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tfa_kink2016-05-07 11:48 am
themodawakens) wrote in tfa_kink2016-05-07 11:48 am
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PROMPT POST #6- CLOSED
prompt post: one | two | three | four | five
+ All comments except fills should be posted anonymously.
+ All prompts should focus on TFA characters. You can't post OT or PT-only prompts.
+ One prompt per comment please.
+ You can request both kink and non-kink content
+ Crossovers, characters from the other media are allowed, but must relate to the 2015 movie in some way.
+ All prompt comments should begin with a pairing tag (eg Rey/Finn) or Gen for no pairing.
+ Use 'Any' when prompting for any pairing at all (eg Kylo/Any or Any/Any)
+ Anyone, everyone, no one? Use "Other." (e.g. Poe/Other)
+ Warn for common triggers, please
+ NO PROMPTS FEATURING CHARACTERS UNDER 18 IN SEXUAL SITUATIONS.
+ don't hijack other people's prompts.
+ prompts should not exceed ~250 words.
+ also, while this is not really a rule I can enforce, please try to limit yourselves to fewer than 5 prompts per page.
+ reposting prompts is currently not allowed.
+ no prompts based on real life tragic events. e.g: 9/11 au, concentration camp au, etc
+ PLAY NICE
Fill - At the Stroke of Twelve (2/3)
(Anonymous) 2016-05-21 03:44 am (UTC)(link)The invitation was written on white laid-linen paper, in crimson ink that glinted as Phasma waved it overhead. A sparkle rode in her eyes, which all three men gathered about the breakfast table knew meant impending murder or tax evasion or some combination thereof.
“An invitation from Queen Leia.” Phasma curtsied into her seat. “There is to be a masked ball at the royal palace. All the young men of the kingdom have been asked to attend – the prince will select his future consort from among them.”
The table was set with brown bread, hard cheese, windfall-apple cider and a little honey pot charmed to walk on its iron legs. It was a poorly-cast charm, though, so the walk was more of a drunken waddle. Hux shooed the inebriated thing away.
“Interesting,” he remarked, in a tone that told everyone he was not interested in the least.
“I don’t see how the Illenium Council would allow it.” Kylo Ren the Mediocre beckoned, and the honey pot came to squat in his palm like a frog. “A prince is expected to marry outside the realm for purposes of alliance. The queen already did us a disservice by wedding that mercenary scoundrel.”
“The prince is going to be king someday, isn’t he? A king’s actions are synonymous with law.” Phasma threw the invitation down with the muster of someone tossing a duelist’s glove. “I expect both of you to make the most of this opportunity.”
In the pause that ensued, she ran an evaluative eye over the two half-wits biology and archetypal convention had seen fit to yoke her with.
There might have been some melancholy, patrician appeal to Benjamin’s face, she supposed, though that had gone out of the fashion three hundred years ago. And she knew several oft-told stories featuring long-shanked, incompetent wizards who found their place in the world, but none of those stories included details about unendearing tears or savage-quick tempers or a mind full of twitches and tics. No, no.
Hux, meanwhile, was the oldest, never an auspicious sign in any folktale, but he possessed that blazing hair and an authentic Dead Father Figure – Phasma had also seen to this with her own hands, or rather with her hands and a well-swung spittoon – which lent his heritage an essential air of mystery.
But Hux also looked at people as though he’d just scraped them off his boot with a stick, so. Perhaps the prince’s tastes ran towards the classical.
“Both?” Finn asked, and we must call him Finn here because he had recently stopped answering to Phineas. “You meant all three of us.”
“Did I?” Phasma cocked an eyebrow. “Explain, if you please.”
“It says all the men in the kingdom.” Finn held up the invitation, his fingernails white where they clenched the rippling paper. His mouth was set, but his eyes looked out on everything as though in surprise at himself. “Not just the lords’ sons, or the counts’ sons. They summoned everybody.”
(Ah, Phasma sometimes thought, but Finn.
Imagine how high she could’ve raised a blood-born son as clever and clear-eyed and strong-hearted as Finn. Finn was golden ore beaten down to serve as paving stone, and Phasma knew this better than anyone – except you, true believer.)
“Yes, my dear mite, and on those terms you rank as a nobody.” She swirled a handful of spice into her cider. “Besides, what interest could you possibly have in such an affair?”
