musefic | Kingdom Hearts fic: The Silver Deer

Well, clearly I did not get all the AUgust fics written during August. Alas! I'm going to do my best to finish the prompt list in September, though we'll see if I succeed.

This is the fill for Prompt 19: Shapeshifter AU

This is based off an idea from a couple years ago, when I was writing a fairy tale-inspired story for the SoRiKai discord. At the time I went with the Gold Tree and Silver Tree retelling, and this was a discarded idea. I was glad to have a chance to actually write it!
It was also pretty clearly inspired by The Decembrists Hazards of Love album, about a woman who rescues an injured white fawn that turns out to be a man adopted and enchanted by the queen of the forest. Though this story ends more happily than it turns out for them, ha.

Sora and Kairi are content to avoid the fae that live in the woods near their cottage, and the fae are content to ignore them. Until the silver deer comes to them for help. Then again. And again.

Sora and Kairi never received visitors out where they were. They lived in a small cottage, just at the edge of the woods, and they had everything they needed there. They had the meadows, and their gardens, and the shadow of the trees. Had they not had each other it would have been a lonely life, but they loved each other dearly, and needed nothing more.

The woods beyond the meadows belonged to the fae, or so they’d always been told, but the fae never bothered them. They left the woods and their fae inhabitants alone, and they were left alone in turn.

Until they weren’t.

The deer was certainly not a normal deer, it was obvious.

Kairi was lying in the meadow, idly braiding a strand of long-stemmed flowers, when the deer stepped out of the shadows of the trees. Its fur was a pale grey, its cloven hooves and small antlers a gleaming silver.

One of the fae that lived in the woods, then. They didn’t ordinarily come out from the trees, and Kairi did not know why this one was an exception. The deer froze, almost as if it was as shocked to see her as she was to see it, but then it stepped forward. Except it wasn’t walking so much as it was limping.

Fae or not, it clearly needed help.

Kairi rolled to her knees, carefully getting to her feet. She held her rope of flowers out in front of her like some sort of… protection? Peace offering? She wasn’t sure.

The deer watched her as she got up, then it limped closer to her, until they met in the middle of the meadow.

“Hi there,” she said, voice soft. If it was one of the fae, and she couldn’t believe it was anything else, then it was as intelligent as any person. It was still hard not to want to soothe it, like any injured creature.

It—he, considering the silver antlers—looked at her, bright blue-green eyes marking him as unnatural as much as the silver did. This close she could see the fur she’d taken for grey was actually a glinting silver as well.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” Maybe a foolish thing to bother saying. It wasn’t often that humans were even capable of hurting the fae, unless perhaps they attacked them with iron. Still, if he was already hurt, then he deserved to know she didn’t intend to make it worse. “Do you want me to look at your leg?”

The deer shifted, turning so his injured leg was closer to her. It was his left rear leg, and she could see now that there was a large cut along the side of his thigh above the knee. It was a clean-looking cut, but clearly a painful one. She winced in sympathy.

She reached forward, looping the chain of flowers she’d made loosely around his neck. A gift, maybe. She needed her hands free, at the very least. She had a scrap of cloth with her, brought along in case she found something she wanted to carry home with her, and she didn’t hesitate to tear a strip a few inches wide from the edge. It would be a makeshift bandage, but better than anything else she could offer.

The deer stared back at her with an expression she hoped was trust.

“I’m going to wrap your leg up,” she said. “Please don’t kick at me?”

Kairi placed one steadying hand against the deer’s side. He was very warm, and his fur was softer than she’d imagined. She stroked down his soft ribs and hip, then carefully started to wrap the fabric around the wounded part of his leg. Not too tightly, and not in a way that would immobilize the joint, but enough to keep the sides of the wound together and covered. She tied the fabric off in a knot that would be easy to untie when he was ready for it to come off.

She risked one extra touch to his side, wanting so badly to pet him.

“Okay,” she said. “I hope that helps.” She tried to ready herself to let the deer go, reluctant to pull her hand back.

The silver color of the deer’s fur seemed to glint even more brightly then, until it was so bright she could barely look at him. She shut her eyes, but where her hand was still resting on his ribcage, she could feel the fur changing beneath her fingers.

