Um. Right. Yeah. Total crack!fic right here. Just – well. Just because I can, actually. Oh, yeah, and probably slash. Again – just because I can. But not, I promise, with any character who is older than Alex... or not significantly older at least.
And yes. The fairies count.
DISCLAIMER: Oh, come off it.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, in a kingdom far, far away, there lived a King and Queen, called John and Helen, who ruled over the royal and general kingdom of Milit-Intel. Everyone in Milit-Intel loved them very much, and it was a source of great worry in the kingdom that there were no little Princes or Princesses to succeed the good King and Queen; so there was great rejoicing when, after a long and anxious wait, Queen Helen was delivered of a son, Prince Alexander, fondly known throughout the kingdom as Alex.
Prince Alexander was a small baby, puppy-plump and angelically well-behaved with big blue eyes – they hadn't yet changed colour from the typical newborn-blue, but everyone agreed that they were very pretty eyes; or, very 'handsome, manly' eyes, when King John was around – and a few faint wisps of blond hair. All the adoring relatives – or obsequious courtiers, it was sometimes difficult to tell the difference in the Milit-Intelian Palace, situated in the capital of Milit-Intel, simply known as 'Six' – said that he looked exactly like his father, which was of course what King John wanted to hear.
King John and Queen Helen were so proud of their little son, Alex, that they decided to hold a party, to celebrate his birth, and they invited all of the nobles, a fair number of the peasants – Milit-Intel was famous for being a small kingdom; a little like Lichtenstein, in our so-dull modern terms, or possibly Monaco – and some of the fairies, who lived up in the mountains, just beyond the capital city. It was to be a huge party, a grand party, a party everyone would remember.
And remember it, everyone certainly did.
For, fatally, one invitation was not sent out. One fairy was not invited – one fairy it was extremely bad news not to invite.
The day of the party dawned, bright and clear, and Little Prince Alex gurgled happily as he was bathed, patted down with lavender scented baby powder, and carefully dressed in his favourite royal blue romp-suit. In one interview with 'Milit-Intel Today!', his adoring mother said it made him look 'cute'. His adoring, but slightly less demonstrative father coughed, rather awkwardly, and said that 'he supposed the kid didn't look too bad most of the time'.
In any case, Prince Alex was all dressed and ready by the time the party started. All the guests had their invitations examined, their ID cards checked, their belongings scanned and they were scanned for weaponry – which was perhaps a little silly, since broadswords are not easy weapons to hide. Nevertheless, King John was a careful man, and wanted to make sure that no harm could possibly come to his little family. To that end, the guests were rigorously checked before they were allowed to approach Queen Helen and her little Prince, and all the paparazzi were kept firmly behind wire mesh fences, and King John beamed over the whole.
After the smoked salmon buffet – 'the finest meal in the whole of Milit-Intel, my friends and subjects!' – the fairies whispered something to King John's butler, who whispered something to King John, who nodded.
"Let all the fairies approach the Royal Cradle!" the butler boomed. Little Prince Alex was startled into absolute silence by the noise, and so only blinked up at the fairies who approached his cradle, one by one.
"Oh, isn't he a darling!" Fairy Jack, the Star Bright, cooed over him. "Well, my gift to you, angel, is that you'll be quick of mind and foot, should you ever need it – a useful thing for a King!"
King John and Queen Helen smiled graciously on Fairy Jack as she turned, bobbed a curtsey and made her way away.
Next, Fairy Ian, the dark Rider, stumped up to the cradle. "Hm. Engaging little brat, aren't you?" he addressed the baby, who blinked, and possibly raised an eyebrow at him, if babies can do such things. King John, on the other hand, who most certainly could raise his eyebrow, most certainly did. "Right. Gift. You will always know how to blend in anywhere, when you need to. Trust me, you'll thank me for that later." With a cursory little bow, he headed away from the King and Queen and back to the buffet.
The next fairy to approach the cradle was the Fairy Sabina, bringer of joy and Pleasure, who twittered at the baby – who gave her a look of faint terror in return. Apparently, even babies have the wits to be scared of that much glitter. "My gift to you, o Fairest of Princes, is that you will surely be the fairest of all Princes, and will melt anyone's heart – when you want to!"
King John and Queen Helen smiled at her as she flounced away, in her puffy pink dress – that amount of pink tulle should be made illegal, King John thought, absently, and made a mental note to look into passing a law against it – but King John leant across to his wife, and said, with a slight frown,
"Shouldn't she have said that Alex will be able to melt any fair maidens' heart?"
Queen Helen, her smile still firmly in place, muttered back, "Of course not, dear. Why limit yourself?"
