A/N: Hey guys! This is the third installment of this story, and there is only ONE more to come after it (yay, almost done!). Also, I kinda sorta really lied in the first chapter about this being a two-shot story soooo...sorry?

To anyone who was wondering whether or not the other dexholders will be appearing, the answer is, unfortunately, no. This is Specialshipping centric, and the original Cinderella fairytale didn't really have any characters beyond the ones I've already introduced, so the ones you've already met are it! I am thinking about doing other fairytale/Pokespe AUs with different shippings though, so if anyone has any suggestions that would be REALLY helpful!

Please read and review (honestly, the reviews have been very encouraging, thanks so much :))), and I hope you enjoy!


DONG!

Yellow's head snapped towards the bell tower that protruded from a nearby church spire. In the dim lighting, the large brass bell that swung back and forth at it's peak seemed to suck her right in, as if taunting her.

Time's up, Little Miss Nobody. You knew it wouldn't last, remember?

Gathering up her skirts, Yellow quickly extricated herself from the confines of the wooden swing, stumbling slightly in her haste

Deep breaths, Yellow. Act calm. Get out of the palace (although she wasn't quite sure she remembered the way), get in your carriage, and make it home before Stepmother and Misty. You can do it.

She took two steps forward, ready to run for her life, but a warm hand suddenly grasped her shoulder and forced her to turn around.

Right. The Prince.

His face was a mask of confusion, crimson eyes staring down at her in shock. "Um…are you leaving?"

She nodded mutely, hoping that he would read the urgency in her eyes and let her go. Stupid stupid stupid! How could I lose track of time like that?

However, Prince Red must have read something else from her face, because his expression morphed to... guilt? Frustration?

Fear.

His next words came as a shock to her ears. "Did I do something to upset you, miss? Because I assure you it was never my intention to–"

Another peal of the bell shook the night air.

Yellow knew that the sudden disappearance act she was about to pull definitely warranted an explanation, that he deserved better than to be shook off and just left, but Yellow was running out of time. Please, please forgive me!

She shrugged out of his shoulder grip and backed towards the path they had just come from, hands splayed placatingly. "Please, Your Highness, nothing is your fault. I just remembered that I, uh, have to, um…go feed my dog! Yes, Chuchu must be getting hungry now, the poor dear hasn't eaten since…dinner…"

With that, she flashed what she hoped was a convincing apologetic smile and bolted. As she speed-walked back towards the palace corridor that Red had led her down, Yellow's mind raced.

She knew that Red wasn't going to buy her excuse for a second (really Yellow, your dog needs to be fed at midnight?), which meant that she had at most thirty more seconds before he started to come after her.

If he comes after you, Yellow. After all, you just ditched him in a garden.

But some inner sense told her that Prince Red wouldn't be the kind of man who simply let an issue go unsolved. He would follow her, if for no other reason than to ask her if she had had a good time or something like that.

Her feet picked up their pace as she entered the palace again, slippers sinking slightly into the lush carpet floor. She could hear the din of the ballroom in the distance, could see the lights coming from its open archway only a couple hundred feet away. Once she was there, she could lose Red in the crowd, make her way to the exit, leave inconspicuously.

The clock chimed for the fourth time.

Stepmother and Misty would probably leave the ball with the last of the guests, so I should be home before they even start to head back…

"Wait! Come back!" Crap. Red was following sooner than she had been hoping. His shout from behind was accompanied by the muffle of footsteps behind her. Yellow knew that, with his long legs, he would catch up to her within seconds.

Not even daring to peek back, she began to sprint full out for the ballroom. Even though it hurt in her shoes, she would definitely prefer having a couple of blisters to being caught magicless in front of the entire population of the Prince's guests. Into the ballroom, out the doors, get home. In, out, home. In, out–

"Please, I'm sorry if I did anything to offend you. We can talk it out!" He sounded closer than ever. Yellow bolted into the ballroom, slamming into twirling couples left and right as she weaved through the crowd, eyes scanning desperately for the exit.

