Lost in the Dark
By E.M. Megs
Chapter 35 – Fairy Tales
A shadow seemed to fall on the Paitet palace that night that stayed there for the rest of the week. Where Haruhi expected there to be insanity and loud shouting, there was quiet. Deafening, brewing silence. Even during their meetings in the library as they worked out the finals of the treaty, there was quiet. At meals, there was quiet. Everywhere that she expected liveliness because of the presence of Tamaki Suoh, Hikaru and Kaoru Hitachiin, Takashi Morinozuka, and Mitsukuni Haninozuka, there was a sorrowful shadow.
It was enough for Haruhi's nerves to fray and for her spirits to crack. Her hands clenched into fists whenever she sensed them tiptoeing around her as if their quiet was a way not to shatter her.
Finally, on the fifth day of their stay in Pait, she got fed up with it. "Dammit!" she exclaimed, bringing her hand down on the dinner table forcefully. "I'm not dead yet, you idiots!" A servant that was standing nearby, jumped and looked panicked for a moment, probably thinking that she was upset with the food or something. "Quit moping around like I'm already dead!"
"Haruhi-" her father began to protest.
"No, Dad. You listen right now. I might be sick but I am not dead yet and until I am actually dead, I expect all of you to be exactly as you always have been." She looked sharply at the blond sitting two seats down from her father. "That means you, Tamaki Suoh," she demanded sharply.
"I'm no-!"
"Yes you are. You've been growing mushrooms every time I've seen you since you found out. Cut it out. Gloom is not something that looks good on you."
"But-!"
"No. Fucking. Buts," she stated rather impatiently. "Be an idiotic ball of sunshine again or gods so help me I will lose my mind."
Beside her Kyoya smirked, pleased that she hadn't lost her spunk yet. "Hikaru, Kaoru, play your tricks. Hunny, eat your cake. Mori, do whatever it is that you do that makes you so happy. And Dad, please, please don't look so sad all the time. I don't want to be treated like a dying person. I'm still me."
Her father sighed and murmured, "Of course you are, sweetheart."
"Kyoya's the only one that's been acting normal and even he's been a bit overbearing." She shot a soft glare in his direction but he merely smirked at her.
"He's also known a lot longer," Hikaru snorted. "Not like we were given that luxury." Kaoru kicked him under the table quickly. "Ouch! Kaoru!"
"Cut it out," Kaoru hissed out the corner of his mouth.
"He has a point, Kao-kisci. You found out four days ago. You need time to adjust." Hunny was the one that spoke in Hikaru's defense with a silently nodding Mori next to him. "But all the same, I do think we owe Haru-kisci the chance to feel alive while she still is and she can't have that as long as we're moping around."
"Thank you," Haruhi mumbled, looking down at her barely-touched plate. Kyoya's mouth turned down slightly when he realized she wasn't really eating. He opened his mouth to say something but Haruhi shot him a look. "Don't mother hen me, Kyoya," she said sharply. He rolled his eyes and returned to his own food.
"So," Hunny continued as though the interruption hadn't occurred, "Where's the cake?!"
Haruhi breathed a sigh of relief as Tamaki yelled, "I want some too!"
The shadow lifted, if only for a while.
~o~
Their final two days in Pait, Kyoya spent long hours in the library doing research with books that the Narian library didn't have. He didn't know exactly what he was looking for. A spell to lift a curse? A cure to memory problems and organ failure? A sure-fire guide to treaty writing?
He really didn't know. He just knew that he had to do everything he could to fix the situation they were in. "Mon ami? You're still awake?" a sleepy Tamaki yawned as he approached the focused Ohtori. Kyoya didn't spare him a glance or a word. "What are you reading?"
"Unusual Spells and Counterspells," Kyoya muttered back drily.
"Ah," Tamaki said. He stood there stupidly and unable to say anything for a couple minutes before he blurted, "You meant what you said about Namahi?" Kyoya stiffened but didn't deign the Suoh with an answer. "You must really lo-"
"I don't," Kyoya cut in sharply, perfectly aware of what the blond was about to say.
"You think that no one can see it, mon ami?" Kyoya glared up at him from his book. "We all see it. Hikaru and Kaoru may not want to admit it but there's no doubt that they see it."
"I don't love Haruhi," Kyoya said with an edge of annoyance.
"You put up face, Kyoya because you don't want to 'make her nightmares come true.' But really, what do you feel?"
"Love is illogical."
"You're right. It isn't logical. That's why it's a matter of the heart and not the mind."
Kyoya stared at the blond, eyes calculating and confusion glinting through them. "What are you hoping to gain from this conversation, Tamaki?"
