#this is unbetaed and unedited this year like i really dragged myself kicking and screaming into finishing

[chuckling-chemist]

anyway happy 4/13 here's my once a year oc fic

A long time ago, there was a princess.

Her blood was tyrian pink, as all princesses were. Her hair was long and black, tied back in a simple tyrian pink ribbon that matched her blood and her eyes. Her horns stood above her head and curled inward, giving off the impression of a drawn butterfly’s antennae. Nothing to make her look especially tall, like the horns that belonged to the other members born into the aristocracy and upper crust of Alternia, but she didn’t need it.

Nor did she need an especially fancy dress the way the others here needed it. She wore a simple pink gown that went down to her ankles that matched her ribbon and her blood and her eyes, a simple pink butterfly mask for the occasion and a simple pin of her symbol – an inward spiral – pinned inside her wrist corsage made of pink carnations and pink roses.

The roses and carnations were once white. She didn’t know much about flowers, but knew enough to know they didn’t come in the shade of pink her blood did.

Nothing much did. Not other trolls, or other flowers, or anything outside of herself and the relatively recently crowned Empress, Carica Elsker.

This gala wasn’t in Carica’s honor. No more than any other gala and party drawing every royal out of their posh hives and ivory towers was or wasn’t in Carica’s honor. This one was in celebration of some major victory their military had off-planet that turned their tide for them, and with Carica currently shuttling herself over to the site, it meant the only Heiress had to go in her stead.

The only Heiress who was a part of a completely different lineage from the Elsker line of trolls. Yoscan.

They used to rule, likely generations of highbloods ago. She’s not sure how long the Elsker’s have dominated each other instead of another fuchsia. Reports differ on if it was Carica’s ancestor who overtook the Yoscan’s or someone earlier, and Carica’s ancestor culled another Elsker for the throne instead.

The Elskers, she learned early on in her history lessons, had a penchant for rewriting in their favor. Even if her tutors never called it such.

She shouldn’t be too mad. Because of Carica’s ancestor (or her ancestor’s ancestor?), the first Beguiler, she didn’t hold the emissary of the Horrorterrors as her lusus. And, because of Carica’s concern of being overtaken, her caste weren’t required to charge for the throne immediately upon adulthood. If she wanted to, she could pursue anything she wanted. Run a restaurant. Command an army. Stay on planet and resume being a rich socialite, as she currently technically was.

A shame all those options sounded so terribly boring for someone like her. A Yoscan.

Whatever that meant.

So she stood here, nearby the punch bowl, staring at rich trolls born into their affluence and rich trolls who worked for their affluence, both of whom stepped on more than a few heads to get where they were. This were not the events she frequented of her own volition. Perhaps the patrons of the gala sensed her nervousness, her naivete, and as such avoided her. She wouldn’t blame them. She probably would do the same.

Though, she didn’t have many events she did frequent. Her tutors kept her on a rigorous schedule, leaving her only time for hunting to keep Carica’s lusus sated and silent.

She should have expected someone to come toward the punch bowl. Should have, and yet when a finger brushed against her shoulder, a gentle tap to inform her of a guest’s presence, she jumped, immediately turning toward the source of the individual: a violetblood with ornate fins and tall horns that curved into what appeared to be an S stared back at her. His mask was dark, an inky black except for a thin white line that took on the shape of a pair of glasses, and his suit equally dark. What she assumed was his symbol – a circle with a line down the center – was pinned against his suit with a small amethyst behind it.

He felt familiar. A face she was once told had a name. She wondered why she couldn’t place it.

“Ah, my apologies,” he said, lips forming a worried line. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

She relaxed, smoothing down her dress and giving him a stilted smile. “It’s no concern. Ah…”

He took a step back and bowed, letting his gaze drop to the floor. “Simply Inaeis is fine,” he said.

She fought back the urge to frown, though her drooping fins failed to hide her disappointment. The name didn’t feel nearly as familiar as his face. “You must be the most recent Heiress,” he added, “The Yoscan?”

There was no point in hiding it. Mask or not, unless she were a freak of nature she would have come from one of two lines. The mask was little more than the thinnest veneer of anonymity for her.

She nodded, motioning for him to stand up. “Kisoku, yes. I take it you’ve heard of me?”

His fins twitched. “In passing, yes. For those of us with our fins to the sea floor, it’s hard for someone in my field of work not to hear of the first fuchsia not wearing Her Imperious Beguiler’s sign in sweeps.”

This time she did frown. “What’s your field of work?”

He allowed his expression to relax into a smile. “Nothing terribly important. Investigative work of a kind,” he said.

