#the whole terrible relationship between Uncle and Mukaze and Shirayuki's Mom and Haruto and KAIN

[sabraeal]

If All Else Fails Just Play Dead

[Read on AO3]

Obiyuki AU Bingo 2021 Swan Princess AU

There is a boy in her house.

Two boys, actually; not counting Uncle, who is the Margrave Entaepode, or Papa, who acts like he is, or Raj, who everyone simply tolerates because there are worse things than having the first prince adopt your heir as their particular friend, and all of them start with denying said prince what he wants.

(And also because when he’s not trying to flex all his royal powers at once, Raj can be almost tolerable. He at least believes in magic, which gives him a leg up over just about every other boy Shirayuki has known, save for uncle, even if he doesn’t know any himself.)

Sakaki is also not to be counted, though she feels bad about it, on account of how often she typically forgets that Sakaki is a boy and not just some boy-shaped furniture Raj travels with, like how he always brings his pillow and his favorite chair. She’ll have to remember to bring him some extra pastries from the kitchen as an apology.

No, these are two entirely foreign boys, shipped straight from the court of the King Who Isn’t, as her father calls him-- though not within his mother’s hearing. Shirayuki is resigned to make the best of it; Uncle asks for so little, and she is the Lady of the Manor, even if she only comes by the title from a lack of older women to fill it. If she must, she can entertain their guests, but that doesn’t mean she has to like it, not one bit at all.

A shelf rattles, jostling the books on their bindings. Shirayuki’s fingers nearly dint a page as she turns it, but she does not look up. To look up would be to give in, and even if she is charged with entertaining, she does not need to be the entertainment.

It rattles again, now with two giggles to accompany it. Excellent. It seems both her troubles are accounted for.

With a sigh, she collects herself. This is what is fair, after all. It is her duty to see after Entaepode’s guests, and Papa is already taking on the brunt of the Her Majesty’s needs, as well as the marquis’ that travels with her. Not that she would have minded if he wanted to switch; Queen Haruto at least seemed like the sort to enjoy a quiet afternoon in the library.

A leg swings over the top of the shelf, long and skinny and ending in a particularly scuffed boot.

Very much, Shirayuki thinks, slapping her book shut on the table, unlike her son and his companion. 

“You’re not supposed to do that.” She means to be mild, but each sound falls so waspish from her lips that it could sting. Oh, Uncle will be displeased when he finds out she was rude to their esteemed guests. “It harms the books.”

A sly, cat’s grin shines down on her as a second leg follows the first. “We’re just on the shelves.” Obi twitches his shoulders in a lazy excuse for a shrug. “It’s not like we’re ripping out pages.”

Of the three of them, he’s older-- oh, well, both boys are older than her, but he’s oldest. Only a few years shy of being a man in his own right; the sort of older that’s supposed to know better. Not that he looks it-- Obi’s supposed to be thirteen, but he’s barely an inch taller than Prince Zen, showing none of the stretch in his limbs that boys his age should before they come into their growth.

His feet dangle, just at the level of her nose, and uncharitable irritation itches in her thoughts. Maybe he’ll be one of those boys who’s small forever, a man in a child’s body. The sort of boy she’ll be looking down on instead of up at, should she get Papa’s height, or Uncle’s.

“The shelves are where the books live,” she tells him officiously, fists high on her hips. “And if you knock it over, then you might hurt your spine, or worse, one of theirs! Or even worse,” she adds with no little horror, “you might tear out a page!”

He blinks, those wide, gold eyes flashing like candlelight. “Huh.”

She conjures up Uncle at his most imperious as she says, “This isn’t a training yard.”

“How would you know?” The shelf wobbles, and a pale white mop heaves itself over it. The second Prince of Clarines is pinch-faced, like he’s always just finished sucking on a lemon, and pale as an invalid. She could believe he was bedridden, from the way he keeps waiting to be served. “It’s not like you’ve ever been on one.”

