Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It's a beautiful summer's day, the last time James wakes up as a human. Birds are singing from the branches of the oak tree outside the arched window, and the sunlight that fills the room is dappled by the leaves, waving in the soft breeze.

If he'd known this was going to be the last time - if he'd been prepared for the end of the summer, for the end of his life as he knew it - he would have appreciated it more. As it is, it's just an annoyance. It's too early, too bright, too loud. He throws on a robe over his nightclothes and makes his way downstairs, taking his usual seat at the head of the dining table. Mary brings him his porridge and he holds the bowl in one hand and the spoon in the other and eats it, as if that were nothing. As if he had a whole lifetime's worth of mornings like this to come.

There's a knock at the castle door and he rises, making his way across the flagstone floor. And as he opens it, as he registers who the person on the other side is, he realises he's been taking it all for granted.

Because it turns out a person's life can change in just the time it takes to open a door.

——

Once upon a time, there was a man called James, a completely ordinary man. He was a captain in Lady Alison's army, and over the years he'd become her most trusted advisor.

Then, one day, he'd helped her catch an imposter. A woman had arrived, claiming a blood relationship with her, and James had managed to disprove this claim just in the nick of time. Alison had been in the process of preparing for a long journey - her new husband had his own lands, far away, that needed some attention - and she had been just about to hand over the keys to the kingdom to this 'Lucy', if that even was her name, when James had made her aware of the truth of who the woman was. It had been very satisfying, examining the facts of the matter and discovering that the 'family portrait' she'd produced had been a forgery. In the end, she had merely been a charlatan, exploiting Alison's desire for blood relatives to gain her trust.

The matter had been settled. Lucy had been sent away, and a distant relative, Lady Button, had been placed in charge of the kingdom. And James had been given a castle, in a beautiful clearing in the middle of the forest, as a reward for his diligent work.

Alison had left, and James had retired his post in her army. It was time for him to settle down. Find somebody to share his castle with him, perhaps.

And then there had been a knock at the door.

——

In hindsight, it would perhaps have been a good idea to make sure the woman he was making an enemy out of wasn't experienced with dark magic. These are the sorts of things it's easy to think of, after the fact.

She stands on his doorstep, her face almost completely obscured by the hood of her cloak, as she reads the terms and conditions of her curse from the scroll she's holding.

Winter will fall on the castle. James will die - not as quickly as he'd feared, when he'd opened the door, nor as slowly as he had previously been hoping to, but somewhere in between. He and Mary will be trapped inside the grounds, along with Robin, the groundskeeper, and the curse will make it almost impossible for the castle to be found by outsiders.

James protests that this situation was hardly Mary or Robin's fault, but his protests fall on deaf ears.

"There will be punishments," the witch reads, barely concealed anger in her voice, "for transgressions." She raises her head slightly, and the Captain can just make out her eyes, blazing out from the shadows under her hood. "You stole my kingdom from me, James. There won't be any more stealing, not from you or from anybody else within these grounds. I want you to keep everybody on their best behaviour."

She smiles, and it doesn't reach her eyes. A shiver runs down James' spine.

"That's everything." She rolls the scroll back up. "Do you have any questions?"

"Is there a way to break the curse?" It's the only question that matters, actually.

The witch tilts her head. "Are you asking me to put in a break clause?"

And look, James has read the stories. He knows that these are always traps, just a way for the magic wielder to make the curse even worse while providing a miniscule amount of hope for the victims, that they might somehow manage to fulfil the requirements to activate the clause. He knows it is almost certainly a terrible idea. But if it will give him even a chance of freeing Mary and Robin, he has to take it.

He nods, and the witch produces a quill from one of the folds of her cloak, uses it to scribble something at the bottom of the parchment. She lays the scroll down at James' feet and takes a step backwards, waving her hands over it. "Remember," she says, pointing at him. "You asked for it."

The whole world seems to shift sideways for a moment. The wind is picking up, hailstones falling as the leaves are blown from the trees, as the birds cry out in fear, making their escape. The ground trembles, and James is aware of a new sensation, of a prickling across his skin, as if the hairs on his arms are all standing on end.

And then, all at once, everything changes. There's far more hair on his arms, and far more of him, his muscles straining at the seams of his clothing. His feet tear their way out of his slippers, and he looks down and realises that they don't look even vaguely human, with a vicious claw curling from the end of each toe. His heels rise from the ground as his feet elongate, and the shape of his body is changing in other places as well, his shirt tearing across his chest as it struggles to contain him.

He puts his hands over his face in an attempt to block out what's happening, but all he succeeds in doing is drawing his attention to the layer of fur that now covers his cheeks, and the large canine teeth, jutting their way up from his lower jaw. What has he done?

And what is he becoming?

He stands like this, trembling, covering his eyes, until it's all over. When the ground is still again, when the wind has stopped roaring through the trees, when his body has settled, he lowers his hands and looks around him.

Frost covers the ground. Where, just moments earlier, fruit had hung from the trees in the orchard, there are now only bare branches. The witch is gone, and, with trembling hands, the Captain picks up the scroll from the floor.

It takes him a minute to unroll it, now that he has claws instead of nails and fingers that are far too large for such a delicate task. Once he's got it unravelled, he reads the break clause at the bottom. And then he reads it again, just to be sure.

Well. That's that, then. As he'd suspected, the terms of the break clause will be impossible to fulfil. It's all just been one terrible mistake after another.

He rolls up the scroll and wonders how he's going to break the news to Robin and Mary. Wonders how he's going to gather enough courage to look at his own face in a mirror, to see what damage has been done.

To see what kind of monster he's become.

——

Five years later

Pat is in the kitchen of his cottage, putting another batch of bread rolls into the oven, when Kitty comes in from the garden. She's been spending longer outside now that the evenings are lengthening, and she always claims she's been weeding the herb garden or checking the rhubarb to see if any of the stems are long enough to pick, but Pat isn't convinced. Every time he looks out of the window, she just seems to be standing by the fence, talking to Thomas.

Pat can't blame her. It is nice for Kitty to have someone her own age to have a chat with. Pat had been a bit unconvinced when he'd heard that the house next door was being bought by a poet - who, from what Pat can gather, wanted to spend a couple of years 'seeing how the people live' before moving back to the city - but Thomas is perfectly pleasant. Not what Pat would call a hard worker, but pleasant enough to talk to.

And there's a new development today, when Kitty puts down an empty basket on the table and announces, "You'll never guess what's just happened! Thomas has asked me to a ball!"

Pat pushes his glasses up his nose and thinks about this. The problem isn't that he minds the idea of Kitty going to a ball; goodness knows she's waited long enough for it. Her sister used to go to balls all the time, to hear Kitty tell it, but there always seemed to be some reason or other that Kitty herself couldn't go. And since her father and sister moved away - and Kitty decided she'd rather stay with Pat than go with them - neither him nor Kitty have really been moving in the right circles for her to do anything like that.

Maybe that's what's making Pat hesitate. He's never been to a ball himself, and he doesn't know what they're like, really, but he knows they're not prepared for it. How is Kitty going to get there? On horseback? And Pat doesn't think there's anything in the house that even Kitty could turn into a suitable dress.

But at the same time, he wants Kitty to have this. He wants her to go dancing, to make more friends her own age. Maybe get married one day, if she wants to. Pat has lived a simple life - he'd grown up in this cottage, then kept living in it on his own after his parents had died. And he's never really wanted more than this. But from the moment he'd taken Kitty in, he'd known she wasn't like him. She'd grown up surrounded by beautiful things, even if she wasn't really allowed to enjoy them, and so it had made sense that she'd end up wanting more than Pat could offer her.

Well, if this is something Kitty can have, then Pat is going to do his best to make sure she gets to enjoy it. "That's great, Kitty!" he says. He's a few seconds late with his response, but Kitty doesn't seem to notice. "What sort of ball?"

He has no idea whether there are different kinds of balls, but he reckons this is as good a question as any for getting the conversation started. Kitty beams. "Oh, it's going to be wonderful! There'll be music, and dancing, and beautiful dresses! It's at Bone Hall, in a month's time. Thomas has said I can travel in his carriage, just imagine!"

Bone Hall isn't far at all. It's in the next village, almost walkable, really.

There's only one problem, then, that Pat can see. And it's the problem of the beautiful dresses.

Kitty goes through to the other room, and Pat thinks about it as he stirs the pot of soup on the stove. He's been planning a journey for a while - well, putting it off, really. There isn't any need to leave the village, generally - they get by fine, mostly, off what they grow in the garden and what they get from the goat and the chickens. And Pat does some odd jobs here and there, fixing fences up and patching holes in roofs. They get by.

But there are some things you can't buy in the village, things that would be nice to have. Tools, books, material for dresses, things like that. There's a market that's held on the other side of the forest, around three days' ride away. Pat could go and pick up a few bits. He might even be able to get some new shoes for Kitty, while he's at it.

Pat has been thinking about going for ages, and this is the perfect time to put his plan into action. Break up his comfortable routine a bit. There isn't much that'll need doing in the garden while he's gone, so Kitty should be able to manage by herself for a week or two.

And it's very pleasant, travelling in spring. The perfect weather for a long journey.

——

Pat should have known, really. Even in late spring, the weather can be very unpredictable, and taking a shortcut through this part of the forest had - in hindsight - been a bad idea. It's currently hailing, visibility down to zero, and Dante, his horse, has reduced his speed to what can only be described as a slow plod.

He had been hoping to make it home that night, but that's looking incredibly unlikely now. They seem to have lost the path and so they're currently just trudging down something that looks like it might vaguely be a track, while Pat keeps an eye out for... well, anything. Anything but trees, and darkness, and hail. Because Dante can't keep going for much longer, that much is clear. And short of going to sleep against a tree, wrapped up in the fancy fabric he's just spent an arm and a leg on, Pat is all out of ideas for how he's going to spend the night.

If he can just find a house, they'll be alright. Just somewhere they can take shelter from the storm for a little while. A barn, even - Pat's got some food in his pack, enough to see them through the night. They just need shelter, really.

They're moving blindly now, not even following the track any more. Dante has his head down, slowly making his way through the dense trees, and Pat is still desperately scanning their surroundings, but there's nothing.

And then, suddenly, he sees a light. It's gone again almost immediately, probably just a trick his eyes are playing on him, but it's worth a shot. He takes the reins and steers them in what he hopes is the right direction. Dante is moving even more slowly, if that were possible, and Pat is just in the process of giving up hope when he sees it again. It's definitely a light, and this time it doesn't disappear. He keeps a tight hold on the reins, making sure they're moving in the right direction. They'll be fine now, surely. That's a person with a lantern, or a light in a cottage, or something. Whatever it is, it's their ticket to not freezing to death in the night.

Dante finally steps out of the trees and into a clearing. Pat just has time to notice what's in front of them - a pair of huge iron gates, leading to a wide, sloping path - before the light goes out.

"Hello?" he calls out. There's no answer, only the sound of the wind whistling eerily through the trees. Well, never mind. They don't have any choice but to keep going. The hail seems to be slowing down now, so that's something at least.

Pat pushes open the gate, then closes it carefully behind them. He leads Dante up the path, which winds its way among the trees. They turn a bend and step out of the wooded part of the grounds, and Pat gets his first glimpse of the house.

It isn't a house, for starters. It's a bloody castle, with a full-blown lake in front of it. Pat hasn't had much experience with rich people, but the experience he has had hasn't been great. He'd be a lot more sure of his welcome at a woodsman's cottage than at a castle.

There are some stables to one side of the lake, with a couple of horses watching them through the gap in the stable door. He ushers Dante inside, taking off his gear and getting him sorted out for the night. Even if Pat gets turned away at the castle door, at least Dante will have somewhere to rest. Pat can probably come back and curl up in the stable with him if it comes to it, without the owners even noticing.

Hopefully it won't come to that, and they'll both be staying here with proper permission. Pat would much rather be following the rules, really. He adjusts his pack on his back and follows the path the rest of the way around, climbing the steps that lead up to the castle door.

