Summary: AU. Growing up in Domino, one of the last monarchical countries in the modern world, Joey Wheeler used to dream about one day befriending the strange, solemn prince splashed across the headlines. Ten years later when chance comes knocking on his door in the form of the boy who might have been king, it's time to discover that there really are no clear boundaries between dreams, luck and fate. On the battlefield of adulthood and on an international stage, a few very important people are about to discover that princes and tailors are never quite who you think they're going to be. After all, this is no ordinary fairy tale.
Warnings: There will be fluff, snark, politics, original characters, smut and, at some point, a few darker themes. Additional warnings will be added as needed; rating may later be raised to M.
Disclaimer:I don't own YGO or any of its characters, and I am not profiting from this fan work.
Break: A Fairytale
Prologue
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Once upon a time there lived a cold and handsome prince who had come to believe that he never needed anyone else and that he could live all of his life on his own. And so he might have continued to believe, only that once upon a time there also lived a talented and unorthodox tailor who was never very good at taking no for an answer.
This is a story about them and how between them they managed to change everything.
When Joey Wheeler was a young boy, he used to lay awake at night and imagine stories. He was a lot like other boys his age in this respect; there were the usual number of Sith lords, Jedi warriors, pirates, ninjas, race cars and explosions. But when Joey was very young, only two or three, his mother used to sit beside his bed and read him fairy tales of all kinds until he finally dropped off to sleep, and for whatever reason these stories became a little bit engrained into his two or three-year old heart.
After his mom and his sister Serenity left, Joey and his dad had to move to an apartment in a part of town where everything was dirty and sirens echoed down late night streets. They lived on the top floor of their building, and Joey would lie on his bed upside down and stare out the window through the fire-escape to the sometimes starry sky overhead. And he told himself stories as the ambulances and fire trucks wailed and a girl started crying somewhere across the street.
Sometimes he was the prince, out to rescue the princess from the evil warlock, or sometimes he was the dragon who wouldn't let anyone mess around with his hoard of treasure. But most of all, Joey always loved the stories about working together. Hansel and Gretel was one of his favourites because it was just like him and Serenity, and someday they'd be back together and they'd beat anybody who tried to hurt them or break them apart again. But he also liked the stories about friends working together, about Knights of the Round Table questing for a holy grail, about princesses dressing as knights and befriending and falling in love with princes while fighting by their sides.
As was probably natural for a boy of his age and disposition, Joey was fascinated by the real royal family and particularly by the little prince he knew to be the exact same age as himself. With a young child's brilliant imagination, Joey painted scenario after scenario in which the two of them solved mysteries, won sword fights and sailed across the ocean. Even in the quietest parts of his childhood Joey was never really alone, not when both his imagination and his daily life were full of personalities and vivid colours.
Whether as a reflection of this strong affinity for others or as a result of it, Joey made friends fast and easily no matter where he was. He'd made one of his best lifelong friends by the time he was seven, and he spent a lot of his days tearing down alleyways and diving behind boxes and vans as other kids pelted after him, cops and robbers gone delightfully right. Especially when his dad started to get a little weird, this is what Joey generally relied on to see him through to the next day when they could do it all over again. Nothing stays easy forever, or even for very long, but there were some happy years.
In the twilight of Joey's childhood, before things got too difficult for cops and robbers and stories to make it alright, one particular news story washed across the country like a shock wave. It was this and only this: at eleven years of age the crown prince of Domino was finally coming home.
The night it happened Joey, like most of the rest of the country, sat in front of his dad's little tv set with his arms wrapped around his knees as the lights from the old box flashed against the darkness. He and his father watched the cars roll up as the police fought to keep the reporters back, and he held his breath through the scrum in the rain and the dark and the lights as everyone in all of Domino waited to see the face of the boy who would someday be their leader for the first time in seven years.
Tomorrow there would be a press conference and everyone in the country would tune in to hear the official statements, to see the two little princes stand beside their father, and to breathe a sigh of relief because everything was going to be okay. But tonight, tonight almost as many people sat not quite believing tomorrow would come, desperately hoping for a glimpse that would prove that it wasn't a hopeless dream. It was a little like a fairy story, the wayward son (albeit absent through no fault of his own) finally come home at last to resume the position that always should have been his. At least, that's the way the newspapers and the excited journalists described it.
Finally, finally when the press had been pushed back far enough and the police had established a firm boundary line, the real movement finally began. Joey would remember for years afterwards the way everyone in dark suits had hurried around, officious but nervous and exhausted looking as they tried to ceremoniously help the perpetually out of sight young boy out of the car and towards the darkened house. They did a good job, as only one camera managed to get a real shot of the boy that night, there in the wind and the dark and the rain.
Across the city, also eleven-year old Joey Wheeler watched as, just for a moment, the half lights and one rain-spattered camera picked out the face of a dark eyed boy who stared back impassively and somehow also forcefully, no expression whatsoever on his face as he met the eyes of the country and the world. And then, not quite three seconds later, he was a dark blur once more, being hurried away into the night and towards shelter, gone again but also here to stay.
Tomorrow that photo would be on every page and every screen and every citizen in Domino would discuss how the little prince had looked so tired or scared or angry or sullen or sad or content. No one seemed to agree at all, and privately Joey would decide that they were all wrong anyway. In his storytelling heart he thought that the prince Seto Kaiba of Domino had looked only one thing that night, and it churned up the old stories he'd dreamed and, on occasion, sometimes still did. When he remembered those shadowed eyes and the dark shape of one young boy being walked towards the huge dark house he only had one word echoing over and over in his chest.
(Lonely.)
That was the night that eleven year old Joey Wheeler made an impulsive promise that he would bury under a thousand other things more important in his everyday life but somehow never entirely forget. He'd played with that boy in his imagination half of the days of his life, and his heart went out to the prince who was in a new place where he knew nothing and no one, and somehow still had to call it home. That night in front of the old little tv set in the dark of his father's shabby little apartment he promised that someday he would be the prince's friend, and then the boy with the dark empty eyes would never be alone again.
Strange as it may seem, this story really and truly begins almost ten years to the day after that remarkable night, on one bright and sunny August morning. Many things may be different after ten years time, but beginnings and once-loved stories hidden deep under years of frayed edges have a way of coming back to us when the time is right.
A/N: I think this is going to be a long one, guys. Let me know if you're into the concept, and I'll have the first full chapter up soon!