One of my 'happy endings? PAH!' drabbles.

Seriously, though; how on earth does being alone for some ungodly number of years prepare you for the constant press of people you'd have to deal with as royalty?

Re-uploaded because ate my line breaks the first time around.


He lives in the forest, now.

Once, he thinks, there might have been a castle; a castle and a kingdom and a fairy.

He might be remembering something he read, though. He can't tell, any more; slowly the bits of him that were human have fallen away, and the bits of him that are beast creep further in. The almost-knowledge of what he used to be is the worst part of this punishment, the days he still thinks about such things.

Sometimes the human side falls asleep and those days are the better days. The beast is allowed to forget, to just exist in the moment, but the human must remember and think.

Surely it's been too long, surely by now the princess must have found him and rescued him and broken the curse. This must be his nightmare.


Sometimes the castle seems too small, now.

Certainly he is not complaining that he is human once again, that his subjects are human also. Equally certainly, he was sometimes happier being the beast. The beast, at least, had his solitude in quiet; the prince has his solitude in a crowd.

Sometimes he dreams of the days when it was only him and her, when it didn't matter what he said or how he dressed or whether his hair was properly styled. Those are the better nights; sometimes he awakens in the middle of the night and he feels the people around him close in until he can't breathe.

Sometimes he can forget he was ever the beast, and on those days he feels apathy, which is better by far than the panicking feeling he gets when he has to deal with his advisors on the days he remembers.

The breaking of the curse should have been the beginning of his happy ending. Sometimes he thinks it still will be, that this is just a nightmare.


He only truly lives in his dreams now.