#convo;mina

[konigarenofgermany-archive]

11:00 am. king aren I’s coronation. @mina-herzog

Aaron had no time to waste going from his room to Mina’s quarters, so he took off at a jog. The pitter patter of tiny dachshund feet skittered behind him as his puppy Hilde scurried to keep up with him. He clapped a hand to his chest to keep his sash from flying off his shoulder and the various royal adornments from clanking around and making a bunch of noise. He was running late and he was supposed to be at the final rehearsal, but there was one last thing he very desperately needed to do.

“Hey, Mina--” Aaron burst through the door and then paused to scoop up Hilde under his arm. “Do you have any, uhm, makeup?” Aaron was out of breath and sweating but those were the least of his problems right then. There was a big hickey on his neck and he couldn’t be seen until that was taken care of. “I ran into... a door... with my neck,” he explained innocently.

[aaronherzog]

Night fell and the air cooled enough to cause a chill down to Aaron’s bones. He loved cold weather, and the temperature now hardly touched an early autumn night in Germany, but it seemed Aaron got used to the hot tropical climate after spending the entire summer here. Tugging his sweatshirt, his hands retreated into the sleeves and he balled the fabric into fists. And he just stood there on the beach, watching the stars.

His head felt full and yet his thoughts were static, all anxious white noise. He slept all day--remembered waking up sometime in the afternoon to a pestering knock from Mina. She said he missed their lunch date. Well--shit. So he said he was tired, and to meet him later at their regular spot on the beach. Then he slept through that arrangement, too, so now he had been unceremoniously marched out of his den in the Tulach House by his little sister.

“Sorry,” he said after what had to be too long. When he looked down at his feet, his hair fell in his face. He pushed it back and it fell again. “I’ve been thinking too much.”

@princess-wilhelmina

[bo-bellamy]

spitfire. @princess-wilhelmina

Bo looked up from her mug of green tea, which she splashed the tea bag in and out of idly. She had only been back on the island for a few days, and the presence of royals and every single pirate was making the private island much more... cozy. The royals made it feel especially cramped. Especially this one.

Bo watched the redheaded princess hop to try and reach a high cabinet shelf, where the last coffee mug sat waiting to be used. She’d seen this princess around before--she was more than half a foot shorter than Bo, with wide eyes and a big smile, and she was usually with Tommy or Belle or one of two douchey looking princes. A couple of times, Bo trailed the princess to try and catch her name (Googling was no fun, and cheating), or just see what she could find out about her. This was the first time she saw the princess alone, and she decided to move in.

Coming up behind her, Bo reached easily for the mug and brought it down for the princess. Her yellow-green eyes focused on the shorter woman and she held the mug out to her, not realizing she was staring at her. Meeting the princess’s gaze made her heart skip a beat. “I’m Bo.”

[aaronherzog]

Aaron got about three meters from the Tulach House when a wave of nausea overtook him, and he had to go puke behind some bushes. It had been a while since he vomited not from drunkenness, but... nerves, was it? The past few minutes felt like a blur. He started his morning by getting kicked out of the villa he’d called home for a couple of months, and then running into Valko Petrov. He swore to god he tried to make nice with his sister’s betrothed, but instead he ended up yelling at him and punching him.

And the worst part was that Aaron didn’t even have the excuse of being drunk when it all happened.

“Fuck,” Aaron said to the bushes. “Fuck.”

Still holding his bundle of belongings under his arm, he made his way toward the villas, diverting briefly by the canteen in case--yup, there she was.

“Heyyy, Mina.” She was smart, she’d see the welt on his cheek and check his hands to find his knuckles bruising. She’d kill him on the spot. “You know I love you, right?”

@princess-wilhelmina

[konigarenofgermany-archive]

a very herzog christmas [mina!]

Sanssouci Place, Potsdam, Germany

The night Aaron returned home felt like a dream. Ushered into the palace from a dark tinted car. They’d set up a tent to get him inside the door and sheltered from the photographers and reporters. A doctor checked him over inside the great hall. Mina wasn’t there yet. Aaron asked about her and all he knew was that she was going to a hospital in Brisbane. Take me there. No. Mother, Father, and his brothers were waiting for him in the drawing room of his quarters. Mother sobbed and held him. His brothers looked on, somber. And his father the king stood over him and Mother and said: We missed you. Then Aaron was the one crying.

