A/N: I posted this story before by the account ang3lm3l0dy but since I can't seem to open that account... Oh well.
They were both touched by the darkness. They look at their reflection and they see a distorted figure, all the demons and ugliness in there.
She is deceptively beautiful. She looks cold, unforgiving, merciless. She looks very much like a queen of snows, of ice. But inside she is as broken as a shattered glass. And like a shattered glass she is. You may want to pick the pieces up and reconstruct them, but no one has done so because they are sharp and could make you bleed.
He looks deceptively innocent. He is graceful and charming—everything a prince should be. And he is a prince. A prince of lies and deception and sadness and isolation. He is like a candle flame, easily outshone by campfires and suns and lamps. Alone, the flame looks beautifully enchanting in the darkness. He tries to get higher, reach something above—but cannot. Because the cold wind blows, and that flame is easily snuffed out.
"Do you know the story of the candlelight that was too boastful?"
She asks him, while he is in a prison cell in one of the dungeons of her castle because he tried to usurp the throne, and almost killed the queen and her sister.
Of course he knows. He always knows. He's heard a lot of stories that come with a warning for him, but still he did not listen. Did not want to. So he feigns ignorance. He snorts out laughter.
"What is that? Another story for children?"
She looks down, and begins to tell a story of a candlelight who boasted one evening that it shone brighter than the stars, the moon, the sun or even all of them put together. At the very same moment a puff of wind came and blew it out. Someone lit it again and said, 'Shine on, friend candlelight, but hold your tongue. The lights of heaven are never blown out.'
Silence ensues. The silver moon shines through the bars of his cell.
"Why are you telling me this?" His voice laces with confusion and rage and anger.
"You have several similarities with that candlelight."
He does not do anything, just stares at her.
"I could do it, you know if only."
Several unspoken words hang in the air: I'll forgive you, if you only stop pushing me, everyone away.
"Queen of ice, of coldness, of winter!" He grits his teeth. "What right do you have to forgive me?!"
"Stop it," she holds unto one of the bars in his prison, her eyes bright and cold. "I had worn a mask too. I could see right through lies."
Just because she, too, deceived people.
"But we deceived people for different reasons, Your Highness," a voice cold, sarcastic, and terrifyingly crazy replies. "You try to save them, I try to save myself."
"But it doesn't have to be that way," she looks at him, her back hunches, her lips trembles. She understands because she has been there before. That's when he realizes that like ice she's beautiful and powerful and dangerous. And no matter what people say, she still feels isolated in a way.
"You…" You make me confused and angry at the same time. You also make me fascinated and enchanted and sad… But no words pour from his mouth.
"You try to save yourself and yet you don't been know the meaning of salvation," she replies.
"Salvation?" he sneers. "What do you know about salvation?"
"I know salvation because someone had saved my people when they were nearly freezing to death from the winter I've brought. I know salvation for someone had saved me from getting killed and…"
He waits for her continue.
"…someone also saved and stopped me from nearly being a monster."
"Don't you see?" he asks smugly. "It was all part of an act."
"You say it as if you planned everything," she replies. As if he planned her magic and he planned her sister. She turns around and leaves him alone in his cell. He hears her heels clack on the floor, the swish of her gown at the tiled floor of the dungeon.
"Why do you even talk to him?"
Her sister asks her, one time after she visited him. He has been kept in their dungeons because his family couldn't care less about him.
"There might be a possibility,"
"A possibility of what? Changing him?"
She doesn't answer her sister, just continues walking to her room. Possibility of what, exactly? She doesn't know.
Of course she was the first one between the two of them who shows her true colors. After all, she was ice and he was fire. Ice melts when near fire.
"In what do I owe the pleasure of another visit from you, My Queen?" He asks, sarcastically.
She is wearing a whitish-blue gown, her favorite one, he notices, because she always wears it.
"It's Summer Festival up there," she replies.
He arches his eyebrow at that. "Then why doesn't Her Majesty go an enjoy it?"
She slumps down, her back supported by the bars of his jail. He sits down too, and if it wasn't for the bars (cold, like her) they would have been back to back (he doesn't know why he does it, he just does).
"You're the only one who'd actually understand me," she says.
He looks surprised, but of course he knows. He always does (because they were both called monsters, both isolated, both alone).
"My Queen," he asks sarcasm off his voice. "Did you know? I hadn't planned everything to happen this way. I wanted to do it cleanly, honestly," he stops.
"But then I happened."
"Exactly so," he shrugs. "You happened. You were far too collected to be my queen. I hated you. And now I realize why."
They have settled on a comfortable silence, because they both understand what he means exactly. That they were very much the same and it does not matter that he is fire and she is ice because everything he hates about himself are almost the same things he hates about her.
She leaves his cell a little later than she expected.
He was alone in his cell, and he hasn't seen the queen for a few days now. He realizes how much he misses her visits, even though he hates her.
That's when he hears a guard go in.
"The queen has pardoned you. You are free to go."
He can't say anything, surprised that she let him go. That she let her killer go.
"May I ask audience of Her Majesty?" he asks, and he doesn't know why, he just needs to talk to her. Because even though he misses his home, he'd rather be here.
"I'm sorry. But the Queen said that once you are pardoned you would be given any request except seeing her."
"Oh," he nods, and he was given room in one of the spare rooms in the left wing of the castle, where all the servants are, because he stays stubborn, and still wants to meet her.
Of course the news of him being stubborn reaches her. She rules here, after all. But she does not want to meet him, not now, when she finally pardoned him. But she should have known. He will always find a way.
It was again in an evening, a bright one at that, the kingdom covered in a blanket of white because it's winter. She simply just couldn't sleep so she goes out to go to her ice palace, which wasn't visited for almost a year now.
"Good evening Your Majesty," voice deep and rich, very much unlike the sneers she's received the first time she visited him. She doesn't see him, because of the darkness enveloping him, cradling him in its arms.
"What are you doing here?" she whispers. "Why won't you leave?" and she doesn't know if she's talking about her demons or him. Maybe both. Because whenever she sees him, demons and ghosts come back and she doesn't know what to do, she feels vulnerable and scared and cowered.
"Don't run, I wanted to see you," he steps out of the darkness, and she closes her eyes.
"Why don't you look at me?" he asks, and he sounds so desperate that she opens her eyes and he looks exactly like that: desperate and sad and very much alone.
She gets scared. It feels like she's looking at herself, he mirrors her too much.
"Why…" she tries to ask again, but instead he catches her mouth on his and she tries to pull away, because she's scared of hurting him, but since he's bigger and stronger, she is unsuccessful, and eventually gives up, because she wants this to happen. She needs this to happen, needs someone to see her as she really is, not just as a monster or the queen or as a sister. She needs someone to really see, needs someone to accept her demons, needs someone to understand, and he—he understands too much, knows her too well.
They break apart, she is left breathless. He smiles at her, a real genuine smile, and he leaves her alone, leaving a paper in her hand.
She smiles when she reads what was written on the paper. She quickly watches his retreating figure from the palace's balcony.
There was no need to say goodbye anymore.
Thank you. Salvation. Forgiveness. I've known the meanings of these words because of you. I'll come back when I'm ready to learn the meaning of love.
There might be demons, lurking, still, but at least they have each other.