#slave fic

The basic premise:

For more than two centuries, the heirs of a coalition of Japan’s richest families have been sacrificed to a magic box, the Ouran Device, as payment for an ancient crime against another family. Those heirs are not killed, however. They are transported to the dimension within the box to live as ‘chevaliers’, slave-champions of a series of ‘Princesses’ of the wronged families, who seek to gather all the chevaliers and all the keys to the box through a series of challenges against each other, in a great ‘game’ that will see the victor (and her chevaliers) emerge from the box back into the real world to rule over the coalition of families as Queen.

No one, chevalier, princess or queen, has ever emerged from the Ouran Device since the sacrifices were established. Whatever has happened in there, it would seem that none of the original princesses has yet managed to successfully claim their birthright.

The wronged family has all but died out in the years since that great crime, however, and while the sacrifice is magically mandated, many of the other families have begun to find ways to cheat the system. Primarily, nominating false, sacrificial heirs to take the hit, while grooming their true heirs to rule the family. The Suoh and Ootori families in particular have become notorious for this.

Not everyone in those families is happy with the path they’ve taken, however. When Yuzuru Suoh’s only son is sacrificed to the box by his mother, for the ‘crime’ of being illegitimate, the chairman sets out to change to change that path by whatever means present themselves.

By happy chance, an heir of the wronged family does still exist, though unknowingly. The last illegitimate daughter of the house became a lawyer and married a commoner, and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Her disowning by her family, and later death, kept that little bit of information from all but the most dedicated of investigators, but Yuzuru has all the money and motive in the world to hire extremely dedicated investigators. He learns of the heir’s existence.

And so, one day, a strange little puzzle box is delivered to the Fujioka household. And a young woman named Haruhi gets abruptly sucked into a life and a challenge like none she’s ever faced. The first new ‘princess’ to be drawn into the Ouran Device in decades, she upsets the game in many, many more ways than one.

Her first chevalier is Kyouya Ootori, by dint of him being recently short of a princess when Haruhi abruptly arrives in the box. Kyouya, traded away from the people he was determined to protect by a sadistic princess, and despite being magically compelled to obey and unable to lie to his mistress, still managed to get her killed by carefully misleading her as to certain risks in the game. He had hoped to use his new-found relative freedom to fight his own mission, and initially does not take being enslaved to a new princess, thrown into the box just for him, at all well.

But Haruhi is nothing like any other princess. She, like Kyouya, wants out. No power, no prize, just freedom, because she’s left a wounded father behind her who has no idea where his daughter has gone or who took her, and Haruhi will not let that stand. She will get back to him.

And Kyouya, recognising a shared goal, and tentatively willing to work with his new princess as long as it also gets him what he wants, agrees to help seek the keys and get out.

On the sole condition that she first seeks out and wins possession of five other chevaliers first. Kaoru and Hikaru Hiitachin. Mitsukuni Haninozuka. Takashi Morinozuka. And, last but so very much not least, Tamaki Suoh. The beautiful, broken-hearted prince who had seduced several princesses in order to prevent them from breaking or selling a defiant Shadow King who could never quite conceal his disdain from them.

Kyouya will help Haruhi escape, all right. He’ll do just about anything under the box’ false sun. As long as she gets his people out as well.

And so begins their game. The Commoner Princess and her Shadow King, facing off against all the brutal, sadistic games of Princesses and their Chevaliers. Struggling to win Kyouya’s chosen family free from their mistresses without losing anything vital in the process. Struggling to gain and keep enough keys to earn their freedom. And struggling, most importantly, to trust each other, in a strange new world where princesses like Haruhi hold all the most brutal cards, and Kyouya has already successfully killed one princess regardless.

Not to mention the machinations of all the other sacrificed heirs inside the box. No one dies in the Ouran Device unless they’re killed. There are two hundred years’ worth of brutalised, sacrificed chevaliers in there. Some of them, by dint of the same sort of vicious cunning Kyouya can lay claim to, possessing freedom and/or keys. Some of them holding means to bar the way.

And then, once they do successfully win their freedom and escape the Ouran Device, Kyouya, his friends, and his Commoner Queen must then struggle to navigate the cut-throat games of the real world, and the families who will do anything to avoid honouring the centuries-old cost demanded of them, to give everything they own and have built to the rulership of some illegitimate commoner brat of a queen (who can somewhat see their point, honestly, but doesn’t appreciate their methods or their treatment of her friends).

I have a LOT of scenes from this AU in my head:

Kyouya and Haruhi’s extremely tense first few days.

Kyouya darkly and challengingly explaining the facts of life to her, as brutally as possible, while also keeping back as many pertinent facts as his paranoid brain thinks he can get away with.

Kyouya failing to quite mention just how sadistic his previous mistress, and most other princesses in the game, can get, until Haruhi has to face it directly herself later on.

