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Metal clashes against metal as Mytho and Fakir engage in a heated battle of blades. Blood rushes to Fakir’s head and the harsh clanging sounds permeate his ears.
Mytho, or what was once Mytho, looks at him through the gaps between their swords. His eyes are hungry, like a predator playing games with his prey before he sinks his teeth into their flesh.
Rue laughs, looking at them both with a grin. Her red eyes are even sharper than the tip of his weapon.
Fakir slashes once more, trying to avoid anything vital he could have hit in the process. After all, some of his friend might still be left in there. The effort is wasted, though, as Mytho easily dodges it, as he did so many times before. He catches Fakir’s blade in the air before he has time to pull it back. Fakir gasps.
“You’re getting sloppy, Fakir.” Mytho teases, gripping the sword’s edge. He doesn’t flinch as it sinks into his palm.
It’s been all too long since they started, Fakir is tired.
He pulls his sword back. He’s more affected by the idea of hurting his friend than his friend is by having it pulled through his open wound. He fixates on the newly forming pool of blood on the ground under where his hand hangs.
That concern is his downfall, as Mytho quickly sweeps at his legs, sending him to the ground on his back easily.
By the time Fakir realizes what happened and tries to sit up it’s already too late. He feels cold steel press against his throat. He gulps, looking up at his attacker with a fear in his heart he thought he abandoned long ago.
Mytho laughs, cruel, pressing his blade further towards his throat. It starts to draw blood, matching the wound on his hand.
Fakir reaches for his sword, trying to distract Mytho by maintaining eye contact. Mytho kicks it away and Fakir watches it slide far from his grasp.
“Mytho-” Fakir forces out, carefully and slowly grabbing the blade against his throat with a shaky hand. “Please.” He attempts to appeal to whatever of Mytho hasn’t been poisoned with the Raven’s blood.
“Hmm?” Mytho laughs again. The way he laughs is so vile it sends shivers down Fakir’s spine.
“Are you trying to beg for your life, now? You don’t want to try a little harder? Or is it that you want me to kill you?”
“Wh-”
Fakir can’t manage a single word before Mytho leans in much closer. They’re face to face now. His cool breath is like ice against his flushed skin. He feels like it could freeze the sweat on his face.
“Do you want me to kill you, Fakir?” Mytho’s face softens to a surprising degree, but his eyes still reflect the malice in his words.
Fakir can feel himself slipping. Some part of him does want that. He could never admit it, but it’s true. Some part of him wants Mytho to watch the light leave his eyes. For him to watch him choke on his own blood. To watch him struggle. To hold him close as he comforts him through the pain and fear as he slips away.
Fakir can already feel himself dying. He can feel his fear overtake him. And most of all, he can see his life flashing before his eyes. As he tries to accept the inevitable, he can recall feeling something like this before.
A young Fakir stumbles, holding his throbbing head in his tiny hands. His body is on fire, yet he shivers so hard he can barely walk. He’s so dizzy that the tall trees and sprawling fields ahead of him wobble and warp and spin over his head. It’s all far too large for him to comprehend in relation to his small, feeble body.
“Karon!” He pleads, his voice weak. “Karon! Help me!”
He’s ashamed of himself for wanting to give up, but his body is too weak to keep moving.
Despite his best wishes, his legs give out from under him. He collapses, recoiling as pain shoots through his already aching head when it hits the ground. He wails, calling for help one last time before his consciousness fades.
He doesn’t know what happened after he passed out, all he knows is that he awoke in his bed. A cold compress lays on his head and his blanket is pulled up to his neck. His bed might be even neater than it was when he had left it.
He’s safe now.
He gives his eyes a moment to adjust, cringing at the light peaking through the curtains of his window. Then, he sits up. He barely manages to catch the cold compress as it falls off his head.
“You’re awake.”
Mytho’s voice pulls him out of his daze. He moves his head much faster than he should to look over at him.
“Mytho?” Fakir smiles softly upon seeing Mytho waiting in a chair beside his bed.
Mytho smiles back as he sets his book down. He turns to face Fakir’s bed.
