Archive of Our Own

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Chapter One
Lancer de le Pique, the Mean lil' Master, the Ace of Spades, doubled back into the bushes, eyes almost as round as his body, as his dirt bike decided to have a mind of its own.It sputtered, clashed, groaned...and all under the care of a prince's twelve-year-old hands. He didn't understand. He'd greased it well, planned it since the beginning of the month. He'd cleaned it, not stopping from pouring buckets of soapy water on it until some of the paint accidentally came off. He'd worked so hard on it, had checked to the minutest detail on every part. On every gear. The robes he'd worn since he was ten were covered in sweat and grease, enough sweat to make his father laugh at him for being "such a little fatass", and enough grease to make his father laugh at him for "being so damn careless".Speaking of… His hands fumbled as usual as he turned off the Led Zeppelin music, whispering about "rings of smoke through the trees and the voices of those who stand looking"...An odd chill, older and odder than most of Lancer's nights, spread through his veins. It was as if someone were to scare him by calling him "Lawn Sair" (not "lawn chair"), the pronunciation to his French name, his original name, his own darn name his own darn dad had given to him. Just for the sake of the music playing, he looked back in the woods. Something seemed to be breathing there, something odd, a conglomeration of eyes and hands and teeth. Lancer raised his hand, his spade attacks replying in an instant, points ready and waiting the way Rouxls had taught him since he was a little boy. Sweat poured down his veins, every inch of the woods stock- still…A deer, majestic and hushed as it was, tiptoed out of the bushes.Lancer sighed, the sweat still pouring. Heh, people were always saying he was too on edge. But the strange thing was that unlike most quirks they commented about him, they didn't use the slang equivalent and instead preferred to say "hypervigilant". Whatever the heck that is.He looked around. The sky was... well… dark. There wasn't any sunlight to contradict that. But it was more than that whenever it was night. He didn't know whether or not it was because he was often pulled by the strings of tiredness, but the sky seemed to become a vortex, seeping him in, taking him to a place far, far, far away from here… The palace was a giant, a vanguard, each of the corners bearing devil's horn-peaks. Pictures of saints of all sorts were hung outside, supposedly to remind Lancer to behave better than them so he wouldn't go under their same fates. There was Sebastian, whose arrows sent Lancer into flinching at least once before passing it. There were Perpetua and Felicity, skin nearly as dark as the sky, looking up to the vast, cradling cavern that was the night. To the right, cast off to the side, was Stephen, holding his stones, looking not at the sky, but on the spades, all of the spades, each and every pattern that happened to be on Lancer's body. He looked to the castle, and its gate, its entryway was a mouth, a cave, cavernous and wide, chewing and spitting out anyone who stepped into the castle without hesitation.But it didn't mean to. It was just a gate.He heard a voice. Ripping, tearing open the sky and the calm dark of Lancer's fright. Almost a horn, a half-choked horn. And then footsteps started towards the ward. Lancer's entire body seized as if he were epileptic, the lump exploding in his throat, swelling as he dove into the poor elephant topiary the King, the darned King, had ordered for his ward.At first, he didn't peer his eyes out, going instead to his defensive position. His unfortunate dirt bike was left out in the open, but what did that matter? If his father was coming, none of that mattered. The footsteps started to draw closer and closer, pressing harder and harder on Lancer's ringing ears, and Lancer's arms flew to his head, crisscrossing over like the instrument of St. Peter's demise. Not again not again not again not again not again please not again WHAT DID I DO not again not again not again…The footsteps abated. Lancer came out of his position, uncoiling vertebra after vertebra, displacing leaf after leaf after leaf, gentle, gentle, gentle... he emerged popping out of the bush, with the elephant's trunk hanging just above his head. He chuckled when the time was right, and took a breath. Sometimes he needed to do this, inhaling and exhaling, not worrying about anything else in the world. Not his dad, not his dirt bike, not what Robert Plant had to say about smoke in trees. Not about what his regal duties would require of him soon, soon, very soon, not about what his social skills demanded. Not about the blue light flashing in his right eye-He flashed his own eye towards the light, challenging it for a moment. He turned his eye to the sky's display, his heart seeming to apply its brakes as it saw the procession of… bones? Elaborate structures of bones, each of them flashing out their lights? Why bones? Why here, why now? Maybe it was one of the castle workers, come to snatch him out of the bush. Maybe it was one of the more lower- class children, come to throw some sort of food or poster at him again while he tried to chase them down, tried to apologize for something he didn't know how to control. But the light wasn't as painful, wasn't as piercing… but the burning, the burning forced him to grab onto his eye. This hurt more than the night by the empty oven when Rouxls Kaard was nowhere to be found. His eyes darted the other way, squeezing so tightly that the edges of his eyes crinkled, the ringing in his ears widened, the red, orange, yellow piercing his eyes even when he put both his hands over it…The light plunged down towards the earth, and all of the prophecies, everything biblical that his father had ever told him, came into the castle. Perhaps it was some warfare from the Lightners. Lancer didn't know. He didn't know. He didn't know.I don't know what's going on what am I supposed to do oh jeez oh jeez oh jeez it looks like it's going to hit the ground, it's going to hit, my ears can't do this, they can't-

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When the object had finally hit the ground, Lancer didn’t know how far off he was from decent enough hearing until people’s mouths started moving without him hearing them. He staved off the urge to go charging towards the meteor, to go off running. That was the Security Department’s job. Unlike what he read in history books, being a prince didn’t give him nearly the darn power he’d dreamed of when he was three. The meteor had also fallen outside of the castle walls, giving him every right to stay inside the castle walls like he’d been since he was just a zygote in his mother’s womb. His mother that, after he was born, had taken off. She’d known how little power she’d have. But would it kill her to take the thing that’d slithered out of her womb with her? And what if it even was a meteor? That was what Lancer expected it to be. Rouxls had sat him down one day, having carried out all of his duties for his duchy, read him out of an astronomical textbook, fascinated him with talk of stars and meteors and asteroids and any paraphernalia that wasn’t stuck to the ground. They’d stayed there, locked the door, shouted out to anyone who knocked that they were tending to the library’s maintenance. But what were meteors when the sky wasn’t- “There you are, you little-” The words were mixed with ringing. But that didn’t impede any of its impact. Everything in Lancer stopped. His heart turned to stone, his breathing clogged, still alive, still as a statue. All of the hormones stopped flooding through his veins, replaced by cortisol, cortisol, cortisol. Every night, every bad night that he could remember, every night that left him unable to sleep on a side or two, was preceded by that phrase. Five words. Five words that were chilling ice. A tangle of thorns. So he did what he usually did… hang his head low, not speak a word. Doing that would only make everything hurt more. There was love in this, he was certain. If there wasn’t any love, he wouldn’t be alive, no breath to stop. If he started it, maybe it would reciprocate. And what if it already did? If he’d just take one look around him, he’d see his bike, his status, his intact feet on the finest soil in all of gosh darn Dark World. He’d see love. That was love. He whipped around toward Lancer’s face. “Rouxls,” he half- whispered, the “xls” a dying- off, a puff of air, a sputter in his voice, as his body forced itself to work again. “Thank goodness…” There was a midget- ghost of a smile on Rouxls face. “Don’t worry I’m having quite a stressful day myself I don’t know what we’ll do but I have to do something it hit my duchy I know how small it is but I don’t know how many people there are in it…” “Hey.” He put a gloved hand on Rouxls cheek. The public wouldn’t have it any other way. He’d seen this in the movies to calm people down, and as much as he hated to admit it (or maybe on the borders of “loved to”), it worked. All of Rouxls’ speech stopped, the air leaving him in a sigh. Deflating. Back to what the gentry called normal. Lancer didn’t need to say another word. “Alright… well… let us both betake ourselves to the duchyeth… I sincerelyest wager that there will be…” Another breath. “...manifold complications.” Lancer’s face lit up, pulling, pulling, pulling, pulling, pulling the starting hook to its bike. It started on the fifteenth or twentyfifth time, he wasn’t sure, but soon, it hummed to life, not quite making itself known over the ringing or the other people rushing to the duchy. This was the only time when he felt… normal. Each day, he’d always felt like he’d stuck out, was the ace of spades in a card deck, big and dark and uniform, the one everyone debated over. But when his hands were put on the bike, the shuddering bike, he felt lower-classed, yes, but normal. Normal. He had a way to get out, to spread his wings to airless flight. As the dirt bike went forward, kicking up some of the faultless grass and dirt, he leaned in closer towards the bike. Him and his bike were sometimes one and the same, both monsters with no direction until he leaned this way or that, turned a handlebar. He could feel its breath, its motorized heartbeat. He’d named it “steed”... short for “fiery- footed steed”, but a steed nonetheless. Steed banked around the corner, nearly cutting off the leaves of one of the pine trees. Its engine doubled, tripled, each vrooming adding another heartbeat to Lancer. It was a chaotic kaleidoscope, a kaleidoscope he could control. The wall was edging up towards Lancer’s vision. The gates were opened, but Lancer didn’t have the gumption to barrel through an entire crowd of nobles just yet. They hated him enough because of his position, and he was sure that a tire tread to the back wouldn’t help matters at all. So he slowed down Steed’s eager warrior-heart for a little while, eased off of the gas bar, his frustration set on low in its boiling- pot. He made his way to the path. Some of the nobles made accented yelps, mostly British accents (as if they weren’t “noble” enough), whenever he drove by, but that didn’t matter. He was Steed, and Steed had control. Steed knew what it… no, he was doing. Lancer calculated each lean, each dip. Once, though, he ended up almost scraping his elbow on the ground. That would have been inconvenient, especially since it was next to a handful of cuts trying, trying their hardest, to form scabs. The engine puttered in an impatient drumbeat, and Lancer found himself muttering, “I know, I know.” But he couldn’t pay attention now… the duchy lay just to his left, and the first noble who had walked out was at least a few hundred feet behind him, as far as he could tell. The duchy was… untouched. Out of everything, out of all the catastrophes he’d imagined with a meteor, it was untouched. There were no people scattered everywhere, nobody running away from the explosion site. In fact, there was no explosion site. Then what could be the matter? The only way Lancer could tell where to go next was a wisp of smoke, a hair trapped in the sky. He veered off the path, hearing an “Oh, thank the Lord” or two behind him. Having no time to grit his teeth, he sped off towards where the wisp was coming from. The wind tasted sour now, the distinct taste of smoke. A convolution of both hearty gatherings by the castle fireplace and a fistful of war, of innocent people and buildings burning, crumpling to the ground. There was nobody here, nobody left, nobody to the right. He would look behind him, but then he’d hit a tree, or worse. Gosh, he needed to get some rearview mirrors on there soon. Inching forward, the engine puttering, everything looking clear… wait. Wait. He tried turning on his headlights, it flashing in an almost epileptic manner the way a phone does when taking a picture. But a glass shatter almost coaxed a “darn it” out of him, and his eyes adjusted to the blackness. Wait. There was something. A lump, but not an ordinary lump. He knew what it was in the way it shifted up and down ever so slightly, moved back and forth, even tried to drag itself. Steed skittered to a stop, Lancer’s legs almost touching the engine in the middle and burning themselves more than they were before. A body. He’d had these first- aid classes before, but he’d taught them to himself; the castle had its entire department to help with that. “You okay?” Lancer half- shouted, the dimming almost gone from his ears. Not quite. If the person ended up being alright, and didn’t allow Lancer to help him, he couldn’t. Lancer didn’t preferr being bashed by every direction because of “royal blood assisting a peasant.” They were both people. Just people. Or… was he a person? He shook, put his hands on his legs, stood up. There was a slight rattling as he shook himself free, and Lancer stepped back for a moment so the man could get his bearings. As soon as Lancer looked at the man even more, he realized he was Lancer’s height. A child. “Erm… hey there, buddy.” It felt stupid spitting that out. No response from the child, and after hearing a whisper from him of, “Jesus, I fall into a whole duchy, and no streetlights?” The nobles had finally caught up to him, had finally started their accented yelling at them. Lancer thought of shushing them, but he stopped. He didn’t want to be the royal- pain- in- the- gavortnick everyone already thought he was. The kid’s eye flashed a color of blue, the color of his hoodie an eerily perfect match with Lancer’s. A voice, deeper than even his father’s, came out, and Lancer tiptoed backwards, back towards Steed. “Heya. I know, not one of my best landings. Show’s over. Nothing left to see.”

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Xenophobia was the first word that popped into Lancer’s mind. It was like the ace of spades that he was constantly. Ostentatious. Uncalled- for. Perhaps it stayed inside the confines of his mind, but he wasn’t quite sure about that. Neither was he sure where it filtered from. Perhaps his father, or perhaps his subjects. Cumbustioni, as the Church and Rouxls had taught him once on one Sunday or another. For the first time in his twelve years, the palace seemed to hold its breath. It was always moving, always changing, always bulging and imploding, imploding and bulging again. But now, it was as if it was any other part of the kingdom: completely still, completely silent. It was what Lancer came in quest of whenever he darted out on Steed. The man- child- whatever creature smiled, stepping forward with his left foot and pretending to roar. A few, genuinely frightened, ran back to the castle. Lancer guessed that Xenophobia had popped into the man-child’s mind, too, as well as the people who were now gawking at him. “Alright, alright!” Lancer shouted, clapping his hands together. People started to already dart away as if they had ESP. His father hated him for doing that, even if he turned out to be in the right in the end. “You heard him! Nothing to see! He needs space, c’mon, c’mon…” The cloud dissipated like a bubble once popped, each going back to the daily races to line up at the starting line again. Lancer could practically feel the sigh of relief that came from the child-man. A quick glance to the castle, as quick as a glance behind him whenever he was on Steed, and the questions barrelled out of his mouth, not stopping. “Hey, you sure you’re alright? Are you, erm, bruised anywhere? Does it hurt anywhere? That must have been a long fall, man…Deus, miserere mei.. Are you sure you don’t have any broken… bones… or…” His speech died, an engine sputtering down, as the man-child used his eye as a flashlight, their two hoodies twain, one and the same. Lancer couldn’t help but stare at every move the man-child made, his skeleton the only part of his body, deftness at every movement necessary. The man-child didn’t waste any of his time. “Yeah, I’m fine. Name’s Sans.” “Sahn what?” “Sans Gaster. Like ‘ants’, not ‘lawn’. That last name means stomach, but, heh, better than nothing, ain’t it?” “So you don’t have a stomach, Sahn?” Lancer almost felt like covering his mouth. He didn’t mean to pronounce it that way. “Whaddya think?” He stretched out his body, a little rattling sound added for good measure. Lancer laughed, a laugh he hated to hear but loved to use. “Sorry. I come from French blood and all. So I’ll probably pronounce your name wrong, too. But I do know how to speak it! Wanna hear some? When you’re stuck in a castle, you learn all sorts of things!” “Things like what?” He didn’t backtrack like most people did when they learned Lancer was of royalty. He fiddled nervously with his jacket. “Things… like….” His face lit up like one of the stars hanging over the both of them. And then his hand moved in suit, pointed to the stars. Tenuous sentinels they were, tangles of light and shadow. “Like the Upper World! The place that people came from when they fell down here. It’s supposed to be a whole lot brighter, brighter than the stars, too!” “The Upper World? Nope. Never heard of it. Unless it was written somewhere earlier in this thing- shit.” Lancer covered his ears. Winced his eyes shut. Stuck out his tongue. “Oop, I’m sorry. Tend to do that sometimes. What’re you, ten? Eleven?” “Twelve.” He disarmed his ears, flopped his hands back at his sides. There were stirrings coming from the windows behind him. Maybe it was just a decent handful of people with brooms, ready to clean out the mess. Lancer turned to Sans, plastered a smile on his face, tried to be polite the way Rouxls had spent weeks and weeks teaching him in that same library when he was six. “Erm, Sahn, do you mind doing the… you know, the…” Lancer snapped once, twice, flapped towards his eye, made a pinging noise. “Oh, sure. Not the first time I’ve been used as a flashlight.” If the two boys were trying to be subtle, they completely failed. As soon as the others saw the blue light, they were immediately blinded by the skeleton- man- child- thing’s eye, screaming, yelping, covering their eyes, doing whatever they could to pass by. Gosh, this dude is so weird… “Ah, shhhh-”Lancer smiled, the edges crinkling like a devil’s henchmen would. “-ooooooot. You see anything weird while it was glowin’ there?”“Yeah, I saw someone. I think it was-”There was no color to drain from Lancer’s face, so all the light drained instead. He rushed towards Steed, greeted by Sans’ own weirded- out face. “Um…..” Sweat poured down his face, the air tasted sour. It couldn’t be him. Not with that crown, that black cape, looking just like him, a whole tail sticking out of him, the one who had created him, the one who a small, small part of Lancer admitted should be doing something… more… Besides, Lancer didn’t know whether or not Sans was a Lightner, and as he learned from what was now a permanent scar on his lower back, if they’re not a Darkner, without a doubt, they’re most definitely a Lightner. The words came, erratic and damaged as they were. “You need a place to stay, don’tcha? So let’s just… ride into town! Now. Please.”The tail swished towards the ground, stopped, the air stopping in Lancer’s lungs. All of the words Lancer was trying to promulgate stopped in his head, banged around the edges, screamed to be let free. But he couldn’t. Not now. Not while he was still-The bike creaked, the lightest of hands resting on Lancer’s shoulders, and without another thought, he sped off at forty-five miles an hour, only slowing down to forty when the hands started to slip every now and then. As he rode out of the town, the tail whipped, perplexed, confused… and then the King of Chaos himself, Le Roi du Chaos, tromped back to the castle. This was the only time that Lancer felt normal, but it was a certain type of normal he loved the taste, smell, aura of. The inner areas of the duchy were alit with the fires of independence, rock music blaring out of Lancer’s speakers as a message proclaimed to the entire town. The street lights helped him to turn off his headlights, but the people, free and wanton as they were, convinced him to keep them on. The streets were paved, scuffed up with tire paint of skids and reverses. If Lancer could sneak up on the people in the town, could manage to see them without them noticing he was the Prince and putting a mask on their normal habits, he could see them. See them with his mind’s eye, see them with his body’s eye. He could see the way they laughed, see the way they weren’t afraid to vape when their jobs were on their break. He could see the way they made cards of their own, made a sport out of it, traded money and a little dignity for it. He could see the way they looked at beauty, lusted for beauty in the music and art they created each day. He saw light, independent and free light. His only nitpick was they thought they were oppressed.Before the two of them knew it, the hotel to the right said hello. There was a parking lot in the back, but who needed that? The cars could speed right on by if he pulled to the right hard enough. “Don’t worry, kid. I’ll be fine here.”“This is the only hotel I know, Sahn. Sorry! If I see anything better, I’ll tell ya if I have the time!”“Hey, thanks.”Lancer moved back to his bike, a particularly devilish pickup truck speeding through at sixty miles an hour, hydroplaning, the water stinging the concealer off of Lancer’s face. Any moment now, the bruises would stop masking themselves, announce themselves as they were. The water dripped off of his face. As if he were weeping, which he was perniciously close to doing, he hung his head low, made his way back to his bike. “Oh, by the way-” Lancer stopped trying to pull the dirt bike to start. “I never got your name.” Lancer did the best he could, tilting his face towards his bike a little. “Lancer. But don’t pronounce it like ‘lawn sair’, like I just did. I just did it because mon cul Français can’t pronounce it any other way. Americanize it like this: ‘Lan’ like in ‘ant’, the second part like ‘sir’.” “Cool. And believe it or not, I don’t think I properly introduced myself.” “Oh, yeah?” Lancer was heaving every effort to start up his dirt bike now, resorting to pouring some extra fuel on it, closing his eyes in defeat when a handful spilled on his trousers. He wouldn’t be able to outlive that now. “I guess you could say that I’m the son of God. At least on this world.” Lancer stopped pouring, took the effort to look at him, to watch him look back, as if they were both playing chicken with each other’s gazes. Underneath Lancer, the bike started, and without another word, Lancer darted back to his castle, almost eager to go back. Man. This guy just keeps on getting weirder and weirder.

