AN: I have no excuse for being AWOL for the past half a year. I'm so unbelievably sorry! Uni has been ridiculously hectic; and on top of that, I'm suing my school blah blah yeah exciting stuff.

THE FOLLOWING IS IMPORTANT: I'm going to be uploading this to Archive of our Own and massively revamping the story/updating it in consideration of the fact that my writing has changed (possibly improved I wouldn't know xD). I haven't yet decided whether I'm going to finish this arc (another 4000-5000 words) on but after that it's almost definitely going on AO3.

The account name is Zayrastriel, same as my fanfiction name. I also do open requests for any pairing in any fandom I'm in so yeah if you want oneshots just ask :3

Thanks so much to everyone who's been messaging me and basically motivating me/sticking by me - I'm dedicating this chapter to HarmonyLover, who is an amazing person and friend, and i hope this'll bring some joy to her day. This story WILL be finished, I promise you. In some form or another. At some point.

(ILY)

Enjoy!

Chapter 18 - Revelations

Jesse

"No," he sighs for what feels like the millionth time, leaning his head back over the edge of the couch and closing his eyes resignedly. He's tired, and can feel a headache looming like a tidal wave, strong and inexorable.

"Why?" Evans asks in that dumb blond sort of tonality that grates at Jesse's nerves like a…he goes with 'cheese grater' because originality and eloquence are evading him with all the skill of…well, his usual originality and eloquence.

He has a faint impression that he's either going to die, go insane, or fall asleep sometime soon.

"Because it's a fucking stupid idea, that's why," Jesse groans. "Look, neither of you have even met Blaine. He's a nice kid, but about as wet as a marinated towel."

There go my similes, he thinks as Evans frowns, glances over at his sister's suddenly unreadable expression.

"That's not the point," Quinn says serenely. "We don't particularly care whether he's competent or not; just as long as there's someone to replace Anderson."

Jesse feels his eyes widen, and despite himself he can't help the feeling of grudgingly horrified respect stirring within him as he stares at Quinn. She's worse than I am, he thinks. Is that even possible?

But then, she probably doesn't know just what her plans entail.

"You do realise that without a strong King, the Confederation will collapse," he points out, careful to keep his tone as non-confrontational as possible.

"Well obviously," Evans sighs, rolling his eyes. "That is sort of the point."

"It'll neutralise them for centuries," Quinn adds, a cold, vicious smile touching her lips but not her eyes.

"And with that," Jesse snaps, because alright, there's admiration but it's also more than a little stupid, "there go solar imports, fruit and vegetable imports, cows," he can't help the emphasis on that because honestly, beef. "Have you bothered actually talking to any economists?" He has. Carmel has the best economy on the continent, and with good reason, because it also has the best School of Economics on the continent.

(That Gabriel has the best mage academy in Altha is immaterial.)

Evans looks taken aback by his vehemence and even Quinn can't hide a flash of uncertainty before her eyes steel. "It won't be that hard, surely," she insists. "Even if Prince Blaine isn't competent to rule, surely they can choose another-"

"Blood magic."

"Pardon?"

"What?"

"They can't choose another," he sighs through gritted teeth (whether or not that's possible, he doesn't know; but he's definitely trying.) "Blood magic. If they want to 'choose another', they'll have to kill him."

Hah! Evans full-out blanches and even Quinn pales slightly at that; but he presses on, careful to capitalise on his advantage. "And it's not just that. If you – if you, an outsider, engineers the death of anyone in the royal family, the entire Goddess-damned Confederation will not be allowed to rest till the Western Plains are destroyed."

"Since when did you care about people, Jesse?" Quinn asks sweetly, though it's obvious she's still a bit thrown-off.

He shrugs. "I don't." That's not entirely true, but it's not entirely a lie either. If Blaine dying was the price for Gabriel's death, it wasn't something he'd lose any sleep over; the kid's nice, and attractive in a young sort of way, but everyone dies someday and anything to delay Jesse's someday is fine by him. But Gabriel dying means the collapse of the main purchaser of Carmel's exports. Gabriel dying means insecurity and potential economic collapse throughout the Sun Kingdoms, which means that he'll have a shattering nation at his border, and war all around him.

Plus, Rachel lives here; stubborn, loyal Rachel. He owes her.

"When did we get to nation-destroying, anyway?" Jesse asks for lack of anything better.. "As far as I knew, I was just here to keep everything nicely on hold till we figured out what to, you know, do."

Quinn and Evans glance at each other, curiously similar expressions of frustration on their pale faces. "Well then, what do you think we should…do?" Quinn asks, making sure to be as blatantly forcedly polite as possible.

There's a knock on the door before Jesse can respond. "Who is-holy shit!" he yelps halfway through the question, shuddering at the sensation of magic leaping to life in his veins, veritable wild-fire coursing through him in a comfortable pleasure-pain.

