And here it is! Natayla returns but not as you know her! This chapter is more about her resurrection and what happened to Alfred after the Tempus Spell went wrong. And, of course, the kidnapping!
The Characters
Flynn Ryder AKA Alfred F. Jones– Alfred – America
Rapunzel – Natasha (Natayla) – 2p! Belarus
Arthur – England
Francis – France
Matthew – Canada
Prince (King) Feliciano – North Italy
Prince (King) Ludwig – Germany
Prince (King) Lovino – South Italy
Mother Gothel – Katya (was originally Anya) – 2p! Ukraine
Maximus – Berlitz – Germany's German Shepherd
Stabbington Brothers – Allen and Alex F. Jones – 2p! America x 2
Hetalia belongs to Hidekaz Himaruya. Tangled belongs to Disney as does Flynn Ryder.
Enjoy!
Chapter 1 : A Series of Unfortunate Events
Previously ~
(Talking about Natayla...)
"Nobody is all bad," Lukas stated.
"She is!" Arthur replied, contemptuously.
At Arthur's home ...
"Stand in the circle and you MUST hold hands." Francis took each of his son's hands and lead them into the middle of the circle. Arthur raised his wand and began to chant the spell that would sent his family sixteen years into the future in a voice so low his words could not be heard. When he finished, the circle began to glow.
"LIBBY!" The little rabbit had jumped out of Alfred arms and bolted. Alfred let go of Francis's hand and ran after her.
"No! Alfred!" Arthur shouted as he grabbed Alfred and pushed him back to the circle. "Take hold of your father's hand. NOW!"
Alfred ran back to the circle and reached for Francis's hand. Arthur could not tell if Alfred had managed to catch hold before he was blinded by a flash of light. When the light faded, the trio had vanished, leaving Arthur praying that Alfred had managed to catch hold of his father's hand in time.
Sixteen years later...
Magic sword, fly swift and sure.
Let evil die and good endure.
Natayla screeched as she felt the sword bury itself in her heart. She thrashed to try and dislodge it but to no avail. As her dragon body began to fall, it shrank as the magic in the sword began to leech away the darkness within her and all the evil she had committed past through her mind. To the innocent Princes Lovino and Feliciano, to a hundred others and eventually to her own brother and sister, Ivan and Katyusha. How could she love her own brother in such away? Believe that her sister could? Her last thought was how glad she was that she had not killed them as her body finally disintegrated, leaving behind only her cloak, the goodness left in her soul and her white magic.
Actually her last thought before her soul and magic sank into the ground to be absorbed into a flower seed was...
Forgive me!
Arthur left the celebration of the returning home of Prince Feliciano as soon as possible to reach his own home. To wait for his husband and sons to arrive from the past. It had been sixteen years since he had last seen them and he could not wait.
His home was coated in sixteen years of dust but a little magic blew that away and he sat down to await his family's arrival.
Then he felt the tell-tale vibration of magic in the air and stood away from the magic circle that still faintly showed on the floor from when he sent them through time in the first place. There was a faint glow that grew into blinding intensity. Then it faded, leaving human beings in its place.
Francis blinked and saw Arthur in front of him. He knew they had been separated for sixteen years but to Francis, it was like they had not been apart.
"Mon chère," he began but stopped when Arthur's face filled with horror.
"WHERE'S ALFRED?" he screamed. Francis realised that he could not feel Alfred's hand in his. Only Matthew's. He looked down to his right and there was no sign of his blonde, sky-blue eyed, energetic son. Francis stared at his right hand as if Alfred's would appear in it if he looked at it hard enough.
"We didn't join hands in time," he said, blankly and looked up at his husband. "Arthur, I'm sorry!. I didn't reach him in time!" Arthur seemed frozen in shock. Matthew's violet eyes began to fill with tears as he realised his twin was not there.
"Papa, Dad," he sobbed. "Where's Alfred gone?" He did not want to lose his brother, they had been through so much together. Losing their parents to fever and being put into an orphanage, they were all each other had until they were sent into the woods where a cannibalistic witch lived and the two men he came to call Papa and Dad came to their rescue and became their new parents. He could not lose his brother.
Arthur finally moved and gathered the eight year old in his arms and hugged him tight. Francis hugged them both.
"I don't know, Matthew," Arthur admitted, crying unashamedly. "But I'll find him. I promise."
They stayed like that for a long time.
A month later...
Lovino felt confident enough to begin his journey home after his transformation from crow back to human and gathered clothes, food, money and jewels. He built a make shift drawbridge to leave Natalya's castle unaware that he was being watched by someone he thought was long gone.
