#npctpm

Percy yanks at the collar of the shirt he’s been forced to wear by Zyblina, it feels like it’s choking him. He feels trapped in it, trapped by Her. 

Gods does he miss Oberons court, he misses home despite it only being across the courtyard. Some days the idea of running into the king's room and begging for his home among the wildflowers of spring back. It’s a nice fantasy, going home, but Oberon for all his kindness is not one to walk among the nettles to bring home a flower suffocated by the weeds. 

So he stands on Her side of the courtyard, trying to rip her damn collar from his throat as emotions he refuses to name bubble up in his chest. Maybe he should keep the collar on, at least it might trap his traitorous heart from trying to escape from his throat. 

A new title should be a good thing, more power, more freedom. And yet with every new title, every new rung he climbs up on the ladder, it feels more akin to adding more shackles and bars to his cage instead of climbing towards the freedom of the sky. The feeling of damnation, of walking into a checkmate with no way out, is ever present these days. He wants to lie down among the rose garden in the court yard to let the roots and the worms take their fill. He dreams of joining the birds in the sky to taste freedom among the clouds even if it ends with him among the rocks at the bottom of a sea cliff. He wishes could take off his shackles that bind him to this place and loose himself in the deepest parts of the wild until the dogs find him.

And yet; he does none of these, instead he stares at the doorway to home dreaming of ways to lay down and rest one final time. 

He manages to tear his eyes away from the door to Oberon's court, and walks without thinking. His feet lead him down a well worn path towards the outskirts of the court, to a small apothecary. 

The silver bell is a quaint shop that hasn’t changed in all the years he’s been in the thorns, run by one of the few fae Percy finds he can trust. As he enters the front garden that surrounds  the path to the shop, he is greeted by the laughter of seedlings playing games with each other. It’s strange, the laughter of children should send a smile to his face, and yet their joy brings nothing but sadness and an aching heart. He wants to kneel down to each one and hug them before urging them to run. They haven’t blossomed yet so She can’t know their potential, this is their chance to run before they get snagged in the brambles around them. 

Instead he takes a steadying breathe to school his expression while  carefully following the path to the front porch. He is greeted with an image so serene he loathes to shatter it with his presence; Irene sitting in a rocking chair reading a book while she keeps an ear out for her charges, looking like the old woman she deserves to be. It strikes him how calm she looks, the tension she always carried with her entirely gone, like she's finally found some peace in this madness.Do they deserve that? 

“Percy?” She calls to him, concern flickers across her features as she studies him. 

“I - sorry ma'am I was lost in thought” 

“Dear how often do I have to tell you not to call me ma’am” she says as she closes her book and stands to greet him properly. “You’re gonna make me feel older than I am if you keep talking like that young man”.

Percy chuckles at that, “well Irene old habits are hard to break, and honestly I’m not so young anymore”.

Irene smiles softly at him, before he can step away she quickly steps forward to pull him into a hug. Despite knowing he has a role to play and they should be keeping a professional distance, Percy finds himself melting into the soft touch of his old mentor turned friend. Irene leans into him and hums quietly under her breath for a moment, “I know you didn’t come out here just to get a hug from an old friend” she murmurs to him.

“Honestly, I’m not sure why I came today” he whispers to her, like it’s a confession made in secret between friends. 

She hums quietly in understanding under her breath at that. Eventually she breaks the hug, and brushes at her shirt to straighten it back out “well then, it sounds like we need to have some tea and a chat hm?”. Instead of giving him a chance to reply she grabs her book and heads inside the small shop. She turns around as she reaches the cottage door “I assume your taste in tea hasn’t change since you left?”, she asks with an air of a woman who already knows the answer to her question. 

“Not at all” he replies with smiles and he moves to follow her into the shop. 

Walking into the shop is like walking backwards into his past, while small details have changed the shop is mostly unchanged from how he remembers it in his younger years. A soft herbal and floral smell permeates throughout the room, the counter is cluttered with drying plants and berries in various stages of becoming jams and preservatives, while the shelves are stocked with teas and dried herbs. It’s like he’s finally breathing clean air when he enters, the weight of responsibility and who he should be lightens under a roof he trusts.

