Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When the Prince is a child, he has many dreams.

Dreams of adventure, as befitting any child, of any tribe and any station. Dreams of friends, the lonely wishes of a child already facing anger from grown men and women that should have known better. And dreams for a country that he really believes can one day be like the ones he reads about in his favorite book, where everyone is treated with respect, and everyone is valued for whoever they happen to be.

And then, all at once, the Prince is no longer a child. He is cursed, and if not killed outright than at least set on the long, slow path toward his own death, which is almost worse. At six years old, he is told that an intruder into the castle—a terrifying experience on its own—has infected him with a tangle of thorns and briars that will, one day in the not too distant future, kill him.

It's hard to keep dreaming, with that dark promise there to loom over him. It's hard to think of adventure when there are thorns wrapping themselves around his chest, choking him, keeping him from running and climbing and doing all the things he wants to do. Hard to wish for friends, when he's been whisked off and hidden away, and everyone treats him like a fragile, broken thing that could crumble to nothing if anyone were to get too close.

Hardest of all to dream of a future for his country, now that he knows he doesn't even have a future for himself.

The Prince grows up too soon and too fast, and with all the strength he has in him he forces himself to put away his dreams. They hurt too much to even look at, and so he seals them somewhere deep and dark in the bottom of his mind, somewhere that the curse can't touch them, but neither can he.

Sometimes he is reminded of those dusty old dreams. More and more rarely, as he grows older, but it does happen. It's always painful to be reminded of the times when he'd thought his life would be different and better, and the Prince finds that those dreams no longer bring him anything but pain. He pushes them back, pushes them away, feels hopelessness and deep sadness instead of joy at the memories of those times. Sometimes he even feels angry—an utterly helpless kind of anger, rooted in frustration and loss and a dark, lonely fear. Angry at his younger self, at the things he used to be able to believe…

(Angry at himself for not being able to, anymore)

(For the sheer, painful loss of those dreams)

He pushes the memories back, and buries them deep, and bristles and tenses and doesn't let even a single glimmer of hope through the wall he's bricked up between himself and his dreams. Which is fine.

It's.

Fine.

And then the curse creeps its way up into his heart, and he falls into a sleep that no one—himself included—expects him to wake from.

The only thing left of the Prince in the world is his dreams, and it has been a very long time since he let those dreams be free.

They have not really been given a chance to grow.

-//-

There is an elda boy sharing a carriage with Hulkenberg.

A very young elda boy, she can't help noticing. As young as the Prince had been on that long ago day when she had failed to protect him, so small that his feet don't quite touch the floor of the carriage, on the rare occasions he remembers to sit up properly. More often he pulls his legs onto the seat, sitting cross legged or folding them around himself in the seamlessly awkward way of all small children, staring out the window with a starry eyed awe at a landscape Hulkenberg herself has long since ceased to notice.

In the two days since Hulkenberg has boarded the carriage and taken note of both the boy and the irritated, occasionally angry looks their fellow passengers keep giving him, she has made the conscious, deliberate choice to bring him under her protection. His name is Will, he has already told her. He is six years old, and he is traveling to the capital to help a friend. He won't tell her who the friend is, or how he expects to be able to help them, but he does tell her that he isn't travelling alone because he has a friend named Gallica, who is a fairy, and also that he thinks that Hulkenberg is… cool.

(He tells her this three times, in quick succession, when she happens to mention that she has tried many interesting cuisines in her travels, including several types of bugs)

Hulkenberg assumes the fairy is an imaginary friend at first, until she starts paying attention. When she starts to see him as a person, as Will, a small child on a journey he is far too young to be attempting alone, and not as merely an elda, she realizes fairly quickly that there is in fact a fairy in his bag.

Very curious.

But Will isn't actually any of Hulkenberg's business, she reluctantly acknowledges, and when the carriage reaches Grand Trad, they'll go their separate ways. She tells herself very firmly that he isn't her charge the way the Prince had been, that she can keep an eye on him from a distance without becoming overly attached, right up until the moment that bandits descend on the carriage. It's not the first time she's had to defend herself from some danger while travelling, but it has been quite some time since she had reason to fight for the safety of someone else.

It's amazing how quickly it all comes back. The extra little jump of her heart as she realizes someone helpless is in danger, the odd split in her attention between the bandits threatening her, and the ones near Will. She stands with her back to him, facing the threat, and in the short, sharp fight that follows, she makes sure that not one person gets close enough to him to hurt him.

"Are you alright, Will?" she asks in the aftermath, as the shaken carriage driver makes a check for damages.

(For a moment, when she first turns around and looks at him, he reminds her so strongly of the Prince that it almost hurts)

"Yes!" he says, but his voice is a little higher than what she's heard from him so far, and she thinks he might be scared. "I'm okay. They didn't even get close to me."

"Good," Hulkenberg says. "I'm—glad to hear it."

Will fidgets for a moment, then says, "Thank you for keeping me safe."

He says it completely earnestly, flustering Hulkenberg, making her unsure what to do next. In the end she pats him on the head, which makes him laugh, and reassures Hulkenberg that there hasn't been any lasting trauma for him.

After that, Will completely relaxes around Hulkenberg. He's a very polite child, she's noticed already. Many children of the so-called lesser tribes are, out of necessity—it's an unfortunate reality, she's noticed, that the two options available to many of those children is to learn their manners well, or to learn to fight instead. They very rarely have the luxury that young roussainte and clemar children do, to be rude or insubordinate to their elders, because the punishment for missteps is harsher for them.

But it's as if Hulkenberg's willingness to protect him against bandits has convinced him that she won't hold it against him if that politeness slips. Perhaps it has. Perhaps he can see as well as she can that she's not going to let him be hurt, at this point. Either way, she starts to see more and more of his eager, adventurous personality, in the endless stream of thoughts and questions he presents her with, about every single sight they travel past.

The carriage makes good time in the aftermath of the bandits, no doubt trying to put distance between their group and the ambush site, and when they do finally stop, it's only because the darkness makes it impossible for the carriage to keep traveling safely. There, Will approaches Hulkenberg where she sits at the fireside of the impromptu little camp, holding something tight in both arms.

"What do you have there?" Hulkenberg asks, as he seems to hesitate over what to say.

"I don't know how to say thank you," Will says slowly. "For… during the bandits."

"No need for thanks," Hulkenberg assures him. "It is the duty of those who can fight to protect those who can't."

"But you did it even though I'm elda," Will says, and Hulkenberg wants to pat him on the head again, because it had made him smile before, and he there is no smile on his face at all as he says this. "And I thought you might… maybe you want to see my book?"

He holds it out to her, very solemnly, and so Hulkenberg feels she has no choice but to take it and flip through the pages. It's not a text she recognizes, although in fairness she has never held a particular fondness for books. But she stops on a page at random, and reads through a passage of—

"It's about another world," Will blurts out, and Hulkenberg has to stifle a smile to see he's crept up close to her, crouching at her side so he can see the book too. "And everyone's happier there. No one cares about tribe, everyone gets taken care of anyway."

"That sounds like a very nice place," Hulkenberg tells him.

"Mmhm," Will says, eyes bright even in the darkness. "I want to live in a world like that someday."

"It would be nice," Hulkenberg allows. She glances down at Will's book again, and asks, "Can you read all this?"

"Um…" His enthusiasm slips a little, and he says, "Well—yes."

"That's very impressive for a child of your age," Hulkenberg says. She means the words encouragingly, but he doesn't seem to take it the same way.

"My friend used to read it to me," Will says, voice quiet. "Um. It was a really long time ago. He doesn't—he's been sick for a long time. He doesn't read with me anymore. But I can read by myself so… so it's okay." There's a moment of silence, and then, heartbreakingly, a sniff.

This time, Hulkenberg does give into the urge to pat him on the head again.

"I love this book," Will whispers, leaning into the touch. It might just be Hulkenberg's imagination, but somewhere behind the words she can almost hear him say, "I love my friend."

"I can see that," Hulkenberg says, as gently as she is capable of.

"It's my friend's," Will says. "But he can't read it right now, so I'm borrowing it. I think he'd—he'd want me to have it."

"I'm sure he would."

"I have his sword too," Will says. "With the luggage on the carriage." His expression is something Hulkenberg can only describe as impish as he looks up at her. "I'm going to learn to fly on it."

Ah, Hulkenberg muses to herself. The imaginations of children. "Maybe you're safer keeping to the book for now," she says. Words are a kind of dangerous, but not the same way as a sword. "I know I'm not the friend you're missing, but I can read a bit to you, if you want."

Will does want, it turns out. He doesn't listen for very long, because before she can make it through two pages, the lengthy day catches up to him. Will falls asleep curled up on the ground next to her, and for a long while Hulkenberg sits there with his book in her hands, looking down at him and thinking.

It's a hard world for people that look like him. She very much wishes that she, or that anyone, could be there for him to protect him.

Hulkenberg makes to shut the book, but happens to catch sight of something unexpected as she does so. On the inside of the front cover, in ink that has faded over time, is the name of the Prince. She stares at it for a long moment, breath frozen in her lungs, heart beating too quickly. Then, in a quick movement, she stands, reaches down to scoop the sleeping child up off the ground, and carries him out of the thin circle of firelight.

"Hey!" a voice calls, and Hulkenberg freezes in place, instinctively shifting her arm around Will to a more protective position, and only relaxes when she picks out Will's fairy friend in the darkness behind her.

"You've no need to worry for your friend," she says, keeping her voice low so as not to attract the attention of anyone else. "I intend only to ask him some questions."

"What kind of questions?" the fairy asks. It's hard to read nuance on her when she's so small, and the night is so dark around them, but Hulkenberg has the vague impression that she's crossed her arms. "He's just a kid. He hasn't done anything."

"I don't intend to imply that he has," Hulkenberg says. "But this book of his once belonged to the Prince, and I have been searching for him for over ten years." There's desperation in her voice, she is very aware of it, and assumes the fairy will be able to as well. Even so, there's nothing she can do to stop it. "Please. If either of you knows anything, please tell me."

The fairy continues to look skeptical.

"I failed him once," Hulkenberg says. "I was meant to guard him that night, and I failed. He was cursed and taken because I was not fast enough, or skilled enough. I intend to find him, and to make up for my mistakes."

Will stirs, and Hulkenberg realizes that either the discomfort of being carried or the whispered conversation has woken him. Must have woken him a while ago, in fact, because he asks, "The Prince is your friend too?"

"He was my charge," Hulkenberg says quietly.

Will considers this. Then he says, "We're going to help him."

Hulkenberg's anxious heart skips a beat. "Are you, now?" she asks.

"Will," the fairy says. "I don't know—"

"She's nice, Gallica," Will says earnestly. "We can trust her."

And despite the fairy's—Gallica's—initial reluctance, they tell her everything.

Hulkenberg is surprised to realize, about halfway through the story, that she is incredibly relieved to have a reason to be able to stay with Will for the foreseeable future.

That conversation begins to change things. Over the next few days, she reaches the capital with Will and Gallica, arranges for transport to the northern fort where they've been sent to find an ally called Grius, and travels there with them.

They reach the fort, and Hulkenberg receives the shock of learning that Grius is a man she knows as Alces, and hasn't seen in many years. With him there to vouch for her, and Will still obsessed (it is in fact the first thing he tells Alces when the four of them do introductions) with the fact that she eats bugs, Hulkenberg begins to feel much more at ease in this new situation.

And then the human attacks.

-//-

When Leon Strohl joins the army, he does not particularly intend to survive his deployment.

It has been a very long time since he's felt at home anywhere. A very long time since he's had anyone that wanted him around, a very long time since he has felt anything but the numbing, all over grief of losing the center of his world.

The army seems as good a way to end that as any other.

What he is not expecting to find, at his very first deployment, is exactly the kind of threat that had torn his life into pieces when he was a teenager. He charges into the fort without thinking, before he can even see the threat for himself, because as soon as he hears the dying soldiers moaning that word, human, human, human, he can see the monster in his mind's eye, and it's like he's back in Halia, and the world is burning again.

Strohl doesn't even think of not rushing in. He's already written off his own life, so the strongest feeling he has in this moment is that he can do better, this time. Can buy someone else's survival through his own sacrifice, maybe, and so he goes charging up the seemingly endless stairs, past more dead and dying. There are monsters everywhere, humans and beast, and Strohl fights those he can't avoid until he reaches the top at last.

The humans he'd met on his way here are nothing compared to what he sees now. This is simultaneously more similar to the human that had destroyed his home, and entirely unique from what Strohl remembers back then. It's just as much of a monster, though, and Strohl has already fully mentally committed himself to charging at it even before he realizes that the monster is already in combat.

On the other side of its horrifying body are two strangers, who from Strohl's distant and partially blocked perspective seem to be a rhoag and… maybe a roussainte? It's hard to tell, and far more important to Strohl is that behind them, even farther away, is a child.

There had been many children, that day in Halia.

(Strohl had been fifteen)

(He had felt himself a child, but looking back, he shouldn't have been such a child, shouldn't have ran, should have been able to fight to protect something that actually mattered)

He doesn't think. It's like his brain just stops working, and his anxiety spikes and spirals and all he can do is run forward, sword drawn, ready to fight. His pulse is pounding through him, a frantic drumbeat, and he realizes as he makes contact with the human for the first time, sword rending its horrible, unnatural flesh, that this can't be a suicide run.

It can't be because there's a child here. And if Strohl runs into his death, as he'd joined the army to do, then the human is going to turn its attentions on the other people here, including the child.

He fights, desperate and afraid, until the human whips at him with its long, branchy limbs, and Strohl flies back and rolls several feet along rocky, broken ground, collecting new bruises and gashes as he does so. In the end he blacks out, and…

Well, it should have been the end for him.

The human should have been able to finish him off then and there.

Instead, he opens his eyes to a room he's never seen before, lit in dappled green and yellows, and the pounding in his chest feels like something different now.

O thou anguished traveler, a woman's voice murmurs.

Strohl's heart hardens in his chest, and he places his hands over it. The woman's voice offers him a choice, but Strohl has already made it.

The rest of the fight passes in a blur. The new magic, the archetype. New allies as the rhoag and roussainte he'd noticed before join the fight on his side, and then finally a new emotion. Something he hasn't felt in a very long time.

Relief.

He hasn't…

He hasn't felt anything close to relief, anything close to pride at a job well done, in so many years that he can't even remember the last occasion.

The human falls and Strohl does too, pain and the loss of adrenaline driving him to his knees as soon as the danger has passed.

"What was that?" the roussainte—a woman with incredibly red hair demands of him, as he struggles to keep from swaying. She and her rhoag companion draw closer to speak with him, but stop short of being close enough to touch, or to fight if it comes to it. They're obviously still wary, either of him or of the archetype magic he'd awoken during the fight. "That magic, 'tis like nothing I've ever seen before."

"I don't…" He has no idea. Can't even begin to explain.

Running footsteps draw everyone's attention, and Strohl blinks at the final person, the child, dashes over to join them.

"Will," the roussainte says. "Alces and I told you to stay back, remember?"

"But the fight's done!" Will protests. "It's safe now."

"Potentially," the rhoag says. "But we still don't know what—no, child, don't—"

It's too late. The boy, Will, a very small elda with mismatched blue and golden eyes and a sword as long as he is strapped to his back, has darted right up to Strohl. With Strohl on his knees, they're more or less the same height, and Will studies him with an intensity that seems out of place for someone his age.

"Hi," he says. "I'm Will. It's nice to meet you."

So Strohl has gathered, but he notes the intentionally polite way Will has made his introduction. It reminds him of his own childhood, carefully reciting the polite greetings his parents had taught him, as his mother looked on approvingly. He responds in kind. "It's nice to meet you, Will," he says. "My name is Leon Strohl da Haliaetus."

"Wow," Will says, impressed. "That's a really long name."

"Lad," the rhoag says, sounding slightly embarrassed. "Don't pester him."

"But he's coming with us," Will says, turning to look up at the other two. "So we have to know who he is, right?"

Absolutely no one, Strohl included, looks like they had expected this.

But the very last of Strohl's energy is failing him now, and as the two adults look at each other in obvious confusion, he blacks out for a second time in fifteen minutes.

-//-

…

…

…

-//-

When he wakes up, an indeterminate amount of time later, it's dark. He's no longer at the fort, but in a camp somewhere, with a small fire lit a few feet away, and trees around them. The other three are there as well, Will asleep on the ground, and the two adults talking in low voices from the other side of the fire.

(There is also, Strohl realizes after several seconds of staring at Will, trying to decide if he's truly awake or if this is some kind of a hallucination, a fairy on the boy's shoulder, sitting there as if on watch)

"Ah," the rhoag says. "You're awake."

Strohl drags himself into a sitting position, regretting the choice with every movement, and says, "I seem to be. I suppose you were the ones that brought me from the fort?"

"There's no arguing with the lad when he gets an idea into his head, we're learning," the man says wryly. Still, there's a note of fondness in his voice, and a small smile on his face, as he says, "Wouldn't hear of us leaving you behind."

"Then I suppose I owe all three of you my thanks," Strohl says.

"We can call it even," the roussainte woman says. "We would not have survived that encounter had you and your magic not arrived when you did."

"The archetype," Strohl says. "I'm—not sure what that was, but I'm glad I was able to help."

The rhoag studies him thoughtfully, but doesn't say anything. Instead, the roussainte says, "However we came together, it seems to be in all our best interest if we continue as traveling companions for now. Traveling alone can be difficult."

And Strohl can still feel every bruise the human had left on him. Even if he does have that archetype magic now, somehow, he recognizes that her statement is as true for him as it is for the others. "That seems fair," he says.

"Will is going to be glad to hear that," the rhoag says, craggy expression melting for a moment into a smile. "And as he said back at the fort, if we're travelling together we should all know who we're travelling with. My name is Grius. This is Hulkenberg." He gestures to the roussainte, then jerks his head back toward Will's sleeping form. "And the boy's fairy is called Gallica."

Strohl opens his mouth to ask questions about how Will had managed to get a fairy as a companion, but then closes it again. Will seems to have a talent for gathering unlikely allies around him. Instead, he asks, "Didn't someone call you Alces back at the fort?"

"It's Grius," the man says, tone inviting no more questions. He changes the subject as well, for good measure. "We'll be leaving for Grand Trad in the morning, traveling through the mines to avoid anything that might have survived to flee the fort. You should get some sleep in the meantime."

Strohl is really in no condition to argue. He doesn't think the human had done any permanent damage, but a good night's rest can only help with his many aches and pains. He lays back down, and for the first time in years falls asleep among friends.

The next morning, he wakes to the excited chatter of a child who is truly, genuinely happy to have him there, and some of the cold, lonely darkness that has crept into his heart since the destruction of his home begins to melt.

Chapter Text

Maria has never seen an elda until the day she meets Will. He walks into the Hushed Honeybee with her dad, a lady knight that used to work with her dad, and a clemar that Maria thinks looks very out of place in this part of Grand Trad. He's dressed too nice, for one thing, and he has an accent that Maria had once heard a customer sneeringly call expensive. He's dirty and travel stained just like everyone else, though, so maybe he does fit in after all.

Will is the one that looks the most out of place of all, though. Even if he is the first elda Maria has ever seen, she's heard about them before. People say well at least I'm not elda sometimes, when they sit in the Honeybee and talk about missing out on jobs because they're paripus or nidia. Sometimes they get used in a curse. Sanctists complain about them.

The first thing Will says, vibrating with excitement when he meets Maria, is, "We met a dragon and it burned off my hair!"

"…what?" Maria says. She looks at Will, whose hair (it's a pretty blue) is kind of charred, and shorter on one side than the other. Then she looks up at her dad, who doesn't look even close to being as excited as Will does as he talks to Miss Fabienne. She doesn't want to interrupt to ask him what that means, so she looks back at Will a second time, and asks, "Did you really meet a dragon?"

Will nods. "It was in a mine. We had to sneak through it to get away from the army after a human attacked, and right at the end there was a dragon!"

"A real dragon?" Maria asks.

"It chased us all the way out," Will says. "But Hulkenberg had to pick me up and carry me most of the way because—" For just a second, there's a flicker in his excitement, a little bit of hesitation. Then he pushes past it. "Because I can't run as fast as everyone else, and I was slowing them down. That's when my hair got burned."

"Is it going to grow back?" Maria asks.

