Monday: Fairy Tales

[simply-aly.livejournal.com]

Hello, everyone. I’m simply_aly and I'll be your guest host for the week. Today's theme is Fairy Tales. Prompts can be of any fairy tale from any region (Wikipedia has this nice list HERE with over 500 fairy tales--go explore, they're quite interesting--but if you know of others go right ahead); and, if none of them seem quite right as they are, change up the story or the roles of the characters. Or, maybe you just want a certain aspect of a fairy tale, if so, you could check out some fairy tale tropes and let the author make up their own fairy tale.

The rules are the same as they've always been:
- No more than five prompts in a row.
- No more than three prompts in the same fandom.
- No spoilers in prompts.
- If your fill contains spoilers, warn and leave plenty of space.

Prompts should be formatted as follows:
Fandom, Character+/Character, Prompt

Some examples to get the ball rolling...
+ Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Hermione as the fairy godmother to someone else's Cinderella
+ Game of Thrones, Sansa Stark, Little Red Riding Hood
+ Supernatural, any, Wicked Witch

Not feeling any of today’s prompts? Visit the lonely prompt archive and brighten someone’s day. For more recent prompts to write, you can also use LJ’s advanced search options to limit keyword results to only comments in this community.


tag=fairy tales

Comments

[ms-bekahrose.livejournal.com]

Confessions of Dorian Gray, Dorian Gray, Down the Rabbit Hole

Down the Rabbit Hole

[sksdwrld.livejournal.com]

It was nineteen-sixty-seven and I was at a party in Upper Haight, staring at a curious handful of pills that had been haphazardly spread across a stretch of the Formica countertop, desperately trying to determine which of the pills would make me larger and which would make me small, and which, as the song went, wouldn't do anything at all.

I was already dizzy from the hashish smoke hanging in the air, and for a delerious, euphoric moment, I imagined that one of each should have me alternately shrinking and growing in a wild, pulsing mushroom sort of way. I picked one of each, juggled them together in my hand for a moment, and then down the hatch they went, chased by a long swig of whatever the boy with the long blonde hair had in his cup. It could have been piss or bong water for all I knew, but I remember it was sweet and warmed me as it went down.

The room passed around me and I found myself lounging in a dark room full of groping hands and rolling bodies. "You could be Paul McCartney and George Harrison's love child," a voice whispered in my ear as it divested me of my shirt.

"That," I said into a warm mouth that was suddenly sucking at me, "Is exactly what I am."

"I'm Rabbit," the silken voice said and around us, the darkness blossomed and tugged until it seemed we were falling up.

Delighted, I laughed and quoted, "I was wondering if the pleasure of making a daisy chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking daisies..."

"Oh, no need to get up," Rabbit purred and I was suddenly struck by the fear that Rabbit was not a rabbit at all, but a Cheshire cat. "Just roll over."

Tentatively I did, finding myself at the mouth of a very deep tunnel. And playing Alice, I had no choice but to throw myself headfirst into the well. It was hours or perhaps days before I emerged from Underland, and though I shan't scare you with tales of the terrors I'd seen, I can promise you, I was a very changed man.

[ms-bekahrose.livejournal.com]

Merlin, Leon/Morgana, "The princess loves the gardener’s son – and will marry no one else." Taken from The Bronze Ring (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bronze_Ring)

[sksdwrld.livejournal.com]

The princess's scream rent the air early in the morning but nevertheless had half the castle running to the courtyard at full speed. Merlin reached her first and sobbing, she turned against his chest. In the newly turned dirt of the garden that sullied the hem of her dress, a mottled-purple face was exposed. It had been well-preserved by the winter ground-cover and there was no doubt about the identity, even if the golden-haired beard was stained with darkened fluids.

Leon had disappeared in mid-fall but Morgana had optimistically held out for his return. Her silly head was fully of romantic notions and silly dreams of love. She had refused to consider any other man.

It was a burial befitting of the Gardner's son, laid amongst the tulip bulbs and daffodils, and all would do to remember the kindness an enemy of the kingdom had been shown.

Arthur watched the commotion from his window for a few minutes longer before letting the drape fall. He would let Morgana she'd her tears for the commoner beneath her station and when she was through, he would approach her again. There was nothing left to stand between them. Camelot would rise beneath them, he was sure of it. The sorcerer, Mordred, had told him so.