Haruhi slowly realising over the course of several encounters that very few people left in this game are really trying to win anymore. All but the most recent sacrifices have simply been stuck too long. Even the princesses are just going through the motions, and using the conventions of the ‘game’ to endlessly one up each other and win petty prizes and the prettiest new chevaliers from each other.

Haruhi and Kyouya winning the twins, and Haruhi realising that the relationship between princesses and their chevaliers very often has a horrific sexual element. Kaoru has followed Tamaki’s path, trying to pacify and appease, while Hikaru has followed Kyouya’s, much less subtly and successfully, and both of them have paid the price for it.

That breathless moment where Kyouya watches Haruhi realise the kind of power she has over them and him, and waits belligerently for her to use it.

The sort of weird half-hope, half-trust he dares have that maybe she won’t, after working beside her for the little time they’ve had.

Kyouya fully intending to goad her and control her into choosing him if she is going to use that power. He’s not going through what happened with Tamaki again. He’s not letting anyone step in front of him again.

Haruhi realising, in one moment, exactly what’s happening in this place, what Kyouya needs to rescue his friends from, and instantly and silently determining that they are getting out. All of them. She’s going to win them for him, and she is going to get them out.

Her realising that doing so means leaving everyone else behind (I feel like she met Nekozawa in particular), but just having to hope that there will be a way once the game is won to come back for them, because she’s fought a challenge now, and knows there’s very likely no way to clear the board and rescue everyone in one shot. There are too many princesses, and their hold is too entrenched. She might lose someone if she tried, and she doesn’t think Kyouya can stand to lose someone.

The twins deeply distrusting, resenting and even hating Haruhi at first, Hikaru angry and defensive, Kaoru watchful and mistrusting, but both of them also being extremely weirded out by how much she apparently lets Kyouya get away with. They served the same princess several times over the two and a half years they’ve all been in the box. They’ve never seen him not be brutalised for kind of things Haruhi casually lets him say and do.

Do they trust her? Or just trust him, that he’s somehow got her safely manipulated the right way?

And then they go after keys, and they win a couple, and they start getting a reputation. Or Haruhi starts getting a reputation, as an upstart newcomer (who let her in?) who’s upsetting the game and doing alarming things like trying to win.

Kyouya realises, and sets out to secure the rest of the group before the paranoia of the other princesses locks them out completely.

He didn’t want to, despite the knowledge of what Honey, Mori and Tamaki were going through, simply because he didn’t think Haruhi was in a good enough position and experienced enough at the game to win. The princesses holding Honey and Tamaki in particular are … not prone to losing challenges. And are prone to inflicting fatal or agonising losses on their challengers.

But needs must when the devil drives. They go after Honey. And they fail. At least partially. Haruhi staves off the loss of one of the others, offers a key to win a loan of Honey instead, but they don’t secure his full freedom. She only wins him for a round of challenges, unless she’s willing to keep paying keys to keep him.

At least Honey is safe enough with them and not serving at his princess’ pleasure, but it’s not enough of a win to take him with them when they leave, not while she still has a claim to him.

And they need keys to escape. To get out of the box. They can’t keep sacrificing keys to keep him.

But they put it aside for a while. Desperately. Kyouya points them at Mori instead, and they do successfully win him. They win another key, trade it for more time. All they need is Tamaki. Fourteen keys. And one more shot at Honey’s challenge.

Tamaki is the hard one. His princess enjoys a certain type of challenge. Especially when she knows Kyouya is one of the chevaliers on offer for him.

She’s the one who owned them together. Kyouya and Tamaki. She was the one who almost killed Kyouya many times over, the one Tamaki put on his best courtesan face to protect him from. She would love to win Kyouya again. She’s heard interesting stories about him. What he’s gotten away with. What he did to the princess she sold him to. She’d love to ‘entertain’ him again.

And her challenges are challenges of obedience. Which princess can best use the magic of the Ouran Device to control her chevaliers. Mostly by magically forcing them to do horrific things to themselves.

Kyouya doesn’t know if Haruhi can do that. Time and challenge after challenge have shown him that … she truly isn’t interested in hurting him, or anyone else, never mind sadistically forcing them to hurt themselves. She’s as far from a typical princess as he could have gotten, and that has been every wonder and hope for him, but now …

For once, he wishes he had a different princess. A proper, more vicious princess. One he could use and sell without a qualm, and trust that she would do the same to him, only hopefully less effectively. Just for this one game. This one sacrifice.

But he volunteers for the challenge anyway. And Haruhi, grim-faced, stands by him for it.

The princess sends Tamaki. Of course she does.

And it’s horrible. It’s all horrible. The challenge is who can force their chevalier with the least resistance. Who owns their slaves most completely. She was betting on Kyouya still being as recalcitrant and defiant as ever. On Haruhi having to fight harder and more brutally just to keep up. Kyouya’s easy and instant obedience, much more instant than Haruhi’s willingness to give orders, deeply frustrates her, and she takes it out on the target she has to hand. Tamaki. It’s horrible. It’s all very, very horrible.

