#fffhhh

A couple of years ago, this wall he’d hit would have driven him out of his mind. 

The illusion of an idyllic lifestyle, of a happy and functional royal family, was difficult to maintain with the sounds of a woman screeching tearing through the castle grounds. Christa’s bad days were also everyone else’s. 

Father’s first wife had insisted that she be moved out of the castle, but from what Mother had told him, he hadn’t wanted that to happen even though he knew her presence soured everyone else. His elder wives had eventually, in a rare moment of solidarity, forced a compromise, however, and a tower was erected on the far edge of the property that looked over the rose gardens Christa loved. Not that the move did much good. When she had her fits, her shrieks bounced off the castle’s walls and carried all the way down to the lake. 

Shu bounced his leg on the floor, trying to concentrate over all the noise. He was failing miserably. He’d closed his window and even stuffed wax in his ears, but nothing could bring him back to his texts. The words all blurred together on the page, useless. 

Of course, Shu hadn’t been able to read anything substantial in weeks (to everyone’s dismay), so Christa’s screaming didn’t even make much of a difference. He stood from his desk and padded over to the window, rubbing his eyes and yawning. 

He didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Not really.

Shu leaned into his windowsill. His nails clicked as he drummed his fingers on the ledge. They were too long - he hadn’t clipped them in over a month - and getting cumbersome, but he somehow couldn’t bring himself to pull the trimmers out of his bathroom and sit down with his nails for five minutes. Too much effort. Even getting out of bed took a lot out of him recently. 

In the distance, he caught a white flash sprinting toward Christa’s tower. Subaru, no doubt, there to either calm or further exacerbate his mother. It varied from day to day. 

His free hand cradled his chin, fingernails digging into the skin of his cheek. He barely felt the pricks. 

Some day, he’d be expected to take a wife. To continue the family, of course. 

Who would he end up marrying? A Cordelia, that would sneak off with other men behind his back? A Beatrix, who would only care for the status that came with his name? A Christa? 

He didn’t want any of that. But he wouldn’t have much of a choice. 

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

A couple of months ago, he’d met a boy in the woods. The boy, he’d thought at first, had more options than he ever would. Edgar didn’t have any obligations to a royal family; he could pack up whatever belongings he had into a sack and just... go, wherever he wanted to, with whoever he wanted to. 

That delusion didn’t stick for long. Edgar was kind, kinder than anyone he’d known in his time at the castle, and he shared his apples. Shu still noticed how much excess room there was in his clothes, and could hear the grumbling of his stomach, and smell the poor quality of his blood. Blood ruined by years of malnourishment. He knew why Edgar spent so many hours collecting apples and setting pitiful-looking traps for rabbits in the woods. 

Running away with Edgar would just be trading one set of hardships for another. He wasn’t naive enough to believe otherwise. 

Still... when he was with Edgar, he’d been... happy. They’d pick apples and collect firewood and draw water from the river together, and Shu would feel more at home than he ever did at the castle. 

A small, selfish part of himself had wanted to bring Edgar into his life. He spent the better part of one afternoon teaching him how to waltz, and having him try on clothes from his wardrobe in preparations for a royal ball, where an extra guest shouldn’t have been noticed. Edgar was taller than he was, and a terrible dancer, but Shu didn’t care. Nobody would notice a human boy in ill-fitting clothes with lead feet, he told himself. 

Reiji noticed, of course. Edgar insisted that everything was fine afterwards, when he changed back into his peasant clothes, but they both knew without having to say anything that they wouldn’t be attending any balls together after that. 

They met in the woods in the days that followed, and talked about their mothers and fathers, and took turns climbing and spotting at the big apple tree in the deepest part of the forest. 

Something had changed, however, even if neither of them was willing to admit it. Edgar stopped asking questions about his daily life. The castle. The intricacies of royal life. Shu didn’t really mind, but he knew it meant his friend had lost interest in learning about him. 

It was a shame. He loved being in the woods with Edgar, of course. He had just really liked teaching him how to dance. Watching his friend wobble around, trying to sway with him on unpracticed legs as he clutched at the fabric of his jacket, had been fun. He’d liked the hand on his back, as well. Warmth was rare at home, and Edgar was full of it. 

Shu still loved his days in the woods, and loved being with Edgar every chance he got. 

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

A couple of weeks ago, Shu had woken up and smelled smoke. 

He found Edgar at the outskirts of his village, face streaked with ash and eyes bulging as he scanned the faces of people as they sprinted out of the burning town, looking for familiar faces. 

Shu had grabbed his hand and squeezed it. Told him that he needed to stay somewhere safe - to stay with him. He begged him not to run back into the village. It all fell on deaf ears. 

He had turned around, eyes bleary from all the acidic smoke in the air, and his flyaway hairs had glowed in the firelight, drawing color from the flames that lapped at his ankles, eager to claim him as theirs. 

Edgar forced a smile onto his face. “Goodbye, Shu.” 

He tugged his hand out of Shu’s weakened grasp, and the last thing Shu saw of Edgar was his back as it disappeared into the flames, which welcomed him with open arms. 

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

Shu stared out into the forest. Every once in a while, he would spot a flash of brown in the corner of his eye and twist his neck to stare at it, hoping, but it was never Edgar. It happened more often on the days that followed fitful nights’ sleeps, the result of nightmares filled to the brim with fire. 

The only real glimpses he got of Edgar these days occurred in those nightmares, however, so he couldn’t complain that much. Even if the only part of him that appeared in those was his retreating back. 

He should have tried harder to get Edgar to stay. He should have screamed for help. He should have tackled him to the ground or dragged him off and kept him away from his village until it was nothing more than a pile of smoking, harmless ash. Edgar would have resented him for it, but at least he’d still be alive. 

Would he be happy, though? He wasn’t happy here. Why would Edgar be? 

In the tower across the grounds, Christa’s screaming continued. 

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

A couple of days ago, Karlheinz himself had approached Shu and told him to pack his bags. They were going North, he’d said. Far North. 

Shu tossed his suitcase into the back of the carriage, and looked back at the castle in which he’d spent the entirety of his life. Every commoner in the world dreamed of living in a place where they could have food in their belly and clothes on their back and a decent roof over their head. Looking at the mansion from beyond the gates, Shu thought that this place would look perfect to a commoner at first glance.  

In the Sakamaki household, the illusion of an idyllic life regularly cracked and splintered, and it broke apart so easily that it couldn’t fool a child. 

There were Karlheinz’s three wives. Cordelia, who slept behind her husband’s back and treated her sons so cruelly that people only spoke of it in hushed whispers in the king’s court. Beatrix, who married into the family solely for status and worked one son to the bone while neglecting the other. Christa, whose fits were the talk of the entire demon realm. 

There was Karlheinz himself. A king with more power than anyone before him, who left nothing but destruction and broken people in his wake. He was either ignorant to or apathetic of the damage he had wrought, and it didn’t matter which it was. 

And now, there was the heir apparent. A boy so lazy, so incapable that his father had to send him away. 

It didn’t matter to Shu anymore. Nothing mattered. At least up North, maybe, there would be some peace and quiet, and he wouldn’t catch flashes of brown in the woods, or wake up with the smell of smoke and burning bodies fresh in his nose. 

Maybe he could finally sleep in peace. It was all he wanted these days.