A/N: First fill of the requests I've been asked :3 gladdecease demanded HakubaAkako. Here goes, here goes… (On a side note, this took me ages to write. I kept coming back and forth to and from it. Guh. Butterfly-chan, you are thanked most profoundly—for, well, everything.)
Warnings: Angst. Lots of. Blame the fandom. Also? this is one of the weirdest stories I've ever written. Weird storyline, weird style, weird characterization. 'Bit confusing.
Disclaimer: I don't own MK. I don't own Tracy K. Smith's poem 'After Persephone'. I don't own Frank Stockton's short story 'The Lady Or The Tiger'. Surprised much?
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A Pomegranate Lamp
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i. at a certain point.
There are only so many ways a fairytale can start.
Once upon a time, a man says (the tale-teller, words-weaver, with the smile at the corner of his mouth), in a far away kingdom, there was a powerful king, and a gentle queen, who so desired to have a son. One day, as they began to despair, a—
Wait, wait. Is this a fairytale?
Of course, son (says the story-teller, another smile as thin as his moustache slipping over his lips). This is a fairytale.
Will it have princes and witches then? and magic? and love?
Of course it will. Do you know any fairytale that don't have princes and witches? or magic? (The tale maker smiles and leans back on his hands. His hair falls in jet-black crops on his forehead. His eyes are kindled with each of his words.) Or love?
And because this is a fairytale, it will end with 'and they lived happily ever after,' right.
… yes. Yes, it will. Eventually. (The man smiles.)
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ii. so far i was no longer me
And so once upon a time a prince is born with gold hair and gold eyes, and they give him the name of a white horse, in knowledge that he will become a virtuous prince, a just king, a chivalrous knight.
(He is.)
Later, they marvel at his looks, at his kindness, at his serious. "He will be as handsome as his father." "How kind he was to that demanding old woman!" "His preceptor says he is a most promising young man." "He will make a wonderful king." "How faithfully he studies!" "He is the best thing that happened to the kind and queen."
(He is, or, at all events, he will be.)
The queen, who, as any true fairytale queen, is ill, calls him to her bedside every evening and predicates a few words of counsel—(be kind to your people, good to your family, loving to your wife)—while the king offers lessons in strategy and governing.
Standing on the palace roof under the fading stars, he says, "I know you will make a fair successor of mine."
(He—
—he will.)
Time passes and brings on what is expected from it. The queen dies. The prince falls in love.
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The princess is about as much of a princess as she is expected to be. She has eyes blue as the sky when the spring sun nears noon, and a skin white as the sky in winter mornings, and hair as black as the stormy sky of thunderous afternoons. She is shy and demure, and her voice, when she speaks, is no louder than the softest wind's hum.
She has yet to be imprisoned by a fierce dragon in a spiked castle, but her eyes meet the prince with a complacency that pleases him.
She is, moreover, exactly the prince's age, and their kingdoms neighbour, and the match has been decided since they were in cradles. They have not met often; often enough for the prince to come to terms with his feelings; and often enough for the princess to come to terms with her own.
(And to all eyes the story is advancing smoothly.)
Obstacles come in the form of a stableboy with cornflower eyes.
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iii. shed everything, save being
Let's talk about jealousy.
j-e-a-l-o-u-s-y, noun, feelings of envy and/or greed toward someone who possesses something one desires. Related to love.
Jealously is love's mirror reflection. Here is a rule: the lovers never see jealousy; the jealous can always see love. (As such, love is at the core of every story; love kindles and warms. Jealousy lays in the outer circle, aiming for close; never succeeding.)
So one loves. So the other doesn't. So the tale is simple. (Shared looks, half-smiles, the soft pressure of fingers when no one else is looking. Someone is always looking. It is as simple as that.)
And so when the evening falls and the time to return draws near, what he sees is not the way the autumn sun slants across her skin and lights up her eyes as she stands on the marble steps. What he sees is the sharp, sudden fondness in her gaze while she looks down, a rein passed lingeringly from hand to hand, the brush of knuckles.
Jealousy can be as strong, as powerful, even more so, than love can ever be. If love is what makes the story, jealousy is what changes it. It spins it like wool on a spindle, gives it a different shape, a different shade. It dies it with darker colours.
Jealousy can destroy and burn.
(In the end, jealousy always kills.)
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(This is what the story does not tell:
In early morning, the stableboy helps the princess down from her window. The climb down the grapevines in the gray predawn light and ride on horseback up one of the nearby, grassy hills. (The princess' feet are bare, and her fingers dig inelegantly in the stableboy's ribs.)
He helps her down when they have reached their destination, and tries to pretend it is the wind that flipped her skirt when they reach the hilltop. And the—shy, demure, soft-speaking—princess promptly whacks him over the head and tackles him the ground and laughs and laughs. He laughs too.