Hux and Kylo flashed smiles at one another.
Finn set the paper down and was quiet.
For the next two days, though, the house became a maelstrom of activity. Wool-twill waistcoats and justaucorps and breeches were inspected, boiled in a vat of iron oxide to turn the fabric a lusterless black like crow feathers. Arguments were pitched over the shaving mirror, which came to a decisive non-conclusion when Phasma snatched her sons by the hair and bashed their heads together.
She also went about nailing bars of cold iron above the doorways, across the shutters, humming as she did.
“For fairies,” she explained, sensibly, when Hux and Kylo Ren the Dubiously Credentialed inquired about it. “I’ve been informed it keeps them clear of a dwelling.”
“By whom? Why would we concern ourselves with fairies?”
“The Kanjiklub sisters recommended it,” Phasma replied. “And if you need to ask me at all, you are clearly unprepared for the answer.”
The masks came last, as expected, because they required the most attention. Kylo Ren the Admittedly Creative fashioned himself something flat-planed and made of blackened steel, damascened with silver. Hux produced one made of dark-red fired clay, a white blaze on its forehead like an erupting star.
Finn had no formal dress, or at least nothing that had fit him in a decade, so he went on mucking out the privy and hammering at his forge and thinking – well, the prince certainly wouldn’t choose either of them, not the prince Finn had met, but he still ought to choose someone who could make him happy.
What a terrible thing it would be, Finn told himself, to have a laugh like that and never get to use it.
He was still telling himself this as he watched his stepmother and brothers ride away in the hired carriage, gliding down the dry summer road on its slender wheels. He told himself this as he trudged into the house, as he lifted a pot of lentil stew off the fire and served a bowl. Evening darkness fell in the room, but he did not bother to light a candle or stoke up the hearth’s glowing coals.
What was there to see?
No, he was content to stay where he was and listen. There were the swallows coming to roost in the eaves, mice inside the daub-patched walls, floorboards creaking underfoot, and a –
A tapping, it sounded like.
Or knocking, somebody rapping their knuckles along the wall in search of a weak spot. Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap, with pauses, and then the noise stopped.
Finn stood.
Which was fortunate, because this was when the room exploded, and if he’d been sitting down then a catapulting brick might have nailed him upside the head and ended our story in a mundanely realistic but unsatisfactory note.
And all right, it didn’t quite explode, but the wall did cave in with a sneeze of dust and mortar and wattle-twigs that sent Finn backwards over the stool he had been seated on. He let out a curse and tried to stop the vibration in his eardrums.
When his vision cleared again, there was a veiled young woman in white standing amidst the remnants of their kitchen. She had a staff of rowan wood in one hand, its end glowing foxfire green, and she clutched an unrolled parchment in the other.
“Greetings, Distressed Young Person,” she read, from the parchment. You could hear the capitalization in her tone. “I Am Your Jedi Godmother, Rey. Are You in Need of Any – dammit, I don’t know how Master Luke expects me to talk through this thing. I suppose the mystique is already gone, wouldn’t you say?”
The woman tore away a scarf over her mouth. Her features beneath it were pale and speckled-brown across the cheeks, like a warbler’s egg.
“—Are you in need of any magical assistance today?” she finished, then twitched her nose with rabbity indignation. “By the way, what idiotic saddle-goose put iron around all the doorways? I had to make my own opening just so I could get in.”
“I noticed.” Finn lurched to his feet, deliberating whether he should pick up the stool or turn himself over to a lunatic asylum. “If you’re a burglar, you ought to consider a change of career.”
“What? No, no. Take the wax out of your ears, Phineas. Finn. Didn’t you hear me?” She spread her arms wide. Her staff’s end still shone. “I’m your – well, let’s call it your fairy godmother. That might be easier.”
Finn wiped at his face.
And if he had not come of age amongst waddling honey pots and porridge that carried a taste of enchantment, because his stepbrother never scrubbed the cauldrons well enough, he might have taken issue with this statement.
As things were, he had more pressing concerns.
“You can fix that wall, can’t you?”
“Yes, don’t worry about it.” Rey dusted her shoulders. “I’m here to get you to the ball. The prince’s ball? That’s – that’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Oh, I thought that was why you called me – I’m sorry, I’m new at this, I should – ”
Finn was preparing to say he hadn’t called her, he had no idea who she was or why she should grant a silly wish like that when there were so many more practical things to ask for, but Rey was holding herself with such unsure stiffness that he sighed.
