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It was the sort of night where the moon hung high and heavy in the sky, and shadows clung to the castle’s walls like nightmares, dimming torches and casting velvet and polished marble alike into darkness. The whole world might as well have been asleep- not even the distant warble of crickets pierced the silence which smothered everything- so of course when Touya knocked on the door to His Majesty’s room, he received an immediate, “Come in.”
Tsukasa was sitting at his desk, the small smile gracing his features barely visible in the dim flickering of candlelight. It wasn’t a forced smile, but it wasn’t a genuine one, either; Touya hadn’t practically grown up with him only to be fooled alongside bureaucrats and aristocrats with placating gestures. There was a visible dullness to his eyes, the sort which irises acquired after spending far too long deciphering petitions written by people who still (mistakenly) believed that the kingdom’s youngest sovereign to ever take the throne was naïve enough to sneak self-aggrandizing policy past, or maybe he’d been mulling over where he could siphon funds from the budget in order to alleviate the effects of that freak hailstorm a few weeks ago, or maybe he’d been in the middle of calculations working towards that same goal, or maybe it had been one of the other hundreds of logistical burdens a person accepted alongside the crown. It could have been anything, really- Touya didn’t know a single thing about ruling and administration, nothing other than the stacks of parchment scattered across a desk’s wooden surface and the long, late nights Tsukasa spent staring at them.
But what he knew was that Tsukasa Tenma, who was his king, who had sequestered himself away into his room at the moment of open court session’s close, likely hadn’t left it since- likely hadn’t moved at all, other than tilting his head to get a better look at the documents before him and lifting his arm to sign them. Because Tsukasa Tenma, who was his friend, had always been the sort to lose himself in his devotion; when they were younger it had been Saki, solely Saki, and now that he held responsibility for an entire kingdom the scope had broadened accordingly. So, shutting the door behind him as quietly as possible, so not as to awaken anyone nearby who would’ve been asleep, Touya with his other hand held up a plate he’d pilfered (taken, in plain view, while the chefs pretended not to notice) from the kitchen, piled high with delicacies (“Make sure he’s getting fruit,” one of them had whispered as they’d walked past).
Tsukasa pulled a face when he saw what Touya carried, somewhere between indignation and embarrassment and gratitude. “Touya, you’re not a servant anymore,” he said, staring hungrily nonetheless.
“I know. I just thought I ought to do this for you.”
“It’s not your job to take care of me.”
“It’s not,” Touya agreed, both of them keenly aware of the sheathed sword strapped to his side. “But it is my job to keep you alive.”
A look between the two of them. A hesitation, and finally Tsukasa said, “Thank you,” which Touya took as his cue to push some of the offending papers off to the side and set the plate down.
Tsukasa had always been something of a picky eater, even before the coronation, so it was a relief to see him abandon his work, reach out for one of the confectionaries- a cake, frosted and light pink, topped with a strawberry- and take a small bite out of it, almost self-consciously, as if it was a weakness to admit to physiological needs.
“I’m glad I still remember the things you like,” Touya said.
“I would’ve been surprised if you’d forgotten,” Tsukasa replied, after swallowing. “We were friends for quite some time, after all.”
Were? came automatically, unbidden, slightly distressed. Touya did his best not to let it show. It wouldn’t have been seemly.
“And,” Tsukasa continued, after a brief period of silence, “your memory has always been rather impressive.” His smile this time was still small, but it was more honest. “I hope I can continue to depend upon it in the future.”
“Of course, Your Majesty.” A slight bow. “I’m willing to serve in whatever manner I can.”
“I appreciate your loyalty,” Tsukasa said, warmly, fondly, and Touya felt something in his heart flutter. He felt something in his stomach twist. He dipped his head, somewhat bashful, unsure of the proper way to respond. From the day Tsukasa had officially accepted the crown forward, he was never quite certain how the two of them stood. It had been easier Before- Before, they’d both been servants, and so they’d been friends without reservation. There was nothing standing in the way of one person befriending another of the same rank. But three years later, one of them was a king, and the other one was a knight.
“It’s an honor,” Touya tried, mostly because it felt safe.
Tsukasa’s smile grew a bit wider, and it also grew a bit sad. “I do wish you were Saki’s knight instead, though.”
Touya jerked, involuntarily. “With all due respect, my liege, I’m quite happy where I am,” he said, as straightforwardly as he could without sounding blunt.
It got a short laugh. “I know, I know. It’s just, I feel like she needs the protection so much more…”
“Don’t underestimate your sister, now.”