A breath hisses between her teeth. It’s not from lack of trying, she wants to say; her last birthday, Papa has trousers sewn for her, plus a shirt and waist. He’d promised her a sword, even traipsed her through the halls to the yard, but Uncle had been waiting right at the gate, mouth drawn to a forbidding line.

What are you thinking, Mukaze? She’d heard him growl, her ear pressed tight to the study door. My own heir, and you put a blade in her hand.

If she were a boy, you’d have thought I’d done it too late, Papa had replied, easy as always, the way that would drive Uncle mad. I don’t see the harm--

Of course you don’t. Uncle had never sounded so cold, so bitter as he did in that moment. You never do.”

Her stomach twists, slithering around like a nest full of snakes, only getting more knotted, more sick as she thinks about it. Uncle and Papa were close as brothers, surely--

Surely, she shouldn’t be worrying about this at all.

“Why are you wearing all that black?” she snips instead, ignoring the heat that licks up her neck. “It’s summer.”

It’s not doing him any favors either; all that thick velvet just makes his limbs skinny and his face more drawn, like he’s a skeleton rather than a boy.

The prince stills, legs no longer kicking, lips no longer flapping; just a steady, slow rise and fall of his chest. Obi-- a study of constant motion-- doesn’t even do that; instead he sits, utterly immovable, and stares.

With a voice chilled with the winter he’s never felt, His Highness finally says, “My father died.”

She’d known that, she had. His Majesty died a year ago, her Uncle even told her, their legs pressed tight on his study’s sofa. She liked doing that, lining bone to bone, like they might one day be a matching set, margrave and heir both. Another pair of shoulders to carry the burden of rule, after so many years of an absent, broader pair.

Her Majesty has ever been a bosom companion to this family, he’d continued, a strange tightness to his voice. Now that her mourning is over, she is bringing her youngest son to visit. I’m sure your father would be pleased if you became...as close as they.

So much for that. Uncle would be so disappointed-- not only had she scolded the prince, but she’d insulted him too, and--

And he had started it. Her mouth settles into a thin line, so like Uncle’s.

“So did my mother.” So long ago that she is barely more than a song and a scent. Still, there is no ceding ground, not to Prince Zen; every inch she gives him yields a mile, and he considers it his due. “And you don’t see me walking around in velvet during high summer.”

The prince’s skin is pale as moonlight, the envy of every maid in the manor, but it flushes an angry red now, his body trembling to contain him. “My father, he sputters, leaping off the shelf, “is more important than your stupid mother ever will be.”

Papa praises her for her even-temper. Just like your mother, he laughs, not as boldly as he is wont. You never let anything under your skin. Not like me. Though all our impulse certainly bred true.

Anger, Uncle would say in his soothing voice, every syllable measured, makes a man a fool. You would do well to eschew it if you can, my little girl.

So it is not that Shirayuki is angry; oh no, she is incandescent.

Her finger curl, carving pitted crescents in her palms. For once she is glad that magic is consigned to history books and scholars in their towers, for if she could but call fire to her fingertips, this whole library would be alight. Her mother may be more sense than solid to her, but there is not a stone here she has not touched, and--

Well, Uncle is right, but Shirayuki is content to be stupid.

“Maybe so,” she says, so calm, so even, just as Uncle might. “But at least people liked her.”

For a moment, Prince Zen looms, every line trembling, and she is convinced that he will raise a hand to her, that he will truly treat her as her father’s mouth has earned her. But instead he spins on his heel, stalking out of the library with naught a word.

Wrath leaves her at once, a spirit exorcised from her chest, and oh, she’s dizzy with the lack. Her hand reaches out, meaning to grab for the chair--

But another hand grabs it instead. Shirayuki had never noticed at what a patrician angle Obi’s nose sat, not until he stares down it at her, his face a smooth bronze mask.

“That,” he says, finally sounding his age, “was badly done.”

