Hi guys! I'm back with another tlc fic! This story was basically inspired by the sneakpeek of Winter that we got in Fairest. It's about what would happen after. It's a popular idea in the tlc fandom that Cinder would just give up her throne and go back to earth with Kai and I disagree with that idea. Very much. Cinder does too. So I wrote this angsty Kaider fic where they don't get their happily ever after...yet. I dunno how long this is going to be but it's still on the shorter side. Minimum three chapters, maximum five. Chapter two should be up relatively fast. I hope you enjoy!
Warning: Major Kaider feels! And ANGST.
They were tired, they were exhausted out of their brains, they were dead on their feet, but their lips were still stretched into delirious smiles.
"We did it." Kai said, cupping his hands around her cheeks and leaning his forehead against hers until their noses were but a millimeter apart. "We did it. It's over."
She closed her eyes, breathing him in; the dusky smell of expensive clothes that had lost their newness; the soft hint of the generic soap he had used to wash his hair. Her hands drifted to his chest, flat against the starchy material of his shirt and warm against the heat of his closeness. She breathed out shakily; she could die in this moment. She could lose herself in him and never return. She could flit herself into the cocoon of his arms and stay there forever. Her hands drifted to his cheeks, brushing against the stubbly skin like she was admiring the texture of a painting, the tips of her fingers falling along his jaw with a reverence that he had never seen in her eyes before.
"Yes." she whispered, gazing into his irises. They were too brown. Too alive for her heart to hold. "We did it."
The words seemed to hit them both with a finality. A realization. Levana was defeated. The Earth had been saved. They were safe now. No running. No grasping for time. No stolen moments. They basked in the revelation. They reveled in it.
And then they were falling together. Lips on lips. Hands on cheeks, fingers twisted around necks, teeth nibbling on skin. They were lost in a cloudy haze of desperation and relief and love and something that tugged at their hearts a little too forcefully, reminding them to take what they could get, reminding them to have this while it lasted. There was an exhilaration in finally being alone, finally out of the scrutinizing eye of the world around them and finally free of the burden they had both been laden with. As his lips trailed along her neck, he felt a little like the barely twenty year old guy he was supposed to be. With his eyes closed and his breath heady, he could picture the world around them slowly falling apart, their immiscible lives meshing together and disintegrating at their feet.
Seemingly hours later, when he sat collapsed against the wall and she had taken place in the space between his legs, he dropped his face in the crook of her neck and took a deep breath. She curled herself against him, her lips still swollen, her eyes wild and alive even through the exhaustion that seeped through both of their bones. It felt so normal, sitting there with her practically in his lap as her metal hand gently played with the collar of his shirt. He imagined that it would be like this now. It would be like this from now until forever, as long as she would let him. He felt his chest well up with something, something that was so bright and warm and overwhelming, he felt like it would burst out of his chest with the force of a thousand starbursts.
"Come back to Earth with me." he said. His fingers traced the slight impression of her collarbones, lightly drumming on her rusty skin. "You'll be a hero. Come back with me."
She sat up abruptly in his arms like he had shaken her out of some dream. And it had been. This time with him, this abandon she had momentarily felt, it was constructed out of shards of dreams that she had compelled into existence. The shards burst around her like broken glass, the remnants of her dreams falling to the floor around her in glittering pieces of a reality that wasn't meant to be.
"I can't." she said.
"You can." he insisted, wild on hope. "You did it –no, we did it- I'll issue a formal nationwide pardon and we will go back together-"
She sat up straighter, slipping out of his arms, "No, Kai, stop, I can't." The lazy euphoria that had settled between them vanished, replaced by the all too familiar heaviness that squeezed at their chests. "I can't go back. I didn't fight this hard for a throne just to throw it away, just to hand it over to the next tyrant itching to take Levana's place."
"You can't replace her until you're eighteen." Kai reminded her, floundering for possibilities. "The court will have to elect a reagent until then anyway."
She gave him a wry smile, sprinkled with an edge of bitterness. "And I'll be there." she said ominously, fiddling with the sleeve of her jacket. "To remind the reagent that I will not be made to disappear a second time." She looked up and directly into his eyes, "It's my throne Kai. I will not abandon it in the wild hope of acceptance from the people who have never wanted me, who will never want me."
"That's not true." he argued. "Just because you were wronged once doesn't mean it will happen again."
She turned away from him and suddenly stood up. Her good hand shook and she clenched it into a fist, "Don't you get it, Kai?" she asked, facing him with blazing eyes, "Even if I somehow manage to evade the hundreds of year old, deeply ingrained prejudice against cyborgs, I'm still Lunar. I'm still decidedly in the non-human category. I belong here, Kai, with others like me. I belong in Luna."
He stood up too, her passionate words resounding in his head with a dull ache. "You belong with me."
She turned her back on him, wrapping her arms around herself in a protective gesture that he had seen her take many times before. He couldn't believe that just moments ago, they had been enveloped in the throes of bliss, high on the feeling of just being together. How could they have forgotten that the world was still hanging over their heads?
"I'm not asking you to give up your throne." she said. Her voice was suddenly different, cold and unfeeling as compared to inferno that had been blazing inside of her just moments before. She had never used that tone with him, had never felt like she had to detach herself from the world just so she could summon up the courage to speak, "Don't ask me to give up mine when you won't do the same."
The words hit him like a blow to the gut, puncturing through his insides, leaving gaping holes behind, "You never wanted a throne." he reminded her, icily. "You never wanted to be queen."
"Do you honestly think that I could go back from this?" she asked, finally turning to face him again. "After everything that's happened, after I've declared my heritage to the world, do you really think that I can just go back to being the lowly old mechanic? Or maybe, I'll go back with you and just be the girlfriend. Lounging off your wealth while you run a country." She saw the stricken look in his eyes and she forced herself to speak more softly. After all, he was just grasping at straws. He just didn't know that she had stopped trying after the first hundred times she had had this conversation with herself. "I'm going to be queen, Kai. I might not have wanted it. I might never have imagined it. But it's the reality and it's the reality we both have to accept."
He opened his mouth to object but then something happened. She watched as the reality finally swept over him; she watched the fight leave his eyes, a spark of amber dissolving into hard brown. "It was supposed to be over." he whispered, "We were supposed to be free."
Her throat rasped. If she had the ability to cry, she would have been bawling right now. She moved closer, resting a palm against his cheek, allowing herself to feel him, to be near him, lest she never got the chance again. "I know." she whispered. "I know."
They don't talk about the issue after that. They don't talk about their inevitable separation. In fact, they avoid it for so long that it's the day of Kai's return to Earth and he's standing in front of a royal spacecraft form Earth that is meant to take him back. She's decked out in a dress the shade of the Lunar sky, standing dutifully by Princess Winter who has been appointed the reagent queen and they're both thinking of ways to say goodbye, ways to tell the other that this was not the end, that this was just an intermission. But they can't form words to express this, especially not in the presence of half the Lunar Court, so he just takes her in his arms and hugs her and pretends that it's enough, that's it's enough to feel her in his arms one last time, that it's enough that he got to spend as much time with her as he did.
"I'll see you." Her voice catches in her throat. "Soon. I promise."
He smiles and even though it is half-wistful and half-pained, it is still striking. He steps onto the ramp of the spaceship and the world opens up between them. Back on Earth, it's still daytime and he can't see the moon. She thinks he's lucky to have half-a-day's reprieve.
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