The sixth peal rang out. DONG! Better hurry, Yellow!

Her gaze lighted on the double doors that marked the entrance to the palace ballroom. There! Almost tripping when a lady's long ballgown got caught underneath her left foot, Yellow scrambled as fast as she could in the direction of the doors. Come. On!

She felt a hand grasp her forearm. She shook it off before it's owner could get a tight grip. Go go go!

Peal number seven broke through the clutter of music and chatter and organized chaos.

Well, dis-organized chaos now, since that she had plowed her way through everyone.

Yellow could feel the breeze flowing in from the front doors, smell the fresh night air, almost taste the victory of getting away and home without anyone noticing a thing. Adrenaline shot through her body, pushing her to her limits as she flashed through between surprised doormen and various exiting guests. She flew out of the confines of the palace.

"Somebody stop her!" Yellow's jubilation vanished as quickly as it came. Suddenly the immobile doormen and the innocent guests she had just passed were reaching out greedy fingers, seeking to snatch up bits and pieces of her gown, her hair, her limbs, as if she were a treat from a candy store.

She dodged them all, thankful for once that she had had so much practice weaving through people in the town marketplace, and sped, gown and hair streaming behind her, for the wide steps that led from the palace entrance to the carriage parking area.

As she ran, she could hear guards and servants alike shouting at one another to grab her, stop her, control her. Some of them were even calling her thief, most likely thinking she had stole something of value from the royal family.

Ha. The only thing I might have even come close to stealing was the Prince, and the chances that had of happening were very, very slim.

The commotion inside the palace behind her also grew, mirroring that of the chaos outdoors. Murmering crescendoed to a roar as party guests began whispering and craning their necks, wanting to catch a glimpse of the runaway, the "thief", the lady who was stumbling so un-ladylike down the palace front steps, and, god forbid, AWAY from the Prince.

Hiking her skirts up almost to her knees, Yellow cursed the fact that silver slippers and stone staircases didn't mix. Add the fact that she barely even see her own feet beneath her dress, and that she was pretty accident-prone, and it was a recipe for disaster.

C'mon c'mon c'mon! She willed herself to move faster, although treading carefully at high speeds was an anomaly she was pretty sure no human was capable of. Body turned almost sideways so that she could sort-of see where she was going, Yellow cleared the first flight of marble steps with an audible sigh of relief.

"There!" The palace guards, with their sturdy boots and practical black suit pants, bounded down two steps at a time behind her.

Yellow knew that she would have to throw caution to the wind if she was even to have a shot at escape.

DONG! Toll number ten.

Bracing herself for impact, she half-slid, half-ran down the second and final set of steps. However, just as she almost reached the bottom, Yellow felt her balance give out. Her left foot slid viciously, the sparkling heel of her shoe squealing against the smooth step, until she was forced to kick it off to avoid twisting her ankle.

Sorry Blue. I'll pay you back someday.

With one bare foot and one still stuck inside a slipper, Yellow cleared the final landing of stairs and began to hobble as fast as she could towards her pumpkin carriage. Already it was beginning to look more orange than gold, and she could see that the mice attendants had begun to sprout tails again. Just a little longer, magic. Hold out just a little longer!

She reached her carriage just as Prince Red arrived at the bottom of the staircase. Yellow allowed herself one glance back, one more peek at the man whose attention she had spent days and weeks and months dreaming about, whose attention she was now giving up, and fell apart at the torn, hurt look on his face.

"Please," his shout came across as a whisper to her ears. "I don't even know your name."

She didn't know if it was the lighting or the misting of her eyes, but everything seemed to shine around him for a second. A flash of gold, highlighting his figure and the marble stone beneath his feet, the glow of the palace behind him and the plea written across his face.

Stay.

