[Fic] {Round 038] "Wrong Turn" PG-13
Author: tigersilver
Title: "Wrong Turn"
Pairings/Characters: Conrad, Gwendal, Wolfram, implied Yuuram.
Prompt/Theme: Future
Word Count: 2,150
Warnings: PG-13 (strong language, dark themes)
Notes: Prompted by the image of Dark!Wolfram by ashwaq.livejournal.com/ in community.livejournal.com/kyou_kara_maou/ . I've never seen anything like it :)! This is honor of such memorable art, twisted into fitting the 'Future' prompt.
Wrong Turn
“Oi! Blondie! Aren’t you that pathetic boy-king’s whore? Where’d ya get your hairy balls from , girly man?”
“Bastards! You’ll pay for that!”
With a roar, Wolfram was after them - “Nyah, nyah, nyah! Little guurl!” they were chanting, scattering down the winding aisles of the Iron King’s Mine - his pretty face flushed red and his eyes narrowed to slits of furious emerald. Taunting shouts echoed back down the corridor, punctuated by his little brother’s angry demands that the rag-tag band he was pursuing stop and face him, like real warriors.
With a sigh, Conrad took off down one of the other pathways, chasing a second group of rebels, and Gwendal choose the third and his appointed quarry, careful not to send his earth-shattering powers out of check. There were just about a dozen of these tattered rebels, holed up here in the abandoned mine, and every one of them - human, half-Mazoku and full - was known to be dangerous and nasty, each firmly committed to puncturing gaping holes in his godson’s lingering, uneasy peace.
Conrad was a swordsman of excellent caliber - the ragged three he was perforce responsible for were driven into a handy safe-room (where accountants of old must have counted the bars of iron for the owners of the mine) in short order by his flashing blade and prodigious skills. He then rendered them harmless with sharp whacks with the sword-flat, applied scientifically to the bases of their skulls. He took a moment to bind them with bits of ragged rope the miners left behind and then headed back down the stone-lined passageway to catch up with his brothers, locking the ancient oak door behind him as added insurance the annoying three would stay put. A scant ten minutes had passed.
His rebels had been just rude as the ones Wolfram had run after (“Oh, so ya think ya got us, ya bastard spawn of the whore-Queen! Making up for your uselessness as a full-fledged demon commander, are ye? You’ll never make us believe yer one of us, half-blood traitor! Just how many good men have ye killed?”) and he winced as he ran, and unhappily remembered a few of the more telling taunts.
“Half-breed! Sodding loser - ya can’t even take care of the poor fucking soldiers under yer orders! Ya think you’re so fucking noble - yer useless, that’s what - not even half the man yer father was!”
“Oh, but where’s that little puppet-king you all follow so blindly, Second Prince? What, did he leave you all by yer high-and-mighty selves to rule the kingdom? You’ve been abandoned, haven’t you? Just like us!”
“Nobody wants you, do they, Weller-san? - not even yer precious Maou! Yer a fuckin’ embarrassment, don’t ya know?”
He’d shut his ears when they castigated him for betraying his human ancestry; closed his eyes to the arrogant pity one of the older rebels offered up - not human, not demon, never fitting in like they did, united in their commonality against Mazoku over-rule. Abandoned? he questioned mentally, making sure the ropes were very tight. As if! Yuuri was still here, at least in spirit, and Conrad would give him all his loyalty every time, no matter who his parents were or weren’t.
“Gods. I wish we hadn’t come,” he mumbled and kept on jogging, regretting for once the onus Shibuya Yuuri left behind him: “That shalt not kill, I tell you - they are people, just like us!” It was infuriating, being forced to listen to that drivel, thrown at him like so much excrement by some band of stupid miscellaneous malcontents. They could’ve let Yosak and the others take care of this; oh, yes, they could’ve - but Wolfram had seemed actually interested for once, and Gwendal, too, had been nostalgic. It had been so very long since any of them had to raise arms in the name of the Maou. Even if the Maou wasn’t here.
The main entrance to the mine was abandoned when he arrived there, breathless, though he could hear faint echoes floating down the empty corridors that branched from it. Cocking his head, he chose the one he was sure his baby brother had taken, following the muted noises - screams? Shouts?