Will shrugs. He looks like he'd be okay if it didn't. "Strohl says it will," he tells Maria. "But I think it's cool. What if I never meet a dragon again?"

Strohl—the clemar—calls, "You're lucky it only got your hair, Will," from the other end of the table. "It could be worse if you ever meet a dragon again." He looks at Will with a pinched up worry that Will doesn't seem to notice. Maria, who is nine and therefore much older than Will, does.

"I think he's worried about you," she whispers to Will, when Strohl's attention is on Hulkenberg and Gallica, and not on the two of them.

"How come?" Will asks. He leans forward, putting his chin in both hands and watching her intently.

He looks so serious, with his funny eyes and his hair all burned on one end, that Maria can't hold back a giggle. "Because a dragon tried to set you on fire?" she reminds him.

"Uh huh?" Will says.

"And… that would make them sad if you were gone," Maria says.

Will looks very surprised by this. "They'd be sad about me?" he asks.

Maria is starting to feel like maybe an adult needs to be having this conversation. She doesn't know what to say to a boy that doesn't think it makes sense for people to be worried about whether he's going to be burned up by a dragon.

But looking around, she sees that Miss Fabienne is busy with customers, and her dad is talking to Hulkenberg and Strohl, and that doesn't leave anyone to talk to Will about being more careful with dragons.

(Does Gallica count?)

(Maria isn't sure, she doesn't know anything about fairies)

Since no one else is there to take over, Maria asks, "Do you want to help me wash the dishes in the kitchen for Miss Fabienne?""

"Okay," Will says. He shouldn't, because he's a guest and if Miss Fabienne knew Maria was asking him to work, she'd probably be disappointed.

Sorry, Miss Fabienne Maria thinks, and finds a stool for Will to stand on so he can reach the sink next to her.

They maybe don't do very well with the dishes. A lot of soap gets everywhere, and even though Will is happy to learn how to wash dishes, he still hasn't done it before. And they talk a lot, about the dragon, and about Maria's favorite places in Grand Trad, and about a book that Will really, really loves that he's borrowing from his friend the Prince.

When Miss Fabienne finally comes in and finds them chattering over the half finished pile of dishes, she tsks and sends them both upstairs. "It's getting late," she says, shooing them out of the kitchen. "Go upstairs and get cleaned up, get some rest."

The two of them do as they're told. Maria has a cozy little room at the back of the hall, right next to Miss Fabienne's, and it's exciting to be able to share it with someone for once. Will pulls out his book, and shyly asks if she wants to read it with him, just for a little bit until they go to sleep. Maria is too curious to say no, so they sit together on her bed with their backs to the wall, sharing the book between them. Maria is still learning to read, but Will seems to know the words by heart, even though he's younger than she is. He has to trace the lines with his finger as he goes, and sometimes he slows down over the longer words, but he gets all the way through the section he'd opened to read.

When he's done, he closes the book and puts it carefully on his lap before looking nervously at Maria. "Did you like it?" he asks.

"I think so," Maria says. "I didn't understand all of it."

"I don't either," Will admits. "But I understand it a little better every time I read it." He rubs his thumb over the spine of the book, not really like he's paying attention at all, just like it's something to do. "I think… someday I'll really get it. And then the Prince will be proud of me."

"I like listening to you read already," Maria says.

Will smiles at her, his whole face lighting up, even though it turns slightly red, too. And Maria decides to take the chance, and say something she's been trying to find the words for all evening.

"Will," she says carefully. "Did you… like reading your book with me?"

"Huh?" Will says. "Yeah, a lot!"

"And what about washing the dishes together?" she asks. "And talking about everything?"

"I liked that too," Will says.

"So did I," Maria says. She screws up her face, half nervous, half concentrating. "And… and if something bad happened to you, like if a dragon burned you up instead of your hair, I'd really miss you. And I think Dad would miss you too. And probably the others." She doesn't know them very well, and doesn't want to make promises, but it seems like they would probably be worried. "That's why… I want you to be worried about it too, if something bad might happen to you."

Will doesn't say anything. He doesn't say anything for a really long time, and finally Maria peeks open one eye and looks over at him.

He's fallen asleep.

Maria sighs, and pulls the blanket up over his shoulders. She thinks that maybe he's still going to need some help with this.

-//-

Will spends the morning of the King's funeral helping Maria help Miss Fabienne around the Hushed Honeybee, and listening as hard as he can to what everyone is saying.

He knows that the grown ups are planning something, and he knows that they don't want him and Maria to know about it, because they stop whispering whenever they notice either of them around. And Maria is probably okay with that, she doesn't seem like she's noticed all the whispers, but Will really wants to know. He thinks about them going on another adventure without him, and his chest feels tight.

He has to help the Prince. His best friend. Will knows he's small, and he can't fight, and he doesn't know magic, but more than anything else in the world he wants the Prince to look at him again and smile.

(It's been such a long time since the Prince was happy to see him that Will almost can't remember it)

(Now he tells Will go away, I don't want you here, and leave me alone, stop hurting me, and it doesn't make sense because Will never, ever wants to hurt the Prince)

(He just… he has to be good enough for the Prince to want again)

So he can't just sit at the Inn, even if it's really nice, with Miss Fabienne and Maria. He listens to the whispers instead, and hears that Grius has a plan to kill Count Louis at the King's funeral. By now Will knows that Count Louis is the bad guy that had cursed the Prince, so this plan makes sense to him. And Will… he wants to be able to see what happens. Just see! And maybe if something happens, he can help too! Somehow.

…maybe.

(It's hard being small)

(And not fair, because Gallica is even smaller than him, and no one's trying to keep her out of the whispers)

Will waits for the grown ups to leave, then when a big crowd of people come into the Inn, he straps the Prince's sword onto his back to help him be brave, and runs outside. He doesn't know where he's going, but almost everyone seems to be going the same direction, so Will just goes with them. It's a long walk, and the city is big, and after Will has been walking for a little while, he realizes he's going to have a harder time getting back to the Inn than he has having getting to the funeral, but… that's okay, he can worry about that later.

There's a bell somewhere that won't stop ringing. Will can hear it the whole time he's walking, and it makes him feel a little bit anxious. It feels like something bad is going to happen, and Will has no idea what.

It's very obvious when he gets to where the funeral is going to be, because it's so crowded. Will slips through the solid wall of people blocking his view, and after getting kicked once and being called a dirty elda three or four times, he finds a building with big fancy steps in front, leading up the the front door. He's not the only one that has the idea to stand at the top of the stairs to get a better look, and he is still short, but he can kind of see what's going on.

Will spends the next several minutes standing on his toes, watching the pretty white box where the king's body is. The white flowers on top remind Will of the wildflowers at home, back in the eldan forest. There's a patch of them in the woods where he'd wok—

Where... where he and Gallica had me...

(...)

He doesn't remember where he's seen those flowers, but they do look familiar. They make him... he thinks he's sad, about the flowers. But it's a funny feeling sad, big and kind of lonely.

Will wishes the king wasn't stuck in his box.

"Will!"

He startles and looks up at the sound of his name, in time to see Gallica darting down toward him.

"I thought I saw you," she says, worry on her face. "What are you doing here? Are you okay? You're crying."

"No 'm not," Will says, but his voice is watery, and when he scrubs his arm over his eyes, they're wet. Will just doesn't understand why. He'd only been thinking about the king.

"Oh, Will," Gallica sighs, and she lands on his shoulder where she can put his cheek reassuringly. "It's alright. But we should get you back to—"

But at that moment she's interrupted as the box with the king in it explodes. Will makes a noise (something in his chest hurts) and a lot of other people scream. Gallica says, "Oh no, Louis," and Will swivels his head to stare at the man now descending down to Earth.

"That's the bad guy?" Will asks.

"Shh," Gallica says. "There's a lot of people here that like him, so you can't be too loud."

Why? Will wonders. Sure, Louis is dressed like a good guy, all white and gold, and his hair is kind of pretty, but he hurt the king, and the Prince! And when he turns around to talk to the crowd, his voice makes Will shrink back, expecting to be yelled at. He's mean.

And then…

Then comes the King, a face on a rock, and it scares Will more than the dragon had in the mines. That had been an adventure, a wild run on his own two feet and then holding tight to Hulkenberg when she'd picked him up and carried him the rest of the way. But a floating head on a rock isn't anything like the stories Will knows, it's just… big. And scary. And if this is the King, he's suddenly not so sorry that the box with his body had stayed closed.

"Gallica," he whispers.

"Shh," she says, and presses her small hand to the side of his face. "It's okay. You can close your eyes."

But Will doesn't. He's not scared. Or—or if he is scared, then it's only so he has a chance to be brave.

(The Prince had told him that, once, a long, long time ago, back when they used to sit together with their favorite book between them, and the Prince would tell him stories)

He doesn't understand most of what the King's head tells them, but it sounds like even most of the adults around them don't. Something about choosing a new King, now that the old one is dead? But…

"Gallica," Will whispers. "Shouldn't the Prince be the new King?"

"Most people don't know the Prince is alive," she reminds him.

"They should believe in him," Will says, so quiet his words are almost lost in the noise of the crowd.

Then Gallica says, very sharply, "Will, I need you to cover your eyes."

"Why?" he asks, then perks up as he spots a flash of movement up on the stage. "Gallica, look! Isn't that Grius?"

She doesn't answer, just tells him to close his eyes again, but Will doesn't. Instead he watches as the distant figure that he's just recognized as Grius runs toward Louis. Something flashes in his hand, and Will only realizes it's a knife when Grius pulls back his hand to attack Louis.

And then it's too late. Chains appear from nowhere as Grius lunges at Louis, wrapping themselves around him, holding him up in midair. Anxiety flares up in Will as the crowd around him reacts in gasps and shouts, surprised and sometimes angry, and suddenly it's harder to see what's going on because everyone else is trying to get closer and get a better look at what's going on. Will pushes forward too, worried about Grius, and about how close he is to Louis, all—all chained up and helpless.

He manages to push his way up to a gap in the crowd where he can see, but by then Louis is on Grius, his sword drawn, saying something that Will is way too far away to hear. He sees, though, when Louis raises the sword, and brings it down in one sharp, sure swing.

"No!" Will screams, the word high pitched and terrified. He's seen people die by now, at the fort with the human, and in the mines, but—but none of those people had been Grius! Grius, who is nice, and who had brought them back to Grand Trad, and been nice. It's not fair, it's not fair, and—

And, suddenly, Will is somewhere else.

The crowd, the crowded city street, Grius and Louis, it's all just gone. Instead he's floating in a room he doesn't know, huge and tall and light and green, and it might have been nice except that Will is still so, so scared. He wants to be able to help Grius, not be stuck here!

He…

He wants to be able to help Grius, but he's so small. What is he supposed to do?

O Traveler, sighs a voice in his ear, and there's a whisper like wind against his face, blowing loose strands of his hair across face. With your journey begun far too soon…

The voice is nice, and it sounds like it feels bad for him. If Will wasn't so busy being scared, he thinks he would have liked that.

O my smallest, bravest Traveler, the voice whispers to him. It is not fair to you, but I must ask you to choose your path.

"I have to help Grius," Will says, voice choked. "I don't know how, but—but if I don't—"

The voice hushes him, and Will has the impression of someone wrapping himselves around him, holding him tight. He presses his hands flat against his chest, and whimpers slightly. Something feels… wrong. In his chest, and he has to get it out.

Do not be so quick, the voice chides gently. To speak the words of your heart. If you have not found them yet, then allow me to support you and your heart, for now. Until you are ready…

And that feeling of someone wrapped around him grows stronger. Will lets his hands slip away from his chest, leaving his heart to slowly calm. He feels like he's being held by someone very kind, someone who cares. The voice continues, speaking softly in his ear. When you are ready to tear out your heart and shout your conviction for all to hear, the voice tells him. You will know what to do. In the meantime, let me support you.

Will doesn't know what to say to that. He doesn't know what's happening, and he doesn't know if this is going to help Grius, but he likes being held. "Can you help Grius?" he asks. "A bad guy is going to hurt him."

I cannot, the voice says, soft and sad and sorry. But with the Heart Archetype, you can help him yourself.

And all at once, Will is back on the street, on the edge of the crowd that had come for the King's funeral. Grius is still wrapped up in those golden chains, with Louis leaning in close, and nothing is different.

Except…

Except for Will.

There are glowing lines down the back of his hands when Will looks down at them, and he knows what that means. He'd seen Strohl turn into an—an Archetype, Grius calls it, at the fort. And Hulkenberg had done the same thing, in the mines. So… so does this mean he can fight too?

(He doesn't know how)

(What is he supposed to do?)

Will does not turn into an Archetype. He doesn't suddenly learn to fight. But…

But something happens.

All of a sudden, Will is very aware of all of his friends, and exactly where they are in the city. Gallica is a spark on his shoulder, Maria a distant buzz far away back in the Inn where he'd snuck out this morning. Hulkenberg and Strohl with their Archetypes are so clear he can almost see the Warrior and the Knight mixed in with the crowd, even though there's like a million people in the way. And…

And there's Grius, a fading blur in the middle of everything as Louis drives his sword into his chained up body.

"Don't die," Will whispers, so softly he can't even hear the words himself. He wraps his small hands around the glow that means Grius, and pulls it close to his heart. It's nothing real, but when Will closes his hands over that light, he's sure he can feel a second heart beating in time with his own. And he curls himself around it, protecting it, refusing to let Grius go.

Don't die, don't die, don't die…

His legs are shaky, but Will plants them on the ground as firm as he can and stays standing. This feels important. This is important, even if he doesn't understand why. The nice voice had said he can save Grius, and so Will is convinced that whatever he's doing is going to save Grius. He just…

He just has to keep holding on until he figures out what to do.

-//-

Hulkenberg isn't able to reach Grius for nearly an hour after his attempted assassination. She tries, but between the grief that pulls at her limbs, making them heavy and slow, and the impassable crowds between herself and him, she simply cannot get near.

After some time, she realizes that… that there is no point in hurrying. The injury Louis had struck on him would surely have been fatal no matter how quickly she managed to reach him, and with each minute that crawls past afterward, it only grows more difficult to lie to herself.

He's dead.

He'll be cold, by the time the crowd clears enough to reach him.

But clear it does, eventually, as the funeral ends and Louis leaves the scene, leaving his carefully sown chaos in his wake. The face of the King far overhead is the only observer as Hulkenberg reaches Grius's side, and kneels down beside him.

"There was… there was nothing we could have done."

The voice isn't hers, although it carries all the same disbelief that she herself feels for the sentiment. The speaker doesn't truly believe that there is nothing they could have done, any more than Hulkenberg does.

The speaker draws close, and Hulkenberg vaguely recognizes Strohl.

"We could have argued more," she tells him, as he crouches beside her. "For all his strategic brilliance, this t'was not his finest plan."

"He was desperate," Strohl says, obviously trying to convince himself as much as her. "You heard what Gallica said about the Prince, and what we need to do to save him. Grius… he…"

Strohl's voice trails off.

"Surely there were other ways," Hulkenberg says. "We could have tried—"

"His heart's beating," Strohl says suddenly, and he sounds completely different than he had a moment ago. "Hulkenberg—"

The urgency sends her gaze—which had been instinctively avoiding the body out of some sense of self preservation, perhaps—flying back to him. And there is the wound, that fatal wound from Louis's blade, but there is also color there that should have long faded. Strohl is frantically undoing Grius's armor, tearing the metal away so that they can lean in close. Hulkenberg reaches her own hand out, and—

And there it is. The faint, impossible heartbeat of a man that should have long been dead. Slow, weak, barely enough to be felt. It's nearly as much of a miracle that Strohl had noticed it as it is that his heart is still beating in the first place.

But beat it does. And as long as it beats, there is a chance.

"We need a healer," Strohl says. "A good one."

A good one? There had been a time when Hulkenberg knew many, or at least knew their names. When the Prince was young and newly cursed, and she was still his guard, she had watched healer after healer parade through the castle, sure they could help him. None had, and Hulkenberg has long since pushed them from her mind. But there is one healer in the city whose name even she knows, whose healing is meant to be near miraculous.

"Yes," Hulkenberg says. "We do." She gestures to Strohl to step back so she can lift Grius—as carefully as possible—off the ground where he'd fallen. "We'll take him to the Saint."

Chapter Text

Grius wakes in an Sanctist Church, which is not what he'd expected. Honestly, he hadn't expected to wake up at all, especially after those chains had appeared from nowhere to keep him from reaching Louis. He would have expected…

"You're lucky you're not dead."

Yes. That.

Grius turns, with some effort, to see a young ishkia woman frowning down at him. He's never met her in person, but nearly everyone in Grand Trad—and for a good way beyond it as well—has heard of Saint Rella.

"I have no idea how you managed to survive the injury your companions brought you in with," the Saint says. "But you're very lucky."

Grius starts to open his mouth to say something—he's not sure what—but coughs instead.

"Don't get too excited," the Saint tells him. "You've a long recovery ahead of you to regain your full strength."

But Grius doesn't give up on trying to speak, despite her warning. By the time he's managed to find his voice, he's regained his senses enough to decide what he wants to ask. "My companions?" he asks.

"I told them to wait in the sanctuary," she says. "But…" her expression turns troubled. "The elda boy was causing a bit of a stir with the worshippers, so they moved outside."

An elda? What is Will doing here? He should have been with Fabienne and Maria. If he's here, has something happened to them as well?

"I'll show you the way to where they're waiting," Rella says. "But stay calm and take things slow, alright? This isn't an injury to take risks with. I did what I could, but you must allow yourself adequate time to rest and recuperate."

"I'm sure I'll be fine," Grius says, levering himself upward into a sitting position with some pain. "But it's probably best for both of us if I don't stay long." He doesn't know how much the others have explained, but he hopes they haven't said much, and wants to leave before he says something to accidentally contradict any lies they've had to tell.

The Saint gives Grius a look he's seen many times in his life, from a great many healers. He ignores it, as he's ignored most of the others, and forces himself to stand. Every inch of him hurts, but time may well be precious, and the Sanctist Church is hardly more of an ally than Louis himself. "I'm grateful for your help," he tells the Saint, bowing as much as his battered body will allow. "But I can't stay."

She considers him, eyes solemn. After several long moments, she says, "I hear someone tried to assassinate Louis at the King's funeral."

"I imagine most people will have heard," Grius says, as neutrally as possible. Whatever else happened after he lost consciousness, the whole event will have left an impression.

"I doubt anyone's looking for a dead man," the Saint says. "But even dead men ought to be careful."

Grius forces a chuckle. "I'll pass that along if I see any," he says.

The Saint sighs, and to Grius's relief points him to where the others have been left to wait for him. Despite the healing, he doesn't trust this stranger not to get cold feet about helping him if the Church or (worse) Louis's men start asking questions. It looks like he'll be lying low for the foreseeable future, which is certainly going to make a second attempt on Louis's life more difficult.

His brooding eases a bit when he reaches the street. and find Hulkenberg, Strohl, and Gallica deep in conversation a little way away. Will is curled up on a bench next to them, clutching his book and fast asleep.

(As always, Grius's chest tightens momentarily on seeing him)

(He really is the spitting image of the Prince in the days before the curse, before the light had gone out in his eyes, before the desperate flight to the eldan sanctum)

(Not for the first time, Grius wonders if there's any relation)

"You're awake!" Hulkenberg says when she spots him.

"Thanks to the three of you, I'm sure," Grius says.

"Are you alright?" Strohl asks.

"More or less, "Grius says. "I doubt I'll be fit to raise a sword anytime soon, but I'll live."

"That's good," Gallica says, unusually somber. "We weren't sure if you would, for a while. Even Rella..."

"We're lucky she has a reputation for both kindness and miracles," Hulkenberg says. "Else I doubt you'd have had any chance at all."

Grius has had too many close calls in his life to dwell on this one. Close as things had been, he knows the darkness that lies behind thoughts like that. Instead he gestures to Will and asks, "And what's he doing here? He and Maria were told to stay with Fabienne."

"I spotted him during the funeral," Gallica says. "And then after it was over, I thought it would be better to take him to the other two. It would have been dangerous for him on his own, with how upset the crowd was getting."

"Exactly why he shouldn't have been there at all," Grius says, a little gruffer than intended. Will is even younger than Maria. Far too young to be wandering into dangerous situations at all.

