A/N: Unbetaed.
He's lost himself in all the anger, all the darkness. A thousand hands in crowded rooms and there she always was, pale and soft-spoken. He doesn't know how all the softness of grace led to this but she is still the beautiful girl he grew up with and always dreamt of having, even if she is slightly changed. One thing that hasn't changed, however, is his love for her, as misplaced as it may seem. He cracks his knuckles with a sigh. Well, he's always been a flawed man. No doubt about it.
She breathes his name on the wind sometimes, full of longing. It's soft, floats on the wind, but he catches the errant sound. But the moment soon passes and she is back to barking orders. Her lips are red and full, pursed in anger and disappointment. He imagines her a thousand suns ago, a thousand moons - days full of wheat and grass and lying in the shade, talking of the future. "The emerald," she hisses. "The emerald." He doesn't even know what it all means. He thinks it could all be a fairy tale if it wasn't so fucked up.
"What about it, my queen?" She doesn't say anything, merely breathes to convey her thoughts on the air. He looks up at her from beneath his lashes. (Teach us to care and not to care.) It ripples through him, the change - makes him shake his head over memories long turned to dust.
He hears her breath hitch. "Show me your wings." He doesn't speak, doesn't dare to reply, just shrugs off his black leather jacket and unfolds them. She runs her fingertips along the tips of his onyx wings with a soft sound of awe.
"What have I done to you?"
He pauses, his heart pounding hard in his chest. "Nothing I haven't asked for, your Majesty."
"Yes," she murmurs. "Yes. I suppose you're right." It is in these rare moments of delicacy that he almost begins to feel like she is a soul detached. He reaches for her hand, pale, spindly fingers cold to the touch. She almost breaks away from it, but she controls her reaction, limits it to just a stifled shudder.
"Are you--"
"Don't go." And yes, she has changed again, reeling her shoulders back into a stance of control, a breath of denial. She grips his fingers with her own. He knows the game by now. He used to care (it was some violation of her self, of his love for her) but he's resigned himself to it now. Princesses (queens) don't grow to love country boys. They don't marry them. Not even if they grow up to become soldiers. (And somewhere, deep inside him, he's always realized that he was only a plaything, only ever a toy.)
Her private chambers are cold and sleek with dark, polished tops and surfaces. The light is dimming, the ground is icing over - the frost permanently settles in the air and his skin pricks up with goosebumps. And it stings him still, the atmosphere - it chills him to his very soul. She presses her body down against him and he can't breathe. Her lips glide down the plane of his neck.
"Do you love me, Zero?" she laughs, meanly, breath hot in his ear. "I see the way you look at me. The way you've always looked--" He nips at her collarbone and she gasps. "That time by the river. The well--"
He sighs his memories into the crook of her shoulder. "What are you doing?" she asks, as he rolls up his pants and wades into the river. "You should try it!" he calls. And he watches as she casts a wary glance at her little sister. But she follows suit. They strip off their dresses and in their slips, wade into the creek. DG shrieks with glee and she's left with no other option but to share in it. Afterwards, the three of them lie together in a row, feet wet and drying in the cool grasses. He hears his father lumbering across the forest towards him, but he dares risk it all. For her. "Who do you think you'll marry?" he questions as he stares up at the clouds in the sky. She smiles benignly. "I don't know." "If you don't have anyone else, you should marry me." DG sniffs. "She's better than you." "No," Azkedellia corrects. "He's too good for me." It's an inside joke for a while but then the inevitable happens and the whole reckoning. She forgets about him for the longest time.
Eight years old and he watches her when he should be doing work, his shirt open in the heat of the suns, his tools lying unused by his bare feet. The silt of the river is entirely too cooling, too distracting. She watches him curiously.
"Even then, Zero," she murmurs, in the aftermath, lying in soiled sheets. "I knew." She cackles then, a harsh sound, but he's used to it, just like the fingernail welts she left in the skin of his back.
"What do you want from me?"
She stares off towards the skyline in the distance. "I don't know." He's resigned to this future, he realizes. He hates himself for it but there's no other option. He loves her, and hell or not, he'll stick by her even if it means he'll die. She turns away from him. "What are you still doing here? Go track --just go."
He bristles but he picks up his clothes and skitters out of her room. The floor is cold against his feet as he runs. The door slams in his face. They don't talk about it. They never talk about it.