A/N: I swear, this started out as a one-shot, and it was a totally different story than what this eventually became. I have no idea how that happened. Anyway, it's good to be back writing, and I'm just going to let you guys read this and we can talk later. All the SG characters belong to the SG books.
OakeX: Happy birthday, old thing (ha, the irony). This one's for you.
On the third Thursday of each month, the servants knew to keep away from the Executive Office in the West Wing. Because every third Thursday, just after the lunch hour, the two princes of Faerie locked themselves behind the heavy walnut doors and did not emerge till late into the evening.
The younger prince called it an Executive Meeting. Perfectly groomed and unflinchingly affable, Mustardseed was always the first to arrive. Phone in hand, with all eight fingers (and two thumbs) on the pulse of his kingdom, he was the epitome of efficiency as he strode to the doors and flung them open.
His older brother, on the other hand, had several alternative names for this Executive Meeting and none respectful. Heir apparent to the throne of Faerie, Puck usually followed several minutes later, muttering and dragging his feet along the carpeted hallway like a pig led querulously to slaughter. His only consolation lay in the bags of chips swinging listlessly from his hands as he slouched toward the doors. If he had to sit through hell, he'd told his brother when they'd first begun this torture some years prior, he at least should be allowed to bring snacks. Mustardseed had been initially resistant, citing reasons of distraction and general mess, but he'd eventually relented upon realizing that if his brother were chewing during the proceedings, he could hardly also be sleeping through said proceedings. Besides, Puck had smugly and imperiously reminded him, he was the King, or would be once they'd figured out how to put him on the throne without backlash from the powerful and influential Northern Fae, who'd never liked Oberon and who tolerated his upstart of a son even less.
Eating aside, no one could really be sure of what went on in the Executive Office during these Executive Meetings. The servants only knew that important decisions were being made behind those doors, decisions for the good of their people, decisions that were the result of pondering and arguing and the weighing of conflicting interests. This they deduced from the noises that escaped into the hallway and into the curious ears of anyone brave (or foolish) enough to wander through the West Wing on those third Thursdays. The reports were varied: sometimes they'd heard voices raised in political debate. Sometimes the clashing steel of a sword duel. Other times, sporadic cheering and booing, as if the brothers had somehow smuggled in a TV set and were facing off against each other over a sporting event.
Once, one of the housemaids had even sworn she'd heard singing.
"Not church singing, all pretty-like," she'd reported in a hushed whisper to the other domestic help, "but. . . " she crossed herself solemnly, "as if the majesties were in the bath and didn't care who heard."
No one had disbelieved her. Prince Mustardseed might be the embodiment of all things proper but Prince Puck . . . well, no one would put anything past him. And no one could - dared - imagine what Faerie would be like when he (finally) took the throne. They'd all believed that he was brave, that he was an accomplished warrior and brilliant military strategist, that he had courage in adversity where a lesser man might have emptied his bladder down the inside of his armor. But as a political visionary and leader of his people, they'd wondered if he perhaps lacked a certain . . . finesse - the ability to foster enduring relationships with other nations without threatening violence, the good sense to refrain from satire in the presence of dignitaries; even just the capacity - however minuscule - for soberness (sincere or otherwise) when the occasion called for it.
Thank the stars for Prince Mustardseed, their people would often say. He might not possess the alluring charisma that characterized all the Kings of Faerie and which their Crown Prince wore like a mantle around his glorious shoulders, but he had foresight, hindsight and all other manner of sight in between, the foil to his brother's manic energy, the gravity to his flightiness, the soul to his heart.
And now, on this third Thursday of one of the bitterest winter months ever to grace the barren fields of their kingdom, the two brothers reconnoitered once more behind closed doors, the mandatory bags of chips tossed carelessly on the long wooden table as Puck dropped his heels on its polished surface and leaned back in his chair.
"Can we make this short?" He asked hopefully.
"Do you have somewhere you need to be?" Mustardseed raised an eyebrow.
"Yes. Anywhere but here." He sighed and closed his eyes. "Fine. You may begin. Spill. Tell me all the horrible, hopeless happenings in our beloved homeland. . . again."
So Mustardseed began, dutifully reporting the land disputes settled by provincial judges, the progress made toward reasonable medical care to the outlying districts, how the new terms of trade with neighboring kingdoms had boosted Faerie's economy.
Puck reached for one of the bags, ripped it open, palmed fistfuls of chips into his mouth and resumed languishing in his chair. With his eyes closed and the crunching of his teeth reverberating pleasantly inside his head, he could almost pretend Mustardseed didn't exist.
A slap to the side of his thigh startled him, and he opened his eyes once more, to meet his brother's annoyed gaze.
"What?" Puck mumbled, spewing potato shrapnel. "It's the same old stuff. Every month you report on the trade and the land and the laws and every month it sounds like Faerie's the richest place in the world, with no crime and no social injustice and . . . well, if that's true, why bother listening? And why bother having these meetings anyway? We could just video one and replay it to an empty room each month. At least that time when we dueled over whether to go to war with the Inferi in the south was different."
