Kingdom Come - a Sanemi x Reader fanfiction
Pairing: Concubine!Sanemi x Empress!Reader
Word Count: ~2.9k (part one)
Synopsis: How was it that a leader - someone as strong and as powerful as you, could have fallen in love with someone who you didn’t even know the face of? The mysterious masked flute player that graced the courtyards with music never left your mind - but maybe he isn’t who you thought he’d be.
Warnings: not much (starts off pretty slow), written for a female!reader, mentions of parental death, grief/mourning
-PART ONE-
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The soft click of porcelain split the stillness of the tea room.
Your silken sleeves brushed the tabletop as you took the cup into your hands, bringing it to your lips and letting the tea fill your senses with its floral taste. It was delicate, as soft as the spring breeze that stirred your kimono.
“I'm glad to hear that your palace renovations have gone well…” you said, gentle voice bringing a smile to the face of Emperor Uzui, who set his cup down with a heavy tap on the wood of the table.
“You must come over and visit! Hinatsuru has been dying to see you again, y'know…” His rose-pink eyes glittered with his usual brash happiness, his yukata sleeves dancing in the zephyr. “You'd love the new courtyards!”
The idea danced in your mind, his invitation welcoming. And he was right… you and Hinatsuru hadn't spoken in so long…
“That'd be lovely…” you said, voice breathy and soft as you brought your cup to your lips once more. His smile brightened, if that was even possible, and the energy was infectious - not that you weren't used to your friend's exuberance. To Uzui, everything was a competition to be the flashiest. And that meant the new gardens that would come as a result of those renovations would be impressive, and that was putting it lightly.
He was a bold man, not exactly known for his subtlety, but that made him endearing in his own… special little way. Not to be condescending.
“I'll see about a date, hm?” When you nodded, Tengen clapped his hands with delight. “Amazing~! Well, I must be off - can't leave the wives alone for long, ‘m I right?”
The two of you shared a laugh, rising to your feet to step out of the tea room with nothing but the soft noise of attendants behind you that were to organize the room. The sun grazed your skin, warmth seeping through your silken sleeves and wrapping your soul in its ethereal glow. That light caught on all the jewels studding the man beside you, bright glares twinkling in your vision like stars on earth.
Flashy indeed.
The feel of wind on your face was nice, cool and calm as it ruffled the silk and gossamer that draped over your body.
“Safe travels, Uzui-san!” you called after him, ears picking up on the sound of his various golden bangles clicking against each other as he waved. You watched him go for a moment, before turning on your heel with a wistful sigh.
Your palace was stunning, pagoda roofs reaching for the sky as if to tear the sun from its lofty perch in the clouds and keep it within the palace’s walls. Murals danced over the towers, paintings of swirling dragons and angels, even a snapshot of the Kirin surrounded by kodama, misty blue clouds swirling around those godly hooves.
The whole complex was a work of art - and yet the gardens were the part you liked the best.
Your footsteps were light on the flagstone path, trailing your way through the courtyards to the sprawling flower fields that were your gardens. Sakura trees sent blush-pink petals dancing over the ground, flowers of every shape and color visible in their beds. A thick perfume hung over the place, like a veil that shrouded it in whimsy. It was a magnificent garden, the place where you spent the majority of your free time.
Color and light warred in your eyes, fighting to make everything brighter. That was the other part of the gardens that you loved so much - sure, everything had some semblance of order, and yet chaos flooded through the plants. Some were overgrown, some trellised up trees, some had begun to reach out over the paths…
Overgrown but composed.
Beautiful.
It was like a group of sunflowers and lotuses had thrown a gala and a bunch of marauding butterflies had crashed it, a blur of red-blue-purple-gold that would appear an eyesore to the unconditioned person, and yet to your gaze, all that existed was a soft, petal-laden hamlet of viridian leaves and sun kissed blossoms.
The paths were graced with moss, enough to make your footfalls padded and quiet so as to not disturb the perfect stillness. The flower’s perfume filled the air, about as intoxicating as those ancient varieties of daiginjo sake that you and your ladies-in-waiting loved to drink during your little parties. The air even smelled akin to the taste of that alcohol, smooth and floral, but warm and sweet all the same. It clung to your skin, a mist of honey-sweetness that held tight to you in a fool’s mimicry of an embrace.
Your hands traced lightly over the petals of a low-hanging branch's flower, the pale pink magnolia flowing under your touch as if you wielded the very life of the bloom within your veins. Life was a fickle thing, and yet your gardens were a place where it could thrive. Where it could grow into the fullness that it deserved - as full as the warm globe that was the moon tonight, swollen with light and choking out the stars, a lazy halo over the horizon that was the marker of the day’s end. The moon that hung eternal over the kingdoms, gazing upon the world from its comfortable throne in the cloudy heavens, turning quiet judgement to all its mortal subjects.
Their lives - your life - would forever be one year, one week, one day short, and yet you live. You laugh. You love.
