Disclaimer: Sleeping Beauty belongs to Disney and its respective artists. The fic's storyline is my creation.
Genre/Story type: Serious.
Rating: PG
Series: Sleeping Beauty
Pairing: n/a
Short Notes: Introspective one-shot over the curse activation scene. Do not post this fic anywhere without my permission.

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Why was it she had been lied to her entire life?

Why is it she can't have the happiness she's finally found?

Why will it be she must lose all her dreams?

Lost in a sea of reality, the heavy weight of gold on the crown of her head weighs down all her hopes and the rubies that glittered inside it gleams the red of sacrifice. She has to be strong to be a good girl, but the weakness she recognizes as her heart could not stop feeling and would not stop beating, even though she can do nothing she pleases.

Rose wonders if the boy she met will come to the cottage tonight, only to find it empty. She wonders if he'll wait the entire night for her before he gives up and leaves. She wonders if the last he thinks of her is of a girl who breaks her promises and did not love him after all.

When she thinks of this, the tears wouldn't stop falling from her eyes

I wish... she thinks hopelessly. I wish I could disappear.

As if something hears her, the room plunges into heavy darkness as black as the anguish veiling her eyes. Rose slowly lifts her head from the cradle of her crossed arms in startlement.

There burned on the hearth the sickly green of her despair and there rasped the voice of what she could do. She can make this all go away. All she has to do, whispers a quiet voice in her head that Rose thinks sounds suspiciously like her rebellious heart, is touch the spindle.

A faint corner of her mind wonders what a spindle is, but she knows it doesn't matter because the voice will show her what it looks like and bring one to her. Barely noticing her cloak slipping from her narrow shoulders, Rose stands up, bewitched by a faint spark of ambition, and follows the light to the wall of the hearth.

It opens the way for her and she steps through the door in a daze.

The eerieness of her path frightens her but she chases after despair's bitter glow. As she ascends the climbing stairs, her hesitant steps become sure and a horrifying calm settles over her nerves. It won't be so bad, she thinks, if she could just die.

It would be better to die than live without her dreams.

As the epiphany strikes her, the stairs end and on the floor appears something she has never seen before.
Oh. This, something in her thinks. Must be a spindle.

She steps closer and the strangeness of the situation tugs at her.

This is a terrible dream, Rose is certain, but it is the last one she could have that can come true.

She reaches out her hand toward the enchanting pinprick of light.