Abstract: In a continuation following the events of Hellboy 2, Prince Nuada is returned to life through the use of the magic of an alicorn (a unicorn's severed horn). Having long believed that the last of the unicorns had vanished from the world, the possibility of a living Mare spurs the first glimmer of hope the fae prince has experienced in long centuries of war and exile. Just maybe, the Fae World isn't doomed to final destruction after all.

I do not own Hellboy or any of the characters used herein (save one). This is entirely an exercise in my own imagination.

Rated M for later adult content (Specific warnings at the beginning of each chapter). Not Mary-Sue. Nuada/OC.

Prologue - A Long Story Short

Nuada Airgeatlámh had ceased to exist. At least, in the conventional sense. The broken pieces that yet remained bore little resemblance to the Fae Prince that had stood in that very spot only a short time before. In life, neither Verrocchio nor Laurana would have been worthy of him but now, what crumbling flecks of statue that remained could hardly have been called Rossellino, whose knobbly-faced men of affairs still glower down from their sanctified pedestals in Rome. But for the Collector, no amount of contrapposto could make an absent man animate. Now, instead of the sounds of steel and the gnashing teeth of golden gears, there was only silence; the sad, sorry, and wholly inadequate end to a brutal legend.

Getting the trinket-laden wheelcart up the stairs hadn't been easy and Bathmoora goblins weren't necessarily known for their tenacity, but a few dollops of adhesive sap to the ends of his Lofstrand crutches and the application of a few magnets to the back axle for spin control and the hall of the Golden Army lay ahead for the pickings. All battles have their leavings, and this one promised to be more profitable than most given the wrenching, clanging, screaming, of rock and ore he could hear from the passageway. But truthfully, he had never expected to the find the Prince. And certainly not to find the Prince dead. Somehow, despite the demon and the fire-starter and the fish, he had always thought Nuada more regal in capture, more substantial in exile. Not gone. Not like this.

He had almost split in two. His head lay several feet from his right arm which itself was more than half a meter from the rest of his torso. His expression remained frozen, pained in a way that the Collector could only wonder as to the gravity of his last thoughts; strangely preserved now without nuance in a ruined face of marble. The warm dry air of the chamber still hung heavy with powder and the little goblin imagined for a moment he could breath his Prince in. But as he did, the grief came; not unexpectedly but more forcefully than he had anticipated. These were not tears of remorse however, but the reality of loss, of the world growing just that much darker for the sacrifice of a Prince who had ended with little left to him but his Name.

The Collector paused to pick up the Prince's arm and part of what must have been his shoulder. Placing them in his cart, he creaked towards a few more smaller pieces that had skittered away on impact. He heaved a pained sigh and wiped away the irritating moisture on his cheeks. At least the ruined remnants of the famed Golden Army would hardly comment on his trembling bottom lip or sour disposition as he gathered the remains, reassembling cleaved parts here and there almost absent-mindedly. The grief continued to roll through his chest with a kind of hiccupping quality, leaving his breath coming in fits and choking swallows. Perhaps what was worse was that, regardless of how much or how deeply he might mourn his Prince, it would never match the shame he felt at being able to do little else.

Perhaps then it was a particularly odd moment that he remembered it. In the bottom of his cart, he remembered it. Traded so many years ago for the most unremarkable directions by a traveler who could never have possibly fathomed its worth, he remembered it. A single silver-white spire the length and breadth of an Angevin misericorde; an alicorn, he remembered it. It had come, if the traveler's tale was to be believed, from one of the last unicorns. While this kind of story had seemed to the Collector absurd, as no unicorn had been seen in this realm, or in any other, for almost three hundred years, rare cases of discovering the horns did remain. Hunted to extinction by Men and Angels alike, the alicorns were prized, fabled artifacts coveted by Spagyrics that could not be replaced by any known artifact or relic of myth. Sadly, neither could the unicorns. The sad, sorry, and wholly inadequate remnants of hope for a brighter future now appeared as dull twists of fibrous cast-off, recognizable only by the bits of light that could occasionally be seen through their strands and, of course, their capacity to heal any wound to creature, monster, or hero. The alicorn's light was never discerning.