And they’re not winning. Again, like Honey, they’re not winning. The princess is easily willing to kill Tamaki before surrendering him. Willing to make him kill himself first. Haruhi is not willing to kill Kyouya. They can’t keep up.

But the orders being given are traded between princesses. To show off how brutal they’re willing to be. Once you match your opponent’s order, you get to give your own for her to match.

So Haruhi does something different. Something she did not run by Kyouya first. He’s been her Shadow King in every other challenge. She’s gone with and trusted his advice first, because he knows the game and the ground better than her, and he’s almost never led her wrong.

But it isn’t working here. So she does something different.

The challenge is the most instant obedience. The better a chevalier follows the order. And to win, the other princess has to match her order.

So Haruhi orders Kyouya to raise his sword and, when she gives the order, to swing it at her. At her throat. With all his strength. And to stop again the instant she says the word.

Kyouya is not amused. Not in the absolute slightest. But Haruhi is his princess. And he has no choice.

The blade stops a millimeter into her neck. Just breaking the skin. He pulled the blow the first instant he could, barely as the ‘stop’ had started, but it hit her anyway. It made her bleed.

He’s never been able to make a princess bleed himself before. And this was the one princess he didn’t want to.

Not least because, if she dies, she takes all their hopes with them.

Haruhi blinks mildly at the blood, and shrugs at her slow timing on ‘stop’. Kyouya is doing his best not to have a fit of apoplexy on the spot. The other four are clutching each other behind her.

Tamaki, who knows nothing about Haruhi at all, is staring at her in half-horrified confusion.

And his princess, meeting Haruhi’s calm, steady, defiant gaze, knows this is a challenge she cannot answer. Because Tamaki, because any chevalier of hers, will obey with all fury on ‘swing’, and resist with all their might on ‘stop’. She knows they will. There is no one she has ever held who will not gladly take the chance to kill her. All they need is to resist for a bare second on that second command, and the blade will have sliced her throat. Even Haruhi, with all Kyouya’s unlikely obedience on her side, did not escape without a wound.

She forced a challenge of obedience. Haruhi has turned it around into a challenge of trust. And there is no princess left in this game who can win that challenge against her.

She concedes, with an ugly lack of grace. And Tamaki is safely theirs.

Tamaki has … absolutely no idea what to think of this. What to think of her. Haruhi. Especially when Kyouya immediately muscles her up against the wall as soon as they’re alone (guess what scene I’m referencing), something suicidal with any other princess, and Haruhi apologises for forcing him. To hurt her. Instead of anything more sane or reasonable. Tamaki has no idea what to do with that.

To be fair, apparently neither does Kyouya.

Mostly because he’s been functioning under the idea that, as ridiculously decent a person as she is for a princess, she’s still been doing this for their initial reasoning: to get what they each want. In her case, getting out, and saving Kyouya’s friends to buy his cooperation to do it. He has no idea why she might let him potentially kill her, because that’s just … not a sane gamble in a working relationship. What? Either she trusts him, which is ridiculous, or she’s willing to get fatally hurt to help him, which is not better, and he’s honestly having a bit of a meltdown.

To which Haruhi responds that of course he wasn’t going to kill her. He needs her alive. And besides. She knows him by now. If he ever really tried to kill her, it would be because she deserved it.

Like her predecessor. The one he did kill. Because she deserved it.

So … worst of both worlds? She fully trusts in his mercenary priorities. She’s apparently perfectly fine with the idea that he can and will kill her later, on moral grounds, if she does something to deserve it. And in the meantime, she’s perfectly willing to stand under his sword and let him decide if that time is now or not.

Which … yeah, Kyouya’s not able for that. He’s going to go have a meltdown now, and Haruhi can go fix the bleeding cut in her neck, fuck, and then he turns around and there’s Tamaki and nope, not dealing with that either.

General meltdowns is the theme here, essentially.

And then we have Tamaki trying to deal with and understand everything, and Kyouya doing everything in his power not to admit to him that he did all of this to get the people Tamaki befriended back for him, and Tamaki being the paranoid one for a change, because he has the least and honestly most stressful experience of Haruhi, and what is happening here? What’s happening?

But they’re running out of time. Honey’s on the clock, they only have partial claim over him, they need to get him and themselves fully out before time runs out.

And Kyouya, extremely shaken and suddenly very determined not to sacrifice Haruhi or anything that might remotely look like it, for no particular reason at all, shut the fuck up, secretly starts setting them up to get Honey free by sacrificing one of the others. Specifically, himself, because he killed his princess once, and if the others get out, if Haruhi gets them out, then he’s the best placed to simply kill another one again and live out his life down here as an independent chevalier.