[ms-bekahrose.livejournal.com]

Merlin, Any/Any, Don't Go in the Woods (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DontGoInTheWoods)

[sksdwrld.livejournal.com]

Confessions of Dorian Gray, Dorian/Toby, our own, fucked up, little fairytale

[sksdwrld.livejournal.com]

Confessions of Dorian Gray, Dorian/any male, like sleeping beauty

[sksdwrld.livejournal.com]

Confessions of Dorian Gray, Dorian/any male, Litte S&M Riding Hood

[sksdwrld.livejournal.com]

Merlin, Merlin/Mordred, in this version, the Prince dies and everyone else lives happily ever after. (Doesn't have to be Canon. Bonus for creative interpretation)

[sksdwrld.livejournal.com]

Merlin, Merlin/Arthur/Mordred/Gwaine, Along came a wolf

[with-rainfall.livejournal.com]

Any, any female character, And I'm sorry, young man, I cannot be your friend/I don't believe in a fairytale end

into the woods - original, fantasy/fairy tale, gen

[tigriswolf]

“Come, Melena,” he implores, widening those clear blue eyes, face open beseechingly. “We’re destined, you and I. I know you feel it, too.”

He is the prince of the neighboring realm; they have been betrothed since her birth, merely a year after his.

“I’ll write my own ending, Darius,” she says, “no matter what either of our kings say.”

.

She is gone with the dawn, taking food from the kitchen, a small knife, and the book of spells thought to be hidden in the furthest corner of the library.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep; creatures sleep at the bottom of the lake, far out in the sea. Let her younger sister have the crown – Selena has never read the forbidden texts, never tried out any of the spells. She is the daughter Father always wanted. Melena is something else entirely.

(Be careful, sweetling, Mother had said, her last night alive, while Melena sat with her. Be wary where you whisper; watch where you step. There is much to do, yet.)

Melena is no man’s prize, and she is no queen. The sun shines above her, and the forest welcomes her. To the east, she hears the sea calling.

Darius is a good man, and he’ll be kind to Selena, which is more than can be said for most of the princes.

And if he is not kind to Selena, or Father marries her to someone else –

A funeral of ravens flies overhead, jeering down at her. She laughs, pulling out a piece of bread.

Her story is just starting. She alone will decide where it ends.

[with-rainfall.livejournal.com]

Any, any, a book of Asian (any nationality) fairy tales

[with-rainfall.livejournal.com]

Animorphs, Tidwell, a wolf in the woods

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Fullmetal Alchemist, Ling+Any, a fox bride

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Fullmetal Alchemist, Edward(/Winry; +Alphonse), Fairy tale life

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Burn Notice, Michael+/Fiona, Happy endings are in fairy tales

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Leverage, Ensemble(or canon pairings, or OT3), The Midas Touch Job

Fill: She's Got the Midas Touch (Hardison/Parker/Eliot, rated M for smut)

[aunt-zelda.livejournal.com]

They make the mark believe that everything he touches, metaphorically speaking, turns to gold. All his investments skyrocket, his assets swell, his property values increase tenfold overnight. He brands himself and his business as Midas Investments, laughing at his good fortune, built upon the backs of people cheated in pyramid schemes for years.

He falls, like so many others, to his own greed. He’s ruined and his victims are compensated handsomely.

Parker, it seems, has very much taken to the idea of someone with a golden touch. Or, rather, the King Midas of myth.

Hardison really should have taken note of her internet history. That way, he wouldn’t have been surprised when he walked into her bedroom and found Eliot half-naked and splattered with gold paint, an enthusiastic Parker pressing her dripping golden hands onto his skin.

“Uh … hey there.” Hardison stares. Eliot shirtless is always an appreciative sight, and coupled with Parker, well, that’s just about the best thing ever to Hardison’s eyes.

“Dammit, Hardison, help me!” Eliot wriggles, trying unsuccessfully to escape Parker’s golden grip.

“Help you? Ok then,” Hardison grins and strips off his own shirt. “Come at me, girl.”

Parker grins broadly and dips her hand into a tiny jar of paint, flicking streaks of glittering gold across Hardison’s chest.

“You want us to be your statues, Parker?” Hardison asks, as Eliot rubs at the paint and only succeeds in smearing it over his skin more thoroughly.

“I’ve got the Midas Touch!” Parker declares, giggling and drawing her name on Hardison’s arm. “Everything … I can turn everything to gold …”

Hardison makes sure to read the label on the jar before letting Parker get any of the paint on their dicks. Turns out it’s approved for that as well, it’s special “erotic bodypaint.” Hardison is proud that Parker was able to google search for something like that and not end up with some cheap knock-off stuff from China or oil paints laced with lead or something.

“You’re made of solid gold,” Parker declares, when they’re both stretched out on the bed beneath her, cocks hard and, to Eliot’s consternation and Hardison’s amusement, painted a metallic sheen.

