THE FOOL.

________ 𝖑𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖊𝖝𝖕𝖊𝖗𝖙 𝖎𝖓 𝖒𝖆𝖐𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖇𝖆𝖉 𝖉𝖊𝖈𝖎𝖘𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖘. //. ◆ pinned post.

ARCANAROSA﹕ Iɴᴅᴇᴘᴇɴᴅᴇɴᴛ ᴀɴᴅ ʜᴇᴀᴠɪʟʏ ᴘʟᴏᴛ-ᴅʀɪᴠᴇɴ ᴏʀɪɢɪɴᴀʟ ᴄʜᴀʀᴀᴄᴛᴇʀ ɴᴀᴍᴇᴅ BASTION ʙᴀsᴇᴅ ᴏɴ ᴄᴏɴᴄᴇᴘᴛ ᴀʀᴛ ꜰʀᴏᴍ Dɪsɴᴇʏ's Tᴀɴɢʟᴇᴅ. Mᴜʟᴛɪᴠᴇʀsᴇ / Mᴜʟᴛɪsʜɪᴘ. Rᴜʟᴇs Bᴇʟᴏᴡ. ⁽Aᴘᴏʟʟᴏɴɪᴀ / Pᴏʟɪ. Sʜᴇ/Hᴇʀ. EST.⁾ ʜᴇᴀᴠʏ ᴛʜᴇᴍᴇs ᴍᴀʏ ʙᴇ ꜰᴇᴀᴛᴜʀᴇᴅ ᴏɴ ᴛʜɪs ʙʟᴏɢ. Aʟʟ ᴡɪʟʟ ʙᴇ ᴛᴀɢɢᴇᴅ ᴀᴄᴄᴏʀᴅɪɴɢʟʏ. Mɪɴᴏʀs DNI.

₊◆˚ ʟɪɴᴋs . ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ . ᴠᴇʀꜱᴇꜱ . ʜᴇᴀᴅᴄᴀɴᴏɴꜱ . ᴘɪɴᴛᴇʀᴇꜱᴛ . ꜱᴘᴏᴛɪꜰʏ . ᴘsᴅ ᴄʀᴇᴅɪᴛ ₊◆˚ ᴀꜰꜰɪʟɪᴀᴛᴇꜱ (ɴᴏɴ-ᴇxᴄʟᴜꜱɪᴠᴇ) @travmsoldat . @lapeirla ₊◆˚ ᴏᴛʜᴇʀ ʙʟᴏɢs @solheira (hiatus) && @queenrumi

"Scared, are you? Of children?"

Then… the sounds of children come closer, and the trees around them begin to groan and rustle. Phillip kicks Samson forward.

He tuts. "You would make a horrible father."

"Children? No. Disembodied voices of children. Yes! Very much so." His voice is a sharp whisper over the sounds of hooves hitting packed dirt. Not two more steps and then! Ah! There it is again. Hell's smallest minions.

“Idiot,” he mumbles beneath his breath and calls to the door. “Expect the bill to run you dry of your entire wealth!”

—

The day is still early. We’re just rolling into the most pleasant hours of the afternoon, in fact, when everyone in the palace has finished their lunch and is now busy fussing over the sort of biscuit that should accompany their tea.

The only person who never indulged in that sort of thing, or any sweet thing for that matter, is the stoic Prince Ludwig. He sits idly in the outdoor gardens at this hour, sipping his cool lemon water and leaving notes along every corner of the book set upon his lap.

He hears someone enter the gardens, and barely glances up a moment to recognize him as Bastion. It was easy enough. After all, the man bears a more striking resemblance to his father than even Ludwig and Phillip—and it said, really, that the only difference between the latter two is that Phillip happens to know how to smile.

“Had enough of my nephew, have you?” He says, not once looking up from his book. “Can’t imagine what might have done it this time. I see you hanging off him more than Petrus, and he is a very needy pup.” 

Bastion’s feet had taken him as far away from the situation as possible. The view of the halls a blurry haze of brown and age. He couldn’t be damned in commenting on how easily he fell into autopilot after being in this cold and gloomy realm Phillip called a kingdom.

Empire, he heard the man correct him in his head. Damn it that he couldn’t even be free from Phillip complaining even in the solitude of his own mind. 

Although you would never hear him admit it, Bastion did share with the ever luminous Coronian Princess a fondness of the outdoors. He had spent most of his young life in the streets, camping in the woods that surrounded Old Corona and watching the birds turn into stars above his head. 

Even as an adult he was most at home under the canopy of the trees. Light broke through a doorway and he made it out with a huff not slowing his pace in the least. It was not the warm Mediterranean weather he craved but it was warmer than usual and he was thankful for that blessing at least.

He’s bracing himself on his forearm on the trunk of a tree, the fist of that arm pressing against his mouth as he calms his annoyance. It takes him a moment to register the voice and even longer to recognize who it belonged to. Bastion twists his head over his shoulder, eyes beginning to narrow at Prince Ludwig before blinking and thinking better on it.

The brush clatters to the floor and she kicks it off somewhere, never to be seen again. She fusses around her room, grabbing tinctures and pill boxes and stuffing them furiously into a bag, and takes one exasperated look in the mirror before rushing out herself.

