Kyou Kara Maou Fan Fiction ❯ Axel ❯ Bielenfeld Blue ( Chapter 1 )

Kyou Kara Maou : Axel

 

Summary: Wolfram tells his father about his first love affair, in the dark days after Suzanna Julia died, when Wolfram turned his back on healing and became a soldier. Yuuri appears in later chapters. Side story to The Bedding of Wolfram.

 

Disclaimer: standard - Kyou kara Maou is not mine. Its original creator was Tomo Takabayashi, with character design by Temari Matsumoto. The anime was produced by Studio Deen.

 

Warnings: rated M for mature sexual theme. No spoilers - most of the characters / plot here never appear in the anime.

 

Please review.

 

Note there are illustrations on the “homepage” link on my profile - portraits of all the key OC's, plus an illustration of the Bielenfeld Beautiful Boy Pageant.

 

 

Chapter 1 : Bielenfeld Blue

 

Wolfram lay back on his pillows, huddled in blankets on the window seat of his room at Blood Pledge Castle, and groaned. Outside the morning sun was shining. Greta and the kitchen girls were laughing, birds were singing, flowers blooming. Inside, his head swirled with darkness and ashes.

 

His father Manfred looked up from the student papers he was companioniably grading at the table. “Was that a groan of breakthrough realization? Or disgust?”

 

“I'm tired,” answered Wolfram. “I'm getting nowhere… Any decent students in that pile?” He waved limply at his father's stack of grading, eyes closed.

 

“They'll make adequate healers,” Manfred allowed. “This one even shows glimpses of intelligence.”

 

Wolfram chuckled. He mentally translated that to the comments Manfred would write on the paper: Top marks! Insightful! Keep developing these ideas through the rest of the course, I look forward to seeing where you go with them! Many a healing student at the Bielenfeld Institute of Majutsu was led by the nose to earn and re-earn Manfred's praise. “…You're a great teacher, Chichiue. How did you know what you should be?”

 

“Trial and error, like everyone else.” Further than that, Manfred declined to go. He sat back and looked at his son thoughtfully. “Is this purely diversionary? Or are you trying to work through, the… what would you call it?”

 

My men, all dead save Andrei and I… slain in their sleep… slain fighting… died of wounds… died protecting me… Robair and Paol, raped to death beside me, begging for death… Axel, died in a berserker rage killing our rapists… Andrei lost hand and eye, never to soldier again… I failed them as a commander… I failed… Axel… Yuuri… Axel… I'm a soldier… healer… lover… soldier… officer… Mazoku… noble… failure… Hahaue's son… Chichiue's son… Yuuri's fiancé… Axel's lover… Axel's commander… failure…

 

“The troop thing,” Wolfram summarized, eyes clenched shut. He grabbed a stuffed animal lying beside him and hurled it in frustration. “This is pointless! I just keep going around in circles!”

 

“Mm. Well. You are tired, you lost a lot of blood. Perhaps you could use a break to get your mind out of a rut. Why don't you tell me about Axel?”

 

Wolfram slitted open an emerald green eye to look at his father. The price of being let off suicide watch was a vow of six hours a day hard labor facing his own internal demons, generally in the privacy of his own mind, but with his father mercilessly supervising to make sure he stuck with it. Seeing no clues, he closed his eye again and muttered, “You were there.”

 

“Mmm, I remember your visit twenty years ago, if that's what you're referring to. But you weren't very forthcoming at the time. So, tell me about you and Axel.” Wolfram didn't start talking immediately. “Unless, you'd rather go back to wrestling your demons on your own…”

 

“Alright, alright. I'll talk…”

 

-oOo-

 

Wolfram took to the practice fields with his sword. The war was over, but no one trusted the peace, and victory tasted of ashes. Troops still overflowed the garrisons of Blood Pledge Castle, though the death toll had eased the crowding. The practice fields were full, ringing with sword practice, thunking with archery practice, grunting and chanting with strength and endurance practice. The injured were everywhere, relaxing by the sides to encourage the less injured.

 

Wolfram hesitated awkwardly by the entrance. I don't / do / don't belong here. He'd been here with Conrad and Gwendal many a time. But he wasn't a soldier. Hahaue couldn't bear for him to fight, though he was old enough. Though he desperately wished to join the troops, he couldn't bear her crying, and he relented time after time, studying healing under Suzanna Julia, instead of taking his place in battle as a man. But Julia's dead. And Conrad - Weller - is gone, to take her spirit to be reborn in another world. And I don't want to be kind to Hahaue or anyone else. I want to fight!

