In a previous post, I claimed that the romantic subtext between N and the player character in Black and White extends far beyond the moment on the Ferris Wheel. This subtext is established through the frequent use of fairytale tropes and motifs.
In this meta, I consider how N embodies the Cursed Prince archetype while also sharing some attributes with the Maiden Trapped in a Tower.
N as the Cursed Prince
The most well-known example of the Cursed Prince archetype is the Beast in Beauty and the Beast. The Beast is a young prince who has been cast under a spell that transforms his outward appearance to reflect his inner brutish and callous nature. He is essentially a man-child who must endeavor to shed his harsh exterior and be restored to the noble young man he always had the potential to be. The prince's breaking of the curse is representative of maturation during a troubled adolescence.
N has royal lineage and is crowned the King of Team Plasma during the game's prologue. His abandonment in the wilderness and subsequent "rescue" by Ghetsis can be viewed as a metaphorical curse. In addition to grooming N "since his infancy" to be a perfect pawn and figurehead, Ghetsis also alienated N from the rest of humanity through isolation and manipulation. N finds it difficult to understand people and identifies more with Pokemon, thus making him almost more akin to a creature than a man.
While N is perhaps less hostile and harsh toward the "Beauty" i.e. the player than your typical Beast, he does at times engage in villainous behavior, puts up a front of confidence, and adopts a dismissive posture toward the player. Case in point: the Ferris Wheel.
The inciting incident in many Beauty and the Beast stories is the Beast capturing the Beauty in some shape or form. He may hold her hostage or take her prisoner, though this is usually temporary. This is how I contextualize the moment in which the player is trapped, albeit briefly, in a confined space on the Ferris Wheel with N who leads you there under false pretenses. N deliberately deceives the player in order to buy his grunts time to escape, then throws down the gauntlet while the player is still reeling from the shock of his betrayal.
I think it often goes overlooked how stone-cold N is in this moment which is a shame because it adds an interesting wrinkle to his characterization. He laments humanity's propensity for cruelty and dishonesty, but he, too, is not above these human shortcomings.
This moment is even more of a sucker punch given that the game intentionally invokes the Rondez-View Ferris Wheel's association with romance beforehand only to subvert it. The name of the Ferris Wheel is a play on the word "rendezvous" which can refer to a date, and the ride serves couples only. Additionally, the electric bulletin board in the Nimbasa City gate advertises the Ferris Wheel as a place where a "heart-pounding encounter" will take place. This turns out to be true, but not in the way one might initially expect; rather than referring to the exhilaration of young love, the player's heart pounds from the suspense of N's reveal.
Though the Beast takes the Beauty captive, it is he who becomes completely captivated by her. I've already written about how N is utterly mystified by the player from the moment he lays eyes on you. After the moment on the Ferris Wheel, N becomes all the more determined to try to figure you out.
In the Chargestone Cave, he continues to ask you probing questions, and if you don't answer them to his liking, he responds with displeasure and perhaps a touch of condescension.
If you respond "No" when N asks if it surprises you that he says you're chosen:
"If you don't understand what that means, it's not likely to surprise you."
If you respond "No" when he asks if you have a dream of your own:
"As if anyone without a dream could ever understand me!"
Compare this to N's more even-keeled, unperturbed reaction when you respond "Yes" to these questions:
"Of course. Such news should be a surprise."
"You have a dream... That's wonderful."
To me, this contrast is indicative of N's expectation and desperation to feel understood by the player.
Overall, N's demeanor in this location strikes me as betraying his immaturity and youth. He tries to act like he has all the answers, but all this bravado is simply a way to overcompensate for his self-doubts. Furthermore, his outburst at the Professor, while I think offers an interesting critique of the Pokedex as taxonomy, is peak angsty teen behavior.
N takes a notably different tack the next time he sees the player outside of the Mistralton gym. He tries to understand you better by speaking with your Pokemon, yes, but perhaps more significant is that he drops his confident front and displays uncertainty, vulnerability, and compassion for the player. In other words, this is the moment when the Beast starts to reveal his true self. Also of note is that Skyla just told the player that Team Plasma already moved on ahead toward Icirrus city, so N hangs back to chat with the player entirely for personal reasons.
Despite N's growing sympathy for and fascination with the player, and despite all his doubts, he continues down the path that Ghetsis laid before him. Again, this is typical of this kind of storyline; even though the Beauty sees past the Beast's veneer, he's not quite ready to let go of his Beast form. N befriends the legendary dragon, storms the Pokemon League, and defeats the Champion with the intent of separating people and Pokemon for good. Only the player stands in the way of him accomplishing this.
As the final showdown approaches, N's posturing and dismissive demeanor toward the player reappear in full force. He calls your perspective on Pokemon battles "ridiculous" and downplays his feelings for the player, stating he "actually kind of liked you a little" but was kidding himself.
However, the tyrant-prince in his faraway castle is not the heroine's gravest threat; the true villain is the wicked witch—the murderess of the innocent—a role played by Ghetsis. N is crushed but ultimately accepting of his defeat at the hands of the player; at this point Ghetsis berates and dehumanizes N for his failure, reveals the true extent of his evil machinations, and expresses his intent to eliminate the player in a surprise extra battle.
In a split-second moment that is presented somewhat ambiguously, N intervenes on the player's behalf to heal your Pokemon before the fight with Ghetsis. This crucial detail is easily missed amid the commotion, but it is a pivotal point in this storyline! N calls the player's name, a bell chimes, and then when the fight starts, the player's Pokemon are auto-healed.
Although I've seen some people suggest that Cheren heals the player in this moment, further evidence points to N being the player's intercessor. Moments earlier, N went out of his way to heal the player before his battle with you, saying there is no honor in fighting a weakened opponent. This establishes that it would be in his character to take issue with Ghetsis jumping straight into the fight. Additionally, Ghetsis's dialogue just before the fight supports this interpretation. He yells, "I won't allow anyone to stop me! No matter who does what!" which sounds like something he would say in response to someone doing something he didn't account for.
Ghetsis never accounted for N exercising agency to aid the player in your moment of crisis. Nor did he account for N developing a bond with the player which ultimately proves stronger than all of Ghetsis's manipulations and whatever sense of loyalty N may have felt for Ghetsis. This moment is huge in terms of N's character development!
The Beast's intervention on the Beauty's behalf earns her forgiveness which in turn breaks the curse over him. This is usually accompanied by a love confession. Given the player in BW is a silent protagonist, the closest we get to this is the heartfelt conversation between N and the player before the credits roll in which N unambiguously expresses his sincere admiration and respect for the player.
Since we only have access to one side of this conversation, it's left to our imagination to read between the lines. As N bares his soul to the player, the tone of his words is affectionate and remorseful. N expresses feelings of unworthiness with respect to the player, saying there's no way he could measure up to you. This begs the question, what exactly does he feel unworthy of? The player's sympathies? Forgiveness? Companionship?
What's more, N recounts his recollections of your first meeting which tilted his world on its axis and shattered his preconceptions (describing a first meeting in such terms is a common trope in love declarations, by the way). He goes on to say that he needed to put his beliefs to the test against you in battle "more than anything." Finally, his parting words encouraging the player to follow their dreams are poignant and affectionate ("If anyone can, it's you!").
The events in the throne room constitute a spiritual death for N—he is defeated by the player and learns that his whole life has been a lie. But this is necessary as the Beast must die so that the Prince can rise. N's new journey of self-discovery will restore him to a newfound sense of life and purpose. Indeed, we see N in the sequel fulfilling his duty as hero and king by confronting his father, passing on the torch to the sequel protagonist, and articulating a new dream to act as a bridge between people and Pokemon.
Now that the Prince's curse has been lifted, his happy ending usually entails taking the Beauty as his bride in a sacred marriage. Together they can restore balance to their kingdom. This is the only part of this story structure that remains unfulfilled in Black and White and its sequel games. However, all signs point toward a heartfelt reunion between the player and N. By the end of the sequel, he plans to set off on a new quest in search of the player and express his gratitude and feelings to them. N speaks about the original player with unmistakable reverence, wistfulness, and longing. This longing is reciprocated as we learn from the player's mom that they set off abruptly in search of N. That the player and N circle each other in this way suggests that their true sense of belonging lies in each other.
This makes sense given that the game establishes N and the player as yin and yang counterparts, equal and opposites, two sides of the same coin, etc. While the original heroes of legend were brothers described as twin heroes, the player and N are twin flames. Some dialogue from the sages in BW's post-game also hints at the depth of this connection. In particular, Giallo, while speaking of the player and N's links to their respective legendary dragons, says that if two people truly understand each other, even if they are as far apart as the sea and the sky, it's like they're right beside each other.
