Chapter Text
They say that no one loves you as much as your parents, but if that’s true, then I must be unlovable. My parents weren’t unkind people, and they didn’t actively go out of their way to hurt me. In fact, for all that they had to deal with regarding me, I wouldn’t blame them. If I was in their situation, I would have done the same thing. It wasn’t their fault that I was born this way.
My parents were wealthy people.
Proprietor of the world’s largest and highest quality jewelry company, Marmora’s, my mother, Krolia Marmora, was one of the most beloved and revered people in the country. Although she never started the company herself, it was passed down through many generations from mother to daughter, growing even more powerful with every hand it was passed to. It was incredibly impressive, the way Krolia ran her business. She was never one to pull punches about anything, not in her business, and not in her life. That’s why it doesn’t surprise me that she left me at such a young age. That’s also why my name doesn’t match hers.
My father, Akira Kogane, was born into the royal family, a blue blood, unlike Krolia. Although many of the marriages between nobles were arranged for one reason or another, Akira and Krolia’s was not. They truly cared for each other and wanted to be together, despite Akira’s family disapproving of the marriage. They wanted him to marry a noble and to carry on the status. Despite Akira being born into his money, he still humbled himself by going to university and becoming a genealogist. One would think that the guy was just a fan of history and lineage, but I know that he only picked this area of interest because of me. I managed to change my parents’ lives in a lot of ways, it seems, and not in the ways a child should.
When Krolia was due to have me, excitement rippled not only through my family, but also through the entire city, and neighbouring cities around it. There were always paparazzi following my parents around, but as the due date grew nearer, the number of them had started to pick up. It had been like that when my cousin, Takashi “Shiro” Shirogane, was born. People have always been invested in the lives of the Marmora’s and the Kogane’s.
It was never a problem for either of my parents though. They were never camera shy, welcoming cameras into nearly every aspect of their lives. Krolia had grown up around that sort of popularity, as had Akira. Shiro was raised to get used to seeing his face plastered everywhere from the newspaper to the television screen. And I’m sure that I would have grown up in the same way.
If I had been normal.
But I wasn’t. So, my face was never plastered anywhere, not even our family home. My photo has never even been taken before. After my birth, Krolia left almost immediately. She was appalled that she had given birth to me and blamed Akira entirely, all due to his Kogane name. Akira continued to look after me, but he hid me away from everyone, never allowing me to speak to anyone or to move to the outside world. Eventually, he couldn’t bear to look after me anymore and handed me off to my uncle, who also struggled to care for me.
His son, my cousin, Shiro, was the only one who ever showed me any form of love. I think it’s because Shiro doesn’t have a mean bone in his body and he couldn’t bring himself to leave me on my own. Once he was old enough, he bought his own place designed specifically to house me in secret, complete with passages and one-way mirrors. He married a nice gal named Allura; a princess. She worries about me constantly and is always ensuring that I’m hidden from the outside world, but I know she means the best. Her advisor, Coran, also works his hardest to protect me from anybody. They all just think that people are out to hurt me.
Because, despite the fact that Akira and Krolia told the world that I had been a stillborn and that that was the reason they had been torn apart, the people were not so stupid. They knew the truth behind why the Kogane child was hidden away.
The problem was all derived from the fact that Krolia was not a royal or a noble. Her blood wasn’t – metaphorically – blue. And that, for whatever reason, seems to be a big issue for everyone in Akira’s family. They’re extremely paranoid about letting anyone into the family who isn’t of a high status. They’ve always been that way. So, even though Krolia was an incredibly successful and powerful woman, she would never be enough to quell the fears of Akira’s relatives. That fear being the result of the fabled curse.
As the local legend went, a curse had been put on the Kogane family years ago. It all began with my great-great-great-grandfather, Sven Kogane. He was a man of very high standing. In a time where all marriages were for the sake of alliances and keeping the noble title going, it was very rare for anyone to fall in love with their spouse before the marriage. And yet, that was what had happened, except not for Sven. It was for the woman who was set to marry him. A blue-blooded, red-headed countess named Hira had had her heart completely stolen by Sven.