You wondered for an ephemeral moment that maybe something as immortal and sempiternal as the moon would crave such a human feeling for itself. That maybe, those knowing eyes looked down on those like you with longing, a love for all things honeyed and short. Something like the memory of strawberries staining a child's hands and lips, something like the rosy war of love, something fleeting. Something human.
The gardens always brought the contemplative side to your mind. The silence was one of wondering.
You'd come here the day your mother had slipped away from the earth and left the kingdom to you. The garden had been your respite from the endless tax that was ruling a kingdom and running this beautiful nation that was like a world of its own. A respite from the grief and the guilt, a place that was untouchable from the sadness that came as the price of being human. The guilt you still hadn't fully overcome.
Once upon a time, you'd been a girl. The commander of a whimsical childhood, one of wooden swords and scraped knees and flower crowns and climbing trees without a care. But as you'd aged, slowly but surely fitting into the mold of an empress, your mother had begun to look at you with hollow, empty eyes. A gaze filled with grief, as if mourning something already lost.
You'd grown away from wishing on dandelions and tracing constellations with sugar-sticky fingers and learned how to rule. How to forge alliances and organize war. The same magnolia tree you stood before now was the one you used to climb back in that euphoric life.
In becoming a ruler, you'd forgotten how to be a daughter. How to live. You'd had so much left to bring to everyone - music… cheer… laughter… but it'd have to wait.
You were determined not to make the same mistake again.
“Y/N!” Your name resounded through the silence in a voice as saccharine as the very sugar that bakers coveted so preciously. “Fancy seeing you here, my lady!” You whirled on your heel, silken robes fluttering in the cool nighttime breeze, to face the voice's owner. The familiar pink-green hair of your lady-in-waiting greeted your eyes, a star of your very own. Why look up to the sky to see brightness when you had someone like Mitsuri instead?
“A good evening to you too, Mitsuri!” you greeted warmly, watching the girl's smile unfurl like a passerine’s wings, an everblazing fire that glowed more than the sun itself.
She patted one hand against the spot at her side, a wordless yet cheerful invitation. You'd never pass up on the opportunity to soak in some sort of effortless happiness in your seemingly shadowed life. Any attempt to outrun the darkness was one that would work splendidly, and so beside the pink-haired girl you reclined. The familiar scent of sugar and mochi that seemed to cling to the girl unendingly filled your senses with familiar warmth, knowing that her presence was one of warmth and light. Somewhere safe. A small haven where the shadows couldn't drag you back to helplessness.
“How're you doing tonight?” she chirped, one to follow social proprietaries regardless of her innocent demeanor. That was an odd concept, the idea that one had to think of a certain way to talk, or act, knowing how to be in a certain situation to avoid… you didn't even know what. Social rules had always been and would always be confusing, and, as far as you were concerned, a waste of time. You didn't care for formalities.
“Quite well,” you said, however, eternally polite despite all odds.
That was how you'd been trained to be. Conditioned from a child to a woman in mere hours. Even so, the few strands of hair that slipped from your sleek updo gave you a little rush of childlike freedom - as if to say that maybe there was still a little bit of that unruly kid in your soul, buried deep beneath calm, polite façades and sonatas dedicated to charming others into alliance. You were like a siren, a silver-tongued ghost of something that once was, a child confined to the hollow shell that was an adult. A leveret hidden in the body of a hare.
“That’s so lovely…” Mitsuri cooed, delight written in those meadow-green irises. She looked… wistful, the kind of dazed that came with one feeling and one feeling only.
Love.
Now, you weren't exactly known for subtlety, nor your ability to cloak questions in the purple prose that was used by so many other nobles, so you asked in the one way you knew how - blunt and straightforward.
“Mitsuri, dear, are you in love?”
She looked bewildered, a sort of taken aback that could be read as defensive if one had never spoken to the pink-haired girl before. And yet, to your trained eyes, all you saw was an attempt to hide what was so clearly true. “W-What? No! No, of- of course not!” she stammered, voice a high-pitch trill that sounded awfully akin to the screech of a jay's midsummer song.
You flashed a knowing smile, a look that was so out of place compared to your usual serene face that it nearly sent Mitsuri jumping out of her skin.
She yelped, trying to catch her balance, sending the child in you surging to the surface in a feeling that could be described as the brush of dove’s feathers on skin… or perhaps a flurry of bubbles in your chest. However it may have felt, you laughed. A true, pure sound that was as musical as the dip and sway of a song. You watched the delight return to Mitsuri’s eyes within moments, entranced by the sweet sound of your joy, and she began laughing too.
The chorus of bubbly innocence was one as bright and pure as carillon bells, as the sun shining through frosted glass, as the scent of magnolias…
You didn't even know how long the two of you spent there until you were stumbling back to the mural-graced palace in fits of giggles, petals clinging to your robes and scattering to the ground with every step, jostled from the silk.