“Hello Fakir.” He leans back slightly, straightening out his back.
Fakir shifts to get a better look at him.
“What happened? How’d I get back here?”
Mytho taps the cover of his book. “Karon sent me out to look for you. You’re not supposed to go wandering out by yourself, you know.”
Fakir frowns as a guilty feeling worsens the ache in his head. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to get lost.”
Mytho sighs. “But you should’ve known there was a chance you could’ve.”
Fakir goes quiet, gripping his blanket.
“I was just trying to find that fruit he liked. I wanted to save him a trip out to the woods.”
Mytho reaches out and pats Fakir’s head. Fakir looks up at him, beaming at the affection.
“There’s a reason he goes out for them himself, Fakir… But what you tried to do for him was very kind.”
“You know, you’re the same age as me, but you’re so much more mature.” Fakir’s toothy grin turns into a pout. “You’re almost like a grown up already.”
Mytho laughs, shaking his head.
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“But you are!” Fakir protests, crossing his arms. “No fair…”
Mytho is quiet for a moment, his lips forming a line. Before he can comfort his friend, he’s clutching at his head.
“Oww…” Fakir whines, face wrinkled up in pain.
Mytho breathes out a sigh. He gets up from his chair and gently pushes him to lay down.
“You need to rest, Fakir.”
Fakir would usually argue in a time like this. Tell Karon and Mytho that no, he doesn’t need rest! He needs to get up and get stronger, whatever that means on any given day. But this time, he doesn’t even have the impulse. He lets Mytho lower him down without any problems and pulls the blanket back up to his chin.
Mytho is relieved at the lack of resistance, though it is a bit confusing compared to his usual demeanor. He’s not going to complain, though.
He gives him another smile as he picks up his book and gets ready to leave the room.
Watching his back get smaller and smaller as he leaves gives Fakir a tummy ache. Or, at least what his limited vocabulary can only describe as a tummy ache. In actuality, it’s longing. He needs him here. His gentle voice, his soft smiles and his pretty face. His reassuring words and comforting tone. He doesn’t want to bother him, but the words leap from his throat before he has a chance to swallow them down.
“Wait-!”
Mytho quickly turns back around, a concerned expression on his face.
“Fakir? What’s wrong?”
Fakir feels his face getting hotter than before. He didn’t even think that was possible.
“Stay here…” He mumbles, hiding the bottom half of his face under the blanket.
Mytho tilts his head, almost like a dog Fakir thinks, and blinks at him. He can tell from his face that he didn’t hear him.
Fakir is brave. He can handle the embarrassment if it makes his tummy ache go away.
“Stay!” Fakir coughs. The yell irritates his already sore throat. “Stay here, please…”
Mytho is silent, but he smiles once again. He doesn’t hesitate walking over again and taking his place beside his bed.
“Alright, alright. I’m sorry.”
He laughs, Fakir can’t help but smile when he hears it.
“I’ll stay as long as you need me to, alright? So I want you to rest and try to get better as soon as possible.”
Fakir nods. He watches eagerly as he sticks his pinky out towards him. He always liked pinky promises. It always made things feel… official? Set in stone. Like locking a door or tying a tie. Something seemed final to him whenever he did it.
He sticks his pinky out and then wraps it around Mytho’s and their smiles widen in unison. Their hands are the same size, but somehow his feels much smaller at the moment. He giggles.
“I promise!”
Fakir had been frozen for what felt like hours, but judging by the blood still pumping from his racing heart, it’s only been a few seconds.
He swallows, and he can feel how straight and sharp the sword his existence is dangling off the edge of is. He wonders if the dull rust of his own would hurt more.
“No.” Fakir weakly forces out an answer to his question. He can barely get himself to believe it.
“Then why aren’t you fighting?!” Mytho’s smug mocking morphs into furious disdain.
Fakir can’t say he blames him. Look at him. What a sorry state he’s in..! He doesn’t want to fight. Fighting would mean he’d have to see Mytho like this longer. It would mean he has to hurt him again. He’s supposed to be his knight. His protector. He’s a sorry excuse for a hero.
Fakir almost squeals when he sees the new book Mytho found for him.