The door is twice his height, at least. He looks at it for a few moments, summoning up his courage, and then raises his fist to knock. But the moment he makes contact with the door, it begins to swing slowly open, as if it were never properly closed in the first place. 

He pauses, right on the threshold, and looks around. There's nobody outside that he can see, and it's just darkness inside.

"Is anybody there?" he calls out, but there's no response. So he takes a deep breath, then takes a tentative step forward, and then he's in the hallway. In the hallway of a massive castle, and not quite sure what to do next.

It's warm, at least, in spite of the vastness of it. He pushes the door closed behind him to keep the heat in, then looks around. There's still nobody to be seen, but there is a light coming from one of the rooms. He walks towards it, peering in through the doorway.

It's a huge room, with a table that must seat at least twenty people, and a fire blazing in the grate. There's only one place set at the table, and he takes a couple of hesitant steps towards it.

He knows he should probably keep exploring the castle. Try to find someone to talk to, to explain his situation. But there's a meal laid out at the table, and Pat finds himself absolutely powerless to resist it. The heel of bread in his pack suddenly seems a lot less exciting in light of the spread he can see in front of him.

He glances around again, just to check, but there's still nobody there. And then he hears a noise, from somewhere above him. The sound of a door closing.

"Hello?" he calls out, and then waits. But there's nothing.

Well. Pat isn't one to look a gift meal in the mouth. He sits down and starts heaping food onto his plate.

It's simple fare, not too dissimilar from the sort of food he'd eat at home, which surprises him. There's some sort of stew, and half a small roast bird, and a bowl of boiled potatoes, with a glass of wine sitting beside it all. Pat takes a bit of everything and gets stuck in. There's always the chance that someone might come in and tell him to get out, and if that's going to happen he'd quite like to have got a decent meal inside him before venturing back out into the night.

But nobody comes. He eats most of what's in the dishes - he leaves the slightly burnt parts of the bird, and he can't manage all the potatoes, despite his best efforts - and he drains the glass of wine, and then he sits back in his chair, absolutely stuffed. He's not used to wine, and he thinks he might have drunk it slightly too quickly, because between that and the food he's starting to get very sleepy.

He gets to his feet before he can nod off at the table. He would like to search the castle, have a proper look for the owner, but given the size of these rooms it feels like he might be looking all night. There's an armchair by the fire so he sinks down into that, instead. If somebody comes in then they can wake him up and throw him out, if they want to. For now, he's full and warm and comfortable enough to go straight to sleep.

He closes his eyes and lets himself rest. He's safe from the storm now, at least. Safe here, in this strange castle.

He sleeps soundly, only waking when the early morning sunlight makes its way into the room. He blinks awake, taking a moment to work out where he is.

It all comes back to him then - the storm, the castle - and he's up and on his feet straight away, hauling his pack onto his back. Best to be gone before anybody sees him, if they haven't realised he's here already. Pat makes sure he has all his things, and then he slips out of the room and back out of the castle door, pulling it carefully shut behind him.

It's all gone pretty smoothly for a night in a strange castle in the middle of the forest. It's still cold, but the storm has passed, at least. And he's just on his way to the stables when a flash of colour catches his eye. It's a rose bush, tucked out of the way next to some sort of outbuilding. The flowers are the same colour as the fabric he'd picked out for Kitty's dress, and he reckons one of them would set the whole look off nicely.

He looks around him, but there's still nobody to be seen. Nobody watching him as he steps off the path and approaches the bush.

There's one rose that's just a bud, really. It's round the back of the bush, right round where it can't be seen from the path, and nobody would miss this rose, surely. Taking a single rose is nothing, compared to eating a whole meal that wasn't meant for him.

Pat bends down and breaks the rose off at the stem. And then, as he straightens back up, he hears footsteps on the path behind him.

He turns around with some trepidation and sees a woman in a smudged apron staring at him.

"Robin!" she shouts, turning back towards the castle. "We've got another one!"

Chapter Text

Pat is in the process of trying to work out what to do with the rose he's holding, when a man - Robin, presumably - appears. He's wearing patched overalls, stained with mud at the knees. He looks at Pat, then looks at the woman. "What he do?"

"He stole that flower!" says the woman, pointing to the rose in Pat's hand. A little dramatically for Pat's liking.

"Hold on," says Pat, laughing nervously, "I didn't - I just picked a flower. I'm not looking for any trouble." He lays the rose down on the ground and takes a step away from it. All he has to do is get to the stables, get Dante saddled up, and then he can get out of here.

"There be's punishments for stealing!" says the woman, clearly getting worked up. Pat looks at Robin for help, but he just shrugs.

"Mary right. This castle has stupid rules." He scratches the back of his head. "I better tell the Captain."

Then he's gone, walking up the steps towards the castle, and Pat is alone with Mary, who is still pointing accusingly at him. It's pretty much the worst start to the morning he could've imagined.

"I'm just gonna-" he says, nodding towards the stables, but Mary cuts him off.

"I needs to tell Annie!" And then she's gone, picking up her skirts and running off in the other direction, down the path towards the gates. 

This feels like a good time for Pat to make his exit. He gets Dante saddled up and out of the stable, then leads him down the path, keeping an eye out for Mary as he goes. There's no sign of her, thank goodness, so he opens the gate and leads Dante out of the castle grounds, very thankful to be seeing the back of the place.

Only he doesn't actually make it through the gates. At the very moment that he steps over the threshold, just as he's about to leave the grounds, he finds himself facing back towards the castle again. He can see the winding path, trees on either side, and he turns around and sees the dense forest behind him, through the gates that he'd just tried to walk through. It's as if he'd been turned around, the second he'd tried to cross the threshold. 

He blinks a couple of times, shakes his head to clear it. Maybe it's the effects of his stressful night catching up to him. 

He tries again, turning around and walking through the gates with Dante, but the same thing happens again, and he ends up facing back towards the castle. He's just trying to work out what to do when Mary appears, along with another woman.

"'Tis him!" says Mary, pointing at him again, and the other woman steps forwards. She's also wearing an apron, except hers is bleached white. She stops in front of him on the path.

"Mary said you was having some trouble. This place is a nightmare, isn't it?"

Pat just blinks at her in confusion. She sighs and holds out her hand for him to shake. "I'm Annie. I've been stuck here half a year or more. You'd better come up to the castle so's we can introduce you to the Captain."

Pat looks back at the gate. He'd like nothing more than to walk through it, to get back to Kitty. But it doesn't look like that's an option just at the moment.

And failing that, he's very much looking forward to getting some answers.

——

Mary and Annie show him into the dining room and take seats at the table, gesturing at Pat to do the same. He sits down awkwardly at the head of the table, in the seat he'd eaten dinner in the night before. He can't quite believe everything that's happened - the storm, finding shelter, falling asleep in front of the fireplace, getting turned around at the gates. It's as if it's all been a very strange dream, but given that he doesn't seem to be showing any signs of waking up, it's probably actually happening.

There's a noise at the back of the room, and Robin enters through a door that Pat hadn't previously noticed. He makes his way down the room and pulls up a seat next to Mary. "The Captain's here," he mutters.

Pat is just wondering where, exactly, the Captain is, when he hears the sound of another chair scraping against the floor. He wonders for a brief moment whether the Captain is invisible and has just taken a seat at the table - because that honestly wouldn't be the strangest thing that's happened so far this morning - when he realises he can make out a figure sitting not at the table, but somewhere in the shadows at the other end of the room. He must've come through the door with Robin. 

The figure clears its throat. "Good morning. I'm the Captain. Robin has told me that you've been having some trouble" -

"If that what you want to call it," mutters Robin, rolling his eyes.

- "and I thought I'd better see how you were getting on with it all. Clear up a few things, you know." The Captain pauses. "Perhaps we should all start by introducing ourselves? I go by 'the Captain'."

Mary opens her mouth to speak, but Pat cuts her off. "Yeah, I reckon I know all your names already, actually. What I'd really like to know is when I'll be able to leave?"

There's a pause in which Mary, Annie and Robin all exchange loaded glances, and Pat immediately wonders whether he's been unnecessarily rude. He resists the urge to start apologising.

"I mean," he tries again, "I'm very grateful, for the - well, I dunno if it was on purpose, but the food and the fire and everything, last night. I would've been in a lot of trouble if I'd stayed out in the forest all night!" He laughs nervously, wondering why none of the others seem to want to meet his eyes. Wondering why the Captain is sitting in a dark corner of the room, just a shadowy figure watching the conversation unfold.

"Anyway," says Pat. He belatedly realises that he should probably offer up an introduction, say a bit about who he is. "Uh, I'm Pat. I was just on my way back home last night, to see my daughter."

'Daughter' seems like the easiest explanation for who Kitty is to him, but it seems to alarm Mary, from the wide-eyed look she gives him. "Daughter? How old be's your daughter?"

Pat tries to do the calculation quickly enough for it not to seem like he's lying about having a daughter. "She's twenty... two."

He doesn't think he quite succeeds, but Mary visibly relaxes. "'Tis a relief," she says to Robin, and Pat has had enough of all these cryptic remarks now, actually.

He takes a deep breath and makes an enormous effort to stay polite. "So, can anyone tell me what's going on here? 'Cause I stayed for the night - and I'm very grateful, like I said - but then I picked a rose from one of the bushes, and suddenly everyone's going on about me stealing something, and I'm having a bit of trouble getting out of the gates. I'm pretty confused, actually."

"There's a curse."

All heads turn towards the end of the room, where the Captain has got up from his chair. He takes a couple of steps towards what looks like a painting on the wall and stops in front of it. Pat gets the impression that the Captain is a tall, well-built man, who seems to be wearing some sort of cloak. "It can't be broken. While the curse holds, none of us can leave the castle grounds."

"You as well, now," says Robin. "We all stuck here."

"But..." Pat trails off. He looks at Robin. "Why can't I leave?"

"It stupid curse. Anybody who does something wrong has to stay. You take rose, and now..." Robin trails off, shrugging.

"Robin and me," says Mary, "we was here from the days before the curse, working for the Captain. Annie be like you, she did break the rules and was forsaken."

Annie rolls her eyes. "I didn't do anything! All I said was, the Captain's an ugly bugger, and he is. Them's just facts."

It seems like a well-rehearsed argument, the way Mary shakes her head at this. "It be wrong to talk like that, and you knows it. The castle punished you because you did do wrong."

"Well," says Pat, thinking, "who's to say it's the rose that's the problem? Couldn't it be because I ate that food last night?"

Would that help? Probably not. Stealing is stealing, after all.

Mary shakes her head. "We puts that food out for you on purpose. Robin saw you coming through the gates, he came to warn us. We gave you the Captain's dinner and then we dids hide." She glances towards the end of the room where the Captain is standing.

The Captain picks up the reins of the conversation again. "We had hoped that in giving you the food, we wouldn't put you in a position where you had the opportunity to break any rules. And if you didn't come into contact with any of us, then you couldn't inadvertently insult us in any way."

Mary shoots a loaded glance at Annie, who rolls her eyes again.

"But unfortunately," continues the Captain, "in picking the rose you seem to have activated the curse. You are, from this point onwards, a prisoner in this castle. Mary can find you a room, and we'll make you as comfortable as possible -"

"I don't want to be comfortable!" Pat's voice has gone uncomfortably high and squeaky, but he's beyond caring about that, actually. "I want to go home!"

"Well, you can't!" says the Captain, his voice rising to a level that's almost a shout. He clears his throat, then makes an effort to soften his tone. "You can't, I'm afraid. None of us can."

He turns and walks towards the door, and Pat can just about make out the shape of him, striding across the room. The door opens, and the Captain pauses. "I am sorry about all this," he says, much more gently this time. "We just have to make the best of a bad situation."

And then he's gone, pulling the door shut behind him, and Mary rises to her feet. "Come with me," she says, "and I'll shows you where you be staying."

