F1 Reader Inserts

Transcending Time || CL16

Charles Leclerc x princess!reader
Summary: Destined to be together, you and Charles' love transcends time to find one another again and finally get the future you never had - the one with a happy ending.
Warnings: 18+ only, reader death (su*cide in past life), angst, fluff, eventual happy ending

Monaco, 1662

"One day, princess, we will board a ship and find a place of our own somewhere far away," Charles promised as he watched the sails on the horizon, his chin resting on your shoulder as you sat between his legs. In his arms was the one place you could be yourself, not the royal that was put on parade to the public. In his arms you could dream of a world where you could love him freely.

But for now you had to hide, keeping your rendezvous a secret and stealing the moments whenever you could.

You had fallen for Charles the moment you saw him stumbling with his arms full of ledgers, the papers catching the breeze that had rolled into the mariner and raining down on your head as you giggled. He hadn't even looked up before insulting you for your rudeness and suggesting you get down on the ground and help him retrieve his father's work as penance.

Your next laugh was hardly the ladylike sound expected of you and when he looked up his green eyes had widened in realisation.

"My apologies, princess, please forgive me," he had pleaded as he bowed his head muttering, "I am stupid. I am stupid."

"Blaireau?" you repeated the word he had used and his cheeks reddened. "You called me a badger?"

He scratched the back of his neck nervously and gave the smallest shake of his head. "Not quite, princess."

That was the first of many insults he taught you since slang was not something your governess had approved of in your schooling. He had taught you a good deal about life outside the palace, but his greatest lesson had been how to love. Love had been foreign from your life until he had stumbled into it and stolen your heart, giving you his in return.

Charles kissed your shoulder and a smile teased your lips and you leaned back into his embrace, finding your way back to the present. "Would life as a clerk's wife suffice her royal highness?"

"You could shovel manure from the stables for all I care, so long as I am your wife," you said as you turned in his arms and pushed him onto his back. "Where you go, I go."

He looked up at you bathed in the warm afternoon sun and adoration filled the smile he saved just for you, the one that brought out the dimples in his cheeks. "One day, princess."

–

"Please, mama, I have never once asked you for anything," you begged as you grabbed her hand over the table, but the former Crown Princess of Monaco looked away with a shake of her head and slipped her hand from your grasp. Desperation grew as you looked to your brother, the Crown Prince of Monaco since your father passed earlier that year, sitting at the head seat. "Louis, don't do this, please, I love him."

"That is why I must, dear sister," Louis uttered as he took a sip of his wine and returned to cutting his roast quail. "You were born to marry a prince, not the son of a clerk. It is forbidden."

You slammed your hands on the table as you rose to your feet. "I was born to love Charles, and I will die loving him."

Louis growled and his cutlery clattered as he tossed them on his plate, his short temper snapping. "Charles will hang on the morrow and that is final. There will be no more traipsing to the marketplace, there will be no more fraternising with those filthy commoners you are so fond of, or you will meet the same fate."