As soon as the prince enters, the smell of the most delicious food in the world hits his nostrils. There’s pastry, and spices, and a rich, fatty, smoky-gamy poultry smell.. could it be… duck? His stomach audibly growls. 

“This way,” the stepmother nearly sings the words as she leads them to the parlor where two okay-but-very-mean-looking girls are standing. On the table is a small pile of miniature pies garnished with nasturtium flowers and sprigs of parsley. Still warm, still fragrant. The prince is looking at the pies much longer than the stepsisters. Holy fuck he wants those pies so bad. There’s even a point where he’s doing that thing, where like, you flick your eyes really quickly down at the food back up to the person who has the food like, “do I have permission to take the food?” But he’s like, basically invisible to both stepsisters so he’s just stuck smelling the very rare food that’s managed to break through his stress-induced appetite barrier. Brad, meanwhile, has already started helping himself with an audible “mm!” Within minutes he’s already taken down four mini pies, and Gabe’s steady nibbles have taken down two. Two!! This is Gabe the Valet we’re talking about here! They cannot resist the curried duck mini-pies! And who can blame them!

“These are amazing!” Brad says with his mouth half full, “Where is your cook?”

“Ah, I’m afraid they’ve already… left for the day,” says the stepmother.

That’s kind of weird, the prince thinks, You’d think they’d want feedback from the palace…

“Do they have the recipe, at least?” Gabe perks up, “The palace kitchens would be very interested in serving this, themselves.”

“It’s a secret family recipe,” says one of the stepsisters.

“Very secret,” says the other stepsister.

 The prince’s eyes narrow slightly at this. His eyes flick down the girl’s clothes and hair. No spots of flour anywhere, and not a whiff of spice on  either of them. They’re densely perfumed. These guys were nowhere near the fucking kitchen! How can they call it a family recipe?

The stepsisters are now launching into this long-ass spiel about how it took the palace this long to find the real owners of the glass slipper, talking over each other, both talking shit about each other, both talking shit about all of the honestly delightful shoe candidates who came before them.

“Did you see that girl with the curly brown hair, big mouth and giant nasty feet? I mean, you didn’t think that idiot could have fit the shoe, right?”

“Or the girl with the massive ugly nose?”

“Or the girl who kept crossing herself and looked like she was about to piss herself and cry the whole ball?”

The prince stiffens where he stands. Oh no, they are not talking shit about Dutiful Winery Daughter, Eunice, and Amelia. Not on his watch! But he can’t say anything because he’s the goddamn footman!

“Well, as delightful as this food is,” Gabe says, shifting the subject, “We do have a schedule to keep—”

“Madam, may I use the washroom?” The prince suddenly pipes up, “All the tea from these meetings just goes right through me.”

“The servants’ privy is—” the stepmother starts and then catches herself, “I mean, obviously a footman of the palace should use our best washroom. Second door from the staircase.”

“…thank you, madam,” the prince gives a hollow bow and briskly walks out of the room. And like, of course now his hyper-observant detective ass is internally going ‘She is absolutely hiding something. Why would she direct a servant away from the servants’ quarters? I have to find the servants’ quarters now. This house doesn’t look big enough to really have a proper servants’ quarters unless it’s—” as soon as he’s out of sight, he pivots in the hallway near the stairs and glances toward the scullery and suddenly the voices of all of the servants he interviewed after the ball come flooding into his mind.

She fixed this button on that jacket.

She knew how to get a stain out with lemon juice.

She was really interested in how to make the food.

Her best friends are rats.

He walks down the hall. His ears are burning and he feels like he’s moving through molasses. There’s a door. There’s a door at the end of the hall. He can hear rats scuttling in the walls. He presses an ear to the wall—are they all moving in one direction?

But then there’s a bloodcurdling scream and the sound of a shatter and all of a sudden the prince's heart plummets into his gut. He sprints back to the parlor where Brad and Gabe are doing the fitting, except the older stepsister on the couch is wailing.

There’s shards of glass flecked with red all over the floor.

“She—she kicked It off—I didn’t have time to grab it—Oh god—” Gabe’s hand goes over his mouth. 

“The shoe bit me, Mother, you must believe me, it bit me!” The older stepsister insists.

“You broke it…” the prince’s voice is more blank than angry as he hangs in the doorway.

