(for tianmi_) The Wizard's Familiar

[tinyterrorsmod]

For: tianmi_

Title: The Wizard’s Familiar
Rating: PG13
Word count: ~4600
Summary: Jongdae is a commoner without a familiar, and Kyungsoo is a wizard looking for a cure.
A/N: Thank you for the wonderful prompts! I hope you like this!


Every year, when autumn rolls around, Jongdae and the other children of the village walk together to the forest. They split up at the edge of the trees, each going to the place where something inside them tugs at them.

They go to meet their familiars. Jongdae remembers how Chanyeol had emerged from the woods carrying a large tabby cat, who only swatted at his face when Chanyeol cooed at it. He can’t forget the way Baekhyun’s eyes lit up when he showed Jongdae a small rabbit tucked inside his coat, sleeping peacefully.

His parents have always told him to be patient. One day he’ll sense the connection, they say, and he won’t be alone anymore.

As it has been, Jongdae usually just wanders off to the beaver pond and chucks rocks at lily pads until everyone else has left the forest, before he can go home, alone again.

It wouldn’t be so bad, he thinks, if he didn’t always miss his favorite TV shows.

The messenger comes in the middle of the night, a heavy knocking at the door. Kyungsoo gets up and scrubs at his bleary eyes. “Who is it?” he tries to say, in a menacing way.

The messenger looks thoroughly unimpressed. “Is this the wizard Kyungsoo’s house?” he asks. Kyungsoo catches him peeking around the door, looking for someone behind Kyungsoo, someone more magnificient-

Someone taller. Kyungsoo sighs. “This is he,” he says. “Did the king forget how to use the cellphone I bought for him? Again?”

The messenger is dumbfounded for a moment, before snapping to. “No, it’s just that this is a matter of national security, and he can’t risk any of this information leaking.”

Kyungsoo looks around. His apartment building has thin walls and a collection of papery old women who live behind them. They would gladly sell his secrets just to set him up on a blind date.

(“I know just the boy, he actually works as the consul to the king, if you should know. And he’s quite the wizard, to boot.”)

He knows they mean well, but it’s a little wearying. So he grabs the messenger’s hand and twists in a circle. The jerk is uncomfortable as always, but Kyungsoo manages as he finds himself in front of the royal dais.

The messenger, on the other hand, looks a little green.

The throne room is bustling, even though the palace is closed to the public on Tuesdays, as expected. Maids are cleaning the hundred mirrors that line the walls as manservants dust the chandeliers. They are all preparing for the upcoming celebration.

“Oh, good, Kyungsoo, you’re here,” the king says, standing. “We have quite the problem on our hands.”

“Have the moats overflowed again?” Kyungsoo asks. He hopes the king hasn’t summoned him for some small housekeeping problem. Just because he can polish all of the silver magically doesn’t mean he wants to; it gives him a terrible headache.

“No, no,” the frazzled man says. He runs a hand through his hair, nearly knocking off his crown. “It’s Prince Yixing. He’s - ill.”

Kyungsoo knows that his definition of ill is great deal different than the king’s, but this time the king looks serious.

Without a familiar, Jongdae can’t go to school with Chanyeol and Baekhyun. Higher education in their town requires dual participation, even though Tao is perpetually lazy and Jongin equally sleepy. It’s a strain on their relationship, because he doesn’t understand what they’re talking about anymore, sometimes. And he feels like a fifth wheel now, without someone by his side.

His parents feel it as well. They keep him at home nowadays, only letting him go out to hunt or hang out by himself in the forest. They don’t like him going into town, where someone is sure to say something and Jongdae’s temper snaps too easily as it is.

He’s definitely too old now, but Jongdae knows that he can’t bear the way he’ll certainly wonder if he doesn’t go. “Well, today’s the day,” he announces at the breakfast table, over his bowl of oatmeal.

His father barely looks at him over the newspaper. His lynx familiar is lazy at his feet. “You know, to look for my familiar in the forest,” Jongdae says staunchly.

His mother exchanges a glance with his father. Her monkey familiar chitters nervously over by the toaster, where Jongdae’s father’s breakfast is browning. “Maybe, dear, you shouldn’t go this year,” she suggests hesitantly.