His hands come from and around her waist.
They roll on the grassy slope and watch the sun rise.)
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iv. when the chase alone
is enough
The witch.
The witch is scantily dressed despite the chill of her habitation, in reds and golds that blur the sight, and he thinks, That was surely planned. (And he thinks of magic gathering about her fingertips, red and gold and blurry, and deceptively pretty.)
(He thinks her skin is the colour of the dark honey he flavours with tea.)
"What you want," says the witch.
"What you want," purrs the witch, and her burgundy eyes slide half-shut and saccharine. "I can give it to you." (He thinks of blue eyes and a radiant, worthy smile, and her long arms drape cool around his shoulders.)
The witch says, "I can give her to you if you give him to me," and the words are breathed a smile against his lips. (It would be so easy, he thinks.)
"I will give her to you if you give him to me," the witch repeats; and the words do not sound like a repetition at all; and when he looks down at her and her eyes and arms and skin and her snake-like figure wrapped around him, he reads a promise like a swelling balloon.
(He thinks of all things, this is probably the worst he could possibly commit.)
He does it anyway.
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So a deal is made.
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v. i lived quickly
"Once," says the witch, and it is such an unlikely thing for her to say that the prince looks up from his book and blinks at her. She is sprawled over the armchair in a great red dress which trickles down her skin the way the crimson taints of the fire do, in every curve and shadow; and she doesn't look like a princess at all.
"Once?" he repeats. (That is obviously the expected reply.)
"Once," she replies, asserting, a tone of firm finality. And without a change in beat she recites, in a clear, high-pitched voice, "Once upon a time in an arena of watchers—a prince came to meet with a tiger—"
"That doesn't rhyme," the prince says, coolly, although it does. (It does when she says it.) The words are like fine wine and they could not—could not—not rhyme, and then that does not make sense, not at all.
And then it does.
"Time to make a choice now," the witch purrs, low and deep in the throat, and the red seems to coil around him and lure him in, and her hands furl and unfurl like soft-touched paws on the firerug, "which will it be—the lady, or the tiger?"
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They are neatly crazy.
"Of course," the witch says, her eyes thick and low, drumming almost like a chord under music. Her fingers splay on the book cover. "But who are they to say so?"
"They will," he says, "if we fail," and at the time it feels like an immeasurable truth, and when she speaks it feels like crumbling sand.
"Little prince," she says-speaks, and her words make it the truth, "sweet little prince," and then, as though it made complete, logical sense, which to her it probably does, "you become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed," says she, in a thick, drumming accent, and rests her head on his shoulder.
"We don't," he says.
"Of course not," she says, eyes thick and low, and he never really knows whether she agrees with him or not.
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(When he asks her, she smirks and laughs and never tells him, and when she leaves she leaves a rich, precious scent on the carpet of his fireplace.)
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vi. my whole life disappearing
from around me like a sound
that rises in the air and is gone
(This is what the story says:
Once upon a time, in a far away kingdom, there lived a gentle princess whose eyes were the same colour as the sky when the sun spring nears noon, and whose hair was as black as the stormy sky of thunderous summer afternoons. She was soft-speaking and kind, and most beloved to the people of the kingdom.
In the same kingdom lived an evil witch, who had lived many decades, and had not, till the princess was born, found her equal in beauty. As, however, she learnt that there existed a maiden who might surpass her, she immediately decided to take revenge on her.
She lured the princess in the forest with a magical horse—a great horse of the purest white—and there held her prisoner in a tower so tall only its top emerged from the trees.
And, so that the princess may not find any way to escape, she spelled her in a magical sleep during which she would grow old and die unbeknownst to human beings.
Her father, however, grieved over the loss of his only and most beloved daughter, and sent out a reward to anyone who might even offer a clue as to her whereabouts. Many men searched all over the country for her; but the forest in which she rested hidden was said to be inhabited by ghosts, and no one dared go far in it.
The princess, who had barely reached the blooming age of sixteen at the time, had remained unconscious in the tower for a long time, by the end of which her father despaired of ever finding her again. The witch, presuming of her victory, and proud of her beauty, decreased her watch on the forest, and the spell that was on it loosened.
Thanks to this, birds and animals started living there again, and many, finding the tall building curious, flew or escalated their way to the window of the highest room, wherein the princess slept. All of them became so entranced by her beauty and simple aspect that they kept visiting her every day, and sang and danced for her, in the hope that their plays might awaken her; and always in vain.
It so happened, however, that the prince of the neighbouring kingdom came to visit the king, and to do so, had to travel through the forest. The witch's guard had by now almost completely disappeared, and he was able to ride through it without any danger.