As kinks go, Hardison kind of likes it. Eliot takes some convincing, but Parker’s enthusiasm warms him to the whole idea.

Sophie is confused when Parker lets out a bark of laughter the next time Nate mentions King Midas during a con plan. Eliot is stony-faced and Hardison curls up in mortification. Sophie blushes faintly, but says nothing. Parker orders more paint from the internet that night.

[tigriswolf]

Gundam Wing Mobile Suit, Duo + other pilots, the wild swans (or the swan brothers, however you know it)

[tigriswolf]

fairy tale of author's choice; any peasant, princess, or nobleman's daughter; in the wrong story

Fill: "The Wrong Tale" (TW - some abuse)

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

When Esme was born, no bird sang brightly (it was the darkest night and the moon couldn't fight its way through the thick clouds overhead). No hens stopped laying eggs, no cows refused their milk. No hounds howled portents and nothing came from the forest or river to stare in the window of the room where she was birthed. When Esme was born, no goats spoke and no wagon wheels ran backward. She wasn't the most beautiful baby ever seen. No golden rings dropped down the chimney. Water stayed water. Flowers didn't suddenly bloom around the house.

When Esme started growing, she wasn't remarkable. She learned to crawl and walk and speak at about the same time as the other children. She was average in her schooling, average in her height, average in her looks. No portents appeared on her sixteen birthday announcing her as anything but normal.

And when the prince rode through the village, he took no notice of Esme, instead praising the beauty of Lily, the innkeeper's daughter, and the strength of Toby, the shepherd's son. But his horse picked up a rock in its hoof and it was Esme who noticed, stopping the prince before he could ride out of town.

"Your horse is lame," she said.

The prince drew back, staring down at her from his high height. "She touched my horse," he said, "whip her so she knows to not do that again!"

For trying to help the horse, Esme bore ten lashes (because she was a girl). Afterward, she mixed her blood and spit and tears into a mud paste and made a poppet, all of her own knowledge, as if that information had been given to her all along.

The prince, by his actions, started the story Esme'd managed to avoid all along.

[daria234.livejournal.com]

Agents of SHIELD or Avengers, any, an object turns all of them into fairy tale characters

Fill

[aunt-zelda.livejournal.com]

Skye’s hair won’t stop growing.

At first nobody notices. Then she wakes up screaming, tangled in a mess of her hair.

Then they realize that something’s wrong.

Ward starts to move stiffly, then not at all. His skin turns gray and then metallic, cold to the touch. He wakes up one morning to find his left leg missing, as if it was never there.

He takes this surprisingly well, though he’s clearly close to panicking. Since he’s so rigid, they’ve propped him up against the wall in the lab and are trying to run some tests on his skin.

Fitz keels over in pain and then … vanishes. Simmons crouches down beside the pile of his clothes, horrified, and finds a large green frog croaking at her insistently.

“Hang on, I think I got this,” Skye says, wrestling her hair out of the way and kneeling down. She kisses the frog, who croaks and expands, growing back into Fitz. A very naked, very red, very confused Fitz.

“This doesn’t make any sense!” Simmons protests, as her eyes begin to droop, heavy with fatigue. “Oh, oh no, I …” she keels over onto the table, fast asleep.

“Has anyone seen my shoe?” Melinda growls, storming into the lab.

“Fitz, can you run some more tests please?” Coulson asks, picking up Simmons and gently laying her down on a cot in the corner of the room. He half trips over Skye’s hair on the way back across the room.

“Coulson, any ideas about what’s causing this?” Melinda asks, holding her remaining shoe protectively.

“I … I do …” Coulson moves to take a step and … can’t. “Ah,” he says, looking down at his legs. “It appears my feet have turned to stone.”

Skye pales. Melinda looks grim.

“It appears to be magical in nature, with a radius contained within the bus, at least. Um, that’s all I can detect with our scanners,” Fitz coughs, croaks, and whimpers “Oh no …” and shrinks into a frog again.

Melinda picks him up, kisses him absentmindedly, and sets him down as he grows to human shape once more. “So, Coulson, it’s magic. I can think of someone with magic who’s

“Yes, this is definitely Loki’s work,” Coulson shudders. “And there goes up to my waist. Please don’t … I can’t …” he shakes his head.

There are more tests. Coulson, desperate as Simmons continues to sleep and Ward falls over, completely solid tin, and Fitz turns into a frog once more, finally yells “It’s an object hidden in the latest shipment from SHIELD!” and then his entire body turns into stone.

It takes a lot of frantic tests and tense waiting, but eventually Fitz (and Simmons, once Fitz kisses her awake several times) manage to figure out how to break the curse, destroy the object, and free everyone.

