Chapter Text
When Chloe was little she learned that Dragons took princesses. Her father told her stories about fire and ashes and parents crying and all Chloe thought to ask was, “why?”
“Why what?” Her father said, looking confused and a little disgruntled at being interrupted in the middle of his story.
“Why do the dragons take princesses? What’s the point of it?” Little Chloe asked, but her father was the king of the entire kingdom of the Bellas and he did not like to be questioned. Chloe didn’t get her answer.
*
Maybe it was because of this, because Chloe just didn’t understand, that she didn’t really have any fear. Even at age 19, with everyone around her being terrified of the winged beasts that no one ever really seemed to have seen, Chloe wasn’t scared. She never took the threats of Dragons too seriously.
She probably should have.
*
It happens too fast for Chloe to even know what’s happening. One moment she’s just wandering around in her spacious back yard, picking flowers and chasing rabbits and the next there is fire everywhere. She sees a huge shadow on the ground. Wings, her scrambled brain reasons, but before she can look up to find the source another ball of fire hits the ground in front of her and she stumbles back. All that Chloe knows is that Dragons take princesses and she is a princess and oh god, this dragon is going to take her. She scrambles up from the floor and runs towards the castle. She hears screams and yells and children crying all around her. Before she reaches the castle, she feels something on the back of her head and she feels arms around her and Chloe thinks I’m safe. Dragons don’t have arms. I’m safe.
Unfortunately, Chloe is wrong.
*
She wakes up somewhere that is decidedly not her bedroom and that’s her first clue. Her second clue is that, if she were home, her legs would most certainly not be tied together. Neither would her arms. It would also be warmer if she was in her room. So, Chloe comes to the conclusion that she is not home. At that point, she opens her eyes. It takes a while for her eyes to get used to the darkness all around her. She realizes that she should probably be scared, but then again, fear has never really been in her nature.
Just when Chloe manages to make out some shapes in the dark, the room lights up. Chloe blinks and looks towards the source of the light. It’s a big ball of blue light, hanging against the ceiling a few feet away from Chloe. Chloe doesn’t even have time to question how there is just a ball of light floating before she registers movement to the left of the light source and her head snaps towards it and she sees… a girl. Right there, in the middle of what Chloe can now see is a large cave, is a girl. At least, she looks like a girl, Chloe thinks. There is something about her that makes her seem different than the other girls in Chloe’s kingdom. The girl is looking at the floating light, her brown hair falling down her shoulders.
“Hello?” Chloe whispers, barely audibly. The girl looks towards Chloe, but doesn’t say anything. Chloe flinches a little bit at the sight of the girl’s eyes. They’re bright red. The girl raises her eyebrows, but does not move. She just stands looking at Chloe with her hands behind her back.
“Are you a princess, too?” Chloe asks, voice a little louder this time. She hesitates and then adds, “Have you also been kidnapped by the dragon?” The girl smirks at this, the corners of her mouth and her eyebrows lifting up.
“No.” The girl speaks eventually. She does not offer any other explanation and now, Chloe is getting a little scared. She doesn’t know what’s happening and where she is and this girl is no help.
“Who are you?” Chloe tries anyway. The girl takes a step towards Chloe.
“I’m not a princess.” The girl is still holding her hands behind her back. Chloe thinks that her father must be looking for her by now.
“Then who are you?”
“Guess.” The girl takes another step towards Chloe. There must be an entire army skimming the woods right now. Looking everywhere just to find their princess.
“I don’t understand.” Chloe says, trying to crawl away from the girl. Her back hits the wall and she realizes that she’s stuck.
“I’m not a princess.” The girl says again, stepping forward once again. The girl is now towering over Chloe, looking at the princess with her red eyes. It makes Chloe think of fire and that turns her own insides into ice. Chloe thinks she knows what is about to happen.
“I’m not a princess.” The girl says, smirking. All of a sudden she whips her arms around so they’re both by her side. Her hands are surrounded by fire when she growls,
“I am the dragon.”