Sven, on the other hand, hadn’t felt the same. He became infatuated with a servant girl named Romelle. In her, Sven saw a future, and she seemed to see the same thing. They had planned to get married and disregard Sven’s arranged marriage as well as all class laws. Despite the fact that his entire family rejected the new marriage and Sven himself, he didn’t back down. He defended his love for Romelle to his dying breath until she was awarded noble status and allowed to live as a royal.
And Hira, well, she was humiliated. Who wouldn’t be, in that day and age? That was one of the highest insults that anyone could have performed. It was bad enough that he chose a servant girl over a noble woman, but it was made worse by the fact she really did love him. Still, it came as a shock to the entire town when Hira leaped off a cliff to her death.
Following the death of her only daughter, the royal sorceress, Honvera, placed a curse on the entire Kogane lineage in an act of revenge for the humiliating death of her daughter. She spread animal Quintessence over the property and commanded that the next Kogane to marry someone unapproved and without blue blood would be cursed with monsters for children.
“And only when one of your kind claims the child as their own, ‘til death do they part, will the curse be broken.” Those were the terms of the curse. Words that I have memorized after having them repeated to me countless times. Couldn’t forget them if I tried.
But, time passed. The children grew up, got married, and had their own children. As luck would have it, Sven and Romelle’s blue-blooded children only married other royals, giving birth to blue-bloods, who all birthed blue-bloods, who all birthed blue-bloods. Finally, after five generations free of the curse, born to the Kogane family of a royal and a woman considered a commoner, the first half-blue-blood. Born with purple splotches of skin dispersed across his entire body, solid yellow eyes lacking pupils, sharp fangs, and furry cat-like ears. The monstrous child; Keith Kogane.
Me.
◊ ◊ ◊
“Keith. Dear, sweet, Keith,” the man before him blathered. He stared at the mirror ahead of him, his eyes flickering across it sporadically. There was a desperate look in his eyes, which really didn’t match with his clean-cut suit and flowing white hair. “I’d given up all hope of ever finding anyone who truly understands me,” he havered, his voice low and serious.
Keith, who had been sitting on the other side of the one-way glass, stilled his hands as they were in the middle of folding his twelfth origami swan. He had been building them the entire time that this man was speaking to him from the adjacent room. Keith lolled his head across the cubbyhole frame where he was stretched out, covered in paper birds, and stared at the guy.
Lotor was his name. He seemed a little bit too self-important, in Keith’s opinion. He had been blabbering on for awhile, offering nothing but empty compliments to Keith through the glass. The words were mostly going into one of Keith’s cat ears and out the other. They were all things he’d heard a thousand times before, and he didn’t doubt that he’d hear them a thousand times after, too. Lotor was an artificial charmer, Keith could tell. It wasn’t uncommon to come across these types of people, and Keith had, a lot more often than he wanted to, honestly. Just looking at Lotor’s snooty face made Keith roll his eyes. He had an expression like he was judging everyone around him constantly, and his tone was just slightly too condescending to be sincere. Keith had caught him sneering at the little waiting room’s furniture when he had first come in, when he hadn’t known that Keith was watching him.
And yet, he was still speaking. “I had given up all hope, that is, until I met you.” He stared hard at the mirror, probably guessing where he thought Keith’s eyes were. He was off. By a lot.
Keith almost scoffed at how cheesy the line was, but he managed to hold his tongue. The disgusted scrunch of his face couldn’t be stopped though. It was times like this when Keith was the most thankful for the one-way glass. He could just leave right then if he wanted to, and what would Lotor do? Nothing. If Keith did leave though, he would just be dragged right back by Allura with Shiro and Coran backing her up. They were all watching the entire conversation with a camera aimed at Lotor. Allura had it linked up to a television in the kitchen.
Keith could practically hear her now as she stared intensely at the screen, probably whispering, “I knew it. He’s the one,” while Shiro offered a hesitant, “He might be…” and Coran exclaimed an excited, “Let’s hope for the best!” That was how it usually happened.
