Hey everyone :). I wanted to try my hand at a series of pairing-inspired fairytale fics, so here's the first one! Hope you enjoy :).
Perhaps they had thought their lives too bland. Perhaps it was simply watching their hair slowly fade to salt-and-pepper, the last embers of their youth slowly burning out. Either way, the king and queen were suddenly possessed with the insatiable desire of a child, an heir to the throne to lead the Northern Kingdom when their hourglasses of life were empty.
How exactly that first child came to be is either a state secret or a mystery. Perhaps they tried and were simply given their reward. Perhaps they had simply taken in an orphaned child.
But perhaps the queen had gone to see the Lady of Winter.
A shocking thought, that the Northern Witch, whom the royal bloodline had attempted to cast out from the Kingdom again and again (to no avail) was consorting with the desperate queen. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and perhaps the queen stood, clad in furs, before the Witch, who was, in popular recollection, a tall and coldly elegant creature, much like the icicles that lined the walls of her cave.
The Northern Witch was famed for making deals, and we suppose the queen made her deal with the Witch.
Some say that that night, they saw the queen and king building a snow sculpture outside in the ice courtyard. It seemed from far to be a petite form clad in scraps of twinkling blue fabric, arranged as a simple dress. Servants whispered about the chapped red hands of the royals as they worked, and some more loose-lipped blabbered about a ceremonial dagger, runic script engraved on a glittering hilt, raised above the hands of the pair as they worked molding the snow.
The dagger had fallen from the king's hand at the last moment, the head butler wheezed, staining the snow figure with two royal bloodlines.
But all speculation. And from speculation, nothing can truly ever be found. Like siphoning the dirt and sand of the earth to find a lost wedding ring, it's time-consuming if anything, lending nothing to the
All the people knew was that, six months later, a pale-lipped, girl, feet sliding noiselessly over the castle tiles, was received as Hinata-hime, the king and queen's daughter.
She was a strange child, with a smile that seemed tragic and chilled the blood of whoever saw it, despite it being a warm, genuine smile. Some whispered darkly that her chest, though blessed with large and bountiful breasts from that first day she entered the great hall, never seemed to rise and fall, even in sleep.
She resided in a corner of the place built solely for her usage, a quarter built of rooms of hollowed out ice, icicle chimes ringing in the winter wind as it passed through, bed crafted from fresh-fallen snow, complete with blankets made of the same stuff. Strange, but there was more.
She had an aversion to heat, that was what they said. The act of drinking hot soup on the feast of her arrival, some speculated, melted her snowy intestines away. Most certainly, she had cried out in pain at the feeling of the liquid fire trickling down in her body.
From that day on, she never ate and lived in her own quarters, watched by servants, told that she could not go outside unless it was dark and an escort was present.
Perhaps the life of this daughter as an invalid was not good enough. The queen should have made a better deal with the Witch, if she had, that was for certain. All they had was a liability in the form of a child, without the benefits of watching that child live a natural life. So some say the queen went for another deal.
If so, this time she traded her health, and eventually her life when the second, flesh-born daughter tumbled head-first into existence. Named Hanabi, this was the determined heir to the Northern Kingdom.
Over the years in the Kingdom, the servants continued telling tall tales. They said that Hinata-hime had not aged a year since entering the palace, while Hanabi sprung up like a weed each year. They told tales of her strange violet eyes, so like the queen's, and yet she could not be a human child. She was an aberration.
One month, a traveler from the South, with wheat-colored hair and strange blue eyes came to the North.
His eyes were reminiscent to the Northerners of a summer sky they'd never seen, and somehow, looking at them in the center of his tan face almost enraged them. Their world was not the center; they were not all that mattered. There was more, and it killed them.
Attacked by wolves one night, mauled and face covered in a steady stream of crimson, he made his way, staggering, to the nearby palace. The moon above shone overhead, almost seeming to wink knowingly.
For the staggering of the wounded man coincided with the midnight stroll of Hinata-hime.
It may not have been love at first sight, but she couldn't deny her fascination. He was unlike the people of her frozen north, dark-haired and pale-skinned and grey-eyed. His coloring seemed to evoke the forbidden sun she watched in daylight hours from her chamber of ice, golden and brilliant, luminescent.
She brought him to her chambers and rubbed snow, which had always seemed to heal her afflictions, into his facial scars, waking him from a daze.
Those blue eyes may have been what sealed the deal. The naïve girl, entombed in her own safety and the protection of ice, had an innocent's heart still, and he won her over.
After healing, he was exuberant and extremely talkative. His name was Uzumaki Naruto, he told her, of somewhere called Konoha. He was here because he'd simply felt the urge to travel. He told her of Hokages, of monuments carved in something called stone, and though she didn't understand, she smiled still.
"Hinata-chan" He called her, and he would mention in passing that he was grateful to her. But somehow, though she didn't know it, she craved hearing some other words.
"You Northerners are really pale, dattebayo."
She smiled, filled with glee that the conversation had turned to something she could comprehend.
"But…" he trailed off, plucking an icicle from the ceiling wall and flicking it to the side nonchalantly, "It suits you."
That's it.
That's almost what I want to hear.
Her heartbeat pounding, she listened, hoping there was more.
And to her luck, there was, over the coming months that Naruto spent at the Northern Palace.
