A/n: I'm going to try for some lighter chapters for a bit before going back to drama and doom. Just a heads up there will be character development and lots of shenanigans, a quiet before the storm if you will.

I think that it would be interesting if they gave Daring in the show a little more character development (and if the rumors of him being the Beast are correct my hopes will soon come true and won't that be fun, fun, fun to watch him freak out), as it is he's… just… there, more of a village idiot than anything else as far as I can tell. I have this head cannon of him realizing that after the fairytale was over, and after his starring role was done… that he would no longer be the star or the heartthrob of everybody's eyes.

He'd just be yet another king whose fame was secondary to his wife's (and as if his terrifying mother-in-law would let him steal the spotlight from her and her daughter), his children would be known to everybody as only Snow White's (Apple's) children, it is cannon in the series that Apple really holds no romantic interest in him and repeatedly mentions that the only way that she feels that she can get her kingdom and become queen is if she marries a prince (and we all know that lie of a romance can only last so long before somebody gets tired of keeping up the farce to the spouse, keeping up the farce to the common people is another story since they don't live in the palace, but inside the palace…?), with the way that the character of Snow White is portrayed so far in the show Daring will be pushed to the background in everything, and finally we all must remember that Daring is human, and that he will get old, and without anything else to help feed his narcissism or give him actual love…

Suffice to say I bet that if he did marry Apple his life would be turned into a living hell.

If I were him I'd start praying to become the Beast (I don't think that Rosabella would push to get married if they didn't really like each other).

XXX

"Mother…" A soft deep labored voice called out to the openly weeping woman kneeling at his bedside. Blue-grey magic flooded his arm, holding broken bones in place as he raised his arm and curled his fingers to lightly touch the woman's cheek, it hurt him to do so but it hurt him more to see the distraught expression on the woman's face.

"You managed to come back alive my son." A deeper voice came from the open doorway. "I must say that you have impressed me greatly. Clawstorm Queen is perhaps one of the most powerful witches of our time, and the lengths she has proven to be willing to go to protect her family and hunt down those who dared touch what she considers hers is beyond measure."

"F-father?" Kline started but hissed in pain when he moved his damaged ribs too much.

"Don't sound so surprised, after all it is only natural for a father to drop everything to greet his only son after a seven year absence." The deeper voice continued leaning heavily against the doorframe.

"I… apologize… I was unable to succeed in our plans." Kline sucked in a light breath.

"It is I who should be apologizing to you my son. I underestimated the sheer might of the power of both Clawstorm and Elenore Queen obviously if we are to succeed in our eventual plans we need to out-power them in order to completely annihilate them." The older man conceded. "I just may have found a way to do it, and now that you are here I have someone I can trust with our next long awaited step."

"Tomak my love I beg the not to send him out into any more danger!" The woman cried standing up from Kline's bedside to throw herself against the older warlock. "He is my only son! I do not think that I could bear it if anything more happened to him!"

"Peace, Joanna my pet, I have no intention of throwing our son to the wolves again. Our ticket to everything that we've dreamed of for our family is resting comfortably at the moment, and soon she will be strong enough to aid us in finishing what we had started so long ago." Tomak assured the woman as he held her slight frame close to his larger muscular one.

"Please do not leave me out father!" Kline pled as best he could through his shallow breathing. "I will heal! And I will be willing to do anything for my beloved sister Clementine! I swear it!"

"Hush my darling boy, please do not excite yourself in such a state." The younger man's mother begged.

"I assure you my son that your role will continue to be a crucial part in your sister's ascension to the throne." Tomak held up his hand to placate his distressed son.

"Brother's home?" Came a tiny voice from outside the doorway, a small blonde head popping in to survey the room.

"Oh Clementine, did we wake you? We were planning on telling you about your brother's return in the morning." The girl's mother told her child apologetically.

"Clemen…tine!" Kline labored out gritting hit teeth against the pain of the fragments of his broken bones sliding against each other as he reached his arm out. "My beloved sister."

