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[starcrowned]

after the fall

It felt like a strange reversal of their circumstances. Instead of her searching him out, it had become him, searching her out. It wasn’t hard to find her – she lingered at the edges of their group, looking out at the increasingly familiar landscape around them.

“They wouldn’t let me treat her. It was just a scraped knee, some iodine, but they wouldn’t let me treat her.”

Her eyes were on Lexi, plaiting a necklace of grass some fifty metres ahead of them. He wished he knew what to say – someday they’ll forgive you. Someday they won’t look at you like you were the mole and it was someone else. “Give them time.” Hal settled beside her, watching as Lourdes twisted grass around her fingers. “They’ll come around. They know you wouldn’t hurt anyone. They just need to remember it.”

He hoped they would, for both their sakes. He still saw the looks he got when he was passed a weapon, like they expected him to be one himself, ready to go off at a moment’s notice. I’m not full of bugs anymore, I’m clean, I’m Hal again. That was what cut him the most, the fact that these people who knew him seemed to not anymore, to think he was capable of betraying them. The bugs were out, he was Hal again – it should have been so simple to distinguish. Hal didn’t betray the 2nd Mass. He fought for it, protected it, would die for it. The worms had him, but he was back, and they could trust him, they could trust him.

“I remember it you know.” Her voice was quiet, and her eyes were fastened straight ahead. “In my dreams. At least, I think I do. I-I’m not sure if it’s a memory or a dream I made up to fill in the blanks between what I remember and what they told me I did.”

“What do you remember?” His hands picked absently at the grass by their feet. He was afraid of what she might say, of the things she might remember about what she’d done, what he’d done.  He remembered too, in fragments and flickers, but too slowly for his liking. Trips to the woods, meeting Karen, handing supplies to Lourdes for her to hide, the bomb, the gun – that he remembered. But he remembered only small details, never enough. He didn’t recall taking his father hostage, or how many times he’d pulled the trigger under the worm’s control. And he knew how it felt to be in battle, to squeeze and feel the gun recoil in his hands, the thrum of impact vibrating up his arm. But he’d never killed his own – if he had, it had been the worms, it hadn’t been him – and he couldn’t imagine killing one of their own. They were family, closer than blood. After all they’d been through, the idea of losing one of them, and his hands holding the weapon that did it...

“I remember holding the gun, my fingers on the trigger.” Her voice sounded so lost, the tone flat and empty. He’d never realised how much he’d missed the sound of hope in her voice, just there, to remind him that things could get better, until it was gone. He waited, expecting more, but Lourdes simply stared out at Lexi. “Do you think I’d still be in that cage, if it wasn’t for Lexi?”

Yeah.

His silence seemed answer enough for her. Lourdes sighed. “I think they still want me in the cage, just in case.”

“It’s gotta be easier than walking. Maybe I should ask to be in there too, if they’re offering them up,” he joked halfheartedly. The tiny upward twitch of her mouth was enough. Smiles were a rare sight from Lourdes these days, but he didn’t blame her. Hal didn’t feel much like smiling either – the tension between Maggie and him was growing, and he didn’t know how to fix it, and the trek wasn’t helping much either.

“Do they trust you yet?”

He winced. “They’re getting there.” It was half a lie, and they both knew it, but the half truth was better than none at all.

“But they won’t let me treat a scraped knee. I can’t be trusted to treat a scraped knee, and it was just iodine, and I just wanted to help.”

“Anne still lets you look after Lexi.”

“I’d never hurt Lexi. Not after what she did for me. She knows that.”

“They’ll remember it in time.”

He wished he knew what the right things to say were, but he wasn’t that kind of person. He wasn’t his dad with a speech and a thousand examples of history up his sleeve. When the Espheni had come, he’d just been a kid in school. He didn’t know how to do this, but he’d promised her that he’d help her. They were all each other had when it came to this, the only two people who understood what it was like to be hijacked from your own skin and turned into something you’d never wanted to be, an enemy against the family who had protected you, sheltered you, loved you.

“What if I can’t forgive myself, Hal?” Her eyes weren’t full of tears, but they were wide, and earnest and fearful. “I was a doctor, Hal. I swore the Hippocratic oath. I swore to do no harm, but I shot the President. I set the bomb. How many people did I kill as the mole?”