Reading N as a Cursed Prince grants greater significance to details that often go without much analysis such as N's deception and capture of the player in the amusement park, the game designers' deliberate choice to draw attention to N's stunted development by directing the player toward his childlike playroom (the cursed prince is a man-child!), and N's intervention on the player's behalf before the final fight with Ghetsis.
Also, N's original concept art makes it even more clear how he fits into the cursed prince archetype before his design was sanitized.
At the same time, N is a mirror image of the player and resembles a typical Pokemon protagonist. N captures the box legendary, challenges the Pokemon League, and defeats the champion all before the player accomplishes any of these feats.
As Ghetsis points out, "Added to all that, his heart burns with the desire to improve the world." Unlike the player who merely wishes to preserve the status quo, N possesses what the player will always lack: the ability as an outsider to radically reimagine a future that aims to redress harms perpetuated by this status quo. In my estimation, this makes him a much more admirable character than the player.
N as the Maiden in the Tower
An alternative lens through which to analyze this story is to consider N as a maiden trapped in a tower and the player as the hero who rescues him.
In many ways, N resembles a stereotypical princess character. He has two step-sisters, a wicked (step)parent in Ghetsis, and the ability to talk to wild creatures. N also seems to have the gift of foresight as he often speaks of envisioning the future. It's unclear to me if this literally means he has visions or he's just using his imagination. Either way, his daring to imagine a better world is a kind of power in itself.
N's seclusion in his castle is metaphorically identical to a young maiden's imprisonment in a high tower. It represents a loss of autonomy and total subjection to the will of the parental figure. The maiden's golden hair is a symbol of her untarnishable goodness, and she is a beacon of innocence and hope. It's noteworthy that descriptions of N by other characters like his sisters and the sages foreground similar idealized feminine traits: his generosity, beauty, innocence, kindness, and purity.
Although N is permitted to leave his tower after he is coronated as Team Plasma's King, he remains metaphorically trapped in its walls throughout his journey. He is captive to his rigid ways of thinking and to the pain and suffering he was exposed to during his youth. The player begins to penetrate these walls and shows N a different point of view. But N doesn't truly escape Ghetsis's influence until he casts it off during the climactic moment in the throne room when he stands with the player and against Ghetsis.
In the Rapunzel tale, the prince and the maiden fall in love and devise a plan to escape her tower, but they are discovered by the witch who thwarts them. She cuts off Rapunzel's hair and banishes her to the desert. Then, she throws the prince out of the tower whose fall is broken by thorn bushes that leave him blind. The two wander the desert for ten years before they reunite, and Rapunzel's tears restore the prince's lost sight.
Upon discovering N's defeat and the player's status as a true hero, Ghetsis attempts to eliminate the player and reconstitute N as a puppet ruler. Although Ghetsis is not successful, he does reveal his true intentions. N learning the sorry truth, much like the cutting of the maiden's hair, can be viewed as a loss of innocence. N must undergo a journey of self-discovery, so he departs the region and wanders for two years which is a kind of self-imposed banishment.
Meanwhile, it can be presumed that the player at some point grows listless and, like the blinded prince, lacks direction. Eventually, they leave the familiarity of the region to seek out N. The yearning to reconnect with him is so urgent that they leave behind a worried mother who has no means of contacting her child.
The eventual reunion between these two characters would entail the healing of each other's wounds and the restoration of the player's lost sense of purpose. N is very clear-eyed about his new dream, and certainly there would be room for the player to share in it through a synthesis of their previously held ideals.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the narrative of Pokemon Black and White tells a love story between the player character and N. Whether you want read it as romantic or platonic is up to you, but the love is there either way. I suspect that the romantic elements are largely kept as subtext because N's interactions with player are identical regardless of the player's gender. If the protagonist were strictly female, my guess is that the romantic elements would have been a lot more overt—GameFreak did something similar, for example, with Shauna in X and Y whose interest in the player is only addressed when you play as a boy. Basically, as usual, heteronormativity is at the scene of the crime.
It has always frustrated me how large portions of the Pokemon fandom treat shipping the player and N as nothing more than the ridiculous fantasies of silly fangirls. I remember reading a Nuzlocke comic back in the day that dedicated an entire installment to making a mockery of the idea. Still, even fans who aren't as derisive about it often treat it as a funny footnote that's entirely incidental to the game. I hope I've been able to demonstrate how the relationship between N and the player, including any romantic implications, is not only structurally at the heart of the story, but it's also metaphorically and thematically resonant.
Changing Tides - human prince 'cursed' into merfolk body (sfw)
Hello! This has been up on my Patreon for my $3 and $5 tiers to read for a week now. If you want to get early access to stuff, and to access my entire back catalogue, here's a link.
Disclaimer which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.
Anon sent me this message and I responded with almost 8000 words:
"human prince who got cursed and turned into a merman, and while his family and the royal court struggle to find a way to break the curse he finds he's actually happier as a merman"
It's 3rd person, sfw, and features an orca clan who adopts our frightened prince, and there's a hint of mlm romance for one of the orcas with a human in the future... Anyway, I hope you like something a little different.
Content: some mild elements of body horror during the curse/turning scene, brief but not gory/too explicit mention of marine animal death, some implied trauma resulting from a transformation against his will/separation from family and previous existence at a young age, brief description of blood/injury from a harpoon to another character
Wordcount: 7965
Dusk gathered over the gentle swells of the open ocean, gilding the new yardarms and painting the perfectly crisp, white sails of the Royal Navy’s flagship with a pink and orange watercolour glow. The ship’s guests drank and laughed, and celebrated The Sea Rose’s maiden voyage, utterly unaware that they were enjoying their final few moments of life as they knew it.
Unremarkable in almost every way, a small porpoise had been playing in the bow wave, its small, dark body darting mere inches from the stem each time it plunged in and out of the spray and waves.
It didn’t hear the warning from the sea witch racing to catch up with it, and when the young porpoise’s concentration slipped and the black-painted stem of ‘The Sea Rose’ collided with its solid little body, no one on board noticed the tragedy of its passing. Even if the guests hadn’t been half drunk on the heady mix of wine and their own self-importance, there was no one on lookout in the crow’s nest that day; the new ship was flanked for her safety by two frigates a little way off, both crewed with the Navy’s finest and bristling to the gunwales with cannon and ammunition. There was no need to keep a watch this time.
There was, after all, no danger.
And yet, the animal’s accidental death would not go unmarked, unmourned, or unpunished.
Heedless of the vengeful danger rising swiftly from beneath the ship, the king himself strode along the main deck in his white and gold finery, leaving his guests for a moment as he spotted his thirteen year old son standing at the taffrail on the afterdeck and staring out at the ship’s trailing wake.
He slapped the skinny boy on his shoulders by way of a greeting, and nearly sent him toppling over into the sea from the force of his jovial blow. Hauling him upright again with a meaty fist at the scruff of his velvet doublet, the king laughed, cheeks red with drink and the bracing sea air, and he grinned down at his second eldest son.
“What’s got into you, lad?” he asked, his words a little thick and his green eyes a little glassy. “You’ve begged me for years to be allowed to go to sea, and now you’re here, you look like you’d rather be anywhere else! You’re not seasick, are you, lad? You’re going to be Admiral of the Fleet when your brother ascends the throne — can’t have you turning green at the slightest bit of swell!”
“It’s not that, father,” he said, mustering a smile for the king. “I’m sorry. I was just… thinking.”
Down below on the deck, the little prince’s older brother was talking with a few of the captains and admirals, and the boy felt suddenly every bit as young as he was. ‘King’ Eolan was a title that would suit his brother one day, with his regal bearing and his noble features, while the younger boy was gangly and too skinny to fill out the doublet he wore or the fine leather boots on his small feet.
He didn’t get the chance to observe the Crown Prince in action for much longer though, because a shudder ran the length of the new ship, and conversation sputtered and died.
The sails quivered and the rigging shook like spiderwebs before a coming storm. All the hands looked to their stations while the royal guests shifted uneasily and someone dropped a wine flute into the silence of the swelling sea. The Crown Prince scuttled up the stairs to the afterdeck and joined his father, tense and alert, though not before laying a hand on his little brother’s shoulder and offering a reassuring smile.
While the ship sailed past the stricken porpoise in a foaming, heedless rush, the creature bobbed past with its back broken, dead on impact, and the sea darkened around it and then began to boil and churn along the sides of the ship.
Finally, a shout went up and someone standing by the rail on the port side pointed and then reeled back in alarm. They were joined by more guests and sailors until half the ship’s company was hanging off the side and staring into the water that had turned an inky black around the corpse of the sea creature.
