Chapter Text
Shuri’s name was a mantra on his lips.
He whispered it into her hair, across her skin, on her giggling lips. He was in a haze, the softness of her bed beckoning him forward. Her arms were wrapped tight across his back, her fingers in his hair.
“Jeremy,” she whispered back, breathless. Her hair was tousled and strewn across the pillows. She was an angel in her cream nightgown, and when he told her that, over and over, she laughed.
“You look like an angel yourself,” she whispered back. He wasn’t sure what she saw, with the curtains cracked open and spilling moonlight across the floor, illuminating the tips of his golden hair. He hoped he was good enough, that when she looked into his eyes, she saw a man worthy enough to be her husband.
He couldn’t remember beyond the confines of this room, nor did he want to. He was drowning in her and wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Jeremy.” She cupped his face with one of her hands, her thumb sweeping across his cheek. “I love you.”
Despite her softness, her delicate lips on the skin of his neck, her words pierced through to him. He saw her truly for the first time, and knew he couldn’t see her at all. She was but a haze, a mist under his fingertips and his realisation shattered the illusion. She faded away from him, and he desperately reached out to her, tried to grab her and hold her close but his strength had melted away with the bedroom, the moonlight, and a piece of his soul.
He was alone in the void, straddling air, his arms reaching into emptiness.
Jeremy awoke amidst bundles of bunched-up fabric, clinging to his skin like the remnants of his dream. His chest rose and fell in an erratic rhythm, shuddering from his whirling mind. Her soft voice rang in his ears, whispering his name over and over and-
He breathed out, groaning into his hands. His sheets were damp, uncomfortably close to his skin. Trying to chase away the thoughts, shame crawled up his back, a hot blush following up to his cheeks and ears.
Gods, what was he doing? What was he thinking?
His dream had told him everything he wanted to hear before crushing his heart under its cold grasp. Shuri was in his arms, giggling, relaxed and holding him close. Shuri had called out his name with so much affection tingeing her voice.
Shuri had told him she loved him.
Jeremy began laughing, breathlessly, into the open air of his room. He didn’t have any explanation for his sheets, nor a way to avoid the rumours sprouting from his servant’s assumptions. He was a fool, a fool longing for what he couldn’t have.
Perhaps it was the futility of it all that made him fall for her. Knowing that nothing could amount to his affection, nothing he could do would make her see him in a different light, would make her open her arms to him. Or perhaps, more simply, it was because of his kinship with her.
When he saw her for the first time, when she was fourteen and scared, so so scared, he didn’t see a stepmother, as his father confidently declared she was. He saw a girl with far too much responsibility, a girl who feared his world the same way he did.
He saw a girl who struggled, who failed, who was forced to grow up too soon.
Jeremy sat up, brushing back his hair with one hand, holding his chest with the other. He prayed, hoping he could quell his heartbeat by getting out of bed and placing his feet on cool ground. Chills ran up his legs; he shuddered. Would she be waking up by now? Would she still be in her nightgown, her heart thudding the same way his did from the same dream? He missed her already, her soft pink hair and softer lips-
He stood, leaving his sheets tangled in his wake and preparing for his day.
He was in his study alone. Shuri was with Rachel to buy jewellery. He’d wanted to come with, to find an explanation as to why he should join their outing, one strong enough to silence any doubts, but when he opened his mouth to speak, incoherent mutters left his lips.
Shuri had cocked her head to one side, her hair tied up, revealing all her neck. He was too mesmerised by her that, when she said she was leaving, he’d nodded without a word of complaint, averting his gaze and clearing his throat. Rachel narrowed her eyes at him, clinging to Shuri’s arm.
Jeremy had bid them farewell and headed straight to his study, concealing his expression from everyone there. He closed the door with more force than he’d intended, his dream rolling into his mind over and over, reminding him of what could’ve been.
What could’ve been had his father not married her, had she been allowed to be a noble girl like any other.
He was barely focusing on the ledgers Shuri gave him to practise on, the stream of numbers glazing over his vision. He wanted to grow up. He wanted to be an adult and lead the Neuschwanstein household. He wanted her to be able to depend on him, rather than him constantly depending on her.
Perhaps that was why he would always be a child in her eyes. It was his incompetence that drove her away. Shuri saw Nora as more dependable than him, as more trustworthy.
Something had to change.
