#sometimes he cannot contain it and he leaps and snaps for the reward and is too hyper to truely be focused

[catsafarithewriter]

“You’re always blaming me for things that are your fault! Granted this time it was mine, but still!”

A/N: Oh, this one is gonna be fun. You specified separately that you wanted this set in @creatxn and @haruxyoshioka‘s dark!baron verse, which they have both graciously allowed me to play in for this prompt. None of this is canon, naturally.

x

The Cat Kingdom has few perks and, up until the incident, one of the major attractions for Baron Humbert von Gikkingen had been the complete absence of humans.

Things have changed since then. 

He steps back into the Cat Kingdom, swapping the winter of the Human World for the perpetual summer of the Cat Kingdom and, when he sees that something is amiss, there is no doubt in his mind that she is somehow responsible. 

Quite how she could have caused all the regular feline occupants to morph into their larger counterparts - lions and tigers and leopards, oh my - he is not sure, but it seems like the kind of chaos she would wreak. He entertains the notion, briefly, of turning around and leaving the Cat Kingdom to clean up its own messes. But he is curious. 

Also the Human World is full of humans, whereas at least the Cat Kingdom is singular in its people population.

However annoying that lone human may be. 

He weaves his way to the palace, avoiding detection by any of the feral felines roaming the land, and is promptly rewarded for his success by a slight form leaping from a broom closet and attempting to hit him with a mop. 

He sidesteps the shambling attack and watches as Haru Yoshioka, reluctant princess of the Cat Kingdom and part-human, smacks into the floor. 

He steps further back. “What are you doing?” he asks. 

She pulls herself into a clumsy sit and grins up at him, somehow - ridiculously - pleased to see him. He avoids meeting her gaze directly. “You’re you!” 

“So it would seem.” He doesn’t offer her a hand as she scrambles to her feet. Naturally the only one unaffected by this would be the ex-human. He eyes her makeshift weapon. “What are you doing?”

“Defending myself. There are lions out there!”

“And you plan to fend them off with a mop?”

“Would you suggest I take them on bare-handed?” She shakes her head. “Bare-pawed? You know what, don’t answer that.”

He cuts straight to the chase. “What have you done?”

The grin finally slips. A part of himself is relieved. “Why would you assume I did this?” He’s watching her just enough to see her face redden. “You always blame me for things that are your fault! Granted, this time it was mine, but still! Where are you going?”

“To fix this.”

He doesn’t look back, but he can hear her as she hastily reclaims the mop and brushes down her skirts before following him. “Where are you going?” he echoes back. To any other individual, the ice in his voice would be enough for them to rethink joining him. 

“Coming with you. I can help.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Too bad,” she says, and, even without looking, he knows her face has crumpled into a dangerously stubborn expression that he is fast becoming familiar with. “This is my mess, so I’m helping. Anyway, you don’t even know how this happened.”

“I’m sure I’m more than capable of figuring out what you’ve done wrong now.” 

Haru scoffs, although the sound is short, punctuated by the quick steps she is forced to take to keep up with his long strides. “It was an accident-”

“Naturally.”

“I was exploring the palace-”

Hiding from the Cat King, Baron’s mind supplies. 

“-and I stumbled into a room I’ve never seen before.” Her words were breathless. Baron found himself slowing down almost imperceptibly. Not to help her. But he’d never find the answer if she keeled over. “Like a storage room, but for potions and I, uh, I may have dropped one?”

He doesn’t look back, but he hopes she can hear the raised eyebrow in his next words. “You found a room full of magic and decided your best course of action was to meddle with it?”

“Dropped,” she says. “I dropped it.” 

“What potion?”

“I… I don’t know.” Before he can reply, she carries hurriedly on, as if she knows blunt retort on the tip of his tongue. “The bottle smashed, okay? And then there was all this commotion and the next thing I know there’s lions in the palace so, no, I don’t know what the potion was. I was too busy trying not to get eaten. Hey, could you stop for a moment?”

“If you cannot keep up, please, by all means, fall behind.”

A hand tugs at his sleeve and, more from surprise than consideration, he doesn’t throw her off immediately. “Sure,” she says, “but you should know the potion room is that way.”

Baron halts and looks to the sandy stairs descending into darkness. “You went down there?”

“Your point is?”

It is hardly the most inviting of staircases. The light is low and dim, perfect for cats but, even in her changed state, several shades too dark for Haru. Despite everything, he slows as he descends. He can hear the careful step of the princess behind him. 

“What’s all this even built for?” she asks. Her voice is close, close enough that usually he would put distance between them without thinking. 

