A/N:
It's been far too long since I posted a new fic (a year or something?) and there's many different reasons ranging from a broken charger to depression to school to just lazy, but I'm going to start trying to post more often from now on. I have a few fics I'd like to post soon, and hopefully I'll be able to without much trouble.
So, without further ado, the fic
When he told them about his sister, the Dragon's Diva they laughed. They told him he was crazy, that he had an overactive imagination. He had no sister, and the current Diva was older than his mother. Other children pushed him down, laughed when he called himself her protector. His parents berated him on those afternoons for starting unnecessary fights over someone who never existed.
Yet when he dreamt he saw her, and she felt too real to not exist. He could feel her hand when it touched his, her heartbeat against his own when he embraced her. He knew what her voice sounded like, and even after he'd awoken he could still smell the lilies she'd put in her hair.
He watched her dance like clockwork –sometimes in the dreams he was her– and he could feel the gravel underneath her feet and the way her voice imitated an orchestra, could see in the eyes of the Dragon what he had always known. His precious twin sister was so easy to replace.
On days she didn't have to dance, or when the Dragon was asleep he watched her as she limped into the little sliver of light in her cave to examine her blistered feet. He felt her tears roll down his own cheeks as the pain, the isolation of her unfortunate burden took its toll on her. It was when she hurt the most that he couldn't touch her, couldn't hold her and comfort her, but could still feel every emotion as intensely as she did. The next night he always made sure to hug her, and told her a thousand times that when he was older, stronger, he would free her from her prison. She'd say, always so light-heartedly that that freedom was the one thing she truly yearned for. Yet she'd slip out of his embrace and stand in the first stance of her ballet and sing of all the things she had only seen through his eyes. The first flowers of spring, the heat of summer, the golden leaves of autumn and the first snow. The stars, the sea, the sun, the rain.
He grew bitter over the years, learned of the little lies of the Kingdom. He knew the reason why it was so easy for his peers to ridicule him was that like everyone else, they believed that the Diva lived in luxury and ate like royalty as all the Priestesses did, but his sister was just barely skin and bone, her greatest luxury was the pendant she now wore around her neck, and she was no Priestess. If anything, she was a sacrifice to ensure wealth to the wealthy.
He would sit in that little dark corner and watch her –eventually become her– as she did that same old song and dance, a painful ritual that left her feet bloody and her throat sore and her body too weak to limp back to her bed. He could feel everything, see everything and would wake up to realize that even though they were turning fourteen together, he would be turning fifteen alone.
His parents brought him to the basement, locked the door and in hushed whispers told him that his sister, who was very very real, had been taken away for the sake of the Kingdom soon after the previous Diva had passed, but if he tried to reach her, tried to get her back for whatever reason, they would never let him bring her home. His sister who was not an elaborate hallucination but a living breathing human being who was forced into the life of a caged songbird and was suffering and dying because of it, and he would be hated by everyone equally if he ever tried to reach out to her.
That night he did not dream of the cave. That night he dreamt of a grove, endless fields of flowers and trees and plants. A true paradise far away from humanity. That night he held his sister's hand and led her through it, named all the plants and trees and animals, let her dip her aching feet in the cool water, watched her face as she tried the berries that grew on the various greenery, watched her smile and laugh and dance and sing, not because she had to, but because she was happy.
By dawn the next morning, he could no longer see the village he'd grown up in in the horizon. With his father's sword at his side, and a satchel full of provisions he decided that there was no better time than the present to be her knight in shining armour.