A/N: And this insanity is what happens when you think about Mick or Ray while listening to the soundtrack of Shrek the Musical. As weird as it is, the idea fits strangely well, so I'm going to write it. So, welcome to my story that is the story of Shrek with Arrowverse characters. This will be drawing more inspiration from the musical than the movie though. I mean, they're basically the same, but I think the musical does a better job at portraying the emotions of the characters, so that's what we're going for.

Disclaimer. By the way, I don't own either Shrek or anything from the Arrowverse. I'm just writing down my crazy idea.


Like many children, Mick grew up on fairy tale stories. His parents were pretty insistent that he learn as many of them as he possibly could. Every night Mick would be told story after story about knights, princesses, magic, adventure, happiness, and, most of all, true love. Every single story ended the exact same way;

'And they all lived happily ever after.'

What the stories don't specifically say though was what Mick's parents had tried to drill into his head.

'And, except for the villains, they all lived happily ever after.'

Maybe all the other kids understood that it was implied that villains didn't get happy endings, but Mick didn't. He had needed it to be explained to him multiple times. And then his parents would spend even longer telling him what exactly counted as a villain.

Basically though, a villain was anybody who wasn't a hero, and everybody knew that in these stories the hero was always very beautiful or extremely handsome. The villains were always the ugly ones. The monsters. The people who just didn't fit in.

Mick had once asked his parents why things were that way, and their answer had stuck with him his entire life.

"People like things that are beautiful, and they hate things that aren't."

It was a tough lesson to learn. Especially for a seven-year old ogre who already knew he would never be beautiful.

That was why his parents had taught him so many fairy tales. They wanted to make sure that he knew what to expect out of life. People and beautiful things get happy endings. Creatures and anything that was ugly did not. They wanted him to learn this at an early age so that he wouldn't get his hopes up. He wasn't going to get a happily ever after, and that was something he was just going to have to live with.

The older he got the more he despised listening to fairy tales. They all sounded the exact same to him, in the sense that they were all about something that he would never have. But his parents kept on telling him the stories. Stories about how he would never be happy. About how he was evil. About how he was going to die miserable and alone at a young age.

Mick hated the stories so much that he started looking for anything to drown them out. It didn't really take him all that long to find something. Every time his father told him a story he would light a single candle in the dark house, which cast an eerie glow. Mick knew that his father did this for dramatic effect, but he just saw it as a distraction.

Mick would hear the words that his father was saying, but he wasn't paying attention to them. He was too busy being drawn to the small flame. The fire and light it gave off flickered in a beautiful and unnatural way that Mick was just entranced by. He could watch the flame dance for hours, and considering how long his father's stories usually were, he normally did.

Mick was so drawn in by the flickering flame that just watching it every other night, which was when his dad would tell his stories, wasn't good enough. Mick needed to see more fire. So after his parents were in bed asleep Mick got into the habit of grabbing one of his father's candle's, lighting it, and watch it until it burned out. And then he would just get another candle.

One night though things went wrong. Mick snuck through the small house, grabbed the candle, lit it...and then something happened. Mick still wasn't entirely sure what. Suddenly the flame wasn't just on the candle, but on the table as well, and then on the floor. It was really big, really hot, and really dangerous. As much as Mick loved fire, he found the whole thing beautiful. At the same time though, that night was the first time that Mick every truly felt afraid of fire.

Fearing for his life Mick had run out of the house. He hadn't waken up his parents. He didn't try to put out the flames. He just ran outside until he was a safe distance from the house. He then sat down on the damp grass and watched as his home burned down. By morning there was nothing left.

Mick was ten when this had happened.

A part of him felt like a phoenix, reborn out of the ashes of a fire. Another part of him just felt scared and horrified about what had happened. What he had done. That day Mick realized that maybe his parent's stories were right. Maybe he really was an evil villain who shouldn't live near anybody else.

He was scared of what he could do to other people, and absolutely terrified of what other people might do to him. All the stories made it clear that evil deeds, like burning your home to the ground with your family still inside, were to be punished. And Mick really didn't want to be punished.

So he ran.

He didn't have a place to go. He didn't even have an idea in mind. He just ran. Every day he struggled just to survive. Every night he longed for the warmth of a fire, but he was too scared to light one, for fear of accidentally burning his shelter down to the ground or alerting others to his location.

Mick wandered a lot for those first couple of months. Never feeling safe enough in any given location to stay there for more than a night or two. It was also impossibly hard to find any shelter whatsoever from the weather and natural chill of the night. And everywhere he went there was always people nearby, and he really, really didn't want to have to deal with humanity.