“Wolfram?”
“Whore-son! Ya couldn’t kill a fly, you little weakling! Baby brat!”
“Ohhh, take me on, blondie - I’d like to see you fighting beneath me, sweetums-just bare your purty little ass for me, why don’t you?“
“Nah, he’s too fucking ‘used’, Bezall. 'Soiled goods', right? I bet that wimpy human kid left him all stretched out and arrgh!”
Conrad caught the rising bustle of blades clashing, rapid-fire as machine-guns spurting, and sped up his pace, determined to give Wolfram a helping hand before they overpowered him. The larger part of the vicious, ill-bred group had fled down this winding narrow passage, heading for the abandoned mine-cars that sat gathering dust on the ancient tracks. If they could manage a head start on Wolfram, they’d be well-nigh uncatchable in the bowels of this torturous maze. In the meantime, Wolfram would be fighting desperately, six-to-one.
“How dare you?!” That was von Bielefeld’s voice, ragged now with effort as the rebel’s stolen clothes.
“You insolent fools! I am not the Maou’s plaything - I am his soldier! Turn and face me, miscreants!”
“Ooh, is baby angry?” wheedled a tenor voice, taunting between the sharp bursts of metal ringing against metal. “You must be soo lonely, poor boy. Come here and take that pesky uniform off, blondie - I’ll give you a good time, I promise.”
A baritone joined the tenor, laughing, and the clash of metal doubled in echo, amplified by the height and breadth of some unseen cavern, wending its way back to Conrad’s horrified ears. Poor Wolfram.
“What, your charms couldn’t keep him here in Shin Makoku, pretty Prince? Did you spread your legs and give him everything you had available and still he wouldn’t stay with you? What a loser!”
“You must not be very good, eh?” first voice chimed back in. “They were right, what they said about you, pretty boy? Can’t even keep a human brat satisfied and you want to be the Consort? I don’t think so, sweet cheeks. Yer far too decorative to be a soldier fer any Maou worth his crown!”
A crowd of voices joined the two of them, closing in.
“Pretty Prince, pretty Prince! Yah, yah, yah! Can’t catch me, can you?”
“Fucking waste of time!”
“Oh, look at him run - he looks like a girl!”
“Bastards!”
There was an abrupt rumble and the sound of falling rock as Conrad ran closer to the opening he could only barely make out dead-ahead. Just a little farther and he'd be there, and save poor Wofram from his abusers. But a brilliant flash of light bloomed eerily n the hallway, momentarily blinding him, and the swordsman was suddenly sweating copiously as the residual heat rushed to meet him head-on.
“Shit!” exclaimed another deep voice, harsh from exhaustion. “You little slut of a motherfucker! When I get a hold of you, I’m going to make you pay dearly for that! I’ll sell you to some brothel, godsdamned bitch, and-“
The baritone roar was cut off abruptly and all the hairs rose on the back of Conrad’s neck at the sudden, looming silence. Wolfram hadn’t been the same in the months since Yuuri departed - quiet and introspective, throwing himself into his duties with a dulled passion, his fire all but extinguished - still, he had to remember the Maou’s credo, didn’t he? Didn’t he?
The lack of enraged shouts echoing was ominous. Conrad stopped in his tracks, staring down the now darkening dust-filled passage, and strained to hear the rebel’s insults resuming, but there was no telltale trade of angry voices, only a quiet gurgle and the snick of a blade cutting through ‘something’ - ‘something’ squishy by the sound of it, like a chunk of meat being skewered. He knew that sound very well, Conrad did.
“Wolfram?” he ventured to call out when the quiet continued another unbearable moment. Hands trembling, Conrad felt for flint and match, wanting some light as quickly as possible so he could continue his journey down this endless obsidian corridor and discover what his baby brother had done in Yuuri’s name.
Footsteps rose up to meet Conrad, as stacked leather heels met pavers, hesitantly picking their way through the rubble. The glow advanced slowly and a hovering fireball eventually revealed Wolfram, but not as Conrad had last seen him. Vaguely, he heard Gwendal’s voice behind him, assured and somewhat self-satisfied.