“W—Where are we going?” She calls after the sound of his footsteps, in a panic pulling a rose-tinted oil out of her pocket and smearing it over her lips. Then, a ribbon she tries desperately to tie into her hair but… she’s never been any good at that, has she?

“There’s no plan for this! No schedule, what if all your gold melts away because you left your books alone, what if we pass by someone we know and I look too ugly to be seen by them and I—“ she’s in the middle of powdering her nose as she runs, and sneezes in the process. “Bastion! There’s knives! On my feet! And if I run much longer I’ll have knives in my toes forever!”

A little growl not quite brought out by frustration vibrates in his chest as she calls out to him in panic. He stops mid-step and turns meeting her in the middle before swooping her by the legs and tossing her over his shoulder with a grunt. KNIVES! She said. Well, we couldn’t exactly have that now could we.

His pace slowed a considerable amount now that her added weight was throwing off his center of gravity.  Bastion wasn’t the strongest man in the world and his new job wasn’t exactly the most active of positions either. More than once he’d limped into his room and crawled into bed with considerably neck and back pain from being hunched over for hours at a time. Still, he was no push over and she should be glad for it.

“Oh trust me, your Liquor-i-ousness, you do more harm moping about every odd day than any old vase w–”

“Otto, will you shut up just this once?”

They make their way down the hall. A maid, during their journey, had passed the strange trio with a look of alarm; Adella barked orders at her about the vase if only to set Bastion’s mind at ease for a spell.

Adella’s room was closer, and so, to endure dragging him along the length of all Germany no further, they bring him in. Otto abandons Bastion immediately and makes his way over to the little table where Adella had set out some biscuits.

“Look,” she says dotingly to Bastion as she gestures to the bed, the pretty desk and other furnishings, and all the feathers strewn about the floor. “No vases in here for you to break and feel guilty over. I broke all of them already.”

Between stumbling through the hall and the falling face first into a bed Bastion’s mind began to sober up. He mumbles something into the mattress at the mention of the vase and twists around to lay on his back, arms spread out and still not able to touch the edges of the massive mattress. Seems that regardless of how Phillip may feel towards her, he at least had the decency of treating her as the high noble she preened herself to be.

Either that or someone had convinced him to play nice.

With one cheek squashed by the mattress he looked every bit as ashamed as he felt. He didn’t drink often (practically never) but Phillip had pressured him into celebrating... whatever it was. 

SKUMPS! SKUMPS! SKUMPS!

“You dream? You? You have to sleep for dreams to happen." 

Her fingers climb up the rough planes of his face to tap just beneath his eyes, and at all the shadows that reveal the fact that, for sure, the man hasn’t slept in one thousand years. Bastion always seems to live in the fog of some past anyway, never thinking or caring for a future in which they both feature. "Last night, I dreamed about a lady with purple teeth. Tell me what kind of dreams you have.”

Ah, well she was right on that. A sleepy, crooked smile twists his lips in an effort to hide a yawn that was threatening to ruin his reputation. Bastion leans his head back and away from her wandering fingers and then dips it into the crook of her neck to hide. He’s keenly aware of her pulse, the rhythmic thumping music to his ears, as his hands gently wrap around her waist to pull her close. 

He bites back a smile at her recollection and hums to himself as he thinks about the last dream he could remember having. She was right in suspecting his sleep was usually dreamless and light. Sleeping too deeply left you open to all sorts of dangers in the wild.

A tickly feeling climbs up the back of her neck, and the tips of her ears burn such a damning shade of red. She huffs.

Otto rolls his eyes. “Shall I leave you two alone for a moment? This hall isn’t much of a honeymoon suite, but…”

“No! That’s it! I won’t be married to a piece of a melodramatic wallpaper. Just think about how difficult it would be coordinate such a nasty shade of purple.”

She grabs his hand and tries (tries) to bring him back up. Otto grabs the other side of his arm and makes a better effort to lift him, leaning a bit harder on his cane to do so.

“Misses you, he says. Must have had the very hard stuff.”

Just as the world settles he feels the two weakest members of the royal entourage attempt to lift him to his feet. They bicker in hushed whispers that were still far too loud for this time of night and the corners of his mouth twitch. He gives them aid in their efforts and stands with a lean against the wall. 

“You—you can’t just—!”

The little color left on that pale face of hers disappears, just like that!, when he marks her notes with all his human nonsense. She lost the energy to pretend being that silly species a long time ago, and is now very grateful that her secret’s been lain bare for everyone to see, judge, and gossip over. She’s embraced all her sea-witchery, wholly and emphatically, and his peers and family would just have to deal with that.

She groans, and, accepting defeat, grabs a brush she’d thrown across the room somewhere. Brushing violently at her wild mess of midnight-black hair, she walks up to Bastion and circles him. “I look like a mess. And you, you look at you,” she pouts, seeming a curious mixture of insincerity and darling sweetness, “not even all that ink could make you look less handsome. You and that dream-look of yours. The house maid would look lovelier, pristine-ier next to you, and she’s been lost in the woods for weeks.”