“It wasn’t you, Lourdes,” was all he could say, repeat it so often until she believed it was the truth. He needed her to believe it, so she could believe it for him too. It wasn’t us; it wasn’t our fault. “It wasn’t you who did those things.”

“They think it was. And I’m dreaming about it. What if I could’ve stopped it if I was just... just...?” The words stopped, Lourdes inhaling deeply to stop them from tumbling out of her mouth. He knew what that felt like. Hal felt like he had a weight pressing on his chest, a whole dam of words inside his lungs, and if he started speaking just one of them, they’d all tumble out of his mouth in a torrent.

“If you just?”

“In my dreams, I’m right there. The worms have my hands and I’m holding a gun, my fingers on the trigger. I’ve never held a gun before Hal, but I can feel it, and it’s so heavy.” She broke eye contact, looking down at her hands. They were trembling, he noted with a start. I was like that too. The first time he’d shot a gun, his knees had felt weak for what felt like hours after. His hands hadn’t stopped shaking until the day after. Guns had always been something dangerous before the invasion, seen only when the world was going to complete hell. He’d never imagined he’d ever hold one, let alone shoot one, but he’d never imagined the world would go to shit like it had either. “I just squeeze on the trigger, and it fires. I can feel it fire Hal, I can feel the dust from the ceiling. What if I was right there, and I just wasn’t strong enough to stop it? I should have been strong enough, I should have fought...”

“You can’t overcome the worms, Lourdes. You couldn’t have. Neither of us could have.”

He couldn’t stop the worms from controlling him. They’d taken his body for a joyride like they were the players and he was the character in some video game before this entire apocalypse started. And when he fought and they couldn’t control him, they’d crippled him. Or had he crippled himself? He didn’t know which it was to blame for those long months of not being able to walk. Maybe it was him. He should have known, after all, he always felt like he should have seen it coming. That night, in Charleston, standing in front of the mirror, feeling that itch in his eye – he should have known. Maybe he had, subconsciously, deep down. Felt it moving underneath his skin before it latched onto his brain and took control – maybe that was why he’d fought so hard against it, just subconsciously shut his body down so it couldn’t use it. But what if Lourdes had never known? The bug had just crawled inside her brain and dug its claws in, and she’d never exactly known what was happening to her, not while it had her.

“I wish I could have.”

“I do too.”

He wished for so many things nowadays. He wished they’d never had the bugs. He wished the invasion had never happened. He wished he knew what was happening with him and Maggie. But all he had was this. He’d made a promise to Lourdes, and he had to keep it, for both their sakes. There was no one else who knew what this felt like, but her. Just Lourdes, with her smiles and her faith. He needed some of that, now when her faith was battered and her smiles rare. If she could make it through, so could he. They were fighters, members of the 2nd Mass, and they could survive this.

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Stories I'm Totally Not Writing ↣ The Weaver

"Once, your father's mothers held the strings of fate in their hands, Constanza. We could weave joy or misery, life and death - and we did. But they feared our power, and sent us out, to make our own way in the world. But they could not rid us of this power. And that, dear one, is why your fingers are tipped gold - there is power in them. Once, they touched the strings of fate, and all the power of the world is now inside you, and whatever you make."

A retelling of the Six Swans done in the vein of season one of ABC's Once Upon A Time, with Seychelle Gabriel cast in the role of the Princess, and Michael B. Jordan as the prince.

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to slay a dragon

He was an idiot, Rose had decided, a complete idiot. What kind of person took a word so close to heart that they went and sought out a damn dragon to slay? An idiot, that’s who. Someone who didn’t seem to realise that his dying would be awfully... well, just awful. And this was coming from her, who always called Prince William an idiot, and often to his face at that. But the world wouldn’t seem right if he wasn’t there, stirring up trouble everywhere he went. And this world was empty enough without him ripping another hole through it by going off and dying on some silly, little quest to prove himself.

a charming thorn one shot. read here

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part of the princesses jones things i'm making, inspired by sarah. also, trying to work through a writing slump. this particular section is the birth of princess eleanor

“Mama! Mama!”

The Queen’s head turned as the sounds of her daughter’s voice echoing through the palace halls. “Kira!” she answered, her voice quiet and strained from the exhaustion of the task at hand. The sound of it seemed to be muffled into her pillows and sheets and the bodies of the midwives in attendance to her, bodies pressed around her bed and trying, in vain, to comfort her.