“Of course not. She’s a tough girl. I know exactly how strong she is. But she was so much closer with-“ he hesitated on the next word- “our parents than I was. And her body-“ A long and quiet sigh. “But for whatever reason, you chose me.”
Because I wanted you to know there was someone out there devoted exclusively to you. Because Tsukasa had been the only one in his family to remain untouched by the plague, but that didn’t mean he’d emerged unscathed. Their lives could have been demarcated into two periods, with the coronation serving as the division, and the Tsukasa from Before had been a person who would go around and make sure the castle staff knew about Touya’s birthday so that there would be something resembling a party after a long and tiring day’s work; who could while away summers with tea parties with his sister in the gardens; who would grin and ruffle Touya’s hair and tell him to ignore the senior Aoyagi with language unbefitting a future king, because neither of them had ever imagined he was going to be king.
But no- Tsukasa, who had always loved his sister, his frail and delicate and now permanently weakened sister, would never have accepted that answer. So instead, Touya went with, “You know that I love your sister as if she were my own, so please, don’t take the wrong impression away from my words- but I chose you because I felt you were someone worth protecting.” Because he’d seen the way his friend’s hands had shaken during the ceremony, and it felt like he was the only person in the entire world who had.
Tsukasa was older, now- taller, too, so the crown on his head didn’t seem so big anymore. At the very least, he’d needed to stop adjusting it on an hour-to-hour basis. But it still seemed so very, very unnatural.
“For what it’s worth,” Touya said, “she’s rather pleased with the arrangement.”
“Is she, now.”
He nodded. She’d pulled him aside, after he’d been knighted- spoke to him without pretenses or titles in the way, like they were a pair of old friends who could retire to the gardens afterwards and have tea together like always. “I’m less worried, now that I know you’ll be looking after him,” she’d told him.
And what a fine job I’ve been doing, Touya thought, bitterly. The castle staff were trapped utterly in the past, and they adored the seventeen-year-old they still saw as that eager servant boy. So of course they’d let Touya take that plate of food. They’d been as horrified as he’d been when he’d found Tsukasa unconscious on the floor of his room.
“How has she been doing,” Tsukasa asked, suddenly. “Saki. Is she happy?”
A dryness in Touya’s throat. What a terrible question to be asked, he decided. What a terrible and terribly unfair question to be asked. “In high spirits, as per usual,” he answered, honestly, after searching for the right thing to say. After wondering if there was anything right to say. “She frolics the mornings away with her ladies in waiting and spends the afternoons on her studies.”
“What kinds of studies?”
“All sorts. Literature. History. Embroidery. Piano, too, every so often, just to make sure she’s not losing touch with her skills.”
“How’s she… how’s her health been?”
“Hale and hearty as she could be.”
“She’s not lonely?”
“…no, sir; she has plenty of friends.”
“Sounds like she’s not in want of anything, then.”
Nothing except her brother, Touya thought. But he didn’t say that out loud. “Yes. She’s quite happy.”
“I’m glad,” Tsukasa murmured. Maybe it was a trick of the candlelight but for a moment he looked strangely vulnerable. In the soft shading of the light he seemed younger, somehow.
Perhaps that was what gave Touya the courage to say what he did. From the coronation onwards he had never been quite certain where the two of them stood- whether or not friendship superseded station, or whether it was even allowed to. For Tsukasa’s sake, he’d never tried to push that line too hard. The last thing his king needed was rumors about favoritism drifting around the mouths of the nobility.
But it was a late night, now- the shadows in the castle grew only longer as the moon began its gradual descent- it felt like the whole world was asleep, and Tsukasa’s features were barely visible in the dim flickering of the candlelight. Vaguely, distantly, it felt like maybe this could be a dream. Something in his heart cried for the possibility. He wanted to wake up, three years younger, into a world where his friend could still smile unabashedly. His discipline, for just a moment, faltered.
“She missed you at dinner tonight, you know.”
Immediately, Touya regretted speaking the words. Whatever vulnerability was present in Tsukasa magnified exponentially for a second- surprise and guilt, in equal volumes, in his face and posture and eyes- and then it all smoothed out into a detached mask of neutrality, the same one he always put on when dealing with troublesome bureaucrats. “Did she, now.”
“…” A slow nod.
“I miss spending time her too,” came with a managed, deliberate evenness. As if he was forcing his voice not to waver.
“Yes, my liege.”
“You know I do.”
“Of course, my liege.”
