Chapter 10: The Seventh Suitor

The heavens stooped low and grey with cloud as the princess and her bird stood in the narrow street before the weaver's house. There was a windless pressure weighing heavy in the air, a sign of imminent snow.

It was not the cold nor the nascency of the storm above that stopped Uraraka from going in. The red-oak door was tall and imposing, and the windows were without light, and the whole house sat undisturbed exactly as she had last left it. She had sworn then never to return, to turn her back on that maudit place and forget all the sinful things that had transpired there.

And yet there she was, before that tall red door, with her hands all balled up and a profound sense of dread setting in her stomach. What terrible fate that he had chosen this house amongst all the rest of the deserted buildings in the quarter.

For a second all that she could think of was running away. With each passing heartbeat the thought of entering the wretched house grew less appealing, and that of meeting her suitor more dangerous. Her head felt too light and yet too heavy to stay on her neck all at the same time, and her heart echoed loudly in her chest. What was she there for? What would she do?

She took a deep breath of frigid air, steeling herself. The fantasmin watched impassively and turned its garnet eyes to hers as if to ask why they were still there.

Gods, with every fibre of her being she wished that she could be somewhere else.

Still the fantasmin stared at her, with that inscrutable air, and her breaths clouded cold against her skin. She placed a cold hand on her stomach and laughed a little. No more games, no more waiting; behind the door was her suitor, and what could she do but face him?

She gave a gentle smile to the bird.

"Are you excited to see your master?" she asked simply.

Of course, it gave no reply. She turned back to the door, stepped forward, and knocked. For a moment there was silence. She stepped back cautiously and slipped a glance at the fantasmin, which was bristling with tense anticipation.

Muted, slow footsteps approached from inside. The door opened just a crack, and through the slit a dark grey eye peered at her. She looked back at it, blinking, swept with confusion.

The door swung open to reveal a tall boy with unruly hair. A boy who was her suitor, but distinctly not Katsuki Bakugou.

"Oh, hello princess." Said Yo Shindo "Would you like to come in?"

The princess frowned. He seemed calm, practically amiable; completely opposed to the way he had been when he first proposed. There was a mildness to him, an openness in his languid posture, that was strangely inviting, and from behind him the smell of warm tea drifted pleasantly.

She looked down at the fantasmin and motioned with her head. As she stepped through the door that Shindo had been holding open, he smiled and quietly shut it behind her.

"Would you like some tea?" he called warmly, walking past her in the unlit room towards a small fireplace. "Your bird can sit on those cushions whilst we talk."

The animal diligently hopped off to sit on some wearing pillows in a corner. Shindo, meanwhile, beckoned Uraraka to be seated before the fire, and brought her a hot mug of tea before sitting down opposite her. Again, he smiled, leaning his cheek on his fist, and the expression struck her as foreign and ill-fitting.

Her skin crawled as his eyes roamed over her. Despite the hot tea she was almost sick to her stomach with worries and misperception; to be in that awful house again, to have him take her image in so intently, left a sandy taste in her mouth. She had not been expecting to face a suitor so soon, so intimately. They sat across from each other on the stone floor, close enough to reach out and touch.

"Why are you here, princess?" he asked.

"I was, um, looking for a suitor."

She watched him mull over her words. He was tall, even taller than Bakugou, but had a relaxed posture that rendered him docile, and messy black hair that curled over his brows. His eyes, true to the girl at the bathhouse's account, slanted upwards with his cheekbones, and were a cool shade of grey. He was exactly as he had been described to her, she realised, and it was through her own imagination that the false picture of Katsuki Bakugou was conjured. She pondered once more what she was doing there.

"I suppose you weren't looking for me." He said, finally. There was a sadness about his words that she could not place.

"No, I wasn't."

"That's a shame." He hesitated, looking down at the steaming mug in his hands. "I really- when you first came along, I really thought that you had come for me. I really hoped that you would ask me to be by your side."

"But you must recall how harsh your words were when you proposed. You must have known that I would have hated to walk so far for someone so mean."

He ran his hands nervously through his hair.

"I did, but it's more than that, you see. It's the magic of the bond- as soon as you took my name, I felt it within me, inside my very heart. Suddenly it was as if I knew who you were behind that veil, and I had known it for all my life, and I had loved you just as long."

