#i just love the prince and king imagery okay... shut up

[science-lings]

My Irondad Secret Santa gift to @ironfamjam! I really hope you like it, the prompt that I did was any au so I did a fantasy kind of au. Maybe because I wanted to draw Peter with super curly hair... maybe because I wanted to play with cape physics... Idk if it’s irondad enough, if not, the context is that Peter is the crown prince with Tony as his (adopted or bio) dad and he may or may not have magic. I kinda based it off of my own fantasy au but it can be up to interpretation lol. @irondadsecretsanta

[slusheeduck]

The Winged Prince

One of the things I wrote for my 30 Days of Victuuri challenge over on AO3. The prompt was “In a Fairy Tale” and I ended up liking this so much I wanted to share it here, too. Notes after the story on fairy tales and how much I love them

               Once upon a time, a lovely prince lived in a castle by the sea. He was well-known for his charm and his beauty, but he kept to his castle due to his curse: instead of a left arm, he had a swan’s wing.

               Of course, he was part of a larger tale, one that was well-known throughout the land. The king’s eleven sons had been transformed into swans by their wicked stepmother, and his only daughter, cunning and loyal, was told by the fairy queen that, if she wanted to save her brothers, she must sew eleven shirts from nettles and not breathe a word while she did, lest her brothers die. Despite winning a foreign king’s love, she was nearly burned as a witch by the townspeople for her strange task, and it was only by her brothers’ intervention that she was saved; as each of the eleven swans lit down around her, she threw on the nettle shirts and returned them to their human form—except for the youngest, who, by way of an unfinished sleeve, retained a swan’s wing where his arm would be.

               Many years had passed. The sister was happily married and ruling in her new home, and ten of the brothers had gone to find their fortunes. But the youngest remained, growing more lovely and lonely with each passing year.

               Rumors began to spread as the years passed and the facts of the whole ordeal grew hazy. Many began to whisper that the prince’s arm was a by-product of the curse, brought on by himself rather than his wicked stepmother. Some said his heart was frozen solid; others said that there was something inhuman in him that must be broken for him to return to normal. Regardless, the general consensus was that someone must find their way to win the prince’s love in order to break the curse.

               When he was young, the prince was utterly enthralled by the attention. So many people who wanted to love him! He would go to town and, much to the dismay of his father and the royal advisor, make a display of himself, tilting his head to let his long silver hair spill against the snow-white feathers, raising his outstretched wing like an angel about to take flight. Then the adoration would come: the compliments, the soft words that made his heart swell and tender glances that made him melt. All too readily, he gave himself to those that adored him, craving the love and attention they poured onto him.

               But all too soon, he realized that the love was shallow. They didn’t love him, not really; they wanted to break his curse and gain the fortune and fame that came from being a hero. He was merely a prize to be won. So the prince’s heart did freeze over, until finally he shut himself away, far from the crowds who only loved what he could give.

               But word spread through the land, and he received many visitors, sitting cool and beautiful on his throne, silver hair cut short and his wing tucked tightly against his side. Many tried to melt his heart, but none could. Like his sister so many years ago, whispers began to spread that he wasn’t human at all; he was a fairy, a changeling who was the true child of the wicked stepmother. If he weren’t the prince, he likely would have been taken to the stake as well. Visitors stopped coming to see him.

               Until one day, a traveler came through the kingdom.

               He was from a faraway land, which prompted distrust amongst the people in the town. He would not say where he was from, or why he had left, only that he was weary and needed to find a place to sleep. The inn turned him away, and the townsfolk wouldn’t have a stranger under their roofs. As luck would have it, the royal stablemaster saw him turned away from the last house in the village, and he offered to let the traveler stay in the king’s stables. After all, they were well-guarded; if he tried anything fishy, it would be stopped immediately. Too tired to argue, the traveler agreed, and soon enough, he was nestled in a bundle of straw and fast asleep.