Tamaki sighed. "I think it's quite noble that you're denying your feelings to protect her but Kyoya... It's making you sick as well." The Ohtori's eye just barely twitched in annoyance. "Did you think I wasn't observant enough to notice that your skin is paler than the last time we saw each other or that there are bags under your eyes? Or that I hadn't heard you in the bathroom the other night? My bed is on the other side of your bathroom wall!"
Kyoya's shoulders dropped only slightly at this. Then he let out a short breath and whispered, "Don't tell her."
"Why?"
"She thinks that she is the only victim of her curse and I won't let her know otherwise. It would break her. Tamaki, watching me die would break her."
Tamaki pursed his lips in rare irritation. "I won't tell her," he admitted softly.
"Thank you."
"But I think that you should. She deserves to know, Kyoya. Both that you love her and that you're ill." The Kiran Prince turned to leave but then stopped and turned back briefly. "Have you tried looking at fairy tale curses?" The Narian shook his head. "I'd look into it. It's said that they're based on some real fact."
"Acknowledged," Kyoya muttered, returning his eyes to the book in his lap.
"Don't forget to get some rest, mon ami," Tamaki called over his shoulder as he left the library.
When he finally crawled into bed that night, Haruhi, half-awake, rolled over and murmured, "What were you doing?"
"Reading," he whispered back. "Go to sleep."
"I think Tamaki came in here. Said something weird. I think I dreamed it." She was barely even lucid in this state. Kyoya smiled a bit.
"Tamaki always says weird things. Go back to sleep, Haruhi." She hummed lightly in response and curled up against his side, the fingers of her hand finding and lacing with his.
"He said... You weren't... as bad... As he initially... thought," she mumbled in a broken sentence as she dozed off again. Kyoya gazed at her for a long time before finally giving in to sleep.
~o~
A couple weeks after they returned to Nari the two were preoccupied with their own reading in the library when Haruhi called, "Kyoya!" The worried tone in her voice caused him to look up. "Kyoya!" she called again, this time sounding a bit panicked.
He was up and by her side in several immediate strides. She wasn't looking at the book in her lap but the hands that she was holding up. He stared at them as well, something akin to dread pooling in his stomach. "What's happening?" she asked him, her voice jumping an octave. "Why won't they stop shaking?" Her hands were trembling. But trembling wasn't even the word for it anymore. They were shaking quite violently. "I can't stop them from shaking, Kyoya!"
He swallowed and gently took her hands in both of his. He could feel them vibrating even as he tightened his hold on them. He hoped that he was masking the slight tremble in his own hands well enough. "Calm down, Haruhi," he murmured, "Your panic is probably making it worse."
"I can't get them to stop," she gasped at him.
"You're losing control of your motor functions, Haruhi," Kyoya told her gently. "That means bouts of uncontrollable shaking for a while before..." He stopped and took a deep breath. She shot him a questioning look. "Paralyzation," he finished after a moment's hesitation.
"I refuse to lose my ability to walk," Haruhi stated, eyes now fiery instead of scared.
"You may not have a choice, Haruhi," he said calmly. "It's not exactly something that you can control. Some of the wiring in your brain is fraying and that is causing both this and your memory problems."
"But why is it happening?"
The Narian Prince had no answer to that question. He looked at her with softened eyes and shook his head. "I don't know. Because a woman was spiteful and jealous of a family that she never had. Because that woman was cruel and immoral and used magic to curse a baby girl. I'm sorry that baby was you."
"What did I do to deserve this?" she asked, her exterior breaking down and eyes becoming wearied again. "What could I possibly have done to deserve this torture?"
"Nothing. You did nothing, Haruhi. It was her." He hated seeing her so hopeless. His hands squeezed hers tightly and gently pulled her toward him. She let herself fall forward and press her face into his shoulder. He held her carefully until her hands stopped their violent shaking and his own trembling slowed.
The only question that remained was how long they could keep this up. If her motor functions and memory were already failing it was only a matter of time before everything else followed. And he wasn't that far behind her.
'We just have to hold on for a month' he thought as he closed his eyes. 'After that it won't matter.'
~o~
Kyoya was not particularly looking to die from a curse that a bitter old woman had placed on his fiance. That was why he was currently looking through every fairy tale that involved a curse he could get his hands on. Specifically, he was looking for how the curses were broken. The one thing that a lot of them had in common was "True love's first kiss," he scoffed under his breath, "How naive."
"What was that?" Haruhi asked from across the room, obviously having heard him. He shook his head with a quick 'nothing'. He slammed shut the book of fairy tales he was reading and tossed it onto the foot of the bed. "Something wrong?" she asked after glancing at the book cover.