He would compare her circling to that of a vulture were she not originally from the very opposite end of the biosphere. His brow cocks at her compliment and he can’t really figure out if it was even meant to be one or if she was just fishing for compliments herself. 

Adella looked fine as she was but one could argue he wasn’t the best judge of what fine really was. He may look like the eldest son of a duke but Bastion would always be the bastard in his eyes. He did not fit the uniform his new station forced on him or the upkeep.

Holding out a finger to poke her in the forehead mid pace he smirks. “Where we are going you won’t have to worry about any of that. Besides, I like you better when you let your hair out.”

For a while, Adella can hear nothing, nothing, but the sound of her own pen scratching viciously away at her paper, upon some scroll that sprawls the entire length of her little laboratory. That’s why Bastion, despite his stumblings, his clumsiest of entries, and the crunching of bottle glass beneath his boots, had managed to startle her in such a way. Yes! She gasps the sharpest of gasps, and the last of her muttering (something about slicing the tail of a salamander at exactly half past midnight) catches right in the middle of her throat.

She blinks up from her desk, staring fully into the bright sunlight spilling through her open windows. Her pupils shrink, her mouth and the very tips of her fingers twitch. Like a cat. Like the fussiest of cats.

The ink is fresh, still wet, but she runs her fingers through it anyway. The purple ink he had shipped in especially for her.

“And if those who say bad things about me, who deserve a decent poisoning, just so happen to be dinner, then what? Hm?” She teases, bringing her hand up to caress his cheek… and stain it with ink in the process. Her fingers drag the color across his mouth.

Although her touch is light Bastion senses a warning in the action as her nail lightly scraps against his stubble. He pulls his breath in with a comical little sigh and places a kiss on the apple of her cheek. The ink doesn’t transfer and he kisses his teeth in frustration that it doesn’t. “We agreed never in the house.”

After coming to stand at his full height he walks around the table and pics up her note to skim through. The concoction itself was gibberish but here, ah --- He plucks the pen from where it sat, makes a small correction and waves it in the air to dry.

“Come out with me.”

He stepped into the room and leaned his frame over the willowy body of his wife, his cheek pressed against hers as he plucked paper and pen from her fingers. He knew she must have heard him (tripping on overgrown vines and coils of rubber tubing as he did) but she had not once looked up to greet him. Imagine, after years and years of struggle, he’s finally replaced by a couple of vials of poison and beakers.

“Come out with me,” he repeats as he pushes away her hair to better rest his chin on her shoulder. “I’ve finished my work for the day. I’m tired of looking at numbers and,” he looks at the scribbles on her paper and the measurements glance back, “-- I’m sure you are too.”

“Well, his mind is made up. I say we honor a dying man’s wishes and–OW!” Otto might have a smattering of bruises all along his leg by the end of this. Adella, softening more and more at the sight of him, but still barely registering how Bastion could ever manage more than a sip of drink, kneels down to meet his eye. She lifts him up by the chin, then holds his face between her palms. She moves that silly head of his side to side, gently. “This castle is haunted, you know? If you stay here another minute, you’ll turn into the wallpaper, which is a very ugly purple color. Do you want that?”

He meets her gaze and the sea beacons him to drown in its depth. It was such a familiar feeling that he leans closer and the warm scent of expensive liquor ghosts her lips. He knows these eyes. He knows these lips. A sheepish smile forms on his typically stoic lips and the hand on her ankle massages a circle right above the ties of her slippers with his thumb. 

The castle wasn’t the only thing being haunted. 

“- Hate to have you see me like this,” he says with more effort to not slur. His head hits the back of the wall as he leans back and he covers his eyes in the crook of his elbow to keep the world from spinning. Focusing on any one thing (even an apparition from his past) churned his stomach and he had to force it to settle down. 

She thought, or had hoped, that years of growing apart would equip her with enough apathy to care very little for his speech. Hasn’t she heard some variation of this all before, anyway? But, some tremors of emotion do tick beneath that far-off, cold look in her eyes. If you look hard enough. “Who told you to do that?” She moves his hand away, and wonders if it’s worth it to begin again this cycle of sad words and misunderstandings in the hope that, maybe this time, something would change. She sits up and clutches his face close between her palms, her fingers twisting into his hair like vines. “When did I love you most? When you were rich?” Drained already, she rips her hands away and faces the ocean once more. She looks into her lap, feeling for that deeply indented skin where the ring had been. “I wish you knew me at all.”

Time stretches after she speaks and the ghost of her grasp keeps his cheek warm to the touch. Bastion takes a deep sigh, for once letting his frustration air out in the opening instead of bottling it up to stale somewhere between his heart and lung. It had been easier when he was alone. No one to care for him. No one for him to care for. Time went so quickly and so slowly at once. One week felt like a year and a day only a few hours.

“I do not regret having met you,” he says quietly with pinched brows. “I regret not being better. I regret not being strong enough to let you go. He reaches forward, curls a strand of ebony hair around a finger in quiet contemplation. “I wish I could speak to my younger self and force him to stay in Paris with you. Maybe then we wouldn’t have taken such a tumultuous path.”