Uraraka felt a shiver run down her spine. Outside, fat snowflakes began to fall thick and fast.

"That's just the magic, though, isn't it? How can you love me if we have barely spoken before?"

"Oh, but I know you far better than that, princess." He continued, turning his smoke-grey eyes to stare into hers "When I felt the magic ache in my bones, and I yearned to be with you, and I knew your face for what it truly was- that was when I realised. It was as though I had recognised you for the first time; I realised then that I had seen you before, on that winter's eve, in the snow. I had seen you come out of this very house, in the depths of despair, and I had heard later of what transpired with the weaver boy-"

"Stop!" Her mug clattered on the stone, spilling the last of her tea. Her hands were shaking. "Don't- don't talk about… that."

"I know that you are ashamed." His tone was tender, peaceful. He reached a hand across to cup her cheek, and she flinched. "I know that you are haunted by that night. But you must understand that I share in your shame, that I am the same as you. I saw you then and I understood that I needed to live. I saw that you would do anything to feed yourself and I realised that there was no dishonour in such a thing! That I was nothing if I did not live on! It was only then that I began to claw my way from starvation and despair. You gave me hope. You're why I'm here today."

His hand was warm upon her cheek. His deep grey eyes swirled with the light of the fire-side as she fell into them, and crinkled gently around the edges. He faced her like a prayer.

"I love you." It was a whisper. "I love you as I love birdsong, and sunshine, and all that is beautiful in the world."

The princess was silent, softened by his pleading eyes. His gaze was maddeningly kind and adoring, and under it she felt her worries slip fast away.

He wrapped a hand around hers, and she let him, melting into it because it felt so natural, so welcome. In that moment, as he reached out to embrace her, she realised how lonely she was; how much she craved the touch of another. She remembered how desperately she longed to be held, to be loved, to be cherished. And in the dark with the single flickering fire, with the light of the outside world dimming through the falling snow, he looked so much like Izuku.

Butterflies fluttered in her stomach, and an uncontrollable blush sprang across her cheeks. His fingers, laced with hers, squeezed in suppliance, and on instinct she leaned closer. His other arm snaked its way around the small of her back, warm and sturdy, and pulled her tight to him. She placed a hand on his chest, and felt his heart beat fast at the exhilaration of her contact.

He loved her. The thought sent tingles across her skin as his face filled her vision. She had wanted, more than anything, to be loved.

He pressed his lips against hers, and they were firm and ripe as a fig. He tasted of salt, as heavy as wine, as his mouth poured smooth into hers and his hands wandered to hold her by the neck. She felt a finger trace her collar bone and went dizzy, breathless, helpless against him. A simple, innocent kiss; unhurried and deliberate and heart-breakingly reverent.

The weave of his cloak slipped away under her grasp as he slowly pulled away.

"Won't you keep me by your side, princess?" he murmured, and she dragged herself from his embrace. She did not recognise the boy before her.

"I could truly understand you." He implored "We could share in each other's pain, our shame; we could be equals. Can't you see that we are bound together by the past, that we are alike in our misery? I could be your comfort. I could love you twice over, and you would not even have to love me."

A life that would never be flashed before her eyes. He would hold her hand all the way home. He would stand with her in the empty castle, and she would never be alone anymore. He would kiss her softly and all the time, and tell her that she had done nothing wrong, and let her cry on his shoulder before the fireside. And they would marry, and he would sit on the throne with her. Her husband would be a beautiful, perfect stranger.

Behind the window, the snow was tumbling into an impenetrable white. The fantasmin in the corner shuffled slightly, and as Uraraka caught sight of it beyond Shindo's shoulder, it was as if an illusion had cracked.

"It's not enough." She said "It's not enough only to share pain and misery. It's not enough only to be loved for your most terrible mistakes."

"It's all we have!" cried Shindo.

"I know. I know, and yet I still want to love as equally as I am loved. I want true love, and I know that you cannot give it to me. I don't deserve it, I know, but I want it all the same."

"You could learn to love me! Can't you see how I love you?"

"I can." She replied. "I can see how the magic of the bond has rotted you brain. Before this, didn't you truly love another? Don't you think that your girlfriend would weep if she heard you now?"

"She'll understand! She's not important!"

The princess stood and turned away, wary of the jealousy that was now splashed across his face. She mouthed silently at the mimic-bird to go, run.

