Archive of Our Own

   If there was one thing that the Danceverses Prince was supposed to be able to do, it was dance. If there was one thing that any coach was supposed to be able to do, really, it was dance. Dancing was, after all, the entire purpose of a coach's life. It was an intrinsic part of their DNA, a skill that came almost as naturally as breathing, as much a part of them as the blood flowing through their veins. To be a coach was to be a skilled dancer. To be the prince of the Danceverses, even more so. The queen and the prince were held to a higher standard on account of their royal blood, and though the queen certainly lived up to the perfection she expected of herself, the prince seemed always to fall short. And so, as skilled of a dancer as he was supposed to be, the Danceverses Prince found himself on the floor of his practice room, having stumbled and tripped over his own feet while attempting for what felt like the thousandth time to perfect the same move he had been practicing for the past 30 minutes at the least.

   He wished that he could just curl up into a ball on the floor where he was lying and give up, but he knew better than to think that he would ever actually get away with even trying. He kept his head to the side and his gaze turned downwards, though, even as he stood back up and brushed himself off, hoping that his mother wouldn't be able to see from that angle how red his face surely was as it burned in shame. She had turned the music off after he'd fallen, plunging the room into suffocating silence that he wasn't sure whether or not she expected him to break. It was always the same when he made such a mistake, which was far more common of an occurrence than he would care to admit. If he remained silent, she would berate him for not apologizing immediately, but if he apologized first, she would snap at him for speaking out of turn. He could never tell whether she expected him to speak or to stay silent. He was actually becoming rather convinced that she didn't even make the choice herself until he'd already done the opposite.

   He risked a glance up at her, or at least as close to a glance as he could muster with his head turned away, and even in the dim light filtering in through his eyelashes he could make out that she was frowning, not that there was anything out of the ordinary about her frowning at him. He was far more used to that look than he was to her smile. The only smile in the room was that of her magical companion, a sentient disco ball with a comically evil smile on its unsuitably adorable features that was bobbing up and down rather ominously just over his mother's shoulder as she frowned at him. "Well? She asked expectantly, crossing her arms over her chest.

   He began straightening out the sleeve of his shirt that had gotten twisted up when he fell, hoping that it would appear to her that he was turned away to look at it rather than to avoid looking her in the eye. "I'm sorry, Mother," he said, using the same neutral tone he always used when he spoke those words. He'd actually practiced them in the mirror when he was younger, wanting to make sure that he always got it just right so as not to invoke any more of her fury. She wasn't too impressed with it this time, though, it seemed.

   "You're sorry?" She asked, clearly unmoved by his words. "Sorry?" She repeated again, louder this time, and despite himself he flinched just a bit at the harshness of her tone as her raised voice filled the otherwise silent room. "If you were sorry, Jack, you would have learned from your mistakes the first time they happened. Better yet, you'd never have made them in the first place. I just don't understand how the Danceverses Prince can struggle so much at dancing. That's something of an oxymoron, don't you think, treasure?"

   "I'm sorry, Mother," he repeated, cursing himself the moment the words left his mouth, because she had just been berating him for saying it, and all he had in response was to say it again .

   "And there it is again," his mother scoffed. "Is that really all you have to say for yourself? Is that really all you ever have to say for yourself? Honestly, treasure, it's like you're not even trying."

   Now that wasn't fair. Of course he was trying. Sure, he made his fair share of mistakes, but they weren't careless mistakes. He wasn't sure whether or not it was worth it to tell her that, though. It was a fairly common argument for him to have with himself. If he pretended that his mistakes were the result of carelessness, at least his mother would continue to believe that he was capable of better. If he admitted to her that he really was trying his hardest, that he was putting everything he had into dancing and it just wasn't enough, he wasn't all that sure he would be able to weather the storm that would be her reaction.

   So he responded the same way he always did. "I'll try harder, Mother." He didn't even know if he was capable of trying harder, but she most certainly didn't need to know that. It was better that way. It was always the conclusion he reached in that silent argument with himself- it was better for her to think that he wasn't trying than it would be for her to find out that he couldn't try any harder, that his absolute best wasn't anywhere near good enough. 

   "I'm growing rather tired of hearing that," his mother said, and Jack couldn't blame her, because he was tired of saying it himself. "Don't say it if you don't mean it, Jack- don't lie to me. Either try harder or stop pretending that you're going to."

   "I am trying," he said, careful to keep his tone neutral so as not to invoke any more of her wrath than he had already incurred. She didn't seem to be in any worse of a mood than usual, and he would rather it stay that way.

   His mother took a few steps toward him, the disco ball continuing to leer on from somewhere behind her, and pressed the side of a cold claw to his cheek. She didn't even have to move it for him to know that she was instructing him to look at her. When he was young, he'd often looked down to avoid making eye contact with her. He was taller than her now, but old habits die hard, he supposed, and he'd made a habit- a bad habit, his mother said, and one that needed to be broken- of turning his head and gazing downward in order to avoid meeting her eye. He knew, though, that he was expected to turn his head towards her and focus his gaze on her the moment that he felt her touch the side of his face. Being allowed to look her in the eye was a privilege reserved for very few, and Jack was unfortunate enough to be one of them. Even at 21 years old, he sometimes found himself suppressing a shiver at the sight of her piercing yellow eyes. This, it seemed, was one of those times.

   "I've told you time and time again to look at me when I'm speaking to you," she said, crossing her arms over her chest again without tearing her gaze away from him for even a moment. 

   "I'm sorry, Mother," he said, fighting the urge to look away, because being under her scrutinizing gaze was something that he didn't think even 21 years by her side could make easier for anyone. 

   His mother raised a brow, clearly unimpressed by his response. "I'm growing rather tired of hearing that, too," she said, and he nearly said it again, because it was always his response when she was unhappy with him, and that was common enough of an occurrence for it to have become instinct for him.

   He managed to stop the words before they could reach his lips, though, and reform them into different ones. "I don't want to disappoint you, Mother," he said. "That's never my intention." It was stiff, overly formal, but it was the kind of response that she tended to expect from him. This one wasn't good enough, though, if the way she rolled her eyes was any indication.

   "You could have had me fooled," she scoffed. "If you were half as good at dancing as you are at disappointing me, you'd very nearly be a better dancer than I am."

   That hurt. That really hurt. That was one of the most hurtful things she'd said to him in quite a while, really. He knew how highly she thought of herself as a dancer. She was, in her own opinion, the single greatest dancer that the Danceverses had ever seen, and she took that quite seriously. She wasn't exaggerating. She wasn't just saying that to make him feel bad. She meant it. She really felt that someone was better at something than she was at dancing, and of course it was him, and of course it was being a disappointment that he was supposedly so skilled at. 

   "I really am trying, Mother," he said after a moment, actually rather impressed with himself for managing to keep his voice so steady despite the fact that he was embarrassingly close to tears.

   "You expect me to believe that what you just did was trying?" She asked incredulously, voice eerily calm in that way that it always was right before she lost her patience. "Treasure, the only thing that you could have been trying to do in order to make such a big mistake would be trying to get it wrong."

   Jack was teetering precariously on the threshold between losing his temper and bursting into tears, and he refused to let himself cry in front of his mother, so he chose rage. "Do you really think so lowly of me that you think I'm not putting any effort into this at all?" He asked furiously.

   He could tell that his mother was dangerously close to losing her temper, as well, but she maintained her composure. "I think too highly of you, treasure, to believe that this is actually the best that you can do," she said evenly. "If I really thought that this was all you were capable of, I would have given up on you a long time ago."

   Jack was in a very dangerous position, and he knew it. He was going to lose either way, caught between a rock and a hard place for what was almost certainly well over the hundredth, if not thousandth, time in his life. He'd spent much of his life in a similar position, ever since he was old enough to begin learning how to dance- ever since he was old enough to begin disappointing her. She truly believed, it seemed, that he was lying to her, that he was holding back and not trying his hardest, and she was mad about it. The question Jack had to answer, then, was if thinking he was lying would make her angrier than knowing that he wasn't. Would she be more mad thinking that he was being careless and lazy or knowing that he wasn't either of those things, that he was remarkably careful and hardworking but that neither of those things mattered because he really was just that bad at dancing?

   Some sick, dark part of him, hidden somewhere deep down, wanted to tell her the truth. Part of him wanted for her to give up on him. Would her disappointment really hurt any more than the crushing weight of her expectations? "If you were half as good at dancing as you are at disappointing me, you'd very nearly be a better dancer than I am." He thought about the pain those words had inflicted, and he decided then that yes, her disappointment would hurt more than the crushing weight of her expectations- much, much more- and he was beginning to doubt that he'd be able to handle that much pain.

   "Well?" His mother asked harshly, snapping him out of his thoughts. "Do you have nothing more to say for yourself?" He turned his head and shifted his gaze downward again, unable to look her in the eyes any longer, not when she had that harsh expression on her face. His mother's smile rarely reached her eyes. Her frown, however, always did, especially when she was looking at Jack. "How many more times do I need to tell you to look at me when I speak to you?" She asked, forcing his head to the side with a claw, pressing just hard enough to remind him of their sharpness without actually cutting him. "Does everything I say go in one ear and out the other? Is that why you're always making mistake after mistake?"

   Was she even capable of speaking to him in a way that wasn't deeply dehumanizing? Did she know how to treat him like someone who mattered even a little bit? He was so tired of being ridiculed for his mistakes like he was the only person in the world who made them. "Everyone makes mistakes, Mother," he said through gritted teeth, but he very nearly flinched at his own words the moment they left his mouth. Yet another mistake he had made, it seemed. He already knew what she would say in response- "I don't." Jack was all too aware of how his mother viewed mistakes. She saw them as a malady, a plague on the Danceverses, a disease that had spread rapidly and needed to be cured- she was the antidote, the remedy for the sickness that was imperfection. She didn't make mistakes.

   But she didn't say that. Instead she took a step back and looked at him critically, like she was considering something, thinking so deeply that she couldn't even speak, lest she ruin whatever complex thoughts were running through her mind. To be the subject of said thoughts was not something many people could say they had experienced, but Jack was no stranger to it- he was among the unlucky few to warrant such scathing critique from her, and perhaps no one had faced it more than he had. He felt sick to his stomach. He had no way of knowing what her next move would be, but he knew from years of experience that he should be afraid- very, very afraid. His throat became so dry that swallowing seemed almost impossible.

   When she finally spoke, her voice was low and quiet, tinged with malice and something almost like defeat. "Maybe you're right," she said, brow furrowed in something like disdain as her piercing yellow eyes met his green ones- when he was younger, he'd had a recurring nightmare where his eyes had become the same yellow as hers, and even years after the last time he dreamt it, he still found himself checking his reflection as soon as he woke up, just to make sure that his eyes were still as green as they had been when he'd fallen asleep the night before. "Perhaps even I've made one before," she continued before pausing, as if she were expecting him to catch onto some hidden meaning behind the words. He was far too busy forcing himself not to look away from her scrutinizing gaze to sift through the subtext of her words, though, and she sighed, somewhere between irritation and disappointment. "Of course, I don't call it a mistake," she said, tone harsher, more biting. "I call it a son."

   She spat out the last word more than she had spoken it, like it was venomous, like the word physically pained her to say aloud. She didn't say another word- she didn't need to. The rehearsal room had never had an echo before, but Jack could have sworn that he could hear that last word reverberating all around him, repeating again and again until fading into silence when she turned away from him, the tail of her coat flaring out behind her, and strode towards the door, shutting it behind her without casting even a glance at him out of the corner of her eye or over her shoulder, her disco ball following closely behind her.

   As the clicking of her heels grew fainter as she retreated down the hall, Jack slowly sank down to his knees, sitting on the cold, hard floor of the rehearsal room. Closing the door had cut off most of the light that had illuminated the room- not that there had been much to begin with- and cloaked Jack in darkness. Only when he couldn't hear his mother's steps any longer did he give up on trying to fight back tears.

