A/N: All associated characters and situations are property of J.K. Rowling. No copyright infringement is intended, and no profit is being made by this story. Honestly. What did you expect? The song A Sorta Fairytale belong to Tori Amos.
Fairytales
Once Upon a Time, she writes, capitalizing words she knows she shouldn't. She does many things these days, knowing instinctively, that she ought not to be doing them. Her quill scratches across the parchment, dark blue ink spilling out in lacy words across the page. A dowager without a crown, now. She is no princess, and certainly not a queen. These are to be her memoirs, this hope of a life stolen from her treasury.
When she was young, she thinks, and she remembers.
When the house was empty, rattling with the little movement left in the rooms, she would tuck herself up with her dolls and storybooks. Downstairs she could hear Mummy singing, humming cheerful tunes in the back of her throat while she knitted or cleaned. Mummy made comforting noises downstairs, and she would sit and listen to them. Listen to the silvery click of needles, the brass of clanging pans, the golden murmurs of conversation through the fire.
She always thought of Mummy as being indescribably precious, the queen of hearth and home, crowned with tarnished fingertips and robed with ashy hems. She kept her largess in a flowerpot-- thin, sparkling powder that shot up into pale green flames, and carried you away into different kingdoms. Once you slid small hands into her apron pockets, you always stumbled on some small treasure. A bit of peppermint candy, or a cookie, a little satin ribbon for your hair, a scrap of shiny tin left from mending the sink.
The king of the castle was Daddy, and where the queen was glittering and firm, arms filled with a baby and a bag of parsley, the king was subdued and gentle. His chariot took you to shops filled with peasants that wore sackcloth clothes instead of flowing robes. His gifts were brightly coloured things with funny names, things that Mummy shook her head at and eyed doubtfully.
But she was Mummy's princess, and everyone knew it. The princess with fiery hair and a tinsel crown. She owned secondhand trains lined with secondhand ermine, and freckled attendents to hold it up even whilst they teased you about your silver-pearl tears.
They don't say things about her tears anymore, now that she's a dowager in mourning. They're the only jewels she can wear, crowning high, round pale cheeks and chapped lips. She's not herself anymore, just the ashes of a former firecracker, exploded into glory and love and joy and then left to burn alone until she was nothing more than a child clinging to Mummy's robes. A Cinderella wandering to hearth and home from the great castle of the king.
The whole country is in mourning now, and all you can buy in the shops are ebony robes that swirl and cry tears of their own. Veils that fit over her gingersnap hair, tucking it close under silver clasps and woven netting. Gloves that hide the golden band that still rests upon her finger. Her signet ring, she thinks ruefully, touching the cool metal. In the end, just another scar etched forever into her skin.
The first was left by the evil lord, his quill scratching fear into her heart, his ink seeping into her blood. She remembers the choking, grasping agony. Her skin white and cold, burning against the cool stone and the dank water, lapping against a satin gown. And her prince's hand, warm against her arm, drawing a golden sword against the dragon. Her eyes, frantic, meeting the Dark Lord's.
Clinging to her prince as they flew away-- she likes that, and would end the story there if she could. Or perhaps a few years later, when she stepped from the high tower into his arms for the ball. A poor princess without a dowry, dressed in the best of her trousseau and some pilfered trifles. Attired in pale, filmy green, fairy lights in her scarlet curls, the hollow of her throat sweet and kissable underneath the moonlit sky.
That was the night his lips first brushed her own, and his fingers only brushed the hollow at the base of her throat, emerald eyes soft and tender, eyes you could drown in if you lost your balance in between life and love. She never dreamed she'd fall with him beside her, but then she'd never thought that her prince could die.
She hated life for that cruel trick-- hated it for taking him away when she'd not been ready for it. When his lips had been wet with blood underneath her fingertips, when he'd clasped her for one last embrace before defeating the Dark Lord-- under her banner!-- she knew, clutching her wooden scepter like a sword, that he might not return. She would have worn widowhood proudly then.
But for death to come, chilled and unwanted, on a golden day-- when Mummy had smoothed the embroidered veil down with age-spotted hands-- when Daddy had held out his arm to escort her down the aisle-- the day of her coronation. She'd been glorious in inherited white silk, the coronet shining on her brow. Diamonds and rose-coloured pearls, gold metal hammered into lover's knots and lilies pure. A pale morning, summer dew shining on her roses, the green thorns kindly wrapped around satin ribbons.
Autumn always came to life, and it rested earlier upon hers than she had ever so desired. The sun came hot and dry over her discarded finery, drying her tears with needled kisses to her flushed face. She wore black in an agonizing parody of hope to the state's funeral, mourning her paralysis. She longed to run to the still body, to force life into him, and back into her heart.
Yet hands held her tightly. Her guards, lurking nearby, shadowing her-- as if, she thought dimly, it mattered if they struck her down now. When her beloved went into the fire, he took her with him. No matter if she still stood, weighted down by heavy air and grief.
So here she rests, quill in hand, her arm tilted against the smooth wood of her desk. Remembering. A fairytale without a happy ending, and a widow without a husband or a child to remember. She's grown oddly content in these past months, or days-- she can't quite remember now, how long it's been-- but on the days when she's alone in the house, hearing the rattles of ghostly movement in between the walls, she thinks of a childlike princess, watching the prince ride by on his great chariot. She remembers when her Mummy's love was safe by her side, and her Daddy was fit and strong, and she watched life go by with wonder. Then tears prick her eyes, and she has to stop writing.
And I'm so sad
Like a good book
I can't put this day back
A sorta fairytale with you
A sorta fairytale with you
Way up north I took my day
All in all was a pretty nice day
And I put the hood right back where
You could taste heaven perfectly
Feel out the summer breeze
Didn't know when we'd be back
And I, I don't-- didn't think
We'd end up like this
~Tori Amos, A Sorta Fairytale