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This wasn’t the first time Lancer tried to disguise himself as a peasant when he got inside the castle gates. He considered muddling up his outfit, covering up his spade icon. Heck, he was already halfway there. His trousers already smelled more like gasoline than normal, and his cloak, slapped on him by his father and the royal hierarchy since he could remember, smelled like musty water. Gasoline and rainwater. Greeeaaat. His father would just adore that- Stop. Who was he kidding? He was just being rebellious, entering into his adolescent- like behaviors again. His father loved him, and if one wanted to look at the evidence, he only needed to look around. The fact that he was inside castle walls, the fact that his bank account was practically spilling with gold, all given by his father, the fact that everyone had to address him not as “Lancer” or even “Lawn Sair”, but as “Your Highness” or “Your Majesty.” He didn’t have to attend school for as long as the other children. School. He got to learn new languages, new subjects even the average adult didn’t learn. Not that he always comprehended it… alright, he comprehended maybe a fourth of what was being taught… but what did it matter? Would his father do any of these things for him if it wasn’t love? If Lancer had his own children and did any of those things to him, would he be considered hated? Maybe, if his children turned out to be anything like him. He took a deep breath, tried to freshen himself up, practiced his smile so it crinkled all the way up to his eyes. walked into the room. Still, he made for his room. Maybe he could hide there, practice his Latin for a little while, listen to some Led Zeppelin, heck, even translate Led Zeppelin into Latin. He set his hand on the doorknob, not even looking to see if the door was covered with musty gasoline, but knowing it was anyway. “Lancer.” He turned around. He learned that the best thing to do when his father called his name like that was to say nothing. To give in to his freezing body. “Where were you?” Freeze. Freeze. Freeze. “Answer me, you son of a bitch, where were you?” “...’was at the duchy.” Lancer could see his eyes reflected in the doorknob, cast down as always. A shadow crept up behind him. His father’s huge belly lunged over the limits of his tunic. He was a black hole. In astronomy, a black hole is a region of space having no leeway for any sort of matter to escape. Three magic words. “Get over here!”He knew the drill. He could still see his eyes cast down to the doorknob. He turned off his ears. He had a well- worked science for doing that. He could only hear the bad words, and even then was only on occasion. But still, the insults filtered, cut, although not as deeply as it would to others. Lancer’s hand was yanked from the doorknob, which was locked by his father. By the time he lost sight of his reflection in the doorknob, there was an unbuckling, a beltsnap, a sting. Oh, no. Not his hand. That was one of the rare, more visible parts of his body. With long enough sleeves, he could cover his arms, his legs, his torso, but his hands.... His father was ahead of him. Soon, the sting did spread to his arms, his legs, his back. But he crowned it all by crowning Lancer with a goose egg and a dent in the wall. He allowed his eyes to widen. Usually, it didn’t get this bad, but there were a few nights when it did. His hands were still the worst part. He didn’t even need to see to know what it looked like. The red, at first looking like some sick joke of a rash, but deeper. Deep enough for a month of gloves, or a month of using the left hand. “Get to bed, boy. Bastard. Running all around town, and I don’t know it. Lucky I don’t do something worse. Dumbass. Y’don’t even belong here. Sure as hell don't act like it, either.”He didn’t know he was limping until he was halfway up the sixth step, looking at his father. The bees still stung, stung, stung, but his father looked relaxed as he put his belt back on. So he was doing something right. He was doing something that was making his father happy, something that made his day better. And that couldn’t be wrong, right? That couldn’t be wrong at all. Still, he couldn’t help but notice he was shaking, notice he was on the verge of crying, as the Led Zeppelin tried to coax him into sleep as he lay on his bed, prostrate as opposed to supine or prone. As the bed absorbed every inch of red, he absorbed every inch of Robert Plant’s sage. “Way down inside, you need it. I’m gonna give you my love.”Wasn’t he doing the same thing to his dad? And wasn’t it confusing that he couldn’t relate the song to anyone who did the same thing back? He fell to more confusion than when Sans fell.

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It was always sorer in the morning. That's the way it always was. The pain had changed this time; instead of being a bee sting, a constant stab, it was more like a constant throb. Lancer felt fatter than he believed, felt more bloated more than he believed. It was as if his torso and limbs had covered themselves in an extra land of hypersensitivity. It was this hypersensitivity that took him one hour to get out of bed.The stash was always hidden in his empty dresser drawer. He knew no one would look there, considering the hotel of spiders it had become over the years. Making sure to lock the door before he began, he sighed just a little, the smile still on his face from a pervading joke he'd thought of as soon as he'd gotten out of bed. The foundation, then the concealer, then a little bit of powder, each of them the palest in the store, all bought while he was disguised in a regular t-shirt and jeans, which was much harder than it sounded since everyone in the castle insisted that everything must be top-of-the-line.It throbbed more than ever, but Lancer knew he had to be strong. He wanted to be just like Dad, and Dad was the strongest person he knew. He stared at his hands and his face in the mirror, almost in awe. Only someone really, really strong could do something like this! He wanted to be just like him!But just to his enemies.And what wasn't strong at all? Showing what was wrong with him. His father could be dealing with some of the worst things in the world. His father could even be going out to the town himself, getting his own stash of makeup! Lancer's grin changed from humorous to daring. As the concealer came on his face and his hands, then the foundation, then the powder, the smile still went on his face, although the foundations were slightly wrinkled.He was about to show his dad how alright he was, how strong he was, how ready he was to conquer what the world had ahead of him when he noticed his father sleeping on his throne, oblivious to everything he was doing. The attendant trying to fan him awake looked at Lancer for a moment, as if he noticed Lancer was having a limp. But Lancer bit his cheeks just a little, inhaled just a little sharper, and walked as normally as he could. After muttering a swear word or two, the attendant continued to try to wake him. But it was no use. There were four empty glasses of ale surrounding the throne, still colder than the popsicles Lancer loved to eat as a child. The snoring alone was enough to drown out all of the pleadings of the attendant. His father was asleep… but still, Lancer could do something.Lancer kissed the top of his father's head for a moment. "Bye, Dad. I love you. I'll be home for dinner, okay?"The king didn't respond, but stirred just a little. Lancer practically pounced out of the castle.

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He’d heard! He’d heard! The smile returned to Lancer’s face, and, without even thinking to check what the weather was to day, he sprinted from the castle doorway to his bike. He’d heard! He’d heard every word I said! Lancer thought, practically breaking the doorknob as he opened the shed. His bike was nowhere to be found. The sweat poured on Lancer’s veins. The shed was empty, opposing his version of how today would be. With a furrowed brow, and with a heartbeat climbing mountains with each second, he closed the door. Where could Steed be? He was certain he'd put it in the shed that night, just before his father discovered where he'd been. But that was alright. His father was right. He deserved it And he deserved his bike being missing…. He heard a clompity, clompity, clompity, clompity CLOMP CLOMP behind him. Whipping his head around, taking down the icy, fiery fortresses that so often surrounded him, he chuckled All of a sudden, the grass seemed to turn a few shades brighter, more vibrant. The birds’ tweets seemed to resound to some of the farthest parts of the castle. “PRINCE!” Huffs came up, once every second. Running something with you that heavy wasn't easy at all. “I, BESTOWED, THY, VEHICLEST, TO, THE, FRONTETH, DOOR…” He stopped, put both hands on his knees, unwittingly dropped the bike. “However, sinceth thou werest not abiding there, I absconded herest…” Rouxls. Dear Rouxls. He was always bounding down the hill with a smile, a crazed conglomeration of what Lancer thought his father should be and the mess he thought was his father’s mood swings. He never wore a belt, and if he did, never even moved his hands to take it off. He let Lancer eat whatever was in his house in his duchy, still reeling in funds despite someone else, for the majority, taking over the duchy since Lancer was born. “Don’t worry, it’s alright!” Lancer said, his jollity forced out the slightest. He moved to the left, shook Steed the best he could for his 4 foot 7 form, and didn’t see loose gears bouncing around in it. He moved to sit on Steed, running his hand up the paint just to say hello. He’d heard through TV and books that this was what people did to their horses just before they went off on a ride. He almost, almost ignored his throbbing legs and ankles, the stabbing just starting to return to his arms. He leaned forward, almost thinking he could defy both gravity and weakness, when his chest and stomach lit on fire and he groaned just a little bit. Just a bit. He still wanted to be strong, just like Dad, didn’t he? “Art thou alrightest?” Rouxls had just finished combing his hair from the run, but it was still being tangled in the wind. “Yeah, I-” He shifted his legs to the pedals, his calves screaming to him. He almost wanted to scream back, to tell them to be quiet, but he just stared at the dashboard in order to distract himself. He wanted to move and get his Led Zeppelin for all the world to hear, but he felt as if Rouxls would approach him and actually look under his sleeves. Which would be an unforgivable crime. A shame. A shame that didn’t deserve prison. Nobody whose hands didn’t even move to unbuckle their belt deserved prison. “I’m just going out to town. Tell Dad I’ll be home by dinner, alright?” He noticed he’d forgotten to start the vehicle, pulling, pulling, pulling, almost falling off of the now- gone- rogue Steed, until it finally started, the heat from the rear tires almost singing Lancer’s hood before he sat up again. The new movement to his torso made him have to bite his tongue, but it was alright. Rouxls became very interested in the grass, staring at his 14- karat boots, shifting his weight back and forth, back and forth. All of the faded whimsy was gone, all of the transparency occluded. He was… staid, almost. “Melodramatic” would be what Lancer’s father called it, but Lancer himself would be calling it “staring at his boots like they were lions.” Lancer looked back, Steed puttering impatiently. Lancer kept his eyes on Roxusl, shouting, “C’mon, lesser dad, you’ve gotta tell greater Dad! You’re staring at your boots like they’re lions!” If Rouxls looked back up, he didn’t pay attention. If Rouxls knew his bike was sputtering up a storm, drowning all noise, he didn’t notice. If Rouxls knew that Lancer’s father was still asleep, he didn’t say. Rouxls knew all sorts of things… how to conjugate fluently in Latin, how to tell a peregrine falcon from a gyrfalcon, how to conduct an entire Mass despite the fact that Lancer’s path was paved on laymen’s roads… but on the things that mattered, or at least mattered to Lancer, he was sometimes taciturn. It first came out as a mutter. “Please speak up!” A half- choked phrase. “Please!” Mirroring Steed, not quite saying anything, his face paling as if he were a hand touched to a runaway snowball. “Sil v’ous plait!” It had changed from a peddle- thudding language to a bird- tweeting language, and this bird tweeting coaxed Rouxls back up. “Alright. If thou insistest, monsieur. Just… be careful, alright?” “That’s it?!” Lancer asked, turning on Steed's headlights to start. Rouxls’ eyes darted to the side. “And you can always talk to me, no matter what happens.” Lancer revved up the engine. “I'm talking to you now, aren't I?” ….. He could have gone to visit Ralsei on the other side of the kingdom or made a few boils of mischief elsewhere by himself, but he didn't. He could have just lay prostrate, relaxed on one of the alley walls, blaring his Led Zeppelin for all the unawakened world to hear, but he didn't. Instead, he went over to a hotel over in a duchy that, for the most part, wasn't too steeped in Rouxl's authority. Lancer didn't know why. Maybe the bruises on him would sting a little less that way. Sans was waiting for him, but he seemed to be panting a little, his identically colored hoodie as wrinkled as Lancer’s smile was that morning. He almost smiled again as he looked down at his hands and noticed the makeup hadn’t quite come off. “Morning! Oh, gosh, I shouldn’tve just left you there. How’re you doin’?” “Feelin’ fine.” But the words came out in the same huffs Rouxls had when he’d run down the hill, little half-puffs outside in the cold December weather of the Dark World. “Sahn? When did you get here?” “Whatta you talking about? I’ve been here since last night. You took me here, remember? Heh…” Lancer cut off Steed’s engine, gave it a little pat just for good measure. He inhaled, decided to drop the subject. Rouxls had done this to him a countless amount of times, just as he had done the same to his father countless amounts of times. “Alright, alright. But I’m in the mood for some breakfast, Sahn! Plus… we need to talk about a few things.” Sans, without another word, turned back to the hotel and muttered, “Breakfast? A big ol’ palace, and they don’t even- he doesn’t even-” Lancer had mentally prepared himself ever since he’d met Sans, mentally prepared himself for anything he had to say. Anything borderlining blasphemy, or even being blasphemy itself, he taught himself to react in the same way he would if Sans told him he liked puppies and rainbows. Even if that didn’t work, he would still turn off his ears the same way he did that night. He found that skill helped him, especially with finding what he needed and wanted to find in a person, below the layer of all the cursing, all of the chatting, all of the insults. As soon as the people started pouring into the hotel, the smell of warmed coffee and pancakes, the taste of browned sugar, the laughter of the people inundated with nostalgia, flooded into Lancer’s ears to the point that they started to rang. So he got out his MP3 player, struggling to yank it out of his pocket, and shuffled to the Led Zeppelin folder, almost by default. He was almost ready to apologize, but he found that Jimmy Page and Robert Plant taught him how to communicate much more effectively than years of Rouxl’s classes did…. at least without words. He snatched the menu, bounced his bruised legs updownupdownupdown in excitement when he found the blueberry pancakes with the hushpuppies beside it, swimming in maple syrup. Sans’ mouth moved, but if they were saying anything. Lancer didn’t know. After the second time, he heard a muffled, “Whatul’uu?” Lancer took off one headphone, the chatter returning to him once again. But it felt slightly better now that someone else was talking to him, someone familiar and warm, like the coffee they sold at the hotel, so he took two headphones off, Robert Plant shutting up for now. “I asked what you were listening to, kiddo,” Sans said. “Ordered for ya, too.” His father had told him about this before. About being dependent on other people, and how terrible it was to stretch into the double digits without being independent enough to fend for himself. He almost considered leaving right then and there, but the promises of someone being interested in what so many other people shunned kept him there. Alright, and the smell of blueberry pancakes. “Um.. I’m listening to Led Zeppelin… you probably won’t like it, though. I don’t have any pop music or anything like that, so…” “Hey, hey, hey, that’s fine. Can I have a listen?” “No. No, I don’t think that’ll be a good idea. You see, um… the headphones! Yeah, the headphones! If I try to stretch the other end all the way out to you, it’ll break! “It’s alright. You can just put it on speaker, can’tcha? I bet it’ll be some bonafide stuff.” Oh, jeez. Lancer unplugged the cord, turned on the speaker so he could barely hear Jimmy Page having fun with the guitars, the solos yelling out ballads of love and loss to a hotel that didn’t want to hear them. Finally, the both of them could hear Robert Plant’s voice streaming through the dark blue MP3 case. “And as we wind on down the road, oh, oh, oh, our shadows taller than our sooooooul, bam- BAM!...” “You… probably don’t like it. I… I think I should turn it off now.” But Sans was in a world, a dimension all to himself, bought and sold to himself within the minute, sunk into the chair, head nodding to the beat of Led Zeppelin’s war- drum heartbeat. He even nodded off, almost fell asleep, until Lancer had to flick his nose, or at least where his nose should be, before Sans laughed awake. Robert Plant went silent, overthrown by the blueberry pancakes and the hotdog that had come to the table. “A hotdog?! C’mon, Sahn, it’s breakfast!” “Who says we have to eat breakfast food for breakfast?” Fifteen minutes later, and all of the food had disappeared, and three customers had been quite fed up with the three songs that came from Led Zeppelin. But if either of the two boys cared at all, they didn’t show it.An entire conversation, and “prince” or “your highness” hadn’t been mentioned even once.Lancer turned back to Steed, washing it… no, him… off with a damp rag and a little bit of hotel- bathroom- soap- that- smelled- like- burnt- marshmallows. Sans, without any preamble, started helping, spreading a little on himself, sneezing out a few bubbles, and making Lancer howl in laughter. “Heheheh, yeah, that was pretty funny…. listen, kid. I’m gonna be stayin’ here for a long time, okay?” “How long?” Lancer had just finished going over the headlights, noticing the puddle that had sprayed him the previous night had dried up instead of freezing over. “I’m not sure. But however long it is, y’ can always talk to me. Alright?” Lancer nodded, although a little slow this time, as if the gears to his neck had rusted. “Alright. Well, I’m going to Ralsei’s, Sahn, so you’re free to come with me if you like. I know how boring it is just to stay in one place, and with Steed with my side, the two of us can get anywhere!” “Ralsei? Who’s he?” “What, Son of God, don’t know him?” “I mean… I mean, I should, but… kid, I dunno what happened-” Lancer noticed. He’d been taught to notice these things, to notice the way people shifted their weights back and forth, lost their eye contact, stood upright when they had once been slumping, swallowed with just a little bit more difficulty. “You’re hiding something, arentcha?” Lancer’s eyebrows furrowed, but he stopped when he felt some of the foundation peeling off. He’d have to refill in some alley once he’d started off to the other side of the kingdom. Sans didn’t say anything. How could he? And how could Lancer react? “Well, Sahn, guess I’ll just have to find out myself! Seeya!” “Anytime, kiddo. Anytime.” Steed’s engine rustled back to life. Lancer de le Pique, the Prince of the Dark World, the Ace of Spades, was determined to find out what one could possibly hide about Ralsei. The new thought put more purpose into Steed’s engine.

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Chapter 6The road smiled at Lancer, riding alongside him, a fiery horse in flight beside him. But with every inch away from the palace, away from Rouxl's duchy, his cuts still smiled at him, grimacing. So he fought back against it. Dismayed at the fact that his MP3 was dead and gone until the next charge, he still smiled, whooped, yelled out various phrases in Latin he'd heard time and time again about victory, about triumph. “Sic semper tyrannis!” “Si vis pacem, para bellum!” He almost yelled out, “Deus Vult”, but he knew that the news crew would be spilling in a giant sigh of rush and hurry as soon as he'd said that. He passed by the spot where he'd met Ralsei for the first time. At first, Lancer thought Ralsei was the funniest little boy he'd ever met, other than himself; Ralsei had paraded in, telling everyone how he was a true prince. THE true prince. But prince or not, he could charm the words, draw the gold out of any situation, becoming a registered poet in his own duchy within the hour. That and the ability to tell a joke, the ability to still the belt and replace it with balm, was the force that guided Steed towards the end of the kingdom. It took an hour or two for Lancer to reach the other end of the kingdom, running out of fuel once and casting a very, very, very opaque layer of shame on himself when he asked for gas with not his forgotten money, but with his status. Having nothing to do during the journey, he ended up singing all of the Led Zeppelin songs he knew before noticing Steed smelled like the flaming arrows the French soldiers back in his ancestry used. So he parked off to the side, trying to stay away from the mud, playing a game of solitaire for a little while, his heart beating in a twisted thud when he played the king of spades. Ten more minutes of blistering, blustery sun, ten more minutes of Steed sputtering along underneath him, and Ralsei came up across the corner, waving, his red scarf battering itself across Ralsei's neck from either the constant gusts of wind that seemed to blow through Ralsei's duchy or the gusts Steed to create whenever it he rushed past anyone that dared to go in his way. With a slight hesitation, Lancer cut off speed, turned down the handle that meant a temporary relinquishment of his freedom. He was greeted with Ralsei's cries, borderlining on piercing, just high-pitched enough to be childish and just subtle enough to be sage. He tromped up the path, not seeming to care that his foot were making a squORCH, squORCH, squORCH, on the ground, head held at Lancer's eye level, back not daring to sag anywhere below ninety degrees.It was the exact way that Rouxls had taught him how to walk, the exact same way that Rouxls still chided him on. Maybe constructing his poems brought him that sort of grandeur. “-and you'll NEVER guess what I saw as I was getting water near the Entrance, Lancer!” “Huh, what…” Lancer was too busy with his kickstand, too busy with trying to bear and beat the battering gusts blowing through his hood. “An opening!” Lancer stopped, everything in him as frozen as his veins whenever he would come home to his father, awake and alive. An opening? There hadn't been an opening, at least one he’d heard of, since the time Rouxls had guided him into that same library and read him out of his textbooks. In fact, there had been a few times where they’d partied, prayed, begged, even had Masses together for an opening. Because if there was an opening, there was hope. Hope that whoever, whatever came down from the Upper World could tell them how to get back. Ralsei was the last one who had went through one of these openings, his memory seeming to be devoid in that aspect, but photographic anywhere else. But why did any of that matter? If there was an opening, it meant a new potential friend. Someone to look at all of his puzzles, someone to listen to all of his Led Zeppelin albums with him, every single note. Lancer shifted his weight from left to right, evolving into a little bunny- hop before he started to jump up and down, laughing, laughing. It was what some people dubbed as “on the spectrum”, but what most dismissed as childhood. It was more meaningful than worded happiness, more wordless than delight. “Are you ready?!” Ralsei exclaimed, clutching onto royal soldiers without one word of protest. That tended to happen when there was no camera crew or escorts around. “I can’t wait to show them all one of my poems I’ve been cooking up!” Lancer laughed, although it was a little bit out of politeness. “Places?” Ralsei’s brow rose up, making just a few wrinkles. “I think we need to practice for a little-” Lancer punched him, with all the cheer of childhood, in the arm. “Aw, c’mon! We’ve been practicing for years! C’mon, c’mon, places…” They heard a clattering in the distance, the quietest of echoes off of the rocks. In no time at all, the two children were screaming, screeching with childish delight, laughing, going into their places, Lancer sprinting to Steed before Ralsei could say anything else.