"That's because between these meetings, your courtiers work their asses off to run your kingdom and keep it honest. While you're off training your soldiers for battles we're never going to fight."
"Not true. We could be at the brink of war and not know it."
Mustardseed scraped a hand over his face. "Puck, we don't have any enemies, not like in the old days. They've all signed peace treaties - even the North court."
"The barbarians in the North don't do peace treaties, and you know it. Whatever it was you thought you signed was probably their queen's grocery list or something."
"I didn't sign that treaty - you did. And all the other treaties. Because you're next in line for the throne, not me, remember?"
"I am on the throne. Metaphorically. The only reason I'm not also literally on it is because you're afraid those North scum will retaliate and challenge us for the right to rule. Just because they protested that one time. One tiny battle. Half a battle, actually. We didn't even get to the good parts."
Mustardseed took a breath, all prepared to defend his stance, when Puck sat up at last, knocking the bag of chips to the floor where it lay with its insides in an orange starburst on the ivory carpet.
"And I would've answered that challenge," he glared at his brother, "if you hadn't sent some stupid emissary to propose a ceasefire. Now we're stuck in limbo because you and Mother want to comb the archives for some obscure loophole in our law that will let me succeed my own father uncontested in our own kingdom. How stupid is that? My own father! In my own kingdom!"
"Well, Father did steal the kingdom from them in the first place."
"It was a race. He won. Don't you remember? New York, circa whatever century: whoever touched down here first got to rule Faerie. Our ship was faster. Their ship sank."
"Because a giant whale mysteriously head-butted their hull at the exact same time that the crown prince of Faerie was just as mysteriously absent from his own ship."
"Well, it was every man - or kingdom - for itself. Besides, there was nothing in the rules against shapeshifting. They could've always dispatched their own champion, like . . . I dunno, a giant squid. No one was stopping them from counter-attacking."
"Which they are now that Father's gone and the original peace terms are moot."
"By pouting and saying we can't crown our own King. Which fool decided it was a good idea to stipulate peace terms that were valid only as long as the King was alive?"
"Father didn't imagine a time when the kingdom would be without him as its head."
"It's only out of respect for the dead, mind you, that I'm holding back what I really think about our father's head."
"Passive-aggressive though they may be," Mustardseed raised his voice meaningfully, "they have a lot of influence in the northern regions. If you push your hand, they might invade us, and we have no allies, not this far south, surrounded by only humans. "
Puck snarled. "So your plan is to sit here for the next thousand centuries without a king, while you and I have snack parties monthly where we pat ourselves on the back for how well we've kept Faerie from being a third-world nation."
Mustardseed straightened and swallowed.
Puck's eyes narrowed to slits.
"What?" He growled. "You've always been lousy at secrets, baby brother. Spit it out."
"I have a proposition."
"Not another expedition to befriend the giants in Allorian? For Pete's sake, bro!"
"No. That was a misplaced confidence in military might, I admit. This is more of a . . . PR move."
"I hate PR. It's a load of cr-"
"Fine. Diplomatic relations, then."
Puck swiveled his chair around and bestowed his back on his brother. "Do your worst."
"I know someone in . . . let's say strategic communication -"
"What the heck is strategic communication?"
"To explain it to you, I'd have to use even bigger words, so let's just leave it as that," Mustardseed evenly deflected, "and this person is sympathetic to our particular cause. They said that -"
"Wait - who's 'they'? I thought you said you knew a person?" Puck turned back to glare at Mustardseed, and was astonished to see him color slightly.
"It's a female!" Puck's voice hushed in wonder. "You've been talking to a female and you didn't want me to know and so you tried to say 'they'. Brother, have you been secretly having a social life? Wow! We should sound the proverbial trumpets and declare a kingdom festival!"
Mustardseed's only reaction was a twitch in his jaw.
"As I was saying," he went on, deliberately ignoring Puck's sarcasm, "they agreed with me that we need allies. Not just military forces we can call on in times of threat, but true allies even in times of peace. Faerie is an unusual kingdom. Our people are not only Fae, as populate the other fairy courts around the world. When Father first began ruling, he took in all the Everafters in the region, gave them a safe place to be from the mortal world outside. And it worked - for a while. Those Everafters rarely - if ever - ventured outside Faerie, let alone assimilated with that mortal world where they could find work, have prospects for themselves, futures for their children. Those who did sometimes survived but enough stories have filtered back to paint a bleak enough outlook of life out there that fewer and fewer were motivated to leave. Now here we are in the busiest city in the human world, far, far removed from other Everafters. We're isolated. We're regressing instead of progressing. Eventually, we're going to run out of land, out of Everafters to marry and start families and new populations with -"
"There are humans. They can marry humans," Puck pointed out, frowning.