"You're…sorta pretty, Hinata-chan…" A red flush over his face as he stretched out a hand towards her. As she gently unfolded his warm fingers, she exposed the snowflake melting in his fox-fur gloves, a stunning geometric mini-wonder.
She could have had it last forever.
"You are sure you wish to marry her?"
"That's what people do, isn't it, Hiashi-sama?"
The king sighed and rested his head in his hands.
"My late wife and I…we went through so much to have a child. She was the answer to our call."
"I can take care of her, dattebayo!"
"You don't understand. There are complications."
"I don't care." A pause, a facial reddening, proof of the difference between him and her. "I…think I love her, dattebayo."
"If there is nothing I can do to change your mind, at least accept this."
A strange gold medallion, interwoven runes carved onto the front face, opening up to reveal a strange clock. It only had two hours, and the single hand seems to be suspended over the second hour, no ticking sounds emerging from the gem-incrusted spectacle.
"What is this?"
"A gift. If you ever regret your decision, you may turn this knob at the top and go back to before you decided to make your choice."
"I don't believe I'll use it, dattebayo."
But still, he clutches the priceless artifact in his palm, feeling rich while he holds it , if nothing else.
The wedding is private and is over quickly.
In the ice chambers, the princess and her bridegroom entwine together, her coldness mingling with the warmth of his blood, his fox-fur coat strewn over his back, her body liberated in the coldness. Pleasure and pain to her at the same time.
Most of the time, it is painful, the heat coming off him in poisonous waves. But looking into those cerulean eyes, she bears it.
He whispers to her as they move, one body, one soul, whispers of love and adoration, of eternity.
…
But of course, he is mortal, and eternity for him is only a word.
As the years go by, his hair fades to lighter shades of wheat until it is shot through with streaks of grey, a few wrinkles slowly begin to appear, and his virility dies down, to the simultaneous relief and indignation of his wife.
She never changes, face still dewy and pale-perfect, eyes still alight with youth. Her body does not go to waste, still formed as if carved by a master sculptor.
She still loves him, even with his transient life, still laughs at his clever words and hangs onto him. But perhaps her devotion and naivety is a blindfold, for she cannot see his struggle.
How to hold on confronted with something that does not change. How to live with something young and strong while watching his own form crumbling at the ends, an old statue almost falling into ruin. How to live with someone who would never have children for them to leave behind, for he knew she could not.
It drives him mad.
Drives him to push the dial back on the now-tarnished golden clock, to disappear back into the folds of time. Blood running down his face again, this time he staggers away from the castle.
"I loved her…dattebayo."
A whisper to no one in particular.
It is a cruel clock, for it only turns back time, not memories.
She sits at the window, head in her hands, sobbing cold tears that freeze on her fingertips. Her father cannot think of how to comfort her, and doesn't.
Soon he dies, and her sister Hanabi is queen.
How many, how many more years before Hanabi too dies? Grows old and shaky with rheumatism like Father? Lies in bed, senility fogging her memory?
And how long until they stop wanting her?
An eternal annoyance, that's what she is.
No one can handle her. How long before she becomes a relic of the past, stored away to keep from irritating the public with her very presence? How long before this chamber truly becomes her tomb?
It comes to her in a flash, and instinctively, she understands her own will.
"I wish to walk outside."
They don't stop her, maybe her sister knew that this day was coming. Or they just want to see her go.
Either way, she walks out of the ice chamber.
She undoes the clasp of her cloak, tossing it aside. She won't need it.
Stretching out a fingertip, she touches the ray of light.
Searing pain, fire spreading across her body, her finger slowly ending its life as an appendage. The liquid it has become falls to the snowy ground in drops as she bites her lips not to scream out an the unspeakable agony. Slowly the orb of light shines down on her entire body, and immolating from the inside, she feels herself lose form.
She drops into the snow and forms with it, becoming it, losing herself.
Hinata-hime?
Who's that?
And there is silence, for snow has no memories besides that of falling.
"Naruto-kun, you shouldn't have taken us for a holiday! It's probably too expensive!"
"Not to worry, Sakura-chan, I've got it all set out, dattebayo!"
"Papa, aren't we stopping in the North?"
"No!"
The pinkette, lush and beautiful as spring, turns to him and scowls just a little.
"Tell your daddy…" she says to the child clutching her hand. "that he should let us just visit for a day. After all.." She smiles at Naruto. "What can one day do?"
He agrees to save his hide. Maybe it won't be so bad.
He watches his child play in the snow, exuberantly creating snow-angels and shaking the whiteness off of pine trees with the quiet happiness of a parent.
His child is beautiful, a blessing, even though before he would have never even used that word for anything out of fear of sounding corny.
It somehow makes it worth it…
"Daddy, look what I found!"
A blue velvet cloak drenched in sooty snow, clasped around his child's neck, too big and trailing on the ground.
Throat catching, he recognizes it.
"Where…."
"She found it buried underneath all the other snow." His wife's voice. "It's just some ratty old cloak, baby, put it away now…"
Suddenly he snatches the nasty, snow-dampened thing from his daughter's grasp and runs towards the palace, body trembling.
He looks frantically inside the window of the ice chamber, trying to find a familiar pair of lilac eyes.
In the end, there is nothing, and he only has his memories reawakened, churning doubt and pain in his gizzard as he feels tears slowly begin to slide down his face.
And he has the cloak as well, proof of his callousness, proof of her misery, proof of a futile love come to an inevitable end.