Jongdae can only stare back at them. “What?”

His father puts down the newspaper, and that’s when Jongdae knows that they’re serious. “We should tell him,” his father says. “That he is--”

“A late bloomer,” his mother says loudly. The monkey puts its hands over its ears.

But it can’t drown out his father. “-adopted.”

The king leads Kyungsoo to Yixing’s room, where Yixing sleeps. He looks quite peaceful, in his pale nightshirt. His hair fans out on the pillow. His breathing is not unnatural, although maybe slightly fast. Otherwise, nothing is wrong.

“But that’s the problem,” the queen says when Kyungsoo states the obvious. “He hasn’t woken up in days.” She sits at Yixing’s bedside, holding Yixing’s hand carefully.

A servant lingers by the door. Kyungsoo had inquired, but the king had waved any suspicions away. “That is Sehun. He has served Yixing since he was young.”

The king looks at him anxiously. “Yixing’s coronation is only days away!”

“Alright, alright,” Kyungsoo sighs. His favorite anime will have to wait for his umpteenth re-watch. He casts a few preliminary spells, but nothing sticks.

He wasn’t expecting them too, but as he progresses to more potent incantations, he grows puzzled. Yixing isn’t responding at all.

Jongdae is never going to have a familiar. It feels strange, knowing that he’ll never have something he was always conditioned to want. He wonders why his parents didn’t say anything before.

All the people of his village have familiars. Jongdae has heard of towns and cities beyond the forest, where demons walk like people, fairies and pixies hold court, and humans don’t have familiars. He’s seen the movies, too, but everyone knows what the movies aren’t real.

It’s hard to imagine what’s out there, when he’s never left home.

Baekhyun and Chanyeol have told him of such places they had seen on school field trips and summer vacations, but he never really believed them.

“We don’t know where you came from,” his father said. Even though his voice was dry as always, he looked at Jongdae with a steady gaze. The lynx wrapped her tail comfortingly around Jongdae’s ankle. “But we have always loved you.”

“You’re not incomplete if you don’t have a familiar, dear,” his mother adds. “You’re just different, and that’s okay.”

Jongdae’s old enough to call bullshit when he sees it. Even if he knows he’s never going to be like everyone else in his village, that doesn’t make his problems just suddenly go away. Explaining himself is just going to confirm to everyone else that he is an outsider.

He knows that everyone will think he’s just being dramatic, but he suddenly wants to be far, far away from here. And with nothing keeping him here, what’s holding him back?

The king eventually leaves to meet with chancellors and ministers, but Kyungsoo grows more and more bewildered. No spell he tries works, and none of the potions he keeps in stock has any effect.

The queen watches him from the worn rocking chair in the corner of the room. She doesn’t say a word as he vanishes and reappears with several old dusty texts from his shop, and his laptop.

He’s sitting with his head in his hands, on the floor before the prince’s bed, when he hears a rustling of skirts. The queen sits down by him gracefully. “I do not think that you will find the cure for my son’s illness in one of your books,” she says.

Her gaze is steady. Kyungsoo was never good at telling white lies anyway. “I don’t think so either,” he says. “But I think it must be out there, somewhere.”

The queen smiles, even though it hurts because of her sad eyes. “You already know that my husband will send you forth on this quest,” she says. “So what are you waiting for?”

It really is Jongdae’s luck that as soon as he walks into the woods, he runs into a witch.

She whips around as soon as she hears the crunch of his footsteps on the path, pointing her wand at him as she binds him in the air. His iPod falls to the ground, and he moans the abrupt ending to his favorite song. “What are you doing here?” she demands.

“It’s none of your business,” he bites out, writhing underneath the chafing ropes. His skin is delicate, for goodness’ sake.

Her eyes narrow and she stares at him coldly. “Have you come to spy on me?”

“I didn’t even know anyone were here,” Jongdae exclaims. “Don’t flatter yourself!”

There’s an ominously bubbling cauldron behind her, black and dark with grime. Jongdae stares curiously; she notices and flicks her wand so that it disappears. Lame.

“Who sent you?” The witch says, clearly not listening to Jongdae at all.

