Chapter Text
THE WEDDING OF THE MILLENNIum
Kristoff Knightlinger
The word on the streets is that Prince Apollo loves his dear wife so much that he wishes to marry her all over again! Of course Prince Apollo is not just a man of words. Rumor has it that another ceremony even grander than the last will be taking place by the end of the quarter! To think our beloved royal couple went through so much, it is truly heartbreaking. I shed tears just thinking about the last few weeks and I think I speak for the entire kingdom when I say that we’ve missed them. A royal wedding is just what our spirits need! Long live the Magnificent North!
LaLa knew that everything went to hell when Jacks disappeared from the face of the earth, but this was new. She looked past the edge of her scandal sheet, peering at the boy who had sold it to her.
“Are you certain?” She asks. The edges of his figure stiffened under the weight of her inquiry but he straightened his back.
“We don’t sell lies,” he says with a surprising degree of indignation. Then as an afterthought, “and we don’t do refunds!”
He scurries past her before she could ask him another question, and then from behind, she heard a faint shout: “mister would you like a paper? Only 2 bronze!”
It was all so...mundane. It didn't seem fitting that the greatest arch ever crafted by the North's founding family had been opened not even a week ago. Not when no one knew nor cared.
LaLa turned her eyes back to her own copy of the Gazette. She had been so sure this was all going to end differently.
She looked up to spy the butcher's shop across the way, stopping to stare at the pig in the window. The red of the apple in its mouth caught her eye and she was reminded of the other end to this blizzard equation: The Prince of Hearts.
The last time she spoke to Evangeline, Jacks had cut their conversation short but she believed and certainly hoped that the other girl forgave her. Nonetheless, Evangeline was getting married to her prince and LaLa supposed she couldn't keep treating the couple she cursed like they were old friends.
Losing a friend was a sort of heartache she was unfamiliar with, but it stung nonetheless.
Evangeline was soon to be Queen, and she was soon to be forgotten again. That was the thing about being immortal. You didn't move with the world. In fact, everyday felt as if the world were tugging her along but she just couldn't keep up.
She hoped Jacks was alright. She hadn't seen him since she stabbed him with a butterknife. He was surely in no mood to seek her out but the silence left her ill at ease. She understood heartbreak as much as he did and knew the lengths they'd both go to avoid it.
In the backrooms of her flat in the Spires, LaLa kept all of her more unusual trinkets. Rat eyes, gallbladders, bile, exotic bird ash and of course, worth more than the gold it resembled, hair she had pulled from Jack's head in exchange for the antidote to her tears.
On the cedar wood floor laid circles of burnt out candles with bits of melted wax stuck to the wood varnish and lines of bird ash she had crafted to twist and wind around colorful crystals and rodent skulls. She replaces a few of the sadder-looking candles and cleans up the ash that had gone awry from their place.
When she was satisfied her circle wasn't going to accidentally send her to bottom of the oceans, she took her place at it's center, offering a strand of hair to the nearest candle. It burned sweet, pungent like dead flowers someone tried too hard to keep and the flame trembled.
Three hours later, she held nothing for her efforts aside from a splitting headache and the urge to throw up.
The next day, she repeated the process, this time at dawn. She fell asleep waiting.
The following day, she tried at midnight and she woke up the next day, with bird ash in her hair.
The day after, LaLa attempted again at noon when the sun was at its peak. She was running low on hair and cursed her weak heart. The things she could've done with the Prince of Heart's freely given hair. She took a breath and placed her hands on her knees as dignified as she could sitting crosslegged on the floor.
Like routine, she began by staring at the back of her eyelids and the darkness stared back. The wood was firm underneath her. The sickly smell of candles calmed her strangely. And the sound of her breath was too repetitive to feel real.
Her conscious slowly faded and she resisted it for as long she could. It came in waves, some stronger then the others, washing over her resolve until she forgot. Then, all at once, it was replaced by something stronger.
Nails dug into her chest and a fog of something darker then frustration blinded her. Her head pounded against her skull. And the next time she blinked, she was in a dim room larger and more crowded than was possible.
Music and murmurs wrapped around her, a symphony of sounds accompanied by a chorus of the moans and whimpers she slowly registered. It took a few seconds for LaLa to find her ground and then a few more to check that all her came with. Her beating heart thumped in the incense-filled room and her eyes stung with the smoke.
Everything was too sharp, too bright and the people were wrong. Beautiful but faceless, blank patches of flesh a shade off. The dream was vivid to the point it was deafening and its owner was was the same.