She flashed him a weak smile, hoping that the one look would be enough to tell him everything, before clambering into her carriage and driving away.

No longer the princess in the golden gown and the golden shoes with the golden Prince. She was the girl in rags and tatters once more, slum of the slums, and nobody worth knowing now that the magic had slid away.

A tear slid down her cheek– from sadness, shock, adrenaline, she couldn't even tell. All she knew was that from the moment she had met him on that fateful day to the moment she was living right now, Prince Red had somehow managed to make her fall in love and forced her to fall out of it without even saying a hundred words to her.

I'm sorry Red. You deserve a lot better than a poor country girl messing around with magic and miracles and a childish daydream of someday being yours. It might have been best if I hadn't even come tonight, just to spare you the embarrassment of being adored and then left. I hope that someday you find a girl who is just as brave and smart and funny and special as you are– someone who doesn't need a faerie godmother to help her steal your heart.

Thanks for tonight though. It might not have been anything out of the ordinary for you, but it was by far the best night of my life. I'm not used to Princes and gardens and swings and ballrooms, and even though I'll never see any of those again, I hope you know that I will never forget them. And that I will never forget you.


The magic wore off completely one hundred feet past the palace gates. Yellow had watched, detached, as the mice scampered away and bright orange pumpkin filling spattered all over the side of the road. Thankfully, she had managed to leap out of her carriage just in time to avoid being crushed, but the long, five mile walk home had not been a pleasant one.

She arrived at her home an hour and a half later, soaked with pumpkin innards and weak from the night's ordeal. Her stepmother and Misty were bound to arrive home in minutes, and they would demand tea or a bath or some other luxury Yellow could only dream of. Her life would go back to the way it always had been.

But, stepping over the threshold of the quaint cottage, and finding herself once again surrounded by the normality and ordinariness of it all, Yellow's nerves finally began to wear out. The magical evening she had just experienced, juxtaposed against the plain, homely setting she had known all her life, made her time with Prince Red seem…unbelievable. Unrealistic.

Impossible.

I have done the impossible.

She stood still for a moment, basking in the hysteria of it all, the fact that her, an orphan servant girl, a wallflower, a nobody, had just waltzed into the royal ball and stolen the attention of the royal Prince for an entire evening. Her. Plain, simple, innocent Yellow of the Viridian Forest. The recollection of it all made her so giddy that a giggle, of all things, bubbled up from the depths of her throat.

It blossomed into a breathy laugh, which had her doubled over with the reservoir of emotion she had pent up for so long spilling out of her like a burst dam. She laughed and laughed and laughed until tears pricked at the corners of her eyes and snorts flew between gasps.

Impossible. I was spirited away by a faerie godmother to a royal ball where I danced with the Prince, and then spent the rest of the evening walking with him through a garden. A god-damn, realer than real, romantic walk through a garden! I sat in a wooden swing in said garden, was called beautiful by said Prince, and then ran through the entire freaking palace to DITCH him.

I have done the impossible.

She knew she was wasting precious minutes by simply standing there and giggling like a lunatic, but she couldn't help it. The shock of the evening and the adrenaline that had been rushing in and out of her all night were finally taking their toll.

Vaguely, she recalled that she had lost one of the slippers given to her by her faerie godmother. Looking down, she realized that the other one, miraculously, was still snugly surrounding her right foot. The thought that the shoes had just been regular shoes, not magical ones, flashed through her head, somehow rattling her even more and causing another bout of laughter to rack her frame.

I am insane and crazy and out of my mind. I am so messed up that I am standing here dying of laughter because I just lost a precious, probably valuable, shoe that I could probably have sold for a lot of money, which is not funny at all. Also, my stepmother could literally come home and see me like this in seconds. I seriously belong in an insane asylum.

When she finally caught her breath, Yellow's mind was empty of everything. Her limbs shook, her knees seemed to wobble as they supported her frame, and her eyes watered as if she had just been crying.

