Kyon x Haruhi
Chess Pieces
"The White King thinks the game of chess is wrong!"
Haruhi woke in a chill sweat at the thought of the strange and improbable dream she had just had, but soon calmed when she remembered that more than anything she liked the strange and improbable, and actually wished for more of it to come into her life. She had, in that odd way that you can be when trapped in the mental imagery of a dream, been convinced that she were Queen of her own land, a land at war with their neighbours, though it was already starting to fade a little: she remembered a throne, and a black and white floor, and a great and heavy crown on her head. It had been a good dream, the sort that made you wonder the next day at the truth of it, for surely something with that much clarity could not have been mere illusion?
She sat up, and rubbed her eyes. The clock on the wall told her in its silent face that it was twenty to five in the morning, but she felt too alive now to go back to sleep. Instead she threw back the covers and let her bare feet touch the cool floor beneath them, sighing as she stretched and tried to get that numbing ache of sleep from out of her limbs.
Haruhi Suzumiya was a one of a kind in more than a few ways: there were not many people in the world that could boast of knowing someone as strange and as passionate about the bizarre as Haruhi was, nor were there many who could honestly admit that they were close enough to her to see the girl behind that oddity, but that was more for her habit of isolating people without fully meaning to than because of how strange people thought she was- oh, they thought it all right, but few people ever really held it against her. Had she been another sort of girl, she might have sent a message to a friend, despite the late hour, and would have laughed about the dream with people at school the next day: as it was, she deemed it personal, and smiled to herself and decided to keep it secret.
And besides- the only one she might have told was Kyon, but she wasn't speaking to him at the moment- sometimes he really was too banal for words.
Eventually she got to her feet entirely, still in the dark, and moved towards her bedroom door. Though sleep was the sensible option, she abhorred doing something so menial and dull as what was sense, and so she ignored that her eyes were drooping and left the room that was still heavy with the taste of a long and deep sleep, hoping, perhaps, to find something elsewhere in the house that would let her focus, and remember the dream again fully, so she could make a note of it: all she could really remember now was that it felt so convincingly real.
How could she remember it?
The Great War had lasted for well over four years now, and as far as the peoples of the warring nations were concerned, it had gone on for far too long. For a war that none of them understood to begin with, for one that seemed to have no cause or meaning behind it, it was a lot to ask of such people to fight without proper justification for so many years.
The borders of each Kingdom were devastated, land burned and trodden down by the now-depleted troops of both armies. Farm land had turned into muddy fields full of trenches and barbed wire, though for much of the time few gunshots could be heard as the two armies sat in total stalemate. Countless had died in the needless battles, and none could even remember anymore how it had all began: some slight, the people of the Red Queendom whispered, towards their Queen, though the people who were ruled by the White King claimed that it was the work of her unscrupulous followers who attempted to control their beloved King. In all fairness to both parties, it could have been either easily: The Red Queen had been known to sink to many levels of depravity before, and the White King had a quick temper and could be rude at times. Perhaps only the rulers themselves could recall, though neither of them would ever be drawn on the subject.
Each Kingdom sat surrounding a hill, upon which two mirroring palaces sat, glaring at each other across the vast valley that lay between them, a glinting snake of a river in the middle the only indication of a boundary between the once-green and beautiful fields.
The White King's palace was one of grey stone and of a practical structure and size: it fit all that he had a need for and was not particularly imaginative in its design. Though it had dungeons it held no secret rooms or passages, no heavy curtains to hide and spy behind and nothing at all that was eerie. The first time that the Red Queen had been shown around it, back when they were still at peace, she had been quite disappointed with the lack of full suits of armour or bare skeletons in the cellar, which should have been there as evidence of the King's merciless regime (The White King had no such regime, not really, but it should have been good of him to keep up with appearances, his rival had told him with a modest bow of the head, "for you will never know when people are secretly plotting your death").
The Red Queen had everything that she had criticized the other palace for lacking- archaic clutter. Suits of armour? She had them a plenty, as well as creaking doors (she asked that the hinges were not oiled specifically) and every room had its own secret passage attached, which lead to a whole number of rooms without any other doors, and some to the outside. It had a moat and a drawbridge and a great pack of dogs that guarded her day and night. The walls were panelled with mahogany wood so that it seemed to be unnaturally dark even in the middle of the day, and she often pulled the floor length, thick velvet curtains across to shroud herself fully from light that came in. The White Palace's garden was flagged with stone slabs and bordered with neat and authoritative hedges: in the Red Kingdom, the royal garden had stepped straight from fairy-tale, each shrub shaped into something miraculous, flowers poking their heads out in bright and abstract colours around the heavy and beautiful shades of green.