Had her father sat her down after that terrible, disastrous morning, and told her that one day she would consent to marry the prince, Shirayuki would have--

Well, she would have done something Uncle wouldn’t approve of, surely. And she had, when Papa sat her down not too long after the queen’s carriage disappeared into the horizon, and told her that their union had been agreed upon, dowry and all. But to think she would ever want to, that she herself would gladly make the plans-- impossible.

If only it had stayed that way. If only she had remembered why she’d waved him off at arm’s length every summer, why she’d tossed him in the pond when he tried to kiss her at fifteen and told him he’d have better luck finding a princess of his own species in there. At least then she might be able to scuttle this whole wedding, instead of having Papa and Haruto cluck at her pitifully when she asks, telling her that it would all work out eventually.

After all, hadn’t she loved him just last night?

Shirayuki huffs, rolling to her side. She’s no longer livid, which is an improvement; last night she’d thought quite long and extremely hard about how many tapestries she would need to tear from the walls to get a good, solid bonfire to catch and burn Wistal palace to its very stones. Once she started considering where the custodians might keep turpentine, or whether she could wheedle the key to the cellars out of the chatelaine, she’d forced herself to lay down. Few things had ever made her so angry that they couldn’t be solved by a good night’s rest.

Wrath and rage has cooled, but not to her usual levelheaded calm, the answer filling her with vim and vigor and a dangerous determination. Oh no, instead her fine barrel of fury has turned to melancholy, and with each minute that ticks by, she drinks a deeper draught.

Is beauty all that matters to you?

Even now her breath catches at the roiling confusion in Zen’s eyes. What else is there?

“What was I thinking?” Her fists clench at her sides, but it’s not enough, not until she brings them to her eyes and pressed down, colors sparking across her eyelids. “Why did I...?”

She thought he had changed. They all had, these last few years, hadn’t they? No longer the three children that had tripped over each other in her uncle’s halls, bickering and pinching and causing trouble wherever they roamed. Shirayuki’s temper had mellowed. Zen had grown taller-- or at least tall enough to please him. And Obi--

Obi should be here. And now he’s not, and it’s yet another why she has no answer to.

A timid knock brushes against her door, followed by an even softer, “M-my lady?”

Shirayuki pulls her fists from her eyes, blinking away the blur. “Come in.”

A small girl slinks inside, dark eyes wide and round. “M-my lady...” Her brow furrows. “Your hands are wet.”

She glances down, staring at the fingers laces so tightly in her nightgown. Her knuckles do indeed shimmer in the light, right where they had been pressed along her eyes. “So they are. I...suppose you are here to dress me.”

“Ah...” The maid loses her certainty, eyes darting around the room. “About that...”

Her heart leaps in her breast. “Has something happened?”

“Ah, well.” The girl winces. “There’s a bit of a, um, problem. With the arrangements.”

“The arrangements?” Shirayuki echoes.

“Ah...”

That’s when she hears the screams.

Her twelfth summer marks the moment that this arrangement becomes completely, irrevocably unfair.

“I don’t see what the problem is.” Branches shiver above her, the only sign of Obi a few flashes of black and buckskin and the leaves quivering in his wake. “You two have gotten nearly civil these days.”

“But you’ve gotten tall,” Shirayuki grouses, tucking herself between the roots of the old oak, book sprawled upon her lap. “Any day now you’ll be head and shoulders taller, and what if Zen’s the same? I can’t be the smallest.”

“Well.” She can’t see him, but she knows he settles above her, perched on a branch too precarious for his size. “You are a girl.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t be tall.” A finger taps against the page, thoughtful. “Haruto is.”

“For a lady.”

“For anyone,” she corrects primly. “It’s fine enough for you to be tall-- you’re tolerable. But Zen...” She grimaces. “His height it the only thing that keeps him humble. The king isn’t tall, is he?”

“He is,” Obi informs her with relish. “Almost taller than my father, and he’s not done growing.”

She pictures it, Zen being able to look Haruka square in the eye, and shudders.