"'Fairy tales' he said. 'Based on actual fact' he said. It's a bunch of mjitbush," he grumbled while pacing.
She had absolutely no idea what he was talking about but the neurotic muttering habit that he had adopted recently made her a bit anxious. "Kyoya. You're muttering again." He glanced at her a moment before resuming his pacing but didn't say anything. A chill ran down her spine. "Kyoya, did you hear me?"
"What was that, Haruhi?" Kyoya finally responded, the spell broken at least for the moment.
She looked at him for several moments with a cross between confusion and curiosity on her face. Finally, she took a breath and said, "Kyoya, are you alright?"
"Of course I'm alright, Haruhi," he replied, almost too quickly. "Why wouldn't I be?"
"You were muttering to yourself again."
"Was I?"
"You didn't notice?"
He looked over at her for a moment, his eyes thoughtful and his mouth drawn in a half-open frown. Then he hummed and strode toward the door. "I'll be back." He flung the door open.
"Kyoya, wait!" she called as he hurried through the door. "What's going on?" Slam.
She sat there for a while with her lips pursed in annoyance. He was hiding something from her again. She dreaded to think what it might be considering all the advances her illness had recently taken. She looked again at the book he'd been reading. "Fairy tales," she muttered to herself, "Why would Kyoya be reading fairy tales?"
~o~
Sometimes Haruhi caught herself wondering what it would have been like to meet Kyoya under normal circumstances. If there had been no war. No curse. No Witch. If she had been raised as the Moradian Princess and not a refugee's son in Kira. Just the two of them as the royalty of their respective countries.
They would have met when their families traveled abroad, most likely. Or at the Exodus Festival. They may or may not have liked each other. They might not even have fallen in love. However, Haruhi was certain that they would have been friends.
She assumed that Yoshio Ohtori would have wanted Kyoya to marry her as she was one of few princesses his youngest son's age. Then again, Yuzuru Suoh probably wouldn't have objected to having her as a daughter-in-law either.
Hell if her mother hadn't died she might even have had a sibling. Hikaru and Kaoru would have officially been Moradian guards, not just her friends. Likely she wouldn't have met Mori and Hunny because they wouldn't have left Gratwen if it weren't for the Narian takeover.
Everything would have been different if there had been no Witch. But she realized that thinking of what could be was futile. She lived in this world. Not the imaginary one.
But when she had dreams that had her jerking awake in a panic, sobbing inconsolably until Kyoya managed to calm her; when her hands shook so much she couldn't even grab a book off the shelf; when she became so sick that she had to resort to eating as little as possible she wished – she wished so vehemently that she could have lived in that imaginary normal world.
It was when she woke from one such dream, shivering with a fever that seemed to have settled in for a short stay. She could have sworn she heard someone retching in the bathroom. She frowned a bit and tried to sit up, only to dizzily fall back down. "Kyoya?" she called sleepily, "Is that you? Are you sick?"
What felt like only seconds later to the half-asleep girl, she felt Kyoya's arms wrap around her from behind. "No," he grumbled in her ear, "Quit being so loud this early."
She sighed. "Must have imagined..."
He lay next to her with his stomach still turning from being emptied minutes ago and held his breath until she went back to sleep then he whispered, "I'm sorry, Haruhi," while pressing his face further into the pillow under his head.
~o~
Just two weeks before the wedding and she was having nightmares nightly. They consisted of her grandmother, Kyoya, red dresses, and poison tipped arrows. At first she thought that she was picking up on the nightmares that Kyoya had admitted to having about his mother's death. However, once Mayumi Ohtori began to morph into her youngest son instead, Haruhi began to feel uneasy.
"I highly doubt that these are Witching Dreams, Haruhi," Kyoya told her one afternoon when she had mentioned it again. They were walking toward the dungeon where Yoshio had ordered his son to continue conducting interrogations with Kiran prisoners.
"That's what my father once told me but then that one came true," she retorted quickly, practically jogging to keep up with his longer stride. "Kyoya I was wearing a red wedding dress and she shot you."
"Why on Earth would the Witch shoot me? She knows all that would do is get her banished from the country and given that she's been very interested in my father for a very long time I don't think she would do anything to jeopardize her position here."
"They started off with your mother in them actually."
"Okay then that means that your subconscious was projecting and turning my mother into me." He stopped outside the staircase that would lead down to the torture chambers. She glanced apprehensively down them once then refocused on their conversation.
"Kyoya I don't think that's it."
"Haruhi I think you're overreacting."
"But-" He put a finger over her lips quickly to stop her protests.
