Reply to anonymous reviewer:

Hanabi: Looking forward to see whether your predictions are right hehe. And it's charming your parents get along well. It makes me feel like smiling too.

Warning: allusion to non-con, and sobfest.

Part 2.7: At the bottom of the ocean (there are treasures)

At eleven, Arthur had been taken off his ancestral grounds without knowing that he would never once again set foot onto the home of his birth.

At fourteen, Arthur had become one of the youngest Empress Consorts in history.

At fifteen, the same begetter found himself subjugated to a life of slavery.

The branding must be the most awful moment of his life. The way red hot iron seared his flesh, melting layers of skin and fat and burning the muscles below his collarbone as he trashed in pain – pain, so much pain clouding his senses, his nerves on fire –his arms and legs pinned under iron cuffs on the ground, the cold, thick metal chafing his skin. He didn't believe that that animalistic, blood-curdling scream filling the dungeon was spilled out of his own mouth until his throat hurt when he attempted to stop his saliva from leaking off his lips. Arthur could literally smell his own burnt flesh, and it made him sick. Fortunately, there was only bile when he vomited on the floor next to his head, otherwise the stench would have triggered his gag reflex again. As it was, Arthur passed out from the pain soon after he was branded.

The other slaves and servants were kind enough to clothe him in garbs with low collars. His mark of ownership was exposed for everyone to see, sure, but at least there was no layer of fabric irritating his raw, sensitive wound. Anyways, the sooner it dried the better.

Ironically, his first noteworthy 'task' was to safely transport the former Cornflower, Antonio Carriedo and Princess Maria out of the Capital.

They'd approached him in the dark of the night a few days after the fever that signaled his infection from the branding cooled down. Roderich had been keeping contact with him as he fed him medicine secretly. When asked, Arthur admitted that he was familiar with the ways of the underground water tunnels in the Capital (don't ask how or why) so he was in.

"You won't believe the nerve of that old geezer," the former Carnation sighed as Arthur helped him pack the handiest of clothing for every season into his luggage in silence. His young daughter was asleep at the other end of his chamber. "As soon as he's Regent, he started replacing the Ministers in the parliament with his own people! And there have been mysterious disappearances of those who opposed him. Soon enough, he'll be sending people to assassinate us," he frowned.

"That's why we're getting away before he can," the former Cornflower threw a cloak at Antonio's face. "Less talking and more packing!" He placed his hands at the sides of his heavily pregnant waist. He looked so full, like he was about to give birth any time. Arthur eyed his abdomen warily, concerned about his state.

The albino noticed Arthur's stare and merely grinned wryly. "We have no choice," he shook his head, "better leave now with the baby inside of me. It's harder to watch out for his people once he or she is out of my body. The awesome me will be fine, brat!"

Instead of rolling his eyes (like he used to do), Arthur merely bit his lower lip and busied himself with packing.

"…Hey," the albino nudged his former student on the shoulder with one hand, the other hand digging deep into the recess of his pocket. Arthur blinked as he procured a golden necklace with small chips of blue and red gems attached to the delicate chain, and deposited the jewelry to his hand.

"When you need money for yourself, sell it," his former sword fighting tutor grinned at him when Arthur looked at him in puzzlement. "My House's emblem is cast on this plate, here," the albino pointed at the metal near one of the beads, "so that if anybody tries to raise a fuss by claiming that you stole it from them, you can tell him I gave this to you."

Arthur raised his brow as Roderich snorted. "Won't that sound suspicious after you're missing?"Well said, Roderich, Arthur thought. The Cornflower often meant well, but he was…sometimes mentally challenged.

"Err…" the albino blinked before his cheeks turned red. "Shaddup! Anyways, sell this the first chance you get! The money will certainly do you some good!" he huffed.

Arthur accepted the necklace with his palms and smiled. "Thank you."

Everyone paused and stared.

Arthur blinked. "W-what?"

The former Cornflower ruffled Arthur's hair. "It's good that you can still smile." He, too, had a smile on his face. None of his badass grin – just a soft, simple smile. "Listen, brat, the key to surviving in the Castle is to stay low. And stick to Alfie. He can and he will protect you."

