IMPORTANT NOTE: I do realize I did mention Mpreg in the last chapter but I will not be exploring it in this story, sad for some good for others, but it is a good plot point I could use in a sequel or otherwise. Winks If I was going to include it I would have put it in the warnings.
Chapter 3
The Choice
A month since he had arrived.
A month of enduring submission to the Prince, however forced it may be, the humiliating punishments of disobedience and most of all avoiding the Prince's prying questions about his past, his country and his interests. The blond did not seem to get that Squall didn't want to talk about this to his friends let alone his 'master'. He had to admit that the Royal was perseverant if nothing else.
In the monotony of this life, the former commander found few and far between perks. Since that party he had only seen Zell in passing twice both when the tattooed man was in the company of the King who he now served as some sort of aide- apparently Zack had been impressed that one time they had met and decided he wanted the man of his staff. Squall had glanced Selphie only once when she had been leaving the castle with Aerith one night for some reason or another. The ex-SeeD had much to his masters annoyance again locked himself on the balcony for some time away when e had spotted the leaving group, as he waited for Cloud to get the master key again from the King to open his balcony as the brunet had stolen his. And since Seifer's departure no one had seen him at all, shipped as it had been mentioned, off to serve in the armed forces.
Surprisingly for him the twins had turned into another bright spot as the only human contact he had outside the Prince and a few cold slaves. A soon as they had figured out that their brother's prize was not only fighter but knew how to teach fighting from his time at Garden the had not stopped begging Cloud to let Squall teach them for a week; pleading that they needed more practice and that their older brother never had enough time to teach the duo themselves.
Cloud had actually given in rather easily but had only made the twins wait for his own amusement.
When the Commander had finally assessed the two he found them both to be remarkably talented with their odd blades named Keyblades which made his own weapon dull by comparison. For the sake of the sessions he had been rewarded his blade back for short amounts of time, which also aided in keeping the man fit as well as aiding his teaching Sora and Roxas.
He could almost see himself still teaching Sora and Roxas as they grew up... he'd like that, they seemed more like his own younger siblings by the day. If he were ever free from these chains he would be sure to at least see them sometimes.
One month.
One month of the ridiculously handsome slave.
One month of trying to control the urge to jump the brunet whenever he got a certain look on his face. At one point Squall had looked so lost and forlorn that Cloud had been tempted to wrap his arms around him, tell him it was alright and henceforth let him free. But he couldn't, that much had been made clear by Zack... and he wasn't about to go back on that.
Still this was getting ludicrous, when he had chosen Squall he had known the slave was that gorgeous and now he was paying the price. Every single movement, the blond wanted him so badly it hurt. To pound him to the- Enough dirty thoughts. Cloud was the Prince of Gaia and would not let himself be affected by some stupid attraction.
One not so dirty thing he did wish however was that the outsider was more open about his past, the blond was curious for obvious reasons; he wanted to know more about his current object of lust.
Lust? Was that all this was? And yet again the heir to the throne found his mind wandering back to the issue of how to get in the brunet's heart or pants, pick and choose. The lust or something more issue was one thing he had to question sometimes- there was more affection involved in the way he observed him rather than simple lust. It was becoming less like him eyeing off a kitchen maid and more like when he had first began to have a morbid curiosity with Reno.
And that had lead to him sleeping with the redhead to eventually have his heart shredded.
Would he risk the same? Squall certainly was not going anywhere easily. The brunet belonged to him and that raised all kinds of interesting possibilities.
Cloud knew the rules of breaking a slave:
One: Take away all he hold familiar and dear until he just has you.
Two: A positive experience to show that you can be kind.
Three: A similar negative experience to show the slave not to cross his master.
Four: Take away from him what he prides the most. After that he will have nothing left to fight for.
Five: Remind him that he still has you and if he holds to nothing else it should be that.
The system worked, as he had been told.
That did not make him want to carry it out any more.
The Gunblader slowly walked down the hall with a guard back to the Prince's room after a training session with Sora and Roxas that had been highly enjoyable. For once instead of fighting him he had the two go against each other. They were so equally matched it had been intriguing and in the process had attracted many of the surrounding palace dwellers to watch from higher balconies and walkways through windows.