He almost gets away with it. Almost gets them to a deal with a very specific princess. Fortunately, though, both Honey and Mori know said princess, and they warn Haruhi, and Haruhi … forces a stop. Forces Kyouya to stop. Again.

She gets him to admit the plan, because chevaliers cannot lie to their princess if said princess specifically demands the truth.

Nobody is happy with him. Nobody’s necessarily surprised, mind you, but they’re not remotely happy with him. Tamaki is trying not to die. Hikaru is trying not to strangle him. Honey and Mori are doing wonderful impressions of disapproving statues planted solidly in his path.

(Kaoru somewhat gets it, actually. He’s not going to tell anyone that, especially not Haruhi or Hikaru, but he does kind of get it. He respects the decision, even if he’s glad it won’t be followed through).

And Haruhi …

All of us or none. That was the deal. Seven in, seven out. Kyouya.

He stares mutinously back at her. Every bit the defiant Shadow King that the other princesses tried to destroy. Exactly that face.

What’s the other plan, Haruhi asks. Gently enough, because she has his number by now. What’s the plan he doesn’t want to use?

… There’s an ex-chevalier. One who’d freed himself, the same way Kyouya had freed himself. By killing his princess. And he has keys. He’s been collecting keys. And favours. He’s been viciously and determinedly preserving his own freedom, and gouging princesses for anything he can get, for … maybe fifty years. Maybe a hundred. Who knows anymore? He can get them the keys to win. He likely has leverage over Honey’s princess. He can give them the tools to get out, almost in a single shot. He’s everything they could possibly want.

If they can persuade him. To let a princess win. To let a princess become a queen.

And the thing is, he’s said he’ll do it. A rumour Kyouya had heard oh, a long time ago. That this ex-chevalier, as lure or dare or something, had said he would give every key and favour he had, would allow a princess to claim her throne finally. If they were willing to do one very specific thing.

He hadn’t told his last princess precisely what that thing was. Kyouya. He’d let her enter the challenge and lay it all on the line before anyone told her. And when she furiously reneged …

Well. Kyouya had been short a princess. Just in time to get a new one.

The only other way out in time to keep Honey, the only way Kyouya can see that doesn’t involve sacrificing Kyouya himself, involves putting Haruhi in front of the weapon Kyouya had used to kill his previous princess. And ask her to pay his price.

A chevalier’s price. He suffered under several princesses. And all they have to do to get out is have a princess agree to suffer under him.

Under him. Very much literally.

A night. A night of torment. And they all go free.

Oh, says Haruhi. Exactly as he’d feared she would. Okay. That’s workable, then.

Kyouya cannot sell another person. Not to that. Not one of his. The whole point was to avoid that. But Haruhi is his princess, and Haruhi can demand, force, the truth from him, and this plan will work. This ex-chevalier does have enough keys. All they have to do is convince him to let them have them.

All Kyouya has to do is let someone else take the hit for him once more. Let someone get raped for him once more.

And they weirdly … they’ve all been through it. It’s what happens to chevaliers. They’ve all been through it. But Haruhi hasn’t. And for all the justice it would be to have a princess suffer as chevaliers have suffered … they can’t. The other five, they get why he wanted to avoid this now. Because this is not a princess. This is Haruhi. The most hope they’ve had since they were sacrificed to this place. And they don’t want her to get hurt. They don’t want her to suffer as they’ve suffered.

But she is their princess. And the decision is finally and irrevocably hers.

They go to challenge the chevalier.

Who greets Kyouya by name. Well, by surname, at least. Family name. Ootori. A wry acknowledgement. Because. When Haruhi entered the box, there were two ex-chevaliers the magic could have chosen to offer her as her starting chevalier. One recent, and one older. And the older chevalier knows full well that it was only his possession of keys that kept him from that fate, and remanded Kyouya to it instead. He has … a little bit of sympathy. But sympathy means nothing in the Ouran Device, and never has. But if Kyouya has managed to fool yet another princess onto his blade, well, he’ll happily oblige the younger knight.

Except things don’t go as he expected. There’s no blustering, no weaselling. This princess challenges him directly, and then agrees to his terms. Directly. While her chevaliers flinch around her. He demands that she submit to him, and she agrees.

And that … See. That’s a problem. That’s a problem, because if she agrees to his terms, and follows through, then he has to uphold his part. He has to surrender his keys. Which might mean this princess … might win. Might become a queen. And no one in the box knows anymore what actually happens if a princess wins, what powers a queen might have, but given everything else they have endured in the box, no one is looking forward to finding out. What more power could the box give someone? He doesn’t know. But what he’s afraid will happen is that it will give her the power of a princess over the families outside the box.

