Work Text:
Once upon a time a beautiful and rich courtier fell deathly ill, and in order to save her life she and her husband sent emissaries out across the land to find the fabled sundrop flower, rumored to have the ability to cure the sick and injured. The petals of this flower were brought to her on her deathbed, and she drank the tincture made from them, and in the morning she was cured. The flowers became something of a fad, after that; and some seven months later when she bore a son, she and her husband were more interested in the profits of that flower than they were in the child, whose hair had come out the same exact silver as the flower’s leaves. When the child began to exhibit strange powers related to his hair, however, they took notice, and shut the boy up in a far-off tower where he was to remain, as materially cared for as any son of nobility, until he grew out of the strange witchcraft and grew into the ability to look after himself and not cause too much trouble.
And in that tower the boy stayed until his twenty-first birthday, when a certain thief with a stolen crown climbed up into his tower to hide from the castle guards. This was the perfect opportunity for the boy to leave his tower; he hid the crown and hostaged it so that the thief would take him to see the annual festivities in the capitol city. The thief did not want to do this—he explained a hundred times over that he was on the run from the law, that they would kill him if he went back there, that there was a place he needed to bring the crown and swiftly and he had no time to double back, but the boy was insistent and good at hiding things and good at smacking the thief over the head with a frying pan when he was told no, and so eventually the thief acquiesced, and took him on a journey to the festival.
It was an incredible journey. They mocked a witch and met a bar full of ruffians and humiliated the castle guard; they got trapped in a cave together and the boy revealed his magical hair and the thief revealed his real name and the boy gave him a nickname; they slept together under a great ancient oak and the boy used his powers to heal the thief’s injuries and the thief revealed that he excelled in the art of songcraft and the boy met the witch in the dead of night and was given the crown and told that the thief only cared for him insomuch as he provided riches; they woke in the morning to a member of the castle guard staring down at them and he and the thief tussled and the boy convinced the guard to allow them one day in the festival and pretended not to notice the guard watching the thief as though he had hung the stars in the sky just for him and then torn them down again; they had danced and enjoyed fresh street food and then piled together in a canoe to watch the lanterns dance over the water, and then the guard had had to run off to his shift and the thief had left, claiming to have seen something strange in the forest, and then the boy was alone again. The journey had stopped being incredible there, because a pair of thugs appeared and claimed that the thief had sold out the boy for the crown; the boy had fled, but had not gotten far, until he was saved by the witch, who showed him how the thief was sailing away with the crown; the witch had brought the boy back to the tower, where he had drowned in his loneliness and stared at his maps and wished the thief had brought him too, until he remembered that he had known the thief once long ago and noticed that the thief had been sailing in the opposite direction to that which he’d needed to go, and he’d tried to confront the witch about it and ended up chained to the wall for his troubles, which was where he was now, tugging fruitlessly at his restraints and replaying the witch’s words over and over again in his head.
He may not have sold you out, but he’s abandoned you just the same. That criminal has been taken into custody by now, and he will be hanged for his crimes come dawn. This kingdom does not take kindly to thieves, after all, and the treasure he stole was truly priceless.
Dawn had broken a few hours ago, and the boy had stopped tugging at his restraints. He did not believe that the thief was dead, not yet—he had had a plan, had laughed about pulling the wool over the royals’ eyes, had called the king a usurper and claimed that he would never reclaim the stolen crown now. He couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be.
Dawn changed to day, and the witch smiled at the boy and said that they would be together forever, now that he had finally found him; the boy scowled at him and turned his head away and remembered the feeling of the thief’s warm hands on his in their canoe during the festival and thought He can’t be dead, he can’t be, he can’t. Day turned to afternoon and the boy remembered how the thief had fought with the guard, desperate and sad, how the guard had called the king his friend, how the thief had swung teary-eyed at the guard, how they had agreed to a truce for the day and the thief had quietly introduced the guard as Momo-kun, who I grew up with, as if they were allie’s and friends, sneaking a wanted thief into a festival so that a tower-raised boy could see it for himself. He did not remember his own parents’ faces, but he remembered how the thief had smiled at him. He’d had him for three days only and it had seemed like an eternity. Afternoon turned to evening, and the boy thought he could hear the thief now, calling for him from down below; the witch moved fast as lightning, and before the boy could react, a gag was shoved in his mouth and knotted behind his head, and then the pulley ropes that the boy had used to escape the tower in the first place were thrown down, and he watched with horror and with hope as they began to slowly, slowly, ever so slowly move and carry what had to be a human being up into the tower.