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A/N: Hey, guys. I know, I know. It’s been awhile. With both some personal issues and a novel I recently made completed, I haven’t come around to writing this in quite awhile.And to make things worse, I’m not going to be submitting a chapter tomorrow. Today, I was feeling a little off. Crummy, in fact. I had a sore throat that made it hurt to swallow, some nausea, a headache, tender lymph nodes, yada yada yada. Welp, I went to the doctor, and turns out, I have strep throat. We caught it early, though, so I should be back in two days. This might also be why the writing quality isn’t quite up to par as before.Oh, well. See you all in two days!… A smile, with mischief- not quite evil- on the fringes, hinged on Lancer’s face. Steed puttered, puttered with an impatient horses’ hoofbeat, on the ground. Ralsei hooded himself, the outfit ink-black, darker than the sky, even. Ready to recite one of his poems in order to welcome whoever was coming in. Who in the world was going to come in? Would it be someone like Sans, who would bring some sort of grand mix of messianic blathering and genuine magnanimity? Would it be an envoy from the Surface, hoping to make peace and relations and whatnot? Or would it be someone… someone strange. Someone pernicious. Someone loving. Someone who never moved their hands to their belt. Someone who wouldn’t curse him out whenever he cried. Someone… Ah, forget about it. He didn’t deserve any of that. He behaved too badly. He ate too much food, was too much of a mischief- maker. He didn’t deserve that. Two figures, one smaller, one taller and looming, but still undeservedly the same size, leaked their inky shadows in the distance, the plants and other background noise seeming to wilt away. For a moment, Lancer thought it was just a mirror. That no one had come down, not really, and it was a tilted, twisted reflection of the two princes. Just to test, he stretched out his arm. It dangled, stretched back and forth in the tangled webs of light and shadow, but what sent a chill of excitement down Lancer's soul was that none of the two figures moved their arms when he did. In a burst of reason, which came few and far between, Lancer choked the engine off. His shoulder blades shuddered as he moved back, shoved back Steed, darted back into the pole in one jump, almost screaming in childish glee. The reason had died, its last command for Lancer to stretch out his head and see the newcomers. They weren't adults, as far as he could tell. The way they stood, their height, the way that they wrapped themselves in Ralsei's tale, an angel in delight, told him this. They weren't children, either. The one to the left stood motionless, silent, the way his father would in a thrashed heartbeat of stillness once Lancer came home. The one to the right held...an axe. An axe? Jeez! Some of the soldiers were scared to get ahold of one of those! “I am a prince, Lighteners, the dark prince foretold in the prophecy, but… I am afraid I don't have any subjects.” Lancer took this blow full in the chin, almost wincing. But no matter how obstinate Ralsei could or wanted or hoped to be, the two couldn't see him like this. Then, they'd just walk away, leaving the belt hanging over him, ready, watching, steady… Lighteners? So that's who they were! Another secret, kept right next to Sans in the filing cabinets of Lancer's secrets, bare and locked, bare yet locked. Another group to hide, another group to keep safe. He had to keep him safe, keep them happy. But the hotel could only hold them so long. So they had to be held at the castle if they wanted to be safe. Where would his father never find them, never so much as peek at their faces… The answer chained Lancer in the stomach. Digging in every time he thought of it. The sound of Steed's engine, growling to life, drowned this answer out. Time for the show, the grand illusion to begin.…. Hours passed, and the script that Ralsei and Lancer had practiced finished, the improvisation ended. The two had introduced themselves. Lancer had shown then a few of his puzzles, fought them for sport. Try as he might to hide it, one of the attacks still smarted in his arm. They then moved to small talk, the greyed jump that friendships must hurl themselves over at some point, that every conceivable relationship had to. Well, one of them did any sort of talking. The other remained silent, and whether it was blissful or just a little annoying, or whether it was threatening, Lancer couldn't quite tell. The one who couldn't speak was Kris, who seemed to pull himself back and forth with an automaton's motivation. The one who could was named Suzie. “You're a LADY?!” “Yep. I'm a lady. F'you're not happy with it, then you can kiss my ass, bud.” She picked her teeth with her axeblade, but Lancer didn't know for sure whether it was for show or if she was fluctuating some show of honesty. Try as she might, Lancer still noticed the slip of blood coming out of her lip. It was what Lancer noticed most about her, at least in the hour they had been together. She could be doing the civilest things, the most trivial. Stroking a puppy, helping out the homeless, buying a new dress. Whatever they were doing, there was always a certain spoke to her voice, the way she snapped when she moved, a trap poised to shut. Lancer smiled, if smiling any more was possible. “Or 'kiss my axe.’” Susie gave Lancer a playful punch in the arm, laughed a hearty, gruff laugh from the inside of her chest, wiped the dribble from her face. Ralsei chuckled, but not loud enough for anyone to hear besides the few fireflies flitting about right beside. him. Kris said nothing, but then again, he never said anything. “Suzie?” “Yeah?” “S’okay if I call you Suze?” “If I can call you Lance and drop the Your Highness and Your Majesty and all that bullcrap.” “Sure, by all means! I hate people calling me that anyway. So…” Lancer rummaged towards Susie. She backed away at first, but after a few moments, they diffused, water over a sheet of paper, and they were just close enough to be heard, just far enough to avoid panic. A whisper this time. “What’s up with Kris? He’s awfully quiet. Should I try using sign language or…” Susie laughed a little too heartily for the others, and Ralsei asked what was the matter. Susie had to shoo him away for a little while. “Nah, Lance. Kris is just...like that. He can talk. He answers questions in school and crap like that. He’s just… I dunno. Reticent.” “Say what?” “Just a big fancy word meaning he doesn’t want to talk a lot. Or… I dunno… like someone’s forcing him not to?” “Who knows?” Sans might. Oh, gosh, Sans might. Sans… what if he’s… I’ve gotta get to him after this!... not now not now not now… not now... A few seconds of silence, needed silence, augmented by Kris’ autonomous need to keep his mouth shut. “Agh!” Susie’s outfit had lost a sequin, Lancer catching it just before it hit the ground, scraping his arm where scabs were just forming over the… he gulped before he let himself think of it… belt whips. “My dad’s gonna kill me for this! God, I should’ve gotten another…” “Oh, jeez, oh, jeez… man, if that were me, I’d get thrashed for that!” The others looked at him, eyes forming into pools, and then beads, staring, staring. The silence grew, grew into an idle monster in that dark world, grew into a fog that froze everything inside of Lancer’s thoughts. But then humor came. Humor, with its fire, melting it with a hot plate. Then a blowtorch. The fog itself became reticent, that big word, that too- grand word, retreating, retreating, retreating... “I, uh, I mean… hohoho! I’m gonna thrash you guys with this next one!” He showed Suzie to his puzzles, a little bit more spring to his step, a little bit more sprightliness to his smile.

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The watch pleading on Lancer’s wrist twinkled in his eye, a tear reflecting it. But whether or not it was a tear of laughter or a tear of blackened regret at the prospect of going home, he didn’t know. He didn’t quite want to know. But his smile grew wider, wider than the depths of the Fountain, the same Fontaine of his childhood. He'd been baptized in that fountain when he was a baby, not shying away the dark for anything. He'd played in that babbling fountain with Rouxls, back when the both of them had nothing better to pass time with. He couldn't count the times he'd ran his fingers down the banisters, clutching the soft fabric with the spades design to his chest. When his father developed one of his moods, that was all. The flag was the only gentle thing. He knew it was dinnertime, but his stomach was overflowing with laughter, overflowing with the prospect of new visitors, silent “Alleluia”s bouncing all over his brain, cracking, fermenting in the kaleidoscope of his mind. Susie came, racing towards Lancer, perhaps meaning only to tap him, but toppling him over instead. All of the cuts, all of the whips covering his body stung again, the bees returning. The commissioner had ordered “safe materials”, but cement and stone? Stone and cement? “Hehe… gotcha, Lance.” Lancer was motionless. Being motionless was better than curling up, better than rolling over and letting Susie see the fugitive tears gathering near his eyes. Besides, the Church had already taught him about situations like this, that suffering was redemptive. That suffering was one of the best things anyone could undertake. It was the Darkners yearned for in small spoonfuls. Maybe, maybe, if his cuts hurt just enough, his father could be even happier… His father deserved to be happy. Ruling a kingdom left dinner plates under the King's eyes and his steps trembling a little, and Lancer couldn't help but imagine the merry-go-round of the King's mind… His father deserved to be happy. The bees stung. “Lance? God, ya wimp…” He heard a chuckle afterwards, which was more than a good enough sign for him to rise up, limbs shaking, to smile back. The foundations were still skewed in his smile, the stinging still there. There she was. Susie Williams, in all of her glory. Ready to take down anyone in her path, all the while carrying a baby on the top of her head. He loved her for that. Maybe that was how an older sister was supposed to be… “Hey, Suze, I took pictures of what we did today, wanna see?” “Hell, yeah.” Susie scooted on Steed, almost knocking over the kickstand. She toppled backwards before catching her right hand on the handlebar, Lancer almost knocking his phone down to reach her. Pushing herself up with one hand, extending the other in a “no, that’s alright” gesture. She smiled in her own unease, and it was then and only then that Lancer saw her smile, how it glinted in the light of Lancer’s phone. Of course, it’d been bought for him when he was at the ripe old age of four, replaced every year with the newer model. Not that he’d asked for, or desired for, any of that, of course. Susie leaned forward, purple hair dangling over Lancer's shoulder, craning to see... … “Hey.” “Hey, what?” “I’m gonna thrash you.” “Oh, yeah? I wanna see you try, small fry.” “Small fry?! Small fry?! I’m gonna show you who’s-” All of the rest was drowned out by attacks, by a flurry of autumn leaves, by spades flying in the fringes of the perpetual night, met by Susie’s axe, Ralsei’s songs, and Kris’ utter nothingness. A poem, one of Ralsei’s, in perfect harmony, all backdropped by the cacophony of the sky. If only Ralsei could be here to write a poem about this. … Ralsei drifted, back and forth, hanging off of one of the trees. Lancer had taught him that move, a terrifying spat considering Lancer's acrophobia. In a fit of giddiness, Ralsei let himself, his wizard's-hat hang upside down, eating the candy off of the tree, one by one. Lancer knew he couldn’t have any… he knew how fat he would get if he ate even one of those… and so he planted his MP3 player, the only antique, battered, item he owned, loaned from an ordinary seller from an ordinary duchy. Led Zeppelin screamed, for all the world to hear, and Ralsei’s paralyzed glance of shock was enough for the rest of his body to fall off the tree.’ Lancer was there to catch him, though, as reluctant as Ralsei was to admit it. But it was Krid who actually caught him. What was the word Susie had taught him? Reticent. Maybe it was a good thing to be that way. … The two of them were alone. The Fun Gang had officially split into two, although a dangerously giddy knowledge stayed that the gang was still united. Lancer tried to be intimidating, and there was still no harm in trying… The two of them were...scared , somewhat, although what they were afraid of they couldn’t quite tell each other. Lancer knew this in the way both him and Susie bit their lips in the same way, rocked back and forth in the same way, darted their eyes left to right in the same way. Lancer knew the secret, eating up the both of them, each secret too terrible to tell. Practically everyone was taught how to tell a lie, how to see when someone else was telling one, for “political purposes”. But most importantly, they were told how to tell a secret. So Lancer tried to ask one of his own. “Hey, you…” Susie nodded. Tried sharpening her axe on one of the stones dislodged, scattered about from the royal roads, even though she did little more than bang the poor axebit against the stone. Lancer almost said something, but bit his tongue. Susie didn't, although her voice was a perpetual mumble. “Yeah, Lance?” “You… youwannajoinmyfanclubiknowiknowit’sawkwardandiknowishouldstopohjeezohjeezi’msorry-” “Stop.” For the first time, Lancer could hear her smile, hear her smile in a different way then when she was just laughing. Smiling in the way that… a mother could. Of course, the only mother Lancer knew was the Holy Mother Catholic Church, but there was always this impression he would feel whenever he saw a baby being held, a teenager and her mother going out for ice cream. “Alright, Lance. Start from the beginning. I don’t speak Mumble.” The words were clearer than this time, not as muttered, as if they’d been… practiced before. In front of a mirror. Lancer knew how it sounded. He’d been to far too many royal plays to not know how it sounded. “Suze.” A deep breath, the cuts only complaining at the breath’s peak. “Suze, I… you know how, um, some public schools have a fan club, and it’s all around one person? Well, I have that sort of club. It’s called...um… the Lancer Fan Club. And I don’t have any members other than me. But it's fun, and spacious, and we can listen to MP3 songs, and you’ll get to enjoy thrashing me, and I’ll get to enjoy thrashing you right back!” Susie laughed, deeper than she did ever before, scaring one of the poor insects into running down a crack in the road. Or that could have been because of her as axe, dropping to the ground in a chin-ANG! “Well...yeah. I'll join. ‘Thrashing’ you, Lancer? What exactly are you implying there, ‘bud’?” Lancer stuck his tongue out, curled his face as if eating a lemon, making the loudest “Bleaaaaaugh!” he could possibly muster. He was only twelve, and although he wasn’t hidden from topics such as this, he wasn’t quite exposed to them on a daily basis, either. He squirmed, moved away from Susie, who snickered and punched- no, she slowed down her fist. She tapped him. “Sorry, Lance. So much time in a public school, y’know? I’m in the seventh grade, so kids aren’t exactly squeaky- clean. Except for this one kid...not Kris...she… ah, forget about it. Anyways, if people see a boy and a girl together, no matter what in the world they’re doing, they’ll think it’s some sort of ‘deep, lovey- dovey, smooch- smooch’ sort of thing.” “Blech” was all Lancer could say. “Blech, blech, blechy- bleck. Ick.” (He let his French roam free here, making it more of a, “Blake, blake, blakey- blake. Eek.”) “You’re damn right, Lance.” Susie set down her axe, looked into the grass as if trying to find its inner workings. “Blechy- ick.” … “Sun’s setting, Lance.” The phone died, and the icon that was the Chaos King’s phone number, ringing in to call Lancer at this time of day, faded. All of the anticipation in Lancer boiled to a halt, and the phone became a ghostly, ghastly weight in Lancer’s hands. Steed begged Lancer to start, but the nausea screamed for him not to. “Y- yeah, Suze, I know.” “You sure you don’t need a walk home?” That voice was deeper this time, deeper than Susie’s voice could ever hope to achieve. The son of God himself, Sahn the skeleton, appeared on the other side, the eye a flashlight again. Susie hissed, put the axe in front of her face. Before anyone could say anything, the bones lit up in a studded, stunning array around Sans’ body, the anger ridding his eye of any trace of friendship Lancer saw in him during that day in the hotel. Blue and yellow danced in the cracks of the road, Sans' panting drowning out Susie's. Lancer yelled, darted. His voice carried all of the power of the Chaos King, but none of the fury. “Sahn, stop. She's not going to attack you. She's just...scared. Just like you.” The bones were a foot, only a foot away from the axe by the time Sans found the weight inside of him to force his hand down. Lancer could see him shudder, although he wasn't sure what he was shuddering about, what time in his life he was shuddering about. Perhaps he was shuddering about the fact that people would beg for heaps of paperwork for a fight out in public- no. Lancer wasn't that high-minded...or naïve. But Susie wasn't stopping, not if any of her dedication could help it. She lunged. Bounding towards him, the axebit resting on his chest. Before anyone could breathe, she started to put weight on the axe. The flashlight-eye stayed unwavering. “Susie! Susie, listen to me, you have to stop!” Lancer could barely feel his hands lunging, grabbing the axe. He could see the flashing eyes darting- gazing- a child in the eyes of a brazen mother, a veritable Jesus, carved as a babe in the arms of Mary back at the cathedral near the castle. Sans’ own eyes froze, paralyzed...but cleverness, a fleeting, unflinching sluff of cleverness, mixed with a fair bit of calm, lifted his hand that lifted the axe off of his chest. “Woah, woah, woah, guys. I like fights, but everybody needs to calm... down. Nobody who's a part of my fanclub gets hurt, and the son of God definitely doesn't get hurt.” “Wait, son of God, Lance?” “Wait, 'fanclub’?” Lancer sat down, face twisting, as if a string webbed across his mouth. As much as he hated to admit it, the bees stung even there. Even there, and the nights came back for a moment, only a moment, and the faces of Suzie and Sans' slept away, swept away, for a moment, only a moment. The nights with Lancer and the Chaos King together, hand in bruised hand, summoned a monster even Sans himself couldn’t contain. “Lancer? Lancer, what fanclub?” Reality punched him in the face, but it refreshed him so he was almost eager to go back, just so he could feel that punch again. Back to reality. “Alright. Alright. Let’s start from the beginning. Susie, Sahn is from...I don't know where...but he's super cool! He's the funniest guy you'll ever meet, and he loves Led Zeppelin! He's a whiz! And Sahn, this is Susie. Also super cool in her own way. She's super strong, and she's very, very purple. She also loves being evil, and she also loves to have fun, and fight, and-” Susie's hand, gloved, covered with alligator- scales from her great grandfather, a soldier, shook Sans’ hand. There was no whoopie cushion this time, nothing that defied or deviated. “Not bad, Susie. Not bad fighting at all.” “Some son of God you are. But nice style. I can keep you around.” But the night couldn't keep Lancer around. They couldn't keep him any more than the traces of the day, the slight brevity in the darkness that lifted the fog from the roads. The “see you guys tomorrow” became less of a promise and more of a thread hanging in the air as home, as the castle, came around the edges, the telltale light being open in the throne room's window. His father was home.

