Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to anything. This is a work of fiction that is purely fan-made.
Crystal was walking only days later with Red, who held Muffin in his arms, when the two of them passed by a short blonde head sweeping away. Red didn't seem to notice in the bustling halls, but Crystal did. As they continued on, she questioned nonchalantly, "Red…how do you think of Yellow?"
Red glanced at her in confusion. "What do you mean?"
"What is your opinion of her?" Crystal asked.
"She's wonderful," he replied with a smile. "Sweet and gracious to all she comes across."
Crystal sighed, impatient. "Don't you love her?"
Red raised his eyebrows. "Love her? Yellow has been my best friend in the palace, someone I can depend on. I always feel protective of her, but I never thought of her in a romantic way. I never even considered that, mostly because of our positions, but also because…I just don't fancy her. I've never really fancied anyone. Why would you think that?"
"I just…you two seem so…perfect for each other, I suppose the phrase would go," Crystal answered, feeling sheepish, but a hard, cold feeling settled in her stomach.
As if on cue, Crystal heard the audible sound of something clattering to the ground. A broomstick, no doubt. Crystal's plan had been to get Red to admit he did love Yellow with the young maid in earshot, so that she would hear him. She had not suspected it could go so awry. With only a petty explanation to Red, Crystal took off in pursuit of the common girl, speeding when she saw her long tresses swing, following her into a side corridor that was empty and hardly held doorways. Crystal dimly noticed that the castle was much like the city outside it; a maze in which there even were dead ends.
"Yellow," Crystal sighed and took hold of the girl's shoulder. She could not run anymore. The princess turned her round to find that her face was streaked with tears, blotchy and red. "Oh, Yellow…"
Yellow hung her head. "My apologies, Princess. I should not be so disgraceful as to—"
"As to what?" Crystal interrupted. "As to show your emotions? There is no disgrace in that, Yellow!"
"Yes, there is." Her voice trembled. "I am weak. I let foolish thoughts get the better of me."
It came out as more of a statement than a question. "You love Red."
Yellow lifted her head, her amber eyes brimming with emotion. She stared right at Crystal. She did not say a word in response, but her entire face grew unintentionally rosy.
"Yellow, I know that you do." Crystal crossed her arms. "I see it every time you look at him. You always address me and Green as 'prince' or 'princess', but you call Red—"
"T-that's only because I work at his castle!" Yellow interjected.
The Johto princess rolled her sapphire eyes. "You cannot make excuses for everything. You act differently around him. I see how you watch him all of the time. He's charming and kind, and you're positively smitten, Yellow." Crystal couldn't keep the grin off of her lips. "He was your hero who saved you when you were lost in the streets, and you're the one he talks to most around the palace…Yellow, you know you love him. There's nobody you find in Viridian who can compare to him."
"I-it's not like that," the bashful blonde denied. "It's not that he doesn't compare because he's a prince. That doesn't matter. Nobody else compares to him because he's sweet and everything he says makes me laugh. I can hardly speak around him. And it terrifies me to feel so strongly. I don't ever want to have to think of anyone else, but…but the one person I fall for is worlds away from me, and he could never love me in return. I've known that all along, and yet…yet I allowed myself to think foolish things. But I've had my time with him. And soon that will be over, and I'll have to just try to forget about all of this."
Crystal stared, her mouth agape. She had not realized that one poor girl could feel so very much. All those agonizing feelings. She leaned down and hugged her.
Yellow went stiff. "Princess—"
"Please," Crystal said into the smaller girl's shoulder, "please just call me Crystal. I'm no different from you, Yellow. I should have said that sooner. I'm no different from you. We both feel and we both wish things were different. Oh, God, I only wish things were different."
Soon after, Crystal made Yellow leave the castle to go home, and the princess began walking off on her own. Later, Crystal was glad she had done so. It was not an hour later when she was seated comfortably before the hearth in the grand library of the palace when she heard a scream and things took a dark turn.
Being a woman of many principles and having low tolerance for the screams of the ailing, Crystal immediately followed the cries. She knew she was going in the right direction when she saw spatters of blood.
The first thing she took in upon turning the corner was that she was by the kitchens. The second thing she noticed was a small door she had never seen before, but it was probably used by the cooks to set garbage out in the alleyways that brushed up against the side of the castle. The third thing was the people; a young serving boy—Joey, if she remembered correctly—crumbled on the ground and three guards behind him. The last thing was the knife and the blood and the severed hand and Joey's tears.