Pat gets up, the Captain's closing remarks still churning around in his head. He follows Mary out into the hallway and up the stairs, and thinks about how ridiculous it is that the Captain expects him to immediately be fine with this, with being imprisoned forever in a castle in the forest. Unable to see his home again. To see Kitty again.

Indignation has turned to sadness by the time they reach the room Mary has picked out for him. She leads him inside, then makes her way over to the windows and pulls back the heavy curtains, revealing grandeur the likes of which Pat has never seen before. There's a four-poster bed, a wardrobe shining with gold detailing, a chandelier in the middle of the ceiling, and all of it is covered in a thick layer of dust.

"This'll be feeling like your home in no time," she says brightly. But Pat has his doubts about that.

This is a beautiful cage, he'll give it that. But it'll never feel like a home.

——

The first day goes by in a bit of a blur. Pat spends a lot of time feeling sorry for himself, mourning his old life. He thinks about Kitty, wonders what she'll do when she realises he isn't coming home. Will she try to find him? He doesn't want to risk her coming here and getting caught in the same trap as him, so he needs to make a plan for that at some point. Perhaps he could make some sort of sign for the front gates that says 'Hello Kitty, I'm completely fine but please don't come in.'

Well, maybe not that exactly. But he's going to need some sort of plan.

Pat spends the rest of the day marvelling at the place he's now living in. He seems to have an entire wing of the castle to himself. Robin lives in one of the outbuildings, and Annie and Mary live in the servants' quarters, though he hasn't yet been able to work out whether they share a room or not. The Captain lives in the west wing, and that leaves the east wing for Pat. He has his room, with an adjoining sitting room - Mary had apologised about how small it was, but Pat reckons it's still bigger than his whole cottage is, back home - and there's even a bathroom across the hallway, with running water.

It's all very comfortable. But it's not home.

After breakfast the next morning he decides to do some exploring, but it's not as exciting as he'd hoped. All the rooms on his floor are much the same as his - dusty furniture, ornate decorations - so he gives up on that pretty quickly, turning his attention to the downstairs rooms. The dining room seems to be the room that gets the most use. Certainly it's the only room that's properly clean. There's a large sitting room, and another one, and another, with a ballroom beyond them. The ballroom looks like it hasn't seen a dance in a number of years. It's all quite depressing, actually, so he ends up back in the dining room. There's at least a fire in this one, and the windows are clean enough to see out of. Pat stops in front of them and looks out at the grounds. They're beautiful, all covered in frost, and as he looks he catches a glimpse of a hooded figure moving between the trees. The Captain, presumably.

He's just thinking that there's something strange about the way the Captain walks - something almost animalistic about the way his body moves - when he hears a door open. He turns and sees Mary, standing by the door at the back of the room.

"Morning," says Pat. It never hurts to be friendly, after all. "I've just been having a little tour around the place. What's through that way?"

He points to the door that Mary has just come out of, and she steps aside so that he can see through the doorway into a narrow passageway, with doors leading off both sides. "'Tis the kitchens, through here. Why don't you come through? We be's having tea now."

Pat follows her through the door and down the passageway. It opens out into a large kitchen, which has a rough wooden table in the middle of it, which Annie and Robin are sitting at. There's a pot of tea in the middle of the table with a plate of scones and jam next to it. Pat sits down gratefully and pours himself a cup of tea, then butters himself a scone.

"Doesn't the Captain join you?" he asks, and Annie shakes her head.

"Keeps himself to himself, he does."

It shouldn't be surprising, he supposes. He doesn't know much about the types of people who live in castles, but the fact that the Captain doesn't join his servants for mid-morning tea probably isn't anything unusual. But in a castle where nobody can leave, where there aren't any other options for company... it does seem strange, that the Captain would avoid them all like this.

And Pat thinks he has an idea of why that might be.

"Is he..." he begins, then trails off, trying to find a polite way of putting it. He's been wondering about the Captain's appearance ever since he'd refused to come out of the shadows on that first day. "He looks... different, does he?"

Robin and Mary glance at Annie, and she laughs. "Different! You could say that. When I first saw him -"

"More tea?" interrupts Mary. She elbows Annie in the process of reaching across the table to get the teapot, and Annie stops talking abruptly.

Robin leans across the table, talking in a low voice. "The Captain no like people staring at him. He try to hide from Annie, when she first come here." He looks at Annie. "And then he bump into her, and we all know how that turn out."

"So..." says Pat to Annie, trying to get everything straight in his mind, "you weren't stuck here straight away then? The first time you visited?"

Annie shakes her head. She settles back in her chair in a classic 'getting ready to tell a story' pose. "I used to walk through these forests with my husband. A right arse, he was."

Mary puts her face in her hands, but Annie continues, unperturbed. "He left me behind one day when I were getting a stone out of my shoe, and I got lost. I was wandering for hours. Well, I wandered right in through these gates, and met Mary here. She told me about her situation, how this lot couldn't leave the castle, and I started coming here more regularly. I brought them things, food and clothes, news from the outside world. They'd been stuck four year or so, by then, running out of all sorts of things."

"And then," she continues, "I saw the Captain, didn't I? And now I'm just as stuck as the rest of them. They told me to be careful not to break any laws, but there's no law against telling things the way I sees them."

Mary shakes her head at this, but doesn't argue.

"I don't mind it," says Annie, her voice softening. She looks at Mary. "'Tis better than being married to him, at any rate. I do laugh, thinking what his face must've looked like, when he realised I was gone for good. He'll have to rub his own feet now, and that serves him right."

"Nobody else come here," says Robin to Pat, "not since curse. Curse make it hard to find castle."

So Pat probably doesn't need to worry about Kitty coming here. He should feel relieved about that, but somehow he doesn't.

"Can't we break it?" he asks. "Isn't there some way I could get a message out, at least?"

Mary looks at him kindly. "Is it your daughter? You wants to get a message to her?"

Pat nods, and finds himself explaining who Kitty is - the way he'd taken her in, the way he knows she probably would be capable of running their cottage by herself, but he'd rather not put it to the test, all the same. "She's going to a ball in a couple of weeks' time," he explains, "and she'll need the material I bought from the market, to make her dress."

Robin shakes his head. "She not be getting that," he says, not unkindly. "But if you speak to the Captain, he might be able to help. He might think of way to get message out."

Okay. Okay, that's all Pat needs to do. Find the Captain, and speak to him, and convince him to help him.

There's only problem with that plan. And it's that the Captain clearly doesn't want to speak to Pat.

——

Pat goes out into the grounds that afternoon, looking for the Captain, but doesn't find him. He moves on to exploring the rest of the ground floor of the castle. The servants' quarters are nice and homely, despite the lack of natural light, but apart from that the castle really just seems to be made up of dusty, empty rooms. 

He stops at the bottom of the staircase that leads to the west wing. The Captain is up there, presumably. Pat thinks about going up those stairs, having a proper look for the Captain. Knocking on doors and disturbing him, when he doesn't even want to see Pat, anyway. Or doesn't want Pat to see him.

Maybe another day. He goes back down to the kitchens instead, has a nice chat with Annie while Mary prepares dinner, and thinks about how both the Captain and Mary had been right. It isn't that bad here. It doesn't feel like home, but it's not a terrible place to spend his time.

He can't get to sleep that night, though. He eventually manages to dose off, but then wakes up again what feels like only minutes later. But it can't possibly be - it must have been longer, because the moon is now high in the sky, lighting up the room through the open curtains. Pat puts on his glasses, then gets out of bed and pads across to the window. It's beautiful, the way the grounds are lit up by the moonlight, almost as brightly as if it were day. It's been snowing, a white blanket over everything, and he makes a note to ask if the whole 'winter' thing is part of the curse, because this much snow this late in the spring is definitely unusual, if not.

He looks down at the path below, and spots some footprints. Not human footprints. They're almost like the prints of a wolf, but bigger, clearly visible even from this height.

Well, if there's a huge wolf loose in the grounds, he should probably go and start waking people up so that someone can deal with that. He's just wondering who would be best to wake first - Robin is the obvious choice for wolf-wrangling, but Pat doesn't fancy leaving the castle to find him - when he sees something else. It's a shadow, moving between the trees. Not a wolf, thankfully, but a man, wearing a cloak. The Captain, thinks Pat. He wonders what the Captain is doing outside so late at night. Hopefully he won't run into the creature, whatever he's doing.

And then the Captain steps out of the shadows, and Pat realises.

The line between 'man' and 'creature' is apparently narrower than he had thought.

Chapter Text

Pat takes a step back from the window, his heart beating so hard he can hear it. The Captain. He was the one who'd left those footprints. This is why he doesn't want anybody to see him, why Annie had been cruel about his appearance. Pat had thought there was maybe something that made his face different, something like a scar or a birthmark, but it isn't just that his face looks different from other men's.

It's that it isn't the face of a man at all.

The Captain is back in the shadows between the trees, and now that Pat knows what he's looking at, he can make out the shape of him. He's broad-shouldered, his torso twice the width of a normal man's, and as he steps out into the moonlight again, Pat sees that he's wearing trousers underneath his cloak. But no other clothes. There's nothing to hide the way his chest, his arms, even his feet, are covered in a thick layer of brown fur.

The Captain steps out into the moonlight, turning towards the castle, and Pat sees his face properly for the first time. It's ferocious. His lower canines are visible even from this distance, gleaming in the light, and for a moment Pat experiences a thrill of fear. His brain notices all of it, all at once - the sharp claws extending out of the Captain's hands and feet, the bulging arm muscles, and the way he seems to prowl rather than walk, moving gracefully on the balls of his feet. Pat swallows, his mouth suddenly very dry. The Captain has shown absolutely no signs of wanting to hurt him, of being in any way a cruel person, but the effect of his appearance is undeniable. 

Pat moves closer to the glass, his breath misting it up as he takes one last look. The Captain seems to be surveying the gardens, his hands clasping each other behind his back as he walks. He pauses in front of the lake, looking out across the still water, and it suddenly hits Pat how beautiful he is. Beautiful not like an animal, not like a beast that hunts, but just... just beautiful. The way he holds himself, the way his mane of hair cascades down and obscures the top of his cloak. The way he looks out across his domain as if it were something that had been taken from him, been rendered unrecognisable, but was still something he wasn't going to lose without a fight.

At that moment the moon is obscured by the clouds, and it breaks whatever hold the Captain's appearance has over Pat. He lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding. Time for bed, probably. He'll try to get a bit more sleep, so that he's ready for whatever the morning brings.

He has a feeling the morning might be bringing quite a lot.

——

Pat thinks about it while he eats breakfast. He thinks about the fact that the Captain isn't exactly human, that he roams the castle grounds at night covered in fur and claws. And he thinks about the fact that the Captain doesn't want anybody to see him like that, which seems fair enough.

And Pat thinks about the fact that he needs to get a message out to Kitty, and the Captain is the only person who seems like they might be able to help him with that.

He finishes his porridge and makes his way to the bottom of the stairs that lead up to the Captain's rooms. He looks up the staircase and thinks it's funny that he seems to be less scared about going up there now than he had been before he knew about the Captain's appearance. Before he knew about his claws and his sharp teeth. Or maybe this is just a different kind of fear, this fear of the beast - all fluttering in his stomach, his heartbeat speeding up as he pictures the Captain in his mind - rather than a dread of the unknown. Because he's not as worried as he had been of somehow annoying the Captain, of being a nuisance. It feels like he knows the Captain a little bit better now than he had before.

He begins to climb the stairs, running his hand over the polished wood of the banister. He wonders briefly whether Mary cleans this staircase, but he can't quite imagine her spending her time polishing banisters. Possibly it's something that's smooth from use, from the Captain's hand rubbing against it as he climbs the stairs. He imagines the Captain's hand, pieces together what it might look like from the glimpses he got the night before, and he suppresses a shiver.

Pat reaches the top of the stairs and looks down the hallway. All the doors are open except one.

Well, here goes nothing. He walks down the hallway, checking that the other rooms are empty, and then he knocks on the closed door. He waits with bated breath, listening for a response.

"Yes?" says a voice, the Captain's voice, from behind the door.