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As Steed’s engine sputtered, a donkey’s bray, Lancer caught a glimpse of some of the commoners, les bourgeoisie, tromping out of their tour of the castle. The light hanging outside the throne room seemed to change color, become warmer, more invigorated. He cut Steed off to a lower gear, the handlebar trembling in his hands to the point to where they felt numb. They were a family, a real family, a mother and a father walking beside each other with their children, chasing each other through the streets. They were each dressed with jackets, the littlest one toddling along with insulation that made her look like one of the snowmen those who lived in the Upper World were supposed to build. The little one slumped to the road, slipped over nothing, bumping her little head, and weeping, wailing the way only a toddler could. The mother whispered some sort of intelligible cooing, raising the little girl in her arms and swinging her back and forth, a pendulum flying in the air. Lancer let his face brighten with delight. It couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be real at all. That was when the defense slipped. That was when the little girl’s eyes caught Lancer’s before she started shouting, “Look, Mommy, the prince! The prince!”. Lancer knew better than to do anything other than let Steed riproar towards the garage. That was the closest that Lancer de le Pique came, at least in that month, to dressing as one of them. Weakness took over Steed’s route. He backpedaled to the throne room as soon as he couldn’t hear the family anymore. His father… this was supposed to be a calmer part of the day. There would be fewer people in the castle. Maybe he could surprise his father, make him feel welcome the way that any father should. Lancer peered into the window as he made his way to the back, another angle into the throne room. His father perched on the throne, fingers digging into his temples, digging his calm’s grave. Journalists, unending, formed a line, flashing their cameras into his eyes. The FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH exploded throughout the room, and already Lancer could feel his pulse mount, start to climb its hill. He could only hear the muffled throbbing of his voices, but it was a painful throb nonetheless. His hand shook, although only with a little movement, as he unlatched the window.The throb hit him in the face, almost as hard as his father’s hand had the power to hit, but with a different type of pain, a more awful sort of pain. The throb trembled, waved, fluctuated, bounced, materialized into words. “How is the law going to what is the process of this year’s midterms will there be a resolve to the production line quandary allegations are climbing to double this month of ruling negligence, what will you do to solve this, smile, smile! Just a few pictures! This year’s feature is bound to boost our reputation, how did you-”The throb hit Lancer too hard, the punches bounding to the point where they were sickening. He shut the window. His poor father. His poor father. How stupid, how insipid, how immature could Lancer be, not willing to realize it sooner! He’d lived here for twelve years, not realizing, not realizing the daily throb, the blackened rings of insanity that came, day after day, hour after hour. Nonstop. Trapped in a room that crushed his father’s mind, his poor mind, caving in on his temples, wreaking havoc over them, over and over, without focus, without reprieve…How stupid he was.The journalists filed out of the room, having maybe been shooed away by one of the attendants or dukes. They made their way to the kitchen, the same kitchen where Lancer had spent hours and hours planning how to steal the cook’s famous pumpkin soup, fresh from the garden. The pumpkin soup had appeared later that day after one of those nights that left Lancer sore. The cook had left it in front of his bedroom door, still hot. He tucked Steed down, back into its home, hands stinging from the December cold, the chill of the almost- night, as he locked the door. He filed inside, watching, waiting for his father, the air around him finally tranquil, stopping the hammerings of the journalists. He tried to make it to his room, but he found himself, as shameful as he was, biting his lip. He shouldn’t be doing this. He was too selfish. His father deserved to be happy, not ignored. His father deserved to be loved, to be comforted, after being battered day after day by the whips and punches of stress. His father deserved so much more than what he had, and perhaps deep inside of the Chaos King, a land that couldn’t be explored yet, his father thought the same for Lancer. His father deserved to be happy. If he couldn’t have a public that would appreciate him, he could at least have a son that would.Still, the air caught in his throat as the Chaos King droned, “Where were you?” The clocked chimed, blared eight times, each bell crushing Lancer. Dinner. How could he have forgotten? He promised his father he would be home for dinner, home in time to eat and maybe to… to talk, to have a conversation. How could he have forgotten? How? He bowed his head, feeling, with a pernicious punch, the shame. He bit his tongue, knowing that if he said anything, the king would misinterpret it. The poor king, Lancer thought. It wasn’t his fault he misinterpreted things sometimes. It was just the way his mind was built, Lancer thought. He didn’t know he was smiling, smiling from Susie, smiling from endless hours hanging upside- down from tree tops, solving puzzles, exploring all of the songs in his MP3 player with Sans right by his side, until his father asked, rearing up to his full height, “What’s makin’ you so happy, boy? Huh?” His mind fumbled, waited for an explanation. Not telling the truth hurt him, but if he told this one, he would hurt everyone he knew. Everyone he loved. His father didn’t mean to ask such a horrible thing, He couldn’t mean to. He was only trying his very best. He hoped, he prayed that his father hadn’t taken the same classes he had, that he would be able to sneak this one sinful little lie past him. “I was eating some candy, and-” His mind froze, was too engendered, too endangered to match what was happening. He was used to this, but it was harder and harder to get accustomed to this when his father was looming right in front of his face, his twisted, grape- tinged breath stinging Lancer’s nose. His mind took a little while to apply its filter. His father didn’t mean anything he was saying. He was only trying to do something, anything, to escape the throbbing, the throbbing, the throbbing… “The hell did you just say? Candy? You’re so fucking fat. Just look at ya. Look at ya! Huh? Didn’t you fucking hear me, fatass?! I said look at ya! Get in front of the mirror! Get in- get in-” His father pushed, shoved, and Lancer knew better than to stay with his feet glued to the floor, as much as his mind compelled him to. He shuffled to the mirror, going over the practice he had done that morning, to distance himself from the world without walking away, without even shifting his gaze. Susie said there was a term for it on the Upper World called “dissociation,” but it seemed to be unheard of here. He created a different world, a world behind his eyes, a blurred world to where he saw himself through a camera. It only worked in perfect situations, where the amount of sounds, sights, were just right. This was the right thing to do, wasn’t it? His father didn’t need him being weak. Not when the entire kingdom was being weak. Not when the entire kingdom didn’t know how to strengthen itself. His ears were still open. Still watching. Still hurting, hurting more than if a wasp’s stings had riddled his eardrum. “I didn’t fuckin’ raise you like this, and y’know it! Y’know it, don’tcha?”The sickness brought him back to reality, the snapping of the belt the one crack, the one split, to drive him out of his own world. Then came a punch, a force so deep his spine trembled. His stomach lit on fire, and he doubled over as if told to. And in a way, the fist in his stomach did tell him to. Lancer tasted his own icky spit, almost coughed. He winced, hands flooding to his stomach on instinct. His wince was too long, and that blinded him. It wasn’t until his arm hit the dresser that he realized he was stumbling, that he’d almost fallen and hit the floor.“Get up.” He panted, coughing, more needles taking their course in his stomach as he coughed. He couldn’t. Not now. He had an instinct, as strange as it was near, that if he got up, his father would be even angrier than he was now. If he wanted to make his father happy… he had to make his father happy, his father was undergoing too much, too much for any one person… he had to stay here. He had to stay quiet. “I said get up!” He let himself hit the floor.“Alright, alright. If that’s how we’re gonna work this. You ain’t eating, boy. Not for two days. Not if you’re getting so fucking fat.”He took this blow, took it to the head, felt the words shake deep into him. One whip, as distinct as it was sudden.’ His leg jerked, the bee sting coming swift. “I’m done here, boy. God, you’re such a disappointment.” .... An hour passed. There was no one that was knocking on the doors, no one peering in from the now- shuttered windows to the throne room. The lights were still on, though, as if his father still thought someone could still peer in, and the shadows seemed to lengthen, to darken, to tell everyone in the throne room that it was well into the night, that it had already dawned to the twilight hours of the next day. Lancer still lay there. His stomach was still on fire, but it didn’t burn as acutely as before. It burned with a different pain, began to throb, as if someone had put in a tiny, delicate, invisible layer outside it. But his father was happy.There wasn’t any MP3 player to turn to now, and turning to the MP3 player would be foolish, anyway. His father would find him, and who knew what direction his temper went to in the hours he spent in the kitchen, entertaining, banishing the journalists from the castle, after his time in the throne room? Two hours passed.Lancer’s brain switched, switched into its speech, comforting him, holding him like a babe in its arms. It was the only arms he knew, the only arms he created. He curled his knees ever so slightly closer to his still- furious stomach, lingering.His father was happy, wasn’t he? Lancer saw it. He saw it in the way his father didn’t even have the uptightness, the anxiousness to put his belt back on. In fact, he had the joy to toss it in the corner. He saw his father’s shoulder blades lengthen, arch, the way a cat, making its way down to the Dark World through centuries of domestication, did whenever it was pet by one of the Darkners. His father was happy. His father was… filled with joy. With delight. If he was, where did that laughter come from these past two hours, the celebration that was happening in the kitchen? If Lancer wasn’t like this, lying on the floor as he should be, then his father would still be at the throne room, battered, battered even more than Lancer was battered in his life, with the machine gun of stress. Lying on the floor as he should be. What a waste he was. What a rebel he was. As the Church would say, he “failed to subdue his unruly passions.” Going behind his father’s back, without his word, just to satisfy himself. His own desires. He hated that. He hated that part of himself. Leaving behind Sans on the road, making fun of him when he’d first fallen. And the threats… the threats he’d made to Kris and Ralsei… he was going to turn them into blood… Oh, God. He fell asleep. Tried to. He was too exhausted to think, too exhausted to cry. The party in the kitchen rose to a fever pitch. Rouxls found him after hours of tending to his duchy. He carried Lancer to his bedroom, amused at how silly ol’ Lancer had chosen to fall asleep in the throne room.

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The day came, the day arose, a dull ache in Lancer’s bones. As the covers eased into his body, the day soaked into him, the realization that it was morning came, and the notion he was still lying on the throne floor ended. He opened his eyes, a breath heaving its delightful path from his chest when he realized he’d been transferred to his bedroom in the middle of the night. A cold shadow dawned upon him, the shadow of mourning morning. Still in the same castle.He shuffled his way to the drawer, still smiling when he rummaged to his MP3, found that it was still on, its battery not quite depleted yet. The concealers, the foundation, the makeup all rolled to the end of the dresser, thunking against the edge of mahogany wood that would have enchanted even Louis XIV. He started with his leg, starting with a tissue, soaking all of the icky red away. The same icky red he’d threatened to turn the Lightners into. Every touch made him wince, but it was worth it. It was worth not being questioned by his friends, Rouxls, the castle workers. He then started with the foundation, biting the inside of both of his cheeks as the cut protested to the makeup, but as the redness faded to perfect white, so did the pain. That was the easy part. Turning on the first song in his playlist, listening to the acoustics fading into Stairway to Heaven, he peeled off the 5,000- dollar, custom- ordered, royal shirt to see if he could look at his torso. If things went wrong, it may end up flying as he played in childish delight with Susie and Sans. That would be the most embarrassing thing Lancer could think of!One look was all it took.It was all Lancer could do to focus on the music, to listen to the recorders following Stairway to Heaven’s guitar, There was something wrong this time, something wrong. Lancer knew this more than the Father, the priest at the royal cathedral knew that “Mary was the mediatrix” or “the infallibility of transubstantiation..” And those terms had been drilled into Lancer’s mind far beyond what he could remember from his childhood. Something was wrong; there was an aberration. His stomach wasn’t supposed to look like this… this filthy, hideous, swollen purple spider. It wasn’t supposed to feel like a real, genuine lance was stabbing him with every beat of his heart, waving between the beats. This wasn’t anything any douse of twenty- dollar foundation could fix, not in a lifetime. Neither could a 5,000 dollar, custom-ordered royal shirt. There weren’t many times in his life where the past night left him like this, but there were a few. A few he wouldn’t dream to forget.Lancer swallowed, thought of a joke, tucked his shirt into his pants, and prayed to whoever happened to be up above that his shirt would stay put. He stared at himself in the mirror and found himself at the opposite of dissociation. He was smacked. He was painfully brought to reality, as painful as his stomach was swelling. God, he was so fat. No wonder he wasn’t allowed to eat. He’d gotten fatter than yesterday, much fatter….Susie. Sans. Everyone in the gang, the gang he had just tormented. He’d be able to apologize, surely. They would be able to take him as he was, take him like this. Surely.Maybe.The shirt stretching, hanging over in a tight, taut ship’s- mast over him, he made his way to Steed. Rouxls had left and was tending to his duchy, but his father wasn’t even awake to tell Lancer not to go there. The air hit him when he was riding, hit him in a hurricane- smack. He had to backpedal, loop around the neighboring duchy again and again just to relish the feeling, to revel in how it felt. It got better each time, and what he would have given to stay all day! He didn’t care whether people thought there were pollutants in the air or how many people shrunk away as soon as they saw the prince, the Crown Prince, riding in mad, dashing circles around town. He didn’t care. Whoever in the world needed to care when the wind shook their mind, shook their innermost feelings like this? But the wind couldn’t last too long. A troupe of people came walking by, the girls posing for social media pictures and strutting to the rhythm of their hearts. They were all coming in Lancer’s field of vision too fast for him to do anything other than stop, no matter how many times he’d been told how hard that was on Steed’s brakes. No matter; he had the knowhow to fix it in twenty minutes, tops. He drifted there in that half- paradise at idle speed, watching the group of friends laugh, joke about times they had when they were children together, dance in the streets in abandon that Rouxls would scoff at. He cut off Steed even farther, tried to mull the sound of his engine down to a cat’s purring. That matched their voices. They kept on laughing, swearing a little, punching each other playfully-There was no time. No time to stay. Lancer wrenched up his handlebar, rose Steed to a hell’s- pitch, and sped off before the troupe even had time to say “prince”. Lancer looked around, darting his eyes back and forth, juggling in a second- nature scoff the road in front of him and the road around him, looking for a trace of purple hair here, a pink scarf flying in the wind there, a blue suit here, a blue hoodie there. He was almost distracted by a man wandering, perhaps back to the duchy, because of the man’s scarf having an almost- red color. Sans. Where was he? Where was he? A quick trip back to the hotel told Lancer that he was wrong, that there was no trace of him. So where did he go in days such as this? He couldn’t just up and disappear into the Upper World; a chance to do that would make Lancer do anything. Where did this all- powerful son of God go? He couldn’t have ascended back to Heaven. If he did, then Lancer didn’t know what he would do.The hope that Sans would turn up somewhere nagging at the back of his mind, Lancer shoved Steed forward. An hour or two, and Steed started to complain, started to sputter up. Lancer ended up on the side of the street, gasing up in tense, panting, painful breaths. He pushed money into the machine as soon as he could, summoning one single, sumptuous spade by his side just in case. The gas nozzle choked to a stop, and so did Lancer’s breathing for the tiniest of increments, and so did Led Zeppelin, singing songs of love and stairways to heaven. There- in the corner! His peripheral vision had caught it in time, perhaps the result of too much time in training with Rouxls. Maybe this was the “hypervigilance” Rouxls kept talking about. He caught a blue hoodie. “Hey, Sahn, wait up!” God, he was never going to get his name right. Lancer perked Steed to life once again, rip roaring around the corner and almost plummeting into a poor woman with fiery- red hair crossing the street. The space where the blue hoodie had come from didn’t stop, didn’t dart into the bushes the way anyone would if they saw a child dashing in, recklessly hopeless, hopelessly reckless, on a bike. He stayed, motionless as a lamp atop a dresser. “Jeez, Sahn, I haven’t seen you in so long-” The blue wasn’t just a hoodie, but an entire set of armor. A red sword dragged across the royal road, nearly making a whole in it. But the swordbearer didn’t seem to care. Kris. He was just as kind as he was silent, a special kind of silent. So Sans wasn’t really here… Lancer let his lip droop just a little, although he turned away first. He cut off Steed, who choked a little in protest before being shut off. Ralsei hovered beside Kris. “Hey, guys!” Lancer commanded his bike to stop squealing. “How’re you all doing? Where’s Susie?” He smiled, but the pain in his stomach added a few crinkles to the edges. Lancer looked towards Ralsei, who was stifling his laughter, as he did so often because of his childish nature, but Kris stayed off to the side, shuffling a little to the trees. “What’s so funn-” “RAAAAAH!” Lancer was interrupted by a weight, huge, and in an instant, he was toppling to the road. It hit him with the force of an airplane, and he would scream in play, but that would have revealed him, surely, to what was digging into his bones. Susie laughed, even screamed a little in her glee, but nobody seemed to react. Either that or they were too afraid to. How would they be afraid to in play such as this? They were all children, and that was universal. Maybe Ralsei and Kris just needed to live a little- pain. Pain coursed through him again, the force of the road screaming through his stomach. He clenched his teeth, Susie still on top of him, managing a clenched, “Get off, haha…” The laugh trailed, died off, with half the light of humor and half the dark of pain. Lancer had to lean on Ralsei as he got up again. Ralsei only had the slightest look of confusion on his face, but Lancer stopped himself from having to stare at it by running towards Susie, hoping halfway to return the favor, halfway to play as a child, to truly act his age. Not like in the palace, oh, no, not in the palace. In the palace, he was expected to act as an elder as soon as he turned into a teenager. How was that any way to live? Susie laughed, shoved Lancer’s weight off of her as if she was buzzing away a fly. A final laugh left Lancer and he deflated, lounging against the tree. Kris and Ralsei followed suit. “Ah, Jesus,” Susie muttered. “Look what you did, Lancer.” She smiled, the sharpened edges to her voices coming back, edges of laughter and play, per the norm when rambunctiousness took over. “I’m gonna need a new belt after this!” Sure enough, a sequin had broke off, once again, from her studded belt. She picked up the fallen sequin from the dew- dropped grass, seemed to be slightly hypnotized with it as it dangled in the sunlight, reflected off of the dew. The wanton daylight seemed to echo in her eyes for a moment before she put it down. “Wish I had some glue.” Her hands clutched the end of her belt as if to roll it up and carry in her pocket, but what a traitor she was! She folded it in half as if to cut it with scissors, to dice it. Her hands moved toward each other, a wave burgeoning in the middle of her belt. The snap forced his feet into a run. The forest greeted his left foot, his right, his left, his right, sprinting, sprinting, sprinting. Voices called behind him, phantom voices, calling for him to come back. But he didn’t hear. He didn’t hear. It was even hard to see. The world was blurry, blurry…. he was swallowing his own heartbeats in a spasm down to his pain- filled stomach… oh, God. He was panicking. The lovechild of hypervigilance. There were voices behind him. Were they real? What was real? Whatwasrealwhatwasrealwhatwasreal? Calm down, calm down, it’s just Susie, it’s nobody else. Collapsing on a tree root. The voices were gone. Alone now, alone now. He felt feverish. Inhalexhaleinhalexhaleinhalexhaleinhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. His stomach was burning. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale, inhale- BREATHE. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. He was alright now. He was fine. He was tired. He was exhausted. He slumped on the edge of the tree, not moving when the leaves were stirred, when Susie came back with her belt, still not fixed... He was exhausted.

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A/N: Yep, this is a quickie. I know. But if I extended this, I found it’d be too awkward. The one thing Lancer knew was that the shadows shrunk into noon. Whether or not Susie or any of the Lightners knew this, Lancer didn’t know. But what he did know was how awkward this was, how grotesque, how much of a pansy he was. Susie’s hand was resting, not quite patting, the top of his head. It was as if he was in infant. It was an anachronism. An aberration. Disgusting, unforgivable. Rouxls had taught him all of those words when he was old enough to be in elementary school, but there was nothing left to describe how churlish, how unmasculine this was. Lancer craned his neck until he heard a benign popping sound. The bugs started to appear, dashing, dancing, prancing about across the grass. Susie, thank the Lord, wasn’t staring at him or cooing at him. He knew he was beyond coddling. He knew it since… since… well, his brain couldn’t backpedal that far. She stared ahead into darkness, into a forest she might as well call her own. There were no animals to stare at her back; if there were, neither of them noticed. START EDITING HERE Ralsei and Kris… yes, Lancer had been aware of what was happening in the time he was under the veil of panic… had gone off into the woods without Susie after she swore, time and time again, to catch up with them. After seeing Susie run time and time again before, Lancer had to believe her.“I swear,” muttered Susie. Again and again and again. “I swear, I swear, I swear, I swear…”“Swear what?” She flinched towards Lancer, eyes wider than the peas he once ate for dinner as a child could ever hope to be. Susie sighed, took her hand off of his head, and sighed again, although not nearly as deep. “Look. Look. I’ve been called dumb at school all the time. And I know, I guess. I mean, I can’t get any topics down at school. And it’s not like anyone wants to help someone who can’t latch onto the topic. So… I just hang there, y’know? And…”“Suze?” “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I’ve been rambling. Thing is… I had a feelin’. A really frickin’ good one, too. And it just kept burning inside of me. I started thinkin’, thinkin’ a lot. And, well… the belt was a test. You failed.” Lancer gasped, a quiet, astonished gasp, not loud enough for even the insects embedded in the ground to hear. Susie couldn’t help but smile a toothless little smile. Of course. Of course she would be this smart. She was Susie Williams, the girl who flew down from the Surface. The girl who could smell, could discern the workings of anyone’s mind, all in a tramp’s guise. How couldn’t she be this smart? “I mean, Lance… I'm just gonna let it out here. I’m in a school where I see this stuff happen all the time. Their parents just aren’t that good. They’re actually pretty pathetic people, in fact. Most people… heheh, they think it’s just an overreaction. But one trip to their house and I believe them. Man, I do. And… I’m not gonna lie to you, bud. I’ve been seeing the signs.” Lancer bit his lip, tilted his face straight down. It was only a lift from Susie’s hand below his chin, cajoling it to where he met Susie’s eyes once again. He was being too soft again. He shouldn’t be this affectionate, especially with someone like her, someone with no royal blood flowing through her veins! He should’ve hidden it better. He should’ve ran further down the woods. Maybe he could have just kept it to himself… maybe… No. They were having this conversation. Pandora’s box had flown from the heights. That’s the way it was going to be. That’s the way it was going to be now. “I mean, Lance… it’s not just the bruises or cuts. Those are the biggies. But then, the not- so- obvious stuff starts. They start to cling towards anything other than going home. Christmas break and summer’s gotta be hell for them, heh. They start to… know stuff, adult stuff they shouldn’t know. Mostly cursing an’ all of that. They start to ask people if they, y’know, did anything wrong even if they did perfect. They start to be afraid of everything, start to go out places they really shouldn’t. I mean… you’re doing fine, Lance, keepin’ yourself safe and all.” Lancer refused the urge to look back down. Safe? Really? “I swear… I swear…” Lancer almost asked her, “Swear what?”. She looked back into the distance, back into the tree- covered veil. Back into her tangle of thorns, back in her own personal land no one could dare enter. “I swear I’m gonna to get you the hell out of there, Lancer. Even if it kills me.”