“Like a private investigator?” She furrowed her brow, eyeing him quizzically. “Isn’t that below the stature of a violetblood?”

His smile widened, eyes glinting underneath his mask. “Only if you think of it as such.” Inaeis stepped closer to her, leaning against the same table she did. “I hardly feel there is any such law stating I must join the fleet as a high ranking admiral, when my skills are better used elsewhere. And as a violet, I am effectively free to do as I please.”

She remembered her lessons, remembered seeing the various charts and diagrams explaining the setup of troll society. Each caste and each role for each caste. Rules and structure most are forced to learn the second they step outside, but her role as heiress and fuchsia was the maximum enforcer from the top. If she (or the Empress) didn’t put the pressure on the violetbloods, they wouldn’t put adequate pressure on the purplebloods, and so on and so forth.

(“Like a diamond,” her tutor said. “Their true beauty comes from the force of its surrounding area.”)

“Only social pressure,” she said.

He looked at her, eyebrow quirked, and let out a short huff she assumed was a laugh. “We’re at the top of the proverbial food chain,” he said. “Despite whatever your lessons taught you, there is no social pressure. You could run away and change your identity and no one would care.”

“I’m sure someone would care,” she said. “I am an heiress.”

He turned away from her, looking over at the other side of the ballroom. It was a small ensemble made of an assortment of midbloods, but currently only the jade pianist plucked away at the keys, playing a soft tune she didn’t recognize.

Much like herself, the other patrons chose not to acknowledge them, instead mingling around with each other. Something she felt confident in saying had to be a common event, leaving them to become little more than paid window dressing.

“Suite number 28, by Debusy,” Inaeis said. “In case you were interested.”

“I’m not sure I am,” she paused to glance between the musicians and Inaeis, “but it looked like you were.”

Another huff, this one undoubtedly sounding amused. “I consider myself a fan of the arts. Unlike many of them,” he gestured forward with a white gloved hand at the crowd in front of them, “who could not tell Suite 10 from Debusy between Shopan’s Null Opus. They merely pretend. Collect what isn’t there’s, if the item is physical. I’ve seen more than my share of forgeries hanging in a cobalt’s hive” He let out a laugh, the sound ringing hollow in her ears. “They’re told supporting the Empress and lavishing in their wealth is what’s most important in life.”

“So what is, then?”

Inaeis was silent. She watched as he glanced around the room again, clearly searching for something, before he stretched out his gloved hand.

“A dance.”

She looked up at him, suspicion crossing her face.

He was avoiding the question.

Why was he avoiding the question?

With a nod, she gingerly took his hand, letting his looming frame lead her toward the center stage of the dance floor. The song, apparently Suite 28 by Debusy if he was to be believed, continued on, the pianos fingers dancing on the keys as the music swelled.

And Inaeis, to his credit, was an excellent dancer. He seemed to register her inexperience, choosing to guide her through each spin and twirl with deft movements on the center of the dance floor. With each turn, each run of piano keys going up and down, he pulled the two of them tighter and tighter together until she could feel his breath on her fins, the pleasant heat against her own cold skin making them twitch.

In that brief moment, they felt more like one unit than two individual trolls, with blessedly not a single soul in the room looking at them.

“You need to run away.”

Her aquatic blood pusher turned frigid. Had he not continued to guide her, she would have stopped. As it was, she merely tripped over own feet, saved from the harsh clacking of stumbling shoes by a sudden dip that aided in slipping her back into position.

She pulled away, putting distance between the two of them without stopping the dance. “What?”

“The Empress. Her Imperious Beguiler. She doesn’t take kindly to other fuchsias outside her lineage who pursue her own political theater,” he said.

“Yes, but-”

“She’s the Empress,” he said. His words were cold, somehow colder than the ice in her chest. “She doesn’t need to cull you with her own trident for you to wind up face down in the ocean.”

“Even if I have no interest in becoming Empress?”

“Do you have another pursuit?”

She shook her head. “Of course not. This is what I’ve been raised to do.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.” His fins drooped. “I’m serious though. After tonight, run away. Change your name, hide your blood caste, anything. But you are a Yoscan, and in Her Imperious Beguiler’s eyes, a threat to her position.”

“And what makes you so sure?”

He didn’t need to answer. The hollowness and pained expression on his face told enough horror stories she determined she didn’t want to know.

Fine, she thought. A different question then.

“If I’m not to pursue this life, what do you suggest I do?”

The song ended. The two of them parted. He nodded politely to the pianist, flashing the briefest smile of encouragement to the jadeblood. The jadeblood locked eyes with him for just long enough to see it, before turning away, face flush.