“-Like they could teach me anything with a sword! Oi, Conrad, Wolfram - are you down this way?”
Blood was smeared on the blade, congealing rivulets still trickling down the hilt where one manicured hand kept it tucked behind his uniformed back. The other hand trailed slowly across a granite-flecked supporting wall and it - it was bloody, too.
Conrad caught his breath, in time with his older brother's gasp, and felt a deep sadness well up within the confines of his chest.
Gods, but he wished they hadn’t come.
“Wolfram? What’s that?” came Gwendal’s curious question, though he knew very well what that scarlet substance was.
Gwendal was more hard-ass when it came to Yuuri’s unusual requests: if you were a soldier in the service of the Maou, you were expected to kill for that privilege and that was that. But, still, he understood Yuuri’s reasoning, though reluctantly. One mustn’t take lives unnecessarily; an impassioned enemy could be persuaded to be the most loyal of allies. He had no doubt that, if the young Maou were here, he’d have been making friends now instead of counting bodies. But the Maou wasn’t…here, that is.
“What have you done?”
A delicate pink tongue peeped out, kitten-like, and the blonde licked his red-spattered lips. His green eyes were oddly off-center - now flickering wildly ‘round the stone walls, then finally managing to focus, deep and steady on Gwendal’s startled face.
“That felt good.”
It was a purr of a sound, satisfaction permeating every syllable. The fireball flared up and Wolfram juggled it superbly, smiling now in a way that made Gwendal clamp his mouth shut abruptly and Conrad throw a hand out in involuntary anguish. The thin shoulders beneath the blue coat were remarkably straight; every line of Wolfram’s body portrayed the arrogance he was known for - but this time it was not loveable in any way. Conrad shuddered when the dark-flecked emerald turned his way.
“Wolf-!”
“Wolfram.”
“Let’s…let’s do it again.”
This time there was no disguising the flash of madness in those lovely green eyes. Conrad had witnessed something like it once, back when Wolfram was possessed by Shinou all those months ago, but this new air of his was different. It was if all the darkness flowing under that golden exterior had risen to the surface, staining Conrad's naïve baby brother with the taint of dirtied adulthood.
If only Yuuri hadn’t chosen Earth. Maybe this scene of leftover carnage would be different; maybe his darling little brother would still be pure. Oh, how he wished they had not come!
Wolfram had murdered now, in cold blood, deliberately, tasting the acrid fear of the dying, the beguiling odor of the damned. All in the name of Shibuya Yuuri, ex-27th Maou of Shin Makoku, peace-lover, oddball, amicable and empathetic even to sworn enemies. His discarded fiancé would never again be the same passionately earnest young demon he’d been when Conrad’s godson still ruled - not now that he’d sipped from the cup sweet Death offered…. and thirsted for more.
“No,” Gwendal said, firmly. “There are no more, Wolfram. None you have to kill, anyway. It’s all under control.”
The implication hung there - and you, too, brother! Control yourself! - vivid in a stone corridor filled with the scent of dust, blood and fire, and Wolfram blinked after a few long, tense seconds of suffering through Gwendal’s glare and seemed to fold back into himself. He gazed wearily at his hand, finally seeing it; his sword, desperately in need of a wipe.
--How he wished he had not come! Another thing to fail at, to stain his honor as Yuuri’s ex-fiancé. Yuuri didn’t want him killing people, he knew that, so why-?
It was the wrong way; he’d chosen the wrong path, lured by petty epithets and stupid teasing, all of which he should’ve blocked out automatically, because Yuuri wasn’t like that and neither was he. But there was no way out now; he’d gone and done it, and it had been remarkably easy and he’d do it again if one more bastard claimed he wasn’t enough, or that he was slutty and sold himself cheap-
“Wolfram,” Conrad’s familiar voice arrowed through the growing cloud of angry confusion filling Wolf's red-stained chest. “Let’s turn back now. Let’s go home.”
“Ye-yes,” Wolfram’s fervent agreement managed to escape his tight throat as he stumbled eagerly forward, his glowing fireball flickering out suddenly as he slumped, leaving the three brothers stranded in a night-filled mine.