Another shriek sounded out, shriller than the ones before, and it took Crystal a long while to realize it had come from her. The three castle guards turned to look at her, surprised. Perhaps they had never really heard how notorious she was for aimlessly wandering the grounds. Their dark cloaks swished, the same navy-blue-and-kelly-green colour combination of the hard bloodstone.
"What in the world is going on?!" Crystal screeched.
One of the guards appeared frantic for a fraction of a second, before regaining his stony, hard-faced expression. Before he spoke, he reminded her slightly of stoic Green. After he spoke such putrid words, she regretted ever even thinking that.
"This boy is scum, Your Majesty," barked the guard. "He was stealing bread from the castle and giving it to peasants out in the alleyway at no cost."
"The bread was stale and not being used," Joey protested, his face drained of colour. Another guard kicked his back so hard that he jerked forward, gasping as his air was knocked from him.
Crystal stared at the whole scene incredulously. "This is just sick," she sputtered, a queasy feeling rising within her. Joey was only helping peasants out of the goodness of his heart; it was something that those who lived in the castle should have been doing, as rulers and caretakers of the kingdom. And yet, Joey had been punished. A punishment that was wrong but could never be taken back. She wondered vaguely when the guards or anyone involved with Kanto's society had become so bloodthirsty.
Trembling all over, she crossed her arms to hide how shaky she was getting, how dizzy from the horrific sight and the sharp, metallic scent of the blood. "This boy will be tended to immediately, and will keep his position here at the palace, or so help me I will kill you three myself." She was not sure exactly where those words came from, but they were threatening enough to make the guards actually seem to believe her. She chalked it up to that she was of higher class, not that she had actually seemed menacing. Frankly, she did not want to be an intimidating person. That sort of power was the kind that set her nerves on edge, made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
Suddenly, she felt like she was suffocating with no reason why. Smothered by the strange revelation of power and the sickness that came with seeing Joey's hand left lying on the ground. She tugged the cloak off of one of the guards as he passed.
"Hey—" he started, but she was too fast for him. She pulled the cloak around herself and shoved open the door, leaping into the alleyway before the guards behind her could fully turn. She blocked the way with the bins and cans and whatever she could find in the spur of the moment, and then she bolted from the alleyway, away from that dreaded, bloody palace.
When Crystal ran from the castle, she did not know where she was going. She just knew she was running. Honestly, she had wanted to run right out of town. But she was not sure of the way out, so she kept on going, turning through the twisted streets. They were compelled to confuse; not placed like a strategic grid in the way that Goldenrod was. But soon enough she found herself at a yawning circle with roads branching off like spokes of a wheel. She turned onto one of the roads and found herself standing in the doorway of a charming house that she knew well. Little lanterns had been lit as darkness sunk in, and frankly, they made the small house appear like a haven.
Tentatively, she rapped on the door. A panel that Crystal did not remember being on the door slid out and two green eyes speculated her.
"Who goes?" asked a gruff tone, but before Crystal could open her mouth, the person was shoved away and the panel snapped shut. The door swung outwards.
Yellow's brothers—Pearl, the taller and younger one, and Emerald, the shorter and older one—stood before her. Pearl did an overly-extravagant bow.
"Your Majesty," he began.
Emerald elbowed him and hissed, "It's 'Your Highness', dimwit."
Pearl nodded and corrected himself. "Your Highness. It is our deep and humble pleasure to be in your presence. Please, enter."
Crystal could not help but smile, even after all she had just encountered. The melodramatic performance lifted her spirits, if only a little.
Yellow came bustling into the cozy parlour and instantly curtseyed, her formality real, unlike her feigned brothers'. "Princess," she exclaimed breathlessly. At Crystal's sour look, she corrected herself reluctantly, "I mean…Crystal. To what do we owe such an honour?"
Crystal—vaguely glad to see that Yellow no longer looked as distressed as earlier—wrung her hands apprehensively. "I…I actually do not know." Heat rose to her face. "I just needed somewhere to go and I…I came here."
"Well, you're always welcome." Crystal did not expect such warm words to come from Emerald, despite the fact that he spoke them with his usual roughness.
Soon enough, the rest of the house's occupants joined the little huddle around Crystal, excluding Tanzanite who just ran forwards and hugged the princess. The parlour was probably the largest room in the house, so it was enough to hold the little group.
"I guess I'm just anxious about the wedding, amongst other things," Crystal admitted to the two girls. It was not a total lie. She was rather distressed about that, on top of the gruesome scene she had witnessed. In her peripheral vision she saw Gold, Emerald, Pearl, and Cheren start some dispute about what sort of pies they could buy for the upcoming holiday season. Cheren inconspicuously slid out when he found the argument tiresome.