"We are getting married in two weeks. Once that happens then she won't be able to touch you without feeling the consequences. Once we are married we can properly advocate for a peace conference and present the peace treaty to my father and King Yuzuru. And then you will see that you were worrying for nothing."
"Why are you still going down there then?" she demanded, nodding toward the stairs.
He gave an annoyed glare. "Because I can't very easily ignore requests from my father. Until the peace conference is actually set into motion I need to act as though winning the war is still my number one priority."
"I don't think it's fooling your father."
"It doesn't have to. It just has to make me seem like I'm still obedient." She sighed. He was never one to be torn from his duties. Even if he disagreed with the methods that those duties involved. "I'm not torturing them anymore, Haruhi. I stopped doing that not long after you." The soldier after Yuki had been kidnapped was the exception, of course, but she knew that.
She opened her mouth to say something, but at a loss she just closed it again and waved her hand as an indicator for him to keep going. He nodded at her once then descended the steps. She stood there for a moment then decided it was best to head back upstairs.
Her uneasiness about the wedding was only going to grow.
~o~
When he finally came across a fairy tale where the curse wasn't broken by true love, Kyoya nearly let out a sigh of relief. It wasn't just that he thought true love was a child's tale. It was the fact that there didn't seem to be anything magical about it. Love did not equal magic in any way. Love was an emotion. Magic was... an ability.
The fairy tale was about a girl cursed with ugliness who only broke the curse when she accepted herself. It also turned out to be one of the only ones that was broken by the victim's own volition instead of a kiss from their "true love." In others, the curse was never broken and impending doom fell upon the victim and everyone surrounding.
A second one that he found was a newer fairy tale involving a woman cursed to obey. She broke it by looking in the mirror and ordering herself to no longer be obedient.
"Interesting," he'd muttered when he had come across that one.
This got Kyoya thinking about Haruhi's curse. It had been placed on her by her grandmother out of spite. But what was it's actual purpose? "To cause Haruhi unhappiness." He was muttering his thoughts out loud without even realizing it.
'Cursed to kill the man who falls in love with her and to die as well if she loves him in return.'
Haruhi had grown up fearing love. Which meant it wasn't solely about happiness. Sure the Witch had ultimately had the intention of causing unhappiness but she went about it by assuming that love would equal happiness. Therefore if she made Haruhi fear love she assumed that she was taking away her happiness.
Despite the Witch's flawed logic, Kyoya was beginning to see the beginnings of a possible way to break the curse. "Fearing love..." Could that be the key to it?
From a couple shelves away, Haruhi listened to his mutterings intensify as he started to scheme and felt something akin to dread or worry mix in her stomach. Something was not right with him and he was hiding it from her.
She hated it when he hid things from her.
~o~
Two nights before the wedding she felt sick to her stomach and had the worst bout of shakes yet. Her memory alternated between not knowing who Kyoya was and begging him to make it stop. Haruhi spent most of the night in the bathroom by the toilet while Kyoya sat on the edge of the bathtub, quietly soothing her in between her heaving.
"Who are you and why are you helping me?" she asked in between sobs, too exhausted to remove her head from where it was leaning against his knees.
"Because I'm marrying you in two days," he replied gently, putting a hand on her head and running his fingers through her hair. "I thought I'd get some practice in."
"Why is this happening?"
"I don't know, Haruhi."
"Kyoya... How many times have I asked that just tonight?"
He sighed, surprisingly patient for someone that was normally a complete grouch when tired. "At least 10 times in the last 4 hours."
She apologized softly only to have the cycle repeat again about half an hour later. He sincerely hoped that she would be able to keep her memories together for the wedding. It would be a disaster if she forgot where she was in the middle of the ceremony.
All the while his own stomach toiled and his hands gave a slight tremble as the only indications of his own illness.
~o~
A/N: To be clear the curse is affecting Kyoya and Haruhi differently, mainly in the way it's affecting their brains. Haruhi is experiencing memory issues while Kyoya has something closer to neurosis (the muttering and obsession with breaking the curse). I believe both would be out of character for them if they weren't sick but it's still the most likely form of illness each of them would get.
Next chapter gets around to the wedding I think. And all the fun climax stuff. Yipee. I must say that I started swearing about halfway through this because it's been 35 chapters and 4 fucking years and I'm still not done with it. I STARTED THIS 6 DAYS BEFORE MY 16TH BIRTHDAY. I AM 20 AND I STILL AM NOT DONE. CHRIST. I SWEAR THIS WAS A BETTER IDEA WHEN I STARTED IT.
And this is why I will likely be sticking to one-shots once I finish off my unfinished long fics.
Kudos to: isara-love, KohakuSpiritedAwayLover55, sisflower, 93, Dark-Yukari, and Infinities Lover.