“My lady, sending for the princess will do no good to her, you must see this!” It was the midwife that held the tisane of herbs that ventured these words forward. She spoke even as her hands urged the cup to the Queen’s mouth and urged her to drink. There was lavender there, and honey, and all manner of things that Aurora had never learned. Just give me enough strength for this last task. If that is all I have left to do on this earth, let it be this. Let me birth this child and name her. “She’ll just be frightened by the...”

By the blood.

The labour had not been easy, not since the pains had started and the midwives had been summoned. The babe lay wrong in her stomach, and Aurora found her strength failing her. Her legs seemed to shake even when they were asked to do nothing more than lay open and provide a passage for her child to enter the world, and there was nothing left inside of her to push, even if the midwives could turn the child inside of her. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. She could not birth a child that lay twisted around in her body, but it would be the end of both of them if she didn’t try. Aurora grasped the cup gently from the midwife’s grasp and sipped at it. Around her, the midwives continued to flutter, taking out red stained rags and replacing them with white linen, massaging her exposed belly to try and turn the child inside of her, speaking is hushed voices that seemed forbidding. You spoke of life in loud voices, but never death, afraid that you’d invite it in; their silence seemed invitation enough to Aurora. Please turn, please turn!

Turn, so the child could grow up beside Kira, and explore the desert palace like Aurora had in her youth. Turn, so the child could take to the sea on her father’s boat during the summer and wander distant shores and ride horses that moved as fast and as swift as the wind. Turn, so Aurora could see the face of her child that had rested for near nine months inside of her womb, and sing lullabies when they cried. Turn, so her child could live.

“Mama!”

Kira’s voice was only growing louder, closer. What had stirred her? Likely the screams, she thought with Aurora, the screams that had come as Aurora had tried to push the child into the world, only to be torn by the efforts. The tears slipped onto her cheek, mingling with the perspiration already gathered on her skin. She wanted to stroke Kira’s dark hair, tell her that all would be well, but how was she meant to be speak these uncertainties to her? How was she meant to bring Kira into this room, already scented with the fragrance of blood and sweat and filled with worry? She could not soothe her, not without worrying her further, not without lying and giving her promises Aurora had no guarantee she could keep. Where is Killian now? Where is he when I need him to grasp my hand and take Kira away from this place and to the shore and the sand?

There was no use asking the question aloud – Aurora already knew the answer. Out at sea, not expecting to be at harbour for another week. The child had come early, three weeks so, and what time they had thought they had had for the babe to right itself within her naturally had been lost when the pains had began that morning. The sun had risen in the sky, peaked, and began to lower itself, and still the babe had not turned, but the pains had continued, until there was nothing but pain and blood and cups of herbs to lull her into rest as the midwives worked to turn the babe. Kira had come only a week before she was due, and the pregnancy, though painful and long, had not been as arduous as this. Kira had been born hardy and strong, screaming out her first breath in a strong declaration to the world both of her living and her strength. Her second pregnancy, Aurora thought, would be the same. Children as strong as their parents, as enduring as the sands and the sea itself.

She should have remembered her mother’s own pregnancies, the babes lost in sleep and just days after birth. Was this all their line was allowed, one healthy daughter, destined to be cursed and hunted from birth, and nothing more? What had they done to deserve this fate, so bitter and vile to swallow?

Aurora dropped the cup from her hands, letting the herbal concoction spill out of the sheets as she clutched for the nearest midwife. “Do not let Kira inside,” she ordered. “She cannot see this. Take her to her rooms and keep her occupied. She cannot see this... this blood.”

The midwife nodded and left the room, the others moving around the bed and allocating tasks to one another. “Are you ready to push again, my lady?”

“Have you turned him? Is he righted?”

The midwife shook her head. “No. The child... the child is still upside down, but we fear if we hesitate any longer that the child will... that you will...”

Die. Yes, it was death that they expected now – Aurora could read that fear of it in their eyes. This was not a world of forgiveness and gentleness; even the greatest gifts could yet draw blood from them and kill them. But there were some things that were worth the cost of obtaining them. Love, for one, friendship, trust, nobility, honour, and children. She had loved her children from the moment she had considered that she had one inside of her, whispered in the night that they would have the nobility of her father and the gentleness of her mother, the strength within her bones and the tenacity of their father.