It was incredible that, after finishing his twelfth swan and setting it up next to the other eleven of varying colours, Lotor still wasn’t finished rambling on. “You see, like you, I’ve felt imprisoned most of my life,” he admitted.
At that, Keith froze. He flicked his golden eyes up to squint at Lotor, even though he wasn’t seen. “Really?” Keith nearly spat, his eyebrows drawing together. “By what?” he prodded. The tone in his voice was a dare, a threat for Lotor to watch his step. “Your good looks and your good name?” Keith let the sarcasm seep into his words like venom sinks into prey.
Of course, the narcissistic man wasn’t one to think too deeply about inflection, or perhaps he just chose to ignore it, because once more, he continued, “Yes, exactly!” A smile graced his face, and Keith would have almost considered him moderately attractive without that upturned nose expression marring his features. Except, he didn’t, because it was at that point that Keith was starting to find substance beneath Lotor’s words.
“No one ever seems to see past that. No one,” he furthered. “And Keith… Dear, sweet, Keith… curse or no curse, if I am more than my name and my face, then surely you’re more than yours.” There was a moment of silence as Keith stared at Lotor, and Lotor stared blankly at the mirror. “Let me in…” he whispered to the glass.
Keith sighed to himself. There it was again. Everyone always wanted him to come out so they could see his face. Everyone was so curious about the effects of the curse. That was why Keith had to be set up to meet people through the one-way glass anyway, so that he wouldn’t scare them all away immediately. That didn’t change anything though, it just revealed how much people didn’t keep their word. Every time, they would tell him that it didn’t matter what he looked like, and every time, Keith would exit the safety of his room just to be rejected again and again. He was sick of how predictable it was. Lotor would be the same.
“Let me in, Keith,” Lotor cooed again.
Keith looked once more at Lotor, harrumphed in his mind, and then swung his legs down from the indent in the wall. He marched through his room, following along the same wall that the glass was on until he reached the door handle leading to the annex. On the other side, it just appeared as a bookshelf so that no one tried to get into Keith’s bedroom. It was truly just designed to hide Keith away.
He turned the handle of the door and sucked in a breath. The only thing that was giving him the strength to face yet another rejection was the thought that Allura would screech the moment she saw the bookshelf being pushed away from the wall on her little monitor. She hated when he showed suitors his face. Keith’s lips quirked into a smile and he shoved the door open. With cocksure steps, Keith stepped into the annex.
Lotor startled back at the sudden movement from the shelf, but then his eyes widened as he took in Keith’s appearance before him. The purple blemishes were clearly visible painted along his collarbones and neck. There was a large one on the side of his jaw and another diagonally across on his other cheek. One of his blotches was on his forehead where it couldn’t be seen underneath his bangs. His fangs were clearly sticking out of the smirk he had wandered in with. They gleamed in the dull light of the annex. His yellow eyes seemed to be staring everywhere and nowhere all at once, creating an unnatural and unnerving aura to him. And most noticeable were the cat ears that sat atop his head, twitching and following sounds as if they had a will of their own.
“Hey,” Keith greeted simply. He stood there, his hip cocked out to the side and his arms crossed over his chest.
Lotor was broken out of his frozen state of shock after hearing Keith’s voice in person. His face morphed into a look of unbelievable horror and disgust. Nose scrunched up, eyes squinted, upper lip raised, and eyebrows drawn inward, Lotor released a revolted whine. With rapid and confused twitches, Lotor scrambled his way around the couch in the centre of the room, closer to the door. He never let his eyes move away from Keith until he was at the door. He flung the door open and stumbled out into the hallway.
“Oh, Lord,” he breathed. Then he was gone, taking off down the hallway at top speed.
Keith sighed again as he heard Lotor shouting. He didn’t wait another moment before turning back to his secret bookshelf door and disappearing back into his bedroom. The shelf echoed as it locked behind Keith. He leaned back into the wall on the other side and stared blankly at the ceiling. His eyes slid shut and a steadying breath escaped his lips as his hands clenched into fists at his sides. Nothing about Lotor had appealed to Keith, and he hadn’t wanted to impress Lotor in any way, but all the same, the strong rejection didn’t hurt any less. His heart ached.