He knew it was hopeless, that short of reversing time, he’d never be able to change the course of their relationship in such a dramatic way. Familial bonds were life long, and in her mind, he was sure she’d already forged that connection. But if he relentlessly tried and relentlessly failed, perhaps his heart could understand what his mind knew.
Before he knew it, the skies had painted his study red and orange, then drowned it in darkness. Jeremy lit a candle to keep him company.
Shuri had returned safely, her long robes sweeping against the front steps of their estate, Rachel still clinging to her side. He hadn’t greeted her this evening, the thought of approaching her and her floral perfume felt like a disaster in the making. He didn’t know why his heart dared to dream such a thing, but now his mind was in shambles and it was all he could think about whenever he saw her.
Lady Shuri Von Neuschwanstein.
Her voice was calming and soft. She’d stood up for him when she shouldn’t have, when he’d deserved to fall from grace right then in the royal palace. She was his stepmother on paper, and in the eyes of society she was his mother.
Should anyone know what he felt, it would spell calamity for his family. He doubted the Church would take well to his affection, nor would anyone else in high society. He couldn’t let anyone know. He had to keep his feelings hidden deep within and seal them away.
Footsteps passed in front of his door. He stared at the flickering lights underneath. Voices followed.
“Did you see the young master today?” A maid, young and feminine, whispered.
“The scene in front of her ladyship?” The other scoffed, her voice lower. “It’s a disgrace she’s allowing this to continue.” How was it, no matter what Jeremy did, Shuri was always the one to blame?
“There are enough scandals around her ladyship. I wonder what’s going on in her head. Is the young master too charming to resist?” She giggled, passing directly under his door. “I doubt I’d be able to refuse his advances, if I were in her place.”
“You aren’t his mother.”
“You’re right.” The voices became quieter taking enough distance for him to breathe. “But still, they’re the same age- and wasn’t he charming, staring like she was his lover?”
It was wrong. All of it was so wrong.
He didn’t chase after them, didn’t try to refuse the rumours they were sprouting, because how could he? They were right. He’d been caught staring without chastity or restraint in his emerald eyes. Had she seen him? Would she struggle to resist his ‘charm’ like the maids and noble ladies implied?
He lowered his head onto his arms, lounging on his desk. He was delusional. Once more his thoughts had spiralled onto her, lamenting losing her when he’s never had her to begin with. She’d never loved him that way, and never would.
Had he another chance, he’d fight his father’s marriage with everything he had. He’d make sure Shuri was never in that position again, that they would never become family, legally or otherwise. He didn’t know what was worse, loving someone who was meant to be his stepmother, or his father bringing in a wife his son’s age.
With his head in his arms, he had time to wonder what possessed his father to do so, why he brought someone so young to their household. Had his father told him that she was Jeremy’s wife-to-be, he would’ve believed him more.
Shuri. Shuri, Shuri, Shuri.
Young Shuri. How could his father look into her eyes and see a wife? How did he not see a daughter, in the same way he looked at Jeremy and saw a son?
He loved his father, with all his heart. But there was something undeniable there. A needle that pricked at his heart and told him it was all so wrong .
The door creaked open.
Jeremy caught his sister’s panicked gaze.
“Brother,” she called out. “Mama’s walking again. She’s by the window and-”
Jeremy stood, adjusting the sword at his side and taking long strides towards the door. Rachel fidgeted, glaring at the floorboards below. “I’ll take care of it.” He put a soft hand on her head, brushing back platinum hair away from her eyes.
“Is she okay?” she asked, her eyes shining with emotion.
“She is.” He nodded, opening the door wider and leaving the room. “Take my candle on the way back. It’s not safe to walk in the dark.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll go to bed soon, I don’t need it.”
Rachel nodded, and Jeremy left down the corridor alone, his strides picking up speed. On nights like these, where Shuri roamed the halls in her sleep…. worry curled around his heart. He passed by one door, and another, until he saw her silhouetted form basking under moonlight.
“Shuri,” he said, raising his voice just enough for it to reach her ears had she been awake. “What are you doing here? Rachel’s worried about you.” He knew he wouldn’t receive an answer, he never did but-
It hurt to see her blank gaze briefly turn towards him, green eyes dull and lifeless, before she resumed staring out the window.
He was close enough to reach out to her now, but held off, standing by her side instead.
“It’s a nice night.” He wasn’t sure who he was talking to. “If you were awake, we could go on a walk in the gardens together.” He smiled. “It’d be cold, but I’d give you my coat and-”
He should stop speaking. She couldn’t hear him. Shuri was under enough torment already, suffering from demons he couldn’t see, that she refused to share. He wondered, what was going on in her head?