The thirteen year old prince followed his father to the railing of the high afterdeck and peered over in time to see a humanoid figure rise from the water. Her long, wet hair hung around her shoulders like a veil of moonlight, and her eyes flashed the colour of the ocean on a summer’s day. Her skin was freckled and oddly iridescent and the air around her seemed to shimmer like the road on a summer’s day. In her right hand she held a staff that was the silvery brown of old driftwood, wrapped around with seaweed like the leather on the grip of a quarterstaff, and her lower body appeared to be that of a leopard seal.
The prince’s breath caught and he stared, slack jawed down at her, forgetting to be afraid.
At the sight of her though, the guests recoiled and grabbed at the charms and holy pendants they wore around their necks, but it would do them no good. The witch raised her staff and let out a wordless scream of grief. As if whisked by a winter squall, the sea rose up around her at her call and a huge wave sloshed against the side of the ship, rocking it and sending a wall of spray and foam across the main deck.
Wherever the droplets of water touched, a flurry of white feathers appeared, and from the afterdeck, the king and the two princes watched a flock of startled seabirds flounder upwards into the sky. In their wake, the main deck lay completely deserted.
The king swore and unsheathed the steel sword at his hip but the young prince simply clung to the wooden railing and continued to stare down at the sea witch.
All his life, he’d heard tales of merfolk and of the magic they wielded, but he’d never dared dream they might be real. He’d spent hours begging the merchants who came to the castle for stories from the fish markets, since every sailor claimed to have fallen in love with a selkie or kissed a mermaid on one of their voyages, but he’d never truly believed that merfolk really did exist.
“What is the meaning of this?” the king bellowed down at her over the sound of the settling sea. “Return this ship’s crew and my guests to me at once, witch!”
“Never!” she snarled. “They’ve flown far away now, oh great king,” she added sarcastically, still sneering, “Your pretty birds won’t return to you now!”
“Why? What prompted such an act?” he barked. To his younger son, he suddenly gestured and added, “Come away from there!” With a desperate look over his shoulder, he hissed at the Crown Prince, “Eolan, protect your brother!”
The witch smiled and the younger prince saw tears tracking down around the corners of her smile as it turned from malice to grief. “Father…” he breathed, wanting to warn the king, but not knowing quite why or of what.
“Quiet!” the king hissed with a sharp motion of his hand. “Eolan, fetch a harpoon. I will have her hide on my wall!”
The Crown Prince snuck away down the stairs, out of sight of the sea witch, and then disappeared below decks. As he left, the younger boy finally let go of the railings and came to stand behind his father.
“Your ship,” the witch called above the wash of water against the sides of the vessel, “Is an abomination! You toss your refuse into the sea to choke the life from those who live there, tangle us in your nets, capture us… skin us!”
She paused and choked something raw and visceral and far beyond articulation. Drawing energy into the staff in a swirl of mist, she came to the real crux of her grievance.
“Your ship took my familiar from me and you didn’t even care to notice!”
“Your what?”
“Shadow!” she wailed, and that sorrow finally crystallised into rage. She pointed as the body of the dead porpoise floated over towards her and then with another heartbroken shriek, she raised the staff not at the king, but at his son. “I curse you!” she spat at him. “I curse you! May your son’s frail human legs fail him and may he know the plight of our people first hand! May the air choke him and the water you disdain be his only solace!”
A bolt of lightning seared down out of a clear sky and struck the deck of The Sea Rose behind the king in a spray of splinters. Ozone and singed wood filled the air as he turned around at the wheezing gulp that left his son’s throat. At the sight that greeted him, the gilt steel sword dropped from his fingers to clatter across the deck at his feet.
The boy’s legs had gone completely limp and he hit the deck hard, eyes wide with terror.
“Father,” he tried to choke in panic, but the sound lodged in his throat.
He brought one hand up instinctively to claw at his neck as he failed to breathe, suffocating in the ordinary sea air, and a moment later his fingers found the three slits of gills in his skin that had not been there before the lightning of the witch’s curse had struck him.
Before the true terror of his discovery could sink in, however, a blinding pain erupted in his chest and his hips, and his legs began to spasm.
The boy tore at the trousers which were suddenly constricting and strangling him, cutting into his legs, and he rolled on the deck as he ripped them off to reveal the distinctive opal-green and black pattern of a mackerel’s skin beginning at his hips. He clawed wildly at his skin in horror trying to halt the change, and his father dragged the fabric away just as the transformation ran its course, and his son arched his back and writhed on the deck like a landed catch, unable to breathe and blind with terror.
Footsteps on the stairs announced Eolan’s return and when he saw his brother lying on the deck with the barbed tail of a mackerel, he crashed to his knees beside them, the harpoon forgotten.
Not knowing what to do, the king knelt at his son’s side and stroked his curly, black hair out of his eyes which were bulging as he failed to breathe.
“Father,” he mouthed, chest spasming.
The skin of his remaining human body turned a grayish silver, like tarnished pewter, and between his fingers as they scrabbled at the deck the king could see a thin webbing stretching and flexing. Black, wickedly sharp claws raked the wood of the deck to splintered furrows as the boy twisted and panicked.
“What do we do?” Eolan whispered, tears filling his eyes. “Father? He’s dying… He can’t breathe!”
Acting on the most fragile of hopes, the king picked his son up in his arms and held him briefly, kissing his forehead. “I love you,” he said. “I will find a way to reverse this.”
Before the cursed prince could work out what was happening, he had been flung over the side of the ship and hit the water with a heavy smack.
The rush of cold seawater across his new gills was a relief beyond anything he’d ever felt. Instinctively, he drew in water through them and let his body start to sink.
Above, the shadow of a second ship, the frigate ‘Persistence’, announced itself with a volley of musket fire, and the sea witch dived out of sight, dragging the body of her slain familiar with her into the depths, the young prince forgotten entirely.
In all the commotion, the prince disappeared into the depths of the coastal waters, alone and afraid for the first time in his life.
__
The clan of orca-folk cautiously breached the surface and paused to watch the selkie on the shore light the driftwood pyre with the tip of her staff, and dipped their heads as one in respect. The creature at the heart of the kindling blaze was most likely her familiar, and they decided not to trouble the witch in her grief.
Leaving her, they swam in silence out of the cove and moved along the rocky shore, casting uneasy glances at each other. Magic was rare among the merfolk, but those who changed their shape at will, like the selkie folk and their distant, inland relatives, the kelpies, had it more strongly. There had been turmoil on the sea that day, and even now that the stars had blinked to life in the sky above, the waters still churned with unease.
A younger member of the clan swam on ahead, not quite understanding the wary reverence her relatives had for the sea witch, and, distracted by the passing of a very ordinary but still very quick seal, she raced off in a stream of bubbles to play with it. Yes, her kind hunted seals, but when they were being that obvious about their pursuit, the seal was in no danger.
She blasted around the rocky promontory but splayed her wide flippers to bring herself to an abrupt halt when she spotted a boy about her own age lying curled on the sandy bed of the next cove’s floor. He was hunched in on himself and seemed to be in some kind of distress, so she swam slowly over to him. He had the dizzying markings of a mackerel — black lines and opal shimmers like summer sunlight on the sea’s surface — and she wondered if perhaps he’d been left behind on the annual migration.
As she approached, he raised his head and his mouth opened in a soft ‘o’ of surprise, gills flaring.
“Hi,” she grinned. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said. “You alright?”
He shook his head.
“Pearl?” Her older brother’s voice sounded from close behind her, wary and warning, and she glanced back over her bare shoulder at him. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I just found him.”
Hook swam past her, pushing her roughly to one side, and he loomed over the terrified stranger and bared all his sharp teeth at him. Hook was only a year older than Pearl, but he liked to play the grown up with her, and it irritated her no end. She grabbed the wide flat of his tail as it wafted past and yanked him sharply backwards. It wasn’t enough to move him much, but it brought his long, black and white hair drifting into his face and undermined his attempt at a tough persona a little.
The strange boy cringed away, hands above his head, and Hook relented when he saw he was no threat, and clearly terrified.
“You hurt?” he asked, though he could taste no blood in the water. “Where’s your shoal?”
In no time, they were joined by the whole orca-folk clan, and it was decided that the stranded boy would swim with them for the winter until his people returned to these waters to claim him. The boy didn’t speak, but he seemed able to understand them, and something told Pearl he’d been through something more awful even than being abandoned by his shoal.
Over the next few weeks, she first coaxed some tentative smiles from him, and then, when they had stopped to rest one night in another rocky cove further to the south, he laughed.
It happened when Hook got his finger clamped by a massive lobster and he swore and flung the thing away before washing it further from him with a great sweep of his tail, scowling. He was growing into his body and would one day outgrow even their father, and the motion sent the offending crustacean spiralling away on the temporary current.