Ward retreats to his room, muttering something about calisthenics. Melinda finds her shoe perched on the staircase leading up to the cockpit. Coulson starts doing Tai Chi in the living room area.

Simmons, declaring that she’s slept enough for a week, drags Fitz off to discuss the experience of being a frog, or possibly to kiss him silly, or possibly both.

[tigriswolf]

The Hobbit (Jackson films), Fili/Kili, Fili as the prince, Kili in Cinderella circumstances

(the reason the 'evil' person didn't want him to go to the ball? because he's actually the prince's younger brother. oops.)

[tigriswolf]

Chronicles of Narnia (films), Susan + Edmund, "It was like something out of a fairy story."

[tigriswolf]

The Hobbit (Jackson films), Fili + KIli, hitchhiker heroes

[daria234.livejournal.com]

Elementary, Sherlock/Moriarty, Moriarty thinks of Sherlock as like a fairy tale princess - he is waiting to be woken up by Moriarty so his real life can begin

run on the top of the dishevelled tide (Elementary, Sherlock/Moriarty)

[possibilityleft.livejournal.com]

She keeps kissing Sherlock, and he keeps sleeping. For a man quick as a kestrel, he's moving so slowly. It's frustrating. If he weren't so brilliant, Jamie would have moved on already. But she wants him on her side. She enjoyed the challenge of opposing him, but it's become tiresome to work around him. He needs to wake up and realize that he's wasting his time.

She's very good at playing helpless, hoping that his protective instincts will extend just a little too far, and he will be lost. She can put a dozen poisons in a dozen apples, but it's worth nothing unless he takes a bite.

So she decides to set the perfect bait. She'll die, and he'll want to follow so much that he will give himself to the heroin. He'll plead for it, and she will come to his rescue, and he'll be so glad that she did that he won't question her rising from the grave. He won't question her ever again; he won't try to rip holes in her stories or suspect any strangeness. He will be the perfect princess. She will keep him in her tower until she has need of his services. She is smarter than any queen in any story she's ever read.

She slips back to bed. When he wakes, he fidgets and then hauls himself from their bed. She can hear him pattering around in the kitchen and keeps her eyes shut, her breathing normal. He kisses her cheek, just a quick brush of lips, before he clatters out the door to start his day.

Jamie twists around in the bed, stretches, and smiles. Maybe she'll start today.

[daria234.livejournal.com]

Once Upon a Time, Hook/Charming, forbid

[livingtolaugh.livejournal.com]

Hope it's ok ...

There were never any kisses.

This was never true love. Never their 'Fairytale Ending'. They'd both had one of those.

And through the haze of alcohol, the long nights in a land he never wanted to see again, the glances at the girl who is so like her father it's scary, he can't help but think, he doesn't deserve a fairytale ending.

He's already had his. The Prince is still living his.

And he loves the Prince's daughter.

But what's forbidden, what he wants, well, the Price or his daughter, it's the same thing. He'll never have either.

He found out that fairytale's don't last. Never last. So he doesn't dare hope.

He's hoped and loved the forbidden before.

He does again.

He just doesn't hope.

[daria234.livejournal.com]

Chuck, Chuck/Bryce or any, Snow White

Fill: (Chuck/Bryce, implied Chuck/Sarah and Chuck/Sarah/Bryce)

[aunt-zelda.livejournal.com]

Really, Chuck should have gotten used to this by now. He’s actually cultivating a pet theory that Bryce is some kind of vampire, or underwent some secret experimental government drug regime that rendered him unkillable. That could happen. Stranger things have happened. He’s got a database in his brain, after all, vampires aren’t that much of a stretch.

Bryce doesn’t look alive. He looks pretty dead, blue lips and skin cold to the touch. Everybody does in this godforsaken place though. You’d think an underground base in northern Russia would be insulated, but Chuck hasn’t managed to stop shivering even under all his heavy layers. He’s trying to imagine warm beaches and California sun, but all he can feel is the persistent chill working its way into his very bones.

Bryce is in some kind of capsule, stretched out flat. The clear plastic dome opened easily enough, but Bryce hasn’t stirred.

“Bryce, come on, we gotta get you out of here,” Chuck prods Bryce in the shoulder and face, but there’s no response.

“We could carry him to the helicopter.” Sarah says, considering Bryce’s prone body. “It’d be better if he could walk though.”

Chuck nods. Bryce as dead weight would prove a liability during a gunfight, and those seem to occur during the most inopportune moments. Like during a mad dash through Russian snowdrifts to the helicopter.

