Chapter 18: The First Star (The Beginning of Something)
The princess was alarmed to hear a loud bang and the sound of swearing as she quickly paced through the castle's corridors, making her way to the entrance hall. When she finally rounded onto her destination, she was greeted by a tableau so absurd as to be beyond her feeble imagination.
Bakugou had been frozen to the ceiling, and only had one free arm. He was using this free arm to direct threatening gestures at Iida, who was shouting up at him and was barely restrained by Midoriya, glowing with green magic as he tried to hold his ground. To add to this confusing scene, Yaoyorozu was using her magic to pull a ladder out of her side, and Todoroki was guiltily standing in a corner with his hands around the wrists of Kirishima and Ashido, who both seemed to be unconscious.
For a moment Uraraka could do nothing but stare, and nobody at the bizarre gathering noticed her presence as they struggled between themselves. When she finally found her words again, they were hardly very elegant.
"Izuku, Momo! What in the Earth Mother's name is going on?"
Iida ceased his grapple against Midoriya and turned to face her, and Yaoyorozu hastily put down the now fully-formed ladder. Despite this, Bakugou was the first to speak, and his voice echoed comically from the high stone ceiling.
"This lot just decided to jump me for no fucking reason!"
"Kacchan," said Midoriya warily, "you did say that-"
"I said that she was getting dressed! Why the fuck is that justification for fucking half-n-half there to stick me to the plafond?"
"Kacchan, there are certain implications…"
Though he was stuck high above her, the princess was almost certain that she could see him roll his eyes. Iida cut in.
"We just wanted to make sure that you were safe." He said.
"Are you safe?" Added Yaoyorozu nervously.
Instinctively, Uraraka looked herself up and down as if she were not sure. Then, realising what they meant, she broke into a sheepish smile.
"Uhm, yes." She said "Although I appreciate your concern."
"Fucking told you." Quipped Bakugou from the ceiling. "Now fucking let me down, half-n-half."
Yaoyorozu glared at him.
"I think it was perfectly reasonable to assume the worst of you, given that you originally planned to kill her."
Midoriya twitched with surprise, and exchanged a concerned look with the two-toned boy in the corner. Bakugou watched the pair with some interest.
"Yeah, well, that plan's off, so calm the fuck down. We're just going to be married now, or some shit."
"Oh, because that's evidently so much better." Replied Yaoyorozu, with some animosity.
"Oy, don't get so high and mighty, lady. You knocked my friends the fuck out, too."
She glared at him. He gave her the middle finger.
"Uhm," said Uraraka delicately "don't you think it would be more constructive to talk about this with everyone on the ground? We could all sit in the kitchen. There's a proper fireplace there, and I haven't yet had breakfast."
Her two knights nodded in synchronisation, and set about extracting Bakugou from his lofty bindings using Yaoyorozu's ladder. Due to the total lack of cooperation between all parties involved, this was quite a complicated process, involving plenty of foul language on Bakugou's part, and it gave the princess enough time to go to her black-haired friend.
She wrapped her in a tight hug, and felt her lean close on her shoulder.
"It's alright," she whispered, and she was on her tiptoes, and she did not know whether she believed it herself "Things will be alright, I know it somehow."
Yaoyorozu, nestled in her neck, gently shook her head.
XXX
The princess passed an unusually crowded and rowdy breakfast.
Kirishima and Ashido, who had been positioned floppily on their stools after the move, woke up with a voracious appetite, and so kept both their mouths and Uraraka occupied, but Yaoyorozu, Iida, and Bakugou were unable to sit through each other's explanations without loudly interjecting or making some snide remark, and eventually resorted to a sort of simmering antipathy. Midoriya and Todoroki tried to engage with each conversation in turn, but really ended up unwittingly making eyes at each other from across the table, and contributing very little apart from the week's quota of flustered blushes.
And Uraraka loved it. She loved being surrounded both by people she knew and people she didn't, and the lively noise that expanded to fill the once-silent kitchen where she had spent so much time alone. She was especially pleased by their final agreement to all stay in the castle together until the wedding (the spirits had set the date in two days' time), and share the chores required to comfortably house them all.