 

-o-

 

/ “That's right,” said Wolfram. “Weller lost all his men, too, save Yozak. And Julia, his great love… forbidden love… Then he walked away from Yozak, and all of us as well, for years.”

 

“So he did,” replied Manfred neutrally. “Go on.” /

 

-o-

 

Wolfram hadn't cracked open a healing book since he learned of Julia's death. When Cheri was distraught with missing Conrad - Weller - and came to cling to Wolfram, he escaped as soon as possible, unable to bear soothing her sadness. He didn't want to feel sad or compassionate. He wanted to burn the pain away with rage. I want to fight!

 

“Von Bielenfeld-kyo?” Another young blond in Bielenfeld blue approached him deferentially. “Looking for someone to practice with? You're welcome to join us. My name's Axel.”

 

“Please call me Wolfram,” he responded in relief. “Thank you, Axel, I should like that very much.” Fighting shyness, Wolfram followed him to a small group in Bielenfeld blue. Not that their well-worn uniforms matched his nobleman's finery. Indeed, though he watched them most carefully of all the troops, he didn't know them, these theoretical countrymen. He felt barely more than a guest on his rare trips there to visit his father. Though acknowledged as his son and heir, his father had never married his mother. All in all, Wolfram felt rather an impostor as a von Bielenfeld, and couldn't imagine how these troops felt about him.

 

As he joined them, most of the youths jumped to their feet, save one with crutches and a cast. All bowed their heads briefly in salute. Axel introduced. “Wolfram von Bielenfeld-kyo, please meet Taran, Viel, Pyotr, and the lazy gimp there is Mikka.” Wolfram grinned and nodded to them all. Axel had a real gift for putting people at ease. “And now, goof-offs, we've seen Wolfram having at it with Weller-kyo. Today let's practice with someone who's good with a sword! Who's up first?”

 

In the end, Wolfram had wooden sword bouts with each of Taran, Viel, and Pyotr, before Axel took up a real sword against him with a grin. “I had to let them tire you out first. Sir,” he said with a smile. With the other youths, Wolfram got well warmed up, and gradually relaxed enough to give them some pointers, but trained as he was with Conrad and Gwendal, the boys just weren't in his league. But tired from those fights, Axel was close to a match for him. He still won, but he had to work for it, and steel swords were much heavier than wood. Both panting, the youths grinned at each other over their pommels. “Good fight, Sir!”

 

“Well fought, Axel! No need to call me Sir all the time, I'm not one of your officers. Call me Wolfram.”

 

“Yes, Si- ah, Wolfram,” Axel agreed laughing. “Well, Wolfram, we're tired and headed for the mess hall. We'd be honored if you'd come teach us again sometime.” At Wolfram's wistful look, he added, “Or, you could join us at mess?”

 

Wolfram grinned, delighted. “Yes, I'd like that, please.”

 

Axel openly eyed Wolfram's ruffles and fine jewelry and shined boots. “If you wouldn't mind dropping by my quarters on the way, then?” Axel and the guys led him into the warren of wooden barracks he hadn't entered before. The others peeled off into a door in mid-building, but Axel kept going to the end, where there were far more doors. He opened one of them into a small neat cubicle with a single bunk.

 

“Are you the officer, then, Axel?” Wolfram asked, surprised.

 

The other laughed out loud. “These are sergeant's quarters - and I'm not a sergeant, either. After we lost our officer and sergeant last year, we got attached to the Shin Makoku army. The new sarge decided the simplest way to deal with us was to make the group my problem, so he stuck me in here to `give me authority' and told me to keep `em in line. Not exactly a promotion or anything, but I do kick their butts out onto the practice field so the real sarge can ignore us. We're still officially Bielenfeld army, anyway.” While Axel was cheerfully relaying this, he opened his footlocker to pull out a clean folded undress uniform. “We're about the same size, try it.”

 

Though he'd never lived in barracks, Wolfram was used to the vast communal baths of the castle. It only gradually dawned on him that the reason he felt bashful now, stripping and changing in this tiny room with Axel, was that the other was openly eyeing him appreciatively. That, Wolfram didn't get much of from the men in the castle, being the Maou Cheri's pampered baby boy. But he liked it… He smiled shyly and turned back and forth for show a little, and said, “Is this on right?”

