A/N: This is more like a character study in an AU where my test headcanon can bold up. I've read somewhere that contrary to popular characterisation (that Denmark acts happy and kind but has a dark and malicious side), this character is always sad and worrying on the inside. This is an effort of mine to bold that up. The OC is just there, because I need him to be there. No particular reason for his existence. You can think of him as anyone you like.
Thank you for having read this story.
"A piece of the sky would be so cool, yanno," the king mumbled.
"Yes," the doctor agreed, absentmindedly.
It was true that the weather was being splendid; had he been any other ordinary (free) doctor, he would have canceled all appointments, left the work to his apprentice and spent the whole day on the green hill, bathing the warm sunlight. But the doctor was no ordinary doctor, so he came to the palace at two p.m. as he was previously ordered, in full attire but with an utterly bored (dying) expression.
And really, the only thing that could motivate him enough to trap himself in the palace was that his patient was the king himself. But even that reason was failing to wake his sense of duty, the doctor lamented, because of the current political situation, where basically no one gave a damn about whether you were royalty or not. To be frank, everyone hated the king. And most of the palace. But the blame was mostly on the king, so three quarters of the people had stopped caring about his existence, and there was a very tempting chance that the doctor would become a national hero if he neglected the king's treating and accidentally killed him.
However, the doctor liked to think that he was politically unaware, thus became somewhat of a hermit; and so he nobly fulfilled his duty of prolonging the king's life and keeping him company in his fancy prison cell known as the royal bedroom, just because he was a good man. And the king wasn't really that bad of a person either, if you squinted hard enough: he was talkative and lively, sometimes annoyingly so, and he knew how to tell a story. During many of their appointments, the doctor was actually amused and cheered up by the king's attitude.
Today was not different. After having taken the pills, the king got himself worked up over a game of Tetris while the doctor sipped calmly on his tea, planning his evening now that he had wasted the whole afternoon in the palace.
"Sorry for making you go all the way here," the king spoke toward his phone. The doctor shrugged.
"I do not blame you, my king-"
"Really, just call me Mathias-"
"-no matter how much I miss the outside world."
"-or just Matt. You're British, right?"
"German, Matt. German."
"See, Matt's all better."
The doctor could have boasted about the king himself being on a nickname basis with him, but again, in the current situation, it would do more harm than good.
"You're free to go as you want," Matt the king mumbled, concentrating on the game in front of him. "I've got the maid. I can very well live three more days with just that. I'm tough."
"You are the king Matt, you are to decide."
The king smiled. "Thanks Doc."
Taking a look at his phone (three new messages and a spam e-mail), the doctor blew on his tea gently. He read the messages: nothing important. "How's the story going?"
"Oh yes, that!" The king suddenly sat up straight, almost hitting the tea cup with his shoulder. He jumped out of bed excitedly and ran to his desk. Crouching down, he used both of his hands to pull out an epic-sized pile of paper sheets. The doctor briefly considered standing up and helping him, but before he could made a decision, the pile had found its place on the bed next to his arm. "Good thing you remind me Doc," the king beamed, climbing into bed. "I have loads for ya to check out."
"The honor's mine, my king," the doctor mumbled.
"Matt."
"Yes."
While the king continued his Tetris game, the doctor skimmed through the first page. The king's handwriting was neat, in an almost unnatural way; but the time spent not signing things and writing meaningless monographs had worn out the uncomfortably orderly lines: the letters now looked more at ease and took more space. The doctor smiled at that.
"Where are you?" The king asked. He misplaced a piece and lost the game, but only gave the phone a small 'aww'.
"Matt, I'm only forty seconds into this." The doctor sighed.
"Okay."
The story took up exactly where it left the doctor last time (frankly said, he couldn't remember what he had read last time for his life), and the protagonist was now on his way toward the underground city. The doctor hummed and flipped through the pages; the king had an okay talent, his stories always made decent reading materials. Too bad his doctor and part-time prison mate wasn't into fantasy adventures.
"Emil." A name caught the doctor's gaze. The king coughed at his phone.
"Yeah, Emil. What's with that?"
"A nice name, that's all."
"No kidding," the king laughed and lost another game. "We don't hire a royal namer just to watch him scratch his a, man."
The doctor resisted the urge to ask about the royal namer. "Emil is a royalty member then?"
"My brother." The king shrugged. "The ones with nice names are all my brothers. Except for Berwarld."
"He's not your brother?"
"He is, but his name's dumb." The king sighed dreamily and looked at the pile of paper with apparent love and care. "I have one small ending to complete, and then it's all done. Kids are gonna love it, aren't they?"
"Sure." The doctor resumed his reading. "Emil, Lukas, and you said... Berwald?"
"There's Tino too. He's my step-brother."
He misses his brothers, of course, the doctor thought. The king would have been the sociable type back when he was still in actual reign and not a trending curse word. Or, more likely, the subtle man-of-family type, because for five years spent on his throne, the king hadn't exactly made a lot of friends. It had been a 180-degree turn of reality when the doctor spoke face-to-face to the king, and now that he had gotten used to this talkative, lively man, the public portrait of King Mathias seemed to him a tiny bit absurd.
