The Greatest Power Of All | MILEVEN AU

prince charming

song - Grace (Acoustic) by Lewis Capaldi 

~"I'm not ready to be just another of your mistakes
Don't wanna let the pieces fall out of place
I was only just a breath removed from going to waste"~

The footsteps outside of her door grew louder, filling the eerie silence of the late evening. The sky outside of her window was filled with uncertain fog, the thick layer drifting over the dark trees in a way that almost looked like shadows coming to take her away. Her eyes fell to the bottom of the door, where the light of the hallway was broken up by the shadows of his long legs, feet tapping gently against the floorboards. Jane sat up from her bed slowly, wiping her eyes and brushing the messy curls away from her face when the door finally creaked open. Flashing her Papa a questioning smile, he crouched down beside her and picked up the brush on her nightstand. She held still, body relaxing contently under his affection, the activity something that he had started to do every single night as she grew up. In that moment, she could pretend that she was one of the princesses in fairy tales with magic hair that needed protecting and caring for, unaware that her Papa just needed her to stay pretty enough.

He placed the brush down, curling a pale finger against a lock of hair. "You really should take more care of your appearance, Jane. You are such a pretty girl, you know that?"

Jane nodded obediently as he tapped her smooth cheek. "Yes, Papa."

"But not pretty enough?" he titled his head. 

Her face fell. "W-What?"

Papa's eyes fell to her hair again, brushing a strand out of her eyes. "You have always been pretty, Jane. It has always been a gift of yours, something to compliment the special abilities that you were destined to use. But this mission is taking longer than I expected...and I can't help but worry as I see the deadline ticking by quicker each day. Perhaps if you dressed up more...that boy would let you closer."

"I-I'm sure he-" 

He raised an eyebrow. "Has he ever complimented your appearance?"

Jane's mind recapped to the conversations that she obtained with the boy with freckled cheeks, the smiles that they had shared and fairy tales that he had explained. She could remember his eyes watching her carefully, a certain glint in there as if perhaps she was different than he originally thought. That perhaps, she was more than he expected. His eyes sometimes went softer around her, the magic wrapping around him like a blanket and exposing the vulnerability underneath his closed off exterior. As their hands brushed when turning the pages of the fairy tales, reading them to Holly with soft voices, he had pulled away quickly. She did catch the slight blush on his freckled cheeks but it could have been the trick of light, perhaps just another example of the fact that nobody would ever see her for what she truly was. It was clear that her magic was working, crawling into his heart like toxic smoke, but part of her wasn't sure how he always seemed to be different than the others.

She became unsure. "N-No...I don't think so."

"You see...this information is important to me. Ted Wheeler has stolen a great deal from us and the quicker that we get this done, the better. I don't expect you to know the details but that man has taken away things that mean something to me. If it is important to me-"

She finished his sentence obediently. "Then it is important to me as well."

"So two weeks?" he checked sternly. 

"Two weeks."

...

She poked her head around the corner of the library, eyes going wide with curiosity once they finally settled on him. Mike was settled at his regular table, head buried in a book but she didn't miss the way that he glanced around every so often as if he was almost searching for her. It made her smile triumphantly, tapping her fingers along the spine of the book she was holding as she watched him. Her eyes swam over his features, irises lapping up the sunlight on the top of his hair made it shine almost like diamonds. His lanky body was covered in another dorky sweater, one with an itchy collar that he tugged at every few seconds, making her want to smooth out the creases so that it stopped irritating his pale skin. The expanse of his pale skin was an ocean that she longed to explore, soft brown orbs drifting down to his slender fingers and back up to his sharp cheekbones that were interrupted by beautiful mismatched dots. He was a little messy, a little different, but that is what made her heart skip a beat.