If I can.
.
END
.
Title: "Wrong Turn"
Pairings/Characters: Conrad, Gwendal, Wolfram, implied Yuuram.
Prompt/Theme: Future
Word Count: 2,150
Warnings: PG-13 (strong language, dark themes)
Notes: Prompted by the image of Dark!Wolfram by ashwaq.livejournal.com/ in community.livejournal.com/kyou_kara_maou/ . I've never seen anything like it :)! This is honor of such memorable art, twisted into fitting the 'Future' prompt.
Wrong Turn
“Oi! Blondie! Aren’t you that pathetic boy-king’s whore? Where’d ya get your hairy balls from , girly man?”
“Bastards! You’ll pay for that!”
With a roar, Wolfram was after them - “Nyah, nyah, nyah! Little guurl!” they were chanting, scattering down the winding aisles of the Iron King’s Mine - his pretty face flushed red and his eyes narrowed to slits of furious emerald. Taunting shouts echoed back down the corridor, punctuated by his little brother’s angry demands that the rag-tag band he was pursuing stop and face him, like real warriors.
With a sigh, Conrad took off down one of the other pathways, chasing a second group of rebels, and Gwendal choose the third and his appointed quarry, careful not to send his earth-shattering powers out of check. There were just about a dozen of these tattered rebels, holed up here in the abandoned mine, and every one of them - human, half-Mazoku and full - was known to be dangerous and nasty, each firmly committed to puncturing gaping holes in his godson’s lingering, uneasy peace.
Conrad was a swordsman of excellent caliber - the ragged three he was perforce responsible for were driven into a handy safe-room (where accountants of old must have counted the bars of iron for the owners of the mine) in short order by his flashing blade and prodigious skills. He then rendered them harmless with sharp whacks with the sword-flat, applied scientifically to the bases of their skulls. He took a moment to bind them with bits of ragged rope the miners left behind and then headed back down the stone-lined passageway to catch up with his brothers, locking the ancient oak door behind him as added insurance the annoying three would stay put. A scant ten minutes had passed.
His rebels had been just rude as the ones Wolfram had run after (“Oh, so ya think ya got us, ya bastard spawn of the whore-Queen! Making up for your uselessness as a full-fledged demon commander, are ye? You’ll never make us believe yer one of us, half-blood traitor! Just how many good men have ye killed?”) and he winced as he ran, and unhappily remembered a few of the more telling taunts.
“Half-breed! Sodding loser - ya can’t even take care of the poor fucking soldiers under yer orders! Ya think you’re so fucking noble - yer useless, that’s what - not even half the man yer father was!”
“Oh, but where’s that little puppet-king you all follow so blindly, Second Prince? What, did he leave you all by yer high-and-mighty selves to rule the kingdom? You’ve been abandoned, haven’t you? Just like us!”
“Nobody wants you, do they, Weller-san? - not even yer precious Maou! Yer a fuckin’ embarrassment, don’t ya know?”
He’d shut his ears when they castigated him for betraying his human ancestry; closed his eyes to the arrogant pity one of the older rebels offered up - not human, not demon, never fitting in like they did, united in their commonality against Mazoku over-rule. Abandoned? he questioned mentally, making sure the ropes were very tight. As if! Yuuri was still here, at least in spirit, and Conrad would give him all his loyalty every time, no matter who his parents were or weren’t.
“Gods. I wish we hadn’t come,” he mumbled and kept on jogging, regretting for once the onus Shibuya Yuuri left behind him: “That shalt not kill, I tell you - they are people, just like us!” It was infuriating, being forced to listen to that drivel, thrown at him like so much excrement by some band of stupid miscellaneous malcontents. They could’ve let Yosak and the others take care of this; oh, yes, they could’ve - but Wolfram had seemed actually interested for once, and Gwendal, too, had been nostalgic. It had been so very long since any of them had to raise arms in the name of the Maou. Even if the Maou wasn’t here.
The main entrance to the mine was abandoned when he arrived there, breathless, though he could hear faint echoes floating down the empty corridors that branched from it. Cocking his head, he chose the one he was sure his baby brother had taken, following the muted noises - screams? Shouts?