“But my responsibilities to the kingdom are…” A gesture, almost desperately, to the papers around him.
“I understand.”
Touya could only wonder if he was imagining the hollowness in Tsukasa’s tones. “It’s hard, trying to pick up what my fa- what the previous king left behind,” he said. “We’re only just beginning to recover from the plague. We can’t have other nations thinking us weak. That’s why…” An inhale. “I mean, that’s why they kicked me onto the throne, after all.”
Touya found himself moving, almost without realizing. “Your Majesty-“
“-it’s nothing, it’s nothing,” Tsukasa laughed. The sound was like shattering glass. “I mean, when I think about it, I can almost understand the nobility’s point of view. If you want to prove that sickness hasn’t weakened your kingdom, why would you choose the heir whose body was permanently damaged by it?” He blinked, eyes oddly bright. He didn’t seem to be looking at anything at all. “Better a bastard than a-“
His voice broke, then. By then, though, Touya had reached him. He felt a few warm droplets on his shoulder, and suppressed the urge to shudder. It was a stark and sobering and terrifying reminder, the fact that somehow, in the past three years, he’d grown enough to find himself now having to look down to see the person he’d once looked up to.
Eventually, Tsukasa pulled away. Touya let his arms fall back to his side.
“…I’m sorry.” Tsukasa lifted his arm, as if to wipe his eyes with his sleeve- paused- snatched a napkin from his desk and used that instead. “That was… extremely unbecoming.”
“No- Your Majesty- please-“ Touya floundered, cursed himself silently. What had he been thinking? What had he been trying to do? Obviously, if Tsukasa had the choice, he would be keeping his sister company. Was he stupid?
…no. Horror spread alongside realization, like numbness, from his fingertips up his arms to the rest of his body. Tears had been the goal. His oldest friend weeping into his shoulder had been the goal. He’d wanted to see Tsukasa cry.
What kind of a person-
What kind of a knight-
He could hear the echoes of his father’s voice telling him that he wasn’t cut out for this, that he wasn’t able to protect anyone. For a single, vicious moment of self-loathing, he wanted to believe it.
I can’t let myself get lost in the past anymore, he thought, stomach churning. Just because Tsukasa no longer laughed or smiled freely- just because Tsukasa from Before and Tsukasa now seemed utterly irreconcilable- just because it seemed like his friend had vanished under the crown and the cape and the scepter and the responsibility-
-he’d wanted- so badly- to see Tsukasa cry. Just to prove a point to himself. Just to see if Tsukasa was still the type of person who could…
“Touya,” was soft, almost inaudible, almost completely obscured by the fingers covering Tsukasa’s mouth. Still, it snapped Touya out of that hellish spiral.
“Your Majesty?” His voice very nearly cracked.
Tsukasa sat slumped in his chair, smaller than he’d ever looked in the past three years. He wouldn’t look Touya in the eye. “Are you happy?”
Shock, panic, guilt, all of it stabbed him at once between the ribs. “Your Majesty, I-“
“Don’t- answer immediately,” Tsukasa said, quietly. “Really- really think about it. You’ve always wanted to be a knight, ever since you were young…” A shaky exhale, or maybe it could’ve been a sob. (He hoped it wasn’t a sob.) “Is…this… what you wanted?”
“…”
I don’t have the right to say anything other than yes, he thought, gloomily. But at the same time, Tsukasa deserved an honest answer.
“I…” Come on, this is your chance to make up for earlier-! “It’s not what I… imagined,” he said, his tongue feeling like lead in his mouth. “But I… you asked if I was happy. And I am. Happy to serve you.”
“…truly?”
“Extraordinarily.” Touya managed to swallow on his third attempt. “If I may… growing up, I imagined I’d be serving under Lady Saki. But, circumstances being what they are, I’m more than happy to serve under you.”
Finally, finally, Tsukasa looked up. He looked so very, very tired.
“No regrets, then?”
Touya shook his head. It had been the coronation ceremony, he thought. It had changed everything and everyone, but what it had done to Touya was change him from a weak-willed child who sought approval as desperately as rivers sought the sea into someone who finally understood what it meant to have unconditional loyalty to someone. (It had been the nights of vigil sitting outside Saki’s room while she had been sick, and the way he’d cried when he found out she would live. It had been the equal amount of fear in his expression the first time he’d sat on the throne.)
In a very real way, if it wasn’t for Tsukasa, he wouldn’t have been able to become a knight. And that was why he couldn’t have ever been anyone’s knight but Tsukasa’s.