“Because it bit me!” says the stepsister, and suddenly a horrified holler escapes her, “My TOES!”

“What?” The prince glances over and his own hand claps over his mouth. Her pinky and… ring? toes are missing. And the stumps are bleeding. Dripping and spurting all over the carpet.

The younger stepsister lets out another earsplitting scream. Oh my god it is not helping.

“You—you could have warned us there were such consequences for not fitting the shoe!” the Stepmother says through gritted teeth to Gabe.

“Madam, We swear, we had no idea—” Gabe starts but the Prince can’t contain himself. HE JUST LOST HIS ONE FUCKING LEAD.

TO ASSHOLES.

“Consequences?!” The Prince blurts out, “This is the first time I’ve seen this happen! With every other girl in the kingdom it’s just either been too tight or too loose! Ma’am this is the first fucking time I’ve seen anything like this! What the hell did you do to piss a shoe off!?”

“You have no right to speak to me like that, you lowly servant!” The Stepmother barks.

“You will address His Highness the prince with respect!” Brad says on reflex.

And the Prince huffs a breath through his teeth like, ‘Goddammit, Brad.”

“…what?” Says the stepmother. 

“MY TOES!” The stepsister wails again and the prince flinches to attention,  looking sharply to Brad, “Send one of the footmen to the palace, have them send in a royal surgeon on the swiftest horse they can,” says the Prince. It’s one of these princely lines that has always lurked ready at the back of his mind, but he never imagined himself really using, especially not for someone who pisses him off as much as this asshole.

“It shall be done, your highness,” Brad gives his shallow bow before hurrying off. The prince swears and pulls off the kerchief of his own servant’s livery, quickly wrapping it around the stepsister’s bleeding toe stubs and applying pressure.

“OW!” The stepsister cries out, “That hurts!”

“Just shut up and just focus on not passing out,” the Prince says darkly.

“You’re the prince?” The stepsister winces.

“Yes,” says the prince.

“…and you’re… worried about me?” The stepsister says breathlessly.

“Yeah,” the prince says, looking up at her sharply, “I’m the prince. It’s my fucking job to worry about the subjects of my kingdom.”

The stepsister’s lips purse together and there’s kind of a beat here where she’s almost, almost picking up on the whole, “nobility isn’t just a matter of birth” deal. I don’t know. Maybe give her a couple years. Maybe.

“I hope you will see our family properly compensated for this horrific incident,” the stepmother adds.

“Yes,” the prince says hollowly, his eyes flicking down to all the glass shards on the floor and the blood that’s now staining the knee of his servants’ livery, “Of course.”

It’s a whole thing. The surgeon does arrive extremely quickly because goddamn if the horse they sent them in on isn’t the fastest horse in the kingdom, he honestly looks a little shaken by the time he arrives because holy shit is that horse fast, but he’s able to stitch up the stepsister’s toe stubs—they do look for the stepsister’s toes to reattach them, but they don’t find them. The prince really, really doesn’t want to think that the shoe ate them, and neither does anyone else, but that is absolutely on everyone’s minds as the royal surgeon is carefully wrapping the stepsister’s foot in gauze. The prince apologizes for the incident, and, with everyone deeply uncomfortable and really not wanting to be around each other, they make the arrangements to leave.

The stepfam watches as the carriage takes off.

—-

Cindy, god bless her, has deeply, deeply hoped she is the dastardly criminal that the guard captain thinks she is, because a dastardly criminal would be able to pick this fucking lock. But she isn’t. She’s just a nice girl staring at no less than 9 sewing needles jammed hopelessly into a keyhole and she’s furiously trying to hold back tears. She’s heard a bloodcurdling scream and muffled yelling about toes but she honestly isn’t paying it that much mind because the stepsisters scream like that whenever they see a rat. She has to focus, goddammit but shit, shit shit, there’s no way in fuck she’s picking this lock. And like… why would she?? She’s never picked locks before! The village tinker’s shown her some interesting stuff so she knows tumblers exist but she doesn’t know how to make them do the thing without a key!

If I was half the girl the prince thinks I am, I would be out there, she thinks, If I was half the girl fairy godmother thinks I am, I’d be riding in the prince’s carriage by now.

