For Lack of A Better Title/Chapter Two

"Are you going to be in your tantrum state forever, Ais?"

He didn't reply.

"I'll take that as a yes."

He looked slightly indignant but still didn’t answer.

Min sighed and finally took a seat next to him. It was awkward, but she draped her arms around him anyway. He stiffened, but eventually allowed himself to rest his head on hers. The embrace was strange and sideways, but it wasn’t a terrible hug.

"You know, it hurts me as well." Min said, after a long, long pause.

Speaking to somebody for the first time in three days, Aisley replied. "No it doesn’t."

"It absolutely does." She insisted, squeezing his hand. "You need to listen to me, Ais. You can't go on denying your destiny. That does no good for anybody, and you will get hurt doing it. Do you know what happens to fairytales that don’t follow through with their story?"

He did, but he let her continue:

"They disappear. They cease to exist, and the world moves on without them. They're forgotten and nobody knows what happens to them. What if they're eternally being tortured, or something of the sort? I don’t want that happening to you.

"And so you support the decision to instead have me torn apart by wild animals," Aisley muttered, irritated, "Because that's somehow better and more desirable than peacefully just disappearing."

This seemed to put an end to Min's patience. She shot up onto her feet, the movement so sudden and violent that Aisley was effectively smacked in the face with her hair and one of her elbows, perhaps not entirely by accident.

"Aisley Ashton Hazelwood, I swear to Perrault if you don’t stop being a selfish pretentious little shit, I'll-" Min cut herself off and left, slamming the door behind her. The walls shook with the impact, and Aisley nearly fell out his chair in shock.

All sounds were somewhat muffled and hazy, but Aisley could still hear his mother and sister concerning over what just happened. Min replied, in a half-yell, her voice grating strangely. She was going to cry. He heard her leave, and Aspen telling her to wait.

They sent her in. To talk "sense" into him? To comfort him? To what exactly? Whatever it was, Aisley was satisfied he'd thwarted their attempts. He grinned to himself. They were failing. He was going to make their lives a little harder, not quite having accepted the fact that he was going to Ever After High, even if he threw a hundred fits a day. No, Aisley had convinced himself that if he made it sound as terrible to his family as it did to him, he wouldn’t have to go. It was absolutely foolproof.

Aisley was unpleasantly woken from his musings by the sound of something colliding with his window.

Avenant.

No, not Avenant.

Avenant's soccer ball.

"YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE, AISLEY!"