A/n: For those of you who are starting to see more Faybelle/Raven than Apple/Raven be rest assured that I'll be bringing in more rapple later and will be making the playing field more even but first I need to shatter Apple of her ideal pre-packaged perfect fairytale visions before I can start bringing in more rapple, and at the same time I need to establish how the dynamic between Faybelle and Raven would work out into a believable relationship.
So don't worry rapple fans, there will be more fan-service for you later, just please be patient.
Though me bringing in more rapple will not necessarily mean that Apple will win, it will just make things more equal on both fronts and I'm not planning on revealing the winner until the last chaper(s) so that will still be a surprise.
XXX
"This is a really weird dream…" Cerise stared at an apologetic looking Raven dressed in… some sort of really ugly colored foreign garment and a snickering Kitty standing next to her.
"I'm so sorry Cerise." Raven whispered. "But this was the first place I thought of that she wouldn't think to look for me."
"Alright…" Cerise rubbed grit out of her eyes. "I'll bite, who's this "she", and why is she looking for you."
"Raven! Your secret business trip has nothing to do with your destiny does it? Raven?" Cerise could hear Apple's voice quite clearly from the hallway, and by the way Raven winced and Kitty's eyebrows rose Cerise could draw an accurate guess to her own questions.
"I take it that Apple is the "she" you were mentioning." Cerise drawled tiredly.
"Princess Apple White you will stop shouting through the hallways at such an ungodly hour of the morning and you will get back here this instant before I call the RA myself!" Briar's voice growled from the hall followed by several suspicious thumps.
"Briar, I know that you're tired but please don't throw things at her!" Ashlynn's voice followed suit.
Raven covered her face in mortification. "I was almost home free." The witch groaned before turning to her surprise host. "I have some family business that I need to attend to and due to the sensitive nature of it I can't confirm or deny anything about the subject outside my family, the other people involved, or my adopted Wonderlandian clan."
"And that has Apple freaking out." Cerise guessed. "Because she's not allowed to know?"
"Yes, and I am so sorry for waking you and Cedar up." Raven apologized holding up a shampoo bottle. "I was just going to leave this outside your door with a note so that you could give it to Daring at breakfast since Apple should be staying in bed until she gets better." The witch stated.
"Apple's sick?" Cerise asked, taking the shampoo bottle and giving it a whiff, it smelled pretty good.
"She hasn't eaten since yesterday at breakfast or slept well last night. She looked terrible a few minutes ago when I came in to grab some stuff before I had to leave." Raven sighed despairingly.
"Don't worry about Cedar, she could sleep through an explosion." The hooded girl pointed to her still sleeping roommate. "And I can forgive you because you are the one who has to live with that." Cerise then pointed towards the closed door where a scuffle and some surprisingly un-lady-like cursing could be heard.
XXX
"Leave Raven alone!" Briar snarled trying to pin Apple down while avoiding getting kicked in the face. Again. "Whatever this secret business is it's none of your concern!"
"But what if a council of crazy crones force her to get deflowered by a stone thingy while dancing skyclad and fighting off barbaric gladiators before being shipped off to the middle of nowhere and having no choice but to survive the wilderness as she finds her way back and then biting into a poisoned apple and getting her forehead tattooed while she's unconscious and having to wake up to find out that she's been married off into Lizzie's harem? I didn't even know that Lizzie had a harem! And now Raven's being sold off into hers!" Apple declared hysterically.
"Well if she did do all that to become apart of my harem I'd definitely be charmed into becoming smitten with her." Lizzie herself commented to Duchess from further down the hall.
"I won't allow it!" Apple shrieked like a mad woman struggling with renewed vigor. Ashlynn yelping as a fist catches her in the eye. "Unhand me Sleeping Beauty! Stop taking off your clothes and trying to do naughty things to me! Go prick your hand on a spinning needle if you continue to act so un-lady-like!" Apple hollered as she convulsed in her two best friend's holds. "Get. Off. Me! Your naked form has no power over me! You are not Raven! Only she is allowed to do devious things to me! She was born to be mine and mine alone! I will not lose her! I will not submit!"
"Would all of you just stop gawking for like two second and help?" Briar demanded to the growing crowd heatedly.