               However, he was woken in the middle of the night by the fluttering of feathers. He roused himself, absently brushing the straw from his dark hair, and jumped in surprise as the prince—hair and wing glinting in the moonlight—smiled at him.

               “Another fortune-seeker come to woo the cursed prince?” he asked, the slightest sting of ice in his words. “It’s been a while since someone’s dared to come to my home.” His wing stretched and flapped once as he fixed cold blue eyes on the traveler’s dark ones. “Is there a name you go by? It doesn’t have to be your real one; most are scared to give that to changelings.”

               The traveler blinked several times, clearly caught off-guard by the prince’s rapid-fire questioning. For the first time, his eyes flicked down to the prince’s wing before going back to his face.

               “I…didn’t realize I’d found your kingdom, Prince Victor.” He scrambled up to his feet and bowed. “I-I’ve heard so much about you! About the nettle shirts and the curse and how people have tried to break it. Bu-but I already know I can’t.”

               The prince blinked, surprised at the traveler’s frankness. “You don’t think you could win my love?”

               To his surprise, he caught the slightest flush in the traveler’s cheeks in the moonlight. “Oh, no. I’m…I’m no one. Really, I should be out seeking my fortune, but I just…I know I won’t be able to find it. And if I can’t do that, then how could I possibly be anything of note to someone like the winged prince?”

               The prince’s expression, so long held in icy seriousness, melted into something much softer as he listened to the traveler. “That hasn’t stopped anyone yet. You could still try.”

               The traveler shook his head, turning his gaze to the ground. “No, I can’t break the curse. It’s already been broken.” He looked up and, at the prince’s incredulous expression, he added, “I’ve…seen a lot of magic while trying to find my fortune. Curses can only be broken once, even if it’s not complete. That wing is as much a part of you as your arm is.” He looked away, then added softly, “I’ve always thought it was beautiful, even when I first heard about it. I can’t believe anyone would want to take that from you.”

               A curious thing happened to the prince when the traveler said those words: for the first time in many years, his heart thawed and melted in his chest. Tears gathered on his silver lashes, and before the traveler could say another word, he spread his wing toward him, carefully wrapping it around them to make a curtain of snow-white feathers.

               “You’re the first to understand,” he whispered, voice weak and desperate. “What do you want? Land? Wealth? Me? Anything you desire, traveler, I’ll give to you.”

               The traveler blinked, and a slow smile spread across his face. Slowly, hesitantly, he reached up to lightly cup the prince’s face.

               “Yuuri.”

               The prince blinked. “What?”

               “Yuuri. That’s my name. And…and I want you to come with me.” He gave the prince a warm smile. “I want us to find our fortunes together, Victor.”

               The prince stared at the traveler for a moment, tears leaking down his cheeks, and he let out an incredulous laugh after a moment.

               “Very well, Yuuri. Then come morning, we will be off to find our fortune.”

               And so, with hearts warmed and spirits renewed, two travelers, Victor and Yuuri, set off from the kingdom to find their fortunes. And while here were great threats, greater rewards, and unimaginable adventure off on the horizon, the greatest fortune had already been found: both by the traveling hero and the captive prince alike.

NOTES:

~I love fairy tales and I LOVE THE IMAGE OF SWAN-WINGED VICTOR. I’m absolutely not the first to be in love with the “Wild Swans” single-winged-brother imagery and what it could stand for (a lack of perceived humanity, something distancing one from the crowd, sacrifice of humanity for beauty, etc.) but I’ve yet to see any Swan Prince Victors and I am disappoint.

~Yuuri did absolutely have his own adventure beforehand, and my thought was that it followed The Traveling Companion by Hans Christian Andersen (who also wrote the version of “The Wild Swans” that everyone is familiar with), which is probably my FAVORITE fairy tale and also could blend with the general idea of this one. But that’s a project for another day.

~I JUST REALLY LOVE FAIRY TALES OKAY.