"Will... isn't the best at doing what he's told," Gallica admits. She clearly means it as an apology, but there's fondness in her voice as well.

Strohl snorts a laugh. "Between showing up today, and the dragon back in the mines, I'm starting to think he has a death wish."

Under her breath, Gallica mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, "Pot meet kettle," before raising her voice and saying, "I'm not sure, but I think he might have come close to an Archetype back at the funeral. When I found him, he had that glow you all do with yours."

"But no actual Archetype?" Grius asks. Gallica shakes her head, and he lets out a sigh of relief. The last thing they need is another child being caught up in the Prince's curse. "Good," he says. "We'll have to be more careful about keeping him away from the fighting from now on."

They agree on this, and Hulkenberg lifts Will carefully up over her shoulder, not for the first time. Will doesn't relax the death grip he has on his book, even in sleep, but he mumbles something incomprehensible, and rests his head on her shoulder.

He's much too small, to be involved in any of this. Even if the Prince is his friend, even if he's come all this way, he's a child.

"Gallica," Strohl says. "Does he have parents waiting for him?"

There's a long pause. Longer than Grius thinks there should have been, and then she says, "I don't think so, no. I can't remember ever meeting them."

This time, the silence is longer.

Hulkenberg says, "Then we're what he has," and leaves it at that.

It seems that, somewhere along the way, the mission to save the Prince has become a mission to save two lonely eldan boys.

"Should we wake him up?" Gallica asks.

"No," Grius says. "Not after today. Let him sleep." He glances at Will in time to see him smile, and adds, "No reason to interrupt a good dream."

-//-

For the first time in his long imprisonment, More receives a visitor to his lonely study. This visitor announces himself with a gasp of delight, and the whispered word, "Kitty!"

More turns, startled, and there's a little boy crouched in front of Plateau, very carefully holding his hand out for the cat to investigate. When Plateau has had a thorough sniff he indicates his approval by pressing his head into the boy's hand, and purring in response to the slow, careful pets.

And More… doesn't quite know what to do with this. It's been such a long time since he's spoken to anyone that he feels completely out of his element. The fact that the boy hasn't even noticed him yet, and is instead entirely absorbed in a one sided conversation with Plateau, isn't particularly helpful.

More clears his throat to get the boy's attention, but when that does in fact make him startle and look over his shoulder, More finds himself breathless by a crushing sense of deja vu that he simply cannot place. He knows this boy, he's absolutely sure of it. Knows him well enough that the sight of his face brings a dizzying rush of emotions. Joy and sadness and loss, along with other, more complicated emotions.

"Are you okay?" the boy asks, turning his full attention on More.

"Oh—" His voice is choked, and More pauses to turn his face away for a moment, coughing awkwardly into an elbow. He needs to say something, and his mind races. What does one say to a child? "I'm fine," he says, not quite convincing. "Just surprised to have a guest."

"Am I not supposed to be here?" the child asks, his brightly mismatched eyes going wide. Along with his hair, they're the only parts of the boy's face that aren't immediately familiar to More—their color seems wrong.

"You are very welcome here," more assures him. "It's just that I was not aware anyone could reach me in this place."

"Oh," the boy says. "I think I'm dreaming!"

More smiles at the way this suggestion is offered. Any sane adult would have treated the possibility with skepticism, but he makes it sound exciting.

"I was waiting for Grius to wake up," the boy explains, with the apparent expectation that all adults know all other adults, or at least that the ones at the center of his world are at the center of everyone else's as well. "But we got in trouble for being inside the church, and when we went outside I got bored and fell asleep."

"Perhaps you are dreaming after all then," More says.

"Yeah!" The boy abandons Plateau—or tries to, as the cat makes a plaintive meow of protest, and he zooms back to continue petting him—giving More the entirety of his attention as he says. "I was reading my favorite book."

He gestures, which is when more realizes that there's a book on the couch next to Plateau. More's book.

"That book is your favorite?" he asks.

"Yeah!" And then the boy launches—to More's mingled pride and embarrassment—into a lengthy description of all the reasons he loves it. In the end, it takes some time for More to get a word in edgewise.

When he does finally manage to say, "I actually wrote that book," the boy's eyes go wide.

"I never thought about that!" he says. "Does every single book really have someone that has to write it?"

More chuckles. "Yes," he says. "Every single one. A book is..."

He stands, and since his visitor is currently held captive by his cat, walks around to the front of the desk to sit on a long neglected couch as he explains, facing the boy. "A book is like a dream," he says. "And dreams don't simply spring forth from nothing."

The boy considers this. Then, as if this explanation has made a decision for him about what to think of More, he says, "I'm Will."

"My name is More," More says. "I'm glad to meet you, Will."

Will smiles, but it's a quick flash, and does not linger. Apparently, this introduction is just a lead in to a more serious worry. "If your book is a dream," he says slowly. "Does that mean the world you wrote about about is a pretend dream?" He searches More's expression, then asks, with a tinge of hope so faint it's almost heartbreaking, he asks, "Or is it a real dream, like this one?"

And the answer to that is, of course, complicated. More's memories of writing his novel are clearer than any others in the life before this place, although that's such a staggeringly low bar that it means nearly nothing. He does not know where his novel had come from, and he merely remembers... an inspiration. He doesn't think—he would be very surprised if the world he'd written of is real at all.

"Please?" Will begs, and More finds himself struggling to break that heart. It would be very easy to lie, and say he doesn't remember, and let Will keep believing that a kinder world is out there somewhere. He's an elda, and the world he lives in must seem very different from the one More had written of in his book.

Will," he says, leaning forward to meet his gaze frankly. He is out of practice when it comes to speaking to people, and knows even less how to speak to children. So he simply tells Will the truth, in the kindest words he can. "A dream is stronger than any reality could be," he says. "Dreams drive us forward, they motivate us to take the reality we have, and bring it closer and closer to those dreams. Perhaps even better."

"But dreams are stronger," Will says. "You just said so."

"Stronger, yes," More agrees. "The real world is incredibly fragile, and easily broken. That's why we need our dreams. To lift us up on that journey to a better reality."

"I don't get it," Will says.

"All I mean," More tells him. "Is that there is nowhere on this world where you can journey to and find the land I wrote of. But you can make it a reality."

"That sounds harder," Will says.

"Yes," More says. "I admit, I took the simple part for myself." And left the difficult portion for those that follow.

Will thinks about this. His eyebrows pull together. Eventually, he says, "Can you help me figure it out?"

"I can't leave this study," More says. "And many of my memories are gone. But if you'll take my feeble help, I would be happy to help you find your way to that better world."

Will holds out his tiny hand, very solemnly, and says, "Deal."

More reaches out to shake his hand--it would be impossible to refuse that earnest face. But as he shakes Will's hand, he recognizes something entirely unexpected.

Seeker.

"Will," he says, too surprised to conceal his excitement. "Are you aware of Archetypes?"

"Yeah," Will says. "How did you know?"

"I've studied Archetypes for a long time," More says. "Would you like to see something interesting?"

With some difficulty, he manages to coax Will away from Plateau and over to his desk, where he can show Willthe work he's done into understanding Archetypes. They sketch out Will's network of bonds, with Will doing most of the talking as More listens and identifies the Archetypes of each of Will's bonds. He makes it easy, even for those friends that don't have the ability to summon Archetypes themselves. He is so very expressive, so delighted to be able to share these stories. The older girl, Maria, strikes him as healer. The fairy Gallica as Mage. His own bond with Will, the seeker.

But then there is the Prince.

Will speaks freely of all his friends, except the Prince. When it comes to him, Will goes very quiet for a very long time, and then almost apologetically says, "He's sick."

"Oh?" More asks.

By this point, Will is sitting across from More at his desk. He clasps his hands in his lap, and stares at them. "He hasn't wanted to talk to me since he got sick," he says. "I miss him."

"I'm sure he's scared," More says. "If he's been sick for a long time."

Will shrugs with one shoulder. "Yeah," he says. "But… I just want to help him. He's my best friend."

His voice shakes, and More can't guess at the emotions behind it.

"He's sick and he won't—he won't let me help him," Will says. "And now I have more friends and everyone's nice, and why isn't the Prince nice too? What if he's not really my friend?"

"Oh, Will," More says. For the second time today, he walks around his desk, this time crouching on one knee in front of Will. He wants to be able to reassure him that his friend does care for him, but has no actual knowledge of their time together. He wants to be able to tell Will that anyone that doesn't want to be his friend is missing something valuable, but the truth is that there is no one in the world that can be universally liked. So instead, he says, "I'm so sorry you're hurting," and feeling extremely awkward, offers Will an arm, not quite sure what he means to do with it.

Will solves that problem by throwing himself into what quickly turns into a hug. He doesn't know if this is the right thing to do, but it feels right. He holds Will until the boy cries himself out, and then Will says hesitantly, "Don't… tell anyone? That I'm worried the Prince doesn't want to be my friend anymore."

"Your secrets are safe with me," More promises him. "Even if there was anyone I could tell, I wouldn't. And I feel safe in assuring you that Plateau won't tell anyone either." He gestures to the cat, who chooses to answer through a dismissive flick of his tail and a meow.

"Thank you," Will says politely. He dries his eyes, and clings to More's side as he returns to his seat—More can't bring himself to put distance between them. "Is… do you think the Prince has an Archetype?"

"I'm afraid not," More says. After all his research into Archetypes, he has a fairly solid grasp on how they might appear, but all he's been able to gather from Will's description of the Prince is that they don't get along the way Will so desperately wishes they could. He doesn't hear anything that sounds to him like an Archetype. Quick to change the subject, he says, "But you…"

"Heart!" Will interrupts, a little bit of enthusiasm leaking back into his voice.

"Heart," More agrees. Not an Archetype he's heard of before. Unlike the ones belonging to his friends, Will's Archetype is shared by no ancient kings, no heroes. In fact, apart from the explanation Will himself has given during their conversation, More knows nothing about it at all. In fact, the only evidence he has that Will isn't making the whole story up is how detailed his story is—Will is too young to have made up some of the things he claims he'd heard, in More's opinion. Whatever the Heart Archetype is, Will truly had awakened it. At least partially, if the voice he'd heard really had stopped him from tearing out his heart.

(Not that More can blame the voice, if so)

(Will is—he's so small. A child. It shouldn't be his place to hurt himself over this fight)

"We'll have to discover what that Archetype is together," More tells Will. "Would you want to help me with my research?"

Will nods easily. "I helped Grius's heart when Louis tried to stab him," he reports.

(More's own heart aches at the easy way he says this)

"You did well," he tells Will. "And I'm very glad your friend is safe."

Will nods, determined. "I'm not very big," he tells More, as if More hasn't realized this on his own. As if he isn't tiny and too small for the life and the harm he's stumbled into. "And I have a sword, but I can't fight. But I can do something."

This reminds More of what he'd wanted to show Will in the first place. "I have another way you can help," he offers, and when Will turns those bright, expectant eyes on him, he starts to show him how to share Archetypes and skills around to his friends. Will is interested immediately, but when they get to the Healer, he leans forward onto More's desk, tracing with his finger the notes More has been sketching out. "Can everyone have healing skills?" he asks.

"Everyone can inherit the same skill," More says. "Yes. But there are other skills that might be helpful too."

"But I don't want them to get hurt," Will says.

It's not a strategic decision, but it's also surely not the worst he could have made. And it shows very, very clearly how much Will's friends matter to him.

"Let's do that, then," More says, and reaches out to put a hand on Will's head. The boy leans into the touch with a happy little sound, so immediately that More wonders if Will is as lonely as he is, a touch starved little boy being offered for the first time friendships kinder than the one he'd grown up with, from the Prince. They stay like that until More has finished walking Will through the ways he can help the other Archetypes.

Will, it turns out, is able to leave. There had been a moment, as he stood in front of the door, when More had wondered…

But no. This is for the best, that he can leave. He is too full of energy and excitement and determination to be confined in this lonely library.

More sighs, and slumps back in his seat. He is sharply aware of how quiet the room has grown again, and he very much hopes that Will is going to make his way back here again, in time.

Chapter Text

So somehow, they are running for the throne.

Strohl is relieved at least that none of them is signing on to be king, and in fact as far as he knows, none of them wants to be. They're running a false campaign on the missing Prince's behalf, in order to get close to Louis. Their entire fighting force is himself and Hulkenberg, with the support of a fairy, Hulkenberg's runner obsessed friend Neuras, and Grius, back in Grand Trad and still recovering from the injuries Louis had inflicted on him.

Their odds could have been better. Even with the power of their still mysterious Archetypes, Strohl has his quiet reservations about their chances. After all, their fights in the Cathedral, and against Zorba's resurrected homan, had been encounters they barely survived. Now they're heading to the isolated town of Martina, where they're going to have to find a way to track down a serial kidnapper that no one else has managed to find so far.

Strohl is anxious. Hulkenberg seems anxious as well, as does Gallica. The only one that doesn't is Neuras, who seems thrilled just to have the chance to take his runner out to stretch its legs. Strohl really isn't sure if he's even aware of where they're going or what they plan to do when they get there, but for the moment he's just relieved they have transport.

On their second evening out from Grand Trad, Strohl wanders down toward the runner's engine, half thinking of trying to get a load of laundry cleaned before turning in for the night. Instead he pauses in the hall, realizing that he can hear Neuras's voice from farther within the runner, apparently talking to himself as he works his way through some unknown repair or maintenance.

Apparently talking to himself.

Because as Strohl stands there listening, he realizes that there's a second voice behind Neuras's louder one, and it belongsn to someone that definitely shouldn't be there. He strides toward the engine room, heart in his mouth, and barges in to find Neuras enthusiastically pointing to something within the engine as Will of all people stands up on his toes to get a better look.

"What are you doing here?" Strohl demands.

Will jumps. Neuras looks over the top of his head at Strohl, beaming. "Look who I found!" he declares. "We have a little stowaway. Stumbled on him tucked away in the pantry earlier today. Bit of a surprise!"

"This—" Strohl finds himself momentarily struck speechless. Will is supposed to be back in Grand Trad, being looked after by Grius and Fabienne. He is not supposed to be coming with them to Martira to hunt a bandit that kidnaps children! "This is not alright," he manages at last.

Will's face is red, but his expression is stubborn. "I want the Prince to be King too!" he insists. "I can help!"

"You're supposed to be back in Grand Trad with Grius and Fabienne," Strohl reminds him.

"I snuck out," Will says.

Which means they'll be worried about him. Strohl can't even imagine how beside themselves Grius and Fabienne must be. "Will," he says, with as much patience as he can possibly summon. "You'll be missed and worried. And it's not safe for you to stay with us. We're going to do soemthing very dangeous."

"I left a note," Will says.

"The lad left a note," Neuras repeats, in a tone that clearly implies he's trying to smooth things over. "And when I found him holed up here the day we left, well I wasn't going to let him go without food the entire journey! Or let him miss out on seeing this!" he gestures, with pride, to the runner's engine.

"I have to be with you guys," Will insists, his whole face turning upward to look right at Strohl. The fierceness in his expression surprises Strohl, and he thinks of Hulkenberg's comment back in the capitol—he has us. Gallica doesn't remember his parents. And they've been careful to downplay the danger of their mission around Will and Maria, especially after Grius's near death at Louis's hands, so why would he have hesitated to stow away and join them?

The sound of their conversation, steadily growing in volume, has brought Hulkenberg and Gallica hurrying toward them. When they see Will, Hulkenberg stops, looking stunned, but Gallica shoots straight toward him. "What are you doing here?" she chides. "This isn't safe for you."

"I'm going to help!" Will insists. There's a kind of desperation in his voice now that everyone's gathered around drowning at him, a hint of a whine. "Neuras said I can stay!"

Immediately, all of them turn to look at Neuras, who at least has the common sense to look embarrassed. "Well," he says apologetically. "He was interested in the runner. I didn't know he knew all of you."

Hulkenberg takes in a deep breath, drawing her shoulders back. Strohl, who has spent the past couple evenings being tortured by her under the guise of training, recognizes the warning signs and makes a snap decision that Will doesn't need to be here to see her tearing Neuras a new one, and that he doesn't much want to be either.

"Let's get you up on deck," he tells Will, and puts his hands on the back of the boy's shoulders to steer him up the ladder. "We can talk more there."

Gallica follows after them as Strohl helps Will reach the ladder rungs (which are just a little too far apart for him to manage easily on his own), and Hulkenberg starts shouting at Neuras. When they do finally reach the deck, Will looks down anxiously. "Is he going to be okay?" he asks.

"He'll be fine," Gallica says. "He should have told us when he found you."

Will looks stricken. "But… I didn't want to get in trouble," he protests. "I asked him not to tell, so I should be the one getting yelled at!"

"Oh you're in trouble too," Gallica tells him. "You should have stayed with Grius in Grand Trad! We can't keep you safe out here."

Will looks at her blankly.

Strohl sighs. He doesn't want Will here, in danger, but he also doesn't want to shout and lecture. And Will is here now, and there's nothing they can do to send him back to safety. "We can't get you back to Grand Trad now," he says. "But since you're here, there's some rules you'll have to follow, alright?"

The long pause before Will nods doesn't exactly fill Strohl with confidence, but they'll just have to work with it. Strohl looks at him as seriously as possible, hoping and praying that the seriousness of the situation will get through to him. "We're going to look for a very bad man when we get to Martira," he says.

"The bounty," Will says immediately. "Heismay!"

"That—yes, that's right." Strohl wishes he'd said it with a little bit less enthusiasm, but he is still correct. "And according to Bardon, he's been kidnapping a lot of people. Kids like you, okay? So I want you to be careful."

"I'll be careful," Will says.

"I want you to stay on the runner with Neuras when we get there," Strohl says.

"What?" Will's mouth actually drops open, and he stares at Strohl for several seconds before he manages to pull himself together and protest, "But that's no fair! I can help!"

"I don't want you near the fighting," Strohl says.

"Then I won't fight," Will says. "But I have an Archetype too! And—and I can… in Akademeia…" He trails off, and Strohl congratulates himself on the effectiveness of his stern look. Even if Will does have an Archetype, the way he'd claimed, even he hasn't tried to say that he can use it to fight. In the excited stories he'd told everyone that would listen before the Tournament's opening ceremony, he'd called his Archetype a Heart Archetype, and honestly Strohl had assumed it was a game he was playing, mimicing the adults around him. Akademeia, he has no idea about.

"You can help us by staying safe on the runner," Strohl says. "So we don't have to worry about you."

There's a long, long pause. Then Will says, "Okay," in a tiny voice.

"Okay you'll stay on the runner?" Strohl asks.

"Okay I'll stay on the runner," Will grumbles.

Strohl sighs in relief and tousles Will's hair. "Good," he says. "Thank you, Will."

-//-

When they get to Martira, Will waits a whole hour after Gallica, Hulkenberg, and Strohl leave the runner before he follows them to do some investigating himself.

Neuras is busy working on his engine, which Will has already learned will keep him busy all day. No one will even notice he's gone, and maybe he'll find some way to help while he explores the town.

He takes his first confident steps forward, into the town, and…

And the next clear memory he has, he's cracking his eyes open in Akademeia, confused, his head pounding. He whimpers, curling up and pressing both hands to his head like that will stop it from pounding, and immediately there's a hand on his shoulder, rubbing soft circles into his back, and a voice humming soothing sounds.

"You're alright," More says. "You're safe."

"…head hurts," Will mumbles, squeezing his eyes closed again.

"You're likely unconscious in reality," More says. He keeps rubbing those nice circles against Will's shoulder, and Will likes that. He feels a little bit sick, and this is distracting. "Do you remember what happened?"

Will tries hard, but has to shake his head no. Which only makes his head hurt more, so he stops. Everything's fuzzy after he decided to go to Martira by himself, and he doesn't know why he's unconscious. If he pushes himself, he can sort of remember making a turn, and walking into an alley. But nothing after that, so he doesn't know how he'd ended up here. Unless…

He gasps, and opens his eyes wide, sudden realization and fear making him forget how much his head hurts. "Maybe the kidnappers got me!" he blurts. "Maybe they snuck up and hit me on the head and that's why I'm unconscious!"