Katya watched as Lovino left and looked down at her hands. She was ageing again and Natalya was no longer around to prevent it. If she could not find another way to hold back her age, she would die.
Nothing here could help her. Unlike Natalya, Katya had no magic of her own. She could use magically infused objects but could not produce magic herself and the power to reverse age did not reside in any object in the castle. Only Natalya had that power and she was gone.
Katya followed Lovino's example and she also gathered supplies and gold and left the castle to go in search of restoring her youth.
A few weeks later, she had done better in her travelling than Lovino who had become stuck in Madrid as she had made it to the coast and the seaport where she heard some Italian sailors talking about a strange flower that had grown on the spot where the Dark Sorceress had died that resisted wild weather and frost. Following her instincts, she used some of her wealth to buy passage to Italy.
It was dark when Katya made her way to the foot of the cliff from which Natalya fell and it was not hard for her to find the flower because it glowed in the dark. She followed the silvery glow and knelt down beside it. A fool could see the flower was magical but could she use it? Her time was short so this was her only chance.
When Katya had first met Natalya, Natalya restored Katya's youth because Katya had a young grandson who needed a guardian. When the grandson grew up and went to sea and Katya grew old again, Natalya refused to restore her youth again because it was against nature for humans to be restored like that and the more it was done, the more it was needed. The human body became addicted to youth magic.
What Katya had done so long ago got Natalya to restore her youth again but Natalya became cold and cruel and she would only reverse Katya's ageing so much and she would only do it when Katya was close to dying and ONLY so Katya could continue to serve her. If only Katya had not made that mistake.
Katya thought about the spell Natalya would cast on her to make her younger again. The flower was magically infused. Could it work? The first line of the spell was Magic, gleam and glow. Perhaps a slight alteration?
Flower, gleam and glow. Let your power shine
Make the clock reverse. Bring back what once was mine.
What once was mine.
The flower began to shine and glowing spores drifted up to bathe Katya and her skin lost its sallowness and smoothed out. She watched as her hands became as they had been in her youth and her faded red-brown hair regained its colour and body. She gave a short giggle of joy as she realised she had found her fountain of youth.
She dug up the flower and wrapped up the roots then disappeared into the night.
A year and a half later...
Prince Feliciano was into his fifth month of pregnancy when he fell ill. His worried husband, Prince Ludwig, summoned Lukas, one of the Fae who had granted Feliciano the gift of child-bearing, to examine Feli.
"What's wrong with him?" Ludwig asked when Lukas left Feli's chambers. Lukas struggled to explain what was happening.
"While Feli carries your child," he replied. "His life is bound up with the life of the child but something has happened. It's rare but it does occur."
"What has occurred?" Ludwig wished Lukas would just come out with it.
"Your child does not have a soul!"
Of all the things Ludwig expected Lukas to say, that was not even on the list. His child did not have a soul! What exactly did that mean?
"Without a soul," Lukas clarified. "Your child will eventually die. And Feli too."
That was too horrible for Ludwig to contemplate. To live without Feli after everything they had been through! Fate could not be that cruel.
"Is there anything you can do to save him?" he asked. "Please!" Lukas took a deep breath.
"There's nothing I can do with my magic," he replied. "I can't just create a soul and that's what we need but there is something that can be done. We need the flower!"
"The flower?" Ludwig was confused.
"The flower that grew at the spot where Natalya died," Lukas explained. "When we tested the flower, we told you it was white magic but what we didn't tell you was it also contained a soul."
"Why didn't you tell us this?"
"We thought if you knew, you might destroy the flower out of fear," Lukas replied, candidly. "Arthur, Vladimir and I had the premonition that the soul would be important. It seems we were right."
"But the flower disappeared over a year ago."
"Which means we must find it!"
Soldiers and servants from the three kingdoms of Italy, Germania and Spain were sent out to look for the flower and they went far and wide but the flower was closer than they imagine.
Katya had replanted the flower at the top of the cliff that Natalya had fallen from. No one went up the cliff and Ludwig had only done so because he had been forced to. She wove a cover of leaves and twigs so from the ground it just look like a shrub and for a while, the flower escaped detection.
But Katya's luck ran out!
Katya only went to the flower at night to renew her youth. She had to do it regularly for, as much as she used the magic to become young, she seemed to age at a much faster rate. She thought perhaps it was because Natalya had probably stabilised her ageing and Katya did not know how to do that.
She uncovered the flower and sang the spell. The flower spores flowed over her and she regained her vigour, unknowing that the flower's hiding place had been revealed.