He's set his challenge because he knew for a fact that no princess inside the box would ever agree to it. Not even to win. They don’t want to anymore. The princesses have been here longer than anyone. They don’t know what the world is like anymore, what powers, if any, they would have there. Why would they sacrifice this perpetual, immortal playground, with playthings that they have absolute control over, and that will be refreshed periodically when they break them? Why would they allow themselves to be hurt, conquered, mastered to accomplish it? His entire aim has never been to actually see it through, it’s been to kill them when they forfeit.

But Haruhi bluntly agrees. And this viciously embittered ex-chevalier is suddenly very nervous.

So he tries to alter the challenge. He can’t recant it, not now that the challenge is offered and the opponent has agreed, but he tries to alter it. To clarify what he wants into something she can’t give him. Because no princess … because it’s something that no princess in this box could give him.

He clarifies that he doesn’t just want her body, he wants her virtue. Her virginity.

Because, as any chevalier can bitterly attest, no Ouran princess has any of that left to offer.

Everybody freezes. Because … Well. They know she’s never touched them. They know she’s never touched anyone inside the box. But outside …?

But Haruhi, who’d tensed up at his clarification as much as anyone, relaxes again. Completely. She’d been afraid he’d ask for something they don’t have. But this?

Yes, she says. She can do that. It’s agreed.

And it sweeps over the rest of them, everyone else in this room, that she … that she’s innocent. Not only in the sexual sense, not only in having something genuinely innocent to lose, but also that she … that she committed no crime. That what they’ve seen inside the box hasn’t been a lie. That she isn’t some late-game princess here for her own gains. That she genuinely didn’t know anything about this, that she genuinely hasn’t hurt anyone. She is no princess. Not as a chevalier defines a princess. She’s … innocent. And she’s offered something they didn’t know she had to lose, and something that they can’t repay.

(Tamaki, in the show, all caught up in the romance of a girl’s first kiss. That, but so much worse).

It goes straight through all of them. Tamaki, Hikaru, Kaoru, Mori, Honey. Kyouya. And it also …

Her opponent. He set that challenge because no princess could have met it. No princess could have met it. So if she can meet it …

But it’s too late now. Challenge is joined, and terms are agreed. Haruhi leaves her chevaliers behind and goes with him to fulfil her end of the bargain.

Kyouya is giving real and honest thought to gutting himself. Exactly as he had every time Tamaki lured a princess away from ‘entertaining’ him.

And Haruhi …

It’s awkward. More than horrifying, it’s awkward. Because he hadn’t actually wanted this either. He’d set the challenge as a goad, to win a lethal forfeit, but after nearly a hundred years of brutalisation, it’s not like he ever wanted to lay with another princess either. And certainly not … If she still has her virginity. Then this is not even justice, not even righteous payment for all she had inflicted on her own chevaliers. This is just him … Him being a princess. To someone else.

And Haruhi, despite her fear and her horror, has that sort of ruthless pragmatism about the whole thing that’s actually horrifying to him. Very suddenly he does not want to touch her.

But a deal is a deal. A challenge is a challenge. And the magic of the box enforces challenges.

He doesn’t … It isn’t … It’s not violent. He can’t be violent, or he’ll throw up, claw himself out of his own skin. And Haruhi … sort of realises that he’s struggling, that he’s on the verge of breaking. And this is not … this is nothing she wants. Nothing she wants to do. She’s petrified, and nauseous, and horrified, and hurt. But they’re both stuck now, and it’ll get them all out. There’s no way out but through. So she does try to be gentle. And it makes things a thousand times worse.

It's over as quickly as he can make it be over. His body has long been trained by previous princesses. It’ll do what’s necessary regardless of his horror. He does … He does hurt her. It’s unavoidable. He can’t … He can’t make himself take the care necessary to avoid it. He can’t give that much, not willingly, not to any princess. So he has to just make it quick instead. It’s not violent. It’s not sadistic. It’s as fast and as remote and as impersonal as he can make it. It’s horrible. The sickness of it sinks into both their guts.

And then afterwards …

He’d demanded the night. A cavalcade of horrors, to affront and terrify a princess into refusing. A night and her virginity. He’s taken the one. But he can’t escape without the other.

So Haruhi, lying there … she takes a while to get herself together. To shudder and cry and pull herself through it. And then she tries talking.

Because she hasn’t forgotten Nekozawa. Every other chevalier she’s seen suffering here, every other person she’ll have to leave. She can take her six with her, pull them out, keep them safe. But there are so many others that she can’t. So she has … she has to try.

Does he know what happens if there’s a queen? Does he know if that gives her power over the box? Will it let her get the rest of them out too?

Kyouya doesn’t know. None of the newer chevaliers know. It’s all been lost across the centuries. But he … he’s been here longer. She’s pretty sure. Does he know?