More looks very pale when Will says this, and he freezes in place. "Kidnappers?" he repeats. "Will—"

But the dream world shatters into pieces, Will's pounding heart waking him up. His head still hurts, but this time he's not in the safe confines of More's library, with a friendly hand on his shoulder. He's lying on a cart with a boy even smaller than he is, and a girl that makes him think of Maria. It's very dark, wherever he is, and it smells kind of wet and icky. His sword—the Prince's sword—is gone.

And something is moving.

Something big and heavy, something that cries, a horrible loud sound like a baby but worse, because no baby would ever be able to cry that much or that loud without its mom coming to make sure it's okay. And if it's not a baby, Will doesn't know what it is, and he doesn't want to stay here to find out. He scrambles out of the cart, accidentally stepping on the girl's knee in his rush to get out. The not-a-baby cries again and Will freezes in place, clamping his hands over his ears until the echoes stop. It's getting closer, and Will is scared.

He runs. But then… but then he stops, only a few steps further down the stone hallway, because there's two kids still asleep on the cart, and he can't just leave them.

Will dashes back, clambers back up onto the cart, and shakes the shoulder of the smaller boy. He's a paripus, and Will thinks he whould have looked even smaller without his tall, pointed ears. Will shakes him hard, but the boy barely moves, and the sound of crying is getting closer. Will half turns so he can reach the girl, a clemar with horns barely bigger than his thumb, and reaches up to shake her too. She groans and twitches, but doesn't wake up either.

There's a long, terrible moment when Will has no idea what he's going to do. Is there still time to stay crouched here in the cart, trying to wake up the other two? Does he have any chance of being able to move the cart? Should he just give up and run away, like his pounding heart obviously wants him to, so at least maybe he can get away?

The ground rumbles and shakes as the thing that's crying comes around a corner, and Will sees it. His mouth falls open in terrified surprise, and his eyes go wide. It really is like a baby, if the baby only had two stumpy legs and no arms, and was taller than even Hulkenberg, who is the tallest person Will knows. Will thinks it's probably a human, because even though he's only seen a few that look like trees and birds and stuff, he can't imagine that anything else in the whole world would be as scary as this baby.

It sees him and the other two kids, and jumps straight up in the air, landing hard enough to shake the ground. It looks excited, which terrifes Will, even before it starts charging straight at them, a huge pink tongue hanging out of its mouth. There's no more time to think about what he's going to do, because there's no more time to do anything. All he can manage is to brace himself, and think—

The last time he was this scared, Grius had been stabbed.

And he'd…

He'd…

Oh yeah. He has an Archetype.

Will has no idea what he's doing, or if it's even going to help, but he remembers what it hadh felt like the last time, and he tries to feel the same. He'd protected Grius before by summoning his Archetype, and that's all he wants to do now, protect himself and the other two kids.

The human rushes at them, and lines of glowing orange draw their way up Will's arms and legs, and he hopes this will work.

-//-

Heismay has spent a long time alone. By choice. The world, in the years since his son died, has become too much to handle in a lot of ways. Too loud, too busy, too full of people other than the one he desperately wants to see, and never will again.

When his first visitors arrive, they are everything he doesn't want to have to deal with in the world. They are loud and abrasive, and they come into the secluded hole in the ground where he's made a kind of home, and they clearly mean to kill him.

There's two of them. A roussainte woman with long red hair, and a younger clemar man with a face like stone as he charges again and again at Heismay. They both have a kind of magic Heismay has never seen before, and they fight with a fairy at their side who looks like she would very much like to join them in their relentless attacks, brandishing her tiny, toothpick sized sword like it stands a chance of doing anything at all to him.

Still, Heismay has no intention of dying easily. Not until he's found a final resting place for his son, and then found a way to say goodbye. So he fights back with everything he has, defending himeslf and his makeshift home, until finally he wears the clemar out to the point that he falls to the ground and spits out—furious in a way that Heismay is shocked to recognize—"He's only a child, just tell us what you did with him!"

Heismay knows that desperation. Remembers the mad search for his child in the aftermath of the paripus riots, and then the slow drudge through the streets, knowing that if his son were still alive, he'd have found his way home by now, and that the only thing left to do is search for the body.

He pulls back, leaping out of easy attacking range and changing to an obviously defensive posture. "What's this," he says warily. "About a child?"

"Don't play games with us!" the woman demands, making an aggressive motion with her sword. "You've taken Will, and we will not rest until we've seen him brought back safe!" She pauses, almost vibrating with righteous indignation, then shouts, "We were eaten by a sandworm to get to you!"

Which… well, at least it explains the smell.

Heismay considers them. Both are panting and exhausting and injured, and obviously taking advantage of the break in the flow of combat to catch their collective breath. It would be very easy, at this point, to press his advantage, and bear down with another attack.

But they're searching for their child.

He sheathes his weapon, and holds up his hands. "I've no children here," he says, words heavy on his tongue because he does, he does have a child here, but his son is still and silent and cold, bone and ash and a weight around his neck, and he's not happy to see any other child lost as his had been. "Search as you like. There's nowhere to keep the captive you seem to think I have. And if you've had a child taken, I'd like to offer my services to help find him."

The other three exchange a series of long and complicated looks, seemingly grappling with the idea of trusting him. As a eugief, these are looks Heismay has been on the outside of for his entire life, and he waits patiently for them to resolve.

In this case, it's the fairy that finally says, "If Will isn't here, then the kidnapper is probably back in Martira, and we just ran off and left Will with him."

That seems to decide it. The other two don't quite relax, and Heismay notices that weapons aren't sheathed, but the clemar turns to him and says, "Alright. At this point, we could use all the help we can get."

Chapter Text

Will has absolutely no idea how long he spends in the dark, smelly tunnels with the monster. The first time the human comes after them, he summons his Heart Archetype and crouches protectively over two other kids that haven't woken up yet, and the human just… ignores them. It goes right past them like they don't exist, and stumbles down the hallway and into the dark.

He doesn't understand it. It's so different from what had happened in Grand Trad when he helped Grius.

Eventually, the other two wake up. The paripus boy is Aleks, and he's five years old. The clemar girl is Claudia, and she is eight. Both of them live in Martira, and are as scared as Will is to be down here with the human.

But they spend days and days down there, looking for a way out, and not being able to find it. They find lots of locked doors instead, and sometimes the human again, or other monsters. Will's Archetype is the only one keeping them safe, and slowly, slowly he starts to figure out what it's doing. Heart isn't like Warrior or Knight. Or… or maybe Will isn't like Strohl or Hulkenberg, because the nice voice that helped him when he got his Archetype had told him it's okay to not tear his heart out, if he wasn't ready, if he was scared.

Maybe he should have. Maybe he would have been able to help…

But even though he hadn't done that, the half an Archetype he does have is the only thing keeping them alive. Over and over again, it finds new ways to keep Will and Aleks and Claudia safe. The more desperately Will wants them safe, the quicker and stronger the magic comes.

(It never comes if he just wants to protect himself)

(When Will is by himself and the human baby monster gets close, he just has to run)

(He wishes he'd woken up with the Prince's sword. He'd feel better if he could pretend his friend was there protecting him)

And then one day, when the three of them are holed up in in a dark little nook, feeling hungry and tired and kind of hopeless, they hear something new. The human, but not just the human. Will can hear swords and raised voices, and all three of them look at each other with hope for the first time in ages.

"We have to go help," Will says, really fast because he's seen that human and knows it's bad news. He doesn't want the fighters to get hurt.

"We should run away," Aleks says. He hugs himself, nervous, and probably cold, too. Will doesn't blame him. He's also nervous. And cold. He wants to go outside and see the sun again.

"They can help us!" Claudia says.

Aleks says, "Um," and looks at Will.

"Um, what?" Claudia asks.

"What if they don't help us?" Aleks asks.

"Why wouldn't they help?"

"Because they might be mean!"

"Nuh uh!"

"Uh huh!"

"Well I'm the oldest," Claudia says, putting her hands on her hips. "And I say we should go talk to them."

"No!" Aleks says, stomping his foot. "I don't want to!"

Will feels like his head is on a swivel, looking back and forth between them, wincing at how loud they're getting, with strangers and enemies so close. He thinks he understands why Claudia is so sure that whoever they can hear fighting will help, because he knows good people that have helped him even though they didn't have to. But he also thinks he knows why Aleks is scared of asking people with swords to help, because sometimes the guards he's seen in Grand Trad had glared at him, so angry that Will was scared of them.

This is exactly what the Prince's book talks about, Will realizes, with a sudden flash of understanding. Words that had just been words, about different people caring about different things, feel more like words that make sense.

(He wonders if the Prince would be proud of him)

"We can sneak up on them?" he says, the suggestion wavering like a question. "If we don't like them, we can just keep hiding. And, um... if we're hiding, whatever they're fighting won't see us either."

Claudia looks like she's going to argue, but the reminder that the human is still here somewhere makes her stop. They might not agree about what to do, but they're all scared of the human. "Okay," she says, all quiet.

They sneak.

They're not very good at it, but they've been getting better, because the baby human monster thing isn't the only dangerous thing here. When they find the people fighting (they're fighting teeth, the ones that had made Claudia cry the first time they saw them), none of the fighters even looks up at them.

And actually, Will is the one that sees and recognizes them, first.

It takes every bit of self control he has in him to wait until the fight is over, but as soon as it is he jumps up from his hiding spot and makes a mad dash through the battlefield toward the trio—one stranger and two people so familiar it hurts—that had just finished getting rid of all the teeth. The stranger sees him first and goes kind of tense, but then Hulkenberg sees him second and she sort of moves her whole body so that when Will crashes into her, she's down at his level with her arms out and ready to shield him.

He hugs her back.

"I'm sorry!" he says, bursting into tears. "I didn't listen and I didn't stay on the runner and I'm really, really sorry!"

"You are so…" Hulkenberg pulls back, holding him at arm's length, her face paler than he has ever seen it, looking at every inch of him. Will tries to stand up very straight, and stop crying, and not look like he's gone lots of days without food, or like he'd been bitten on the shoulder by something he'd been too scared to look at when he was running away from it. And maybe it works, because Hulkenberg shakes him (not too hard, but a little hard) by the shoulders. "You are foolish," she tells him.

Will nods.

"But you are also safe, now," Hulkenberg says, and she lets Will hug him again.

"And I made friends!" Will says. He turns around, and calls back into the darkness, where he'd been hiding with Claudia and Aleks. "It's okay!" he says. "They're my family!"

(Hulkenberg's arms around him go a little bit tighter)

"There's more kids down here?" Strohl asks. "Alive?"

So Will introduces them to Claudia and Aleks, and promises Aleks (Aleks makes him put his pinky finger out so they can wrap them together, he says that makes the promise more important) that these are good people that will help. And then Hulkenberg and Strohl introduce them to Heismay, which is scary because that's the name of the person with the bounty that they'd gone looking for, but no one else is worried, and Heismay doesn't do anything except tell them he's very glad to see all three of them safe, which is nice.

So, because he trusts Hulkenberg, and Strohl, Will decides that if they like Heismay he's just going to have to trust him too.

"We should get the children out of here," Heismay says. "I'm sure these two have families that will be glad to see them again."

-//-

Heismay has not been with this group for very long. Long enough to learn about the strange magic they use to fight, yes, and long enough to see for himself that they care very, very much about getting their missing child back. The fairy Gallica had been left behind with their equally strange runner captain, to continue searching in Martira, and the rest of them are down in the bowels of the city, following a lead that eventually leads them to a human monster, and an increasingly likely conclusion that the sanctoress of Martira is the one behind said kidnappings.

By the time they find the trio of lost children (of surviving lost children, because more than three had gone missing), Heismay is fairly sure that a confrontation is inevitable.

But not today.

Not with three children in tow.

So under the cover of darkness, when no one will be around to see a wanted criminal or missing children, they return to the surface. Strohl takes the clemar girl home, while Hulkenberg has to carry the paripus boy. Shock and malnutrition (he is—he is very, very small, for a paripus) have robbed him of the ability to make it through the final stretch alone.

This leaves Heismay alone with Will.

He feels honored, in a way, that the others have trusted him with this. One of the others could easily have taken both of the other children, and Heismay hadn't expected to be trusted. Still, it's a short walk back to the runner, and Heismay is sure that Gallica and Neuras will be as glad to see Will alive and whole as the others have been.

Will is slow, though. Probably for the same reason that Hulkenberg is carrying his paripus friend home. He's a little off balance, and blinking a lot, and he keeps yawning.

Even though Will is only a child—no older than Heismay's own son had been, when… the last time he had seen him—he's already taller than Heismay is. If he gets too tired to keep going on his own, Heismay is not going to be able to carry him the rest of the way back.

He decides to start a conversation, to try and keep Will awake and focused. "You're an elda," he says. "I wasn't expecting that."

"Uh huh," Will says. He yawns again, but then asks, "Why weren't you expecting it? Everyone always points it out."

Probably in the same tone that they oh so helpfully remind Heismay that he is a eugief.

He wonders if anyone has talked to Will, about the realities of being a lesser tribe in Euchronia. There's no doubt in his mind that Will's family cares for him very deeply, but they are a clemar and a roussainte. There are some things that can only be understood if they've been lived through, and Heismay catches himself wishing for a moment that he might be invited to stay, for a while. So that as Will starts to question why people treat him so differently, there's someone else around that's felt that pain firsthand.

"Well," Heismay says. "It's not very common to see a clemar and roussainte with an elda son."

Will tilts his head in obvious confusion, and says, "Huh?"

"There's nothing wrong with being adopted, of course," Heismay says hastily, because it is not his responsibility to explain to this very tired child, who has just been rescued from a kidnapping and days on the run from a human, how babies are brought into the world. Nor does he particularly want to navigate that dangerous territory. "It was merely unexpected."

"I don't have a Mom and Dad," Will says. "At least…" his face pulls together, thinking hard. "I don't remember them."

"Ah," Heismay says. "That is… I thought…" He frowns at Will. "You said that Heismay and Strohl are your family, did you not?"

"Yep," Will says, perking up again. "And Gallica, and Neuras, and Grius, and Maria, and Fabienne."

Heismay doesn't know all those names, but he means it when he says, "I'm glad you've found such a large family."

"And the Prince!" Will adds, which stops Heismay dead in his tracks.

"And who?" he asks.

-//-

By the time they all sit down and talk about their plans for the future, they're on their way out of Martira, heading for Brilehaven, and Heismay has more or less been added as a member of the team without anyone ever officially acknowledging it. So this is that acknowledgment, the four of them—Heismay, Hulkenberg, Strohl, and Gallica—sitting down at the round table in the heart of the gauntlet runner to talk about what comes next.

Neuras is not there, because he's up in the pilot's compartment, both preoccupied with and more interested in his piloting. Will is there, but he's mostly focused on a stack of blank paper he's very carefully drawing on, tongue out in concentration and completely ignoring the conversation.

(They'd written to Grius before leaving Martira, to tell him that Will is safe with them, and after an explanation of the postal system, Will had gotten very excited about being able to send his own letters to Grius in Grand Trad, and to his new friends in Martira)

(More specifically, at the moment he's sending them pictures. Like the ones from Neuras, he'd explained earlier, as he showed Heismay the collection their pilot has been drawing at each new stop)

"None of us thinks you're a kidnapper, at this point," Strohl says, a little awkwardly. "Obviously."

"It's fairly clear at this point," Hulkenberg agrees.

"And you do have an Archetype now," Strohl goes on. "And you know about the mission to help the Prince, since Will, ah… mentioned that."

All of them look over at Will, who is busily drawing a picture of the horrible bugs he and Hulkenberg had tried at the Inn at Martira. It looks slightly better than it does in Gallica's memories, but that might just be because she can't smell it in the picture.

"So we were talking it over," Strohl continues, "And if you want to keep travelling with us, it would be a real help."

Heismay's ears twitch, and Gallica thinks he looks a little guilty. With his hearing, he'd probably overheard the conversation. He doesn't say anything about it, though, and the others either don't notice or don't say anything either.

"You might not want my help when you see the greeting we get in Brilehaven," Heismay says, hands folded in front of him on the table. He looks entirely calm, which is impressive. "There's still every chance that the Church will refuse to accept the true version of events, and demand my head on a platter instead."

Will looks up, eyes wide. "Why would they want that?" he asks.

"It's alright, Will," Gallica assures him. "We won't let anything happen to Heismay."

"I can help too," Will says, pushing his drawing of giant bugs aside. "I'm good at protecting people!"

"Very good," Gallica agrees. Whatever had happened down there for three days, he and his friends had managed to keep each other alive, and Gallica knows Will well enough to be sure that he'd done absolutely everything he could to make sure his friends are safe. He'd slept for almost a full day after they got him back to the runner, and when they brought his sword back after beating Joanna's human monster baby (Norris had apparently taken it off Will after kidnapping him, and had recognized its value enough to know he'd wanted to keep it), he hadn't let it out of his sight for more than an few minutes at a time. There's a kind of quiet pride in it now, Gallica thinks. It's not just the Prince's sword to him, anymore. It's something he's earned the right to wear himself.

Maybe he's right. She doesn't want to see him ever have to use it, or even learn to use it, but he'd done more than he ever should have had to, to keep himself and two other children safe.

"And More is helping me learn how to help with Archetypes," Will continues, leaning forward with both elbows on the table, half standing up out of his seat in his earnest attempt to convince the rest of the group that he can help. "So everyone can have the best Archetypes, all the time!"

"Who's More?" Heismay asks.

"My friend!" Will says.

"Will has some… well," Hulkenberg hesitates, visibly trying not to hurt Will's feelings. "More is a friend he dreams about."

"Ah…" Heismay nods. "Of course. An imagin—" he stops, shakes his head, and changes course. "But we do have access to different Archetypes at different times. Why is that, exactly?"

"We don't know yet," Gallica says. "We still have a lot to figure out about how they work." But now really isn't the time to be talking about that. They can always figure out what's going on with their Archetypes later, but for right now, they really need to decide Heismay's future with the group. "Look," she says. "We can look into it later. Grius knows some stuff about Archetypes too, he was actually the first one to tell us about it, after Strohl got his Archetype back at the fort."

Strohl nods. "So if he writes us back while we're still at Brilehaven, we might be able to get some more information we can work with."

"It's More," Will grumbles, pulling a new piece of paper toward him. "I told you."

Gallica lands on the table next to him, and pats him on the shoulder.

"If you stick around," Gallica continues. "You can help us figure all that out too."

There's a moment of silence, apart from the ever present sounds of the runner's tread on the ground outside, and Will's mumbled complaints.

"Well," Heismay says, after a several seconds long pause. "If you're willing to bring me along, even with all the problems I'm likely to add to your… unusual bid for the throne, then I would be happy to continue working with you all."

"We'll be happy to have you," Hulkenberg says.

"We could always use another fighter," Strohl adds.

"Of course you're coming," Will says. "I spent lots of magla so you could have healing spells too."' But then he looks up from his drawing (a crowd of bookshelves, with a stick figure man behind a desk, and what might be either a cat or a loaf of bread surrounded by hearts), and says, shyly, "And I like having you here too."

"Then I suppose I have to stay," Heismay says, very serious as he makes eye contact with Will. "And I will be happy to join this team."

"You get to join the family," Will corrects him, and goes back to his drawing without noticing—the way all the rest of them do—that Heismay has to look away very quickly, and that he seems to be blinking a whole lot more than he usually does.

Chapter Text

Brilehaven, Will is immediately convinced, is the best place he's ever seen. There is a man there who collects bugs. Special golden beetles, he explains to Will, as he shows him a bottle full of them. And if he pays attention, and is very careful not to scare them, he can find them just about anywhere in the world.

"I even," he tells Will, leaning conspiratorally toward him. "Found some in the sandworm while I was living there."

"What sandworm?" Will asks, still staring wide eyed at the pretty golden beetles.

The old man shifts, looking over Will's head at Strohl behind him. "You didn't tell him about where we met?" he asks.

"You guys know each other?"

"Oh," Strohl says, putting a hand on Will's shoulder. "I don't think—we actually don't have to get into that."

"Well you see," the old man says. "I had been swallowed by a giant sandworm quite some time ago. And I was living there when your friends here were eaten by it as well! And we met there, although only briefly, before they decided to make their way out through the—"

"We really need to get going," Strohl says quickly. "Hulkenberg and the others have already gone ahead to find rooms, I don't want to get too seperated, unfamiliar city, you know how it is. I'll tell her you said hello."