"Of course you are," Tanzanite agreed in a tone full of empathy. "I would be too. I mean, you're going to become the princess of Kanto! That enough would be a lot to take in, but adding it to getting married…"
"The thing is," Crystal went on sheepishly, "it's not as if I am not prepared. I have known fully well that I will be married off, but…it just has not seemed real until now. Especially what you said about Kanto just now. I mean, I hardly even know how to dance, much less act as a princess for a country I only just arrived in!"
Both girls were silent. For a moment, Crystal felt totally alien. No one could possibly know what she was feeling or what she had to go though. But just because she was going through something difficult did not mean that nobody understood struggle.
Yellow reached out, hesitated as if wondering if she was being improper, and then took Crystal's hand. "I'm so sorry you are faced with this," she said sincerely. Crystal wondered if Yellow had even a single unkind fiber within her. "I wish I could help you, but…I am just as clueless as a stranger."
Tanzanite put her hands on her hips. "Yellow, you're not a stranger to anyone. Rather, you must be the guardian angel who watches over them." To Crystal, she added, "We will never be able to feel the wrath of such a situation, but we can help in small ways." A grin crept onto her face. "You said, for example, that you do not know how to dance. We can fix that."
Tanzanite rose and broke up the boys' bickering. "Emerald! Play a waltz for us." As he scampered over to the small piano, grumbling, Tanzanite went on, "He tinkers so much that he pretends he uses mechanical hands, but we all know he actually enjoys the piano."
Emerald started off with a simple tune, and Tanzanite pulled Crystal up to show her how to position herself. "Don't fret, I shall lead." Yellow looked on with a sort of awe that her violet-eyed companion could be so forward with a noble.
Crystal's feet moved dumbly, fumbling for the beat, but she concentrated hard with her usual resolve to be an erudite and learn quickly.
Gold grinned and called out, "You may have the grace of an ostrich, my bird, but you dance as though you're a swan."
Crystal stuck her tongue out in a very unladylike manner, but that only encouraged him. Soon, he'd cut in and Tanzanite started off with Pearl. It soon became a whole spinning, clumsy room of waltzing, with partners switching and turning and bumping into each other. Shy Yellow eventually got dragged in by Gold and looked particularly mortified when she was handed off to Crystal, as if her presence alone could offend the princess unlike the rest of the commoners in the room.
Tanzanite removed herself—it had become an odd number, after all, and even the slightest activity made her grow weary—and stood by Emerald to catch her breath, watching her friends as they continued on. To their surprise, she actually added words to the tune:
"I've come across many people,
While traveling through my days;
Merchants and pirates and bakers and smiths,
And potters who make things from clay."
Her voice was refreshingly mediocre, and yet it filled the whole room along with the piano's notes and laughter.
"Many have asked me for favours,
But none such as stubborn as you."
It was, of course, at that very line that Crystal was handed off to Gold, who smiled mockingly at her.
"'Write me some sort of grand fable,' you say,
In a foreign word or two."
If Tanzanite's impromptu performance had not shocked the princess enough, Emerald joined in for a round of the chorus. His voice was surprisingly nice for someone who tended to be rather prickly. He was not looking at anyone, though, but staring down at the piano keys with a bashful dusting of pink staining his ears.
"So I will write you a waltz,
It'll go something like this.
The dancers will leap, and the bows will be deep,
It's a ballad you simply can't miss."
Tanzanite nearly started the second verse, but her intake of breath sharply turned into a gasp, and everyone else in the room abruptly stopped as well. She raced to the window and peered out, her hands to the cold glass. "It's snowing! My word, it's snowing!"
Crystal managed to peek out as well; it was true. Flurries rained down from above, turning the luminescent streets into that much more of a fantasy scene. "I had nearly forgotten how beautiful snow looks," Crystal breathed. Never before had she taken such a fancy to the weather; never before had she valued the simple beauty of nature. But now that she was free from the grip of the palace—however fleeting the moment may be—suddenly the world had became so much sharper, so full of clarity.
Everyone grabbed their coats and raced out into the street. The snow was already sticking in little patches on the curbside.
"Marvelous," Crystal observed. She valued the craftsmanship of each microscopic icicle—how no two were the same—but then she came to the conclusion that the people around her who spun in the whistling wind and stuck their tongues out to catch the flakes and already tried to form snowballs were just simply enjoying the snow, not evaluating it.
Yellow's neighbours trickled out as well to watch the first snow of the year. For a split second, Crystal felt the familiar concern that she would be recognized, but then let it slip away like sleet under a carriage wheel. She did not care if she would be. She had left the castle on her own anyways, not caring for the consequences this time. And if she were to be seen with commoners, she would not even care. They were dopes, but they had become her dopes, and on that snowy evening she loved each one of them. They were more of a family to her than her own had ever been.