Both sides were immensely different.
She was a good Queen, but known to be unpredictable: almost overnight you could wake up and find that her silent and obedient minions had re-shaped the entire landscape around your front door, and though she was rarely outright cruel she could be incredibly manipulative of her courtiers and anyone whom she wished to get anything off, and she rarely realised the immorality of her actions until she was half-way through, obviously by which point it was too late to do anything (and so she just ignored it- after all, being supreme ruler did have some perks).
She had great armies full of men and women with impossible powers and incredible strength, but the White Kingdom was one of people with no particular merit at all, other than their ability to defend and to constantly push forward. Many- including those in the White army- had questioned how they had not already been defeated, but their King was a firm believer in the worth of humanity, that inherent and common power that was, more often than not, overlooked: it might not have been spectacular in the sense that it would never be some huge, visual explosion of power, but what a man could achieve with their own ingenuity and the force of his arm and belief was pretty incredible too- the Red Queen had seized her throne through her own capability and that of her terrifying private troop of unusually tall men that dressed in blue, but the White King had been put in power for his diplomatic skills and his ability to control a situation, and he had been chose by his people.
The White King considered himself to be both more and less than any other person in his lands: though he sometimes forgot that he was special he was also well aware for the most part of his importance in the shaping of his Kingdom, which he was forsworn to protect and so always strived to do. It was regarded that though he was not as harsh a master as the Red Queen, he certainly was the weaker, though he had a sharp tongue when he was riled.
The two monarchs had sat across from each other for months that had stretched into years, waiting for the other to give. The true secret of the war was buried in time and court intrigue, but it had begun, as all great things, with a small seed of discontent. The treaty of peace between the King and the Queen had never been as solid and unwavering as the nations had hoped, for both were too stubborn and unwilling to give up anything to consolidate such a parley. As such, the relationship between the lands had always been tenuous and uncomfortable, but the King showed disinterest to the Queen's whims once to often, and in a haze of anger and frustration she had challenged him to a game, the winner being the one who would not have to give up anything to consolidate their agreement.
The game chosen (by the representative of a neutral Kingdom south of where their own lay, side by side) was chess. The Queen hated chess. She had no time for games of monotonous patience and skill.
The White King had won. In his heart of hearts, a heart back then already chequered white and red, he knew that he should have let her take the victory.
Unfortunately, the Queen had never taken well to failure, and had promptly declared war on the Kingdom of the White King to avenge her pride and to finally conquer them, so as to finally win total control. Each army mirrored each other perfectly: sixty four troops in contrasting red and white uniforms, flags flying above them in the breeze announcing for all the worlds to know that these two once-allied peoples, peoples who had once been friends and family, brothers and lovers, were now willing to die for the cause of the slaughter of the other.
Four years of this, before the White King had enough.
"My Queen! The White King approaches the castle! He wishes to talk to you!"
The Red Queen sat on her great throne and threw her sceptre at the wall hard enough to break a lesser one, though this was made of old and much stronger metals and so it merely clattered to the floor, where a courtier ran to pick it up and then back to her side to give it to her with a respectful bow.
Her throne was on a great podium, towering above the black and white floor like the columns that arched either side. She wore a great pointed crown and a long red cloak, but the trim of it was the purest white fur that brushed against her cheeks and made her scowl when she was in a bad mood.
"Let him enter."
Their guards stood before them across the great chequered floor of the throne room, the two royals surrounded by loyal foot soldiers and knights, who had left their steeds outside but still brandished fearsome weapons in fully-armoured hands. The King and Queen stared levelly across the room at each other, the lady in red sitting on her high throne with a leg crossed impetuously, mouth turned up in a sneer at the man in white who stood before her, arms crossed and eyebrow raised sardonically.
"Are you here to grovel?"
He shook his head slowly.
"I am here to forge a peace once more."
"Why should I accept a peace?"
He turned his head to the side, nose in the air, obviously unimpressed with her. One eye still watched her, cautiously gauging a reaction.
"Because we should learn to be more careful with our power, Queen. We have a duty."