When she looked back, it was no longer a deer in front of her. It was a young man. His hair was the same silver as the deer’s fur had been, and he was wearing a loose robe that nearly matched his hair. He was also wearing the flower chain she’d looped around his neck.

Embarrassingly, her hand was still cupping his ribcage. She felt her face flush, but before she could pull her hand away, he placed his own hand on top of hers, then fell backwards into the soft meadow grass. He pulled her along with him, and she barely managed to avoid landing on his leg, which she assumed was still hurt.

A quick glance downward revealed his robe pulled up toward his hip on that side. His thigh was still bandaged, the fabric somehow adjusting so it still tightly dressed the wound, despite the change in shape.

The fae man tugged her closer, face to face, and gently kissed her.

She pulled back after only a second, even though the kiss had been warm and pleasant. She remembered stories of the fae tricking people into bargains, or trying to kidnap them back to their kingdoms. She didn’t think he was trying to do harm to her, but…

He let go of her when she pulled back, instead reaching for the flower chain.

“If you catch a fae thrice, it’s bound to stay with you,” he said. His voice was lovely.

She was sure she blushed again. “I wasn’t meaning to catch you.”

“I know.”

He watched her for a few more moments, as if he was trying to determine something. She had no idea if he succeeded or not; again he started to glow, too brightly to look at. When she was able to look at him again, he was back in his deer form, and he bounded back toward the trees. She could still see him limping, but it seemed less pronounced.

Sora knelt in the garden, carefully pulling weeds up from around the deliberate plantings. It felt like a constant chore, but it wasn’t an unenjoyable one as far as things went.

When he heard a cautious footfall behind him, he assumed it had to be Kairi, though she wasn’t generally cautious in the gardens. Careful, certainly, but not hesitant.

He turned around, already brushing soil from his hands, ready to ask her if something was wrong. The words never came, as he realized it was not Kairi behind him.

A few paces away was a silver deer.

Kairi had told Sora about the fae deer that came to her injured and turned into a fae man. That had been months ago, but Sora couldn’t imagine this was a different silver fae deer. How many could there be?

He looked to the deer’s rear leg. Kairi’s bandage had obviously done as hoped; there was only the very faintest line in the hair to indicate there’d ever been any damage. If Sora had doubted this was the same fae creature, that certainly was enough to confirm it.

“Hello,” he said. From Kairi’s report, the creature hadn’t been dangerous, but that didn’t mean it was a good idea to be anything other than polite.

“I think you met Kairi,” he continued. “She helped you, right?”

The deer lowered his head, in what Sora assumed was acknowledgement.

Then, still stepping hesitantly, the deer turned, so that Sora could see the other side of his neck.

Sora sucked in a sharp breath. The whole right side of the deer’s neck, leading into the top of his shoulder, was torn up. It looked like the sort of wound a predator left on its prey, though the prey didn’t usually survive it.

“Okay,” Sora said. “Let me get some water.”

Fortunately that was an easy task; the well was inside the garden, a bucket always left next to it.

“Let me rinse this off…”

Sora carefully poured the cool well water over the deer’s neck. The wounds were fairly fresh, considering the blood had only just started to dry, and it rinsed away easily enough. It was good to clean the wounds, but it didn’t really make them look much better.

“I think I’m going to have to do the same thing Kairi did,” Sora told the deer. “I’ll make a bandage for you.”

He’d been kneeling on a scrap of fabric while weeding, but that would be dirty and not a good choice for wound dressing.

“I’ll be right back, please just wait here…”

Sora fetched a clean towel from inside his and Kairi’s cottage. It was old, but clean, and easy enough to tear into a longer strip.

The deer was a cooperative patient. He waited calmly while Sora wrapped his neck, and down to his shoulder and chest. It had to be painful.

This close, Sora could see dried blood on the deer’s antlers. He wondered if it had given as good as it had gotten in whatever fight caused these wounds. At least it didn’t seem interested in doing the same to him.

Sora reached around the deer’s neck to tie the bandage off.

The deer’s fur glinted so brightly Sora was forced to close his eyes, and when he reopened them, he no longer had his arms around a deer, however strange. Instead he had his arms thrown around the neck of a human man, kneeling in the walkway between garden beds.