Weariness also settled over her like a blanket of peace, flooding her bones like a tidal wave. The nighttime sounds slowly ebbed their way into her head, the blend of cricket chirps and owl hoots and rustling branches forming a comforting background of white noise for her thoughts.

All this time I've been dreaming about Prince Red– about talking to him and laughing with him and feeling the tingle that comes when I meet his gaze again and again and again…and…it actually happened.

For one blissful, beautiful, impossible moment, he was…mine.

For. One. Moment.

And suddenly the full weight of her situation began to dawn once more.

It was over.

Her wondrous, fantastical, fairy-tale dream had finally reached its end. This one night, one spell, one miracle, was all that she was going to get for the rest of her life. She was going to grow up poor and scorned, going to move out of her Stepmother's house one day and somehow make it on her own, going to live the life of just one more insignificant peasant.

Going to be just one more girl among the thousands who had once upon a time been in love with Prince Red.

There would be no more magic, no more faerie-godmothers and rich dresses and parties in the palace. There would be no more… anything.

And Prince Red…

God, Prince Red.

She would live out the rest of her life truly knowing that she would never see him again. No more girlish hopes, or accidental encounters, or sparks of eye contact that left her reeling and praying for more. No more dancing or gardens; no more heart-racing happiness or smiling so hard her cheeks hurt, or thinking "god, how can I ever get enough of him?".

Because the only thing racing through her head now was "god, how will I ever get over him?"

The red string of fate that had tied her life with his had severed when the clock struck midnight. And all she was left with was a sadness so deep it throbbed with every rattling breath she took.


When her stepmother and Misty got home, they demanded tea, a bath, and for their ballgowns to be unsown from their backs and gently hung up in their closets. Yellow did the tasks with a detached air, as if her hands were going through the motions but her brain didn't seem to pick up on any of it. She was positive that Misty and her stepmother would not even suspect her as the mystery girl. After all, she was dressed in rags, dirty, and nothing more than a servant to them.

And according to the rulebooks, servants did not attract princes.

But it did hurt to listen to them discuss it, to hear their opinions on which of the rich daughters of the town had been "the one", which girls they knew had the most matching features to the Prince's princess. They knew she had blonde hair. They knew she had been wearing a silver gown, and was petite. And they also knew that she stood in their way of getting Prince Red themselves.

Even though she tried to hide it, Yellow could tell that Misty was upset at not being chosen by Red. Could see the sadness, frustration, anguish in her stepsister's eyes. Could see the jealousy that also twitched across her features whenever Stepmother called the mystery girl "beautiful", or "graceful", or "princess".

But her stepmother also didn't give those descriptions as compliments. Yellow knew that her stepmother would stop at nothing to marry her only daughter into wealth; to leave Misty well-off and, consequently, be well-off herself. And who was a greater catch than the Prince?

After tending to them and being dismissed, Yellow hid upstairs in her attic bedroom and listened to their disgusted chatter, their bitter envy, their ill-intentioned gossip. All of it targeted towards her.

Somehow, their fury only emboldened her own sense of accomplishment. For once, I am the one who has something they don't.

She fell asleep with the satisfying burn of revenge coursing through her veins, but the bittersweet weight of its accompanying sadness tearing at her heart.


The buzz lasted for weeks. In the house, all Misty and her stepmother would discuss was their mystery girl dressed in the gossamer gown and the silver slippers, and what she could have possibly done to get ahead in the game of courtship. In the streets, ladies chattered about who "she" was outside of their window shops, fanning themselves with feathered fans and wrinkling their noses at the idea of Prince Red choosing a girl who wasn't their daughters. Yellow found an almost giddy pleasure in listening to the gossip, the rush that came with having a secret no one in the world knew but everyone needed to know making her feel like a hidden celebrity, of sorts.