Pat clears his throat. "Morning," he says cheerfully. "I was just wondering if we could have a little chat?"

There's the sound of footsteps, getting louder, and then the door opens, just a crack. "What do you want?" asks the Captain.

Pat pauses. He hasn't thought as far ahead as to what he might say, but this seems like the kind of conversation that's difficult to have through a mostly closed door. "I was sort of hoping that maybe I could come in?"

"I don't think that's a good idea." The Captain's voice is hard, closed off. Pat thinks about what Annie had said, about the Captain keeping himself to himself. He wonders whether the Captain is always like this or whether he might get a bit more sociable once he gets used to being around Pat.

"I've seen you, y'know," says Pat, before he can think better of it. "I saw you. Last night. So - if that's why you don't want me to come in, if it's something to do with... the way you look, then you don't have to worry about that. It doesn't matter to me."

The Captain doesn't say anything for a few long moments. Pat is just wondering whether it would be better to go away and come back later when the door is suddenly yanked open, startling him. And the Captain is standing right in front of him.

He's massive, is Pat's first thought. Bigger than he'd seemed in the grounds, in the night. His frame seems to fill up almost the whole doorway, and it's a big doorway. He's at least half Pat's height again, and everything about him seems to be scaled up. His hands are the size of dinner plates, bigger than Pat's face. His whole body is raw power, and it's a little bit thrilling, the way he could just crush Pat if he wanted to. Just - push him up against the wall and break all his ribs, without even trying. Pat shudders at the thought.

"It doesn't matter to you?" asks the Captain, his tone incredulous.

"What?" Pat thinks he might have forgotten how to breathe, let alone how to form sentences.

"The way I look, it doesn't matter to you?" The Captain sounds almost angry now. He gestures down his body as if he's making a point, and Pat's eyes follow the direction of his hand. He's bare chested again, just like the night before, and the fur on his torso is so thick that Pat can't even make out his nipples. Not that he's trying to look at the Captain's nipples.

He guiltily snaps his gaze back to the Captain's face.

"Uh," he says, very coherently. "I mean. I'm not going to laugh at you, or anything, is what I mean. Or run away screaming."

There's another pause. The Captain studies Pat's face, and Pat tries not to let his gaze wander anywhere inappropriate. It's only now he's looking at the Captain's face properly that he's noticing that the Captain has actual horns, growing out of the top of his head, curling slightly on their way out of his mane.

"Come in, then," says the Captain finally. He turns around and walks over to a large wingback armchair, and Pat tries not to stare at him as he walks, at the way his legs move. His trousers are too short for him, exposing a large amount of furry ankle, and Pat can see his leg muscles rippling as he moves.

"Well?" says the Captain, turning his head back to look at Pat. "Or are you having second thoughts about the screaming and running away?"

Pat forces out a laugh and then enters the room, pushing the door closed behind him. It's a large sitting room, all ornate side tables and gold patterned wallpaper. He makes his way over and takes a seat in the armchair opposite the Captain. 

The Captain doesn't meet his gaze. He's looking out of the window, and Pat follows his gaze to the pine tree outside, where there's a solitary robin perched at the top of it.

"I know you were joking," the Captain says quietly, "but Mary did. Run away screaming, that is. When she first saw me like this."

"Oh," says Pat. He tries to think of something to say to that. He has questions, but they're either completely inappropriate - does the Captain have a tail? Does he tear his food apart with his claws? - or they have obvious answers. It's obvious that he hasn't always been like this, that his appearance is something to do with the curse. And it's obvious that he hates it.

He gives up on thinking of anything to say in response, and decides to just get straight to the point instead. "I was hoping you could help me with something, actually."

The Captain looks at Pat, raising his eyebrows. "Yes?"

So Pat launches into the same explanation he'd given the others - of who Kitty is, of why he needs to contact her. The Captain watches him the whole time, his expression inscrutable.

"And that's it, really," finishes Pat. "I know there's a curse and none of us can leave. But I was hoping maybe there was something you could do? Robin reckoned you might be able to help."

The Captain sighs. He sounds like he's weary right down to his bones. "I can try," he says, doubtfully. "I believe there's a section of books on witchcraft in the library, if Mary hasn't found them and put them on the fire. We might be able to find something there."

He gets to his feet and leads the way across the room to a side door. He opens it and walks through, and Pat follows him into the next room.

It's a massive library. There are books filling every shelf, from the floor to the ceiling, on the far side of the wall. The ceiling is so high that there's a ladder on wheels leaning against the bookcases, so that the top few shelves can be reached. A window takes up the entirety of the wall that faces the grounds, bathing the whole room in sunlight, illuminating the dust motes in the air. There's a large oak desk in the middle of the room, and an ornate tiled floor, and everything is beautiful and dusty, the way it is in all the other unused rooms in the castle.

"I don't use this room very often," says the Captain. It's a statement that's so obvious it surely doesn't need to be said, but then he adds, "I can't turn the pages." He lifts his hands, and Pat's attention is drawn to the way they're more like paws, really. The way his fingers are thick and close together, with pads underneath them and thick fur on top. His claws seem to be even sharper up close like this, and Pat imagines them raking grooves down a piece of wood, or scraping across skin, leaving raised red marks. He resists the urge to reach out and touch them. 

He clears his throat. "Well, I can turn the pages for you, if you'd like." He means - not just right now, when they're looking for a way to get around the curse, but all the time, whenever the Captain wants to read a book. But he doesn't know quite how to word that.

The Captain might understand anyway, because he gives a small smile. It transforms his whole face, somehow. "Thank you." He crosses the room and rings a bell on the wall. "I'll ask Mary to get the worst of the dust off everything, and then we can get started."

"Why don't you ask one of the others to turn the pages?" asks Pat. "In general, I mean. Someone like Mary. She works for you, doesn't she?"

The Captain gives a half shrug and turns away, looking at the peeling gold paint on the wall instead of at Pat. "I don't want to bother them more than I have to. They didn't sign up for this life, after all."

That doesn't seem right to Pat. "And you did, did you?"

"That's different." The Captain looks down at the floor and Pat gets a proper look at his profile. The darker fur on his face gives the impression of the Captain having facial hair, though his whole face is so furry that it's hard to tell. "The curse was my fault. I deserve everything that's happened since."

Mary comes in then, and there's a discussion between her and the Captain about exactly which parts of the room need cleaning, and Pat wonders what it must be like to be trapped in a castle, with your body transformed into something that makes people scream and run away, and to believe that you deserve it.

——

It turns out there's a whole section on magic, a hundred books or so, so they settle down to work their way through it. The Captain brings through another chair from the sitting room and they sit side by side at the desk with a book open on the stand, Pat turning the pages as the Captain directs him.

They're interesting books. Lots of them aren't about curses at all, but are just books containing seemingly innocuous information about herbs and flowers, with a section at the end about 'poultices' that need to be made during certain phases of the moon. Even Mary, who is apparently terrified of all things supernatural, probably wouldn't see the need to burn those books.

After a couple of days, they've narrowed the books down to a pile of twenty or so, all of which make at least some reference to curses. The pile sits teeteringly by the side of the desk as Pat and the Captain finish shelving the books they've discarded. The sun is in the process of setting, and they're both exhausted and covered in dust, despite Mary's best efforts.

Pat is just trying to work out whether he's got enough energy for going through some of the shortlist of books by candlelight, working into the evening, when the Captain stretches, raising his arms above his head. His cloak shifts, and Pat gets a glimpse of the thicker hair under his armpits and completely loses his train of thought.

The Captain lowers his arms again and shakes them out slightly, rolling his neck from side to side, and Pat finds he can't take his eyes off him. He's just so - physical. He takes up so much space.

"I might go for a walk," the Captain says, glancing at Pat. "Clear my head, you know."

"Sounds good, yeah." Pat wonders whether the Captain is hoping Pat will join him, or whether he'd like some time to himself. If he usually spends most of the day alone, maybe he's getting fed up of having Pat hanging around all the time. Or maybe he would like Pat to join him. Maybe it'd be nice for him to see that Pat wants to spend time with him in other contexts than just when they're trying to find a way around the curse.

What it boils down to is this: Pat doesn't want to ask the Captain if he can join him, and make the Captain to feel obligated to say yes. And he doesn't want to not ask, and have the Captain think Pat doesn't want to join him. And the Captain has walked across the room and is opening the door to leave, so Pat should probably just stop overthinking and make his mind up.

"I'll come too, if that's okay?"

The Captain pauses with his hand on the handle, the door half open. He looks back at Pat, his eyes searching Pat's face, and Pat doesn't know what he's looking for there but he must find it, because he says, "If you like."

They make their way outside, their footsteps crunching on the frozen ground, and Pat is glad he's joining the Captain for this, even if the Captain would prefer to be alone. It's beautiful in the garden at dusk, all soft light shining through the trees, and Pat probably should've grabbed his coat before leaving the castle, because it's also bloody freezing.

"Is the winter thing part of the curse?" he asks, and the Captain nods.

"Yes. We're in an eternal winter, now."

They're taking a slow path around the lake, the surface of which is covered in a thin sheet of ice. It's not solid enough to take any weight, Pat doesn't think, but it's frozen enough for the surface to be cloudy, obscuring the water below. Pat wonders what it would be like to step onto it, to hear it crack beneath his feet. And he wonders what it would feel like to fall. To plunge into the depths, lungs screaming with it, and to be dragged out again, alive.

And as they walk, he thinks about the phrase eternal winter. It's the sort of thing that can easily sound dreary and depressing, but in reality it isn't like that at all. The cold is making him feel more alert, making everything around him seem somehow sharper, more vibrant.

Then they pass under a tree and a drop of icy water falls from a branch and hits the back of Pat's neck, which is exactly the worst place to be struck by a drop of icy water. He shivers violently, immediately rescinding his previous opinion about the weather.

"Pat," says the Captain, looking at him, and Pat reckons that's the first time the Captain's said his name. He shivers again, for an entirely different reason. "You're cold."

Pat shrugs. "A bit, yeah. I'll be alright though."

The Captain shakes his head and begins to remove his cloak, pulling it off over his head. Pat has an objection all ready to go, but it never manages to make its way out of his mouth. The cloak comes off, revealing a broad, uninterrupted expanse of the Captain's arms and torso, and Pat can properly see for the first time the way his mane wraps around his shoulders, goes all the way down to just beneath where his collarbone presumably is. His chest is much broader than his waist, the shape of him tapering right down once his ribcage ends, and there's a trail of darker fur at the base of his stomach, leading down to where his trousers begin.

Pat wrenches his eyes away. The Captain has taken his cloak off for Pat's benefit, and he doesn't need Pat ogling him about it.

The Captain slips the cloak over Pat's head, adjusting it over his shoulders, and Pat feels instantly warmer. He glances down and notices how much bigger it looks on him than it had looked on the Captain. The two sides of the cloak meet in the middle on Pat, not leaving any of his chest exposed, and the whole thing is trailing slightly on the floor behind him.

He looks up at the Captain. "Thanks. Don't you need it, though? For warmth, or - anything?" For modesty, he means, for not walking around the castle grounds half naked, where anybody could see.

"I don't need clothes, really. I'm warm enough without them. Too warm, sometimes." The Captain looks away, out over the lake, and Pat takes this opportunity to trace his eyes over the lines of the Captain's body. He takes in the slope of his shoulders and the curve of his elbows, just drinks his fill of the Captain while he's too lost in thought to notice.

"I used to worry more," the Captain continues, "about... appropriate attire. When I first - when the curse first happened. There weren't any clothes in the castle that fitted me, not really, but I hated the thought that I was making anybody feel uncomfortable by not being fully clothed." He looks back at Pat and shrugs. "But nobody cared, actually. Robin pointed out that it was no different than me wearing a coat made of fur. It's not like - not like a human, being naked. I'm never really naked, now."

Pat nods, says something in vague agreement, but really he's thinking about the others, about their reaction. Is it possible that to them, the Captain just looks like a person wearing a fur coat? Or like an animal, naked in an unremarkable sort of way?

