A/N: Okay, I know it's been like a gazillion years since I updated so a special thank you to everyone to sticked out!
I've been busy with exam - I read like freaking FIVE books. For one exam... damn I'm a nerd...
Anyway, after the exam I was spending a week with my grandmother without internet, so sorry I didn't pull myself together and updated before we left. I honestly didn't think about it. Sorry.
Anyway, here's the story. Still not mine. Wonder if I could find some way to go back in time and make it?
Enjoy! And please review. I live of reviews. They're my oxygen.
Mathematics
She had always sucked at romance.
There was no denying it. Sure she had dated and flirted with guys at parties, but it always stopped there. Her dates had never been anything special and her flirts were lucky if they got to making out.
She never fell for anyone. Sure, she could think some guy was cute, but she never spent hours daydreaming about one guy and she never had the feeling of butterflies in her stomach, when she went for a date or flirted with some guy.
She could analyze a poem to perfection, calculate advanced mathematic, write stories that made the reader laugh and cry after her choice and create art so beautiful that her art teacher had tried to talk her into exhibit it.
But she couldn't bring herself to cry over some guy, she didn't know anything about seduction and she had a feeling she always said or did the wrong thing.
With Marak it was no different.
It would be nice to think that with him, she would always know the right thing to say or do. But that wasn't true. But unlike the other boys and men, Marak just laughed it off when she started rambling or starting talking about something she deep down knew wasn't considered sexy. She never got why so many boys had so big a problem with the thought of having a girlfriend with a brain. Marak only found it amusing if she started rambling about chemistry or theology. He never started to look at her as if she was crazy.
Later on she got comfortable enough with him to be able to flirt effortlessly and analyse what mood he was in. Sure she would sometimes still say something that probably shouldn't have been said at that specific time, but being raised among goblins, Marak was used to people just saying what they thought.
And the butterflies?
They came.
Funnily enough several months inside her marriage.
Traditional
She hadn't exactly had a traditional wedding.
She had dreamt about how her wedding should be – which girl hadn't? – even though she wasn't even sure she wanted to be married. With her father leaving her mother after twenty-four years and four children, she didn't want to risk the same happened to her. Not that she didn't love her father. He was an amazing dad, who clearly loved her more than anything. She just wasn't sure she would ever get the courage to be so vulnerable to anyone. Opening up meant risking to get hurt.
But she had still had a fantasy-wedding. It should be outdoor in Japan – she loved the nature and God it would drive her family crazy having to fly across the world or miss it. She would wear a simple, but beautiful dress and most importantly then she would love her groom dearly. He would be someone understanding, honest, funny and comforting.
It was safe to say she didn't get the wedding.
Instead of Japan, she got a cave deep underground with thousand of horrifying monsters screaming as she was cut with knives.
Instead of her white wedding dress, her dress had to be so short they were able to use the shackles around her ankles and so revealing that the Queens Charm wouldn't have problems gliding in under her skin.
Instead of looking at her groom with love and happiness, she felt fear and anger at the sight of the terrifying monster in front of her. A monster, who hurt her, who took away everything she held dear and who did it all for the sake of all the other screaming monsters.
But she did get the most important thing. She got a husband, who clearly loved her, who she would never risk abandoning her, and who would never take advantage of her trust. Instead he would be ecstatic that she finally felt safe with him.
And she realized that she didn't have to have Japan, a beautiful dress or even love for her groom.
She just had to have love for her husband.
Subject
She had never been the type to crave for admirers.
She had always preferred friends. True friends. Not followers.
And now she found herself to have thousands of subjects, who all seemed to live merely to make her happy. They surely tried.
But she couldn't really appreciate their efforts and enjoy their attention.
Silently she sat among thousand of admiring stares, desperately craving a friend.
Roll
"Just one bite," he coaxed her.
"I'm not hungry," she whispered. It was true. Looking upon hundreds of deformed monsters, who all stared at you, would do that to your appetite.
"Just one bite?"