“Why, the king, of course,” Jongdae replies, rolling his eyes. A little paranoid, isn’t she?

The witch gasps. Jongdae has a feeling that was a mistake. But as soon as he opens his mouth to take the words back, she shouts an incantation at him.

He feels so very strange. The ropes disappear and he slumps to the ground. “Good,” the witch says, looking over him. “I don’t think you’ll be bothering me now.”

Kyungsoo posts on wizarding message boards and looks up the prince’s condition in all the best databases. He doesn’t find a clear solution, but his own kind are helpful in suggesting a list of possibilities.

So he packs his backpack and vanishes away, finding himself in a small forest where supposedly a “universal panacea” can be found in the lowland sulfur springs.

He hikes across what feels like ten miles of forest before his phone rings with another notification. False alarm.

Kyungsoo groans. He’s in the middle of a dense thicket, trees all around him so that he can’t make out the sun. He’s going to have to find another spot to vanish out of this place.

But the closest clearing is already occupied, by a hulking mass. It’s covered in scales and for a moment, Kyungsoo forgets himself, creeping forward curiously.

The beast snuffles and then turns its neck to look at him. Kyungsoo jumps. “A dragon!”

Kyungsoo has read about them only in books. Large and graceful, dragons are valued not for their physical properties. Instead, they are supposedly wise creatures, receptacles of immense knowledge and understanding.

At Kyungsoo’s voice, the dragon jumps and looks around wildly. Its eyes are red and watery, and it doesn’t seem to be able to focus on Kyungsoo at all. It stumbles to the right and smashes into a tree, startling when a cascade of leaves fall down on its head.

Graceful. Wise. Yeah, right.

Jongdae doesn’t know what he’s looking at when he sees a boy his own age, wearing a snapback and a backpack, peering down at him. His eyes hurt and everything is blurry.

He doesn’t know what that witch did to him, but he’s afraid that it isn’t anything good. He tries to get to his feet, because he can’t see the boy’s familiar, which means it could be anyway, leaving him vulnerable to attack.

Instead, he realizes that his body has become quite large and unwieldly. He falls into a tree and is buried in a bunch of dead leaves. The boy laughs, pulling his headphones off.

Jongdae snorts, but then rears back when he sees fire. “What kind of dragon are you?” the boy asks. His face scrunches up, but Jongdae doesn’t know if he can trust him.

A dragon? Jongdae immediately turns around and rushes through the brush to the nearby stream. He can’t help but notice that he runs on paws with thick claws, and that he seems to have a tail, which throws him off balance.

He stops at the water’s edge and looks down at his reflection. Yup, he’s a dragon. Black scales and beady eyes and a mouth full of sharp teeth. He looks quite nice, for a dragon. But then again, Jongdae’s never seen one.

The boy appears at his side again, without a familiar. Jongdae bristles.

“I am friend, dragon,” the boy said. “I am Kyungsoo.” He sits down next to Jongdae and sighs. “I came here to find a cure, but you’re not even going to be much help.” He casts a disparaging look at Jongdae.

Jongdae is still stuck on the fact that the witch has made him a dragon, out of all things. Though maybe this won’t be so bad.

The boy continues. “The prince is ill, and I have no idea how to fix it. I’m supposed to be the royal wizard. The king is going to kill me.”

No one ever said dragons listened to other people’s troubles like a psychotherapist. Jongdae snorts at the boy again. “What do you want?”

Fix me, Jongdae tries to say, but it just comes out in snuffling. It doesn’t matter. The boy reaches out to calm Jongdae down, and snatches his hand back in surprise. “You’re human!”

He touches Jongdae again, but frowns. “Whoever did this to you is equal to me in caliber. I can’t even read your mind - all I know is that your shape is unnatural for the signature of your soul.” His hand drops. “Great. Another thing I can’t fix.”

Jongdae snaps his teeth. He doesn’t understand what the boy is saying, he is not a thing, and he still doesn’t know where the boy’s familiar is.

But Kyungsoo said - something about a prince? Jongdae has heard of a faraway land, with kings and queens and princees, where people do not have familiars. Maybe this is where he is from, where he belongs. He pulls at Kyungsoo, tips him onto his back.

