Disclaimer: I don't own "Doctor Who", "Twilight", or the "Princesses" series; you know the drill

Feedback: Much appreciated

AN: Background details provided here for those who haven't read Hines' work- I naturally assume you're aware of the essential details of all three princesses' 'public' tales- as well as information about how Lorindar and the rest of this world fit into the Doctor's universe; hope you like the result

The Perils of Lorindar

As we were shown into the throne room, I tried to keep my breathing under control while staying as close to the Doctor as I could; thinking of the Doctor as a Time Lord was one thing, but the idea that I was in the same building as three classic characters from stories I'd heard as a child left me torn between screaming like a dizzy fangirl and running away in shock and confusion.

Adapting to aliens being real was one thing, but the thought that I was in a realm where fairy tales were real

As we came to a halt in front of a raised marble dias, I realised that we had apparently reached our destination, prompting me to look up and see who we'd come here to see. There were two thrones at the top of the dias, made of rich oak and inlaid with ivory and gold; one was carved to resemble what I thought was a griffin, while the other looked like a swan, and had a woman sitting in it; I guessed that she was the queen while the king was away somewhere. The woman struck me as being painfully thin in a manner I couldn't help but associate with someone suffering from terminal cancer, wearing a fur-lined cloak despite the warm weather and holding on to a stout oak staff even as she sat before us. Her eyes gleamed with an inner strength that put me in mind of the Doctor, but otherwise her entire body gave the impression that a strong breeze would have knocked her down.

"So," she said, looking at my friend with a slight smile, "you are the one I've been dreaming about?"

"Should I be flattered or concerned?" the Doctor replied, smiling politely at the woman.

"My insight has allowed me to bring these three together; you may consider that as you will," the woman replied, indicating the three women behind us with a smile before she focused her gaze on my friend. "What is your name?"

"I am the Doctor, your Majesty," the Doctor replied, nodding politely at her before indicating me. "And this is my friend, Bella Swan."

"And I am Queen Beatrice of Lorindar," the woman replied, smiling at him before she looked at the Doctor with a firmer expression. "Now then, if introductions are out of the way, can I ask who you are and what you are doing here?"

"You may," the Doctor said, looking solemnly at the queen. "Your Majesty, there is something taking place that could be dangerous to your world and the world that Bella and I come from; I became aware of it in my travels and have come to investigate."

"Indeed?" Beatrice said, looking curiously at the Doctor. "And… what are you, that prompts you to make this offer?"

"And who's she to you?" Snow- I was in the same room as Snow White- asked, indicating me with an inquiring hand.

"I am… a traveller, your Majesty; I travel wherever I wish to, observing the many wonders that this world has to offer, and assist those I encounter when circumstances permit me to do so," the Doctor said, unusually formal despite his usual casual manner. "Bella Swan is a human, but she is my friend and companion, travelling with me to broaden her view of the world and provide her with new experiences; we met when she needed some time away from home and I needed a friend-"

"You're his friend?" Talia- Sleeping Beauty- said, holding up a hand to halt the Doctor as she looked at me with a very pointed stare, as though wanting to test something.

"Uh… yes?" I said, nodding awkwardly at the other woman, wondering what had prompted that kind of response. "Just his friend; we're not… together or anything like that."

"You haven't promised him anything in return for going along with him, or agreed to be with him because of some kind of payment?" the armed princess asked, an edge to her tone that I didn't understand.

"No…" I said, aware that my confusion was showing but completely lost as to what this woman was talking about; there was definitely something personal in these questions, but I had no idea what might have prompted them in the first place…

"Seriously, Talia, relax," Snow said, looking at the other woman with a smile. "Do you really think I wouldn't have noticed if there was some kind of deal going on here?"

"Deal?" the Doctor repeated, looking at her curiously.

"Fairy deals," Snow said with a smile. "It's not an exact science, but I've been working on picking up on some details if I'm actually trying; considering the circumstances of your arrival, I wanted to make sure I knew what we were dealing with."

"Fairies make deals?" I said in surprise.

"You don't exactly get something for nothing," Talia said, looking pointedly at me. "Or did you think that I got all those gifts at my christening because they were feeling generous?"

"Uh…" I said, my mind quickly going over what I remembered of Sleeping Beauty from the various adaptations I'd heard over the years; discounting the specific names from the Disney version, I was fairly sure that I remembered the story's curse happening when various fairies came to the princess's christening to bless her with various gifts, only for one fairy to curse her with dying when she pricked her finger when she was sixteen…

"It all seemed generous at first, but the last fairy perverted the curse for her own ends; you don't want to know the details," Talia said grimly, looking at me in a manner that left me convinced that asking for more details wouldn't be a good idea; the stare she was giving me left me strongly reminded of Rosalie when the topic of her past came up.