“I was afraid you’d say that.” Shirayuki sighs, finger knitting in her lap. “Uncle should forbid you from coming. You can stay for now, but next summer is right out.”

It’s strange how even though she can’t see him, she can feel his grin on the air. “I’m sure nothing would make him happier.”

“Or me,” she admits, wistful. “What good neighbors Zen and I might be, if we never had to look at each other again. Save for weddings and births and funerals, of course. And you’d always be welcome, Obi.”

“Thanks.” He drops down one of his too-long legs, toes curling in the air above her, the only visible part of him. “But I wasn’t talk about the Young Master.”

Shirayuki blinks, mouth curving in confusion as she parses his words. “You can’t mean Uncle.”

Obi leans, just enough for her to see his dubious, arched brow. “Why not?”

“Uncle’s always liked Zen.” He’d been the one to calm her when she’d come crying, distraught that Papa would make her marry a boy as pompous as him. Plenty of boys grow out of their pettiness, little girl, he’d told her, smoothing the wild riot of her hair, at least as many that don’t. “Even now, he’s with him, showing him the march.”

“Only because your father asked him,” Obi says, settling back into the canopy. “The next Margrave Entaepode needs to know what his lands can bring. Especially if he means to bring them to his brother.”

Shirayuki frowns. “I’m the next Margrave Entaepode.”

“No,” Obi hums. “You’re the next margravine.”

Shirayuki is not sure what she expects when she walks into Clarines’ great hall, but it is certainly not carnage.

“What happened?” she breathes, picking her way over a toppled chair. There’s not a scrap of fabric that’s not torn, not a table nor chair without a wobble. Flower petals lay strewn on the ground, and the cake--

“Oh no,” she sighs, “I was so looking forward to desset.”

It’s toppled, every tier crushed to the stone beneath it, buttercream and jam and custard smeared up and down the aisle. It had been a gift from the Seirans; Zen had been so excited to know their much-beloved cook had made each layer with him in mind-- Except one, Obi reminded him, swiping a bit of cream from a spoon. You know who Cookie loves best.

“A beast did it,” the steward tells her, near to tiers. “Knocked it over, then even stopped to take a bite.”

“Three bites,” a maid chimes in. “Odd, it was. I could have sworn it thought about it too, just stood there looking as Cook came in, shouting to high heaven, and ate its share.”

Shirayuki glances down. “Flew? As in-- with wings?”

“Yes,” the steward agrees, “it had wings, and a mouth with cruel teeth.”

“There weren’t no teeth,” the chatelaine snaps waving the wailing man off. “It was just a bird. Swan, I think, from the size. And the meanness. Came in here like a holy terror, it did.

“It was a beast with teeth,” the steward insists, “and it bit one of the footmen!”

The chatelaine huffs. “What did you expect, trying to grab it like that?”

Shirayuki can’t help but agree; she’s bitten more than a man or two that tried to catch her as well. But that’s not what has her attention now; instead it is the cake on the floor, those three big bites out of it, baring chocolate sponge and raspberry custard. The layer Cookie made special. The one she thought would go to waste when...

“Where is he now?” At their looks, she amends, “I mean, it. The beast.”

“Outside,” the steward says, sending a narrow look toward the door. “A few of the maids managed to chase it out, but I’m afraid it will have gotten into the decoration-- my lady, where--?”

“I’d like to take a look,” Shirayuki calls back, slippered feet already carrying her to the door. “I, ah, think I might know how to solve this...problem?”

The steward blinks. “Is there some...Tanbarunian folk tradition for this? Ridding the grounds of a foul beast?”

Her feet stutter at the threshold, and she swallows down a laugh. “Certainly something for removing one fowl.”

At thirteen, Shirayuki will admit, Zen becomes tolerable. Not without extreme duress, and certainly never if Obi is around, but being in his presence no longer feels like slivers under her fingernails. Now it’s just that unpleasant drone of cicadas, the same that herald his arrival every summer.

