Chapter Text
Once upon a time, there was a boy who walked through time.
In the light of day, his life was ordinary. But when he closed his eyes at night, he saw scenes of the future - dark premonitions and evil deeds yet to be done.
His life was an ordinary one, if isolated. Friendless save for just one, the boy who had not yet been chosen by a fairy, he wandered the forests of his home, yearning to find a way to see reason in it all.
And then, a fairy came to him.
The boy left the forest, death on his heels.
In to the wide world he travelled, and everywhere that he went, the scent of blood and violence followed him. He met a young princess, and swore to her that he would help her. He met a tribe of stone and a tribe of the water. And then he returned - and everything promptly turned on its head.
Once upon a time, there was a girl who could see the future.
Not yet a queen but trained for it from birth, she witnessed dark doings in her dreams and worry began to set in. A fearsome king of the desert, allegedly a friend to her father the king, would stalk her dreams.
And yet there was hope - a boy from the forest, one who would part the dark clouds and bring salvation to the land.
She waited. She met the boy and sent him on his journey. And she waited again.
When she found her father dead in his study, the king of the desert looming over his body, she knew, then, that she could wait no longer.
And so she fled.
Once upon a time, there was a boy who thought himself ordinary.
He lived with a couple he referred to as his parents - an orphan, but lacking grief for what he did not know, he chose them as his own. He learnt his lessons. He explored the land.
And one day, a letter arrived telling him of a faraway land on the brink of war. He was not what he thought he was, but was instead the survivor of a war, a member of an ancient and dying race. And he was asked a very important question - would he give up his comfortable life in a seaside town far from the taint of war, and come to protect a girl he barely knew of?
He accepted, and found himself in his ancestral home, hidden away with a girl who would one day become his sister.
Once upon a time, three lives became touched by the same war. The boy who walked through time reached for a sword he was not yet old enough to wield, and found himself trapped in a seven-year sleep. The girl who could see the future waited and watched, teaching her newly found brother all he would need to know for his duties. And the boy who thought himself ordinary was taught to listen for songs of magic, songs that he would need to one day use for the aid of their land.
When the boy who walked through time awakened to find himself in a shattered world, it was the boy who thought himself ordinary who was waiting for him, prepared to aid the girl who could see the future. His tasks would take him through fire, beneath water, through the shadows and through the sands. It would return him to his childhood home and it would tear him far from it.
And all through it, the boy who thought himself ordinary would guide him on his path.
And yet something that neither of them expected happened. The boy who walked through time found himself wounded after a temple he could not quite defeat before it had its revenge, and the boy who thought himself ordinary took it upon himself to care for him himself. And the two began to grow close.
When the boy who thought himself ordinary found himself defending the boy who walked through time from a threat he did not yet know, the boy who walked through time rewarded him with a kiss. Together, they fought through fire and rain and shadows they could not fight, and together, they found themselves in each other's bodies.
The boy who walked through time took himself to a new temple, fearsome and dark.
The boy who thought himself ordinary returned to what he thought may have been safety - and yet was anything but.
For the king of the desert had many spies.
For fourteen days, the boy who thought himself ordinary was a prisoner, subject to violence and degradation and pain. It was only when the boy who walked through time was reunited with the girl who saw the future that he found himself safe once more, his tormentor dead at his hand, his body shattered and broken and his mind consumed with horror.
He was changed, now, from his ordeal.
And for all three of them, the world fell apart.
The boy who walked through time was returned to his former home, his former time - a gift to return childhood to himself. The girl who saw the future was left alone, the future queen of a land that had been ravaged by war. The boy who thought himself ordinary was forced to push on regardless, despite horror and trauma and the loss of the one he loved.
For the boy who walked through time, it meant falling to another world and returning a new man - albeit one in a boy's form. Waiting for him once he finally returned to the girl who could see the future, he found the boy who thought himself ordinary waiting for him - but a younger version, a version that did not yet know him - free of trauma, but also free of the memories that shared.
He walked away again.
And for the boy who thought himself ordinary, who had no such spectre from the past to soothe his wounds, simply moving on would be his greatest challenge...