There is a lot I don't own in this story, so many influences. Nothing belonging to DC belongs to me. The JLA AU however, is something of my baby. So the fantasy setting and world-building is kind of mine.

While the primary influences for this story are the comics, there are also elements incorporated from the Young Justice cartoon (and later on, the Teen Titans cartoon) and a few less noticeable from CW's Arrow.

Royal Palace, City of the Star, The Western Coast

Ruadh was awakened by the near-silent sounds of one of his personal attendants tending the fire in his room. She was a pretty girl, probably a year or two younger than his own six winters and ten. Very pretty. Probably what Oli was thinking when he gave the major domo instructions for assigning someone for her position. (And from the way she moved she would take no nonsense from anyone, no matter who they were. Probably Dinah's input.)

The sun was just beginning to break over the horizon and Ruadh groaned and rolled over as the girl left, forcing himself out from underneath the many, fine coverings laid over his bed. Only a little more than a year and he was already becoming soft. It was hard to be enthusiastic about the day ahead though. He knew the majority would be spent either going over matters of state with Olivier (Dinah) or trapped in a room with one of his blasted tutors. He dunked his head into the washbasin and stared forlornly at the polished silver mirror beside the wardrobe. As far as he was concerned, the evening could not come swiftly enough.

*JLA*JLA*JLA*

Ruadh managed to make it to the very doors of the sunroom where the royal family breakfasted. Unfortunately, he ran into Dinah there. The queen-to-be took one look at him in his breeches and shirtsleeves, Ivor's wolf skin thrown over his shoulder, and pointed back the way he came. "You are not a child, Roi. You know what appropriate dress is."

Ruadh knew the expression he was making was remarkably childish but couldn't bring himself to care. "But it itches and its not like anyone in there cares."

Dinah looked slightly sympathetic but unmoving. "Consider it practice for the times when you have no choice." She gestured at her full skirts and her restraining bodice. "I do. It's the only way I can stand this cursed thing."

Ruadh blinked, feeling distinctly surprised. He'd never received any indication that she was anything but comfortable, whether she was Lady Dinah or The Canary.

She gave him a sardonic look. "I can't lift my arms any higher than my ribs." She said dryly. "And considering the number of assassination attempts Oli is victim of, it is hardly my favorite situation to be in. Now go."

With a groan, Ruadh trudged back down the hall, his fingers clenched on the edge of the wolf-skin. He knew he should be grateful. Hell's bells, he was. There was no reason for a king to take in a twice-orphaned "savage," let alone adopt him as his son and heir. And yet despite that, Ruadh missed the lands where he had grown up. The mountains and their mists, the smoke of the peat fires in the cold nights, the woad-streaked war parties, hunting wild cats and deer in the forests.

He knew, in his head, that Oli's people were his people but he had been no more than a babe in arms when his born-father had taken him and abandoned the coastal kingdom and fled into the Northern wilds, wrought with grief over the death of his wife, Ruadh's mother. Roi the Harper, Ruadh's father, had been...not welcomed...but aided by the Clans. Even those thought of as barbarians by the great civilizations around them had an appreciation for tales and music. Ruadh had vague memories of those early days, wandering the wilds, from clan-hearth to clan-hearth, the faint sounds of his born-father's harpstrings. He thinks his born-father had brown hair, his own flame-red must have come from his mother.

When his born-father had died in his fourth summer, Ivor of the Brave Bow had taken him into his hearth. That was when he became Ruadh, leaving his Western born-name behind him. He'd thought it for good. (The Clans believed it was ill luck to bear the names of the dead.)

And then Ivor had died and for a little more than a year he had been the camp-child, belonging to no one. It would have been harder were he not so skilled a hunter, even at only thirteen summers. He nearly always had something to trade for a few days of shelter. (It was a hard life. Even born-kin had to pull their weight, let alone an outsider.)

He still doesn't know exactly why Oli was in the Northern wilds but he had come across him, injured and cornered by an angry bear. Mere days later, a stunned Ruadh had found himself southward bound, clutching his bow tight, his small bundle of belongings bound to the same pack horse as the fresh-tanned bearskin. (It is ironic, that Ruadh gained manhood only to be taken from the People. To kill either a wolf or a bear is to prove yourself a man, with the right to a hearth of your own.)

Instead of being able to build a hut and truly become a part of the Clan, he was taken by a man with a strange, straw-gold beard who alternated between chattering at him like a squirrel in a language that Ruadh understood only a few words of and brooding in the depths of his ragged green hood in a way that made Ruadh wary.

After four days of hard riding their surroundings had changed from tangled thickets, craggy mountains, and scattered camps to more cultivated lands. There were still mountains and forests but there were also walled cities, irrigated fields, and gardens and orchards where the trees formed perfectly ordered, unnaturally straight lines that would offer little by way of concealment.

Every so often, the man in the green hood (as Ruadh had taken to calling him at the time) would stop to speak to a traveler or farmer. Ruadh never understood more than a handful of the most basic words but by watching those interactions he'd learned what he'd guessed (correctly) were their greeting customs. Most of the time he would stay back from the conversation, wrapped tightly in Ivor's wolf-skin that he had inherited and always wore in those days, the scent and weight familiar and comforting. It also helped him avoid the curious and wary looks he had received. (And sometimes still did.) But nothing could block out the whispers that he had not needed to know the language to understand.

He had not known who Oli was until the day after the night they had arrived at the palace, which had been bustling with a sort of frenzied activity that Ruadh had later learned was because their king had abolished slavery by transforming it to an indenture system patterned after Atlantis' and then disappeared for nearly two weeks. (Why, exactly, has still not been made clear. It probably had something to do with Lord Merlynn)

He had quickly learned of Oli's tendency to vanish and run off on some hare-brained adventure, leaving the care of his people in the hands of his mother, Princess Dowager Marion, until she was assassinated in the seventh month of Ruadh's life with them. He hadn't cared much for the woman, who despised him and made it very clear, but Oli had been devastated and Ruadh does not know what would have become of the kingdom if it wasn't for Dinah.