“Are you supposed to be climbing?” she asks, settling herself at the base of the tree’s trunk, as always. “Your mother won’t thank you for ruining those trousers.”

Obi laughs, already deep in the canopy. “I think you mean his laundress.”

“I have plenty more,” Zen scoffs, levering his boot over another knot, giving him the height to reach the first branch. “And I think you’re only so cross because you can’t climb for beans.”

She retracts her opinion. His Highness has certainly not become tolerable in the least.

“Come off it,” Obi laughs, so easy in his bower. “Anyone can climb.”

Zen grins down at her with smug authority. “Not Shirayuki, she’s a girl.”

“So is Kiki,” Obi reminds him, “and if she heard you talk like that, she’d come up and throw you off that branch herself.”

“Kiki hardly counts as a girl--”

“--That’s not what Mitsuhide would say--”

“--And that doesn’t mean Shirayuki can,” Zen adds, tone brooking no argument. “She doesn’t even have trousers on.”

“Shirayuki can climb in a dress just fine.” Obi swings down, right to the lowest branch. Or rather, the second lowest, since Zen hasn’t vacated the first. “Come on, I’ll tell you how.”

She spares the tree a dubious glance. “Are you sure--?”

“Always. Don’t you trust me?” He lowers down a hand, callused and bronzed, and she takes it. “Good, now put your foot there. Now just...think up.”

She sends him a dubious look. “I don’t think it’s possible to just go up by thinking it.”

He grins down. “You’d be surprised.”

Shirayuki is definitely ruining her dress.

“You’re sure it’s up here?” she calls down, a worried swarm of footmen huddling beneath her. “Waterfowl aren’t really...tree-dwelling birds.”

“I’m sure, my lady,” one pipes up beneath her. “Took to wing, then hopped up the branches easy as you please.”

Shirayuki casts a long look up the oak, sighing. “Of course he did.”

One slippered foot lifts, hooking over a thicker branch, resting her weight right by the trunk.

“Just think up,” she murmurs, irritation rising with every word. “Just think up and it’s hardly anything at all.”

“HONK,” agrees the goose above her.

“Oh.” She blinks, taking in the sleek white body and the webbed feet tucked unnaturally beneath it. Well, not that the pose was unnatural, but the place. “You’re not a swan at all.”

“HONK,” the goose informs her, wistful this time.

“Be glad,” she says, reaching for him. “If you were any bigger, I wouldn’t be able to carry you, and you’d be stuck up here with your big wings and bad decisions.

The goose ducks it head, abashed. “HONK.”

“You better,” she starts, trying to wrangle a bird his size beneath her arm, “be exactly who I think you are.”

This close, her fowl friend doesn’t dare express his opinion at the only volume nature saw fit to give him, but instead, cuddles right against her neck. For one, weak moment, Shirayuki leans against the trunk, letting her head sink into his feathers. Please let this be him. If it is, she can worry about the how later. Maybe even the why. As long as he hasn’t abandoned her, there’s nothing--

“Not to interrupt you,” a lady’s languid voice drawls beneath her. “But I’m assuming that you might need some help getting down.”

Fifteen is when Shirayuki is made aware of just how utterly unfair her life will be from now on, now that she’s to be the wife of a prince.

“No, no,” Obi laughs, nervous. “I think the Young Master has it right this time, Miss. You can’t come.”

“Why not?” He’s gotten much taller now, taller even than when he arrived, and she has to look up to guilelessly meet his eye, much more than she’s used to. “If I can climb trees with you, I can splash around in a pond just fine--”

“Yes, but--” his mouth split into a pained grimace-- “climbing trees doesn’t involve taking off clothes. You can see how that might be a, hm, problem now, can’t you, Miss?”

“No.”

His exasperation is completely unwarranted, considering how exasperating he’s being. “You’re a lady.”

