Sometimes Ruby looked empty.

It was impossible to accurate put to words, but the bright and kind boy would look so distant and detached that sometimes Topaz wondered if he was really there at all.

Sometimes it made Topaz scared that he might disappear.

“....your highness?”

Ruby snapped to attention and smiled softly at Topaz, as though the moment had never occurred.

He always looked so far away when he smiled like that.

“State your business.”

Topaz swallowed his fears. The touch of the blood had caused the normal internal panic any sentient being who didn’t wish for death might feel but that wasn’t the fear.

The voice was familiar but so cold.

He heard it in his nightmares sometimes.

The day would one day come when Ruby would realize that Topaz was nothing but a puppet in his fathers hand, a puppet who had already poisoned and betrayed him too many times to count, and when that day came the soft voice full of affection would become cold and hateful.

Topaz’s face slammed into the brick wall and the threat of the sword moved to his spine as he was held there violently.

He lost the air in his throat.

“Answer.”

Cold and malicious.

I deserve to die like this.

Topaz couldn’t help but think like that at times. That no matter what cruel fate Ruby decided for him, he should accept it without question.

But as quickly as his fears overtook him they were so quickly replaced with relief.

He’s alive.

Topaz could cry with relief and if he wasn’t so adept at holding his emotions in place, he would have. Ruby was alive. Perhaps whatever attack happened on the palace caused Ruby to learn Topaz’s true nature but that was okay.

So long as he was alive.

Strength left Topaz’s legs and he would have collapsed if he wasn’t being held against the wall, the threat of death lingering at the tip of his fiance’s blade.

“You must really have a death wish.” Ruby’s voice sneered into his ear and the pure malice in it sent a shiver down his spine. Distantly he realized that he couldn’t speak.

His body was too battered.

I want to see him.

If Topaz was going to die here, he just wanted to see Ruby’s face one more time.

His body wouldn’t listen to him and the attempt to speak only came out as a garbled whimper.

Ruby sneered derisively and pulled away his support, Topaz crumbling to the ground in a heap in response. Topaz tried to regain his breath but he’d long used all of his strength. He felt dizzy. 

The blade touched Topaz’s chin and forced him to look up. Topaz was distantly thankful for the help, even if it came at the tip of a blade. The blade was cold and that felt nice against his feverish skin. He just didn’t have the strength to look up on his own.

Topaz’s eyes adjusted to get one last look at his fiance and froze.

No.

Wrong.

Everything was wrong.

So wrong.

Topaz clutched his throat.

He couldn’t breathe.

Wrong. That’s wrong.

The shoulder length red hair, blowing gently in the evening wind. Deep blue eyes that flashed with hints of gold in the firelight. Strong cheekbones and a pointed nose. A sturdy frame that belied none of the frailty brought about by Ruby’s illness. A regality in the way he stood and held his sword.

In every visual cue that Topaz could dissect, the person before him was doubtlessly Ruby Lefehyr. His highness, the pillar of the kingdom, the person that Topaz had grown up beside and known his whole life. He had memorized every curve of Ruby’s face and knew even of the tiny scar on his ear he’d gotten while training as a child. There was no way for Topaz to be mistaken when he knew better than most anyone else what Ruby looked like.

No.

He felt nauseous. The feverish confusion made his vision spin and he felt bile build in the back of his throat at the sight before him.

Not him.

Wrong.

That’s not Ruby.

He couldn’t explain it. It was just wrong.

Everything was wrong. The names of the streets. The parts of the city. The shrine. The palace. Wrong. Everything was wrong.

Topaz opened his mouth to find his words. To demand to know who would dare to impersonate the crown prince so thoroughly. To find where Ruby was.

If this wasn’t Ruby, where was Ruby?

And why wasn’t there even a hint of recognition…?

Any questions or demands he might have made ended in violent vomiting that landed on the impersonator's shoes. Tears and vomit combined as a sob of frustration was ripped from Topaz’s throat as the confusion overtook him completely.

He couldn’t understand it.

When his body could no longer sustain the strength even to vomit, he collapsed onto the foul smelling remnants of his stomach acids before losing consciousness entirely.

Topaz was sure that he dreamed.

He couldn’t say what he dreamed of. But when he opened his eyes again into the darkness of a holding cell, he was sure that he’d awoken from a dream. The feeling of melancholy from the dream remained in his heart as he stared up at the dank ceiling.

It wasn’t hard for him to take stock of his surroundings. He was feeling much more clear headed. Perhaps it was because his fears couldn’t possibly be heightened any further but the emotions that made it impossible to think faded to the background as he thought. It was a simple holding cell, no special considerations were made, making it likely he was in the custody of the city guards or some similar group. His body ached beyond his ability to accurately convey and his thoughts spun around unpleasantly.

The straw beneath his head stank off the vomit so he hadn’t been cleaned before being shoved unceremoniously down here. Either that or he’d vomited even more in his sleep. Or both. Although those semantics didn’t matter. The fact that he’d been shoved here alone was proof that no one knew his identity.

Good or bad, special considerations would be made for the young master of the Edentus ducal household. Political prisoners weren’t often shoved in the tank like a troubled drunk.

Of course that would mean that Ruby either hadn’t recognized him or hadn’t shared his identity with his wardens.

That wasn’t Ruby…

He felt foolish even thinking that. He’d recognized Ruby from head to toe and still chose to deny his identity. Was he that heartbroken over the prospect of being hated that he couldn’t accept reality?

Reality deserved to be questioned though. Linali Hill and Waffle Hill. The state of the palace. No one here appeared to recognize Topaz despite his prominent identity as the duke’s son and the crown prince’s fiance.

That strange fall. The one that lasted forever, dropping down to the pits of nowhere with his father and being picked up in Caramel Alley, his father nowhere to be found.

Topaz divided the possibilities up neatly.

The information he had was wrong, his memories were wrong, or reality was wrong.

He couldn’t decide which was most annoying.

There was a chuckle from a shadow in the cell and Topaz tensed in response.

“A bit of all three, young one.”