   Jack very rarely cried, though not for a lack of reasons to- he was fairly certain he had his fair share of those. His mother didn't care for tears, and she especially didn't care for his tears. He had, according to her, been a particularly fussy baby, and she'd said to him on more than one occasion that he had already cried enough for one lifetime by the time he had taken his first steps. To shed tears was, according to his mother, to show weakness, and to show weakness was to show imperfection, and everyone in the Danceverses knew exactly how she felt about imperfections, Jack more so than most. So he didn't cry. Not when he was hurt. Not when he was sick. Not even when his mother said something hurtful enough to keep him up at night. Something about this time was different, though.

   He was surprised that he even remembered how to cry, really. He'd avoided it for years- he couldn't have been much older than 18 or 19 the last time he'd really cried. But alone in the rehearsal room, slumped over on the cold floor as everything his mother had said to him repeated over and over again on a sickening endless loop in his mind, Jack sobbed . He cried quietly, of course. He knew better than to allow himself to be loud enough for his mother or any of her guards or minions to hear from the other side of the door. She was upset enough with him as it was- the last thing he needed was for her to berate him for crying like a child. He doubted that she could say anything that would hurt him more than she already had that day, but he wasn't exactly willing to test that theory, so he stayed as quiet as he could manage.

   Most of the pain didn't come from her disappointment- not really. He was used to her disappointment. He was actually far more acquainted with it than he was with her approval. But for his failures to be so great that even she admitted to having made a mistake- well, that was quite possibly the worst thing she could have said to him, the worst thing she could have done to him. He was fairly certain that she could tear his heart from his chest- he wondered sometimes if her claws were capable of such a monstrous feat and, if they were, how much longer it would be before he was on the receiving end- and it would have hurt significantly less than her words had.

   Perhaps the thing that hurt the most about it all was that it was true . As much as he wished that he could say that his mother's insistence on perfection was something even she fell short of from time to time, he had never seen his mother make a mistake before. She wasn't lying when she said that she didn't make them. Her idea of perfection was perhaps a little skewed, different and darker than Jack's, but it didn't change the fact that she wasn't prone to mistakes like he was.

   Jack didn't deserve to be her son. He didn't deserve to be a coach. He most certainly didn't deserve to be the Danceverses Prince. When he was younger, when he'd still believed in such childish things as fate and destiny and love, he'd sometimes thought that there had to have been some sort of mixup somewhere, that some deity or another was playing some sort of sick joke by allowing him to be born to the Danceverses Queen. He hoped that said deity was getting a good laugh out of the whole thing, because Jack most certainly was not . He just wanted to know what was wrong with him. What had gone so horribly awry to give the Danceverses a prince who could barely dance? What had his mother done wrong to deserve such a failure of an heir? Sure, she'd done her fair share of objectionable things, but even that didn't seem like enough of a sin to warrant the shame he knew she felt for him.

   Was there even anything he could do? Rehearsing didn't make him good enough. Trying to follow his mother's advice didn't make him good enough. Even the consequences of not being good enough couldn't make him good enough. It was like there was something inherently wrong with him, something that he couldn't change, that his mother couldn't change, that nobody in all the Danceverses could change. Were he anyone but the Danceverses Prince, he figured he could run away and make some sick sideshow attraction of himself- the first coach in the history of the Danceverses who just couldn't learn to dance.

   If there was a knock at the door, Jack didn't hear it over the sound of his sobs, muffled as they were as he cried into his hands, but the door swung open, casting light over the pathetic sight that was Jack, curled in on himself in the middle of the room and crying by himself. The tears stopped as soon as he registered that the door was open, terror coursing through him at the realization that his mother must have caught him hugging his knees to his chest and crying like a scolded child, but the shadow cast across the floor didn't belong to his mother. It belonged to Wanderlust.

   "I've been asked to- are you alright, Your Highness?" He asked, his usual cheerful smile wiped away the moment he caught sight of Jack, who quickly looked away to avoid being seen in such a state, though he knew that looking away wouldn't do much to convince anyone he hadn't been crying when he was sitting alone in a previously dark room, hugging his knees to his chest. Being called Your Highness felt rather like a slap in the face after what his mother had said to him, after what he'd thought to himself about his right- or lack thereof- to call himself the Danceverses Prince, but Wanderlust tended to call him that not out of formality, as Jack had long since told him to call him Jack, but out of a sort of playfulness.

   Wanderlust had been appointed Jack's personal guard on Jack's 18th birthday some three years prior. He wasn't even two years older than Jack, having been only 19 at the time he was given the position, but Jack's mother had chosen him above older, more experienced guards on the grounds that he was an incredibly skilled sorcerer. Other guards were tougher and stronger, but Jack's mother, a powerful sorceress in her own right, knew very well that even the toughest and strongest of coaches were nothing against a sorcerer with a good grasp on the magic that they wielded. It wasn't that Wanderlust wasn't strong, though. He most certainly was, or at least Jack assumed that he was given how muscular his arms were, not that he had taken particular notice of how muscular his guard was, because there was no reason for him to have taken notice of that, so he hadn't. Right? What had he even been thinking about? Had he been asked a question? He didn't really remember. He blamed the argument with his mother and not the thoughts about his guard. Oh, right! The argument with his mother. That was what he had been asked about. Or, he'd been asked if he was alright because he was crying, and he was crying because of the argument with his mother, so in a roundabout way he had, indeed, been asked about the argument with his mother.

   "Jack?" Wanderlust asked, voice much softer than usual, like he was trying not to startle a frightened, wounded animal. Jack never thought he'd see the day that he wouldn't be glad to hear Wanderlust address him by his name, but he knew that he was only using it out of concern. Wanderlust always addressed him as Your Highness, because once they'd gotten to know each other well enough for Jack to tell Wanderlust to call him by his name, he thought it was fun to tease Jack for his noble blood and used the title as more of an affectionate nickname than anything else. For Wanderlust not to use it meant that there was something wrong, and Jack hated that he now knew that there was something wrong, because there was no need to burden Wanderlust with the weight of his own failures.

   "I'm fine," Jack said as dismissively as he could, though he knew that just one look at him would reveal to anyone, especially someone who knew him as well as Wanderlust did, that he was anything but fine.

   "Are you hurt?" Wanderlust asked worriedly. "Should I fetch your m-?"

   "No!" Jack blurted out desperately, not realizing until it was far too late how utterly pathetic he sounded. If he weren't already looking away, he would have turned away in embarrassment. "I... no," he said, more calmly this time. "There's no need to bother her. I'm fine."

   Wanderlust stepped further into the room then and shut the door softly behind him. "But you're crying," he said, and though Jack didn't look up, he could hear Wanderlust's footsteps as he crossed the room. He stopped when he reached Jack's side, and Jack was vaguely aware of him sitting down beside him.

   "It's nothing," Jack said, even if he was well aware that he wasn't fooling anyone. Sure, he'd stopped crying the moment Wanderlust had opened the door, having long since been taught never to cry in front of others, but his voice was still thick with tears, and being curled up on the floor in the middle of an empty room wasn't exactly the kind of thing that people did when they were fine. Still, he couldn't just tell Wanderlust the truth, so he had to insist that he was fine, at least for long enough to come up with some story or another to explain away his childish tears.

   "Did... did someone hurt you?" Wanderlust asked hesitantly, and Jack shook his head furiously, because Wanderlust was already getting too close to the truth, and he couldn't allow that to happen.

   "I already told you I'm not hurt," he said dismissively.

   "That's... that's not what I asked," Wanderlust said with a gentleness that almost infuriated Jack because he didn't deserve to be spoken to with such kindness. "I mean, you're not hurt hurt, but... did someone... say something?"

   Jack was running out of time to come up with some sort of story, but his head was far too full of the things his mother had said to him and the anger he felt towards himself- and the sweetness of Wanderlust's voice and the comfort of his presence- and the desperation to come up with an excuse, and all he could muster up was another remarkably unconvincing, "I'm fine."

   Wanderlust, much to Jack's dismay, was not deterred. "Did... did she say something?" He asked, and Jack silently cursed him for being so perceptive. Maybe it was obvious, maybe everyone knew how difficult things were between the queen and the prince, but Jack had allowed himself to operate under the foolish impression that the strains in their relationship were more or less a secret.

   "Nothing I didn't deserve to hear," Jack said, trying to subtly wipe some of the tears from his face. "I mean it, Wanderlust- I'm okay."

   Wanderlust was quiet for a moment, probably pondering what to do or say next. Jack hoped that he would just move on from it and change the subject, but he supposed he should have known better than to actually believe that he would be so lucky. "I doubt you deserved whatever she said to you," Wanderlust said softly, and Jack fought back a groan. 

   He didn't need this right now. He didn't need Wanderlust's pity. He didn't need his kind words or his soft voice. He didn't need that smile that filled Jack with something dangerously close to joy. He didn't need the accelerated heart rate that came with meeting Wanderlust's gaze. He didn't need friendship, and he most certainly didn't need whatever it was he felt when Wanderlust was around. He was far too exhausted for any of those things. "You don't even know what she said," Jack said with a sigh. "You have no way of knowing whether or not I deserved it."

   Jack's heart skipped a beat when Wanderlust reached for his hand, not in terror like it did when his mother touched him, but in something else that he couldn't quite put his finger on, and he forgot for a moment that he was trying to avoid Wanderlust seeing his face. He turned his head quickly and stared at Wanderlust in something like distrust. What reason could Wanderlust possibly have to want to touch him, to want to hold his hand? Still, something in him told him to allow Wanderlust to take his hand, even as he eyed him suspiciously and waited with bated breath for what he might say next.

   "You could tell me," Wanderlust said gently, and Jack felt sick. Could he really tell Wanderlust the things his mother had said? He would agree with her, surely, even if he acted like he was Jack's friend. It was Jack's mother that paid his wages, after all, and it would take a considerable amount of bias in Jack's favor to think that what his mother had said wasn't true. 

   "I would," Jack admitted before he even realized that he was speaking the words, "but I don't think I could handle hearing you agree." He really hadn't meant to say it. It had been more of a thought than something he had actually intended to speak aloud, but the words had left his mouth and now he could only wait in suffocating silence as Wanderlust realized just how pathetic Jack really was, how weak he was, how much of a disappointment he was. 

   Wanderlust looked almost offended. "Why would I agree?" He asked, as if he'd been accused of something horrible.

   "Because it's true, Wanderlust," Jack said sighed, reluctantly removing his hand from Wanderlust's and looking away from him when he realized how sad the action seemed to have made his guard. Jack shut his eyes and took a deep breath before opening them again, though he kept his head turned away from Wanderlust as he spoke. "Yes, they hurt... but that doesn't mean they aren't true."

   When Wanderlust spoke, his voice was quieter, more sad, like he felt guilty for something. "If I've ever done anything to make you believe that I would ever say anything bad about you... I'm really, really sorry."

   Jack dared look back at Wanderlust, but he couldn't look for long- the sadness on his face was far too much. He hadn't intended it that way. He hadn't meant to make him feel bad. Why was he so terrible at this? Was he good at anything? "No, it's not... it's not anything you've done," he said, though he imagined that his inability to meet Wanderlust's gaze probably didn't make him sound particularly convincing. "It's just me. The things that she said about me are true, and no amount of kindness can take away from the fact that she's right. You can't change the truth."

   "What if it isn't the truth, though?" Wanderlust asked, and Jack groaned frustratedly. He didn't know how else to say it. Was there really any way to convince Wanderlust that what he was saying was true other than just saying it? He didn't want to- he really didn't want to- but he knew his guard's stubbornness well enough to know that there was likely no other way out of it. He supposed it was better to get it over with. There was no point in trying to salvage whatever semblance of a friendship he thought he had with Wanderlust. It was only delaying the inevitable.