"I know…" Arthur looked down at the floor, "but…I don't want to bother him."

"Seriously? Alfie would cry a flood without you. That kid needs you!" The albino raised his voice.

Everyone shushed him and peered at the Princess in the bed. She was still blissfully asleep.

"Think of it this way," Roderich continued in hushed tones, "You're the only parental figure Their Highnesses have left, because the only thing Duke Orleans is interested in is how he can manipulate his grandsons to do his biddings. The Princes will play their part, and you should play yours too."

"Well said!" The red-eyed begetter slapped Roderich' back and the brunet scowled. "By the way, little master, where will you be going?" he asked casually.

Roderich was neither pregnant nor with a child. Arthur thought (hoped) he was going to stay.

"To my father's home, most likely," the bespectacled musician sighed. "I have no wish to serve Duke Orleans or be involved in his politics. I'd rather retreat away from the Capital. I imagine the court will be a circus under his…reign." He turned to Arthur and his lips curled downward. "I'm sorry."

Arthur shook his head. "No such thing," he mumbled, "everyone should take care of himself now."

The former Carnation snapped the lid of his luggage with a resounding 'click' that carried a sense of finality. The four widows looked at each other for a long time, memorizing each other's features, before Roderich ended the strange moment of connection by clearing his throat. "Well…"

Antonio picked up his (still slumbering) daughter into his arms, while Arthur picked up their luggage. "Let's go!" The brunet grinned.

They departed.

(Every slave and servant was heavily punished after the disappearance of two prominent former flowers and one (and a half) heir to the throne was discovered. But nobody could track it back to him. Roderich had covered their tracks well. Arthur kept an ear for any news of them and breathed a sigh of relief after weeks of no news. When it was time for Roderich to depart, Arthur still shed a tear no matter how much he'd steeled his heart.)

"Arthur!"

Prince Alfred launched himself into Arthur's arms the moment the slave entered his room to change the linens. Apparently, the chief had made him in-charge of cleaning the Princes' chambers after the Princes (or rather, Prince Alfred) stirred up a ruckus. Still, one week had passed from the day Arthur owed his life to the young blue-eyed blonde.

"Where have you been?" Prince Alfred sighed as he nuzzled the older man's side, small arms holding his waist tightly. "I've been so scared for you…"

Arthur placed his hand on the Prince's shoulders awkwardly, his fingertips giving the royalty the barest of touch. "I'm sorry to have worried you, Your Highness."

The Prince withdrew from him and glared. "Arthur," he frowned, "call me like you used to."

"Prince Alfred," Arthur kneeled in front of his charge to bring their eyes level, "things have changed. I'm no longer in a position that allows me to touch you and address you casually."

"As long as we're alone, it should be okay, right?" Prince Alfred's lips turned downward. "Arthur-"

"Excuse me…" the door to the room creaked open, and Arthur nearly jumped away from the Prince before Prince Matthew's head poked into the room. "I heard Arthur's here…" he slipped into the small gap between the door and the frame and shuffled his feet.

"Prince Matthew," Arthur allowed the shy Prince a smile. "Your humble subject is here." He gave him a quick bow.

Though the quiet monarch looked bothered by his former tutor's greeting, he approached him steadily and offered a bundle of paper to his face. "…You've lost weight," his thin brows creased, "I've brought some food for you…I hope…no, I insist you accept it."

Arthur resisted the urge to blink and let his smile widen instead. Passive aggressiveness suited Prince Matthew, somewhat. "Thank you very much, Your Highness," Arthur raised his hands to receive the package.

Prince Alfred, who was pouting and glaring at his twin for taking Arthur's attention off him, suddenly grabbed Arthur's hands. His skin was filled with angry red burnt marks and hard calluses. "What happened to them?" Prince Alfred asked worriedly as he pulled one of Arthur's hands closer to his face and turned his palm.

"Prince Alfred, you needn't worry," Arthur reassured the boy as the three of them stared at his battered hand. "I was just ironing clothes [2]," he stated, but when Prince Alfred touched one of the blisters he couldn't help but jerk and hiss in pain.