(The prince’s laugh, he considered again. At least he could go and be sure things were all right.)
“Since you’re already here,” Finn said, “you might as well try.”
Rey cast off her hesitation like the act it had no doubt been – magic and storytelling alike are really just a matter of lying with the right details, you see – and swung her staff in a circle.
I would pass, usually, over the following sartorial matters, but although Rey was a beginner in most things she had a great deal of raw talent she knew precisely how to use.
(Magic also hates begging or demanding where it would prefer persuasion, but this takes a certain haggler’s mindset and an eye for hidden value. Rey was exceptionally good at this, which was part of how she came to be the patron of Those Who Have Been Left Behind.
But Finn didn’t know this part, and properly speaking neither should you.)
So Rey dressed him in silk brocade so white that it was dazzling, a long regimental jacket and a matched waistcoat beneath it, abalone buttons and a curving silver sabre hung from the black satin sash at his waist. The tall riding boots she put him in were gleaming black as well, and Finn realized somewhat dizzily that she had clothed him as a soldier.
Then she put a white mask upon his face, made of what felt impossibly like glass, though it had a scrollwork pattern of crimson red that traveled from his forehead to below his right eye.
“Red and white, see? Your prince’s family colors.” Rey nodded, arms akimbo, as though she’d just kneaded bread or tossed a hay bale instead of bending the fabric of space. “Now, as for transport –”
There came a rustling noise like feathers, as a cloak unfurled around Finn’s shoulders, and upon second glance he saw this was exactly what it was – a thousand feathers, all sewn cleverly together, from what appeared to be the wings of white gyrfalcons.
“Think of where you want to go, then spin that thing around yourself once.” She puckered her lips, considering. “Oh, and you need to get back before midnight. Almost forgot that part. Spells never overstay their own curiosity.”
Finn smoothed a hand down the cloak, the feather-vanes bowing against his fingers, and glanced up still in a mild daze.
“Why not?”
“Because,” Rey said, then she reached forward to give him a hard turn that made the room blur, “that’s not how magic works.”
…
Re: Fill - At the Stroke of Twelve (2/3)
(Anonymous) 2016-05-21 03:58 am (UTC)(link)Re: Fill - At the Stroke of Twelve (2/3)
(Anonymous) 2016-05-21 07:18 am (UTC)(link)Re: Fill - At the Stroke of Twelve (2/3)
(Anonymous) 2016-05-21 01:48 pm (UTC)(link)OP
(Anonymous) 2016-05-21 01:52 pm (UTC)(link)Fill - At the Stroke of Twelve (3/4)
(Anonymous) 2016-05-22 05:09 am (UTC)(link)…
In every obligatory small-talk conversation, there comes a critical moment wherein the frontal lobe and cerebral cortex – in an understandable effort to save themselves from rapid mortification – both disengage at once like the pole-pin of a wagon springing loose. Responsibility for any subsequent discourse then falls to the reptilian basal ganglia, which in our species has not been on the social up-and-up for something in excess of two million years.
“Oh, yes,” Poe responded, to a question he could not remember five seconds after the fact, “I believe our three-decker dragoons are trained in the caracole maneuver.”
The guest he was trapped in discussion with – an orange-haired, rigid-backed man in black, beside a taller black-haired man who had loomed in seething silence all the while – did not seem much bothered by his amphibious mixing of military tactics.
(Hux had been superbly apathetic about this whole venture until approximately an hour ago, when he first clapped eyes on the palace’s limestone-white walls and its barbican gates and the soaring, spired towers from which one could take in the whole countryside at a glance. The lush red-currant wine they served here certainly didn’t hurt.
Phasma was circling the crowd, laughing affectedly behind a peacock-feather fan.)
Poe looked about once more, surveyed the milling faces and swirling colors of the ballroom to be sure he hadn’t missed anyone. His mother sat on the dais, in a posture of ascendant repose as always, a silver-brown braid coiled about her head in a fashion that required no accompanying crown.
She perked her eyebrows at him.
Their shaggy old boarhound – Bacca, which was short for something nobody could pronounce – sat beside her, at stolid attention like an infantry guard. He was pondering who amongst this assembled company he most wanted to bite in the arse-end next.