He wraps the cloak around himself and follows the Captain back up the path to the castle. And he looks at the Captain's back, at the way the curve of it is still visible even in the dying light, even beneath all his fur, and he can't help but imagine what it would feel like to press his hand to the small of the Captain's back. How thick is the fur there? How firm would the muscles feel, underneath?

It seems impossible that Pat is the only person who thinks these things around the Captain. It feels like surely everybody must feel as overwhelmed as Pat does, when they look at him.

Over the next few days, Pat spends a lot more time in the Captain's library, helping him comb through the pile of books, page by page. And as the others come in and out of the room, running errands, he realises that it really is just him who feels like this. Just him, orbiting around the Captain, stealing glances at him whenever he can get away with it. The others hardly seem to take any notice of him at all.

It's very strange. Pat should probably have a think about what he's going do about all this, at some point. These things have always been very straightforward in the past, for Pat - you realise you like someone, and then you tell them about it, then either get rejected or start courting them, whichever. It's all pretty simple.

Unfortunately, Pat doesn't have a script for what to do when you're trapped in a castle with the person you like, under the influence of some kind of curse that he still doesn't fully understand. He doesn't really have a good sense of what 'courting' might look like, under these conditions, and the 'possibly getting rejected' side of things... he can't even begin to imagine how awkward that would make things, afterwards.

So he tries to put it out of his mind for the moment. He sits next to the Captain and turns the pages of his books and goes on walks with him around the castle grounds, and just keeps on falling for him, one moment at a time. The way snow falls, softly, one flake after another.

Barely noticeable, until you wake up one day and find yourself buried in it.

Chapter Text

They settle into a routine after a week or so. They spend the best part of each day working their way through the stack of books, but they take the evenings off to go for walks together through the grounds. Pat eats his breakfasts downstairs with the others, but then eats the rest of his meals in the Captain's rooms, while they work. He does his best to keep his eyes off the Captain while he's eating, especially when he's using his fingers, or when he's picking up his bowl of stew and drinking from it, because the Captain looks so self-conscious about the whole thing and Pat doesn't want to add to that. Doesn't want to end up eating downstairs with the others for all his meals. Not when he could be up here, enjoying the Captain's company.

Pat's favourite part of the day is the evening walks. The castle grounds are beautiful, and the Captain takes him a slightly different route each time, showing him different parts of the grounds. One day the Captain shows him a squat wooden building, buried deep in the trees behind the castle. There's a bush growing up against one side of it, almost completely hiding it from view.

"It's for birdwatching," he explains. Pat hadn't even really been aware that birdwatching was a thing people did, beyond just admiring a bird if you happen to spot one when you're out and about, but apparently it is. Apparently you can dedicate whole buildings to it, if you want to.

The Captain crouches down and shuffles through the door at the side of the hut, then moves across so that Pat can follow him inside. It's so small it's almost impossible for them not to be touching, and after a few seconds Pat decides to just relax, to stop trying to fold himself into the corner to avoid his arm brushing against the Captain's.

This is a mixed success. Pat is definitely more comfortable, but the arm brushing situation doesn't make it any easier to concentrate on the birds outside the window. The Captain is saying something, explaining something about the building or the birds or something, and Pat's attention is completely and utterly focused on the press of the Captain's arm against his, the way he can feel the Captain's heat radiating off him even through the layers Pat is wearing.

The Captain is peering out through the narrow window. It runs the whole length of the cabin, so the two of them aren't forced to look through it in the same place. That would be logistically very difficult, and also incredibly exciting, Pat thinks - having his face that close to the Captain's, being able to feel the warmth of the Captain's breath against Pat's cheek.

The Captain glances at Pat, and Pat realises that he's asked him a question, that he's waiting for an answer. He clears his throat. "Sorry, Cap, I missed that."

There's a pause, and then the Captain says, "Cap?"

"Sorry," Pat says again, realising what he's done. "I just - 'Captain' takes a pretty long time to say, y'know, so I was just -"

"It's fine, Pat." The Captain smiles softly. "You can call me Cap, if you like."

Pat thinks he's lucky the Captain doesn't smile more often, because it feels like he's having a minor heart attack every time it happens.

The Captain turns his attention back to the window. "Oh, look at that starling," he says quietly, pointing at a bird. Pat makes a valiant effort to look at the bird and not at the hand the Captain is pointing with.

"They're very clever birds, starlings," breathes the Captain. He brings his hand back down to his side, his arm brushing against Pat's again, and it's a sensory overload, being in this tiny hut with the Captain. "They're beautiful, as well. They look very plain, just black with speckles, but look more closely at the colours."

Pat focuses up. He looks at the bird, wanting to find something insightful to say, something that will impress the Captain. He's got nothing, though. He doesn't know a single thing about birds. He'd've said that one was a blackbird, if the Captain had asked him what he thought.

He can see, now that he's looking more closely, that it maybe isn't black at all. "Is it green?" he says. Very insightfully. "Underneath?"

The Captain seems pleased with this, at any rate. He's smiling again, just opening his mouth to respond, when the starling opens its beak and emits the strangest sound Pat has ever heard a bird make.

They both laugh, and Pat thinks, I don't think I've ever heard him laugh, before.

The Captain is explaining something about the noise, about how starlings mimic sounds, and that one was probably the sound of Robin sawing down a tree, or something, and Pat watches him and thinks about how he'd really quite like to spend every minute of every day trying to find ways to make the Captain laugh.

——

They make good progress with the stack of books, and by the time Pat has been at the castle a fortnight or so, they've only got a handful left to go through. These last few are ones they've been deliberately putting off - dense, unreadable texts - and Pat is beginning to think that maybe it wouldn't be the end of the world if they never found a way around the curse. Kitty would move on with her life, eventually, and Pat could just stay here with the Captain forever. It doesn't sound like a bad life, actually.

And then one day, Pat wakes up and everything is wrong.

There's nobody in the kitchen when he gets downstairs, for starters. Mary usually seems to get up at the crack of dawn to make a batch of porridge, but there's nothing on the stove today, and no signs of any plates or bowls that might've already been used. Pat stands in the doorway and just listens to the silence, tries to work out where everybody might be.

Then there are footsteps in the hallway behind him, and Pat turns around just as Robin reaches the doorway, squeezing past him. "Morning," he says, nodding to Pat. He pulls a knife out of a drawer and cuts a chunk off the loaf of bread on the side, then picks it up without bothering with a plate. 

"Morning," says Pat. "What's going on?"

Robin shrugs. "The Captain not well. Mary busy looking after him this morning."

"Not well?" Pat is torn between concern for the Captain and annoyance at Robin, for not seeming more bothered by this. "What's wrong with him?"

"Is a curse thing." Robin waves a hand vaguely. "He get ill a lot. It going to kill him one day, he say. I dunno."

"Going to kill him?" What is actually going on? Why hasn't anybody told him about this?

Robin shrugs again, and something inside Pat abruptly snaps. "Can you be a bit more worried about this, please?"

He's trying to sound angry, but it's coming out all high and squeaky, which might spoil the effect a bit. Robin sighs. "At the beginning, we all worry. But that was long time ago. Can't do this" - he gestures to Pat, to the way he's clearly panicking - "every time."

Pat gives up on the conversation. He leaves Robin to his breakfast and makes his way out of the kitchen to find the Captain and get some proper answers. As he climbs the stairs, he wonders what an illness like this might look like - something that's going to kill the Captain, but hasn't yet. Something that ails him so often that Robin has grown tired of worrying about it.

Pat reaches the landing and makes his way to the only closed door, the door to the only one of the Captain's rooms that he hasn't yet been into. He knocks, then pushes it open without waiting for a response.

The Captain's bedroom is another beautiful room, presumably, but Pat can't take in anything about its appearance, not when the Captain is lying on the bed in the middle of the room with his eyes closed, as if he's dying. As if he's already dead.

Pat approaches cautiously. Mary is sat in a chair on the other side of the bed, murmuring something to herself as she presses a damp cloth to the Captain's forehead. She looks up as Pat reaches the bed. "I be's blessing him," she explains, "to ward off the evil spirits."

Pat sometimes wonders at Mary, at the way all her dislike of witchcraft and evil spirits sometimes leads to her doing things which look an awful lot like performing spells. He takes a seat across the bed from her and looks down at the Captain. He had seemed motionless, at first glance, but he's twitching slightly, leaning into Mary's touch.

"'Tis a fever," Mary says. She takes the cloth away and touches the back of her hand to the Captain's forehead, then sits back, looking down at him with a mildly anxious expression on her face. Pat's hand reaches out to do the same thing, without him even consciously moving it, but he manages to stop himself before he makes contact. Even from a few inches above the Captain's head, he can feel the heat radiating off him. There's no need to touch him to confirm it.

He puts his hands in his lap and thinks about the time Kitty had had a fever, a couple of years ago. He'd had to get the doctor out in the end, she'd been that ill. But she'd pulled through alright. The doctor had said something about keeping her the right temperature, although Pat can't remember whether that was about keeping her warm or keeping her cool. And there was something about making sure she took in plenty of liquids - tea, soup, things like that. To help her keep her strength up.

He looks at Mary. "What do you do, when he gets ill?"

Mary shrugs. "Well, I do ward off the spirits, and then I just tries to stop him getting too hot. I keeps the window open, takes the blankets off the bed. It be's out of our hands, I suppose, if it be the curse that ails him."

Pat is beginning to notice more things now, as Mary talks. The way the window is open, the curtain blowing around in the cold breeze that's entering the room. And the way the Captain is lying under a crisp, white sheet, with no blankets on top of it. It's the sort of sheet you might put over someone after they've died, like a shroud, and Pat puts that thought out of his mind.

"Okay," he says, slowly. Mary seems to have the cooling-the-Captain-down thing covered, if that is what you're supposed to do when someone has a fever. Now there's just the small matter of getting him to drink something. "Could you bring up some soup?"

Mary nods and then leaves the room, handing Pat the cloth on her way out. Pat just holds it for a moment, looking down at the Captain, wondering if there's even anything useful he can do. As Mary had said, isn't it out of their hands? If he's ill because of the curse?

The Captain's eyes flicker open, and Pat leans forward slightly, unsure whether he's properly awake or not. "Cap?" he tries, and the Captain makes a groaning noise. He's starting to shiver now, his whole body convulsing, and Pat gently presses the cloth to his forehead, trying to see if he's maybe cooling down a little bit, if he could do with a blanket. But he's still boiling hot, so hot that within moments the cloth is warm all the way through. 

It would be more effective to take the Captain's temperature with the back of his hand than with the cloth, Pat knows that. But he doesn't want to touch the Captain if the Captain wouldn't - he wouldn't want that, would he, if he was aware of what was happening? He wouldn't want Pat to know how his fur feels, whether it's actually as soft as it looks. And Pat doesn't think that's what he wants, for it to be like this, the first time he touches the Captain. He's spent a bit of time recently thinking what it might be like, the first time he touches the Captain, and in none of those daydreams has it been for the purpose of taking his temperature.

The Captain's eyes focus on Pat, and Pat removes the cloth from his forehead. "Cap?" he tries again.

"I'm sorry," says the Captain. He looks away. "I'm not - not very well, today."

His teeth are beginning to chatter, and the shivering seems to be getting more violent with every passing moment, and Pat's heart is just breaking for him. "Can I do anything?" he asks, desperate for something, anything, to do. "Can I help at all?"

The Captain shakes his head, his teeth still chattering. He takes a deep breath, closing his eyes, clearly trying to will his body to be still. It sort of works. His body is still shaking, but the chattering slows down a lot. "I'm cold," he manages, and Pat raises his eyebrows.

"You're burning up," says Pat gently. He puts a hand on the Captain's chest, touching him through the sheet, and focuses on the way the Captain is shivering under Pat's hand, but is still boiling hot. He doesn't think about the way the Captain's fur is more springy than he'd expected, or the way the muscles in his chest are firm, unyielding underneath all his fur. Those thoughts would all be deeply inappropriate, so he pushes them away. "You're not cold, I promise."