Having a feeling that if she gave in she would end up throwing up, she merely shook her head.
"Fine," he sighed, giving up. She looked up in surprise. He rarely gave up that easily and usually he would prove capable of persuading her.
He pushed his plate away with a huff, which could only be described at childish. "Then I'm not eating either."
Before she could even begin to ask him why he would even think his starvation would help anything, if not make her happy, the others goblins had seen what their king had done, and before she knew of it, they pushed away their plates as well.
With a huff much similar to his, she crossed her arms, having no intentions of eating.
That was until she caught sight of a young goblin boy. Despise his look – half wolf, half human – she would recognize the look in his eyes anywhere as he gazed longingly at the cupcake in front of him.
It was the precisely same look her youngest brother had when she told him he would have to wait to after dinner to get some sweets.
The precisely same look that always caused her to cave in.
With an exasperated sigh she reluctantly grabbed a roll of bread.
The little boy's exited and relieved face was worth Maraks triumphantly smirk.
At least that was what she told herself.
Dead
With a gasp Mai shot out of bed. She had had a nightmare. This in itself was not unusual. She constantly had nightmares, though they became rarer and rarer as time went by. But this nightmare was different than the others. This didn't involve the tons of earth above her crumbling and burying her alive. This didn't involve the disappearance of her copy, which would mean her family's agony. This didn't involve Marak, the frightening monster.
Well, it did involve Marak, but unlike the other nightmares about him he didn't hurt her. He wasn't cruel or malicious. In fact he was trying to protect her.
In the nightmare she had sat silently, unable to move a muscle as Marak screamed of pain, before finally laying still.
She shivered at the thought of the nightmare. Marak hadn't come to bed yet. He was probably still working.
True enough, she found him in his office, writing. Finally truly realizing he wasn't dead she was left to wonder what the nightmare has been about.
Why would she think he would protect her?
Why would the thought of his death fill her with worry instead of happiness?
Finally looking up at the sound of her, Marak laid his pencil aside. "Nightmare?"
She hesitated. "Yeah." There really wasn't any reason admitting what it had been about.
He pushed his work aside and pulled her back into their bedroom. "You should go back to sleep," he said. "I'll make sure you won't get anymore nightmare."
Lying in bed again she grudgingly admitted that maybe, just maybe, she didn't want Marak dead or even suffering. Maybe she even wanted him to be happy. She just didn't want him to be happy with her.
Contact
Three days into their marriage Marak was at the edge of pulling his hair out in frustration. Three days of marriage and she hadn't said one damn word! Ever since she saw him the first time she had refused to answer his question or saying, well anything to him.
By the third day Marak was willing to pay almost anything for any type of contact with his wife. Any type at all. He would even be relieved if she started screaming at him or even tried to kill him. It would still be better than just watching her either staring out in the distance with those eyes filled with desperation or pace around their apartment as a lion in a cage.
The only sign she even acknowledged his presence was the way she shivered every time he came near her and the way she constantly glanced in his direction as a prey would keep an eye on the presence of a predator.
It was the night between the third and forth night she finally caved in. Lying awake in their bed, he wondered what had woken him up before he realized that she wasn't there. He still hadn't fully comprehended that he was now married and he had more often that not woken up wondering why in the world a young human girl was lying in his bed.
Getting up not looking forward to a night searching for his wandering wife, he discovered pleasantly surprised that she was merely out on their balcony.
"Having trouble sleeping?" he asked her gently, trying to ignore her shudder as he neared her.
As usually she didn't answer him and he tried not to let this bother him as he looked at the view with her. He had seen it more time than he could count, but now he tried to see it from her point of view. He knew it was likely she had never seen anything as magically or beautiful in her life and hoped that she one day would appreciate it.
"Why?" She suddenly asked, pulling him out of his thought.
For several long seconds he didn't even try to comprehend what she had said, but was merely inwardly celebrating that his wife actually had talked to him. And it wasn't even an insult! Then his brain started to function once again.