Poe turned away again. The golden half-mask displayed his lips as they pursed in irritation.
“But the army really ought to have its own branch of architects and engineers, I believe,” Hux bored on, with the single-mindedness of someone turning an auger. “Siegecraft is no longer the fashion in warfare, but according to Aristobulus of Cassandreia –”
We will never discover what sage wisdom Aristobulus of Cassandreia might have imparted across the span of so many centuries, although he certainly had many valuable and worthwhile things to say, because this was when the man in white walked in.
He had arrived late, pausing to hang up his thousand-falcon-feather cloak despite a baffled footmen’s offer, but if the massive doors opening to admit this one last guest had not drawn everybody’s attention they would have no doubt all stared anyway. He carried a sort of faint, peculiar iridescence about his person, like the moonlit edge of a cloud, which did not seem wholly attributable to either the ballroom’s crystal chandelier or the late-stage effects of intoxication. An officer’s sabre clanked at his side. The crimson marking on his mask traveled the whole length of the hall to where the prince stood, in a single instant, its impact as stunning as a fired musket-shot.
Then the man took a humbled step forward into the room, as someone would while approaching a skittish horse to offer it an apple, and Poe knew precisely who he really was.
(He wasn’t an imbecile, after all, and here before him was the tacit purpose for which he had arranged this whole event in the first place.
On the behalf of his future subjects, we should be glad for his perspicacity. Princes in fairy tales lack it so very often.)
Poe shouldered his way through the crowd without another word to the two men in black, chewing the inside of his cheek. All right, then, it appeared Finn had come wearing a mask to cover his whole face, which indicated that he did not want to be recognized. Or, not yet – perhaps that meant Poe was being invited to play along with a charade, towards some climactic reveal.
That suited him just fine.
“A well-planned entrance, sir,” Poe said. “I hear tardiness is –”
Finn stared at the prince, standing there in brushed golden and brown velvet – it was a bit hard to see through this mask, though, so it could've been satin – and said the first thing that came into his head.
“—Can you dance the twin-imperial écarté?” Finn asked. “I apologize, your majesty, but that’s only style I know.”
Poe stopped.
His station in life had left him unaccustomed to being caught off-guard, or interrupted for any reason, but now this odd-named blacksmith with the apple had done it twice is as many encounters. A giddiness tripped quickly down his spine.
“I can dance anything,” he offered in response, “but since you happen to be the present expert, I must invite you to take the lead.”
“All right.” They stepped closer to one another, arranged their arms. “Uh. Shall we?”
“Of course.”
Finn had only ever practiced this around the smithy, on rainy days when there were no customers, or up in the swept hayloft where nobody could hear him. Dancing it on a marble floor to a hundred-piece orchestra was something else entirely, and he made a mistake every fifth step or so. His fairy whatever-she-was had given him riding gloves, fortunately, which disguised both his calluses and the present clamminess of his palms, but even so the prince’s back felt woodstove-warm beneath his hand.
Poe made no comment about the frequent blunders, not even when his toes got trodden on, although he himself moved in perfect spring-heeled time to every note. Quite the contrary, he had to bite his lip once or twice to keep from smiling.
Finn decided this was very gracious of him.
And ah, he considered, level-headedly, the prince did not seem to have recognized him, although with the mask it could hardly be considered Poe's fault. It had been ridiculous and conceited of Finn to expect anything different, hadn’t it?
Oh well.
The tenth and eleventh hours chimed by.
At the ballroom’s far end, Ben – we will call him that, for now, since he was hiding behind a proper mask and did not need the added false title – squinted at the dancing pair with semi-professional admiration and envy. There was a charmed air around the stranger that seemed to waver as he moved, distorting the colors seen through it like sheets of rain on glass, the handiwork of a talented beginner in which Ben's evaluation could find no flaws or chinks.
Not a trick he himself could ever hope to manage, in other words. Every time he tried to look any harder, to see what lay beneath the illusion, a pain stung him between the eyes.
“That’s fey magic,” he declared. “Someone’s cast a glamour on that man.”
“Be silent, you stampeding ignoramus,” Hux said, standing beside him. His eyes were closed. “I am composing my coronation speech.”
(And through the ballroom’s high-arched eastern window, one could see a rising quarter-moon and the capitol city’s great clock tower. Its chimes were be heard for miles, each toll striding out over pastures and hay fields like the footfalls of a giant.)