When the wash of water in their ears had settled, they heard a quiet giggling and looked around to see him sitting near a bed of kelp, one hand over his mouth, and laughing softly. His eyes were the most beautiful brown, like a seal’s, and when Hook saw who was laughing, his indignation at the incident melted away like the ice in the spring, and his whole body softened.
Pearl watched as Hook swam over to the strange boy, the one they’d taken to calling Mackerel for the beautiful patterns on his tail, but the boy stopped laughing almost immediately. Hook’s shoulders dropped and he looked mortified when he saw unease and uncertainty in the boy’s eyes.
“It’s alright,” Hook said with a half-smile. “I deserved to get pinched the way I picked her up,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking. You want to see if we can find another one and I’ll show you the right way to do it?”
Tentatively, the boy nodded, and Pearl watched as the boy swam off at Hook’s side. He didn’t swim like normal merfolk, but more like a newborn still getting used to his tail. Sometimes he started to sink and panicked, and the first few times it had happened, Hook had actually had to lift him up to keep him from sinking completely. Unlike them, he was a piscine merfolk, meaning he could breathe water and not air, while they were mammalian and needed to surface. When Hook went up to gulp fresh air those first few times, Pearl would watch the boy and make sure he didn’t sink until Hook returned.
He seemed to grow in confidence though over the winter, and by the time of that first laugh, he was just a bit awkward in the water. He couldn’t hope to keep up with Hook, but her brother had a kind streak to him for all his brash bravado, and he kept pace with Mackerel. Slowly, the boy began to talk with them, but he never spoke of what had happened to him, and any time they asked him where his shoal was or where he’d grown up, he shut up tighter than a clam and refused to talk. Eventually, they stopped asking.
He did till them his name though, and they were surprised to learn it was a human name. Pearl had been named for the lightness of her irises — such a pale blue it was almost silver — and Hook had been named because the patch of white under his tall dorsal fin looked like one of the barbed devices that humans used to catch fish. Mackerel, however, turned out to be named Theo, and when asked why he had that name, he just shrugged and said his parents must have liked it. They stuck to calling him Mackerel, or Macks, and he didn’t object in the slightest, only smiling shyly the first time Hook used his new name.
When spring came to the waters where Pearl’s clan hunted, no piscine merfolk came looking for Mackerel, so he simply stayed with the orca folk.
One year became two, became three, became five.
Hook grew into a monster of a merman, with muscles rippling over his body and a reputation for taking on anything he deemed a threat to his clan, from great white sharks to fishing boats. Mackerel grew as well. Gone was that awkward, faltering motion as he swam — he could out pace any of them in a race and he was lithe and graceful and elegant when he moved. He laughed a lot too.
Pearl noticed how he would watch her swim past and then look away, and when Hook caught him staring at her like that, he washed him playfully away with a wave of his massive tail and sent him spiralling off into the murky depths with a laugh and told him to come back when he could win against Pearl in arm-wrestling.
Then, one summer evening, Mackerel disappeared.
They’d been swimming nearer to the shore than was wise in the warmer months, when humans often gathered on the shore with their fires to dance and sing and make a strange music of their own. Hook and Pearl’s mother called the clan back from the shallows and led them away when they heard the strange notes of human song and saw the orange lights dancing on the shore like strange, swirling blooms of plankton that spat sparks into the sky, but when Hook turned to Pearl to ask her something, he tensed and looked around.
“What?”
“Where’s Macks?” he asked, his hold tightening on the driftwood spear he usually carried in his right hand. Its ghostly-white blade was made of honed whalebone, and it had gutted a great white from nose to tail only the week before. The colour had drained from Hook’s usually tanned face, and he looked around frantically in the gloom that night had cast on the sea.
“Maybe he didn’t hear mother calling?” Pearl whispered.
“Stay here. I’ll go back for him.”
“Careful!” Pearl hissed, but he was already sliding away like a shadow, consumed by the growing darkness.
Hook searched the cove where they’d been intending to rest until they’d discovered the humans too close for comfort, but found nothing. Panic began to rise as he looked further along the dark, jagged rocks of the shoreline.
Eventually he started to run out of air, and surfaced carefully, mindful of the massive dorsal fin that stuck up like a sail behind him now that he was full-grown. If the humans spotted it glinting in the dark, they’d hurl harpoons at him or try to snatch him for a trophy. Merfolk — both saltwater and freshwater — didn’t last long in captivity, and he had no intention of being taken.
Then, at the far end of the sweeping cove, he spotted the opalescent glimmer of Mackerel’s scales and saw his greyish body draped over a rock. He was leaning on it, staring at the humans. His black hair, which, in the water, was flat, had started to curl, and Hook couldn’t believe he was out of the water at all. He was going to asphyxiate if he stayed up there too long, but the orca kept watching him a little longer. He liked Mackerel’s body; how it was different from the powerful orca folk. He was built for speed and agility where Hook was built for a combination of wild bursts of power and slower endurance. He might have begun courting him, bringing him gifts of carved whalebone and rare trinkets from the seabed, if Mackerel hadn’t clearly been attracted only to his sister or her female friends. So, he’d kept his affection for him chaste, and now as he watched, he realised with a jolt that Mackerel was crying.
Slowly, he swam over to him, keeping in Mackerel’s line of sight, and when his best friend turned to look at him, Hook’s heart cracked and sheared apart at the look on his face.
“What?” Hook asked, pausing and bringing his hands up to speak in the Hunter’s Tongue they used with each other when they needed to be silent in the water. He’d taught Mackerel himself, and he’d soon picked it up like he’d been speaking it all his life.
Mackerel only shook his head though and then dipped his neck below the waterline to breathe before rising up and staring again at the humans.
Hook turned to watch, but didn’t he understand. Humans were fascinating, sure, but they weren’t beautiful enough to make grown merfolk cry, surely?
Strange structures had been erected on the soft, pale sand, which looked like they were made of the same material that humans used to catch the wind and drive their boats and ships. These though were coloured the same shade as the urchins and starfish that hunkered down in rock pools at high tide, and whatever they were made of glittered occasionally like the sun on the water. The humans were laughing and moving around in odd patterns around their fires.
“What is it?” Hook whispered when he was close enough to Mackerel that their bodies touched all along one side.
“I miss them,” Mackerel rasped back. His voice didn’t work very well above the water, needing the cool caress of the waves to make it audible.
“Miss who?”
“My family.”
Hook went still. Macks had never talked about his family in all the years he’d lived with Hook’s clan. He looked from Mackerel to the humans and back again. “What do you mean?”
Mackerel bit his lip. “These people…” he said. “I know them. Hook, I was —”
A shout went up and something lanced down out of the dark, piercing the water and glancing off Hook’s large, rounded flipper. He cried out in shock at the sting of it as blood blossomed in the dark water, and he yanked Mackerel down into the waves just as another spear flew into the waves like a diving bird.
This one landed in Hook’s flat tail, and it wasn’t a spear. It was a harpoon.
Thick and barbed, the weapon lodged itself in his tail and he found himself hauled up the beach by a small party of humans before he could even flounder or lash out. His own spear had been dropped when he’d reached for Mackerel and he only prayed that his friend had the sense to swim for the depths. Not that he was about to go down without a fight, he thought as he readied himself to lash out with his fists, and even his teeth if he had to.
Of course, Mackerel had the self-preservation instincts of a piece of seaweed in a Spring Tide, however, and he breached the water a second later with a screech of distress that made even Hook’s eardrums hurt. For an instant, the tearing pressure on his tail was relaxed and he heaved his body with all his might, knocking the shadowed figures aside and sending them tumbling into the sand.
Then he saw Mackerel hauling himself up the beach, and the men started to run for him too.
Panic set in to Hook until he heard Mackerel yelling at them. He was yelling a name. A human name.
The figure at the front of the group skidded to a halt in the wet sand and stood there in shock while a wave washed up the shore to him and sloshed over his boots. “Theo?”
“Eolan…” Mackerel wheezed. “Please… Let him go…”
The figure crashed to his knees in front of Mackerel and tilted his face up to look him in the eye.
Hook seized the opportunity and swung his tail again, scattering the last of the humans tugging fruitlessly on his line now that there were too few of them. The barb of the harpoon was right through the meat of his tail and it was bleeding everywhere, turning the sand a nasty dark hue.
“Let… him go… Eolan. For me.”
“Brother? Little brother?” the human choked, bowing over him.
“Yes. It’s me. Let. Him. Go.”
The human turned his face to look at Hook then, and Hook recoiled. He looked like Mackerel, just… older. And harder too.
“Get back into the water,” Hook growled at Mackerel. “You’ll choke up here.”
That made the human — his brother? — look sharply back at him, and when Mackerel nodded and his lungs started to seize, the human dragged him unceremoniously into the water himself by the tail.