But then this little furious fire lights up in her heart. The fairy godmother wouldn’t want her to give up. The fairy godmother would want her to go down kicking and screaming, and probably biting someone to the point of drawing blood. The fairy godmother is a manifestation of this goddamn column of PAIN in Cinderella and GODDAMN if Cindy is going to let that agony amount to nothing. She draws in a furious breath through her nostrils, gives a glance toward the cellar door leading to the garden outside and huffs it out. Her hands ball into fists and she descends the stairs.

—

“Highness…” Brad’s words are slow, unsure as the prince is walking back towards the carriage, “I—I know you really cared about her, wherever she is and whoever she is,” Brad casts his eyes downward, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” the prince says the words on reflex.

“If it’s…. worth saying, your highness,” Brad says slowly, “I think.. going through all this, as painful as it has been, I think it’s been really good for you. It’s… it’s been really good to see how much you care about people.”

“It’s one thing to care, Brad,” the prince says quietly, “It’s another thing to actually fucking do something.”

“You’re going to do a lot of things, highness,” Gabe says quietly, “I’m sure of it.”

“Mm,” the Prince just slips into the carriage and closes the door.

He leans his head against the glass of the carriage window as it rattles on, staring out at the woods surrounding the estate, then the fields beyond as the carriage rattles down the road. The prince is weighing Brad’s words in his head like… okay, maybe the idea of someone is enough to get you off your ass to try and put some good in the world, but at the same time… fuck, it hurts. It hurts so bad. Only remembering the idea of a smile, of a laugh…of someone grinning and calling you on your shit… it fucking hurts his heart more than any of you can fucking imagine. The scenery is rolling by, fallow fields, the odd handful of trees set up as a windbreak, and the fence that trails along the road. Wooden, and unassuming, bleached by sunlight. The prince lets his eyes bump over the fenceposts as they roll by. Fencepost… fencepost… fencepost… fencepost with a rat in a little green marching band jacket on it… fencepost…

The prince suddenly jerks to attention and smushes the side of his face against the glass of the carriage window, looking behind him. There is a rat, in a swanky little green band jacket perched on the fencepost that is rapidly rolling behind the royal carriage. Its nose is high and twitching in the air. The prince stares after the rat shrinking In the distance in awe and blinks several times. Just before it falls out of view with the carriage’s progression, it hops back into the grass.

“I suppose with the slipper broken, we’ll have to make an announcement that—prince?” Gabe the valet looks up from his agenda.

The prince means to shout “RAT IN A JACKET” but what comes out sounds more like “RAJACKINRAT” and Brad goes, “What” and the prince just fucking opens the carriage door and fucking jumps out and tucks and rolls out of the full-speed moving carriage, bouncing painfully in the dirt road.

“Your highness?!” Brad yells out the swinging carriage door but the prince has already sprang to his feet and broken into a dead sprint across the field back to the house. He vaults over a fence, clips a hedge hard with his shoulder, stumbles over the roots of several copses of trees, and then hops another fence to find himself at the rear of Cindy’s family estate. His shoes fucking skid hard to a stop in the dirt, and he’s looking around this cute little garden and farm yard. It’s an adorably kept garden for something owned by such horrible people, but he’s not getting too caught up on that detail. He’s feverishly looking around. Where’s the rat? Where did the rat go? The rat in the jacket—where is it??? And then there’s a… whispering, rattling sound and he glanced over to see a hazel tree that seems to be moving… a little too much for it to just be the wind. It’s swaying… pointing? He narrows his eyes for a second but then suddenly flinches hard at a loud, ‘WHUNK’ sound and a pained, muffled grunt, and he glances over to see a cellar door.

A cellar door barred with a criss-crossing shovel and rake.

He rushes over.

Now, okay, maybe the smart thing to do here may have been to yell through the door ‘Who’s in there?’ Or maybe ‘what happened’ or even just ‘Hello?’ But this boy is amped up on enough adrenaline and desperation to kill a younger, bedridden, asthmatic version of himself. So instead, he yanks away the shovel and rake barring the cellar doors and takes hold of both cellar door handles and flings them open, only for Cindy to fucking rush headlong into him.

And like, I need to stress here that the prince is all about horseback riding, fencing, and wrestling. Like, do you know how much that builds up your core and quads? Those are all VERY CORE AND QUAD-FOCUSED SPORTS. This dude is cute but he is STURDY, but now scrappy Cindy has just caught him hard with a bony shoulder/elbow combo right to the solarplexus like a goddamn axehead, so he’s making this “Phwoor” noise on contact and Cindy has maybe a 28% idea of what is currently happening because she’s just fucking SPRUNG UP meaning to literally bust open a cellar door and instead she’s… hit something… not quite soft-ish?? Definitely not a cellar door???