“He’s so cool!” Fakir exclaims happily as he brushes his hand over the cover.
The book’s cover displays a gorgeous drawing of a knight. He stands proudly on the edge of a cliff. Fakir thinks it looks dangerous, but the knight’s confident expression shows he has no fear. With one hand, he’s plunged his large sword into the rock below him. How precarious! How brave! With the other, he has his arm wrapped around an adoring, doe-eyed princess. Presumably, he’s just saved her from… something. A dragon, a witch, an evil king or queen, a big ugly monster. It was kind of interchangeable in these kinds of storybooks. What matters is that he saves her. That he’s a hero. That he beheaded the dragon or blinded the cyclops or overthrew the royals and carried the princess off and saved the day.
That kind of bravery was amazing to him, ever since The Prince and The Raven. He was always kind of a scaredy-cat. He would jump at thunderstorms and cry at loud dogs. He was getting better, but he needed to be the best. He wanted to be a hero worthy of mythology and storybook covers, of being the knight Karon said he was destined to be. For now, though, he’d have to admire the pencil men on his shelf.
“I bet this one is great!”
Fakir is growing a little old for fairytales, or so he’s heard others mumble about him a few times. But he doesn’t care. They make him happy, and they don’t hurt anyone. So what’s the problem?
“Should I read it now or…” He asks with a nervous smile.
“Why not let me read it to you?” Karon says with a smile as he walks through the door.
He’s still dirty from work, but this doesn’t faze Fakir as he runs to hug him with wide arms. Some of the soot rubs off on his clothes.
Karon hugs him close with a hearty laugh. He gives a smile to Mytho, who calmly and quietly watches them as usual.
“Hello boys.” Karon says warmly. “Why don’t we read it together after dinner?”
Fakir pulls away, looking up at him with a nod.
“That sounds good to me!”
Karon ruffles his hair as he leaves to wash up.
Fakir can hardly contain his excitement. He spends the rest of the night eagerly awaiting the next story he can envelop himself with. He sits waiting for dinner while kicking his legs, he sits through dinner while talking about how much he can’t wait for it. He talks about it through the shape of his toothbrush and in between spitting out toothpaste. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to sleep tonight after hearing it, even. Not like that dissuades him at all.
He runs to his bedroom, beating Mytho and Karon easily. He jumps into bed with such ferocity Karon worries he’ll break the wooden frame. He can’t settle into bed yet. If he gets too comfortable, he worries he’ll be too distracted to hear the end of the story.
Mytho sits next to him, and it gives him a weird feeling in his stomach when he feels how close he is to him. Like fluttering… Maybe this is what people mean when they say there’s butterflies in their stomachs?
Karon pulls up a chair in front of the two of them and clears his throat. He always made a bedtime story so theatrical. He looked like he was prepared to give an important speech. Or even introduce a play. It only makes Fakir happier to be hearing a new story from him.
Karon starts narrating the tale to the best of his ability. It’s nothing out of the ordinary for a fairytale. A noble knight hears from a fairy friend of his that there’s a princess that’s been kidnapped and locked away by the corrupt brother of the king. He doesn’t hesitate to jump into action to save her. He braves ferocious beasts of all kinds, cutting them down to, literal and figurative, size with his mighty sword.
He can guess how it ends, but he doesn’t actually hear it. Because halfway through, he’s fallen asleep. He naturally leans over, and his head lands gently on Mytho’s shoulder.
Fakir doesn’t exactly know what happens after that, because although he doesn’t completely sleep through it, he can hardly call himself awake.
From what he does know, and what he can guess, Karon picks him up gently as Mytho gets off his bed. A shame, he thinks, he would’ve liked to sleep on Mytho’s shoulder all night. He knows he’s tucked in because he wakes up that way. What he doesn’t know, is-
“How did that story end?” Fakir’s heart asks before his brain can stop him. “The one I fell asleep to .”
Mytho looks at him with a surprising level of confusion. It occurs to Fakir that he’s not actually talking to Mytho anymore. He’s talking to a pawn of The Raven. A Raven’s pawn didn’t let him sleep peacefully on his shoulder, Mytho did.