*
Chloe always thought dragons were huge beasts, with claws and wings and fangs. Chloe never expected to find a dragon in the form of a young girl with fire on her hands and in her eyes.
All the girl does is laugh at her and move away.
Chloe should probably be a lot more scared than she is.
*
“I expected you to be… bigger.” Chloe says eventually, her boldness surprising mostly herself. The girl—the dragon, had perched herself on a chair on the other side of the cave when she moved away from Chloe earlier. She had not acknowledged Chloe in any way since. And even now, she doesn’t look Chloe’s way.
“And I expected you to be more afraid. We’re all disappointed sometimes.” The girl drawls, but Chloe can tell that she’s nervous. Who knew that even dragons got nervous sometimes.
“I thought Dragons were like—more like animals. You’re just a person.” This gets the girl’s attention. Her head snaps up quickly and her eyes burn fiercely when she talks.
“Don’t compare to me to your filthy kind, human.”
“No, I didn’t mean it like that! I just meant that I thought dragons were like—like big green monsters with scales and fire breath and stuff.” Chloe trips over her words when the girl looks at her with those fiery eyes, but she explains herself and the girl smirks a little.
“That’s what humans says about us? Idiots.” Chloe can’t help but feel a little offended by now. Considering that, you know, she happens to be a human.
“At least we don’t kidnap princesses.” Chloe means for it to come out all snarky and condescending, but it comes out a little pathetically. The other girl just huffs out a laugh and averts her eyes, letting the silence drag on.
*
“So what’s going to happen now?” Chloe asks after what she thinks must’ve been at least thirty minutes but is probably closer to ten. Chloe can’t really tell what time it is but she knows it’s been a while since she’s gotten here and her usually-well-fed stomach is starting to rumble a little bit.
The dragon doesn’t answer.
*
“What’s your name?” Chloe’s not sure whether dragons have names. She’s not even sure they have parents. To be completely honest, Chloe’s not entirely sure she’s not just having a very long, very realistic-looking dream.
“Beca.” The dragon grunts out, though, so Chloe figures they do have names.
“I’m Chloe.”
“I know.”
Chloe doesn’t really know what to say to that.
*
Chloe eventually wakes up from a restless sleep without remembering having fallen asleep. Her stomach is rumbling almost painfully now and she wonders, once again, what Beca is planning on doing with her. She looks up from her place on the floor to find the dragon in the same spot she had been the day—night?—before. Her stomach rumbles again, like it’s trying to announce itself. Beca turns to look at Chloe. She looks for a few seconds before she gets up and walks away in a direction where Chloe’s gaze can’t follow. She comes back a few minutes later. Chloe hears her footsteps approaching but keeps her eyes fixed on the ground. She only looks up when a huge pile of food is dumped in front of her. She hears the footsteps walking away again and when she looks up further, Beca is sitting at the table again.
*
Chloe eats. Beca watches Chloe in her peripheral vision, seemingly fascinated. Chloe only eats till she’s full and saves the rest of the food by piling it up next to herself.
“You don’t eat?” Chloe asks eventually and Beca tilts her head.
“No.”
“Not at all?”
“No.” Beca says again.
Chloe leaves it at that.
*
Chloe wonders if this is what Beca’s life looks like. With how clumsily and seemingly unknowing she has gone about this whole kidnapping thing, Chloe suspects she’s the dragon’s first victim. Ever since Chloe had been there, Beca had sat on that chair in the back of the cave and stared to the table top. She hadn’t slept. She had barely even moved, only getting up to get Chloe the food earlier. Chloe wants to ask her a million things, but she doesn’t know how to go about it.
“Just ask.” Beca growls all of a sudden, startling Chloe out of her thoughts.
“Ask what?”
“Whatever it is you want to ask. I can see it in your eyes.” Chloe blushes a little and takes a deep breath.
“There’s tons of things I want to ask.” She whispers and Beca tilts her head like she doesn’t understand.
“Ask them.”
“Why do you look like this?” Beca chuckles a bit incredulously at this and Chloe winces at how harshly it came out, but she does not apologize or take it back.
