Fiona's Charming Ordeal

By Gadfly

Introduction

Fiona's adventures during the day in Shrek 2 that she awakened as a human.

Many, many thanks to TrudiRose for her invaluable assistance with proofing and suggestions as the story has evolved. I strongly recommend her own excellent stories as collected at this site.

Copyright Notice

Characters, places and situations from the motion pictures Shrek and Shrek 2 belong to DreamWorks. They are used here with affection but, alas, without permission.

Layer 1: Facing the Strange

Crown Princess Fiona of the kingdom of Far Far Away awoke, stretched, washed her face, looked into the mirror on the wall above her basin, and screamed.

The face looking back at her from the mirror was not hers. Or rather, it was hers. But it was the delicate, beautifully contoured face of her human self, a face that had launched so many valiant knights on ill-fated quests to rescue her from a dragon's keep. It was not the broad, pudgy, green-skinned face of the ogress she had been, day and night, for the past many weeks. Not the face of the being that she had at first resigned herself to become, and then reveled in the becoming. Not the face of her husband's wife.

"FIONA!"

The voice had come from far below, from the castle courtyard, and it called but that one word. But Fiona instantly recognized the voice. How could she not? It was the voice of –

"Shrek!" Fiona gasped, turning away from the mirror. He was back! She had feared she had lost him forever, and now here he was in the courtyard, calling her name!

Fiona began to dash from her room and nearly stumbled, just catching her balance before she sprawled face-first across the floor. It had been quite some time since she had occupied this much lighter shell, and she would have liked some time to re-acclimate herself to it. But there was no time. Shrek was in the courtyard below, and she had to reach him as quickly as she could. There was much going on that morning that was baffling and confounding her, but in all the turmoil she held onto one firm constant; she had to find Shrek. It was the one certainty that grounded her being.

Fiona quickly regained her footing as she staggered into the hallway. She paused for the briefest moment. The main stairway was to her left, but she knew from her childhood days that there was a servants' stairway to the right, and slightly closer. She further remembered from her childhood that the servants' stairway featured smooth metal rail banisters that were perfectly made for sliding down – and cutting the time it took to travel to the main floor by a few seconds. As any reduction in the time it took to reach Shrek seemed worth it, Fiona turned to her right and ran to the door that opened to the servant's stairway. She threw the door open and paused just a moment as she looked down the stairwell and its railing. It seemed oddly smaller now than when she was but a small child – of either species. Nevertheless, the princess then threw herself on the railing and began sliding down.

Halfway down the first flight, Fiona saw a male servant trudging up the stairs, a full breakfast platter balanced on his upturned right hand. His eyes were cast down at the steps that he labored to climb, and his left hand gripped the railing down which Fiona now traveled.

"Look out!" Fiona called.

The servant looked up to see the princess speeding towards him. He yelped in surprise and sprang away from the railing. His back thumped against the stairwell wall opposite the banister and the tray toppled from his grasp, showering him with juice, eggs, tea, and milk. Cups and glass shattered as they hit the steps and the platter itself clanged loudly as it followed them and then began bouncing down the stairwell.

"Sorry!" Fiona apologized as she glided past. She would have spent more time in a proper apology and offered to help clean up, but she was obsessed with her own quest. She slid off the railing at the end of the first landing, again almost losing her balance, but a brief moment later she flung herself on the railing for the next level.

"SHREK!" Fiona yelled as she reached the main floor, her voice echoing back up the stairwell and eventually out the still-open stairwell door near her bedroom.

Fiona sprinted across the wide castle hall. Her re-acclimation to her human physique was nearly complete; she found it was coming back to her like riding a bicycle. She reached the broad wooden doors, shoved one of them open, and then stepped into the sunlight. She looked down into the courtyard at the base of the steps, expecting – praying – to see a large green ogre standing there, more than likely with a small gray donkey by his side. She wondered – she feared – how he would react to seeing her back in this form. It wasn't like she had any sort of explanation that she could offer him. But that was something they'd deal with later. Right now the important thing – the most important thing in the world – was for them to be back together.