Why did she stand at this window every night?
He was about to hold her and gently guide her back to her room, before catching sight of long scars across her neck. They were a dark red, blotchy gashes across pale skin. How didn’t he notice them until now? They were battle wounds on a noble woman’s neck, how could this happen to begin with?
“Shuri, if I asked you what these were from, would you tell me the truth?”
No answer.
He couldn’t be surprised. Instead, he held onto her wrists and slowly took a step back. Like a doll, she swayed, stumbling back with him.
“You should go to bed, it’s too late to be awake.” Futility curled around his vocal chords, the end of his words crackling. Every night was like this. In vain, he’d continue speaking to her, continue trying to break through to her as if his voice could somehow grant her any solace. As usual, he knew it was pointless, that nothing he did here could possibly ring in her ears, much less convince her to trust him, for even in her waking moments she treated him as nothing more than one of her other children.
When she was a safe distance from the window, he gathered her in his arms, her light form slumping against him. As if even her soul had given up on protecting her, she was motionless as he walked down the halls, the moonlight splayed onto the floors ahead of them.
It was almost ironic, how just hours ago he was dreaming of holding her in his arms, but now that she was there he felt nothing but heavy worry stained in desperation.
Her room wasn’t far away and he pushed the door open with his shoulder. She had yet to stir, but her hands were now clasped around the front of his jacket, holding him in a fragile grip. She looked so vulnerable asleep, so afraid of the world and everything in it. His chest squeezed.
He set her down on the bed, bending down to make the descent comfortable. Even after being back on her own bed, she refused to let go.
“Shuri,” he murmured, crouching down at her bedside. “You wouldn’t want to hold onto me if you were awake, you need to let go.” His fingers brushed against her own, not making an effort to take her off.
She flinched.
Jeremy froze.
And for a moment, her face scrunched up and fear pierced into his heart. What if she awoke then? What if her eyes fluttered open and the first thing she saw waking in the middle of the night was a man trespassing in her bedroom? What if she misinterprets his actions for the first time, what if she regards him with mistrust and fear, for why could he possibly be in her room, hunched over her while she slept?
And for a moment, Jeremy regretted not telling her that she walked in her sleep.
Her face relaxed; her grip loosened, hands falling to the cover.
Jeremy pulled away from her, his heart thudding in his chest. He took a step back, from her form bathed in moonlight, ethereal in its beauty, far beyond his league.
“Good night Shuri,” he continued, speaking against his better judgement, “I hope that one day, you can tell me what torments you so.”
He closed the door, softly clicking it in his wake.
There was an hourglass on his table.
Shimmering gold, it glowed in the darkness, a beacon amidst his paperwork, simply sitting innocuously, as if it’d always been there. Had this been the work of the maids? Of Rachel?
He entered what should’ve been a dark office, but was now bathed in the soft glow of the hourglass. He didn’t have the energy to question it, and half of his mind was set on him being too tired to differentiate reality from fantasy.
Oh, how he’d struggled with that today.
Jeremy sat at his desk, rubbing his eyes and blinking slowly, his vision blurring for a beat, then returning on the same hourglass. He touched it. Lukewarm glass, the golden sand above was warm. Above… No, surely he was hallucinating. The sand was bunched at the top of the hourglass, not a drop descending below. Perhaps that’s why he was given the item, because it was broken beyond repair.
Jeremy left it to the side, starting his work on his ledgers once more, but the words blurred into a pool of incongruent babbles, incomprehensible to his tired mind. Perhaps he should sleep, leave the ledgers to an early sunrise and a regretful future Jeremy. He wasn’t sure what to do but he knew he couldn’t be lucid, the hourglass was proof of that.
Hourglass. He was drawn to it again, his fingers drumming against the top full to the brim with sand. Leon had once spoken to him about the significance of dreams, that every item within it had a meaning that could be dissected. He’d said that hourglasses meant one was waiting or in stasis, dependent on time to solve their problems.
And he supposed Leon was right, for all he’d been doing was waiting. Waiting to become an adult, waiting for Shuri to look at him and see what he tried to show her. Waiting for his feelings to dissipate, for anything to change.
Waiting for an opportunity, no matter the cost.
Jeremy turned the hourglass upside down.