And then WHUMPF they’re both sprawled out with Cinderella on top of the prince in the chicken piss-drenched dirt of the farm.

“Guh..?” The prince makes a noise that’s half-suppressing a gag before glancing down and seeing hair clotted up with soot and ashes. Cindy’s covered in a fresh layer of soot after her last ramming attempt sent her painfully rolling down the stairs and into the ashes near the fireplace.

Cindy’s eyelashes flutter. Her head jerks up because she still has half a mind to race after the carriage that’s just taken off, but then she looks down because she doesn’t know what she just hit.

 And then she sees the prince. 

It’s him! It’s him! Sure he’s wearing (now crooked) glasses, and servant’s livery now, and his hair is all mussed up and there’s the five o’clock shadow (Wow she really likes the five o’ clock shadow), but she knows those eyes from when they were dancing together! It is fucking NOW OR NEVER. It is fucking GO TIME. So she just braces both hands in the dirt on either side of the prince’s face and this whole marvelous gracious script she had in her head goes right out the window and she just shouts, “I HAVE THE SHOE!” In the prince’s face, except it comes out more like “IVETHASHOE!”

“What?” The prince is staring up at her. Oh fuck I don’t know how to explain what he is currently going through right now. You know that whole ‘tip of your tongue’ sensation when like… you know something, you know you know something, but it’s not clicking? It’s just not coming? And it is the worst fucking mental itch. Imagine that, but a million times worse. The weight of her—he knows the weight of her from when they were dancing, from when he was obsessively running through every detail of that night through his head night after night. He knows the feel of her back muscles, and he’s pretty sure it’s the same feel as this fucking battering ram that’s sprung out of that cellar. This face. He has to know this face. He wants to know this face so fucking bad. He can see the fear in her eyes and he knows the fear in her eyes, the fucking timing of her expressions, but every human is capable of having fear in their eyes so there’s just this fucking tidal wave of “is it you? Please, please, is it you?” crashing against these walls of fucking despair.

“I—I have the other shoe,” Cinderella’s voice comes slow and dense to her. 

But then there’s the sound of a door slamming at the front of the house and Cinderella flinches. And fuck, the Prince knows what her flinching feels like in his arms from the sound of that first midnight bell ringing.

“What are you doing?!” The stepmother barks, “Get off of him you wretched little thing!”

Another visible flinch goes through Cindy, but she stays still, her mouth pinches for a second before she says again, “I have… the other shoe.”

“Cinderella, did you not hear me? Do you know how much of an embarrassment you’re making of yourself?” 

Cinderella winces, her eyes squeezing shut, but she feels a gentle hand touching her forearm and she opens one eye.

“You have the other shoe?” The prince is staring up at her. He looks like total shit compared to the ball, but she thinks she likes it more. The five o’ clock shadow, the eye bags, the mussed up hair… this is the fucking dork who snuck off with her and let her have half of his plate of food without hesitation.

“Yeah,” she says, pushing back from him. He props himself up to a kneeling position and she pulls the other glass slipper out of the pocket on her dress. And he recognizes it. This dude has spent hours and hours poring over the other glass slipper, he would recognize its partner in a heartbeat. Less than a heartbeat. It’s the other half of the pair, and this girl, this girl who is slamming against some wall in his psyche with the frustration and distrust of one’s own memory, has the other shoe. “Um… here—” she pushes the slipper into his hands and yes, yes, he knows the weight of it. He turns it over in his hands, just marveling.

The stepmother is going on like, “Cinderella, you will listen to me or so help me you will never—that is to say—” The stepmother can’t properly threaten Cindy the way she always does! Not when the prince is fucking there! Oh but the prince picks up on that. Dude has grown up with a complicated web of dynamics of servants and lords and advisors and tutors and he knows, he knows the exact fucking look on someone’s face when they can’t use their usual ammunition. He looks back at Cindy.

“…you have the other one…” he says, very slow, very quiet.

“Your highness, she’s not well, I simply must—” the Stepmother starts but the prince holds up a ‘Shut the fuck up’ hand and she falls silent.

