Chapter Text
Marianne dragged her feet, pacing along the parapet that crowned the fairy palace and tried not to look at the border to the Dark Forest, a visible dark line where the fields ended and thick foliage began. She’d always felt the palace was oddly close to the border and now its proximity felt like some kind of joke on Marianne personally, just how close they were.
So. Um. Bye!
Marianne kicked a fist-sized pebble off the edge, letting it echo, satisfyingly loud, as it tumbled down to the earth. It still did little to ease her frustration. Bye? The Bog King had risked his life to rescue her sister, had been a strangely comforting companion to her for the duration of the verystrange night, had fought with her - in all sense of the term -, had amused her, irritated her, made her happier than she could remember being in months…
And all she’d had to say to him was bye?
It wasn’t for want of trying, she thought to herself, wanting to kick something again but finding nothing nearby. She had begun… something, something she knew she had wanted to say even with the words not fully formed in her mind as she tried. Oh, and she had wanted to say… whatever that was, but it wouldn’t come. It wouldn’t take a shape, a word, to associate with this feeling so new and unexpected. Even if it was so glaringly obvious in hindsight. It was love. Love. Love love love love love.
She sighed. By every star, it had been so obvious that really the idea that she had even needed to tell him at all should have been pointless - so obvious that he had to have known just looking at her, she had to have known just looking at him.
But she hadn’t. And he clearly hadn’t. And now here they were.
It had been two days. Not necessarily long, but they had felt like eons to Marianne, who spent them wondering if she could find some excuse to go back to the Dark Forest. Technically, it wouldn’t be very easy; her father had been doing everything in his power to strengthen security between the fields and their neighbors, worked into quite the tizzy over the troubles of that particular night, by how unguarded the borders had been, how easy it had been for the Bog King to kidnap a member of the royal family, how easy it had been for Sunny to have snuck into the Dark Forest and, admittedly (and by no one more than himself), gotten everyone into this mess.
Marianne understood where her father was coming from, but she was more quick to blame isolationism - as she always had - for causing trouble between the two kingdoms, and increasing it wasn’t going to do anyone any good. Now seemed like as good a time as any to try and talk her father around to creating stronger ties to the Dark Forest, rather than stronger walls to keep them apart, although she had to admit her opinions were now wholly biased, based on a desire to remain close to its king as much as any. Unbidden the memory of herself, a young fairy, looking into arranged political marriages against her father’s express wishes, came back to her. Perhaps…
Really Marianne, she thought to herself bitterly. Marriage? Nothing good came down that path, even if Bog was nothing like Roland. Nothing at all.
She growled under her breath, frustrated with the way her thoughts ran in circles, and abandoned her pacing. What she would give for a good training bout with her handmaidens (a good spar with a certain monarch who had not only taken her seriously but had given her the best, most challenging, most entertaining fight she could have ever hoped to experience) but that would require a sword, and hers sat at the bottom of a ravine, quite probably broken beyond all repair. And while losing her sword felt trifle compared to even the memory of the pain she’d felt thinking she might have lost Bog to that ravine as well, it had taken her years to convince her father to get her her own sword, and by the stars, she knew he wasn’t going to be eager to get her a new one.
“Maariiaaanne? Marianne!”
She was woken from her reverie to her sister’s voice, the obvious exasperation making it clear this was not the first or even second time Dawn had said her name.
“Um. Hi?” She said. “Have you been looking for me?”
Dawn groaned. “Not hard to look when you’ve been sitting here everyday… gazing off at his kingdom.”
She bristled. “I do not- I am not gazing!”
“You are gazing. Dare I even say pining…?”
Marianne glared at her sister, despite the burning in her cheeks. She’d always been prone to spacing out, but it was something more to be caught spacing out thinking about him. About the king of the Goblin Kingdom, about his moonlit blue eyes and crooked smile, about the name tough girl spoken in a rough brogue, with just enough combination of a challenge and an invitation in his tone…
She was doing it now, even while thinking about not doing it. Dawn was right; she had it bad.
Dawn took in her silence and came to the exact right conclusion. Her expression softened. “Go talk to him.”
“What? I can’t just-”
“Why not?” she interrupted. “He said you could visit, didn’t he?”
Whenever she’d like, she recalled. It had been so far from what she had wanted to hear him say -I love you, I love you, I love you - that she hadn’t properly appreciated the sentiment until long after they had gone their separate ways. Their kingdom’s had been isolated, on messy terms at best, for as long as she or anyone could remember. Bog extending an invitation to her, the crown princess, that she was welcome in the goblin kingdom, in his world… it was nothing small, nothing trivial.
And she had just up and left! She was so stupid, stupid, stupid!
Shaking herself, she addressed her sister. “And what would I even say? Remember me, I’m the reason you don’t have a castle anymore!”
Dawn rolled her eyes. “I think Roland is the reason for that, as he is for everything.”
Marianne shrugged. “Okay, that’s true.” Although it was no fun to blame him if she couldn’t punch him - again - for it as well. No one had heard from Roland since she’d socked him and let the potion go down with it. Marianne could only hope he’d fallen for a rock and proceeded to let it crush him.
Dawn sighed. “Really, Marianne. Is it that hard to say I love you?” Marianne opened her mouth but was sharply cut off. “Don’t you deny it.”
“I wasn’t going to!” She said, defensively. And truly, she wouldn’t have. The simple fact that the love potion had bounced off of her was proof enough that her heart belonged elsewhere, but even before then… just seeing that he had survived, after what he had risked to get Dawn out, after he’d done everything for her. The spark she hadn’t dared acknowledge was suddenly alight in her, as clear as if it had been written the sky.