Mitsuri was leaning on your shoulder as you two rested against a wall in the palace, alabaster paint cool and smooth under your backs as you caught your breath. You realized too late the mischievous grin plastered on the face that belonged to your pink-green blur of chaos until your lady-in-waiting plunged her hands into the sash of her robes and pulled out a fistful of petals that collided with you in a firework of morpho blue and blush pink.
You gasped with disbelief as the petals clung to gossamer and caught in your hair, a childlike smirk appearing on your face as you watched Mitsuri dart away through the halls. You followed, determined to bring retribution against your flowery assailant.
As the two of you ran, footfalls clicking on the floor, everyone you passed smiled softly at the two carefree ladies running through palace halls like two little girls running around a garden.
…
You shook off the remnants of your laughter that clung to you like cobwebs, sinking into the warm water of your bath with a sigh of content. Ripples shied away from your body, the scent of roses holding tight to the ebony hair that now fell down your back in a midnight cascade. You watched with a smile as candlelight swam in golden undulations against the surface, pushed and pulled by the dip and sway of the water’s silver-gold veneer. The only noise was the thin sigh of your every breath and the water lapping at your skin and the edges of the bath, quiet enough so that you could hear your thoughts. Sometimes, that was good.
Sometimes it wasn’t.
It hadn’t been long ago - a few weeks? A month? Two? when your mother had succumbed to the illness that had plagued her life so incessantly for these past years. You’d only been a little girl when she’d first fallen ill, watching her slowly start to take more meals in bed and struggle to walk, aiding her in political matters as you’d grown up. You’d watched the spirit in her eyes slowly get strangled out like vines choking a tree, or perhaps a candle flame that had been snuffed out too soon… perhaps an early blooming and early dying flower… there were hundreds of different metaphors you could use.
You didn't want to try and think of them all.
Your mother had been the gentlest woman you'd ever met - even more so than the ladies who'd watched over you as you'd ascended the throne that had never supposed to have belonged to someone so young. You'd taken control of a mourning kingdom and brought them back to prosperity.
The years had passed so, so quickly, almost as if the time was one of the dandelions that bloomed goldenrod-yellow and just as quickly turned into the snowy puffs you used to love to wish on.
You'd seen the grief that had cleaved through your home with brutal, unforgiving claws and you'd seen the hope in your people's eyes. The hope that you'd be there to guide them through a loss that had devastated you and them both. The care you felt for those people bordered on maternal, and you took great pride in the revitalization of the kingdom after your mother's death.
You could walk along those paths in the countryside and see the trees that could have gone bare should your nation have fallen into despair. You could see the city's people - not just people, friends - talking and laughing with each other. You could see the art and music and life that colored your home and you could see the smiles painting everyone's faces as they went about their busy lives. You could see the little kids with their flower crowns and the inquisitive sparkle in their eyes, and it made you think of what you'd lost.
You wouldn’t let them experience the same guilt and grief you had. They would lead happy, peaceful lives in a safe nation, all thanks to you.
That was something to take pride in.
As the heat of the water made your muscles relax, you sighed with what could only be described as pure, heavenly bliss. The windows were thrown open, a breeze brushing through your hair, the night-kissed air swooping in on silent wings to fill in the empty spaces in your heart with gentle peace and feathery silence. It was calm, gentle, everything you needed to recultivate the sense of joy you used to have. You could do it. Music drifted in through those shutters, the lilting notes of a flute that graced your ears and made your heart feel suspiciously light. It was odd this time around, as if the music was unnaturally angelic - something sent by the gods themselves to lift you from the grief. A feeling like no other.
You reveled in it for a moment.
All too soon, the water’s embrace went cold and left you shivering in your own skin. Slipping out of that air-chilled shield, you shook a little in the process of towelling yourself off. The downy silk was comforting, something soft that cradled you like you were fragile, and the feel of your sleep clothes on clean skin was a simple sort of joy that you couldn’t resist taking delight in. That soft, swooping flute music kept dancing in your ears as you went through the motions of redressing.
Exhaustion settled heavy and deep in your bones, the very fabric of your being craving rest like you’d been deprived of it for years instead of a mere day. A soft yawn escaped your lips, the primal instinct that called for rest threatening to have you asleep standing up if you didn’t go to bed right now. Who were you to not listen?
As you slipped under those supple sheets, the crisp feeling was pleasant to the touch, windows casting the soft silver of moonlight over your skin, you let yourself slip into dreamless sleep with a contented sigh. After all, you could say you deserved this rest. Rebuilding a kingdom was tiring.
Sleep enveloped you, your thoughts drowned out peacefully in darkness as you sank into the familiar embrace of the night.
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(I'd like to dedicate this fic to @sixxels, a lovely writer that has unfortunately deactivated their account after receiving death threats by a bunch of ignorant people who find happiness in bringing others misery. I am one of the many, many people who loved their writing and are devastated to see them go, and I hope they're doing alright stepping away from Tumblr.)
*:･ﾟ ~Thistle *:･ﾟ