"No wait!" Will protests, as Strohl nudges him away from the old man. "I wanna know about the sandworm! How did you get out?" He hasn't heard this story at all yet, and wants to know the ending.

Strohl doesn't stop, but as they're walking away, the old man yells after them, "Through the beast's butthole!"

And that just makes Will's entire day. It is the funniest thing he's ever heard. He asks Strohl question after question as they head back toward the center of Brilehaven, and then he switches to asking Hulkenberg and Gallica questions too. None of them wants to answer them, but Hulkenberg does look at Strohl and say, "We agreed we would never tell anyone," like he's just disappointed her.

"I didn't," Strohl says. "But we ran into that old man that was living there, do you remember him?"

"Vividly," Hulkenberg says.

"Yeah," Strohl says. "Well, I guess he followed us out of the sandworm."

"Out of its butthole!" Will says, pressing his hands over his mouth to stop himself from falling over giggling.

Strohl closes his eyes, and then after several seconds he says, voice a little flat. "Anyway. We ran into him. He's willing to trade some item he's picked up for golden beetles, but he also told Will, ah—the whole story of how we met."

"You know," Heismay says, as Hulkenberg coughs and looks away. "I also was not privy to this entire story, but I do wonder if a man who is trading beetles for prizes, that was living in a sandworm and escaped through it's—" His very serious expression twistches for a second. "Through its anus, if he might be the kind of man that you should not be introudcing children to."

"Technically we all had to escape through the anus," Strohl mutters.

"Does anus mean butt?" Will asks.

Nobody answers him, so Will asks again, louder, "DOES ANUS MEAN--"

"Okay!" Hulkenberg says suddenly, clapping her hands together. "Let's go and get some dinner, alright?"

"Did you find somewhere to stay?" Strohl asks.

"Nowhere that gives me confidence in its safety," Hulkenberg says. She glances at Will, then says, "Sadly, I think we'll have to sleep in the Runner."

"I like sleeping there," Will says. "It's like we're on an adventure!"

Heismay chuckles "We are on an adventure," he reminds him.

"Oh yeah." Will grins sheepishly at him. They're on a really important adventure. They're going to beat the bad guy, save the Prince, and find some bugs along the way.

They have dinner at a crowded Inn with a real fish tank in the middle. Will wants to go sit on the floor and watch them swimming around, but it's crowded and Heismay tells him to be careful and stay out of everyone's way so he doesn't get kicked in the crowd.

So he just eats his funny looking fish, and goes back to the Runner. Ever since Heismay joined, he's made Will have an actual bedtime, and Will has already learned that there is nothing he can do to change Heismay's mind. But he's also learned that if he doesn't complain, and gets ready for bed on time, Heismay will read to him from the Prince's book before he goes to sleep. And he likes that, so he brushes his teeth, and carefully wraps new bandages around a healing cut on his leg from Martira. Then he crawls into bed, wrapping his arms around a pillow and burrowing into the blankets. Gallica comes to sit next to him, and he falls asleep to the sound of More's fantasy world.

And he has a dream.

It starts nice. He's sitting with the Prince in a garden somewhere, a garden with hedges all around it like a maze, where the two of them can sit on a marble bench with their legs dangling over the edge, reading the book. In the dream, the Prince is as young as Will is, and he's breathless with excitement as he shows Will his favorite parts. Will scoots closer, excited too, happy to have his best friend at his side.

But then the dream changes.

A cloud comes over the sun, and the bench slides so that Will is falling down and away from the Prince. He makes a wild grab for his friend's hand, but the Prince slaps him away, so that Will is left scrabbling against nothing as he falls down a dark hole. He lands in a heap, shaking all over, and cranes his neck up to the top of the hole where a small square of light shows the rest of the world, and the Prince all grown up and surrounded by thorns, the same as he looks every morning when Will checks the mirror to make sure he's still okay.

He reaches up, but he's so small, and the hole just goes up and up and up, and the Prince is angry, standing in that thin patch of light with his face hard like stone and his hands in fists. "Just leave me alone!" he shouts down. "Stop hurting me!"

Will flinches, pulling his arms back down, hugging himself. "I didn't…" He drops his gaze too, staring at his bare feet. "I didn't mean to. I'm sorry…"

The light overhead gets a little bit brighter as the Prince walks away, and Will feels hot tears welling up in his eyes. He doesn't want to hurt the Prince, he would never hurt the Prince. He doesn't want to let him down. And he doesn't want to be left alone, forgotten in the bottom of this dark hole—

He wakes up, still crying, and it takes him a second to realize he's not in a hole somewhere, he's not alone and forgotten in the dark. He's on the gauntlet runner, and Gallica is asleep next to him, and everyone else is sleeping in the other bunks. His family, he thinks desperately, as if saying the word more will make it more true, will make everyone else believe it, make him believe it, and then—and then they can't leave, right? Because family isn't supposed to leave you.

But the Prince did, and Will loves the Prince, his best friend, and so it must have been something he did wrong to make him go away.

He buries his face in the pillow he'd fallen asleep hugging, and cries as quietly as he possibly can. He doesn't want anyone else to hear, and come and ask what he did.

But Heismay hears anyway, because his ears are bigger than anyone else's, and after a few minutes he comes and checks on him. Will burrows his face further into the pillow, not wanting to let him see he's crying, but Heismay puts a hand on his shoulder and gently nudges him away from the pillow. "Would you like to come up to the deck with me?" he asks, instead of saying anything about the tears. "The stars look quite nice."

Will shakes his head no.

"I have something to give you," Heismay says, which gets Will's attention.

"…what is it?" he asks.

"Come up and see," Heismay says, then turns around and leaves.

Will thinks about it, but only for a little while. He wants to see the stars. And whatever Heismay is going to show him. So he dries his face with his hands and crawls out of his bunk, following Heismay out to the deck.

There's a little firepit there. Most days after dinner, everyone goes up there. Will likes to run around catching the bugs that try to get close to the fire, cupping them between his hands and bringing them back to Hulkenberg to see if she'll eat them. The fire is still burning, but very low, and it's very dark. Heismay helps him reach the low fire, and they sit next to each other. Heismay hands him a box.

"There are a lot of stars," Will says, staring up. The bag Heismay has just handed him sits unopend on his lap. It's easy to see them all from out here, with nothing around to get in the way, and Will curls his fingers against the rigid material of the deck, because it feels like he's going to fall right in if he isn't careful. "It makes me feel dizzy."

"It's alright," Heismay says. "You're safe."

Will thinks about that for a minute, still staring up at the stars instead of looking at Heismay. Then he says, "I don't feel very safe. I don't know why. But I feel scared like I'm running away from the baby human again."

"I heard you having a nightmare," Heismay says.

Right away, Will feels his eyes start to well up with tears again. They fall easier this time, down the same paths the earlier tears had followed. He keeps staring up at the sky, so Heismay won't see. It's dark. Maybe he won't. Heismay has good ears, but he doesn't think his eyes are just as good. So as long as Will stares really hard at the stars, and doesn't sound like he's crying, he thinks it'll be okay.

Heismay clears his throat, and says, "You can open that bag now, if you want. I was going to wait until a special occasion, but I think it might help you tonight."

Will has already forgotten about the bag, and it surprises him into looking down at his lap again. "What is it?" he asks.

"Open it and find out," Heismay says.

Will opens the bag, a rough canvas thing like they use in the kitchen for ingredients. It smells a little like potatoes, so maybe that's where Heismay had gotten it. But when Will reaches inside, he doesn't feel potatoes. Instead, his fingers close around something soft, and when he pulls it out and squints at it in the little bit of firelight that's left, he sees a roughly sewn cat in orange fabric. He stares at it for several seconds, then looks up at Heismay, so confused he doesn't know what to say.

Heismay says, "Before we left Martira, I noticed that you keep drawing the cat in that library. And—well, the parents of the two other children that you helped to keep alive wanted to show they were grateful. They wanted to make sure you knew how much you helped them."

Something a little warm flares up in Will's chest. "…really?" he asks, wiping his eyes with one arm.

"Yes, really," Heismay says. "And I thought that you would like to have is something to hold at night."

"I have my pillow," Will says. "But…" He looks down at the stuffed cat. It looks much nicer to hold than a pillow. It looks like Plateau, and Plateau is Will's favorite cat in the whole world.

"Your friend Aleks's mother sewed it herself," Heismay says.

"Um…" Will pulls the stuffed cat close to his chest. "Do I get to keep it?"

"Yes," Heismay says. "It's a gift. For you."

Will hugs it tight. It's soft, and the real Plateau wouldn't like to be hugged, you have to be nice to cats, but this is just a stuffed toy, and there's nothing in the world that can stop Will from holding on tight. He loves being hugged and held, loves it when he gets patted on the head or is allowed to lean up next to someone's side. He likes when people show him they like him by wanting to be close to him, when they don't push him away. He likes Hulkenberg hugging him tight after he found everyone in Martira, and he likes More rubbing his back when he was sick in Akademeia. And he likes having something of his very own that he can hold onto and never let go of.

He gets to love something the way he wants to be loved.

Will leans over the stuffed cat, hugging it tight. "I'll take really good care of it," he tells Heismay. "I promise."

"I know you will," Heismay says.

"And I'll never tell it to go away," Will says, still crying and crying. He remembers his dream, down at the bottom of the hole with the Prince shouting at him to go away. It's only a dream, but he has so many memories like that. So many times when the Prince hadn't wanted him there, no matter how hard Will tried to be there for him.

Sometimes, it feels like those are all the memories he has of the world before he left the forest with Gallica. A few favorite memories that—that can't even be memories, from when the Prince was little like him, and wanted him around just as much as Will wanted to be there. And then again and again being left behind and shouted down and, and—

And Will cries into his present, loud and ugly, wailing at the stars because his heart hurts so bad it feels like it will break. He cries, and Heismay pats him on the elbow, and lets him stay where he is on the deck until he's cried himself all the way out, and then he asks, "Are you feeling any better?"

"I think so," Will whispers. He doesn't know for sure if he is, but he definitely feels different. It doesn't make the distance between him and the Prince hurt any less, but he thinks he can go back to bed. He feels confused, instead of hurt, and he feels too tired to care that it's only not bad instead of good. Maybe he can get to good later.

"Let's get you back to bed, then," Heismay says, and prods Will until he's back on his feet and stumbling toward the inside of the runner. He goes back to his bunk, where Gallica is awake now and sitting up, and looks at him all worried.

"Heismay got me a present," Will mumbles, curling up next to her. He hugs the stuffed cat to his chest and yawns.

"I think I heard you crying a few minutes ago," Gallica says. "Are you okay?"

Will still doesn't know how to answer that. So instead he says, "I'm going to call him Platfoot."

"The cat?" Gallica asks.

"Uh huh. Because, like… Plateau sounds like Platoe, so if I name him after Plateau he can be Platfoot." He smiles, proud of himself, and closes his eyes. Gallica sighs, and Will feels her wings brush against his wrist. Maybe, he thinks, it is okay to feel better after all. Because he has a stuffed animal to hug, and Gallica right here, and Heismay thinking about him, and everyone else all around him. And Aleks and Claudia and their families thinking about him, and saying thank you. He has… good memories now.

And someday he's going to get back home to the Prince, and things will be better, and he'll be better, so the Prince will want him around from now on, just like his—his family here wants him around.

On that happy thought, he falls asleep again, and this time doesn't have even a single dream that he remembers.

-//-

By unspoken consent, the group lets Will sleep in the next morning. Only Heismay had heard him crying to himself in his bunk, but all of them had been woken by the sound of him sobbing up on deck.

"We have to find somewhere safer for him to stay when we get to Martira," Strohl says, to the rest of the gathered group at the table. "If he's having nightmares like that. It has to be because he's been around so much fighting."

"I don't think any of us would blame him for having nightmares after Martira," Hulkenberg says. "If there were any doubt that the Lady Joanna is a deserving target, seeing that she was ready to feed Will to that monstrous child would have dispelled them."

"It would be better if we could get him back to Grand Trad," Gallica sighs. "But we'll have to find something, yeah."

"Or," Heismay says. "We keep him here."

Every other eye turns to him, shocked and upset.

"I would have thought," Hulkenberg says. "That after… what you've shared with us of your own son…"

Heismay's posture is very stiff and very straight as he answers her. "I do not want to ever see another child lost to the violence thath took my son," he says. "But I was on the deck last night with Will. He promised that he would never tell his toy to go away." His tone is quiet and reluctant and sad as he says, "I think that being abandoned and left behind is his nightmare, and that nothing else that happens to him could hurt as much as being told we don't want him around."

"Even if he could be hurt?" Strohl asks.

"Yes," Heismay says.

Neuras, who so far hasn't spoken a single word, says, "Well then, it sounds like the lad is staying! Wouldn't be the same without him here."

And nobody at all argues that.

Chapter Text

They don't let Will come to the presentation ceremony, where the candidates are meant to present the heads they've collected for the first stage of the tournament. Strohl agrees with Hulkenberg when she suggests that after what had happened at the opening ceremony that it might be better to keep him away. Just in case.

It leaves a bitter taste in Strohl's mouth when it turns out that this was a good decision. None of them had actually been expecting Joanna to die. There were opportunities there, for the Church to use her. They could have imprisoned her, stripped her of her title, ordered reperations—anything. There's no King to second guess them, not anymore, and Strohl knows enough of politics to realize that this is a bad sign. They'd chosen to behead her, out of every available option. They'd taken over the King's plan to let the people choose their new King, with this tournament. Now they're beheading their own sanctoress, and no one had stepped forward to try and stop them. It's an open question of how far they'll go at the Tournament's next public event.

They don't tell Will any of this, when they come back to the runner that night. He can tell they're upset, but Gallica tells him something vague, explains that they hadn't done quites as well as they wanted to, and Will seems to accept that. And luckily public discourse has already turned to speculation over the next task, so there's little chance of him overhearing the full story elsewhere.

Still, he can tell that they're upset. In the days after Joanna's death, he's on his best behavior, trying to help however he can. When one of them has cleaning or laundry or gardening to do around the runner, Will is somehow always right at their elbow, eager to learn how to help. If Strohl didn't know better, he never would have guessed that this same kid had been kidnapped only a few weeks ago, and has had at least one bad night when nightmares woke him up sobbing.

Sometimes, he looks at Will and wonders. Is he just too young to understand everything, or to remember it? Or is he just learning to hide things? What if Strohl is missing obvious signs that Will is still upset, and he's going to carry the trauma around with him forever?

Will starts walking up to him sometimes, looking at him nervously, and then asking Strohl if he can hug him. Strohl tries to say yes as often as possible—when he's not in the kitchen, or cleaning a blade—and for several days this helps with his worries that they're accidentally traumatizing Will beyond what a kid his age should be able to handle.

Then Gallica tells him that Will is doing it because he's worried about Strohl, which is… sweet, but also shouldn't be his job to try and fix.

So he's worried about Will. It's a kind of constant background worry, an anxiety that he can't do anything about, and that he feels worse about because he can't find the right thing to say.

Gallica has been doing her best to distract him, usually by reminding him that the Prince's sword is made of magla, and that when the Prince was younger, closer to Will's age, he used to be able to use the sword's magla to fly around on top of it. She shows Will how it's done, and he takes to it like a fish to water, surprising all of them. Strohl thinks he's not the only one that wishes Will could have slowed down a bit at first, maybe taken a tumble or two at walking speed to learn how to fall. Instead, he's whizzing around on what is still in actual fact a weapon, laughing in a way that is also a worry, and has probably added a grey hair or two to Strohl's head already.

And then everything gets so much worse, and he forgets for a while about Lady Joanna, and the sword, and every other reason to worry for Will.

It's not the fact that they've been approached by Louis's followers that's the problem, when it happens. They've been specifically trying to get his attention, so if anything, the ambush by the Magnus brothers is good news. The fact that they have a message from Louis is good news. Louis's invitation to come and see him on his oversized runner is good news.

Fidelio Magnus's parting shot is enough to ruin it.

Over his shoulder, as he leaves the conversation, he calls, "And bring the elda kid with you. Lord Louis wants to meet with him specifically."

Strohl is alone, as this ambush happens. He's the only one that directly hears this invitation, and as he watches the paripus walk away, he genuinely considers keeping that part to himself. And he absolutely isn't planning to let Will hear about it. Will doesn't even know about Lady Joanna's death, or why they've been so stressed since then, and he's already doing everything he can to try and make them feel better. If he did know that Louis wants to see him, specifically—and why does Louis want to talk to Will, of all people—he'd probably feel like he had to do it. He'd want to, and Strohl doesn't have to know as much about kids as Heismay does to realize they can't let this meeting ever happen.

Louis has killed a king, cursed a Prince, nearly killed Grius. Will is a child that hasn't let go of his stuffed cat for five minutes since he got it. He deserves so much better than Louis.

-//-

Will sometimes has to pretend he's asleep so that the adults will talk about their plans loud enough for him to hear. He'd found that out by accident when he woke up too early, and heard them talking about... about Lady Joanna getting her head cut off.

(Will knows she's supposed to be a bad guy)

(But it hadn't been her chasing him and Aleks and Claudia around for days and days, and it feels like maybe the human is the real bad guy, so… so he's kind of sad that something bad had happened to her)

He feels a little like a spy, laying in bed and hugging Platfoot, listening to secret plans from the other side of the Runner. Whispering in here isn't really that quiet unless they're moving, because then everything is really loud, so Will has heard lots of things he's not supposed to. It would be easier if he had giant ears like Heismay, but he still hears plenty.

And today he learns that Louis, the bad guy, wants to talk to him.

No one wants to let him go. Not even Gallica, who knows how important the Prince is to Will. If Louis wants to talk to him, and this is going to help them get Louis's attention and save the Prince, then Will is definitely going to go.

He has to wait for the right time, though, and it finally comes the night of a fancy party called a soiree that Will isn't invited to and actually doesn't want to go to, because Strohl has told him all about fancy parties and they sound boring. But everyone else goes, except for Neuras, and Neuras isn't hard to sneak past. Will packs his bag with More's book and Platfoot. He straps the Prince's sword to his back, and goes to Louis's ship.

He knows exactly where it is, because he's been told not to go there. Also because it's the biggest runner in the city, even with so many people here for the tournament. It's not hard to find, and Will has been thinking hard about all the ways this could go wrong, so he's ready when some of them do. A drunk paripus man yells at him that he's cursed as Will walks past, and Will ignores him, ears burning. A younger clemar tries to take the Prince's sword, but Will yells at him that he's going to bite him. He thinks he might be too scared to do it if he really had to, so luckily the clemar decides he wants the sword less than he wants to not get bittne, so he just kicks Will and leaves.

The rest of the way to Louis's runner is easier. People still stare at him, but they always stare at him. Gallica says that lots of people have never seen an elda before, and reminds Will that he'd stared a lot at he first mustari he saw, too. Which makes sense. Even Will has never seen…

(No, of course he's seen other elda)

(The Prince is elda! And—and the village, back home…)

(Just because it feels like he can't remember anyone else, it doesn't mean… it's not like he's never met another elda before)

When he gets to Louis's runner, he stops and just stares at it for a few minutes. It's so much bigger than theirs, he almost can't believe they're the same thing. This looks more like the ships he's seen at Brilehaven's docks, but still even bigger than those.

It's so big that he forgets to think about anything until someone asks, "Are you lost?"

He jumps and turns around, and there's a nidia woman with long blonde hair half crouched down, smiling at him.

"Oh," Will says. He takes a step back, remembering to be nervous, and clutches at the strap of his bag with both hands. "Um… no. I'm supposed to be here."

The woman glances up at Louis's runner, her smile slipping, and Will thinks—oh. She's only pretending to be happy. She's nervous too, for some reason.

"I don't think this is a very good night for you to be here," she says, smile back on her face when she looks at him again. "Do you know how to get home from here?"

"I'm not going home!" Will says. "I—I need to talk to Louis!"

She looks at him, and only after she's really looked does she say, "You're the elda boy that's traveling with the Prince's Campaign."

Will nods. "My name's Will," he says. "Louis said he wanted to talk to me. So. So I came to talk to him." He stands up as straight as he can.