It kept her distracted from the thought that soon she was to married. Married, and so young, and to a stranger who had wanted to kill her not that long ago. Every so often she caught her future husband giving her a funny look, and the urge to take him up on his impenetrable attitude was only calmed by their company.
They spent the rest of the day cleaning up the dusty rooms and setting out places to sleep. The boys settled on sharing a wide room from the old servants' quarters (there were five of them, after all), and had much more work to do than the girls, who simply set up in Uraraka's bedroom. There was a great deal of unnecessary showboating and general foolery as they each brought out their magic for entirely unreasonable purposes, and much time was spent laughing at one person's incompetence or the other's brilliance. Ashido's use of acid proved effective for cleaning the stone, but tended to lead to incomprehensible scientific lectures from Yaoyorozu, whilst Iida's use of speed was flashy but rather useless. At midday, he left to announce Bakugou's victory to the Lasandunian public, and returned with the bewildering news that nobody seemed to care.
Though prone to rumour-mongering, the Lasandunian people were not naturally interested in the affairs of others, especially in such a period after their own sufferings had been so intense, and preferred to keep to themselves. Unlike the festival period, the common people saw little to be gained from the union of their lofty, distant regent, and continued about their lives as they had always done. Uraraka felt an inexplicable disappointment at the thought, and wondered whether it was selfish pride or some deeper pity at the state of her kingdom. As she scrubbed down the stone, she wondered how many others were doing the same: cleaning their homes to welcome in a more auspicious new year.
She was often distracted by Ashido's casual moaning (who apparently had a terrible headache from being rendered unconscious earlier that morning), or by Midoriya's mumbling, but together the youths did quite a good job of cleaning up the castle.
Bakugou, proved to be a perfectly serviceable cleaner. Though he complained a lot, he was efficient, and always planned his tasks in the most convenient order. Uraraka watched him go about his responsibilities with intrigue.
Here, yet again, was another side of him that she had never seen before, though perhaps it made sense for him to be so hard-working. She wondered whether he would continue to be so dedicated once they were married, then shook the idea from her head. That was a question for tomorrow.
Presently, she turned back to finish wiping the dust from the dining hall walls, and, when her rag was thick with grime, excused herself to go rinse it.
She took her time as she meandered back to the kitchen, avidly absorbing all of the shiny new details that sprung out at her along her walk. With less dust about, the whole place looked brighter, and the stained-glass projected cherry-red circles on the stone floor. She played at hopping from one island of crimson light to the other, her wooden clogs snapping at the ground, as she had done as a child, and marvelled at how pleasantly nostalgic it felt. The whole castle was coming back to life.
The path of ruby circles ended as she curved back into the bowels of the castle, and with a little disappointment she turned to focus on the darker details around her. From above, she heard somebody's footsteps, and the splashing of water. Just to her right, there was the sound of tinkling glass… Ancient magic, she realised with a start.
She changed course, hastening towards the source of the noise.
When she found it, she was almost blinded. Sparkling, copper-blue light burst forth from the doors of the Hall of Stars. They glowed brilliantly, the magic within straining against the golden hinges, singing like glass as something primeval stirred within. Enchanted light, almost liquid, was beginning to seep from under the sill, and the faint sounds of chatter flowed with it.
Uraraka dropped her rag and sleep-walked, entranced, to the blue-lacquer wood. Unthinkingly her hands reached out to trace the golden plates at its centre, where once a great lock had held fast, and before her mind could catch up with her fingers she had opened the doors and stepped into the swirl of magic.
For a moment cobalt luminescence filled her senses, and all that she could see or hear was blue. When it finally left her, she found her surroundings no less radiant, only warmer and more inviting. Above her, a galaxy whirled with stars of every shape and size; all of the colours of the dawn spilled out with self-assured lustre.
Here was the Hall of Stars of her childhood: there the welcoming, circular walls with their geometric carvings, there the tasselled pillows on which the joyous congregation had once sat, there the fantastic woven carpet, its pattern of wolves and mountain goats given life to roam about the fabric in perpetual motion, there the engraved alter, there-
Her parents.
