The Bald Princess

~Nine~

Let's meet again, like strangers, introduce yourself in the same cafe with the same cup of coffee. Let's fall in love again but this time under a different umbrella, with a different story but with the same characters.

Atarah

"You promised me, daughter." Father said, glancing at me as he took a spoonful of porridge in his mouth. I sighed, turning to my father, turning the tap off as I was washing the dishes. "You had promised me that you will have all your meals with me, child."

He said, his eyes stern as he kept his spoon back in his bowl, filled with porridge. I wiped my hands with my skirt as I walked towards him, taking my own bowl and sat beside him. But I wasn't hungry. The idea of even eating a spoon of the porridge made my stomach to churn. I felt nauseous even before having the food.

"I haven't forgotten, father. But I won't be able to finish it all." I said with a sheepish smile and poured half of the content in an empty bowl and he looked at me with disappointment but didn't say anything. He grabbed an apple, I didn't knew we had in our kitchen before he started dicing the apple into several pieces.

"I don't appreciate you not eating even a quarter of what you should really be having, my child, but I know, your body will take time to adjust but you need to eat, my dearest daughter. Have this, I bought this early in the morning for you." He said and I bit my lips, smiling at him. I was very grateful of him for not forcing me to eat all the porridge in the bowl. Though it was hard to eat the breakfast, I had always skipped. But I didn't had the heart to deny my father, especially when I had promised him to eat all my meals with him.

"Thank you, father. I love you." I said and his eyes widened before he smiled at me, stroking my face gently, lovingly as he pressed his lips against my forehead before moving back to his chair.

"You don't have to thank me, my child. What I do is merely an act of my love towards you. You're my child, my only daughter. Never think that you have to be grateful of me because I love you or I care for you. Because you deserve all the love of this world. And someone, someday will love you. More than me, more than your mother loved you. Hm?"

Lies were beautiful. Because we can fabricate everything as per our own will. Fictions were nothing but chapters of beautifully written lies. Lies were written so beautifully that we eventually start believing them. Father's words were nothing but a fallacy, lies I wished were true but deep down, we both knew no-one could ever love me, the way he loves me. And no-one will ever love me other than him. I was his daughter, he had no option but to bear me but no-one else was bound to love me.

"I doubt, father, someone will ever love me more than you. I doubt someone will ever love me at all. And it doesn't hurt me as much now." I said and he frowned. His eyes lost the playfulness, they first had before he looked at me with a teasing glint in his eyes— he feigned his impish expression. Because truth is always unveiled, it's always the fib, which needs to be covered by the curtains of falsity.

"Do not think, my daughter that I didn't see Warrior Chief— Ansel Duncan dropping you home, last night. Do you both feel something for each other?" He asked, raising his brows at me with a mischievous smile and I scoffed, shaking my head as I took another bite of the porridge.

"It's funny to even think Warrior Duncan feeling something for me, father. He had just caught me trespassing in his area and was kind enough to drop me home." I half lied. I didn't want him to know that I had crossed the boundary to give him the shirt, I had bought for him. His eyebrows pinched together as he looked at me with confusion.

"You.... you were trespassing his area?" He asked and I chuckled nervously, shaking my head.

"Not intentionally, father. I was..... I was just taking a stroll in the woods and some random animal growled behind me and I rushed into the forest in fear, not knowing that I was actually getting into a private property." He closed his eyes to take a deep breath as he shook his head. I pressed my lips together when father opened his eyes to stare at me like I had grown four heads. I knew, it was dumb of me to narrate that part of the story which was scary but I didn't felt comfortable in telling him that I bought Warrior Duncan a shirt when we didn't even had food in the house.

"I thought, you stopped walking in the woods. I thought you were healing." He said softly and my heart stopped beating for a while. My fingers subconsciously tugging on the sleeves of my gown which hide my scars well.

"I didn't harm myself this time, father. I didn't go there to cut myself. I just..... I just feel peace in the silence of the forest. It calms me, father. I feel closer to my soul, I find my solace there." I said and he let out a breath of relief.

I had done so many sins. Harming myself was one of them. It helps me with the pain. It helps me to feel alive. When pain and mental abuse of people gets too much, the only way I find to liberate my pain is my causing myself another pain. They say, one pain can make you forget another one. But then one day when father caught me with blood staining my sleeves and I was too numb to feel any pain. He discovered my secret that day.

"You're not lying, my child, right? Tell me, I can trust you, this time." He said and I licked my lips as I nodded my head, rolling the sleeves of my gown up to show him my old scars.