   "It is the truth," he said firmly, staring straight ahead instead of looking anywhere near Wanderlust's direction. "If I was... if I was half as good at dancing as I am at disappointing her, I'd probably be a better dancer than she is." He took a deep, shuddering breath. "I very well might be the only mistake she's ever made."

   Wanderlust fell remarkably silent, more still than Jack had ever seen him in all the time they'd known one another. It was unnerving, unsettling, like something he was never supposed to see. "If she's ever made a mistake," Wanderlust said eventually, the words slow and thoughtful, "it was leading you to believe such terrible things about yourself."

   It wasn't quite the answer Jack was expecting, but when he looked at Wanderlust out of the corner of his eye, he saw nothing but a genuine concern, a belief that what he was saying was true, that Jack's mother was in the wrong for the things she'd said. Wanderlust was, Jack had found out over the course of the three years they'd known each other, a particularly bad liar, and that meant that there wasn't a hint of deceit in what he was saying while he looked so genuine. Still, Jack couldn't bring himself to accept it. He wondered briefly if it was something his mother had drilled into him, an inability to fathom why anyone would ever be on his side, but he shook his head. "Either way, there's no reason for the Danceverses Prince to not be able to dance . The Danceverses deserves better than me."

   "Did she say that?" Wanderlust asked, and Jack shrugged slightly.

   "Not quite," he said, "but I know that she thinks it, and she has every right to."

   Wanderlust put his arm around Jack then, a hand on his shoulder, and though Jack tensed up at first he didn't pull away. "For what it's worth," Wanderlust said softly, "I think that the Danceverses is lucky to have you as its prince, even if Her Majesty doesn't recognize it."

   Jack realized with a bitter sort of clarity that it was quite possibly one of the nicest things anyone had ever said to him. His mother certainly didn't have many kind words for him, and most guards and employees in Swan Tower were too frightened of him, or rather of his mother, and of him by extension, to say anything to him at all, kind or otherwise. He wasn't really all that sure how to respond. How was he supposed to tell someone that what they'd said meant more to him than nearly anything else he'd been told his entire life? He was dangerously close to tears once more, though this time it wasn't from fury or despair. Jack was fairly certain he had never cried in anything like joy or appreciation. The tears felt different in his eyes than the ones he was used to, and he was afraid to speak lest his voice break, but he couldn't allow Wanderlust's words to go without a response. 

   "I... th-thank you," he managed to say, though he wondered as soon as the words left his mouth whether or not it was the appropriate response. Was it selfish of him to accept the compliment? Was he implying that he also believed that the Danceverses was lucky to have him as its prince? Should he have denied what Wanderlust said? Or was that rude? Wanderlust was easier to talk to than others, but that didn't mean that he was easy to talk to. Nobody was easy to talk to, not to Jack.

   But Wanderlust didn't seem put off by the response at all. If anything, he seemed pleased by it, and he leaned a little bit closer to Jack, who was surprised to find that he didn't at all feel the urge to pull away. "I'll always be in your corner," Wanderlust said simply, like it was the most casual thing in the world. The simplicity with which he said it was disarming, and Jack put an arm around Wanderlust, too, without even really realizing that he was doing it, so engrossed he was in the sincerity of Wanderlust's words.

   Their heads were closer now, and when they turned to look at each other, Jack wondered for a moment, however brief, if Wanderlust might be thinking about leaning in just a bit closer. Jack decided then that he most certainly wouldn't pull away if Wanderlust did lean in closer to him, but he shut his eyes suddenly against a blinding light. He wasn't sure where it even came from at first, but squinting against it, he realized that it was coming from Wanderlust's eyes .

   Jack pulled away quickly, heart pounding, leaving Wanderlust to steady himself on shaking arms as his eyes returned to normal. He blinked rapidly and shook his head, disoriented, and Jack felt stupid staring with his mouth slightly agape, but he was entirely unsure of what to make of what had just happened. Was that a sorcery thing? His mother's eyes had never done that, though they did seem to emit a soft yellow glow at all times.

   "Are you okay?" Jack asked, feeling rather stupid for the question but not sure what else to ask. "Are you alright?"

   Wanderlust flushed like he was embarrassed and turned away from Jack. Never before had Wanderlust avoided eye contact with Jack. Had Jack done something wrong? Should he not have put an arm around him? Had he allowed himself to lean a little bit too close? No . This wasn't about him. This was about Wanderlust.

   "I'm fine," Wanderlust said quietly, and Jack recognized his tone immediately, because it was one he often used. He'd used it that very day, when Wanderlust had come in and he'd tried convincing him that nothing was wrong.

   "Are you sure?" Jack asked, not wanting to push, but hoping that maybe Wanderlust would let him help him the way he had helped Jack. Well, maybe help wasn't the right word. Jack had never been very good at helping . He could try, though. He figured that he owed Wanderlust that much.

   "Yeah," Wanderlust said, mustering up a smile, but his voice was shaky and the smile didn't reach his eyes like his smiles always did. Jack didn't consider himself an expert on reading people, not by a long shot, but he knew Wanderlust well enough to know that he wasn't being honest.

   Jack considered his next words. This wasn't exactly something he was used to. He wasn't actually all that sure how someone went about comforting someone else, but seeing Wanderlust in such a state was remarkably alarming and concerning, and if Jack had still thought himself incapable of empathy as he'd believed before meeting Wanderlust, the worry he had for his friend would have shattered that belief in an instant.

   "You... you can tell me," he said eventually, not realizing until after he'd said the words how similar they were to the ones Wanderlust had spoken to him earlier- "You could tell me." Would Wanderlust feel the same dread Jack had felt upon hearing those words spoken to him?

   "You'll think I'm crazy," Wanderlust said, and though he laughed like it was a joke, Jack recognized the self-conscious undertone. It was something his own voice was nearly always tinged with. A deep shame, a fear of judgment, disguised beneath a laugh and a throwaway comment in an attempt to distract from the way it really made him feel. He knew the feeling well, and he knew what he wanted to hear whenever he was experiencing it.

   "Try me," Jack said, attempting to replicate the calm and casual nature with which Wanderlust often spoke, trying to show him that it was fine for him to talk about it, that whatever he said wouldn't turn Jack away from him. He was pretty sure he did a fairly poor job at trying to sound the way Wanderlust did, but Wanderlust did seem to perk up a little bit at the words, so he must have done something right.

   "I get these... weird hallucinations sometimes," Wanderlust admitted, and Jack tilted his head slightly in curiosity. It wasn't exactly the confession he'd been suspecting. The glowing of his eyes seemed to indicate that there was something inherently magical about whatever it was that had happened. Hallucinations didn't really seem to fit that bill.

   "Oh?" Jack asked, still trying to sound conversational. He wanted to ask about the glowing of his eyes and what that had to do with hallucinations, but he didn't really know enough about sorcery or the Flow to make sense of any answer Wanderlust would give him.

   Wanderlust nodded slowly. "Yeah," he said eventually. "They're... they're so odd. It's kind of like... dreaming. But I'm not asleep."

   Jack raised a brow. "Sounds more like a vision than a hallucination," he said, though he knew that he had to be wrong. What did he know about sorcery and the Flow? He wasn't any authority on the difference between hallucinations and visions. Wanderlust was a sorcerer. Of course he knew what visions were. And if he'd called whatever he was having hallucinations then it had to be hallucinations.

   But Wanderlust gave him a look that Jack couldn't quite decipher, somewhere between being worried and impressed, and bit his lip almost nervously, looking away from Jack and staring off into seemingly nothing, clearly thinking through either what Jack had just said or what he was planning on saying in response, if not both. Eventually, he took a deep breath and exhaled in a long, drawn-out sigh. "That's what I'm worried about," he said, and Jack furrowed his brow, unable to discern the meaning behind the words.

   "What do you mean?" He asked hesitantly, worried that he was missing something extraordinarily obvious and making a fool of himself.

   "If they're visions," Wanderlust began, seeming to look around the room at anything and everything that wasn't Jack, "then I can't say I'm happy about the future to come."

   Well, that was rather alarming. Jack wanted to believe that Wanderlust was making it sound worse than it actually was, but he was more convinced that Wanderlust was making it sound better . "What... what have you seen?" He asked, beginning to panic when Wanderlust paused. "If it's too personal, you don't have to tell me," he added quickly, worried that Wanderlust's hesitance came from a feeling of being intruded on. Jack shouldn't assume that Wanderlust would be comfortable enough to tell Jack something as private and personal as one's visions of the future.

   "No, it's not that," Wanderlust said, just as quickly as Jack had spoken, like he worried that he was the reason that Jack was worried. "It's- I'm just... scared," he admitted. "It's scary. It makes me think that you might get hurt, and if you get hurt... that means that I've failed you."

   Jack hadn't really been expecting for himself to play any sort of role in the future that Wanderlust was so worried about, but he would be lying if he said that there wasn't something morbidly endearing about it, about knowing that Wanderlust worried enough about him that a future where Jack got hurt was one he didn't want to live to see. It was a rather dark thought, he knew, and his lack of worry over the implication of his getting hurt probably didn't say great things about his psyche, but he was too focused on Wanderlust to worry about that.

   "What makes you think I'll get hurt?" Jack asked slowly as the realization dawned on him that he was more concerned about what his being hurt meant for Wanderlust than it did for himself. 

   Wanderlust looked for a moment like he wanted to lie. It was in the way he opened his mouth and then shut it again, the way his gaze flitted away for a moment, the trembling in his hands. But he chose the truth, straightening up a bit and taking a deep breath.

   "I see... I see someone else as the Danceverses Prince," he admitted, and Jack's heart seemed to stop for a moment in an emotion he couldn't describe. It wasn't fear or sadness or anger, but it wasn't relief, either. "I can't really tell who it is, but I know that it isn't you. And I see someone else on the throne, someone other than your mother, and her face is obscured, but somehow it feels so familiar. And I don't know what any of it means."

   Jack considered what it could mean for a moment. He couldn't help but think of the belief he had carried as a child, the idea of some great cosmic mixup crowning him Danceverses Prince by mistake. Maybe the future Wanderlust saw was one where the mixup had been resolved. The vision was frightening to Wanderlust, but Jack found a strange sense of comfort in the thought.

   "I think," Jack began slowly, "that you might have seen a better future."

   Wanderlust looked horrified by the idea. "What about that sounds better?" He asked, as if the answer weren't obvious.

   "Anyone other than my mother on the throne sounds better to me," Jack said. He was fairly certain that most of the people in the Danceverses believed that he was on his mother's side, that he was just as intent on destruction as she was, but Wanderlust was one of very few who knew better. Perhaps no one had a stronger disdain for the Danceverses Queen than her son did, but he kept his head down and his mouth shut for fear of what might become of him were she to find out just how vehemently he opposed her. Jack was many things, and one of those things, as much as he hated to admit it, was cowardly. He would rather submit to his mother and allow her to cause all the harm she did just to save his own skin.

   Wanderlust opened his mouth to say something before his eyes widened and he looked toward the door and then back at Jack. "Your mother," he said urgently, and Jack's entire body tensed up.

   "What about her?" He asked warily.

   "She wanted me to come find you," Wanderlust said, and Jack's heart sank. "She wanted to talk to you in her office." He stood up then and offered Jack his hand to help him up. Normally, Jack would be hyper aware of the feeling of holding Wanderlust's hand in his own, but he was far too focused on his mother now to think about it. "Let me walk you," Wanderlust continued. "I'll explain to her that it's my fault it took so long."

   Jack was considering shaking his head when he realized that he was already doing it, like he'd somehow made the decision long before he consciously began thinking about it. "No," he said, letting go of Wanderlust's hand regretfully. "I'll tell her it's my fault. She'll believe me. I've been late before."