She struggled to sit herself up, placing herself against the pillows as she had at the very beginning of the labour. When her arms shook, the midwives took her arms and helped her, placing cool clothes against her forehead and cheeks to wipe her clean. “I will do it. I will do it.” There was steel in her eyes, in her words. I will see this child into this world. We will both live, and I will show him to Kira and Killian and baptise him in sea water.

A stick was placed in between her teeth, a pair of hands clasping one of her own in between it, and then with a nod to the midwife to her left, Aurora pushed. Her breath hissed in between her teeth, and she clung to the hands that held hers, nails digging into soft flesh. She could not fail; there were things to do, things for this child to see, to do, to feel. Love and hope and yes, even dismay and pain, but all these things were worth it. This child had to live, not for her, not for Killian, but for itself.

“Mama!” The words were a shriek, accompanied by a flurry of footfalls and quieter noises of scolding, calling Kira away from the door. But it was too late; the door opened, and Aurora’s daughter, near four and still small, was inside the room, her blue eyes seeking and finding her mother. “Mama!” she exclaimed, and she darted around the midwives’ legs and reaching hands, twisting and ducking as she went, til she reached the side of the bed and was beginning to scramble atop of it. She ought to tell them to take Kira away, but Kira’s eyes were wide and shone with tears, some of which had already spilled down her cheek. “Mama, ple-please don’t hurt, please don’t cry! I’ll sing you b-better, like you do me!” Kira sobbed, fresh tears falling down her face.

Aurora waved away the midwives, removing the stick from between her teeth and cradling her dark haired daughter into her side. “Oh precious Kira, my little songbird,” she whispered to her. There were no other words she could give her daughter, nothing but the stroke of her hand across Kira’s curling hair and the warmth of a hug. There were no songs that could make this better.

“I’ll sing you better,” Kira repeated after a moment, wriggling free of the embrace. With a fist, she wiped away the tears on her small face and inhaled deeply, closing her eyes and placing her tiny fingers on her belly. Months before, Aurora had placed Kira’s hand there herself, and told her to wait for the kick of her sibling inside her. Now, Kira sought it all on her own. She knew what was happening, what the screams meant, and a part of Aurora broke at the thought. Kira was too young to know of death as anything but a nightmare, and blood as anything but a skinned knee.

“Kira, you must understa-” Aurora went to pry Kira’s hands from her stomach, to cradle her once more against her and whisper that she must go away now, but there was a warmth in Kira’s small hands that stopped her. A warmth, and a tingle, and a shifting inside of Aurora that made her fall back onto the pillows and cry out.

“I’ve seen cities and palaces and jewels,” Kira sang, her voice sweet and high. Aurora recognised the song from her childhood, a song her mother had sung to her as a girl, and Aurora had sung to Kira herself. If she closed her eyes, she could see the world of the songs, her land, her home. “But none as pretty as the sands. I’ve seen woods and mountains and rivers bold, but none as lovely as these lands.”

“Kira, come awa-”

“No,” Aurora commanded, “sing a little more, Kira. It feels...” Better, as if something has eased inside of her, the knots in her muscles untangling. It might have been nothing, but it was a little ease. Respectfully, the midwives around the bed eased away, leaving only the Queen and the young princess on the bed. “Do you have a little more song for me, my little Lark?”

Kira nodded, her face serious. “Come away to the world of the sands my love, the waters here run cool and sweet. The stars are clear and bright up in the sky, in the land where sand and sea greet. Come away to the sands my love, I cherish the day we will meet.” Her sweet voice faltered, her eyes widening as she realised she had forgotten the words. “Mama, I... I...”

“We have paradise inside these lands my love,” Aurora prompted gently, but then she cried out, hands moving towards her stomach. The midwives bustled forward again, one gently taking Kira from the bed and moving with her to the walls of the room, and another probing the skin of Aurora’s abdomen. “I... I think the child has turned, Your Grace! The child has turned!”

No, it was impossible, not in so short a period of time. Aurora glanced sharply at her daughter by the wall, inhaling sharply. So it was true then – it was in the blood. The gift, the curse, all of it. She had known of the curse; Kira woke screaming and trembling in fear and speaking of flames and burnings, but not of this. Oh Kira, not you. Not our sweet girl, my little lark.

She extended her hand to Kira, beckoning her forward. “Come, Kira. Sing a little more, if you can.”