Dawn sat, cross-legged, on the edge of the parapet. “Talk to him,” she repeated, stubbornly. “You don’t have to tell him you love him today, but you should at least say something. He wouldn’t have offered if he didn’t want to see you, too.”
Marianne flushed, and quickly looked away. She glanced at the sky, watching it turn a shades of orange and pink with the sunset. “Not today,” she said. “It’s getting late.” the moon would rise soon enough, she thought before she could stop herself, thinking about the Dark Forest, glowing and beautiful, and the king who had showed her his world so readily, let her into his life…
She shook her head furiously, and gave her sister a tight smile.
“Tomorrow?” Dawn prompted.
She gulped, feeling her chest go tight, but yes. Thinking about the moon, thinking about him… suddenly another day of this felt unbearable.
“Tomorrow.”
The Bog King’s old castle was not so close the border as the fairy palace and between the thickness of the ground-cover and width of century-old trees, that border was impossible to view. It made logical sense, of course, to build the new castle further into his kingdom, further away from fairies and elves and creatures who tried to meddle in the Dark Forest’s affairs. Bog knew all of this to be true, and were he himself would gladly work on building up his fortress, his defenses, his walls.
But the Bog King hadn’t felt much like himself - that part of himself - of late. He glowered in the general direction of the waning moon as it peaked through the canopy of trees, as if blaming it for all the trouble he was in. Then, too late, caught himself wondering if, a kingdom away, a fairy princess was looking at that moon and thinking of an… adventure two nights previous, of him.
Bog squeezed his eyes shut as if in an effort to shove the thought away. She wasn’t, of course she wasn’t you damned fool. Why would a creature like her be wasting any of her time thinking about him?
Gods, and it wasn’t helping that Plum was now both free and partnered up with his mother of all people, with the singular intention of making his life miserable. They’d say it was with the intention of seeing him admit his feelings to the princess Marianne but really that was the same thing right then.
“Talk to her,” they had chorused (and gods, if he had thought his mother’s voice was grating it was nothing compared to what it was with Plum’s high-pitched pipes playing harmony) earlier that evening, clearly not ready to give him any semblance of peace.
“No,” He had returned flatly. This was only to be met with a litany of outraged remarks that made his head scream in pain.
“Didn’t you see the way she looked at you?”
“The potion didn’t work - what more proof do you need?”
“I’ve never seen you so happy!”
“She’s perfect for you!”
He had tried shooing them off, glaring and growling and reminding them that he had a castle to rebuild thank you very much, and plenty more important things to worry about than what to do with his feelings for a fairy princess.
The fact that he, inadvertently, admitted aloud that he had those feelings for said princess, only egged them on further.
Flustered and irate, Bog only got them off topic when he - in his desperate attempts to shut them both up - had called Plum ‘mother’ by mistake. They were now arguing about mother-figures, if not louder than they had been before, but at least he could escape.
Now back at the ruins of his old castle, Bog rummaged through, trying to salvage what he could, mostly records and artifacts, the rest deemed replaceable. It was oddly cathartic work, especially late at night, when the rest of his subjects were gone and he could actually be left to his own thoughts.
Already the events of that night felt like a dream to Bog, with only his ruined castle to serve as any proof of it’s reality. Already he was questioning what memories he had of it - of her - because certainly, certainly, they could not have truly happened the way they did in his head. She couldn’t have smiled at him the way he pictured her smiling, warm and gentle, lighting up her wide brown eyes with understanding and, dare he say, affection. Nor could she have let him take her through his kingdom, looking at it with such awe, trusting him entirely.
No, and even if he hadn’t simply imagined these things, they had been the product of an odd alliance, formed in a night so strange that all bets had been off. By morning whatever magic had touched her, touched them, would have broken, their lives returned to what they had been before. There was no way she could still- she had ever-
The potion hadn’t worked, he reminded himself, echoing Plum’s earlier words. There was no way that had been remembered wrong or misconstrued. She had been dusted and it had had no affect on her.
She was already in love with someone else.
No.
He shook himself from that thought - that hope - from daring to even let it form in his head. And, gods, and it wasn’t that Bog didn’t want to see her. It was that he wanted to see her so much he could think of little else. It was that whenever he thought about seeing her, of talking to her, he felt this throat close up. It was that, quite honestly, Bog had no idea how to be in love.
Feel free to visit whenever you’d like.
His mother and Plum were right, damn them. Fool as he was to have fallen for Marianne - and he was - he was a bigger fool for letting her go.
And now he couldn’t just go and talk to her, the way he was being so pressured to. The gods only knew how the fairy king had reacted to the events of that night, but Bog suspected it hadn’t been good. He’d never minded his isolation but now things had changed, oh had they changed. Of course, Marianne wasn’t the type to be held back by borders or orders to stay out of the forest. Bog didn’t question that, but if he were to make any attempt to go to her…
He could kidnap her. Surely there was a party coming up, there always seemed to be. The idea was both laughably absurd in the thought of Marianne being a damsel in distress in this scenario, and alarming in how tempting the idea was, insane and impractical though it was. Anything to see her again.
He had it bad.
Sending another scowl in the direction of the moon, Bog attempted to marshal his thoughts into something more productive. Like the idea that, if searching through the rubble went according to plan tonight, he might very well have an excuse to see his beautiful, fierce, perfect Marianne.
What he was going to say to her when he did could wait.
Tomorrow, he thought, letting a bit of hope color his thoughts. She didn’t have to love him back, he only wanted to see her again.
Tomorrow.