A lieutenant and a trio of soldiers were making their way home from another failed attempt to find the flower when one of the soldiers spotted a glow at the top of the cliff near the castle and pointed it out to his superior. The lieutenant decided to check it out to see if it was a threat to the safety of the castle and they made their way to the top of the cliff.
Katya heard people coming, put the cover back over the flower and ran, not realising that, when she swung her bag over her shoulder it hit the cover and knocked it away. She hid behind a shrub as the soldiers came into sight and that was when she realised that her precious, youth-restoring flower was exposed.
And there was no time to go back.
The soldiers came into sight of the silvery glow and could not believe their eyes when they finally located what the whole kingdom had been looking for.
"We found it," the lieutenant breathed. They immediately dug the flower up and wrapped the roots, then they carried it away while Katya watched with growing fury.
Prince Ludwig stood by anxiously as Lukas dropped the flower into a potion he had prepared and they watched it dissolve and turn the potion silver. Lukas then poured the potion into a goblet and gave it to Ludwig.
Ludwig took the potion to Feli's sick room when he had grown sicker and was too ill to leave his bed. Ludwig sat beside his husband with Lukas standing in the background.
"We found it, Feli," he said. Feliciano looked up at Ludwig with exhausted eyes in an almost white face.
"Ve ~," he replied, weakly. Ludwig put his arm around Feli's shoulders, lifted him up and put the goblet to his lips. Feli could only take small sips and it took a while for him to drink the whole potion but when he finished Ludwig laid him back down to rest and Feli went to sleep.
"What now?" Ludwig asked Lukas.
"Now we wait!"
Feliciano recovered quickly and Lukas confirmed that the soul that had resided in the flower was now absorbed into his unborn child. The whole kingdom rejoiced when he safely gave birth to a baby girl. She had blonde, almost white hair and blue eyes with a hint of purple. A week after she was born, Ludwig and Feliciano released a lantern, a gift from the Kingdom of China, into the sky.
"We still need to name her," Ludwig said as they watched the lantern climb into the air.
"Ve~, I know," Feli replied, cuddling the new princess as she slept in his arms. "But we have time."
As it turned out, they did not!
The day IT happened, Ludwig had a gift for his new daughter. The day she was born he had commissioned the Royal Jeweller to make a crown for her and the jeweller worked night and day to get it ready. A beautiful crown made of gold with petal-shaped pink and green diamonds. The baby giggled and reached for it, her eyes drawn to the glittering stones. Feli laughed as Ludwig put it on her head and it fell down, stopped only by her ears.
A puppy of one of Ludwig's dogs wandered in, drawn to the laughter, and toddled up to the family. He knew that the tall blonde man led his pack, the brunette was his mate and, by the scent, the little blonde creature was their pup and he wondered if she would like to play with him.
Ludwig spotted the puppy he had named Berlitz and picked him up. He held the little dog up to his daughter who giggled and patted his soft fur. Berlitz licked her face and she giggled more.
Yes, Berlitz thought, he would remember her scent and they would be friends forever.
But their friendship was cut short that night!
Katya waited until everyone had settled down for the night and crept through the castle, avoiding the night guards as she made her way to the nursery. What she was considering had only a chance of being right but she was desperate enough to take that chance. She had grown dangerously old and on the verge of dying.
She crept into the nursery, keeping as quiet as possible as the Princes were asleep in the next chamber. She moved past the table that held the new crown, silently to the crib where the baby princess slept, moved the sun symbol baby mobile above it away and looked down at the little blonde head, praying that she was right as she took a lock of the baby's hair on her aged and wizened finger and sang in a creaky voice.
Flower, gleam and glow. Let your power shine
Make the clock reverse. Bring back what once was mine.
What once was mine.
The baby's hair began to glow and the skin on Katya's hand began to smooth out and lose its bony appearance. She sighed with relief as the rejuvenation spread to the rest of her hand. She would take a lock of the child's hair and she would remain young forever. She took out a pair of scissors and snipped the lock.
The detached hair stopped glowing and turned auburn as did the lock of hair it was cut from and Katya's hand went back to its aged state. Katya gasped in shock and then realised what she had to do.
Ludwig and Feliciano were awoken by their child's crying, followed by the sound of someone moving around in the nursery. Both scrambled from their bed and ran to the nursery in time to see Katya climbing over the balcony with their infant daughter in her arms, disappearing into the night. Feliciano fell to his knees and cried.
His family was cursed.
Katya needed somewhere to keep the child so she would not be found and she knew just the place. There was a deserted tower that Katya had accidentally stumbled across on her original journey to find the flower and it was where she had been living. It was in a hidden glade that could not easily be found which was what Katya needed as she knew the princess's disappearance would bring out the resources of three kingdoms to find her.
