Hello everyone! I sincerely apologize for the delay in posting this, September is certainly a crazy month IRL.
I'd like to thank OperaGoose, PrincessNala, minijo1990, IreneNorton and Torchwood-Babe who all left a second review and often a long one (3!), I love you guys and you're a biiig part of the reason this chapter is out ;)
Thanks to Power Of Funk as well for two kind reviews and for pointing out a shameful mistake :D
Without further ado, I hope you enjoy!
Lying on his cot, having long grown used both to its great comfortableness and to the fact that its length was greatly reduced by a heavy chest containing many unidentifiable items, John sighed, turning his mouth down. He had been living with the Prince as his knight for the past two weeks and it was nothing he had hoped for.
His first source of bewilderment had been the Prince's bedchambers; although the furniture was as richly decorated as one would expect from a royal bedroom, no one had seemingly tidied anything up in the last five years; his trying to do so, if only to access the bed and writing table that occupied the smaller room he was to have, was met with grudging acceptance at best and frank annoyance at worst from Sherlock.
The man himself wasn't easy to live with; apart from his weird moods and lack of conversation, he also had the disconcerting habit of fixing John like he was trying very hard to map him out, sometimes for hours on end. A whole corner of the room was dedicated to what John would have called Alchemy if the idea of the Prince himself training in the Dark Arts hadn't been so ridiculous and very often emitted strange noise and unpleasant smells.
Having shared a room with an elder sibling for thirteen years he was well accustomed to the necessity of compromises when living with someone and he could certainly have dealt with the Prince's eccentricities if it hadn't been for the one habit John couldn't accept or get used to.
The Prince had indeed a tendency to disappear without a word, not only in daytime, but also at night – being a light sleeper, John often woke up to the sound of the door being shut as Sherlock left his room or again when he came back. He had first thought that the Prince was going off to see one of his lovers – perhaps Molly, the kitchen girl who had seemed so enamoured with him? But the Prince's attire didn't seem to corroborate this theory; he always left fully armed and when he came back his first action was often to meticulously clean and sharpen his blade, no matter the hour.
It simply didn't make any sense. If the Prince wanted to train, why would he do so in the middle of the darkest hours? If he was engaged in a fight, who did he fight against and why did no news of his action reach them by the light of the day?
John was admittedly aggravated by the Prince's secrecy in those matters. Certainly they hadn't known each other for a long time, but the enigmatic man had made him his Knight – did this title mean nothing? Remembering how the other man had denied him the knowledge of his identity in the first days of their acquaintance, he bitterly admitted to himself that he had been forewarned from the beginning. In spite of his beautiful speech, the Prince clearly didn't trust him, either to have his back or to even know where he was going; this much was made clear with almost every action the Prince took.
The sensation of being useless, of living nothing was one he was well accustomed to – but it had never seemed so overwhelming before.
His uncertainties were played up in a most unexpected and unpleasant way on the following day as he went on his daily visit to Alte.
"Yer horse has been there a while, Gent."
The voice belonged to a freckled youth, a bit taller than he was, heavily muscled by his work in the stables. He wore his obnoxious smirk like one would a well-loved gown.
John wasn't much impressed.
"Certainly, sir. And I expect that she'll be here for a while yet."
His display of courtesy was a mistake; thinking himself mocked, the young man adopted a full-out sneer.
"I ain't no sir. But I still know that if she's staying, you hafta pay up."
"I've certainly never heard about this before. As a knight, I thought-"
The idea of relying on his title to get people to listen to him had been until then repugnant, and it created a small jolt in his stomach to hear himself say that he was indeed a knight. His counterpart, however, only smiled mockingly - John didn't know how he had expected the rude young man to react, but it certainly wasn't with incredulity.
"Right, mister Knight. You can sure have a place in the stable, and I'll make sure to treat yer horse particularly well."
The sarcasm in the young man's tone was more than obvious.
"I assure you I've been dubbed as the Prince's knight."
"A Prince's knight, eh? Never heard of that. And I haven't seen you much around him either – are you sure he knows you're supposed to work for him?"
John froze slightly, more because the stable boy's words painfully awoke all his doubts than because of the inherent impertinence in the other's queries. He didn't know how to answer, but it turned out that he didn't have to.
"Having a little fun, Melchior? I'm sure Sir Rave would be glad to hear his stable boys are efficient enough to take time off to work to rib newcomers and still finish their work on time."
The threat was thrown light-heartedly enough but was very clear all the same and the boy – Melchior – quickly left after a last sneer in his direction. John turned to thank his helper, finding a young woman whose well-made dress indicated as a servant of a high-enough status.
"That boy's certainly annoying. He's always picking on the newest visitors."
Her words were slightly drawled as well and he wondered whether anyone from the capital knew how to speak without elongating the syllables.
"Indeed. And you have my thanks, my Lady."