But there was no ogre. No donkey either, for that matter. The only nearby being she saw in the courtyard was a large white stallion standing at the base of the steps, a stallion with a majestic build but with something both odd yet somewhat familiar about the face.

"SHREK!" Fiona called again, and then scampered down the steps, casting her eyes further about the courtyard for any hint of her beloved.

"Princess!"

The voice that answered her was not Shrek's, but it rang bells of recognition just the same. And it had seemed to come from the stallion. She turned and looked again at the face of the equine – the large brown eyes and the big toothy grin, which were now beaming at her. Fiona was nonplussed. Could this possibly be –

"Donkey?" she ventured.

"Wow! That potion worked on you, too, huh?" the stallion – Donkey? – gushed.

"Uh – what potion?" Fiona asked, the muddy whirl of bewilderment that made up her thoughts this morning getting even murkier. The last thing she remembered from the previous day had been the heart-wrenching scene where she had announced to her parents her intention to leave this castle, seek out her missing husband, and return with him to their home in the swamp. The unspoken subtext of that confrontation had been that she would likely never see her parents again. She was just about to walk out the doorway into a pouring rain towards her announced quest when she had suddenly felt her head began swimming and then fainted. She certainly didn't recall drinking any potion.

"Oh, it's kind of a long story," Donkey replied. "But you see, Shrek and I took some magic potion and well … now … we're sexy!"

Donkey continued to grin at her, apparently quite happy with himself and with life in general, as Fiona tried to digest this information. So Shrek had taken a potion that had somehow affected both him and her. But why would he do that? And where was he? But then Fiona noticed some movement from something on Donkey's back that she hadn't observed before. And she heard a – purring? Dear God, what had Shrek done! Slowly – fearfully – she looked around Donkey's head to get a view of his back. Then she saw sitting there facing away from her … a cat. An orange cat, oddly wearing a plumed dark cavalier hat and boots. Around his waist was a brown belt that held a small rapier. The cat had one booted foot thrust into the air as it cleaned itself. If this was Donkey's idea of sexy, then her equine friend indeed needed some serious therapy.

Fiona's nose wrinkled. "Shrek?" she asked, hoping she was wrong.

The cat looked up, then back around at her. After a moment it casually leaned back on one paw … ogled her … and then spoke. "For you, baby," it said suggestively in a deep male voice with a Spanish-tinged accent, "I could be."

"Yeah, you wish!" Donkey rebuked his mysterious feline rider which, much to Fiona's relief, was apparently not a transmuted ogre.

Fiona dismissed the cat. She didn't need another annoying talking animal, she needed her husband. She turned back to her remodeled friend and, with a hint of desperation seeping into her voice, asked, "Donkey, where is Shrek?"

"He just went inside, looking for you," Donkey replied, jerking his head back toward the steps and doorway from which Fiona had just descended.

Fiona gave a small grunt of frustration. They had missed each other! While she was so cleverly sliding down the servants' stairwell, Shrek was no doubt bounding up the main stairway. Without another word to Donkey – or Stallion, whatever – Fiona dashed back up the steps, through the doorway, and towards the main stairway.

"SHREK!" she called again as she mounted the stairs. She tried to ignore the fatigue that was finally starting to catch up with her weaker human physique as she climbed, her eyes scanning the flights above her for any sign of Shrek – or someone who might be Shrek. Again, she tried to think of why Shrek would do such a thing.

Then it dawned on her. What she had said the day before yesterday, during their after-dinner spat. 'I've made changes for you, Shrek. Think about THAT.'