Hook meanwhile clawed his own way back down the beach, dragging the harpoon with him. If it ripped out of his tail, he’d bleed to death, but if he didn’t get away from these humans, they’d hang him up like the sharks and the tuna they took great pride in catching, and they’d wait til he bled out or died from the stress of it.
He yanked at Mackerel’s tail and dragged him the last way into the water too, then half-swam and half-sank down into the safety of deeper water. Pearl was waiting for them with Hook’s spear in her hand and swam at him, crying out when she saw the harpoon in his tail.
“It’s bad, Hook. We have to take you to the sea witch,” she said. “Mackerel, what in the name of the Deep were you thinking?”
“I…” he croaked. Like a piece of flotsam caught in the grip of the tide, he didn’t know whether to return to the beach or follow them into the sea. Hook didn’t have time to wait though, and he let his clan bear him away, looking back over his shoulder at Mackerel in disbelief and confusion.
Pearl drew Mackerel after them, and he followed in mute shock.
The sea witch’s lair was somewhere most merfolk avoided, mostly because magic was as unnerving to them as human fire, and the sea witch was powerful. She had never been known to turn away anyone in distress however, and when she scented blood in the water and saw Hook being borne into the protective ring of rocks around her home by two of his kind, weak from blood-loss and pain, she darted over immediately and hissed a curse.
“Humans,” she said through gritted teeth as she instructed the orca folk where to leave Hook. He found himself drifting in and out of consciousness on a soft bed of woven kelp, and when he looked up she smiled at him. “Easy, sweetheart. We’ll get you taken care of. I’ll need you to be brave, and you might need to hold onto someone while I take it out. There’s no easy way to do it, but my magic will patch you up afterwards. It’ll scar, but at least you’ll have your tail, eh?”
He nodded. “M… Mack…” he moaned, but Mackerel didn’t appear. When he cracked his eyes open again, he saw Mackerel staring at the witch with abject terror in his big brown eyes.
“It’s alright, lad,” she laughed, waving him over. “Come. Your friend needs you now.”
But Mackerel didn’t move.
When he remained, drifting on the currents like a mindless jellyfish, the witch tutted and gestured more impatiently, until she went still and really looked at him. “You’re… You can’t be… By the Deep, you’re him, aren’t you?”
Slowly, he nodded.
When Hook let out a groan as the water drifted over his injury and moved the harpoon, the witch focused again and said, “No time for that now. Someone hold him while I heal him up.”
Mackerel did move then, and he swam right around her and came to hold Hook’s hand in a firm grip. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Not your fault. Humans are awful. I hate them,” Hook spat. “I hate them all, I —” He cut off as the witch yanked the harpoon out and immediately began to heal it. Hook’s eyes rolled and he lost consciousness at last.
When he came to, he found Pearl at his side, curled up asleep the way she had done when they were really young. He stroked his hand over her hair and she stirred, blinking and rolling over.
“You’re alright?” she asked and he nodded.
Moving his tail experimentally up and down, he found that the pain had gone, and the wound had been mended to leave a silvery scar in the top and a pink one in the white of the flesh underneath. “Where’s Macks?” he asked and she swallowed and looked away. “Pearl?”
“He’s gone.”
“Gone?” Hook jerked upright and glared at her. “Gone where?”
“He talked with the sea witch for ages and she gave him something, and then… he just left.”
“Without saying where he was going?”
“He swam to the surface like he was one of us running out of air. I don’t know what happened.”
“Where is she? Where’s the witch? I want to ask —”
“I’m here,” came the witch’s harsh voice from nearby. “Don’t get your flippers in a flap,” she added, rolling her eyes. “And something tells me your boy will be back…”
“He’s not my boy,” Hook growled.
The witch just rolled her eyes. “Maybe not in the way you wish, but he’s not for you anyway. Your blood told me an interesting story when I drank half of it in by accident earlier. How are you feeling?”
She moved her seal’s lower body from side to side in a sinuous sweep and lifted up his enormous fluke, nodding with a satisfied grunt when she inspected the scar.
“I’m fine. Tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s not really my story to tell, if he’s not told you already,” she said carefully, “But I lashed out a long time ago when humans took my familiar from me, and I took it out on the wrong person. I wanted the humans to know what it was like to suffer at the hands of someone you feared, so I gave one of them a tail and gills in a fit of pique to make his father pay. I was so wrapped up in my grief at Shadow’s death that I clean forgot about the lad when the humans opened fire on me, and I’ve not thought about him from that day to this.”
“Mackerel…” Hook exhaled, his blue eyes wide. “He… He was human, once, wasn’t he?”
The witch nodded. “Pampered little princeling out on his father’s brand new ship. Shadow got too close and the ship hit my familiar. The shock of it broke something inside me that day, but I never should have taken it out on an innocent child.”
“Where is he now?”
“I gave him the means to return to his people. If he stays on land for longer than a single cycle of the sun and moon, he’ll stay there and never return. If he returns to the sea within that time, he’ll never be able to return to his human form again.”
“Why would you make him choose like that?” Hook demanded, face like a thunderhead.
“My magic isn’t infinite, boy,” she scoffed. “I can’t give him a shifters gift. He must choose, his family in the water or his family on land. By all accounts, the humans have scoured the land looking for a way to get their cursed prince back, but no witch has been willing or able to help them.”
Pearl shook her head. “Probably no one wanted to go against the Sea Witch…”
The witch blew a stream of bubbles from her mouth and shrugged. “If they had, I might have heard about the situation and remembered the poor boy I tossed into the ocean like a piece of discarded bait. Your clan shamed me with your honour in taking in the boy as your own.”
Hook swam out of the witch’s lair not long after that and made straight for the cove where the humans had been frolicking on the shore like spinner dolphins in the surf before they’d spotted him and Mackerel.
There, sitting close together on the beach by the dying embers of the fire, he saw his best friend and the human who’d called him ‘little brother’.
For a long time, he watched, transfixed.
Mackerel was wrapped in a piece of fabric that looked like a small, patterned sail, only it fell softly around him, and from under it, Hook could just see a pair of feet. His gaze snagged on them, and he wasn’t sure how long he stared. He wondered what it was like to have two limbs instead of one — perhaps it was like controlling his flippers and his tail separately…?
Suddenly, on the rocks above him and to his right, a male voice cleared his throat, and Hook jumped, lurching away with a snarl.
“Sorry,” the man said with an earthy chuckle. “Didn’t want to spook you, but I figured you should know I was here, and that you’d better not try anything either,” he warned.
Hook’s upper lip peeled back to show his row of sharp teeth. “If he wants to be there, I won’t stop him,” he growled. “Who are you?”
“Crown Prince’s bodyguard. You?”
“His friend.”
Hook eyed the man up and down and found he didn’t dislike him, physically. Like Hook, he was clearly a warrior, since he had what the humans called a ‘sword’ belted to his hip, and he carried a long spear in his right hand. His clothes looked like they’d been made of fish scales though, and Hook immediately wanted to touch. The fabric shimmered in the torch light and clinked softly, almost musically.
When he saw where Hook was staring, the man chuckled. “Yeah, mail’s a bit like fish skin, I suppose.”
“Mail?”
“This,” he said, plucking at the shirt that ended halfway down his thighs.
He crouched down, leaning on the spear for balance, and at the sight of the dark, soft fabric underneath the mail and covering his legs, Hook’s curiosity surged and he swam a little closer.
“Fuck,” the man breathed when he saw the way Hook moved.
“What?”
“Never been this close to one of your kind.”
“Without hurling a harpoon at us, you mean?” Hook growled, gripping the rock at the man’s boots and raising himself up out of the water enough to reveal his entire torso. Then, with one hand, he grabbed at the man’s mail shirt near his neck and hauled him close.
The spear dropped from his hand and clattered onto the rocks, but the human didn’t resist him.
“Holy shit,” he exhaled instead.
Hook snarled, lip rising again on one side, and he heard a shout of alarm from the beach.
Flinging the man aside so that he toppled and landed hard on his backside on the rock behind him, Hook looked over to find Mackerel standing shakily and staggering on the sand. The ‘sail cloth that wasn’t sail cloth’ fell to his waist and he grabbed at it, just as his brother lurched to his feet and helped to steady him.
Together they walked shakily around the cove and over to the rocks that jutted out into the sea like a dock, but the shore was too jagged for Mackerel’s bare, human feet, and besides, he was too unsteady on his unfamiliar legs.
He beckoned Hook over though, and Hook glanced back at the Crown Prince’s bodyguard, then sloshed into the water and drove himself at the shore with a few powerful sweeps of his tail. There, he half-beached himself, looking up at Macks.
