#lancine

The underbelly of Wonderworld was always so unforgivingly cold. A wintery embrace that could make one feel like they had never known warmth once in their lifetime. The darkness around them seemed to close in, causing the girl to hide her face in the torn cloak of her captor. She had always been afraid of the idea that something may lurk in the darkness, waiting to strike and drag her into the shadows.

Even as she sat in that exact situation, she couldn't help but flinch away from the darkness and further into the arms of the very beast she feared that lurked in the shadows. How much time had passed since she came to Wonderworld? Was time different here than in her own world? Had she been gone long enough for her grandfather to grow worried? All these thoughts and many more swarmed around in her head, forcing her to close her eyes as she laid there, cradled by the Negati King.

Her heart had already been fixed, but Lance refused to let her leave Wonderworld, knowing the world outside that awaited her was cruel and unforgiving and would only send her back broken all over again.

Why leave a world you can shape any way you wish for one that had hurt you before, and would not hesitate to do so again? Had Lance simply stood by and watched from the shadows as always, Balan would have sent Francine back to her world; her cold, unfeeling world, devoid of empathy.

No, he wouldn't let her go back there. Not when she had everything she could ever want in her Wonderworld. Not when his children, the children he created in her partial likeness out of love, needed her motherly affections and care. Not when he could finally hold her in his arms; when he could finally keep her safe forever.

She was his little rose, and the darkness he commanded in this little world would be the brambles meant to protect the delicate flower. He would be the thorn hidden right beneath the petals, preventing his rose from ever being taken from him; his eternally-blooming rose that flourished in the shadows.