The woman turns around, and just for a second before she does, Will can see a look on her face like she's really thinking hard. She bites her lip, looks at Louis's runner, then looks down at him again. Finally she says, "Alright, Will. My name's Junah."

"It's nice to meet you, Junah," Will says politely, and he thinks her smile looks a little bit more real.

"Louis isn't here right now," Junah says. "But I do know he wants to talk to you."

Will's stomach churns a little. Maybe he'd been kind of hoping this would all be a big mistake, and when he got here, someone would make him turn around and go home. Strohl isn't usually wrong, but it would have been okay if he was, just this time.

"I can take you up to his quarters," Junah says. "And… we can wait for him there together, alright?"

Will sort of wants to say no. He's not inside yet. It's not too late, and she'd said he should go home. Louis is a bad guy, and Will still remembers what he'd done to Grius in Grand Trad. But then he thinks about the Prince, cursed and dying, and says, "Okay."

Junah offers him her hand, and Will pulls one hand off his bag to hold hers as she leads him into the runner. Inside, it's more like a building than a runner, and there's guards everywhere. Will studies them as Junah leads them to an elevator, and decides that as far as scary places go, this is worse than the fort where they'd met Strohl, and maybe worse than the dragon that burned his eyebrows off (that had been kind of exciting), but not as bad as seeing Grius get stabbed, or hiding from the human baby for three days in Martira.

He's been to worse places than this. Will takes a deep breath, and clutches Junah's hand a little less tightly.

She has to argue with some guards on their way into Louis's room, but it sounds like those guards have also heard that Louis wants to talk to Will, so eventually Junah wins the argument, and talks the guards into letting her bring Will in to wait for Louis. "I'll stay with him," she says, giving them the same fake smile Will had seen outside. "Just to make sure he doesn't break anything."

"I won't break anything," Will pipes up.

"You know how kids are," Junah says, and the guard laughs.

"I've got two at home," he says. "Best you keep an eye on him, Lady Junah. We'll send word to Lord Louis so he knows you're here when he gets back."

Junah smiles some more, and one of the guards blushes, and then they're inside and the guards are leaving so they can tell Louis to come back and talk to him.

"Will!" Junah says, when they're alone in the room, letting go of his hand. "I need you to do me a very big favor."

"Okay," Will says. "What is it?"

"I need to find something that Louis… borrowed from me," Junah says. "A book. But he's still reading it, and I don't want him to know that I'm taking it back."

Will has never thought that someone like Louis would like books. Books are great. Louis is not. But there are a lot of books here.

(…)

(Maybe they're all evil books)

"Why don't you wait for him to finish reading it?" he asks.

"Oh," Junah says. "I'm just… excited to read more of it."

Will puts his hand on his bag, and says, "I have a book. We can read that instead?"

Junah's expression sort of… cracks. Her voice is softer when she says, "Maybe next time, sweet. This book is very important to me."

"Okay," Will says. He's a little disappointed, because he's very stressed and he thinks that maybe reading some of his book would help him. But maybe Junah has a book like that, and it's special to her. "I can help you look for it. What does it look like?"

"Well…" Junah looks at the door, then back at him. "Can you read, Will?"

"Yes," Will says. He's best at reading More's book, because he knows it so well, but he's good at reading other things, too.

"I'm looking for a book that's not written in Euchronian," Junah says. "Or—it might not be a book. It might just be a few pages."

"You don't know?" Will asks. "Isn't this your book?"

Junah is already pulling books off shelves and looking through drawers. "It's a very unique book," she says, distracted.

Will decides that he'd like to be distracted too, and drags a chair over to a high shelf so he can look too. He pulls a few books down and glances through them, but everything he sees is in Euchronian, so he just puts them right back again. Then he comes to a little black book and gasps.

"Will?" Junah says.

He keeps staring.

"Will," Junah says again, more urgently. "Did you find it?"

"Um," Will says, pulling Louis's copy of More's book off the shelf. He holds it in his hands, staring at it, trying to figure out why Louis would have something like this. He's obviously never read it, because if he had, he wouldn't be a bad guy. "No, sorry."

He slips the second copy into his bag, next to the Prince's copy and his cat. He feels a little bit bad about stealing it, but he wants to protect More's book from Louis, so it's not like it's a bad kind of stealing.

(He looks over his shoulder at Junah, but it doesn't look like she'd seen him take the book)

The both keep looking. Junah starts to get more and more panicked as she doesn't find her book, and after a while she hurries over to where Will is looking, and says, "We probably don't have much time left."

"Do you think Louis is going to be back soon?" Will asks.

Junah nods. "And I really need this to stay a secret between us," she says. "I'm sorry to ask you for so many favors, Will, but can you do that for me?"

Will doesn't have time to answer, because right at that moment, the door opens and Louis walks in.

-//-

Junah's heart stutters in fear as Louis walks in, and her first instinct is to turn so that she's between him and Will. He's still standing on the chair he'd been using to reach the higher shelves, looking very confused about why someone he's only just met is asking him to lie for her.

This isn't how things were supposed to go. Maybe she should have kept to her original plan, and let the guards think she's waiting here to seduce Louis while he's out. It's just that stumbling on exactly the elda boy Louis has been wanting to see, when everyone knows he's been wanting to see him, had felt so lucky. It's a perfect excuse to be left without supervision in Louis's quarters. Maybe a chance to get a feel for the group that claims to be campaigning for the Prince.

(Junah knows there are others on the same mission she is, she just hasn't been told who they are)

(And this group is either the help she desperately needs, or just pretenders and therefore the last people she should trust)

But she hadn't found the spell Louis had used to curse the Prince. And Will is just a child—her main impression of him is the look of utter disappointment on his face when she'd had to say no to reading with him.

She should not have brought him to see Louis.

"Oh!" she says, after fifteen full seconds of ringing silence. "You're back already," she says, throwing a smile onto her face and even managing a fairly convincing laugh.

"Well," Louis says. "I was planning to stay out later, but this sounds much more interesting."

Will hops off the chair, and he's close enough to Junah that she can actually feel his full body tremble when he walks out in front of her. "My name's Will," he says. His voice is shaking too, but he plants his feet. It's very obvious that he's afraid, and Junah feels her heart break a little for him. "I heard that you wanted to talk to me."

Louis looks down at him, and there's a smile on his face that Junah doesn't trust for a second. He looks actually excited, which is a rare expression for him, and probably very bad news for poor Will. "Oh yes," he says. "I've been very interested in talking to you." He looks up at Junah. "You brought him here, yes?"

"Yes," Junah says.

"Well," Louis says. "Thank you very much." His tone, and the ironic little gesture toward the door he makes afterwards, both make it clear that he expects her to leave.

Junah hesitates.

"Was there something else?" Louis asks.

Again, the implication is unstated but incredibly clear. Leave.

Reluctantly, but with no other options, Junah walks out of the room, and leaves Louis and Will alone.

Chapter Text

For a long time after Junah leaves, Louis doesn't say anything. He crosses the room so slowly that Will feels like he's going to die from waiting. Each step makes Will absolutely sure that now, finally, Louis is going to say something. He'll explain why he'd wanted to talk to Will, specifically, and then Will can stop waiting and wondering about what he's going to say.

But… no. Each new step brings a little flicker of hope, only for it to shatter again into new anxiety when Louis stays silent. Will can hear his own heartbeat pounding in his ears, and his breathing is uneven and ragged. This feels the same as the fear of hiding from the human baby in Martira, squeezing his eyes closed and holding his breath, waiting for it to pass.

But the human hadn't been smart. And it had never known where Will was. Louis is very smart, and even as he makes his agonizingly slow way across the room, his attention never turns away from where Will stands trembling next to the bookshelf.

Louis passes right next to him, so close that Will can see the seams on his clothes, and smell the faint hint of armor and sword polish on him. Will wrinkles his nose, even though he usually likes those smells, they remind him of adventure.

He doesn't like them on Louis.

"Why did you want to talk to me?" he finally blurts out, as Louis stops at his desk, looming over it, not even looking at Will. He can't take it anymore. The silence is the worst.

"Do you know how rare it is to see an elda out in the open?" Louis asks. He sits, leaning back in his chair, looking totally comfortable.

(Will feels like he's going to explode)

"Um," Will says, "I…"

"Speak up," Louis interrupts. "You're quiet as a mouse."

Will squeezes his eyes tight shut, then opens them again. "I haven't seen any other elda," he says, louder.

Louis studies him, smiling with too many teeth. When he leans forward, his horns glint in the light, and Will can't stop himself from thinking about how sharp they look. He's never been scared of a clemar's horns before, because they're just a part of them, but Louis makes his look like a weapon.

"No," Louis says. "You haven't." His smile grows a little, like he's laughing at some joke Will doesn't understand, and he says, "Some say the elda were wiped out."

Will starts to shake his head no, but then stops. What if Louis wants to know where the eldan village is? What if he wants to hurt—

His fear stutters to a confused stop, scrabbling to name someone to be worried over. The Prince feels too obvious, of course Louis wants to hurt the Prince, but Will is suddenly scared for everyone else, too. He needs to not tell Louis anything, and keep them all safe!

"So of course when I heard rumors that the Prince's farce of a proxy campaign had a little elda boy tagging along, I was curious."

…there are a lot of words in that sentence Will doesn't know, and he's too scared to ask what proxy means.

"And now here you are," Louis says. "I wanted to see you for myself, and I am not disappointed." His eyes on Will make him want to turn invisible and run away, but… there's nowhere to go. He's in the middle of Louis's giant runner, full of guards with weapons. All Will has is a sword he only knows how to use to fly.

Louis continues. "I don't quite know what I was expecting, but this is…" He pauses over the last line, then finishes, "Interesting."

Will shrinks in on himself a little.

"Did you know," Louis says. "The first magic I studied was eldan magic?"

Will swallows. "No…?" he says, not sure where this is going. "Why would you want to do that? No one ever wants to know about the elda."

Louis doesn't answer Will's question, and Will doesn't like the way it feels to be ignored. He doesn't want Louis to pay attention to him either, but being ignored makes him feel small.

"There are some very old kinds of magic still practiced by the elda," Louis says. He sounds more like he's thinking out loud than talking to Will. "Very different from the types of magic practiced by every other tribe." For the first time, he looks right at Will.

Immediately, Will wishes Louis would go back to ignoring him.

"That's why I think I am the only person with the knowledge to recognize exactly what you are."

" ... I'm Will," Will says, confused. What answer is Louis looking for? "I'm elda. Everyone knows that."

Louis laughs at him, loud enough to make Will flinch. It's an almost normal sound, a real laugh like anyone else might make. He says, "So even you don't know! It's the only part I was unsure of." He leans forward, studying Will. "I remember the missing Prince," he says. "I remember seeing him many years ago in the Palace, before he was cursed, and... lost. I'm sure others that remember him have told you that you look like him."

"He's elda too," Will says.

"Well," Louis says, with a bored hand wave. "Half elda. Half clemar."

Will frowns. That's true, he guesses. The dead king was a clemar, and he was the Prince's dad. Will's just never thought about it, because… the Prince doesn't look clemar. And nobody talks about him being clemar. He's always been elda.

"I wonder what you are," Louis says. "Any half formed horns hiding on your skull?"

Will feels his whole face twist up. too confused to even try and hide it.

"Tell me," Louis says. "Will. What is the Prince, to you?"

It feels like a trick. Will fidgets, and doesn't say anything.

"Now, now," Louis says, in the mocking voice adults he doesn't like sometimes use to talk to him. Like he's stupid, instead of six. "None of that. I know your minders are running a campaign on behalf of the missing Prince. I know that you know him. I merely wish to know what he is to you. Your brother?"

"He's my best friend," Will whispers. His ears burn with a mix of embarrassment and upset.

"I imagine it's been some time since he was a friend to you, though," Louis says. "Years and years..."

Will flinches before he can stop himself. How had Louis known that?

"You really are incredibly small," Louis says. "Stunted, perhaps. Someone must have been very disappointed to see that you were the most that could be drawn from the Prince's dreams. What a horribly dark place he must have fallen into, after that curse."

Will sees red. He doesn't like when Louis talks to him like he's stupid, or looks at him like he wants to hurt him. But he can't make himself just stand here and listen to Louis insulting his friend. "The Prince's dreams are important!" he says, curling his hands into fists. "He told me all about them, and he showed me how to believe in them too. And I know I'm little, but I'm going to fight for his dreams until he can fight for them himself!"

There's a very, very long silence.

Will only realizes he's been shouting (at Louis, the bad guy) when the echo starts to fade. He... he probably shouldn't have done that.

But Louis insulted the Prince. He insulted his dreams.

And then Louis starts to laugh. A real, shoulder shaking laugh. He does something complicated with his desk to open a hidden drawer. He stands, shaking his head a little, and pulls something out of that hidden drawer. He walks around the desk and crouches—like a cat about to jump on a mouse—and smiles at Will. "Oh," he says. "Oh you sad, fractured remnant of a dead thing. The Prince isn't going to fight for any kind of dream."

Will bristles. And even though he's terrified of Louis looming over him, he forces himself to say, "Yes he is. You don't know him."

"I know one very important thing," Louis says. "I know exactly when he stopped dreaming." He gives will a look that will hates, and hands him a neatly bound journal. "Here," he says, voice suddenly bored. "I've been studying the Prince's curse for some time It would be interesting to reverse engineer it. But I don't have all his information. Take this back to whoever's watching over him. If they have any brains, they'll be able to figure out the rest."

" ... why?" Will asks, holding the journal uncertainly, like it's going to bite him.

"Because," Louis says. "I suspect that if he were to wake, the Prince's beliefs might well fall closer to my own than to the dreams you claim he still believes in. And wouldn't that be interesting?"

-//-

Junah should have made herself scarce after Louis's return, but she can't bring herself to leave while Will is alone in there with him. She finds a reason to stay nearby instead, and when Will finally comes bursting out of the room, clutching a journal to his chest, eyes wild and scared, she intercepts him immediately.

"It's alright," she says, catching him and gently steering him into a side corridor where she can kneel down in front of him with both hands on his trembling shoulders, and smile reassuringly at him. Whatever she might look like to everyone else, she knows what it's like to be small. No matter how good her illusions are, or how much time and effort she puts into making her hair and her face look a certain way, she knows what her true self looks like.

She knows what it is to feel tiny and insignificant in the face of someone like Louis.

"Take deep breaths," she tells Will, without letting a single stray thought cloud her expression. "You can watch me, and breathe the same way I do, alright? Take a deep breath in…" She pauses, letting him try two, three times before he gets it right. "And let it back out."

His breath is a choked little gasp instead of the slow release that Junah demonstrates, but he does look a little calmer, at least. Some of the shaking stops.

"Are you okay?" she asks.

Will hesitates, then shakes his head no.

"Did he hurt you?"

Another no, and Junah knows better than to think this second reaction in any way takes away from the first one. It just means the hurt is somewhere no one else can see.

"I want to go home," Will says, and Junah nods because this part is easy, at least. She stands up again, and offers Will her hand.

"I'll show you the back way out," she tells him. "There's less people around." He'd made it up here alright, but she can imagine that he might not want to face Louis's armed guard on the way back down.

Will starts to take her hand, but then says, "Wait!" and pulls his bag off his shoulder. Crouching down, he starts to reorganize it, carefully shifting his things around to try and fit the journal in. He just about manages, although he has to pull out a little stuffed orange cat to make it work. He glances up at Junah, and when he sees her watching he half turns his back on her and hunches his shoulders in a way that doesn't do anything to hide that he's giving it a long, tight hug.

Junah doesn't let him know she's seen it, so instead she asks, "What's that book?"

Will pauses, hand on the book, then looks up at Junah again and asks, "Is Louis a liar?"

It's not the answer she expects, and for a second she doesn't know what to say.

"Louis said… it's something that can help someone a lot," Will says. "But he's a bad guy, so maybe he lies."

Will is probably lucky that she's the one he'd said that to, because anyone else on this runner would have taken offense, been angry, rushed to defend their Lord Louis. If he was any older, he probably would have realized that.

Junah, in contrast, only feels a terrible hope start to burn in her chest. "Will," she says quietly. "Who did he say it would help?"

"My best friend," Will says.

"Can you tell me…" She hesitates. "Will, you and your friends are running a campaign for the Prince."

Will nods.

"Is the Prince your friend that you want to help?"

He doesn't answer, but his wide eyed frozen expression might as well have screamed yes at her.

Slowly, Junah reaches over, takes the journal out of his bag, and opens it. Inside are the notes Junah has been looking for all this time. The curse. Written out in the spell notation that she had learned at the academy, instead of typical Euchronian.

Will reaches out as she's staring, and grabs it back. "It's mine," he says, voice as fierce as a six year old can sound. "I need to save him."

"Can I help you?" Junah asks.

Will's eyes are trusting. Even after everything, when she offers to help, he looks at her and trusts. "Okay," he says. "We—"

And then there's a sound like a crash, and then a shout, and from somewhere far away a fight.

Will gasps, grabs the journal in one arm, his cat in the other, and takes off running straight toward the sound of the fighting.

"Will!" Junah calls.

He doesn't slow down. "They might need help!" he yells over his shoulder, and just keeps running.

Junah chases after him, but he sprints like he's running for his life, like he's done it before and knows how to move fast and stay out of sight. Junah wonders where he'd learned that, and then she stops wondering that because it's much more important to worry about where he'd actually gone and how she's going to catch up to him.

She keeps going toward the noise, and finally comes out on deck where she finds a very unusual scene. Glodell, which—actually that part isn't incredibly unusual. It kind of makes sense that he would be in the middle of whatever's going on here. But he's facing a eugief and a fairy, and the eugief has access to a kind of magic Junah has never seen for herself before.

Well.

This is not how she'd expected to spend her evening at all.

-//-

The plan, even at the outset, is not a good one. Hulkenberg is very aware that it's only tentatively possible, and unlikely to succeed. They've managed to attract Louis's interest enough to get him to commit to a meeting at a ridiculous soiree (and Hulkenberg wishes extremely badly that this meeting could take place somewhere else). This means that he won't be on his runner, in his quarters, guarding any potential curse notes.

So, they're splitting up. As Gallica is difficult to see if you don't know to look for her, and Heismay has experience in stealth, the two of them are to go straight to the runner. Hulkenberg and Strohl will—unfortunately—attend the soiree to distract Louis.

Neuras will babysit Will, and make sure he stays on their own runner.

Neuras. Will babysit Will. And make sure he stays on their own runner.

Neuras had not made sure that Will stays on their runner.

Hulkenberg discovers this only after Louis has left the soiree early, and she and Strohl have returned to the entirely-too-childless gauntlet runner. What follows is an hour or so of sheer panic, before Will comes zooming aboard on the Prince's flying sword, clutching Louis's own notes on the Prince's curse, bleeding profusely from a long cut across his arm.

"Will!" Hulkenberg snaps, as he tumbles off the sword with a little ooph noise. "We were so worried! How were you hurt? Where have you been?" She picks up the Prince's sword, waiting a moment until Will has stopped wiggling enough for her to return it to the sheath on his back, then picks him up and hauls him back to the sink to wash out his injury.

"I went to Louis's runner and met a nice lady and Louis was mean and I don't know why he gave me his stuff but Junah says we should talk about it and then Heismay and Gallica got caught by a mean guy with a dog and Junah has an Archetype now so I think she has to come stay with us, she's really nice."

Hulkenberg blinks. Strohl, who has obviously heard the sound of Will making it back and Hulkenberg's reaction, stops in the kitchen doorway and stares.

Will, apparently, is not done with the strange revelations.

"Her and Heismay got the guy but not the dog because it's not his fault and he can probably be a nice dog still, but then we had to get out of there really fast before anyone found us and Gallica told me to use the Prince's sword because I'm getting really good at that." He looks proud. "And we're going to meet up here!"

Hulkenberg says, "Do you mean…. the singer Junah?"

Will shrugs one shoulder, then obviously remembers that arm is hurt and makes a face. "The mean guy tried to hit me," he says. "But I only got a little hurt."

He's gotten very hurt. Hulkenberg eyes the gash, and sets to first aid. This is going to scar, but as long as it's cleaned and he keeps it still and stops playing with the bandage, it shouldn't get infected. Will wiggles and complains during the whole process, more upset by the stinging antiseptic than the cut itself, and it takes long enough that the rest of the group arrives while she's still finishing.

