Chapter Text
It was only supposed to be a job. A quick stint, max six months, posing as some Ingvarran nobleman’s snooty son.
Donella had given him an offer he couldn’t refuse for trading places with the Coronans’ hostage: a clean slate. Everything he owed her, all the debt he’d inevitably accrued over the last twelve plus years working as a pickpocket and thief under her thumb, forgiven. All for one stupid job.
Six months, she’d promised, and he’d be home free.
Six years later, Hugo regretted ever having stepped foot on Coronan soil. He regretted that he knew both Ingvarran and Coronan since childhood. He regretted trading clothes with the half-drunk teenager who he was supposed to replace, who in turn was to be traded to the Coronan agents in exchange for his uncle.
Hugo had never considered the severity of the Coronan threat until he watched the months turn to years, the hapless troupe of hostages in the Grate only growing in numbers. Hunger was a constant friend. Neither his Ingvarran employers, nor his Coronan captors, bothered to see to his physical needs. If nothing else, Hugo figured, they could start a new weight-loss business: spend six months in the Grate and you’ll see the difference, or your money back!
The food, when he did get it, was awful. The company of captive princes, snobbish, out of touch, and constantly complaining, was torturous. Hugo was a true outsider.
Ten months into his first year in the Grate, Hugo decided to come clean to the Coronans and confess to taking the place of the Ingvarran prince. The guards actually laughed, explaining that they didn’t care who he was, so long as the Ingvarran’s were willing to submit to Coronan authority and pay their taxes to keep him alive. Mockingly, they explained that so long as the Queen or her Owl didn’t know, he was safe.
Hugo shuddered at this, and for a whole week, let the matter be.
When frustration became unbearable, he loudly announced his deception to the first guard he saw.
“I’m not a prince!”
To which the guard huffed loudly, boxed his ears, and told him to hold his tongue.
Nursing a bleeding right eardrum, Hugo smirked. He’d no intention of attempting escape (the consequences for failure were too severe to consider) but that didn’t mean he couldn’t annoy his way out of the Corona dungeon.
It became a habit, each time the guard came to take him to the refectory or the yard, to loudly announce, “I’m not a prince!”
Before long, their abuse stopped, and some would even half-smile, grunting sarcastically, responding to the tune of, “sure, your highness, and I’m the Griffin of Pittsford!”
Sadly, in spite of his best efforts at being the squeaky wheel, Hugo’s incarceration continued.
There was one bright spot in the darkness of his wrongful imprisonment, and it all started with vomit. A lot of vomit.
One of the other hostages, a surly shrimp of a kid with broken Ingvarran, didn’t appreciate Hugo’s opportunistic outlook on the common meals. This young man was kept in the high-security corridor upstairs, and he often missed out on food by the time he was brought down to the refectory. Varian, as the prince was called, hailed from the Dark Kingdom. Hugo should have known better than to cross a hungry wizard, but what could he say? Finders keepers.
Varian had some things to say about that. Or rather, his potions did. After Hugo had helped himself to Varian’s paltry meal for the third time (the prince returned each slight with an adorable death glare), Hugo returned to his cell with a raging fever. This was followed by the most uncomfortable two weeks of his life: liquids he did not know his body contained were spilling from each and every orifice of his body.
When the poison-induced deluge finally stopped, Hugo was bedridden for another full month of recovery.
After that, he always made certain the dark wizard received a fair portion at mealtime.
Although their relationship remained tense, they fell into a respectful sort of camaraderie, engaging in games of chess or idle gossip whenever their paths crossed in the refectory. Varian was too high-security to be allowed recreation time in the castle yard.
The first time Varian escaped, Hugo was startled to find a pit had formed in his own heart. What did he care whether his petty nemesis got away?
Upon recapture, Varian was kept locked away. Guards boasted to the hostages about the youth’s failure, taunting the other prisoners with haunting retellings of his botched escape—especially highlighting the bloody beating he’d received upon his return to the Grate and the weeks of malnourishment he suffered in the lightless lower level where the cells were no larger than tombs.
Five weeks passed for Hugo with no sign of the young prince, until one day, Varian was being dragged along the corridor toward the refectory just as Hugo was being returned to his cell.
The kid looked awful: bruised all over, exhausted, barely holding himself upright as he was half-dragged by the guards, the telltale bloodstains of whip marks dark and rusty across the back of his shirt. Hugo wondered at the icy shivers that ran over him at the sight.
But his terror was more than fear for himself, or understandable pity at seeing a fellow hostage in crisis. Hugo should have felt at least some satisfaction in seeing the kid who’d poisoned him and strutted around the refectory like a little emperor, reduced to such a pathetic state.
But no, Hugo was fighting back literal tears at the sight of young Varian, defeated. There was something so tragic and intriguing about the dark-haired prince. It could have been Hugo’s realization that Varian’s “magic” was in fact a genius proclivity for alchemy, which Hugo himself had always found fascinating and had intended to pursue, if his life had gone differently. Or perhaps it was the “cursed” stripe of blue hair, or his hauntingly wide eyes, or the way his buck teeth protruded when the kid grinned proudly in triumph upon besting Hugo at a silent game of chess. What a smile! It turned the grim meaninglessness of the dungeon into something strangely hopeful.
