Chapter Text
“We need to be together.”
“Right, yeah, safety in numbers.”
“No. The ogres like to pair Vassals up. They like to play dollhouse. It’ll be easier if they just assume we’re together.”
-
A frustrating, fruitless week had passed since that fateful conversation, after Skrimm Stabbaskotch had found himself trapped in the city that he now knew to be Ogreton. Trapped and enslaved alongside countless humans who had been there for as long as they could remember, in service to a civilization of ogres. The week had been a frightening and terrible drag, full of counting livestock and scrubbing floors and cleaning fish and whatever other menial task he was ordered to, all while worrying where the hell his friends were and if he would ever be able to see them again and how they were going to get out of this stupid hellhole. Skrimm had never worked so hard in his life, and he hated it.
But there was one upside to his unbelievably awful situation; he wasn’t trapped in it alone.
If it weren’t for Daisy, he probably would have completely lost his mind by now. But since that first day when he’d been taken to the Vassals’ quarters and she had pulled him into a crushing hug as soon as she’d spotted him, Daisy had done her best to ensure they wouldn’t be separated any more than they had to be. From the start, she had suggested that they pretend to be “together together”, much to Skrimm’s bewilderment. And so far, it had worked. The Vassals, of course, knew the reality of their situation. But the ogres were none the wiser and seemed to find the idea highly entertaining, a response that Skrimm felt was . . . more than a little grating.
But it didn’t bother Daisy. As long as they were allowed to stay together, Daisy seemed happy.
At least, most of the time.
This was not one of those times.
-
He saw her when she entered the Vassals’ quarters, her mouth pressed into a hard line and her eyes darting around the room until they landed on him. From across the room, her hands moved in urgent gestures: “I need to talk to you.”
It was the end of a long day of back-breaking work, and Skrimm was more than ready to burrow himself into his bunk and sleep like a rock. But from the way Daisy made a beeline for him and grabbed him by his wrist (albeit gently) and guided him to the washroom, Skrimm suspected that whatever she had to say was more important.
“What is it? Is it about our friends? Have they been getting our letters? Where the hell are they?” Skrimm whispered frantically, hoping for good news and not expecting any.
Daisy shook her head and waved her hand as she led him over to a marble bench in the empty washroom, obviously meaning for him to sit. As he did so, she paced back and forth in front of the bench, shaking her hands at her sides. It was a habit, something Skrimm had seen her do when she was trying to gather her thoughts.
“Daisy, come on. What-what’s going on? Did you hear something? Please, I need to know if—"
Daisy stopped and held up a hand, taking a deep breath before signing, “I’m sorry. There is . . . a lot I need to tell you. I’m trying to get it all straight.”
“Okay. Can you at least tell me if it’s good or bad news?”
“It’s complicated news.”
“Oh, great. That’s my favorite kind. Why can’t it ever be good news?”
“Skrimm.”
“What?”
“You’re not helping.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Standing in front of him, Daisy took another breath to calm herself. “The first thing you need to know is that our friends are okay. They were taken to the House of Education. They’ve gotten our letters.”
“Oh, thank the gods!” Skrimm shouted, leaping to his feet. “They’re okay, they’re okay, we can find a way to get to them and-and we—"
“There’s a lot more. You’ll probably want to sit back down.” Daisy gently pushed him back to the bench. This time, he said nothing as she resumed her pacing for a moment.
Something was clearly wrong. Skrimm felt his stomach twisting with dread as he wondered what could have happened to worry Daisy like this, so much so that it would undercut the relief of knowing that their friends were alive and okay.
Finally, Daisy was able to continue. “Earlier this morning, I was summoned to serve the family and I overheard them discussing our friends. I guess the head of the House of Education has been trying to negotiate for you and I to be transferred to their ownership.”
“Okay, that . . . sounds like a good thing? I mean, not the ownership part, but at least we’ll be with everybody else again!”
“It is a good thing. But Gorkgustus . . . didn’t want to let both of us go.”
Skrimm frowned, immediately indignant. “What? No. No, they’re not splitting us up. We’ll figure something out, we—”
“We already did.” Daisy shook out her hands again and huffed sharply. “Do you remember when you first got here and I told you that the ogres like to ‘play dollhouse’ with the Vassals?”
Skrimm felt his stomach drop like a rock. “Oh, gods. Do I want to know why that’s relevant?”
“You might hate me for this. If there was another option, I would have gone for it. But this was the only way for us to stay together.”
“Please, just tell me.”
“In two days, you and I are going to get married.”
The Vassals in the common room were used to the antics of the strange goblin man that had been brought to stay with them a week prior. He was loud and weird, sure, but he was attached at the hip—well, knee—to their own Daisy, and she seemed to think very highly of him, despite his constant complaining and generally abrasive personality.
But nothing could have prepared the Vassals for the resounding shriek of “WE’RE GETTING MARRIED?!?” that echoed from the washroom.
-
Wide-eyed, slack-jawed, and at a complete loss for words, Skrimm stared blankly at Daisy, barely even registering when she brought her hands down from her ears and signed, “That was unbelievably loud.”