Except her kind of celebrity, her kind of fame, was the kind that would never make fortunes or fans or fake-happiness. Because beneath it all lay the fear that if she were discovered, she would be hunted, mocked, abused, abandoned. The headlines would read "Peasant Girl Found to Have Bewitched Prince" or "A Nobody Thought She Had a Chance At Being a Princess".

But she knew that the person who would pay the most if her secret ever got out was not her, but Prince Red. She could already imagine the ridicule he would receive for having been "fooled" into falling for a girl like Yellow. Could imagine the disdainful look that the king had given them in the ballroom magnified into thoughts and words and actions. Could almost see and hear and taste the poison that her identity would bring to his reputation if anyone, anyone at all, ever found out.

Hell, even Prince Red could never, ever, know.

So, in the confines of her room and the secrecy of her meadow and by the embers of the fireside, the words it's over, it's over, IT IS OVER flashed again and again and again and again and again in her head– a never-ending mantra reminding her that her little "tryst" must be forgotten by everyone, even her, as soon as possible (even though it hurt like hell every time she even imagined forgetting her night at the ball).

But the less people wondering who "she" was, the lower the chances Yellow had of being found out.

It'll blow over in a month, at most. And then, you can live your life in peace again.

Or, somewhat-peace. Yellow knew that while gossip passed quickly, the pain of heartbreak would probably take at least another year. First, the novelty of the entire affair needed to evaporate like mist on a hot summer day. One month. Second, Yellow had to cut him out of her life entirely– no more sneaking around when he gave speeches in the town square, no more hiding in the woods hoping he might come hunting, and, of course, no more balls. Half a year. Finally, when she had been apart from him for so long that she could barely remember what he looked like (she knew that she would probably never be able to cut his image out of her mind, but trying to convince herself she someday would helped), she would stop thinking about him, little by little, until closure was the only thing she knew. That might take a lifetime.

But it would work. It had to work.

Because it had been less than one week since she been with him on that night and already the pain was unbearable. She didn't even know what pain it was– pain of being apart, pain of reliving their moments again and again, pain of knowing that there shouldn't even be a "pain of separation" or "pain of memory"…

It just…hurt. Like being stabbed by a tiny knife again and again and again and not being allowed to cry because she was the one holding the handle.

So she tried to convince herself that she shouldn't even be feeling upset, that her entire "thing" with Red had literally been like a one-night stand, that most girls her age wouldn't even give a damn about a man they had spent less than three hours with.

Sure, he was the Prince, and he was smart and funny and handsome and gorgeous and–

UHHHH! Yellow wanted to tear her hair out in frustration.

One month, she told herself. In one month, all of this will blow over and you can start your master plan for forgetting and healing. One month.

She spent following weeks as if nothing had ever happened. She cleaned the house and did the chores everyone else neglected, ran errands in the streets for her stepmother, ran away to the meadow whenever she felt lost or lonely or overwhelmed (which was a lot these days).

She hid the slipper that had remained, the only proof that her night at the ball had been real, inside a beautiful wooden treasure box that her father had given her for her fourth birthday– one of the only real possessions she owned. On days when everything seemed to be going downhill, she would open it up and stare at the slipper, at the intricate patterns of glitter etched onto its surface and the soft velvet that lined the inside, and lose herself in the memories that came with it.

You're doing well, she would tell herself on days when it hurt the most. You haven't cried once since the night of the ball, and neither stepmother nor Misty nor any of the townsfolk suspect a thing. You will make it.

When the gossip began to die down just a bit, she even allowed herself to feel hope again.

But then, on a Thursday afternoon out in the pouring streets of the marketplace, three weeks after the ball catastrophe, Yellow heard the trumpets blare twice for a royal announcement. Heard that the Prince was calling for a search, of all things, for his "missing princess". That he was using her slipper, the one that she had dropped on the palace steps (she'd all but forgotten about it up until that point), as a guide. That the girl's foot who fit the shoe would, would… marry him.

Marry. Prince Red. Princess.

What have I gotten myself into?