Chapter 26 – Fruit, Friendship
On a yellow mid-spring morning, in a pool of saffron window-light, Katsuki Bakugou sat with a book in one hand and a spoon in the other. He was not strictly supposed to have the spoon in his current possession (there was no kingdom, all the land over, where food would be accepted in a library), but as he was king, and as he did not think anyone would see him, he paid this detail no mind.
Besides, he thought as he scooped the pinkish flesh of the finko fruit from its skin, the fruit that he was eating was too dry to pose any significant risk to the books around him. Its texture was sandy at best, and its taste was something akin to the dust that swirled in the air around him, if slightly sweeter.
The book he was reading was, in content, just as dry as his food. He read it slowly but attentively, secure in the knowledge that he would be undisturbed until its finish. Though he knew that he could (he had become nearly fluent in ancient Lasandunian), he didn't push himself to finish the pages quickly once he had finished eating. He thought that if he paid more attention to each minute turn of phrase, he might be able to find a clue as to what he was looking for, and thereby save himself time in the long run.
Alas, his reading was not to go uninterrupted. In the late morning he heard the echo of his wife's footsteps pattering close and then far in the corridor behind the door as she called for Yaoyorozu. Some time after this, Kirishima and Ashido stopped in to ask him what he was up to (he remained unyielding on the matter) and to smugly chatter about the state of his marriage. Once he had kicked them out, he enjoyed only a short spell of silence before the door to the library swung open once more. It was his wife.
"Katsuki." She said. She had a reddish tinge to her face, and her hair was just that tiny bit fluffier than usual that suggested she had been in a hurry. Her eyes snapped on him with a concerning precision.
"Yes?"
"Did you-" she looked at the table where he sat, and he was suddenly self-conscious of his hands. Beside them, in amongst the neatly stacked books, sat a drying green peel and a gleaming spoon. "You ate the finko fruit."
She did not sound angry. Nor accusatory, really. From across the room, seated in his heavy wooden chair and lit by the midday suns, he could barely make out her face. She stood above him, silent, and turned away.
"Wait."
He pushed roughly away from the table. She turned to the door, and he paced to intercept her.
"Wait."
He had hurt her somehow. Or she was hurt before she had come. He did not know which and desperately wished to. When she turned her brown eyes up to meet his, he felt his heart strangle in his throat.
"What's wrong, moon face?"
"It's nothing." She said.
He huffed.
"It's obviously not nothing."
"Well, it's nothing important."
It was important to him.
"That's not true." He simply said.
She looked away, and when she spoke her voice was low. There was a waver to the longer words that betrayed a sense of shame.
"It's stupid." She said "I came here all full of anger, fixated on my frustration. For a moment I was completely enraged at you, but then I realised that that wouldn't be fair. I realised once I saw you that you couldn't realise what that fruit had meant to me, that it was I who had sewed discord in the castle all day, and now… well, now I feel quite displeased with myself."
He let her turn away, searching the turn of her collar and the ribbon upon her neck. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, but something about that did not feel quite right. He placed a hand on her sleeve.
"What did it mean to you?"
"It meant-" she sniffled, and a pang of guilt, followed by the realisation of the ridiculousness of his situation, hit him. He was married, and a king, and having a marital disagreement over an unripe fruit. Gods help him. "It meant the end of winter. I watched it ripen all through the snow. It was my hope, the prize at the end."
She turned back to him, and in her watery eyes there was a spark of anger.
"Couldn't you have known that? Didn't you see the way I looked at it every time that I passed? Gods, I want so desperately to be angry at you."
"You kind of are angry at me."
"I know, thank you very much. I could be angry at you for eating an unripe fruit even if it was not the only one in the kingdom, and the heralding of spring. It's wasteful."
He sighed.
"I- alright, I don't know how I'm supposed to defend myself here. I understand why you're frustrated. It's not stupid to have things that are important to you."
She pursed her lips and wiped her tears.
"But-" he dropped his hand from her "there are plenty of things here to mark the end of winter already. Things that you did, we did with ponytail. The trade and the city."
"It's not a finko fruit."
"No, but you can get plenty of other fruit if you want. You're a queen."
"But it wouldn't be fruit that I had grown. Oh, I know it's stupid, but couldn't you have waited a little longer, at least until it was ripe?"
