A Different World

what remains after

Summary: a royalty AU in which Peter leaves for a week, Beck stages a military coup, and Michelle is pissed.

It happened on the second day after Peter left on a diplomatic trip to upper New York.

He'd left before. It wasn't the first time Michelle was left alone to handle the daily ins and outs of running half of a country. Even when Peter was there, she all but ruled over the parliament on her own. They hadn't anticipated anything different this time.

They had been wrong―so incredibly wrong.

With her arms pinned tightly behind her back, all Michelle could do was scowl at Beck as he ordered her to be locked away and took control of parliament.

"I have matters to attend to," Beck crooned, trailing his fingers across her jaw.

Michelle recoiled, moving out of his reach only to be shoved roughly by the rogue guard that was holding her too tightly.

"Get her out of here," Beck ordered. He turned to her parliament and Michelle was all too aware of the many wide eyes that followed her out the door.

Their people were loyal. They always had been and Michelle was willing to bet they still were. Whatever Beck had orchestrated, she doubted the rest of the country was in on it save for the rogues that he'd dragged into parliament to detain her.

Her suspicions were confirmed when, upon exiting the parliament building, the rogues that were holding her tightly crowded closer and blocked her from view. She was ushered roughly into a carriage and with a none too gentle shove into the seat. The curtains were drawn and daggers were leveled as the door closed behind her.

Beck had already taken the palace. The gate was drawn and unrecognizable faces patrolled the halls as she was pulled from the carriage.

"Let me go," she hissed, pulling free of the guards as they held her arms bruisingly.

She didn't run, but they jumped at her as if she had. Groping hands reached for her arms and held tighter still, escorting her through the palace halls as if she weren't familiar with her own home. She didn't pull away from them again.

Beck's rogues were everywhere. They roamed the halls, eyed her and snickered, and by the time she was shoved into her quarters, she knew they had infested the palace. It had been only a handful of hours since she'd left that morning for parliament, but Beck had moved in and settled his soldiers.

This wasn't done in the spur of the moment, she realized. Beck had planned for it.

The door was locked, the click of the key letting Michelle know she wouldn't be leaving anytime soon.

Not until Beck has the parliament, she thought bitterly. He wasn't one to leave ends untied and until the parliament was in his hands, he'd stay there.

The difficulty with a coup, Michelle knew, was that there was no way to know who was on whose side. Beck had filled the palace with his own soldiers, but what had happened to hers?

Many of them had accompanied Peter upstate, but the vast majority of them had been milling in the stables when she left that morning.

Had they all turned?

No, that was unlikely. She would have noticed something that big. Something else had to have happened. Beck had a silver tongue and as she held all the power when Peter was out of the country, he wouldn't have been able to mobilize all her men without her knowledge.

With that being said, something had to have happened and Michelle was eager to find out how and why, if only to prevent it from happening again. She half expected Beck to come and flaunt his success and was surprised when he didn't show up for hours. From what little she knew about Beck, he didn't seem like the type to lock her in her room and leave her alone.