I did -tell- you I hated happy endings. This one is Cinderella. Oh, the angst.

It was her reception by the time she actually thought about how unlikely all this was, and by then they were already into Happily Ever After. It had taken the screams of her stepmother, as they'd locked on those red-hot monstrosities they'd laughingly called shoes, to jar her thoughts enough.

Afterwards, she always wondered what she'd been thinking. The simplest answer was that she hadn't, but that was a thought she was never allowed to have. Instead, she'd driven herself crazy wondering how she could have missed the signs. They were there, if she'd looked - how the palace servants always smiled and never talked, how her family (ohgodherfamily) had always taken the greatest care to never mention the royal family, how worried her father had looked when they received that invitation.

She'd heard the stories, too. How her stepmother had killed her father, how her stepsisters had been dressed in the finest dresses and herself in rags, all of that. He'd taken great pleasure in telling her them all.

And then there was him. He wasn't particularly handsome, or charming (and that was another clue, right there, in how he insisted on being Prince Charming), but the invitations had gone out for every eligible woman and every eligible woman had been there. She'd been 15 at the time - too young, according to the invitations, but her stepsisters were older and they'd been. Afterwards, the Royal Guard had come around and searched all the houses. She remembered her father being accused of lying about her age, how the guardsman had just stabbed him and left him there as they took her to the palace. She remembered the execution of her stepsisters, after the wedding, and their mutilated hands and feet. He'd told her that story, too. About how they'd cut up their own feet, to fit that shoe he'd brought around.
Her own feet hadn't even fit that shoe, the first time. It was amazing how quickly they'd had the new pair made, really.

She smiled, by default, as The Queen entered the room she was sitting in, gracefully rising to her feet and bowing her head, nodding her head as The Queen spoke to her, not really listening. She knew the words by heart, now. He'd enter the room soon, smile at his mother, and take her out the room, to his. And a while after that, the guard would take her to her room, and she'd get dressed for dinner, and she'd go down, and smile, and maybe eat a little.

And maybe, soon, she'd fall pregnant, and once the Heir was born, she'd be allowed to die in some accident or another.

And she smiled, and she nodded, and she lived Happily Ever After.