The prince holds the slipper back out to Cinderella and she takes it. 

“Show me,” he says, “Please.” It’s impossible to keep all the desperation in his voice out of that ‘please.’

She turns it over in her hands. So careful, so loving—trying to have as little finger contact as possible even though the Prince has determined through multiple experiments that the slipper doesn’t fucking smudge. The way she looks at this shoe—it’s just as much hope and despair for her—it’s a memory of the best fucking night of her life, and it’s also a manifestation of her fear that she will never again know happiness like she knew at that ball. 

“Do you need more time?” The Prince asks but that just seems to prompt Cindy out of her daze and the complete three-way pile-up of hope and love and terror.

She shakes her head, then pushes back onto her butt, extends one leg, stubs her heel against the dirt to get off her normal shoe, and then stoops forward and pulls the glass slipper on. After so long of watching people furiously try to jam their feet into the slipper, or seeing the slipper awkwardly knock loose against heels, it is so goddamn surreal to see the shoe fit. Without a second thought. Like she’s just pulling it on in the morning like any other shoe.

 The prince is still, dead silent, absolutely dumbfounded. She pushes back onto her hands and extends her leg again, now turning her ankle with a slight ‘Ta-daaaa’ gesture. It’s not bragging or smugness, it’s more like a gesture of respect to the slipper itself, and everything it represents. Brad runs in right at this point but basically the combination of being out of breath from running after the prince and the sight of a girl who he previously thought was a chimney sweep wearing the slipper has rendered him silent save fore some labored, buckled-over panting.

Cindy gives a glance to her Stepmother on reflex, the muscles of her shoulders and neck unconsciously tensing, ready to be seized by the hair and for everything she’s hoped and dreamed of to be torn agonizingly away from her again, but… there’s nothing. The Stepmother has just gone full blue-screen. 404 File Not Found. Mouth hanging open, stunned. Cinderella looks back at the prince, who is staring just as slack-jawed. She looks back at the prince, whose expression is unreadable.

“If you need to try it on other people to make sure, I understand, but I don’t think my stepsisters—“ Cinderella starts.

The prince lunges forward and hugs her. Just, all these years of all this gentlemanly training, all of these social defenses, ‘this spoon goes here,’ ‘maintain this distance and bow at 45 degrees,’ and walking with books stacked on his head just fucking disintegrate and he just whips his arms around her. His head is just a fog of, It’s you. It’s you. It’s you. You’re real. I knew I didn’t dream you. It’s you. And Cinderella just.. freezes. Leggy still stuck out. It’s almost a flinch. Just a few stunned seconds of registering affectionate human contact. He remembered her. He was looking for her. He was worried about her. He turned the entire goddamn kingdom upside-down for her. And somewhere in the midst of these realizations she becomes aware that her cheeks are soaked with tears and her chest is heaving with sobs and at some point they’ve both come together on their knees he’s pulling away like, “Oh god, I’m sorry, are you-? I didn’t mean to—” 

And she’s pushing forward, clawing at the front of his jacket, fingers trying to find purchase—she’s so used to crying against a damn tree— and she’s like, “No—I mean I’m fine—I— mean—“ and then the sobs are rippling through her words and she just kind of slumps against him, arms winding around him like she has to think about where they’re supposed to go. God, how long has it been? His arms find his way around her again and he just kind of sits there for a long while, just letting her cry. 

He strokes her hair lightly. His hands come away sooty and he doesn’t even notice. 

After a minute, maybe two, she pulls away again to snort up a big glob of snot and wipe her face off a little, her tears streaking away the ash and dirt, and she has never looked more beautiful. Her eyes are all puffy and her skin is all red and blotchy but the girl at the ball doesn’t have shit on the girl he’s looking at right now. “I’m sorry—” she says, snorting again, “I’m trying to…” another sob falls out of her and she laughs at herself a little, “I’m really trying—!” 

“You’re fine,” he says, and he tucks back a little strand of hair that’s stuck to her face with snot. Then he smiles, a gentle, lopsided smile, and he hits her with the same line she hit him back at the ball, when they were both at that buffet table and she had a mouth half-full of bacon-wrapped dates, but here it carries so much more weight: “Hey... do you want to get out of here?”

“Uh huh,” her voice is shaking with the force of her nods.

