AN: Hello there! Here we go again with another Brittana story. I swear I just can't stop myself from writing them. For some reason I just can't seem to write them in high school being all normal. I have to put them into crazy situations.
I've adapted the Disney classic as best as I can. I've changed some things to make more characters fit and to help make the story a bit more...I dunno if realistic is the right word, maybe probable? Yeah, sure, so I hope everything translates well.
One of these adaptations with this story is the curse. I changed it because I just didn't think having Quinn as a candle stick made much sense in writing. You'll just have to see what's different, I guess.
Anyway, I hope you like what I'm doing here, if you do or don't, just lemme know. Which is code for please review because I freaking love reviews. I'll be updating at least once a week.
I know this is short, but it's just the Prologue.
Standard Disclaimer: I really own like...none of this.
Prologue
Once upon a time in a far away land, a young princess lived in a shining castle...
"Tina, no, do it right," Santana snaps at the girl. "I should look perfect."
"Yes, m'lady," Tina mumbles, continuing to work on Santana's hair, combing it gently, attempting to braid it without pulling any hair. She's already been yelled at four times this morning, she really doesn't want to listen to Santana's voice anymore, especially if it's angry.
"It would be quite alright if you were to remain calm for a moment or two," Quinn says from the doorway. "M'lady." Santana recognizes the sarcasm in the last words and scowls at her, through her vanity mirror.
"Servants should know there place, take Tina here for example, she does as she's told and though she does it poorly, she knows to keep her mouth shut while doing it," Santana says, holding her head up a little higher. The action causes Tina's hand to slip and pull at Santana's hair. "Tina!" Her voice is almost a shriek and Tina cringes.
"Sorry," Tina mumbles for what feels like the millionth time. She tries to move her hands as quickly and efficiently as possible.
"Don't apologize, Tina," Quinn says, sauntering into the room. "The Lady is only antsy because of the arrival of her parents. Which should be any moment now..." She crosses the room and looks through the glass on the doors that lead to Santana's balcony.
"Don't forget your place," Santana snaps, turning her head to look at Quinn. "You're still my servant."
Quinn senses the tone and refrains from making anymore remarks. "Your hair looks fine," she says.
"What would you know? Scullery maids shouldn't worry about hair, especially since you've lopped yours off. You practically look like a boy," Santana laughs at her own words and turns back to the mirror.
Tina ties off the braid and Santana nods at her once. "That means leave," she snaps and Tina scurries out of the room. Santana watches her go through the mirror, smirking.
"You should give her a break," Quinn says, her tone more casual.
"I was being serious when I said remember your place," Santana says through a clenched jaw. "Tonight is important and I don't want you fucking it up like you did that stable boy. I don't need another mistake like Beth to come out of this."
Santana watches Quinn's face in the mirror. She doesn't care when the look of shock is replaced with anger, then replaced with defeat.
She does however, smile to herself when Quinn finally leaves her, muttering, "M'lady."
Although she had everything her heart desired, the princess was spoiled, selfish and unkind.
Santana is sitting at the long wooden table in the dining hall. It seats almost thirty and is set for three. She sits on the left, leaving the head of the table open for when her father arrives. She's becoming impatient, though, having been sitting for so long. She's already moved from the parlor to the library to her room to the foyer and now she's sitting at the table. Her nails click impatiently on the wood.
"What's taking them?" She huffs to no one in particular.
"Well, it is such a cold night, my lady, perhaps they were delayed by unexpected weather or perhaps something has gone wrong with the carriage," Rachel begins.
Santana holds up a bored hand. "Please don't make me listen to you anymore. I don't need you to tell me things I'm already aware of."
Rachel quiets immediately, obediently and sinks into the shadows against the wall, where other servants are waiting for orders, waiting for the arrival of Santana's parents.
Santana huffs again.
An odd noise echoes in from the foyer. Santana scrunches her face in confusion because it sounds like someone is...knocking at her door. She opens her mouth to send someone to go and check but Rachel is already moving out of the dining hall. She smirks.
She feels like her pets are trained well.
Rachel moves quickly, crossing the room and disappearing beyond the doors.
The noise quiets, Santana can barely hear Rachel speaking – she'd recognize that horrible sound anywhere, though – then another voice, it sounds foreign. The dinning room is right off of the entrance hall, the voices are close enough to hear but too far away to discern any sound. When Rachel doesn't return immediately and voices are echoing through the door Santana huffs loudly and rises to her feet. She moves across the room gracefully.. She keeps her head raised and doesn't look at any of the guards or servants she passes.