Perhaps, in another life, another universe, if their situations had been different…
Well, things being what they were, Hugo couldn’t afford to think like that.
Upon Varian’s second escape, Hugo found himself holding his breath in the hours in his cell, running his fingers across the fur of the pet mouse he’d tamed with scraps and named Olivia. His cell, tragically, overlooked the city, not the castle yard, so he could only follow by sound the drama of the princess’s defection and Varian’s flight. Each shout, each thrumming of horse-hoofs, caused the young man to hold his breath as if the noise of breathing would drown out the news he was craning to hear.
When the youth was returned days later, deathly ill and in possession of a glowing, magical rock that the guards said had turned his hair to unearthly blue, Hugo was ready to burst. Pacing frantically in his small cell, he wasted hours staring out over the city rooftops, imagining a different life.
He must have fallen asleep at the window. He was curled into himself on the frigid floor, leaned against the wall beneath the barred aperture, when the guard came to fetch him to the refectory for an early meal (mealtimes were always deucedly irregular).
“You’re getting a cellmate,” the guard announced, leading him down the hall.
“I’m not a prince,” Hugo stated.
“Quiet, you.”
There was a harsh shove at his back, and Hugo stumbled forward.
The young man raised his eyebrows, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose. This was one of the guards who usually jumped at the opportunity to tease back. What had put him in such a sour mood, if the dark princes had been defeated as rumor suggested?
Hugo hoped Olivia would be clever enough to find her way up to his new room. He never kept her confined (how could he?) and so she had free run of the Grate. It certainly warmed his heart to know that she chose to stay by his side.
Rather than directing Hugo to the refectory for food, the guard delivered him to a mid-security cell on the top floor of the Grate.
Peering within, Hugo saw a whimpering shell of a man, curled up against the back wall in absolute terror.
“What’s wrong with him?”
The guard actually laughed in response, talking as he unlocked and opened the barred door.
“Ha! Just a pathetic, yellow traitor. I wouldn’t trust Andrew any further than you can throw him. The Owl–er– Sir Cassandra–” he was unmistakably peeved at her new title– “was just having a little fun with the Saporian.”
With that, Hugo was shoved once again, and he stumbled into the still-dark cell, wheeling around to glare back at the guard as the door slammed shut.
“I’m not a prince! I keep telling you people!”
“Can it, Ingvarr!"
Stomping footsteps echoed as the guard retreated down the hall.
The shivering man on the back wall stirred, drawing in a sharp breath.
“You’re not Sir Quirin.”
“Who?” Hugo said, before realizing the name was familiar. Wasn’t that Varian’s–
A manic laugh filled the grim cell. Hugo blinked, staring back in trepidation. Perhaps this was the Coronan’s way of finally getting rid of him: put him in a room with a madman.
“You’re not Sir Quirin!” Andrew cheered, leaping to his feet and taking Hugo’s hands in his.
“No, I’m not.”
The man was genuinely crying in relief. He laughed again.
“How do you know Sir Quirin?” Hugo inquired.
Andrew’s expression darkened.
“Erm, I…I was Prince Varian’s cellmate, for a time.”
Andrew. Andrew! Hugo could have slapped himself. How could he have forgotten? The guards said Varian had escaped with his cellmate, a traitor Saporian! Pieces were sliding together in Hugo’s mind, including an offhand comment he’d overheard about “the rat” who betrayed Varian to the Coronans–
“You!” Hugo cried, thrusting Andrew away. “You’re the one who betrayed them!”
“What do you care?” Andrew bellowed back, standing tall and squaring his shoulders. Even though Hugo was relatively tall himself, the Saporian towered over him, grinning down threateningly.
Hugo knew better.
“Nothing,” he shrugged, retracting his emotions and locking them away. “Just like to keep tabs on Grate gossip, you know?”
Andrew laughed, wiping a tear from his eye and seating himself on his bunk.
“Nice, kid. So what brings you here?”
Hugo shrugged. “Some Ingvarran toad paid me to trade places with his kid six years ago. Been here since.”
“Rough,” Andrew replied, before launching into an irritatingly self-aggrandizing rendition of his own act of attempted thievery that had landed him in prison. Hugo, who as a thief himself by trade, wasn’t the slightest bit interested in listening to the bragging of some amateur, allowed his thoughts to wander as he surveyed his new surroundings.
Almost immediately, he noticed the telltale masonry that signified a wide spot on the wall that had been recently repaired. He saw uneven tallies on the wall behind him, marking a span of time in fives…1,488 marks in total. Hugo exhaled sadly. Over four years. And now, for the second heartbreaking time, the prince was back. To have had freedom before him, only to have it stolen away, twice? Hugo didn’t think he’d be able to bear it.
Perhaps that was what made Varian so special. He never gave up. Even Hugo, whose protestations had been reduced to a sarcastic mantra repeated ad-nauseum to indifferent guards, had internally resigned himself to his fate.