   "But-" Wanderlust began, but Jack didn't allow him to continue.

   "She's upset with me already," he said. "One more slip up isn't going to kill me." He hoped it wouldn't, at least, but he didn't say that aloud, as it wouldn't do much to bolster his argument.

   He didn't really begin to consider the implication of it until he was walking by himself towards his mother's office. Jack had always considered himself something of a coward, willing to look past his mother's atrocities if it meant keeping himself safe. He'd been that way for as long as he could remember. But here he was, making the familiar journey to his mother's office, ready to lie to her just to keep Wanderlust out of trouble. It was in complete conflict with the sense of self-preservation that he'd carried with him for so long. He was willing to give up some portion of his own safety to ensure Wanderlust's. It was a rather foreign concept to Jack, he realized, and it worried him a bit, because it meant that he cared enough for Wanderlust that he was willing to give up something he'd always considered an intrinsic part of himself. The cowardice that he'd long thought was so much a part of him that he couldn't change it had gone out the window the moment he was given the chance to protect Wanderlust. 

   It frightened Jack, really, how willing he was to take the blame for something that his mother would very likely be angry about. Wanderlust was his friend, sure, but he was his guard. He was paid by Jack's mother to keep him safe, and it was foolish of Jack to have allowed himself to have developed such complicated feelings for him, but as long as he'd tried to deny them, the realization of how readily he'd taken the blame did little to hide the fact that he felt the way that he did. He’d spent his entire life trying to avoid his mother’s wrath, but now he was walking directly into it just to shield Wanderlust from its dangers, and trying to tell himself that he saw Wanderlust as just a friend felt like too ridiculous of a lie to keep up.

   "I don't know why I continue expecting for you to actually be on time for once," his mother said when he walked into her office. She was sitting at her desk, Discoball floating ominously behind her as usual. "At a certain point, I suppose it's on me for having such unrealistic expectations."

   "I'm sorry, Mother," Jack said. He winced internally when he remembered what his mother had said about growing tired of hearing the words, but they were so ingrained in his mind that he knew it would take a long conscious effort to keep himself from saying the words as soon as she told him of her disappointment.

   "I'm beginning to think that I'm setting myself up for disappointment by expecting even the bare minimum from you," his mother said dryly, "but perhaps you just need a little motivation."

   Jack didn't like the sound of that, but he didn't let it show. "What did you have in mind, Mother?" He asked, because he knew that she was expecting him to ask. She rarely told him anything unless he asked. She always wanted him to acknowledge his interest before she rewarded him with information. It was just another way she demonstrated the power she held over him.

   She didn't answer at first, only smiling rather conspiratorially, like she had some genius plan that she couldn't wait to enact. "I'll show you," she said after a moment, rising from her chair. Jack waited for his mother and Discoball to move past him before following closely behind. He was entirely unsure of what to expect, and it took everything in him not to ask for more details. He doubted that she would tell him, insisting that it was a surprise or, worst case scenario, scolding him for speaking out of turn, so he focused on steadying his breathing as he followed her out of her office and down the bleak halls of Swan Tower. There wasn't much to look at as they walked. His mother's taste seemed to somehow combine the worst parts of both grandiosity and simplicity, resulting in high ceilings and polished black and pink walls that were left depressingly bare. There was no artwork or decoration, because his mother was too critical of art of any kind to see any of it as perfect enough for a place in her tower. It made the entire place feel unfinished and like it wasn't lived in, like it had been long since abandoned. Jack had never cared for it, and even at 21 he was still off put by how impersonal the entire place was.

   She led him from her office on the top floor down a ridiculous number of flights of stairs to the vault in the basement. It was enchanted by his mother so that only she and anyone with her blood could enter, but Jack had never bothered even considering going in before. It was full of things that, while monetarily valuable, meant nothing to him. His mother had tried to show him around once or twice when he was young, but he'd been largely uninterested. As he'd grown older, he'd realized just how many of the things in the vault were likely stolen from other danceverses. Being Danceverses Queen technically gave her the authority to more or less take what she wanted, but Jack didn't see the purpose in taking Winterhaven's most valuable diamond or an important religious relic from Floworld only to lock it up in a vault where nobody ever even saw it. The only motive he could think of for his mother to have taken them was for whatever sick power trip she got from taking things that didn't belong to her, so he thought that stealing was a fair enough word for it.

   Jack didn't really see how something she'd stolen from some other danceverse, because he knew Eternyx well enough to know that it wasn't exactly brimming with valuables and treasures, would give him any motivation to try harder, whether it was actual motivation or the sick manipulation he was actually expecting, but he followed her wordlessly through the remarkably neat and tidy vault until she came to a pedestal at the very back. Unlike most of the things in the vault, it was surrounded by glass panels. The magical enchantment that kept anyone but Jack’s mother and her son from entering the vault meant that most of the items in the vault weren’t kept behind glass or even ropes. Something about this object had to be different.

   On the pedestal was a golden crown. It was in a sort of semicircle, made up of several triangular points, and there was a ribbon of some sort on the ends, seemingly to tie into a knot to secure it on someone's head. It felt remarkably out of place amidst the splendor of the other things in the vault and was, Jack couldn't help but think, almost laughably ugly. It was big and gaudy, and Jack briefly pictured his mother's "motivation" being forcing him to wear it until he met her expectations, like some sort of golden dunce cap. It was a stupid thought, but he nearly shuddered at it, because he couldn't imagine having to wear something that atrocious. He couldn't even believe that his mother would have something that ugly in the vault. It had to be incredibly valuable for her to even consider letting it reside within the confines of Swan Tower.

   When he looked at her, though, she was looking at the crown with something like reverence. Her disco ball, which Jack supposed she had enchanted to be able to enter the vault, too, circled the crown menacingly with that same wicked smirk on its face. "This," his mother said after eyeing the crown for a moment, "is the Crown of the Danceverses Prince." Jack's heart dropped in a way that felt nothing like it did when his mother said something cruel or condescending. The crown was supposed to be his? He eyed it warily for a moment before looking back at his mother. "It's perhaps the single most valuable thing in all of the Danceverses, and it isn't handed out to just anyone. You must prove yourself worthy of the crown before it can ever be placed upon your head, but once it is... treasure, the power you wield will be second only to mine."

   Jack paused for a long moment, trying to formulate a response. Wearing that ridiculous crown and possessing the same destructive powers that his mother did were actually quite far down on the list of things that Jack wanted, and he failed to see how either of those things could possibly serve as the motivation that she apparently intended to use them as. "How do I prove myself worthy, Mother?" He asked hesitantly, and she put an uncharacteristically gentle hand on his shoulder.

    "Perfection, treasure," she breathed, like the word was a sacred one- which, to her, he supposed it was. "You should know by now that perfection is the key to most things." Suddenly, being unable to attain the perfection his mother desired of him didn’t feel quite so terrible, if only because it was preventing him from putting that gaudy crown on his head. Perhaps his struggle to live up to her expectations was a blessing in disguise, preventing him from harnessing the powers that his mother used to do so much harm. "Once you've proven yourself," his mother continued, "you will truly be the Danceverses Prince."

   Something about that piqued Jack's interest, the idea that he wasn't the Danceverses Prince- not yet, at least. His thoughts wandered back to the concept of some great cosmic mixup, a mistake by some deity or another that had resulted in the wrong person bearing the title of Danceverses Prince, and then to Wanderlust's visions of someone else in his place. Had he somehow been right all along? Had something gone wrong, giving him the title of Danceverses Prince when some other coach was meant to have it instead?

   He looked around at the other things in the vault around him, and the realization sent a cold chill down his spine. A diamond from Winterhaven. A religious relic from Floworld. Some manner of trinket from Carnivallium. A pearl from the Melosia Realms. It was just as he'd thought- everything in the vault was stolen. The crown didn't belong to her. It didn't belong to him . It belonged to someone else entirely, someone ousted from their throne. Jack wasn't the Danceverses Prince.

   He felt like all of the air had been drained from his lungs, like his knees would go out at any moment, but he couldn't let it show. His mother couldn't know the thoughts running rampant through his head. He looked to his mother, who was eyeing him with a raised brow.

   "Isn't that what you want, treasure?" She asked, a strange half-sincere sweetness in her voice that told him that she was truly hoping that the crown and its implications would be enough to bolster his efforts until he achieved the perfection she expected of him.

   Jack didn't falter for a moment, nodding firmly. "Yes, mother," he said, and he could tell in her smile that she truly believed him. He breathed an internal sigh of relief but didn't allow himself to relax.

   "Perfect," his mother said with a wicked grin, the same grin she always wore when she got exactly what she wanted. Behind her, Discoball flew around in a celebratory circle, looking just as delighted as Jack's mother did. "I hope to see newfound effort in rehearsals tomorrow."

   "Yes, mother," Jack said, and she waved her hand to indicate that he was excused. He couldn't have gotten out of the vault quickly enough, but he didn't allow himself to walk any faster than normal, lest he arouse suspicion in his mother or her magical companion. He maintained a normal pace out of the vault and all the way up to his room, but he was beginning to feel rather like the world around him was spinning.

   Jack didn't sleep well that night. He tossed and turned, unable to quiet his thoughts enough for sleep to find him. He couldn't get the image of the crown out of his head. He thought of the coach actually destined to wear it, of what they must feel like without it. Did they know who they really were, or were they just as clueless about their status as Jack had been? How could his mother have taken over as Danceverses Queen? She had to have done it before he was born, because he had been declared Danceverses Prince at birth. He spent hours going back and forth in his mind, telling himself that it was just too ridiculous of a theory to be true but unable to shake the feeling that there was truth to it. It  all added up, after all- the cosmic mishap he'd been so convinced of when he was younger, the visions Wanderlust had of someone else in Jack's place, the crown that sat in a vault full of stolen items. 

   Morning came far too late and too soon all at once. Jack got out of bed earlier than he normally did, dressing for the day and doing his makeup before flagging down a minion outside of his room and handing it a note with strict instructions to deliver it directly to Wanderlust. He didn't write anything particularly suspicious or incriminating, not wanting to be caught if his mother somehow intercepted it. It was simple- "Please meet me in my room as soon as you can." He had an innocent excuse ready in case his mother managed to get her hands on the note. He would simply tell her that he was hoping to be escorted into the city to buy a new pair of shoes. His rehearsal shoes were quite worn down, and she'd told him that he needed to get some new ones, so requesting that his personal guard escort him on such an errand would, hopefully, raise no suspicion in his mother.

   Fortunately, it seemed that the note made it to Wanderlust without any complications, as Jack's guard knocked on his bedroom door within ten minutes of the note leaving Jack's hands. Wanderlust wore a worried expression, but he still smiled when Jack opened the door. "Good morning," he said brightly, hiding his worry remarkably well.

   "Good morning," Jack said, opening the door wider for Wanderlust to step into the room before quickly scanning the hallway to make sure it was empty before shutting the door and locking it behind him.

   "You wanted to see me?" Wanderlust asked nervously, and Jack nodded.

   "I need to talk to you," he said, gesturing towards a sofa in the spacious room. He sat down and tried to make his posture as relaxed as possible so as not to worry Wanderlust any more than necessary. Wanderlust was notably stiff as he sat down beside him, clearly nervous.

   "Is everything alright?" He asked hesitantly, and Jack wanted to reassure him that all was well, but he didn't want to lie.

   "I don't know," he admitted, which seemed to do little to ease Wanderlust's nerves, but Jack wondered if it was best for both of them to be somewhat on edge, to keep themselves on high alert. "But I'm hoping you can help me figure that out."

   Wanderlust shifted uncomfortably, looking down at his hands as he placed them in his lap. "I'll see what I can do," he said, glancing up at Jack nervously, and Jack nodded.

