Overcoming Boundaries

Chapter 1

-o-

The Engagement

I guess that it is all a part of being young. I thought that I was on top of things. That I knew it all. I thought that I knew what it meant to love someone – I thought that it meant to protect. That was before my shaking fingers ran through her hair, and I wanted to circle those golden locks around my fingers and tie her to me forever. It was before I craved the vision of her with my eyes instead of becoming a victim to my own shyness. Before I held her tight and my arms grew to miss her shape whenever she was not near. Before I kissed her lips and found that I was to walk famished every moment I could not taste her. Before I realized she was a drug driving me crazy, and now I feel that I know nothing at all.

"I absolutely refuse!"

A loud echo bounced up the stone walls when the chair tumbled to the floor. The young man, standing by the table that filled up most of the circular room, was taking deep breaths while waiting for the furious blush on his cheeks to fade. Bangs were left in a mess after he had run his fingers through them, again and again. The navy cape was hanging askew over his slender shoulders. There was only one more person in the room. A man in sky blue robes and a heavy white mantle. There was no mistaking that this was a hardened man, shaped by battle. The great crown defined the thick line formed by his eyebrows and made him look stricter and more intimidating than he already was. Still sitting – his hands locked together – he peered at his son, more amused than baffled by his outburst.

Since the day he was born, Marth had not raised his voice against his father once. The boy was meek, tender and obedient to a fault. Not a single thing King Cornelius said or did would change his son into the heir he had wished for. In spite of years of training, Marth still looked as frail as a maiden. He did wield a sword with perfect technique, but lacked the spine to use it against a foe. That he had a knack for writing and dancing was of little use for a war nation. This sudden defiance was a first, and it was hilarious. Not only because Prince Marth was not even half the size of his father whom he opposed, and less fearsome than the meekest lamb, but because the young man imagined himself to have a say in the matter.

"Son, a week has passed since the portrait arrived, along with the request for marriage, and we cannot insult a great nation as Hyrule by withholding our reply," Cornelius said and the prince pressed his lips together. The king almost let a chuckle ruin his composure when he saw his son's struggle not to speak out of line. "Those long-eared Hylians have always kept to themselves. They've prospered behind closed doors any man would kill to open up. A union with them would be most beneficial for Altea."

"For Altea?" Marth exclaimed, too upset to muster the self-control needed to stay silent. "You're the one who has always said that a true king is out there on the battlefield alongside his men. I should be on the front line protecting Altea! How can I be expected to stay behind and fuss over some foreign princess when people are dying out there?"

"You have not been to battle once yet. You are far from a king, and if you plan to become one you will sooner or later need a queen. Might just as well be sooner."

Marth crossed his arms and gave it another shot to fume in silence. Cornelius took the opportunity to indulge in sweet visions of the future alliance, taking his time to fill the silence with vivid descriptions of the battle skills of the Hylians and their great bounty. How could anyone turn that down?

"I thought that you, with your fondness for doves and flowers and poetry, would be thrilled to spend your days courting a beautiful lady rather than going to war," the king finished his long speech. The contempt he felt for the things he spoke of melted into each word.

The prince's eyes fled to the side. He breathed in and his impatient breaths slowed down. It was not becoming of a prince to lose his temper over mere words, he reminded himself. Not over words purposely chosen to upset him. Not when he had heard every insult a thousand times already. He had since long reconciled with the fact that his father would never get over what a disappointment he was.

Marth ran his tongue over his bottom lip as his mind frantically struggled to scramble together the pieces of the speech he had been preparing and rephrasing in his head for months now. If he wanted to persuade his father he needed to keep his head cool. A calm mind was one of the most basic rules to being a successful debater. Another was timing. He had not planned to bring this up, not for another year or two – perhaps more – but desperate times called for desperate measures. This was an opening he could not allow to pass him by, as it might be the last one.

"If... If there is a gaining alliance we seek, we could... should further strengthen our bonds to Talys. Their network of... of communication, not to mention their squad of reliable pegasus knights, would be of great use and..."

King Cornelius burst out laughing." And a marriage to Princess Shiida would be the best option," he finished his son's sentence for him. "Is that it?"

The hot blush returned to Marth's cheeks, and the silence spoke in his place. His gaze avoided the king's mocking eyes and his arms, which gestures had helped emphasizing the weight of importance his words had carried, fell down to his sides.