Kyungsoo hangs over and looks at him, surprised. “You want to come with me?” he says. Jongdae nods vigorously. Kyungsoo softens at the obviously human reaction. “If you search for a cure with me, I will bring you to my land and do my best to help you.”

Jongdae would shake on it, but he doesn’t have hands. He offers his paw instead.

Kyungsoo doesn’t know what he’s doing with a dragon who’s actually a human. He doesn’t know if he can fix him. He doesn’t even know if he’s going to find the cure for the prince.

He has exhausted every suggestion. The dragon flies to wherever Kyungsoo asks, and they have gone everywhere, it seems, that Kyungsoo can get wifi. They have searched for a particular rare bitter herb, in the desert. They have looked for a particular algae, that only grows in the deepest lakes of the coldest tundra (the dragon didn’t like that particular territory). They have even looked for a miracle drug in the most secret files of each government, but to no avail.

Kyungsoo is beginning to think that there’s nothing that he can do. And if he can’t help the prince, how’s he even going to help this dragon?

It’s a rather nice dragon, even though it tosses him around when he’s not moving fast enough (he can’t help it, he doesn’t have wings, Kyungsoo likes to remind it). It seems to have a sense of humor, laughing at him when he fell into the lake, which was really more of a pond, and crisping his clothes a bit with its flame, when he wouldn’t stop complaining with chattering teeth.

Kyungsoo doesn’t know what kind of human could have gotten themselves turned into a dragon, or how. But he doesn’t think that this is a terrible person.

So that’s why he breaks down when they only have a day’s distance from the castle left. “I’m going to the king empty-handed,” Kyungsoo says. His face glows by the string of blue lights that he created with a few words.

The dragon looks at him, as if Kyungsoo is confused. Well, yeah, I know, its expression seems to say.

“If it’s like this,” Kyungsoo begins, struggling for words.

The dragon tilts its head. Even though it mocks him sometimes, it has always been patient with him.

“I don’t think I can help you!” he blurts out, then slumps down.

The eyes are unreadable, but Kyungsoo knows that the dragon understands what he is saying. He can sense the crack inside the beast, the disappointment that suddenly springs up within it.

It looks down, then stumbles away from the clearing. Kyungsoo watches the dragon go, then curls up in his sleeping bag. Maybe he should run away, too.

Jongdae crashes through. He’s upset, angry. He’s been helping that pesky little wizard all this time, just to find that the impostor can do nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Jongdae doesn’t want to stay a dragon forever. He’s seen the world, so many places and people. But he wants - to go home, and see his parents again. To say sorry, for rejecting them when they told him he was adopted.

And there’s no way he can do that as a dragon. He doesn’t know what his father would do if a dragon just touched down in the azalea bed.

Probably get the garden hose in self defense, Jongdae thinks.

He finds a quiet place to himself and lies down. Kyungsoo isn’t really an impostor, he concedes to himself. Jongdae has witnessed Kyungsoo do magic, all sorts, from creating light to cooking their food, to protecting them from that flock of angry swans that one time in the forest. He doesn’t have a familiar, and Jongdae still doesn’t know what’s up with that.

But Kyungsoo isn’t a terrible person. Sometimes he’s even nice, when he catches fish for Jongdae and picks out the little bones that would get stuck in his teeth. In return, Jongdae takes him flying and laughs at the way Kyungsoo clutches at Jongdae’s scales and turns green. If Jongdae were human, he would want Kyungsoo to be his friend.

Kyungsoo is kind, but he just can’t help Jongdae. Jongdae sighs, tucking his snout behind his paws. He doesn’t quite know when he dozes off, only when he wakes again.

A flash of light comes out of nowhere. Jongdae will never admit to bleating like a sheep, of all things, when he finds himself suddenly blinded. But he is surprised.

“Well, look at this,” he hears, and it’s the witch again. She smiles, tapping her wand in her hand. “The little dragon that I made, just a few days ago.”

Jongdae snorts, crouching to rush at her in anger. But she tsks, flicking her wand. Suddenly, he is immobilized. “This is excellent,” she says. “With you like this, there’s no reason why it wouldn’t work on the prince. Permanently.”

She slides a finger down his cheek. “Thank you for being my little guinea pig,” she whispers, and then she’s gone.