"Right then; we won't ask for them," the Doctor said, looking reassuringly at Talia with a sympathetic smile as though she wasn't delivering a chilling glare, before his expression became more apologetic. "Still… I take it we can assume that the 'happily-ever-after' part of your story didn't really happen?"

"Let's just say that my wake-up call wasn't the simple kiss the stories say and leave it at that," Talia said grimly. "I was able to hone most of the gifts the fairies gave me to improve my ability to defend myself, and I don't sleep any more, but considering that my 'saviour' was the descendant of the man who ordered my family killed, you can understand why I didn't want to stay with him."

With that said, she turned and walked out of the throne room, leaving the Doctor and I to exchange awkward glances at having brought up what was clearly an awkward topic.

"Trust me, you really don't want to know what else the fairies had planned for her kingdom," Snow said, looking warningly at me as Talia left. "Danielle and I are probably her closest friends, and even we wouldn't know about it if we hadn't been there when she learned the truth."

"The curse was part of an attempted coup?" the Doctor asked.

"…Among other things," Snow said after a moment's pause, nodding at my friend before she gave him a slight smile. "You're good, aren't you?"

"I've seen a lot over the course of my travels, Snow; if I wasn't quick at picking up minor details to work out the bigger picture, I wouldn't be here today," the Doctor explained, before he looked at the remaining two princesses with a smile. "So, since it sounds like Talia had to leave her kingdom for various reasons of political intrigue, and Danielle appears to be the resident princess, would you care to tell us how you ended up here?"

"I was kicked out of my kingdom for killing my mother," Snow clarified.

"You were?" I repeated, looking at her in surprise (I decided not to ask if the queen had been her actual mother or her stepmother; that was a relatively minor detail that could have easily been 'edited' at some point to make her story more child-friendly). "But… if she was evil-"

"Her death just opened the doors for the more power-hungry members of the family to try and take the throne," Snow explained, shaking her head in frustration at the memory. "Queen Bea helped ensure that my cousin Lawrence took the throne- he was the least bloodthirsty of the alternatives- but they had to get me out afterwards; people needed a scapegoat for all the violence, and I had killed the previous queen."

"Oh," I said, suddenly feeling the inadequacy of any attempt I might make to apologise for bringing up a topic like that.

"Don't worry about it; you asked, so I decided to answer," Snow said, smiling reassuringly at me. "After all, Bea vouches for you."

"And that's enough?" the Doctor asked, looking at the queen curiously. "I mean no disrespect, your Majesty, but… well…"

"I've brought these three women together because I felt that they would need each other, and so far they have saved us all from some significant potential threats," the Queen said, smiling understandingly at my friend. "They trust me because I have done all that I can to aid them so far, and I trust them because they have proven themselves worthy of that trust; if we can trust each other based on my dreams, I'm fairly sure that we can trust you both on the same evidence."

"Uh… thanks," I said, feeling uncomfortable being grouped with the Doctor like that; I'd seen some interesting things in my time with him, but I wasn't completely comfortable with people treating me as though I was the Doctor's equal...

"As long as we're discussing our stories, what's yours like?" the Doctor asked, looking curiously at Danielle (Cinderella!).

"Most of the story's an exaggeration; I… changed in the garden, sneaked over to the ball, and left before midnight to ensure that my step-family didn't get back to an empty house," Danielle clarified.

"So… no turning mice into horses or creating coaches out of pumpkins?" I asked, glad to see that Danielle just seemed embarrassed rather than angry when discussing her story.

"They're saying that now?" Danielle asked, looking at me in surprise.

"Just… where I come from," I said, shrugging slightly even as I gave her a slight smile; at least this story sounded less tragic than the other two. "Although I was wondering… why did your prince need to test you with the slippers?"

"His eyesight isn't very good," Danielle explained, smiling back at me with a slightly embarrassed air about her. "He's fine in daylight, but at night, even illuminated by candlelight…"

"Ah," I said, nodding in understanding.

"In any case," the Doctor said, clapping his hands together and turning back to the thrones, "now that those details are cleared up, Your Majesty, I can answer the second part of your question; my travels brought me within a short distance of your lovely kingdom, and we… became aware that there were things happening here that shouldn't be."

