Stepsister's Lament || Yandere!Cinderella X F!Reader

Eight O'Clock

Everyone, no matter their age or gender, had a favorite Disney princess. Yours always was and always will be Cinderella. Not only did her dress fulfill every little girl's dream, but her personality -her graciousness- made you admire her right away.

You paid no mind to criticisms that she was a passive, weak girl who simply relied on a prince to come rescue her and solve all her problems. You'd fought many a radical feminist, argued that Cinderella was a strong princess until you were blue in the face.

Then you got sick, really sick, and you were too weak to fight anyone anymore. You saw countless doctors, but no one could agree on a diagnosis or treatment.

The one personal item you kept with you as you went in and out of hospitals was a beautifully illustrated book of fairy tales, the pages well-worn from your repeated perusal. These were the original stories, not their Disneyfied versions, but you adored them all the same.

The animated Disney film of Cinderella never delved into the fates of the wicked stepsisters after the prince whisked her away from a life of abuse on a snow-white horse. But in this dark version of the story, they get their comeuppance. They're blinded and sentenced to a lifetime of beggary.

This didn't bother you nearly as much as it should have. An eye for an eye, taken literally in this instance. Instead, there was one other, liiittle detail you took issue with...

Now, heads may not turn when you walk in the room, but you didn't consider yourself ugly. Average, maybe. Your features were inoffensive to the eyes.

So imagine your surprise when you turned the page for the first time and found the ugly stepsisters looked just like you. Everything, from the color of their skin to the way they styled their hair!

This initial discovery devastated your younger self. In fact, you remembered crying so hard you puked. Now you found it kind of funny. You had to stifle an amused snort every time you gazed down at the water-damaged illustration of the evil twins Anastasia and Drusilla, all dressed up in finery but still hideous when compared to Cinderella in just rags.

Who knew it would be one of the last sights you laid eyes on before you died?

What you thought at first was a little fatigue, a little shortness of breath, turned out to be acute respiratory failure.

Your favorite book slid off the side of your hospital bed and dropped to the floor, falling open on the page depicting Cinderella's Happily Ever After. The machines all around you blared. Nurses came rushing in. But, deep down, you knew it was already too late. You could read in big, bold letters above your head: The End.

Except it wasn't.

You fell forward, as if you had been just dozing off and not falling under death's eternal sleep, before jerking back- And suddenly, you were in a whole other place.

"Anastasia! Aristocrats. Don't. Slouch." A woman's voice rang in your ears like tinnitus. Each word was punctuated with a none-too-gentle knock on your noggin.

You looked in the direction of the strikes... And there you found an older woman dressed in old-fashioned clothes. You didn't know enough about the history of fashion to pinpoint what period her gown belonged to.

She was beautiful, though. So much so that you almost couldn't believe she was the one who attacked you... But you caught her red-handed, brandishing a closed hand fan like a fancy little club. The strict frown she wore made unsightly wrinkles in her otherwise lovely face. She resembled your mother around the eyes.

To her left, seated on the same cushioned bench, was a little girl who was a mirror-image of you at the age of eight but also clad in an outdated dress. She didn't rise to your defense in word or action. In fact, she even gave a mean little snicker at your expense. Brat.