Chapter Text
It’s too humid to breathe the day Her Majesty pulls you from bloody rubble. Literal rubble, her fists buried in the remains of your chimney until she’s able to grasp the clammy body of the little girl stuck hiding inside when bandits came asking for her father. She killed them that day, on a goodwill trip through the farthest villages of the kingdom. Your mother would have said, “A bit of warning next time, Majesty,” and gone on about the state of the house and garden. She would have cracked jokes about the dirt floor, "just needing a good scrub," and now knowing the queen, you know the two of them would have gotten along so well if your mother wasn’t dead.
If the queen’s blade pierced the dusty bandit in your kitchen faster than his had pierced your father, she would have been a hostage to his ramblings about your family’s great big fruit trees.
She might have smiled at you wrapped around the leg of a table you were barely taller than at six. Instead she watches you with such a supernatural mix of horror and relief you’re not positive she’s even real. She's the sun. Her pale face and halo of golden hair are all you can see out of the hole she’s dug in the rubble. You watched the blood drain from your mother’s throat a few minutes ago and that feels much more real than this.
Seven people are dead in the ruins of your house and the queen only killed five of them because she wasn’t fast enough to save your parents. Or your village. She wasn’t fast enough to keep the last one from blowing up your chimney or to stop the fields from burning. They’re still burning for miles when she carries you outside because she made it in time to watch it happen, but not in time to stop it. Her gold-trimmed carriage is waiting. There’s blood spatter across the right panel but you can’t tell because of the red paint, and when you’re six you wonder things like, “Did she do that on purpose? A blood colored carriage? Does she kill bandits often?” When you’re six you don’t ever think, “I wonder if my mother will have her throat slit today? When is that sword going to stop my father’s heart?”
“Masaru!” The queen kicks the door in and she’s shaking like you’ll never see again, “I got– got her– there was one!”
Her husband uncurls from around their son and he’s not wearing armor like his wife. Jeanist is here but you don’t know him yet and he appears over the queen’s shoulders when she hurries you into the safety of her fancy velvet box.
You reach out a hand dumbly– it doesn’t look like your hand– and you can’t feel the autumn breeze, or the velvet seats, or the warm woman wrapped around you, or her husband’s fingers wiping something from your face. You hate velvet. You think it’s strange you can’t feel that at least.
Bakugou is six years old and has never seen a dead body before. Right now, you’re the closest thing he’ll get before he has to attend his grandmother’s funeral in three years. You haven’t blinked since his mother locked the carriage door and you’re staring right through him like she mistook you for something that was alive in her rush to save her citizens. They were supposed to be taking a nice trip around the countryside.
You’re nestled deep in her lap while the horses race over bumps and roots back to the castle, because if you weren’t you’d tumble to the floor like a limply sewn doll. His jeweled carriage and rust orange jacket– his hand-worked leather shoes– suffocate him when he looks at you. They break his heart for you. You’re even smaller than he is and paler than looks healthy. You’re not saying a word. He’s afraid of you. Your tattered dress and broken bare feet. Blood drips from your hair and down your face on both sides, and his father is trying to wipe it away with his sleeve. The king is smearing blood on his silk sleeve and that feels suffocating too.
For the first time in his life, his mother is absolutely silent. His parents exchange looks that he won’t know the meaning of for a few years. Right now Bakugou is six and his feathery blond hair is damp with sweat from the summer haze and the fires of the farming village behind them. No one’s alive anymore to put them out.
No one’s alive anymore. You’re six, not stupid. You reach your hand up to touch the velvet wallpaper under the carriage window but there’s nothing under your fingers. You can’t even feel your fingers against one another and the little boy is looking at you with tears in his eyes. Bakugou watches as you paw at the walls and scratch at the velvet so hard it gets stuck under your nails. You’re still staring ahead but now there are tears dripping from your chin– the color is coming back to your face– you’re coming back to life and Bakugou grasps your hand across the aisle because it’s scratching at bare wood and you’re gonna hurt yourself!
He holds your little fingers in his while his father pulls him close. His mother drags her palm up your forehead to feel your temperature and to swipe stray hairs from your wet face because you’re sobbing now and relief washes over her like riptide. Bakugou looks exactly like his mother. He looks like the sun and the only thing you can feel is his hand in yours.