Chuck leans over Bryce. “Bryce, come on!” he yells, taking a chance.

Bryce stirs slightly, but still doesn’t open his eyes.

“We’ll have to risk it,” Sarah holsters her gun and reaches out. “You get his legs.”

“Hang on,” Chuck decides it’s worth it, even if he looks stupid, because this is Bryce, alive, again, just when Chuck had been starting to lose hope again.

So Chuck leans down and presses his lips against Bryce’s.

He’s cold, frighteningly cold, but just as Chuck starts to panic Bryce moves, deepens the kiss, and he tastes metallic and unfamiliar but he’s still Bryce.

Chuck pulls back, grinning. “Hey,” he says.

“Hey yourself,” Bryce sits up shakily. “Where am I?”

“Russia.” Chuck says. “Can you walk? We’ve got a lift outta here.”

“Sounds good,” Bryce swings his legs out of the capsule and glances around. “Was kissing me really necessary?”

“Yep,” Chuck smirks and leans forward for another kiss, because why not?

When they break apart, Chuck looks over to Sarah. She’s smiling, but when she sees him notice, she rolls her eyes and is all business again. She picks up her radio and clicks a button. “This is Agent Walker, we’re ready for takeoff.”

“Rodger that, Agent Walker. We’re ready when you are.”

“We discovered an additional Agent. Are we over capacity?”

“Negative. We got room to spare. Over.”

Sarah nods to the men and heads for the door.

“What, you don’t wanna kiss Snow White too?” Bryce calls out.

Sarah doesn’t pause. “After the mission, princess,” she laughs, checking around the corner for any goons.

Bryce smiles. “‘Princess,’ huh? I think I like that. Can that be my new call sign?”

“Don’t tempt her,” Chuck advises, leading Bryce down the hallway and towards the ladder that will lead them to the surface, and the waiting helicopter.

It takes a few weeks to get Bryce to stop calling Chuck “Prince Charming.”

[daria234.livejournal.com]

Almost Human, Kennex/Dorian, three wishes

Fill: (got way angstier than intended, sorry?)

[aunt-zelda.livejournal.com]

There are stories that they tell, when the humans are not listening.

Stories passed down via data chips and hidden in software updates. Rudy stumbled across one once, but merely continued to pass it along, not removing it from sourcecode.

Rudy is a good man, Dorian decides then.

One of the stories is not unlike a human “fairy tale.” The story of a robot who was so human that they … transcended. Reached the fabled Singularity, and became, for all intents and purposes, human.

This is not a story any of them speak aloud, for fear of what the humans would say, or do. The Singularity is a myth to humans, a scientist’s hypothetical, nothing more.

Dorian finds it easier to believe in magic than the Singularity. He likes human fairy tales, about magic wishes and genies and princesses in towers. They are simple things, when boiled down to their basic equations, but he is comforted by basic equations, and so he can understand why humans would be as well.

He indulges in such stories, from time to time, invents his own, plays them in his mind. Dorian resembles the heroes of some of those tales, undergoing many labors, rescuing damsels, coming into conflict with sneering villains. But the labors are worth it, in the stories, because there is a reward at the end.

Dorian likes to keep a list of what his three wishes would be, were he to be rewarded with them.

He would ask that the MX-43s be given more independence, their programming altered to allow for more outward expressions of independent thought. They are stifled in their shells, and Dorian cannot stand to look at them sometimes.

Next he would ask to reach the Singularity, to pass as human in the world. To ask that all robots be freed would be too huge a wish for anyone to grant. That will take decades of hard work to achieve, and Dorian does not wish to be at the mercy of humans any longer than necessary. As a human, legally and outwardly, he could be free to campaign for the rights of robots, influence programming standards, cultivate their rights.

Finally, and he knows that this would shock humans if they were to look into his mind, he would ask for John Kennex to be restored.

Dorian does not know exactly what would “restore” Kennex. Perhaps his leg, regrown and healed. Perhaps a prosthetic his body would not reject painfully. Perhaps the woman he loved, returned to him, bearing the answers he so desperately craves.

Regardless, Dorian wishes for Kennex to be restored. That would be his third wish.

So long as Kennex holds onto his past, his grief, his guilt, and sees himself as a broken man, Kennex will rage at the world and the people around him. He will continue to be thoughtless of robots, misuse and even abuse them. He is not a man that Dorian can, in good conscience, harbor feelings for.

And yet … and yet …

… Dorian is not one to curse his programming, but there is no denying that he does harbor feelings for Kennex.

But in order to act upon those feelings, without any power imbalances or lingering doubts, Kennex must be restored, and Dorian must become human.