They bring—that is actually the Lady Junah. Hulkenberg has to look away and pretend to be busy tidying their healing items for several seconds so that she can get her expression under control, and luckily there's enough… general chaos in the runner to hide her little pause. Will certainly does keep things interesting, doesn't he?

"I think we need to have a conversation," Heismay says, gesturing back toward the round table in the runner's central room. "It seems our plans may need to change."

"Are we in danger if we stay here?" Strohl asks, even as the whole group starts to move toward the table. Will as well, vibrating with excitement over being included. Hulkenberg very badly wishes he didn't have to be, but in this case, she has a feeling they're going to need his side of the story before anything starts making sense.

"No," Heismay says. "We ran into Glodell on Louis's runner, but he was puffed up with the idea of capturing intruders himself. He did not call for backup, and… he certainly can't now."

"His dog is okay," Will says, for the second time since he made it back. He doesn't seem obviously traumatized by seeing the death of a man right in front of him, and Hulkenberg reflects that it might have become a slightly too common sight for him by this point.

"That's good," Strohl says, giving him a pat on the shoulder. "And it's good that no one knows we were the ones trying to…" His gaze turns to Junah, trailing off before he can say speak their whole intention for going there in front of a woman who is after all still a stranger.

"It's okay," Gallica says. "Turns out she's been looking for the same thing we are."

Junah manages to look completely calm and at ease, even in what should have been enemy territory. "You're not the only ones that have been trying to help the Prince," she says. "I've been trying to find the same thing you all are."

"And when she and Will found Heismay fighting on his own," Gallica says. "She jumped right in."

"Junah has an Archetype too!" Will blurts. "Masked Dancer, it's really pretty."

Hulkenberg feels her face starting to heat up again. This is… inconvenient.

"That's… good news," Strohl says, voice still cautious, but posture starting to unfold a little. "We could use allies more than enemies."

"And Louis gave us the curse!" Will says. He dives into his bag and pulls out a thin journal, bound in leather.

Hulkenberg gives an exclamation of surprise, and Strohl sits up straight like a bolt of lightning has hit him.

"He just gave it to you?" she demands.

"He said…" For the first time since he's made it back, Will goes still. He seems to shrink in on himself, and he doesn't look at any of them as he explains, "Louis said that if the Prince gets better, he'll be on Louis's side."

"Why would he say that?" Strohl asks.

"He said he won't fight for his dreams," Will says. "He said—he said he'd agree with him."

Gallica flies over to stand on the table in front of him, arms crossed. "Well that's not true," she says. "And we know that's not true, don't we?"

"Of course," Hulkenberg says, adding her own voice to the reassurance. She may not have seen the Prince in years, but the boy she remembers—so like Will, in some ways—would never abandon the Kingdom, or the people he's fighting for.

Will says nothing, though. His fingers play with a trailing edge of the bandage Hulkenberg has just wrapped around his arm, and his gaze is very far away.

"Hey," Gallica says, nudging him. "Will, we know that's not true."

Will says, "We… we have to go see him. And make sure."

"Ah," Heismay says. "That's the one thing we can't do."

"We need to make sure," Will says, still not looking. "And he needs help!"

"But this could be a trap," Heismay says gently. "Louis could have given us that as bait, expecting us to run straight back to where the Prince is hidden, and… finish the job."

"We'll get to him," Hulkenberg says. "Don't worry, Will. We just need to be careful, and take a roundabout path, and make sure that nobody can follow us."

She looks at Junah, a little embarrassed, but she's not the only one. It's clearly too late to hide the fact that they're trying to help the Prince—she'd either known already, or drawn correct conclusions based on the campaign they're running. But they can't be careless. They can't take someone that's publicly on Louis's side straight to the Prince.

"I am on your side," Junah says. "But I understand that you don't have a reason to believe me. If you need me to go, then I'll go."

Will pushes himself off his chair, leaves everything but his cat at the table, and leaves the room without saying a word. Hulkenberg watches him go, a little twinge of sympathy going through her as she watches the defeated slump of his shoulder. But maybe it's better for him to have some time on his own to think it through and realize that this is better for the Prince, in the long run.

She turns back to the conversation.

-//-

Will goes and hides down by the runner's engine, because it's far away from where everyone else is talking, and it has lots of little nooks and crannies that he can crawl into and hide with Platfoot. He doesn't want anyone to see him right now. If they're not going to help, he doesn't want to talk to them.

His arm hurts. More than before, now that he's safe and thinking about it. And his eyes sting with tears he's fighting hard not to shed. And no matter how hard he tries, he can't stop replaying the things Louis had said in his mind, over and over.

What if…

What if he's right?

It's been a long time since the Prince said anything nice to him. Or read with him. What if the Prince hates him? What if the Prince hates everyone? What if he's a bad guy, like Louis? Will doesn't want to believe it, he wants to believe in his friend, but…

He closes his eyes and hugs Platfoot tight, burying his face in the cat's fabric. Maybe he should go see More. He thinks More would understand why Will wants to believe in the Prince and his dreams so badly. And it would be nice to have the real Plateau to hug. But then he would have to explain, he would have to say out loud that maybe Louis is right.

When he squeezes his eyes closed, Will sees the memory of his nightmares painted inside his eyelids. The Prince shouting at him, pushing him away.

A high, thin whine leaks out of him, past Platfoot. The beginnings of a cry. He wants to go see the Prince! He needs to know for sure if he's okay. If he's—still nice. Will painfully, desperately wants to be back in the eldan forest. Back where it had all started, the beginning of the journey, and the end.

He wants to go home.

On the other side of the room, something starts to glow.

Will looks up, confused at the pale blue light. There's a kind of hole in the wall on the other side of the room, something Neuras has told him not to play with because even he doesn't know what it is. It's been cold and dark for as long as Will's been here, but it's glowing now, brighter and brighter, so bright that finally Will can only look at it through squinting.

And then the light flashes, and something happens.

Chapter Text

Gallica recognizes where they are as soon as the runner... moves. If that's what it's doing. One second they're in Brilehaven, feeling Jonah out to see if she's really on their side as much as she claims, and the next they're home. Back in the eldan forest.

"This is impossible," she says, staring out at the old, familiar forest. "This is... we should have been so far away from here."

"Neuras!" Hulkenberg yells. "Neuras, what did you do?"

"Can't put this one on me," Neuras says, sounding absolutely delighted. "The old girl's got some idea of her own into her head!"

"That is not how that works," Hulkenberg snaps. "You need to figure out how we got here!"

As the two of them argue, the rest of the group heads out on deck. Almost as soon as they do, Jonah--who very clearly isn't going anywhere at this point—says, "Is that an elda?"

She's pointing into the forest, where some unlucky passerby has had the bad timing of seeing the run appear almost on top of him.

"Probably," Gallica says with a sigh. "We are close to their village."

Heismay clears his throat. "Does that mean—are we close to the Prince as well?"

Gallica looks at him, and then at Jonah, and then at the startled elda out in the woods. They're here. They have either a lead or a trap. This is the single best chance they'll ever have. As long as Louis had given them his real notes. As long as they'll actually help.

(But why would Louis want to help them?)

(Why...)

(Can they afford not to try?)

"This is it," Strohl says. "We have to bring them Louis's notes."

"Junah," Heismay says. "You have been close to Louis for some time, yes? You were moving freely on his runner. Would he ever give out real information that could actually help us?

"Well…" Junah says. In contrast to Heismay's urgent tone, her voice is reluctant. "Yes. If for some reason he thought he would benefit more from the Prince's cure than we will."

"He won't," Gallica says quickly. "The Prince isn't like Louis. He's a good person."

There's a moment of silence.

Then Heismay says, "If Louis is too blinded by his own schemes to believe in the Prince, let's make sure to take advantage of his mistake. He is not the kind of man to make many of them, so we can't afford to let this one pass."

"The journal he gave Will," Junah says. "It's notes on the spell. Not complete, I don't know why, but if we can get anything to people that have actually been with the Prince and trying to help him all these years, it should be enough."

"They can counter the curse," Gallica says. "That's what Will and I were sent out to find in… in the first place…" she hesitates, suddenly. An odd half thought has just flashed through her mind, too quick to be caught, but still enough to leave her feeling unsettled.

"Gallica?" Strohl asks.

"It's nothing," she says quickly, shaking her head. "Sorry. Let's bring the journal in."

So that's what they do. Neuras has set to work on the engine, trying to figure out what had gone wrong with the runner to bring them here in the first place, and Will has hidden in some corner that none of them have been able to find yet. So after they agree that at least one person needs to be left behind to keep Neuras on task—they decide on Strohl—the rest of them take Louis's notes to the Prince's healers.

It's a strange homecoming. Gallica has always been slightly out of place here, a fairy among the elda, but coming back with a roussainte, eugeif, and nidia in tow (with a ishkia and clemar waiting back in the runner, along with their only actual elda), she feels like she absolutely fits in. That first elda that had seen them arrive dashes off before they can get close, and apparently warned the rest of the village that they're coming. By the time they get there, a small crowd of guards and curious onlookers has gathered to see them.

Gallica goes straight for Gruidae. "We did it," she says, unable to hold back a smile. There's a relief to being back here, even with the context. "At least, we have a lead."

She explains as quickly as possible that they don't have the original spell, but they have notes from Louis, which is the next best thing. Gruidae promises they'll be able to do something with this, and then turns to offer the rest of the group space to stay until—hopefully—the Prince is fully recovered.

"I see there are four of you here," she says, eyeing their odd little group. "And you said you had more back on your ship?"

There are no gauntlet runners among the elda. They have nowhere to go. Gallica makes a mental note to reming Neuras to be gentle when he meets people that don't have the term gauntlet runner in their everyday vocabulary. "Our pilot is still there," she agrees. "And we left another companion with him. And Will, of course."

"Will?" Gruidae asks.

"He's had a tough couple of days," Gallica explains. "We figured that he can come out when he's ready."

"No," Gruidae says. "I mean, who is Will?"

Gallica's body understands what's happening before her mind does. The bottom drops out of her stomach and goosebumps pop up all along her bare arms, and only then--only after she's already felt the shock hit her, does she realize where it's coming from. The veil of false memories falls away, and Gallica remembers the truth.

"Oh," she says, because how else is she supposed to react to this? "I—need to get back there. I'm sorry."

Before anyone can protest, she's off and flying. As fast as she can, as if she can flee the reality of what she's just realized. Will had never lived here. He had never been a friend to the Prince. Gallica herself had only met him…

She slows to a stop near the runner. The patch of flowers next to the runner are sumoning up new memories, and they're distracting enough to need all of her focus. Now that her mind has been opened to the truth of Will's situation, she can remember finding him here, exactly here. A tiny, lonely figure curled up and shaking.

Gallica had been worried, about the unexpected child all on his own. She'd assumed that he'd wandered out from the village.

And then as she went closer, she'd known that his name is Will, and that he is supposed to go with her.

Which is ridiculous, in hindsight! Why would anyone have sent a child out on such an important mission? Gallica on her own has the advantage of stealth, but Will can't protecct himself, and doesn't know the world, and had only ever been hurt by the world outside the forest. How could she have believed for so long that he'd been sent out on a dangerous mission?

Now the question is… what does she do now?

She's remembered, but is Will going to? If he doesn't, will she have to tell him? Will might not be what they all believed he was, but that doesn't mean he isn't incredibly important to them. Half the group—more than half, maybe—wouldn't have joined them if it hadn't been for Will. He's brought them together, and he's almost the heart of their group.

She goes back into the runner, where Neuras greets her with an enthusiastic explanation of the progress he's made in figuring out how they'd gotten here. Something about teleportation and plans he'd used without understanding what it was for. Gallica knows how long he can go when he really puts his mind to something like this, so she cuts him off as quickly as she can. "Sorry," she says. "But did you ever figure out where Will's hiding? I really need to talk to him."

"He's down by the engine," Strohl says, frowning over at Gallica. "That's how Neuras figured out the teleportation, I guess. What's wrong with Will?"

"Nothing's wrong," Gallica says quickly, even though that's a lie. Or is it? She doesn't really know who he is or where he'd come from, but she knows that he's Will. There's nothing wrong with that. "I just need to talk to him."

"Well, he's still down there," Strohl says. "We found him crawled under a console while neuras was trying to figure out how we ended up here." He's obviously picking up on Gallica's anxiety, because he presses her again. "What happened?"

Gallica hesitates. But Strohl is so genuinely concerned that Gallica slumps, and gives in, and tells him. "Being here reminded me of something," she explains quietly. "Or... I guess I got my real memories back. All the memories of Will being here were... just a lie. I met him right here." She gestures to the clearing with its flowers. "But he's never been to the village or the sanctum. I don't know where he came from, but it wasn't here."

"No," Neuras says. But there's a thread of doubt in his voice. "He hasn't been lying to us all this time. Not Will."

Gallica isn't sure whether he means that Will wouldn't, or that he couldn't. Either way, it's true. Will has kept things from them, yes, but they're almost always his own plans to go running into danger when he knows the rest of them would stop him. And when he's caught, he's still absolutely incapable of keeping his lies off his face—he's a child, not some long con schemer. "He might have fake memories too," Gallica says. "Whatever made me think we were sent out to find Grius together, the same thing might also have made him think that he lived here, and befriended the Prince."

Strohl looks confused, and Gallica can't blame him. She feels like things have turned upside down for her, too. He says, "We need to find out where Will came from. We need to explain it to him, and see what he really remembers."

"No!" Gallica says, horrified. "You know how much the Prince means to him. How many times has she heard will proudly declare that the Prince is his best friend? "This would break him, he doesn't have anyone else."

"He might," Strohl shoots back. "He might have true memories of family that he'd want to get back to if he could. He might have people that care about him very much."

"If I could interrupt," Neuras says, as the two of them start to get heated. They both stop at his interjection, surprisingly unconcerned compared do the two of them. "We know that Will does have people that care about him very much. He has all of us, so whatever happens next, he will be alright. We can tell him the truth, and then make sure everything turns out just fine."

Gallica sighs. He's right, and she knows that, but the conversation is going to be difficult. "Alright," she says quietly. "I'll… go and tell him what I remembered."

-//-

Will listens at doors, as a habit. He eavesdrops on everything he can aboard the runner. He knows the adults don't want him to know everything they do, so if he doesn't want to be out of the loop on everything he has to find things out for himself. So of course he hears when Gallica comes racing back into the runner, breathless with bad news.

Not that he has to try very hard to listen, in this case. Gallica and Strohl are so busy yelling at each other that he couldn't have missed it if he tried. He doesn't know exactly what they're talking about, but when he hears Gallica say that he wasn't ever really here, and he doesn't really know the Prince, something deep in his core shudders. He wants to throw up. Of course he knows the Prince! The Prince is his best friend! He's the reason Will has been fighting so hard all this time. He had shared his dream and his book and his sword with Will.

They're friends!

He squeezes his eyes tight shut, and refuses to think about his nightmares, and the Prince shouting at him, and... and all the memories of the Prince being just as mean. He tries not to think about the part of him that's relieved at the idea that the Prince never actually knew him.

If the good memories can't be real, at least the bad ones aren't either.

But if he doesn't have his best friend, then why has he been doing any of this? It's so important to him, but why? If he wasn't fighting for the Prince, he could have been home with his family.

(Right?)

(...the only family he remembers is the one he has here)

When Gallica comes to tell him that everything he remembers is a lie, Will has already worried himself past that, and into something new. "Don't make me leave!" he blurts out. "Please!"

She freezes in place in midair, surprised.

"I heard what you guys were arguing about," Will says. "I don't have anywhere else to go. I don't want to go!"

"We're not going to just leave you," Gallica says. She flies forward, gesturing for will to hold his hands out, palms up. When he does, she lands on them and looks him square in the face. "We don't even know what's going on yet."

"But you said…"

"I said that I don't remember you with the elda," Gallica says. "But that doesn't change anything that's happened with all of us on the runner. We still want you here, Will."

"But if I don't really know the Prince…"

Will trails off, and before either he or Gallica can say anything else, footsteps heading into the engine room announce that they're about to not be alone. Both Neuras and Strohl walk in, and obviously have enough context to know exactly what Will needs. Neuras doesn't even hesitate to wrap him in a full body hug. Will reacts immediately, body moving toward Neuras like he's magnetically attracted to the comfort. He tucks Gallica close to his body, protecting her with his hands so that she won't be crushed by the hug.

They stay like that for a very long time.

-//-

The next few days are tricky. For the first time since the quest to save the Prince started, Strohl finds himself with nothing productive to do. He can't help the elda with the spell notes Louis had given Will, they're doing fine without him. Supposedly, the Prince will be awake in only a few days. There's nothing to fight, either, which gives Strohl a lot of restless energy to work out, and nothing much to do with it.

To keep both of them busy, Strohl spends a lot of time with Will, the only one more nervous than he is.

Everyone is being very careful around Will. They know now that he's not from here, and so far as anyone's been able to discover, he's not from anywhere. Strohl's not sure how that can be possible, but the elda insist that there aren't any missing children anywhere near here.

They're very kind about it, at least. There are other eldan children Will's age here, and nearly every day while they're waiting for the Prince to wake up, a little gaggle of them come by the runner to ask if Will wants to come and play with them. Sometimes he says yes. Sometimes—more often than Strohl is used to—he says he just wants to be by himself.

Strohl starts to sit with him as much as he can. When Will asks, Strohl always has some excuse for why he always has a reason to be around, and he tries to distract the boy as much as possible. He's never seen Will as quiet and withdrawn as he is now, and even if he's only known Will a few months, that feels worryingly out of character.

On the day that the elda healers are planning to try and wake the Prince, Strohl takes it on himself to proactively distract Will by taking him up on deck and showing him how to polish the Prince's sword. There's really no reason not to, Will is almost as old as Strohl had been when his father started teaching him the same thing, and Strohl thinks that doing something explicitly helpful for the Prince might help Will to feel better while he's waiting.

For a while, it works well. It takes most of Will's focus to get the movements right, and while he warms up to the task, he seems almost like the old Will again. He asks questions, watches Strohl to see how he's doing it, and really tries to get it as right as possible. And then he asks, "Do you think the Prince will want his sword back?"

"Well," Strohl says. "Probably. It is his sword, after all."

"Yeah," Will says. His hands falter a little on the blade, and Strohl reaches over to correct him before he can nick a finger on the blade's edge. "Do you think he'll be mad that I borrowed it?"

"I think he'll understand," Strohl says, hoping he's right. "You're taking good care of it, right?"

"Only today," Will says. "Maybe I should have started doing it a long time ago. But I thought it was a borrow." His hands go still, and he frowns down at the sword. "Maybe it's more like a steal. He doesn't know who I am, so he couldn't have said yes."

"It's a very out of the ordinary situation," Strohl reminds him. "And you're doing your best now that you know."

Will nods. He doesn't go back to the sword, though, and Strohl doesn't push. He looks back at his own sword, and continues cleaning, letting Will work through his thoughts at his own pace.

After a while, Will says, "Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course," Strohl says. "What's wrong?"

"Um," Will says. "Is there ever a reason a clemar wouldn't have horns?"

Now Strohl stops his own sword maintenance and looks over at Will, who is looking very hard in the other direction, his face bright red. "Why would you ask?" Strohl says.

"Something Louis said on his runner," Will admits. "He said the Prince is half clemar, and then he wondered what I am. He wondered if I had horns inside my head too. And—I don't know what that means?"

Strohl isn't very sure what it means either. But he knows what it means that the Prince is half clemar, at least, and starts there. "Well," he says. "Sometimes, when a child has one clemar parent and one parent of another tribe, their horns aren't strong enough to grow in. You only get a little nub under the skin."

"The Prince is half elda," Will says. "Maybe he has horns inside his head."

"He probably does," Strohl says.

"Do you think I do?" Will asks.

"Do you think you do?" Strohl asks. "Or is this just because Louis said something?"

"I don't know," Will says. "Um. Now that I know the Prince isn't really my friend, I've been trying to remember my real memories, but I can't. So I don't know who my parents are, and what if Louis knew about me somehow?"

"Louis doesn't know anything about you," Strohl says firmly. "You can't tell one way or the other way a person is half clemar by looking, unless they're like Zorba and still have a horn."

"Can I find out?" Will asks.