XXX
"…And that's my cue." Cerise coughed awkwardly over Kitty's helpless belly laughter and headed out the door.
Raven heard her phone chime, the witch looking over her hexts wearily. The first was from Faybelle who was simultaneously warning her that Apple was on the second floor looking for her and informing her, in what Raven swore was a delighted sort of way, that the princess was acting completely off her rocker and that Faybelle had a funny new video that she had just taken with her phone to show her later.
Several more hexts from various friends popped up but Raven chose to ignore them for now.
Raven squeezed her eyes shut and just focused on breathing for a long moment before she hexted Faybelle back with a; yes I heard all of that I'm hiding in Cedar's dorm, climbing down the balcony with Kitty now, and forwarding that to Maddie as well before she grabbed a laughing Kitty off the floor and hooked Cerise and Cedar's emergency foldable ladder to the side of the balcony's stone railing.
XXX
"Well…" Faybelle began after she flew over the girl's dorms to meet the witch and hovered beside Raven as she climbed down the side of the building (Kitty had collected herself long enough to teleport herself down to the ground where she resumed her laughing fit, Maddie holding her up as the cat-girl's mirth shook her frame violently). "They've managed to tie her up and they've decided to take her to the healer's offices… and hey, at least it's provided enough of a distraction for us to slip away quietly."
"I had no idea that she was going to be that…" Raven stopped herself with a forced shake of the head. "She's sleep deprived and she hasn't eaten anything in a while, plus she's probably been through a lot yesterday what with the little adventure we had taken and the shaking of some of her core beliefs… she didn't mean a word of it." The witch told herself firmly.
"Well obviously she was not in her right mind." Faybelle pointed out, holding her tongue when she had the urge to go as far as to say that the princess had been bound to snap at some point with how obsessed the girl was with destiny and having everything be perfect to the point of being unreasonable.
Faybelle bit her lip when she noticed that Raven's mood seemed to plummet the longer the other dwelled on the situation. "For what it's worth… I kind of figured that it would be detrimental to you if her shouting about you up and down the hallways at three-in-the-morning ticked off the wrong people… so when Briar and Ashlynn had finally stopped her I set up temporary magic sound barrier at the ends of the hallway so that at least she couldn't be heard up or down the stares…"
The fairy dug into her pocket and held up a small metallic disk. "And I set off this dampening device incase anybody aside from me tried to film her… my mother set up my electronics to be immune to the jamming spell incase a prank of mine went wrong and I needed to make sure that as little publicity got made of me as possible."
Raven stopped her decent and looked at Faybelle with wide eyes.
"Understand that I did it solely to protect my future wife's reputation." Faybelle sniffed acting as if she didn't care. "And that Heart's girl seemed a little too enchanted by the idea of you going through all of that stuff Apple described in her psycho babble…" The fairy grumbled darkly.
Raven smiled softly her hair and veil swaying gently in the early morning breeze, Faybelle noted that the witch's outfit looked lovely in the dim moonlight with all of it's ghastly colors muted to darker shades. "And it's better if you're the only one who had the ability to document all of that… for your own personal entertainment of course, you are evil after all." Raven hummed knowingly, her eyes bright.
"You know me so well dearest." Faybelle smirked. "Now let's hurry up and elope already, if anything to get you out of that horrid dress."
XXX
"She's slightly malnourished and exhausted to the point where she seems to be seeing things, I'd say that she hasn't had a fully decent meal for a day or two and she hasn't been getting as much sleep as she needs to." Healer Phalange looked over her charts boardly. "I've put her on some sedatives and an I.V. drip, as soon as she wakes I'm putting her on the special peanut butter and ordering the B.R.A.T diet for her prescribed daily meals until I'm satisfied she won't do this again. You all can eat that stuff you found in her room if you'd like, it might teach her to not neglect her body like this." The woman said as she walked out of the private observation room.
"So in other words we'll putting all of this in your floor's fridge." Cerise concluded knowingly while pointing to the takeout boxes she had found while she and Briar had gotten some spare clothes and supplies for the princess while she stayed in the infirmary.
"Now don't be so hasty…" Briar growled menacingly at Apple's snoring form, bearing her teeth as much as her bruised bottom lip and jaw would allow.
"She means that is exactly what we are going to do." Ashlynn said while nursing her black eye with a cold pack.