"He's injured." The small girl gasped as she eyed the swollen and bruised skin beneath the man's bandages. "But you still look like my big brother… from the pictures." The child murmured uncertainly.

"It has been a long time since you have seen your brother in person." Tomak commented as he gently shooed the small child into the room.

"Clementine…" Kline smiled wistfully as the girl drew nearer to the bed. "You haven't changed a bit since I last saw you."

"I've been like this for a really long time. It's weird." The girl whined standing on her tiptoes and softly laying her head on the edge of her brother's pillow. "I'm tired of being short, and all of my old friends are all grown up and gone now."

"It's not weird at all." Kline cooed. "Forget them, you are perfect my darling sister, you who is so perfectly innocent and fair, everyone else is beneath you in comparison. You are the fairest of them all, and one day you will make the most perfect queen in all of Ever After."

XXX

Daring knew that he was probably in way over his head.

Okay he was definitely in way over his head. And these feelings were coming in super fast and… yeah he was toast and this was all probably going to lead into his first real major heartbreak…

For the first part of it all he was developing… some pretty intense… feelings for this one individual… which wouldn't be so bad except she was Raven's grandmother. Albeit a very attractive, bewitchingly witchy grandmother who was still considered quite young by her race's standards, but still… she was Raven's mother's mother.

But Elenore Queen was… positively radiant, and she was unlike any of the girls that he had dated in the past, for one thing she was a full grown woman so that was definitely different, but what also set her apart was… it was that she felt so real. None of the girls that he had dated had that quality of giving off that same authentic feeling, most of the time his dates were acting out the parts of their story character personalities or were just in it to say that they had dated the best Prince Charming on campus, none of them let their mask slip and showed their true inner person.

Something that Elenore had no troubles doing, as she had told him once when he had covertly asked her why she wasn't acting… well like an Evil Queen; she had shrugged and said that she was who she was and she didn't particularly feel the need to conform to a story character ideal since she wasn't her mother, or her mother, or her great aunt so-and-so, she was Elenore Queen, the descendant to a long and proud line of witches, why waste time trying to copy her predecessors when she could carve her own unique mark and become her own version of the Evil Queen. Not many of the Evil Queens of the past felt the need to adhere to stereotypes or copying other people's work anyway, individuality was just how things were done in her family.

Which made Raven's extreme aversion to trying to fit into the Royal's demands of how she should be acting make a whole lot more sense. Hex it made Raven's mother make lots more sense too, in a depressing sort of way because from the way that Apple used to swoon over her mother's tales (used to being the key words, now the princess scowled and barked spitefully at anyone who complained about Raven looking less and less like a villain with each passing week) of how Raven's mom and Apple's mom used to get along… Daring was starting to suspect that Snow White was… not a fair maiden at all, and that Raven's mother was only acting the way she had in sheer self-defense. That thought made him feel guilty for even being human in the fist place.

When he had hesitantly brought the issue up with his family during one of their weekly get-togethers, as it had turned out, his siblings had arrived to the same conclusion he had and to everyone's shock their parents nodded their heads and confirmed their suspicions!

Human royalty have always baffled the story villain community, his mother had revealed with a shrug, since humans lived comparatively shorter lives the memories and lessons learned from the past tended to get diluted and twisted up until the same mistakes started happening all over again. Snow White and the maidens she had ran with in high school had clung onto their racism and had taken their character developing classes far too seriously, and left without the aide of the school faculty to protect her, Raven's mother had done the only thing she knew that would keep everybody far away, and that was to shove a poisoned apple into Snow White's hands when she had enough and to gracefully accept punishment if she just so happened to be caught.

Which had led to Dexter asking why Snow White kept poking the proverbial viper's den with a stick if she knew that she was only going to get poisoned.

To which their parents replied that Snow White had apparently started to like getting poisoned and she adored the attention and popularity she received whenever she could prove that she had been poisoned, making her look more and more like the most perfect helpless innocent maiden in school at the expense of Raven's mother seeming more and more evil to most, save for a few, humans at the school.