“Have you enjoyed the evening?” Finn asked, after another song wound to its finish. “I’m sure everyone is wondering if you’ve made your – selection doesn’t seem to be the right word. Your choice. Have you?”
“With my mother wondering more than the rest put together, I’m sure.” They had stopped dancing, but Poe did not release his partner’s hand or arm. “But I’m nearing a decision. The council won’t like it, though – they’ve said they would prefer someone from Jakku or D’Qar, to maintain our trade agreements. What would you tell them, sir, if you were in my place?”
“There’s not much risk of that, your majesty. So I shouldn’t pretend I could speak for you.” Finn tilted his head. The red of his mask gleamed. “Nobody should, though. A king’s duty is to do the right thing, whatever his advisers try and tell him. Does that sound reasonable?”
“Quite. And you misprize yourself, sir.” Poe tipped his chin up, slightly, indicating the gilded-iron circlet that he wore balanced on his head. “I think this crown would suit you well.”
“That one there?” Finn gave it a craftsman’s critical glance. “I’d have to make several changes first, your majesty, if you’ll excuse me for saying so. The sunstones are set crooked.”
Poe laughed – which, if you will remember, was the thing Finn had come to hear – and began leading him towards the dais where Queen Leia sat.
But then the midnight hour began its strikes, a first and a second and a third toll, and Finn felt both his knees lock up.
What had he been wearing, before the enchantment? He tried to remember. Rough trousers, mud-caked boots, a woolen shirt that had been the victim of countless mendings, a neck-scarf he used to either clean the sweat off his face as he stood before the burning forge or to wipe his nose when it ran on the chilled-damp mornings.
A nobody, Phasma had reminded him. A nobody.
Well, frankly speaking, it was true.
There was a fourth, fifth, sixth toll. The prince turned back towards him, wearing a perplexed frown, and gave another slight tug on Finn’s arm. One of the abalone buttons on his enchanted white jacket suddenly winked out of existence like a firefly.
He slid his hands free, dropping a harried bow.
“Thank you for the dance, your majesty,” he said. “And for the conversation. We’ll all be very fortunate to call you our king.”
And, in sight of everyone, to the tune of seven-eight-nine, Finn straightened up and ran.
He knocked several guests down in the process, too, hollering back his sincerest apologies as the sword and the sash alike vanished from his waist. Poe dashed after him, although not fast enough – a more plausible scenario for two men in flat-heeled shoes, you would imagine, than if one of them had been in, say, slippers made from spun glass.
“Poor young fellow, whoever he is.” Phasma had rejoined her sons and was sipping the sweet red wine. “Always a pesky expiration on those sorts of short-term seelie charms – if you require a comparison, dealings with the devil will give you a seven-year lease at the very minimum.”
“The joke would be on poor Lucifer himself, then, Mother,” Hux said, jauntily. Ben was staring at the glamour’s lingering afterimage. “When the time came he would discover that you have no soul to collect.”
“Quite true.”
Finn’s coat was turning its old woad-dyed blue again when he snatched his falcon-feather cloak from the hands of a waiting attendant. He swung it around his shoulders as the tenth, eleventh notes struck, as he careened through the palace doors, but just before the night air snatched him up he half-thought he heard someone calling his name.
The red and white mask fell from his face to land on the front steps. A hairline crack appeared across its front.
“Phineas – Finn, Finn, wait – ”
Then his feet struck creaking wooden floorboards. Something knocked against his shin. Finn was pitched headlong over a footstool, landed hard on his knees, and found himself staring at the faultlessly-repaired stone wall of his own kitchen at home, far from anything resembling orchestra music or crystal chandeliers or brushed golden velvet.
He picked himself up.
And so Finn also noticed that the hearth-fire’s embers had at last burned out, that a cold bowl of untouched lentil stew still sat waiting for him on the table.
…
Re: Fill - At the Stroke of Twelve (3/4)
(Anonymous) 2016-05-22 08:32 am (UTC)(link)“I can dance anything,”
This is amazing. I love this. etc... I'm just repeating my previous comments, but I can't let an update on this fill slip by without saying something, it's just so good!
OP
(Anonymous) 2016-05-22 01:28 pm (UTC)(link)“—Can you dance the twin-imperial écarté?”