“You said that your kind describes us as big monsters with scales and fire breath, right?” Beca walks over to Chloe and plops down on the floor a few feet away, crossing her legs. It makes her look like the complete opposite of the kind of monster she’s describing.
“Yeah.”
“We used to be. My ancestors were huge. They had those scales you talk about. And they were strong. Stronger than any human. Until those humans started developing these weapons. Those things that shot fire back into the sky and bouts of steel into the chests of dragons. So the dragons pulled back. And we evolved. The scales disappeared over generations. We started to look more and more like humans. With that came the—the cross-breeding.” Beca huffs a little awkward laugh and scrunches her nose up in a way that Chloe thinks is way too innocent for a fire-y monster. “Anyway, when I have my wings hidden—“ Beca continues
“You have wings?!!” Chloe yells out, causing Beca to jolt and frown.
“Yeah.” The girl just shrugs. Like it’s nothing. Like it is not the single coolest thing that Chloe has ever heard in her life. Like it doesn’t want to make Chloe reach out and touch Beca’s shoulder blades, where she imagines the wings must be hiding.
“Can I see?” Chloe asks and for a second, Beca looks like she’s going to say yes. Then she frowns and looks down at her hands.
“I can’t. The cave isn’t big enough.” Beca looks like she’s thinking. Chloe wants to ask. Chloe wants to say it. She swallows the words and asks something else instead.
“Do you have a family?” Chloe wrinkles her nose at the way it comes out. The words sound as if they were spoken by a little girl rather than a 20-year old princess. Beca’s face hardens a little at the question and gives only a clipped nod in reply. Chloe tries to keep her mouth shut. She squeezes her lips together just like she used to do as a little kid when she would feel the urge to say something that her father would probably call ‘audacious’. It never worked when she was a kid, her fierce and stubborn nature forever coming out on top, and it doesn’t work now.
“Where are they?” The question seems to fall right out of Chloe’s mouth. She doesn’t even realize it until the words are hanging between them like thick, heavy fog. Beca swallows hard. For a flash of a second, Chloe feels like she wants to reach out to Beca. Of course that would be ridiculous, considering Beca is a dangerous and fire-wielding monster and Chloe is inherently her victim.
“Not here.” Beca huffs and little puffs of smoke escape from her nose. It looks a little odd, but perfectly normal at the same time.
“Alright.” Chloe says
“Alright.” Beca answers.
*
Chloe feels like she’s been her at least two days. She’s sleeping sporadically and when she’s awake, she talks to Beca or eats. Chloe doesn’t feel like a prisoner. Beca had completely untied her some time ago and except for the dragon herself, there’s nothing keeping Chloe in the cave. Of course it’s not like she would exactly be able to get by Beca, but she also hasn’t tried or felt the need to try. She’s feeling fine, actually. Beca tells her stories about dragons and in turn, Chloe tells her stories about her kingdom. They’re different from the stories Chloe’s father used to tell her. The story Beca tells are simply stories. The reason they’re being told are for entertainment, not for learning Chloe the do’s and don’ts of being the princess and queen of the Bellas.
It’s still a little odd sometimes. The fact that Chloe is spending her time in a cave with some kind of human-dragon or dragon-human that looks more human, but acts more dragon. The fact that she’s actually enjoying this time, even though she really probably shouldn’t. Most of all, what’s odd is the fact that Beca lets it all happen. Chloe knows there’s a reason that she’s been kidnapped. Beca’s plan couldn’t possibly have been this—sitting around and telling each other stories all day.
At the end of the second day, or maybe the beginning of the third, Chloe brings it up.
“So what am I here for?” Beca’s sitting cross-legged in front of her. Her brown eyes seem to stare right through Chloe (apparently they’re only red when she wants them to be. Chloe thinks it’s pretty fucking cool). She looks at Chloe for such a long time without saying anything, that Chloe is almost sure Beca isn’t going to answer at all. And then she looks away and smiles a smile that makes something within Chloe’s stomach flutter a little bit and then she just shrugs.
“Alright.” Says Chloe.
“Alright.” Answers Beca.