 

Axel made a show of taking the opportunity to examine him, and said, “Damn, you look good, Wolfram. Yes, I believe it's on right. C'mon, the guys are waiting for us!” And they headed out to the mess, Axel's arm thrown casually over Wolfram's shoulders in friendship.

 

The mess food was plain, but good, a generous serving of meat and vegetable stew apiece. Pitchers of water and bowls of bread and butter and cheese were constantly replenished on each table, to take as much as one wished.

 

“So, where are you all from? In Bielenfeld,” Wolfram asked.

 

Axel answered. “Pyotr and Mikka are from tenant farm families on the Tarkenburg plantation - they were friends back home, and joined up together. Viel's people run an inn by the Institute. Taran and I are from the castle town - his people are craftsmen. My mother and sisters work the castle laundries. My father and brothers were soldiers.”

 

Were. “Viel, my father works at the Institute, too,” Wolfram began, then realized everyone was smiling at each other.

 

“Everyone in Bielenfeld knows Manfred,” Viel answered. “Him and General von Gratz… Hey, is it true what they say, about those two having a falling out at Suzanna Julia von Wincott's funeral?”

 

“More than a falling out,” said Wolfram uncomfortably. “They started a majutsu duel. It wasn't easy getting them apart. I was afraid Chichiue would burn the place down - ”

 

The story was interrupted by some more youths joining them. Two were the most beautiful blonds Wolfram had ever seen, save perhaps himself. These turned out to be Paol, a healer, and his friend Robair. They'd been working at the hospital instead of “banging swords about” that day, mostly as orderlies, though they could all manage simple healing spells, and Paol considerably more. When Wolfram's group explained about Wolfram joining them for sword practice, Paol cut in hungrily, “Have you studied healing under your father, Wolfram?”

 

“Yes, healing and fire attacks both - though my mother wants me to study only healing.”

 

Paol and Robair exchanged looks. “Can you teach us?”

 

Axel explained, “We're all novice majutsu specialists, cavalry. But majutsu troops are so tight-knit… When the Bielenfeld regiment lost its head, if we wanted to join other majutsu troops, they'd have split us up by ones and twos. We'd rather stay together, as Bielenfeld troops, but we don't get any training this way. Sarge said, unless we found a teacher, we had to to stick to swords. Except at the hospital.”

 

“I'd love to practice fighting majutsu with you as well as swords!” said Wolfram. “Can we practice again tomorrow?”

 

Everyone's excited agreement was cut off by an officer making an announcement to the mess. “As of this morning, General Adelbert von Gratz has been declared a traitor to Shin Makoku, and exiled, for advocating the repudiation of Shinou, the Maou Cecilie, and her Regent Stoeffel von Spitzweg. Gratz has declared himself an ally to the humans. Let no Mazoku offer him assistance. Replacing him among the Ten Aristocrats is his brother, Brendan von Gratz. All Gratz forces to attend review tomorrow, full dress plus honor guard. That is all.”

 

Wolfram sat dead still. The fight at the funeral was bad enough, but for cousin Adelbert to turn against Shinou and his mother… It was like a sudden punch knocking the wind out of him. And these troops surrounding him had followed, revered, Adelbert.

 

Pyotr was the first to talk into the table's silence. “Well, I can understand his point about the Maou -“

 

Axel cut that off, “Fool! You speak treason with the Maou's son at table?”

 

Silence fell at their table, though the mess was quite loud with ugly murmuring. Wolfram stood up quietly and with dignity. “I expect I'll be needed at the castle tomorrow. Pyotr… For what it's worth, the Maou opposed this latest war as much as von Gratz did. My own brother Weller's half-Mazoku Lutenberg Legion was decimated, sent off on a suicide mission without adequate weapons or armor. I'll never forgive my cousin Adelbert's treason. But nor will I forgive my Uncle Stoeffel.”

 

As Wolfram stiffly walked away, surrounded by covert glances and sudden silences wherever he passed, Axel leapt up to join him. “I'm sorry about Pyotr, sir,” he said when they were safely outside. “He spoke without thinking. From where we sit, without even a Bielenfeld officer anymore, these politics on high are a puzzle. We see our own domain refuse to replace the regiment's officer, a good general gone mad, a lot of good men and women dead. Pyotr was speaking from his frustration, not his head. Please, sir. Come teach us majustsu anyway? Ah, Wolfram… this way?”