"Nobody deserves such a heartbreak as you will have given her." She said. She watched the bird quietly shamble towards the door and continued. "You should go back to her. It's surely not too late."

"It is too late! I cannot be safe anywhere but your side! Without you, I'll die; all alone, and so cold in this house that you hate so much."

He advanced towards her and she backed away, closer to the door. Her eyes flicked towards the fantasmin, now sat in the entrance-way, and as his followed hers a sudden anguish swept over him.

"You're trying to escape!" he shouted, lunging to grip her by her hair. She dodged and took another step backwards.

"I would not have to," she responded "if you had been able to convince me to stay. You cannot keep me by your side by force."

"Is love not forceful in its own way?"

She pursed her lips.

"No."

There was a beat's pause. Shindo understood then that he was losing her, and before he had the time to squeeze her hand goodbye she had bolted to the door with a cry of "RUN!" directed at the fantasmin. The door slammed open and they rushed out into the blind cover of white.

The snow was thick and impassable. The princess could not see her hands before her or the feet that carried her away, guided only by her memory and the wheezes of the fantasmin ahead of her. Already two full fingers of snow lay fresh on the ground, and the sound of her footsteps was swallowed with her sinking wooden clogs.

She could not run, but walked quickly and unevenly over the cold crust. Though she squinted and held out her arms, she could feel the fantasmin grow further away, and she swiftly but surely became more and more lost, more panicked and unsure. Behind her, Shindo's cloak rustled in the heavy air. He had followed, and was closer than he ought to be.

"Just to be by your side!" he shouted, and the princess hastened at the sound "Just to be-"

For the second time in as many days, the suitor fell apart. He was cut off by his own unbearable, garbled scream, and by crunch and by crack he sank to his knees.

Uraraka saw nothing but heard all. The sobs, the pleading, the squelch of his lungs; the fizz and the gush of his blood. Then the teeth, and the scraping of bone against bone, and the ghostly rattle of her mother's fingers inside somebody else's ribcage. The spirits.

The snow fell around her and she stood transfixed, listening as slimy terror built in her throat and her eyelashes filled with chalk. Her legs had turned hard as copper, from cold or from fear, and she could not will them to move. Still the spirits sucked on Shindo's tendons.

Finally a stillness settled, and through it a whisper floated.

"Ochaco…" it called, with the voice that was her father's, stolen from his grave "My child…"

She whipped around, but in the glare of the snowstorm she could see neither the red of blood nor the blue of death.

"I am so hungry…"

Without a second thought she ran. Snowflakes caught on her cloak and in her hair and on the bruise on her cheek as dived through the swirling storm. Her consciousness began to shrink, sticking to her fingertips, and all that she could think of was the beat of her heart. She had to run.

Beneath her the ground was shifting, gaining steepness. She held a hand out and found a wall, ran a hand along it as she went, and gasped as it turned sharply around a corner. She tripped.

The princess fell softly into what was now three fingers of snow. For a moment she lay there, catching her breath, and when she had pulled herself up to sit she remembered that she was lost. So, for that matter, was the fantasmin.

Her fingers were stiff and wet from her tumble, and she curled them in against her chest as she wondered what to do next. The freeze had reached her bones now, and she shivered violently with every breath. She was in no state to walk back to the bird, and in any case how would she find the way? Her teeth chattered.

She clenched her jaw and pulled her shoulders back, willing her lungs to fill themselves with icy air. She needed to do something. After a pause, with all of the strength that she had, she began to sing.

Perhaps it could not truly be called singing; it was, after all, largely tuneless and screamed between shaky breaths. But Uraraka put her soul into every word as she implored the mimic-bird to come back, and in each wrong note there was a strange kind of hope.

"I wish," she chanted haltingly, trying and failing to remember the lyrics "I sat on my true love's knee, where many an old sto-ry was told to me. And there were things that-"

A whistle cut through the snow. The fantasmin's metallic voice echoed from afar, growing nearer as it finished the verse.

"His hair was green, his eyes-" She no longer cared about the words. She was rushing over the frost towards the hidden creature "Were al-so green. His arms were strong, his word was true. I wish in my heart that I were with youuuuu."