But Apple White did not appear to be as intense as her mother, their parents were quick to assure, and Raven was a fine young witch who obviously cared for both Daring and Apple, and that if there were any issues they would not push Daring or any of their children to marry someone they did not want to.

Which had led Daring to the second and third reason why he was so, so, so toast.

He realized that he did not want to marry Apple, that even though everybody, including himself, was certain that he was definitely her prince since he was the most charming of the Prince Charming's in the school and she was-… used to be, the most fairest and popular, and perfect maiden in the school then… it just had to be right?

But… there had to be more to a marriage and relationship than token niceties with him acting charming in her presence for the masses to see and her fake-swooning (and he could tell it was fake!) over him. He tried to think of a time when they had actually interacted like that without lots of other people being around to watch them, or even a time when they had just talked one on one without anybody around and without putting on this big show.

And then there was Raven, who did care about him, albeit in a strictly friendship capacity, but that was more than any other girl their age, and not related to him, had ever cared about him. Sure he was a dang fine pretty face but girls tended to want things from him in return for their attentions, Raven just tended to walk in and give him a hug hello without demanding or expecting any sort of date from him (which made Daring suspect that lesbians could make pretty awesome friends for straight men in the same way gay men were the favored friend for straight women), and she was fun to be around, she knew how to distract him from the mirrors and the memory of his form kissing a corpse by catching his interest with other things, such as food and the numerous witch customs that she had to study and practice on the side of her fairytale classes.

Which completed the overwhelming feeling of being thoroughly toast because he realized that aside from his siblings and Raven, Daring was not really close to anybody else… and now Raven had left Ever After just over an hour ago and Daring already missed her.

What was he going to do on the weekends now that Raven was gone, and his siblings had social lives of their own now? The usual spending the day in front of the mirror and going on a date were now out of the questions so-

Daring stopped in his tracks when someone stumbled onto the sidewalk in front of him and then proceeded to trip and fall flat onto their face.

"Cedar?" He asked the back of the familiar looking dress, quickly lifting the bewildered girl up to a standing position.

"D-Dar… ah!" She croaked and leaned against him heavily, the girl's hands flying to her neck as her torso expanded, as she drew a breath, and Daring's eyes caught onto the sight of small drops of red falling onto the sidewalk from the girl's scraped knee.

That's when the gears in the boy's brain clicked to a conclusion.

"Cedar that's skin covering your leg!" He exclaimed as he stared at the dark pigmented torn flesh, far darker in color than the wood that she had used to be made up of, surrounding the dripping red of her wound. "You're breathing and bleeding! You're-"

"Real." Cedar breathed weakly slumping fully against him as if she was having trouble controlling her limbs while she was too busy being overwhelmed by everything else that she was feeling.

Daring picked the sensory-taxed girl up and began running for the healer's offices.

XXX

"Mommy?" Duchess sniffled, collapsing to her knees in her now private dorm room. "Mommy you're… you're human!"

The woman on the screen of her phone couldn't seem to stop grinning and crying, which in turn caused Duchess to grin and laugh wetly through her tears of joy.

"Mommy you're back! I have my mommy back!" Duchess continued to cry as the two Swans exchanged near incomprehensible babble between birdcalls and human speech.

XXX

"Rather impressive the students Apple was able to draw around the school ready to burst into the Headmaster's chambers to rescue Raven." Ramona commented to the sunset.

"Freaking scary if you ask me." Cerise muttered.

"Apple did always have a knack for commanding a room." Briar mused. "Should we tell Raven that there is a strong possibility that the Headmaster is her grandfather? Blondie sure seemed to think he was."

"Let's hold off on that until we've got some actual evidence." Cerise decided. "It was only a brief mention during that post-fight verbal fight, and besides that; just how useful can that guy be to Raven?"

"I agree." Ramona nodded. "Remember how our mother used to rant about the way that he treated Raven's mom? How he drove the sisters to run away to a whole other dimension? And let's not forget that he cursed and locked up his own brother. How are you supposed to trust a guy like that after everything that he's done?"

