Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Bright streetlights illuminated the street nestled in a small town. Various types of people made their commute from work at the end of the day here, the sun hadn’t quite set yet though the sky was dimming slowly. On this street, a bar was as rowdy as ever.

The bar was busy, to the point where a trio of treasure hunters were attempting to communicate with each other over the sound of the voices ringing out from the various types of people that frequented the bar.

“WHAT?!”

“I SAID, WE SHOULD PROBABLY FIGURE OUT OUR NEXT MOVE!”

“CAN WE GET OUT OF HERE?!”

They shuffled their way out of the bar slowly, it was packed on evenings like this.

“Gosh, there really is nothing here… can we pack up and go? We’ve been here for like a week, and nobody we’ve asked has said anything good.” Elphelt said with a sigh as her sister Ramlethal shook her head. “No. We still haven’t researched anything yet, we don’t know for sure there’s nothing here.” Firm as ever, she spoke in her usual flat tone. The others could tell, she hadn’t given up hope yet. Usually, town hopping consisted of asking locals about the area under the pretense of being tourists, and eventually ending up at a library or other archive in an attempt to look into the local history. “Seriously? We never find much, y’know…” Sin groaned, shoulders sinking. After an attempt to sway Ram’s resolve, they settled for her statement.

Soon, the group found themselves at the local library, pouring over books and reading up on the town’s records.

“Sin, wake up… we need you to research with us, we’ll work three times as fast if you’re helping.” Ramlethal poked his head as he snored, sleeping on the history book he said he’d finish by the end of the day. He wasn’t even a fourth through. “No luck, he’s fast asleep.” The quiet girl shook her head and returned to her book. “It’s best to let him sleep. We’ve been searching all day, right? We’ve all had a long day.” Elphelt gave a patient smile, closing the book she was reading and returning to the shelf to pick up another one.

Ramlethal nodded. “I suppose so.”

After a bit of reading the pages of her book, Elphelt’s eyes went wide. “Ram! Ram! Look at this!” Passing the open book to her sister, the other girl scanned the page. “What am I looking at?” She replied absentmindedly. “Our next job, silly! This book says there’s a princess at the top of a tower, and she probably has a lot of treasure at the top! I bet she’ll be suuuper happy if we rescue her!” Elphelt rattled off excitedly, pointing at an illustration of a tall tower surrounded by a cliff.

As Ramlethal scanned the page, the story the book told became more and more interesting. Supposedly, years and years ago, the princess of this kingdom was locked away in a tower. She longed for freedom, and her cries could be heard from the forest if you were close to her tower. The tale, as Ramlethal noticed, mentioned nothing about treasure.

“How can you be sure there’s even a tower to begin with? That’s just a story in a book, you know.” “Duh, she’s a princess! There’s gotta be a reward in it for us if we save her! C’mon, guys, we should at least check it out!” Elphelt excitedly nodded her head. After thinking it over, Ramlethal closed her book as Elphelt shook Sin awake. “Let’s go, then. It’s best we start now. Get a lantern ready, it’s getting dark.”

The sun had gone down long before the group had reached their destination. After a lot of complaining and breaks to breathe, they arrived at a very tall tower.

“Woah… Sure hope this is worth it.” Sin looked up, stepping back a bit to take the scale of the structure in. “I’m sure it will! We’ve got this, right guys?” Elphelt turned to face her friends, only to be met with unsure faces lit by the lantern Ramlethal held. “I think, now that we know where this is, we should find an inn.” She said, eyes lit by the light. “Yeah, El, aren’t you sleepy?” The blonde boy tilted his head to the side, an unsure smile on his face, “But… but… won’t it be worth the treasure?” Elphelt said, pouting to the best of her ability. Unfortunately, it didn’t work, and her fellow hunters left after an attempt to persuade her to leave with them.

“Well! I’ll just get the treasure for myself, huh? Hmmph…” Elphelt huffed as she turned around, facing the tower. It was made of old, aged stone and vines draped over the walls. Surely, she could climb this. It didn’t seem as tall as it was from afar, so maybe it wouldn’t be as hard as her companions made it out to be.

It was. Muscles screaming, she climbed the tower and reached the window at the very top. There was a small platform, probably some sort of counter, and she was able to pull herself up and through the window.

There, as she looked up, she saw paintings decorating the walls. Paintings of stars, the sun, and plants sprawled across the stone of the walls, illuminated by the light of the slowly rising sun. Though, the thing that caught her eye was a long stream of blonde… hair? She knelt down, and gently brushed her fingers against the stream. Definitely hair. Where did it come from? Her heart quickened. Was there a monster? This was a stupid decision. She should have gone with the others. She shouldn’t have left them.