The prince cranes past Cindy and looks at Brad, who is still panting, buckled over from chasing after him. 

“Uh Brad? Could you bring the carriage around?”

“Of—,” Brad huffs, “Course, your highness.” He briskly, but wearily hustles off.

“I—” Cinderella wipes at her face again, sniffles and swallows thickly, “Can I get my stuff? It won’t take too long.” “Yeah,” the Prince says and she’s standing up and pulling away and like… he realizes he isn’t holding her in place but he’s raising his hands to let her wrists slip from them, as if trying to keep the contact as long as possible before she hurries off. 

And he’s just… kind of staring into space there in the dirt, like, Holy fuck, it really is her. That spell, that fog, all that unsureness has just been wiped away and now, ka-CHUNK, this girl is locked in—it is the girl from the ball. It’s mystery girl! Who has rat friends!! In clothes!! That she made!! He has never been more sure of anything in his life. And he’s never known a love like the one that is fucking surging up in him right now.

And the stepmother thinks this is a great time to speak up. “Um, your highness, if I may—“

“You may fucking not,” the Prince says with a pleasant blankness, not even looking at her. 

And the stepmother makes a sound that would have been an assenting ‘Ah,' sound but it comes out more like a strangled, “Eh—“ And she tries to compose herself, “I’m sorry your majesty, I must have misheard—”

“You did not,” and the prince is now gracious enough to glance up at her, still kneeling in the dirt. There is something dark behind the pleasant blankness in his expression. Something that says, I am not going to ask why that cellar door was barred with gardening tools, and I hope for your sake you recognize that as a mercy. We are a progressive kingdom and we are very proud to have banned virtually all forms of corporal punishment. However, it is taking an ungodly amount of self-control to not bring back the most fucked up medieval punishments solely for you, so I suggest you do not fucking push me.

Because like… one thing to keep in mind with the prince is… sure, most of the time he’s a good-hearted (albeit kind of antisocial) dweeb: He likes his books, he likes his horses, and he sees his hobbies of fencing and wrestling as more exercises in athletic ability and camaraderie than really anything martial. However, he is also his mother’s son.

And the queen will not hesitate to absolutely destroy a motherfucker.

And the stepmother recognizes this and quietly clears her throat. “Right,” she says, glancing off again as the carriage once again pulls up to the estate with Brad hanging off the side of it all cool and shit like he didn’t nearly pop a blood vessel chasing after the prince. A breeze blows through the boughs of the hazel tree, and it sounds almost like a snicker. 

“I—oof—I got my stuff!” Cindy comes up out of the cellar, hauling a heavy-looking chest. A rat is perched on the chest, and a rat is perched on each of her shoulders, with a final, fancy green-jacketed  rat sitting sphinx-like on her head.

“Oh—!” The prince rushes over, prompting the chest rat to jump into one of Cindy’s apron pockets, “Here—I can carry that for you.”

“Your highness, I must insist—” Brad cuts in and takes the chest from Cindy, “And…” he looks at Cinderella, “Miss, if I may have a word?”

“Brad—” the Prince says in warning but Cinderella touches his shoulder in an ‘It’s fine’ gesture, and follows after Brad as he carries the chest over to the carriage. 

“So…” Brad says, carrying the chest over, “You’re not a chimney sweep.”

“No, I’m sorry, I should have said so,” says Cinderella.

“No, it’s not your fault—I shouldn’t have made assumptions,” said Brad, “So all the ash is from…?” He studies her for a second and then glances off as they finally reach the carriage.

 Cinderella is looking down at all the soot dusting her ashamedly. “It’s my own fault…” she says quietly, “It.. gets really cold down in the cellar, but I should know when I’m tired enough to get into my own bed.. but…” she trails off.

Brad’s face scrunches with guilt. “I would like to apologize,” Brad says, as he’s strapping the chest to the back of the carriage.

“A-apologize?” Cindy perks up.

“I was convinced you had sinister, ulterior motives, I made many assumptions about your character which I now realize to be unfounded.”

“Oh…” Cindy says quietly. 

“I should have trusted his highness’s judgment.” Brad isn’t looking at her.

“But you were just doing your job!” Cinderella perks up a little.

Brad blinks a few times and tries to re-compose himself. “It was still unjust of me to assume you were… some sort of criminal mastermind.”