The mimic-bird whistled back the final verse, the echo rising as she stumbled towards it. Uraraka had not heard these lines before, but with each high semibreve a sense of understanding settled, as if she had known it all along. Just as the last note died, she was stopped by a pull at her cloak. Crouching down, her hands found the long golden beak of the fantasmin clasped around it, and her hard fingers tapped the top of its smooth white skull.

"Thank the gods, I've found you." She murmured, slowly stepping away. "I'm sorry that I left you. You should not have been alone in this."

She stood, trying to regain her bearings, and just as the animal pulled on her cloak, something else pulled at her sleeve. She reached out to touch it. A wide hand rested on her arm, the long fingers curling around the flesh.

A pale face loomed into view from out of the fog of white. Awase Yosetsu, an eighth suitor. She struggled to remember his magic as he smiled vacantly at her. He was so close that she could feel each breath on her skin.

"Hello, princess." He said "Please don't be alarmed. All I want is to be by your side."

"You know that I cannot give that to you." She replied through gritted teeth.

"But it is all that I wish for!"

She pried his hand off.

"And I wish," she said with a venom that sprang from the back of her neck and was fuelled by her hunger and fatigue "that your bones lay soft under the foam, and your knuckles were stuck with fennel and mustard seed."

She slammed a fist into his stomach as his eyes widened in shock. He folded, sinking back into the blind of white, and before she could think any further she turned to wrap her arms around the crouching fantasmin.

She felt its cold beak against her neck, and the disordered jumble of bones under its cloth covering, and the soft tickle of a stray feather. Shutting her eyes tight, she took a deep breath and sent magic coursing from along her spine. With a lurch they lifted off the ground, and Uraraka was hit with the familiar but unpleasant sensation of her organs floating about inside of her. The mimic-bird clucked in concern and fright.

They floated upwards for a time to avoid Yosetsu's reach, and then she pulled one hand loose to feel around her. Keeping the unwieldy animal by her side with only one arm proved difficult, but by a series of wiggles and grip changes, they managed to find an arrangement that was comfortable for the both of them, and the princess was able to turn her attention to returning home.

After some time in the still, frosty air, her fingers reached a tiled roof. She dropped closer to it, and through the thick of the falling snowflakes she realised it must be heated: none of the snow had stuck. She pressed her palm flush against the toasty red clay, feeling the warmth radiate through. From nearby the scent of wood smoke and sugar wafted lazily, accompanied by the occasional clang of a metal tray. Sato's bakery.

She sank down further, feeling her way to the front of the store to look through the windows. The shopfront was dark, and the countertop empty, and she guessed with a sigh that Sato had retired to his own quarters to bake. Still, she was able to orient herself now. She took a deep breath, preparing herself for the inevitable nausea to come.

"Hold on tight now," she said to the fantasmin "We're almost home and dry."

They soared up. The air was as milky as rice wine, and twisted and flowed around them as they flew over stacked chimneys and hip roofs. The princess' cloak streamed smooth behind them, covered like her hair in a thin layer of the tumbling crystals, and her wide sleeves billowed as she held the mimic-bird tight. Below them, unseen, slipped the castle gates and that endless, empty courtyard.

Finally, they came to a still, Uraraka's knee having hit something hard and wooden. Feeling blindly her fingers found a carved oaken star, and the cool metal of a hinge. She plunged down, keeping one hand in contact with the grand castle door even as the fantasmin squawked and the ground rushed at them from beneath.

They made an inelegant and slightly painful landing. She heard the bird skid and tumble in the snow, and collapsed against the carved door. A wave of nausea swept over her as her stomach sank back into place, and she doubled over into a dry, painful heave. She retched and convulsed as her throat scrambled in earnest to empty her out, but with each gag she found that there was nothing inside her to regurgitate. It was only after slapping a cold palm against the back of her neck that she was able to take a few uninterrupted but shaky breaths and regain her composure.

When the sensation had left, she realised that the fantasmin had made its way back to her side, and was pulling on her cloak again. She laughed a little.

"I suppose that was most unladylike, wasn't it?" she said with a grin, and she tried to shake some of the snow from her hair. "Well, that and punching Yosetsu. I do hope you can keep my secrets."

She slithered a hand into the secret mechanism and slowly opened the door.

The princess and her fantasmin stumbled into the dry, into being able to see again, into home, and hurried down the kitchen steps to a fire that was expiring but not quite yet dead.

A/N: Nobody gets it right the first time around… right?