LaLa caught glimpses of him through the weaving crowds but his presence was suffocating, even more so than the heat of a hundred bodies packed into a space not meant to hold that many.
Jacks lounged on a velvet seat like he was King. His collar was undone and his sleeves ripped in places, enough to look devious but not sloppy. His unkept hair gleamed in the light, ablaze and a girl in a backless green dress was perched on his lap. She leans forward to press herself against the hollow of his throat, and another kisses his worn boot. Her blonde braids flutter behind her and her face sprouts cherry-red lips as they met the dirty leather. His gaze turns to meet LaLa's expectantly, lazy and unbothered.
The traffic around them slowed to acknowledge her presence. In fact, everything slowed. Colors weren't as bright, moans not as loud.
“This is a pathetic dream,” she says, her voice echoing.
“Reality is not much off,” he reassures blandly. He detaches himself from the girl on his lap but she diligently follows after him, occupying herself with the exposed flesh of his neck and he doesn't stop her.
LaLa stayed where she was, refusing to come to him. "Where are you?"
He shrugs, a glass abruptly appearing in his hand. He absently toys with it, swirling the wine inside. Around and around, the line of his lips growing thinner as he contemplated the storm of his own making. It felt like an eternity before he responds, unfeeling as ever.
"South."
"Are you lying?"
A small quirk of his lips, "Maybe."
There was a deep bitterness to the gesture. He looked relax from afar but she had known Jacks for a long time. They weren't friends but he probably understood her more than anyone ever would and she liked to think she understood him too. She didn't care about him, not in the ways that mattered, but he had been so close to something that resembled happiness, it felt like it could've hers as well.
"It's okay to be sad," LaLa says. he looks at her.
"I'm the Prince of Hearts," Jacks responds flatly, "I'm incapable of feeling sad."
"Then heartbroken."
He parts his lips to respond: "My business with Donate-"
"I'm not talking about Donatella."
His mouth clamps down and an ugly look enters his eyes, turning the stormy gray knife sharp. Shattered Ice to match a shattered heart and the room changed with him. She almost missed the humid heat.
"I played my part LaLa," he says easily but he's not looking at her anymore, "She wanted someone to love her and I gave that to her. Don't mistake that for reality."
"You're lying."
"You know nothing about me, Unwed Bride."
"I know more than you think. You're a good liar Jacks, but you're not that good."
The colors around them flickered and she saw a flash of something inhuman in the corner of her eyes. But then it was gone.
"She can do whatever she wants," he snarls, as much of a warning as he was willing to give. This conversation was over. He waves a hand and a sharp pain rang in LaLa's skull as everything become too much all at once. The colors and sound coming back in full intensity, angry in nature. Whatever spell Jacks had casted to mute the dream dissipated.
She caught a glimpse of him through the bodies swallowing her up and she watched when he leans down and pulls the girl at his feet into a kiss. He drowns the wine in his hands and pushes it into her mouth before tossing the glass somewhere. Her back arches beautifully and her blonde locks flashed rose under the lights. He kissed her fervently, a dream he wanted to shatter and keep.
"Jacks!" she growled. His jaw tightened but he didn't look at her. His eyes were on the girl in his arms and whoever he was imagining her to be.
His hand moved against the small of her neck, driving the kiss deeper, the girl in the green dress left forgotten on the sofa. But between one body and the next, she's wrapped around his back, whimpering against his ear as he kissed someone else.
Someone pushes pass LaLa roughly and she was lost in the violent sway of bodies. It was too much. She couldn't breath.
And then she was on the floor, and in between the footfalls that threatened to bury her, she sees him.
He's on the floor too. His arms are wrapped around the blonde's waist and his lips are on the swell of her breasts, pressing languid bruises onto her pale skin, words dotting parchment, a show for her and for him. Thin fingers run through his hair and she throws her head back in a cry that LaLa felt verberate in her throat.
When Jacks turns to face her, he didn't look like heartbreak come to life, or any of those pretty things people said about the devastating Prince of Hearts. He looked colder than the snowstorms that ravaged the far north and his stare promised so much worse.
"Good-bye LaLa." His tone was cruel, a dismissal seeped with pain.
"What did you want from the Arch."
His answer is even, bored almost. "I wanted another chance at true love."
"And?"
He smiles at her and it's terrifying how human he looked. "We're done here," he says too quietly.