   "I don't think that your visions are showing the future," he said, and Wanderlust frowned, probably thinking that Jack was going to call him crazy as he'd expected he would the day before. "I think that they might be memories."

   Wanderlust's head shot up at that, eyes wide. "What?" He asked. "How could they possibly be memories?"

   "Ever since I was a kid, I've had this... theory of sorts," Jack explained, "that I was never actually meant to be the Danceverses Prince. I thought that there had to have been some sort of mistake, that some deity or another had royally screwed up and given the title to the wrong person. It was how I justified all of my failures. I guess I just sort of grew out of it after a while, but I thought about it again when you told me about your vision yesterday." He paused for a moment, meeting Wanderlust's eyes in an attempt to gauge his reaction. He seemed interested, having leaned forward slightly, a determined sort of look on his face. Jack took a deep breath and pressed on. "My mother brought me to the vault last night," he continued. "She wanted to show me something that she thought would 'motivate me' to work harder. It was a crown, a big golden crown that she said belonged to the Danceverses Prince. She said that I had to prove myself worthy of perfection before I could wear it, and that it would grant me the same magic that she has. But something about it felt wrong. I couldn't figure out what it was, but then it hit me. Everything in that vault is stolen. There's things from Carnivallium and Floworld and every other danceverse. I don't think the crown is any different. Wanderlust, I... I think that the crown was stolen from the real Danceverses Prince."

   The same blinding light that had emanated from Wanderlust's eyes when he'd had his vision the day before filled the room, and Jack nearly fell off of the sofa in his attempt to turn away from the bright light, shielding his eyes from it with his arm. The moment the light went away, he lowered his arm and reached forward to put a hand on Wanderlust's shoulder.

   "Wander?" He asked, too worried to realize that the nickname had made it past his lips. "Are you alright?"

   Wanderlust looked more dazed than he had after the vision the day before, but he didn't pull away from Jack's touch, instead reaching up and putting his own hand over the one that Jack had on his shoulder. "Y-yeah," he said, though it was clear in his voice that he was barely even aware of the words he was saying. "Yeah, I think so." He looked almost frightened, and Jack waited with dread for Wanderlust to tell him what he had seen. Had something he said triggered something? Was it his fault that Wanderlust had seen something potentially horrific?

   "Wander," Jack said again, trailing off when he realized that he wasn't even sure what he was going to say. Perhaps there was just something comforting about saying Wanderlust's name.

   The look on Wanderlust's face when he finally looked back up at Jack was a difficult one to read, somewhere between terror and amazement, a sort of morbid fascination that sent a chill down Jack's spine. "You're right," Wanderlust breathed. "You're completely right. You... you figured it out. How did you... how did you figure it out? It's been years. I was... I was a kid."

   Jack furrowed his brow. "You?" He asked. He hadn't really considered that Wanderlust would have had any part in it, though he supposed that it made sense that he would, given that he was the one having visions of the whole thing.

   Wanderlust nodded. "That crown is supposed to be… mine," he said, and Jack's eyes widened.

   "What?" He asked, shaking his head in disbelief. That wasn't exactly the revelation he'd been expecting.

   "My mother is the Danceverses Queen," Wanderlust said. "She and my father... Night Swan overthrew them. She must have done something to their memories."

   It was world-shattering, but the world that it shattered was the one that had been weighing on his shoulders for over 20 years, and it felt almost like taking a deep breath after being held under water for far too long. He'd rather expected the true Danceverses Prince to be somewhere far away, living a life of anonymity, but now it seemed that his mother had kept those she'd overthrown right under her nose, right under Jack's nose. She had made the true Danceverses Prince her son's guard . It seemed like a remarkably risky move, and almost a stupid one, to give the one she'd overthrown so much power. Sure, she'd been able to keep an eye on him, but he held a significant amount of power over much of her army due to his position.

   "Did she do something to your memory, too, then?" Jack asked, focusing his gaze on Wanderlust in an effort to keep the room around him from spinning.

   Wanderlust didn't seem to know the answer, settling on a shrug. "I think that I was just too young to really remember. Memory spells take a lot of energy. She probably didn't want to waste her power on keeping me from remembering something I would probably not remember anyway once I grew up."

   "But you remember now, don't you?" Jack asked.

   "Through some sort of magic or another, yes," Wanderlust answered. "I think it has something to do with you."

   Jack furrowed his brow skeptically. "Me?" He asked, unconvinced, but Wanderlust nodded enthusiastically.

   "Every time I've ever had a vision, it's had something to do with you," he said, and something about that made Jack's heart skip a beat.

   "But I thought you said you'd had them before," Jack said. "I only saw it for the first time yesterday. How could it have something to do with me if I wasn't there?"

   Wanderlust hesitated this time, looking away for a moment, almost blushing . "It's always happened when I've been thinking about you," he admitted, voice much softer than it had been before.

   In any other circumstances, Jack was fairly certain that he would have blushed at the idea of Wanderlust thinking about him frequently enough to have figured out such a connection, but he was far too busy trying to process everything he was being told. It was one thing to have his suspicions, but finding out that they were true was another thing entirely, and even believing that he might not be the Danceverses Prince couldn't have prepared him for the revelation that Wanderlust was the one who truly had the right to the title. Still, he tried to focus on moving forward. Surely they had to do something . Jack just didn't have the slightest clue what exactly that "something" was.

   "Do you think there's a way to wake up your parents?" He asked hesitantly. It seemed like the right move, to Jack, at least. After all, the true Danceverses Monarchs would be much better suited to figuring everything out than Jack was. If Wanderlust could awaken his parents' memories, perhaps Jack could merely sit back and watch as they defeated his mother. There was a chance he would be caught up in the aftermath, being a pretender to the throne and all, but he figured he would cross that bridge when he came to it.

   Wanderlust seemed to like the idea, too, his expression brightening at the suggestion. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I think so. And once they remember, they can... they can fix everything." He suddenly sobered a bit, seemingly realizing that "fixing everything" entailed defeating Jack's mother, but Jack couldn't find it in him to be worried about his mother's fate in that moment. She had lied to him his entire life, after all, forcing him to try fulfilling a destiny he had never been fated for in the first place.

   "What do you want me to do?" Jack asked firmly, hoping to insinuate that he wasn't all that worried about what happened to his mother. He was going to help bring her down. He'd decided it then and there, and nothing was going to change his mind. There was a dangerous rage bubbling up within him, and he was fighting to keep it contained. They needed to move now, or he feared it might overflow.

   "Come with me," Wanderlust said without missing a beat. "Maybe you can help wake them up, too."

   Jack doubted that, but he nodded anyway and followed Wanderlust out of his room and down the winding halls of Swan Tower towards the servants quarters in the basement. Jack had been vaguely aware of the fact that Wanderlust's parents were also employees of his mother's, but knowing what he knew now made it a much more chilling thought. She had erased the memories of the people she'd overthrown and forced them to work for her as she sat on the throne that was rightfully theirs. It was fittingly twisted for his mother, he couldn't help but think, to keep them so close as she lived out the life that they were meant to be living.

  Despite having lived in Swan Tower all of his life, Jack had never seen the servants quarters before. It wasn't very big, which he supposed made sense considering that his mother had begun relying less on coaches she employed and more on those she transformed into minions. After all, why would she pay coaches to do the work that mind-controlled minions could do just as well for free? Save for higher ranking guards, most of her army was composed of minions, and aside from a few dozen cooks, housekeepers, and secretaries, most of the functions of Swan Tower were overseen by minions, as well.

   To Jack's knowledge, Wanderlust's mother was one of those housekeepers, and his father served as a bookkeeper of some sort. As such, Wanderlust's mother could be anywhere in the tower, but his father spent most of his time in the same office, making it more rational to search for him first. Wanderlust knew exactly where to go, and he led Jack through the servants quarters that were thankfully quite empty, most of the employees of the tower having some task or another to fulfill every morning. He doubted that anyone would have actually worked up the nerve to question what Jack was doing there, but there was a feeling of security in the emptiness of the place that Jack quite appreciated given how remarkably shaken he was by all of the revelations he’d been uncovering. 24 hours prior, he wouldn’t have thought any of this possible, but there he was, on a quest to awaken the true Danceverses Monarchs that his mother had overthrown.

   Wanderlust hesitated for a moment outside of the door to the office his father was working in, and Jack could tell by the look on his face that he was remarkably uncertain about how to go about everything. It seemed that he’d been bolstered by the realization and been eager to do something about it, but now that it was time to do something, he wasn’t really all that sure how it needed to be done.

   “Do you have a way to break the spell on your father?” Jack asked, figuring it was best to get the big question out of the way first. It was best to have a plan rather than to just barge in and make wild claims that they couldn’t really support.

   Wanderlust thought for a moment, biting his lip nervously. “Maybe?” He answered eventually, though he didn’t sound particularly convinced. “Memory magic isn’t really my thing. I’m more of an ‘opening portals and shooting spells’ kind of sorcerer. I’m not great at the whole ‘getting into people’s minds’ thing.” He huffed frustratedly. “Maybe there’s another way, though. Maybe… maybe it has something to do with you.”

   The thought of something so important as saving the Danceverses from his mother being entirely reliant on his own actions was, to Jack, perhaps the most terrifying thing in the world. He was not competent enough to be given such a large responsibility. He didn’t know sorcery. He didn’t know how to channel the Flow. “I doubt that,” he said dismissively, hoping that Wanderlust would sense his discomfort and move on. But this wasn’t about his comfort, he admitted to himself. It was about saving people, and his comfort most certainly wasn’t the highest priority in their current mission.

   “Every vision I’ve had has been when I was thinking about you,” Wanderlust said, putting a hand on Jack’s arm, and in any other scenario, Jack would have been delighted by the contact, but he felt almost like he wasn’t even in his own body, and it was like he couldn’t even feel Wanderlust’s touch despite knowing that it was there. “Surely that has to mean something.”

   “That seems more like a coincidence than anything,” Jack said, even if he didn’t truly believe that. “If anything, I would think that-”

   He was cut off by the sound of a door opening, and both Jack and Wanderlust glanced over to see that the door they’d stopped outside of had, indeed, been swung open, and a man was standing there with a rather confused expression on his face. Jack had never seen the man before, but he could see the slightest hints of a resemblance that indicated that he was most likely the man they had been searching for, Wanderlust’s father.

   His mouth was open like he had been going to say something, likely scolding his son for hanging out outside of his office, but Jack’s presence had likely thrown him off entirely. He closed his mouth and then opened it again. “Your Highness,” he said, bowing deeply. Something about knowing that the man bowing before him was the king, that Jack should really be the one bowing before him , made him feel vaguely ill, but he pushed the feeling down and tried to ignore it. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

   Jack’s mind went completely blank, and he stammered out a few completely incomprehensible syllables before giving up and shooting Wanderlust a look, hoping that he would pick up on the hint and answer instead. Fortunately, he did. “We, uh… we were hoping we could talk to you,” Wanderlust said stiffly, in a formal sort of manner that Jack would assume wasn’t one he normally used with his father.

   Wanderlust’s father looked confused, but he took a step back into the room so that the two of them could enter. Despite being within the confines of Swan Tower, the office in which Wanderlust’s father worked was remarkably unremarkable. Some bookshelves and filing cabinets and a desk with a computer. There was an extra chair in front of the desk, but Jack decided not to sit. Rather, he elected to stay towards the back of the room and let Wanderlust do the talking. This was his father, after all. Surely he would know what he needed to say in order to at least make some semblance of progress in reversing whatever memory spell was placed on him.

   “So,” Wanderlust began awkwardly, looking down at his feet, “I guess I should just… say it.” He tossed Jack a look over his shoulder then, as if to see if he agreed with the decision. Jack just shrugged and tried to convey on his face that he didn’t know any better than Wanderlust did. If anything, he probably knew far less.