"I f-feel f-freezing," argues the Captain half-heartedly. He looks up at Pat. "Please," he says. And then he puts his hand over Pat's, where it's still resting gently on his chest.

Okay, so - they're touching, now. This is what touching the Captain is like. Pat registers several things at once - the soft pads on the Captain's palm and fingers, and the fur that grows between them, short and slightly bristly. The way his hand is so big it completely covers Pat's. The way Pat's own body seems to have stopped working all of a sudden, his heart rate speeding up until it feels like his chest might burst, and his lungs are clearly failing because he seems to have stopped breathing altogether. Like there's no room inside him for any vital functions, for anything at all apart from how it feels to have the Captain's hand on his, to have the Captain staring into his eyes and covering Pat's hand and saying 'please' as if there's anything in the world Pat would ever want to deny him.

"Please," says the Captain again. "Will you warm me up? Please?"

There was definitely something, some reason why this was a bad idea. But then maybe Pat's remembering it wrong and you're supposed to keep a sick person warm rather than keeping them cool. He doesn't know. He doesn't think he knows anything any more. The Captain shifts over in the bed, making room for him, and Pat gets in under the sheet, propping himself up on the pillows, moving as if he's in a trance. The Captain presses against him and it's so much contact, all at once, the Captain's chest pressing against Pat's belly and his head resting on Pat's chest, and even through his clothes Pat can feel one of the Captain's horns digging into him slightly. He decides if they're doing this they might as well do it properly, so he wraps his arm around the Captain's back, resting his hand on the Captain's shoulder, and closes his eyes and just thinks, surely this can't do any harm. Surely it's like Mary had said, and none of it matters because the Captain is cursed, anyway, and he's stopped shivering now so that must count for something, mustn't it?

The Captain makes a noise of contentment, adjusting the position of his head so that it isn't digging into Pat's chest quite as much, and Pat wonders absently how often the Captain touches other people. Whether it's only something that happens when he's like this, half out of his mind with fever. Pat hopes not. He finds himself thinking about Kitty, about how he used to dance with her in the kitchen, taking it in turns to make up the moves. He wonders who she's dancing with, now he's gone. He wonders whether or not she managed to go to that ball with Thomas. Kitty and the ball and the trip to the market, that all feels like a lifetime ago, like something that had happened to a completely different person. Because this is Pat's life now, whether he likes it or not, and he does, he does like it. He likes this, lying here with the Captain's head resting on his chest. He likes it, and he doesn't ever want it to end.

Except, apparently, the Captain is dying. So it has to end, doesn't it? Pat wonders whether it might happen today, whether this might be the fever that kills the Captain, and he wonders whether he'd feel guilty, if it did. There would be a part of him that would regret this, he's sure, that would wonder whether he'd hastened the end for the Captain by letting him heat up too much. But there would also be a part of him that would be glad to have been allowed this. To have gotten this close to the Captain, even if it had only happened once.

Pat decides, in that moment, that he's going to do something about his feelings for the Captain. If the Captain recovers - when the Captain recovers - Pat will talk to him. He'll ask him if he can kiss him, or dance with him, or something. Anything. Before it's too late.

Mary comes back into the room with a bowl of soup, and Pat sits up guiltily, dislodging the Captain from his position. Mary raises her eyebrows but doesn't comment.

"Is there a spoon?" asks Pat, looking at the bowl as Mary sets it down on a small table beside the bed.

She shakes her head. "The Captain be's not able to use a spoon."

Of course he can't. Pat thinks about the way the Captain normally eats soup, thinks about what the chances are that the Captain is going to be able to sit up in bed and hold the bowl to his lips to drink out of it.

It's not looking good, if the way the Captain is currently curled up beside him is any indication. He's shivering again, so Pat puts a hand on his back, between his shoulder blades, hoping to convey some warmth to the Captain, or some calmness, perhaps. He's still hot to the touch, but possibly less hot than he had been a minute ago. It's hard to say with any certainty.

Pat looks at Mary. "Could you bring a spoon anyway?"

She shrugs. "If you like."

She leaves the room again, and Pat puts the back of his hand to the Captain's forehead, to try to get a better idea of his temperature. It really does feel like he's cooled down slightly. His forehead is damp with sweat, and Pat picks up the cloth again and does a very poor job of wiping the Captain's brow. His fur is so thick there, just above his eyebrows where his mane begins, and Pat thinks it would really be more effective if he could get the Captain into a bath, sponge him down. But he obviously isn't feeling well enough for that just at the moment.

It's becoming strangely normal, touching the Captain. Commonplace, almost. The Captain's body had seemed so mysterious before, and Pat reckons he'd been curious about it and afraid of it in equal measure, but now it's just... the Captain's body. Pat doesn't have to wonder about what it would feel like to touch the Captain, because he knows. He knows that the Captain's fur is soft on his back, and on his chest, and slightly courser just above his eyebrows. He knows that the Captain's body is firm and muscular, underneath all the fur. He's getting used to the Captain touching him, in this context - because he's feeling ill, because he needs something from Pat. And if Pat would really like to be touching him in a different context, then that's a thought that's getting easier and easier to ignore.

Mary brings the spoon, and Pat shifts the Captain into more of a sitting position, his head tilting back against Pat's shoulder as Pat sits up against the pillows. He keeps one arm looped around the Captain's chest, holding him in place, and with the other hand he brings a spoonful of soup to the Captain's lips. The Captain pauses for a moment before drinking from the spoon, and Pat takes a moment to be thankful that he's stopped violently shivering, because he reckons they'd get a lot of soup all over the bed if he was.

He puts the spoon back in the bowl, gets some more soup, and the Captain makes a noise of complaint. "You can't feed me the whole bowl like that, we'll be here all day."

Pat can't help but smile at the Captain's annoyance. He's just delighted that the Captain is feeling well enough for speaking in full sentences. "I can, y'know. Unless you'd like to try drinking from the bowl?"

The Captain thinks for a moment, and then gives a half-hearted shake of his head. Pat brings the spoon to his mouth again and the Captain parts his lips for it. It's the first time Pat has got a proper look at the Captain's teeth, and it's not just the ones that stick out of his lower jaw that are sharp. He's got a whole row of sharp little teeth between those ones, and Pat wonders absently whether they make it more difficult to eat normal human food, to take a bite out of something like an apple.

Then he finds himself, just for a moment, wondering what it would feel like to be bitten by the Captain. To put his fingers into his mouth and feel just how sharp those teeth really are.

He pushes that thought away and focuses on the soup. One spoonful at a time. And the Captain really does seem to be starting to feel better. By the time they've finished the bowl, he doesn't even feel dangerously hot to the touch any more. He does seem to be getting drowsy, a dead weight against Pat's chest, and Pat decides it's probably time to let him sleep. He eases out from under him, climbing carefully out of the bed and leaving the Captain's head propped up slightly against the pillows, his eyes blinking slowly shut.

Pat closes the window and thinks for a moment about leaving the Captain to it, maybe fetching Mary to see if she thinks it's safe enough to leave him. But if he's being honest, leaving the Captain is the last thing he wants to do right now.

So instead, he settles down in the chair beside him, and watches the Captain sleep.

——

The Captain is up and about the following day, eating his soup without assistance, and the day after that they're back at work in the library. Pat is still trying to wrap his head around all of it, as he turns the pages of a book with the smallest writing he's ever seen.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asks, leaving the rest unspoken. Why didn't you tell me you were going to die? Why didn't you trust me?

"I didn't want to worry you," says the Captain. He's peering through a magnifying glass at the text, clearly more focused on that than he is on Pat's question. And okay, yeah, that's fair enough, that he didn't want to worry Pat. But it's much more of a worry to have something like that sprung on you.

"Is there anything else you're not telling me? Because I'd really rather know, y'know."

The Captain puts the magnifying glass down and looks at Pat. They're sitting very close together, Pat holding the book to stop it from falling shut, and Pat is starting to regret that, now. They should maybe find something they can use to keep the book open, to avoid the Captain looking at Pat with his face only inches away, completely derailing Pat's train of thought.

"That's everything," says the Captain. "There's a curse on the castle, on me. It can't be broken. Perhaps when I die it will break, I'm not sure. The wording isn't clear on that point." He glances down to the drawer underneath the desk, where he keeps the scroll. He gets it out occasionally, when he needs to check the exact wording of the curse. He's never let Pat see it.

"But I am hoping," he continues, "that we might be able to bend the rules slightly. This book seems confident that the wording of 'prisoner' is more flexible than the curse would have us believe."

This is news to Pat. "I thought we were just trying to get a message out?"

The Captain smiles. "The best way to get a message out is with a messenger, wouldn't you say?" He gestures to the book in front of them. "From the way this book is going, I'm hopeful that there will be something in one of the later chapters about how to release a prisoner from the castle grounds."

He looks very pleased with himself. And Pat can't bring himself to tell him that actually, he can't think of anything in the world that he wants less than to be released from the castle grounds.

Chapter Text

Pat spends a lot of time thinking about the promise he'd made to himself. When the Captain had been ill, it had seemed like the easiest thing in the world, the idea of telling the Captain how he felt about him. But now that everything's gone back to normal, it's looking unlikely that Pat will ever manage to gather up the courage for it. What's he supposed to say? 'I know you're looking for a way to release me from the castle, but actually I'd like to stay here with you forever, because I love you?'

Okay, yeah, he could just say that. It's just harder than he'd thought it would be, to find the right moment.

So instead, he suggests a dance.

It's the perfect solution. It's something for all of them to do, to break up the monotony a bit. It'll take everybody's minds off things. And it'll give Pat the opportunity to touch the Captain, without having to tell him how he feels.

He spends the whole week before the dance sitting beside the Captain in the library, thinking about it. He imagines what it would be like to be holding the Captain, their bodies pressed together. He dreams, endlessly, about taking the Captain into his arms, twirling him round on the dancefloor.

Or being twirled round on the dancefloor. Pat isn't picky, actually. He's just looking forward to touching the Captain at a time when the Captain isn't out of his mind with fever.

Mary's been up on a ladder washing the windows, and Robin has been waxing the floor, and by the time the evening of the dance rolls around, everything's gleaming in the candlelight. Including the Captain, as he steps into the ballroom. He's found some clothes that fit him, a shirt and jacket, all buttoned up right to the neck, and Pat thinks... wow.

It's a good look on him. Not quite as good a look as the shirtless one, but Pat will take it.

And then the Captain sits down at the piano in the corner and begins to play.

It's a beautiful melody, rich and haunting. The others step out onto the dancefloor, but all Pat wants to do is listen to it, actually. He makes his way slowly across the room to the piano, and as he gets closer it's as if the music is filling him up, resonating right through him. He's never heard this song before, he's sure of that, but as he comes to a stop in front of the piano he thinks that maybe he's always known it, the tune of it. Maybe it was something someone sung to him as a baby. Something he heard in another life.

It comes to an end eventually, the way all good things do, and the Captain lets his claws come to a rest against the keys. He smiles up at Pat, at whatever expression he can see in Pat's face, and Pat thinks that at this rate he might not even have to tell the Captain how he feels about him. Because he's pretty sure it's blatantly obvious.

"I had to relearn how to play, after the curse," the Captain says, into the silence between them. "It felt very different with these hands. But it was the only thing that kept me sane, back then. The idea that no matter what I had become, I could still create music."

Pat is still thinking about the tune, still trying to remember what it reminds him of, when his brain catches up with what the Captain is saying. With 'create music'.

"Hang on, did you write that?"

The Captain nods. "Yes, I wrote that."

"Wow." Pat can't imagine how you'd even go about it. How you'd even begin to write a song.

The Captain shrugs. "I've always written music, ever since I was young. There was just something about it. There were a lot of things I found difficult, as a child, but music always came easily to me." He brings his claws down onto the keys again, starting up a new tune, and this time Pat can see how he's doing it, can appreciate just how delicate he's having to be. He's clearly got a lot of control over his fingers, despite his difficulties with things like turning the pages of books and holding cutlery, if he can use them for this. For playing music like this.

