Chapter Text
Leorio had been fifteen the first time he saw the Sleeping Beauty. He had grown up hearing stories of her, heard of the misadventures the many of the older folks had had trying to find her tower in the forest around their town. The stories said that she had been there for hundreds of years at least, maybe more, but if anyone had found her, they did not speak of it. They said that she was an ancient princess cursed to sleep like death until true love's kiss set her free. Leorio had loved to imagine himself climbing the stairs of her tower, throwing open the doors to her chamber, stridding confidently up to her, and, upon seeing her beautiful face for the first time, falling madly in love with her and waking her with his kiss.
Of course, dreams and reality rarely mix.
It was raining when he found the tower. Not a storm like in the stories, just a muggy, humid, constant rain that soakes him to the bone and makes the path trecherous. He thinks little when he comes upon the ruins; there are pleanty in this valley, left over from some long forgotten kingdom that had fallen into disarray. He stumbles into it solely for shelter, hoping to start a fire and dry his handmedown healer's cloak and maybe have a hot meal before he set out once more for home. The main room offers no such protection from the wet, so he carefully begins to scale the stone steps up to the loft. Even the ornate doors don't phase him: he's more distracted making sure the floor's structurouly sound. Then he steps inside the room and stops dead.
It smells fresh and sweet, like spring flowers, and it is warm like a midsummer's evening, a sharp contrast from the frigid fall outside. There are candles lit around the room, though they bare no sign that the wax was burning. The furnature is rich and beautiful and like nothing he had ever seen, and all of it perfectly clean and free of dust and critters. Then there's the bed: large enough for two at least, and covered in red and gold and blue linens and softer than a cloud.
And lastly, there is the Beauty. She is indeed gorgeous, with hair like sunlight, skin like cream, and lips like roses. She's sleeping, too, just like the stories said; he could see her chest rising and falling beneath her duvet. He has never seen a more etheral person or magical place.
He approaches the bed slowly, drawing up beside it with more wonder than confidence. She looks so comfortable in her soft bed, with her lips were curled in the slightest of smiles, like she was having some infinitely pleasent dream.
He doesn't kiss her.
He backs slowly out of the room, finding as he passes again through the doors that his clothes are now perfectly dry. He stumbles home in a state of shock, which is greatened when he finds his water flask filled with wine and his meager bag of herbs and medicinals filled with all kinds of rare and expensive varieties he had only seen in the books his master has. He keeps both a secret from the others, hidden in the bottom of his chest of belongings in the healer's hut.
In the coming years, he visits her whenever he had an excuse to. At first, he just goes to look, to gaze upon her beauty. He never touchs anything and never stays long, feeling out of place in his perpetually muddy boots and his ragged clothes. Within a year though, he finds himself bringing her things, flowers in spring, pretty stones and minerals he finds by the river, little trinkets he buys with his meager savings. Everything he leaves behind he finds on display when he returns, the flowers in a vase, the stones lined up along a shelf, the trinkets placed around the room sweetly.
Each time he comes, he finds a little something in his pack that hadn't been there before. Most of the time it was more medicinals, which he stockpiles and uses whenever he can without raising suspision. He has grown fond of the secret little room and the maiden within it. It hurt to think of people coming in to gawk at her.