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` They sat there for precious hours, time upon time, eternity, a few minutes, seconds. They sat there, and the crickets grew louder, louder. They sat there, and there was no chance of a recovery, no chance of a reprieve from Susie’s words. The ground absorbed the blow, absorbed the cursing, absorbed it as it seeped into Lancer’s mind. Susie’s lips peeled, her teeth shone for fleeting seconds, finding what to say, before she shut her mouth once again. This happened again… only once more, before she decided what to say. “Look… I don’t know a lot about bein’ a good son or daughter. Hell, nah. But I know about giving and taking. That’s easy enough for me. When you give something, you gotta get something. When you get something, you gotta give something. That’s all. But when you give without getting, or get without giving…” Susie fell silent, letting her eyes stab the tree in front of her, the leaves matching her eyes’ color. Lancer didn’t want to feel shameful. There was no way he’d be willing to feel anything like that… he was the Crown Prince, le prince héritier...,and he seldom felt as if he’d feel anything else. But he still felt it, and it was a garment, a three-sizes- too-large tunic covering him, absorbing him into the ground just as the ground was absorbing Susie’s words. He felt like a child, demure, reticent. Anything that Rouxls saw him as, he was. Anything that the Chaos King didn’t want him to be, he was. Susie’s lips peeled again. “...that ain’t love. No matter how you cut it.”He knew it wasn’t love, and he knew it would never be love; a part of him, instinctual and hated, told Lancer so. He shoved it down whenever it usurped itself, usurped itself like it was another Lancer and he was…. he shuddered… another Chaos King. But it was buried too deep inside of him to voice itself most of the time. Buried by what happened after Lancer would lock Steed in his shed and head inside the castle every evening. He looked up at the dark, ever- present. Omniscient. Never leaving this world, as much of a truth as the Virgin Mary was. But the stars always here, always hanging, swaying during the forever- night, when the shadows would come. The night was the only time when everything outside the castle seemed to have a sense of normality, and everything inside the castle would have the nonsense, the insanity of abnormality. It was buried too deep inside of him. Buried by- Noises came, noises from the back of one of the trees. Cracking, popping, shedding of leaves. Even Susie knew to hop up and stand aside… she didn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea. Even Susie knew that if a girl like her was too close to a boy like him, pandemonium would ensue, a black hole from the heights she’d never be able to rip herself from. She knew, knew from countless parts of books and movies from the Upper World, that a commoner like her shouldn’t be “consorting with royalty.” She didn’t know what the consequences would be, but they would be nothing compared to back in the Upper World, back to someone else she thought was more special. Someone who was a “she”, someone who, with just one letter, managed to transform it all from something normal to something agonizingly stunning…Bleck, they’d say. Bleck, bleck, bleckity-bleck. Ick.They stood there for ten minutes, too fixated on the ground, too fixated on the trees, to look at each other. Who would believe what she had said? Who would believe how he had lived?Who would believe how they had lived? The answer came, blaring, a speakerphone, more noises coming, quieter this time. Cloven hooves appeared in the woods, and almost immediately, Lancer resorted to the hunting lessons with Rouxls, to those tranquil days when Rouxls would reach out his hand and steady Lancer’s aim… gentle, gentle, slow… but first, there were calls to know. Always in Latin, in case there were commoners in the woods, or French, which Lancer used just for the hell of it. Besides, commoners also need game. He found that oftentimes, aristocrats chased their glittering tails with whimsical tales.“Chamois!”It was muttered, kept in the painted veils of socialization that were rife in the Dark World. Otherwise, Susie would have turned her head, sprinted, thought Lancer as insane. The shadows lengthened with a slight flinch, and the hooves were seen with a green layer hanging over them. The hooves skittered, inched forward, as if whoever was behind the bush knew the call. Lastly, the body forced itself through the bushes… and it was Ralsei, barefaced and brazen, green scarf and all, plucking off a rogue bushleaf.“Erm… what did you call me?”Oh, God. As if Lancer could embarrass himself even more. The discomfort with Susie mixed with this latest emergency, and he was unable to do anything other than mix a “nevermind” with no dares to meet any of their eyes. But perhaps that was alright with Susie, as she wore her hair as a shade over her eyes, claiming to never have a need for sunglasses or anything of the sort. But Lancer knew. He knew how her eyes were green, although she never wanted to say anything about it; it was a taboo subject…“Anyway, you two, I came back here to tell you that we’re getting close to the palace. We’ll be there in about a day.” Susie raised an eyebrow; Lancer was too discomforted to try to raise one of his, much less speak. “How did you get here?”Ralsei smiled, although it was crinkled on the edges, more so than the royal flag after a day of the wind’s insanity. “I would say I got here myself, but I met this man who told me he knew a shortcut back to your guys… he was really weird. His eye started glowing like some sort of laser, and his hoodie was the exact shade of Lancer’s, I mean, the exact shade, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know, I don’t know if he’s some type of stalker or…”Lancer looked towards Susie, chuckled, cringed. He let the humor dangle, a lone, flimsy, unwieldy piece of machinery, but was tenfold relieved when she chuckled right back. It was as if she’d muttered, So the son of God’s come back. The red exploded across Ralsei’s cheeks, and the ground itself seemed to laugh. A breeze blew, as unforgiving as it was chilly, as chilly as the sky was dark, and the ground laughed even more, oh, how it laughed…How she laughed. “We know this guy, Ralsei. Don’t worry. He’s alright. His name’s Sans, but Lancer here…”She was going to sock the middle of his back, but she hesitated, shuddering her fist back to her side. Before Ralsei could say anything in protest, she spoke again.“...he keeps on calling him Sahn.”Lancer stuck out his tongue, and for the first time in months, it felt genuine, without atrocity. Without veiling some sort of horror. He lingered there in that moment, savoring it, rolling it around him as if it were a ball of yarn, wondering if he were to stay there forever. Wondering if he could stay in there forever. Wondering if the insects, if the animals, if the darkness closing and lengthening, lengthening and closing, would ever allow him to. “Suze!” Without thinking, without any ounce of effort, he rabbled, tousled his hand through Susie’s hair. “You know I can’t help that!”The conversation died with the quietness and slowness of a turtle, and before Lancer knew it, the laughter seemed to strip the red off of his cuts, if only slightly. He loved moments like this, loved to bask in them. But it was only amount of time before the light peeped out, before the lightheartedness of it all scorched his wounds and brought them out again, made them painful again, burned them with its knife. So he shuffled forward with the rest of them, feigning Fate, lugging along Steed as a passenger; trying to catch up with them would only leave him lost and them frustrated, strangled by Steed’s exhaust. As Ralsei led him back, Lancer’s eyes darted, flinching whenever something would come out of a corner, revealing itself as blue. He scared away quite a few bluebirds like that.The shadows lengthened past noon, and while Ralsei’s stomach rumbled and Lancer’s stomach whimper-howled, Susie’s didn’t react at all. Neither did she react to the subtle calm that came over the both of their faces or stop her lovable bantering. A half an hour stretched out until Ralsei couldn’t stop his gnawing hunger anymore, until he asked Susie if she had anything to eat. She fetched a yellow cylinder from her pocket. “Cheese stick. Anyone want it?”Lancer was close enough to look on it, to pierce through the Dark World’s veil and notice the intricacies, the textures that betrayed it. “Bull.”“Whaddya you mean?”“That’s, uh…”His stomach flipped, tumbled, almost forced Lancer to double over. It was pain, but it was an instinctual sort. He couldn’t be this desperate, right? He couldn’t afford to be. He was a member of the royal family. He was supposed to eat banquets with his father, was supposed to hog all of the food the commoners often accused his family of taking. He wasn’t supposed to eat… this. He was stabbed in the stomach again, instinct the knife. Maybe… maybe…Lancer snatched the chalk, ate it as if it were a cheese stick, ate it as if it were an entire royal pig, roasted over an open fire, tantalizing and tormenting the royal family for hours. Ravaged pieces scattered about, and Lancer darted his eyes toward the ground, an instinct to avoid the eyes pressing in on him, the feet stopping. He didn’t look up or feel anyone changing where they were, where their eyes were shooting, until a full minute later. He fumbled. He tried to cover it up. But there wasn’t any way to say it, nothing that didn’t give away the fact that the Chaos King, the one who ransomed everything Lancer knew without giving anything back, wouldn’t allow him to have what he needed.Maybe… he didn’t know. Maybe Susie was right. “Just hungry” was the only thing Lancer muttered for a few seconds. “Just hungry, alright? Now drop it. Just… drop it.” although he couldn’t escape Susie’s eyes glowing down at him, her eyebrows furrowing, mouth at a slight frown. After a “C’mon, guys, c’mon! Can’t we step it up a little? The fountain won’t grow any younger…” Susie almost broke to a ran, treated her axe as if it were a downy- feather. Lancer had to mount Steed in order to catch up, and as Steed’s engine growled to life, Ralsei was left to his own devices, left to run on his own. Susie was right. How couldn’t she be right?

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Warning:The chapter you are about to read contains rape. If you consent to reading such content, read on.That being said, I still highly recommend reading it, as horrible as that request might sound. Believe me, writing that scene hurt me more than anything I've ever written. It provides a pivot point for not only Lancer, but also the rest of the main characters. Ultimately, it provides a foundation for the rest of the story. If you do not read this, the next chapters will be difficult to understand at times.Since this is rape, it will be both explicit and brutal. I have tried my best to not include anything erotic or even graphic. Fanfiction is rife with that sort of prose, but I have done my best to stay away from it. If you don't want to read it... Go back on the chapter index and click on "IF YOU DIDN'T READ THAT CHAPTER."If you want to go on reading it anyway...Continue on and read the next chapter (it will be called "Chapter 14: I Warned You.") After you're done, go back to the chapter index and click on, "IF YOU DID READ THAT CHAPTER."Thank you.

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8 PM.Lancer came home."Hey. Hey, son. I've been feeling down lately. Just do me this one little favor, a'ight? Your mom's not here to do this, so you'll have to take over."The bedroom door locked, everything inside Lancer following suit.The unfolding of sheets."No. I-I don't wanna.""What did you say? What the fuck did you just tell me, boy?""No, no, no, nonononono…"Bolting towards the lock.His father's hand dragging, dragging.The bed was a black hole.9 PM.Hell began.
Hoodie ripped off, tossed to the corner.Shorts ripped off, tossed to the corner.Everything ripped off, tossed to the corner.Pulling. Pushing. Jerking.Screaming. Screaming. Screaming.Bouncing, bouncing, like the times he would jump on the bed when he was a kid.But never this.He'd heard about this in churches, but never this.Never this.10 PM.He couldn't stop. He couldn't say anything, couldn't stop the tears from staining the bed. Saying anything would only make it worse.If this was the "love" everyone was talking about, the "love" in the pop songs and on TV and in his rock music…it hurt.11 PM.Screaming, screaming. No knocks at the door.12 AM.He'd stopped screaming. But he tried to, nothing in him responding. It was as if he had strep throat.1 AM."Hell, yeah, hell yeah, I'm done now, boy. Thanks. I'll buy you somethin' for your bike, okay?"2 AM.Everything put from the corner back into its rightful place....

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Thank you for reading that chapter.I know I will probably lose a considerable amount of fans for what I have just written, but I am willing to lose them in order to provide a pivot point in the story.The only reason I posted the last chapter was to provide a pivot point for the rest of the story. For example, an, "Oh, my daddy punched me in the tummy" probably wouldn't be enough to initiate the conflict the rest of the story needs in order to realistically get into its conclusion. But something such as... the last chapter... definitely would spur something necessary.The following will just be a rant. If you don't want to hear it, please proceed to the next chapter (Chapter 15).And now, a word to the people Fanfiction, Deviantart, Archive of Our Own, etc. who make illicit ships, such as incest ships, pedophilia ships, and overly graphic ships that do not contain a reason to be graphic. Even if you do not make such ships in any fandom, I'd still like you to read this. Since Undertale is the closest fandom to this, I'll use it as an example.Ships such as Frisk x Sans, Frisk x Papyrus, and Frisk X Mettaton normalize pedophilia. Ships such as Sans x Papyrus normalize incest. These ships need to be recognized as pedophilia and incest and are not okay in any respect. In real life, relationships such as these are not glamorous. They're not sexually alluring. They're not "turn-ons". They're not worthy of "playful smut". They're as they were in the last chapter... horrible, violent, and traumatic, decimating innocence and childhood and leaving nothing behind.I hope that last chapter was an eye-opener to the reality of such ships and the poison they whisper into text, into media, and ultimately into young, easily moldable minds.And I hope that last chapter does provide a good pivot point as this story progresses.Again, thank you.Please proceed to the next chapter.

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Thank you.It's completely alright if you don't want to read it. I don't blame you. It was one of the hardest scenes I ever had to write in a book, and I had to step away from the keyboard for quite a long time in order to recover. In fact, despite the fact that I'm under drinking age, it gave me the all- encompassing feeling of needing a good drink.That being said, it probably would have been one of the hardest scenes you ever would have to read. So congratulations for saving yourself the feeling of needing a good drink no matter what age you are.I will attempt to clarify in the next chapters what happened without being too overly explicit.Again, thank you for staying with this tale.Please continue on to the next chapter.

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He shivered. He shivered. He shivered. The heaters were blowing too fierce, but nobody noticed. Nobody noticed him; that was made so by Rouxls, who had accepted the King’s request to have the throne room orchestra play with a force that shook the room’s mirrors. Nobody would come across this section of the castle.. this was the bedroom, the one blasphemed area secluded, hidden, stifled. This was where Lancer was born. And this was where he was certain he would die. The weight of it crushed on top of twelve- year- old shoulders, crushed his eyes until tears, unwanted, came shuffling out, squeezing, dripping on the floor. But not enough. It wasn’t enough to hold up to what Susie had told him. It ain’t love, it ain’t love, it ain’t love. It wasn’t enough to support itself against what a part of him, as girlish and churlish as could be, told him. It was all his fault, wasn’t it? It was his fault the floor was so dry, his eyes so wizened. He should be doing more, shouldn’t he? And what was it with him focusing only on himself? He was being selfish, as egocentric as he knew only princes could be. Shouldn’t he pay attention to Sans, to Susie, to Ralsei, to Kris? Would they ever be able to walk away from the venom on his clothes he would never wash off, staining him so deep they reached his soul? Would they even be able to look at him? Curse that. Curse if they were able to or not, it didn’t matter; they all had eyes. Would they even look at him? Would Lancer be able to look at himself? Despite the fact that his eyes were dry, his shirt was still soiled. He was disgusting. He couldn’t look at himself. He shouldn’t be asking for help if he others couldn’t even look at him. A trembling raised its voice in the insides of both of his thighs, and it was only then that Lancer realized how far apart one leg was from the other. He knew, without preamble, that putting his legs even a little more together would result in a clashing tidal wave of pain and tenderness. He exhaled, a choke heaving out of his chest, moving its way up to its throat to die there. He couldn’t swallow; trying to ended up with him clutching his throat. He couldn’t breathe. The swelling in his throat turned his breathing into a wheeze or two, his tongue lolling out of his mouth as if he were a corpse. In all ways except living, he was a corpse. He shivered.His stomach was a flame touching a piece of metal, burning it until it turned white and powdery. But it was still hungry, still needy as ever. Even after all this. After all this. He inhaled, coughed, ignored the waspsting in his throat. He felt his body break around him, felt the minutae, the cells, closing in on themselves. He knew he needed a doctor. There. He let himself that luxury. He couldn’t be walking around like this, a pigeon with clipped wings. Maybe some magical medicine, a night resting in a one-person bed would make him look like he did every morning with his concealer and foundation. But he couldn’t let himself have that luxury now. He needed freedom. A different sort of luxury, but by God, what a luxury it was. He turned left towards the garage. Towards Steed. Towards where his legs wouldn’t look startling; one’s legs tended to spread on a bike. Towards freedom. There was nothing left in the bedroom his father didn’t take from him already. … The shadows began to thin in that certain way that hinted at dawn, its esoteric language that hid the passage of time from Susie, from Kris. The stars were covered with a murky cloud, massive as it was. An owl in the distance hooted, mourned. The crickets seemed to stop. What happened to them? Did the same thing happen to them as they did to Lancer? Even Lancer wasn’t sure what happened to him. He knew what it was as a subject, but as an object, as a thing, as a demon… he couldn’t stomach it, force it down his burning boil of a stomach.It was foolish to be guarding a castle tonight. Why would anyone do that? There was a rousing orchestra performance downstairs, and besides, the bedrooms upstairs weren’t guarded, so why should the outside be? He’d already made the via dolorosa to Steed. Rouxls had already approached him, out of the castle and on the way to his duchy, laughing at first because of a joke he’d heard at the orchestra, the smell of a good Merlot on his suit. All it took was a half of a minute for Rouxls to notice Lancer’s trembling legs before he was behind him, panting from the run, the eerie thrill of panic in his eyes. Lancer had bat up his hand, said he’d handle this biggie on his own. The words had tumbled, shambled, wheezed. Lancer knew better than to do anything else besides start up Steed with such force that it shook without the engine running. “I’ll handle this biggie on my own, alright? Je vais bien, je vais bien, je vais bien.” How many times did Lancer have to say “je vais bien”, that he was alright, before anyone believed it? Steed sputtered a little before ending up in front of the church. Maybe he’d be healed here. This was what he’d always been told. Maybe they were having Communion here, breaking the Host, breaking the bread, bread… his soul was too stained, too putrefied. But maybe he could… maybe…Jesus hung from a crucifix in the background. Dying. His arms outstretched to the churchgoers to embrace them. To take away all of the true problems their lives vomited out, to take them to a different world… Lancer knew it the ways the churchgoers closed their eyes during prayer, erupted if their prayer was interrupted. It was a different world. A better world. Not this one at all. Not this one.The tears came out, Lancer’s legs tautening. Buckling, collapsing to the ground, Steed letting out a whimper. The tears still came. They came, and his throat flooded. But Lancer didn’t care. What did breathing matter, what at all did it matter?The words spattered, wheezing, indistinguishable between English and French. Still Jesus hung, swaying over the churchgoers, staring straight down, the area outside of the church windows where Lancer was not even in His peripheral vision. He couldn’t see Lancer. “Son of God, where are you now?”…Steed guided him towards the light. His legs shook, stopped, rested against Steed. For an instant, the handlebars became the King’s shoulders, the front of the bike the back of the King’s hood, the noise of the engine turning into an awful, disgusting, unspeakable noise. With a scream that sounded like water and air being pumped through a large pipe, Lancer pulled over, the hotel just in the distance. His brain was festering; anyone could see that now. Sans. Sans could fix this. He was the son of God, wasn’t he? He was his friend, wasn’t he? The Church was his mother, just as abusive as the King was. Whether or not it could change was up to it. But Sans… Sans would make Lancer laugh. So there was no reason he would turn away Lancer while he was crying. There was no reason why he wouldn’t open his arms like Him on the crucifix did, no reason why he wouldn’t tell him, “Don’t say sorry just ‘cuz you’re cryin’.” He wouldn’t abandon Lancer this time. Oh, God, oh, God, the smell of pancakes was churning out of the hotel kitchen… Je vais bien.

