Dick: I KNOW YOU
Jason: I WALKED WITH YOU ONCE UPON A DREAM
Dick: I KNOW YOU
Jason: THE GLEAM IN YOUR EEEEEEYYYYYYYEEEEESSSSSS IS SO FAMILIAR A GLEAM.
Tim and Damian: SHUT UP!
...
Well... ok.
Dick and Jason: YOU'LL LOVE ME AT ONCE, THE WAY YOU DID ONCE UPON A DREAM!
"Disney," Damian said. Dick shook his head.
"No, Damian, we are NOT watching any Disney movies," he said. "They have ruined multiple of these stories. For example, Ariel is dead."
"As is my childhood," Luke said. This made Kate snicker. Dick cleared his throat very loudly.
"Alright, Sleeping Beauty. Here we go…"
Once upon a time, fairies existed. They were able to grant people wishes and gifts and stuff. There was a king and queen who wanted a baby girl.
"A girl?" Damian asked. Dick shrugged.
"Look, this pair of royals were really weird," he said. Kate frowned at them all.
"Why is that so weird?" she demanded.
"Because back then, a female couldn't continue the line," Dick explained. "It HAD to be a male, that way the name was the same. That's just how it was back then."
"Everywhere except England," Tim pointed out.
The fairies granted their wish and they had a daughter. Which they wanted. For some reason. When she was born, the royalty people decided to throw a massive party and invited all the most important fairies and people in general.
There was food and there were gifts, magical gifts that only fairies could grant: beauty, kindness, grace, honesty-
"Magic cheese," Damian interrupted.
"Cows," Tim agreed.
"Golden fish," Damian continued. Tim frowned and turned to him.
"That was a giant, not a fairy," he said. Damian nodded.
"Yeah, now I remember."
Then, a loud BOOM made the whole castle shake. All the fairies had granted the baby their gifts except for one.
Another BOOM shook the castle. In a flash of green smoke, there stood a witch dressed all in black, with long, black hair falling across her shoulders. Her nails were black, her eyes as black as a crow's feathers.
The way Dick was telling the story now left no room for commentary.
Her voice was low and smooth, like honey, but held an icy chill to it, as if her voice alone could freeze everyone in the throne room solid. When she spoke, everyone may as well have been frozen.
"You invited everyone to this party," she said, voice dreadfully calm. "Except me."
"W-what do you want?" the king asked. The witch smiled at him. Her eyes were filled with a rage reminiscent to that of a fire.
"I too wish to grant the princess a gift," she said. "My gift is that, when the princess turns 16, she'll prick her finger on a spindle and die."
In another flash of green, she was gone. There was silence in the throne room. It was broken by the last fairy, the one who hadn't granted the baby her wish.
"I can't undo this spell," she said sadly. "But I can ensure that she won't die."
"How?" The queen asked. The fairy flew over to the princess and redid the witch's spell.
"She'll only be asleep for 100 years," she said. "I wish I could do more, but…"
"As long as she isn't dead," the king said softly. "Besides, this is a fairytale. We can't fix the problem too easily, can we?"
Everyone smiled half-heartedly at each other, or at Dick. They weren't necessarily upset about the direction of the story… but the way Dick was telling it left no room for laughter, even for those who knew how the story ended (which was everyone except Damian.)
The fairies left, and life continued as normal. At the time, the king demanded all spinning wheels be destroyed. As the years wore on and the princess grew up… WAIT. I just realized I haven't named her yet.
This was what broke the tension. Jason immediately broke into laughter, Tim and Damian face-palmed, and their three guests all sighed simultaneously. Dick bit his lip and thought about a name.
"How about… um… Iris."
Everyone froze and gave Dick unreadable looks.
"Iris… West?" Tim asked.
"Like, Barry's wife?" Jason asked. Dick's face turned a little red and he nodded, crossing his arms.
"No other names are coming to mind, alright?" he pouted. Damian shrugged and gestured for Dick to continue, to which Dick happily obliged.
Iris grew into a beautiful young girl. Everyone eventually forgot about the evil witch's words. When she finally turned 16, she was wandering through the castle when she saw a hallway she had never noticed before.
"Oh, no…" Kate murmured.
Out of curiosity, she went down, studying the paintings and other wall décor. She didn't recognize the lady in the paintings, and she didn't realize that that black-haired lady with the strange black eyes was in every painting.
"Turn around," Tim muttered.
She continued down the hallway, not noticing how everything seemed to get darker around her.
The hallway led to a winding staircase, which she went up. When she got to the top, she saw a spinning wheel. At said spinning wheel was an old lady.
"Don't trust her," Damian said. Dick smirked at them all.
"Hello," Iris said in a friendly voice. The old lady, who was obviously the witch in disguise, beckoned her over.
"Do you know how these work?" she asked. Iris tilted her head to the side curiously.
"No… actually, I've never seen one before," she admitted. She went over to the old lady and listened intently.
"Why don't you try?" the old lady offered. Iris sat down and started going over the witch's instructions.
She got distracted. She poked her finger on the spindle and watched as a bead of blood welled up.
Before she could even stick her finger in her mouth, she fell over as if dead.
"Nooooooooo!" the boys cried dramatically. Kate rolled her eyes, Duke face-palmed, and Luke put his hands over his mouth to stop his giggle from escaping.
As the princess fell asleep, so did the rest of the castle. Standing upright, still actually asleep, it didn't matter. They all froze, their eyes drooping shut immediately. A wall of thorns grew around the castle.
The witch disappeared.
At first, brave princes and knights attempted to break through the thorns to save the kingdom. When no one could get through, people eventually stopped trying, and eventually, what lay beyond the wall of thorns was forgotten.
"Pussies," Damian said. Tim and Jason started snickering. "I mean, they couldn't get through, so they just GAVE UP? Honestly!"
Dick smiled cheekily.
A hundred years passed, and a handsome prince who may or not have been named Barry came riding around on a horse. He came upon the wall of thorns and thought "ooh. Wonder what's back there?"
"Fair enough," Jason said.
He rode up to the thorns. He thought nothing of the way flowers bloomed from them once he approached, almost didn't even notice them moving out of the way for him to get through.
"You know what this means?" Jason asked. Dick sighed.
"Please don't," he said. The three boys ignored him.
"BARRY IS THE CHOSEN ONE!" they shouted at the same time. Dick groaned and practically shouted over them to get the rest of the story through.
HE RODE UP TO THE INSIDE AND FOUND THE HALLWAY IMMEDIATELY. HE- oh, thank you for quieting down. ("You're welcome!" -Jason) He wandered up the staircase and spotted Iris sleeping in her place by the spinning wheel.
"Well, dang," he said to himself. "Wonder how long she's been here?"
He walked up to her and picked her up. He wandered around until he finally found the exit. He kissed her forehead, because he vaguely remembered that if you find an unconscious princess, the first thing you should do is kiss them. They might just sit up and burst into a musical number.
This got some snickers from the audience.
She did, in fact, sit up. They kissed, they embraced, everyone else in the castle woke up, too, not realizing that they had been sleeping for 100 years. They continued about their day as though nothing at all had happened.
I like to think they were surprised when they finally realized how much time had passed. Iris and Barry got married, blah blah blah, typical fairytale ending.
"The End," Dick said. While everyone applauded him (sarcastically, in some cases) he started wondering where Bruce was and why he wasn't home yet.
"Ok, guys," he said. "The next story is Rapunzel."
Funny story: I started typing this chapter. I got halfway through before I realized I was typing Rapunzel, not Sleeping Beauty. So... that was an experience.