"Never woulda thunk that Apple could pull off those kind of punches." Cerise murmured in awe as she stared down at the unconscious blonde while holding ice packs to her bruised sides. "Nor did I think that she could scratch and leave a mark. Damn those nails are vicious!"
"Indeed they are." Briar said darkly while looking over the Band-Aids that littered the hooded girl's face and arms, and the gauze on Ashlynn's shoulder that covered a nasty bite wound. "I think that I'll clip them while she's still asleep…"
"Maybe I should do that while Cerise takes you back to our dorm. I can stay with her for the rest of the night." Ashlynn advised, worried at what might happen if she let the vexed princess anywhere near Apple right now.
"I just don't understand what had gotten into her." Briar grumbled scratching her head. "I know that Apple can be a little neurotic at times but I've never seen her just lose it like this."
"We can ask her when she's back to being coherent." Cerise gently took Briar's hand and led her away. "We still don't have to wake up for several hours yet, let's get some sleep."
XXX
Raven was only allowed the time to re-center herself in the face of the hot, dry air and incredibly bright sun after they stepped through the large mirror used for traveling between long distances before they were all whisked away into an air conditioned carriage designed to travel over the rolling expanses of sand surrounding the travel port's smooth outer black stone walls. Mirror travel was a quick and efficient way to get from one place to another but the side effects left most disoriented and more than a little shaky on their feet (and as a result of so many worlds being quarantined the giant mirrors located in Ever After High's very own travel port lay mostly empty when weekends came around making it easy for them all to get away unseen by everybody save for the golems working the controls).
Inside the carriage Raven was treated to a surprise nose piercing much to her displeasure, at the very least it had been quick and the fairy guy doing it had used some sort of topical numbing stuff, plus it helped big time that the person who had pierced her nose had obviously known what he was doing and was being really nice about everything. Explaining things as he worked about how it might hurt a little bit more than usual because he was using a small tube-like stud (which was still bigger than the usual) that would allow for the nath to be worn right away, and kindly dabbing away some stray tears that escaped Raven's eyes (because even with the topical numbing stuff the needle still stung) with a tissue.
While Raven sat poking the tip of her numb nose and the nice man who had just pierced her gave Maddie a satchel with some vials of sanitizing solution and explained that Raven was to clean her piercing three times a day, the witch took a moment to look out the window to view her surroundings.
The dessert territories of this particular fairy realm looked just as pretty as a postcard with it's rolling sandy dunes and the black rock spires standing hundreds of feet tall above the ground, some of the larger ones even had clouds surrounding them and if Raven paid close attention she could see that a few actually had faces on them.
"They look better at night." Faybelle said as she scooted closer. "The ones that aren't deceased giants, and are too small to do much with, have been carved with ancient runes that glow at night and the other, much larger, formations have been carved hollow to create vertical village communities, you can see the glow from the windows at night as well."
"So a bunch of these really big spires are actually entire villages?" Raven asked in awe her eyes widening with wonder.
Faybelle nodded. "The rock holds a great deal of magical power from the earth within it's stone so much so that each is able to create it's very own eco-system including different climates, plants and animals all living in and on the rock. If there are a bunch of spires really close to one another the magic becomes strong enough to create climates on the surrounding ground stable enough to make large patches of semi-tropical oasis dotting the landscape."
"Amazing!" Raven breathed. "But what happens if there is a sand storm?"
"That is where the genius of our witch and fairy ancestors comes in, the people from long ago constructed magical barricades tall enough to defend their homes from oncoming storms both groups have lived here for thousands of years, so long that they've become apart of the eco-system, as long as they continue to live and preform magic in the villages the leftover magic is directed to the shields." Faybelle said as she studied the witch's reaction, internally please that there was genuine interest on Raven's features.
"A magical symbiotic relationship between the people and the land." Raven sighed dreamily. "This reminds me of the relationship the farmers of my homelands have with the earth that they work with."
"Ah yes I heard about that." Faybelle nodded knowledgably. "It is believed that the magic preformed in the day to day lives of the people who live on your lands combined with the magic produced from several species of rare fauna that are protected on the Queen's lands nourishes the land and helps make it far more fertile than the lands of surrounding kingdoms."
