Yuletide story for miskatonic. Scroll to end for warnings.
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A Thousand Nights and One Day
There was a prince once. He lived alone in a great stone castle on a high mountain, where servants came and went about their business constantly all about him, alongside soldiers and tremulous peasants. There were even others of his blood. But he was alone, for all passed unnoticed insects. In this respect he was like his father: a bored child pulling the wings and legs off beetles for the brief amusement it afforded, passing each day as it came.
His heart was made of stone, so they said, long before it became truth. His heart was not stone; it was merely that emotions rippled lightly over its surface before fading away, unable to leave a lasting imprint.
The day the girl arrived was like any other; it must have been, for he knew nothing of her existence until later. The comings and goings of her ilk had no schedule: they were brought in and disposed of on his father's caprices, and it was not a matter he found any interest in. Occasionally he used them. That was all.
So the prince did not notice the girl at first. By the time he chanced to see her when he went to the dungeons seeking diversion, she had already been there for a month at least, he would learn later. That was unusual, the fact she had survived his father's hospitality so long.
But it had nothing to do with her charms, pretty though she was. She was simply forgotten, it seemed. It was easy to overlook her, a quiet, pliant reed that bent to every wind without breaking. He could throw her to the ground and shove himself inside, fucking her until she was sobbing from pain; or he could hold her down and suckle leisurely at her small breasts as he caressed her between her legs with his fingers, until she was trembling and crying out in pleasure in spite of herself; but once he was done, she resumed her normal attitude of patient watchfulness, as though nothing he did could do more than stir her surface. It was not particularly entertaining, once he'd had her a few times.
So he stopped. He wondered what she waited for. He asked her, of course. And found, to his mild bemusement, that she had no expectation of any alteration in her circumstances, simply passing each day as it came.
The girl had a lover before she was brought here. This was not interesting in itself. She confessed that her lover was her brother, and that was interesting. And then the brother came.
He proved to be a remarkably efficient killer, the prince noted as he followed the trail of bodies down to the dungeons, wondering if the mysterious scourge that had gutted his castle would kill the girl as well. It was a strange tableau that met his eyes when he found them.
The prince identified the killer as the brother immediately. They looked very much alike. Not just physically, though the brilliant green of their eyes was striking; it was a certain stillness of manner, a sense of waiting patience, that fixed the resemblance in the mind of the prince, though that was nothing more than a veneer, as it turned out. Like a strangely warped mirror: the two siblings, one inside and one outside the cell, one living, one dead. So much passion concealed beneath, so much potential for violence, wanting only opportunity. Only the girl had directed it inwards on herself, while the brother turned it outwards.
It was amusing. And intriguing. Could such as they be truly human? And that raised another question in his mind -- an ancient, bloody legend that fit the situation just nicely. How many youkai had there been in the castle? No harm in trying out an experiment, surely.
He hadn't been so entertained in decades. His lifetime, even. And wasn't that another hilarious twist of fate when the brother, the youkai he made, rose up and ripped his heart open.
The brother left the prince to die alone in his great castle. Not that he wanted to; he was having too much fun. But nothing came to his hand but a stray mahjong tile that must have had fallen there when the prison guards knocked over the table in their death throes. And so the prince poured his heart into the cool stone, and set it in his breast in place of the torn one of flesh.
Then his heart was stone, as prophesied.
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There was a prince once, who had a heart of stone. He wandered through the wide world, at a loss now that his castle was gone. What would he do? What was his place? He found he needed nothing now, sustained sufficiently by the magic he bound in the stone heart. He passed his days in much the same fashion he had before, without a plan, waiting for something to catch his attention.
Finally, he thought to look for the one who had given to him his stone heart, when he chanced to pass a green-eyed human child in the street; but he didn't want revenge. He was amused. He was more alive than he had ever been in life. He was captivated. He wanted to see that passion again, focused on him.
The prince wondered what the brother would be like. Would he be all seething fury beneath black ice, like the first time the prince had seen him, butchering youkai? Or like the girl had been; a placid serpent waiting only for an opportunity to strike?
What would he do when he found the brother? The prince imagined a thousand different scenarios -- brushing past him in the street to see if he remembered; following him, seeing how he passed his days; cutting him into a thousand pieces, little by little; locking him in a cell to see how far the similarity went... and then, the prince brought out his memories of the girl, how sweet and warm she had been, and tried to insert the brother in her remembered place, struggling and crying out beneath him. Or perhaps he would slowly take away all the brother had, one by one, just to see what he would do when he was left with nothing, like the prince had been.
Sometimes he tried to test out his planned scenarios on various humans or youkai he found, that reminded him in some way of the brother, but none of them lasted or responded the way he wanted, and he would scrap the idea and think of a new one.
It never occurred to him that he should be surprised that his fascination was now set in stone, when he had never retained any interest for long before. It was not his nature to be affected by emotions.
Thus the prince passed a thousand nights, and then, one day, he found the brother.
THE END
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WARNINGS: SLASH, HET, NON-CON.