“Humor me?”
Fakir asks with a small smile.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” Mytho says plainly as he watches Fakir sort through a collection of sticks and branches.
He’d picked them up on a trip out to the shop close to their house. He hid them in his bag when he gave the groceries to Karon, and brought them out to show to Mytho after he left to toil away over his anvil.
“C’mon, it’s just a little sparring. What’s the worst that could happen?” Fakir doesn’t look at him as he speaks, comparing the sizes and thickness of each branch like a sommelier comparing the color of two glasses of red wine.
In actuality, he could think of a few things. Splinters, sharp wooden tips cutting through their soft skin, hurt feelings and creeping insecurities. But none of those possibilities mattered to Fakir, because he knew they could never be enough to harm their relationship in the long run.
He can already envision the inevitable make up. He can see a vivid image of Mytho’s arms wrapped around his waist as he sulks. He can’t sulk for long though, because Mytho’s embrace is so warm he can almost forget the feeling of anger exists altogether.
Mytho opens his mouth to speak, but before he can get a word in, Fakir happily hops to his feet. He thrusts two sticks in the air, thickness and length not dissimilar to that of fencing sabres.
Mytho makes a split second attempt to resist, but he knows he can’t say no to Fakir’s eager smile. He sighs and takes a stick sword, resigning himself to a childish duel.
Fakir beams, but quickly forces a frown onto his face. He furrows his brow in an attempt to look like a man to be feared instead of a boy to be held.
Mytho can’t help but laugh, covering his mouth with the back of his hand and averting his eyes from Fakir’s nerdy expression.
“Hey!” Fakir’s face breaks out into a soft pink. He huffs. “You have to take this seriously!”
Mytho takes a moment, but he forces himself to stop laughing fairly quickly. He clears his throat, nodding as he assumes a fighting stance.
Fakir follows suit, widening his stance and slightly bending forward. He’s mimicking his favorite fairytale illustrations and books on swordplay that Karon gave him.
“En garde!” Fakir yells, deepening his voice to sound more serious to himself.
Mytho and Fakir begin to engage in clumsy combat. The sound of their ‘swords’ softly smacking against each other is laughable. It reminds Fakir of wooden baby letter blocks more than it does harsh clanging metal blades. Sometimes one of them will trip over their own feet and have to call a quick timeout or hastily hold out their weapon with two hands to block an opportunistic slash.
Their moves are rather simplistic too. Mytho stabs forward, Fakir swipes across. Mytho lunges toward, Fakir jumps back on. The spin to shift positions, making sure their backs are never facing each other. Rinse and repeat.
Mytho is fairly bored, but Fakir is having the time of his life. He’s essentially roleplaying the valiant knight he’s been told he’s destined to one day become. He slashes and stabs and swipes with a confident vigor Mytho can’t force himself to pretend he has in him. This lack of enthusiasm hardly dampens his excitement, though. After a few mere minutes of play pretend conflict, he can hear in his head the sounds of metal and warcries and breathy mid battle banter. Things he never hears the true horrors of in peacetime.
“Is that all you got?!” Fakir asks with a cocky smile.
“Hardly.” Mytho retorts halfheartedly.
“I thought you were stronger!” Fakir teases.
“Don’t get too confident now.” Mytho almost sighs out.
“I’ve got you now, knave!”
Mytho seemed to be expecting another repeat of the boring cycle he’s checked out of, so Fakir thinks he must be surprised when he sweeps a kick out from under his legs, sending him careening onto his back on the grass. His suspicions are confirmed when he sees him look up at him with wide eyes and long blinks.
Fakir laughs in triumph. He plants a foot on Mytho’s chest, pointing the tip of his stick at his throat.
“I won!” He exclaims, putting his free hand on his hip.
Mytho looks at him a bit longer, and then his eyes drift to the stick sword just out of reach. Then, after a longer period of silence than Fakir had expected, he breaks out into a fit of laughter. This immediately melts away the worries that were starting to take root in his mind. He begins to laugh with him, carefully taking his foot off his chest and tossing away his sword as if it wasn’t the center of his world just a few mere moments before now.