Pat imagines what it might be like to have those claws against his skin. To have the Captain controlling himself carefully, so that he can hold Pat in his hands without leaving so much as a scratch on him. He swallows heavily at the thought of that.

And then he realises that, beautiful music aside, the evening isn't playing out quite the way he'd hoped.

"Will you dance, after this one?" he asks casually, and the Captain shakes his head.

"I don't dance," he says, and Pat's heart sinks.

"Not even..." Pat begins, and then trails off. He's not quite sure where he was going with that sentence.

Not even when everybody else is dancing? Not even when your life might be ending?

Not even with me?

"Alright," says Pat. It's alright if the Captain doesn't want to dance. It's up to him, after all.

Pat stays by the piano for a bit, listening. And then he goes and dances with the others, showing them some of the moves he and Kitty had made up, learning some new moves from them in return. Robin seems to dance by just bouncing around, moving his arms in time to the music, but Mary and Annie take it in turns to dance with him properly, and at one point all three of them hold hands and twirl around the room, Robin running circles around them.

It's fun. It's nothing like any ball Pat has ever heard of, but that's alright. He's having a nice evening.

He keeps dancing with the others, and pretends that he doesn't mind that the one person he'd wanted to dance with is the one person who doesn't want to dance at all.

——

Annie wants a turn at the piano as the evening draws to a close, so the Captain gives up his seat to her. He makes his way out through the doors, into the evening air, and Pat follows him, because he doesn't think he could physically stop himself if he tried.

He pulls the door closed behind him, shutting out the sounds of Mary and Robin arguing about who is stepping on whose toes. The Captain is sitting at one end of a stone bench, looking out over the gardens. Pat takes a seat at the other end, trying to push down the feeling that he's disturbing him. He opens his mouth to say something about the stars, or the unseasonable warmth of the evening, but what actually comes out is quite different.

"Why don't you dance?"

The Captain sighs. "I just... it would make me feel too self-conscious, I think. Even just coming to the dance tonight, that's the most time I've spent in front of everybody, since... well. Since the curse. I don't think I could cope with being in the middle of the dancefloor, with everybody looking at me."

That does make sense, Pat supposes. He thinks about how the Captain spends quite a lot of time with him, though, and how he doesn't seem to struggle to cope when it's just Pat looking at him.

He wonders whether that's to do with the number of people, or something else. Something to do with it being Pat, in particular.

It's a nice thought, but probably not an accurate one.

The Captain is deep in his own train of thought, by the looks of things. "It's easier to seem normal when I'm sitting at the piano, I suppose. But it would be obvious, when I was dancing, how different I am." He looks at Pat. "I don't want to be like this, you know. A monster."

"You're not a monster," says Pat automatically.

The Captain shrugs. "You know what I mean. A beast. Seeing the horror in Mary and Robin's faces after I transformed... I don't enjoy making people afraid, Pat."

Pat thinks about saying 'I'm not afraid of you', but he's not completely sure that's true, actually.

"I suppose a lot of the time, I'm trying to hide that I'm... you know. This." The Captain looks down at his hands, folded in his lap. "It's not that I'm trying to pretend to be human, even. A lot of that feels wrong now - wearing clothes, for instance. And my name didn't feel like it fit any more, after I changed. I'm not trying to be human, I'm just trying not to be something children are told stories about, to frighten them."

Pat looks out across the grounds, lit up by the moonlight, and thinks about how beautiful it all is. Not despite the eternal winter, but because of it. And he thinks about how the Captain clearly isn't happy with who he is, and he wonders how much of that is just down to his fear of making other people uncomfortable.

He wonders if there's anything at all he could say that would help with that.

"Well, I don't mind," he says eventually. "You're welcome to scare me as much as you like." He means it in a completely selfless way, but actually... yeah. He wouldn't hate that, actually.

"Thank you," says the Captain. "I'll bear that in mind."

They sit quietly together for a minute or so, just listening to the mingling sounds of the piano and the sounds of the night. An owl hoots somewhere, out in the forest.

Pat is just wondering how long he'll be able to keep sitting on the cold stone bench, when the Captain speaks.

"I found something."

And Pat instantly knows what he's talking about. His heart plummets.

"Yeah?" he says, as casually as he can manage.

The Captain nods. "I think... it looks like there is a way you can leave. But it'll only work if you promise to come back again."

Pat looks at the Captain, dressed up to the nines, sitting stiffly on the bench beside him. And he thinks that won't be a problem.

——

That isn't the problem. The problem, it turns out, is that the Captain doesn't trust him to keep his promise.

It's the morning after the dance, and they're putting the Captain's plan into action. He'd found something in his book about the definition of 'prisoner', something about how a prisoner can be sent out of the castle temporarily to perform duties for their captor, as long as they can be trusted to return.

So Pat had put his coat on, readied Dante for the journey, and the Captain had bid him go to the village and pass on a message to Kitty. He'd given his permission for Pat to stay there a few nights before coming back. Pat had said goodbye, ridden out of the gates, and been immediately turned around again.

And again, and again. The others are all gathered round by this point, critiquing his technique. Which isn't very helpful, actually.

"You needs to tells the Captain that you be coming back," suggests Mary eventually, and there's a flicker of something across the Captain's face that suggests that... yeah. Maybe it is that, actually.

Pat dismounts. "Alright guys, can we have a minute?"

The others retreat, just far enough to be out of earshot, as Pat approaches the Captain. He stops in front of him, scrutinising his expression. "Do you think it might be that, Cap? That you don't trust me to come back?"

"Of course I trust you." But the Captain isn't meeting his eyes, and Pat thinks... maybe the Captain's worried that Pat will just leave and not return. Maybe, in spite of all the time they've spent together, the Captain still doesn't think he means anything to Pat.

Pat blows out a breath. "God, Cap. Do you really think I'd leave forever, just like that?"

The Captain meets his eyes, then. "Well, why shouldn't you? You're not supposed to be here. None of you are. Of course you'd want to leave, to get back to your real life."

"This is my real life," says Pat. It isn't what he'd planned, that's true. But he doesn't want to be anywhere else, now.

The Captain looks away again, and Pat knows he can't say it now, like this. He can't say 'I love you' and then just get on a horse and leave. And he doesn't want to leave Kitty waiting any longer than he has to, worrying about him.

So instead he takes half a step forward, moving into the Captain's space. He reaches his hand out and takes hold of the Captain's wrist, wrapping his fingers around it, making sure he has the Captain's full attention.

"I'll never leave you," he says. "Not ever. Alright?"

The Captain nods, and Pat gives his wrist a squeeze, then lets go. The Captain makes an aborted movement, as if he'd thought about reaching out and touching Pat but then changed his mind, and Pat aches for him.

He'll be back in a few days. They can talk about it then.

"I'll be off, then," says Pat. "And then I'll be back."

The Captain doesn't say anything. Not as Pat walks away, and not as Pat gets back on his horse.

Pat circles round once, waving goodbye to the others. The Captain raises his hand slightly, gives Pat a half smile, and then Pat's off through the gates.

For real, this time.

——

It's lovely to see Kitty. And it turns out that, despite Pat having been gone for several weeks, she hasn't been all that worried about him.

"I just thought you must have found somewhere lovely to stay and lost track of the time!" she says once she's finished hugging him.

Pat supposes she's half right, there. He tells her about the castle, and about the Captain and the curse, and she seems delighted by all of it.

"A beast!" she breathes. "Gosh. Is he very scary?"

"Nah," says Pat. "Not once you get to know him."

And actually, now Pat's thinking about it, he wonders whether he'd ever really found the Captain scary. He wonders if it had ever actually been about fear, for him, or whether there had maybe been something else going on, right from the beginning.

That might be something worth adding to the pile of things he needs to talk to the Captain about when he gets back.

He gives Kitty the material for her dress, although the ball has already been and gone. Apparently it had been a great success, in spite of everything. Kitty tells Pat the whole story - how Thomas had danced almost every dance with her, and how because Thomas had given her some ribbons to brighten up one of her old dresses, she'd barely heard any disparaging comments about it at all. Her and Thomas seem like a sure thing now, but Pat is trying not to pry too much. From the looks of the garden, it certainly seems like Kitty has been spending more time talking to Thomas over the fence than doing anything all that useful out there. No change there, then.

Pat is just happy she's happy. He doesn't really want to leave her again, but he can't see that he has a choice. She's offered to come with him, to come and stay in the castle, but he can't risk her getting trapped there like that. She's got her whole life to live, after all.

Thomas comes to the cottage for tea one day, and he reads out a poem he's written for Kitty. It's a lovely gesture, even if it does seem to go on for hours. Pat had wondered whether Thomas might want to take advantage of him being there to ask him for Kitty's hand in marriage, or something like that, but Thomas seems perfectly content to drink tea and recite poetry and then just go home again.

Which is fine. Pat would just like to know that Kitty's going to be alright, before he heads back to the castle. Because he's made it back this time, but who knows what'll happen the next time.

He's telling himself it's because he's worried the Captain will get stuck again, not being able to trust that Pat will come back, like he had before. But really, it's the other thing that's worrying him. If he's the Captain's prisoner, and the Captain dies... the Captain hadn't seemed sure what would happen next.

Pat isn't letting himself think about it. He just enjoys the time he's spending with Kitty, and counts down the days until his return to the castle. But then, one night, he has the most vivid dream he's ever had in his life.

It's of the Captain, dying. Asking for him. Wanting to say goodbye.

Pat wakes in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, and he's pulling on his travelling clothes before he's even fully awake. He leaves a scribbled note for Kitty, gets Dante ready, and then he's off, riding back to the castle.

He tells himself that it's a massive overreaction. That it was just a dream. And, in the end, he gets to the castle just as dawn is breaking, on what turns out to be the final day.

Because, of course, it wasn't just a dream.

Chapter Text

The castle is eerily quiet when Pat steps inside. He makes his way to the kitchen, hoping to find Mary making breakfast, but she's not there. Robin and Annie are sitting at the table instead. They're fully dressed, and they look up at him as he comes to a stop in the doorway.

It's not good news. That's clear just from their faces, so Pat doesn't waste time talking to them. He turns around and hurries back down the passageway, across the dining room, then takes the stairs at a run. He can't stop thinking about how even Robin had looked worried - Robin, who'd said he couldn't do that every time the Captain was ill. But he is doing it, today.

Please don't let me be too late, he thinks desperately.

He pushes the door open, out of breath, and it's a very similar scene to the last time - the Captain lying in the bed, Mary sitting in the chair beside him, the window open, the curtains billowing out into the room.

But this time the Captain is clearly alive, and clearly very unwell. His eyes are open and unfocused, staring at the ceiling, and his whole body is twitching, and as Pat approaches he can see that the Captain's fur is damp with sweat.

Mary isn't doing anything this time, except for looking at the Captain with a worried expression on her face. She glances up at Pat as he takes the seat on the other side of the bed.

"He's been like this all night," she says, her hands twisting together in her lap. "He be's not sure who I am, now."

Pat touches the back of his hand to the Captain's forehead, and it only confirms what he already knows.

"I'll leave you with him for a minute," Mary says, and she rises and leaves the room.

Pat wonders absently whether she means 'I'll let you take a turn of watching him', or whether she means 'I'll give you two some privacy'. He thinks it probably doesn't matter now, not now the Captain almost certainly won't recognise him through the haze of the fever.

Pat tries anyway, of course. He takes the Captain's hand, holds it between his own, and tries.

"I'm back, Cap," he says, and his voice breaks on it. He clears his throat and tries again. "I'm here now. I'm going to stay here, with you, for - for the rest of your life."

The Captain doesn't react. He's still staring at the ceiling, and Pat tries to think of something to talk about. He could tell the Captain a bit about his trip, about Kitty, maybe.

He opens his mouth to talk, and then suddenly he's sobbing, doubling over with it. "Please," he gasps, "please, please don't leave me, Cap. I don't know what I'll do without you."