The following days in the company of Andrew were insufferable. The man was an egotistical chatterbox. At least he didn’t seem to expect conversation in return, allowing Hugo to silently stew over his grievances against Andrew and the Coronans.
The day of the eclipse was chaotic. Guards abandoned their posts. Hostages, left unattended in their cells, clambered aloud for the sheer delight of making forbidden noise.
Many stomachs were grumbling by the time that Sir Adira of the Brotherhood was seen, escorting a downcast Cassandra to the lowest level of the prison. As the impressive lady passed, she informed the hostages that the princess had staged a coup, the queen was dead, and that the state would be trading them back to their homelands shortly, as soon as the threat of war was abated.
Hugo couldn’t help but wonder what this all meant for Varian.
Guards returned late that evening, hand-delivering a generous portion of fruit, bread, cheese, water, dried meat, and a bottle of wine to each of the cells.
“I’m not a prince,” Hugo announced as soon as the guards approached.
For a moment, the men halted in their steps, turning to each other for a moment in silent discussion. They were the same guards Hugo was used to seeing, although they had never considered his words until now.
“You’re really not a prince?” one asked, bringing over the food, which Andrew immediately took for himself.
“No, I was paid to take the place of–”
“What do you think?” the guard interrupted, turning to his companion.
“Eh,” the man shrugged. “Best hang on to him, just in case. If nothing else, he’ll be useful for the workforce.”
“Hey!” Hugo bellowed. “I thought your sunshine princess was supposed to be the epitome of grace and generosity! Do you really think she’s going to continue her deposed father’s dirty habit of slavery?”
“Quiet, dog!” The guard yelled back, slamming a fist against the bars. Hugo shivered but held his ground.
“What’s all this, then?” asked Sir Adira, returning up the hall. The guards visibly jumped, straightening to the point of silliness, saluting in the approach of the intimidating warrior. She stopped before Hugo’s door, looking within, quickly tallying up Andrew, the wall, and Hugo, and inferring much from a mere glance. She turned pointedly to the guard, raising her eyebrows for an explanation.
“I’m not a prince!” Hugo cried before the guard could speak. The guard choked on his words, and Adira looked Hugo up and down, considering.
“Release him.”
“Um, sir?” the guard asked.
“Look at him. He is no prince. This is likely a vagrant thief, who was paid into this sorry position. Release him immediately. See to it that he is given appropriate recompense for his trouble, as well as supplies and a horse for the journey home.”
“But–”
“Her Majesty Rapunzel has placed me in charge of the Grate for the time being.” She raised her hand to her sword-hilt on her back, drawing the black blade a few inches. “Do you need a reminder of what happens to soldiers to claim loyalty to the deposed king?”
“N-no, of course not!”
“We’ll do as you command, sir!” the other guard yelped, already producing the keys.
“Oh–” she said, “might as well let that one go, too.”
Andrew perked up, shoveling the rest of the food into his face and scrambling to his feet like a dog to a whistle.
Adira grimaced. “No need to pay that one, though. Just let him loose in the city. I wash my hands of what happens to him after that.”
“Thank you, great warrior!” Andrew blustered, already free of the cell and kneeling at her feet.
“Get up, you rat!” He scrambled to his feet. Adira hissed, and Andrew flinched away several steps. “I know exactly what you did to my nephew. I’m giving you mercy, only because I know you aren’t honorable enough to deserve justice. Now, get out before I change my mind.”
She didn’t need to tell him twice. Andrew yelped audibly and bolted to the stairs.
“I don’t know you,” Adira continued, turning to Hugo in a casual tone. “Do you know the prince?”
“Erm,” Hugo stumbled for words. Adira smiled at his bashful blush. “I see. Does he–”
“No, no he’s got real problems to deal with.”
Adira nodded sadly.
“I’m afraid that’s true. Well…”
“Hugo.”
“Hugo,” she smiled. “Can I do anything more for you?”
“Oh no, no sir. I can see myself out.”
“I don’t know what your plans are,” she winked, “but you might consider sticking around in town for the time being. The borders are covered. Until this war-threat is over with, it’ll be safest to remain near to the new Queen.”
“I understand,” he nodded appreciatively. “But I have some unfinished business back home. I’ll try my luck at the border.”
Adira nodded, turning to leave.
“I wish you luck, young Hugo.”
“Thank you. Please take care of the prince.”
Already at the head of the stairs by her long strides, Adira turned her head over her shoulder with a wry smile.
“I’ll tell him you said so.”
It was not without regret that Hugo shook the dust of Corona from his feet. Finding his way across the border wasn’t difficult, and the guards had given him plenty of supplies and money. Hugo regretted not getting to bid farewell to Olivia the mouse, although he knew it was best for her to stay in the castle with her family.
Family. It was really a foreign concept to Hugo.
As he continued toward Donella and home in the dirty streets of the Ingvarr capitol, Hugo mused for the thousandth time over his short time at Varian’s side. He remained invisible to the prince. Did Varian even know his name?
Hugo shrugged off the thought. It didn’t matter. They were from different worlds, and only a mere chance had crossed their paths.
The young man released a satisfied sigh, setting his mind on the winding road before him.
At least both of them were now free.