Jongdae is disoriented, but he knows what he heard. Kyungsoo’s prince is in danger.

Kyungsoo awakes to the dragon nuzzling at his neck. “What is it? I thought you left,” he says, sourly.

The dragon shakes its head and pushes at him, forcing him to get up. “What?” he asks again, louder even though it’s unfair. It’s not like the creature can answer.

It pushes him toward his backpack. “I’m not going back,” he says. “There’s nothing I can do to help.”

The dragon is quite agitated, Kyungsoo realizes. It breathes in roughly, then pushes him again. Kyungsoo doesn’t care though, rolling out of the way.

The dragon sits back, at that. He waits until he gets Kyungsoo’s attention, and points with his paw at his backpack. Then at himself, then at the backpack again. “I’m not going to the castle,” Kyungsoo says, but that’s when the dragon points at himself. Or rather, Kyungsoo notices, not at himself, but at his body.

“Are you saying that something like what is going to happen to you, is going to happen to the prince?” Kyungsoo asks slowly. The dragon nods eagerly. “How do you know what?”

The dragon gives him a look, like Are we going to waste time playing charades or what?

Kyungsoo decides. It’s bad enough to have a comatose prince; the kingdom doesn’t need a dragon one.

They fly quickly, the dragon not bothering to conceal itself. Kyungsoo can see people pointing at him from the town below. The castle bustles with preparations, as if the prince is still not asleep in his tower.

Kyungsoo worries about the landing, but the dragon clearly doesn’t.

It goes belly down in the prince’s courtyard, which Kyungsoo points out to it. Kyungsoo quickly jumps off and breaks through the doors into the prince’s room.

Only to find the prince Yixing and the servant Sehun in what can only be construed as a romantic embrace. “What the-”

The king bursts in, at the sound of Kyungsoo’s voice. “Wizard, we have waited a long time for you and Yixing has not gotten better!” he cries. Then he catches a glimpse of his son behind Kyungsoo, clearly upright and conscious. “Yixing?”

Kyungsoo notices the queen following the king into the room, her face as serene as ever. “You knew that he was alright, all along,” he says in a daze.

There’s a flash of light before she can reply, though. Kyungsoo throws his arm up, but he still sees a woman materialize. She holds a wand in her hand.

“Do you remember me?” she shouts. The king pales. “You spurned my gift at your son’s baptism, so I have come to set things straight.”

“You wanted to give him blue hair,” the queen says, placidly. “Of course we couldn’t have that, dear.”

The witch shrieks in impatience. “It would have worn off in days. But no, everything had to be perfect.” She raises her wand. “But now, I have created the perfect revenge,” she says, with a smile.

Kyungsoo is lost for what to do when the light blasts from her wand. He has a feeling that this kind of magic is much different than the kind he is used to. The only thing he can do, is shield the prince.

But instead, the dragon sticks its head into the room, shielding him. “No!” the witch shouts.

When the light disappears, the dragon is no longer there. The witch has been thrown against the wall, and is hunched over, panting in exhaustion. Kyungsoo is immediately filled with remorse, until he looks down and sees the boy at his feet.

Dare Kyungsoo say it, the boy seems to bear a striking resemblance to the dragon he has been traveling with.

Jongdae is disoriented, naked and cold. “I think you need some clothes,” a strange voice tells him. He looks up to see what could only be the prince, smiling down at him.

Kyungsoo looks lost for words. “I’m Jongdae,” he provides helpfully. “And I’m not a dragon anymore, no thanks to you.”

He looks blank, but then his jaw tightens. “What did you think you were doing?” Kyungsoo says fiercely. “You could have been hurt!”

“Well, he’s not,” a boy in servant’s clothing says, expressionlessly.

“Yixing?” the king says. “Explain this.” He waves helplessly at the room, falling speechless.

The prince turns to Kyungsoo. “I pretended to be asleep. Mother and Sehun” - the boy in servant’s clothing - “helped me keep up the ruse, to put off the coronation. I’m sorry you had to go on your quest, but Mother and I thought it would buy me some time for her to convince Father.” He turns to his father. “I don’t mind being prince,” he says. “But I want to marry Sehun. I don’t want anyone else.”