"You're not okay at all!" Prince Alfred's frown deepened. "I'll tell the chief to get you off ironing duti-"

"No, I'm really okay," Arthur insisted. He knew the former Edelweiss had told him to let Prince Alfred protect him, but this was really too much, he felt. "Do you remember that a few months ago, when you started learning sword fighting, your palm started to hurt?" Arthur moved his finger across the raised, hardened calluses on the young Prince's palm. Almost immediately, Prince Alfred quieted. Arthur had learned long ago that his young charge tended to behave agreeably when he was showered with affection, and used this finding to get him to at least listen to his views. "It's the same with this," Arthur smiled at him, "give it a few more days, and I'll be fine."

Prince Alfred stared at him for a long, long time before his gaze dropped to the mark below Arthur's collarbone. "…Does it still hurt?" His fingers reached out to caress it, only to halt midair.

"It doesn't hurt anymore," Arthur answered honestly.

The Prince sighed. "If you say so…"

When Prince Alfred settled himself on Arthur's chest, his protests settling onto the silent crease on his brows, Arthur let him be. He sent Prince Matthew, who was eyeing the oldest blonde hesitantly, a welcoming gaze. The smile on the quieter twin's face when he joined them in a group hug was simply beautiful.

Surprisingly, Arthur settled into the life of a slave fairly well.

He'd been rotated to different parts of the Castle for the chief to find what he was good at performing [1]. He was forbidden from entering the kitchen after barely ten minutes of chopping vegetables and boiling soup, but generally, Arthur loved the stable, the gardens and the laundry room best. He loved taking care of the horses, digging his fingers in dirt as he planted the bulbs or sitting next to the window sill with beddings or curtains for the next balls or celebrations in his hands.

It was probably because the home of his ancestral grounds didn't employ that many servants. Women didn't survive very well in northern borderlands, which were riddled with harsh weather, wild animals and threats of disputes with neighbouring states. There weren't that many farms either, so they grew their own vegetables. Erin was too clumsy with threads and needles so more often than not it was Arthur who accompanied their mother in autumns, stitching the seams of winter coats for four growing children near the fireplace, as James and their father looked for firewood. Rhys liked to insist on the importance of taking care of his horses (and sheep), and the mares he'd nurtured could run faster than the wind and often won races in town. Arthur had learned a lot from simply lending his quiet brother a hand.

(Reminiscing on his childhood made him miss his family like there was a hole in his chest, so he'd quickly banish the memories from his mind and focus on the chores at hand.)

Some slaves and servants [3] liked to mock him and assign him heavy tasks or beat him up for 'not moping the floor properly' (for he was a newbie and therefore, at the bottom of the food chain and boy, did they like reminding him of that), but mostly they ignored him. Some of them treated him amicably, too, for Arthur never reacted to any baiting or kept a distance with anyone. He was unexpectedly calm about the transition over his lifestyle.

His sleeping quarter was a barrack shared with numerous other slaves. His bunk bed was made of rattan and hay (as a newbie, he was relegated to the bottommost surface, where bugs could crawl over him when he slept). He hadn't been able to sleep well, because during cold, windy nights the draft was terrible.

And the child sleeping next to him had been crying.

She was a small, small girl, aged six at most, with beady dark eyes and shoulder-length inky black hair. Her parents must have been Easterners. She'd quieted after she'd been shushed by the teenage girl sleeping above her, but still sobbed herself to sleep on most nights, occasionally hiccoughing and blowing her nose quietly.

Arthur let her be and minded his own business (there were too many miserable children in slavery for him to care of) until one afternoon, when he was sitting in the laundry room behind a basinful of tablecloth, bubbles and scent of flowery detergent filling the damp room, the section-in-charge - a strict redhead in her mid-twenties with a no-nonsense attitude - barged into the room and shouted, "Who of you idiots washed the crimson curtains of the throne room till the colour fades?"