"Apple told me that Raven never felt threatened by him the same way her mother was." Briar pointed out. "Apple said that Raven felt bad for the guy and constantly worried that he'd drive himself into a heart attack if he kept getting into those stress fits at the existence of the Rebel faction."

"…But we also need to remember that Raven was able to forgive Apple, before Apple started questioning her story and becoming a lot nicer, every time she hurt her. And… just trust me, as one of the few people Raven went to for a shoulder to cry on… Apple had hurt her a lot." Cerise spoke quietly.

"I know she did." Briar admitted, looking down to the ground in shame because at the time she could see that Raven had been working so hard to keep peace between herself and Apple, trying to establish a steady equal ground between them, and Apple had been too obsessed with having a perfect happy ending to notice how much of a bully she had become to the witch… and Briar had done little to help the witch out in the beginning.

"I think that they're both better off now that certain truths have been revealed." Ramona continued lightly. "Raven doesn't have to worry about losing Apple's friendship and Apple seems to be slowly learning to stand on her own two feet in regards to her own life."

"But now the question is whether or not she'll get a chance with Raven now that Faybelle is keen on keeping our favorite witch, since Apple was the one to unintentionally drive the two together with her old antics." Briar snorted.

"Well…" Cerise began but her gaze was caught by something off to the side.

"…Is Cheery Smiles… smiling?" The hooded girl asked in confusion as she stared at the girl grinning at a butterfly that had landed on her arm. "I thought that she was unable to smile until after her destiny was finished…"

"I'm seeing it. I don't believe it but I'm definitely seeing it." Briar murmured in shock.

"Now that is weird, even by our standards." Ramona rubbed her eyes as if what she was seeing was just a dream or a trick of the eye.

XXX

Milton's hands shook as he pressed his hands together resting his chin and mouth on them as he stared at the floor and breathed.

"She trusts me, just a little bit." The man swallowed almost disbelievingly. "Against all odds she's let me in."

"How does that make you feel?" Giles quirked up a brow inquisitively.

"I… I don't know." The other confesses sounding confused. "I had never counted on her taking the news so easily, I had assumed that there would have been a lot more apologizing on my part for past wrongs… come to think of it, why is she trusting me? I haven't done anything yet to earn it."

"Because she's gambling on the assumption that you won't hurt her." Giles replied easily. "I'm far better at lurking discreetly in the hallways than you are brother, and she actually talks to me on occasion, I've heard her recount several instances where you could have tried to force her to become the Evil Queen or banish her against her will and yet you did not."

Milton rubbed his brow with his fingertips. "That child can argue a unicorn into giving up it's own horn, and she can read me like an open book. She never gave me an inch to even hope to convince or trick her into her destiny." The man chuckled weakly. "I was more concerned with what mess she could be capable of making with my pull over the other students if I overstepped and gave her legitimate reason to simply leave, her father sure threatened to take her out of school enough times and I knew that Clawstorm would turn me into a newt first chance she got if I did anything. I knew that I stood little chance of trying to control her that way, and I knew that Miss Queen was stubborn and knew all of her rights and would not be afraid to use them to their fullest potential."

The older man chuckled. "She reminds me of our mother in that respect, even praying to the Ancestors couldn't help our father when she had her mind made up about something, it was probably the reason why he stayed away from the manner so often or had her go on those errands to the nearest city for days at a time, a woman who could not only stand up for herself in a verbal match but was mean enough to knock her own husband down if he dared raise a hand to her? He was probably downright petrified of her by the time you were born."

"Did mum ever love our father?" Giles asked he had been a tiny little thing when their mother had passed so his memories of her were few and blurry.

"She loved him enough to stay and not spirit herself or us away in the middle of the night, and he knew better than to push his luck since… well since it is so difficult for those of the Grimm family to find someone willing to stay without manipulating political agendas upon the fairytale characters we are tasked to watch over." Milton admitted a little tentatively, still sensitive about telling his little brother about the harsh realities of arranged marriages and the complicated relationship surrounding their parents. "That is at least until the day that she had been taken from us."

"Father tried to throw her out." Giles murmured, a flicker of a memory awakening in his eyes.