"Forget that childish crush, son. Remember that a prince is a prince before anything else. Besides, we are already on good terms with Talys and their flying ponies."

"Well, they might turn against us if they hear about this," Marth hissed through clenched teeth. He glared while the bubbling anger was slowly, slowly getting closer to boiling over, and his voice trembled when he added, "Shiida expects me to ask her. Everyone does."

"They do? Your relationship must be progressing smoothly. For all of Talys to be this insulted you have to be kissing her in public all the time."

Of course Marth would never have tried that even once. He did not have the guts to approach a woman, less a noble woman whose virtue was to be respected and guarded above all. Marth was the kind to romanticize women from afar rather than experiencing them firsthand.

"W-we have a silent agreement."

"I guess that settles it. We have an agreement of word with Hyrule, and soon a written one that I will send today."

Marth could not even blink. His hands were balled into fists while the sight of his father's smug face burned his retina and refused to flicker for a millisecond. The prince's cheeks felt hot and he would not have been surprised if steam had come out of his ears. He ran his fingers through his hair, grinding his teeth at how difficult it was to think in this heat. But he could not be allowed to lose his temper. He could not.

"I-I love her!" the young prince exclaimed desperately. But what was he hoping for? That love – his faith in the greatness of love – would be powerful enough to change the heart of a man that had never changed his mind?

Love, such abstract of a thing. Was it not so pure and good it drove mankind into sin for it? It ran through war as well as peace. Through grief as well as joy. Through life like blood through veins. Even beyond that – into death. If one denied it, was it not out of fear for something as inescapable as this untouchable? Or pride in front of such might? Only one thing Marth knew for certain, he was not one ashamed to love.

"You do not know a thing about love," Cornelius said, looking Marth in the eye.

"Only because I have never kissed a girl it does not mean that I do not understand love," Marth snapped, guessing what his father was about to say. "You're the one who fails to see – and I feel sorry for Mother for being given away to a creep like you. Love is not only physical. It is more than that and I pity you who will have rotted away in your grave before realizing it."

King Cornelius scratched a spot near his temple before he turned back to his son, watching him with eyes calm like the mirror surface of a pond. "I was not making fun of your inexperience with women, son. What I was saying was that you do not understand the feeling."

Marth felt all steam run out of him. Was this man, this cruel and heartless man, telling him that love was something he could not fathom? How could there be any truth in such a statement? If there were, he was at sea – drifting lost amongst dark and stormy waves. He could but to stare at his father, begging to be tossed a few words of explanation to cling to.

"Although..." Cornelius spoke and Marth's gaze flew to his lips. "It would not harm with some practice, now when you're engaged and all – or you'll end up making a fool out of yourself. I'm sure that the castle maidens would be thrilled to be of service and, besides them being close at hand, you can keep track off any bastard children."

With a cry of rage Marth burst out of the room. He should have known better than to expect that man to have anything of worth to say. King Cornelius was incapable of loving, and any wishes for it to be different would be a waste. Unbeknownst to Marth, his father shook his head at the empty doorway. An affectionate smile on his face.

A servant carrying a pile of clean sheets pressed himself to the wall when the furious prince stormed down the dark and narrow hall. The many questions and his own statements were swirling around in Marth's head, to the point that he did not take in his surroundings until he had forcefully pulled the door to his room shut. Everything emerged from glowing blind spots as the fog of rage cleared. He pushed some dark bangs away from his eyes. He did it tentatively, as if the anger was a monster that had crawled back into its cavern and he could not trust this sudden calm it left behind.

The young prince, his back leaning against the door, covered his eyes and took a deep breath before his hand fell from his face. The first thing he laid eyes upon was the accursed portrait. The life size portrait of his bride to be that had arrived a week ago. He sauntered over to the foot of the massive bed and sat down. He hunched over, locked his hands together and leaned his head against his knuckles, raising his gaze to the painting.

"Princess Zelda," he mumbled quietly to himself.

The memory of the sand-colored cloth being pulled off the painting came alive in his mind. Her eyes had been looking straight into his with the soul of a living being. The artist had taken great care to mix in lavender shades in the many blues of the irises, and added the purest white specks of light that shined in the otherwise dusk piece.