"Oh, no, Shrek!" Fiona now moaned under her breath. "I didn't mean physically! That's not the change I meant! At least, not the change I wanted you to make! I meant that I'd changed my attitudes, my outlook. I'd opened myself to new possibilities, while you were still stubbornly holding onto your –" Fiona stopped her muttering. The time when she could have clarified her angry words was past. Shrek, rejected by her father and feeling spurned by his precious bride as well, had apparently decided to do away with the proud, brazen, uncouth, unabashed ogre that she had fallen in love with and replace him with somebody else, somebody he felt would be more acceptable to her father … and, he wrongfully felt, to –

"Fiona?"

Fiona had just reached the landing of one of the flights when she heard someone call her name. She turned to see a man standing on a balcony set a few yards off the landing. He was a relatively tall, stunningly handsome, well-built young man with perfectly brushed blond hair framing a face that looked like it was carved by angels. That face bore a cocky grin as he stood, propping himself with one arm against the frame of the balcony as the sunlight glistened off of him – or was that incredibly attractive visage radiating its own light? He wore a brown leather vest over an off-white shirt, brown plaid pants and brown boots, all the same color scheme albeit not all the same materials as her husband usually wore, and they fit much more stylishly than they ever did on the ogre.

"Shrek?" she ventured, taking a few tentative steps towards the Adonis.

"Aye, Fiona, it is me," the man said with a smooth, upper-class English accent as he dropped his arm and stepped towards the princess, the grin still plastered on his comely face. The words might have been Shrek's, but –

"What happened to your voice?" Fiona asked skeptically. Something – some instinct was telling Fiona that something was wrong here, and it wasn't just the possibility that her husband had traded in his Humvee for a Rolls.

The man seemed taken aback for just a moment, then stammered, "Uhhh – the potion changed a lot of things, Fiona …" He then reached out and took her now dainty left hand, whose ring finger still hosted her now smaller but still precious wedding band. Cupping her hand with an elegant, practiced confidence she didn't recall Shrek demonstrating before, he smiled and added more gently, "But not the way I feel about you."

Fiona retained her skeptical expression as her mind raced. The potion had affected his voice? But she could swear that she had heard Shrek's Scottish-accented voice calling her name earlier. Indeed, that was what had sent her rushing from her room. Could she possibly have heard this voice instead, and somehow her mind had used some hidden facility and translated it into Shrek's familiar brogue, to better identify the source? Did that even make sense? But what other explanation was there? Donkey had said that Shrek had come in here looking for her, and now here he was. But at least Donkey still sounded like Donkey. This man neither looked nor sounded like Shrek. For that matter, he even smelled different. Not that she really expected Shrek's pungent ogre odor to radiate from a humanized version of him, just as Fiona's ogress scent did not reek from her human pores. But as she got closer, Fiona detected that he was wearing strong musk-scented cologne, and his breath smelled of peppermint mouth spray.

The princess looked into this man's eyes, and noticed something else discomforting. The eyes were not the deep brown of her beloved monster. They had changed as well, and were now blue – an even lighter shade of blue than her own.

"Fiona?"

This time it was her mother's voice that called her name. Fiona turned to see her mother and father, Queen Lillian and King Harold, already dressed in their royal raiment, hurrying towards her. Their faces also bore expressions of shock and confusion. The princess wasn't surprised at their reaction. Since she assumed that her transformation had taken place overnight, then that meant this was the first time her parents had ever seen their grown daughter in human form. For the previous two days they had had to come to grips with seeing her instead in the unexpected form of an ogress. That had been a development that her mother had seemed willing to accept – or at least tolerate. But her father … Fiona still recalled with pain they way he had beheld her during a brief argument the previous morning when she had tried to find out from him where Shrek had disappeared to – the distaste in the king's face and voice when he'd beheld his ogress daughter and, referring to Shrek, spat, 'Look at what he's done to you!' Well, Dad, Fiona now thought with bitter irony, come take a look at what I've done to him.

The king did so. He and the queen stopped a few feet away. Harold, perplexed, looked at the man holding his daughter's hand. "Charming," the king said, although to Fiona it sounded oddly like a question.