"And she knocked him out cold with the heating iron, tied him up to the chicken coop, and took us both with her when she left the house." Milton nodded. "She had family in the Eternal Winterlands of the north that we were going to stay with. We had stopped the carriage for a rest over by one of the lochs on the border of one of the four kingdoms that the Queen family is currently having troubles with ironically enough. That's when she had spied the old woman running from the kelpie along the bank, and our mother being her usual self told us to wait by the carriage and proceeded to run towards the creature while throwing things at it."

"I remember an old lady and mum yelling and a lot of splashing water…" Giles furrowed his brow as he attempted to remember. "And a pearly white horse with long sharp teeth and kelp covering its entire body running towards us."

"The kelpie had a friend who had heard me screaming and you crying and had decided to venture a little further onto land to have us as it's meal… and that's when Elenore showed up." Milton looked to the ceiling and breathed a heavy sigh. "She had heard from her parents that we were moving away and that we'd be passing close by her kingdom's territory, she had known where the safest routes were to the north and had stolen her father's griffin and flew south and down along the road we were on in the hopes of catching us for a goodbye, and perhaps contact information so that she and us could still stay friends. She scared off the beast heading for us."

"I have… a vague recollection of you… hugging or… tackling her to the ground?" Giles questioned while scrunching his face up, trying to remember.

"She had tried to chase after the kelpie to get our mother back. I didn't want to lose her too so I stopped her." Milton admitted, remembering how Elenore had struggled to slip away, howling and cursing as he begged her to not risk herself to the hungry mouths of the kelpie in their home territory, begged her not to be taken from him too.

Elenore had always been as fierce as she was passionate, and loyal only to a select few, and more importantly she had meant just about everything to him in that one moment in time where he was sobbing into her middle and she had shakily pulled herself together to hold both him and his brother as they both cried and cried until they were able to be herded into the carriage and her father's trusty griffin had guided the horses safely into Queen territories.

Elenore had never hesitated in defending him or his brother when things got a little rough.

Milton sat back and wondered if chancing calling up Elenore and perhaps even running over to Hathor Academy would be a good or bad move on his part.

Giles stared at his brother in confusion, wondering why the older man was suddenly willing to finally talk about the tragedy that had transpired while they had been young, since the other had refused to even speak of the event before now.

XXX

"This whole limp body thing will wear off soon right? I barely had the chance to see what was out the carriage windows!" Raven complained as she tried to desperately look at her new living quarters while being arranged onto a large bed.

"It's raining buckets." Faybelle deadpanned as she nudged the witch to the center of the bed. "You didn't miss much, trust me."

"You're definitely more lively than before." Apple observed the witch's twitching limbs. "I'm sure that after our nap you'll be able to move more." The princess guessed before disappearing into a walk-in closet with their luggage.

"Faybelle." Apple called out a moment later, stepping out of the closet with both hands on her hips. "Why is there a baby cradle and changing table in that room?"

"Oh that must be the nursery detailed in the floor plan that the school had sent me." Raven hummed in recognition.

"A what?" Faybelle asked bewildered. "What nursery? Why would we need a nursery?"

"Are you saying that you had no idea about this?" Raven asked confused. "I would have figured since your mother had been the one to-"

"Mom." Faybelle hissed. "So back when she was worried about boys she threatened against unwanted pregnancies but when I acquire a profitable bride she's all for grand-larva witchling heirs?" The fairy growled grabbing her phone from her pocket and walking out of the room. "I'll be back soon." She called irritatedly over her shoulder.

"Well it's nice to know that we appear to be on the same page about waiting for children." Raven commented as sounds of laughter and embarrassed snarls filtered in from down the apartment stairs.

"The Thorn clan is real subtle about these sort of things." Apple snorted sarcastically.

"Tell me about it." Raven snickered. "But they've been nice and bearable thus far so I can't complain much."

"How are you feeling?" The princess asked.

"Partly exhausted from today's adventure and move and partly… stunned into a sort of disconnected state of mind in regards to… the whole "hey I'm your long lost grandfather" thing." The witch thumped her head lightly against the pillow beneath her head.