So he just kept on going. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but he believed that he would know it when he found it.

After about a month of just wandering around, barely making it by, Mick found himself at an enchanted part of the forest. He considered turning back the other way. There weren't any humans near this part of the forest, he would be safe from them (and they would be safe from him). On the downside though, he couldn't exactly sneak into their villages if he was living so far away from them.

He had a choice to make. Live near a ready supply of food, but never feel safe because everybody around hated and feared him. Or live away from most every other creature but run the risk of starving to death.

It was actually a much easier decision to make than Mick had thought it would be. Without even thinking on it for a minute Mick continued on into the enchanted part of the forest and he never looked back.

This part of the forest was unlike anything Mick had ever seen before. It was almost as though the woods themselves were alive. He found himself fighting for his life more often against a bunch of plants than he did against mobs of people. It was easier to fight plants though, so he was okay with it.

After living in the forest for a few weeks the wildlife grew used to his presence. At least, he assumed it did, because the plants weren't trying to eat him anymore. Either way, things got much easier from that point on.

Shortly after the forest starting working with him instead of against him Mick finally found a place to call home. It was a fire swamp. There really was no other way to describe it. The place was surrounded by murky water that was actually practically boiling. Occasionally small bursts of hot steam and water would come shooting up out of the ground, like geysers. And all the plants that grew in this little area were extremely flammable.

Mick instantly fell in love with the place. He would spend night after night there before the paranoia that always came when he stayed in one location for too long would hit him. Mick would leave for a few days, and then somehow find his way back. This happened a couple of times, with Mick always staying for longer and longer the more he returned. Without him even realizing it Mick had made the place his permanent home.

And he was strangely okay with that.

Once Mick had accepted that he didn't need to be on the run anymore he actually started to settle down. He had learned how to live off the land, and no human would dare to wander this far into the forest. He was as safe out here as he knew he was ever going to get. Safe...but also completely alone.

He tried not to think about that though, because solitude was just a price he was going to have to pay if he wanted a chance to even be content with life. He knew that he never was going to be completely happy, and he was learning to be okay with it. Besides, in the few interactions with humans that he had had he had seen what came with true happiness. Love, friendship, cuddles, and everything else that he would never have.

And he was starting to think that he didn't want that stuff anyways. Being on his own worked pretty well for him, and he wasn't about to give up the stability he had found to have a chance at something that he knew could never be his.

It wasn't a happy life, but it was his, and he was (mostly) just fine with it.


Ray had grown up begging to hear fairy tale stories. He wanted to hear all of them. He wanted to hear about all of the happily ever afters. He wanted to hear about all of the examples of true love conquering all and breaking curses. Stories where good always got rewarded and evil always got punished.

Even with all the times he begged his parents to tell him the stories, it wasn't until he was seven did he even realize that his life was practically a fairy tale story just waiting to happen.

Ray had a secret, one that only his family was familiar with. To the outside world he was just Prince Raymond. The one who wasn't born to inherit the throne, but was still adored by all. He was just a child though, so nobody thought twice about the strange fact that he had never been seen at night.

His parents had forbidden Ray from even leaving his room once the sun had set, because they couldn't let anybody know their terrible secret. Ray was just a sweet, innocent child during the day. At night though he turned into something completely different.

A creature.

Ray was cursed. Had been from the moment he was born. He was a normal human during the day, but once the sun set he became an ogre.

Ray had always been a very naive child. He hadn't realized that not everybody turned into something else at night. He didn't even understand that ogres were beings that people feared and hated. To him it was just something that happened. It wasn't until Ray was eight years old did he even realize that turning into an ogre was a very, very bad thing.

A visiting Lord and Lady were staying at the castle, and they had brought their young son, Nathaniel, with them. Nate and Ray were just about the same age, and they immediately became friends. They played all day, until Ray's parents dragged him back to his room for the night.

For the first time Ray realized just how much he hated being locked in his room every night. He hated not having a say in what he could do. He hated that he couldn't keep on playing with his friend. And that night Ray realized that he hated how his parents locked him up as though they were ashamed of him and what he became. He always had hated it, even if he never realized it.

Upset and tired of being controlled all the time Ray snuck out of his room. The door was locked from the outside, to keep Ray in even more than it was to keep others out, so he climbed out the window. It was a little hard, and very scary, but Ray just couldn't stay in that room anymore.