The blond man – Fiona tried to force herself to think of him as Shrek now – released her hand and turned to the king. "Ah, do you think so … heh-heh-heh-heh … Dad?" Shrek asked, somewhat uncomfortably. Shrek then took a couple of steps closer to Harold and added more assertively, "I was so hoping you'd approve."

The king looked from Shrek to his daughter. Harold didn't ask any further questions. Did that mean he understood what had happened? If so, then Fiona would have thought he'd be happy. Yet the expression on her father's face, despite its exaggerated grin, did not reflect happiness. Instead, he looked more like he'd just swallowed a frog.

The queen, however, was still confused. "Um … who are you?" she asked Shrek.

"Mom, it's me, Shrek!" he replied. "I know you never get a second chance at a first impression," he continued regretfully, "but well …" here Shrek reached around Fiona's slim waist and pulled her possessively beside him. "What do you think?"

As the king and queen exchanged befuddled glances and forced smiles, trying to digest this morning's revelations, Shrek pulled Fiona against him for an embrace. Fiona allowed herself to be so held, and even laid her head against his shoulder. But the way that their human bodies fit against each other seemed so … unnatural to her … somehow wrong. Fiona mentally kicked herself. There was nothing wrong with this, it was just … different. As a human, she had never been held in an amorous embrace. Yet this was still Shrek, a Shrek who had just sacrificed so much for her. That the sacrifice was unnecessary made it tragic, but it was born of the purest and noblest of intentions. She hugged the man in her arms, trying to recall all the passionate embraces they had shared since that magical first kiss, trying to imagine the ogre inside this handsome blond human calling out to her. She even thought she could hear him in the back of her mind … that distinctive brogue calling her name, 'Fiona! Fiona!' over and over. It sounded both distant and desperate, as if he was afraid he was losing her. Well, you shall not lose me, my True Love, Fiona thought. She closed her eyes and tried again to draw from this embrace the feelings she had felt so many times before, tried to compel her soul to react. But she failed. Try as she may, it still felt too wrong. She may as well be hugging a heartless mannequin.

The embrace ended as the king and queen stepped up beside them. "So … what exactly happened?" the queen inquired.

Shrek smiled and replied, "Well, after that series of unfortunate events two days ago, I realized how selfish I was being. I mean, after all, this is Fiona's home. It's where she's meant to be. I couldn't really ask her to leave all this … to leave you … for some desolate hovel out in some God-forsaken swamp."

"But Shrek … you adore that swamp!" Fiona said.

"Oh, Fiona, my pet," Shrek responded, turning towards her, "that is so very sweet of you. But I realized that I couldn't let some beastly desire for hermit-like isolation separate you from your parents … and from your royal destiny." Shrek cast his gaze about in a gesture that seemed to take in the grandeur of the castle – perhaps the entire kingdom. "Nor could I in good conscious ask you to go through the humiliation of wandering about your domain as an ugly green monster, or suffer the indignity of being married to one."

Fiona's brow knitted and she opened her mouth to protest, but Shrek had turned back to the queen. "And so yesterday morning I lit out to find a cure for our wretched plight. Fortunately, M– … ah, the Fairy Godmother had left her card, and so I was able to track her down. I explained the situation and, well, she gave me a potion, which I drank. It not only transformed me into the being you see before you, but also returned my True Love to her rightful state."

Fiona's remorse was suddenly tinged by anger. "Why couldn't you have waited for me or at least awakened me and told me what you wanted to do?" she half-pleaded, half-demanded. "How could you make such an important decision without me!"

"Because … I know you," Shrek said, his voice smooth and gentle, rolling like balm over her wounded pride. "You would no doubt have told me it didn't matter to you, that you wanted to be with me regardless of our appearance or acceptance by others, even your parents. You might have even managed to convince yourself you meant it. But Fiona, what kind of life would that have left us? Just the two of us, alone, despised beasts living out our days in some miserable bog, raising monstrous offspring who would have faced equal enmity when they deserved a royal heritage? How long do you think before regrets over your estrangement from your parents over our marriage would have manifested itself in strains in our own relationship? No. I needed no crystal ball to look into the future and see the hazards ahead. I had to take the actions I did, Fiona, to ensure our happiness. I do apologize for not consulting you. I swear I will try whenever possible not to take such unilateral actions in the future. But believe me, what I did was for our own good – for both of us."