Kira took her hand immediately, grasping it in both of hers, and took up the song again as the midwives began to bustle around them again, placing the stick in between Aurora’s teeth and repositioning the pillows behind her back. “You must push again, my lady, now, while this luck holds,” they urged, and Aurora nodded.

“We have paradise inside these lands my love, lands of warmth and honey and sun,” Kira sang, and Aurora pushed.

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ROBBSTARKED ASKED:  MAD BEAUTY + 5 POR FAVOR

Seeking Solace

The curse is broken, but Jefferson almost wishes it was not. The half veiled memories, hidden through the dark magic, are fully remembered, and his mind does not relinquish them. Like a trap, his mind closes around the memories – the sight of his wife, cold and pale, the bite of the axe slipping through skin and bone to sever head from shoulders in one agonising blow, and worse still, the memories of remaining in Wonderland, of knowing that Grace awaited him, and he was not there. That instead, he was in Wonderland, surrounded by hats that would not do as he wished and take him back to where he needed to be. He had promised her to return for a tea party, and he had to return, so he’d sewn each hat and spun it on the ground, praying for the wisps of purple smoke to enclose him and spirit him away.

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snarkysweetness asked you:

WOODEN SWAN + 74 and I want it rebloggable :P

Wish, command, yadda yadda XD

Are You Challenging Me?

“I say you can’t.”

“Are you kidding me?”

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the minotaur's keeper

The Gods are angry at them still, the people whispered, their words flying on the wind, for the Minotaur still yet craves human flesh to sate its hunger. But they had not seen her brother, or seen past the grotesque mix of bull and man. He is just a boy, she wanted to tell them, just a boy who has never seen sunlight or touched grass. He lives in the dark, and when strangers venture to him, they scream and scratch at him. He is just a boy.

a retelling of the myth of ariadne and the minotaur. read here.

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between love and war

There is violence in her, and the others can't see it. But he can, God of War and Violence and Blood, he can see this violence within her. And he worships it. Conquer me like a city, my love, he thinks as her nails dig hard into the skin of his shoulders. Leave me as your ruins and I shall be happy to be destroyed by your touch.

an ares/aphrodite one shot. read here

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p o m e g r a n a t e & a s p h o d e l

a hades/persephone greek mythology fiction told from the perspective of persephone herself

read the second chapter here (x)

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p o m e g r a n a t e & a s p h o d e l

a hades/persephone greek mythology fiction told from the perspective of persephone herself

read the first chapter here (x)

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She needed the consistency of reality, of knowing what she saw existed, and what she felt was real, that a cloud was a cloud and nothing more. She needed reality, but had no idea of how to grasp it. It was like reaching for shadows, but at least she need not be alone. Jefferson - the Hatter - he would help her, right? Had he not already done so before, freeing her from the asylum, opening the door and letting the light flood in? He’ll help me, he has to help me.

 (x) we'll be the cure - a mad beauty piece for julie

Status: Complete Word Count: 2,306 Graphic Credit: Julie

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A Pirate's Kind of Man

It made his mouth water at the thought. His opposite, another challenge found. A rough speaking man with little patience and less manners. Uncouth, uncultured... a pirate’s kind of man.

Status: Complete

Word Count: 2,569

A crackfic on the pairing of Leroy/Grumpy and Captain Hook, dedicated to Annie and Sarah.

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prompt me, maybe?

So... my creative writing mojo has been lost somewhere now that I have lots of time to write. So in the spirit of actually wanting to write and gain it back, prompt me maybe? =)

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Jailbreak

Aurora ran, as fast as her body could take her, feet slapping hard on the asphalt. Her chest felt tight, small licks of fire circling her lungs as she drew in each breath with a ragged pant, body telling her to stop, and let the pursuers behind her catch her, but she couldn’t. They were all counting on her, held in the dungeons of the fort, and only she could set them all free again. She couldn’t just give up, but her muscles ached from running, and her throat felt aflame from the effort of it all. Risking one glance backwards, Aurora gave a yelp as she saw her pursuer round the corner, darting forward and around the edge of the wall without a second thought.

Status: Complete [1/1]

Word Count: 1,963

An AU OUAT one shot that aims to make up for any feels hurt in Little Broken Things. I shall say no more.

