A sadistic Princess should have a sadistic knight.

Controlled.

     "Hime!!"
     "Okita-san?"
Sougo's eyes wrenched open. A thickening fog shrouded his surroundings.
"Okita-dono, are you alright?"
He noticed the warm bundle embraced in his arms, and saw the princess, sleeping soundly and peacefully. Was all that a dream? He wondered, cordially perplexed.
     "Yes, I'm fine."
Their small rafts croaked over the rolling waves, and a strong feeling of déjà-vu swelled in his gut. He was a composed man, with little imperfections and faults. But there was something that swirled enigmatically in his head, so frenzied and untame, that it made him unbelievably noxious. He gazed down at his princess with wary eyes. As long as she's here, and I'm here with her.. All else can be ignored. He internally gawked at his chumminess and plucked listlessly at his flaxen fringe.
"Sougo, did you have a nightmare, or have you fell ill?" Hijikata inquired frankly. And, though in the back of his mind, he was aware that it was genuine concern; it was Hijikata who said it, and that made his blood boil.
He jabbed at his shin with his sheathed sword. A strained hiss left the man's lips. "I'm finneee, Hijibaka, why don't you throw yourself off a cliff, Hijibaka? Why don't you commit seppuku, Hijibaka?"
"The hell's wrong with you?!"
Sougo stared at the man with subtle-but surely present-malevolence, and wasn't going to allow him to extricate himself. He was already in a rigid mood. He should have stayed silent.
     "Like I'd tell you," Sougo retaliated with vitriol.
     "You should tell me. I'm your damn superior," Hijikata spat officiously, Shinpachi worriedly scooting further from him. Katsura seemed malcontent, but didn't plan to impede their banter at any moment.
     "You have complete disregard for me anyway. You just pretend to so you can move up the ranks."
Hijikata stiffened with disbelief.
     "Apologize, Sadist."
Jolting at the sudden, penetrating sound of a female, Sougo's gaze snapped down to stare reverently at his princess. Her cerulean eyes bore into his.
    "Hime, when did you-"
    "Hijikata was only concerned about you. Apologize."
Biting his lip, Sougo looked reluctantly at her then at Hijikata. With a click of his tongue, he said sourly:
    "Sorry. I'm exhausted, all right?"
All eyes widened as Sougo turned away, watching the greyish waves converge with the hints of blue that poked through the fog.
All that was deduced among the other three men was: the princess has a lot more power over Sougo than anticipated.
...
Kagura raked her fingers through her hair, entirely overwhelmed. The workload Otose had punished her with for "making the entire castle worry" was a stupefyingly large amount. And, inexorably, she was slipping into unconsciousness. Several times she has awoken with a jerk and half-lidded mumbling that she had lost count. Inhaling deeply through her nose, she inked her quill and wrote perfunctorily to the end of the paper. Her gruelling task was to translate over fifty Chinese proverbs into Japanese, and, sadly, she has only managed thirty-six.
"Hime, go to sleep. I'll finish it for you."
She groaned and massaged her temples as Sougo gingerly walked over to her and laid warm hands on her tense shoulders.
"That's the last thing I'm going to do."
"Humour me. Why?"
Giving a dismissive exhale, she brusquely replied, "You rescued me. If anything, I should be finishing your work."
Unexpectedly, his response was a quirky, unprecedented chuckle, followed by: "I didn't save you against my will."
Unsettled and perturbed, she turned to look at him.
"What's with your abrupt change of character, sadist? Have you forgotten the reason I call you that?"
He repeated his quirky laugh. There was a dreadful silence that came, a smile etched onto Sougo's lips as he watched her politely. The unease rose in her gut and, dubiously, she turned her back on him and began to write. Well, pretended to write. She's never feigned anything around him before, and she was truthfully more surprised at her discomfort than at his sudden metamorphosis.
"You know, Hime," he began, his voice oddly distant, although the physical distance between them stretched a mere six feet. "I had a funny dream."
"O-oh?" What's more laughable than my stupidity? She thought irritably, glancing at the Chinese characters to her right to repeat them in Japanese on her left.
"You discharged me from my position as your knight."
Her hand reflexively froze, as if a ripple in time casted a chronological pause throughout space and Earth. She remained that way, awkwardly static and flabbergasted. She rose and stared at him fully.
...
Please don't repeat, Sougo thought hopelessly, that keen solicitude she provided was so sickeningly alike his dream(was it a dream?)it made him horribly anxious. His behaviour made him gag as well. Why was he so easily manipulated by a measly creation of his subconscious? Because it was terrifyingly realistic. Because the events were so intact and clear. Because such a mistake can be made so effortlessly, it's haunting. He ignored his thoughts and shook his head.
     "Not that you will discharge me from my position. Correct? I mean, you cannot."
Her silence lingered much too long for his liking, but she giggled and said, "Of course." But does she mean that? He shut himself up.
...
He returned to normal. He would trip her when they were the only ones in the corridor(and when she was desperately trying not to stumble over her expansive kimono, plus they were running late), tantalize her whilst she was studying or reading, purposely yawn obnoxiously loud during her sessions with Otose; all in all, he behaved abysmally.
When she reached her limit and demanded why his actions were much more extreme than before, he shrugged and said: "Just because."
...
"You've done what?"
Kamui cupped his hands as a visual aid. "Watch, Takasugi-chan," he began cheerily, then formed a sizeable circle with his spindly fingers. "Imagine that this is Knight-chan's brain-"
"'Knight-chan'?" Takasugi inquired evenly.
"Imouto-chan's knight. The little stupid one who thought he had taken Imouto-chan undetected."
Takasugi grimaced. How come it sounds innocuous whenever he says something like that?
"Imagine this is his brain. If we instigate a... Ceremony, perhaps that is a suitable thing to call it; in which we imprison him like we did Imouto-chan, except we feed him messages. Daily." He clenched his hand, then released, "soon he will be under our control, so, he'll bring her to us. And perhaps even more."
The raven-locked male withdrew a smoky breath and cleared his throat. Admittedly, this piqued his interest. He usually made quite an effort to ignore Kamui's ridiculous notions, but this-this is indeed thrilling. "So what you're saying is-" he tapped off the black ashes from his pipe on the edge of the boat. "-that we should brainwash him?"
Kamui's pondered this and shook his head.
"I like to call it conditioning."
Bemused and quite excited, Takasugi chuckled.
"Where do we start?"
Kamui's leaned backward, his throat to the stars as though he was about to let out a hysterical laugh, but he didn't; he licked his lips and turned to Takasugi, "We visit the kingdom of Kabuki-cho."

A/N: dun dun dunnnnnnn