A/N: Response to a prompt from harpyvixen:

"What is going through Rose's mind after her "Aunts" break the news to her? And all the way up to the moment when Maleficent appears in the fireplace to lure her to the tower."

Canon-compliant, and some dialogue was borrowed from the movie. Fairly dark, but no specific warnings. Feedback would be much appreciated!

Briar Rose's aunts have always been very serious people. It isn't that they don't smile or laugh—they do, all the time! Rose's childhood has been filled with warmth and happiness. But every so often Rose says something, just a passing comment, a little joke…

"Rose, dear, would you go out and pick some flowers?" Aunt Flora would say.

"Flowers? But I just picked two bouquets yesterday!" Rose would reply. Then, with a grin, she'd add, "Afraid the frost will get them?"

Aunt Flora would always look at her as though she'd seen a ghost, then her expression would soften into one of gentle, mildly concerned vexation. "Rose, dear, it's the middle of June. There isn't going to be a frost. I wanted another bouquet for the kitchen, that's all."

Rose's smile would fall, she would respond, "Of course not. How silly of me. Be back before dusk!" and she'd make her way out into the woods where the prettiest flowers grew.

Rose's aunts, dearer than anything though they are, have absolutely no sense of humour, and Rose sometimes finds it quite lonely to be the only one enjoying herself as they stare at her as though she's grown a second head ("That's impossible, Rose. Humans can't grow extra heads. If they could, beheading would not be a practicable penalty.")

Unfortunately—and she must stress again how dearly she loves her aunts—Briar Rose has never met another person with whom to compare her strange love for non-serious remarks, aside from the people in story books, of course, and in those, it's only ever the occasional man who makes a joke that Rose funds funny. Rose has come to the tragic conclusion that she might truly be touched in the head, or at the very least, that she has an unacceptable mind for a woman. She supposes she'll never find a husband now, though admittedly her prospects were already somewhat limited by the fact that she's not allowed to speak to anyone.

Briar Rose is turning sixteen today. According to her aunts, today is the day she becomes a woman, not just a child anymore. She finds the idea somewhat frightening, given her newfound discovery about the shortcomings of her mind, but she also finds it unbearably exciting. Rose has been clinging for nearly a year now to the desperate hope that on this day, her life will change.

Rose must stress once again that she has not had a bad life, not by any definition. She does not remember her parents—they died in a fire caused by an evil fairy when she was only a few days old—but she has never known anything less than adoration from all three of her mother's sisters. They have given her everything they possibly could, and a day has never gone by in which they have not told her that they love her, that she is beautiful and kind and good, and that they only want the best life for her.

They have given her everything except for a friend…someone her own age, or someone with whom she has anything in common at all, really.

Rose hopes that today that might change. She hopes that, now that she is a woman and not a child anymore, she might be permitted to talk to someone—anyone will do! She knows that it will be marvelous to talk to someone new, whether it is the man and woman who bake bread, or the woman who mends shoes, or the woman and her son who stop by their house sometimes and knock, only to walk away when no one ever answers the door. She knows that when she is granted permission, the world will open up to her like a window, and she will suddenly see and know and understand everything which has eluded her in her sixteen years of existence.

She doesn't mean to disobey them, really she doesn't. She's never disobeyed them before, not since she learned the rules when she was five or so. But he is so handsome and so insistent and he has such a lovely singing voice, and she thinks perhaps a part of her hopes so badly that when she comes home, her aunts will tell her that it's okay, anyway, and then no harm will have been done, that she's already convinced herself that it's real and she's allowed.

And he is so persistent! She tries to get away!

But what if she grows old and her beauty fades and then nobody wants her? She's read countless stories that end that way. The men only go chasing after the girls who are young and beautiful. Women who are old and plain end up alone and unloved and very, very sad. Rose does not want to end up alone.

A part of her knows she's being melodramatic. Somewhere, deep in the recesses of her mind, she realizes that this stranger she met in the woods cannot be the only friendly, handsome boy there ever was. Yet, he is the only one she had ever laid eyes on, and indeed, he is the only man of any variety she has ever laid eyes on, and he is the only person other than her three very dearest of aunts to whom she has ever really spoken at all, and so she cannot help herself if in the course of an afternoon, he has become the center of her entire (admittedly very small) universe.

Her universe didn't have a center before. She didn't realize that until just now. She was drifting idly in no direction at all and then suddenly, just as she knew it would, her life changed when she turned sixteen, and now she has a purpose and she understands everything. Everything is him, her handsome stranger in the woods. He is the answer to everything. This must be what love feels like, and surely her aunts will understand that.

"Aunt Flora? Fauna, Merryweather?" she calls as she lets herself into the cottage in the glen. "Where is everybody? Oh!"

Oh! Oh, it's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen! Oh, this is the best day of her life—she cannot imagine how a day could ever, ever be any better. And oh, yes, she has had a good life, but now, now everything seems so much sweeter, now that she knows that she has a purpose and a direction and a place in this world.