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He wasn’t there. He wasn’t there… that’s all there was to say. There was no sign of a hoodie here, no faint rattling over there. There were no jokes being made from the side of the bench, no questions for ordering a bottle of ketchup. There was simply… nothing. It was as if he’d died. There was a whistle coming through from the right, and Lancer whipped his head around so it made a faint popping noise, but the breeze was just the wind blowing through to one of the bottles. The chairs in the hotel kitchen were empty, the one brochure for the orchestra dangling off of the largest table sending Lancer into a confused sort of anger. Anger that drove him to shove open the hotel’s kitchen door, to shove down the first three pancakes. His stomach was settled in a twisted loop, and eating another pancake would only accentuate a layer of tenderness he didn’t want to add. Anger. He had to stop. He had to control himself. Control his trembling legs, control his palms leaking on the stove. Dripping, two waterfalls crushed in his palms. Susie couldn’t see him like this, and what if Sans were to turn up on the road? He must be there. He couldn’t expect Sans to stay in the hotel for untold weeks, could he? And could he have gone to… gone to the concert… The thoughts muddled, tripped and fell with just as graceful movement as Lancer made through the kitchen, walking with his chicken limp, legs still trembling, trembling, rummaging through one pack after the other. One flew onto the floor, but he noticed it, its blue and green royal pattern, its ADMIT ONE spattered across the bottom. They were the spare tickets. Of course. In the Chaos King’s almighty wisdom, la sagesse divine, he’d made sure that there was always one spare ticket in case the first one went missing. He wouldn’t want anyone missing this concert, right? Why, if they’d missed, they might have wandered about, made their way to the bedrooms upstairs… He made his way to the corner where Sans was, and when nothing could be found there, he made is way in an almost drunken haze, as drunken as his father could ever hope to be, wandering through the hotel halls for something… anything… There was one room with flowers decorated all about it, pink and sickening enough to make the pancakes’ worth diminish somewhat. Another one with a hoodie- Lancer peeked in. The hoodie was too big for the wearer, a four- year- old smiling, sitting with her siblings around a phone. He was too late. He didn’t want anyone seeing him like this, with his legs spread and the gingerly area of his pants already growing weightier. He tiptoed as far back as he could, his hand reaching back, skittering on one of the walls as if he were a spider, latching on… BAM!Lancer found himself on the ground, stunned, legs twitching, chest flitting up and down to and fro from the hotel ceiling, the air leaving him in straws. The phone was nothing but background noise now. The girl in the hoodie stirred. “Oh mon Dieu! Guys, look! C’est le prince! C’est le prince!” Too late. Too late. Too late. Someone running in the hallway had already hit him, running, carrying a hefty weight of towels. A hotel worker. Thank God it wasn’t someone else. “Excuse me”- his legs seized, and he bit his lower lip so he wouldn’t yell. The shame covered him even more than the towels covered the hotel worker’s hands. The shame; he didn’t know how to wash it off of him. Maybe if he took showers enough, maybe if his father- no, he couldn’t think about him anymore. He couldn’t afford to. If he did, his father may even take away his thoughts. Why not? He’d already taken away everything else.He didn’t know how long he’d sat there, gritting his teeth, his legs still trembling, until one of the hotel workers came from the side, apologizing even more than Lancer wanted to apologize for… for what he’d done that night. Lancer tried to say, “Yes, erm…” The worker’s head poked out of the side, reddening as soon as he had heard the first “C’est le prince!”. The worker cleared his throat, nearly dropping the towels. “Um, Your Highness, can you please, um, oh jeez, speak up? Oh, I’m sorry if I’m being rude, please-” His throat gurgled, scraped, groaned the quietest groan. “Yes, erm, do you know where Sahns is? He checked in awhile ago…” His throat screamed, and it was all Lancer could do not to clutch it. Water… why in the world couldn’t a hotel have a water fountain here? “Your Highness, Monsieur, he’s in room 248, I’m so, so, so sorry if I was infringing on your politeness, er, no, that’s not the word, oh, I’m so sorry, Monsieur...” Lancer’d had enough. He picked himself up, his legs and stomach screaming, moved aside the hotel worker, and walked to the elevator. There were no more cries of “C’est le prince!”. ... 248 came and went, Sans’ belongings scattered about. Three minutes of rummaging before Lancer realized there was no ticket here, and there would be no ticket anywhere. His legs… if only he could draw them in just a little… Susie. Susie would help him now. Perhaps Susie was with Sans. Sans and Susie did have a rushed meeting before. He limped out of the room, looking back. Oh, how he wanted to stay. The curtains, swaying back and forth, the bed with no one in it, the clothes that were replaced each year… he wanted to stay, wanted to stay in this golden tangle of thorns. He wanted to feel the cool breeze without anyone looking at him and shouting applause. He wanted to live, to live how the family below him lived. But even as a prince, he knew this one universal truth. Noble. Religious: You can’t always get what you want. …. The elevator swung, the buttons laying heavy in his vision. When the door finally came up to him, he peered through and wondered, for a split second, if the family was there. He stepped in the elevator, chasing away any frail thoughts that they would come running out of the corner. In the bottom floor they would stay. Susie. Susie was all that Lancer needed now. He walked through the last floor of the hotel, eyes raised beyond the kitchen, beyond any children that would come straying in to the left. Susie, that was all. And then there was Steed. He would fly on it, fly on its fiery feet towards the dawn, fly far, far away from the Card Castle, far away from attendants and whips and flying objects, crashing, another bruise to the face, a little concealer will fix that. He was sick of that. He needed to run away, run far away… perhaps with Susie, back to the Upper World. The Upper World! What lay there? Was the Upper World a place where mothers and fathers knew how to take care of their children? Was the Upper World a place where belts were never made? Was the Upper World the place where Jimmy Page and all of the members of Led Zeppelin lived? He could sing forever, with Susie and Steed and Sans and all substances that started with s… The Upper World. Steed could take him there. Steed’s engine roared in delight, the handlebar shifting forward easier than he expected. The breeze seemed warmer than normal although Advent was appearing, the cold twisting into the Dark World, into Lancer’s bones. But not as hard as usual. The crickets were quieting, and the shadows were shrinking so that it didn’t become all- encompassing. Steed’s exhaust, as familiar, wafted through the blackened air, and Lancer smiled, smiled through the impossibility of at all, smiled at the posssibility of being with Susie by noon. Steed complained, but what did that matter? What at all? Why, Lancer could just pull into one of the streets, tinker with this gear and that assortment. He did, running, sprinting as fast as he could, past a general store and past a family’s house, whipping out his wrench from his pocket. It was a gamble, but a gamble Lancer was willing to take as he adjusted the gear a little this way…. a little more… a little… A hand with a black glove on it, sick with bedheat, caught Lancer by the throat. The world darkened ever more, the wrench plummeted from his hands, and the last echo rung through Lancer’s ears before the world vanished.

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Steed couldn't wait to stop, but its owner had another instinct, buried deep inside of him: to go, to sprint, to ride, mind rife with thoughts. The glove kept Lancer belting out a silent scream as Steed was left to its own devices. On and on Steed careened, off of the curb, into the blades of grass, into a tree trunk. Steed gasped, choked, and died. That did it. The words came, clear and sweet. How sweet it was, sweeter than the dew covering the trees in a perpetual rhythm. Let it rain, let it rain... “Let me go, Dad! Let me go!” Another bruise grew, riper and purpler than the grapes him and Rouxls would grow when Lancer was a child. Why his father, the King of the entire Dark World, chosen by the whim of God and always mentioned in a Darkner's prayer, would be out here would be a wild goosechase to anyone who wasn't Lancer de le Pique, the Crown Prince. To him, it was just another errand, no longer a fool's one. But it was no fool's errand to fight back now. The light returned to Lancer's veins, came back to where it was perhaps needed for unending years. His teeth sunk into the rawhide skin of his father's hand, that same hand he had held onto when he was a child. His foot kicked ack into his father's legs, into the damned area where he had stabbedstabbedstabbedstabbed Lancer that precious, previous night. He punched where he could, wriggled. He was the worm everyone had called him when he was younger, while they were laughing, hurling whatever they could at the prince who was having such a better life than they were. He could hear his father groan, and he smiled. It turned into a grimace when the Chaos King whipped his son in the air and trapped him against the alley wall. His back screamed, but there wasn’t anything stopping Lancer. Nothing besides the inability to move, ensured by the King’s hands grabbing at just the right places. The King always had the ability for doing that, and it was that one thing, that one incomparable quandary, that kept Lancer at bay. “Damn it. Damn it, boy. And you thought I wouldn’t figure it out, huh?” Lancer couldn’t say anything. What could he say? There was nothing near him that had ears for his words; there was nothing except the breeze to coax him into inspiration. All of the shopmen seemed to be deaf; all of the townspeople seemed to be dead. No one came around that sidewalk area, nobody seemed to need gas as Lancer had. It would have been odd if it weren’t for the guards, sprinting back and forth, chasing their tails, hurrying, rushing every last person inside. “Huh. Stayin’ quiet. Well, better than sayin’ no, least in my book. Makes me less angry. I like ya when you’re quiet.” He dropped him, but the King, in an inexplicably clever move, shoved Lancer’s legs further in to the point to where Lancer had to claw the inside of his hood to keep from yelling. “Tell ya what. Let’s play a game. Maybe have a gamble, ‘cuz you sure as hell know I like that more than anythin’ in the world. You keep your legs pinned like this, an’ I’ll count to a minute. If you stay quiet, like I like ya, then you can go on to whatever the hell you were doin’ in the first place. Shit, I’ll even fix your entire bike when you get home. Maybe add something extra. Ya know I don’t break my promises. Especially when you do me a favor.” Lancer didn’t have a yell to hold back until that last sentence. “But if ya don’t, well… there’s new sheets.” He had to stay strong now. Just like Susie. Susie, with her axe hanging high up in the air, swinging back and forth, a falcon in flight, a pendulum. He had to be as strong as her teeth, breaking through chalk and metal and anything else that might plague her life. He had to be strong as her, who didn’t let a tear shed, at least in front of him. He had to be strong as her, who one day, had told Lancer that she didn’t let a tear shed, at least in front of him. He had to stay strong. He had to let any stray tears fall by the wayside in his brain, let his head throb with emotion and bruises without letting anything come out. Thirty seconds passed by. The wind howled, and a different howling morphed as soon as it crossed his father’s lips, a howling of dried grapes and the various fruits, dried and customized, that the King kept in his cellar. The pain grew into a demon of its own, but what did it matter? Only Susie mattered now; her and Sans. But if the son of God wasn’t brave enough to help him when help screamed from the rooftops and alley walls Lancer was glued to. If this was how Susie lived, it was a life Lancer wanted to run from and glue himself too all at the same time. It was beautiful. It was lionhearted. He was lionhearted. He was Lancer de le Pique. The Dark World needed a prince. The Dark World would never see someone like him again. Sixty seconds. The King finally let go, and Lancer let himself gasp out his relief when the King nodded. He nodded again. Now, this was a sure sign. The wind roared in a different direction, the grapes being carried to the backdoor on the right. “Huh. Looks like you’re a bit of the man I want ya to be.” Lancer had to choke back his “thank you”. There would be no thank yous now, no yes sirs. Susie, and the room tucked away from the orchestra, away from anyone’s notice, away from anyone’s problems, had long convinced him of that. There would be nothing. His father would be treated like… like a commoner. Like Lancer was treated. Lancer’s mind had morphed into a classless universe. In there, there was no prosperity, no poverty. There was only the way people were treated, and that was that. His father didn’t have any more merit than the son of God, and neither did the son of God have any more merit than the children skirting across the sidewalk, being hushed away by one of the narby royal guards. “But only a bit.” But even without any of the poverty, Lancer couldn’t expect perfection. He’d heard about this, the old adage to where if the father was chased away from the family, the money tended to go with him. There were some punches he just had to take. “Don’t ya think I know what you’ve been doin’? You’re goin’ with Lightners.” Lancer’s insides froze, his mind shot and splattered across the sidewalk. He plummeted to a place, dark and cavernous, he didn’t want to become a part of. Ralsei called it “clearing your conscience,” Ralsei, and the other children, no doubt felt a need to be in this place. Lancer did as well, but it was twisted, even blacker than the shadows that always lengthened and extended, lengthened and extended… “Ya cunt.” Lancer’s eyes lay downcast, and the latest blow he took to his stomach. He let it writhe around, a butterfly in heat and in death. His father had only used that word, that pernicious word, so often, on the nights to where he couldn’t sit on his throne for a good month, standing on a stool instead. “Alright. Alright. Let’s play another gamble. Just one more, ‘cuz I’m gettin’ real impatient here, boy, real impatient. In this gamble…” His father smiled a slow smile, as slow as a train could start to pull out of a station after the engine started, The dried grapes dripped from his mouth to the sidewalk, the sheen reflecting against the shadows, the shadows reflecting off of it. “...if I let ya go and do whatever ya were doin’, ya pay my kindness back by bringin’ back the Lightners an’ puttin’ them in the nice little area next to the rest of the troublemakers. If ya don’t, the same thing as before. There’s new sheets. “Xcept this time… I’ve got a nice set of wood and nails to put right on your door so ya don’t escape, an’ I think I’m just pissed off enough not to feed ya.” There was nothing left now. He was still Lancer de le Pique, but he felt as if the King had murdered him, dried him up. What was he supposed to do? The kingdom had to have an heir, had to have someone who wasn’t the King. Anyone, anyone who wasn’t the King. But to but his friends in prison? They didn’t deserve that. And Lancer would probably grieve about that for the rest of his life, tear himself up until the King died, finally reached his port, finally stepped both of his feet into Hell. But to let himself die just because he was too naive to do otherwise, to do anything other than to see the world through ever- narrowing fields? The kingdom didn’t deserve that. Lancer knew what a moral compass was. He knew how to steer himself through. What choice did he have? What type of Hell did Lancer have to step in: one with Satan only, or one with enough force to chain the world? Lancer nodded, but he didn’t let the King see anything else. The King didn’t deserve even one trace of satisfaction. The tears had to stay in. He had to be just like Susie now. If he mirrored her sufferings, it was worth it if he could reap her fruits. His gaze glared at him rather than looked away from him, and it was then that he realized he hadn’t had eye contact with his own father for the past three years. He noticed that his father’s eyes were blue. Just like his. Oh, God, just like his. The blue eyes shifted to the side, and with one last crowning “if ya don’t bring ‘em back, boy, remember. I can find ya just as easy”, Lancer ran to Steed. The front was dented, and with an instinct that girded his hands to flight, he took off the metal plating at the front to expose the delicate gears underneath. Only a few spilled out onto the sidewalk, and in a matter of fifteen minutes, Lancer had already put each one of them back. They were loose gears, unruly gears, just like Lancer in his father’s life, just like Lancer intended to be in his father’s life. But Lancer knew what to do, exactly where to reach and find exactly which tool he needed, exactly where he needed to grasp, exactly when and where and how he needed to end this gear’s tyrrany. The gear didn’t fight back at all, just slid right into place like a good gear should. As Lancer shut the metal plating, he was a little angry at the gear for how it had slipped into place as if it hadn’t had anything to fight for. It did; a grand machine that propelled its world forward and horrors behind. But there was no more damage. No more gears. The front plate had absorbed it all, a broken nose crunching against the wall with a perfectly intact brain underneath. If there was a son of God, he had came and went. With a heavy soul, Lancer sighed his life out of him and breathed it back in again, shifting Steed back into position as it made its funeral- trip towards Susie.

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Lancer felt his insides gnashing at him, gnashing the same way they did the gears. Oh, God. He couldn’t be taking them away. He couldn’t take them to prison. He gripped Steed’s handlebars, grimacing, wincing, grinding his teeth. He swore… he swore as soon as his father dropped dead on the floor of the throne room, spilling all of his wine with him, he would free all of them just as he freed that wineglass from his father’s grasp… The air tasted choked and heavy, as if all of the exhaust had a fire marshal directing every trace at Lancer’s throat. There were families on the side, street cleaners here and there, kids that looked about Lancer’s age straddling the line between the sidewalk and the curb, between normality and death. The only difference between them and Lancer is that Lancer had a destination at the end of the flight, selected light at the end of the train- tunnel. God, God... What was he doing? He shouldn’t be doing this. He shouldn’t be careening towards friends, dear friends of his whose hands he would fit with chains, hands that never rose to fists or dove to lengths they never should. He could try another move. He could try finding Sans, wherever he was, and do what princes were known to do best and what stabbed Lancer’s core… beg, cry, scream for what he wanted. What he needed. He could find Sans and do everything his wrung- out soul could do to ask for Sans to take him back to wherever he had came from. He hadn’t come from here, hadn’t he? That was enough. That was all Lancer needed. It wasn’t what anyone else needed. If he went in hiding, his father would pounce on the entire Dark World, a raptor in flight, and he would create his own demons. They would fly from his fingertips, spawn all across the frigid ground, and consume all that the Dark World had built. All that the Dark world praised his father’s for. Every institution, every child smiling with a full row of teeth instead of a partial one, every teenager who snagged herself a job out of a tenement with none to offer, every person inside that tenement who went to bed with food in their bellies and smiles in their hearts. All of that would disappear because of a delinquent who tried to perfect his world. Perfection was overrated then. Nobody in the Dark World deserved that. A toddler walked past with a hoodie two sizes too big for her, humming the royal theme, voice piping out at the high notes. Nobody in the Dark World deserved that. An axe blade bolted towards the ground on the right, a strange, striking girl stifling the axehandle with her spike-studded hand… Susie. Lancer pulled his bike over to the right, eased it, a soldier in orbit. He jumped out, the helmet thudding on the nearby sycamore, his mind straddling the border between death and hell, legs still trembling…… He only needed it one last time. He only needed to be with those who had held onto him and he had held onto since the first day, before his father put his stomach over a gridiron, one last time. He only needed to laugh about stupid jokes with them, scream to “Whole Lotta Love” with them, show them tricks with Steed he’d practiced before he learned how to to walk… ...one ...last ...time. He whipped out his MP3 player, hands darting to the Led Zeppelin folder, not knowing someone was there until a hand landed on his shoulder. For a moment, he thought it was his father, and all of the chemicals, all of the emotions running through Lancer stopped; he stiffened, arched, a cat in flight. Only when a voice with just- beginning candy traces on the edges, edges his father wouldn’t ever dream of having, convinced Lancer to return to what he thought was normal. Susie was standing over him. Her hair loomed in front of her face in a nuisance- web, her axe by her side always, always. “Hey, Lance. Long time no see.” Lancer tried to mirror her smile, his stomach wrinkling it at the edges, drying it out like the raisins Rouxls loved to eat. Her grimace- smile came out to play, and he followed her to Ralsei and Kris, followed her to tomorrow, oh, God, to tomorrow and forever.... There was no room for words. There was no need for words. With the state of Lancer’s throat, there was no want for words. Lancer inhaled, soaked in everything around him, a constant and chilling soaking. He took Ralsei’s scarf one time and ran about one of the streetlamps with it, wrestled in a humble sort of dogfight with Kris, and, of course, stayed with Susie. They were beyond the point of drifting in and out; their footsteps synchronized in a perfect, if not harmonic, drumbeat. And yes, Lancer thought it was a little sappy. But a little sap perhaps eased how much it would hurt when they would finally reach the Card Castle. Only once did he speak, and it was only after Susie spoke first. That was only after Lancer made a humorous little sign of the cross, le signe de la croix. And that was only after Ralsei recited one of his poems, only to accidentally pronounce “crepe” like “crape”. “Hey, Lance.” Her smile pulled to tautness. “What’s the difference between a priest and a zit?”Lancer would have shouted at Susie, maybe kicked her a little, only a little, out of spite, and sprinted the other direction if he wasn’t so focused on the shadows around him, the spectacle in front of him, the stars looming in the sky.Since there was nothing, Susie shifted her weight from left to right, cradled her axe as if the trees were giants. “A zit will wait ‘till he’s twelve before he comes on ya. Ah, but you probably won’t get it-”The laughter poured out of Lancer’s throat, laughter that turned into a growling groan. Susie stopped talking, and her axehead was overcome with depression, dropping slowly to the just- rained on ground. “How… how did y-”Oh, not now. Not now. Please, not now. His legs started to tremble again, his muscles unable to take it. He pushed his legs together in a tortuous snap, and pain erupted in the exact spot Lancer never wanted to even bring to his thought. He didn’t quite slump- he hadn’t had enough theatre lessons with Rouxls for that- but he leaned on a nearby tree, eyes crushing shut. Kris and Ralsei responded with a church’s chorus of “are you alright”s and “are you hurt”s, but one stood out, the loudest. “Lance, you alright? Talk to me, talk to me. Where does it hurt? Lance, you’ve gotta say some-”She stopped. She stopped. Oh, God in Heaven, she stopped. She set him down, and then she looked at him. Pried his mouth open to look at his throat. Looking down once at his legs, once only. She knew. The shame took ahold of his vocal cords, stuffed them down a ditch. The shame he’d had since that night inundated him, soaking into the ground, soaking into Susie. Looking into his eyes. No, impaling them. Fixing them in place There was no escape, not even if Lancer could turn his head and run. Then, those eyes could still follow him, chase him to the ends of the Dark World, chase him to the ends of wherever in the world the Upper World was. Even if he were to become blind, he wouldn’t see nothingness. He would still see those eyes wherever he went, their gaze still would follow him.She only looked down when she noticed the tears, those damn tears, escaping. She hadn’t even had time to process them.Her eyes then pierced the tree in front of her, and Lancer could still do nothing but stare at the ground, feeling the wind wipe his own tears off of his chest and his cheeks, not saying anything in response to Susie’s embrace. Yes, Susie was embracing him, but she was somewhere else, in a different world, neither Darker nor Upper. She was nowhere. She was everywhere. Her breaths were leaving her in plaited, inaudible gasps.“Oh my God, Lance.” That was all that Lancer needed. All that Lancer wanted. All that Susie could say.“Oh my God, Lance.”

