Title: Fairytale
Chapter: 1/author not well organised enough to know how long this thing will be
Characters: Pretty much everyone
Pairings: Sephiroth/Cloud, Zack/Aerith, Tifa/Rude, mentions of Sephiroth/randoms and others as we encounter them
Rating: R overall
Summary: An angst-light fairytale about a cursed prince.
Warnings: Yaoi, het, violence, language, a cavalier attitude to historical accuracy, silliness and bloody Sephiroth being an angst muffin.
A/N: Modern English in what in my head looks an awful lot like 18th century Europe. Calm down, it's fantasy and Zack is totally a time wizard anyway.
"Thirty years ago, a king and his queen ruled the largest and most prosperous country on Gaia. For many years, they were without children, and their people shared their sorrow. As the years passed, and the queen began to age and the king began to fear they would never know the blessing of children, the king ordered sent out word across the land asking for the help of any enchantress, sorceror, surgeon or herbalist that could give them the baby they wished for so much.
"Day after day, enchantresses came down from the mountains and in from the northern iceflows, sorcerors rode from their remote peninsulas, surgeons travelled from every town, and herbalists altered their trade routes to tend to the king and queen. They tried potions and spells and charms and leechcraft and finally prayer, but nothing seemed to work. The king and queen despaired.
"As springtime approached, the queen spent more time in her own corner of the gardens. She had resigned herself to knowing that her lilies and forget-me-nots would be her only children. One chilly day in early spring, she entered her garden to find someone already there.
"An enchantress waited for her, and, telling the queen of her sorrow on her behalf, gave the queen a potion in vial carved from ice. She promised her that, if she drank the potion that night an hour before she lay with the king, they would conceive a son. Before the queen could ask anything of her, the enchantress had vanished.
"That night, the queen followed the enchantress' instructions, and drank the potion before she lay with the king. Sure enough, they conceived and that winter, the queen gave birth to a son.
"But something was wrong. The baby boy was weak, and the queen weaker still. The midwife tried everything she knew, then she called for the king's surgeon. The surgeon knew at a glance that there was nothing he could do, and he called at once for a priest. At dawn, the queen was laid to rest in the royal crypt, her infant son in her arms."
Cloud paused and took in the five upturned faces at his feet. Emery looked bored; he'd found a caterpillar on the tree trunk beside him and busied himself gently picking it up and attaching it to Giselle's braid. He conscientiously tucked a leaf into her hair for it to eat. Giselle hadn't noticed, she was listening to Cloud's story, her expression one of puppy-like infatuation. Beside her, her brother, Willem, frowned up at Cloud.
"That's it?" he demanded. "The queen dies, the end?"
"Well, yeah," Cloud shrugged. "That's history."
"What happened next, then?" Willem asked. "What happened to the king?"
"He died of a broken heart," sighed Giselle. Her friends, Gretchen and Annalisa, sighed rapturously. Willem rolled his eyes and Emery made a gagging noise behind Giselle. He stuck another leaf into her braid for the caterpillar.
"Well..." Cloud paused for effect. Unofficial history lessons be damned, he liked telling the kids stories. "They say that as the queen lay dying, the king rode for three days and three nights until he found the enchantress again, and he begged her to save his wife and son. She agreed to save his son, but her magic wasn't great enough to save the queen. Furthermore, the enchantress' power came at a terrible price: the prince was cursed - "
"Is that crowned prince Sephiroth?" said Willem. "Everyone says he's cursed."
"Who's everyone?" demanded Giselle. "Only grandmama says that, and papa says not to listen to her."
"Maybe," Cloud said, cutting them off before they could begin to argue. "If the story's true. The books all say that the crowned prince is the first son of the king's second wife, Jenova."
"How was the prince cursed?" asked Emery. Curses were so much more interesting than royal lineage.
Cloud leaned forward conspiratorially and dropped his voice into a dramatic whisper. "He has to eat the flesh of living humans to stay alive."
"Raw or cooked?" asked Emery. Giselle and her friends squealed in disgust.
Suddenly, the sound of someone approaching along the path came across the clearing; whoever it was moved through the bushes at a brisk jog, dead leaves crunching under their feet.
"Look out!" Willem leapt to his feet and pointed. "It's the prince, come to get you!"
The girls squealed and sped away, back toward the village, nearly barrelling into the young woman on the narrow path.