Rolling his head along the wall, Keith stared hard at his tiny collection of origami swans of varying colours. He absently thought about stringing them up and hanging them from his ceiling. That was something he could do later. Instead, Keith steeled his emotions and pushed off the wall, heading purposely for the main exit from his room which lead down to the kitchen. That’s where he would find Shiro, Allura, and Coran after they were all finished chasing after the latest suitor who had fled from the house screaming every time, just like clockwork.
By the time Keith stomped down the stairs and into the kitchen, he just managed to make out the distant voice of Lotor hollering, “He’s a demon!” Keith peeked around the corner of the kitchen to see out into the foyer where the front door was wide open. Coran was sprinting across the long mansion driveway after Lotor. Keith’s eyelids drooped in unimpressed exhaustion.
“Keith, why?” Shiro’s disappointed voice called out from the other side of the kitchen.
Keith turned back from the foyer. He didn’t want to meet Shiro’s eyes, so rather than stand there and be berated once again, he just rolled his eyes and pushed past him to search through the cupboards for something to eat. “Hey, I wasn’t the one who ran, Shiro,” he shot back.
“Of course, they run, Keith!” Allura cried as she entered the room with an exasperated huff. “What do you expect when you surprise them like that?” She glared at Keith, as if he was the one who had made the mistake here. “Do you think I showed Shiro my weird birthmark on our first date? No, I had the good sense to wait until we were married.” She stood akimbo as she faced Keith, like a scolding mother.
Keith groaned and yanked the box of Froot Loops off the top shelf. “I didn’t show him my birthmark, I showed him my face!” Keith argued, growing more and more angry with every word that was spoken to him. Why couldn’t a guy just disappear into his room and drown his sorrows in a box of Froot Loops without being harassed?
“Calm down! Both of you!” Shiro reprimanded, looking between Allura and Keith while putting his hands up.
Keith glared pointedly at Shiro before jamming his hand into the box, ripping out a handful of cereal pieces, and dumping them all into his mouth. It was an act of defiance.
Allura seemed to clam down at that, a heavy sigh escaping her as she relaxed her arms to her sides. “Oh, Keith,” she breathed sadly. “He really liked you,” she told him softly. There was a sympathetic look in her eye as she stepped closer to Keith.
Not having it, Keith just scrunched his face up harder. “If he liked me so much, then why did he run?” he rhetorically asked, burning holes in his cereal box with the force of his glare.
Allura answered anyway, taking it as an opportunity to remind Keith once more what she had been reminding him of every day since she had met him. “He liked you,” she stated pointedly. “He just didn’t like your inhuman parts. But it wasn’t you, Keith.” Looking up from the box, Keith stared at Allura. An encouraging smile graced her features, making her appear much softer and more comforting than before. Behind her, Keith could see as Shiro nodded in agreement.
Keith couldn’t help the way his heart dropped a little bit, even though he knew they were trying to make him feel better. “Right… Yeah…” he mumbled, staring down at his hands again. There were purple marks sticking out of the sleeves of his red sweater and he instinctively moved to pull the sleeves down, covering them back up. “It isn’t that he doesn’t like me, it’s just that he doesn’t like… me…”
Shiro stepped forward then, placing a gentle hand on Keith’s shoulder in support. “Keith, what we mean to say is that you’re more than your curse.”
Allura brightened, “Exactly. You’re not you, you’re someone stuck in this body.”
Once more, they both smiled kindly at Keith, who just nodded in silent acknowledgement. He swallowed hard and gripped his box of Froot Loops a little bit too hard. Then, with a plastered-on smile, he spun around and returned to his room.
On his way out, he nearly ran into Coran as the advisor rushed back into the room, panting. “The bugger got away on me,” Coran told them. He stretched out his legs dramatically, his eyes popping a little bit as one of his joints cracked.
Keith heard Shiro mutter one last thing to Allura before he was out of earshot. “We should really get them to sign the confidentiality agreement before we send them in to meet Keith.” There was an obvious frown in his voice. Keith quickly rushed back to the staircase near the rear of the kitchen which led to his room, escaping any further conversation.