title: the fair folk

summary: they are beautiful, they are enchanting and they are ethereal, but remember - fairies are not kind.

an1: "Hui, Gallade isn't a fairy". Yes I know but the story of Tam Lin is one from my childhood and Gallade really fits, okay. It's about time I wrote a happy story here anyways.

an2: Xerneas could have worked for the role of the fairy queen but Diancie fits better IMO. Also, they both have megas, so yeah? (But Hui you were planning this before ORAS was even announced-SHHH)

an3: written mostly for nostalgia's sake/sheer self-interest (since no one else that I know of is writing something like this if I want to see it I have to write it myself) so may not make as much sense. You have been warned.

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Part Six

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tam lin

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Sinnoh's skies were gray, and the air crisp with midwinter's breath when the diamond princess appeared from between the trees, leaving no footprints as she made her way towards him. The royal fairy was like a snow-woman, said to roam the mountains crowned with ancient ice doggedly searching for her unfaithful love because of the grudge that kept her alive, as she approached him.

Unlike the snow-woman's victims, Tam Lin, once a kirlia and a fairy, now a gallade and a knight, didn't try to flee. He waited until the princess stopped of her own free will.

"Greetings," the diamond monarch said, glistening like the treasure she was with the rarest of gems decorating her.

He bowed deeply, showing full respect and courtesy towards the fairy princess. While a princess and not a queen, she held great favor with the Great Rainbow Stag, and was the immortal god's daughter and representative. "Greetings," he replied.

Her red eyes, as beautiful and cool as the jewels that adorned her body, swept over the scene that bore evidence of his trainings. "You have grown powerful, for a mortal."

His time as one of her fairy knights, guarding the rose trees in the bosom of wildness had taught him respect and wariness towards the woods, but the shattered ice and torn ground showed his strength. She spoke true, as all fairies did.

And in what she didn't say, she also gave truth.

"But tell me," Diancie said, turning her gaze back to him. The large diamond at the center of her crown glared like the harsh sun, and while her eyes bore no hostility, Tam Lin remained wary. "Can your strength compare to that of ours? To what you held before you left?"

No longer a fairy, he could speak falsehood.

But he had no reason to, and she would not believe him if he tried.

"It cannot, fair lady," he said. Time was not as clear and straightforward in the fair court as it was in the real world, but his memories remained crisp. He recalled the ladies-in-waiting, garbed in trailing dresses as white as the tunics of swanna feathers and flabébé petals he had donned as a fey, how despite their outward frailty they could face any demon from the dark hells and blast them away by channeling the moon's fair force. He could see in his mind's eye the cheerful water sprites, who on land maintained their carefree smiles as they destroyed any predator foolish enough to believe itself capable of preying on the undine.

Tam Lin remembered them, and he remained vigilant and wary because of it. The human maiden, at his bequest, had pulled him out of the fair world and banished the fey in him through the dawn's star-stone, but even now, saved from that world he knew quite well of the fair folk's darker sides.

"Do you not miss it?" she whispered. In her dark gray palms, a shining orb sat. He felt his body stiffen at the sight of it, yearn to touch that orb and feel its power course through his veins to empower his blood. "You would be so powerful – so magnificent. The strongest of the fairy knights."

Humans believed the Rainbow Stag to oppose the Demon Bird – yet it was not that simple. The Seelie and Unseelie Courts simply coexisted in balance, with Life paying tithe to Death. For new life to bloom, the old had to make way. And fairies, the oldest and trickiest of all, avoided the coming wings of death by offering sacrifices.

"And you would have sent me off to the bird of destruction," Tam Lin countered. The fairy princess fell silent at this, closing her dark, stone-cold mouth, but he continued on. "Handed me over to Yveltal as the tithe of fairy souls, as the covenant between life and death demands of the fair folk. Where I would have been destroyed down to my soul, and then reshaped into a phantom or a demon."

He remembered the maiden pulling at his fragile, slim hands urgently, embracing him tightly with arms warm and strong. Remembered the stone, glowing like the dawn star at her breast like the morning star he had wished on in his times as a fey, begging the star in the stead of a god with rainbow antlers to let him return to the old days, when he was just a shy little childling who was sensitive to the emotions of others, before the fey had taken him and made him one of their own.

"Ah," Diancie sighed, and it was one of light regret. Light, because she couldn't feel deep, powerful emotions. Grudges, she could nurse coldly like an enduring diamond, icy and glittering in her heart for a long time, but the fleeting, powerful bursts of passion she couldn't comprehend, or empathize with. She didn't deny his words.

Instead the princess reached out, hands icy and hard. Sinnoh's air was chilled, but her hands had a coldness beyond just that of temperature. "If only I had replaced your vibrant heart with a stone," she mused lovingly, even if her whispered words struck horror into him. "If only I had replaced your eyes with gems. Then you would never have been shaken by that human child."

Tam Lin had seen a demon shade with jewelled eyes, an inky member of the Unseelie Court with a wide jagged smile. He had no desire to see the world as that shadow of a soul bound to the Demon Bird did, seeing only the greed and filth of mortals left behind in the dark. He wanted to be able to see the light, the good.

"My answer remains the same, fair lady," he spoke.

A dazzling smile graced her lips. "Such good manners," she said approvingly. "'Tis a shame that your choice would lead away from us, Tam Lin – but may your mortal life serve you fine."

He bowed deeply.

"Fair thee well."

Tam Lin stayed thusly until his heroine ran into his arms, tugging at his face with worried, warm hands that had a bright life's blood running through their veins.

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