"Cloud Strife, have you been filling their heads with stories again?" Tifa, the daughter of a local nobleman - the local nobleman - appeared at the edge of the clearing. Notorious for escaping from her tutors and dressing like a working woman, with her sleeves rolled and her skirts pragmatically to her ankles, her father had despaired of her ever growing into the fine lady her mother had been. His dismay only deepened when she became friends with Cloud and rumours began to circulate when they became inseparable. As the years passed, though, Tifa bloomed into a woman every bit as lovely as her mother, and found herself more of a practical sister than anything else to the ever flighty Cloud. Now, she stood with her hands firm on her hips and her chin raised.
"No," Cloud said, his expression at its most innocent. "They asked if I'd give them a histoy lesson."
He smiled and her stern posture gave way.
"And that stuff about the prince being cursed?" she said. "I don't think that's in any books I've read."
"You heard that?" Cloud glanced at Emery and Willem. "Home time," he told them. "It's getting late."
They watched the boys trail away in the same direction as the girls. When their footsteps had dwindled into the distance, Tifa turned back to Cloud, a frown on her face.
"It's treason," she said "saying things like that about the prince."
"Who'll know?" Cloud asked. He stood up. "It really is getting late. Won't your father be worried you're out by yourself?"
Tifa drew herself up in a way that she'd seen her aunt - a duchess, apparently - once do. In Cloud's unspoken opinion, it'd have been more impressive if she were taller.
"I'm almost twenty," she said haughtily. "If I'm old enough to get married, then I'm old enough to be out on my own."
"With the town witch's son," said Cloud. He began to walk back toward the village, Tifa falling into step beside him.
"I'm not worried about people talking," she peered at him. "And I know you're not."
They walked in companionable silence for a while. A little ways ahead, before the uneven path inclined sharply downward to the village, the path narrowed. Cloud stepped into the undergrowth and held a whippy branch out of the way for Tifa.
"Where did you disappear to today?" he asked. He fell into step a couple of paces behind her.
Cloud couldn't see her face, but he was sure he could hear the grimace in Tifa's voice.
"Apparently Queen Jenova's decided it's time that crowned prince Sephiroth got married."
"Aren't you a little... common for that?"
Tifa half turned and swatted him across the crown of his head.
"I mean," Cloud said "you're not a princess, no matter what your father calls you."
Tifa snorted, sounding most unladylike.
"No one of um, appropriate rank," she immitated the polished accent of the ruling class "wants to marry him. Because of that flesh eating thing."
"Treason, Tifa."
She swatted him again, hitting his clavicle this time because of the slope of the path.
"So Queen Jenova's trying to find someone who isn't around court enough to have heard the rumours." She glanced at him, almost nervously, he thought, over her shoulder. "Father - father doesn't believe the rumours."
Cloud stopped walking abruptly, and Tifa turned to face him. He tried not to look disapproving, and she reached over one shoulder and played with her hair, uncommonly girlish in her discomfort.
"I'm not actually marrying him," she said hurriedly. "Nothing's been - I mean, there's no arrangements or anything yet. The messengers only left this afternoon with Father's ... Father's acceptance. They might still say I'm too common or, or there'll be someone else who accepts that they ... like better."
She bit her lower lip, hands folded in front of her. She didn't want to marry Sephiroth, that much Cloud could see, but he wondered if there was something she wasn't telling him. He knew she loved him much as he did her, but he doubted it was just that she was going to miss him.
"You don't believe the rumours, do you?" he asked.
"No, it's stupid," she said. "I... Cloud. I never told you but..."
"Someone else?" he said. Something in his chest pulled taut with loss; some childish resentment that his best - his only, really - friend might abandon him for someone else. He applauded himself for keeping his voice neutral.
Tifa put her knuckles to her lips. Cloud had never seen her do that.
"He's only a blacksmith's son," she said eventually. "From the lowlands."
Being a member of the peasant class gave Cloud a somewhat different perspective on what constituted a good marriage partner, and he nodded approvingly.
"Good prospects and a solid trade, then," he said. Tifa laughed, voice tinged with hysteria.
"Cloud! Father won't approve," she twisted her hands in her overskirt and Cloud wondered how they'd gone from joking about flesh eating princes to worrying over Tifa's future. "And I haven't got anything to offer, I don't know how to do anything - anything useful!"
Unable to argue with that, Cloud instead wrapped an arm around her shoulders and gave her a comforting squeeze.
"Don't worry just yet. The prince will probably choose some Eastern princess with nicer legs than you and the local lords will be disgusted by your pragmatism and lack of embroidery skills. That'll make your father realise what a hopeless noble you are, he'll get to work having another, better daughter, and you'll be allowed to marry your blacksmith. Everything will be fine."
Tifa smacked the palm of her free hand into his face.