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In Waiting

I was angry. That's all it had been; I'd threatened the man in a fit of anger, and this is my just desserts, as you might say.

I've always had a problem with my temper. No matter what I try, it refuses to stay on its leash. I used to think it had a mind of its own; something I hate myself for thinking, because, really, she took advantage of that. The gods are unfair, they say; they are absolutely right, whoever "they" are. What did the Queen of the Woods do but give my rage mind and form?

Ah, yes, this hideous, ugly thing I am forced to call skin... All come from killing the beast which had singlehandedly destroyed my precious rose garden; a beast favored by the Goddess of the Woods, that cold-eyed Queen of the Moon. In her hypocritical fury, she took the beast inside me and gave it a form. So now, under her watchful eye, I become something I have never succeeded in taming. Once a month, the beast within tears its way out, and I become that which I killed in both mind and body for the twisted pleasure of she who is no longer worshipped. Perhaps this had made her bitter; I do not know, and I do not seek to know.

Maybe I shouldn't have been angry, shouldn't have woken that slumbering beast. But the man was stealing my rose, the most perfect that had ever come from my bushes. I would've given it to him gladly, had he asked, but he just took it, as if it was his right, and that made me so angry... Haven't I been taken advantage of enough already? He didn't know, couldn't know, what he was doing, but it was done, nonetheless.

I'm not sure if I ought to regret it or not. Part of me does, and yet, when I remember...

I asked him what he was doing. The poor man was terrified, and I, that is, the civilized I, was truly ashamed of myself for raging over something so trivial. It was my rose, true, but did I not have so many others, as he'd pointed out?

Then again, roses are an obsession... I've always been fascinated by them. I was utterly captivated by their beauty, how they could be elegant, wild, flirtatious, and sweetly comforting, all at the same time. I suppose I cherished beauty because it was something I had lost myself, but that didn't change anything.

But the man, in his hurried apologies, struck upon the subject of a daughter. A sweet, pretty daughter who had begged him for only a rose.

It was wrong of me, perhaps, to ask for his daughter's life in return for his own, but what could I do? The curse upon me would break only if someone could learn to love all of me as I was; how could I give up this chance that had been dropped into my lap? Who was I to question the will of the goddess who had, apparently, seen fit to have mercy on me at long last?

Alas, if I could only have understood that gods do not forget or forgive...

The man wept, pleaded, begged on bended knees, but I could only promise him that no harm should come to her. I found it incredibly funny to promise this, as I never had plans of harming anyone in the first place, but in my exhiliration at the prospect of freedom, I'm afraid I rather forgot what terror the poor man must have been feeling. That's another thing I regret, that, but in the end, he swore that he would send the child to me.

He kept his promise. In a rather unorthodox fashion, but it was kept, and even I couldn't deny it.

What walked into my palace two months later was not the demure maiden I'd been dreaming of but a strapping young Apollo. Well... Maybe not fair- haired Apollo, but one of the others. Oh, yes, he could easily have passed as a god.

I was furious, of course - a rather dangerous state of mind, considering - but when he spoke calmly, with such an air of tragedy, the kind that says, "I have been wronged, but I accept my fate", there was no way I could not listen to him. And I remember what he said, too, word for word.

"You said to bring you 'the child'. I am a 'child', would you not agree? My sister, unfortunately, has previous engagements and couldn't leave, so I come in her place."

Elegant, beautiful, and despairing. And above all, there was no disgust when he looked upon me, upon the hideousness that was now my face.

How could I not forgive that?

From that moment, that fatal moment, I started to fall in love. It was a slow process. I struggled against the trap that had been set for me, but as time dragged on, I began to care less and less about what the world might think. As long as I could be happy, there was no reason to care for the world, which had never done anything for me.

It was a daily torture in the beginning. Every night, I would lay out a feast for this perfect stranger, who spoke little but always smiled, an empty smile in an empty face. I hated it. It simply wasn't my style to smile and seethe and weep at once. I never thought it was healthy to keep everything inside, which is, perhaps, the root of my problem altogether. But I allowed him to mourn, understanding that others were different and that there was nothing I could do to help otherwise.

Then the goddess smirked and decided to throw more obstacles my way, and this is where my plan crumbled like over-soggy bread.

Mush - he refused to give me any other name - had very conveniently arrived two weeks before the full moon, and so it was a week after his untimely arrival that the beast stirred and started its slow usurpation of my character. Under normal circumstances, I would storm up and down the palace, screaming at the walls. However, it had never occurred to me that I wouldn't be able to indulge the Beast while entertaining a guest. It never occurred to me that I ought to dine alone before the change. It also never occurred to me that the Beast might not be quite as polite as I'd managed to be, for no matter how I believed in expressing one's feelings, I did not approve of rudeness. But it's hard to control when the Beast welcomes himself into the house. I tried my best to remain civil, but his perpetually blank attitude had started fraying my nerves, had been fraying them for some time. He acted as if he were in a trance, strolling in the gardens all day, politely giving one word answers over dinner, and then quietly retiring. Day after day, it had become all the more obvious that though he did not cringe away from the scarred eye, lost to a hunter's arrow, he did not feel any liking, much less love, for me, either.