He cannot deal with it. Her. But …

He’s taken things that cannot be repaid. And she’s Queen now anyway, or will be after this night. Very shortly there won’t be choices anyway. So. What a question. What an unbelievable question. Far too much to hope, especially not for him, not when he’s hurt her. But why not try to help everyone else out?

He doesn’t know the powers of a Queen. But he does know that …

There was a scroll, a contract, kept with the box in his time. When the sacrifices were offered, it was done in sight of the contract. The thing that binds them all to this hell. That contract will have the details of what was agreed to, what is owed to her, and what she has the right to do. It’s kept by the families. Kept with the box. As queen, she would have the right to view it.

Will she …

He doesn’t want to ask. Doesn’t want to finish it. Never give a princess any of your hope. But she waits, and he has to ask.

Will she free them? If she has that power? Will she do it?

If she has that power, Haruhi responds immediately, she will free them. And if she doesn’t have that power, she will get it. If this is a contract? Her mother was a lawyer, and she will find a way to get that power. If she does nothing else. No one will stay inside this box.

He can’t answer that. Or believe it. And so the rest of the night passes in … in incredibly awkward silence. Haruhi actually sleeps. She’s so pragmatic. Hurt and horrified and so pragmatic. He wants to claw his way outside his skin. But he’s lain in agony alongside many a princess in his time. One more night is nothing.

In the morning, he escorts her back out to her chevaliers, all of them grey and sleepless and scrambling sickly to their feet. He meets Kyouya’s eyes, and has only his own horror to offer for the mirror he finds there. His own horror, and nine keys, the last they need to escape.

It doesn’t matter about the dangling deal for Honey. She’s won. Won the keys and won queenship. No princess in the box has any hold on her, or anything of hers, after that. They can … They can go free. All of them.

Before she does, though. The keys in her hand, freedom in her hand. Haruhi turns, and asks her … asks the man who hurt her.

If she’s queen now. If the game is won. Does that mean the princesses no longer have power?

It hits like a lightning bolt. Even as they vanish. Even as they disappear before him. It hits like a thunderbolt from the sky.

The game is won. The challenge is complete. The princesses, the remaining princesses, lost. So what happens to the losers? Will the magic still protect them? Vicious anticipation rushes through him, because the Ouran Device has never been merciful. So he very much doubts it.

Maybe they can’t be free from the box. Maybe this queen won’t keep her word. But maybe that doesn’t mean there can’t be changes inside the box.

The price for his actions against his queen may yet call due. But in the meantime.

And Haruhi and her chevaliers …

Seven bodies appear, abruptly, in a tiny room, and tumble onto a wooden floor. Next to a box propped on a table. Seven bodies fall out, no longer dressed in the magical finery of the Ouran Device, but in the clothes they wore days or months or years ago when they first entered it. Seven bodies tumble out onto the floor. And then lie very still. In terror … In terror that it’s not what they hope, that it’s something else, something worse. Everyone freezes.

But Haruhi … she knows this room. She recognises this room. So she scrambles up first.

Is it real? She looks at Kyouya. Instantly, instinctively. Her shadow king, who’s guided her through everything. Kyouya. Is it real? But he can’t answer. He’s too terrified. He can’t answer. So Haruhi scrambles over to him and …

Orders him. Orders him to stand up and answer her.

And he resists. Instinctively. The reason so many princesses had brutalised him. Because his defiance is bedrock, carefully cultivated, a grim viciousness that’s haunted even his interactions with Haruhi. As it should. As she knew it would. She knew he’d balk.

And in the box, the magic would have forced him to compliance. But here …

He braces for it automatically. Braces for the unnatural demand, for the magic to force him to his feet. But it doesn’t come. It doesn’t come. He freezes out of sheer shock. Realisation. Terror. His princess ordered him, and he’s not moving. He’s not being forced to move. The seconds tick on, and the relentless grip around his body and his will does not come.

They realise what’s happening. All of them. They realise what it means.

And Haruhi beams in relief, and flings her arms around him. It’s over, she whispers, hugging him desperately. It’s real, it’s over. We got out. It’s real. We’re out.

She breaks down in sobs onto his chest, and Kyouya …

He can’t respond. He can’t make himself. He can’t believe it.

No one ever gets out of the box. Princess or chevalier. No one, not one single person, has ever gotten out. Not in centuries. Not in three hundred years.

He’d planned to win their freedom within the box. He’d planned to lie and manipulate and murder and do whatever it took, within the box, to protect the one person who’d ever offered him true friendship, to protect their chosen companions, to make a space where no one could hurt them. He’d planned to die for Tamaki if he had to. To murder for the others, to be the ruthless shadow king that they couldn’t be. He’d planned that. But he’d never … he’d never hoped …

People don’t come back from the box. They don’t escape. They don’t get out. The heirs are sacrifices. No one knows what happens to them within the box, but they know it’s not pleasant, and they know that they won’t come back. Kyouya had known from the moment his father had declared him heir that he’d been offered up so that his brothers wouldn’t have to be. He’d known that no one would come for him. He’d known that he’d never be free.

