Um, this is the prologue to the Butterfly AU, a fic wherein Morzan doesn't die. There's more of it, but it won't be posted until the whole fic's finished, because this can sort-of stand on it's own and the rest of it... can't. This is basically getting posted because my inspiritation is severely lacking and reviews are v. good for that.

So, um, yeah. Hope you like!

Title: For You (Butterfly Mix)

Author: Electrumqueen/AndromedaDreamer

Characters/Pairings: Ensemble (AU of Book One)(SPOILERS IN PAIRINGSLIST--Roran/Nasuada, Murtagh/Tornac, Ajihad/Jeod, Murtagh/Nasuada, Arya/Faolin, Eragon/Katrina, Jeod/Trianna, Galbatorix/Morzan, Angela/Jeod, Saphira/Thorn, Thorn/Ruadhri. Mentions of Brom/Jeod, Brom/Selena, Jeod/Helen, Galbatorix/Angela/Morzan. Tornac/Katrina, Roran/Katrina, Eragon/Roran, Angela/Katrina, Arya/Eragon, Roran/Katrina/Nasuada UST)

Rating: PG-13/T

Warnings: Slash, Het, Weird Pairings, CRACK, incest-y-themes (not Murtagh/Eragon).

Disclaimer: CP wrote the characters first; the poetry is Carl Sandburg's. Theme song I used was Regina Spektor's 'On the Radio'--I highly recommend you listen to it with this fic (at least the prologue & prelude). Also Redemption, by Switchfoot.

Summary: AU: Morzan doesn't die. Now Alagaesia is paying the price...

Prologue: In Which Ten Minutes Changes Everything

The single clenched fist lifted and ready
Or the open asking hand held out and waiting
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other
Carl Sandburg—Choose (Chicago Poems, 1916)

Two men are fighting. The man with the crimson sword (red like blood, and passion) is lazy, arrogant, at ease in the art of death. The man with the pale steel sword is bleeding from a hundred thousand cuts and scrapes, and his movements are fuelled by rage and desperation.

Flash.

Brom makes a desperate lunge—an all-or-nothing gamble—and Morzan is caught off guard. The younger man strikes him through the heart, and he dies. In the sky, a dragon is falling, screaming.

No, wait. That isn't what happened. Rewind.

Morzan died. Or did he? In a universe a world over from the Alagaesia we know, a butterfly flaps its wings in the mountains of the Spine.

Flash.

The butterfly's breeze wings its way to a clearing in a forest, somewhere in the land of Alagaesia...

Flash.

Two men are fighting. The man with the crimson sword (red like blood, and passion) is lazy, arrogant, at ease in the art of death. His name is Morzan; he is the first of the Forsworn, Rider-warriors of the Empire.

The man with the pale steel sword is bleeding from a hundred thousand cuts and scrapes, and his movements are fuelled by rage and desperation. He is Brom, leader of the Varden—those who rebel.

And he is losing.

Flash.

Brom starts to lunge—to make a desperate gamble—and a cool breeze caresses his face, like a lover. Like Selena. He pauses—she married this man, didn't she? And he wonders, briefly, if maybe she was right.

It's the distraction Morzan needs, and he finishes the complicated hand-gesture, murmurs the last word. Brom falls, and his heart stops beating. Morzan grins, deadly and feral, and walks over to him, searches through the younger man's dying mind, careless like a child with his toys.

He reels in shock, and calls his dragon down. We need to go nowhe tells her, and she feels his panic and lands, great red wings tearing the air.

Wait, she says, as he's climbing on her back, the egg.

Right, he replies, and grabs the stone-like object from near the younger man's still body.

It hums in his hands, the night sky held between his palms.

He'll send people to get all they can from the body later—besides, it's only fair to let your opponents have the bodies of their fallen. For now, he has something more important to attend to.

The village of Carvahall, he tells his dragon. They'll pay for hiding my son.

Reviews are beyond awesome.