Work Text:
Everything begins on Cinder Street.
Everything dies on Cinder Street.
And Cinder Street keeps going.
That's why they named it that.
The Birds.
The Birds who lived above the Rats.
They threw down everything they did not want to see.
Until, eventually, the Rats found themselves a king.
And for ten years, the whole city belonged to him.
Banks began losing money.
Jewellers found empty safes.
Every time the Birds built themselves another cage of gold, the Rat King found the key.
The police hunted him.
The banks hired men to find him.
The Church prayed for him to be caught.
No one knew his real name.
No one knew his real face.
He was a thievery prodigy.
He learned to steal before he learned to walk.
He could pick pockets without even looking at it.
He understood the rich because he had spent his childhood studying them, right from beneath their boots.
One Rat alone can easily be crushed beneath a boot.
If the Rat King was undefeatable...
That was because the Rat King was never one person.
He was a hundred.
Because when we tie your tails together...
That's how you get a Rat King.
When the Birds had become as poor as Rats, the Rats would become the Birds.
So they all agreed on a secret hoarding place where the fortune would be kept until the day they had taken everything.
But then the Rat King grew old.
And eventually, he forgot where he had hidden it.
"If you deserved it, you would remember."
The entire city tore itself apart looking for the greatest fortune in the history of the world.
The Rats searched. The Birds searched. Every animal in the city searched.
They figured there had never been any treasure.
Or, if there had been, he had spent it all on a woman.
So they killed him.
And eventually, the Rat King became nothing more than a legend told to misbehaving youths.
But I am here to tell you,
The Rat King was no legend at all.
Why?
Because I was the one who crowned him.
I was five years old.
I was beneath a lamppost.
It was dark winter night.
A boy, no more than double my size, came jumping down the street.
He was smiling.
He held something between his fingers.
And when he looked at me,
We had the same eyes.
Perhaps we were related.
Perhaps I saw my future self.
Perhaps he saw his past self.
He came to me, crouched down and held out a penny.
I refused it.
I was too busy deciding whether I should die from cold or hunger.
"Why don't you want it?"
With enough of these, you'll have enough to build yourself a whole castle."
"A castle made of pennies?"
He laughed.
"I'll hold on for it for you."
"I'll build you a castle right there."
He pointed toward the end of the street.
"So big that everyone in the world will have their own room."
"Would that make me a princess?"
He smiled.
"Princess Cinderella."
"And would that make you a king?"
He looked at me for a long moment.
"The Rat King."
I haven't been back since.
I was afraid I did not deserve it.
I am too old now.
I came here for something else.
I came here to turn back to cinder.