The golden sand trickled upwards, gaining in momentum rapidly. From a stream to a geyser, he didn’t know what to do, seeing it slam against the upper bounds of the hourglass, growing brighter and brighter. He felt drowsy, a soft haze overcoming his vision, just like when he’d realised he was in a dream that morning, the haze that overcame his vision, the world that broke away and left him in the void.
And sure enough, when he finally looked past the hourglass he was in utter darkness. It was the darkness of the void, of the deepest of basements and prisons without a single light, not the soft dark of the night with stars and moonlight and the soft contours of his home. It was nothingness.
This time he accepted it, putting his head down to where he knew his desk could’ve been, refusing to think about how a chair nor a desk couldn’t have been there to support him, letting his haze drift off into the morning to come. Waiting once more, for a future far beyond his grasp.
Jeremy was standing in a sea of white light.
It was hard to get his bearings at first, to realise he was no longer sitting but standing in a vast sea of nothingness, except for the figure in front of him doused in gold.
“Hi,” a feminine voice whispered to him, giggling almost. “It’s been a while.”
He was dreaming. He knew that, yet every fibre of his being was screaming that it was real. “We’ve met before?”
“Oh yes, we’ve met so, so many times,” the voice continued. The figure was a stitched amalgamation of light, threads that both scattered and were bound together, infinite in how it reached beyond the plains of the endless nothingness.
Jeremy tried to take a step back, but found himself routed in place.
“Don’t be afraid,” she cooed and the threads burst. Scattering and blooming in the air, revealing a woman that looked just like Shuri. Her hair was paler yet just as cascading, like the boundless rivers encasing the realm. “If you’re afraid of simply this much, how will you handle what is to come?”
“I’m not afraid!” He felt himself flare up, squaring his shoulders to her. “I’m not afraid of anything.”
Not-Shuri hummed. Jeremy wished for this dream to end.
“Of course.” She mimicked his stance playfully, puffing out her chest and trying to make her visage severe. She towered over him, like a giant making fun of an ant. She then burst into a fit of childish giggles. “You’re not afraid of anything but time.”
Jeremy blinked, once more trying to take a step back. “I’m not.”
“Oh but you are .” She stepped forwards, invading his space with her presence. “You’re afraid of time slipping you by, of every opportunity slipping past your grasp.” As if to illustrate her point. She reached out to his hands, palms he hadn’t realised he’d outstretched, and phrased through them like a ghost. “You’re afraid of losing who you love.”
“I’m… not.”
“It’d be commendable.” She took a step back. “If it wasn’t awfully selfish.”
Selfish? This woman didn’t even know him!
“And what do you know of me!” he barked back, a cornered dog with his heart ripped off his sleeve and stomped under her feet. “I haven’t done anything !”
“Exactly, because it’s all about you.” She took another step back, her form getting smaller and smaller. She was a mirror image of Shuri, her features stitched together in a way that uniquely hers. It made him sick to see her lovely face abused and used by another. “It’s all about what you’re losing, what you have to gain. It’s about who you can become. Men often claim to love, yet few sacrifice for it.” Despite their distance, her voice was booming in his ears, clearer than ever.
Jeremy tried to speak, but the words clogged up in his throat. Could he really say, to a stranger in a dream no less, that he loved her? It had to be kept as a closely guarded secret, as a hushed reality he denied until his lips were numb. If outside of his dream, he spoke the words aloud, they’d exist outside of him. They’d infect Shuri’s world and a problem that was once his burden to solve would be a blight upon her name, and their entire family.
“You lack the courage to speak your most basic truth, and you claim to love her?” the entity taunted, her voice like rough cords tightening around his limbs.
For an instant, the entity’s appearance morphed into Shuri’s, an identical replica of her down to the sheen in her eyes. “You almost make me regret giving you this opportunity.”
“What opportunity?” Something about seeing Shuri tell him something changed his perspective, as he walked forwards. A stupid moth to a brilliant flame.
“An opportunity to prove yourself.” She took steps back, stealing Shuri’s voice and using it to her own ends. “That’s what you wanted, right? I’ll give you what you seek, under a single condition.”
Jeremy’s arms glowed and burned in the same instant. His face contorted, he tried to scream but it was as if the universe herself had dipped underwater, drowning any sound. His forearms glowed, an hourglass and numbers etched onto both sides.
“Save her.” He was tugged forwards by the threads of light, forced to kneel at not-Shuri’s feet. Her hair became crimson, dripping colour onto the plane. “Save her from her destiny and you’ll live to see her happiness.”
He was tugged under the surface.
The world dyed black.