I could accept that. But the Beast was another matter, and Mush found out soon enough why I lived so deep in a forgotten forest, why I never wandered beyond the walls of the palace.

Nobody had bothered to warn him. I myself had forgotten in the strain of trying to control the Beast, which only made it more rampant than ever when it finally arrived in the middle of an otherwise perfect summer night. And who knew that Mush would choose this particular night to appreciate the effects of the thrice-damned bitch on my flowers.

I didn't just say that, by the way.

Every time I changed, I did so in the garden. The first time I did so within the palace, I ended up destroying half of it. The wolf belongs to the wild, after all, and I found that the garden constituted enough as wild that the Beast was content to run through the maze of them. And there was enough of me left that the scent of roses was calming. On this night, however, the scent of flesh was upon the winds, and as Mush stared into red oblivion from his balcony, the wind blew in the exact wrong direction.

Flesh always smells good to a Beast.

I barrelled through the maze, completely unaware, completely unprepared to find that beautiful young god at the end of my path. He stared at me, a sleek, curiously light-furred wolf, blinded in one eye, with surprise, repulsion, and just a hint of fear. It was the last two that really fueled the Beast on.

I made the unfortunate discovery that all appetites whirled into one within the Beast.

All I can remember is a hunger beyond anything I had ever felt before. All for that flesh. Next thing I knew, I was somehow on the balcony, and Mush was on the floor, my muzzle in his face. It succeeded in swiping him once across the stomach; he screamed, as much in fury as in fear and pain. I had enough control left that I forced the Beast away before it decided to really tear into him. For the first time, I, Kid Blink, the man, rose up and did battle with the brute.

Who won that night, I cannot say... My will prevailed, but he remained, beaten, perhaps, but leaving me beaten behind him. Suffice to say that I only managed to crawl into my own chambers. I woke on the floor the next morning.

After that, I arranged for Mush to be sent home. I had not kept my word; he had been hurt. It was only fair, therefore, that he be returned to his home, his family. I sent that rose, the best, as a token of good will.

"For your sister," I had told him. For you.

I had not wanted to see him off, but it would've been rude otherwise. So I dragged myself to the gate. He stared at me, his luminous eyes taking in the eye patch, the paleness... I wonder if he saw the depression. If he did, it never showed on that perfect, dark face.

I stood and watched my one chance at freedom slowly riding away.

For every night thereafter, I saw him in a series of feverish dreams. He was sweet and kind in them; he laughed and joked with me, as he never did in life. We spent days and nights together, never tiring of the other's company. Month after month, the dreams came, each differing from the one that came before it - different settings, different days. Once, he introduced me to his family, and I saw them all as clear as daylight. His father, whom I wronged; the sister who had asked for such a rarity; the brother, who had never once been mentioned except in passing. That was the thing... They all seemed so real. The seasons changed day by day; the sun even traveled across the sky. The details were amazing, but they didn't matter. He loved me, and I loved him; he knew my heart, and I knew his. That was enough. But even so, he always laughed and refused when I asked him to lift that hated curse.

"Hold on, my sweet," he would whisper. "Soon."

One night, the dreams ended. My roses started to wither as one.

I never did understand why. No amount of care revived them. And now I am here, laying amongst my dying roses. It's a sadly appropriate ending, is it not? I suppose I had poured too much of myself into them, for I felt my soul severing its way out of my body, strand by strand, and even the Beast cannot rouse me despite the glare of the goddess. But we will remain together, my roses and I, in life as in death, for they were always my most stalwart companions. And I can only admire the view of this snow of red; it is rather charming, if melancholy...

But what is that? Who knows the way into this garden...

He strides calmly down the path toward my death bed, a gliding saunter that only he can achieve.

"What are you doing here? You ought to be home, where you belong... Why are you here?" How my tongue betrays me even on the threshold of Hades.

"Must I have a reason?" A gentle retort, his voice as full of starlight as ever.

"But why..."

"Hush, darling. You never did know when you were straining yourself."

I blinked. Darling?

"Don't look at me like that... Well, fine, if you must know. That rose you gave me started to die, and I knew it was time to come back to you."

I leaned against his stomach, where I had been before, for he had lifted my head onto his lap. "Will you now lift the curse?"

"Yes," was the whispered reply.

His lips found mine, and the kiss was soft and chaste.

I closed my eye.

Well. Terrible? I want to say so, but I'm ashamed to say that I'm kind of proud of it.

Happy birthday, B, darling. I strove for fluff, just for you, but this was as close as I could get... And just as proof that I really did try, I was going to just let Blink die. But then I decided it was unfair, so I've left the ending up to your imagination.

Now that this is out of my head at last, I shall go to bed. Good night.

Gothic Author

P. S. If there are any mistakes, grammatical or otherwise, please, please tell me.

P. P. S. I know this would probably be better as a chapter fic, but you said one-shots, and I figured a novella-length epic would be cheating, so...