The foyer looks like a disaster area. Santana scowls at Rachel who is standing by the large double doors speaking to someone in the doorway. The figure is hunched in a traveling cloak, Santana can't make out their face.
"You," Santana speaks. The word echoes against the walls.
Everyone seems to freeze. Rachel turns to look at Santana. She opens her mouth but Santana stops her.
"I'm sure whatever apology you're about to come up with is wonderful and full of oh so many necessary words, but I'd like to know what's going on tonight, if it isn't too much trouble," Santana snaps, voice dripping with sarcasm and contempt. She hates nothing more than when a servant can't do their job.
But then, one winter's night, an old beggar woman came to the castle and offered a single rose in return for shelter from the bitter cold.
"She," Rachel stops and looks down at the hunched figure. "She was asking if she could stay the night, just for this one night, since it's winter," Rachel says, stumbling over her words.
Santana cocks an eyebrow and strides closer to the stranger. "Well," she begins, an angry smirk on her face. "I'd love to see the person who has the audacity to ask for free room and board from someone who is," she eyes the tattered traveling cloak the figure is wearing. "So obviously out of element in my entrance hall."
"Please," a frail voice asks from under the hood. "It's frigid outside, a night like I haven't seen in years." The woman reaches into her robe and pulls out a single rose in full bloom, offering it towards Santana. "I can give you this."
Santana watches Rachel's face crease in sympathy.
"Show yourself," Santana barks, ignoring the rose –she isn't as easily swayed.
Repulsed by her haggard appearances, the princess sneered at the gift and turned the old woman away.
The figure lowers her hood and Santana takes a step back. An old woman is standing before her. Her skin is so completely covered in crinkles that it look like tiny pathways across her face. Her hair is white and wispy and hangs loosely, unkempt, around her face.
"Absolutely not," Santana says, crossing her arms over her chest. "You've already interrupted my dinner and ruined my appetite with your...appearance. Please leave." She sees Rachel inhale sharply beside her and shoots her a warning look.
But she warned her not to be deceived by appearances, for beauty is found within.
"My appearance," the woman begins. "Is not all that I am. I ask for just one night. I will not bother you or your staff, I will not take your food. I just need somewhere to rest and escape this biting cold."
Santana scoffs. "Get out." Her words are sharp and she turns her back on the old woman, leaving her with Rachel to deal with.
And when she dismissed her again, the old woman's ugliness melted away to reveal a beautiful enchantress.
Light flashes through the entrance hall and Santana turns. She feels like she's been blinded, the light –which has now disappeared – was so bright, so pure. She blinks hard, trying to focus. Standing where the old, hunched woman had been standing is a woman in a green dress. It flows like water around her. The woman is beautiful, tall, taller than Santana.
Santana's eyebrows knit together in confusion. "What is this?" She turns to Rachel whose mouth is open, she looks stunned, in awe.
"I warned you," the woman in green says. Her voice seems to echo everywhere. Santana feels like the voice is inside of her, making her organs vibrate. "I gave you a chance to show kindness to another."
"What?" Santana asks again. "What is the meaning of this?"
The woman tsks at her. "There it is, that anger, that bitterness at all things that aren't beautiful, like you are."
Santana narrows her eyes. "This is trickery, had I known–"
The woman holds up a hand. "Had you only known I was just as beautiful? Had you only known I was an enchantress?"
The princess tried to apologize but it was too late, for the enchantress had seen there was no love in her heart–
Rachel gasps. Santana's eyes widen and she takes a step back. She's angry at herself for not realizing immediately. Of course she would have to be an enchantress to change forms. "I'm sorry," Santana splutters quickly. Wealth, societal standings, those types of things can't save you from enchanters. Santana knows this and feels her heart pounding hard in her chest.
"Sorry," the woman says. Her voice is heavy, as if she's tasting the word in her mouth, feeling it. "Sorry does not amend the ugliness I see in you. You have let your beauty poison you, you have lost compassion and love. These are things that matter."
Santana can feel her face growing hot with anger at having her words thrown back at her, humiliation at being tricked in front of her servants and most of all fear. Santana has heard her father and his friends, other men of nobility, Dukes and Earls and the like talk about the dangers of enchanters. They spoke about enchanters as if they were vigilantes. Delusions of grandeur, she had heard him say; the world was build this way on purpose, with everything in its place, and changing that would hardly make things better. Their words had been spoken with such conviction. Yet when Santana had asked him about enchanters he had told her to never associate with them and to avoid them at all costs. He had said it with fear, hiding just behind his eyes.
–and as punishment she transformed the princess into a hideous being and placed a powerful spell upon the castle and all who lived there.