Mackerel crouched, keeping the soft fabric around himself and half hiding his strange limbs from Hook’s view for some reason, and the older man stepped back when Mackerel nodded at him. “You’re human?” Hook croaked, looking up at him.
Mackerel made a little sideways motion with his head. “For now. I’m sorry I never told you what happened. I… I was afraid you’d… that you wouldn’t want me in your family anymore if you knew the truth. I know how you talk about humans…”
Shame twisted in his gut and he looked back at the man on the rocks who was standing up at the approach of Mackerel’s brother.
“You going to stay with them?” Hook asked.
“I’m not sure. I want to talk with my brother a bit longer. While I can. We’ve got a lot to catch up on.”
Hook nodded. “I understand.”
“Hook…?”
He met Hook’s blue eyes with his brown and reached for him. His skin was warm and soft in the firelight, and Hook found he missed the stony grey it had been before. Being human didn’t suit him, but he didn’t feel it was his place to say that, so he just swallowed and nodded. “Take your time. You know where we’ll be.”
“Hook, whatever I decide, you're family too. All of you. Pearl and you and the whole clan. You took me in and cared for me in a way my family on land never really did. They sheltered me and they loved me, but… not the way you did. I’ll always love you all for that. You know that, right?”
Hook nodded once and shoved his weight backwards in the sand, awkwardly carving a channel in the wet shoreline with his massive body. He glared as Mackerel’s older brother strode back across to join them, and he helped Mackerel to stand. His legs trembled and wobbled, and he laughed and leaned into his brother, and the two retreated up the beach to talk some more.
At the whispering of metal rings sliding like scales across one another, Hook glanced to his right and saw the guardsman approaching along the sand. He set down his spear and held up his hands, laughing softly. It was a warm, chuffing sound, and it stirred something in Hook’s gut that he’d thought only awakened for Mackerel.
“What do you want?” he asked, though it came out more petulant than threatening, and it only made the human warrior snort another little laugh. “You sound like a seal with a cold, making that noise.”
That made the man’s laughter grow and he shook his head. Hook saw that his hair was wavy and dark brown, and it looked impossibly soft. A shiver ran down his whole body and he felt a spark of arousal thrum through him. He was glad he was lying on his front, for one.
The two princes talked long into the night, and Hook stayed with the guardsman.
Slowly, he got over his hostility and started to ask questions about the humans’ world, and once he’d started, he couldn’t stop. The guardsman had plenty of his own questions too, and by the time the sun was well up into the sky and hammering down on them, Hook’s deep voice was hoarse and his golden-brown skin was dry and prickling.
“I should…” he rasped, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder at the water behind him. “I’m going to turn into one of your baked fish soon.”
“Shit, I’m sorry,” the guardsman said. His name was Kit, it turned out, which Hook thought was a very funny sounding name. “You need a hand getting back in the water?”
He didn’t, but the thought of having this human’s hands on him sounded suddenly and bizarrely appealing, so he shrugged. “You strong enough to actually help me, or are you just looking for an excuse to get your hands on a merman?” he said, raising an eyebrow.
Again, Kit laughed. It seemed so easy, so natural for him to laugh, but Hook felt a little flicker of pride all the same at having made him do it.
“With all that muscle you’re packing? Probably not,” Kit admitted. “Seemed polite to ask though.”
Hook snorted too, and shook his head. His hair had dried while they’d been talking and it was tickling his face. The guard surprised him by reaching out and tucking it behind his ear with a smile. “I’m glad I met you, Hook,” Kit said. “Maybe… no matter what His Highness decides, you’ll meet me here again some time?”
“His… Highness?”
“The one you call Mackerel. He’s a prince, you know?”
“He’s just… Macks,” Hook scowled.
“Yeah.”
Kit straightened with a grunt and dusted the sand off his legs, and Hook used his forearms to back himself back out into the surf, tail lifted so it didn’t drag like an anchor.
His back was burned, and the saltwater was agony to start with, but it had been worth it to spend so long in the company of the strange human. He ducked beneath the water without a word and vanished, deciding to wait out the rest of the time until Macks’ spell conditions were met in the solitude of a nearby kelp bed.
Occasionally he surfaced, but he didn’t go back to the shore, and finally, when the moon was starting to rise again, he breached the water one last time and looked to the beach. There was no sign of Macks this time, and he realised he’d probably made his choice.
Grief struck him a worse blow than even the harpoon, and he curled inwards with a grunt as saltwater leaked from his eyes and he realised he was crying. He doubled over and turned towards the open ocean. His scarred tail gave a throb of pain as he pushed himself to the limit and blew past his clan who had been waiting nervously out in the open water all day.
Pearl yelled after him but he ignored her. He wasn’t sure how far along the coast he swam but eventually he doubled back to familiar waters and located his clan.
And there, in the middle of all of them, was Mackerel.
Hook halted and stared, and the motion of his black and white tail attracted his best friend’s attention enough that he stopped mid-sentence and darted away from the girls, his body flashing like a minnow between the figures of orca merfolk. He shot out and blasted over to him at a pace even Hook hadn’t known he was capable of, and collided with him with the speed of a racing tuna fish. He gave a soft ‘oof’, a cloud of bubbles rising up to the surface in a foam as the air was knocked from his lungs and he started to cough. Mackerel tugged him up to the surface and made sure he got a good gulp of air before hugging him again.
“I know you don’t see me as your brother,” he said, “And I’m sorry I can’t give you what you wanted, but… I hope you’ll accept me back into the clan all the same.”
“I love you,” Hook said, “No matter what, or how. I can’t believe you stayed though. I thought… I thought…” He squeezed him tightly, using his flippers as well as his arms, and Mackerel laughed.
“Turns out I actually prefer being a merman,” Mackerel laughed. “I was always out of place on dry land, but here… I think I’m meant to be here.” He waited a beat and then said, “My brother’s guardsman seemed quite taken with you. Maybe you can keep flirting with him when I go and visit my brother?”
Hook shoved him away and then used his trademark tail-wipe to wash him even further away, and the two of them laughed.
“Race you?” Macks asked.
Mackerel did an easy back-flip in the water, rolling gracefully and then twisting like a strand of kelp in the current. When Hook thought back to how he’d been in those first few weeks — when, he now knew, he’d only just acquired a tail instead of legs — he realised how Mackerel had really grown into that pretty tail of his.
As pretty as it was though, it somehow wasn’t as appealing as Kit’s legs anymore, and Hook hid a secret smile as he let his slippery friend scoot away from him before setting the muscle of his tail to good use and powering after him like an incoming breaker.
Relations with the humans changed after that. The old king died some years later, though not before he got to see his lost son one last time, and over the course of the next year, trade and new laws governing fishing rights and shipping lanes were established for the safety and benefit of the merfolk.
And if Hook disappeared from the clan for extended periods of time, and if those periods happened to overlap with Kit’s time off duty, well, it was only a sign of better things for both worlds, surely?
__
I really hope you enjoyed this. If you did, please consider showing your support by reblogging. It really is the best (and totally free!) way to help the artists and writers whose work you enjoy.
This is just a short story I wanted to write up in a AU where the gang are in a fairytale setting. Kinda an offshoot of Rapunzel but with G/t instead. May or may not cont. this depending on the reception and motivation. Thought something different to refresh myself for the canon story.
Part 1 (You are here)
Part 2
cw: Implied past abuse
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One might assume that being held hostage is not only terrifying but also an exhilarating predicament. In tales of old, damsels in distress yearned for freedom and often found romance with the noble hero who saved them in most derivative literature.
However, Jason's firsthand experience proved quite the opposite.
Perhaps it stemmed from the fact that Jason wasn't kidnapped by a fearsome beast, but rather, he was imprisoned by his own father and the individuals who had pledged their allegiance to the Anderheart royal family since his adolescence. The novelty of being confined in a tower forever gradually lost its appeal over time. Fortunately, those who locked him away occasionally sent servants and mages to inform him what era it was, provided they were brave enough to engage in conversation.
The prince wouldn’t consider himself a hostage, far from it.
In fact, he’s the fearsome beast that needed to be locked up.
It all started with a bit of family trouble back when he was a young boy. Not that he would like to remember much of what happened but, what did happen was his own mother cursing her son before she was executed for being a witch.
What horrible curse was he afflicted with? Falling into a deep slumber to be awoken by a kiss, or turning into a swan at a nonspecific lake?
No, that would be far too graceful for the poor prince. Whenever he felt true love or happiness, he would start to double in size when his heart raced. The second his father found out what happened to him, for the safety of the kingdom and to keep a respectful appearance of the royal family, Jason was locked up in a refurbished prisoner tower which was meant to hold powerfully dangerous wizard prisoners.