"Lord Jesse? Are you alright?" the voice – one of the minor Lords he dragged with him when he came here – asks with mild concern.

"I'm fine," he manages to answer between clenched teeth, shooting a glare in Quinn's direction (she smiles sweetly and mouths an exaggerated apologies that he can tell she doesn't mean.) "What is it?"

"You asked me to tell you when Prince Blaine and Regent Kurt arrived back at the castle, sir."

Finally. "Thank you," Jesse calls, before turning back towards Quinn and Jesse.

"Well?"

Quinn frowns, obviously troubled. "Would you…we could…"

He takes pity on her. "I can arrange a meeting. The people who know, etc. etc.

"That sounds…" Quinn and Evans exchange glances. "Workable," Quinn finally allows. "But be discreet," she adds, an impotent order because she has no authority over him beyond that which being a pretty girl unfortunately offers.

"Of course," Jesse nods, inwardly seething.

Quinn

Others means two women. Quinn recognises neither of them, which means neither of them are important.

"This is all you have," she says flatly, glancing at St James.

The man has the audacity to grin at her. Grin! – as though this is some kind of joke. "Calm down, doll-face," he says cheerfully. "Don't get your…you know what," he cuts himself off, looking at her face with a hint of nervousness in his eyes, "just don't worry. It's all going to be fine."

Quinn raises an eyebrow (or at least, that's what she thinks she's doing, though it feels too much like an involuntary muscle spasm for her liking.) "Really."

"Hey, St James," Santana Lopez of House Anderson calls loudly, "Miss Blonde has a point. What the fuck is she doing here?"

It's amazing; Quinn's heard about Lopez, but she never really believed that blonde could sound like an insult in anyone's mouth, especially when they were sitting next to (or on, but Quinn refuses to believe that anyone would be rude enough to do that in public) the most quintessentially blonde blonde Quinn's ever met.

"More to the point," comes a murmur from the door, "what are we doing here?"

"Blaine!" St James exclaims, voice oozing saccharine glee.

Blaine Anderson's face hardens for a split second (interesting) before a slight, almost forced smile curves his lips. "St James," he says.

"Hey, hobbit, where've you been?" Lopez demands, lifting (lifting!) Brittany off her lap and stalking towards her half-brother.

Curiously, Quinn turns to St James. "What did you do to him?" she asks with a certain amount of interest. Oddly enough, he actually bites his lip with what seems like a certain amount of contrition before shrugging.

"Whatever," he drawls. "Not important…Alright, listen up, people!" he shouts. "I suppose introductions are in order. Blaine, Samuel Evans of House Fabray," St James says brusquely. "Sam, Blaine of House Anderson."

"Nice to meet you," Quinn's half-brother says politely, but Quinn's careful to watch his eyes and sees them flick towards her, the unspoken Him? A King? Please passing between them unnoticed.

Anderson glances at Quinn. "You must be Queen Quinn." His smile is warm, and his lips pleasantly cool against the too-hot skin of the back of her hand.

Over Anderson's head, she lets her lip quirk up in response to the marginal tilt of Sam's head.

Not looking forward to watching him die.

A slight shrug from Sam.

Hopefully it all works out and we don't have to.

Altha (Wes)

Gabriel laughs – laughs, the sound rich and warm, and far too much like Blaine's for Wes's liking.

"You think I'm going to kill you? Why on earth would I want to do that?" Gabriel asks, sounding genuinely curious. "I've kept you alive this long, so I'm hardly going to kill you now."

Wes blinks. That is a good point, he has to admit.

That being said, he hardly thinks it was a ridiculous assumption to make, given the long preamble about high treason and such-

"Besides," the King continues, stepping back and leaning on his desk, "it's hardly as though you're going to remember."

What? "…Pardon?" There is something ridiculously surreal about being polite to this man, something disgusting and stupid and pointless about it; but habits are habits, and he supposes that Gabriel is still technically his king.

"When you step out that door," Gabriel shrugs, "you won't remember. And now, if you'll excuse me…"

He sweeps out of the room as Wes staggers to his feet and turns to stare at the door.

Jesse

They're discussing something, but Jesse can't say what at this point. It's all pointless, anyway; wasteful procrastination that there's basically nothing they can do. Gabriel's fucking good at the I love to screw with people game, and all they can do is try and reduce the collateral.

"Can't you break it?" Blaine asks suddenly, voice quiet. "Or tell Kurt, or something?"

Jesse is honestly quite disappointed that it took him so long to ask. "No can do," he replies, shaking his head in exaggerated sadness. "Kurt's the focal point of the whole thing. I sweep in with my stunning good looks and invincible magic and boom."