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There was no slow rise from the ground, no lolling of her axe as she stood. Her feet hesitated, yes, but there was no slowness in it. In a matter of minutes, she’d darted to the other side of hell, towards the Castle, le château de l'enfer. Lancer tried to follow her. His legs rejuvenated, he managed to run in the same way, if not the same speed, Kris and Ralsei did. After a few seconds, the pain seized him again, and he lagged behind, and Ralsei had to double back. Lancer didn’t know that Ralsei was carrying him until his feet left the ground. He was flying. He was flying, and Lancer became a prisoner in Ralsei’s arms. The air whipped him, the leaves soaring, smacking him in the face. After bringing up a hand to take one of them off, the leaf spattered. He stared at it for a moment, two moments, three, four, as he streaked a finger against it. Foundation. He let it go, brought another finger to his cheek. The cut under his cheek, sprung fresh from a beltbruise, stung with a new fervor. He looked up at Ralsei, although he didn’t let his hand leave his cheek as long as he was as vulnerable as this. He didn’t want to be vulnerable. To piano with him being the crown prince. Whether he was the prince or whether his home was a corner on the sidewalk, splattered with rain puddle atop rain puddle as cars ran by, the answer still blared the same: he didn’t want to be vulnerable. Not here, not anywhere, not now, not ever, not with Susie, not without. Ralsei’s eyes burrowed forward into the trees, the bluster starting to mat his fur. All Ralsei did was look down and whisper “spell” once before looking back up. Lancer knew better, had too many days spent at Ralsei’s house to question him. Not after the day he’d come out of the house, screaming, a dazzling array of terrifying swords of all sorts of colors surrounding him, his hood taken off, black streak-curves, below his eyes, stretching down to his chin. All Lancer had done was reassure himself that he was the prince; he had felt down that day, another typical evening with his father done. Lancer felt the weight of sleep pulling at his veins. A tear formed, as unwanted as it was, when he realized the reason why. It made it harder to sleep, but something else was tugging at it, something Lancer only felt a few times in his life. Something he couldn’t do a piano to fight back at. If only he could be with them one… last… time… …

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About an hour or so later, the spell left Lancer’s bones, and his eyes opened. He felt an uncanny lightness in his cheek, a sort of absence of pain he’d never experienced before. Putting his hand back up to it, none of the red, none of the foundation or creamer, rubbed off of him. He kept on rubbing it in awe as he realized the skin was smooth. He looked up at Ralsei, who looked back down for a few seconds and managed to whisper “Spell” again. His eyes gazed back up, pierced the castle again. The castle hung, a bulldog crouching with its mouth wide open, ready to guzzle down and demolish anyone who dared step in. Some of the guards were still standing outside, and Lancer crouched, turned his head away from the guards, curled up into a ball no matter how much it hurt his stomach or his legs. Ralsei muttered something, muttered something beyond a language, muttered something that Lancer could only feel, and that feeling tugged him into a cavern deep, a cavern wide inside himself. The world became a blur, and when Lancer whipped his head back around to the guards, their faces were distorted, as if a demonic water bead had spat all over them. Lancer shuddered. This was the horror that came with invisibility. The castle swallowed them all, the mouth of its spiked gate gleaming, sniffing them out, settling with a clang on the floor. Lancer could feel even Ralsei, who had emerged that night with black streaks on his face, swords in his hands, ready. Ready to vanquish anything, anyone.And Susie. Wy Susie? She’d done nothing to disturb this. Her dedication was a tower, inescapable, unquenchable. It was something that he sure didn’t have. Something that the King had beat out of his soul long ago. Lancer didn’t know that souls could bear their own wounds until then. But the more he talked to Susie, the more he talked to Sans, the more that he saw their own wounds. He never saw a trace of their souls, though- just their speech, just by what they did. He could start to discern with an accuracy only Sans could triumph over, what their wounds were. Although he wasn’t quite sure what balm to soak them with. Maybe the treatment wasn’t to soak them with any balm at all. Just to leave them there. Leave them there… all alone… yes, they needed space away from Lancer. Space away from his wounds, as annoying as they were. Lancer gulped, and his insides began to quake, his mind shuddering harder than Ralsei had. “Ralsei...it's time.”Stupid. Stupid. Now, Ralsei would be able to find out. This world here was dark, yes, and fleeting, yes. But Lancer had spent one night in the dungeons, one terrifying night when his father thought that Lancer was acting just a little too rambunctious…And now he was going to set his friends in there, too?Lancer caught his fumble. “Time to let go. I think we’re safe now.”Ralsei looked around, nodded, still wordless, still sagacious. Lancer jumped out towards one of the trees. A poster jumped out of the tree, the King blaring, his smile crushing Lancer's. A thousand nights pounced on Lancer's head, one night in bed, another night in the dungeons, another night where the King had found his belt after almost, just almost, losing it. If the King had found out he hadn't imprisoned them, those nights would multiply. They would multiply...and Lancer wasn't sure if his mind would be intact to think of those nights. And Lancer knew, in that instant, that there was no way in the world, in Heaven, or Hell, that he could say no to his father.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It was as if God had started to come down from Heaven. Oh, not the Son of God… he was busy, preoccupied, as Lancer had always perceived him. But God himself had come down, and the churches were just starting to decorate, the mangers spiking from their little homes in the corner, the people shouting out nativity figure sales and laughing, laughing, no matter how much money they had in their pockets. To each manger they added something new, something different. If Max the hair-cutter was adding his own king, looking nothing like Lancer’s father, then Achille the occupational therapist was adding a Doctor. There were possibly cakes and pies, turkeys and roast geese, lobsters and cheeses, scattered everywhere, at least three for each family, but they were kept inside of their houses for now, and only a trace of their smell wafted on the streets, mixing with the burnt wine that often came when the Darkners, in a particularly festive way, spilled wine on their firelogs. It was la veille de Noël… Christmas Eve. The spikes in Lancer’s consciousness wore off a little. At least his friends would be able to see this. At least he would be able to see this. “This is the castle, Lancer? Wow…”“Heh. I’ve seen better, Ralsei. With people from my world, we have entire neighborhoods like that.Hey, Lance…Don’tcha think we should be going up, not down?Lance?Lance, listen to me. Lance.”“Lancer? Why are we- oh, my gosh, are those- Lancer, stop!”“Hey, hey, Lance, what are ya, psycho? Hey, let go! Let go, let go, let go-!”THUD. An extra bruise sported Lancer’s arm, but there wasn’t any pain in it. All the pain was directed somewhere else, somewhere. deeper. Somewhere… he didn’t know… darker.A guard rushed in from the hallway, kicking Susie in the stomach, oh God, her stomach, sending her back careening towards the back of the cell. A spade attack from Lancer managed to shove Ralsei to the back of his cell, even though Ralsei couldn’t bring himself to do anything but yell out why’s and why’s and why’s, over and over. SLAM. SLAM.He’d done it. The keys trembled and sang in his hands. The dungeon hung exactly as he’d imagined. The walls loomed, dark and stiff, moss growing in puddles along the edges. For the prisoners, a stray vine hung here and there, all of the grapes plucked off, no, clawed off. But the prison was darker than the rest of the world, emptier than the rest of their souls, save for those in the cages at the back. The air he breathed was thin and fleeting, almost the way Susie had described the mountain climbers in the Upper World. It was only through sheer stress, sheer cortisol, that Lancer remained upright; the guard next to him had a tiny oxygen tank to replace the stress. The air, next to the cellar, tasted like old wine, and the cellar called from the corner, the guard having a little source of distraction for himself for the night, or, when he was feeling generous, distraction for a few of the prisoners. Each cell told a story, too twisted and too endless for words. Tales of a boy raised just like Lancer, with everything he wanted and nothing he needed, one mistake dragging him here. Tales of a The endless tally marks on the wall, most of them dating after, not before, Lancer’s father took the throne, were more frightening than if the ghost of every prisoner were to walk the earth. The cracks in the walls moved along, entwining with the cracks in Lancer’s soul. And his soul beat him, beat in his chest, beat him more than his father ever could. Beat him more than the Dark World’s laws could beat the prisoners. God, he was so pathetic. Lancer was frightened to look up, even though the thinning of the air was starting to take its toll. Ralsei was the first to collapse, Kris swaying, gnashing his teeth at Lancer before collapsing himself. No words were spoken. A fire rose in the back of Lancer’s head. It happened before he thought about it. Susie’s little yelp that counted for her yell in the thinning air died. He bit his lip, took the key, and scratched it into his skin. Only scratched it- everyone else would be too worried otherwise. He supposed he wanted a different kind of pain, a sweeter kind of pain. But that would be weak. He stared at the keys for another jaded moment before settling them back into his pocket. Susie. Susie stared at him with marbles, both of them turning cloudy and settling into Lancer’s already-heaving stomach. She was too shocked to even grab her axe, to even say a prayer. That was until the lack of air in that dungeon, steeped underground, lulled them all to sleep. It was the same lullaby that sung every prisoner to sleep, always waking up the next day. The keys trembled and sang in his hands. Lancer’s own prayer, his “Miserere mei, Domine, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam…”, memorized to the brim, sputtered to death when Susie fell. He knew how much of a little coward he was. Even if his father weren’t around to tell him that, he’d still believe it. Here he was, shuddering at every little thing that was brought into his life. Shuddering when he’d come home to the castle, the light still on in the throne room. Shuddering whenever Rouxls would leave his duchy in search of a holiday. Shuddering whenever he’d hang off of Steed in the air for just a little too long, and his senses would jar him, and he’d clutch onto Steed before he could say anything. His legs trembled, his eyes stung as he trudged back towards the King. The rest of the world throbbed in the background, felt as if it were an angry, pulsing spiderweb. It was sticker than a spider’s web, too. He felt dirty. If one were to push his mind to the edge, which was very close to happening now, he would say he felt even dirtier than that one night when the last thing he’d had was taken away. Almost. Almost- This was the first time the dungeon guard saw Lancer cry.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

His father. Even during Christmas, his father sat where he usually did, in the throne room, a guard on each side with a fleur de lis etched on each of their chests. Even so, he was taller than Lancer standing, a rhino over his calf. All of the celebrations seemed to stop, and Saint Nicholas couldn’t pray his way, the carolers couldn’t belt out their way past the stones in the throne room walls. Neither could the scents of the baked ham, the stew, the apples, waft through them. They were only replaced by charcoal. The flames that were behind each guard fluttered in the background, and even though there were the usual sounds of revelry… it was Christmas, after all, and a night had passed since the friends Lancer loved so much were shoved behind bars… all was calm, all was bright, all was terror, all was night in the throne room. “Lancer.” Lancer stared at the floor, and in a daring move, he shifted his eyes back and forth across the room, just above the oft-scrubbed floor, just to see if his father was pleased enough to let him do so. “Lancer, my son.” The world seemed to hold its breath, the smoke from the torches seeping in. His father’s foot boomed from the edge of the throne, and one could hear his belly jiggle from the other edge of the room, a Santa Claus with a demon’s disguise. He was stepping off of the throne, his shadow growing ever nearer to Lancer. Oh, no. What had Lancer done wrong? Did he forget to lock the jail gate tight enough? Should he have added more tally marks to the prison wall so his friends couldn’t have any room to count their days? Did he forget to attend the Christmas Eve mass service that morning? He could feel his father’s hand hovering over his head. A tenuous crane in flight. Underneath it, underneath all of it-Lancer smiled. He didn’t let it show. He kept his head bowed low, kept his hoodie as a shadow on the ground. But he smiled. He knew his father had some sort of pride in him for what he did. Maybe he’d go easy on him, only add a few more bruises to his legs. Maybe he’d- His father patted him, a little hard on the first one, but still patting. No bruises. “Son…” Lancer looked up. For the first time in his young life, he looked up. And what he saw was a smile, stretched out into endless miles. A smile that he saw in his dear little skeleton friend, and not one etched and echoed into the curvatures of a demon. It was the smile he’d craved all of these years, the smile that appeared on other fathers, les pères, whenever they would play with their children in the meadow beside Rouxl’s duchy. It filled Lancer’s cravings to the brim, filled them all with- Poison. Poison… and who was he to accept that? Poison that came from his friends’ betrayal. What a tangled, blackened heart that his lungs were breathing in. The prison was echoing through him now. The poison was driving him away now, at first pushing him to his toes, and then backing away. And then, for the first time, his father realized his height, sat back down, thinking that was the reason of Lancer’s flight. But he didn’t know that the poison still danced through Lancer’s veins, forced Lancer to tiptoe back against the wall. If this was pride, if this is what the royal guards all strove for, if this is what Rouxls tried to make him feel for his wonderful patria… ...it hurt. As soon as he began to sprint for the prisons, the guards stood or perhaps lunged back and forth a few times in confusion. Their job was to obey royalty, but at the same time, their job was to protect it. His father, however, disregarded it, running as fast as the many trips down to the wine cellar would allow him to, sprinting, sprinting, sprinting….if only he could get through the entrance… the castle torches were wafting in his face, nearly catching his robes afire…. if only… if only… if only… The public waited outside, and besides the sight of Lancer running, they couldn’t find anything amiss. They were tourists, visitors to the castle, who would often take pictures of the castle roof that hung just overhead. Tourists that would turn into a mob if they knew what happened behind the castle doors. His father was held back. He could only stand by the entrance and curse, curse until the day ended, curse until the moon hung over the sky and the stars found themselves weeping!