"But … you loved being an ogre," Fiona said, her voice quivering.

"I know," Shrek said. Then his smile deepened and he added, "But I love you more."

Fiona felt tears began to well in her eyes and she stared up at Shrek, speechless. Wordlessly, he reached for her and they embraced yet again. Fiona laid her head on Shrek's shoulder and closed her eyes, squeezing the tears from them. The vest upon which her cheek rested was of a softer, suppler leather than Shrek's alligator-skin vest, and she missed its coarser texture, as she missed so much else. His heavy cologne filled her nostrils, making her feel even sicker than the general situation already had. She tried to wrap her mind around it all. Shrek's words had made perfect sense … at an intellectual level. No doubt her parents – at least her father – found the logic irrefutable. But Fiona and Shrek's relationship was, and had always been, an affair of the heart. Had logic held any sway, they would never have wed; never have fallen in love, for that matter. Was Shrek's derogatory language concerning that lovely, magical, tree-hewn home in their own private paradise something he was just saying for her benefit, or something that this new, changed Shrek really felt? She prayed it was the former, but feared it was the latter. She felt more tears trickle from her eyes.

"Well done … Son!" the king said with somewhat forced joviality, stepping forward and patting Shrek on his upper arm. "Look! You've brought tears of joy to my daughter's eyes!"

The embrace ended, and Fiona looked at her father. He was shifting his gaze nervously back and forth between her and Shrek, his grinning face and cheerful demeanor still not quite masking something else that Fiona sensed was going on underneath. Or was she seeing something that wasn't there? Fiona glanced over at her mother, who had stepped forward with Harold and stood beside him. The princess saw her staring at the king with a curious expression of her own. Lillian then looked at Fiona and offered a sympathetic smile, one more genuine than Harold's and which seemed to reflect both hope and condolence.

"Thank you, Dad," Shrek said in response to Harold's remark. "Your daughter's happiness is my paramount concern."

Fiona looked up into Shrek's face. He was grinning down at her with a cocky, self-assured smile, the right part of his mouth curled up noticeably more than the left. She then concentrated on his eyes. It truly wasn't just the color that was different. When Shrek looked at her she could always read emotion in his eyes; sometimes confusion, on rare occasions anger, but most often adoration. But these eyes were … empty. It was as if there was nothing behind them … or perhaps what was there did not match the honeyed words and refined gestures. Fiona felt a shiver run up her spine.

Lillian then spoke. "Um, perhaps this is a conversation we should continue later –"

"Y-yes!" Harold chimed in. "We were just on our way to breakfast. Perhaps you two would care to join us? We all got off to such a bad start during dinner a couple of nights ago. Perhaps we can … begin again?"

"An excellent idea! And I would be honored … Dad," Shrek said, inclining his head slightly in a bow to the king, who in turn at first seemed to wince, then grinned and returned the gesture. Shrek then said, "Come, Fiona," and exerted some slight pressure to her back. Fiona allowed him to lead her away from the balcony and they started making their way down the hallway, the king and queen behind them.

The royal foursome made their way down the corridors to the dining hall, the scene of that terrible dinner argument two days before. Oddly, Fiona had to correct Shrek from taking a wrong turn a couple of times. True, he had not been around the castle very long, but still, Fiona had thought he had better memory – unless the potion affected that as well. It seemed to have affected his bearing, too, as he now walked with stringent upright poise, his strides measured and seemingly practiced. He kept one arm draped across Fiona's back with his hand on her waist opposite him. Normally Fiona took comfort from Shrek's touch; but now she found it somehow set her even more on edge, as if he was not showing his affection as much as leading her about as one would a prize horse.