“I can dance anything,”
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME
I literally had to sit and cover my face for several seconds to recover from this
Ahhhhhh all the imagery in this section was so beautiful, and I am completely head-over-heels for that moment where the mask falls off just at the stroke of midnight
(And the banter between Phasma and the boys about seelie charms and her being soulless, it was perfect and hilarious at once)
I'M SO HAPPYYYY
Re: Fill - At the Stroke of Twelve (3/4)
(Anonymous) 2016-05-22 10:34 pm (UTC)(link)Fill - At the Stroke of Twelve (4/4)
(Anonymous) 2016-05-25 02:29 am (UTC)(link)And here, as you may already know, is where the grand search ought to begin: a proclamation trumpeted throughout the countryside that whosever fits this dainty glass slipper – or this mask, in our case – shall take the crown prince for a husband.
Really, though, what sort of political sense does that make? A risky gamble, if you want my opinion. Surely there was more than one woman in that far-away land who wore a size six and a half, and surely there was more than one gentleman in Hosnia who could have made that mask sit well enough on his face if he tried.
But our prince was a man who knew his own heart, and who had recently been advised to know his own mind as well, so when he rode out at daybreak with a mask tied to his belt there was only one house he had any intention of visiting.
Phasma, the nape of whose neck had been pricked with vague anticipation all morning, was standing at the front gate when she saw a dust-cloud advancing up the road. A suspicious quantity of robins and goldfinches had been landing atop the roof for several hours, accompanied by the odd mouse or squirrel. They all appeared to be waiting for whatever would happen next, though Phasma was satisfied to note that none of them were wearing clothes. She had, at least, been spared that final revolting indignity.
She kilted up her skirts and strode inside.
Hux sat spreading marmalade on his bread in forceful, irate slaps. Kylo Ren the Human Disaster was picking owl pellets apart and boiling the delicate bones clean in a pot, lizard skulls and rat ribs and the furcula of a sparrow, which could only grant wishes if it was first snapped in two.
(That’s another general rule, in fairy tales and life alike. All the strongest magic comes from things that have been broken – don’t argue with me there, poppet. I know my business well enough.)
“Where,” she pronounced, “is Phineas?”
“Skulking in the attic,” Hux said. “He’s been in a foul temper all day. Why?”
This was a clear case of seeing the sawdust before the plank, as Hux had been quite the skulker himself. The prince had not returned to speak with him last night, after the dazzling stranger beat his hasty departure, had not even offered anyone a second dance at all. Why, he hadn’t even thought to compliment Hux on his recommendation about rifling the insides of cannon barrels for improved accuracy. How rude.
Phasma hauled Hux to his feet.
“Go lock him in, then.” She gave a shove. “The prince will be here shortly. We may be able to manage this, if we can keep our wits about us. And comb down that cowlick, will you? Try to look presentable. As for you –”
Her second son turned. The shoulder-blade of a nightingale protruded from his mouth, because he had once read that placing it under your tongue could turn you invisible.
“—I oughn’t bother asking you for a spell to help things along, I suppose. Something to shift the memory, move the heart? Turn the hourglass of time? Your brother is sorely lacking in personal charm, if you haven’t noticed.”
“Magic of that kind comes very highly-priced,” he answered, flatly, and spat the bone onto his palm. “I would need to tear out one of my eyes, at the minimum. Or cut off an arm.”
Then Ben looked up at her.
“Shall I try?”
(Here we might recall those ugly stepsisters from the old story, who had looked down at the feet upon which they had walked and run and danced all their lives – feet which would never fit such a dainty glass slipper, in other words – before reaching out to take the cleaver from their mother’s proffering hand.
Turn that over a while in your mind, if you please, and tell me for whom they really did it.)
Phasma gritted her teeth.
“Absolutely not.” She pushed him towards the stairs, after Hux. “A parlor trick like that is as liable to burn the house down or turn us all into geese as it is to go even half-way right – the grander feat on your part will be keeping silent.”
He went clattering away, and Phasma swung herself towards the door.
In the attic, meanwhile, Finn lay on his back and stared up at the bare rafters. A dull, flattening heaviness had been settled in his chest all day, and carrying it about had finally grown too wearisome. If they wanted him to do anything, Finn had decided, at the forge or in the house or around the yard, they would have to ask him directly.
He sighed.