“One that can swim,” she counters. “We’ve done it before, I don’t know why it’s bothering you now.”

“Because you’re...” He waves a hand at her, a harried up and down, but she only stares back. “Of all the things for Master to leave to me...”

“I can keep my shift on,” she offers, “if that helps.”

“It really doesn’t, Miss.” Obi sighs, one hand coming up to rub at his shoulder. “Surely your father-- no, your uncle. Surely your uncle’s talked to you about how boys and girls shouldn’t, um...you know.”

“I don’t.”

“It’s just...” He takes a steeling breath. “Miss, you’re a woman now. You can’t be naked with men.”

She wrinkles her nose. “I said I would wear my shift. And besides, you’re not men, you’re boys.”

Obi head rolls heavenward. “Only to you.”

Shirayuki gives him a considering look and pulls out her trump card. “Would you let Kiki Seiran come?”

She doesn’t know this Kiki Seiran, not from anything more than what’s been said in her presence, but she knows-- whatever a man does, Kiki does, and better too. The moment her name leaves her lips, Obi drops her a helpless glare.

“Kiki,” he says, as if savoring the word, “doesn’t count. No one lets Kiki Seiran do something, she just does it, and we all live with the consequences.”

A fond smile flickers across his lips, and for no reason at all, her stomach twists. “You should marry her.”

Obi blinks. “Huh?”

“Kiki Seiran,” she says lightly. “It seems she’s really quite impressive.”

For a long moment he stares at her, unblinking. Then he coughs, one, twice, until it’s no longer a cough but roaring laughter.

Shirayuki stares at him. “Is something funny?”

“Oh, Miss,” he wheezes. “That’s some vote of confidence, but Kiki Seiran-- she’s not for the likes of me.”

The sick knot in her stomach dissipates into affront. “Why not? There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“Again, you really know how to compliment a man,” he teases. “But no count worth his acreage will marry his daughter and heir to a bastard. With her pedigree, they’re probably planning to marrying her to Elder Highness as we speak.”

“Well, that’s silly,” she huffs. “You’re worth a thousand princes Obi. Any lady would be lucky to have you.”

His smile wavers. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

“You should bring her next time,” she decides. “I can talk to her.”

“Ah,” he coughs, shaking his head as he traipses after her. “That won’t be necessary at all.”

This is not how she thought she’d meet the illustrious Kiki Seiran, her wedding dress torn to rags and goose hugged tight in her arms, but it would not be the first time today fate thwarted her expectations.

“I’m fine,” Shirayuki assures her, slowly making her descent. “But do you have, um, water?”

One elegant brow arches. “Water?”

“Ah, yes.” She drops down before her-- oh, Lady Seiran is...quite a bit taller than she’d imagined, and at least twice as pretty. No wonder Obi always smiled when he talked about her. “Like a, um, lake? Or a river might do?”

“A lake?” Her gaze drops, mouth canting into a thoughtful line. “For your avian compatriot, I suppose. You think his home must be close by.”

“Yes,” she lies, because babbling about ancient texts she’s certain she was never supposed to see and magic of the blackest sort seemed a poor first impression to make. “It would probably, uh, help with the...destructive behavior.”

“He has left quite a spectacle behind. It will take hours to clean that up. Or days,” she adds with a pointed look toward the goose. “Your wedding seems to be thoroughly postponed.”

Good, she doesn’t say. This Kiki Seiran is Zen’s friend too, after all. And even if Shirayuki could have shaken him to pieces last night, she’s that too.

“Water?” she says instead.

It’s the right thing to say, since Kiki turns around, gesturing toward the treeline. “There’s a pond back there. Just follow the cobblestone path and it should take you right out to the dock.”

“Perfect.” Shirayuki takes two hurried steps before pausing, turning over her hip to add, “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Lady Kiki. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

There’s that brow again, lifted into an elegant arch Shirayuki could never hope to mimic. “Only good things, I hope.”

Her stomach lurches as she replies, “The best.”