"'Things'?" the queen repeated, looking at my friend with a slight smile. "And what 'things' would these be?"

"I'm… still working on that, actually; I know they're happening in this area, but what I sensed might be here could have any number of side-effects I'm not aware of yet," the Doctor said, looking apologetically at the queen for a moment before he smiled again, as though his lack of an immediate explanation was just a minor inconvenience. "Still, the point is, if I was aware of something odd happening here, and you were aware that Bella and I were coming here, maybe you were aware of the first thing too?"

"Aside from my initial visions of you, I suppose?" Beatrice said, smiling slightly at the Doctor before she sighed and sat back in her chair. "Well… I will admit, something came to me, but the visions are always relatively vague; I was more focused on the certainty of your arrival than the question of what brought you here…"

She looked over at Snow. "I don't suppose you've heard anything I didn't?"

"Well… I don't remember hearing about anything significant recently, but I have a few people I could get in touch with, and I can always check the mirror…" Snow said, looking uncertainly between the queen and the Doctor.

"The mirror?" I repeated, looking sharply at Snow, struck by the obvious implications of Snow White talking about a mirror. "As in, your mother's mirror? 'Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the fairest one of all' and all that?"

"Of course," Snow replied. "It's a useful means of boosting my magic; after I took it away with me, why shouldn't I use it?"

I was suddenly struck by the memory of that bit in Harry Potter about not trusting anything if you couldn't see where it thought, but I just as swiftly told myself not to think about that; talking about the rules of magic based on something I'd read in a book wasn't exactly going to get me anywhere.

"If you could just take a look around, I'd appreciate it," the Doctor said, smiling over at Snow. "I can't be sure how it would manifest here, but whatever Bella and I are looking for would be exceptionally powerful and definitely not part of the natural order; news of anything unusual that's been happening here would give me something to work with, if nothing else."

"Do you often dive in without knowing what you're looking for?" Snow asked, even as she returned the Doctor's smile with one of her own.

"Sometimes you don't have time to plan ahead," the Doctor replied, shrugging casually back at Snow before looking over at Beatrice and Danielle. "In the meantime, if you want to keep an eye on my box, could Bell and I have a couple of rooms?"

"So eager to invite yourself to stay, Doctor?" the queen asked in a slightly teasing manner.

"Eager to assure you that you have nothing to fear from us, your Majesty," the Doctor replied. "The box we arrived in serves as our means of transport; if you have control of that, we can't leave you, and you can feel free to allocate us any rooms you wish."

"Separate rooms if you can, please," I added, wanting to ensure that there was no confusion about our relationship; it was a minor detail, but I just felt that it was an important one.

"We have a pair of adjoining rooms in my tower," Danielle said, looking at us both with a smile. "They're a bit sparse, but they have the essentials in terms of furniture; will that do?"

"Perfect," the Doctor said, returning her smile with one of his own. "Just somewhere where we won't be underfoot and maybe with something to read while we wait for Snow to finish should be fine; thank you."

"Just be sure to avoid Talia if you see her," Snow added, smiling slightly at the Doctor as she turned to leave. "She tends to get worked-up when she's faced with the possibility of imminent danger and there's nothing for her to hit; she wouldn't attack without cause, but it's best to give her time to cool down."

I didn't need to have the Doctor's intellect to realise that the awkward questions we'd asked earlier wouldn't help us strike up a casual conversation with Talia; I still wasn't clear on how the Doctor had come to the conclusion that a coup was involved, but Talia definitely didn't want to talk about that issue any more than she had to…


Less than an hour later, after the Doctor and I had been shown to our current rooms- they each only consisted of a bed, a desk, an empty wardrobe and a full bookcase, but considering that nobody could have known who we were they'd managed rather well- I had finished testing my bed and gone through to find the Doctor studying one of the books as he casually sat at his desk.

"Oh, hello," he said, grinning up at me as though this whole experience was just another day at the metaphorical office (Not that I could imagine the Doctor ever working in a real office). "Just been reading up on the history of this place-"

"Before we get to that, can you just… clear a couple of things up for me first?" I asked, looking uncertainly at the Doctor; faced with the sheer impossibility of the world we'd just found ourselves in, I'd prefer to tackle the potentially smaller question first. "Firstly, why did you think that what happened to… Talia… was part of a coup?"

"Well, when you think about it, when an entire royal household nods off for a hundred years or so, someone's got to take over during that time, and it probably won't be in the most diplomatic manner," the Doctor said, smiling promptingly at me. "I mean, I'm all for people taking charge of themselves, but you don't go from kings to democracy like that; it's a long and complicated process, and Talia's family probably didn't prepare for the transition before everything… happened."

