A/N: Here, have something new because Plotbunnies, lolz.
Kiss of Iron
Prologue
Harry had died.
Again.
It was a rather common occurrence, all things considered. He had, after all, died many times before. He'd died young and old, violently and kindly. He'd died through sickness, murder, accident, suicide, and all things around and in-between, only to be reborn again afterwards. He'd been male, female, both, and neither. He'd been straight, gay, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, and countless other sexualities, enough times to find that you truly couldn't control that factor in your life.
Another thing you couldn't really control was your death.
10 out of 10 people die.
…Harry had just been every single one of them at one point.
Now, as he opened his eyes to his nth life, he found himself blinking up at a beautiful man smiling softly down at him, glowing inhumanly with tri-ringed eyes, a signature he recognized as being a sidhe trait. Harry stared up at the man, who, he guessed, was his father. He had dark crimson hair, long and held back in a braid well past his shoulders. His eyes were flame colored. A ring of burnt orange around his pupil, a crimson red around that, and a dark gold around the edge.
"Hello, little one," the man murmured to him, pulling him up to place a soft kiss on Harry's forehead, and Harry made a soft, questioning noise. "My little Harkin." Still smiling, the man handed Harry off to a different sidhe, this one a woman who bowed deeply to his father and took Harry a little ways away to clean. Harry eyed the woman curiously, taking in her bright yellow skin and hair, and her black, black eyes, making him think of a bee. After she finished cleaning him, she wrapped him in a soft green blanket and returned to where his mother and father must be. Harry shifted around in his blanket, and made soft, uncertain sounds. He'd never liked this stage of rebirth, being so helpless and reliant upon others.
A sudden, piercing cry echoed through the chamber, and Harry blinked, startled, as he heard his father crooning again and the gasping pants of what must be his mother.
"My lovely Meredith," his father murmured, and soon Harry found himself joined by what must be his little twin sister. Turning his head as best as he can when the yellow sidhe set the green-wrapped bundle next to him, Harry peered at the sniffling, scrunched-up face of his sister, Meredith.
She had hair, small tufts of it on her softly-gleaming head, the color of garnets. Her skin was moonbeam-pale, gleaming, and, when she opened her eyes, to stare tearily at him, Harry could see that, despite their current baby-blue color, she had the same three rings as their father. Harry cooed at her wordlessly, and shifted around as their father once more picked them up and held them.
"I give you Prince Harkin and Princess Meredith of the Unseelie Court!" He introduced, and Harry squinted at the tired-looking sidhe woman lying on the bed being cared for by the pretty bee-sidhe. She was, in comparison to the honestly intriguing bee-sidhe's beauty, rather plain for a sidhe. She had wavy, sweat-dampened brown hair, brown eyes, and pale skin, but nothing as other-worldly as the other woman's, and Harry did not like the look in her eyes, that bitterness which dug deep into this woman's heart.
Meredith sniffled next to him and Harry cooed again.
He would have to keep an eye out for his little sister.
~(Line Break)~
Harry loved the Unseelie Court, despite its prejudice towards his twin and self due to their "mixed" blood. They were three now, and Harry found himself eying his reflection in a mirror while his two bodyguards, Carrow and Adair, watched on, Carrow with fond amusement, and Adair with a carefully neutral face. Harry squinted at his reflection in the small hand-held mirror he'd snatched from his mother's drawer. This was the first time he'd seen himself in this life.
His hair was messy and thick, and the same deep, garnet red as his twin's. His skin, however, was a soft, creamy brown, that glowed like all sidhe, but gave hint to his mother's Brownie heritage. His three-ringed eyes were his prettiest feature, he would admit. A ring of Killing Curse green around the pupil, a pale, money-colored green around that, and the final ring a molten silver color with a green tinge, making it look like his eyes were lightening towards white from pupil out.
"Are you enjoying your reflection, Prince Harkin?" Carrow asked, amused, and Harry lowered his mirror and turned, cocking his head and peering way up at his two guards of the day. Carrow had once been a Hunter Deity centuries before, but now he was one of Queen Andais's, Harry's Aunt, Guards. He was tall and slender, with close-cut brown hair, brown skin, and brown-and-green eyes. He had a nice smile, and smelled of growing things and nature, and was rather good looking.
Adair, standing stiff and neutral beside him, was just as good looking, actually more-so, with sun-kissed golden skin, long brown hair, and sunshine-eyes, the three rings mixed of yellow and gold. Sometimes Harry had to blink spots from his eyes after staring into them too long, because they glowed faintly, like staring into the sun.
"I've never seen my reflection before," he told the Guards simply with a shrug, before pushing himself carefully to his wobbly little three-year-old feet and waddling awkwardly over to them, lifting his hands up to Carrow with a guileless blink.
"I am hungry," he told the Guard as the former Deity willingly picked him up; Harry smiled back when the statement earned him a startled laugh.
"Well, then, little Prince," the Guard said as he proceeded to carry Harry around, Adair being the one to check that each room was secure for him. "Let's go get you something to eat, hmm?" Harry smiled as he laid his head against the Guards shoulder.
He really did like the Unseelie Court.
~(Line Break)~
His Aunt was trying to drown his sister, and Harry's little six-year-old body was trembling with rage.