“Wow this place really hasn’t changed a bit” he murmurs mostly to himself. 

Irene chuckles under her breath at that “what was it you said about old habits?”. She doesn’t turn to look at him, too busy preparing her tea in a ritual only she understands, “you know if you want I’m sure I have some clothes upstairs that would fit you if you wanted out of that uniform”. 

The suggestion sends that emotion he's been trying to bottle slamming against the bars of flesh and bone he’s buried it behind. He can’t, he’s lost who he was too long ago to know who he is with it, without Her. 

“Did you hear Kora became the bleeding heart?” he asks, sidestepping the conversation with all the gracefulness of a newborn fawn. 

Irene nods her head at that, finally turning to face him as the tea leaves are finally in the pot steeping. ““I did” she says as she regards him “makes me wonder what happened to the kind boy who held the position before her”.

Percy knows she’s watching him for any tell, for a hint of emotion to tell her whatever it is she suspects is true. But he’s never thought to keep secrets from Irene, his walls down and emotions on display in this room. The gaze of his friend has never felt so invasive, so much like Her. He watches as her face falls, she’s seen what it is she’s looking for and for once he’s entirely unsure what it is she has seen; his mask so shattered his not sure which Percy she's seeing. 

“Oh Percy” she breathes, walking forward to brush a tear from his face. When had he started crying?

Instead of answering he leans his face into her palm for a moment. “She promoted me today” he mumbles into her palm, like it's a secret and speaking it aloud makes this his reality. 

“You know I almost thought that she was going to keep me titless” he laughs bitterly under his breath as he furiously wipes his tears standing up from his resting position. “I had hoped that maybe she saw I was worn out and was replacing me to demote me”.

Irene is frozen still watching the man she knew unravel in front of her as he continues his rant.

“But instead, instead that fucking Witch” he nearly spits the word as venom rolls off his tongue “came to me today after promoting Kora with a gift, and I should have known Her gifts always have string.” 

He’s pacing across the cottage now, his footsteps hard and full of hatred as he continues forward, unsure he's even able to stop his tirade now that he's begun. 

“She led me to Her office and gave me that smile I’ve seen on Her use on hundreds of clients already trapped too far in Her web. And you know what I thought at that moment, I well and truly thought that I shouldn’t be getting that look.” He stops his pacing for a moment, catching sight of himself in the window. It’s the first time he's seen how he looks in the hours since his promotion, and he looks tired. He stops to stare at himself in the window his ranting turning to a whisper “In all this time I’ve worked under Her, all this time I’ve done things with and for Her I only see in nightmares, and somehow in all this time I forgot I am still Her prey in the end”, his voice cracking as that ugly emotion he has been pushing down all morning finally crawls out of his throat.

It's the confession that breaks him, staring at himself in a window pane as he realizes that being at the top just means he is just the closest play thing to use. The sobs rack his frame as he slides down the wall to place his head in his knees and sob. 

Siron is used to strange dreams that toe some line between reality and the machinations of his unconscious mind; therefore, walking into a lovely greenhouse where the flora is too saturated is not outside his normal. The strangeness begins while he is inspecting the plants he’s never seen before, when a woman with dark hair streaked with grey rounds the corner. He is used to being ignored in these dreams, often a passive observerof someone else’s dreams, but the woman smiles and greets him like she is aware and unbothered by his presence.

She must see the look of confusion that passes over his face at this, as she lets out a quiet chuckle.

Before he knows it, Siron is pruning the strange plants with her falling into a soothing rhythm. The rest of the dream is a haze, like the memory of a warm blanket when you wake up on a cold winter day.

These sporadic dreams continue for some time, as time passes the locations and number of dreams vary, but the woman remains as a constant hazy memory.

Eventually when Siron's skill in magical creation is great enough, he crafts an automaton in the likeness of the woman who walks his dream.