Strohl considers, then carefully puts his sword to one side and leans over, pointing to his own horn, and the place where it meets his head. "Feel here," he says. "Right at the base."

Will puts the Prince's word down too, then leans forward, one arm reaching up toward Strohl. He hesitates though, fingers almost but not quite reaching. "Is it okay?" he asks.

"It's fine," Strohl assures him, and Will carefully reaches the rest of the way forward to poke him on the side of the head.

"It's bumpy," Will says.

"Our skulls need a little extra support for the horns," Louis says. "And even if a half clemar doesn't have horns, they'll still have that."

"Are you sure?" Will asks.

"Positive," Strohl says. It's something his mother had mentioned many years ago, and he still treasures the memories he has of his parents.

Will nods slowly, and reaches up to rub at his own head.

Strohl waits to see if he'll say anything, but Will only looks thoughtful and a little bit sad. Strohl could ask what he'd felt, and he's fairly sure Will would tell him. Because Will is a good kid, who wants to make the people around him happy, and wants to be liked and accepted in return. And so because Strohl is the adult here, and doesn't want Will to think he has to give up his secrets unless he actually wants to, he doesn't ask. Whatever tribe Will is, it doesn't matter. He's Will.

"Um," Will says, after a while. "Gruidae told me that I can stay here, if I want."

Strohl has heard this, but he asks, "Did she?" so that Will can tell him too.

"Yeah," Will says. "Because it's hard to be an elda, but everyone's elda here."

"It would be easier for you," Strohl says. "Do you want to stay?"

Will shakes his head no. "I want to stay with my family," he says.

"Then you'll stay," Strohl says. "And we'll figure everything else out."

"But…" Will hesitates, and drops the hand that had been raised up to the side of his head, and twists them in his lap. "I think I want to see the Prince first. He's waking up today."

"He is," Strohl agrees. "If the spell works."

"So we can go see him."

Strohl hesitates. "I don't know if that's a good idea," he says, as gently as possible. "But you know that he won't know you, right?"

"I need to see him not know me," Will explains. "And then I can stop worrying about it." He looks at Strohl, eyes wide and confused. "What if he did know me? And what if we're friends after all? Then he might be sad if I just leave him."

Strohl sighs. Logically, they can be pretty confident that Will has never been here, and never known the Prince. But Will is only six, and logic doesn't mean as much at that age. Besides, true or not, he has those memories. Strohl can't imagine what it must be like to remember something that simply isn't true. Maybe seeing the Prince will be good for him. "Well," he says. "Maybe we can go check and see how they're doing."

"Really?"

"I don't know if he'll be awake yet," Strohl warns. "Or if they've even tried to break the curse. But we can go and see."

Will is eager to try, but Strohl makes sure to take the time to show him how to put away the cleaning tools they've been using, and safely stow their weapons. First of all because it's an important part of the process, and partly because Will seems nervous and jittery, and Strohl thinks that slowing down and taking their time will give him the space to calm down. It seems to help a little, but Will is still quiet and a little bit pale as they leave the runner and make the by now familiar walk to the eldan sanctum.

Strohl has to bargain a little to get them inside. Apparently the eldan healers have cast the spell that's meant to break the curse on the Prince, but he's still waking up, and a little bit groggy. It takes some time to convince anyone that he and Will aren't going to make things worse, and in the end it only works because they're the ones that had brought Louis's notes in the first place.

And then, they're just there. In the Prince's sickroom, with the Prince himself sitting on the bed, looking only slightly less pale than Will. In his case, though, Strohl guesses that it's his long illness and general lack of sunlight, instead of nerves.

Will takes a shaky breath, and half hides behind Strohl. He has faced down dragons and humans without hesitation (or even the self preservation Strohl wishes he'd have), so it breaks Strohl's heart a little to realize that this is what scares him. He's not a monster, so he doesn't point this out, and instead walks across the room to the Prince, who looks up at him as Strohl gives a slight bow of introduction.

He really does look a lot like Will. If Will was ten or fifteen years older, with longer, paler hair and sadder eyes. But their faces are so similar that they could easily have been brothers, and for the first time since they got here, Strohl wonders if they might have known each other after all.

"We won't take up much of your time," Strohl says. "But we wanted to see if you were doing alright. I know you're still recovering, so we won't stay long, but—" This is surprisingly unconfortable, with Will still and quiet behind him. "Well, I hope you're doing well."

"Surprisingly better," the Prince says. His voice is quiet, a little hoarse, with the carefully refined accent Strohl associates with nobility. Which makes sense, considering—well, he's about as noble as it's possible to get. "I heard that a group had come from somewhere outside the sanctum with the countercurse. I suppose you were part of that group."

"Yes," Strohl says. "Leon Strohl da Haliaetus."

"And who's this with you?" the Prince asks.

Strohl looks down at Will, who's now wearing an expression of open terror. Strohl puts his hands on Will's shoulders, gently steering him forward so that he and the Prince can see each other. He doesn't take his hands off Will's shoulders, though, because he can feel him shaking, and there's no reason that Will shouldn't be allowed the support he needs.

Will tenses like he's gathering all his strength, and says, "I'm Will."

A little desperate. A little pleading. Strohl has never seen Will want anything as badly as he wants the Prince to know him.

So it's a kind of cruelty, if an unintended one, when the Prince gives Will a well meant smile and says, "Will. It's nice to meet you."

Will stands stock still for a few seconds. Then he turns, all at once, and crushes himself into Strohl. He wraps his arms around Strohl's waist and sobs with a heartbreak that doesn't leave space for thought or words. He sobs with the same feeling Strohl had on the day his parents had died, and so Strohl knows the absolute misery behind it.

The Prince half stands, looking shocked at Will's reaction, and starts to ask, "is he..?"

"He'll be fine," Strohl says, more a hope than a fact. "But I think we should probably…" He nods toward the door, and adds, awkwardly, "I'm so sorry about—"

"No, of course—"

They trip over each other, both embarrassed and trying to apologize, and after a while Strohl manages to steer Will out of the Prince's room, and into a quiet, private place where he can sob as much as he needs to.

Strohl holds Will as he tries to process the worst thing that has ever happened to him, and wishes things had gone a different way.

-//-

The Prince is relieved when he's left alone again in his sickroom. He knows it would have been rude to voice, but Will's presence had deeply unsettled him. Something had seemed so eerily familiar, stirring up a mix of emotions that don't make sense. And worse, even less logical, is his own reaction—to turn away, to leave, to get out, with the same urgency that he might leave a room full of flames. To protect himself.

There is something about Will that scares him.

Chapter Text

The Prince doesn't move for a long time after his visitors leave the sickroom. He sits on the bed, hands clasped tightly together, staring blankly at the wall in front of him. After months of unconsciousness, it would have been more than enough for one day to just have to readjust to his own body. He thinks he would have liked the time to do that on his own, without any distractions.

Instead, there's Will.

It's hard for the Prince to wrap his head around exactly how Will scares him, because the feeling is so unfamiliar. For most of his life, he's been haunted by a very specific kind of fear, fuelled by the curse. Fear of dying, fear of pain, fear of everything he's not going to be around for when the twisted thorns finally claim him.

Looking at Will is a very different kind of fear. He looks so much like the Prince himself had when he was that age, but without a trace of the Prince's curse. And there's something about his eyes, one blue and one gold, and even the bright blue hair (the exact shade of the Prince's favorite color), that is terrifyingly familiar. The Prince doesn't remember why, but there is something familiar in that face.

Which is strange. Because the Prince has been here in the Sanctum since before Will would have been born, and some of the others here should have remembered him.

The Prince doesn't understand why Will had sobbed when the Prince introduced himself. Grabbed at his minder and cried like the world was ending. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that it's his fault somehow, but the Prince really doesn't know what he was meant to have done instead. It had taken all his experience as royalty, as the unwanted bastard elda son of an unpopular King, to be polite and keep a smile on his face.

Maybe he shouldn't have bothered. Will hadn't seemed to like him anyway.

The thought depresses him, sending a sharp little spike of pain through him. Metaphorical pain, which should have been better than the very real thorns that have plagued him for so long, but isn't.

He doesn't leave his room the day he wakes up. Or the next. He claims to still be getting his strength back, but the truth is that he just has no desire to leave its privacy, and be forced to come face to face with anyone else. He doesn't want to really do much of anything, which is frustrating and oddly claustraphobic. It's been years since he was able to do anything, and now that he can, now that he can move freely and breathe without difficulty, now that he can just exist without the dread of the thorns always closing in on him, he doesn't know what that means.

The last time he wanted things, he was six years old. Now he's eighteen, and barely feels like a person. No matter how hard he tries to want to do something, anything, the desire just won't come. So he sits in his room, feeling empty and hollowed out, until someone knocks at his door on the evening of the third day. The Prince, who has his manners left if nothing else, sits up straight, runs his fingers through the increasingly wild bird's nest of his hair, and calls, "Come in."

The door creaks open, and he regrets the invitation almost immediately as Will slips inside. Then he feels stupid, because Will is just a kid.

Still, after three days of isolation and worry, the Prince finds it harder than it had been before to stay polite. He doesn't smile at Will, who isn't smiling either, and just asks, "What are you doing here?"

Will closes the door behind him, his movements careful and furtive.

The Prince does not feel trapped, he tells himself. This is a child.

"I have some of your stuff," Will says, after a pause. His eyes are fixed on the flooor, unmoving. "Hulkenberg said she could bring it back to you for me, but More said I should try to do it myself."

The Prince knows Hulkenberg, of course, but More is a stranger's name. Outside of the pen name his father had used when he wrote that old book, the Prince has never heard of anyone else using the name. He doesn't ask, deciding that it would only stretch the conversation with Will out longer than he wants it to. Instead, he asks, "What do you have of mine?"

"I have your sword," Will admits, voice small. "And your book?"

"My book?"

Will, his posture simultaneously tense and apologetic, unstraps the sword from his back first, and steps just close enough to the Prince to hand it in its hilt up to him. The Prince recognizes his mother's sword with a little jolt, and reaches out to take it.

Will pulls back as soon as the Prince closes his hands around it, like he's been burned, and lowers his gaze to rummage through his bag for what turns out to be a small, black book. He starts to hold it out too, but then stops with an odd choking sound. "I'm sorry," he says. "I know it's yours, but I don't want to give it back!" He clutches the book tight to his chest, curling around it in an almost protective movement. "I would miss More, and Plateau, and—and I want to read it again!"

The Prince still hasn't gotten a good look at the book, but Will's reaction stirs enough curiosity that he crouches down to see the cover. Somehow, despite knowing that Will has called this his book, the Prince is still surprised to recognize it. This is his father's book, the one the Prince used to read religiously before the assault in the Palace. Before he was cursed. He hasn't thought about it in… years, probably.

"You can keep it if you want it," he says. "I don't need it."

"Yes you do," Will insists, even as he hugs the book closer. It's a frustrating reply, because the Prince doesn't know what to say. No, he doesn't need some old book he used to keep himself occupied with, back when he was the kind of naive kid that thought he could grow up into a world like that one. Yes, Will can keep it as long as he wants to. The Prince doesn't care.

(But...)

(But something about the thought I don't care sends an unhappy shiver down his spine)

He's too old to believe in fantasies like the one in that book, but it had been his only lifeline when he was little. He'd read it cover to cover, over and over again. He'd practically known it by heart, had even written his own adventures into--

And all at once, he remembers.

Those stories. He hasn't even thought about them in years, but they had existed. The Prince had made himself a hero. Someone that looked like him, but was better in every way. Unstoppable, brave, kind, adventerous. He'd already known that his destiny was to grow up and try to role his father's Kingdom. Those stories, that dream boy, were a safer way to play pretend.

He'd called him Will, and suddenly the Prince understands exactly why this shaking little boy, too scared to look at him, is so terrifying to him as well. A red flush of anger rises up in his face, blotchy and hot. Suddenly, it feels like an insult—an accusation—that Will is here.

His stupid, childish stories brought to life and sent out into a world he doesn't fit. To struggle and fail and fall against real hurdles, because that's what the world is. It's not a bored child's dream, inspired by his father's perfect but impossible stories.

Of course Will could overcome any challenge in the Prince's childish imagination. Of course he could be strong, and friends with everyone, and unfalteringly hopeful. That's easy in a story, but this is the real world. Someone had brought the Prince's worst and least realistic dream to life, and the end result of that is this scared, defeated child cowering in front of the Prince.

(Weren't you stupid to want this in the first place?)

(Don't you see how foolish your dreams were?)

"Just keep it," the Prince says, his voice harsh. "Keep it, and go away." He's pushing Will away as hard as he can, because he hadn't asked for any part of this, but here is some dusty old creation of his, here for anyone in the world to see. And what would people think, if they knew what Will is? Would they blame the Prince for his failings?

The Prince isn't a kid anymore. He'd grown up! He knows better than to believe in things that can't exist.

Will has gone very still, and the Prince is angry about that, too.

"Just get out of here," he snaps. "You're an old mistake that should never even have ever existed."

"I'm sorry," Will whispers, still frozen, not looking at the Prince.

"Don't be sorry!" the Prince says, raising his voice. "Just—I don't know. Don't be here."

Weill doesn't answer for a long time. The silence stretches out for so long that the Prince is starting to wonder if he's going to have to repeat himself. He's starting to wonder if he can bring himself to repeat himself, seeing the obvious effect it's having on Will.

He can remind himself as much as he wants that Will isn't even a real person, but it's easy to forget that when that person is standing in front of him, as real looking as any other child.

"You're just like I remembered," Will says finally, his voice barely audible.

"What?"

"I remember you when you were a kid like me," Will says. "And we had so much fun together. You were so nice. But that was a long time ago. And—and ever since then I just remember you being mean." He holds on tighter to the borrowed book. "I really wanted the older memories to be right, but they're not. You really are just mean."

The words hit harder than the Prince expects. It's… exactly the kind of thing he used to daydream about saying to the nobles at the castle that smiled at him in front of his father, and sneered at him behind his back. It's hard to hear them aimed at him, and that's why the Prince finds himself lashing back out in exchange.

"Do you know what you are, Will?" he asks. Without waiting for an answer, he pushes on. "You're a dream. I made you up when I was a dumb kid that thought the world in that book was worth chasing. I don't know how you're real, but I know you shouldn't be. You're nothing. You're not real, you're just a stupid dream! I made you up!"

He shouts this last part. He's angry at Will for existing. Angry that this has turned out to be the kind of world where these dreams can't exist, after all. Angry that Will is here anyway. Angry, furious, at himself.

(For dreaming)

(For giving up)

(For standing here, face to face with the friend he would have ran to in delight, would have held onto and refused to let go, once upon a time)

(For not being able to do that, anymore)

For the first time, Will looks right up at him. His heterochromatic eyes—the Prince had thought eyes like that were so cool, when he was younger—are intense in his round, childish face.

"I'm a dream," he says, almost dazed. And then, his voice stronger, "I'm a dream."

The Prince nods, just once, firm in his own anger.

And Will says—"Okay."

-//-

Will's heart is pounding so loudly he can hear it in his ears, and the Prince keeps saying things that hurt like a knife. Talking to him feels like talking to Louis, like Will is too small to count, and easy to step on.

But then the Prince calls Will a dream, and to him that's obviously a bad thing, but to Will it's not. He squeezes the Prince's… no, More's book tight in his hands. The Prince doesn't deserve a book like this. More had written a book that's better than anything the Prince could ever think up.

And More had told him something once, about dreams.

"Making up a dream is easy," he tells the Prince, working hard to make sure his voice doesn't get shaky. "But making dreams real is hard." He peels one hand off More's book (he's scared, he's so scared, and angry and lost and sad), and points at himself. "But I worked hard! I helped my friends, and I got my eyebrows burned off by a dragon, and I got chased by a human for three! Whole! Days!" He's been fighting not to cry, but a few fat, ugly tears roll down his face now. They're not sad tears, though, they're angry ones. He doesn't care if he's a dream, no matter how sure the Prince is that it's a bad thing. He'd promised More that he would help him make his dreams real, and so he knows what that means for himself, too. "I worked really, really hard," he says. "And I don't care what you think I am, I know I'm real."

"That's not how it works," the Prince says.

"Yes it is!" Will says. "I'm real, and you—"

The world, suddenly, freezes.

Will is somewhere else, in the room he'd seen when he awakened to the Heart Archetype to help Grius stay alive. But now he's seen it with his own two eyes, and knows it's not very far away from the room where he's standing in front of the Prince, feeling angrier and scared and sad all at the same time. This is the eldan sanctum, but… it's empty now. The only person in the whole room is Will, floating in midair over the very center of the room.

And even though he's alone, he hears a voice.

"You have journeyed far," the voice whispers. The same one that he'd heard that day in Grand Trad, the one that told him he didn't have to be ready to tear his heart out if he doesn't want to. "And I do not need to tell you that you have worked so very hard to be the best that you can be. You already know yourself that dreams are easy, and that making those dreams a reality is hard. You already know that you have worked hard, and accomplished much. All that need be said now is that which lies in your heart. If you are ready."

Ready to tear his own heart out.

As if the Prince hasn't done that to him already.

Will squeezes his eyes tight shut and nods. It's time, but he's a little scared. He wants to ask if this is going to hurt, but he doesn't think it matters anymore. It's time to do this, whether it hurts or not, and he can feel that same strange pressure building up in his chest that he had the first time he was here. Only, this time the voice doesn't reach out to stop him. Instead, her tone sad, she says, "I am so sorry it's come to this. But I know that you are strong enough to save the both of you."

Will flinches, and screws his eyes up a little tighter when he hears the words. He doesn't want to help the Prince. He's mad at him! The Prince isn't the nice friend Will remembers from a long time ago, he's the mean friend from his nightmares.

But—

But he does want to help. Will wants to help everyone, he wants to live in a world like the one in More's book, and… and maybe he does want to help the Prince most of all.

Because if the Prince can be the mean friend from his nightmares, then maybe he used to be the nice friend, too. Maybe the Prince needs help remembering how to be the nice friend again.

Will takes a deep breath, shoves his hand into his chest, and grabs for his heart. It does hurt. It hurts a lot, but it doesn't hurt more than Will can stand. After everything he's been through, he is strong enough, angry enough, real enough to do this.

He's going to show the Prince that he is so much more than just a dream.

Will's fingers close around something cold and metallic, and he pulls as hard as he can. His eyes fly open and he's back in the Prince's room, one hand still wrapped around More's book, the other one clutching his own heart. Will stands up straight. And looks right at the Prince as he shouts what he's feeling into that heart.

"I don't care what you say," he tells the person whose words have always meant more to him than anyone else in the world. "I know me better than you ever knew me. And if I have to be a dream, then I'm the realest dream ever, because I'm not gonna stop fighting!"

"You—" The Prince is staring at Will's heart in his hand, expression horrified, and it's like the shock of seeing Will standing there holding it has shocked the mean right off his face. Right now, his face pale and eyes wide open in surprise, he looks more like the friend Will remembers, and has been trying so hard to get back to all this time.

"I'm going to keep fighting hard for me," Will says. "And for you, too! Because—" he looks at the Prince, really looks. And he has the very grown up thought that maybe being mean can be a little bit like being cursed, actually. Maybe being mean can come from not believing in dreams anymore, and maybe, if that's true, they're not done saving the Prince yet after all.

"…because?" the Prince echoes, voice barely a whisper.

"Because you're my best friend," Will says. "And even if you don't believe in me anymore, I'll believe in both of us until you're ready."

And then…

He's not Will anymore. Not just Will. He's still him. But he is also wrapped up in the blazing orange frame of an Archetype, the Lionheart, and he is every scared little kid, every scared grown up even, that had to be stronger and kinder and braver than it was fair to ask them to be. He is powerful, with that fully awakened Archetype, but Will isn't even thinking about that right now. He's looking (for the first time) down at the Prince, and seeing a tiny flicker of something good in his face. Just a thought, maybe something like, maybe he is real after all, or maybe I don't have to be so angry. Will doesn't know, exactly, but it's something bright on the face of his friend, something good still hiding under everything bad he'd said.

Louis is wrong, Will decides as the Lionheart's form melts away around him, and he drops a little clumsily back down to the floor, with nothing in his hands but the book. Louis is wrong because even if the Prince wants him to, Will is never, ever going to let his friend lose that bright, good, something.