It wasn't akin to a dismal prison with meager accommodations and chains, considering Jason was still the prince after all. He occupied two entire floors, and all his possessions from his room in the castle were transported here. His extensive collection of books and plants kept him occupied throughout the years. The tower's walls were even enchanted to withstand his uncontrollable growth, ensuring he wouldn’t accidentally destroy his home. Admittedly, it caused him significant pain when that occurred, but Jason believed he deserved it for allowing himself to become such a monstrosity in the first place. The prince preferred not to view his current residence as a prison but rather as a place of self-reformation and eventual liberation from the curse.
Though things on that front were slow going. All kinds of wizards and bishops had given his humble tower a visit to see if they were the ones that could break Jason’s curse. None of them succeeded by even a little bit. The number of people claiming they could fix him dwindled and Jason could hardly remember the last time a magic user tried to break the curse. It didn’t help either, that no parameters were said on the solution to get rid of Jason’s burden. Thinking about this made his stomach drop and he’d rather not focus on his predicament.
While there hasn't been a recent visit from suppliers from the kingdom, Jason wasn’t completely left to his own devices. It would be idiotic to leave a giant shifter to go mad by loneliness. Years ago around the time Jason turned fifteen, he was given a druid attendant to originally help him cure his ailment. This druid attendant was only a mere apprentice and needed experience for her mage training. Of Course she never did help him with the curse, but she did stay to become his closest ally. She even taught him how to nurture plants and they bonded over book series they both really like.
Strangely enough, Jason couldn’t put a finger on why but she wasn’t disgusted by his curse and actually wanted to be friends. Sure she seemed fearful of him at first, though she ended up going past the whole giant thing pretty quickly.
Oh Ellinor, so sweet yet had an awful taste of companions evidently.
Jason longed for her presence, despite knowing that she would return in a month with supplies to ensure he didn't perish from hunger and would provide him with new books to read. Plus it wasn’t like he could force her to stay just because he really wanted someone to talk to. He’d just find things to do to avoid being needy for attention. Surely, given his expertise in enduring captivity for countless moons, he could find ample activities to keep himself busy.
It was only day three and he was already out of books to sink into.
Loneliness began to eat away at him like moths to a nicely crafted sweater. He could feel the holes in his heart widening and just needed to find something to keep him distracted.
The prince finally rose from his silk sheets from his self reflection and quiet sobs, trying to think of ways a damsel like himself could pre-occupy his time. There were moments when he almost wished he were tormented by a captor, as it would afford him someone to converse with, reminiscent of the stories he had read. Gently dabbing his tears with a handkerchief, he took a deep breath, attempting to compose himself.
“Just a couple of weeks Jason, nothing to get all emotional over.” he whispered to himself as he passed by the solitary window that offered a glimpse of the outside world. Pausing, he leaned out of the stone archway, beholding the tranquil forest that surrounded him. Despite being the sole view he had of the outside, it remained a breathtaking sight regardless of the season. The melodic songs of diverse bird species and the presence of adorable, fluffy rodents never failed to bring a smile to his face. If only the creatures weren't frightened of him, he could approach them closely. Oh, how he yearned to run his fingers through the soft fur of an endearing creature.
What he’d also wish he could do was to check out the plant life around him when Ellinor isn’t around to help him pick it. Just after Ellinor left Jason just had to notice a fruitful bounty of lavender had decided to grow underneath a willow tree that was right across from his tower. Jason had read of the calming remedy the herb had and heard that it made for an amazing tea. Having something to help calm him wasn’t only useful in his separation anxiety but may help with keeping from getting taller.
His gaze lingered longingly upon the lavender patch, wondering if it would remain in full bloom by the time Ellinor returned—
Wait, who was that?
Jason hadn't anticipated encountering anything other than the usual lavender flowers nestled beneath the willow's branches, but the sight before him was no mere flower. She possessed a beauty as captivating as the very patch she was avidly plucking from. His extraordinary eyesight allowed him a better glimpse of the woman, who had dark skin and neatly braided hair fashioned into a crown. Her clothes seemed nice, though not too nice to be a high class nobel, but he assumed that was because a dress would be problematic in dense woods like these. Jason couldn’t get a better look at her as she was bent down on her knees to hog all of the sweet smelling lavender.
Normally, it would be ill-advised for the prince to engage with passersby outside his tower. More often than not, they were lost bandits or adventurers mistaking him for a trapped princess. Each encounter ended with Ellinor either chasing them away or their retreat in terror upon discovering Jason's true identity. Fools, all of them.
However, this time, Jason realized his precious herbs were at stake, and lavender was not commonly found in the area. The audacity of this beautiful intruder to take what was clearly near his tower, and to claim one of the few things that could have kept him grounded and normal… no, she had to go.
“HEY- YOU THERE. TRESPASSER!” Jason yelled out as he poked his head outside his stone window and held onto the balcony fence. The woman startled as she looked where the yelling was coming from. “YEAH YOU! MISS!”
The woman stood up from her business and the prince could finally see her face. Her skin was definitely glowing and well taken care of so she couldn’t have been a dirty bandit type he usually saw. Perhaps a traveling noble merchant or a mage? Could be a magic user as he noticed how enchanting her eyes were. Wait- Focus Jason!
Just because this flower thief was pretty didn’t mean she had the right to take his precious herbs. Though perhaps he shouldn’t scare the daylights out of her and just tell her to get lost.
As the woman pointed to herself and gave a puppy dog head tilt, Jason went on shouting from his window. “Those lavender flowers are already claimed!” Jason spoke, trying his best to seem authoritative though it was pretty lacking, “and this is private property you’re standing in!”
The woman looked back at the lavender patch silently and then did a double take at the tower. Raising an eyebrow in curiosity, instead of leaving his yard, the lady decided the best idea was to walk even closer to the tower. Jason cringed and before he could tell her to back off, the woman cuffed her hands around her mouth and started to yell back.
“I don’t see a garden fence around here!” Shouted the beautiful stranger, “Also no offense, it looked like nobody lived in your dinky tower in centuries! How was I supposed to know!?”
Dinky?! Really? A three story tower is dinky to her? Jason’s fingers gripped on the stone window sill. "Well now you know don't you?!" Shouted back the whiny prince, "so why don't you leave my 'dinky tower' alone?"
Instead of just leaving like he asked, she stood there analyzing the scene before her. "You locked up here or something? Need help out of there?" She responded with a tinge of worry in her voice. Jason only rolled his eyes as he found himself again in this bothersome situation.
"You're not one of those Albion graduate heroes are you?" Jason spoke with his arms crossed, "No I'm perfectly fine thank you very much."
Her worried expression turned into a skeptical one as she still didn't make herself scarce.
"Oh really?" She retorted back with her hands on her hips, "Why don't you come down here to get the damn flowers yourself?"
Jason’s cheeks turned a tomato shade of red as his resolve began to crumble. He sputtered out his explanation.
"I-i can't…" Jason admitted, "I can not leave the tower but, I can assure you I'm perfectly fine."
That beautifully annoying woman smirked before she responded, walking over the tiny bridge that was over a stream, "You're literally in the middle of nowhere trapped in a prisoner tower. That doesn't look fine to me."
Oh by the gods, she's gotten so close to the structure that if Jason were to jump out of the window he'd probably land on her. He didn't need her that close.
"Look who ever you are- it's none of your business and I implore you to move on!" Jason tried to appeal to her, "you won't like what you see here I assure you."
The woman's response to that vague warning was to pat the sword handle at her side with a grin. Jason’s palms started to sweat, knowing she could bolt by the sight of his curse.
"What's keeping you here? Ransom? Dragon? Evil wizard? Your hair?" Natasha asked, her eyes looking at the tower to see where the door was.
Well, it seemed like he had to tell her the truth that nobody wanted to hear. That he was indeed the cursed prince of the Anderheart family. Jason leaned over the edge trying to be as stern as a lanky man could be.
He pointed to himself.
"I am, " Jason said, "I have a curse where I grow into a giant monster and I am kept here to keep the world safe."
That should have done it. Once people found out who he was they would either aim their arrows or run.
So why did she just stand there?
She stared up at the prince with an unreadable look on her face before she started to snicker. She put her hand over her mouth attempting to not break out into laughter. Right as Jason was going to ask what was so funny about his predicament, she answered with giggles.
"Seriously!?" Natasha spoke, "with a cute face like that?!"
Th-thump
Oh no.
Jason felt butterflies lunge in his stomach and that dreaded feeling of glee appeared. It was already too late as he felt the growth spurt suddenly making him several feet taller.
He also felt the stone window frame smack the top of his head.
“ACK!!” Jason yelped as his sudden growth caused him to smack the top of his head, he bent over for a moment to rub the bruise, “Ugh bloody hell that stings- I ugh, told you!” Thankfully he didn’t manage to fall out of the window, though he did also realize he wasn’t hearing screaming either. Jason’s eyebrows furrowed as he bent down to look outside the window once more wondering why he didn’t hear a reaction.