---

Aaron hardly left his room. A new phone was given to him but he didn’t turn it on for three days. He couldn’t eat. For years a white grand piano sat by the window in his room, but upon his return, Aaron found it to be hideous. The white piano was promptly donated and replaced by a black one. Once it arrived, Aaron sat at the bench and hovered over the keys. He couldn’t remember a single fucking song.

---

Mina had been home for a few days and Aaron hardly left her side. Despite being together during their captivity, Aaron felt like he hadn’t seen his sister at all. And he almost lost her. One night he fell asleep on the couch in her room with Gretel, her dachshund, on his chest. A knock on the door before the sunrise brought news. The King is dead.

---

Aaron dropped a box of pastries on the table beside Mina. He couldn’t stop pacing. “Mother is a mess.” He took a chocolate croissant and chewed on it. “Do you know what you’re wearing for the funeral?”

@mina-herzog

[aaronherzog]

Aaron slowly tried to regain some semblance of normalcy after what happened with the fires. The person he found it most difficult to bring himself to see was his sister, and it hurt like hell. He felt like a risk to everyone around him for what he did to Voloshyn, and if there was one person in the world he couldn’t bear to lose because of his actions, it was Mina. Once the talk of the fire started to die down a bit around the island, Aaron got out of his room a bit more. Maddox told him he had to be smart about how he conducted himself. That was a big ask. But he knew he couldn’t survive without his biggest ally.

Aaron met up with Mina outside the canteen, a cloth bag slung on his shoulder full of whatever he could scrounge up without getting yelled at. “I have never gone on a picnic before,” he told Mina with a shrug. It seemed so... pedestrian, but what about this island hadn’t made him live like a commoner? “Have you?”

@princess-wilhelmina

[aaronherzog]

The sense of urgency with which Aaron walked with Mina in tow seemed matched by his sister. They hadn’t exchanged any words yet, just a hurried come with me and okay. It was not a far walk to the Tulach House from where he scooped her up from the canteen, which was good for Mina because she probably had to go at a jog to keep up with his brisk long strides.

Aaron ushered Mina into his room and shut the door behind them, then he stuck a chair under the doorknob. His room was not in its usual tidy order with the bed unmade, drawers half closed, and closet and bathroom doors hanging open. On his desk sat a wilting flower crown, and an aloe vera plant soaking up the mid morning sun in the windowsill above his bed. Aaron exhaled and looked up at her worriedly. “Mina, Roddy is here.” Aaron lifted and dropped his hands at his sides. He didn’t know what else to say--that basically summed up how screwed they were, and how screwed their country would be should something happen to their father.

@princess-wilhelmina

[aaronherzog]

The hardest part about having Mina for a sister was planning literally any sort of surprise for her. She was too observant. Asked too many questions. That was why Aaron had to stoop to asking a pirate for help--Tommy, specifically, because he would be the most useful not only for keeping Mina occupied and out of the villa, but providing Aaron with supplies. He put in an order of basic baking supplies (and got two boxes of “Duncan Hines” chocolate cake mix), icing (one tub of vanilla, one tub of... strawberry?), and decorations (two birthday cake candles and a baggie of loose rainbow sprinkles).

All in all, a really good haul on such short notice.

Aaron surmised it had been since Mina’s 18th birthday that he had officially done anything over the top for her. But he owed her big time for all the shit he pulled in the past couple of weeks. Thank god her birthday was coming up so he could atone. He figured doing it a couple days early meant for a bigger surprise, too--the problem with Mina wasn’t that she expected anything for her birthday, just that Aaron consistently did something for her so a surprise was out of the question.

Aaron stuck one of the two birthday cake candles in a strawberry-iced cupcake and, making sure no one was looking, took the lighter from his sock and lit it. Tommy was going to drop her back off at his villa at noon after taking her god-knows-where (Aaron figured he didn’t want to know what kinds of things Tommy and Mina got up to). Aaron finished icing the last cupcake and placed it on the plate with the others. In front of the plates of cupcakes sat a flower crown he’d constructed very carefully out of the island flowers he could get his hands on, and a little card titled Mina.

There, now Aaron was the best brother ever again and Mina would come through the door at any moment.

@princess-wilhelmina