“Things you don’t want brought into the light,” he answers. He tilts his head back so he can see the shadowed outline of Haru. “Which is why only idiots would consider exploring down here a wise decision.”

“Fine. The King was trying to invite me for dinner, so I was lying low. Happy?”

“Never.”

She scoffs, but there’s humour in the sound. “Liar.”

“My mistake. Wading through the depths of the palace in pursuit of undoing a possible curse is indisputably how I like to spend my time.”

“Well, obviously not now.” Her footsteps quicken, and only then does Baron realise he’d upped the pace. “But you must be happy sometimes, right?” There the offbeat staccato as she takes two steps at a time. “I mean, you got to find something in your life worth living for, right, no matter how bad things get.”

“Like you do?”

He doesn’t mean to say it, and he doesn’t mean for the words to sound so bitter but for whatever reason - blind optimism or basic denial - she barks a laugh. “Exactly-”  

“Even though you’re simply lying to yourself in denying the situation you’re in.”

“It’s not - I’m not in denial.” Her breath is shorter now, words caught between gasps as she drops from one step to the next. “I’m just choosing to focus on the good things.”

“Like what? Your unwanted suitor? Your hollow title? Maybe the life you left behind?”

There’s only a slight intake of breath, maybe nothing. “Like Yuki,” she says. “And Lune. And all the new friends I’ve made and even-” She yelps and goes stumbling then, and Baron whips round to catch her before she falls. 

She tilts her head back to meet his gaze. “And even you, Baron.”

He drops his hold, and she grabs the wall to keep herself upright. “Then you’re a fool,” he says, and he turns back to the stairs.  

“Why do you do that?” she demands. 

“Do what?”

“Shut down anyone who tries to reach out to you.”

He looks to her then. Really looks. Her gaudy gown is dishevelled and creased; the traits of someone wearing expensive clothes out of require rather than choice. Her physical features linger in the limbo between feline and human - almost feline, but not quite, not enough to escape her past. But her eyes… Her eyes are all too human.

He looks away. “There are any number of cats in the castle who would appreciate your efforts more than I,” he says. “Waste your time on them.”

“I have time. Lots of it. I can waste my time on you if I want.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re like me.”

He stops then. Snaps to her like a machine, his form abruptly still. “We are nothing alike,” he hisses. 

“Neither of us really belong here,” she says. “Both of us come from the Human World-”

“How do you know about that?”

“Well, you’re obviously not a full cat. So I asked Lune and he said you’re some sort of living figurine-”

“A Creation,” he amends automatically. 

“Right. A Creation made by humans. Neither of us belong here.”

“And by the logic that I was made by one of your kind, you presume me to belong in your world?”

She stands, unaffected by the curt words. “I don’t know,” she admits. “But I know you don’t belong here.”

Meeting her gaze was a mistake. He turns back to the stairs and continues down. “What makes you so sure?”

“You don’t call this place home.” She’s navigating her feet through the shadows, and she misses the look Baron shoots her. She carries on. “Do you even have a home? You come and you go, but I never actually hear of you going home.” There’s a beat of silence, punctuated only by her reaching the last step and almost tripping as she finds level ground. “Do you have a home?” she asks, and the sympathy is sickening. 

“We’re here.” He stops by a doorway. “A room full of potions, that was your description, correct? Then we’re here.” He enters before waiting for confirmation, already spotting the shattered bottle. It may have contained a spell, once upon a time, but the magic had fast dissolved away like smoke upon its release. He kneels down by the remains.

He can hear Haru lingering by the door. 

“You’re lost too, aren’t you?” she asks softly. “Like me.”

“The magic stored here is experimental magic,” he says. “Unstable. Whatever spell was released, it won’t be permanent. All we need to do is wait out its effects-”

“Fine. Ignore me. But that just tells me I’m right.”

He locates a shard of glass with the label still attached. 

“You always go quiet when I’m correct. It makes you far easier to read than I think you like to admit.”

‘What Once Was’ is barely legible amid the wreckage. It explains the change from housecats to wild, at least. He glances back to Haru. She’s not looking at him, even as she talks. 

What Once Was.

She talks and she talks, and he can’t help wondering if maybe, just maybe the choice of potion wasn’t as random as she had played it up as. 

If only it worked on once-humans. 

#chez-pezeater #replies #cat writes #the cat returns #tcr fanfic #blight verse #dark!baron #no way home verse #ugh tonewise this is also all over the place #i shifted to present tense later to get the Mood better #and had to rewrite parts #baron feels OOC from canon dark!baron material #i wanted so badly to do good by this verse #so i think I conveyed it rather badly #but haru considering maybe finding ways to become human again? #naturally it all goes amiss #and she plays it off as nothing