Chapter Text
Two children born entwined, apart
Two children marked to rule
They danced, they sang, proved blades beyond
But none forgot their birth
For lovers born on beat exact shall be forever cursed
But clockwork hearts don’t beat in sync
A curse that gears might circumvent
The tragedy of princes green
Is not a stagnant destiny
For life and souls and greener path
A clockwork Prince may find
A destiny of death and pain
Might princes green defy
-Ode to the Lovers, addendum by an unknown source
The Green Prince- No. The title of prince is one he no longer has a right to bear. Let him be remembered as nothing more than what he is.
The Green Prisoner sighed, staring up at the dimly-lit ceiling of his filthy cell, the silkflies fluttering absently as they rested on the glass of the lamp. The dripping of the muckmaggot-infested water was a constant sound, vibrating through the halls and his shell like the beat of a verdanian war drum.
There’s an unusually small muckroach chewing on his wing, The prisoner notes in the distant reaches of his mind, the part still being consumed by the dull grief that’s taken over every other part of him. In truth, the only reason he noticed was the pain lacing up his body in sharp rivulets– a bright contrast to the ache that eats its way through him daily. He can’t work up the energy to do so much as flick the maggot off his wing.
His reason to do anything is long gone, after all. His love and home, sheared away from him in one fell swoop, all he cared for naught but silk on the scissors of the Citadel that ravaged both for idle curiosity.
The pain of the tiny roach chewing through his limb spikes through his wing and up his back again, and yet he still does not move. Honestly, the prisoner welcomes the pain, a distraction from the cloudy misery of his mind. This pain is more reminiscent of his first pitfalls of grief than the soft pangs that consume him steadily now.
He should remove the foul creature from his shell.
He does not.
Let this place consume him in body as it has in mind.
Perhaps then, he hopes with an idle mind, he and his love can at last be reunited in the gentle embrace of death. It’s a foolish, childish, impossible hope, he’s well aware. His love was not granted the mercy of passing on, soul chained to dual metal tombs. His love, his other half, his very reason for existence is and will always now be nothing but a spectacle for that accursed chorus.
The roach, unimpressed with his lamentations, rips a chunk off his wing, and the abruptness of it is so painful that his body jerks away, posture straightening for the first time in Wyrm-knows how long. He turns his head to the side the faintest bit, all he can manage with the scant energy he possesses. He wonders how much of his weakness is the fact that he can’t remember when the roach-tenders last fed him, or his own misery.
The roach, despite having no features with which to express disapproval, gives the prisoner a look, and starts squirming away with the chunk of his wing.
Oh well. It’s not as if he was using them anyways. They were shredded beyond recognition by the Dancer’s blades anyways– When the Citadel marched on his homeland, they were certain to use the machines of his lover to do so. Perhaps if he was not so grief-stricken, he could have destroyed the Cogwork Abominations and put the soul of his partner to rest. Instead his own motions were unsteady, a dance not meant for a single soul. The blades of his love’s prison tore through him, and the Citadel’s soldiers restrained him easily. The mercy of not witnessing his own kingdom falling was not granted to him either– the Reeds that bound him in silk kept his gaze focused on the devastation the Weaver’s kingdom had wrought.
Oh, his Verdania, his home. The Prisoner turns his mind’s eye away from better memories. He was not deserving of them. The cowardly failure of a prince ruling over a dead kingdom from a cell deserved no fond reminiscence of home.
Footsteps from above the moldy stone of his ceiling shook him from his reverie. The roachtenders must’ve remembered he was here. Joyous days, he thinks to himself with the slightest of scoffs.
The dampened annoyance is quickly replaced with a deep, cold dread as he hears the clicking of gears, the telltale sign of cogwork machinery. A steady thump, thump, thump mirrors his own heartbeat as what is unmistakably one of the Citadel’s monstrosities climbs up, then leaps down the path to his cell.
Their trophy of a disgraced prince holds no meaning, now that Vedania is gone, and all who’d remember its majesty as well. They must be here to put an end to him, pin his body up in their museums as a display of the kingdom they ruined, or simply destroy the last link to that dead kingdom without fanfare. Or place his soul in the Dancers as well, to make them faster or something. The prisoner knows not what goes on in the twisted minds of the Citadel’s stooges.
Distantly, he hopes for that final option– to be entwined with his love again at last, caught in a dance of blades with his partner once more, trapped in coffins of steel, bound by chains built into their very beings, silken strings plucked by the uncaring conductors, but together once more.
His heart skips a beat as he looks up to see the face of his partner, cast in bronze instead of the brilliant teal of his fluff. A spiked crown curves out of his love’s head, eyes glowing with the hollow white of the dead.
The first strong emotion he’s felt in ages bubbles in his chest, lava bubbling up under his chitin with a fire that comes straight from his heart as he rises. “Have you come to mock me, then? End my life with the machines you made from the soul of my love? What’s the point? I am broken already.”
To the prisoner's shock, the dancer seems almost to flinch back at his outburst. He abruptly feels exhausted, as if that short outburst took all the energy he’d stored while imprisoned. He collapses back onto the bench he’s rotted on for so long.
“Well? Go ahead then. I have naught to live for anyways.”
Another flinch from the dancer does something funny to his heart, skipping as if there are two hearts beating behind his chest. He looks up at the dancer wearily, then shuts his eyes. After a moment, a creak of rusted metal tells him the door to his cage has been opened.
To love…
And dance…
And end…
Together…
I’m sorry I couldn't keep our vows, love…
As the dancer steps closer, the prisoner exhales, sure it will be his last breath. A strange sense of peace washes over him at the thought. An end to his suffering, however undeserved.
The thud of metal hitting stone, and the hesitant claws, cold as ice, that reach upwards to cup his face thoroughly disabuses him of that motion. The Prince's eyes fly open to see the Dancer, an expression of utter horror on the face that’s supposed to be stoic. Uncaring. A mockery of the grace he loved so dearly. Never…
“...My Love?”
It’s impossible to tell which one uttered those two, damning words.