"I'm no lady. My name is Sally, and I acted more out of pity than sense of justice. Seems to me like you've already have enough on your plate, dealing with the Freak every day."
His thankful smile immediately disappeared. Surely he had misunderstood her.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Yes, we've heard you were his latest whim. Fat luck, that, but then I guess you should have known that it was better to run. Hopefully for you he'll tire soon enough of having you around."
This unexpected strike at his current deepest fear left him silent once more and the woman continued, apparently satisfied.
"Can't bash the hand holding the purse the money comes from, can we? A royal freak is still a royal, I guess. Not the first time I've seen fear of repercussion shut a man's mouth when he would have talked."
He'd have liked to explain to her supercilious smirk just why his silence was more than cowardice or simple loyalty to his employer; but truthfully, he didn't know how to explain or if there even was something to explain, so he simply let his mouth close and his brow furrow slightly. The young woman seemed satisfied by his lack of answer and her mouth became a genuine smile.
"If you get tired of being around him all the time, just drop by the kitchen and ask for my name – I'm always around anyway."
He gave a little nod and went back to the Prince's bedchambers, sighing when he was met with an empty and messy room. He certainly had a lot of thinking to do.
This night, when Sherlock silently rose from his bed and left, John sat up. It was too much. He had taken too many superior or pitying looks, too many derisive remarks about him being lucky to be so highly paid for a job that didn't seem to entail more than being stared at or talked to a few hours a day, too many blush-inducing whispers about why the Prince did keep him around. He had enough.
Fighting the pull of sleep wasn't easy, but he was fuelled by his anger and determination, and as the Prince silently shut the door after himself a little after dawn, he was still awake. He crossed the room in two steps and, made daring by his sleepless night, seized the Prince's arm. Before he could speak, however – to say what, he certainly had no idea – his thoughts derailed.
Sherlock's by now familiar coat was wet. But it hasn't rained in days, his mind murmured faintly.
John stared uncomprehendingly at his hand; it was hard to be certain, but it seemed to be smeared with black or dark red liquid.
The world seemed to tilt a bit to the side; John dimly thought he should get used to this sensation, considering it seemed to happen often enough when near the Prince.
"You're hurt." His tone was curiously bland.
"John, for mercy's sake. It's barely more than a scratch."
It occurred to John to wonder just how many times this had happened. Had the Prince often stumbled in, tired and hurt, while he slept placidly a few feet away or laid away despairing about the man's lack of trust in him? He felt a sudden burst of contempt for the fool he had been – some Prince's knight he was. But he now had his chance to act and earn his master's trust.
"Please, Sire, let me take a look at it. You've already deduced I had some training in the healing arts and-"
"Certainly not. Let's not make too much of a trifle."
The two men seemed to realize at the same time that John's hand was still circling the Prince's arm and Sherlock impatiently shook it off.
"I'm perfectly fine. Please return to your room."
The perfectly-fine man then proceeded to stand up and almost fall over again. He help up a placating hand – wincing as it made his muscles stretch beneath his wound – easily anticipating the knight's reaction.
"A simple moment of light-headedness. A good night's rest and I'll be fine."
John didn't bother to point out to the man that there certainly wasn't enough left of the night to constitute a "good night's rest", nor that even if there had been, he had never known the Prince to sleep more than three hours in a row. Instead he used what was probably the only weapon at his disposal.
"Sherlock, enough!"
The Prince's head snapped up and John knew that he had him, even as the man automatically wiped all traces of surprise off his features. In spite of the man's clear invitation to on the day of John's unconventional dubbing, John had never made use of his given name before. Sticking to formalities had somehow always seemed essential to his continued sanity, but he suddenly found out that he didn't care much about sanity any longer. It had been a gamble he was ready to take.
"Sit down and stop acting like a petulant child. I have to put a dressing on this if you don't want it to scar durably."
Before the Prince could find his voice again, John disappeared in his room to look for the right materials to create a poultice. Unseen from his knight, Sherlock's lips stretched in a rare smile.
"How did you ever manage to get stabbed in the arm at this time of the night?"
The question was asked rather abruptly, but the hands putting the dressing around his arm stayed extremely gentle. It was all very fascinating.
"Mycroft."
The hands stopped then.
"The King?"
Sherlock thought of sarcastically asking whether John knew many Mycrofts, but figured it was rather a bad idea to annoy someone who had his hands less than two inches away from your wounded arm.
"The guards are mainly imbeciles – and the knights are barely better. They certainly lack the finesse necessary for the missions I undertake."
Sherlock could almost follow John's train of thoughts as the other man remembered the circumstances of their first meeting and – finally – realised why the prince of his kingdom had been chasing bandits alone.
"I must confess to some surprise that you'd obey the King. You certainly…don't seem to see eye to eye on many subjects."