"And you will be the perfect poster boy for that forward thinking," Mustardseed reassured him dryly, gratified at the slight flush that crept up his brother's neck as he'd spoken. "But you know as well as I that Faerie is not set up for easy comings-and-goings between Everafters and humans. And the issue still remains that we need to make connections - old and new - with others of our kind, to invite them to join us, to encourage our people to join them."
"I'm listening," Puck filled his brother's pause, his face unusually serious.
"We start small: show our faces here, say a few words there, get our foot in the door. People notice, they get interested, they ask about us, we land interviews, and we get a voice, to share what we want about who we are to the entire world -"
"Assuming the entire world is interested -"
"- they will be, with the right angle. And if we're lucky, other Everafters will read those interviews, will hopefully spread the news, and they'll come out of hiding."
"And if we're especially lucky," Puck pointed out primly, "we'll have time to pack up and run before the monsters come find us, because we'd just as good as declared an open house."
Mustardseed threw him a disapproving look. "Have some faith, Puck. The monsters, as you call them, already know where we are. And for whatever reason, they've not come calling, not in the centuries we've been here. The good guys, the ones who're scared, the ones who need to know it's okay to get help from the human world - they're the ones we're trying to reach."
"Get help from the human world," Puck repeated slowly, his lip curling, and Mustardseed's brow furrowed at the sight.
"You did, didn't you?" He asked, suddenly uncertain. "The Grimms helped you, helped us, are still helping us."
"Well, then the Grimms are the weirdos." Puck's face suddenly closed, and turned away.
"What do you mean?"
The silence that followed was a stark change from the heated words that had flown between them just moments earlier. Mustardseed watched his older brother wrestle within himself until finally, Puck met his gaze with cold eyes.
"You never had the delight of being banished, brother. Of being butt-kicked out into this warm and welcoming human world, as you call it. Let's just say that I can totally sympathize with all those scaredy cats hiding in the woodwork. Sometimes it's not worth the risk of leaving home. Lucky for them, they still have the choice. Maybe we should just let them stay where they are instead of baiting them with promises of new tomorrows and glorious opportunities and other such crap."
When Puck finished his bitter tirade, Mustardseed sat heavily down in his chair and folded his fingers together. His head was spinning with the realization that he'd never actually known what Puck had lived through during his years of exile. Because he'd been brought back to Faerie by friends and even now remained connected to them - by choice - he'd assumed that his brother had found ways to cope with being away from home, had not suffered too much, had been happy.
"What happened to you out there, Puck?" He asked quietly.
Puck's eyes shuttered. "Everything."
"Tell me," Mustardseed's words were a plea.
"Not my favorite bedtime story," Puck snorted, but his flippancy didn't have quite its usual edge. "It could keep you up at night. You see, before the Grimms found me, everyone else did. Father threw me out with nothing. I still had my magic, sure, but I also had to eat, to sleep, to hide. At first, I played tricks, and that worked for a while. But humans are resilient little blighters. They stay scared for only so long. After that, they fight back. So I stole and I fought and I killed. Hundreds and hundreds of them before the Old Lady got hold of me. I almost killed her, too, and I would've if not for that wolf man."
"Mr Canis."
"Yes. That's what I meant when I said the Grimms were the weirdos. They were the only ones who didn't join the hunt. Do you know, brother, that the humans have ways to torture a boy that even the Fae would never dream of?"
Mustardseed visibly flinched. "Puck, I'm . . . sorry."
Puck shook his head violently. "Whatever. It's done now. I don't think of it much. Anyway, why would I wish that on other Everafters? It's a trap."
"What if . . . what if it wasn't, though? What if the world's different now? What if Everafters could enter it and be safe, because there are other Everafters already in it whom they'd know to seek out, who would welcome them, who could help? What if that could've been the world you found instead of the one you were forced into? What if someone had tried - had succeeded - to do what we're only doing now?"
Puck was silent once more, studying the orange crumbs on the carpet. Mustardseed wisely let him have his thoughts to himself.
"What do you have in mind?" Puck asked at last.
"We use the media."
"Like . . . go on national TV and campaign for. . . other Fae to come out of the woodwork so we can have a big midnight revel in some park somewhere?" In the wake of the buildup, the exasperation on Puck's face was almost comical.
"Not exactly. We're going to use a different platform. We'll market ourselves as ambassadors of goodwill and social success. Other Everafters around the world will see it, be reassured that it is possible to make a life in the mortal universe, and even contribute to it, use our skills for mutual good."
Mustardseed paused and Puck blinked several times.
"I didn't understand a single word you said there," he moaned. "Except for the bit about goodwill, which I just about barfed at because I am so not about goodwill. Just. . . give it to me straight, Mustardseed. What is it you've signed us up for?"
Then Mustardseed inhaled, and told him, and even though he'd kept his voice low, the servants several hallways down said later that Puck's laughter was like a dying man convulsing on borrowed air.