Finally the thief spilled into the tower. “Yuki!” he shouted, looking around wildly, but he was already too late. His eyes caught on the boy, Yuki, chained and gagged, just as the heavy sconce on the wall fell, fire and metal and fuel catching him in the forehead and sending him staggering to the ground as the flame extinguished itself in his blood and the witch stepped forward and drove his foot into the thief’s back.
“Oh, Yuki,” he said. “Look what you did. This boy might have lived, if not for you.”
Yuki screamed into his gag, some garbled mixture of BAN and DON’T TOUCH HIM and raw, animal sound; the witch only sighed, annoyed, and pressed down harder on the thief’s back until Yuki fell silent from lack of air.
“Are you done?” he asked.
Yuki shook his head furiously, straining against his restraints and chewing furiously on his gag until the knot loosened and it fell around his neck and he gasped out, “No, no, Ban, Ban, Ban!”
The thief stirred under the witch’s foot, and he let out a terrible low moan of pain. Yuki strained against his chains, but all they did was cut into his wrists, and the witch watched him as impassively until the thief stopped moving around under his foot.
“Don’t worry about him, Yuki,” he said. “This boy will die soon enough, and then you and I will be together forever. With that hair of yours, neither of us will ever have to die. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”
“No,” said Yuki, “no, no, Ban, no, no, no—”
“You have the same powers as Zero did,” said the witch. “With you by my side, I’ll finally be able to find him again—”
“No!” Yuki shouted. “I won’t help you find him, whoever he is. I won’t stay with you, I’ll never stop fighting you—”
The thief was moving a little now, but it was slow and shaky, as though he were off-balance simply from lying on the floor; he was still breathing, but each breath came out in a kind of gurgling whistle, and blood bubbled at his lips. He was alive, for now, but he did not have much time left.
“But—if you let me heal him—then I’ll do whatever you want.”
“N…no…”
“I’ll use my powers for your sake. I…I’ll never leave you. Just as long as I can heal Ban. I promise.”
“No…Yu…ki…don’t do it…”
“I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll be good, I’ll be so good, I promise. Just please let me heal him. As long as Ban’s alive, I can—”
“But of course,” said the witch. “That sounds like an excellent deal to me.”
“No…no…”
They both ignored the thief. The witch stepped off of him, and he rolled over onto his back, staring sightlessly at the ceiling as Yuki was unchained and rushed over to him, propping him up under the window and holding him close.
“Yuki…no, don’t do it…”
“Ban…”
“If you do…you’ll never be free…”
“I don’t care,” said Yuki.
The thief stared at him for a moment. His eyes were unfocused and his face was a mess of blood and burnt flesh, and he raised his hand and pressed it against Yuki’s cheek. His grip was weak, though, and it fell down to Yuki’s shoulder a moment later.
“You…were my…new dream,” he said.
“And you were mine,” Yuki whispered. “Ban, I promise I won’t let you die. I’ll protect you, this time.”
The thief smiled at him, a devastated smile, a pained smile. “No…n…no, Yuki,” he murmured. “My happiness…is your safety.”
His other hand reached the windowsill; Yuki leaned forward to press the top of his head to the thief’s face, wishing for the first time that his hair was longer so that the spell would be easier to cast. As he did so, the thief pushed down hard on his shoulder and stood, swaying from side to side and bracing himself against the windowsill. Yuki stood as well, confused, and the thief met his eyes and smiled once more—then fell backwards out of the window.