As soon as Squall stepped into the Prince's quaters he knew something was going to go horribly wrong. The threat of it hung stagnant in the air temptingly wafting its way into his nostrils making him feel nervous. And it was not the only thing; a scent barely registrable to the human nose also seemed to permeate from the upper floors. It wasn't entirely unpleasant so the brunet simply assumed it was some sort of mask for the rich to the smells of the outdoors.
He set out to investigate and found himself eventually in the familiar sight Prince's bedchamber. The aroma was stronger now, as the SeeD commander snuck in, knowing all too well that the owner of the room, and he thought bitterly, him could return at any moment.
A wave of drowsiness struck him and Squall found himself almost struggling to keep conscious, eyes half-lidded and head clouded and hazy. It was a far different sensation to be put in stasis and far messier as he staggered to try and make it to an at least soft surface to let play out the inevitable slumber he was finding himself sinking into. As much as he tried to fight it he could already tell there was no use, whatever it was, was far too strong
The brunet was out soon as he fell onto the bed sinking slightly into the warm covers.
The painting on one wall opened and calmly the prince walked out smiling triumphantly his slumbering slave. 'Regalis dormio' the perfume that currently wafted through the room had done the work; it was a potion used by royals for the express purpose of debilitating slaves and enemies. To the normal worker or person living at the palace you were gradually immunised against its power the mako given to the Royal family making them completely immune, but to one such as Squall from an entirely different world it was overpowering.
The brunet would not be out for long; the immediate destabilising effect would wear off soon and bring him back to consciousness. However the more extended and perverse effects would linger, a mix of relaxants and immobilisers could leave a victim at the mercy of any interrogator, both in measures of truth and openness. And that was exactly what Cloud had in mind.
The man was enigmatic enough, and in order to get inside his head, he needed to know more about his past which the Commander would not let him so, as closed up and stoic as he was. Difficult tasks involve extreme measures.
The blond prince gently lifted the handsome warrior onto the bed, sitting beside him so that the younger man's head rested soundly on his legs. He couldn't help himself running a possessive hand through the soft silk of his hair.
Scanning around the mako bright blue eyes made sure that the source of the potion's perfume, a couple of ornamental golden rods were in reach, in case Squall began to regain control of his body too quickly.
One stormy blue grey eye opened to stare up at the face before him with astounding clarity for one who had just woken, a questioning glare only weakly sustained as the sheer calmness brought on by the potion dulled his anger and annoyance.
"Welcome back to the world of the living"
Squall raised one eyebrow questioningly and tried to move his arm to swat away a hand that was running down the side of his arm teasingly. But it wasn't working, as if asleep they wouldn't move properly, unlike the hot shiver that sped down his spine.
"What is going on?" he said almost passively
"I found you passed out on my bed" Cloud smirked in a way that suggested that this wasn't at all by accident.
"You did this to me" It wasn't a question, and you could see the slave trying to bring as much anger into it as possible but he was unsuccessful as the relaxants brought a smile across his features. It was a beautiful smile, not shown often and Cloud was almost overjoyed to be on its receiving end.
"Yes." He could not be bothered to deny the obvious, as he ran his hand to grasp the sub-ordinates' waist. "You are too closed up; I need to know more about you"
Squall tilted his head to the side slightly with surprisingly little difficulty, he felt almost happy to answer any questions the angel would ask him, regardless how close he had kept the information in the past. He did not know when the blond Prince he hated had turned into such an angel or why he hated him so much in the first place.
"You care?"
"I want to know. About you, your family and why you are the way you are. Is that all that hard?" Cloud was secretly enjoying this. The potion whilst carefully regulated had different effects on different people and he had to admit this was one of the most adorable he had ever seen. The way Squall looked at him was half between a confused child and a puppy dog, all too willing to please.
And the usually stoic and reserved Commander did speak, he talked of Laguna and Raine his parents, the orphanage, growing up in the garden. He talked of SeeD and the Sorceress war, how he did not want all the fame and the authority that had been thrust upon him. He talked of his friends, Zell, Qusistis, Irvine, Selphie, Rinoa and how they had saved the world against all odds. It was when the talk of Sephiroth and his attack on their world did things start to get emotional. The blond prince could only grasp the poor slave tighter as the man who bottled up his emotions and kept his feeling from the world began to cry. The death of Rinoa at the hands of the general and how the world began to crumble around him while all the people he knew and loved vanished. He had, in his mind failed to protect them all.