“I—I . . .”
“Look at me.” Daisy tapped him on the shoulder. “Look at my hands. I know this isn’t ideal, and I know it sounds weird, but this kind of thing happens a lot here. The ogres love weddings. It’s the only way they’ll allow us to stay together and be reunited with our friends. And, on the plus side, we won’t have to work for the next two days. We’ll have to help with the preparations tomorrow, but it won’t be difficult. And we don’t have to work on the actual wedding day.”
Skrimm tried to keep up with Daisy’s hand gestures, but his thoughts were racing and his ears felt prickly and he was starting to get a headache. He dropped his head into his hands and groaned.
“What—what kind of a sick hell is this place?”
He heard the sound of slight movement and felt another tap on his shoulder. When he lifted his head, he saw that Daisy had knelt to the floor and was sitting on her knees to meet his eyes.
“That’s a little hurtful. I don’t think I’ll be that bad of a fake wife.” Despite the weight of their situation, Daisy’s eyes still held a mirthful spark.
“Oh my gods, that’s not what I mean.”
“I know. I’m teasing you.” She gave a breathy laugh. “It won’t be as bad as you think. All the ogres care about is the wedding ceremony. They like parties, and any reason to have a party. All we have to do is put on a smile and pretend to be hopelessly in love for a couple days.”
“Your dad is going to kill me.”
“No, he won’t. I’ll tell him not to.”
“Would have been great if you’d told him not to before he tried the first time. I still have a bruise,” Skrimm said drily.
Daisy lifted her hand to his face and tilted his chin up gently, looking at his jaw. “Yeah, he really didn’t hold back. But it doesn’t look as gross as it did a few days ago. I can get something for you to put on it, if it still hurts.”
Skrimm cleared his throat. “No, no. It’s fine. It’s not too bad.”
The two sat in silence for a few moments, thinking their own thoughts about what the next few days would hold. Skrimm still felt a small tangle of anxiety in his gut, but Daisy had assuaged most of his fears.
He looked at her then. She was staring at the floor, but her eyes looked far away. There was a softly somber weight that hung around her, a bow in her shoulders.
In that moment, Skrimm felt very selfish. Daisy had said that the whole fake wedding thing happened a lot, but there was obviously something that was bothering her deeply about it. Something she hadn’t told him. All while he’d shrieked and groaned and complained at the thought of marrying her.
No, no, not at the thought of marrying her. The thought of being forced to pretend to marry her for the sake of their lives. That was the awful part.
At least Daisy had understood what he meant and was still happy to tease him about it. That had to mean that things weren’t as bad as they originally sounded. Count on Daisy to find her own way of whistling in the dark.
But there was still something more to what she was feeling than what she had told him.
“Daisy, what’s—”
At that moment, Daisy pushed herself up from the floor and stretched. “It’s late. We’re both tired. We should go get some sleep. We can talk about this more tomorrow; there’s a few things we’ll have to plan.”
-
Several hours later, Skrimm lay on his back in the dark, staring up at the bunk above him. Completely unable to sleep.
The quarters were quiet, save for the sound of snoring from a few of the other bunks. The bunk above him was completely silent; he wondered if Daisy was as sleepless as he was.
For the hundredth time, Skrimm remembered whose bed he was meant to be sleeping in and felt a stab of guilt.
It wasn’t anybody’s fault. They did their best to protect her. No one could have known that Honey was doomed from the start. But sometimes he still saw her when he looked at Daisy.
Saw the ghost of her. The absence.
It wasn’t right that she was gone.
But Skrimm couldn’t sit with these thoughts any longer. They were making his throat feel tight and his head ring with a sound that he didn’t want to hear.
As quietly as he could, Skrimm sat up in his bunk and whispered, “Daisy?”
He’d barely made any sound at all. But he felt the bunk shake slightly as Daisy rolled over and hung her head down over the edge of the top bunk, her hair falling comically around her upside-down face.
Skrimm knew by now that Daisy hated to be woken up in the night for any reason. But judging by the way her eyes searched intently for him in the dark, she hadn’t been sleeping either.
“I can’t sleep,” Skrimm whispered. “I’m sorry for freaking out earlier. I didn’t mean to yell at you. The whole wedding thing is weird but I . . . I trust you.”
With his eyes more naturally attuned to seeing in the dark, Skrimm could see Daisy’s face soften before she disappeared back up to her bunk. Then, almost silently, she climbed down the ladder at the foot of the bunk and tiptoed to the side of Skrimm’s bed. He put out a hand to steady her, since she was mostly blind in the dark, and she took it briefly before signing something.
“Can I hug you?”
Skrimm, caught entirely off guard, was conscious of the fact that he was taking way too long to answer before stammering out, “Do . . . do you want to?”
If he could have kicked himself, he would have done so gladly. But Daisy’s arms were suddenly wrapped around him, in a way that told him he was right about the mournful weight that had surrounded her earlier.
Skrimm wasn’t a hugger, by any means. But Daisy had nothing else to hold on to.
Nothing in the cursed, godforsaken wilderness of Drakkar could have torn him away from holding on to her.