How interesting to see one from outside the brooding caverns. I didn’t think that was allowed, she thought.

“Live. Be free,” he said. “Live a life so full no highblood here could dream of it.”

***

Not that long ago, there was a princess.

Her blood was tyrian pink, though she didn’t think about that too much these days. Her hair was long and black, its waves and curls held back only by a teal ribbon tied up to keep it out of her face. Her horns stood above her head and curled, looking like the swirl of her symbol in its infancy. She stood tall against her company, a female brownblood with horns not dissimilar of a deer, but only thanks to the heels she insisted upon wearing as they entered the abandoned chateau. A supposed storagehouse of Informer Duskfire for his confiscated art collection, according to the brownblood’s research. Lost to time alongside his dubiously legal library, the very same library the brownblood’s moirail resided in for years.

Both of them were only illuminated by the lantern sitting on the floor between them, and the twin flashlights pointing at the distressingly familiar portrait on the wall.

“It’s not real,” she sneered, staring at a prim and proper looking version of herself. “It’s a fraud. They fucking told me I was the only one of my line!”

The brownblood pursed her lips in irritation. “And who’s they, exactly?” Because this looks like you.”

“It’s not.”

She gestured up to the horns that made the fuchsia bare her fangs in annoyance. “Those are your horns.”

“Shorty’s said horn patterns can repeat.”

She pointed at the familiar swirl in the fuchsia blood’s jewelry. “That’s your symbol.”

“Coincidence.”

“On a fuchsia? The single rarest caste to exist?” The brownblood sighed, adjusting the hold of the flashlight to hold like a knife, the light now illuminating the deep scar going down her face. “Can you choose not to be obtuse for once in your life, Mayola? I wouldn’t have bothered showing you this if I didn’t think this was you.”

“I’m not being obtuse,” she said. She pointed her light directly at the painting, desperately hoping to burn the face off of the stupid fuchsia standing in front of her. “My stupid tutors fucking told me when I was barely out of pupation I was a freak of nature who shouldn’t exist. And believe me, Careen loved throwing that one in my face too when she could.”

“And it didn’t once occur to you that they were lying?” This time, she didn’t wait for Mayola to answer. “Because they do. You know they do. You were the one to stumble upon my ancestor’s tomb with Ektome. I don’t know how this is so different.”

Mayola sighed in irritation.

“Because-”

Because it means my life has been a useless lie.

Because everyone around me treated my existence as if I was another lowblood cog in the machine until I ran away.

Because it means now I’m living in the shadow of an ancestor and destined to finish what she started.

Because I’ll never be free.

She snarled, throwing the flashlight at the wall. It landed with a soft thud, the portrait seemingly undamaged while the light pointed toward something an abstract painting of a calvalreaper. The brownblood didn’t even flinch, her stare continuing to bore holes into Mayola’s soul.

“Because it just fucking does, okay Valeba?” she exclaimed. “Are you fucking happy now?”

She spun around on her heel, ready to be march out, only for Valeba to catch her arm and pull her back with her free arm, forcing Mayola to stare at Valeba in the face.

A part of her brain was dimly aware Mayola was far stronger than Valeba. Her kismesis was a brownblood, and no matter how skilled Valeba was at combat, most seadwellers could outmatch her blow to blow in physical strength. If she wanted to, she could yank her arm free and take off, leaving her in the dust.

But yet, here she was, letting this brownblood, second bottom out of the castes, seamlessly manhandle her and keep her in place with little more than a knowing stare.

“You told me once you weren’t leadership material. It wasn’t in your blood,” she said.

“’Cause it’s not. Plain and simple.”

Valeba sighed. Her flashlight dropped to the floor. Hot breath tickled Mayola’s face.

“Funny. It looks like I’m staring at the evidence right now.” Her tone shifted, into something quieter, less sure, as she added, “The second Heiress Apparent.”

A light breeze, no doubt a draft in this decrepit mansion, blew between them. It danced along the edges of Mayola’s hair, making her suddenly long to chop it off again.

She sucked in a breath.

She wasn’t so blind to not see what she was staring at.

“Now take it.”

Mayola had never closed the distance and kissed her so fast in her life.

#my writing #happy 4/13 #homestuck #homestuck oc #this is unbetaed and unedited this year like i really dragged myself kicking and screaming into finishing #and had a few different ideas kicking around in my head i couldn't commit too #and im not wholly confident anyone's gonna read it so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ #if nothing else finishing it did force me to clean my bathroom so you know small victories #anyway back to stardew