*Burning Roses. *
*A Beauty and The Beast story. *
Rating: Pg-13Pairings: None yet.
Genre: Romance, Humor, and Drama. And action (I think).
Disclaimer: Please for the love of God, keep the first chapter's disclaimer in your mind as you read. Cuz I own nadda. And sue me and you get S.O.S. (Shit on a shingle. Actually, it's pretty good on toast. Army food. They called it that for some reason. It's chipped beef and gravy, so please wipe those bad thoughts from yer mind! Now!
Summary: I am so sorry for not putting this up sooner. I just started High School. ::Feels like dying:: And I am so exhausted…. Anyways…
:: gets all teary eyed and sentimental. Grabs a hankie from god knows where and buries face in it:: Ohhhh, you are all so nice to me!! :: Sobs:: I feel all warm and fuzzy. And, between you and me, my cheeks are beginning to hurt from this big cheesy grin I'm wearing. Good grief, I'm a sap. :: pauses and turns off water works.:: … morning and sleep and…eck, why am I even up? :: smacks forehead.:: 0.o? Where did that come from?
Hey, wait, is that a horse ranch? With horses? And trailers? And fences. ( now I wonder why there would be fences, I mean sure they are fun to jump over, and all that. I think horses should have more freedom. I hate seeing like four horses in a small pasture. It annoys me. You're not supposed to annoy a crazy person)
::Glows with happiness.:: I think I should have a birthday bi-annually. It's so fun.
Duo schemes and conspires. Serena bawls along with Quatre and things get even stranger when the all get together for a forgiving fest. How fun. Meow. Lets go horseback riding. And I mean that in the cleanest way possible, you echis.
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Chapter Seventeen.
Three days may have passed, but the situation got no better between Serena and Beast. Not that Serena was helping any. She was putting her stealth and Duo's magic to good use to keep herself from Beast.
It wasn't that she didn't want to talk to him, she wanted to, God, she wanted to. But she was no good with confrontation, and what if he was still mad with her? She did not want to make things worse then they were, and she didn't want to make a fool of herself. Besides, who wants to deal with an ugly snoop anyway.
Suffice to say she was feeling really low in spirits. Sixty feet under to be precise.
Duo, the little tweaker that he was, did his best to cheer her up, which often ended with Quatre beet red, Serena clutching her sides with laughter and Duo grinning cheekily at them all, quite smug and pleased with his inane chatter and wit.
They stayed in her room, most of the time, the doors and windows locked. Wufei had not yet returned from where ever he had gone to and Relena was no one cares where so there where no worries.
To pass the time, Serena would read them stories from her books, and she read with a flair and a passion that kept them glued to the edge of their seats. Duo had fallen over once, but aside from the bump on his noggin, which may have been there before, he was doing smashing.
Not literally. There was nothing his size he could smash. It was an expression.
At the moment, Serena was reading from book of poems and philosophy. Duo and Quatre were avid listeners, and hung on her every word. She loved it. Shakespeare did that, you know. Gained avid listeners, I mean.
" ' O me, what eyes hath Love put in my head, Which have no correspondence with true sight! Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled, That censure falsely what they see aright? If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote, What means the world to say it is not so? If it be not, then love doth well denote Love's eye is not so true as all men's no. How can it? O, how can Love's eye be true, That is so vex'd with watching and with tears? No marvel then though I mistake my view: The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.'" Serena took a breath, winding up for the last part and to see if she still had her audience in her hand. Not literally of course. They were.
Deep breath expelled and another one taken, she picked up where she left off, putting the emotions she believed to be appropriate for the last of the sonnet. And a little of her own. " ' O cunning Love with tears thou keep'st me blind. Lest eyes well seeing thy foul faults should find.'"
Quatre was leaking rivers from his eyes and sniffling , Duo was as far from the other fairy as he could get and holding a small throw pillow over his head to avoid the tears and snots.
All in all, they looked quite hilarious like that. Also, Duo was squeezing the water from his semi-drenched braid with a dark expression, muttering a few choice words here and there. Some of which consisted of PMS or mad cow disease or something of the sort.
Serena wasn't too sure, and catching a dark glance shot in her direction sent by the braid boy made the corners of her mouth twitch in amusement.
Five heartbeats later, Serena was sitting on her bum, laughing herself sick. It had a hysterical edge to it, tears dripping from her cheeks.
She blubbered out a few words and started flooding. Speaking of mood swings and PMS….
Ahem, anyways, aside from that little tidbit of the female psychology, which we will not get into because I don't want to get into it…Eck, yeah, well, moving on.
Shadows were very, very handy. Handy because you can use them for whatever convenient spying and/ or surveillance you happen to be doing. Not that that's what he would have called it per say, he wasn't that desperate for a peashooter to the head and a knee to the groin.