Perhaps, if he closed his eyes and concentrated, he could summon up a memory of last night so lucid and clear it would feel like the real thing all over again. He could affix the sounds and colors and textures to some secure place deep within his mind, where they could be found whenever he wanted to think about –
Then Finn heard two sounds, together: the ringing of a bridle, down in the yard, and the brisk sliding-shut of an iron bolt-lock on the trapdoor directly beneath him.
“Enjoy yourself,” came Hux’s droll voice, through the wood. “You may be there a while.”
Finn ran to the attic’s dusty window.
A brindle-coated charger stood tied to their hitching post, and the prince – Poe, his name was Poe – was walking determinedly towards the door, one fist already raised as if to knock. Even from this distance, Finn could see a painted mask swinging from his belt.
His hands, which were sore at the fingertips due to how hard his pulse was beating, startled back from the sill.
A nobody, he almost thought again, he was still a nobody, a nobody who shoveled ash and cinder and certainly had no business whatsoever with a prince, but then Phineas – who was also Finn now, we should remember, names are important – halted himself, because he happened to know his own heart and mind as well.
And for the first time in a very long while, possibly in his whole life if we are as being honest as a fairy tale requires, Finn felt the bright, straight-sighted joy of both wanting something for his own sake and knowing it was within his reach. The prince had come looking for that supposed nobody, after all.
Yes, Finn thought. Yes, all right.
He turned again towards the trapdoor.
He’d made that lock himself, hadn’t he, and the hinges with it? Yes, again, certainly, melted the ore and poured it and shaped it and watched it steam in the water as it cooled, and damned if he was going to let a thing like that get in his way now.
Finn went to the desk where Hux sometimes sat reading and picked up a slender pen-knife.
Downstairs, there came an insistent pounding at the door. Phasma opened it and did not bother feigning surprise when Poe stepped through, clothed in the battle-standard colors of red and white.
“Good day,” he said, taking in the sight of her haughty posture and ash-blonde hair. “I suspect you’re the Evil Stepmother, is that right?”
Poe, you see, being a prince, had read a few stories himself.
Phasma smiled.
“If you’ve come looking for Phineas, I’m afraid he isn’t here.” She placed a hand on her hip. “I’ve sent him away to seek his fortune in the world, as befitting of his status as my youngest son.”
“That rule,” Poe stated, clearly, “only applies to children who are one’s own blood. And if you’ve sent him away, then that means you must’ve given him some sort of magical item to haul along. You’ll have to tell me what it was before I can think about believing you.”
“You are hardly in a position to be making such demands, your majesty,” Phasma said. “You’re not a proper prince, I’m sure you’ve realized – you are heir to a sovereign state, governed by a constitutional monarchy, and your kingship will be hardly more than a figurehead’s title when it passes to you. All this fairy tale business is not a true part of your heritage.”
She stared down her nose at him. She wore a dress of black moiré,with sleeves lined in white lace, while a necklace of moonstones glittered at her throat. The skin there was pale and smooth and shone like beaten silver.
(So long as we are splitting semantic hairs, I ought to remind you that we should call her a Wicked Stepmother and not a simply evil one. The former are more dangerous, and more powerful, and more desperate, because of what they stand to lose. Remember the red-hot iron shoes.)
“I won’t refute that,” Poe answered, circling around the kitchen table, “but you should also consider who my parents are – a foundling princess and an orphaned thief who fell in love on a quest together. That’s – ” he raised his fingers, “what would you say, three plotlines? Four, coming together? I might even have a more integral place in this than you do.”
“Oh, my, some storyteller has taught you well indeed.” Phasma reached for a wooden bowl, lifted out a bright red apple. “Hungry?”
“And that would be poison, most likely.” Poe raised an eyebrow. “Life-in-death sleep, the glass coffin, that whole routine. You’ll need a few more dwarves for the spell to work correctly.”
Hux – decidedly not a dwarf – had sauntered back down the stairs by then, auburn hair combed back, smelling overwhelmingly of cloves and aged ambergris. Kylo Ren the Far-Too-Serious slunk after him.
(Privately, those two always felt as though they had been born into the wrong genre. A chivalric romance might have suited them better, something with swords and errant knights, or else a classical tragedy with generals who are always prepared to carry an ideology to its ultimate conclusion.
Or a celestial opera told in nine movements, maybe. That would have been interesting.)
Phasma took a relishing bite from the apple, but her smile never slipped.