…
She was still standing there.
The woman stood there, eyes widened and definitely looked like she was completely caught off guard. Though she definitely wasn’t reaching for her sword as her arms remained crossed. The shock on her face slowly formed into a confused gaze.
“That’s it?” She spoke.
"What do you mean, 'that's it'!?" Jason exclaimed, his voice inadvertently louder, but he no longer cared. "I'm a bloody monster! You shouldn't be lingering around!" Was he actually feeling a twinge of offense that she didn't appear scared of him? It seemed that the years of isolation had truly taken a toll on the prince.
“I mean yeah you’re a little bit taller but like-” she said, gesturing with her arms, "but this? It doesn't scream 'monster' to me." A warm smile graced the woman's face, indicating she wasn't bluffing, although perhaps she lacked awareness of the potential danger. The 7-foot-tall prince cleared his throat, closing his eyes and crossing his arms in annoyance.
“I could be hundreds of men tall if it weren’t for this tower keeping me in check, you should be afraid. ” Jason coldly explained, truly unsure of this situation and the unknown was clearly making him uncomfortable.
“I mean-” Oh bother, she’s speaking again, “I’ve always had a thing for tall guys.”
Before he could react, his body swelled uncontrollably, leaving him scrambling to retreat into his room to avoid getting his head stuck in the window. His desk and bookshelves toppled over as his legs pushed them aside. Jason's back and head collided with the cold stone walls on the other side of the room. Struggling to catch his breath, he felt his face burning red and realized that his room now felt more like a cramped crate. Grumbling, he blew his bangs out of his face, wondering what he had done to deserve this. The nerve of this intruder!
“Hey you alright in there!?” That sweet little voice yelled.
Taking a deep breath was all the prince could do, as he needed to keep his temper in check. Even if the lady made him lose control, it wasn’t like she was trying to cause harm. A royal like him needs to be gentle and stern when asking for things. Especially if he was big enough to cause harm and he really didn’t want to scare people. Pulling himself forward, Jason mumbled a confirmation that he was fine. He then reached his arm out the window, which was as long as a horse, and pointed towards the willow tree.
“Look miss,” Jason said, “Just leave me be please, you can take the lavender if you want.”
There was silence. A very long one.
Jason pulled his arm back inside and curled up upon the cool prison wall. His fingers gripping opposite elbows as he held back tears. Thinking the situation over in his mind and feeling a deep pit in his stomach.
“Oh you gigantic moron…” Jason murmured to himself, “She just wanted to help and you had to go be a rude brute..” He curled into himself as he became a big sobbing mass in his itty bitty tower. The walls have never felt this closed in since the days where he was first thrown in there. Memories of him being chained up for the first few weeks came to mind and being left to starve as the servants who used to keep him alive were too scared to approach his door. He hadn't talked to anyone those desolate weeks and had to beg to convince his father that he wasn’t meaning to be dangerous. That he hated what he’d become and wanted more than anything to be fixed.
Jason grimaced and fiddled with the gem on his crown. Surely a cure was going to come around soon and he could step outside this tower without fear. At this point Jason didn’t even care about being a ruler or whatever. He just didn’t want to be alone.
Clank
Jason’s head rose and graced the ceiling, hearing a noise coming from the window that sounded like metal scraping rock. Hanging there over the window sill was a hook that had a rope tied on it. Was she planning on coming up here to slay him for being rude!?
“Hey buddy could you do me a favor and loop that rope through an anchor?” Her voice yelled up casually, “I’m sending a basket up.”
Wait what?
More confusion came to Jason, he wondered why in the world this person wanted to give him something after he yelled at her to leave. The prince crawled forward and desperately patted the ceiling as he searched for that rope hook he used to use during the first few years of his banishment. He hadn't found a need for it lately as Ellinor wasn’t scared coming into the tower. One of his giant fingers brushed against cold metal and he gave it a tug. Dust exploded from the anchor and unfortunately Jason inhaled a lot of it. He coughed harshly and waved a hand around to try to fan the dust outside the window.
The very kind person asked if he was okay and the giant tried to assure her that he’s just fine. Jason fed the rope through the hoop of the anchor and held onto the other end on the rope with one hand. The rope jostled a bit as pressure was added to the other end outside. It wasn’t heavy at all though there was indeed something tied to the other end. Just then there were two brief tugs to the rope and Jason took that as a signal to pull it up.
While it wouldn’t take much effort to pull it up strength wise, he was very slow and methodical with pulling up the basket. He wouldn’t want to accidentally jostle out the mystery contents in the basket. His eyes brightened in surprise when he managed to spot the basket on the other end and nearly dropped it.
It was a small bouquet of lavender.
The smell was just as wonderful as he thought it would be and they looked beautiful up close. His heart began to race once more as he felt his body push the limit of the tower’s allowance. Though he didn’t care about his desk being completely pushed into the wall or that he was completely cramped in his tiny room. Someone gave him a wonderful gift and it brought a huge grin on his face for the first time in a while.
While he wished he would go face her once more to properly say thank you, his head was just a bit too large to fit through the window, so instead he pushed an arm through the window. His index finger and thumb crossed over to the delight of the stranger.
“Uhm- thank you very much Miss… could I please get your name?” Jason asked with him trying to not sound like was crying.
The new friend spoke cheerfully, “Natasha Maryrose, I come from the Solaris Republic not far from here. Could I get yours as well?”
The Solaris Republic? He remembered that that democratic empire had a tense yet amicable relationship with the kingdom he was born to rule in. It seemed their borders were much closer than he initially thought.
“Prince Anderheart,” Said the prince, “Though you can call me Jason, if that's a bit too formal.”
“Oh so you are the cursed prince! Huh..” Natahsa scratched her grin, “Wow the tales about you are seriously bunk.”
“Wh-what tales!?” The giant arm flinched a little, “There’s tales about me!?”
“Heh, I’d say they’re more like rumors or stories that mothers tell their young kids to make them behave.” Natasha confessed as she leaned on the tower’s wall, “I wouldn’t give it too much thought, it’s not like you actually have claws and bake men’s bones into bread. ”
“Oh by the gods…” Jason responded as his arm went limp on the window’s edge, causing a giggle to come from below, “I hardly even speak to those that come around here…”
“I’m special then?” Natasha retorted as she noticed the fingers of the arms twitch, “I could try to help clear your name out here if you want.”
“Oh no no no, “ The arm crawled back into the window as if a snake was finding shelter in its den, “I would appreciate it if you kept me a secret for now, I honestly don’t want people knowing where I am when I’m stuck like this…”
“Yeah, that’s understandable,” Natasha responded, “Then your secret is safe with me ya little bone muncher!”
A laugh bellowed from within the tower, it was dainty yet shook the stone walls. Not enough to break them but, one would have thought a keg explosive went off in there.
Perhaps, a kind of emotional keg exploded there that day.
Jason whipped his tears with his other arm and smiled, having the outside arm give a thumbs up before gently grasping the window. Tapping his fingers on the sill as he took a large breath.
“Oh man alive…” Jason spoke, “Could I make another bold request if it’s not too much to ask?”
“Shoot.”
“Could you… pay me a visit sometimes? If-if you want that is. I know we just met and everything but, I-I think you’re really interesting and it gets quite lonely-”
“I’d love to.”
The arm froze in surprise, then melted back onto the window as it hung very low along the tower’s aging stone walls.
“Th-thanks, and I’m very, very sorry for the way I’ve treated you,” Jason began to apologize, “You were just trying to be nice and here I was yelling at you for it- Eh?!”
In the middle of his apology, he didn’t realize that his arm could reach so far down that it was just barely enough for someone to reach their hand out to touch the tip of his middle finger. He
felt a silk-soft hand pat his finger, which initially flinched at the touch but let itself be petted. Jason couldn’t make out what Natasha was mumbling about, but, deep down he knew it must have been kind.
Finally, the dreaded cursed prince of the Atlas kingdom and Anderheart monarchy, had made another friend.
Tale as old as time
Hearts eachother's rhyme
You're singing my song tonight
Falling in love with those Fairytale Eyes
Beast or Prince
Hero or Villain
What care I……..?
Just be mine
So teasing
The Beauty of you needs to
Be IMMORTALIZED
Song as old as rhyme
I am yours completely
Leaving would be a crime
Downright BEASTLY
Come set me free………
An Enchanted Mirror
Reflects a Cursed Prince
Who banishes my fear
Show me him, who casts this dancing spell
Conjure her, his shy blushing flower
His rose in bloom magical
His Belle
Both a little scared…….
Neither one prepared
Beauty and her Gregory