Arthur distinctly remembered his sleeping neighbour the Eastern kid working on those curtains in the morning (because the cloth was huge and took a long time to scrub). He peeked to the side and there she was (she had mostly the same shifts with him, having entered the Castle not long before Arthur's life as a slave started), scrubbing another piece of cloth. Her small, short hands were shaking. But the rest of her body wasn't, and she wasn't avoiding the section-in-charge's scrutinizing stare. She wasn't afraid of the punishment, it seemed (one learned how to accept them with resignation after sometime), but a longer look on her arms revealed that they were marred blue, black and red, dark straight lashes left behind from recent caning still unhealed. That must be the reason for her mistake.

Before the other slaves pointed at her in unison (for everyone would be punished if no one claimed the blame, and children weren't spared any mercy in slavery), Arthur quickly voiced out. "I deeply apologise, it was my blunder."

The in-charge pursed her lips at him. "Get out," she barked.

Arthur caught the kid's anxious gaze before he exited through the door and sent her what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

Much, much later, when everyone was asleep and Arthur was trying to ignore the stinging of his arms, someone shimmied to his side and draped a makeshift blanket of messily-patched old clothes over him.

"Why did you take the caning for me?" she whispered as she touched his hands softly, beady eyes staring raptly at him like a kitten's.

"Because you couldn't possibly withstand anymore with these hands," he caught her wrist in his significantly larger palm and dropped a kiss to her skin. God, but was he a sucker for kids. "Don't mind it too much."

She grew quiet for a while before she finally curled herself into a ball and tucked herself under Arthur's chin. "I only managed to snatch enough material to patch one blanket," she whispered in explanation.

"I'm Arthur," Arthur accepted her gratitude. "What's your name?" he asked as he petted her hair absently.

"Xin," the little girl answered as she dozed off. [4]

And that was the start of their relationship.

(His uncovered legs still felt cold, but the warmth of her small body made up for it. After weeks of restless sleep, Arthur finally obtained a piece of respite.)

Arthur liked serving the nobles the least.

Whenever he swept the floor or changed the beddings of guests chambers, he always executed his tasks with as much efficiency as possible. Sometimes, when he wasn't fast enough to slink away from the masters of the chambers' sight, some of the aristocrats (especially Duke Orleans' men) liked to command him to perform 'favours' for them.

"You're good, huh?" They often said as they used his mouth or…his other body parts. "Did you use these to get the Emperor hooked?"

After these episodes, Arthur often secluded himself near the well at the edge of the Castle, close to the forest, at night, and scrubbed himself till his skin was red and raw even when he was still bruised. He'd shiver, his teeth clacking as he vomited bile and half digested chunks of coarse bread onto the ground and still he couldn't get the foul taste of semen and cum out of his mouth and he felt disgusted, he hated it, he hated himself so much-

Then Xin came to him with warm leftovers from the kitchen (Xin got assigned to kitchen duties way, way more often than Arthur), wiped him dry, treated his wounds and let him cuddle her as they ate together, and life seemed a little better.

(Life seemed most bearable in Spring, when the flowers he'd tended started to bloom, and it didn't hurt to stay in the gardens as long as he could because he wouldn't get sunburns. Cool breezes weaved between his hair and his sweaty neck and Arthur thought he'd found a piece of Heaven on earth.)

"Are you hurt?"

Arthur looked up from the clean clothes he was folding and arranging into the closet to Prince Alfred, who was in his pajama robe, swinging his legs at the edge of his four-poster bed. "…Not particularly," Arthur pasted a smile on his face.

(Though technically he was in-charge of tending to the Prince's chamber, Arthur only spent a maximum of six hours per week here, most of which the owner was out studying with his (new) tutors. The master of the chamber had taken to skipping classes to wait for him on several occasions, and it took some negotiating with the chief to fix Arthur's schedule in such a way that he would clean Prince Alfred's rooms when the monarch was actually inside.)

Prince Alfred frowned. "But you've been limping."

Arthur's heart lodged itself in his throat. For a moment, the only thing he could feel was fear and oh no he knows nowbefore his heartbeat slowed down again. "…I tripped over the stairs when I was cleaning the railings," he finally managed to say.

Prince Alfred's sky blue eyes stared into his eyes in a piercing gaze. "…Liar," he hissed vehemently.