The man was as beautiful as Kairi had described. Long hair the same silver as the deer had been. Bright blue-green eyes. The bandage Sora had been tying off still fit perfectly well, now wrapped around the young fae man’s shoulder and chest.

“Ah,” Sora said, aware enough to feel self-conscious, now that he was hugging a beautiful stranger. “I’m sorry, I…”

Before he could disentangle his arms, the fae man had wrapped his own around Sora’s back.

“Catch a fae thrice, it’s bound to stay with you,” he said. Kairi hadn’t been exaggerating how lovely his voice was, either.

“Catch you?” Sora asked.

“Your arms,” the fae said. “Have you not caught me?”

“Oh!” Sora let go, though the fae man didn’t. “I wasn’t trying to.”

“I know,” the man answered.

Then he pulled Sora even closer, pressing a quick kiss to his lips.

The kiss was over as quickly as it had started. The fae man was staring into his eyes. Sora had a hard enough time looking away that he wondered if he was being placed under some sort of spell.

Then the fae man let go of Sora, and the blinding light was back. When the brightness had cleared enough for Sora to see, the fae was once more a deer, and it bounded over the garden fence and toward the woods.

One foot in front of the next. It was harder and harder to do, the wound burning both impossibly hot and cold at the same time. The blood loss would be enough to cause the physical weakness, but worse was the tangible sense of something being drained out of him. Some intrinsic part of his self that was being taken away from him.

One more step. One more.

Riku would never have had anyone to turn to in this situation. None of his own kind could help, even if they were so inclined. Some might have been willing in other circumstances, in exchange for some complicated favor, but not for this. A human had created this weapon, a human had attacked him, and only a human could remove it.

The first time he’d stumbled upon one of the humans from the house in the meadow, it had been a mistake. He’d wandered out of the trees, leg injured from a bad jump. He’d failed to clear the fallen tree, slipping, catching the back of his leg on a broken branch on the way down. The fae were supernaturally graceful, but that didn’t make them impervious to accident. The wound would heal on its own, and he thought about fleeing the instant she saw him.

Instead she threw a rope of flowers around his neck, and tied a careful bandage around the wound… For the first time, the threat of being caught by a human didn’t seem like the terror it was supposed to be.

He’d paid for her kindness with a kiss, though he didn’t know if she took it as such.

Another step. A shudder and a near fall, an attempt to refocus his eyes.

The monstrous wolf that tore at his shoulder didn’t survive its attempt on his life. He’d gored it with his antlers as the price for its hubris in attacking him. Not before it had already ripped into the flesh of his neck and shoulder.

Again, he could heal. It was severe enough to take some time, but he had all the time he could wish for. As long as he could lay low, prevent anything else from coming after him while weakened…

Except he remembered a kind pair of hands tending a wound, and he turned toward the meadow. It was empty when he left the trees, and he cautiously approached the house itself. He knew she must live there.

It wasn’t her he found in the garden. Yet the man’s gentle voice and soothing hands were just as kind as they cleaned the blood from the wound, as they wrapped a new bandage around him. When his arms gently held Riku around the shoulders.

No, being caught didn’t fill him with terror the way it should. Perhaps that was more frightening than the rest of it.

Another kiss for payment, before he fled.

His steps were growing less sure as he crossed into the garden. He stumbled toward the door, leaning his head forward in desperation.

Scrape. He ran his antlers over the outside of the door, the silver catching on the wood.

Silence.

He pushed his antler against the door again, feeling that this attempt was already weaker than the last. His vision blurred.

Then he was collapsing forward, into a better-lit room, as the door was pulled open.

Perhaps it was relief, but he lost a few moments of awareness.

The next thing he was aware of was the woman.

Kairi, his mind supplied. The man had called her ‘Kairi’.

She was kneeling on the floor next to him, blood soaking into her skirt. Her hands were under his chin, as she tried to find the source of the blood now covering her floor. Covering her.

My blood. Oh.

He tried to push his way to his feet, but couldn’t quite get the strength of his legs underneath him, his hooves scrabbling weakly against the wood. The man was there, gentle hands at Riku’s sides, trying to carefully lift him.

The intrinsic power inside of him was guttering like a drowned candle flame. He tried to grab onto what little of it was left, before it was gone completely; he couldn’t get them to understand when he was like this.