"What about trace magic?" Blaine argues, and the boy is persistent, Jesse will give him that. "If you could tra-"

"Nice try," and it is, but Jesse's bored, because this whole thing is pointless. "That's the thing about Compulsion – when it shatters it doesn't leave any traces. And even if it did, as if the King of the Confederation would submit himself to any sort of inquiry."

And it's not going to save your life anyway, sweetheart, his mind adds, not unkindly.

"So basically, we're fucked," Santana mutters. Alessandra, his mind tries to tell him. No, he thinks.

"I was thinking more along the lines of Anderson's fucked. No offence, your Highness," Evans adds belatedly.

"Oh. Oh Goddess."

Everyone freezes; and then, as one, they turn slowly in their seats.

To see Rachel, frozen in the doorway.

It's entirely possible she just walked past in time to hear Evans, but from the look of horrified dawning comprehension on her face, Jesse doubts it.

Great.

That can't be true, he thinks without much hope as he pulls a Device (he has no idea what kind but he knows what it does and that's what matters) out from his pocket and points it at the door.

Wes stole this, about three years ago while leading a raid into a tech-mage turned hacker's laboratory. He doesn't know why he stole it, but like not knowing what it is, that doesn't matter. It's been useful, and that does matter.

Webs of shimmering magic threads waver into existence (or at least, visibility) and he slumps back to the floor. He's never been good at actually interpreting what the magic's saying, but the casualness with which Gabriel left him here, full of information that could easily bring down the monarchy (but not from the inside, never from the inside because blood magic is fucked up and why did he ever think this would work?) makes it obvious what'll happen when he crosses the threshold.

The threads vanish as he lowers the Device and slumps to his knees.

Part of him wants to call out for David, but he quashes that thought immediately as irrational and potentially suicidal.

There's nothing else to do.

So he pushes himself to his feet. Takes a deep breath. Closes his eyes.

Steps forwards-

Memories that shatter into a million tiny glittering fragments that dissolve into sand and drift away in an unseen wind as he grasps helplessly for them-

Wes blinks. "What am I doing here?"

Shaking his head to clear the remnants of what feels like a semi-fog clouding his thoughts (it doesn't work) Wes heads off to his rooms. Maybe he'll get lucky and David will be there.

Three weeks later

Blaine

So it turns out that there's one loophole with Compulsion; it can't knowingly be broken.

Knowingly being the operative word.

It means they can't repeat the same thing with Kurt (and they try, hard.) But at least now they know.

So now Blaine has to endure the pitying expressions of almost everyone he spends time with, as they keep desperately, futilely fighting for an answer. Rachel's not as vocal about it as Blaine might have expected; apart from a few indignant outbursts at St James, she's…kind.

This explains a lot, she tells him ruefully as they leave the room, safe in the knowledge that no one has any idea what to do. I actually feel sort of better, knowing.

It's a quiet few weeks after that; but not quiet in the tense anticipatory way that Blaine's life had been since he arrived in Lima.

What time he doesn't spend in the palace library, or in one of the many comfortably stuffy bookshops or public archives that have blurred together into one exhausting but oddly relaxing amalgamation of books, Blaine passes in Kurt's company.

They skirt around the day in the snow, though it's obvious from the way Kurt glances at him sometimes as though he's trying to be subtle (a miserable failure) that it's as much in the forefront of his mind as it is in Blaine's; but nothing's verbalised.

Except for one thing.

Blaine walks into Kurt's room one morning to see Rachel kneeling beside his bed as Kurt lies flat on his back, threads of Air and Water swirling around her fingers. Immediately, Kurt flinches upwards and then rolls on his side and Rachel jumps to her feet, placing her body between him and Kurt in a sort of instinctive protective gesture that makes Blaine's heart ache, suddenly and fiercely.

"Sorry," Blaine says softly, stepping backwards slowly. "I didn't know you were – I mean, I'll leave you alone-"

"Stay."

Kurt's voice is surprisingly harsh, the rough tone a far cry from the musical sweetness Blaine's accustomed to.

He stays, forces himself to examine every burn, every glimmer of bone through torn, blackened skin and loosened muscle as Rachel sings the glamour into being over the scars.

It's one of the most amazing things he's ever seen.

Wes scries him once, and something's off but Blaine is half asleep from staying up all night in yet another corner of the dusty library.

He and Rachel perform for their team (that's what he's thinking of them as, somehow, a team of the powerfully helpless in the unwinnable fight against Gabriel) once, laughing their way through a rendition of Tonight. They even get a smile out of Quinn, and Evans outright laughs.

One notable time, all of them somehow end up in the same bookshop two streets away from the castle. Brittany leaves and brings back a few bags of wine. The hangover the next morning is nothing short of traumatic, particularly when St James (Jesse) wakes them up at 6:00 to sing with Rachel, but at least they're all suffering together.

And he waits for something (doesn't know what, but that doesn't matter.)

It comes sooner than he thinks, and not in a way he expects.