Author's Note: I started this one before "To Color His Love." That's right, Muse. Keep 'em coming.
Disclaimer: ...Sure. Let's make this more painful than it already is.
He's done a lot of things in his life. Things he's shamelessly proud of, things he can't help but smirk about.
(Things that make his heart hurt.)
He's screwed around a lot, for most of his life, it seems. He's played people like instruments.
(And when they play him back he gets revenge.)
He's really up for any adventure.
(As long as it's that kind of adventure.)
He's never read a fairy tale, though.
(The princes are always charming.)
But, she likes fairy tales. She likes charming princes. She likes knights in shining armor, and she'll create her own distress if it means she can be saved.
(Saved by a White Prince, not a Dark Lord.)
Her headband is her tiara, her virtue is her jewel.
(He'd take it away from her in a heartbeat- a bejeweled crown for her diamond.)
She's no ordinary princess. She's cunning and intelligent, wicked and sly.
(He thinks she's divinely perfect.)
In all her wickedness, in all her cunning, she's perfectly imperfect.
(He wishes she wasn't out of his league.)
In fact, compared to him, she's almost aristocratic.
(Royal.)
He thinks that maybe he wouldn't mind reading one of her fairy tales, just to see what kind of prince she wants.
(He's fooling himself, fooling himself, fool, fool, fool- he's nothing more than a jester in her court.)
-
She's so perfect, so beautiful. Her story has a White Prince.
(There's no place for a villain.)
He almost can't bring himself to touch their flawlessness.
(But he wants it, he wants it- fool!- oh, he wants it.)
-
He reads Little Red Riding Hood before realizing it isn't one of her fairytales.
(He smirks.)
He decides that if she ever comes over to him like Little Red, he'll be her Big Bad Wolf.
(He'll pick her flower hard.)
-
He reads Aladdin. He scoffs.
(He hopes.)
The lucky streetrat has a magic lamp to make him a prince. Even the beggar got his princess, and all he needed was a genie.
(He wonders if money can buy a genie.)
-
He reads Sleeping Beauty. She's gorgeous and pure. He tells a disgruntled Nate that he'd tap the girl in a second if she hadn't been sleeping for a hundred years.
(He hates her.)
The prince is kind and noble enough to kiss a girl who hasn't lived for a hundred years. He tells a disgusted Serena that the prince must've been pathetically desperate.
(He hates him.)
A kiss of true love is all it takes.
(One kiss from her would never be enough.)
-
He reads Cinderella. She's hardworking and talented, and all the prince needs to do is dance with her.
(She's no Cinderella.)
All the prince needs to do is be charming and he wins her over in a heartbeat. Chuck hates the prince.
(Nathaniel Archibald.)
And to find his true love, the prince sets out to find the maiden who fits a glass shoe.
(And he can't help but think- fool, fool, fool!- that if he had a glass shoe, he'd give it to her for her heart.)
-
He reads Beauty and the Beast.
(He stops reading fairy tales.)
-
(He'd rather be a jester than a beast.)
-
The White Prince falls from his horse, on his way to rescue the damsel in distress.
(Some say he threw himself off.)
Persephone wanders just a bit, caught up in her dreams.
(The dreams that shatter, piece by piece…)
Hades drags her to the Underworld.
(She shouldn't have tempted him in the first place.)
-
He doesn't have a crown, but he's got an empire.
He doesn't have a magic lamp, but his magic touch will do.
He doesn't believe in love (yet), but his lust is always true.
-
It's more.
(More, more, more…)
It's more than he'd ever expected. He's risen in her palace, up the ranks; from a court jester, he's come a long way.
(To court scandal.)
They'll deny their existence forever and ever; that's what they silently promise each night.
(Like they deny the existence of butterflies.)
He's terrified of things with wings, like butterflies and hearts.
(He's terrified he'll have to kill them.)
-
As she sleeps by his side, he whispers to her a fairy tale of a man who wants a crown.
(So that he can have the queen.)
He tells her of the Constance Land, of a queen so powerful that her people revolt.
(Of a sad little beauty who knows how to hide.)
He tells her of a White Knight who was once always at her side.
(Of a confused boy who doesn't know his bride.)
He tells her of a Dark Lord whose conquests are his pride.
(Of a boy who has always longed for love and butterflies.)
(He tells her of a fool.)
-
Oh, to be a prince and sweep her away to his castle. To awake her with true love's kiss. To teach her to let down her hair. To search a country for her with nothing but a glass slipper. To look into her eyes and see love. To have her bite into a pomegranate and stay, stay, stay…
Fool. All he had to do was say those three little (big) words. After all, that's what changes a beast…
(...Into a prince.)
-
("I love you.")
("It's too late for that.")