 

Wolfram winced. He'd forgotten his clothes were still at Axel's.

 

Axel handed him out his noble clothes as a bundle. “Just keep my old uniform, for practices. I've got plenty. Though you're always welcome to drop by my quarters?” He smiled uncertainly. “Can't ever have too many friends, right?”

 

Wolfram couldn't help but respond in kind, and hold out his hand. “I'll look for you day after tomorrow in the practice fields, then.”

 

-oOo-

 

“Hahaue was frantic looking for you yesterday,” complained Gwendal. He and Wolfram stood in full formal regalia in the line of the Ten Aristocrats, Gwendal in his own right as Lord of Walde, and Wolfram standing in for the elderly Lord of Bielenfeld. Though the occasion was important enough for all Ten to attend, it was also being rushed to reassure the public after Adelbert's dramatic scandal, so there were many substitutes.

 

Brendan von Gratz, swearing fealty today as the new Lord of Gratz, looked very like his elder brother. But he'd always stayed home to mind the domain while Adelbert pursued his military career. When Wolfram's turn came, he assured his cousin of the continued support and friendship of Bielenfeld, and his family's personal regret for Brendan's trials. Brendan seemed touched by the ritual and made Wolfram promise to come hunting next time he passed through Gratzberg.

 

As usual, Wolfram and Gwendal's speaking parts were over in minutes, but the event dragged on for hours. “Where were you?” Gwendal demanded. Wolfram told him, and that he planned to go again tomorrow, and hoped to continue practicing with them.

 

Gwendal frowned, uncertain. “That doesn't seem appropriate for a noble of your rank, Wolfram. If you were properly trained, you'd be a candidate to command the whole Bielenfeld Regiment. But it's not for the troops to train up their commander. What do you think, Günter?” They fell in with Günter von Krist, also subbing in for his liege today, as they filed out to the military review stand.

 

“Oh, certainly not,” said Günter, “without following the proper forms. You'd want permission from their officer at a minimum. If you want to proceed with officer's training, you could petition Lord von Bielenfeld for a commission, and probably seek training from the Shin Makoku garrision. And none of them would grant permission without the blessing of Stoeffel and Maou first. But even informally, well, you could begin by asking permission from General Teodor von Trondheim. I see he's standing today with his Lord brother. An unusually political move for Ted, don't you think, Gwendal?”

 

“Ted and Adelbert were tight,” suggested Gwendal. “I imagine Lord Franklin is pushing Ted to rehabilitate himself.”

 

Wolfram complained, “I don't understand why there's all this political red tape. I'm just trying to play with some friends, and see if I want to become a soldier! The commoners must think we're clowns with all this…”

 

“Wolfram!” exclaimed Günter, shocked. “Not in the least! The rituals and forms of the aristocracy are an assurance of stability and well-trained government for the people. The good relations and close ties between the noble families, such as Bielenfeld and Gratz, have been carefully cultivated over the generations to produce alliances for the domain's best interests. We nobles are our people's representatives in government.”

 

Wolfram ruefully wondered what, if any, political use his parents' brief unmarried liaison had served. “Still no love lost between Spitzweg and Bielenfeld and Maou from where I stand,” he grumbled. “And me hanging around as Hahaue's teddy bear won't fix that.”

 

Gwendal glowered at him. “Your birth was just the beginning. How to go about the rest of the task is up to you. But Hahaue's already had one son walk away on her this year. Whatever else you do, don't screw up the teddy bear job.”

 

“I know, I know…” Wolfram grumbled, then stopped, surprised. “The Bielenfeld Regiment! Someone must have patched it together to review with the Gratz troops today. Wonderful!” And before Gwendal and Günter had a chance to prompt him, Wolfram was striding to center podium to stand with Brendan. As the break between Gratz maroon and Bielenfeld blue passed, he and Brendan clasped hands and held them high, to great cheering from the troops. Cheri came forward and lifted Brendan's other hand high, for another round of cheers. And though both boys were on parade, still Wolfram and Axel managed to catch each other's eye and smile.

 

Günter's right, thought Wolfram, moved. The red tape seems silly, but this ritual today - this mattered. Brendan looked to have tears standing in his eyes. The troops answered with handclasps between Bielenfeld and Gratz on the parade field. Adelbert's wound was deep, but today was a good start on the healing.

 

-oOo-

 

I love reviews… Please?