“Who are you? What do you want?” A chilling voice rang out, and Elphelt’s eyes went to the source.

A woman, maybe around her age, looked at her from the end of the staircase. As if a magnet had pulled her forward, Elphelt took a few steps forward. “Are you the princess?” She said, her voice shaking.

That was her first mistake, as the woman rushed towards her and everything went dark.

Chapter Text

The tower, even all those years ago, radiated an uneasy energy. It was overgrown with vines curling up to the roof, and as far as Millia knew it went up to the clouds, touching the sky.

Zato insisted. This would be where she stayed until her stalker was dealt with. It was just out of reach to anyone who didn’t know where it was initially, bordered by cliffs and on the edge of the forest just outside her kingdom.

She was sixteen then, and for all she knew this was the best possible solution. Nobody would get to visit her except for Zato. He was her betrothed after all, they’d marry after she finally got to leave the tower. When everything that wanted her dead was gone.

She hadn’t even known anything about her stalker before her exile, other than that he was a fan and he’d tried sneaking into her room multiple times. Zato said he’d deal with it, but apparently there were more who wanted her, who sought her out and wanted her for god knows what. She had no idea how her parents even agreed to it, anyway.

So, she resided there for years. A decade, really. The walls grew with every passing day at first. Even the inside of the tower felt large and intimidating, like it was going to swallow her whole at any moment. However, as she grew older it felt anything but. She felt suffocated. Everything felt smaller and smaller.

She learned to pass the time quickly, when Zato wasn’t around it was just her and her thoughts occupying her headspace, so she picked up new hobbies. She would request something new every time Zato came by, and he’d always bring it to her. He’d shower her with flowery words of his regret towards her situation and his hopes that everything would be ok soon, but nothing ever came of it.

Her hair grew, longer and longer as she devoted hours of it to brushing and washing it. She refused Zato’s help since they weren’t married yet and it would be improper for him to see her naked. She didn’t know how he felt about it, and frankly she didn’t care, somehow.

The walls soon became like canvases, she painted whatever she could think of on the walls of the tower’s interior. The sky, the forest view from the windows, Zato. Everything. It kept her from going crazy, probably, so she painted as much as she could with what finite space she had. She’d hang from the rafters on a seat of her hair, (eventually growing long enough to where she never felt it pull on her scalp) and paint. She didn’t only paint though, she’d passed the time with other hobbies too. Whatever she could get her hands on. Baking, sculpture, reading. She’d requested new books and trinkets among other things from Zato, and he fulfilled her requests every time.

That was her life, and at first she was fine with it.

Soon, though, around the nine year mark, she’d begun to wonder why she was still there. There was no way her stalker was still out there. There was no way the people that wanted her gone were still bent on her destruction. Zato had her best interests at heart, surely, but come on. All she could do was wait, wait, wait until she couldn’t stand it, and wait some more. It was near torture.

One day, hours after Zato had left and into the hours of the night, she’d heard a faint commotion outside. Had they been passersby she wouldn’t care, many people had come by on accident and simply stopped to stare, Millia could only assume they’d end up forgetting where the tower was before they got back to wherever they came from so they posed no threat. However, the voices were loud, even for her at her altitude. Were there two people? There were two voices that were the loudest, she couldn’t hear anything else. Were they arguing? She couldn’t make any specific conversation out, yet she could make out a faint shape moving towards her tower. She could only hope whatever it was would give up and never come back. Or better yet, fall and never return at all.

She could only return to her paintings and hope for the best, soon falling asleep hours later.

After a while, the faint sound of something hitting stone grew louder and louder as dawn broke into the sky. She’d retreated to a far distance away from the large window Zato usually entered through, and armed herself with a pan. Ideally she’d have something much more lethal, but alas.

The sound stopped, and a person had hoisted themselves into her tower. A young girl, maybe around her age, who looked like she’d seen death (was the climb really that strenuous? Millia chose not to dwell on it).

The girl took a moment to brush her fingers against the stream of hair that cascaded past her feet and up, up, up to a rafter. “Who are you? What do you want?” Millia asked, trying to make her voice sound cold and intimidating.

There was an expression on the girl’s face that she couldn’t quite figure out. She’d stepped forward, and so did Millia. Oh. She was scared. Millia could catch her here and make sure she’d never come back again.

“Are you the princess?” The girl said, voice quivering.

Millia took her chance and rushed forward, knocking her out.