There's still no reaction. Pat takes some deep breaths, trying to get himself back under control. Because he knows he's just being silly, really. He does know what he'll do without him, of course he does. He'll stay here with the others if the curse doesn't break, and he'll go back to his cottage if it does, and he'll watch Kitty get married and leave him. Either way, it's the sort of life he'd have been completely happy with, a few weeks ago. He can live that life, the one where it's mostly just him, doing things by himself. He knows he can, because it's the life he's pretty much always had.

It doesn't feel like enough, though. Not any more. Not now he knows his life can be like this, taking walks by the lake with the Captain, and watching birds with the Captain, and sitting beside the Captain on a bench, not dancing. This is what he wants, and this is exactly what he can't have. It's all over, now.

He takes some more deep breaths and grips the Captain's hand tightly. He's full of regrets, now, wishing he'd never left, wishing he'd spent these last few days with the Captain. Or, if he'd thought about it a bit harder, he could've brought someone helpful back with him. A doctor, maybe, or someone who knew a bit more about magic. Someone who could have made one last attempt at breaking the curse.

Well. It's just going to have to be up to Pat, isn't it? He's not a doctor, but he's learnt a thing or two about magic, these last few weeks. There might be something in the scroll, some obscure way the curse can be broken. It's worth a try, at least.

Reluctantly, he lets go of the Captain's hand. The Captain's eyes are closed now, and the twitching has stopped. His breaths are starting to slow, and it really feels like if Pat is going to do this, it has to be now. So, fighting every instinct in his body screaming at him to stay, he gets up and leaves the room.

He makes his way to the library as quickly as he can. He opens the drawer, pulls out the parchment, then unrolls it on the desk, scanning over it. It's all as he'd expected, as the Captain had said - eternal winter on the castle, the inhabitants can't leave, the Captain will die - until he gets to the handwritten line, right at the bottom.

The break clause. There's a break clause.

Pat reads it once, twice, then lets go of the scroll and rushes back to the Captain's room, his heart in his mouth. He drops to his knees next to the bed, taking the Captain's hand again.

"I love you," he says breathlessly. He presses his face to the back of the Captain's hand, squeezing his eyes shut, and he doesn't think about how he can't hear the Captain's breathing any more. He just focuses on this, on doing everything he can to break the curse. "I love you, Cap, I'm in love with you. Please, please don't die."

Nothing happens. Pat's crying again, now, all over the Captain's hand, and there's a long moment where he thinks that this is it. That it's over, that he was too late.

And then there's a flash of light.

Pat raises his head and notices all of it at once. He feels the wind rushing through the room, sees the sun, bright outside the window, hears the birds in the trees in the grounds. The trees are now covered in blossom, and the temperature in the room seems to have risen slightly, and the Captain's hand is cooling, where Pat is holding it.

The Captain blinks his eyes open, then sits up, and he's alive, thank God. Thank God. Mary is in the room, somehow, and Pat can hear the others in the hallway outside, and his whole body is just flooded with relief.

"What happened?" asks the Captain, and the events of the last few minutes replay in Pat's mind. The way Pat had read the scroll and found out that there was a way to break the spell, despite what the Captain had said. And the way the Captain had actually, very nearly died.

The relief has evaporated, and it's left Pat absolutely boiling with rage. He gets to his feet, trembling with it, with the intensity of it.

"How dare you?!" he shouts, and Mary jumps about a foot into the air, but there's no part of his brain that's available to worry about her. "How dare you! There was a way to break the curse, and you didn't tell me? You were just going to bloody die?"

"Pat, I-" begins the Captain, but Pat doesn't hear the rest of it. He's gone, out of the room, down the stairs and out of the castle.

He stops when he gets to the lake. He sits down on the grass in front of it, puts his head in his hands, and screams.

It's just been a bit of an intense morning, actually. And it feels like it's going to take him a few minutes before he's ready to face up to the rest of it. 

——

The Captain gives him a little while before coming to find him. Pat is looking out over the lake, pulling up handfuls of grass, when he hears the Captain's footsteps behind him. He settles down next to Pat on the grass, and neither of them speak for a long moment.

Pat doesn't really know where to begin, actually. Because the whole thing is so ridiculous. If you've got a piece of parchment that says 'the curse will be broken if someone falls in love with you', and if you're living with someone who's clearly falling in love with you, then you tell them about it, don't you? Pat can't actually think of a single reason why you wouldn't tell them about it.

And he can't help replaying the other thing, the thing that had so nearly happened. If he hadn't had that dream, or if he'd been just a little bit later with any of it... the Captain would have died, right there in his bed. And then, at some later date, Pat would have found that scroll, would have found out that he could've stopped it all. If only he'd been brave enough to tell the Captain how he felt.

It makes him feel sick to think about that.

It's the Captain who speaks first, in the end. "I am sorry, Pat," he says, and that's not really good enough, actually.

Pat shakes his head. "I just can't believe you didn't tell me." He looks across at the Captain, and to his credit, the Captain looks like he's feeling pretty awful about the whole thing. And he has just almost died, to be fair.

Pat should possibly go a bit easier on him.

"I didn't see the point," says the Captain, looking out across the lake. "I didn't really... I suppose I didn't really think it was possible for someone to fall in love with me while I looked like this."

Pat looks at the Captain. His fur is shining in the morning sunlight, his cloak shifting slightly in the gentle breeze, and he's completely, heartbreakingly beautiful. It's the most nonsense Pat has ever heard.

"Didn't you notice?" asks Pat. "I wasn't being very subtle, y'know. Didn't you know I was in love with you?"

The Captain looks at him, then looks away again. "I didn't know... how much of it was me wanting you to feel that way, and how much was actually happening. And even if it had been true, if you had... had feelings for me, I didn't want you to feel obligated. I didn't want you to feel like you had to love me, to break the curse."

"So you were just going to die?"

The Captain sighs deeply. "It wasn't a good plan, I know. I suppose I didn't think it through that far. I thought I had more time, and that... well, if you were to fall in love with me then I could tell you about the break clause, afterwards. It all happened too quickly, in the end."

"Yeah." Pat supposes it did, really. He looks out across the lake, and thinks... okay. That wasn't great, but it's all over, now.

There's a tiny spark of hope, blooming in his chest, as he thinks about what might come next.

"I suppose, at this point," the Captain is saying, "I shouldn't be surprised by anything that happens. But I really did think I might be turned back into a human, if the break clause was activated."

"I'm glad you weren't," says Pat, before he can stop himself. Because honestly, if the Captain had been replaced by just an ordinary human... well. Pat's not shallow, as a rule, but he can't say he wouldn't be disappointed.

The Captain looks at him, his eyebrows raised, and Pat attempts to dig himself out of the hole he's just got himself into. "I just mean... obviously it's disappointing for you, if you'd rather be human. I'd prefer it if you were happy, obviously. But... I do like you like this."

"Really?" The Captain still looks incredibly sceptical.

"Yeah, of course," says Pat. He doesn't know how to convince him, actually, so he reaches out and takes the Captain's hand in both of his own. He holds it gently and traces his fingers over it, over the fur and the long claws, the pads on the Captain's fingers, and then looks back up at him. "I like you, just like this. I didn't fall in love with you in spite of what you looked like, y'know. I like all of you."

"Oh." The Captain looks down at his hand, where it's resting in Pat's. And then he looks up at Pat again. "You know, I like all of you, too."

The spark of hope in Pat's chest is turning into something bigger, now, and he's just thinking through the logistics of how kissing the Captain might work, with all his sharp canine teeth, when there's a loud whooping sound from behind them.

It would seem that Robin has tested out the castle gates and found that, for the first time in five years, he can go through them.

The Captain drops Pat's hand and gets to his feet, brushing his trousers down. "Well," he says. "Would you like to go for a walk?"

A proper walk, out in the forest.

"Yes please," says Pat. They can work the rest of it out later, after all.

——

Mary and Annie join them for the walk, and Robin runs circles around them all, chasing squirrels, and it's nice, being outside the castle. Well, Pat's been outside the castle quite recently, actually, but it must be nice for the others.

Robin disappears at some point, and he still hasn't returned by the time they get back to the castle gates. The Captain just shrugs. "I wasn't expecting everybody to stay, not now the curse has lifted," he says, and Mary and Annie exchange loaded glances which Pat reckons means they won't be sticking around for long, either.

They cobble together some bits for lunch and all eat together around the dining table - even the Captain, for a change - and then Mary disappears off to the kitchens, and Annie disappears off somewhere else, and it's just Pat and the Captain, finishing off their bread and cheese.

"Well," says the Captain, pushing his plate away. "I suppose you'll be wanting to leave, too. To get back to Kitty."

Pat blinks. "I mean... yeah, I'll be visiting her quite a bit, I s'pose. Or she can come and stay here, if you don't mind. But I'm not leaving."

"Oh," says the Captain, looking surprised, and it's infuriating, actually. Pat had thought he'd got rid of all his anger about the Captain being ridiculous, when he was having his little scream down by the lake earlier, but apparently not.

"You know," Pat says slowly, "when you were - well, earlier. In your room. I said I was going to stay for the rest of your life. And I meant that, y'know. I love you, and I'm not leaving you. Not if you'd like me to stay."

"Of course I'd like you to stay," says the Captain. "Of course. I don't know if I said, but I also feel the same way. About you."

Pat smiles. "You didn't. But I had an inkling."

The Captain reaches out and takes Pat's hand, and Pat thinks this might be the first time the Captain has touched him, deliberately, rather than the other way around.

"You'd really like to stay?" he says quietly, and Pat nods.

"Yeah. Forever. I'd marry you, y'know. If you wanted that."

"Yes." The Captain looks up, meeting Pat's eyes. "Yes, I would want that. With you."

Mary comes back in at that point, starts clearing away the plates, but that doesn't matter. Because it feels like they might finally be on the same page about everything.

And all that's really left to do is set the date.

——

It's a beautiful summer's day, the day they choose for it. The Captain hadn't been a big fan of ideas like 'inviting guests' or 'leaving the castle', so in the end they bring the vicar to them and have a small ceremony. It's just them, Kitty and Thomas, along with Annie, Mary and Robin. The three of them are back at the castle now, after having spread their wings for a bit, and Kitty has been staying with them too for the last few weeks. It's lovely, having everybody around him like this. It's everything Pat had never dared to imagine his life could be.

The ceremony is a success. They'd cut out the part at the end where the vicar would usually ask them to kiss, because that hadn't been a great success, when they'd practised it. The Captain's teeth really are too prominent for that, sadly. They've been doing a lot of courting, recently - sneaking in some quiet moments during their walks among the trees - and they've had a lot of success with holding hands, and with the Captain kissing the back of Pat's hand, and with the Captain's teeth, gently scraping across the side of Pat's neck, while Pat shivers in pleasure.

They'd gone with the hand holding, for the ceremony. And then everybody had cheered, and thrown rose petals, and there had been a dance in the ballroom during which the Captain had played the piano the whole time. He'd played a new song, something Pat had never heard him play before, and he'd looked at Pat the whole time he was playing it. Pat will have to ask him later, but he thinks that might be a song the Captain had written especially for him, for their wedding day. The thought of that makes Pat feel like he's just swallowed all the stars in the sky, actually.

And now the Captain is outside, sitting on the bench, and Pat is stepping out to join him, and it's just like the day of the dance, all those months ago. Only it's nothing like that day, really, is it?

Pat stops in front of the Captain and holds out his hand. "Will you dance with me, love?"

The Captain looks around, as if to be absolutely sure that nobody else will see, and then takes Pat's hand. "Just one dance," he says, and then his other hand is on Pat's shoulder, and Pat's hand is on his waist, and they're moving, out across the terrace.

Just one dance.

The Captain spins Pat around, and it's as if the stars above them are spinning. It's getting late but the sun has only just set, and the sky is navy blue, the grounds bright in the moonlight. The Captain steadies Pat, bringing him in closer to him, and Pat catches his breath and thinks, yes.

One dance is enough.