The birds and animals who had been taking care of the princess thought this would be the mean to free her; and the birds calling out to him, and the animals guiding his horse's steps, the prince soon found himself at the foot of the tower. Intrigued, he quickly climbed up it, and upon reaching the highest room, found the princess (whose beauty sleep had not altered, despite the witch's wishes), and immediately fell madly in love with her.
Following naught but his heart, he bent over her and gave her a true love's kiss, which, as it happened, was the only way to break the witch's spell.
The princess thus awoke, and fell in love with him as well, and they both rode back to her father, who, delighted to find his beloved daughter alive and well, immediately agreed to their marriage.
As for the witch, you ask?
She arrived to the tower too late to prevent the princess's escape, and had to disappear from the kingdom, taking with her her accomplice, a stableboy at the castle, who had set free the white horse in the beginning of this story. Both of them were never found again.
And they all lived—
Stop.)
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This is what the story does not say:
The prince reaches out and pushes the witch's hair behind her back, and watches as the fire plays on the dark skin of her arms, of her bare shoulders. The witch says nothing, but her eyes dance, and he leans in and—
—he half expects her to take like honey but—
—she tastes like pomegranate fruit.
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vii. after song
The King announces the upcoming wedding two days after their return. The princess blushes, and looks down, and the prince tries hard—tries, and that should be enough, shouldn't it, for hoping and hoping and hoping—to see shyness and joy in that blush.
Later, they part in the castle yard, and a stableboy with cornflower eyes comes out with the morning horses, and passes him without a word.
The townsfolk speak, later, in the evenings, over their bitter beer and their coarse bread. They talk of his courage, of the princess' sweetness, of their love, of their adventures. They speak and speak into the night. And— (—and their words make it true.)
They say, The prince will be glad that he has found someone so wonderful to love.
They say, He will make a virtuous, just, chivalrous king one day.
They say, Surely he will be happy.
He will not.
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viii. then memory. then retreat.
(When in love, her hair tumbles down her back in black tresses; the fire glistens off the dark honey of her skin. His fingers are pale and long as they smooth down her sides, her eyes so darkened by their throes that they seem to reflect off the flames.
The carpet will keep their scent, weighed down, for days. He knows.
Afterwards, they are silent. (They do not really like what else they could be.) When the witch eventually stands up and sets about gathering her garments, it is with slow careful determination that is not like her at all, and he watches the way her arms move, the way she will hold her head high.
She leaves. She stops at the door, though.
"I will be back," she says, and then, so she is.)
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The end comes exactly one week after the beginning, and goes thus:
In early morning, the stableboy helps the princess down from her window. They climb down the grapevines in the gray predawn light and ride on horseback away from the castle. (The princess' feet are bare, and her fingers dig inelegantly in the stableboy's ribs.)
They leave. The castle behind and all her possessions and wealth, and the sun flares and burns, and. They leave.
News of the elopement does not reach either the king or the prince before the late afternoon; and by then it's too late to even hope catching up with them. The king does send his horsemen after, though.
When they come back empty-handed, he mopes for three days; decides that what has happened has happened because of the witch (—because, being a witch, she must have cast a spell over his daughter—) and sends them chasing for her.
It is three weeks before they capture her.
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ix. then silence.
(This happens at some point in time:
"All fairytales need not have endings," says the witch, sprawled over the armchair, her long red dress trickling off her skin the way the crimson taints of the fire do. She does not look like a princess at all, and the prince's fingers splay on her shoulders.)
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He has to sign the order of execution himself.
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x. it was real. more real—
Of course (the storyteller says, blue eyes and gentle smile), it could end any other way. The witch could escape. The prince could get her out. The castle could be overcome by a mob of revolted peasants, and they could run away during the commotion. Let us say it could happen any other way (says the taleteller, the words-weaver, with the smile at the corner of his eyes).
Let us say the prince obtains the witch's grace.
Let us say the witch disappears the morning of her execution, and no one alive can tell where and how she has gone.
Let us say the witch dies, and is born again, and the prince finds her many years hence, and he shelters and takes care of her.
Let us say the witch dies, and the prince is heartbroken, and kills himself to meet her in death. (They find the body later, and put it down to the princess' elopement.)
Of course (speaks the man with the smile and the eyes; he takes a sip of tea; and his next words are soft as melted honey), it could end any of those ways, and many others too, and many more others after that. You can believe that if you want, Kaito-kun.
That is not how it ends, though.
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xi. even than what came after.
This is how it ends:
Akako dies. Saguru lives.
(The princess and the stableboy live happily ever after.)
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Hmm. To be frank, I'm completely unsure about this. Experimentation to the max. Oh, well. Thank you for reading. *mopes over Greek final*