Emotion strangled her as she stared at them. There, at the altar, were her parents, as she had always known them, always loved them. Their pale shrouds were pure and white, and their teeth fit comfortably, perfectly, within their mouths. Their hands were soft and clawless, and their round, brown eyes rumpled as they smiled at her.
"Come along, poppet." Called her mother. "We haven't much longer here."
The princess flew. Everything disappeared from around her as she raced to them, arms outstretched. As she reached them, she passed straight through, and found, with some displeasure, that the ghosts of her parents had a slightly elastic feel. After the faint, cold resistance of their floating images, she passed into free air.
Her father laughed. Gods, she had missed that laugh. Saltwater welled in her eyes.
"Silly girl," He said "don't worry about a thing like that. We don't want to see you sad."
He reached out to ruffle her hair, but the only thing that she felt was a chill wave, and vague sense of unease. Her mother laughed. Why did she laugh?
"You buried us so properly, and you sewed us such fine shrouds."
"We waited in the earth to see you for so long. We wanted to visit, but the spirits took our souls."
She stared at her mother's translucent face, the warm brown eyes that faded so mysteriously. It was different than it had been in life: colder, calmer, effortlessly distant.
"We are sure that when you join us, we will be proud of you."
They were not proud of her now.
Another cold, perturbing touch. She felt almost that it was not to her that they were speaking, but rather to the echo around them; an expository dialogue from which she should pick up the pieces.
"But I am marrying a boy whom I do not love," she burst, despairing, and their serene expressions never changed "in this very chapel where you loved each other, and Lasandu, so dearly. How can I make you proud? What can I do without you?"
Her parents looked at each other, smiling wisely as her tears threatened to spill.
"It's a strange thing being dead, poppet."
"When you are no longer tied to mortality, you are no longer tied to time."
"We can see it all; the future, the past. It's terribly muddled, you wouldn't like it one bit."
They laughed, slightly artificial, but she couldn't help but be caught up in their giggles. She wanted, desperately, to feel their warmth again. She would do anything to be swept up in those soft memories of a brighter time.
"We've seen your hardships, darling, we've cried for you though you cannot hear. But we are certain, most certain, that one day you will do us proud, and that one day you will be happy."
Her mother tried to pull at her sleeve. The sensation was weak, lukewarm.
"True love isn't found," she soothed "the gods wouldn't devote destiny to a thing as silly as that. You have to forge it with you own hands."
She was growing paler in the starlight. Her father was as thin and translucent as a veil.
"Goodbye, poppet."
"We love you."
They faded into nothingness. As fast as a clap, darkness fell, as all of the glistening stars above disappeared. The princess was alone in the gloom with nothing but her tears and the growing feeling that she might never remember all of the beautiful things that she had lost.
She stood in the oppressive obscurity of the Hall of Stars, and thought of how beautiful it had once been, and how lonely it now was, and how desolate she had made it. Beneath her feet, the wolves and goats had stopped running along the carpet, and had washed-out to a lifeless grey. The candle-brackets were without flame, and the sound of her breathing was swallowed up by the emptiness around her.
From behind her, slow footsteps approached, and a hand alighted on her shoulder. She turned her head, and through the dimness she could just make out a head of spiky blond hair.
"Oh," she sniffled "it's you."
"I was wondering where you'd got to."
She wiped her eyes on her sleeves. His hand was still on her shoulder.
"Did you hear everything?"
"Pretty much."
If she had been able to find his eyes, she would have glared at him. Instead, she sniffled again, and laughed a little pathetically.
"I told you, didn't I, that if I started to cry then I would never stop?"
He sighed. His voice was low. His hand was warm.
"So what?"
"So, that's no good at all, is it?"
"Not really. Not right now, at least."
A flash of light. Far above them, a single yellow star twinkled unconfidently.
Their eyes found each other in the amber glow. His hand slipped off her shoulder, and she felt her heart beat fast.
It was not true love.
But it was surely the beginning of something.
A/N: Please check out my associated tumblr and twitter pages for some cultural notes on the world that this is set in!