“Very good, your majesty.”
And while our Wicked Stepmother and our Prince Charming moved from the confirmatio to the refutatio stage in their debate, Finn was working his knife to fit inside the trapdoor’s hinge-screws. He could have pounded away at the lock itself all he wanted, or waited for some form of assistance, and had he been somebody else he might have done just that, but youngest sons are often as clever as they are good and patient.
Finn twirled the screws free in several turns – magic doesn’t solve everything, you know – and let the trapdoor clatter away. Then down the ladder, down the hall, down the stairs he went, on nearly-weightless feet, and when he entered the kitchen he saw his prince still standing there and waiting for him.
He walked straight between his stepbrothers, past Phasma, pointing to the mask.
“I’ll take that back now, your majesty,” he said. “Thank you for coming all this way to return it.”
“Well, it wasn’t entirely selfless of me.” Poe smiled broadly. “I think everyone might be getting that royal holiday, soon, so long as you’re interested.”
(That was another thing about being a prince, terribly earnest and plainly terrible lines like that. It was a fortunate thing he was so handsome.)
Finn took the white mask as Poe offered it, carefully and with his fingertips, staring at its smooth-curved insides and the crack running down its front.
But did he need to put it on, do you suppose, our final act of promised transformation, in order that the prince might know him for who he truly was? No, no, I don’t believe so either. He had no more need of it, you see. He had managed the trick entirely on his own.
(Rey had allowed that one snarl in the enchantment, letting the mask stay behind when everything else vanished, because she also happened to have an excellent taste for imperfection.)
So instead Finn slipped the mask into his own belt, smiling as well, and reached out to accept that hand the prince was holding out to him.
They had not gotten beyond the door together when Phasma spoke.
“And have you anything to say?” she prompted, shoulders still set proudly straight. “Some thanks should be in order, Phineas.”
“No.” Finn turned. “And the name is Finn. I don’t owe you anything.”
“Of course you do, darling. I’ve made you what you are.” And incredibly, our Hero thought he saw his Wicked Stepmother wink at him. “I’m the plot, you know.”
He peered into the darkened room behind her. There was the kitchen table, and the hearth, and somewhere there was an unlit forge with a hammer rested atop its anvil, and of course there were his stepmother and stepbrothers waiting in silence. He could have them punished, Finn realized, according to the laws of story if not the laws of the land.
But here he stood, outside, and that was enough.
“Thank you, then,” he said.
He walked away without looking back.
Finn was not quite so well-versed in fairy tales as you are, I should mention, having only just realized his role in them, and he had never been told how kisses are not strictly required unless to end hundred-year-slumbers or unnatural cases of amphibianism – therefore it was more of a pleasant surprise than an indignant one when Poe stopped at the gate, turned to face him, and caught him hard by the collar and the mouth at once. Finn’s eyes crossed slightly before he could remember to close them, which he did.
The kiss lasted for a long time, out in that hay-chaff summer sunlight while the birds all took wing. When it ended, Finn leaned forward as well, intent on returning the gesture.
“Not yet,” Poe said, and he laughed. “Keep it. It suits you.”
Then they lived happily at some times, unhappily at others, and very many things in between, which is the honest best that you or I or anyone can do. And whether the tale has properly ended now or not – as I said at the very beginning, people are often unaware of the story they are telling because they are still somewhere in the middle of it – must be for you yourself to determine.
…
Re: Fill - At the Stroke of Twelve (4/4)
(Anonymous) 2016-05-25 05:43 am (UTC)(link)What can even be said about this flawless fic. I am in awe.
Re: Fill - At the Stroke of Twelve (4/4)
(Anonymous) 2016-05-25 05:07 pm (UTC)(link)Phasma for Wicked Stepmother/Plot of the Year! A+++++ fill, anon. I'm still reeling from that whole aside about the ugly stepsisters and the cleaver, tbh.
OP
(Anonymous) 2016-05-26 01:22 pm (UTC)(link)This fill made me SO happy and if you have a tumblr or an AO3 account and don't mind sharing it, I want to subscribe to everything you write.
Re: OP
(Anonymous) 2016-05-26 04:59 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Fill - At the Stroke of Twelve (4/4)
(Anonymous) 2016-06-09 09:17 pm (UTC)(link)I am D Y I N G. This whole thing was amazing.