"That's… a good point," I said, suddenly surprised that I hadn't thought of that when I'd heard the story in the past; the Disney version had trimmed down the time between the princess falling asleep and when she was woken up, but I had definitely read other versions where she slept for a century…

"OK, so that's that answered, but that doesn't explain how these… how this whole place can be real," I said, looking anxiously at the Doctor as I refocused my attention on the main issue; accepting vampires and aliens was one thing, but this was specific characters in a world of magic that didn't seem to fit anything I'd experienced with the Doctor so far. "I mean… Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty are real?"

"Excellent question," the Doctor said, smiling at me in approval. "Under normal circumstances, my initial assumption would be that we're in the Land of Fiction, but that doesn't work-"

"The Land of Fiction?" I interrupted.

"It's a realm outside Time where fictional creations are brought into existence by a Master or Writer- term varies according to preference- who controls everything; I've heard rumours that it was created by some old enemies of mine for entertainment, but if it was they abandoned it long ago and the Land's now only a threat based on who's controlling it," the Doctor explained. "I've visited it a few times- actually encountered Rapunzel the first time I popped by- but like I said, this can't be it; apart from the fact that this world is just another dimension rather than being outside of time altogether, there's too much background detail."

"And that makes it less plausible that we've gone back there?" I asked. "We're in a world of fairy tales-!"

"Even if we ignore such background details as that aforementioned coup, let me ask you this; can you recall any fairy tale adaptation where they actually named the kingdoms where everything took place?" the Doctor asked.

"Uh… Beauty and the Beast?" I asked after a moment's thought.

"Disney version just relocated it to France to make it plausible for a girl to be named some variation of 'Beauty'; that doesn't count, and the original version never specified a specific location," the Doctor said, shaking his head before he continued. "No, like I said, we must be dealing with an example of the Gardner Effect, and this is the realm where the tales were real; ergo, no details have been lost in the retelling, so everything's pretty much accounted for."

"So… we're in another dimension… populated by fairy tale characters… that can use magic because the rules here aren't the same as back home… that my world somehow found out about?" I asked, wishing I could sound more confident even as I knew I was just coming across as completely lost right now; even the part about how magic worked was just a guess based on the Doctor's earlier explanation about how other dimensions differed from ours. "How does that… work?"

"It's part of what we term the Gardner Effect," the Doctor explained, looking thoughtfully at me before he continued. "You see, Bella, some worlds are indirectly linked to each other in a manner that allows other worlds to be aware of the activities of their 'neighbours', but they're sometimes only receiving part of the full picture. Picture reality as a massive jigsaw puzzle, with the various parallel universes and other dimensions as pieces in the puzzle, each one independent but connected to the whole. As a result, some of these worlds sometimes get parts of the whole, without getting the full details; the history of this world has become our fairy tales back on Earth, permeating the wider human subconscious so that everyone has at least some awareness of the stories, even if bits and pieces are misinterpreted or lost due to human error or editing decisions, but other worlds with less significant differences have been re-remembered as games or novels or television shows or comic books or even myths…"

He shrugged. "It's complicated to witness, and you never know how much of what's written is the Gardner effect and how much is just peoples' imaginations- although the more popular writers and shows are generally 'real' somewhere- but it's rather fascinating to see what stands out after it gets through the barrier versus what actually happened if you can visit the original dimension; it's like our earlier discussion about historical perspective affecting the history books, you know."

"Right…" I said, lost for anything better to say to that revelation.

We were in a world where fairy tales were real- the world that may have actually been the source of the fairy tales back on Earth- and somehow even the fairy tales didn't always manage to get a happy ending…

It was nice that things had worked out for Cinderella, but learning what had happened to Sleeping Beauty and Snow White was actually rather depressing; so much for childhood innocence…

Still, we had our immediate mission to focus on, and it wasn't like I didn't already know from experience that happy endings couldn't be guaranteed; the priority now was whatever threat the Doctor had detected was trying to leave here to threaten our world, not brooding about how even characters who were meant to have a 'happy-ever-after' couldn't get it.

"In the meantime," the Doctor said, indicating the book in his hands with a smile, "this has some interesting details on the history of Lorindar; shall I fill you in?"

"Why not?" I asked, sitting down on the bed as the Doctor sat back in his chair and began to read the book; it might be childish, but it would be nice to have an excuse not to think too much right now…