That was masochistic. He was not masochistic. Despite popular belief… nor was he sadistic.
That of course, may have been debatable at any other time, but he was not interested in that right now.
I am. And yet, that is another story all together, one I particularly don't feel like writing right now. After the first hundred or so tortures and such it does get rather redundant. I hate monotony.
Anyways.
He had heard her throughout the speech, magic aiding him a little in the hiding part. And, to put it bluntly, the irony was giving his cynical side a free dinner. With candlelight and all other such niceties. Thank you's and welcome to the club's were exchanged genially, and Beast stood there looking like he was going to hit his head against the wall any second now.
Women. He swore they had some sort of powers to twist a man's perceptions and blind him and warp his mind and… you get the idea.
When that thought mill finished, his sense of irony giggled like a giddy courtroom lady and pointed at him declaring he had just proved her words, though recited they were, right. Sort of.
How freaky. Maybe he should lay off the wine and ale from now on.
Heh. Right.
That would happen and pigs would fly. Oh! look there goes another oinker.
Shaking his head, Beast slinked off, intent on getting someone to examine his head. He'd heard Wufei had a good shrink. Maybe he'd try that. And if that didn't work, walls were handy. Either way…
As Lady Luck would have it, Duo saw the beast and an idea of evil matchmaking origins began to boil, boil and toil and trouble, and all that weird witch stuff he seemed to have an uncanny knack for.
Oh dear.
" Hey, Ren, lets go out to the…stables." The stables was were the ol' beat man went to when he was feeling very antsy of otherwise self destructive. Duo knew him well, at least, he liked to think he did. 500 years had taught him all of Beasts habits. Besides, he liked horses and Ren had admitted to him she didn't know how to ride.
Well, what a wonderful way to teach her, no?
She hiccupped and wiped her nose, blinking at him blearily. " What?"
Duo sighed and rolled his eyes. " Were going to the stables. You are depriving yourself of fresh air and it's causing you to have break downs. I'm getting soaked by the both of you ninnies. You make me sick!" Grumping to himself, Duo gathered the magic needed for transport and wiggled his nose cutely for show.
In the next instant, Serena was sitting in a pile of…. Hay.
Bet you thought I was going to say horse doo eh? Ha ha. Got you.
She blinked, and sneezed, then scrambled to her feet and glaring braided murder at the small fairy soon to be known as one dead Duo. The ducks were going to have a field day with this one. Cracking her knuckles in an especially creepy way, she advanced on a very freaked out Duo clutching his poor victimized braid and hiding behind a fairy shield, also known as Quatre. Who was still sniffling and leaking streams.
" Don't hurt me. I swear, I'm innocent."
" I don't want to be here Duo, I just want to stay in my room and die." Serena grated through clenched teeth, but she stopped her Advance of Horrible, Painful, scissory death to the braided one™. For which Duo thanked the powers that be and blubbered a I'll never do it again, then lit off with Quatre in tow like a streak of lightening with Relena on it's tail. All the while griining like a fricken Cheshire cat.
Serena had this very sudden sinking feeling in her belly. Like her intestines just went on vacation and there was nothing to hold up her stomach. She had a sudden gory vision of her stomach acids raining down, unfiltered, onto her kidneys.
Yikes.
Gulping, she turned around to see the reason why the hairs on the back of her neck were standing at attention. Said reason stared strait back at her from the back of a great black dappled Percheron champing at it's bit impatiently.
She immediately felt like crawling under a rock, or maybe into one of those lovely little dark stalls and trying her hardest to die.
" …Hi, Beast." Fancy meeting you here, she didn't say, now if you don't mind I have a fairy to skin alive.
Beast could not believe the audacity of that damned fairy. He was willing to bet the farmer that Duo had planned this. Little pest.
" Hello Serena. Would like to join me for a ride?" He asked politely, keeping all evidence of emotion from his tone. Before him, Serena found her feet fascinating and muttered something to them.
" Beg pardon?"
" I said I don't know how to ride."
For a giddy moment, Beast had this vision of Serena in his arms as they galloped over a field laughing merrily.
Yikes.
" Then ride with me."
There was a request for death somewhere in there, he just knew it.
" All right."
There was a strange feeling lingering somewhere in her, she just knew it. It was scaring her.
" Meow."
Both humanoids sweat dropped at the sudden interruption in the tension.
Guess who.
End Chapter.
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{ **Taken from The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Sonnets, page 1518 column one, CXLVIII} Okay, I feel so bad. I feel so very lame too. This chapter really ragged.
Please don't kill me. It's cruel. There were some good points in this chapter. But, seeing as how my brain is fried extra crispy, there aint many.
Advise for the day: I believe in Unicorns. They live in my head. I also belong to the House A Mythological Creature In Your Head fund. Join and become a member today!
-_-. Jokes invisible. If you can read these next few lines, you have very good imagination.