kinkfest | Pretty Little Princess [Kingdom Hearts, Riku/Namine, PG-13]

Title: Pretty Little Princess
Author/Artist:

de_yaten
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Riku/Namine, non-con Marluxia/Namine. Brief non-con sexual content. Insane amount of prose and symbolism.
Summary: "chivalry; knight in shining armor - "you're everything I think I need."
A/N: I have no idea why this ended up being so dark or long, lol. First entry, woo! :)

She is the princess in the tower, locked away from the world by stone walls and winding stairs. She is Rapunzel trapped in the sky with scissor-sheared locks; Snow White unbreathing in an apple-scented coffin. She is the damsel in distress held captive by an evil king with a snake and thunder-demon sitting beside his throne.

He is the prince of her nighttime stories; the prince with a heart of silver and a sword that pierces through the toughest dragons. He is the prince that scales the castle wall with rope to rescue Rapunzel; the prince with the kiss of life that flutters Snow White's dead eyes open. He is the prince with a name that the evil king whispers in her ear, the prince that should love her, could love her, will love her -- if she will use her magic to bind his heart and bring him to their throne room in one piece.

She is the princess with crayon-calloused fingers that scribble a pretty little lie on a notebook of witchery, and he becomes the prince who bursts in with banner held high and only love for her in his paper-bound heart. She wonders why he has no sword to kill the evil king, but the snake reminds her that her pretty little lie wasn't only to make her pretty little prince love her; it was to make the poison-ivy ruler a thornless rose-king, the scale-skinned snake a squire with witty words, the electric-shock monstress a tempered lady-in-waiting. To make him a puppet, Princess, a pretty little puppet that will do what we say.

And the prince with the lied-to-little-heart doesn't know any better, and he greets them all with a winning smile and a joke about their latest meeting that never really happened in the first place.

She sits, proper little princess in her chair, and smiles when he finally comes to her. He holds her in his dragon-slaying arms and she waits with frozen breath for the kiss, the first kiss, the kiss of True Love that will melt away her sorrow and fear and save her from everything all in one tiny press of flesh.

He is experienced with kisses --she knows even though he no longer does-- but he gives only a chaste butterfly peck and murmurs a long lost love-sonnet against her cold pale cheek. There is no great passion, no sparks, no wings that lift her safe and away. Only the faint lingering memory of his touch, polite and reverent as it was. But isn't that what she wanted? A proper knight, a great prince who sings love ballads and slays dragons and courts her with fancy and would never ever hurt her?

He retires to his separate room with a graceful bow and that winning smile, and she holds in her tears until she hears the door shut and the king smiles ever-so-sweetly.

Love is love is love, the king says, when she worries her lip with her teeth and asks if what she has done is wrong, and isn't it evil wicked wrong to make him love her?

The ogress calls her a wicked witch and cackles like thunder, and the snake darts out a forked-tongue but says nothing. The king kneels in front of her, touching with black gloves and she half-wishes for the prince to burst in, because a good prince, a just prince, would strongly suggest that to touch a lady without permission is wholly immoral and wrong, dear sir.

She wishes he would come, now, come to slay this king who might have been a dragon, who might have been a demon. He would brandish his sword, because it is definitely wrong, dear sir, to raise her pretty princess dress with leather fingers and breath words dripping with dirtied lace and red cheeks against her thighs.

She wishes he would come, now, because the ogress is watching with lightning-sharp lips that offer no help, and the snake is long-since bored and slithered away. Her prince would kill the king and whisk her away on a horse of rainbow-colors, because she is sick of white: white floors, white walls, white stairs that wind up and down, white dresses and white prison bars that constrict ever-tighter against her.

But the prince is fast asleep with new memories coursing through his veins with the wax-poison she has dripped onto his heart, a black parchment seal that would hold them together forever. He would wake tomorrow someone completely new, all traces of his real Red princess and dearest friend wiped from his mind. He is a prince now, but he would be her prince tomorrow.

She wishes he would come, now, because she is trapped in another First Kiss that is forcing sparks and passion that are neither polite or reverent or royal in the least.

My pretty little princess, says the king, wiping his lips.

Your wicked little witch, says the ogress, licking her own.

That night she is told the story of Sleeping Beauty and she dreams that she is the witch, taunting the prince (her prince) with tales of a red-haired girl that she could crush with a brush of her pen, tales of a brunette boy she could make into a lovely empty eternally sleeping shell with the rip of parchment.

She wakes terrified, and the irony is not lost on her that he is sleeping beside her bed, on his knees slumped over the royal silk sheets. She raises a hand to her pink lips to silence the cry when he begins to writhe in a nightmare, half-screaming and sobbing, over Kairi and Sora and O God, Sora.

She doesn't wake him because princes aren't meant to be in princesses' rooms alone, and he might blame himself for breaking the storybook rules so early in the tale.

It's wrong, she tells the thorn-crowned king, moonlight streaming through his garden window. It's wrong and he hurts and I'm going to fix him no matter what you say.

The snake slithers in at the exact moment to whisper in the king's ear, something secret, something little princesses aren't meant to know and probably never will.

She is tossed her magic notebook and told to fix him, if she must, if she wills it to be. Set this prince free on his own path, he tells her, to live or die as he pleases.

She erases every false-dragon he has slain for her, every kind word to the king and snake and demoness, erases it all quickly and furiously with nothing else on her mind. Her royal fingers hesitate, briefly, over True Love's First Kiss, but she knows that it must go as well, even if she must go on remembering it in sorrow, alone.

He is cast back into the world while in a dream, and she knows it is for the best that she does not see him off. She might lose courage and take it all back, and she may not receive the king's generosity a second time.

So she slides back into her princess-throne, lower than all the rest, and is locked back into the tower until they tell her of another prince in the Castle. A prince with blue eyes and brown hair and he is a prince of the rough-lands, so his manners are mediocre at best, but if she will use her magic to bind his heart and bring them to their wicked white throne room, it will be better than the first time.

They promise, and she listens and obeys, because princesses don't argue or raise their voice or do anything but listen and smile and wait for their prince to save them.

But they lied (don’t they always, she thinks) because Sora hurts too, and so she fixes him and tells him she is no princess of his, no lover, no friend. But he still saves her from a vine-wrapped tower anyway, like a good prince or maybe like a good friend instead.

When she finally escapes, taken in by a wizard wrapped in red, she no longer considers herself a pretty little princess. She is the White Witch, plastering the walls with healing potion pictures that stitch-shut the many wounds she has carved with colors into Sora's heart.

Pretty little princess, says the wizard, with a crooked smile.

Wicked little witch, she says, with the same.