube had agreed, now that he had been pardoned, to help in running the estate, and Gwendel knew for sure that Hube would take his side, especially with his human lover and half-human child to consider. Gwendel chuckled. He would have loved to be a fly on the wall for that particular discussion! Hube's time away had definitely changed the attitude his father had implanted in him about humans.
Gwendel was so lost in though that he didn't notice when Annisina stopped suddenly in front of a door. Consequently he managed to walk right into her, tripping him and sending both of them tumbling to the floor in a heap.
"Sorry," Gwendel said apologetically, moving off her and offering a hand to get her back on her feet.
She took it and gave him an unusually worried look, especially for her.
"Gwendel, what is with you? I'm almost tempted to take you to the healers you're so out of it," she said, shaking her had as she came to her feet.
"I'm fine," he protested, "I just have a lot on my mind lately, that's all."
"If you say so," she shook her head, "Come on, we're here, you may as well come in and we'll try this first," she sighed, taking his hand and puling him into the room.
Once he was inside she let go of him, then closed and locked the door behind them.
Er…where are we anyway?" Gwendel asked, looking around at what appeared to be some sort of combination between a laboratory and a bizarre torture chamber, "just out of curiosity."
"My suite, of course," Annisina said, bustling around and fiddling with various machines. "This is where I keep my more secret projects, now please, have a seat." She indicated a comfortable armchair in a little alcove between the main room they were in and the bedroom. "You obviously need to rest, so just sit there. It won't bite you," she added when she saw his somewhat dubious expression.
Still a bit wary, Gwendel went over to the chair and sat down.
"Good boy," she patted his hand, leaning over the chair to pull up a bag that was dangling of the arm. "Here, why don't you keep yourself occupied while I get things set up? I know how you hate to sit still."
"What is…?" Gwendel started to ask, but then his fingers encountered the familiar shapes of crochet hooks and yarn, and a slow, relaxed smile passed over his face as he emptied the bag out onto his lap and began sorting through the materials there, already letting his mind drift to what cute thing he would create next. He didn't even think to ask why Annisina had crocheting materials hanging form a comfortable chair in her own suite when he hadn't seen her show any interest in the art since both of them were young.
It didn't take very long for Gwendel to become completely absorbed in his work, and Annisina took as much advantage of that as she dared, scanning him with various different machines. All her readings were very confused, though. For some reason all she could get were impressions of what he was concentrating on right at that moment, which meant she had lots of readouts about crochet patterns and cute stuffed animals. The only machine which gave her a different reading was one she hadn't even realized she had turned on. The love meter she'd used when Wolfram and Yuuri went "missing" in the bearbee house kept indicating something, but it didn't seem to be connected directly to Gwendel's obsession with "cute things" the way it had been before. Annisina was confused. The result made it actually look like some outside force was interfering with those feelings. They seemed very strong, but also very strongly suppressed.
"Surely that can't be healthy," she muttered to herself as she fiddled with the dials, trying to get a clearer readout. Suddenly her eyes brightened as she had an absolutely brilliant idea. She looked at the happily oblivious Gwendel sitting in the armchair and then she looked down at Control-kun still slung over her arm. It would be a perfect test of Control-kun's abilities, and she really did need to know what was going on with Gwendel…
Her mind made up, Annisina walked casually over to where Gwendel was sitting and perched on the arm of the chair. Then, using her well-honed combat skills she flicked her wrist so that just the tip of Control-kun circled Gwendel's neck lightly like a collar and wound back around itself.
Gwendel's hands stilled and the partially-completed crochet project fell into his lap, but he didn't say anything. Annisina was surprised at that. After all, she wasn't sending any command to him not to speak. She made him turn his head toward her and saw that his eyes were completely blank. Did he always look like that when e was crocheting, she wondered? If he did, it was frightening. His gaze was just so… blank!
"Alright Gwennie, I need you to wake up now," she instructed him.
Immidiately the life came back into his eyes, although he didn't move. Control-kun was definitely performing up to expectations!
"Annisina, what are you doing?" he growled, frowning at her but completely unable to move in any other way.
"I'm finding out what's wrong with you," she explained matter-of-factly, "Now I need you to answer a few questions for me," she smiled
"What would you like to know?" he asked in a pleasant tone (his eyes blazing showed that in fact this was not what he had wanted to say at all).
"Such a good boy you are. Let's start off with an easy question for you:" She lounged on the edge of the chair, being sure to keep a firm hold on his "leash". "What made you so distracted at lunch?"
"Your lips," he answered simply, "and I remembered something about my uncle."
The first part of his answer shocked her so much that she almost fell off the arm of the chair, and she blushed such a bright shade of red that her face almost matched her hair. The second part of the answer, however, made her concerned. She knew which uncle Gwendel meant - he never referred to Stoffel by anything other than his given name, and Annisina didn't like that particular uncle. At all.
"What did you remember about your uncle?" she asked, forcing the blush from her face.
"An argument, from when I was young," Gwendel answered. Quite willingly, actually. He was finding that he could remember more about the argument now that he was being questioned about it, and he hoped she would keep asking about that and not something else potentially embarrassing, since she seemed to have him completely under her control.
Annisina was intrigued by this as well, since she couldn't seem to see the connection between his (she suppressed the blush again) fascination with her lips during lunch and an old argument with his uncle. "Okay, so how does an argument with your uncle when you were young connect to you being completely distracted at lunch?" she asked. She couldn't bring herself to ask "how does it connect to my lips", that was just too embarrassing.
"I'm not quite sure, that's what I was trying to figure out," Gwendel admitted, "I was bored, so I was looking around the room, then I started watching you eat, then I noticed that I couldn't stop looking at your lips. That's a bad sign, it means I haven't been crocheting enough. Anyway then I started remembering this argument between me and my uncle that must have taken place a few years before he stepped down since I was almost grown but he was still the one in charge of the estate…" Gwendel's explanation trailed off into silence, his gaze abstracting again.
Annisina blinked. She'd never heard the taciturn earth-mage come out with so many words all together at once since she could remember, and she'd known him almost as long as he could talk. Something decidedly odd was going on here.
"What was the argument about?" she asked, curious now.
"I don't know, that's when you started growling at me," he shrugged.
"If you remembered the argument, surely you remember what it was about," Annisina pointed out, "so I want you to remember it now. What was the argument about?"
"I need to crochet," Gwendel's eyes went blank again and his fingers actually twitched, trying to reach for the hooks and yarn on his lap.
Annisina raised an eyebrow. This was very suspicious. Control-kun was working perfectly, so Gwendel shouldn't have any control whatsoever over any part of his body, so how were his fingers moving? It had to be an outside spell, something set upon him by someone else, and if this response was triggered by her trying to get him to remember the subject of an argument with his uncle…
"You are not to crochet," she said firmly, "you are to come with me and sit in a different chair now."
At least he still obeyed her direct commands. He easily rose from the chair, the crochet hooks and balls of wool falling onto the floor, and followed her to a chair tucked away between two other large coils of metal and a few tables, where she instructed him to sit.
"You should be able to remember here," she said, depressing a switch in one of the coils that started the whole contraption humming.
Gwendel's whole body twitched and he grunted in obvious discomfort, but Annisina made herself ignore it. She knew the dampening field would affect him as well, but this was the only thing she could think of to get through this obviously interdicted mental block.
"Now, what was the argument between your uncle and you that you were remembering? What was it about?" she asked again.
"You," he said simply, and then his eyes widened. "I remember now, it was about you!"
... To Be Continued ...