There was an edge of hunger, of the famine on her tongue. He swallowed before speaking.
"It was never going to ripen, round face."
Her mouth cracked open. He watched something shatter.
"It's an Abrassan fruit. It's meant for the sun and sand. I've seen them in eastern Melanthos, all lining the shore. They would never ripen here, only dry up and harden."
She narrowed her eyes and let out a long, shaky sigh. He did not stop her when she left.
And he knew that in the grand scheme of things, this was not a significant argument. He knew that she would feel patronised by any further attempts to reassure her, and that she could grapple with this caprice on her own. But the final scene, the falling of her face, stuck in his mind as he read. The entire uncomfortable affair floated through his thoughts, obscuring the words under his eyes. He couldn't concentrate, and, being a practical sort of person, decided to do something about it.
XXX
The next day, Katsuki Bakugou awoke before dawn and hurried out to the city square. There he waited a spell in the bluish cold until he heard the approaching flap of wings, and subsequently was met with Hawks' landing. He silently helped him unload his barrels and boxes and bags, and once he was done, he made a single request.
Hawks gave him a sly smile, but didn't refuse. He suppressed the urge to spit something at him, and ran back to the castle.
A week later he awoke before dawn once again, and hurried out to the city square. He waited once again for hawks to alight, helped with his unpacking, and then hurried back to the castle with a small crate in his hands.
Once he had returned, he drifted through the corridors for a bit. It was too early for breakfast, and besides, Uraraka liked to eat with Yaoyorozu and Midoriya, whose company he would prefer not to be graced with. He considered going up to her room once the sun had risen, but turned back once he realised that he had not been up there since he had been unmasked, and did not know whether he was welcome. Eventually he set down his parcel on a table in the old servants' quarters, and went about his day as usual until he ran into his wife again. When he did, it was in the afternoon, under the shadow of a courtyard arch.
"Oh, hello." Said Uraraka softly, crouching at a flowerbed as he approached, "how has your day been?"
"Fine."
Yes, it was fine. That wasn't what he had wanted to say. Fuck, why was this so hard? Why was she giving him that look? The sun was warm on the back of his neck.
"Are you alright?" she asked.
"Yes."
She stood to look up at him, and her face filled his vision. Nervousness swelled within him again.
"Ura- Ochaco." He forced each syllable out with a bite. "Do you- Are you busy right now?"
She looked back over her shoulder at the freshly turned dirt, and the trowel that she had set aside on the stone.
"No, not really. Why?"
"Come with me."
She patted the earth down one last time, then stood and shook off her skirts. The puffs of dust that bloomed around her shimmered in the sun, and he was dazzled when she turned to him.
They walked back together, him holding the doors open for her as they went.
They arrived in the old servants' quarters, and Bakugou walked to the old table to pick up the crate. Uraraka watched him curiously as he slowly slid away the wooden lid, and out of the corners of his eyes he relished the sight of her. He had caught her off guard, caught her attention again.
"This-" He carefully lifted a gleaming orange thing out of a nest of paper "is a finko fruit."
Her eyes (already wide, and in any case always round) widened. He felt that he had enthralled her, and after the initial surge of pleasure that this brought him, then felt that he had been a little unfair. He had not done this to aggrandise himself. No.
He wanted to see her smile.
He gently picked her hand up from her side, and placed it in her palm. She curled her fingers around it and ran her thumb over its skin. She stared, turning it over and over and over.
"Oh, Katsuki…" she breathed. He could see a smile picking at her lips. He could feel a tug at his own, but suppressed it, sharply.
"Ochaco." She looked up at him, bright-eyed. His heart caught in his throat.
His heart caught in his throat? What the fuck?
He coughed.
"I'm sorry." He continued. "I know it's not the same, but I wanted to give it to you anyway. If I had known how much it meant to you, I wouldn't have done it."
She glanced down at the fruit in her palms and then back up to him.
"This means more." She said, and she held his gaze for just a moment before they both quickly looked away.
She rolled the fruit around in her hands again.
"So, how does one eat a finko?"
They walked to the kitchen, where he cut around its hard centre with a sharp knife. He felt the juice of it run under his fingernails as he handed the half without the stone in it, and again felt a strange patter in his heart when she put it to her lips and sipped the film of sweet nectar off it.