   Wanderlust’s father raised a brow when Wanderlust looked back at Jack, gaze flitting briefly between the two of them before settling back on Wanderlust, who was facing his father once more. Jack couldn’t help but wonder what was going through Wanderlust’s father’s head. What could he possibly think that Wanderlust was going to tell him? He didn’t look particularly concerned , but he definitely seemed uncertain.

   “Jack and I…” Wanderlust said, continuing to look over his shoulder at Jack, who was trying to look anywhere but back at Wanderlust because he had no answers and didn’t want Wanderlust misreading any looks from him as a sign that he should say something in particular. “Jack and I are…”

   He trailed off for several seconds, and eventually Wanderlust’s father broke the agonizing silence with a simple, “Are what?”

   “Okay, not ‘are,’” Wanderlust said. “We… we sort of figured out… we think that maybe- well, no, not maybe, ‘cause we’re actually pretty sure of it, but-” Wow , this was not going well. Maybe getting Wanderlust to do the talking had actually been a terrible idea. Jack wasn’t sure he would do much better, but he was fairly certain he could do at least a little better than Wanderlust was doing.

   “Wander,” his father said finally, cutting him off, “you don’t have to tell me.”

   Wanderlust shook his head. “No,” he said, surprisingly articulate despite the way he’d been stumbling over his words only moments before. “No, I do have to tell you. It’s really important.”

   Wanderlust’s father looked at Jack for a moment and then back at his son before sighing. “I already know, Wander,” he said, and Jack’s eyes widened. He imagined that Wanderlust’s did, too. He knew? He knew and he hadn’t done anything about it? He’d been content to let Jack’s mother commit all manner of atrocities from a throne that didn’t belong to her?

   “What?” Wanderlust asked emphatically. “How?”

   “Let’s call it fatherly instinct,” Wanderlust’s father said, though Jack had no idea how that was an answer to the question. He didn’t know his father, but he had a good enough grasp on the concept of fatherhood to know that it didn’t have the power to break immensely powerful memory spells.

   “You knew?” Wanderlust asked incredulously, clearly feeling a similar frustration to Jack at the realization that he had known and never done anything about it. He’d never even said anything about it. He was supposed to be the Danceverses King, but he wasn’t doing anything to stop the woman who had taken his throne from him.

   Wanderlust’s father just nodded, as if it were the most casual thing in the world. “And I want you to know that I completely support you,” he said solemnly. “Your mother and I just want for you to be happy, and we will always be proud of you. We would never think any different of you because you’re gay-”

    “What?” Wanderlust practically shrieked, and his father gave him an apologetic look.

   “Bi?” He asked hesitantly, and the awkwardness in the room was so palpable that Jack, even just as a spectator, wished he could melt away into the floor. How had they gotten themselves into this situation? Did Wanderlust’s father think that Wanderlust had shown up with the intention of coming out to him? It was a strange conclusion, Jack thought, because why would Wanderlust have brought Jack along with him to do so? And why would he have assumed that that was what he was talking about when Wanderlust had blatantly mentioned that both he and Jack wanted to speak to him.

   Oh. Well, that made sense. When Wanderlust had trailed off after saying “Jack and I are,” his father must have assumed that the next word was going to be “dating.” Wanderlust seemed to make the connection at the same time that Jack did, throwing a look over his shoulder at him, face flushed a much deeper blue than usual.

   “No,” he said hurriedly, looking back to his father. “No, no, no. We’re not- no. It’s not like that. It’s not like that at all.” Despite himself, Jack felt his heart sink a bit at Wanderlust’s words. He knew, of course, that Wanderlust didn’t feel the same way that Jack did for him, but hearing him protesting the idea so vehemently, like it was horribly embarrassing just to think about, was remarkably disheartening. He didn’t want to hear any more of Wanderlust’s protestations. They had something important to do.

   “My mother is a usurper to the throne,” Jack said firmly. “She overthrew you and your wife and erased your memories. She has no claim to the throne. She needs to be defeated. We need for you to wake up, to remember, or she’ll never be brought down.”

   Jack was, it seemed, not the key to stirring Wanderlust’s father’s memory, because he was looking at Jack like he was crazy. Jack supposed that was fair enough. For all he knew, his son and the prince had barged into the office, seemingly to declare that they were romantically involved, only for his son to adamantly deny any such relationship and the prince to claim that he wasn’t the prince at all and that his mother had stolen the throne. Truthfully, it would be much less reasonable to simply believe Jack’s words right away.

   Wanderlust’s father remained speechless, looking between Jack and Wanderlust before finally settling his gaze on his son, probably waiting for him to tell him that this was all some elaborate joke. “It’s true,” Wanderlust said. “You and mom are supposed to be the king and queen, and I’m supposed to be Danceverses Prince.”

   Jack winced at the sight of black and pink smoke erupting around Wanderlust’s father, terrified that his mother had somehow found out about their plan and was getting rid of the true Danceverses King, this time for good, but when the smoke dissipated, he remained there, seemingly unharmed, a new look in his eye. “Wanderlust?” He asked, like he hadn’t known his son was there in the first place.

   Wanderlust shot Jack a worried look before taking a step closer to his father. “Dad?” He asked hesitantly. “Are… are you okay?”

   “Where’s your crown?” Wanderlust’s father asked, and Jack’s jaw nearly dropped. His mother hadn’t done anything at all. Wanderlust had done something. He’d freed his father from the spell. He was himself again, aware of his rightful place. “What is-?” He paused as what Jack assumed had to be a wave of false memories flooded over him, the realization of what Jack’s mother had done finally settling in.

   “Dad?” Wanderlust asked, reaching for his father’s hand.

   “Leda,” Wanderlust’s father practically growled. Wanderlust looked confused, but Jack knew that name. That was his mother’s name. Or it had been, at least, sometime long ago. He’d heard Cygnus use the name once, and she’d been furious, telling him that it wasn’t her name anymore, that Leda was dead and Night Swan was queen. Jack didn’t know the history of it. He hadn’t dared ask her, so he’d allowed himself to be kept in the dark about it. But Wanderlust’s father knew the name, and he spoke it with such hatred that Jack had to suppress a shiver.

   “Dad?” Wanderlust repeated nervously before being pulled into a hug by his father.

   “This is my fault,” he said, holding his son tightly. Jack’s mother hadn’t hugged him like that since he was a child. It almost hurt to watch because of that. “I brought Leda here. I brought her here from Earth, and everything she’s done has been my fault.”

   “Earth?” Wanderlust asked incredulously, pulling away from his father enough to look at him as he asked the question. “She’s from Earth?”

   Wanderlust’s father nodded. “She’s a human,” he said, and Jack’s knees very nearly gave out. “She learned how to use the Flow, but it wasn’t enough for her. She needed the Dark Flow, and she allowed it to corrupt her in exchange for more power.”

   Jack’s mother wasn’t a coach at all. She was a human. And he was her son. He wasn’t a coach, either. Whether his father was human or coach, though he wasn’t sure if it was really possible to be half coach, Jack was at least half human.

   He thought of a time when he was no older than 14, when he’d made a particularly major error in a dance she wanted him to learn. He couldn’t remember what the dance was. He couldn’t even remember what mistake he had made. But he remembered what she’d said to him afterwards. “Worthless child,” she’d huffed. “It’s like you aren’t even a coach.” The words had always stung, but thinking of them now, hearing them again in his head, knocked the air out of his lungs completely. She knew . She knew that he wasn’t a coach, not fully at least, and yet she’d still expected him to be able to dance like one. She was a human herself. She’d likely needed years and years of training, too, to get to where she was. She hadn’t picked up on it as a kid like a coach would, because she wasn’t a coach, and neither was he, but she’d expected it of him regardless. She’d allowed him to spend 21 years believing that he was a miserable excuse for a coach, that wasn’t good enough, that there was something inherently wrong with him, when she’d known all along that there was something different about him, something that set him apart from other coaches, that held him back from mastering dance as quickly as they did. 

   A red hot anger began to burn in the pit of his stomach, a dangerous fury directed at his mother. He’d resented her nearly his entire life, hated her for all of the pain she’d caused him, but knowing the truth behind the pain made the feeling far more intense. His mother had gone out of her way to keep him from finding out the truth, a truth that would have eased his suffering, even if just by a little bit. If he had known the truth, would he have been so hard on himself? He barely needed to consider the question at all. Of course he wouldn’t have. From the moment he was born, she’d placed upon him the expectations of the Danceverses Prince, when all he had been was a human, or at least part human, in a world that wasn’t built for him. He had no real place in the Danceverses, but he’d been forced into the place of its prince . It was almost impossibly cruel. Jack was shaking, though no longer from fear or from nerves. It was fury, burgeoning deep in his core and beginning to seep into his veins.

   “Jack?” He heard Wanderlust ask, and when he looked up, Wanderlust seemed to flinch. That was enough for Jack to force down whatever rage was boiling deep within himself. He didn’t like the idea of becoming something so terrible that Wanderlust flinched at the sight of him. Wanderlust’s expression softened as Jack’s did, but he looked terrified. “Are you alright?” He asked.

   Jack didn’t really know the answer to that question, but he nodded anyway, because they didn’t have enough time to worry about his well being. He had no doubt that his mother would have felt a change the moment that the spell on Wanderlust’s father was broken, and she wasn’t going to sit around waiting for them to come to her. She was probably already halfway to the servants quarters, ready for a fight.

   “We need to go find my mom,” Wanderlust said. “We need to wake her up, too. She’s the one who was born into royalty, so she’s the one with the true claim to the throne.” Jack nodded his understanding, figuring that words were a waste of time in such an urgent situation, and followed Wanderlust out of the room.

   Wanderlust’s father had apparently told him where his mother was, and fortunately, she wasn’t too far. Assuming they didn’t encounter Jack’s mother or any of her minions, it should have been an easy and quick run to find her. Wanderlust’s father was staying behind. He was, according to Wanderlust, a sorcerer in his own right who would hopefully be able to hold Jack’s mother off, maybe even to stop her entirely. Jack wasn’t all that sure why he was going with Wanderlust, seeing as he would do little to help him wake his mother, but he supposed that it was better than staying back and watching his mother take out her rage on Wanderlust’s father, so he didn’t complain.

   Wanderlust’s mother was in the laundry room that Jack had heard about several times but never actually seen. In any other circumstances, he might have taken the time to look around the room, but his eyes were drawn instead to the woman standing in the far corner. Seeing her, Jack had no trouble believing that she was the true Danceverses Queen. She had a regality about her, but not in the harsh, domineering way that his own mother had. She smiled when she saw her son, though a hint of confusion crossed her features when she realized that he was trailing Jack behind him.

   “Wander,” she said cheerfully, though there was a tinge of worry to the word, audible only in the slightest hint of a waver in her voice.

   “Mom,” Wanderlust began, slightly out of breath from running down the halls, “do you think I’m gay?”

   “What?” His mother asked, right as Jack said, “Wanderlust!”

   “Sorry,” Wanderlust said quickly before rushing over to his mother. “Uh, how do I do this? What did it last time? Oh, yeah. Hey, mom, I’m the Danceverses Prince.”

   Jack was actually rather surprised that it worked. He’d thought that there might be a little bit more to it than that, but he wasn’t going to complain when the spell broke the same way it had with Wanderlust’s father. Like Wanderlust’s father had, his mother seemed dazed for a moment, taking in everything around her like it was new, but soon enough she seemed to come around, pulling Wanderlust into a hug just as his father had when he’d been awoken. 

   “Are you alright?” She asked worriedly, and Wanderlust nodded.

   “I’m fine,” he said. “Are you okay?”

