The room was silent, the snores of the small children confirming that your story had been successful in sending them to sleep. Just as you stood, beginning to walk towards the door you heard sniffles from the corner of the room. "Oh, sweetie don't cry!" You yelped, watching as your grandchild began to wipe at her eyes, sobbing loudly as she sat up in bed.
"Fairy tales are meant to have happy ever afters!" She hiccuped, pouting at you and sitting at the end of her bed you smoothed down the creases in your skirt smiling at her childish statement.
Leaning over you wiped the tears from her eyes, "my little minnow, everyone fell asleep before I could tell the ending." She sprang up and wiped at her face, a huge smile on her face as she nodded her head.
"How did you live happily ever after?" You blinked in surprise, hearing the words that had filled your head for the subsequent years, but it didn't matter now and you cleared your throat, dramatically flaring your hands to make your granddaughter giggle in amusement.
The sound of approaching footsteps could be heard and you knew you would have to be quick to avoid Jimin teasing you for using your own love story as a bedtime fairy tale again. "Well my minnow, those rumours about eating mer flesh to provide fae with immortality were partly correct. But quite wrong, as most rumours often are." You smiled, mind going back to that fateful day when everything had come to the end. "The royal mer possess the ability to save a life with a kiss, and as the princess of the mer I also have that blessing."
A hand landed on your shoulder, squeezing gently and you turned to smile at Jimin, who grinned when your young granddaughter squealed in excitement, "little one, you don't get to hear the ending if you're loud." He winked and she nodded, clamping her hands over her mouth.
Jimin heaved a sigh and sent you a glare as you gestured for him to go on, "well, the handsome, dashing, wise, clever-" you elbowed Jimin in the side, "the prince was certain he was going to die, after all that had been his aim to save the love of his life. But his sneaky mer princess had a secret, slowly she had pressed a kiss to his lips and the blood leaking into the seawater disappeared."
The waves had stilled as your lips had touched his and with your eyes squeezing shut, you hadn't seen the magic beging to work. Only hearing Jimin's rasping breaths become steadier before he pulled you into the water with a groan.
"How did you do that?" Jimin gasped, placing his hands on his heart to find it miraculously uninsured and you shook your head, tears already streaming down your face as you tackled him in a hug. But Jimin yelped when he saw the state of his feet - well, tail.
Although Jimin's life had been saved by you again, for the third time, you had been unable to save all of him. A healing kiss from a mer would lead to that species becoming indebted to the royal, only able to carry out that sentence by becoming one themselves.
"So after I turned into a mer and got a beautiful rusty coloured tail," you blinked and found yourself back in the room with Jimin, who was rambling onto the poor child who was beginning to rub her eyes with sleep. So you placed a quick kiss to his lips and finished the story quickly.
The little girl smiling up as you smoothed her hair from her face, "your grandad proposed to me whilst we were still mer and once getting married my father allowed us to return to being fae."
The girl smiled, "so you got married and lived happily ever after?"
Jimin smiled and squeezed your hand in his, your heart sped slightly at the small contact, just like it had done all those years ago, as Jimin whispered, "We still live happily ever after."
A/N: 10k imagines in a week along with school coursework deadlines are super duper hard to write. Please give me some praise and compliments to provide me with the power to write The Frog Prince ( knj )