They finally rounded the corner to the last corridor to the dining hall. Both dark brown paneled walls of the corridor were decorated with several portraits of other kings and queens of Fiona's lineage.

"Imagine, my love" Shrek said, gesturing to the artwork as they strolled, "now, one day your beautiful face will grace this hallway, as is your birthright. I can't tell you of how ashamed I am that I nearly robbed you of it."

Fiona said nothing. A second later the couple passed not a portrait, but a portrait-sized mirror. Shrek halted, his grip along Fiona's waist halting her as well. He then turned toward the mirror so that he and Fiona were facing it together. "There, you see?" Shrek said, smiling and striking a pose with her. "Won't this make a lovely painting for future generations to gaze upon?" A moment later, however, his smile turned into a frown. "Hum," he mumbled, then leaned forward to get a closer look at himself. He examined his teeth, licked one side of his perfectly set pearly whites clean, and then leaned back again. He straightened a slightly askew strand of hair, and then struck a wide-grinned pose as he beheld his reflection with apparent self-satisfaction.

Fiona – her brow slightly wrinkled, her nostrils slightly flared, and her top lip slightly curled in unconscious signs of disapproval – watched as Shrek admired himself. She had seen her husband – her ogre husband – smile into mirrors before, sometimes with the immediate result of a self-shattering looking glass, but never with such blatant, unbounded egotism.

"Yes, you two do make a marvelous looking pair! A wonderful couple!" Harold agreed with his son-in-law, but with a touch too much enthusiasm. Both Fiona and Lillian looked at the king with one eyebrow cocked in identical expressions of curiosity. Harold blushed slightly and said, "Well, uh, perhaps we should continue on to breakfast, wot wot?"

Fiona shook her head slightly and looked up at Shrek. He was still admiring himself.

"Shrek?" she asked.

"Hum?" he responded distractedly, his eyes still focused on his reflection.

"Breakfast?"

"Huh? Oh! Of course!" the prince said, and then pulled his gaze from the mirror with apparent reluctance.

As Fiona stared into Shrek's face, searching in vain for something that reminded her of her ogrid spouse, Lillian was still staring at her own husband, her lips pursed in contemplation. The queen then addressed Fiona and Shrek. "You two go ahead. Harold and I will be there shortly. We need to have a brief word first. In private."

Harold seemed to wince a bit, but continued smiling that oddly unconvincing smile at the newlyweds. "Er, of course," he said. "You two go on. We'll be along by and by."

"Very well, Mom. We'll see you soon," Shrek said, bowed slightly to her, then again slipped his arm around Fiona's back and resumed leading her down the corridor. Fiona looked back at her parents, her face again twisted in confusion at her father's demeanor and her husband's uncharacteristic behavior compounded by her irrational, continued discomfiture with Shrek's touch. Her pace began to slow, and again Shrek pulled her forcibly beside him. Fiona turned her face towards him, and was about to mouth a protest when Shrek whispered, "Please, my love. Your mother asked us to go ahead so that she might have some private words with your father. We must show respect and do what our mothers request."

Fiona's eyes narrowed as she looked up at him – or rather, his profile, as he was now staring straight ahead – but after a moment decided to stifle her protest. She supposed what he said made sense. In fact, much of what he said this morning made sense. So why did everything feel so wrong?

Fiona shifted her attention forward as well, and she and Shrek wordlessly finished their trek to the dining hall. As her husband opened a door to the dark-word paneled eating chamber and they stepped inside, Fiona found herself giving yet another start at a new surprise. The chair at the head of the large rectangular table was already occupied. Fiona recognized the occupant from their short meeting the night of her and Shrek's after-dinner argument; the somewhat stocky figure, the silver hair done up in a bun and lightly sprinkled with glitter, the slim glasses, the pale blue dress and the gossamer wings.

It was her Fairy Godmother.