   “I am now,” she said softly, shutting her eyes as she held her son close. “I am now.” Jack had to look away. He had no part in the moment between mother and son. Even looking on felt like he was intruding. They needed to move, urgently so, but he couldn’t bring himself to interrupt, even as a feeling of dread began clawing at him, settling somewhere behind his ribs, dangerously close to his heart. Something bad was about to happen. He desperately hoped that someone else could feel it, too.

   Fortunately, Wanderlust’s mother seemed to. She had pulled away from her son and was looking past Jack out of the door and down the hall, the expression on her face somewhere between determination and fear. “Where’s your father?” She asked her son.

   “Probably waiting for us,” Wanderlust said. “He said he would try holding Night Swan off.”

   “Let’s not keep him waiting, then,” his mother said resolutely, and Wanderlust nodded. As they began to follow Wanderlust’s mother down the hall, Wanderlust reached over and took Jack’s hand in his. It was a small gesture, but somehow it seemed to lessen the dread that had been building up in Jack’s chest. It could only do so much, though, and the moment they turned a corner to see where Jack’s mother had caught up with Jack’s father, the dread spread from his chest to his entire body, spreading coldly through his veins.

   Jack was familiar with the process. He’d seen it too many times to count, double that in his nightmares. Wanderlust’s father was being turned into a minion, the color draining from his body as a cloud of black and pink smoke swirled around him. “Dad!” Wanderlust called out, alerting Jack’s mother to their presence. The speed with which she transformed both Wanderlust and his mother into minions was almost ridiculously anticlimactic. Jack was fairly certain that he was going to be sick. He’d never seen such bitter hatred in his mother’s eyes, and it was being focused directly on him .

   “I think you’ve been holding out on me, Jack,” she said harshly. “Have you just been playing dumb all this time, hmm? Pretending to be some fool with two left feet while you conspire behind my back to destroy everything I’ve built? Everything I’ve built for us?” As she spoke, the minions that had once been Wanderlust and his parents slowly walked towards her, filing into place beside her, blocking off the hall so that Jack couldn’t run. She stepped closer to him, and they did, too, like a wall closing in on him. Even Discoball hovered ominously beside his mother, another brick in the wall that threatened to crush him. “I’m almost impressed, really,” she continued, practically hissing out the words. “What a performance you put on. You very nearly had me fooled. I suppose it’s on me, really, for believing you when you said you were sorry, that you were going to try harder. My heart, it would seem, is my greatest weakness.”

   The words seemed to react to the dread and fury in his veins, and a humorless laugh erupted from deep within Jack’s chest, accompanied by a wave of angry tears that he refused to let fall. “Your heart?” He asked incredulously. “You need to have something in the first place for it to be your weakness.”

   Her expression hardened even more, if such a thing were possible, and she took another menacing step towards him, the three minions beside her following suit. “You think that I don’t have a heart because you think that I don’t love you,” she seethed, “but you haven’t considered that maybe having a heart just isn’t enough to make someone love the likes of you. No one loves disappointment, treasure, and that’s all you’ll ever be.”

   His mother’s words were clawing at him, trying to cut him, to break him, but only one of them truly reached his mind. Treasure. The vault. The crown. One of the first things Wanderlust’s father had done upon awakening from the spell had been to ask Wanderlust where his crown was. It was important. It was what had sparked Jack’s realization in the first place. The crown was the key.

   His mother and her minions and Discoball were blocking the way up into the tower, but they weren’t blocking the way down. It was risky, but Jack was fairly certain that it was the only hope he had left. He looked up at his mother, who judging by the smug smile on her face seemed to think that her words had fully broken him, took a deep breath, and turned and bolted. He wasn’t the fastest runner, but he knew that his mother would be too surprised to be right on his heels from the start. He had never run from her, not even as a child. The thought of it from her perspective was actually rather comical, really. It probably seemed like a desperate and pathetic move, a last attempt at getting away. He doubted she’d even waste her energy truly giving chase. There was no way out of Swan Tower from where they were, after all. As long as she followed, she would corner him eventually. He just had to hope that he could get to the crown first.

   Jack wasn’t familiar with the layout of the servants quarters, but he knew that they were on a basement level just above the lowest level, where the vault was located, and all he needed to do was find a staircase leading down. To his knowledge, there was nothing else on that lowest level, meaning that a descending staircase should lead him straight to the vault. For efficiency’s sake, most things in the servants quarters seemed to be labeled quite clearly, so a staircase was surprisingly easy to identify. He didn’t waste any time looking over his shoulder as he burst into the stairwell and thundered down the stairs as quickly as his feet could carry him. His heart was in his throat, the true horrors of the situation right at the precipice of his mind, threatening to teeter over the edge of his thoughts and overwhelm him to the point of giving up entirely. He couldn’t think about his mother or her minions, the ones that had once been Wanderlust and his parents, the true royal family of the Danceverses. He thought of the crown, and he didn’t let anything else into his thoughts.

   He was remarkably out of breath by the time he reached the vault, but he pulled the heavy door open and ran inside, the magical threshold in the doorway that kept anyone but him and his mother from entering feeling like a blast of cold air on his face as he passed through it. He slowed down a bit once inside the vault, partly because he was getting tired far too quickly and partly because he wasn’t all that keen on breaking anything that, if he were to succeed, would probably need to be returned to the various danceverses that his mother had stolen them from.

   Jack had rather forgotten about the glass paneling surrounding the crown, but he supposed that it made more sense now that he knew the significance of it. Punching or kicking the glass to break it seemed rather undignified, but he was considering it anyway until he noticed the slightest hint of a glimmer surrounding the glass. Something magical. There was some sort of spell around it, an extra barrier between the crown and anyone who might want to take it, likely some manner of shield that could be broken only by magic.

   Jack’s heart sank as he realized he had hit a dead end. He was no sorcerer. His mother had tried to teach him sorcery when he was a teenager, but she’d given up after only a year or two, convinced that he was too weak to wield any manner of magic. The fact that she’d had the foresight to place a magical barrier around the crown’s casing despite knowing that only she and Jack were capable of entering the vault in the first place seemed to imply that she had expected Jack’s betrayal. She had known that he might turn his back on her one day, that he would fight back, and she’d been prepared. To alter the spell that protected the vault would have been a great undertaking, but adding an additional layer of protection to the crown would have been easy. Jack’s inability to perform magic was one of his greatest shames, and she had put it to use against him.

   Except that his inability to perform magic was not a complete one. He was capable of one thing. It was a frivolous thing, barely even a parlor trick according to his mother, but it was magic, and magic was required to break the barrier. He hadn’t done it in a long time, because his mother considered it so worthless that it didn’t warrant any practice, but it came surprisingly naturally. A deep breath and a spin and an immense amount of concentration, and the old but familiar feeling of the microphone in his hand. It really wasn’t good for much, not for a prince, at least, but he knew now that he was no prince, and he found a strange sense of freedom in that.

   The sound of the glass shattering as he smashed the microphone through it was almost like music, and despite himself, Jack laughed under his breath. His mother had foreseen his betrayal and planned accordingly, but he’d still managed to thwart her, and for the first time, disappointing her didn’t seem so bad, because her disappointment ultimately meant his victory. He used the microphone to push more of the glass out of the frame so he could reach in without accidentally cutting himself on its jagged edges and grab the crown. There was magic radiating off of it in waves, a different magic than the one he had always been surrounded by. There was something pure about it, something clear and comforting but powerful and strong all the same. Something about it felt remarkably familiar, too, though it took him a moment to realize that it was because it felt like Wanderlust , like his presence and his magic. It was potent enough that Jack was certain that he needed only to get it to the minion that had once been Wanderlust in order for it to break through his mother’s spell.

   Turning on his heel, Jack made it about three-quarters of the way out of the vault before his mother stepped into view, standing in the threshold of the doorway as the three minions she had with her remained just outside, unable to make it through the magical barrier. Discoball was flitting about her erratically, an evil smile on their face as they leered on in a manner only as menacing as could be managed by something so cute.

   Jack’s mother looked genuinely surprised to see the crown in Jack’s hands, but it was clear that she didn’t see it as anything more than a minor wrench in her plans. She didn’t think enough of him to believe that he really stood any sort of chance against her, after all. “Give me the crown, treasure,” she said, an eerie sort of gentleness in her voice that told him just how close she was to snapping. “You have no claim to it.”

   Jack wanted to roll his eyes, but he knew better than to actually do it. “No more of a claim than you have,” he said.

   “I am the Danceverses Queen,” she said fiercely. “By birthright or conquest, it doesn’t matter- the throne is mine . I’m the one who’s built this empire, and I have so selflessly allowed you a place in it. I need that crown, Jack, but I don’t need you, and if I must lose you to keep my throne, so be it.”

   Discoball lunged forward then, flying across the vault to Jack, seemingly aiming to knock the crown out of his hands. Jack doubted that the disco ball would be able to break his grip, but it never even made it to the crown. Once it was within a few inches of it, they began to flicker strangely, a bright blue overtaking the muted gray that normally emanated from them. It was brief, so brief that Jack may very well have missed it had he blinked, but the panic that crossed his mother’s face didn’t go unnoticed by him, either. That flicker meant something, and judging by the way she quickly snapped her fingers to call Discoball back to her side, it likely had something to do with their proximity to the crown. 

   “Last chance, Jack,” his mother warned as she stepped closer to him, Discoball hovering menacingly by her feet, as if ready to guard Jack’s mother should Jack make any sudden moves. “Is it really worth getting yourself killed? Come now, treasure, give me the crown.” She smiled at him then, a deceivingly sweet smile, as if she hadn’t threatened to kill her own son moments prior, as if she really carried any love for him.

   Jack was surprised that he didn’t feel the urge to give in, to surrender. The self-preservation he had thought such an integral part of his character up until the previous afternoon was gone entirely, and in its absence stood someone far braver than Jack had always thought himself to be. “No,” he said simply, and her smile quickly morphed into a furious scowl.

   “No?” She asked darkly. She was repeating the word in disbelief, he knew, but it wasn’t lost on him how similar the situation was to one he’d found himself in countless times before. She didn’t like one word answers. They always needed to be at least two. “Yes” was never enough. “Yes, mother” was the only acceptable response.

   “No, mother,” Jack said, partly to buy himself more time and partly because he knew that it would infuriate her, and if he was going to die, he supposed that he might as well go out with a bang.

   Her face twisted into an expression of rage unlike any Jack had ever seen, and she raised her arm with a flourish, casting some manner of spell that Jack couldn’t see. But then he could feel it, a burning in his chest, like something was filling his lungs. Still holding tightly to the crown with one hand, he brought his other hand up to clutch at his chest, trying to take a deep breath but unable to. Instead, he let out a breath, and from his mouth emanated the black and pink smoke of his mother’s magic.

   “I don’t want to have to do this,” his mother said, though the fury in her voice made it quite clear that she most certainly did. She held out her hand to Discoball, wordlessly instructing them to stay in place as she stepped closer to Jack, who fell to his knees as his mother’s magic continued to fill his lungs, suffocating him from the inside. She reached down for the crown, but he used what little strength he had to turn his body away from her, just enough to pull the crown out of her reach, collapsing onto his side in the process.

   His vision was beginning to blur, the pain in his chest worsening as the smoke forced out any air that had been in his lungs prior, but he was all too aware of his mother kneeling down beside him. “You must know that this hurts me much more than it hurts you,” she said lowly, brushing aside some of his hair that had fallen in front of his eyes. He jerked his head away from her as best as he could, but he knew that it was a waste of his strength. The burning intensified and the terror that he knew he should have begun feeling long ago finally began to sink in. He had failed, and now the Danceverses would have no prince, not even the false one who had taken the title for 21 years. His mother knelt above him, murmuring something that he couldn’t quite make out as he tried in vain to force air into his lungs. And yet there was a strange sense of comfort still from the crown in his hand, from the pure magic that it gave off, a power strong enough, even, to have held off his mother’s magical companion.