Sherlock's lip curled disdainfully. Obey the King indeed.
"Although most of those missions barely represent a challenge of any sort, I agreed to fulfil them for the rare few that come around with some interesting features. It certainly has nothing to do with my brother."
"I'm sure, Sire."
Sherlock raised an eyebrow as he considered the man in front of him, but his knight's eyes, as they met his, were filled with nothing but total innocence. He let the comment go, lips twitching slightly.
"I do believe this scratch has been beaten in submission by the three layers of bandage you've wrapped around it." A slight tightening of the said bandage – clearly a warning – was his only answer, and inexplicably he found himself fighting a smile yet again. "We should both find some rest now."
And they both indeed did.
John had made it clear that night that things had to change, and they did; he found himself joining the Prince when he left to get documents, meet with mysterious individuals (or not-so-mysterious ones, since one of his main sources of information appeared to be the children working in the castle or living on the streets in the city) or fight some ruffians, now understanding and following the man's strange schedule.
They had settled in what could have been called a routine, had the word not been incompatible with Prince Sherlock's very self. As it was, the two men at least adapted beautifully to each other, John learning to ignore the constant mess their bedchambers were in and Sherlock managing to forgive him when he had to take a break to eat or sleep during missions. It was, however, on said missions that they found themselves growing always closer together. It made a certain amount of sense, considering they had immediately fought alongside each other when they had met, and more than once John had found himself smiling ruefully as he reflected on the words the Prince had used to convince him to let Sherlock call him John. They had indeed bonded through battle.
The 'cases', as Sherlock referred to them, seemed to slowly take over all parts of his life now that he accompanied Sherlock on them, and John fairly suspected the Prince to accept more of them on purpose or even to look by himself for mysteries that had little to do with things a King would ask a Prince to take an interest in. Indeed, some of the cases certainly had "interesting features", to borrow the Prince's turn of phrase: John thus found himself looking for a small blue gem in a poultry market, trying to decipher an ingenious code made of small drawn dancing men that was revealed to be nothing more than a means of communication between two secret lovers or even listening to the bewildering tale of a red-headed man who had come all the way from the city of Coburg to complain of his sudden unemployment. Many of the cases, however, weren't noteworthy, mostly involving ridding the royal grounds of thieves and ruffians.
And yet, it was on such an unexciting case that John saw confirmed in the most unlikely way that he had indeed found his purpose as the Prince's knight and companion.
They had been following the bandits they were chasing for close to an hour, and John observed, not for the first time, that the Prince followed trails like no hunter John had ever met. Certainly parts of the two processes were identical, as both included looking for footsteps and other small signs of the prey's passage; but John was pretty sure the steady stream of muttered deductions that was barely reaching his ears was specific to Sherlock. The man seemed to employ a curious combination of physical clues, analysis of the hunted villains' states of mind and truly fantastical leaps of logic – yet John never doubted that they were on the right track, and indeed from time to time a detail stood out that was obvious enough to indicate even to normal people a group of armed men had gone through those bushes a short time previously.
Surely enough, the Prince and his knight soon found themselves engaged in a fight with five surprised ruffians. No matter how many times the scenario repeated itself, John kept forgetting the sense of utter rightness permeating their fights alongside each other, or perhaps convinced himself that his memory had to be flawed. And yet here it was again, as always, this easy camaraderie that according to all accounts shouldn't have existed after little more than a lunar cycle of knowing each other.
The two men knew by now just what they were capable of together: the row should have been over promptly, and for a while it seemed this way; but then everything went wrong very quickly. John stumbled on a tree's large root. Sherlock whirled around in concern, perfectly blocking the attack coming from his right while doing so. A man they had both thought incapacitated painfully got himself up on his elbow and tried to stab at the Prince's shin. His aim was off but it was enough to distract Sherlock, and John's throat closed off as he saw that their fifth opponent, who had stayed a bit outside the fight until then, was about to take advantage of the Prince's momentary lapse of attention. Rather than scream a warning the knight literally threw himself at the attacking man, heedless of the danger involved in such a daring move. Brutally shoving the Prince aside, he tried and failed to repel the blow, biting his lower lip hard enough to taste blood as the sword left a trail of fire-like pain in his left shoulder. Immediately pressing his hand to the deep gash there, he stumbled against the large tree they had been fighting under as the Prince defeated their two remaining adversaries faster than even his trained eyes would follow.
Having confirmed that in spite of his nerves trying to tell him otherwise his arm hadn't nearly been ripped off his body, he closed his eyes in shame. His clumsiness had almost killed the person he had sworn to protect; what kind of knight stumbled over tree roots? The could-have-beens kept repeating themselves in his mind's eye, in an unbearable but inescapable loop of agony. If he hadn't been fast enough, the fifth man's attack could well have felled the Prince. If his master hadn't been such a skilled fencer, he could have been seriously hurt while battling two opponents.