The penultimate fairy was Fairy Yassen, the patron fairy of Gregorys. He was a cunning, clever fairy, rather withdrawn, and with a tendency towards depression – there was a theory, among the other fairies, that he was simply still getting over being given such a crap duty. After all, no one really wanted to be a patron fairy, especially not of Gregorys.
Yassen snapped his fingers in front of Alex's big eyes – turning brown now – and muttered, "No reactions there. Right. My gift to you, O Prince Who-Was-Not-Named-Gregory-And-Therefore-Shouldn't-Be-Anything-To-Do-With-Me, is that you'll have good reactions, and you'll have a witty comeback for every occasion. Think how useful that will be."
He turned, and stomped off, without ever bothering to glance in the King and Queen's direction. The monarchs' smiles became a little fixed.
Just as the last fairy was stepping up to the Royal Cradle, the doors swung open with a almighty crash, and the room was bathed in darkness. Framed in the doorway, stood the most terrifying figure in the kingdom of Milit-Intel – the Blunt Fairy, Alan.
The Blunt Fairy Alan had terrorised the Northern borders of Milit-Intel for years; there were rumours that the good King John had tried to fight him once before, and, in a furious battle had cut out what was left of his rather shrivelled conscience – these things always happen in fairy tales. So the Blunt Fairy Alan was left with only one wing – because everyone knows a fairy's conscience is in his right wing – and the other wing had turned black with disuse, and all the cruel deeds he had committed.
It seemed that he was back to commit one more.
"Why, King John," The Blunt Fairy Alan said, tonelessly from the door; he had never been granted the gift of emotive public speaking. All of the other fairies had been to scared to grant it, and everyone knows that a fairy can't grant gifts to themselves. "I see you have a party going on here. I'm hurt that I wasn't invited."
While King John gaped at the fairy's audacity – and at the fact that the fairy had managed to get past the strict palace security – Queen Helen rose to the fore. Smiling charmingly, she said, sweetly, "Blunt Fairy Alan! How lovely to see you… we were hoping that you'd turn up after we'd all finished eating. You see, I've always hated your table manners, and I know you don't like fish, so we thought you wouldn't mind not being invited too much…"
The Blunt Fairy Alan looked a little taken aback by this, but recovered himself well. "Silence, woman!" he said, louder. "I am here to exact my revenge, not engage in this pointless discourse!"
"Get out of here!" King John sputtered. "Away from my family! Away, I tell you!"
The Blunt Fairy Alan raised an eyebrow at him, greyly. "I'm hurt that you don't want me near your family. I was hoping you'd name me godfather, John, after everything I did for you."
"Well, I didn't." King John returned, smartly. "So you can go now." There was just the faintest hint of a childish pout in the King's voice.
"I'm going in just a second." The Blunt Fairy stomped over to the cradle, and peered down at the baby, who gazed back up at him with wide blue eyes. "I too have a gift for the Prince." He said, slowly. "When the Prince turns fourteen, he will prick his finger on an arrow, at which point, he will be enslaved to me." He looked up, met King John's eyes, and a rare, frightening smile slid over his grey face. "For all eternity."
Queen Helen shrieked. "No! You can't do that! You can't!"
"Excuse me," The Blunt Fairy Alan gave her a little bow, scrupulously polite, "But I can. I just did."
King John's response was a lot simpler. He sat down very suddenly on his throne, and said, "Oh bugger."
The Blunt Fairy Alan gave a little cackle, and then stopped, looking faintly embarrassed – much in the same way normal people look when they have hiccupped unexpectedly. Bowing once more to the now hysterical Queen, he disappeared, leaving just the faintest hint of black smoke behind him; the Blunt Fairy Alan had always understood the importance of good drama.
"Excuse me." A timid little voice spoke up from the back of the room. It was Tulip, the last flower fairy left in Milit-Intel – out of embarrassment, she never normally appeared as a fairy, preferring to pretend to be a normal person, calling herself 'Tulip Jones', of all things, and wearing big, rather ill-fitting black clothes to hide her wings and fairy glow.
King John glowered at her, and she shrunk back, sucking a little harder on her mint humbug for courage. "What is it, fairy?" he asked, with barely half-concealed animosity.
"Well, every fairy can only give one gift…" All the other fairies present nodded. "But – I haven't given mine yet, saving your Highness pleasure…"
Queen Helen looked up, half way through recovering from her hysterical fit. "You can save my baby boy?"
"No one can reverse another fairies spell, your Majesty…" Tulip bobbed a rather awkward curtsey. "But I can – lighten it."
"How?!" King John asked, urgently. "If you can do that, do it, by all means!"