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It boiled inside of the King, although he didn’t want it to. It lapped, laughed inside of the King’s veins, although he didn’t want it to. It racked inside of him, although he didn’t want it to. It was a cycle, a cycle that began with the first of the kings, each king laying bruises on his prince until the King who was now seated on the throne came to reign. He tried to end it. Hell, he tried to discover it. Tried to. All he could do was try. The roof stretched out in front of him, his son running, sprinting towards his beloved Steed, towards the dungeons. Humiliation kept the King from running out, but he could at least look up. … He had to keep it in his native tongue, had to keep it hidden. There was nothing indicating that anyone in the castle didn’t know it, but it still had to be kept secret. If not secret, at least veiled. Lancer swallowed, tried to forget all traces of English, that dull, yet still beautiful, language.He rapped at the guard’s shoulder, a teacher in rapt attention. “Excusez-moi monsieur?”“Qu'est-ce qu'il se passe, Lancer?” Lancer had to stay still for a moment. Royal deferences there was none, yet dismiss there was none. Other than his friends, there wasn’t anyone who spoke to him like that. Which was why Lancer approached him with more confidence.Lancer latched his hands on the keys, in a fit of childish trust, and the guard pulled it away. No one under Heaven could be that trusting, after all. "S'il vous plaît. Ce sont mes amis. Vous avez vu comment je les ai poussés dans la cellule. Vous n’avez pas trouvé de motif raisonnable pour expliquer pourquoi j’ai fait, non?”The guard sighed, the huff jumping out of him into a ghost-wisp in the air. “J'ai fait. Mais je ne peux pas excuser les prisonniers simplement à cause de la témérité d'un garçon.”There. The insult left. Lancer’s face bunched with shame. He supposed he deserved it, and he supposed the guard was right. He supposed everyone was right except him. "Bien. Je suis peut-être un imbécile, mais je vais vous poser quelques questions. " “Leur demander,” the guard said, a cigarette topping the edge of his pocket. He toyed around with it whenever Lancer didn’t speak, his face not quite chiseled the way one’s face should when he enters adulthood. "Je n'ai rien de mieux à faire ici.""La première question: qui a négligé de vous donner, à vous et au reste des gardes, du pain quand il n’a plus de pain, et qui vous refuse un lieu de repos pendant la nuit, à part le sol de cette prison?"The guard laughed, as humorless as it was. "Vous avez posé deux questions alors qu'il aurait dû y en avoir une, mais je vous laisserai tout de même vous en demander plus."Lancer paused. "Le second est ... qui m'a dit d'emprisonner ceux que vous gardez maintenant?"The guard laughed, with a little humor this time. “Oui, mon garçon, le roi est un homme bon. Peu importe ce que les autres pensent de lui. S'il y a un dieu quelque part, le roi est un excellent représentant. Il garde les pauvres hors des rues de la ville, nous donne le texte de la Sainte Bible pour garder nos âmes mortelles de l’enfer, nous donne des hôpitaux pour le corps et l’esprit… mais il est faillible. N'oublie jamais ça."The guard paused, took off his oxygen mask, ignored Lancer’s quiet “that may not be a good idea”, took a breath out of his cigarette. He coughed, as if so lost inside his thoughts that he forgot the tar and fire ravaging his lungs. “Oui, le roi oublie de temps en temps de me donner du pain à manger, à moi et aux autres. Il néglige de nous donner un endroit pour nous reposer.”Lancer moved the guard’s hand down, the keys slipping down the guard’s wrist. “"À cet égard, monsieur, nous sommes les mêmes."The guard paused, let the keys slide down his hand onto Lancer’s arm. He scanned Lancer as if he were a floating hand in a laboratory, too savage, too inhuman, too changed from what it should be to be real. This agonizing silence lasted for second upon second. Too long, too long, too long… But then he smiled, turning his back, giving his oxygen tank a rest and leaning it to the side. He walked away, shouting over his shoulder, "Si quelqu'un me demande, je serai en ville!”...With a poke and a ghost of a shake, Lancer woke up Kris and Ralsei. Kris only flopped over, but he waved his hand towards Lancer’s, and Lancer sighed with relief. Lancer didn’t notice he was shaking until after Ralsei woke up, didn’t notice how blurry his vision became until after Ralsei sat up, asked what was wrong. He managed to stand, twisted his keys into the door, and it opened with a clumping groan. He slumped to the edge of the door, the few heaving, ugly sobs making the bar doors jingle and almost making the guard turn the corner. It was hesitant, but Lancer could feel Ralsei’s hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry. God, I’m so sorry.” “I know. I know.” “I’m never ever ever ever ever gonna do this again…” “I know, I know, shhh…” Lancer stayed, strayed for a few minutes. Kris stirred, woke up, but didn't say anything, didn't move across the dingy jail floor towards the both of them. The sobs still echoed, and he thanked God, the son of God, that the guard was out of town. “Suze?” Ralsei didn't reply, but still embraced, still embraced. Lancer coughed, tried to get himself in order. God, he was so pathetic. He tried again. All he could do was try. “Suze? Where is she?” If it was possible, Ralsei took on a pallor. A veil. He didn't say anything, only pointing to the throne room window. The light was on.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Neither English nor French left Lancer’s mouth as he ran, ran faster than his aching legs or his round body could decipher. Ralsei had to shake Kris to the full realm of alertness before the both of them ran, ran even faster…
“S-”
No. He couldn't shout out her name now. He couldn't. Not with the rest of the castle ravaging around him, not with the vines encircling them all and enwrapping their dreams. It was noon, but it was as if Christmas had all but ended. There was no gaiety in the streets now. There were no children skipping though, none of their parading parents. It was as if it had gone to the next day, saint Stephen's day, The first martyr. There was a statue in front of the castle of him, his vulture-like form over hanging over them all like the stars. His eyes seemed to watch Lancer even more earnestly now as he sprinted into the castle.
The light in the throne room dimmed, and then extinguished. What happened? What happened? Susie was strong, stronger even then she dared to tell, but she couldn't face the wrath of the monarchy, the wrath of a mace. Where was Susie? Susie? Oh, Susie, where are you...où es-tu?...
“Lance! The hell are you doing here, bud?”
Susie was standing just outside of the plaza. She had left a half an hour ago, silently stealing away, her punches and the little money cuz she had no pocket affording her a chance out of the jail. Lancer couldn't quite see how she failed to reach the castle yet. She was endurant. That lends who knew all too well from her beating him almost hourly in the path here. So what was she doing? Was she just staring off into the distance? Thinking of her family?
Or was she waiting for them? Or at least waiting for something. From the castle moat roaring underneath her, Lancer hoped it wasn't what he thought it was.
Lancer knew better than to do anything but shift his thoughts around, shift his thoughts like the rocks were shifting underneath the moat. Shifting...shifting…
Lancer huffed. There was no beating around the bush now. He was a slave of the law, as everyone else was, as everyone else didn't know of him, didn't think of him. He looked around him, looked at Ralsei. He glanced back at the throne room, the light sucked out from a dead Darkner's eye, the Lighteners surrounding Lancer, a dead Darkner's mind. He shook his head at Ralsei.
“Look,” sighed Lancer. He could feel his confidence dying, an atom exploding in slow motion. “I can't do this, Suze. It's too big of a job for me. I mean, I-I freed Ralsei and I freed Kris and I'm and I'm so sorry for what I did and I-”
"Lancer... you wanted to get rid of us?"
She twirled her axe, whether or not she was aware of it.
"Buddy, I... I thought we were a team, man... where'd that all go?"
Why was she doing this? Why was she talking to Lancer as if she were his mother, and-
She walked away in a slow march, stopping after a few steps. There were countless mothers in the plaza that had done the same.
"Nah. It's fine."
The winds blew, and Lancer's royal robes became pieces of paper.
"It's fine, actually. You don't have to explain anything. I get it. I get it, y'know?"
Lancer stared at the floor, what he had done weighing on him, paralyzing him, pounding him, berating him with an urge to run to Confession, to run back as soon as he could and scream that he was sorry. A frown formed on his face, heavier than he wanted it to. It quivered. Of course it would quiver. He didn't care how childlike he was. He didn't care how childish he was.
"Sometimes, I'm just in the way, and sometimes, ya just have to push me out. Nothin' complicated."
It was time for Lancer's entire body to quiver as he stood up, his mind exploding, tired synapses rushing to say anything, anything.
"No, that's not what I-"
"Shut up."
"Suze-"
"Shut the HELL up, Lance!"
Shut the hell up. Shut the hell up. He was back in the throne room again. Back with the belt off of his father's waist again. Back staring at himself in the doorknob, waiting for it all to be over again. He didn't want to be back here. But he was. He knew Ralsei was around him, who was really saying it, but Susie had developed another edge, enveloping Lancer.
Lancer bowed his little head and knelt down as if to die a martyr. As if he was Saint Stephen. He knew what to do. No more apologies. He was a slave under the law. He was a slave under his pall.
Ralsei sprinted towards a nearby tree even
before Susie
grabbed
her
axe.
"Get... out... of... my... way."
Lancer didn't even have to look up at her to know that her teeth were clenched so tightly together that they would squeak. That they were bared more than the crocodiles roaring in the castle moat did. That if he didn't- if he didn't- the cuts on his arms cried out- if he didn't-
But he couldn't- he was back in the throne room- he couldn't- he couldn't-
"Did you hear me? I said get OUT OF MY WAY!"
He tried to say something, but it was choked, strangled in his throat, his father's hand seeming to tighten, tighten- oh, God, he couldn't-
"Didn't you hear-"
She stepped back. Lancer's body was still afire.
"Well, I tried to warn ya. So don't expect me to feel guilty."
He knew. He knew, and there was nothing he could do except to whimper a little, to fly off to a land faraway, a land he could call his very own. It was a land shapeless, voidless, lightless, darkless, a veil and nothing else. But in that world, the blows would be only pressure. No pain.
Ralsei looked on with horror, his mouth in a silent scream, his fists curled up in sightless punches, and Kris tilted his head towards the three.
The first came. Something warm poured down his arm.
Second. Now he couldn't breathe out of his nose, so he was left panting. A dog. Just as Susie wanted.
Third. "I'll kill you." Nothing physical. Nothing he hadn't heard before.
Fourth. The left side of his head lit on fire, but at least in his world, he couldn't feel the edges. At least in his world, there was a little light. Ralsei was screaming, screaming “STOPSTOPSTOP….” but no words could filter into Suzie’s ears now.
Fifth. His right pointer finger swelled into a beet.
"Get it? I'll kill ya!"
Sixth. More red trickled down his cheek, onto his chin. “STOPSTOPSTOPstopstopSTOP, PLEASE…”
Lancer couldn't find the difference between Susie's voice and his father's.
Seven. A whip spread across the top of his back, and red made its way down to where Lancer's own belt would have been.
Eight. His nose started to squeeze against him.
"You think I care?" Suzie roared. "You think I care if you just wanna lay down and DIE?" The word "die" forced her voice to tremble a little, but Lancer was still in his own world, Suzie in hers. In that moment, all Lancer wanted to do was to lay down and die. In fact, he'd been wanting to do it longer, oh, God, longer than what Susie could ever think...
Nine. He found it better if he didn't count the damage, although he felt the red pouring down on him, forming, slow as a turtle, into an umbrella. He knew his world was safe. He knew his world was the only thing that was safe now.
Susie was a fire of her own. Everything inside Lancer screamed, clawed back to try and find his own way back to his world, to move, to do something, before Susie could-
"If you want to die so much, then why don't you just DO IT?"
He wasn't talking to him in just the now, but in the past, in the things that had already passed, in the things that would pass.
Her
axe
swung
again.
Ten.
His chest was now on fire. Nothing deep, nothing dark, nothing dangerous. But there was still red trickling to the ground to reach Susie's boots. She paused, held her axe, stared down. For a few minutes, that was all she did. All that Lancer could do was say, “Suze…” before Ralsei's healing magic tightened his chest, tightened all the newfound wounds. But there were still a few that couldn't be healed. It was like a cavern, and there was only so far Ralsei could jump inside it.
For a few minutes, that was all that happened.
The dungeon took a breath, Susie following suit.
“Man, I don't… I don't want to kill ya. Just...please move, alright?”
A few more moments of silence. There was a dripping sound from Lancer's chin on the floor.
Noise, full and rambunctious, came back to Lancer's throat. It was a car crash. It was a train wreck. It was beautiful.
“But if you do then, my dad will- and- and- the both of you will kill each other…”
Nobody dared to move. Nobody dared to speak. Nobody dared to breathe.
Except Susie, who stared into a lone crack in a castle wall. She was strong, army-strong, Susie-strong, but she couldn't help but notice the centipede in the wall rolling back and forth in a lazy fit.
'Then I won't hurt him.”
“Promise?” He said it too quickly, says the word echoing around the castle, bouncing back and forth. Promise promise promise promise, promise, promise…
Susie nodded. The promise carried forward its weight. Without any further preamble, Lancer followed the echo out of the courtyard towards the castle, ran, ran, sprinted. He was a bird. He was free. He was going to talk to his father, no weapons, no terror, to carry forth the promise, that sweet promise, sweeter than buttered, bubbling molasses or a genuine hug from his father. It was too sweet. It was reckless.
The roof was waiting for him.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The rain fell outside the castle, dripping, dripping, starting endless rhythms in all of their hearts. It would turn into snow, but it’s held back by an untold number of things- the number of the winds, the warmth dark can sometimes bring, the reign of the King, scorching so much that Winter bowed is head under its King, submitted back to its duties. No one expected the rifts of conversation to start billowing into Susie and Lancer’s heads as they tromped up the stairs, but they did anyway. Your dad’s a jerk, Lance. I know he is, but he’s my dad. Your dad’s a jerk, Lance. And that’s an understatement. But that doesn’t mean we have to hurt him, right? He’s hurt you. But I mean, I won’t. I promised. But that’s it. That’s it? That’s it. An’ as for everyone else? That’ll be left up to them. But we’ll still talk to him, right? She stopped. She put her hand against the wall, the last few steps calling out to her, stone stares in the middle of the night, The torches flickered like the stars undulating outside, her eyes maddening, the rest of the castle walls going insane whenever she stared at them. From the left, there was an alcove to where they could see parts of the balcony outside, but the window was scant and they could only see the King’s hand. It was an ugly thing, and a thing that harbinged of something more than the sum of his parts. It was an ugly thing, and the glove was stained despite the perfume of the roses du roi sprayed on it. It was stayed with colors that bounced back and forth, bullets in Lancer’s brain. Stains of red. Stains of rust. Stains of royalty. It was an ugly thing, and each of the members of the gang almost shuddered, almost, and climbed up the stairs... Yeah, Lance. We’ll talk to him. Alright? It was a subtle, subtler than the rocks moving through the castle moats with each bounding swim-sprint of a crocodile, but Lancer had found his way to the front, and by the time he was out of sight, Susie and the rest of them were left to ponder, left to stretch their hands out in vain, left to their silent screams. Dad. His father turned, and the right side of Susie’s body shriveled, shuddered. As Lancer spoke, spoke brave, spoke bold, spoke bellicose, nights echoed through the castle. They were monsters, echoing, echoing, nights in the King’s bed, nights in his own dread, nights nursing cuts that only foundation could fix. They echoed, and they fueled, and they fuled him, and they gave him voice. Looking back, Susie flapped her hand, urging the rest of them in the throne room. Ralsei was left trembling, trembling… it was all Susie could do to not look back, to keep her eyes on the King, the King, the King… Kris patted Ralsei on the shoulder, walked with him to the throne room, to the very bitter end… Lancer was standing almost on his tiptoes now. Staring right into the pits in his father’s hood, hell-slits where his eyes should have been. Not looking down. Not looking down. More than ever, Susie wanted to bolt towards him, to live, to laugh, to cry, to scream, to tell Lancer how he was braver than even the kids in Susie’s school who laughed at her for having such a “deadbeat mom and dad.” Braver than maybe, just maybe, Susie was. He was brave, and he was beautiful, and he gasped, choked. He was flying in the air. Flying over the castle floor. Ralsei shrieked, Kris’ almost-shaking hand atop Ralsei’s mouth. The King whipped back around towards them, his laugh still echoing, a funnel. One word. Whipping off of his teeth. “Kneel.”But Susie didn’t kneel, although the others around her did. Submission. Unforgivable. Susie took hold of her axe, ready- she was ready- her eyes were an inferno, his eyes were Hell, her eyes were mystery- she was ready- she wouldn’t, couldn’t kneel- she was ready- the world was silent- she was ready- The King gave Lancer enough time to wince before he hit the floor.

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The Spades King whipped around towards all three of the children, their eyes wide, staring at his empty palms.Ralsei practically had to hold Suzie back from the edge of the castle wall as the tiny four-foot-seven shadow, the criminal, went down, down, down, down….The Spades King was nonexistent now, at least in Suzie's mind. Her feet tromped down the castle stairs. She didn't realize she'd gotten at least five decent-sized splinters.But on the fifth step down, she heard a more sickening crunch from outside, impossible for her size six feet, and for the first and final time, Suzie screamed. A banshee-howl, a wolf's cry, an eagle, swooping down, down, down, down. But that only stopped her footsteps for a moment. Only a moment.The scream didn't finish until she was outside. A chill rushed down her mind, prying her eyes shut, washing off her axe. When she dared to come out again, there were three bushes. The first two bushes had been installed by Lancer and his father just those two weeks ago.But the third one was small, irregular, jumbled-up and scrambled in places any socially comfortable person wouldn't want to look at, a mess of red, white, and blue.Lancer.She sprinted there, ignoring Ralsei's rain-choked warning, those drumming, buzzing, telltale words that once someone's HP went down so much, it couldn't be brought back up by anyone. It was like asking to rescue someone buried alive when they were already embedded in the Earth's core.But that was nothing. Nothing to stop Suzie'slegs from moving, nothing to stop her from shouting out, "C'mon, man, say something, say something!" for the whole kingdom to hear once she was there.There was silence, and then there was the chorus behind her, Kris and Ralsei joining in, murmuring, "Say something, come on, come on say something, say something…" It was like a song, playing over and over again, running down its muddy path in the grog-swamp of their minds.Finally, there was something, but that wasn't until the other two bushes were watered with the thicker-than-water from Lancer instead of the clear water they received on a daily basis from the Spades King.The smallest of groans, cut off as soon as he caught sight of Suzie's axe. Then a word trailing down his mouth, dribbling on his chin. "Shoes…"The most pathetic gleam of confusion went across Ralsei's face, but it was quickly replaced by his every breath tugging and gasping and heaving, every word a half a scream. "Your, extra, shoes, are, in, my, pack, but, why, would, you, want, to-"Lancer coughed again, harder, and the wall just in front of him discolored. "Suze…" he repeated, then slumped back down, exhausted. Ready to rest now.The tugging, the gasping, the heaving, all of it in Ralsei's breath, stopped. Susie had to gently lift Ralsei out of the way, but Kris seemed to double back on his own.The thicker-than-water spread to the courtyard floor.Suzie noticed her hands were shaking before looking up again. She wanted, with a craving that even all the bombs of her dedication couldn't stop, to pick Lancer up. But she knew, from deep in her bone- instincts, that he'd only be hurt more.She'd heard what Ralsei had warned her about in terms of HP.God, she was so soft.And that was alright.That was alright now. "I'm here, Lance. Right here, okay? And your dad's not coming back here any time soon." Her teeth grated on "time", rubbed together until they squeaked. "I swear it, I swear I'm gonna-"She felt something pat her pants, barely touch it. A stained hand. She knew.Lancer tried to sing, but it wasn't quite a song. It was a half-choked prayer, somewhat speech and somewhat hanging. The thicker-than-water was mixing now with the rain, spreading even farther, almost too far for Suzie to look, the bubbles making it too much…"Oh, Suze-Anna, now, don't you cry for me, for-"He fell to gravity again, gravity forever, gravity he never wanted to leave.Suzie looked at her dusty hands, shook, noticed again they were shaking, that she was shaking. She looked back to where two strange, strange boys named Ralsei and Kris were, the both of them staring at the two bushes...

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The air was still, as death often tended to do. If the air was still, then nothing else could move. Not the speeches streaming from Ralsei, not the marches of the Royal Guards about the palace, not even the faint music still chiming from the orchestra. But there was still a little thread of something, even as the bushes were gulping down their fill. A thought, a lyric from the orchestra's concert that morning, streaming through each of their heads at slightly different rates. A round song. Herod the King, in his raging, charged he hath this day. His men of might, in his own sight, all children young to slay…Lancer had sung a carol from his soul to Susie. Given her a peace offering, a dove with the Lamb's fur, Agnus Dei, softer than words or touch. There was nothing else pouring from Susie's mouth, no curses at Ralsei, who was ripping a wail from the insides of his throat. No curses at the skies above him. Susie looked down. Red, almost nothing else. She shuddered. And she returned the carol. “Then woe is me poor child, for thee and ever mourn and say for thy parting nor say nor sing by-by, lullay, lullay…” And in an instant, Susie proved that savagery could sing. “Lullay, lullay my little tiny child by-by lullay lullay…”

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The best people always come too late. At least that was what Susie came to know. It started with her father, tossing a few sweaty dollar bills to the foster home before leaving her to go off and have his way with a whole building of women more beautiful than Susie's own mother. It then came to little Grace Hopkins, feared by the bullies but was out of sight when the same bullies descended on Susie. From the bushes came a startling crinkle, as if the leaves were nothing but tissue paper, then a roaring rip as he came out. Him. Too small for the bush to stop from enveloping him. Him. He who had nothing to hide inside of him, who had built something so strong with Lancer, so strong, Susie-strong, but placed one weakness in its core. He’d attacked it, toppled the tower- no, built the tower Lancer was now bleeding in front of. Him. There was no one to stop Susie now. No one but the ground as it stopped Susie from pushing Sans down any further. No one but Ralsei, making a half-hearted conglomeration of tugs and pleas to stop. No one but Kris, who stayed motionless, staring at a faraway world, a world of his very own, a world that seemed to be controlling him. “You- fucker- you- you-” She was nothing now. She wanted to become something. Did she deserve to become the warrior she was before? Perhaps not, but she still wanted to become something. She didn’t deserve her axe. She could only punch, punch with every curse that streamed out of her lips. She was nothing. She was nothing. Still nothing, until-Susie didn’t realize how much of her punches, how much of her frenzy, was redirected until she realized that Sans was looking straight down at the floor. Unmoving. Warmth was trickling down his arm, down his legs, down his mouth, even a little in his torso. He did nothing but wipe his mouth so as to keep his dignity. Susie was crying. But she didn’t care. She couldn't afford to, not with the guards fleeing them, yet encircling them, coming fast. She couldn't afford to when the King, the son of a bitch he was, was still cowering inside the castle. She couldn't afford to, not with the world still revolving around her.Ralsei was pushing, almost shoving Kris, whispering in a mother’s dove-coo for him to move, to say something, to ensure he was alive. But still he stood. A statue in one of the King's gardens. A veritable pygmalion.Susie still hid. Still caring. She tried feigning a hurt eye, but one glance from Ralsei lashed her bull to a growling halt. She looked at him. Him. What a little piece of shit he was. But he still needed to understand her. Just once. Once was enough. She was a little piece of shit herself, but all she needed was understanding. All that she ever needed was understanding, really. “Sans?” There was no noise, not when the noisiest one was kept quiet. “What 'son of God’ do you even think you are?” The wind blew its musty ichor; it was raining. It became a shadow, started dripping, dribbling, atop of Sans’ hoodie, than Ralsei, who did his best to wipe it off of his glasses, then to ever-unmoving Kris, then to Lancer, then to the castle, and beyond it all… Lancer had always hated the rain. It made it too muddy to take Steed out for a ride. But he said nothing. The only other sound was the wind echoing, leaching out a song from Sans’ bones. Whistling, whistling… can you hear the whistle… can you hear it….