He told her flatly that it was not the right way to eat it. She retorted that it was wrong to waste. He handed her a spoon. She held it, stiff, confused, until he took up his own and began to scoop out the smooth, pink flesh. As soon as she understood, she followed gleefully, neatly placing a spoonful under her waiting teeth.
He watched the flavour hit her. Pink washed across her cheeks.
"Well?"
She chewed furiously and swallowed.
"It's delicious!" she declared. "The sweetest thing by far that I have tasted in- in two years!"
He patiently watched her finish her half, then handed her his. She set upon it with the same delighted vigour, and he felt himself relax. He had achieved what he had wished. The sweet, flowery smell of it hung in the air between them.
"Thank you." She said.
"It was no trouble." He lied.
Even though it was quite a lot of trouble, a week later he awoke before dawn again and headed to the city square. There he once more helped Hawks unpack, made his request, and hurried back up to the castle.
A week after that, he found Uraraka in the courtyard again, once again led her to the old servants' quarters, and this time gave her a pink fruit called a peach.
They shared it. There was a hard pit in the middle, which he accepted in his half, and its skin was softly downy. She said that she liked it, whilst he preferred to peel the fuzz away, making a lightly disparaging comment about her tastes as he did so. She laughed. They talked about the city, and the coming summer, and the garden, and his training.
The next week he brought her a pomegranate. They ripped it open together and indulged in its berry-like flesh as red juice ran between their knuckles.
The week after that, he brought her an orange. She sucked on the slices a little before biting them, and he laughed at her because he had done the same when he was a child.
The week after that, he brought her a papaya, and the week after that, a basketful of magenta lychees. And so it was that each week, at midday on the day of Hawks' arrival, they would find each other, run back to the old servants' quarters, and hide away from the world for a few hours, wrapped in the scent of citrus and sweetness as nectar glistened on their lips.
He looked forward to it every time. He tried to surprise her with fruits from his hometown, and then, when he had exhausted his favourites, tried those that were in season in Capcana or Onirus, and on a rare occasion Stavilar. He remembered the ones that she liked (sweet, sometimes a little sour) and the ones that she didn't (bitter, too hard). She liked pears, loved apricots, and was indifferent to apples. She confided that whilst she liked the taste of grapes and melon, she had eaten them before, at feasts with her parents, and now found them a little hard to eat. Whilst splitting plums she told him that she had had a nightmare, and he dared to put his hand on hers.
On the first day of summer, he found her asshe returned from the baths, and she took him by the hand. The heat of the high noon suns thumped in his palms as they walked their usual route in silence. In the old servants' quarters they shared a mango, and she asked him about the bruises on his arms. He told her about training, and about Kirishima's latest idiocy (a corybantic attack of rolls and scaly kicks) and she laughed so hard she nearly dropped her fruit. She told him about her latest weaving projects. Afterwards, they sat together on a window-ledge in the sun, watching the land below them move in silence.
He watched her hair glisten and rustle, and felt his heart pick up its pace. It had been doing that a lot lately, and it unnerved him. He watched her lips move softly, then realised that she was speaking. He had not been paying attention to her words.
"Sorry, what?"
She rolled her eyes.
"I said 'thank you', although it hardly seems as nice now that I have had to repeat myself."
"Oh. Uh. Sure- I mean, what for?"
"For the fruit. And for finding me every week."
"Well, you find me too."
"Yes, because I look forward to it. When I'm with- when I'm here, I feel as though the winter is behind me, and that perhaps Lasandu will be alright. It's not just the fruit. It's all of Lasandu, and that you helped me change it. And it's strange because of course, well, I hated you-" he raised his eyebrows "feared you, at least, when we first met, and now I think that there is less anger within me. I think every time I've told you about it you've taken some off of me, and now when I am sad I no longer boil but lie still."
"I'm-"
He struggled to push the words out.
"I'm glad."
"I'm glad too. I'm glad we met. I'm glad we're friends."
"Yeah."
But of course, it was more than that. It was more than the little smile on her lips and the way his heart beat fast. It was what he had always wanted.
Always? Not always. He had not always known it.
He had wanted to see her smile. He had wanted to know her, and know not only her joy but her grief, her anger. He had wanted to be her hero.
And now he wanted more.