Tulip approached the baby's cradle, nervously aware of everyone's eyes on her. Prince Alex, blissfully unaware of the curse which had just been laid on him, was attempting to suck on one of his toes, and he blinked up at her with wide nearly-brown eyes. "Hello." She nodded, rather nervously at the child, who responded with a solemner-than-usual blink. "My gift to you, Prince, is that, um… that when you prick your finger, and are, um, e-enslaved to the B-Blunt Fairy Alan…it will only be until you, um, receive true love's, er, kiss. Then the spell will be, er… broken."
She backed away, and looked up at the King and Queen.
"And what," the King said, very softly, "If he never receives 'true love's kiss'?"
Tulip shrugged, rather helplessly. "I, er… I can't h-help you with that, your Majesty. Anything else would tamper with the B-Blunt Fairy Alan's spell, and, um, that would be – er – bad."
"What would happen?" King John asked.
The Fairy Yassen stepped forwards, looking bored by the whole procedure, but willing to intervene nonetheless. "It would create an infinite paradox, which would crush the tiny kingdom of Milit-Intel, and go on devouring lives and countries in an attempt to sustain itself, spreading out across the universe, until it eventually destroyed everything in its path. At which point, the universe would implode, leaving in its wake infinite nothingness."
"Ah. So, not good, then?"
"No, your Majesty. Not good. Very not good." Yassen agreed, wryly.
"Well then." King John went to the cradle, and looked down at the infant for a few, long moments. Finally, he bent down and picked the boy up, the first time he had done so in public – needless to say, the paparazzi, safely behind their wire fences, went mad. "When my son reaches his first birthday, we will send him away to live with the Fairy Yassen, Tulip, Last Flower Fairy of Milit-Intel, and the Fairy Ian." He said, slowly. "And we hereby decree that all arrows in the kingdom, and all bows, shall be henceforth and immediately destroyed. Egad and Forsooth."
The Fairies Ian and Yassen looked horrified.
And so, on his first birthday, the Prince Alexander was given a royal birthday party, and the Fairy Yassen grudgingly appeared to pick the little boy up and take him away from his loving parents for the next thirteen years.
Shockingly enough, they found that the Fairy Ian was the best with the little boy, and Tulip and Yassen were perfectly happy just to let him get on with it, occasionally dropping in on him now and then to check that everything was alright. Eventually, after a few years of debate – Fairies can take forever to decide about these things – they moved in together, for ease of access, and began a fraught, tense and at times violent private life that made the now-five year old Alex shriek with laughter.
Yassen and Ian had the tensest relationship in the little cottage they had bought, in the large forest of Chel-on-Sea, a relationship which often resulted in pistols at dawn in the nearest clearing. The fairies quick healing came in very handy at times like those.
Tulip generally kept everything in order, proving to be a genius at organisation, if a little lacking in imagination. Ian dealt with any intruders into their little realm, and Yassen provided the imagination. Unfortunately, the Fairy Yassen's imagination was – eclectic – at best, and was as likely to provide a deadly obstacle course for the little now-seven year old Prince as a nice new teddy bear at bedtime.
However, in their own twisted, bizarre little ways, each of the fairies was fond of the little boy. He was, it had to be said, very easy to love, and each of them treated him differently than the other. Yassen was the big brother – rarely serious, rarely affectionate and rarely there, but fun to be around all the same. Ian was the authority figure, stern but fair and affectionate – as far as he knew how to be. And Tulip was the aunt, or mummy figure, as disturbing as that is; always there with a plaster and a mint humbug. Other children got hugs and cookies, but then, Alex wasn't like other children, and it wasn't as though he'd ever expressed a desire for hugs and cookies, so mostly, the fairies ignored all parenting advice they'd ever heard, and just got on with it.
Finally, the dreaded day of Alex's fourteenth birthday arrived. Tulip gave him a large back of mint humbugs – her traditional gift; she'd never seen the enormous stash of them Alex kept under his bed, as he really couldn't stand the things – and a large book on stealth witchcraft she thought the boy might find interesting. Ian's gift was typically practical, a warm cloak – "lined with the fur of stealth tiger; excellent for stealth manoeuvring, Alex." Here he caught Tulip's eye. "And machine washable, of course…" – and a pair of sturdy boots, which, apparently, were as light as a feather when put on – something Ian dismissed, as a 'frippery charm'. Yassen's was, as always the most interesting present – a long lochinvar axe.
"I'll teach you how to use it, sometime." He promised, casually. "But until then, try not to behead anyone, alright?" he paused. "Unless it's Ian. You have my full permission to kill Ian."
With the present giving done, they all settled back into their usual routine, and proceeded to ignore Alex's birthday altogether – and a long way away from Chel-on-Sea, a lonely, childless King and Queen celebrated the birthday of their missing Prince, and prayed.
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lol,
-ami xxx