"Well the high council, Grand Coven, and most other witch and fairy lands know that is the real reason why the lands are so fertile… however much of the kingdoms surrounding us for some reason keep trying to claim that it's because of the alkaline content in the soil or something, every once in a while they send some gullible fools trying to get us to let them mine away the soil to sell, every single time we educate them and show them the evidence and then they get super angry at the same lords who sent them to us." Raven scratched her chin with an exasperated huff.
"Seems like an awfully stupid way to harass you." Faybelle said, albeit not very surprised since there were human kingdoms surrounding the Queen territories and since many of those human kingdoms had inbred idiots for rulers.
"The lords want the right to hunt the remaining endangered local wildlife that live on the Queen territory." Kitty grumbled irritably. "It's in the fine print of the contracts from the people trying to get access to the soil, investors get free reign on the areas they are stripping of natural resources."
"So they're trying to gyp you and the contractors… for a creepy taxidermy head on their wall?" The man who did Raven's piercing asked, his thin eyebrow creeping high on his dark skinned forehead.
"The hide of a special species of fresh water Silkie is said to give a human the ability to breathe underwater and there is a species of miniature wooly dragon serpents whose blood is believed to heal all ills- that is false by the way, it's only a small ingredient in a common remedy for certain types of poisons." Raven informed pinching the bridge of her nose. "And the magical plants that protect them all from poachers have sap that some royal ladies would kill for because some old wives' tale says that it helps smooth out wrinkles."
"And your lands border the North Sea, where the mere-folk live in their underwater city a few miles from your lands. The same mere-folk who have refused trade of the highly valuable Dessenti sea sponge with all the close by human kingdoms save for the King lands." Faybelle realized. "And since the Silkie pelts give humans the ability to breathe under water and since mere-blood and stomach enzymes reacts violently to wooly dragon serpent blood, a species that is all but extinct save for the small colonies living deep in the Queen lands… damn that's low, even for the humans from that area."
"I'm guessing from ya'll's serious expressions that this is a bad thing?" The lone male fairy asked the girls.
"Dessenti is the main ingredient in a super expensive illegal drug, but it doesn't cause super crazy brain trips like most drugs, it causes the senses in non-Wonderland humans to become super alert and gives them super strength." Maddie explained while she giggled madly. "It causes a whole bunch of damage to the human taking it and the crashes when the drug wears off are not fun at all so they keep having to take more and more to keep up their abilities, by the way what's your name?" The girl tilted her head to the side curiously.
"I-it's Moss… I'm Faybelle's second cousin, and what does a drug that makes a bunch of humans turn into super beings have to do with anything?" Moss asked.
"Super soldiers." Faybelle stated grimly. "Many lords in the kingdoms neighboring the Queen, King, and the mere-people's territories have never been keen about non-humans having control over such valuable resources. Over the centuries their ancestors have mined and hunted and stripped their lands of essential natural resources, and now they are solely dependent on imports from lands that are either run by non-humans or run by humans who allow many diverse races live on their lands."
"Actually it's more about a group of a meager few lords wanting to gain power and rights over valuable resources and the people who are protected by our lands than it is about racism." Raven corrected. "Up until a few generations ago coups and people itching to claim land through war-like means, like these guys, used to be prevented from forming by the protection of the old fairytale laws which state that only direct descendants of fairytales can rule over the lands that they already own or gain and their allies are always protected under that same law."
"Used to? As in it's not anymore?" Moss asked wide-eyed.
"The current Headmaster Grimm's grandfather dissolved some key acts of this ancient legal document making certain areas vulnerable to being conquered by other kingdoms." Faybelle informed looking sidelong towards Raven. "Apparently the Queen lands are one of those places."
"But that's only a problem if my family continues carrying the title for the Evil Queen." Raven said looking determined. "If I can get out of signing the Book and becoming the Evil Queen then the title will go to a different clan and the terms for my people's land reverts to the protection laws under the Grand Coven's derestriction, no one will be able touch us or our allies after that without severe consequences. We've already sent the Grand Coven all the evidence they need to take down those lords once the third part of this marriage ceremony is finalized, my grandmother has already arranged it."
"And by marrying you in this token marriage I get the title and the Thorn clan gets three powerful new allies." Faybelle finishes looking at Raven with a new level of respect. "I can see why my mother is so eager to get this done and over with so quickly with having two ceremonies instead of one this first go around."