And now that’s …

There’s no magic on his body. There’s no fist gripping his will. But he still can’t move. He still can’t get up. He still can’t hug her back.

She freed him. She sacrificed … For him. She freed him. She had all the power in the world, the power to completely destroy him, and she freed him. And not just him, but …

It can’t be repaid. There’s no word for the magnitude of the debt. It can’t be repaid.

And it’s not just him. No one else … No one else is moving either. No one else can. So it’s something, someone else, that moves them.

There’s a noise behind them. A wet gasp for air, someone else’s shocked, ragged, desperately hopeful breathing. There’s someone else. And all six of them, chevaliers, lurch to their feet to defend their princess. Queen. To defend Haruhi.

But it’s not … She gives out a cry behind them. Bolts past them. Because it’s not an enemy. She bolts into her father’s arms.

And he folds down around her and cries.

He lost her mother. He lost everything. And then he came home, and found that someone had taken his daughter. And he’d gone to the police, but he’s a man with an entertainer’s job, he’s a lowlife, they didn’t care, and even when he found one who seemed like they might care, two days later they abruptly didn’t again. They hadn’t been able to meet his eyes. They’d been stiff, adamant, ashamed. But they hadn’t helped him. As if someone had leaned on them from on high. They hadn’t helped. No one had helped.

No one official, anyway. Friends at work, yes. People he knew. They’d helped scour the city. But they couldn’t find her. The person who took her controlled the police. Of course they couldn’t find her.

He’d thought the worst. The worst nightmare of his life. He’d thought the absolute worst. But here she is. She’s back. In his arms. Here she is.

With, yes, six other people. Six young men. He doesn’t know what to make of that. Hopes it’s not what he fears. But she hadn’t been afraid of them. Hadn’t seemed afraid of them. And she’s here. So let’s deal with that, the obliterating relief of that, first.

The six young men look … Gutted, he notices absently. They look gutted. They stand back, and almost seem like they can’t watch, can’t bear to, but none of them, not a single one, takes their eyes off his daughter. Like she’s too precious to look away from.

All right. In a minute. All right.

What happened? He asks eventually. Ragged, cried out. Still hugging Haruhi to his chest. Where were you? What happened? Are you all right? And she curls into his chest in answer, but the others … the others glance at each other. The others suddenly look concerned.

She didn’t know anything about the box, anything about the families. She’d been kidnapped into it. And that means they still have enemies. Or potential enemies. She’s their queen. And several of them know all too well that that means she has people in this world willing to kill her. People of their blood. And someone arranged to have the box delivered to her. Which means someone already knows to watch this house.

It's not Kyouya who steps forward now. He can’t. His father will be the first in line to slaughter her, or rather to pay someone else to slaughter her. He knows it, and it terrifies him. He’s been gone from this world for who knows how long? He never thought he’d get out. He has some things in place, regardless, not optimism but just pragmatism, pragmatism and stubborn defiance of fate, but he doesn’t know enough. He doesn’t know the state of the board, who knows where they are, who will move first. His resources are tiny, and he doesn’t know where the blow will land from. He freezes and he hates it.

But someone else steps forward, grimly determined.

Honey.

He moves forward, and Haruhi’s father instinctively pulls his daughter away from him, pulls her slightly behind him. Honey flinches, but stays the course. Stands politely, while Haruhi tugs impatiently at her father and looks at him. He stands at attention, in a way he never did inside the box, and holds her eyes with a true gravity.

We’re not safe, he tells her, as gently as he can. The people who sent the box … we don’t know which family they were. We’re not safe. We have to go somewhere else. We need protection.

Her father glares at him. Petrified. But Haruhi straightens easily.

Okay, she says. What do we need? Where do we go?

Honey hesitates, just slightly. The tiniest bit. He looks back at Mori. And he looks back at Kyouya. But then he faces her again, shoulders as straight and expression as terrified as anyone has ever seen it.

I would offer my family home, he said, with all the formality of an heir. We’re powerful fighters, and the other families know not to mess with us lightly. We honour our debts, my queen. If you let me contact them, I promise, my family will protect you.

Which … Haruhi’s father is very baffled. Haruhi is concerned. Why the formality? Why the fear?

But Kyouya speaks, here. Not a protest, not really. Just. Just Honey’s name. And Honey looks at him.

The only reason we had to do it this way is because of me. Because she still … Because she still had claim over me. The only reason you or Haruhi had to get hurt is because … I owe this debt. And my family will help me honour it. You know they will. Please. Please, Kyouya. Let me.