“Wolfram?”
“Whore-son! Ya couldn’t kill a fly, you little weakling! Baby brat!”
“Ohhh, take me on, blondie - I’d like to see you fighting beneath me, sweetums-just bare your purty little ass for me, why don’t you?“
“Nah, he’s too fucking ‘used’, Bezall. 'Soiled goods', right? I bet that wimpy human kid left him all stretched out and arrgh!”
Conrad caught the rising bustle of blades clashing, rapid-fire as machine-guns spurting, and sped up his pace, determined to give Wolfram a helping hand before they overpowered him. The larger part of the vicious, ill-bred group had fled down this winding narrow passage, heading for the abandoned mine-cars that sat gathering dust on the ancient tracks. If they could manage a head start on Wolfram, they’d be well-nigh uncatchable in the bowels of this torturous maze. In the meantime, Wolfram would be fighting desperately, six-to-one.
“How dare you?!” That was von Bielefeld’s voice, ragged now with effort as the rebel’s stolen clothes.
“You insolent fools! I am not the Maou’s plaything - I am his soldier! Turn and face me, miscreants!”
“Ooh, is baby angry?” wheedled a tenor voice, taunting between the sharp bursts of metal ringing against metal. “You must be soo lonely, poor boy. Come here and take that pesky uniform off, blondie - I’ll give you a good time, I promise.”
A baritone joined the tenor, laughing, and the clash of metal doubled in echo, amplified by the height and breadth of some unseen cavern, wending its way back to Conrad’s horrified ears. Poor Wolfram.
“What, your charms couldn’t keep him here in Shin Makoku, pretty Prince? Did you spread your legs and give him everything you had available and still he wouldn’t stay with you? What a loser!”
“You must not be very good, eh?” first voice chimed back in. “They were right, what they said about you, pretty boy? Can’t even keep a human brat satisfied and you want to be the Consort? I don’t think so, sweet cheeks. Yer far too decorative to be a soldier fer any Maou worth his crown!”
A crowd of voices joined the two of them, closing in.
“Pretty Prince, pretty Prince! Yah, yah, yah! Can’t catch me, can you?”
“Fucking waste of time!”
“Oh, look at him run - he looks like a girl!”
“Bastards!”
There was an abrupt rumble and the sound of falling rock as Conrad ran closer to the opening he could only barely make out dead-ahead. Just a little farther and he'd be there, and save poor Wofram from his abusers. But a brilliant flash of light bloomed eerily n the hallway, momentarily blinding him, and the swordsman was suddenly sweating copiously as the residual heat rushed to meet him head-on.
“Shit!” exclaimed another deep voice, harsh from exhaustion. “You little slut of a motherfucker! When I get a hold of you, I’m going to make you pay dearly for that! I’ll sell you to some brothel, godsdamned bitch, and-“
The baritone roar was cut off abruptly and all the hairs rose on the back of Conrad’s neck at the sudden, looming silence. Wolfram hadn’t been the same in the months since Yuuri departed - quiet and introspective, throwing himself into his duties with a dulled passion, his fire all but extinguished - still, he had to remember the Maou’s credo, didn’t he? Didn’t he?
The lack of enraged shouts echoing was ominous. Conrad stopped in his tracks, staring down the now darkening dust-filled passage, and strained to hear the rebel’s insults resuming, but there was no telltale trade of angry voices, only a quiet gurgle and the snick of a blade cutting through ‘something’ - ‘something’ squishy by the sound of it, like a chunk of meat being skewered. He knew that sound very well, Conrad did.
“Wolfram?” he ventured to call out when the quiet continued another unbearable moment. Hands trembling, Conrad felt for flint and match, wanting some light as quickly as possible so he could continue his journey down this endless obsidian corridor and discover what his baby brother had done in Yuuri’s name.
Footsteps rose up to meet Conrad, as stacked leather heels met pavers, hesitantly picking their way through the rubble. The glow advanced slowly and a hovering fireball eventually revealed Wolfram, but not as Conrad had last seen him. Vaguely, he heard Gwendal’s voice behind him, assured and somewhat self-satisfied.