The doctor let out a sigh that briefly distracted the king from his game again. When trapped, one could so easily lose oneself to negative thoughts. If he had to life the rest of his life in a bedroom, he was sure that by the end of it he wouldn't be be as sane as he preferred to be.
But, the doctor mused, look at this young man. Just two years over the age of thirty, and already on the other side of the hill.
"How's the quest thing," the king asked. The doctor could just say the truth that he hadn't gotten a thing in his mind since he started reading, but he thought too good of himself to act rude. So he read through the passage quickly.
"Emil seems like a free soul," he concluded. That earned him a laugh from the king.
"Yea... he's one of a kind. Yanno, he hasn't even finished college yet by the time of my coronation... He just seems so eager 'bout those rocks that no one cares about. Good thing he's free to do what he wants."
The smile on the king's face was bright and happy. The doctor raised an eyebrow.
"He studies rocks?"
"Yep," the king grinned, the Tetris game forgotten in his hands, beeping his lost. " Lukas is a spy - or at least I think so. Hasn't seen him since forever. He's busy. Berwald has his own company. Dude's obsessed with furnitures, for some reason."
"They aren't burdened with royalty works, it seems."
The smile fluttered. "Yeah."
Deciding at last to take the writing more seriously, the doctor lowered his head, sipped on the lukewarm tea and dived into the pages. If he was more imaginative and maybe just some years younger, he would have been able to appreciate the vivid description and the feeling of wonder in every sentence. Wasn't it sad for the young royalty: imprisoned with only the presence of an old boring man every three days for an afternoon. And yet he was so eager to show that old man his effort, even though he probably knew that all his excitement was meaningless to him.
The king sighed in what could be called nostalgia. "They get to do their things now... Good story." He continued the dialogue alone. "At first the gov wanted Berwald, but it turned out he was born a woodsmith, and by that time he had already been engaged to Tino, and that guy's family's so antisocial... they want nothing to do with a king."
No kidding, the doctor swallowed one more gulp of tea.
"So I stepped up and save his a, even though they didn't actually want me, because, yanno, I never know how to back down and that'll give them loads of problems. But they rethought it after a while and agreed. So I became king, and he sold tables and fridges for a living and got a husband."
The king looked somewhat sad, but the doctor decided to pay it no mind. He surfed through four, five pages: it seemed like there was only one more chapter to read. "Being king must be fun."
"Nah."
"Sorry to hear that."
"There's some guys in the gov that I just really wanna punch in the face, but doing that in public's a no-no, so I shake their hands and laugh at them. Attitude keeps people going, something like that."
"You did a good job at disguising you emotions," the doctor tried to cheers the king up. The young man only replied to his effort with a sigh.
"Yea, thanks Doc. I noticed some shady things those guys did, so I counterattacked. I blew it. My strong point is telling story, man, not governing."
"At least you know you blew it."
"Good point."
Not good enough, the doctor heard the nonexistent whisper. Not good enough to bail me out of this.
"You should ask for your brothers, you know."
The king laughed again, with a fading bitterness. "They're only civilian now. A whole royalty system, one king. No princes. The gov had a tradition, if they wanna use me, they cut every connection. But I'm okay with staying in a bedroom, I can write whatever, I get my phone..."
The doctor didn't look up from the pages in his hands. He only heard the king's voice mutter silently.
"My brothers stay out of this."
The doctor half expected the guards to bust in and interrupt the king's speech at this point, but no one came between the thick silence between them. Realisation hit him just like that: no one's going to hear the story of a villain.
The reading was almost to an end. "The power always ends up in wrong hand," the king cried out. "We finish this here! I will be the end of this madness. No-one is to take this from me!"
"There is always better men to expect," Emil held up his sword. "I know three."
What a fantasy for a half mad man, the doctor thought to himself. "There'll be an election in some month," he said, again absentmindedly.
"Yeah."
"There'll be a new king for the palace."
"Yep."
"What after that, my king-"
"Matt."
"-Matt?"
The young man smiled. "Guess no one's gonna need two kings. No one wants two dudes sitting on top of them."
There were so many worries, so many theories in the doctor's mind, but after a sip of tea he just let them all slip. He wasn't made to poke his nose in his patient's personal life. He had a life to live. He only had a bit of pity to spare, and that would be all that he gave the king. Just enough to call him Matt as he was requested... and to feel sorry for him, for having only this uncaring hermit as his conversation partner.
"But I will finish the story first," the king smiled again, and it looked so genuine. The doctor, just to be polite, gave the page in his hand a half-smile too. "And I don't know man... maybe you can help me send it to one of my brothers? Not Lukas, he's hella busy, he's gonna be angry at me..."
"It would be nice if the king gets a happy ending," the doctor commented. "Have you ever thought of that?"
The king raised an eyebrow at him. "You think?"
"He seems like a man of good nature."
"I donno..." The king ticked his tongue. "But he's the bad guy."
The doctor gave that a sigh. " You did say that fairytales were one's wildest dreams."
Two men looked at each other. The doctor saw in the other's eyes a flash of - what was that? Dream? Hope? (Why hadn't he seen that in this man until now?)
But he was not made for this, the doctor reminded himself.
The king laid down on his pillow. "It is," he smiled wearily, and resumed his Tetris game./.