Somehow Ray was able to climb his way up to the balcony of the room above his. The castle was so big that he didn't know for sure if this was somebody's room, or one of their many empty ones, but he didn't really think it mattered. He just planned on going into the room and accessing the rest of the castle that way. Easy.

Ray didn't really stop to think that there might be somebody in the room already, and that they might want to stop him in his tracks.

"Raymond?" A harsh and scared sounding voice was what greeted the boy the second he had crept into the room. Ray jumped in fright and turned towards the bed where the voice had come from. He relaxed when he saw that it was just his brother. Sydney on the other hand didn't relax when he saw Ray. He was tense and had curled himself up at the far side of the bed, almost like he was trying to get as far away from Ray as possible. There was a look of fear in Sydney's eyes, which just confused Ray. Was his brother...afraid of him?

"Raymond, what are you doing here?" Sydney asked in a whispered tone, as though he was worried that somebody would hear them. "You know you're supposed to be in your room."

"Yeah, but I-I wanted to play with Nate some more." Ray said, suddenly feeling unsure about his whole plan.

"What?!" Sydney's eyes went very wide. "You can't! Nobody else can see you when you're...when you're…"

"An ogre?" Ray offered innocently. He knew that was what he was at the moment. Why was Sydney making such a big deal about it.

"Yes, that." Sydney shuddered. "Nate can't know that you turn into...that. Nobody can."

"Why not?" Ray asked for the first time in his life.

"Because it's not normal!" Sydney waved his arms out to emphasise his point. "Prince's aren't supposed to turn into monsters!"

Ray flinched and took a step back. His eyes glistened with tears. Was that what his brother thought he was? A monster? Was that what his parents thought too?

Sydney's eyes softened when he saw that his brother was starting to cry. "Hey, I didn't...Look, why don't I go get mom and dad? They always know what to do." Sydney crawled off the bed and for a moment it seemed like he was about to approach Ray, to comfort him. The moment passed though. "Just...try to keep out of sight when I'm gone, okay? I'll be back soon."

Sydney didn't come back with their parents until morning, well after Ray had already turned back into a little boy. Ray had spent the night alone, curled up under his brother's bed, wondering if Sydney hated him, and if Nate would too if he knew the truth. Even after the sun came up and he turned back to normal Ray still didn't come out from under the bed. He only came out when Sydney grabbed his arms and pulled him out, with a little bit of help from their dad.

The second that he was out from under the bed Ray felt the tears that he had been holding in all night start falling. He just started crying, and he didn't even fully understand why. His mother immediately drew him close and held him. She stroked his hair and whispered loving nonsense to him until he calmed down.

His parents then sat him down on Sydney's bed and talked with him. They didn't scold Ray about how he had snuck out. They just told him that it was dangerous for him to be seen by others when he was an ogre. His parents told him that normal people would judge him, and might even hate him if they knew what he was.

Ray didn't want people to hate him. He had tearfully asked if there was any way to break the curse. His parents said that true love would break the curse, which made Ray feel better. He may not know anything about true love, but he did know a lot about fairy tales, and if so many other people could find true love then why couldn't he?

His parents then gave him some news that he wasn't as excited about. They were going to send him away. His parents assured him that they weren't going to do it because they wanted to, or because they hated him. They told him they were just thinking of his safety. That if he lived somewhere else, far away from other people, then he wouldn't have to worry about someone finding out about his secret. Nobody would try to hurt him.

Of course, Ray was too young at that time to wonder how he could possibly find true love to break the curse if he was locked away in a tower for his whole life? He trusted his parents, and he knew that they had his best interest at heart, even if it sometimes didn't feel like it.

So Ray was sent far away from his family's castle and their kingdom. He was sent to live in a tower instead, guarded by a mysterious boy with a magical and deadly flute. Ray's parents had sent his fairy tale book collection with him, and every day he would read the stories and be filled with hope that someday his knight would shining armor would come and break the curse, and they would live happily ever after.

Even as the days and weeks passed Ray didn't give up hope. He clung to his belief in true love and told himself 'it's going to happen today.'


A/N: As you can probably tell, this is going to be an atomwave story. What can I say? They're probably my favorite Arrowverse pairing, and I'm not even sure when I started shipping them. All I know is that I started watching the second season and suddenly every little moment between the two of them got me excited. So, yeah, I ship them pretty hard, but I know that not everybody does. If these two is not your type of thing, then feel free to not continue to read the story. Nobody's forcing you to stay.