"Well it's not just something that you can expect to feel any instant feelings towards I suppose." Apple bit her lip. "I'm kind of creeped out by the notion to be honest… I mean… the Headmaster and the concept of him having children and grandchildren just doesn't compute. And I'm worried about how well we can trust him… with the way he had treated both your mother and grandmother…"

"He won't try to hurt me intentionally." Raven stated with knowing certainty. "He acts differently around me compared to the way that he has been described to have treated my mother. I get the distinct impression that the whole fantastic show of power via making it appear as though she was cursing all the worlds at once, kind of broke the Headmaster a little. I think that he became fond of the technique of attempting to be encouraging of villain values real quick when I refused my destiny."

"I'll bet he did." Apple rolled her eyes.

"But still… it's all a bit much for me, I… don't feel as though I'm able to properly freak out about this as I should be able to. I have more pressing matters to deal with and so the logical side of me is taking over, hoping beyond hope that maybe, maybe he might be the key to getting all of this bad stuff to stop, and maybe… there will come a day when I can fully see him as family and not the Headmaster to Ever After High. I want to have my family and life back and… as much progress we have all made on this… I need more help, I need his and Giles's help, because I'm scared and I'm way too young for this and they seem to know it more than anybody else." Raven closed her eyes tightly and inhaled deeply.

"They know Ever After and it's ins and outs far better than I do, they know what to look for and how to be super discreet, and so that's what I'm going to trust them with; they will be my warning system, if something suspicious starts going down they can warn me and we can take the proper course of action. In the mean time I can focus on my studies and becoming more proficient with my magic and my herbalist skills so that I can get stronger."

"And have a chance to breathe." Apple piped up. "You are allowed to be worried but don't let it get to the point where you get too stressed out to give your nerves a rest or enjoy the little things in life, it's just not healthy. Remember Raven; you are not alone, you have lots of friends and allies who are looking out for you and your family, we won't let anything bad happen."

Raven mulled that over in her head for a moment.

"I'll try." The witch agreed reluctantly.

"Ugh mom!" Faybelle's voice floated up to the room.

"Speaking of pressing matters where is Faybelle going to sleep?" The princess blinked innocently.

"Apple." Raven warned.

"Kidding, kidding." Apple assured. "I know that she and I have to learn to get along if we both want to stay here on the weekends. It's going to be weird all things and rivalries for your affection considered, but… we'll try."

"You might want to start looking for someone that she can poison in substitution to you and curse in substitution to Briar, she'd owe you a favor if you did that for her." Raven revealed with a blush to basically a confirmation and reminder towards… something very complicated and involving two very strange potential romances. "That and she'd cheer up a bit more." Because Faybelle was reluctantly starting to like the anti-maiden vibe that both princesses were giving off, apparently it made them far more interesting and bearable to be around.

"I've… got some people in mind." Apple assured, in actuality she had the names of several certain enemy human lords in mind… along with… perhaps her own mother might want to be shopping to be poisoned again since technically the older woman was not Snow White since she had never been poisoned by an Evil Queen, just one Clawstorm Queen who had never signed the Book.

Apple wondered when it would be an appropriate time to inform her mother of this fact, if at all, certainly if the woman was going to put up a fuss about Apple not following destiny she'd blow a gasket if she ever knew that Apple was seriously starting to consider refusing to ascend to the throne altogether, a distraction would be welcome in that event.

"Parents and their biological clocks demanding grandchildren." Faybelle muttered darkly as she entered the room.

"Was that your mother's laughter we heard earlier?" Raven asked.

"Be grateful that you have a father who wants to forever see you as a tiny witchling." The fairy ordered slipping into the bed beside Raven. "Because having a parent who wants to become a grandmamma is just simply unbelievably irritating, and I'd stop snickering if I was you princess since my mother has just oh so kindly hinted that having a concubine from an influential human kingdom might benefit my marriage's love life!"

Apple nearly swallowed her tongue as she slipped into the bed as well beside Raven's free side.