   Discoball. Lying on the floor, Jack turned his head just enough to lay eyes on Discoball, still hovering ominously just above the floor. He thought about the strange flickering light that had overcome them when they approached the crown and of his mother’s rush to keep them away from it. She cared enough about keeping them away from it that she had ordered them to stay put rather than following her towards Jack. That had to mean something. He doubted that he would be around long enough to find out what that something was, but one last attempt at beating his mother couldn’t hurt. With the strength he had left in him, Jack hurled the crown away, sending it sliding across the floor in Discoball’s direction. He couldn’t be sure whether or not the bright light that followed was from Discoball or his own imagination, and he didn’t have the time to find out. He heard his mother’s voice, loud and furious, and then he closed his eyes, and if something else happened, he wasn’t around for long enough to hear it.

   Waking up perfectly alive after the whole ordeal was, Jack decided, the second most shocking thing that had ever happened to him. The most shocking thing that had ever happened to him was waking up perfectly alive in Wanderlust’s arms. Wanderlust had him enveloped in something like a hug, repeating his name several times. Jack tried to respond, but all he could do was gasp, desperately trying to get the air that his mother’s spell had deprived him of. His chest still ached and every breath burned, and he choked on the air he was so desperately breathing into his lungs and began to cough, which did nothing to help the pain that was already present. He could hear Wanderlust saying his name worriedly, but he couldn’t say anything in response, gasping and coughing and gagging on whatever remained of his mother’s spell in his lungs.

   When the coughing finally subsided, he returned to deep, heaving breaths that still prevented him from speaking, but he opened his eyes to find Wanderlust looking down at him. There were tears streaming down his face and he looked horrified, but the Crown of the Danceverses Prince was placed firmly on his head, and something about it just looked so right .

   “I thought she’d killed you,” Wanderlust said the moment their eyes met, his voice thick with tears. “I thought it was too late. I thought… I thought you were gone.” His voice broke even more on the last word, and his grip on Jack tightened a bit.

   Jack still doubted that he would be able to speak, but he didn’t want to ignore Wanderlust’s statement entirely, so he brought his hand up and placed it awkwardly on Wanderlust’s face. It was such an intimate gesture, and wrapped up as he was in Wanderlust’s arms, it felt almost sacred. If he’d had any breath left, it would surely have been taken away in that moment. He was actually glad that he couldn’t speak, because he feared the words that might have come from his mouth.

   “You saved me,” Wanderlust said quietly, bringing his own hand up to rest over the one Jack still had on the side of his face. “You saved the Danceverses.” Jack rather doubted that. While it seemed that tossing the crown towards Discoball had managed to break Wanderlust and his parents out of their spell, it was what they had done when returned to their normal forms that would have saved the Danceverses. Jack had merely given them a little bit of help. What had they done to save the Danceverses? Where was his mother? Had she been defeated? Was she dead? As her son, and as a usurper to the throne in his own right, what would happen to him?

   “Is he awake?” A familiar voice asked from somewhere nearby, though it took Jack a moment to recognize the voice as that of Wanderlust’s mother. Jack hastily removed his hand from the side of Wanderlust’s face and turned his head in the direction the voice had come from, revealing to him that he was no longer in the vault in Swan Tower’s basement. He wasn’t in Swan Tower at all, it seemed, but in what looked like some sort of bedroom.

   “He is,” Wanderlust said, looking away from Jack for the first time since he’d woken up and focusing his attention instead on his mother, who had come into the room through a door that had been left open.

   “Good,” she said. “I hope that means you’ll be making good on our little promise” There was an edge to her tone that Jack couldn’t quite place, but something about it seemed to cause Wanderlust to blush.

   “Mom,” Wanderlust said warningly, though there was no real force behind it, and his mother only laughed good naturedly, at which point Jack turned his head slightly to look up at her. He was tempted to look away the moment she met his gaze, but her face suddenly took on a concerned expression, and she leaned down slightly to be more level with Wanderlust, who Jack realized was sitting on a bed as he held Jack in his arms.

   Wanderlust’s mother took Jack’s hand in her own, and Jack watched in shock as she said, “You saved the Danceverses. You’re a hero, Jack. Remember that.” She squeezed his hand then, and with one last look at Wanderlust, she rose back up to her full height and walked away, smiling at them both over her shoulder before leaving the room, closing the door behind her. In the silence that followed, Jack felt like he could hear Wanderlust’s mother’s words echoing in his head- “You’re a hero.” Jack couldn’t bring himself to believe the words, not even for a moment, but he had seen the sincerity of them in Wanderlust’s mother’s eyes. She believed it, whether he did or not, and he wasn’t all that sure of how to feel about it.

   “She’s right, you know,” Wanderlust said, bringing Jack’s attention back to him. “Night Swan would have succeeded if it weren’t for you. Discoball got the crown to me, and I was able to break the spell on my parents, and they were able to immobilize her. None of that would have happened if it weren’t for you.”

   Jack didn’t really know how to respond to that. He didn’t really agree with what Wanderlust was saying, but he didn’t want to argue with him. So much of his energy had always gone to arguing. He didn’t want to waste any more on it. He just nodded rather curtly in acknowledgement and changed the subject. “What promise was your mother talking about?” He asked, wincing slightly at how rough and hoarse his voice sounded.

   Wanderlust blushed again. “Oh,” he stammered out, “oh, she was just- she was… it was just a- something we had… talked about.” He stopped for a moment and sighed heavily. “When we were waiting for you to wake up, she… made me promise something.” Jack raised a brow, and Wanderlust bit his lip nervously and looked away from him. He seemed suddenly to realize that he was still holding Jack in his arms, and he began to slowly disentangle himself from Jack, gently laying Jack down on the bed they were sitting on.

   “Wander?” Jack asked hesitantly. Had he done something to warrant Wanderlust’s sudden pulling away.

   Wanderlust took a deep breath and looked at Jack worriedly before averting his gaze entirely, staring down at his hands in his lap. “I… once we managed to stop her, my parents took Night Swan to Floworld. I guess there’s some kind of prison there capable of holding coaches with powerful connections to the Flow. I don’t know, really. I wasn’t paying much attention- Anyway, they left and I… I saw you there on the ground and I thought that… I thought that you were dead, and I was so hysterical that I kind of couldn’t tell whether you were breathing or not, and I just… I freaked out, and I… I said some things, and my mom heard me. She… she made me promise that, if you woke up, I would tell you… the things I said when I thought you were… gone. The things I said I wished I could have told you.”

   Jack couldn’t really imagine what Wanderlust could possibly have said that would make him so nervous, unless they were bad things, but it seemed odd that his mother would encourage him to tell Jack those things, especially knowing that she didn’t dislike Jack or blame him for what his own mother had done. “I don’t… I don’t understand,” Jack said after the silence between them dragged on for longer than he could bear.

   Wanderlust looked up at him again, fresh tears beginning to form in his eyes. “When I thought that you were gone, that it was too late, that you were never coming back,” he began weakly, “I’ve never felt a pain like that. I felt like… like my heart had been ripped out of my chest. And I thought that you had died- that you had died, and that I had never… never told you… how much you mean to me. I was so scared that you had died thinking that I didn’t l- that I didn’t care about you.”

   Wanderlust was trembling, and Jack realized that he was, too. Nobody had ever spoken to him in such a manner. He’d never thought himself the kind of person that someone else could truly care about, not to such a great extent. Slowly, Jack reached out and took Wanderlust’s hand in his own, and Wanderlust stared at their joined hands in something like awe before taking a deep breath, his expression hardening into a more determined one.

   “I’ve been way too scared,” he continued, voice a bit stronger now, “but seeing you like that, thinking you were gone… Knowing what it feels like to think that I never told you… that’s a pain far worse than whatever I might feel if you don’t feel the same.” Jack wanted to ask what he meant by that, but then Wanderlust looked him in the eye with an intensity that rendered Jack speechless. “I love you,” Wanderlust said, and Jack was fairly certain that his heart stopped for a moment. “I really, really love you. Your mother thought she was doing something cruel by wiping my parents’ memories, by keeping me from the crown, but the truth is that being your guard was the best thing that ever happened to me. It’s so selfish, I know, but I can’t even be angry about what she did, because if she hadn’t, I might never have met you, and I’d rather spend the rest of my life cleaning up her mess with you as a friend than have lived some grand, princely life without knowing who you are. I couldn’t bear the thought of you dying without knowing that I love you, and I can’t- I won’t let it happen. I’m not asking you to reciprocate my feelings. I know you can’t force that kind of thing. I just… I need you to know how much you mean to me.” He was breathing heavily, like the confession had been a physically demanding task.

   Truthfully, Jack couldn’t even begin to think of a response. How could anything he said possibly live up to what Wanderlust had told him? How could he verbalize the extent of what Wanderlust meant to him? He was his friend, his confidant, his guardian. Jack had always felt safe around him, and it was far more to do with how kind Wanderlust was than how strong or powerful he was. Wanderlust’s smile was one of his favorite sights, beautiful and inviting like a sunset or a meadow- or at least like the paintings and pictures of those things, considering the fact that Eternyx had neither. There was a warmth to Wanderlust, a sense of comfort that Jack had never felt in anyone or anything else. He wished he could tell him that, that he had spent months trying to convince himself that he hadn’t fallen head over heels in love with his guard, but the words seemed stuck in his head, like they couldn’t come out of his mouth.

   “Where was all that eloquence when you were trying to break the spell on your father?” He asked instead, and Wanderlust stared at him for a moment before beginning to laugh. Jack tried to laugh, too, but the lingering pain in his chest made that rather difficult, so he settled on smiling up at Wanderlust and squeezing his hand. “If nearly dying is what it took to get you to tell me that, I should have done it way sooner,” he said, and Wanderlust laughed at first before the implication seemed to sink in, and he froze.

   “You…?” He asked, trailing off, and Jack let out a huff that sounded close enough to a laugh.

   “Me,” he said, suddenly emboldened to bring his hand back up to the side of Wanderlust’s face, though this time he propped himself up on his elbow and sat up enough to meet Wanderlust halfway and kiss him. Jack would be lying if he were to say that he had never thought about kissing Wanderlust, but the kiss didn’t fully live up to expectations, mainly because going longer than a couple of seconds without breathing made Jack’s chest ache again and he had to pull away much sooner than he would have liked.

   “Oh,” Wanderlust said, a rather dazed look on his face that made Jack laugh despite the ache in his chest. 

   “That good, huh?” He joked, and Wanderlust laughed, too, turning and flopping down onto his back beside Jack, hesitantly joining their hands. They were silent for a while, Wanderlust seeming perfectly content to lie there at Jack’s side as he breathed slowly and steadily until the burning and aching in his chest had subsided almost entirely. “What happens now?” Jack asked eventually, and Wanderlust tilted his head slightly in thought.

   “I don’t know,” he admitted after several seconds. “The Danceverses is waking up from the spell or curse that Night Swan had on everyone to make them forget the old monarchy. The people she turned into minions are starting to find their way back home. There’s a good 22 years worth of damage to undo, but… hopefully things will go back to normal one day.”

   Jack thought about that, about the idea of “normal.” His mother had overthrown the Danceverses Monarchs a good year before he was even born. He had no concept of “normal.” Others would surely begin to fall back into the place that had been theirs before she had taken over, but the way things had been under his mother were all that Jack had ever known. He didn’t have a place, not in the Danceverses that existed without his mother on the throne. He would have to find one, he supposed, but it wasn’t as scary of a thought as he would have expected. Because for the time being he was lying next to Wanderlust, their hands entwined, in some room or another in wherever it was that the true Danceverses Monarchs ruled from, and it was rather difficult to be scared next to the one person who, even now that the truth had come out and he wasn’t a guard at all, had always known how to make Jack feel safe.