Title: A Beginning
Rating: PG for some swearing.
Theme/Prompt being used: Love
Timeline: Celi is still Maou and Stoffel has just started a war with the humans.

Originally written for the KKM challenge on LJ community ( http: /www (dot) community (dot) livejournal (dot) com/ kkm(underscore) challenge/ ), which gives a different prompt every two weeks for fanfic and fanart.

A/N: I'm still very new to the fandom, so I apologise if I inadvertently bend canon. Please be gentle with your concrit!

Winner of the Mod's choice for the round. Yay! :)

Gwendal had been in meetings all day—and well into the night—closeted with Gunter and the rest of the generals and advisors, trying to find some way of winning this damnable war that Stoffel had started.

The Mazoku Kingdom had a slight advantage for now, but their people were dying by the hundreds. Every dispatch from the front lines brought news of more and more wounded and killed.

And still Stoffel pressed for more, thinking somehow that the army wasn't doing enough—that his army wasn't doing enough—swaying fools like Adalbert to his way of thinking.

He suppressed a low, angry growl as he stalked down the corridor, his arms clasped behind his back. What more did his uncle expect him to do? If it had been in his power, he would never have started a war such as this—he would have ensured a quick campaign with a decisive victory easily grasped—but no, Stoffel was in charge.

His lip curled derisively as he thought again of his mother's brother, and as always, a sense of shamed chargin filled him at the thought that if only his mother had been a better ruler, none of this would have happened.

Love!

That was what was wrong with her. Always talking of love and thinking of it, on the hunt for it, as if it was the only thing of importance. While all around her, battle waged and her brother slowly drove their great and noble kingdom into the ground with his insanity.

It was then that Anissina appeared before him.

'Gwendal!' she called, looking unaccountably bright eyed, given the late hour. 'Just the man I was looking for! I need—'

She broke off as his scowl deepened, and while his expression did not change, he felt a moment of surprise. They had known each other for so long that his scowls, while they may have terrified anyone else, had ceased to have any effect on her.

'When was the last time you ate?' she asked him, a frown on her own face.

He blinked, the scowl lifting as he thought. 'I remember eating at the meeting...'

'That was nearly six hours ago!' she cried, giving him an exasperated look. 'Honestly, where would you men be without us women?'

She caught hold of his arm, and started to tug him down the corridor with her.

'I know where the kitchens are, thank you,' he snapped at her, snatching his arm away. 'I do live here, after all.'

She lifted a disdainful eyebrow at him as she preceded him down the stairs. 'Forgive me,' she said mock sweetly. 'I thought you might have forgotten, distracted as you are with constant thoughts of destruction and killing.'

'Anissina...' he ground out, fury rising like a dark tide, but then they were in front of the kitchens and she walked in before he could continue.

He chose to drop the matter for the moment, not wanting to cause a scene in front of the one lone servant still awake and tending to the fire.

The man looked surprised to see two nobles—one of them the Maou's eldest son, no less—in the kitchens at that hour, but his face was a study in astonishment when Anissina briskly ordered him to prepare a bowl of the stew that was currently simmering over the fire.

'But that's only for the nightwatchmen who will be along in a moment,' the man stammered. 'It's not fit for you, my lady—'

'Oh, it's not for me,' she assured the nervous man. 'It's for him,' she went on, indicating him with a less than polite jerk of her head.

The cook looked more distressed than ever. 'But—the Maou's son—I couldn't—'

'He missed having a proper dinner with the rest of us, so he can just make do with what's available,' she replied breezily, and after a fearful look at Gwendal, the man complied.

Soon he was sitting down to a steaming bowl of stew and a hunk of bread, with Anissina seated across from him at the scarred old table, even as the cook sat by the fire, watching them with wondering eyes.

Ordinarily he would never have compromised the dignity of his position as Maou's son and Commander of the Mazoku Army by sitting down at a servant's table, but now that the food was before him, his stomach gave a throb and he realised just how hungry he was.

He bolted down a bite of bread, and hissed when he raised the spoon with the still hot stew to his lips.

