AN~ Changed this to Book of Everafter Charming just 'cause I wanted to write about him.
He prefers smirks to smiles, even now that he's been turned into a hero (because the real Charming may have forgotten, but he remembers the way things used to be. He remembers having a brother. Drinking and partying. Women. Hiding from his family- the brother who might kill him, the weak father, the mother who lived in terror). After all, now that he's a hero, people expect him to be a little aloof, in the offtime when he's allowed to change little bits. The time when he's not in the story. The margins.
And when he smiles, he gets hurt. Even though he's just a character in a book, he still feels the way the real Charming must. And people have too much power to hurt him when he lets them in.
It started with Snow, he remembers. Back before things changed. He tried to be nice to her, but she would have none of it. Sure, she'd been engaged to his older brother since her birth, but still. He'd just had a silly schoolboy crush (maybe). How much would it have hurt to be nice to him? So he'd turned to other women, ones who appreciated him. That snubbed smile had done a lot to shape him into the man he'd been before Bunny rewrote him.
And Bunny- oh, Bunny. Being nice to her had been an enormous mistake. He shouldn't have tried to comfort her when the first Snow died. Shouldn't have mentioned the book (offhand, in passing) to her. It was no wonder he'd become so sardonic. Everyone he'd ever tried to be nice to had betrayed him. He remembered having been a drinker as a way to escape.
The way these girls had looked at him, though. It had been a look of fondness, right before he died and had to be rewritten again (nobody tells the characters that they remember, until it happens). They'd seemed to like him. Imagine that. Perhaps he'd changed, outside. In the land where he was allowed to change, where it wouldn't destroy the world, or the book, or both. Perhaps he was becoming a good person.
Maybe out there, he smiled.