"A duty it has taken you four years to remember?"
He turned back to her.
"A duty that you still cannot recall."
The hall echoed with a ringing silence as the two stared across at each other. A flicker of doubt crossed the scowling and beautiful face of the Queen, though the King's remained grave and unsmiling. Her courtiers shivered: no one dared to question the Queen, no one dared to criticise. Who knew what her reaction might be? Eventually she inclined her head, and spoke almost as if she were talking to herself (indeed, had it not been for the cavernous acoustics of the throne room, no one else might have heard her question).
"But what does he bring, what does he deny me this time, to make good our deal?"
Barely broken, the silence intensified as all but the King shuffled and looked at each other nervously, not knowing whether this was merely the brief and fatal calm before an inevitable storm. Slowly, ominously, it began to rain outside, pelting the window with increasing volume.
The King raised an arm to the side. All but the Queen looked at him. She stared out the window, as if looking for something through the haze of grey on the far distance.
Nervously, perhaps a little unwillingly, a man stepped forward in the garb of a bishop, carrying a casket in his hands. He was dressed all in glittering white, robe sewn with incandescent beads, though once the men of the cloth had worn both colours in equal measure, as a symbol of their neutrality. He took eight steps further, until he stood right before the dais from which the throne glared, away from the throng, and with great ceremony pulled the lid upwards to display to the Queen what lay inside it.
She looked sharply up to stare at the King.
"You offer me the crown to your Kingdom?"
He shook his head.
"I offer you the crown of Queen. And, if you will, I will have the red crown of King."
Breath shuddered its way around the onlookers, some in sighs, some in deep intakes of breath as the Queen finally stood, hands fisted at her side, glare once more firmly in place.
"Are you suggesting that we seal our peace with the exchange of crowns?"
He shook his head, and undid the clasp that fixed his great white cloak around him that had thus far obscured what he was wearing. As it fell to the ground a collective gasp moved from courtier to courtier, as each saw what the King had dressed himself in that morning. He was wearing the ceremonial white garments of his office, but they had been altered. Some hand had taken them and dyed one half of them a brilliant and vibrant red as the Queen's own clothes, though in the middle it had weakened and turned a whole new colour, a faded red mixed with white until it became a shade far warmer than either.
"I am suggesting that we enter into a union, my Queen. A true union, this time."
The Queen lifted her own red robe away from her feet and took incautious steps down from where she had sat and glared for years, but paused at the edge of the chequered floor, as if still unsure whether to enter the game that the White King was weaving.
He held out a hand to her.
"Haruhi?"
She went to take his hand, a smile scoring her face.
"It is the dalliance you wished for long ago, and I refused."
She nodded, still smarting from the memory.
"I accept."
He smiled in return then, in his three-tone clothes, and she turned to shout barking orders at her people.
"Take down all the red flags, call off this war! Mix this new colour, this is one that it both of us and neither, and announced that we two Kingdoms are once more at peace."
"My men," the White King announced, "send word back that we are to stand down. Remove all of our flags, raise the new ones!"
Cheers went up around the kingdoms as the once-White King took the hand of the once-Red Queen.
"Hey, Kyon?"
He turned to her, an eyebrow raised. She had been ignoring him for the last three days after he had particularly displeased her, and her silences normally lasted longer than this unless something in particular distracted her. She had her hands in the air as if in surrender, and he had to blink at the sight, half-convinced that his own mind was making it up. Haruhi? Surrendering? Surely not?
"Checkmate?"
She was smiling at him, and after a moment, he felt himself surrender to the inevitable abnormality, and smile right back.
That night Kyon dreamt of a wide and golden valley, united underneath one improbable colour. He saw from a vantage point of a birds how children played in the river in perfect safety, how hundreds of bridges had been built that linked the two banks. Then he realised that there was another bridge: a great, long one made of wood slats and rope that spanned the entire length of the golden valley, linking two imposing houses that stood on opposite hills.
Each palace waved huge flags in the air, flying in the breeze at the top of great and curling spires: each were identical, red next to white, and the colour that the two made.
Kyon woke the next day with the strange feeling that he really, really should wear a pink shirt to the SOS meeting that day.
"Go to the store by the dungeon, take all the red paint,
Take all the white, make up a newborn colour,
Cover your neighbour, we'll be all right."
Pink Floyd