One of the neighbours—a little girl—had struck up a holiday carol, and soon the street was singing along in a joyous chorus, the streetlamps illuminating all jolly faces and every snow-dusted head.
Crystal smiled at the scene, before she felt a hand on her arm drag her back between the Nympharum house and another. "What—?" she began, turning round, but Gold put a finger to his mouth and stopped. No one had noticed that they had slid away. The warm light of the streetlamps had been replaced by the soft ivory glow of the moon.
"Why have you brought me back here?" she questioned, trying to keep all prickliness from her tone.
For a moment, the calm and charming Gold she knew was gone and there stood an apprehensive young man who obviously had no clue how to reply to a question. He opened and shut his mouth several times making him look like a fish.
Crystal narrowed her eyebrows. "Are you pulling a trick?"
He snapped back to being the boy who knew exactly what to say and do. With a look of seriousness she had never seen him wear, he reached for her hand and pulled her closer. Before Crystal could even form a word, he kissed her squarely on the lips.
Crystal was supposed to know exactly what to do at all times. She was supposed to be queenly and calm. But in that long moment, she was frozen, as if the ice on the streets had crept into her. Though it had not apparently reached her insides; her heart felt warm, like a little glowing candle was inside it.
Gold stepped back and saw how wide her eyes had gotten. She had not closed them at all. He looked away from her and said, "I wanted to pretend, just once, that I could do that. That you would even let me." Without another word, without letting her speak, he turned round and went back to the street.
Crystal stood still, rooted to the ground. Green had been right. Gold felt something for her, beyond a friendship. Something she could not return.
So she was not sure why she felt a pang of hurt in her chest. Wouldn't Gold be the heartbroken one? Why was she feeling so horrible? Maybe it was guilt. Maybe it was something else. It hit her almost as hard as the cold wind did; she had gone numb in her thoughts, but returned to reality.
It was a night of firsts. The first snow of the year had drifted down in ViridianCity, and Crystal's first kiss had been stolen away.
Knowing she would rather walk through the entire city than take just a few steps back to her friends, Crystal turned the opposite direction and quit the scene. She started slowly, but then picked up her speed, as if she could run away from her problems. Crystalline tears drizzled down her red cheeks like rain. She found herself heading back towards the castle. It was the last place she wanted to be, but the only place she could go.
Upon nearing it, she saw that guards were already departing to scour the city for her. If she just turned up out of the blue, there would be so many questions. All the reasons she ran out in the first place came flooding back and she turned again. Too many places to run from. She headed to the forest.
Not knowing her way through it, she stayed to the edges. It was dense, making it easy to hide in and look out of. She did not know what she would do after waiting out the guards. Maybe they would find her. Maybe they would just keep looking and she would eventually freeze. Her heart already felt seized by the frigid chill.
Crystal slumped against a tree that sheltered her from the falling snow, drew her cloak tight around her, and cradled her head in her hands. Water slipped through her fingers; she had not noticed she was still crying, but she let herself. She was so pitiful. A royal was supposed to be strong and face everything with bravery. She could hardly face an arranged marriage.
But she realized that was not all. What had really caused the tears she had been suppressing to overflow was a common boy with amber eyes who had stolen her breath away. He harboured feelings for her—her, the princess of Johto. Her, the stubborn, prickly girl that she was. And even if she wanted to, she could never ever return those feelings.
And a small part of her wanted to. She thought her judgment might have been clouded by guilt or pain, but a small part of her wished she could fall in love. A small part of her wished her cold heart would let her.
A/N: Whoa...something actually happened! That's so unusual!
Hey guys. I'm back again. Ignoring studying and planning of future chapters and all that good stuff. Usually my chapters are chopped into annoyingly short tidbits, but this one is luckily only cut once.
Couldn't resist inserting a waltz. What? I'm a sucker for dance scenes. And Gold gets to act like an angst-filled teenage girl...
Gomenasai if it's uncharacteristically graphic there for a second...and the whole bread thing. Suggestion from my Pokemon-loving friend. we have conversations like this:
Friend: Hey I'm writing a new story. About dragons. And keys. And mysteries.
Me: Fun! I'm writing too. A story about five kingdoms at war.
Friend: Are the kingdoms warring each other at the same time or just two fighting each other and two fighting each other and so on?
Me: There's an alliance between two monarchies, and they're warring against two allied democracies, and then there's one neutral little monarchy.
Friend: And then the neutral kingdom sneaks in and takes over them all MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!