He pulled it for the first time since he had acquired it from the false bottom of the tired old cart. Bits of mold and dirt still clung to the threadbare wrapping but he could feel it solid and warm in his hands. Trading for it had been his finest bargain and he was proud of it. It was the perfect insurance policy, an ace up his sleeve forever in service to a life philosophy of the 'just in case.' Alicorns, as it turned out, had but two powers: to cure anything poisoned and the power to heal where little or no hope remained. In short, that they might set to right what had once been wronged. So many times had he imagined it restoring his veteran wounds, giving him back his legs, making splendid flesh where there were now only scars and pocks. But he had never tried it. As it turned out, he was afraid. Just as often as he had imagined cavorting with his newly restored legs, he had also imagined someone taking them again. It was the same with his cuts and his bruises. They would only appear again and again after that. No, he had decided, he would keep it secret and when the time truly came, he would know when to use it. But the unfortunate truth of being in possession of an alicorn, is that one cannot save oneself from the ultimate wound. One cannot save one's own self from death.

He clutched the bundle tight. Looking back down at the Prince he wondered for a moment if those pained, and maybe now accusatory eyes, could actually see. Could he be judged by the gaze of his sovereign still, and be found lacking? Before he even realized the decision was made, he began gathering all the pieces of the fallen Prince, carefully arranging them on the floor as best he could in a manner of repose. Even in death, though, Nuada seemed hardly properly funerary. His hands were at his sides but palms upturned, his head tipped back, his face drawn and indignant. He made for a very resentful corpse. The Collector chuckled, how like the Fae Prince to be rebellious even in the midst of his own demise.

Once assembled, the stone-statue body of Bathmoora's lost Prince finally lay in state; attended by his failed soldiers in this, a cathedral of irrelevant memories. Slowly, the Collector produced his prize. It was a fine thing to marvel at the unblemished beauty of an alicorn and he took several long moments to smile at its subtle twists and spirals and to trace his fingers through each winding flourish. Alicorns were each unique and he often thought of his as a field of golden wheat rolling and undulating in the winds of a summer storm. But at long last, he was ready to let it go. Laying the severed horn against Nuada's chest he drew in a breath.

" Ar chodail tú go maith? Tá sé in am éirí." (trans. Did you sleep well? It is time to get up.)

As he had only once before, Prince Nuada Airgeatlámh came screaming into the world.

~...*…~

Nuada sat for a long time, unmoving. His eyes felt heavy and his breathing pained, but unhurried and even. The alicorn lay in his hands where it had fallen from his chest as he had attempted to reflexively leap to his feet, only to end up seated awkwardly side-ways next to two broken gear spindles and a melted copper shoulder-plate. The Collector hovered uncertainly near the stairs, where he must have fled following the stream of horrific cries and blinding shards of light that had heralded the Prince's return to the battlefield of his defeat.

He had been dead. He remembered it, strangely. His mind recounted the sound of his own heart slowing, the icy stillness that had begun at his core and crept relentlessly through him until his breath had failed him and the darkness finally overtaken him. He remembered the feeling as his knees had given out and how the weight of his own pain had finally pulled him to the ground. His sister's betrayal still curled low in his belly but as his sight had returned it was as though a new clarity had also followed him into those first few moments of air that still tasted of fire and blood. It didn't take him long to deduce what had happened. He knew what it was that now lay in his lap.

He did not look to the small goblin that was still nervously rocking his hands on his crutches, unsure of whether he should speak or flee. Nuada thought that he should feel gratitude at that moment, a newfound joy at life returned. He thought he should feel a renewed sense of vengeance now that he lived and breathed once more. But it seemed that the poetry of hatred had deserted him as well, and an unfamiliar calm now kept him firmly rooted as he began to experience his own thoughts, unclouded, for what might have been the first time in a millennium.

He had courted war for the very reason such a relic now warmed his grave-cold skin. He had championed the dying cries of a green world, whose magic had been stolen away with each hunter's arrow and burned up with each relic-smith's forge. As industry and outrage had claimed the fields and the forests, the Old Gods had sunk into the Earth with a howl of desperation he had taken unto himself as a call to arms, but though the sun still rose and the moon still drifted aimlessly through the stars, he had not believed any hope for the kingdoms of the Fae had remained. Hope for vengeance, perhaps, but never hope for restoration. His was a war of revenge, not salvation. But an alicorn that still held the power to give life to the dead and hope to the war-weary, could only have come from a creature that still somewhere drew breath. An alicorn whose light still bloomed in the confines of a twisted horn, meant that the unicorn to whom it belonged had somehow escaped a final betrayal worse than his own.

He looked down at the object now so entwined in his fingers, its soft sparkling light slowly fading back to a dull, white, stain. How long had she been hidden? Who could have taken her such that no word could reach him? Where had the unicorn gone?

He turned to look up towards the vacant dais. Nuala's body was missing, and so was his spear. Now at least he knew where to start.