Anissina made a sound of impatience and pulled the bowl towards herself.

'Idiot,' she chided him. 'Can't you see it's hot? He just took it off the fire!'

She passed a hand over the bowl, and handed it back to him.

'There,' she said. 'That should be better.'

'Thank you,' he replied with poor grace, dragging his stew back to himself. Raising the spoon again—jarred a little by the unfamiliarity of it, he had used sporks all his life—he took a mouthful of the now pleasantly warm stew.

As he ate and she watched him in silence, he felt his earlier anger abate. To be honest, she had been abrasive and dismissive ever since he had known her, and it had never bothered him before. They had always had their disagreements—he disliked calling them fights, though that was what they were—but he had never felt this level of rage for her.

He realised now that his anger with Stoffel had nearly caused him to make her a target—when she had done nothing to him. She had merely been trying to take care of him, after all, albeit in her own way.

'You're welcome,' she said quietly, and he looked up to see her eyes soft and dark in the flickering flames that did a poor job of illuminating the kitchen.

'Gwendal,' she went on softly, 'is—is everything alright?'

He didn't miss the uncharacteristic hesitancy. He looked up again, and saw that her gaze was ungaurded and worried.

'Not here,' he said, abruptly pushing back his chair and abandoning his nearly finished stew. He picked up his bread and led her out of the kitchens, stopping briefly to thank the cook.

Taking large bites of his bread, he led her through the moonlight brightened corridors until they were standing just outside his rooms.

'What's wrong?' she asked him urgently.

'Where do I start?' he asked her sardonically, and she frowned at him.

'It's this damned war,' he spat in reply to her look, spinning on his heel and stalking down the corridor. 'Stoffel thinks the Army isn't doing enough, he keeps making more and more outrageous demands—'

'And Conrart is talking of joining the army to prove his loyalty—he's too young—and Mother—'

He broke off, his back to her, and she prompted him gently. 'And Celi?'

'All she cares about is...'

He trailed off, and she said nothing while the silence drew out between them.

'All around us, people are dying,' he went on in a whisper. 'Men I have known for years—men I have trained myself—go out onto the front lines and do not return. And I do not know how many more letters of condolence I can write to their grieving families.'

'And Stoffel,' he snarled the name as he spun around in a renewal of his anger, 'is only looking for a sign of weakness to replace me with one of his own toadies.'

He had paced back to her by now, and she clutched at his arm, her face pale in the moonlight.

'Surely he wouldn't—after all, you are the Maou's son—'

'Maou?' he echoed with a harsh laugh. 'The kingdom may call Mother 'Maou' but it is Stoffel who runs the show. Stoffel who is the power behind the throne...and Stoffel who declares the wars.'

'There must be something we can do,' she cried, her grip tightening in her emotion.

He noticed her use of the word 'we', and felt a surge of affection and gratitude for her. Even when they had been children together, she had always been ready to fight his battles with him, after the mandatory declarations that only boys were dumb enough to get themselves so constantly into trouble.

The memories of a more innocent time eased his heart somewhat, and she blinked when he smiled gently down at her.

'Thank you, Anissina,' he said softly, drawing her hand away from his arm and to his lips.

She looked stunned, and her hand trembled against his lips as he looked down into her wide eyes.

'I didn't really do anything,' she protested breathlessly. 'All I did was listen.'

'It was enough,' he replied, gently letting her hand go.

He noticed that she clenched the hand into a fist as she let it fall to her side, and then she blinked twice before saying in her normal tones, 'Well, I had wanted your help with something—it was why I was looking for you, actually—but I guess it can wait until tomorrow.'

'Good night,' she said brightly, bowing as was customary, and he felt a momentary sense of disappointment at the loss of her wide eyed expression and breathless voice.

He bowed his head in return, and with a last smile, she turned and walked away from him.

He sighed, and entering his rooms, he frowned as his eye fell on the large map of the Mazoku kingdom he had tacked onto one wall, immediately distracted by thoughts of tactics and strategies.

A/N: Thank you very much for reading, all concrit is very welcome. : )