“-Like they could teach me anything with a sword! Oi, Conrad, Wolfram - are you down this way?”
Blood was smeared on the blade, congealing rivulets still trickling down the hilt where one manicured hand kept it tucked behind his uniformed back. The other hand trailed slowly across a granite-flecked supporting wall and it - it was bloody, too.
Conrad caught his breath, in time with his older brother's gasp, and felt a deep sadness well up within the confines of his chest.
Gods, but he wished they hadn’t come.
“Wolfram? What’s that?” came Gwendal’s curious question, though he knew very well what that scarlet substance was.
Gwendal was more hard-ass when it came to Yuuri’s unusual requests: if you were a soldier in the service of the Maou, you were expected to kill for that privilege and that was that. But, still, he understood Yuuri’s reasoning, though reluctantly. One mustn’t take lives unnecessarily; an impassioned enemy could be persuaded to be the most loyal of allies. He had no doubt that, if the young Maou were here, he’d have been making friends now instead of counting bodies. But the Maou wasn’t…here, that is.
“What have you done?”
A delicate pink tongue peeped out, kitten-like, and the blonde licked his red-spattered lips. His green eyes were oddly off-center - now flickering wildly ‘round the stone walls, then finally managing to focus, deep and steady on Gwendal’s startled face.
“That felt good.”
It was a purr of a sound, satisfaction permeating every syllable. The fireball flared up and Wolfram juggled it superbly, smiling now in a way that made Gwendal clamp his mouth shut abruptly and Conrad throw a hand out in involuntary anguish. The thin shoulders beneath the blue coat were remarkably straight; every line of Wolfram’s body portrayed the arrogance he was known for - but this time it was not loveable in any way. Conrad shuddered when the dark-flecked emerald turned his way.
“Wolf-!”
“Wolfram.”
“Let’s…let’s do it again.”
This time there was no disguising the flash of madness in those lovely green eyes. Conrad had witnessed something like it once, back when Wolfram was possessed by Shinou all those months ago, but this new air of his was different. It was if all the darkness flowing under that golden exterior had risen to the surface, staining Conrad's naïve baby brother with the taint of dirtied adulthood.
If only Yuuri hadn’t chosen Earth. Maybe this scene of leftover carnage would be different; maybe his darling little brother would still be pure. Oh, how he wished they had not come!
Wolfram had murdered now, in cold blood, deliberately, tasting the acrid fear of the dying, the beguiling odor of the damned. All in the name of Shibuya Yuuri, ex-27th Maou of Shin Makoku, peace-lover, oddball, amicable and empathetic even to sworn enemies. His discarded fiancé would never again be the same passionately earnest young demon he’d been when Conrad’s godson still ruled - not now that he’d sipped from the cup sweet Death offered…. and thirsted for more.
“No,” Gwendal said, firmly. “There are no more, Wolfram. None you have to kill, anyway. It’s all under control.”
The implication hung there - and you, too, brother! Control yourself! - vivid in a stone corridor filled with the scent of dust, blood and fire, and Wolfram blinked after a few long, tense seconds of suffering through Gwendal’s glare and seemed to fold back into himself. He gazed wearily at his hand, finally seeing it; his sword, desperately in need of a wipe.
--How he wished he had not come! Another thing to fail at, to stain his honor as Yuuri’s ex-fiancé. Yuuri didn’t want him killing people, he knew that, so why-?
It was the wrong way; he’d chosen the wrong path, lured by petty epithets and stupid teasing, all of which he should’ve blocked out automatically, because Yuuri wasn’t like that and neither was he. But there was no way out now; he’d gone and done it, and it had been remarkably easy and he’d do it again if one more bastard claimed he wasn’t enough, or that he was slutty and sold himself cheap-
“Wolfram,” Conrad’s familiar voice arrowed through the growing cloud of angry confusion filling Wolf's red-stained chest. “Let’s turn back now. Let’s go home.”
“Ye-yes,” Wolfram’s fervent agreement managed to escape his tight throat as he stumbled eagerly forward, his glowing fireball flickering out suddenly as he slumped, leaving the three brothers stranded in a night-filled mine.
If I can.
.
END
.