Yuki screamed and lunged for him, but could not catch hold of him in time; he watched the thief fall for an impossibly long length of time, for the tiniest instant, for an eternity, until his body hit the grass beneath the tower and did not move again. Somebody was screaming, and Yuki’s throat was raw, and his hair felt like it was burning from the roots, but there was nowhere for the magic to go. The thief’s crumpled body looked so, so small from up here, and it did not move, but it was okay, it was okay, Yuki could still heal him if only he could get down there. He could heal him if he could reach him, because he wasn’t dead, couldn’t be dead, and so Yuki climbed up onto the windowsill, following the traces of the thief’s blood, but was yanked back before he could heal him.
“What are you thinking?!” said the witch. “You’ll die!”
“I need to heal him.” Yuki’s throat was raw, and the words burned it. He swallowed and tasted blood on his tongue. “I need to heal him.”
“There’s no healing that. Let’s go.” The witch’s lips curled up into a cruel smile. “You made a promise to me, remember? We can visit his body on the way and see if there’s anything left to heal.”
Yuki numbly followed the witch, something inside of him hollow and aching and terrified. You were my new dream. My happiness is your safety. And then the fall—and then the thud, and the unmoving body. The body still hadn’t moved by the time he’d followed the witch out of the secret entrance they’d used to get into the tower only last night, and then he walked over to the thief. He was staring up at the sky with blue eyes that did not blink and did not see a thing; his head was nearly flat now with the crushing force of his fall, and his limbs lay at angles that no human being could possibly contort themselves into. Yuki touched his shoulder and said, “Ban,” and got no answer; he picked the thief up in his arms and the body lolled like a particularly soft plush toy. It was still warm, and it was wet with blood, and he pressed his head into its chest and let his magic pour into it and nothing happened.
“How do I do it,” Yuki said. “How can I heal him.”
“You can’t, not now,” said the witch behind him. “He’s dead—”
“You liar!” Yuki had never shouted that loudly before. Distantly, he was surprised that he was capable of it. “You said that my magic could give you forever. What’s the point of that if death still comes?”
“You use your healing magic before death, obviously,” said the witch. “Or—I don’t know—take out his heart and destroy it and hope a machinist finds him in time to build him a new one and reanimate him.”
“Could you do that?” said Yuki.
“No. I don’t know how,” said the witch. “And the new king has been stamping out all kinds of magic all over the land, anyway. The only way a machinist might find him is if he’s already hiding in these woods, like you were.”
“I don’t understand,” said Yuki. “What’s a machinist?”
“A machinist is a person who can rebuild and reanimate corpses, but only if the corpse in question lost its heart before its spirit fully abandoned its body,” said the witch. “They build mechanical hearts that preserve the body and return the spirit…mostly. The result is a homunculus with the spirit and memories of the original human, but no heart—no emotions, and especially no love for anyone or anything. Best of all, they can be built from any heartless corpse, no matter how long it’s been rotting. Of course, that’s only if the heart has been removed in time…and this boy as he was will never exist again. All that will be left is a walking imitation, an emotionless husk reviled by all with a healthy respect for the cycle of life and death. Would you truly inflict that on—well. I see I already have your answer.”
Yuki had stopped listening around the time that the witch had said that reanimation was possible; he had used Ban’s own shattered ribcage to dig deep into his chest, and now he held his heart in his hands. It was still warm, and sticky with flowing blood, and Yuki pressed his lips to it in a desperate kiss.
“You’ll be alright, Ban,” he said. “You’ll be back someday. I’ll see you then.”
The expression on the witch’s face was truly unreadable; he turned and walked away, and Yuki followed him without complaint, still holding the thief’s heart close to his chest.
“That’s disgusting,” the witch snapped when he noticed it. “Throw it away.”
“No,” said Yuki, and the witch groaned.
“No wonder they locked you in a tower,” he muttered. “I’m finding you another one as soon as we quit this kingdom.”
“Mm. Alright,” Yuki said. “But I’m keeping Ban’s heart with me.”
“Zero…” said the witch. “Zero, what is wrong with this boy…”
But there was no answer from the missing Zero, whoever or whatever he was, and Yuki kept following the witch, the thief’s blood slowly drying on his mouth, his shirt, his neck. He had made a promise, after all, and one day, his thief would be healed, so he had to keep it, and follow the witch to whatever doom awaited them.