He extends a hand toward his fallen friend, a kind smile replacing the bragging, bratty expression he had before.
“You okay?” Fakir asks as he pulls Mytho off the ground.
Mytho wipes the dirt off his clothes with another small laugh. He nods, extending his hand back out to Fakir just after he let go.
Fakir looks at him, head tilting slightly to the side.
“You’re already up. Do you have a concussion or something?”
Mytho actually does manage to stifle his laughter this time. Just barely.
“It’s a handshake, silly. It’s an admission of defeat.” His smile widens as Fakir gives his hand a hearty shake.
“So then I’ve won?”
Mytho’s voice holds in equal measures venom and pride.
“Since, you know, you’re speechless now.”
Fakir doesn’t respond. He’s given up now, something he never thought himself capable of. But his duty as a knight was to die for the prince. This is a little different, but it’s hard for his nostalgia tainted mind to draw a line between dying for Mytho and dying by his hands. In truth, he might not have ever thought there was a difference to begin with. Not now, with his life dangling off the edge of his unstable whims, and not in the past when he and Karon found him alone and distant and brought him in with the warmth of a long united family.
Fakir sighs, somewhere in the middle ground of dreamy and resigned. He slowly closes his eyes, lamenting the last sight he’ll have is Mytho’s spiteful grin blurring in his tired vision, and briefly wonders if this is revenge.
He wonders if all these years, Mytho was faking the grace with which he accepted his defeat. He wonders if he faked the distance and placidity with which he accepted the fierce possession. The acceptance it took to resign himself to a life of his back to a wall and nails sunken into his skin as he hears all the ways he’s stupid for thinking he should be allowed freedom and a life of his own outside of the cage he built for him.
He knows, then, that he deserves whatever he’s going to do to him. Be it a swift end or a long, brutal demise.
He doesn’t get either, though. Perhaps he was naive to think it would be that easy for him to slip away from his mistakes.
He doesn’t fully register what happens. He doesn’t think he’s fully inside of his own body when it does. But he can put the pieces together with the few brief snapshots he gets of the events that transpired.
The blade moved from being pressed to his throat and switched to the tip just barely piercing the skin of his chest.
The soft music he hears in the distance that he thinks his mind might be adding to make this whole thing easier.
The swift and sudden motion of Mytho turning away from him, leaving trails of mirrors of his silhouette in his vision, and confirming that the music exists outside of his barely conscious mind.
And the last thing he remembers is an all consuming light. If he didn’t know better, he’d think it was the entrance to the afterlife. But he of all people knows he won’t make it to heaven.
It takes more thought than it should to realize that he was saved, and Tutu, his savior, healed his wounds. At least, his physical ones. The strongest magic couldn’t mend his mental scars, nor could it bring together the halves of his heart that constantly threatened to tear away from each other and leave a bloody mess in the bottom of his stomach.
He snaps out of his daze in a way so sudden and shocking he thought he could only feel this way in the aftermath of a slap across the face.
No such violence was committed against him, though. He sits in the courtyard, back against one of the many trees dotting campus.
“Fakir?” Ahiru’s high pitched voice worriedly calls out to him. “Are you okay?”
Fakir… awakens. That’s the only way he can describe coming out of whatever walking coma he was in before. He looks up, expecting to see the sky clear and blue above him, but the only thing he sees is Ahiru’s wide eyes. The view is comparable, he thinks. She’s leaning in close enough for her long braid to be ever so slightly brushing against his cheek. Is so soft and slight he almost shivers. He sits up quickly, causing Ahiru to make a small squeak as she swiftly pulls back. They barely avoid a head to head collision.
“Can’t you see? Use your eyes, I’m perfectly fine.” Fakir replies, just as grumpy and impatient as he always is with her.
She smiles at him in a way that makes him think she takes that short tone and nasty attitude with homey relief.
Fakir wants to be more mad at her lack of self respect, but he almost died from an unwillingness to fight his prince. He decides she’s worthy of a break for now. Anything else would be a show of hypocrisy so blatant he couldn’t stand it.
“But thanks anyway.”