The king blinks, looks at his wife. “It that was it,” he says, “all you had to do was ask.” Yixing and Sehun look sheepish, at that.

Kyungsoo is staring at Jongdae. “You’re quite handsome, you know,” he says.

“What, I was ugly before?” Jongdae asks, insulted.

“Dragon features don’t quite translate your true beauty,” Kyungsoo consoles him, drawing closer. Jongdae preens.

“All of you!” The witch shouts. They turn to look at her. “How dare you ignore me!” She draws her wand again, but an unknown force seizes it from her hand.

They all expect the wand to fly into Kyungsoo’s grasp, but instead it pokes Jongdae in the eye. He immediately bows over. “Arrrrgh,” Kyungsoo hears.

“Please be quiet,” Sehun says, with a blank face. He picks up the basin of water on the washstand and throws it at the witch.

None of them expect what they see: the witch evaporates into steam, the remnants of her drifting out the open doors into the courtyard. Sehun stands frozen, the basin still outstretched before him.

“Yixing, may I have your sword?” the king says. Kyungsoo rolls his eyes. There are much more effective modern weapons, but the king seems to scorn any invention of the twenty-first century that Kyungsoo or Yixing try to show him.

He has Sehun kneel before him, and proceeds to knight him “Lord of the Kitchens and the Chambers.” The queen gives him a look, but Yixing looks positively ecstatic.

“What?” the king says. “Now the boy has a title. No one can challenge their marriage.”

Kyungsoo wraps his jacket around Jongdae. “Well, that settles that.”

The queen insists that Kyungsoo and Jongdae stay for the coronation/engagement and the reception afterwards. Jongdae borrows one of Yixing’s old suits; Kyungsoo loses his breath, for a moment.

Kyungsoo can tell that Jongdae is upset that he doesn’t get a title too, but he plies him with enough chocolate cake that the frown disappears in no time.

Kyungsoo can’t stop looking at this boy. He has dark eyes and a pretty smile, and apparently Kyungsoo has been traveling with this, this whole time?

Suddenly he feels quite bereft. He doesn’t know how to convince this stranger not to leave, and even if he did stay, what could Kyungsoo give him? His house is lonely, even though he probably has the world’s largest collection of Prince of Tennis memorabilia.

“You don’t have a familiar,” the boy says at last. Jongdae, Kyungsoo reminds himself. “Where is it?”

Kyungsoo looks up from his phone, at Jongdae carefully. “Only people who live in the lands up north have one. Here, we do not, but we can do magic.”

“I was raised in the north, but I don’t have a familiar,” Jongdae says. “And I sure can’t do magic.”

Kyungsoo blinks. “How did you get the witch’s wand, then?”

“That was me?” Jongdae asks, voice rising in amusement. “I can do magic?” He stares hard at the tray of wine glasses that a nearby waiter is carrying.

They both have to duck when the wine glass crashes into the wall behind their heads. “You might need some training,” Kyungsoo cautions.

Jongdae flutters his eyelashes. “Are you busy now, Kyungsoo?”

Kyungsoo blushes and pretends not to notice Jongdae sidling up to him. “Well, I don’t think I’ll be traveling anytime soon.”

Jongdae grins, but he’ll have to change that. Once Kyungsoo teaches him all that he knows, he wants to bring Kyungsoo to meet his parents and Baekhyun and Chanyeol. He wants to get to know his native land, and maybe find his birth parents. He wants to travel the world, not as a dragon, but as a boy, with Kyungsoo at his side.

“Hey, Kyungsoo, don’t you think you’d be even stronger as a wizard, if you had a familiar?” Jongdae asks breathily. Kyungsoo looks away, queasy. “I could be your familiar.”

His eyes change for a moment, and they look so much like the dragon’s that Kyungsoo wonders if Jongdae has been completely cured, or if the dragon will always be a part of him.

Then Jongdae leans in closer, laughing at the way Kyungsoo’s eyes close involuntarily and he squirms. No matter what happens to him, no matter what they do and who they become, Jongdae knows what he wants. He feels sure of it, pressing into Kyungsoo’s side.

First, he wants a kiss.