The thought sat at the back of his mind for the following weeks, whispering constantly and occasionally screaming until it filled his burning ears. They sat on a window-sill in the library, warm with the light of the two yellow suns, and, as though he could not control it, his arms came to wrap around her. She leaned her head on his shoulder, and her hair was so soft, so agonisingly soft. She smiled. They were so close that he could feel the beat of her heart in her cheeks. He wanted to be closer still.
But the queen remained always a little distant. She said that he was a great friend to her, and hugged him, and held his hand, but never before her other friends, and never without a small and sad twist to her lips.
He thought he might be going mad. He felt pathetic, reduced to insecurity when she was near. He wanted to know, desperately, what she thought of him. He wanted to know what she thought of them, as a pair, but never had the courage to ask. She would say that they were king and queen, and friends, and co-conspirators - and she would be right, because her words were as law to him.
It ate at him.
He wanted to be strong, and she made him weak. It was the same as it had been with Kirishima; and yet it was completely unlike anything before. His head was not full of ash, but pollen and glimmering dust – something dizzy, ticklish came over him at the sight of her smile. His stomach was not full of wasps, but his head buzzed with honeybees whenever she came near. He feared already the same sad end that had smothered his first love.
And Kirishima had started to look at him differently, too. He was less energetic when they fought, sometimes grouchy in the morning, and downright recalcitrant when asked to help with the city guard. He was always tired, marked under his bright red eyes by the streaks of the blue night. Bakugou had asked, only once, what was wrong, and he had snapped that he didn't want to talk about it. The king felt his world shrink a little.
Ashido, too, had changed. At meal-times, and during gatherings, she was as lively as usual, but in the queit hours, when she thought that no one was watching, her eyes drifted off to some place beyond the horizon, and a sort of melancholy filled out her lower lip. Once, on a clear and bright day when they were carrying freshly laundered clothes back from the washers' well, she had stopped halfway through their walk up the summit to stare. The summer air was cool but still, and the basket of clothes at her side steamed quietly. Still turned away from him, she bit her lip.
"Do you miss home?" said Bakugou.
"No." she replied quietly "I don't have- no, nevermind."
He let her be. She pulled her basket up again, and began to walk once more. As she hiked up the steep streets ahead, he noticed how the grip on her skirts was tighter than usual, and how her heel set down with uncharacteristic force. When they were back at the castle, he had asked her if she wanted help with any tidying, and she had said no.
"I'm not needing of yer help." She said, and her lower lip pulled down to reveal a flash of teeth "Go back to your library. I'll see you later."
She had left, and he had not followed. He had gone to the library, and spent the rest of the day in silence.
XXX
A week later, having spent each afternoon curled over a book, he called his wife to that same library.
Nervous excitement vibrated in his hands as he led her past towering bookshelves to the table where a thick, dusty tome lay.
"What is it?" she said. Something about the anticipation in her voice made his heart swell. (Again?)
It was what he had spent the last months searching for. It was the result of his learning, reading, and cross-referencing. It was volume 23 of "The Laws of the Moste Sacred Magicke of This Lande of the Children of Lasan".
"Just read the top line." He said, and he had to force himself to sound calm even though his pulse was battering against his bones.
He watched her scan the page. He watched her eyes light up, and an incredulous smile shiver across her lips.
(This was what he had wanted.)
"Oh, Katsuki…" the whisper spilled out of her lips. She turned to him with a look of admiration unparalleled by anything he had seen before. "Thank you."
She wrapped her arms around him, and his skin thrilled at the touch. For a moment he was frozen.
Hesitatingly, he lifted his arms to hold her back. He rested his cheek on the top of her head, feeling the warmth of her soft hair.
"I wanted to help."
"You have more than helped. You are more than a hero."
Still swaddled in his arms, she turned her head to look back to the open book on the table. The page, entitled "Laws Concerning Marriage in moste Excepting Times" lay invitingly open.
"With this – well, you know it, it is why you have searched so long – with this, I can rewrite the magic of our marriage laws. I can end the Suitor's game and save my successors from such horrors."
"I thought that you would want to be the one to do it."
"Yes, gods yes." She hugged him tighter "Thank you." It was a whisper, and at the end her breath began to hitch "Thank you, this is surely the kindest gift I have ever received. And I know that I am unworthy-"
He tightened his grip around her, and gently shushed her.