"You need to learn what beauty is, Santana," the enchantress says. "Beauty is love, the act of it. It is not the image." She takes a step back, out the double doors and into the cold night. "I have placed a curse on you, on your servants who allow you to treat them –and others– in your monstrous ways."
Santana feels her entire body become cold, numb. Fear crawls across her skin. She stumbles backwards, away from the enchantress, in futile hope of escape.
"Do not fear," the enchantress says and smiles at Santana. It's warm and real and genuine and Santana cringes. "When you find love, when you realize love and have love returned, your spell will be broken."
The world turns white and Santana is blinded like she was before. When she finally blinks the brightness from her eyes, the enchantress is gone.
"M'lady," Rachel beings in a quiet, quavering voice.
Santana opens her mouth to respond but stops. She doubles over.
Pain, she's in pain. It's unlike anything she's ever felt in her entire life.
"What is going on?" Quinn's voice echoes through the entrance hall.
The sound is like knives in Santana's ears. Everything hurts so much. She stumbles away, desperately wanting to get away from everyone, everything. They can not see her this weak, she won't allow it. She can hear Quinn and Rachel talking behind her as she moves to the stairs, up and up, clawing her way. She hears footsteps coming towards her and barks an order for them to leave her.
She doesn't know how she manages to make it to the west wing, into her room. She does though. She collapses beside her bed and feels her body changing beneath her skin –feels her skin changing. It hurts like knives and ice and lasts for what feels like centuries.
Until she's floating.
Or spinning.
She isn't really sure but she isn't in pain. She opens her eyes and stares at the detailed molding on her ceiling. She groans slightly and pushes herself up. She blinks a few times and grabs onto her bedding, using it to pull herself up.
She stops and gasps loudly. Her arms, her once beautiful, flawless arms are now... She looks scarred, as if she had been burned years ago and the wounds were never properly treated. Her hands are the same way, the scarring moves in patches, making it even more gruesome. It seems to make a swirling pattern on her body. Her nails are long and yellowing, like an old man's. She pulls the hem of her dress up and gasps again when she realizes that her legs and toe nails are the same. Santana resists the urge to scream as she pulls herself to her feet.
She's in a daze as she makes her way across her room, to her vanity. She looks into the mirror.
Her hair is dull and hangs limply on her head. Her skin looks scarred, like the rest of her. Her teeth are sharp and seem to jut at horrible angles. Her lips look chapped and gruesome. Her eyes though, they haven't changed.
It's an odd comfort, but it's one thing, at least.
She flexes her fingers in front of her and blinks at her reflection a few times before a sob escapes her. She sinks slowly into the chair in front of her vanity.
"What you see is what I saw," a voice speaks from across the room.
Santana jumps and turns, the enchantress is standing on her balcony, the double doors open. "You," she hisses. She scowls at the woman and turns back to the mirror, she chokes out another sob.
"I brought you a gift," the enchantress says.
"A gift?" Santana barks. "Haven't you done enough?"
The enchantress says nothing. She moves into the room quietly and sets a long handled hand mirror on the vanity in front of Santana. It's silver and ornate, beautiful.
"So I can always remind myself of how repulsive I am?" Santana spits at the enchantress.
"It will show you whatever you ask of it," the enchantress says, moving back towards the balcony.
"Why?" Santana nearly yells the question. "Why give me this when you made me...turned me into... I look like some type of beast."
"To help," the enchantress says.
"I don't understand," Santana moans, slumped over her vanity.
"I hope to think you will," the enchantress says. "Oh."
Santana looks up. The enchantress is standing over her, the red rose held in her hand. She held the stem gently and let it go. It hovered in the air and floated towards Santana, who looked at the enchantress.
"Take it," she says gently.
Santana reaches her hand out slowly, grimacing at the way her skin looks. She holds the rose gently in front of her. "I suppose this will help, too?"
"Until your twenty-first birthday," the enchantress says, moving towards the open balcony doors.
"I don't understand," Santana repeats.
"You have until the last petal falls to break your curse," the enchantress says, stepping onto the balcony.
"Wait," Santana says, glancing to the rose and setting it on her vanity, afraid to touch it.
When she looks up, the enchantress is gone. Santana buries her head into her arms and sobs.
Ashamed of her monstrous form, she concealed herself inside her castle, with a magic mirror as her only window to the outside world. The rose she had been offered, was truly and enchanted rose, which would bloom until her twenty first year. If she could learn to love another and earn their love in return by the time the last petal fell. If not, she would be doomed to remain a beast for all time.
As the years passed, she fell into despair and lost all hope.
For who could ever learn to love a beast?