Chapter Text
The day he met her was probably the worst day of his life.
Well, it wasn’t THE worst day. Being a Dread Pirate Roberts fills up a lot of worst days, given the thievery and the murder and generally bad attitude of all pirates. The worst day of his life was actually the day both of his parents died, leaving him in a state of shock that lasted right up until Buttercup’s mother and father, old friends of his parents, came to pick him up and have him live on their dairy farm instead. But that one was particularly awful, right up there with the worst of the Dread Pirate days, because it was the day Westley could no longer pretend his family was coming back. Because it was a day where he had to leave the small farmhouse he had dug himself into and face Buttercup’s father’s pitiful smile, and her mother’s pitiful smile, and adults only smile like that at children when they had lost something very dear to them.
And that meant his parents were really dead. Because if they had just left and would come back, if the sickness had gone away when his neighbors came to carry their cold bodies, they would be smiling with joy. But they weren’t.
Pity was all he was going to get for a very long time.
The shock carried him, however, through the front door of his new hosts’ home. While his shoulders still shook and his fingers were even worse, he wasn’t a complete mess as the adults showed him around their house. It was small and quaint, as they didn’t have much, but it was still a lot more than Westley was used to, so the novelty of it kept the tears and the wails and the smiles of his parents away. Westley was admiring a piece of metal silverware—he had always used wooden spoons—when she walked in.
“Oh,” said her father, face lighting up. Westley still hadn’t turned around, spoon shaking in his small hands. “Our daughter is here.”
“I was just about to say that,” snapped her mother, and the man rolled his eyes like he had done ten times since the tour started. They quarreled more than he was used to, since his parents had always treated each other—
Nope. Westley shut down that one quickly. He wasn’t stupid. If he thought too hard, the shock would fade, and that was all that was keeping him alive right now.
“Why don’t you introduce yourself?” her father said, and that was when Westley turned around. The boy immediately stopped shaking. The spoon went still in his hands.
She was beautiful. She was only ten—and so was he—but she was beautiful in a way Westley knew he had never seen someone be beautiful before. Her autumn hair was messy but shone in the sunset, a million colors mixing to give a unique glow; her skin was also without a blemish, with a nose that suited her face perfectly—face symmetrical and even and beautiful. Nimble and small and eyes as blue as the sky. Whoever she was, Westley realized, this was something to stay alive for.
Of course, Westley wasn’t unique in this thought. Almost every boy in the village with working eyesight had their face go red when they first saw her walk into a room. So the girl took no real notice of how Westley straightened and had a fist around the metal spoon that a million men couldn’t break. “Is this the farm boy?” She looked to her father and pointed at the red faced boy with interest.
Interest. Westley was interesting. The thought almost made him smile, despite the shock and the dead parents and the sobs waiting in his throat.
“Yes,” said her mother. “Westley is going to be staying with us from now on. Go on, introduce yourself.”
She blinked. “Hello,” she said slowly, as if thinking he couldn’t understand her without it. “I’m Buttercup. I live here.”
“Well, he knows that.”
“I don’t think he knows anything. Does he always stare this much?” Even Buttercup was starting to notice how long the boy had gone without blinking, face red and eyes wide. Usually, the cases that were this bad looked at their feet and tried to stammer out a greeting. Some boys were weird like that according to Buttercup’s experience—as she would tell him later on. “Hello? Anyone home?” She waved her hand as if she was trying to get his attention but it was fixed. “Doesn’t he talk?”
“I’m afraid he hasn’t talked at all since his parents—well, since we brought him. It’s okay, I’m sure he will feel comfortable enough to talk in time,” said her mother.
Buttercup looked right to him—she always did, even from the beginning—and said, “So you’re mute because your parents are dead.”
The adults gaped in shock. Westley finally blinked, the red in his face leaving to show a pale shock. What?
“Buttercup!” her father scolded, “How could you—”
“They are, aren’t they?”
“Well…” he started, but couldn’t finish the thought. None of the adults in Westley’s life could ever talk about the disease or the cold bodies, never even bothered to sit down with him and discuss what would happen next. Just pitiful glances. At least Buttercup had the nerve to say what everyone was thinking. Lord knows Westley was thinking it. His vision started to get blurry with the millions of tears locked behind his eyes. Uh oh.
“It’s okay,” Buttercup said, walking up to him and nodding with the simplicity only children have. The boy looked up then, surprised on his face. She was so close he could reach out and touch her. The thought made the tears retreat a little. “You can have my parents. They’re both AWFUL!” She turned to her mother and stomped her feet, face taut with anger.
“Honey—” her mother started tiredly. She had hoped her daughter had forgotten this argument, clearly.
“No! Horse wanted a new brush and you said no! I hate both of you still and the farm boy doesn’t change that!”
“Buttercup, it was too expensive, you know this.” The father’s tone made it very clear that these types of arguments were frequent and terrible. Westley couldn’t help but smile a little at how silly Buttercup looked right then—all upset and ready to cry over a new brush for what he assumed was a horse named Horse. And here Westley was, on the second worst day of his life (so far), not having lost face. Or a tear at all.