And then there was his capture a truly horrific story: they had been the last standing; the mobilized Garden of Balamb, which had been cornered on the Balamb peninsula by Sephiroth's armies. Many of the SeeDs had died and they had been terribly understocked for resources of food and weaponry.
In a last ditch attempt, the remaining ten senior SeeDs and teachers had volunteered Squall, as their leader to try and escape to build a resistance force with anyone who could have been left. He had accepted, albeit reluctantly the task, and had set out by stealth in the opposite direction to distracting forces.
From what Squall had heard afterwards, it had worked initially, all forces following them presuming that he, the Commander who was even famous among the opposing army for his skill and strategy was among them. Sephiroth had been leading the chase and according to reports, he was determined to bring the famous Leonhart in personally.
Then disaster struck when Squall was spotted, the duo of scouts were easily dispatched and there was no radio to the forward taskforce to tell of the Commanders whereabouts, but when the two did not reply for a regular update, Sephiroth knew. The ethereal general left his own men to capture the alpha group and left alone to get Squall.
The rest could not be described, except by the Commander himself.
A wind whistled ominously through the halls as a radio from one of the fallen men, seemed to buzz immediately after the kill. Something was wrong and Squall knew it, as he pelted down the empty halls that were devoid of all life except for the occasional yell or scream in the distance.
It was eerily quiet and put the man on his toes.
Footsteps seemed to echo somewhere behind, travelling fast, faster than he was so he ducked into one of the unused classrooms wishing against all odds that whoever it was would just pass thinking he had continued on. Even so the Commander still had another unlocked door to go through if the worst came and he was found.
The footsteps slowed as they grew closer as if knowing that he was still in the vicinity, that he hadn't run past into the following maze of corridors.
Squall backed back closer to the other door as the knob on the door he had used to enter began to turn painstakingly slow. The brunet's breath caught momentarily as he decided his best chance would be to bolt out the door.
He had barely taken two steps when his upper arm was grabbed in a cold and very harsh grip... and from there everything had seemed to be in slow motion- every sword strike against the insanely fast silver haired demon who the Commander recognized as his opposing force: General Sephiroth. In many ways they did the same job and were similar for it. But the brunet had sworn that he would never let himself get that cold, ruthless and careless.
An immeasurable time later Lionheart was thrown from his hands and a delicate Katana was pulled up against his neck.
"Did you really think you could escape me?" Sephiroth smirked as Squall struggled, "Look how the mighty fall: The great Squall Leonheart of SeeD at my mercy..." a sadistic smile spread across his face every word measure to strike hard upon the younger man's heart, "Did you enjoy watching me destroy your armies?"
"No."
"I didn't expect you to?"
"What will become of me now?"
"I wouldn't know but my guess is that you will be put into slavery. I wouldn't mind you myself... Imagine that desecrating the hope of all Archipelago. How ... entertaining." There was a certain innuendo to his words and bile began to rise in the brunet's throat at the thought of being this man's slave.
"But first, I do believe my troops have caught your decoys."
From there he had had to watch all of Team Alpha bet murdered before his eyes, men and women who had done their all to try and save his life. He would never forget that betrayal, hurt and pain in their eyes as they watched their comrades fall while their leader remained untouched apart from Sephiroth forcing him to watch every second, a cold hand gripping his waist.
"I hate him so much," the brunet whispered, "And yet he terrifies me in a way. I never want to go through that again."
"I won't let it happen. You belong to me not that monster."
Eyes wide with surprise at such a revelation the sleepy Commander nuzzled up against the hand his master had resting on his cheek. I don't want to break him; the blond thought wistfully, I want to protect him from the world. The skin beneath his fingers was so soft as he caressed the younger man's face gently.
It's the choice that needs to be made.
Thanks again to all who have reviewed this story or even read it; it's been really great to see so much interest.
For those who wonder- Regalis Dormio is Royal Sleep in Latin