This train of thoughts explained why his first words as Sherlock joined him were desperate apologies.
"Sire! I'm so sorry…really sorry. I can't – ah – apologize enough and I-"
Sherlock's eyes widened for a split second, reflecting his surprise; in spite of everything, John felt the relief he usually associated with the Prince's bewilderment, having obscurely understood that those too-brief moments were one of the main reasons Sherlock kept him around as his knight.
"Never mind this. Are you alright?"
It was John's turn to be astounded. He detailed Sherlock's features carefully, despite knowing how little the man could be read. He had seen anger, or at least annoyance, flash across the Prince's face as his brother addressed him often enough to think he could identify it, but he couldn't see any in the pursued lips and deeply furrowed brow in front of him. The deep baritone voice didn't sound angry either, but rather…panicked? John frowned a little, unconsciously mirroring Sherlock. That didn't make any sense.
"John! Are you alright?"
Definitively a trace of panic here. John didn't really understand, but that wouldn't do.
"Certainly Sire – don't worry. I'd still like to apologize for my clumsiness-"
"In what? Saving my life? Stop saying such idiocies. Now if you were to apologize for your fool-hardiness I might accept, but I somehow believe it wouldn't be sincere."
John was definitively confused.
"But I – and the root – you were distracted from your fight."
A raised eyebrow.
"I do believe you're delirious. The blood loss must be more debilitating than the quantity of blood currently staining your armour would indicate – which means we should immediately head for the castle. Come on, John."
Silenced by the Prince's imperious look, John took the arm that was offered to him, leaning first hesitantly and then more freely on the other man's shoulder as they started walking. The trip back was long, the pain in his shoulder fairly excruciating and although John knew it was actually a good sign that he could still feel his arm at all, it didn't look like such a good thing right then. He also couldn't help but worry about what would happen next – although he had completed sword-training with both hands, his left was clearly the dominant one and he doubted he could be of any real use for a while now that he was hurt: Guilt's cold fingers hadn't released his heart yet and they pressed a bit harder at this thought. But in spite of everything, Sherlock's body near him was a warm and reassuring anchor, he kept catching the worried inquiring glances the Prince surely thought were discreet and he simply couldn't ignore the growing part of him that was quite certain it was all worth the wound.
The royal physician Sherlock had insisted on visiting in spite of the very early hour was nothing John had expected; instead of a grey-haired man, he found a fine-looking lady who instantly adopted a long-suffering look as she saw who was visiting her, a look that quickly turned to concern as she caught sight of his left arm.
The Prince stayed at his side as she expertly applied a poultice and dressed the wound, an unmoving and silent presence that attracted more than a few raised eyebrows from the obviously curious woman. John had thought that by now the news the Prince had "acquired" a knight had circled the castle, but either he had overestimated the rumour mills' power or Ella, as she had asked to be called, didn't listen to gossip.
After congratulating him on managing to keep the wound from bleeding too much and asking if he had ever received medical training – Sherlock smirked a little then – she pronounced him fit to go, recommending that he didn't move his arm around for half a lunar cycle, longer if he could help it. He tensed a bit at the news, wondering anew what use he would be to his master without his dominant arm, but his dark thoughts were interrupted by a hand briefly holding and shaking his (right) shoulder.
"Considering the Princess of Bohemia is expected to arrive in the week and our activities will then mostly consist in an endless stream of boring diplomatic matters, I'm quite certain we'll manage."
John ducked his head a little to smile and thus missed the physician's frankly speculative stare at them both as she heard the Prince casually refer to himself and another human being as a plural pronoun twice, but Sherlock didn't. Disdaining to answer her curiosity with anything else than a raised eyebrow, he pointedly took hold of John's elbow and more-or-less gently guided him out of the woman's domain and towards their home.
The following days were full of a tension John didn't understand. He had at first feared that Sherlock hadn't been sincere when assuring him that he didn't consider the incident his fault, but he had soon come to realize that it was rather tied to Princess Adler's impending arrival. He had asked the Prince whether he knew her personally, but while Sherlock's answer of "Had a case concerning her once." certainly made it seem like there was a story there, it also appeared to John that the problem went deeper.
In spite of the time he had to devote to this enigma now that he was almost confined to their bedchambers by a worried Prince he hadn't come any closer to understanding his master's emotions by the day clarions resonated to announce Princess Adler's arrival. Stealing a glance at Sherlock from where they stood in welcome on the machicolations, both in their best attire – which meant much more for the Prince that it did for him, as he had simply tried to decrease his less-worn gown – and finding him frowning, he resolved that he would find his answer before the royal wedding's celebrations could come to an end.
He certainly didn't expect another, much darker mystery to be presented to them, one that would involve much higher stakes than a Prince's feelings about his brother's marriage.
TBC...