"Thank you." She whispered again, and under him he felt the heave of her ribs against his. She began to quietly cry. "My parents can finally lie still."
He disentangled one arm to gently pat her hair as she sobbed. They gently rocked back and forth in the dusty light for quite some time, until Uraraka pulled herself from him to shyly look up. There was a puffy redness to her eyes and cheeks that was quite charming. She smiled at him.
And Katsuki Bakugou's stomach dropped, and he knew, beyond a doubt, that he was in love.
XXX
"Katsu-babe, we need to talk."
He grunted in affirmation. They were stood on a rampart of the castle walls, staring out onto the land below. The sky above was heavy and grey, and the clouds above pushed down a layer of lowery humidity that clung to their skin. Beneath them, the valley was blurred by the summer's haze, and the faint sounds of city life floated up on the water droplets suspended in the air.
"You-" started Ashido "Are you happy here?"
He nodded, biting his lip. He knew that she was able to read these things in him (it was why they had become friends, after all), which meant that she would also be able to read…
"Do you like Ochaco?"
A sharp inhale of breath.
"What I mean is, do you have feelings for her?"
She turned to face him, and he could sense that she was translating what his face must have plainly spoken. His cheeks had turned bright red.
She broke into a smile, her eyebrows pinched in recognition.
"Aw, babe…" the corners of her mouth twitched "I'm sorry. I know it's hard."
"It's not hard."
"No, I-" her smile, by its very force, was becoming grim "I mean, I hope it will work out, I want you to be happy."
There was silence. The windless air was subjugating.
"Mina…"
How could he not have seen it before? He had seen the weariness in her smile, and heard her quiet sighs. He had seen her paw at her the weave of her Capcanish clothes and chew the soft-bread slowly. He had seen it, known it, and let it be obscured by the light of his new love. The realisation hit him with shame.
"Are you not happy here?"
Her face distorted like a trodden wildflower. The black edges of her eyes seemed to spill onto the pink of her cheeks.
"Katsuki, I-" she held his gaze, though her lower lids were heavy with water "I can't stay here any longer." She swallowed, pleading "It's not- It's not that I wasn't happy here before. Please, you've got t'y understand me, I promise I was happy at first, to be here with you 'n Eiji, to watch you grow into a king."
"What changed?"
Gods, what a fool he had been, to be so blinded as to ignore the sadness of the girl who had saved him.
"Nothing changed, Katsuki! Nothing changed at all, but that's exactly what I wanted, what I was missing! When we first came up here – such a long journey, and so cold for cold-blooded Eiji – I thought we would be here no longer than the game, and soon be back down the mountain with that precious walnut-wood box. I thought that we would journey on together, even if only to hand you to the order of the knights in Capcana. I never imagined that we would stay here for so long, and even into the summer."
She gripped the hem of her overshirt, hands shaking.
"We were not meant for this, Katsuki!" she broke "It's too cold here for Eiji, he's slowly freezing to his very bones. And I wanted to travel, I wanted to see the rest of this world with you, and I can't stand to be stuck within this city and these castle walls any longer. This kingdom is too small for me, and for him. He must spread his wings once more, and so must I.
"And I know that you're a king now, but isn't your duty done? Haven't you restored this kingdom, haven't you become hero enough to be a knight? Gods, I cannot ask you to leave your wife and the object of your affections, but I'm asking – seriously asking, Katsuki – I'm asking you to leave this place with us. I am asking you to become a wanderer again."
From behind them, there came a quiet flutter. Ochaco Uraraka stared at them. She had come up the rampart stairs to greet them, and now stood frozen still.
"Katsuki." Her lips (the same lips he had spent so long staring at as of late; lovely, pink lips.) hung open in horror "Please stay."
A/N: Hello. My absence has been nine months now, and I apologise. Though I love this project, I simply haven't been in a position to return to it. I hope that you, too, care enough to continue reading despite this long break. I would recommend re-reading some chapters to remind yourself of the state of things if necessary, as this is a horribly complicated story by any measure. In particular, chapter 13 could help with some of Bakugou's inner monologue.
Chapter 13 might even be my all-time favourite, so I'm surprised that it doesn't seem that popular. In any case, please tell me what you think, and where you think the story might be going! Thank you.