Raven smiled shyly back at Faybelle and shrugged modestly. "Now you see why I jumped into all of this so eagerly? Between my family's honor and the fate of the people I'm supposed to protect I have everything to gain from going against destiny and everything to lose if I don't."
"Wait, wait, wait… Are you sayin' that for the first time in centuries, that there is a legitimate threat of a war breaking out in Ever After? Over some land, the parts of some creatures that aren't found pretty much anywhere else, and a designer super drug? Moss waived his hands agitatedly.
"And let's not forget the possible destruction of the most fertile lands found in Ever After." Faybelle reminded. "The Queen lands grow over eighty percent of Ever After's magical agricultural raw materials, lots of the plants that they grow are very difficult to plant in other places, including in the fairy realms."
"The King lands too, the Good King has started bringing in farmers from the Queen lands to start some new crops and he has started a program that is trying to expand their small remaining magical forests and reintroducing some long lost fauna into them, as a result their fields are thriving." Raven added with an innocent smile.
Moss gestured confusedly with his hands. "So boil that all down and… y'all are sayin' that you're goin' against a bunch of crazy people tryin' to destroy a major supporting import… for what purpose exactly?"
"As far as we've been able to figure out it's mostly for power and money if they get control over the lands they'd make lots of money from stripping it all down and using the raw materials to wage war against their neighbors." Kitty said while rolling her eyes. "These idiots have been so out of practice with the art of battle strategy that they're willing to deprive their lands of the support that are constantly supplied to their people from the Queen lands for the sake of building themselves up."
"Right…" Moss covered his face. "Because it couldn't have just been about a simple restoring of honor to a new ally now could it?"
XXX
"Ouch. What happened to your face Cerise?" Hunter asked first thing as he sat down at the breakfast table, all the bookball players had agreed to sit in the same place early that morning to give themselves a pep talk about the upcoming game. "Congratulations for getting Daring to let you on the team by the way, but seriously, did you try to give a cat a bath?" The boy asked gently touching one of the scratches on her cheek.
"Apple White lost it, Duchess says that Briar and Ashlynn had to hold her down while Cerise tied her up so that she would stop hitting people." Sparrow tattled gleefully. "The perfect princess finally found something that she couldn't handle."
"Apple found out that the original Prince Charming was into necrophilia?" Daring asked as he and his brother sat down with their breakfast. "Ouch. Cerise what happened to your face?"
"Who was a what?" Dexter yelped his eyes wide."
"A few of us tried to find clues to where the Book may currently be by going into it's memories… it was very traumatizing to find out that many previous assumptions about how our ancestors really were… well let's just say that I have… some thinking to do…" The prince coughed weakly.
"Into Necrophilia?" Hunter raised a brow.
"It's of little to no consolation to me but at least my ancestor wasn't described as a drunk who misunderstood his assigned job so completely, I'm not the only one who's destiny it is to portray a bad guy masquerading as a good guy." Daring looked at Hunter pointedly.
"Why are you looking at me like that…?" Hunter asked suspiciously. "Why-? What did my ancestor do?"
"Before we get into all of that, Raven told me to give this to you before she left for her trip." Cerise interrupted, sliding the nice smelling shampoo bottle over to the blond prince.
"Oooh!" Daring squealed while clapping excitedly. "Is this the shampoo that Raven promised to give to me so that I could try it out?"
Daring reached out to grab Dexter's shoulder as his wide-eyed brother tried to sneak away (because new beauty products for Daring meant one thing in their family; he and Darling were going to be dragged off to take a surprise shower and then they would be dutifully studied throughout the day to see just how well whatever potion worked on them).
"I think so… she was kind of in a hurry to get off campus… she just gave it to me and ran." Cerise said carefully.
"I don't blame her, I'd run too if what Duchess had said about Apple chasing her was true." Sparrow snorted.
Cerise kicked him under the table.
"OW! Hey, they'll find out later anyway, and besides Apple is the one who tried to scratch your face off!" Sparrow defended under his cousin's glare.
"Wait, Apple did that to you?" Hunter asked.