"Why?" he repeated. Of all the things he had expected her to say – whereof most of them were either curses or pleading of letting her go – this was not one of them.
"Why are you doing this to me?" She whispered, barely holding back her tears. "Why hold me captive here? Why marry me? Why are you hurting me like this?"
Inwardly he cringed, wondering why she asked. He had explained it to her, of course. In fact he had told her several times, deeply hoping she would one day understand. Was she trying to make him feel guilty for taking her? In that case it worked exceptionally well.
"Why me?" she added, her tears now freely running down her cheeks. It itched in his hands to dry them away, but he knew she wouldn't allow it.
Now he understood his question. She wasn't asking him why he did what he did. She asked him how come she ended up being the victim.
He hesitated, trying to find the right words. He wouldn't lie to her – couldn't lie to her – but he didn't want to make things worse.
With an uncomfortable feeling he realized he was most likely to. "Because I wanted you," he told her truthfully. "Because I found you beautiful. Because you were educated, but did not seem haughty. Because I hoped your fascination with other cultures would help you. Because I wanted to make the elf king jealous. Because I was selfish and it was you I had decided I wanted to marry."
He fell silent, waiting for her to break down, to yell at her, to try to kill him, to try to throw herself of the balcony. Thankfully that didn't happen.
Mai had finally realized that this in fact was happening. She was married to a goblin, she was going to give birth to his heir and she was never going to see her family again. This wasn't a fairytale and there was no knight in shiny armour to rescue her.
She didn't think she could handle it. The pain was so powerful she almost didn't believe that it really was only emotional. It had to be physical somehow. It was if someone tried their very hardest to squash her heart with their bare hands. She looked down, half expecting to see blood pouring out of her chest.
There was nothing to see and as she stared down she couldn't feel the tears streaming down her face, couldn't hear her own sobbing. She didn't even notice when Marak pulled her into an tentative embrace.
All that existed was pain.
And now she had realized it was a pain she would live with forever.
Physiology
She had always loved literature, art and music.
She had always hated biology, physic and physical geography.
It didn't help she had always been awful at them in school. The interest simply wasn't there.
Therefore it was with deep surprised she discovered Marak thought her to be smart when they began to discuss physiology or herbology.
It was first when she realized that her world had far more knowledge concerning these subjects than this new world that she realized than while she was considered average, if not mildly stupid when they came up in discussion back in her old classroom, she was here far more knowledgeable than most.
She tried to explain this to Marak, but it did nothing to remove his admiring gaze.
She tried her very hardest not to be flattered by it.
She failed.
Insistence
Even several months into their marriage she still had her bad days. The days where she wanted nothing more than to stay in bed and bath in self pity.
Or at least that was what she would have done, if Marak had allowed her.
Whenever he found her hiding under their covers in the middle of the day he would almost do anything to get her out of there. He would coax, demand and even beg for her to come with him and do something.
And every time she would cave in to his insistence that it would be better if she came with him and every damn time he proved that he was right.
Nature
Walking among the silver trees in the winter garden she had to admit Maraks kingdom was the most beautiful place she had ever seen – and would ever see, she added annoyed.
True, it didn't have the wildness of the nature, but it had a beauty more magical and elegant than anything she would ever find above earth.
She just wished she could have had both.
Infinite
Never had infinity seemed so long as after she had realized she would spent the rest of it down here.
She would for all infinity live among the same monsters, who took her freedom.
She would for all infinity stay married to her ugly husband, whom she did not love.
She would for all infinity wake up in his arms, shuddering at the feeling.
She would for all infinity cry her heart out, but still have tears left.
She would for all infinity forcing herself to breath despise having no joy in life.
She would for all infinity force her heart to beat without anyone to love.
No, never had infinity seemed so long.
A/N: If I ever repeat anything, please let me now. By know I've written so much to this story I have trouble remembering what I've actually written and what are just ideas about what I wish to write.
I just seem to be unable to stop this story. I've fallen in love with it. Hard.