Holly Strange → Kate Bishop (takeeveryshot) wrote in thereincarnates, @ 2016-10-10 20:53:00 |
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Entry tags: | !au, !fairytale, erik von brandt, holly strange |
Who: Holly Strange & Erik von Brandt
What: She's a dancing princess under a spell that he has to break
Where: Central City, Amestris
When: Late at night
Warnings: Nothing major, probs
Being one of twelve daughters wasn't easy. Having eleven sisters wasn't any easier. Holly had grown up in a noisy castle with eleven noisy sisters and one very strict father, the king. See, they weren't just twelve daughters, they were also twelve princesses. Their mother had died when the youngest was born, leaving their father to look after all of them. With the help of the castle staff, naturally, but he was still the only parent of twelve children. Twelve girls, and all as much of a handful as the next. Holly was no exception, though as the youngest, there was a bit more of an allowance for her to be a handful. Being the youngest of twelve meant that you often got overlooked by any one of your other siblings, and then there was the small matter of your mother having died giving birth to you. As if the first eleven had all come out fine, but you were the one who broke the proverbial camel's back. Holly had never quite gotten over it, and neither had their father.
Amestris was the most technologically advanced kingdom in the entire country, with Central City at the heart of its progress. The kingdom that Holly's father ruled had left what was now referred to as the 'dark ages' many years ago, like other neighboring kingdoms favoring science over magic in practice enough that laws were passed and as a consequence dangerous enemies were made. There were perhaps now other kingdoms with even stricter laws than them, but Amestris was still considered to be the first, the ones responsible for the mass hysteria in the first place. That meant they, and more specifically her father, had a lot of enemies. And it was only a matter of time before those enemies came knocking on their front door. Just because you lived in a certified fortress didn't mean you were invulnerable, or so their father learned when his enemies finally found their way in, through his family.
A spell was put on Holly and her sisters, something most unusual. Every night, once the rest of the castle was asleep, the princesses became slaves to the slippers on their feet, unable to stop from moving in them. Their overbearing father tried to keep them locked up in their rooms, because how would it look if his twelve daughters were seen doing god knows what at all hours of the night? But Holly and her sisters were unwilling to be prisoners in their own home for a condition that wasn't under their control, so every night, they found a way to leave the castle unseen, much to their father's growing frustration. He hadn't yet discovered the secret passageways in their bedroom that led them underground, and that was how they preferred to keep it, while they still had to suffer under this spell. You had to take all the enjoyment in life that was offered to you, after all.
Unlike some of her other sisters, Holly had always loved to dance. At first, that hadn't even changed, but after a time, there was something to be said about free will. She loved to dance, but she wished she had a choice in the matter. Like the rest of her sisters, she was under a spell that kept her feet moving all night long, so why not make the most of it by sneaking off to dance the night away with a bunch of underground boat princes that they met after the spell was cast on them? Holly was always miserable by the end of the night when they found their own beds again at 3AM, her feet were sore and she usually ended up sleeping through most of the morning, but at least she didn't spend every night locked up in her room? Sometimes Holly thought that actually wouldn't be so bad, but she would rather have more than those two options. She just wished there was a way to break the spell, and set her and her sisters free, once and for all.
Some of her older sisters were paranoid that father had spies trying to discover their secret. All those men the king kept inviting into the castle weren't exactly inconspicuous, and her sisters were overcautious. The eldest always visited their father's male visitors with a cup of wine in the evening, on the off chance that he might try to follow them when they left the castle that night, and this one had been no different. Holly felt bad, privately. He'd seemed like a perfectly nice man, and he'd certainly been handsome. As the youngest, she could do nothing, her older sisters would do what they wanted, and like clockwork, later that night they snuck underneath the castle and met the princes, one boat for each of them to take them all across the water to the prince's castle where the princesses always danced the night away with them. For princes, they were all fairly tolerable, though Holly wasn't actually interested in any one of them. She still always started the night off dancing gleefully around the big ballroom and laughing in delight, as she was doing now surrounded by her sisters and their own dance partners, because no matter how much her feet hurt later at the end of the night, Holly did love to dance.