He wriggles into the brocaded jerkin that is considered essential here and makes a face at the abrasive threads against the skin of his lower arms. Oli had first met Dinah as The Green Archer meeting The Canary, but shortly after that Lady Dinah and her mother had returned to the Western Coasts for the first time since the death of her father, Sir Pascal de Lance. They had spent the previous five years or so living in the elder Lady Dinah's family home on Gotham Island in the East. Their return had been not more than three weeks after the death of the Queen-Mother and no more than three days before Dinah was acting chatelaine. And it had been plain for all to see, as clearly as that ridiculous beard, that King Olivier was smitten.

Nearly a year later and the entire kingdom was in the midst of preparations for the royal wedding. Mostly, Ruadh just hopes that they will have their own sons soon, so that he can leave Crown Prince Roi behind him and simply be. Whether as Roi or Ruadh he does not care.

*JLA*JLA*JLA*

He is late to breakfast and uncomfortable in the stiff trousers and heavy jerkin, fidgeting with the ridiculous half-cape that comes from the shoulders. He wonders if Robin knows that the Western nobility wear capes even smaller and more silly than his. Probably, the irritating little brat seems to know everything about everyone, while almost no one knows anything about him or The Bat.

Dinah's mother is forcing Olivier to discuss the day's schedule with her as Dinah serenely passes Ruadh a plate of the sad little things that Ruadh would trade a box of for one good, solid wheat-cake, followed by a bowl of fruit to eat them with. Ruadh gives a grudging thanks and takes a vicious bite, doing his best to ignore Olivier's sulking on the other side of the table.

Oli hates court days. He argues that he learns more about the problems of his people in one night on patrol as The Green Archer than he does in a month of court days where he listens to various nobles who want to complain about money.

Ruadh doesn't feel sorry for him, he is meeting with his etiquette tutor today. Oli can go jump off the cliff.

*JLA*JLA*JLA*

Ruadh will swear on his born-father's grave that his etiquette tutor is a magician who can slow time. No other three hours of his week ever lasts so long. As soon as the odious man leaves Ruadh wastes no time in stripping down to his shirtsleeves and climbing out the window. It is only a short walk to the stables and Ruadh ignores the looks he gets from the various persons he encounters on the way. None of them dare stop him and that is all he cares about. Siofra is in her stall and he doesn't bother with her heavy saddle, merely slipping on the bridle and coaxing the bit between her teeth. He swings up onto her and urges her into a trot heading out of the stable, he can hear people jumping out of their way but merely urges her onward.

The Palace, though well-defensible, is not far from an open field and that is where Ruadh goes to ride off the numbness his mind has slipped into over the past hours.

He has another hour or so before one of Dinah's retainers comes to inform him that his presence is required at the midday meal. By this time, both he and Siofra are soaked in sweat and he considers the benefits of simply showing up to the meal as he is. He decides that only Oli would be that sort of suicidal and reluctantly turns Siofra over to a groom to be watered and cooled off before rushing up to his rooms to bathe and change.

Lunch is made awkward by the presence of an ambassador from one of the Metros Empire's protectorates, a man who reminds Ruadh as nothing so much as a bullfrog and calls him "Prince Ru-ey", drawing the first syllable out so long that Ruadh thinks he has a stutter the first time he says it. Olivier looks like he is considering putting an arrow through the man just to shut him up by the time they get to the fourth dish and he still has not stopped talking once, not even when there is food in his mouth. Dinah looks like she wouldn't scold Oli too much.

The elder Lady Dinah looks like she won't give Oli the chance to put an arrow through him because she'll get there first and Ruadh is abruptly reminded of the fact that the well-spoken, elegant lady seated across from him was the first Canary and fought alongside other guardians in a time when there was but one other woman who did such things, and she a fae. He also remembers the many occasions he has heard her verbally destroy some idiot and suffer no loss in negotiations, only to have it graciously waved off afterwards because she "is of the House Drakon, after all." Whatever that means. (Oli says it means that she is scary, a wolf in sheep's clothing.)

No blood is spilt except Olivier's though, and that because he'd clenched his fist on the wrong end of his knife while holding in his temper. Ruadh pokes at his roast swan and wishes dearly for the evening to come soon.

*JLA*JLA*JLA*

After lunch and rest is spent training, which Ruadh would enjoy more if it was "real" training. Charging on horseback at a tiny hoop with a long stick is pointless, made occasionally painful by the noblemen's sons who are also taking the lessons from the Royal horse-master. It could be worse though, at least Master Raibert likes Ruadh (because he isn't an idiot) and one of the other boys is halfway decent. Sadly, all the young nobles his age seem to have agreed to be the most insufferable group of fops he has ever met, making him desperately wish he were a couple of years younger or older. Most of those boys are more than half-way decent.

He is good at the rings, his impeccable aim serving him well, and Siofra is, if possible, better than he, so while it is far from his favorite thing to do, the early evening is by no means so agonizing as was the morning. And once Siofra has been returned to her stall and an attendant has carried of his training armor he is able to make his way to the hidden door in the wine-cellar, where Oli is already waiting for him.

"Suit up." His mentor says with a grin, already overshadowed by the green hood. "We have much to do tonight."

Ruadh grins back and shoulders his quiver.

For those whose inquiring minds wish to know, Ruadh/Roi/Roy joined Oli/Ollie as his jr. partner two years previous to this story, at the age of 14.

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