prison of my mind

a Castle in the Sky fic

by Atlantean Knight

DISCLAIMER : This brilliant movie is by Hayao Miyazaki. I don't own anything.

Falling.

That's what Muska remembered. Falling as he had once before. But this falling was different. Before, when he fell, he had a purpose. He had fallen by choice. He had fallen because he wanted to find a princess to bring back with him to Laputa. Now… now he was falling because his princess had chosen another. He opened his eyes, seeing the rest of the castle crumbling away broke his spirit even more. He was going to die, he was certain of it. He closed his eyes again. He felt warm arms embrace him, and when he opened his eyes again to see if he was hallucinating, he saw that he was holding a glowing volucite pendant… Her pendant. He put it around his neck as he fell from a good thirty thousand feet in the air. The pendant burst with a bright light that surrounded him, carrying him safely through the air. Well, safe was relative. A piece of falling castle struck his shoulder. It left a gash, and he tried to fly out of the way of the rest of the falling debris. Something struck his back. He curled up and the pendant glowed even brighter. He closed his eyes, knowing that even with her pendant, he could still die. He wanted to.

A bright light pierced through the darkness. Someone was calling… Muska… Muska… The Laputian king sat up and found himself in a house. An elderly woman was there. He gasped. "Wh-what? Where am I?"

"You fell from the sky, you know that?" The old woman handed Muska a basket with food in it. She smiled at him.

"The… the sky…" Muska went silent for a while and looked at the basket. He noticed that the pendant was still around his neck. He gasped. He tried to roll out of the bed, but a sharp pain shot through his back. He fell onto the bed and held back a pained cry.

"You should rest, Muska. I'll bring you food so you can recover."

Muska nodded to the old woman. He then thought of something. "How do you know my name?"

The old woman laughed. "You had been awake for a while there, and I asked you. But then you passed out again, I believe it's been a week since you passed out."

A week… He shook his head. "Well, thank you... for saving me…"

The old woman nodded. She stood up and left the house, leaving Muska alone with his thoughts.

What else did he remember? He remembered his mother's voice… a voice he hadn't heard in a very long time. He heard his father too, a noble king… a king proud of his son, the little prince. How long ago had it been? Hundreds of years… But Muska looked not a day over thirty. He had survived because of his pure Laputian blood… it kept him young, and allowed him to alternate between appearances. He had changed his hair color more than once, he had also changed his eyes, and often had worn glasses. But he had eventually returned to his original appearance, handsome, golden hair, golden eyes. That was the face that she knew… the face that Sheeta knew. He had kept the glasses, not because he needed them, but they made him appear more… refined.

Another thing Muska remembered was his time alone in Laputa. When he had been four, most of the other cities around Laputa had crashed to the ground, and the survivors had to learn how to lead human lives… normal lives. A normal life was not what the young prince of Laputa wanted. In Laputa, he had been Romuska Palo Ul Laputa, the rightful heir. He had come to earth with one purpose. He wanted to find a suitable queen and bring her back to Laputa. He was seven when he found himself on the land. He had met an old man who had taken him in as a son. He had told the man that he was a prince from a land in the sky. The man asked his name.

"I'm Romuska Palo Ul Laputa, the rightful heir."

"You should have a more… human… name here. Here, you can just be Muska."

And so it had been that Muska was sent to school, sent to go learn with the other human children. And he excelled at everything he did. Be it historical, linguistic, technological, mathematical… Muska was a genius at everything. He had gotten past the grade schools and into the advanced schooling by the time he was thirteen, and had finished his schooling, all of it, by his eighteenth birthday. He had traveled around, and by the time he was twenty, he had acquired a government job. He couldn't remember how many times he had to change his appearance over the years, but he knew it was far too many for his liking. He had decided it would be best if he didn't look the same for seven hundred years. It would've made people suspicious of him.

He remembered Sheeta, meeting her for the first time; she had been a little girl. He had taken her away with him, under the false pretense of being a guardian. But in reality, she was like him. Laputian. He took her away not because he wanted to be cruel, well, that wasn't the original intent, but because he didn't want some human boy to muddy her blood when she got older. If he was to continue the royal line, he needed a pure Laputian. But what he remembered most about Sheeta was the look she gave him before she spoke the spell of destruction with that insolent peasant boy, Pazu. And the way she looked at him had been with pity. He hated that. But at the same time, he loved it.

"Dammit Sheeta…"

Muska finally mustered up the energy to get out of the bed, although pain still shot through his body. He stumbled to the washroom and tore off the bandages around his chest and arms. What he saw underneath them was a shock. Scars… Whatever had cut him had volucite in it. Volucite was the one thing that could kill him. Laputians were virtually immune to everything else; he could have been shot by Pazu, but he would have healed. Volucite was his weakness… well, other than Sheeta. If she had willed him dead, he would have taken his own life. He sighed, tracing one of the scars. It ran across his chest, from his shoulder to his hip. He shook his head. It hurt… but it was nothing compared to the pain of losing Sheeta to Pazu.

When he left the washroom, he spotted a sketchbook. He sighed and picked it up. He took the graphite that was next to it, and skillfully drew a picture of Sheeta. It was amazing, his accuracy, but that was something that came with a photographic memory. He drew her asleep. He noted how peaceful she had looked when she was asleep. He remembered touching her cheek, wishing that he could comfort her, wishing that he wasn't going mad… He felt his spirit breaking even more. He threw the sketchbook to the ground and put the graphite down on the table again. He went over to the bed and sat down on it. He buried his face in his hands and cried. He cried because he knew she was gone forever. Off on some journey with Pazu, somewhere far away from him. He hated that Pazu had taken her, he hated how Pazu had ruined every one of his plans. The boy was but sixteen at the time. But Muska vowed that he would never stop looking for Sheeta. He … he needed her. Why, he wasn't sure. She probably wouldn't cooperate, and he would be forced to drastic measures again… but that didn't matter. If he had to, he would kill Pazu. He flopped back on the bed and rolled over, pulling the covers over his head, as he had when he was a child. For now, he would have to rely on his memory… a wonderful gift, but not as good as reality. He would have to rely on memories of Sheeta to keep going… to keep living. He knew Laputa wasn't really gone… the inner city was still there… but the weapons, the technology, the science that he loved… all gone. He would build an airship and return home… where he would stay. Even if he was alone, he would stay in Laputa, and earn the forgiveness of the life that remained. But as he slowly drifted back into the darkness of sleep, he imagined Sheeta. He imagined her there, beside him. And then… nothingness.