Buttercup noticed his smile, and then, for the very first time, turned her ire on him. With a pointed finger in his chest—it burned where she touched him—she yelled, “You’re laughing at me!” This startled the boy, and he quickly shook his head to negate this idea, but his words were caught in his throat. She was just too close, too angry. All that came out was a sort of half sob, one of the many that had been building in his chest. And as far as Buttercup was concerned, that was an admission of guilt. Her eyes narrowed, and the ire in her crystal eyes seemed to become a permanent fixture in her expression. It would come to haunt his every moment for the next eight years.
“Oh, so you think you’re above me, Farm Boy?”
He shook his head.
“You think you’re so great? That Horse doesn’t deserve a new brush?”
Again, he shook his head.
“Then you’re going to brush him! You work for us now, so you gotta do what I say!” She looked to her parents defiantly, but even at this age they cowered to her. Without their objections he was left with no defenders, and in half a second Westley went from The Poor Orphan to Farm Boy, Tender of Horse. Of course, he didn’t really know that yet, but he definitely felt it when Buttercup reached onto the table and pulled out a terrible looking brush, shoving it into his chest. Again, her touch burned into his skin. “You can start now, since you’re not doing anything but standing around the house.”
“Girl,” her father started, but Buttercup just stomped her foot again. His protest died. The adults looked to Westley.
“Well?” Buttercup said, crossing her arms. She looked angry at him, face all scrunched up, but she was still LOOKING at him. He was still somewhat interesting. And, well, her father had told him Westley would only stay as long as he would work for the family. The girl stared on.
Finally, with the pressure at its peak, Westley finally said something his father had always said to his mother to get her off his back. “As you wish.” Except his throat was still strangled and sobs were stuck in his lungs and it came out as “Azz ymzish,” which Buttercup took as just a confirmation and whipped away. She left the room in a stomping fashion, apparently not caring to follow Westley to the task. His head felt dizzy with her gone, as her removal meant entering the space of ‘where even am I’ once more. If anything, she felt real. This house, empty of anything familiar, did not.
Of course, her parents didn’t immediately order him out to the stables. They showed him their room and Buttercup’s very angrily locked door, along with the hovel he would be staying in out back—there just wasn’t room in the small house for another boy—along with the cows and the fields and the general chores he would be expected to help out with. The whole time, Westley held onto the brush in a death grip. The cows licked at his hand but he didn’t budge, stone faced and polite and nodding along. Because the brush meant that the girl was real. Horse was real. His role in this new house was real. Him being an orphan was real. Good god, it was all real.
And so eventually there was nothing left to show but the stables. The adults stood around awkwardly, not really knowing what to say. “You know,” started her father, “you don’t have to brush Horse if you don’t want to. She’s just a little girl, her tantrums fade with time.” Time seemed to be the key factor in that sentence. “I can talk to her.”
Westley shook his head, face grim and determined, and that seemed to get across his message. Her father respected it, stepped back a little to give him some space. The mother just shook her head in a bit of disbelief, but said nothing. Maybe they expected that it would turn out this way. Maybe they just didn’t care what chores Westley did as long as work was done.
That was his new purpose, after all. Work until he died. No time to be a child anymore—that body was long cold.
And so Westley didn’t even wait for them to show him the stables, he just walked right inside. They made no move to catch up.
Inside, the stables were actually a bit nice. Cover from the rain, hay everywhere. Its only resident was a young white horse that ate from a pile of vegetables lazily, with full expectation it would be filled again—he could guess those were Buttercup’s.
“Horse,” he said out loud, voice strained. The gelding looked at him with alert ears then, confused at the sight of a new person in its stable.
A horse named Horse. It was real. The brush finally fell from his grasp as his hand went limp, landing softly on the hay filled floor.
It was all real.
Nothing could have stopped him then. A scream came out of his throat and into the air, a scream of grief and anger and grief again, and then the sobs finally wracked his chest and the tears burst out of his eyes and his vision went so blurry he couldn’t see anything at all and he could only stumble to the wall and slide down its side. When his limp body hit the ground he curled inward, sobbing and shaking and muffling his screams by planting his face in between his knees. Horse blinked in alarm, but Westley didn’t care. The shock was gone, and there was nothing left of him.
He cried and cried and cried, upset about many different things. He cried because he missed the jam on bread his mother used to make on Sunday mornings, the good jam. He cried because the stable was too hot and Horse looked mean and the hay dug into his skin. He cried because Buttercup hated him and the adults looked at him with sad eyes and the people in the village whispered to each other when he passed them to make it to the dairy farm. He cried because he wanted to be warm and tucked into bed and he wasn’t, because he had to brush Horse and then fix up his hovel and then look at the fences and make friends with the cows and he didn’t think anyone would ever tuck him into bed again. He cried because his life was changing and it wasn’t his fault, he didn’t ask it to. He cried because he wanted to go back and wanted his mom and his dad and he no longer smelled like either of them.
Westley cried because his parents were dead. He only stopped when there were no tears left, only shakes and sobs and a bit of vomit, and Horse came to sniff at his hair. He stayed there until nightfall, locked in place, and no one disturbed him even as the mother brought him stew in a bowl. And eventually, the second worst day of his life ended.
But there were more to come.