“Never.”
“…I’m glad to hear it.” Tsukasa smiled, but it was brittle and fragile and precarious, gossamer dew and cobwebs hanging in a storm. “Really. I am. It makes me feel like…” His words trailed off. His hand clenched, then unclenched. He set his jaw.
“…Your Majesty?”
Tsukasa closed his eyes, as if he couldn’t stand the sight of anything anymore. “Go to your quarters and get some sleep, Touya,” he whispered. “You’re dismissed for the night.”
“You know, I’m actually glad I’m not a prince,” Tsukasa had once said, at a tea party with Saki and Touya. They’d been maybe around ten years old, then- maybe Tsukasa had been eleven- and so they had far less to do than the rest of the castle staff, who collectively agreed that children ought to have the opportunity to be children: if they started a few hours after sunrise they were usually finished around midday. It was a conversation Touya would think back upon a lot, in the future.
There had been two curious gazes, and so Tsukasa had immediately continued with, “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it seems like it’d be nice and all, but I like the job I’ve got right now. I like taking care of you.” He flicked Saki lightly on the nose, to which she’d giggled.
“I have other servants to help look after me too,” she said. “Like Touya!” Touya, at this point still shy, had only nodded.
“Yeah,” Tsukasa said. “But if I’m doing it then I can make sure it’s being done right. No one knows you as well as I do! Touya’s a close second,” he added, hastily. “But Touya wants to be a knight.”
“Ah- er- um, well, my father wants me to be a magistrate like him…”
“Who cares what your father wants,” Tsukasa declared, kicking one of the legs on Touya’s chair. Touya yelped. “Oh- uh, sorry.” (“No, no, it’s fine…”) “Seriously, though, who cares what your father wants. It’s your life; spend it doing the things you want.”
Miserably, “Father says… says that I need to uphold the proper legacy expected as a member of the Aoyagi household.”
Saki’s sigh came at the same time as Tsukasa’s, “Bleh.” He patted his sister on the shoulder sympathetically.
“That’s something else that’s great about being nobody important,” Tsukasa said. “Nobody really cares about what you do.”
“Touya’s father does.”
“Right, but Touya’s father is a-“ Touya’s face bloomed to resemble the nearby rosebushes.
“Big brother!” Saki scolded, but she was grinning widely.
Tsukasa was grinning too. “And hey, Saki, when you’re in charge of things, you can make a law saying that grown-ups who care about ‘legacies’ or ‘family names’ or whatever should be banished to the Millennium Forest.”
“She’d have to get it approved by a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives and a three-fourths majority in the House of Peers.”
“Alright, and Touya can help you sneak it past Parliament.”
Saki laughed. “What about you, then?”
“Me?” Tsukasa blinked owlishly. “…I guess I’d still be serving you.”
Saki shook her head. “Come on, big brother! You’re the only one out of the three of us with the freedom to do whatever he wants, and you’re saying you’d still spend your entire life at the castle?!”
“Ack- well, when you put it that way…” Tsukasa swung his legs back and forth, slightly perplexed. “I dunno. I haven’t really thought about it.”
“…I think you should travel,” Touya found the courage to chime in. Two pairs of eyes fixed on him. “I mean- um, I just mean that- the stories you tell always have such amazing settings, and…”
“Yes?” Tsukasa prodded, not unkindly.
“Um, well, I did a bit of research last night, because I was curious, and- there actually is a mountain you can climb, it’s somewhere in Albion’s Teeth, where when you get to the top- you can see the entire kingdom- all the way to the ocean,” Touya said.
“Wow,” Saki gasped.
“Um, the book had an illustration… it’s probably nothing compared to the actual view, though. So I was just…” Touya’s words dissolved into mumbles. “Maybe-you-could-do-a-little-reading-and-check-those-places-out-for-yourself-is-all.”
Tsukasa blinked again. “Huh,” he said, thoughtfully. “…that sounds pretty fun, actually.”
“Do it do it, you should do it, big brother!” Saki cried, clutching at Tsukasa’s arm.
“Ha! I’ll think about it.” He tousled her hair affectionately. (“Biig brooother! That took all morning to style!”) “Sounds like just doing the research would be a lot of work.”
“I could help,” Touya offered.
Tsukasa had smiled at him then. It was a smile Touya had never forgotten. Then he’d laughed.
“Well, that’s a problem for the me in the future,” he’d decided. “And really, the future’s still so far off from us right now- so what’s the point in worrying about it?”