Because the Haninozuka Clan, unlike the Suohs or the Ootoris, did not sacrifice lesser heirs to save preferred ones. They honoured their word. Grimly. Bleakly. But they honoured it. Honey had always known that as the eldest it was his duty to protect his younger brother. He’d been grimly proud of it. He was his family’s heir, fully and truly. And they would honour his word as such. They had never imagined they would get him back. But they would honour his word, if he gave it.

And the last debt owed, the reason they’d had to go to the ex-chevalier in the first place, the reason it had come down to Kyouya’s sacrifice or Haruhi’s, had been because Honey was still owned. They’d … They’d done it for him. To leave without sacrificing him.

Yes. His mother, his father, his brother. If he told them that. They would honour his word.

They would help him repay his debt.

Ending Thoughts

I have several more scenes in my head, but this is where my energy ran out. But a few of the other pictures in my head:

Honey and Mori do take up defence of the team, and the Haninozuka and Morinozuka Clans are the backbone of Haruhi’s ‘faction’.

In the safety of the Haninozuka compound, Haruhi finally has a little breakdown in the showers about essentially letting herself be raped, even if she doesn’t blame the ex-chevalier for it, and finally has a conversation with Tamaki about it, because Tamaki … He’s played the role of courtesan to several princesses to try and keep them from killing Kyouya, and he gets it. Everything she’s feeling. He gets it. And he’s … He doesn’t know how to feel that she did it for Kyouya, for Honey, for him, but he can at least help her through it. They sit naked in the showers together and just comfort each other.

Kyouya, meanwhile, has an incredibly painful conversation with Haruhi’s father where he has to basically confirm some of the man’s worst fears about what happened to his daughter, and does it in the coldest, cruellest way possible in an attempt to fall on his sword for not being able to plan well enough to stop it from happening. And Ranka … Ranka sees through him enough, and knows his daughter enough, to see through that and realise that Kyouya is trying to atone for failing to protect her, and likely because Haruhi … because his daughter was determined to protect him, and she was stubborn enough to get there first. Because Ranka knows that feeling. It’s … It’s different in tone, more horrifying now, but he still remembers her keeping her parent day secret so he could sleep, can still remember the tiny child looking after him in his grief even though she’d lost her mother, and he can extrapolate that out into his stubborn, gentle, precious daughter protecting this young man whether he wanted it or not. And a bit of him hates it, hates that she went through that, wants to hate Kyouya for allowing it, but …

He'd never devalue Haruhi, her choices, that way. If she thought this young man needed protecting, then he needed protecting, and that’s that. And he can empathise with Kyouya’s grief over it.

With the backing of Honey and Mori’s families, they start moving to get Haruhi recognised as queen by the contract, and getting access to the contract. Hikaru and Kaoru ask for permission to contact their family as well, as if she’d deny them, because it’s still … They’re all still running on chevalier training, and it’s still not real that they’re out in the world and can do things and not get tortured for them. Which … Haruhi breaks, a little, but they work around.

Tamaki’s grandmother and Kyouya’s father are, indeed, their primary enemies. And no one knows yet that Tamaki’s father was the one to essentially kidnap Haruhi, as well as lean on the police not to investigate it. He did it out of loyalty. He did it because alone of his family, he loved his son and wanted to protect him, to change the game, to give him a tool to maybe escape. But to do so he kidnapped Haruhi, let Ranka think she’d been trafficked, and put her in a position where she did wind up raped. So Tamaki, when he finds out, has horrifically mixed feelings on the matter.

And the ex-chevalier who hurt her? Mostly because they both had no choice, but still?

He’s also a Suoh. One of the sacrificed heirs from generations past. And when she does free him, and all the other chevaliers from the box, that’s …

The Suohs owe several debts. Several debts.

As for the Ootoris … They try, once they realise that Kyouya is more than her slave, that he is her Shadow King, to prevail on his family loyalty to steer Haruhi favourably towards them. And Kyouya comes very, very close to murdering his father in front of the families. Because his father just … doesn’t get it. Won’t get it. Not anything Kyouya’s been through. Not anything he condemned Kyouya to. But in a way …

They can’t let themselves. Kyouya’s father, Tamaki’s grandmother. They can’t let themselves. Because their brothers were sacrificed for them, and they were raised knowing they’d have to sacrifice one of their own children, that the pattern would just continue, and so they couldn’t let themselves feel it. It was their way to protect themselves, the product of centuries of this pattern, and it’s not an excuse, but it is a reason.

And Kyouya … he is Shadow King to Haruhi’s Queen, and then actual King to her Queen. It takes a while. It takes a long while, because the stain of princess-and-chevalier lingers, but …

He trusts her. And she him. She stood under his sword. And he was the first person she turned to at every turn.

He does love Tamaki, is willing to die for him, and I did consider this going in an OT3 direction. But I think in the end it’s HaruKyou.

This was … This is a fic that’s been playing in the back of my head for something like a decade now. It won’t be written. But I have a lot of scenes, and I felt like describing them somewhat. Heh.