He liked being close enough for the structure of the canvas to be visible. To discern the technique. That way Marth could tell himself that this was a construction. An illusion. Because such terrifying beauty was unreal, and the fact that it did look real made it even more terrifying.

Beauty was nothing but beauty however. Granted, women were strange and entrancing creatures, beautiful in a hundred different ways, but this meant that Princess Zelda could merely add a droplet to a sea. True love was the only thing that could heighten a woman's beauty above that of all others. He knew. Across the Akaneian continent there were plenty of pretty princesses. All breathtakingly beautiful. He had seen several of them and Marth fancied himself immune to the many traps they amounted to by now. He could admire them the same way he admired flowers, appreciatively but with a clear mind. It was the exoticness of this Hylian princess that had caught him off guard. Nothing more.

He kept watching in silence. The pallor of her milky white skin rivaled the surface of the pearly moon. The mesmerizing eyes were sharp and observing, like a cat's. The long ears were terrifyingly alike those of the dragon kin when they took human form – the mysterious dragons that were the reason for so many wars and so much bloodshed. The amount of gold and jewels that hung around her waist, across her chest and on her shoulders made his own midnight blue armor feel heavier. Symbols unknown to Marth rimmed the lavender bodice, covered the pauldrons and traveled up from the hem of the silky white dress. Images decorated a long pice of cloth hanging down the front. They were horrifying. Snaking vines. A growing seed rooted at the bottom. A bird with three triangles in place of its head. As if she were garbed in witchcraft. Everything about her was foreign and frightening.

No, he had come to loath every part of this Hylian enchantress. Every detail he could have found stunning filled him with disgust when he thought of how those false feelings could ensnare him and trick him. Because he could never accept a life together with this woman. Being drawn to her would only mean disappointment, failure and sin.

The prince glared at the stiff expression of the painted princess and dragged his feet over to the mahogany desk at the window. He tore the feathered quill from its stand, ripped out a piece of vellum and dipped the quill in ink. He pressed the tip down on the smooth material, and a huge blotch of black spread on it. The thickness of the black, the poor and angry shape of the blotch; as ugly as his own suppressed fury that had made it spill made Marth sag in his seat. With a long sigh he laid the fine parchment aside and placed a new one in front of him. With swift yet gentle flicks of his wrist the quill moved lightly across the page, leaving three words for Marth to stare at.

My Dearest Shiida

An unfamiliar sound – throaty, whining, painful – came out of him when he tossed the letter away from himself and allowed it to flutter off the desk without giving it as much as a second glance. He pulled out a new sheet and wrote quickly.

My Dear Shiida

The quill stopped moving. How could he tell Shiida that he was betrothed to another woman? He felt the words that wanted to escape the quill. The question whether she would consider leaving all of this behind and escape with him. Would she agree to elope? To wed him even without land, gold and honor? To leave her own country and comfortable life for him?

Marth knew that he could never write those words. All he could do, and all he wanted instead of this fool's dream, was to tell her with his own words why he was getting married to another. He could not ask her to wait for him to find a way out. He had to be a man and keep his head high for both their sakes. The second letter fell to the floor and the third one was started.

Dear Shiida

Marth paused yet again. The two words, written in leaning elegant letters, looked in their simpleness stronger than truth itself. Shiida was the one who was dear to him. In that moment he decided that he would never allow Princess Zelda to feel at welcome in Altea.

(A/N)

I have been resisting posting this for months now. The reason is that I am not even close to finished with the second chapter and I have a lot of stories that need my attention more. I am just as dedicated to all of my stories, but because I always switch from one to another I have decided that it is better for me to work on a couple of them on the side instead of having plenty of stories posted with about 1-2 chapters each.

Tonight I gave in to my weakness. I want this posted. I have wanted to write a story revolving around Marth and Zelda for so long. A good traditional romance. Ironically, the heroine of the story has not showed up yet and it takes two to tango, right (I sense my old bad habit of never getting to the point being at work). In any case, Marth believes he has just been engaged to some fangirl sending pictures of herself to make him fall in love. He might be in for a surprise.

I would not like to mislead anyone so I might just as well mention that Shiida, although Marth writes to her in this chapter, is not planned to make a single appearance. That might change but as of now I have nothing in mind for her.

I hope that you enjoyed this first chapter. Thanks for reading.