"I didn't, father. I promised you, I won't cut myself again. I promised to come to you if I ever felt the urge to harm myself. And I can never break promises, I made to you." He smiled as he cupped my palms, looking at me with a sad smile. His eyes gazing at me like he was looking at my mother when she was losing her life.

"I love you, my child. You're the only family I am left with and never forget that."

"I won't, father. I won't."

~~~~~~~~

When Warrior Duncan said he would meet me soon. I didn't knew his soon won't come until more than a month. After forty three days, I was suddenly surprised to see Warrior Duncan standing in front me, straight and proud as ever, in my infirmary. My breath almost got stuck inside my lungs as our eyes met after what it felt like was an eternity. It wasn't until I saw him, I realized how much I had missed him.

His dark chasm for eyes. They were like a portal to another world. His chiseled face, his soft skin. His hair, they were the prettiest. He was dressed up in his perfectly ironed white shirt and dark pants with a large red, royal cloak. He held his sabre closer to his body and I couldn't help but stare at him, like a teenager meeting the character they had read in a book for the first time. I didn't even realise when he came so close to me until he snapped his fingers in front of me, making me blink of out of his trance.

"It's flattering to know, healer that I can make you zone out on me. Did my eyes made you lose yourself in me?" He asked, his lips straight as ever. Who could say by looking at his face that he was being smug? I shook my head, looking away from him as blush erupted on my cheeks.

"You...... you're back." I managed to let out and I saw his lips twitching slightly as he nodded his head and hummed, looking at me with his intense gaze. I took a step back, feeling our proximity too much for me to handle.

"Hm. I was gone into a neighbouring kingdom to settle the dispute." He said and I nodded my head as I wrote down the medicines for the five year old who kept vomiting out every time he ate.

"How have you been, healer?" He asked and I froze at his question. It was such a normal question, asked so normally and yet it made my heart to stop beating for a split second.

The fact that someone had asked me how I have been, made my eyes to burn. And something about Warrior Duncan asking me made me feel it tenfold more. I didn't knew why I felt what I felt when he was around me but it felt different than usual. Good kind of different but sometimes scary kind of different.

"Healer?" He called me when I didn't say anything for a few minutes and I swallowed nervously, looking at him as I shrugged my shoulders.

"I'm doing great, Warrior Duncan. Thank you for asking. May I ask how was your meet in our neighbouring kingdom?" I asked, not wanting to be rude and I saw amusement swirling in his eyes as he slid a chair towards him before sitting down on it.

"You're not obliged to ask me just because I wondered how you were, healer. But since you asked, it was tiring. The King wasn't ready to leave the borders to us and was quite persistent on claiming the north of our kingdom as his. It wasn't until I told him who I was, he wasn't ready to back off." He said, his eyes suddenly darkened and a chill passed down my spine as a dark, scary look crossed his face. There was this thing about him, he turned so scary in a second, like he had switch burton in him.

"Oh." Was all I could mutter and he blinked when he saw the frightened expression on my face and in a second, he was back to normal. Just like that. Like he just turned his personality in a flick of his fingers.

"You don't have to be scared of me, healer. I won't harm you." He said after a long period of silence and my eyes jerked up to meet his. They held the honesty that shook me from within. His words..... they were so different than what people usually said to me. He was generally so different with me. Like I was a normal person. Like he was a normal person. 

"It's hard to accept that someone doesn't desire to hurt me, Warrior Duncan, when all my life I have been subjected to abuse for how I look and for what I really am." I said with a smile and something in his eyes flashed. Was it guilt? Or was it pain? Or maybe anger. I wasn't really sure.

He didn't had any answer to my answer. I wasn't even expecting him to say how things were wrong, how I was wrongly treated and that he was with me. I didn't expect him to say all these to me and yet I wished for him to console me, to say exactly those words I wasn't expecting him to say. My emotions confused me. They irritated me.

"Nobody can save you, healer, but your own self. People abuse because you accepted the abuses. They blamed you for their sins because you accepted that it was your fault. And I am no knight, healer, I won't play one for you. You have to be your own saviour. Nobody would do that for you. We are in no fiction where the protagonist is always helpless and waits for her knight to save her. Nobody would come to your rescue, you need to save your own self, healer."

Warrior Duncan said and I blinked at how he exactly knew what I was thinking. But then, he knew what I kept thinking, all the other time too. He wasn't just a human being and I was getting to know that. I was on my way of exploring him.

"It's easier to live that way, Sir. Fighting back takes a lot of courage but accepting the abuse now takes silence. All my life, I have accepted myself as a villian and it's easier to live by that rather than being rebellious, Warrior Duncan."