Katya named the little girl Natasha and would keep her in the tower. She would never lose her precious little flower again.
Three years later...
New York, The New World (Soon to known as America)
A faint light began to glow in the deserted street and brightened. There was a flash of light and an eight year old boy with blonde hair and a cowlick fell unconscious in the street. He lay there for a minute before a man, going home from the tavern, stumbled into the street and stopped at the sight of the child lying on the ground. Not a man to care much about his fellow man, he went to walk away but he was not heartless enough to leave a child like that so he staggered to the boy, knelt beside him and shook him to see if he would get a response and the boy was not dead.
The boy groaned and moved slightly. The man shook him harder.
"Hey, boy," he slurred. "You all right?" The boy woke up and turned to see a man with dark reddish hair looking down at him. He looked round, confused.
"What's yer name, kid?" the man asked.
"Alfred!"
"Alfred what?" The boy's brow furrowed as he thought about the question.
"I don't remember," came the distressed answer.
"Where're yer family?"
"I don't know!" Alfred's eyes filled with tears. Oh no! The man had no patience with children at the best of times, that's why he put his own twin sons in the orphanage. He especially hated them when they cried. Actually the orphanage was not a bad idea.
"Don't cry, kid!" he ordered. "I'll take yer somewhere they can take care of yer." He took Alfred's hand and lead him to the orphanage where they took the man's name, one Frederick Jones. They took the boy in and gave him the name of Alfred F. Jones.
And Alfred F. Jones would eventually make his way to Italy.
Another three years later...
History was repeating itself for the Italian Royal Family.
When the Princess was taken, the soldiers of the future Triple Monarchy were dispatched to find her, the most dedicated coming from her Uncle Lovino and Antonio's kingdom, the abduction bringing back bad memories for Lovino who hated the thought of his little niece perhaps suffering the way he did but there was no sign.
Every night, on her birthday, Ludwig and Feliciano would release a Chinese lantern into the sky in memory of their lost daughter. It became a tradition for the people to also release lanterns for the missing princess and a cloud of lights would rise from the town. Ludwig and Feliciano were touched by the support of the people and it helped to ease the ache in their hearts although it would never take it away completely.
And maybe, one day, it would call their little girl back to them.
Little seven year old Natasha climbed out of bed and sneaked past her mother's bedroom in the tower in which they lived.
They had lived in the tower for as long as the little girl could remember. Her mother would not take her outside, telling her that outside was full of danger and evil people who would want to take her special gift away while brushing Nastasha's hair as she sang her their special lullaby.
But as Natasha grew, she noticed that, on her birthday, floating lights would appear in the sky. It was her birthday today. She opened the shutters and, sure enough, lights drifted up and across the sky and the little girl smiled. Somehow she knew the lights were for her and one day she would see them for real.
Two years later...
In the seaport, three boys deserted the ship they had signed on as cabin boy and crew. Two were twins with dark red hair and brown, almost reddish eyes. One was missing a tooth and another had a nose that had been broken at least once and that was the only way to tell them apart. Allen and Alex F. Jones were fifteen and were already harden by their experiences in the world, unlike their thirteen year old companion who still had dreams and aspirations that he would never tell his colleagues about.
He had come to Italy for a reason. He had no conscious memory of anything before the age of eight but he had dreams in which he saw three people. All blondes, one had green eyes and big eyebrows, one had blue eyes and a stubbly beard and there was a small boy with violet eyes who looked like him. He did not know who these people were but in his dreams he was wanted and loved so he believed that this was his family and they had not abandoned him.
What brought him to Italy was that, as well as English and French, he could speak Italian and he had no memory of ever learning these languages and in his dreams, Italian was sometimes spoken so now he was here looking for his lost family.
And nothing was going to stop Flynn Ryder!
I kind of cheated a little here. Yes, it's Belarus but it's 2p! Belarus because, ironically, she's not a psycho and the Rapunzel character is not a nutjob. And when thinking about the Stabbington Brothers, 2p! America stuck in my head so I doubled him up (will the world survive? XP)
In Hetalia Tales 1 : Sleeping Beauty I mentioned that, for a moment, Natalya's empty cloak glowed for a moment. That was the first clue. The flower that I mentioned grew where Natalya died in Cinderella was the second. The flower disappearing and an old woman kidnapping Feli's and Ludwig's daughter from the nursery were clues to which story I would be using.
The next chapter will begin the story properly (this chapter was more to set up the rest of the story) An old friend will make an appearance and Natasha and Flynn/Alfred will meet. And watch out for Berlitz!
So till next week,
Hasta la Pasta!