"Surprise, surprise!" he aunts call as Rose examines the dress and the cake they have made for her. She can't even begin to imagine how they did it—she's always had to handle most of the sewing and cooking—but they are both—the dress and the cake—absolutely perfect.

"This is the happiest day of my life!" She thinks she says this out loud, but she cannot be certain, for music and birdsong and the sound of his voice and all kinds of other unintelligible things are ringing in her ears. "Everything is so wonderful!" Because of him. She is in love and she has found a friend and a love and her world has a center. "Just wait 'til you meet him!"

"Him?"

"Rose!"

"You've met some stranger?"

"Oh, he's not a stranger," she explains. He couldn't be further from, in fact. He is everything. He is a dream come true. "We've met before."

"You have?"

"Where?"

"Once upon a dream," she replies, and she is a little worried that they're going to be angry with her for breaking the rules, but this worry is drowned out by the sounds of the universe thundering in her ears, and she sings aloud the song that's foremost in her heart, or perhaps a combination of a few songs, she doesn't really know. She's never been this blissfully happy before, and she can't quite contain herself. She doesn't want to.

She reaches out to Aunt Fauna, who she knows will understand the best. More than either of her sisters, Fauna believes the very hardest in the possibility of true love.

"She's in love," says Aunt Fauna, sounding unhappy. This is when the first pang of genuine fear strikes her heart. If Fauna isn't happy for her…

"Oh no."

"This is terrible!"

"Why?" she asks, the song in her heart ending in abrupt, heavy silence. "After all, I am sixteen," she says. Today she becomes a woman, not just a child anymore. Today her life has become wonderful. How can her beloved aunts not see that?

"It isn't that, dear," says Aunt Flora sadly.

"You're already betrothed," Aunt Fauna adds.

"Betrothed?" Rose echoes, and now she hears another kind of sound, the sound of the world as she knows it crashing down around her.

"Since the day you were born," says Aunt Merryweather with a smile.

"To Prince Philip, dear," Fauna finishes, and she, too, looks happy.

Briar Rose decides that her aunts are playing a joke on her. It's a very cruel joke, but there's no other explanation for this.

"But that's impossible," Rose replies. She is trying to do what her aunts do to her when she makes a joke. She is explaining why it is preposterous. She suddenly understands how they feel, because they don't understand. This joke isn't funny to her, like her jokes aren't funny to them. She swears to herself that she'll never make another joke as long as she lives if they'll only let this one end. "How could I marry a prince? I'd have to be—"

"A princess," Aunt Merryweather finishes her sentence, still smiling as though it's the best day of her life, too.

"And you are, dear," Aunt Fauna continues.

"The Princess Aurora," Aunt Flora finishes. "Tonight, we're taking you back to your father, King Stefan."

"But…but I can't," Rose states, feeling rather stupid as she grasps onto the most practical concern that enters into her mind. She has promised to meet her stranger tonight. It would be rude not to be here. "He's coming here tonight," she tries to explain and also not to lose consciousness. "I promised to meet him."

She doesn't hear what Aunt Flora says in response. Her ears are ringing or thundering or she's gone deaf or something, and she sees spots and flashes of light everywhere. Briar Rose's aunts do not make jokes. She knows this. She has never been more certain of anything in her life. If they are telling her that she is the Princess Aurora and that she is betrothed to Prince Philip and that her entire life and everything they have told her up until now has been a lie, they are not joking.

Prince Philip is the eldest son of King Hubert of the North, which is the kingdom nearest theirs, the Kingdom of the East. Rose knows absolutely nothing else about him, except that he's betrothed to Princess Aurora.

Princess Aurora was cursed by an evil fairy when she was a baby. Briar Rose doesn't know the evil fairy's name. It wasn't written in the book and her aunts would not tell her. The evil fairy cursed Princess Aurora to die when she turned sixteen, but then Princess Aurora disappeared without a trace. She is known as the Lost Princess of the Eastern Kingdom.

Briar Rose is Princess Aurora.

Briar Rose is Princess Aurora.

Briar Rose is not Briar Rose. She is Princess Aurora. Her aunts say it as though it's the simplest thing in the world. "You're not you. You're she," and suddenly her world, which seemed only an instant ago to have finally found its purpose, has now exploded into a million pieces. She has no world. She is not Briar Rose, because Briar Rose doesn't exist anymore. Briar Rose was just destroyed in as few as ten words. It is as though she never existed to begin with.

Rose vaguely realizes that she's crying. She's yelling nonsense words that don't form thoughts, and all she can think is that she has to get away from these three smiling faces who somehow think that this is a good thing, that Briar Rose is gone forever and that Princess Aurora is going to die today and that she, the girl they have raised for sixteen years, is slowly drifting toward the hour of her demise.

She runs to her room and slams the door, pressing her hands and face against it as though that will somehow block out the world, but of course, it isn't even enough to block out Merryweather's low, sweet voice saying, "And we thought she'd be so happy."

She doesn't remember very much after that. She isn't certain if she's awake or asleep or caught somewhere in between. She can't see anything, and all she hears is the sound of her own voice, crying about nothing and everything as the last remaining hours of a life she has never known slip through her fingers.