I'd Give Up The World For You

Daisy missed how simple things used to be. Her days on the farm seemed so far away now.

It had been a lot of hard work and she had hated the lack of running water but that was far superior to being queen. She missed a lot of things she had previously taken for granted, such as having the freedom to walk into town whenever she needed something. 

Now any time she tried, a servant insisted on going for her. She wasn't allowed out to visit Elaine either since it was "too dangerous." Instead she had to wait for her friend to come to her.

She missed casually interacting with Miette and Nia too. She saw the former once a week during her weekly tea with Tom but it wasn't the same. She had wanted all of the juicy gossip about what really happened with Rukelion's hostile takeover and Daisy didn't know how to talk about it without bringing up anything too personal. It was awkward.

When she wasn't gardening or having Elaine visit there wasn't much to do with a distinct lack of chores in her life. Her husband was busy running the country so she didn't get to hang out with him much.

Their days of casually spending evenings together seemed a lifetime away now. He was always happy to see her when she did go looking for him but he was also always in the middle of something. She understood why but that didn't make her any less lonely.

Daisy felt even lonelier now dealing with the weight of her husband's responsibilities as he continued cleaning out the ranks of the nobility than she had back when they had hundreds of miles separating them.

She was allowed to go anywhere she wanted within the castle and do anything but it was stilted with so many eyes on her. She still didn't feel comfortable here. 

Sometimes she wondered if she ever would. Rukelion acted like he was born to run the place, which made sense considering he had been a prince. Castles were very familiar to him. But to her this was the strangest part of being inside a fantasyland.

Adjusting to thinking she was in the past had been hard but it had nothing on this. Being a queen, if only in name, was a whole other ballgame. And it truly was only in name since she hadn't done anything remotely queenly since that botched tea party where two people got arrested. 

Daisy did her thing and Rukelion did his for the most part. They were living parallel lives rather than working as a team the way they had been before. 

Although…had they ever truly been a team? Sure, he would help her with her farm chores and other things she had to do around the house but that was because he had to at first and later because he wanted to spend time with her and that happened to be what she did most of the day.

He had gone along with whatever she was doing in order to be with her when he wasn't doing what he needed to do to accomplish his goal. Now that it was accomplished, his free time had become practically nonexistent. 

She couldn't blame him for it too much since he had worked long and hard for this but she missed him. She missed being able to spend countless hours by his side talking about anything and everything to help pass the time as they worked.

Daisy knew she was being selfish. Rukelion had wanted this far longer than he had wanted her but it was hard going from being his number one priority to playing second fiddle, especially when she was still trying to adjust to having so many restrictions due to her new position as the king's wife.

She had never really been his first priority though, had she? Since he had left her specifically to take over this country. She knew she made him happy and that he did need her but it was largely incidental. 

He didn't think the way she did. He was perfectly content going about his duties seeing her in snatches throughout the day but she wasn't!

Back home Daisy knew a woman who had a workaholic boyfriend who never made time for her. She had secretly felt sorry for the poor sucker but never thought it would happen to her. Her husband's job had taken over his life at the worst possible time.

They were supposed to be focused on starting their family but he had a lot of other things to do and she was left slowly losing her mind without being able to do all of her usual activities. She had the terrible feeling it was only going to get worse once her belly got too big to bend over with. 

At that point she wouldn't even be able to garden anymore. Then what was she supposed to do? Sit around and knit all day?

Her frustration only grew over the following months as she saw her husband less and less. She spent a lot of time in the kitchens baking with apples and pumpkin but under the watchful eye of all of the kitchen staff who often insisted on doing things for her all the fun was sucked out of it. 

She far preferred doing this in her own small kitchen with Rukelion hovering over her shoulder asking when the apple tart was going to be done every five minutes and her laughing and telling him to help if he was so eager. Which he did. 

Daisy was overwhelmed by the nostalgia and her eyes filled with tears. That had been happening a lot lately. Stupid pregnancy hormones! The last thing she needed right now was for anybody to see them. Someone would end up reporting it to Rukelion and she didn't want to explain herself right now because she was sure she would sound like a spoiled brat. 

"Your Majesty, forgive me for speaking out of turn, but are you alright?" Isabelle, one of the pastry girls who was less awkward around her than most, asked with a frown. 

The small show of concern was what finally made the dam break. She began sobbing helplessly into her hands, mortified but unable to stop. She stood there in the middle of the busy kitchen crying her eyes out feeling like a total idiot but unable to so much as run to find somewhere to hide. 

As suspected, someone was reporting her movements because less than five minutes later Rukelion appeared in the doorway to the kitchens looking rather frantic. The entire kitchen staff began panicking, likely because no king had ever set foot in there before. 

He strode across the room and without saying anything he scooped her up into his arms and walked her out of there. At least that way she wouldn't be crying in front of people she didn't know well anymore. 

"What's wrong, Daisy?" he asked worriedly after setting her down on his lap in the nearest empty room, which happened to be some sort of parlor. 

His arms were around her and he was holding her tightly as if it would prevent her from breaking apart. The hug only made her cry harder. Hugging a crying person tended to have that effect. 

"I miss you!" she sobbed, unable to get anything else out. 

Rukelion frowned in confusion. "…I'm right here."

Oh, that wasn't what she meant! Why couldn't she speak properly around her tears? This was so frustrating!

It took Daisy a while to calm down enough to be coherent. "I never see you anymore and I have nothing to fill all of the time with since most of my usual activities are either restricted or now rendered so awkward I can't enjoy them properly. 

"I can't sit still like this; I've always been a woman of action! I'm losing my mind and I'm even lonelier than I was when I was on the farm and you were in the capital. I hate everything about this, Rukelion. 

"I know you're busy and I know I'm being selfish but everything I ever knew got turned on its head and I don't even have my best friend to support me now for more than five minutes at a time. I can't live like this, okay? But I know your work is important so I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

Her husband looked as though he had been slapped. "You're really that miserable being here?"

"Uh, yeah. Did you honestly expect anything different? I'm no queen."

"Who told you that? If it was another noble—"

"No one told me that! They didn't have to. I'm not cut out for this. I've never been someone with any degree of influence. All I've ever tried to do is quietly make my way through the world searching for some small scrap of happiness along the way and I literally cannot do that the way things are right now. There's nothing quiet about being inside a castle with people watching my every move and judging me for it!" Daisy cried in exasperation. 

"I want things to go back to the way they used to be but that isn't possible. Like it or not, this is my life now because it's what matters to you and I want to support you in whatever you do.. But I miss being able to be myself."