"Stop it!" He shouted, and, in an explosion dirt, grass, and stone, his magic erupted around him, tearing violently into the world around him, leaving a crater of destroyed grass and mud and torn earth as his body disappeared from sight momentarily. His Aunt, alarmed, moved away, just barely managing to dodge a gleaming blade that errupted from the ground she had just stood on, and Merry was coughing up water, sobbing, as their Father appeared and scooped her up. Harry could only pant as the magic died down, and glare viciously at his aunt.
All around him, chains of stone, dirt, and metal rattled and hissed like furious serpants, each of the thick, ominous chains tipped in wicked, deadly-looking blades. Harry panted, glaring, as those thick, deadly chains coiled around him, like an over-protective boa constrictor, as he lifted his clenched left hand, which was glowing with faint, purple energy. Taking a deep breath, face lightly sweaty, Harry let it out slowly, the purple energy fading, and his chains hissing and melting away, turning into shadow and mist before all that was left was him, standing in a crater of destruction and glaring at the Queen of Air and Darkness.
"…Is Merry alright, Papa?" He asked quietly, turning away from his Aunt and tiredly climbing from his crater. His father nodded and silently scooped him up as well, so that he could cuddle his soaking-wet, sobbing little sister.
"I don't want to be here anymore," Harry muttered into his father's shoulder; the older Prince just nodded, turned, and left his sister standing with her Guards, staring at the destruction around her.
That night, there were earthquakes for miles around, thanks to Harry's release of his Hand of Power.
He was now Prince Harkin NocEssus, Son of Essus, Prince of Chains.
He preferred just being Harry.
~(Line Break)~
Harry was infatuated, pure and simple.
Of course, no one knew, besides Merry, but she had sworn to never tell their Papa or anyone who would tell him. They wouldn't understand, he'd told her earnestly, because he was a Prince of the Unseelie Court, and to be interested in anything that wasn't a sidhe for anything more than a one-night stand was frowned upon.
It wasn't Harry's fault that Goblin King Kurag was just so fascinating to him! His skin was the same color as Fflur, the Sidhe who had been at Harry and Merry's birth, but it was covered in warts and lumps, the "beauty marks" of the Goblin Court. His eyes, all three of the ones on his face, were orange with a hint of yellow, and looked like large citrine's upon his strong, broad features. There was a large lump on his shoulder, where what the Goblin Court called a "wandering eye" rested, a beautiful lavender colored thing with thick black lashes. A full, lushly-lipped mouth rested below it on Kurag's chest, and two small arms curled from that side of Kurag's body. Unlike his sister, Harry knew that those extra features belonged to the completely sentient twin that Kurag had attempted to absorb within the womb.
That twin was so kind and gentle, always willing to play cards with the Royal Unseelie Twins, and playing feather-blowing with Merry, that Harry couldn't help but adore it, and Kurag himself.
Which is probably why it hurt so much when, at sixteen, the Goblin King had asked for Merry's hand as consort. When their Father had managed to turn the Goblin King down without insulting him, and Merry herself had turned him down, terrified when, in a form of Goblin courtship, Kurag had dropped his trousers for her, exposing his own large, intimidating member, and that of his absorbed twin, whose smaller legs dangled uselessly against his upper thigh.
Harry had crawled into Merry's bed every night for a week after, and wept for his young, broken heart as she tried to sooth him, because, despite it all, Kurag had not cast a single thought or glance his way, had not offered Harry the same honor, and that beautiful lavender eye had shed a single tear for Merry.
He had experienced heartache before, in many of his rebirths, but those were dulled by death, the color and emotion washed out, leaving nothing but memory that, like old films, gave images but no interest.
This heartache was bright and fresh, an open wound.
He did not wish to feel it again.
~(Line Break)~
Their Papa was dead by the time they turned eighteen. His beautiful, loving body savaged and hacked up, his life snuffed out by some unknown assassin, and this worthless piece of shit was selling pictures of it and their grief.
Watching his sister illegally use her magic upon the foolish, disgusting worm known as Barry Jenkins, parading his worst fears in front of his eyes as he screamed and whimpered and begged for mercy on the side of this back-country road, Harry felt a vicious satisfaction when the two of them finally left.
He would have preferred to kill the wretch, but their Aunt was waiting for them, and it would not do to keep the Queen waiting.
~(Line Break)~
It had been twelve years since they buried their father, and Harry had killed four sidhe in Duels in defense of his sister and himself. Merry had killed two, and nearly died on the Hand of a third. They had had enough.
"I will miss you," Merry whispered into his shoulder, her curvaceous, five-foot self curled protectively in his arms as they said goodbye at the airport. His own height of five-foot-three was telling, his pale brown skin now darkened to the shade of coffee with a small dose of creamer. Harry hugged his sister tightly, the two of them ensconced in their glamour's, which Merry was better at, but still. Harry had darkened his hair to black, and sheared his previously ankle-length locks to barely two inches long, while Merry's beautiful garnet hair had been "dyed" black and was now shoulder length. She pulled back, and Harry looked into her green-glamored eyes, his own burnt orange a signature of his "sidhe background".
"I will miss you too, little sister," he murmured softly, stroking a hand down her face sadly as she blinked tears from her eyes.
"No calls," she reminded him, voice tight with emotion; he nodded with a faint smile.
"No names, no letters, no message in a bottle," he replied with a teasing edge; Merry's smile was watery. With one final, bone-crushing hug, the two of them reluctantly parted ways. Merry was getting on a plane to L.A., while Harry was going to Miami.
It would be the farthest the two had ever been from each other.
Somehow, that hurt Harry more than leaving his beloved Unseelie Court.
A/N: Here you guys go, just a taste!