“Criminal mastermind…” Cindy breathes, “No one’s ever thought I was a criminal mastermind before!”

“Because… you clearly aren’t?” Brad really wasn’t expecting the conversation to take this turn? He was kind of expecting her to just accept the apology by now.

“Well, I mean, it’s just.. I get called ‘stupid’ a lot—It’s kind of flattering to have someone think I’m a criminal mastermind!”

Brad yanks on the last strap on the chest before saying, “Miss, would you please just accept my apology?”

“Oh! Sorry,” Cindy laughs a little, “I’m not used to people apologizing to me.” 

There’s just a beat and Brad is putting 2 and 2 together of ‘I get called stupid a lot’ and ‘People don’t apologize to me’ and there’s this flicker across his face of ‘Jesus fuck we need to get you out of here.’

“er—I mean,” Cinderella straightens up, clearly trying to imitate Brad’s own impeccable guardsman posture, “I accept your apology, sir.”

“…thanks,” says Brad. He stares at Cindy for a second and makes eye-contact with the rat on her head.. “So the rats are coming—?”

“The rats are coming,” says Cindy, “And… if it’s possible… Chauncey isn’t as good a watchdog as he used to be, so I was thinking, maybe he would be more comfortable at the palace… but if stepmother wants to keep him I under—“

“You want the dog? Why take the dog, my dear! Why would you ever think I would stop you from taking the dog? Take the dog! Take him!” A terrified, manic laugh falls out of the stepmother and there’s a long quiet beat before Cinderella just kind of… shuffles over to Chauncey’s place in the barn and brings her formerly-carriage-driver-dog over to the prince’s carriage. His hips aren’t that good so both she and Brad help the dog into the carriage. 

“Is that everything?” The Prince walks over.

“Oh—! One more thing!” Cinderella rushes away and comes back with one hazelnut from the tree her father planted, pocketing it and then clasping her hands together. “Okay. I’m ready.” The prince holds out a hand to help her up into the carriage.

“I hope you don’t forget all we did to get you here, my dear,” the stepmother coos, and a there’s another visible flinch in Cinderella’s shoulders as she’s pulling herself up into the carriage. The prince looks back at the stepmother, and that shadow passes behind his eyes again, and the Stepmother draws herself in with a prim posture. The prince can just… feel this roiling, seething anger in him, his mother’s righteous fury, his father’s love for all things small, and good and kind, and there’s a three-second beat where he wants to fucking scorch the earth of this godforsaken place.

But then he looks back at Cindy, sitting in the carriage.

And she just looks… so tired. So very, very tired.

So without a word the prince pulls himself up into the carriage, and closes the door. Brad hops on the back, and off the carriage goes. The green-jacketed rat finds its way into the prince’s lap as they ride and he mindlessly traces a finger along the line of its body. The dog is audibly snoring at their feet. 

Cinderella leans her head on his shoulder, her eyelids heavy.

“Prince?” She says quietly, lifting her head.

“Mm?”

“Sorry for um.. tackling you like that.”

He snorts a little. “It’s fine.

“I didn’t give you internal bleeding, did I? You know,” her voice drops a little, “From the hemophilia?”

“…I… don’t have hemophilia,” the prince says squinting a little, “I’m not internally bleeding. I’m fine. Really.”

“You don’t?” Cindy relaxes and snuggles her cheek against his shoulder, “Oh… that’s such a relief…”

A short pause passes between them, filled only with the sound of the rattling carriage. Gabe, for once in his life, is not furiously taking notes. He’s also in the fucking, absolute blank faced ‘who the fuck are you’ mode while Brad is avoiding contact with everyone, staring out the window and quietly chewing on some of the extra pies that he quietly pocketed during all the horror of the shoe straight-up biting off the stepsister’s toes.

“Uhm… hey—” the prince glances at Cindy, “So… okay this is going to sound like… a really weird question, and I swear I’m not trying to be weird it’s just.. I put a whole chart together, but the shoe didn’t go along with the chart, so like—I know it doesn’t matter because the shoe fits but like… just so I don’t go crazy from all this… how big are your feet?” 

“I don’t know,” Cinderella doesn’t lift her head from his shoulder, “Like…big rat-sized, I guess?” 

“Big rat-sized,” the prince repeats.

“Mm-hmm.”

“I can live with that,” the prince settles against the carriage seat cushions.