"That's what I was trying to tell you." Sparrow said excitedly. "Apple White's lost it! She went crazy and woke up half the girl's dorm chasing after Raven to stop her from going on this secret family business trip, Briar and Ashlynn had to literally pin her to the floor to keep her from doing something crazy."
"I knew that Raven was going away for the weekend on a business trip but why would Apple freak out over it? Raven told us herself that the situation with her kingdom is complicated and much of the business that she conducts must remain a secret." Daring asked confused.
"Duchess said that Apple said something about a bunch of crones trying to force Raven to do a bunch of crazy stuff so that they could sell her off to Lizzie's harem." Sparrow shrugged. "You know how weird witch and fairy politics can get. Though Apple could have made that all up in her head… Duchess said that Apple got pretty crazy there for a minute."
"But Raven has already been adopted by two Wonderlandian clans." Dexter said confused. "All that would be needed is a recommendation from either Maddie or Kitty and Raven could be apart of Lizzie's harem no problem."
"You mean that Lizzie actually has a harem?" Sparrow asks eyes wide.
"I'm more concerned about the fact that Apple tried to scratch Cerise's face off and you keep saying that Ashlynn was one of the ones holding Apple down." Hunter cut in urgently, looking pleadingly at Cerise. "Is Ashlynn ok? Apple didn't hurt her too did she?"
Cerise's guilty hesitation was all the answer he needed.
"Green gods." Hunter swore before taking off running.
"She's in the infirmary!" Cerise called after him.
"You're still able to play right?" Daring asked.
"Oh yeah, the healers said that a few scratches and superficial bruises won't hinder me at all, and the ice packs have all but gotten rid of the bruises." Cerise waved off the boy's concern, thanking her inherited fast-healing abilities for the thousandth time in her life. "Now what's our plan of attack?"
"Hey guys, sorry I'm late what have you- Cerise what happened to your face?" Tiny asked as he came up to the table.
XXX
"Wow." Raven whispered looking up.
"I don't know if "wow" quite covers it." Kitty mumbled staring up at the giant organic looking castle made up of rune-carved mossy rock.
"Your family lives in this?" Raven pointed above her.
"Well… some of my family and the people who work here are a little larger than Tiny so it's actually quite cozy in there at times." Faybelle hummed equal parts proud and amused.
The fairy's three wide-eyed guests turned to look at her incredulously.
"Did you say a little larger than-?" Raven began but was cut off as a giant sized fae that looked like a cross from a tree and a rock formation ambled past them.
"Okay, maybe some of them are lots bigger than Tiny." Faybelle mused as she got a better look at the family's head gardener (in the distance she saw Moss slinking back inside the castle, no doubt going to curl up in a horrified little ball under his bed after the talk that they just had with him).
"Oh good, it's about time you all got here." A dry voice drawled monotonously, making Faybelle straighten immediately when a figure approached them.
"Mother, it's lovely to see you." Faybelle greeted while standing stiff as a board.
The woman Faybelle was talking to looked like an older, more intimidating, version of the girl, with much larger wings, which twitched towards Faybelle almost fondly. The woman wore a dark green silk ruffled lady's overcoat with a long train in the back and skin tight black pants that were framed by the cut of the coat where the cloth parted to normally allow room for a full set of skirts (a surprising thing to see someone wearing so well in the desert but the Thorn castle was located in the middle of an oasis so the weather was much cooler within the protection of the black rocks and trees surrounding them).
Her long bone white hair with dark green strips decorating it was worn down in three sections; two were braded and sported decorative rings on them as they hung gracefully in front and the rest was left to cascade down her back like a waterfall of spider's silk, the crown the Evil Fairy wore had two horns that looked like large thorny branches that were growing out of her skull.
Raven put her left fist into her palm and bowed deeply to the woman respectfully, politely not speaking unless she was asked to and giving the mother and daughter some illusion of privacy.
"Good, your future bride has come with some semblance of acceptable manners along with her potential assets." Raven heard the woman's voice remark neutrally, which coming from the Evil Fairy was some pretty high praise. "Now come. We need to get you two washed and prepped for the first ceremony to be done right away, tomorrow we will do the second and the third day we will discuss the new developments you discovered yesterday from your little adventure."
With that the Evil Fairy turned and started walking regally into the castle, silently commanding the four girls to follow after her.