He felt the warmth, though it still seemed weaker than it should have, but he felt his shape begin to change. He felt things rearranging themselves, but it did nothing to soothe or obscure the pain. Instead the agony redoubled, and he felt himself pitch forward again, though this time on two legs instead of four.

The man was now holding him up, as the woman’s fingers traced along his jaw. Then she gasped, finally seeing the wound.

“I-iron,” he forced out.

The spike had been driven into the top of his chest. In two-legged shape, it was just below his collarbone. A few inches long, and made of the coldest iron.

“Iron kills the fae, doesn’t it?” Kairi said, her fingers just barely touching the end of the spike that protruded from his chest.

Even that gentle touch was agony, and he screamed, flailing out with more strength than he’d thought he had, trying to push her away.

“Let’s get him lying down,” the man said.

If Riku had the presence of mind to focus on it, he would probably have been grateful they seemed willing to help, even after he’d almost struck her. Some distant part of him was, but more of him was afraid of a mortality he’d never thought he was doomed to face.

He allowed himself to be half-carried, half-dragged to a bed, where they laid him on his back.

“Kairi? Will you hold his hands back? I can’t imagine the iron is good to leave in,” the man said, “but I don’t want him to attack me if it hurts.”

Kairi was a lovely name. He could never have asked them to share their names: that was known as the worst of fae tricks, an attempt to steal it away. He didn’t want to take anything from them.

“Okay.” The man was speaking again, but this time to him. “I think we should take this… whatever it is… out of your chest. It can’t be helping to have it in there. But if that’s the wrong thing for us to do, I need you to tell me. If it’s going to make things worse…” he trailed off.

Riku shook his head weakly. The iron was burning him and freezing him at once, like the blood in his veins was being frozen and then set aflame. Every second it stayed in his chest, he felt more of himself being poisoned. “Do it,” he choked out.

“Kairi?”

She sat at the edge of the bed, next to his head. Then she reached down and gently took his hands. She pulled them closer, above his head. She did her best to prevent it from shifting the spot where the iron spike was embedded, but there was still a fresh wave of agony. He didn’t pull away. She wrapped her hands around his wrists, firmly, but not harshly.

“Okay, Sora. I’ve got him.”

Sora.

Riku didn’t want to lash out at him, and he was grateful Kairi’s hands around his wrists would help keep him from doing so.

Sora gripped the end of the iron spike, and Riku shouted again. He tried to thrash with his arms, but Kairi held him tight. He tried to kick, and was both glad and horrified to find he could barely lift them.

In one smooth motion, Sora pulled the spike from his chest. It was several inches, and Riku felt every bit of its length. Finally, the agony was too much, and it was probably a mercy that he lost consciousness.

The sun had risen when Riku woke up. He was still in a human bed.

His chest burned, but without the insistent, deadly cold of the iron. The pain and weakness lingered in a way that nothing except iron could cause, but he could tell that healing had started.

He pushed himself upright.

That was enough to draw the attention of the two humans.

“Good morning,” Kairi said. “How are you feeling?”

“Alive,” he answered.

“Glad for that,” Sora said. “That didn’t seem guaranteed, last night.”

Riku nodded. “I’m… in your debt,” he said. That was true, in more ways than one.

“I’m just glad we could help,” Kairi said.

“My name is Riku.”

They might not understand the significance of a name being offered. Or, judging by their surprised expressions, maybe they did.

“I heard your names last night,” he said. “So it seems only fair.”

He winced a little at his own play on words. The fair folk.

“You don’t owe us anything,” Sora said. “We both mean it when we say we’re just glad you’re okay.”

Riku looked at both of them. “I do owe you a debt for having saved me. Nothing else could have. But also”—he glanced at his wrists, then to Kairi—“you caught a fae thrice. So aren’t I bound to stay with you?” He also looked to Sora. Three times between the two of them was still three times.

“I didn’t…” Kairi said. “That wasn’t what I meant to do.”

“I know,” Riku said, also for the third time.

“Do you want to be caught?” Sora asked. “Do you want to stay?”

Riku hesitated. Fae were supposed to loathe and fear the idea of being captured. Even so, he cautiously nodded.

“Then we’ll be glad to keep you,” Kairi said.

“But only for as long as you want,” Sora added.

Riku’s smile was genuine. “As long as we all want,” he conceded.