"Prince Alf-"

"Somebody hurt you, right?" The boy rose to his feet and approached the slave with sure, steady steps. (He was almost ten years old now, and shooting up like a stalk, lean muscles from sword fighting and physical exercises with the Empire's best veterans and teachers filling his limbs and torso. Arthur already knew Prince Alfred would grow up to be bigger than him, bigger than his own father, even). "Tell me who did it!"

"Please, calm down," Arthur rose to his feet, too, and moved his hands in a pacifying gesture. "Nobody hurt me. I just tripped."

"…do you seriously think I would believe your lie?" the Prince took a deep breath and stopped in front of the older blonde, hurt clouding his expression. "…you know that you can count on me to protect you, right?" he placed his hands on the thinner man's shoulders, blue eyes merely inches lower from Arthur's.

"…Of course I do," Arthur replied, and he believed what he said. "It's just…" you will think I'm disgusting you'll hate me you won't understand, "…I was clumsy enough to make mistakes and so I was punished. It's as simple as that. I can handle it on my own. You can't be giving me special treatments all the time. What would the nobles feel if they see the Crown Prince devoting his time to worrying about just one slave? They may be working for you as your ministers or administrators in the future, you know," he spoke calmly. For one moment, Arthur felt like he was still the Prince's tutor, advising the boy on how to deal with politics in his court.

You don't get it,Prince Alfred thought and frowned.You're still trying to protect me."I'm fine," he insisted, "I can handle them on my own too!"

"So let us handle our issues on our own, then," Arthur latched on to the Prince's own words, and the boy seethed when he realised he'd been led. "Arthur!" his pitch rose.

"Your Highness," Arthur placed his hands over Prince Alfred's hands and rubbed them soothingly, "Trust and respect has to be earned. To be the best ruler for your Empire, you should focus on building your knowledge and your relationships with the nobles, do you understand?" He offered the boy a soft smile.

You're not 'just one slave', the Prince protested inwardly, but he conceded (for now) and laid his head on Arthur's shoulder and enveloped his (thin) frame in his arms. Expectedly, Arthur allowed the embrace.

On hindsight, Arthur should have been sensitive enough to recognize that utilizing touches to keep the boy's temper and stubbornness in check would yield repercussions, but he didn't stop.

And the repercussions continued to grow.

TBC

REVIEW PLEASE!

Notes:

1. I purposely not make Arthur the Princes' nanny….because the Princes were growing too old for a nanny, and it'd be awkward, not to mention almost impossible, falling in love with a boy you helped bathe and clothe every day, the boy you had to look after 24/7. The way I made it, Arthur only saw the Princes routinely but occasionally. It's not so awkward later, when Arthur and Alfred started becoming attracted to each other.

2. Coal iron, dude. Not easy to handle!

3. What's the difference between a servant/maid and a slave? Well, servants get paid. They get marginal benefits like unpaid leave to see their families outside the Castle. They are commoners working in the Castle. Slaves (most of the time, war keeps, pardoned criminals, or simply poor people who have no one else) don't get paid (they only get fed and clothed, but no 'buying your own freedom'), and they can't leave the Castle except for running errands. The brand allows people to distinguish the freemen and the slaves. Nobles' personal attendants tend to be servants (freemen) because most slaves are illiterate and attendants need to be smart and attentive.

According to the dramas, in the Forbidden City, servants tended to be assigned to a particular part of the City and/or serving just one particular person only. E.g. servant X worked in the kitchen, servant Y worked in the Archive, etc, the whole time. Well…let's assume in Alfred's Castle the system wasn't so organized…so servants tended to have around 3-4 duties, coz some duties would not take up so much time (e.g. you can't be washing clothes for 15 hours/day!) and some duties were seasonal. E.g. Arthur would be busy gardening in spring and summer, but in winter he would be busy in keeping the rooms warm and ensuring that the horses were comfortable? Something like that? Also, job rotation, yo. Makes it less boring.

4. Xin is my OC, Singapore (Xin-Jia-Bo). She'll grow to be Arthur's most loyal lady-in-waiting, his eyes and ears in the Castle.