Aurora ran, as fast as her body could take her, feet slapping hard on the asphalt. Her chest felt tight, small licks of fire circling her lungs as she drew in each breath with a ragged pant, body telling her to stop, and let the pursuers behind her catch her, but she couldn’t. They were all counting on her, held in the dungeons of the fort, and only she could set them all free again. She couldn’t just give up, but her muscles ached from running, and her throat felt aflame from the effort of it all. Risking one glance backwards, Aurora gave a yelp as she saw her pursuer round the corner, darting forward and around the edge of the wall without a second thought.

There was no way she could outrun them – that much Aurora knew. She’d never been the fastest or the most athletic of the girls, but she’d always been the smartest. My smart little girl, her mother had always said when her parents had received her semester grades, before enveloping her into a hug. Mulan was faster than Aurora, always beating her in the yearly athletic carnival that the primary school held, but Aurora didn’t mind so much. She preferred to read instead of racing around and tripping over her feet or the long dresses that she preferred to wear. They made her feel like a princess, especially when she twirled about, though they weren’t so good to wear when they all played chasey on the playground. They tangled around her feet or snagged on sticks, or got dirty if she tripped, and that always made her mother annoyed. But, at the same time, Aurora liked to be among all the other children, and liked to make them happy. Her mother’s sad eyes and nightmares made Aurora long for smiles to belong around her, rather than screams in the night and downturned smiles.

“I’m coming to get you, Rora!” Philip’s voice carried through the air, and the sound of his footfalls too loud and close for Aurora’s liking. Withholding a squeal, Aurora turned and looked for a hiding place, eyes falling onto the open door to the building. They weren’t meant to be inside the school buildings during playtime, but if she didn’t take it, Philip would catch her, and all the caught robbers would be left arrested. Squeezing her eyes closed as if it made it her invisible, she darted inside the building and pulled the door closed, ducking down to hide as she waited to hear Philip pass her. Her heart thumped painfully loud in her ears as she waited, withholding her breath in case Philip heard it. And he would, wouldn’t he? He always seemed to catch her, and he’d grin at her as he did so, before telling her off about her sticking a tongue out at him. I’ll tell your mother! he'd cry, and that was usually enough for Aurora to automatically stop and stand up straight.

But not today. Today, she was going to win.

His footsteps passed, Philip’s voice calling out to her growing fainter, but Aurora didn’t rise immediately. “One hippopotamus, two hippopotamus, three hippopotamus,” she counted, chest rising and falling quickly as she tried to catch her breath. All she had to do was break the other robbers out of the jail, and not get caught herself. She could do that... except Mulan was guarding the jail under the playground fort. Aurora had never been faster than Mulan, but she was smarter. She could always just tag them through the window, rather than go through the door that Mulan would be guarding. Aurora grinned, rising up to open the door and peek out to see if Philip was nearby. Today, he would be the one to lose, and he would be the one getting told off for sticking his tongue out at her.

Seeing no Philip or other cop around the building, Aurora darted out, running as fast as she could – only to fall as she ran into another body.

“Oof!” was her exclamation as she fell backwards, hands reaching out to break her fall. Her palms stung as she came to a rest, a small exhalation of pain escaping her lips as she lifted up her hands to see the graze on the heel of her palm. “Ow,” she moaned, pushing off the small pieces of dirt and debri that clung to her hand.

“What’d you do that for?”

Aurora glanced at the dark haired boy in front of her, who blew at the palms of his own hands to stop the fiery sting that came from the graze, wincing as she saw that he too had been injured by her rapid flight from the hallway. “Sorry,” she said as she stood up and walked towards him, offering her hand to help him up. “I didn’t mean to, Killian!”

“What are you even running from, anyway?” he asked, his bottom lip jutting out slightly as he brushed aside her hand and rose from the ground. “Don’t tell me that you’re scared of the sixth graders in there.” His chin jerked towards the building that Aurora had just exited, and she shook her head defiantly. She didn’t get scared – mostly. She was scared of the nightmares her mother had, and the strange monsters that her mother drew in the art book that Aurora wasn’t meant to look at, but not of the sixth graders. Just because they were big, didn’t mean they were scary. Snow had proved that when she’d kicked one in the shins and called it an ogre for being mean to her friend, Emma.

“No, I’m playing cops and robbers silly,” she explained, nodding her head firmly. “And Philip is going to catch me and put me in jail if he finds me, and then all the robbers will have been caught and we’ll have lost.” Her voice turned glum at the thought. “So I’m hiding, so I can stage a jailbreak and get them all free.”

“Sounds silly,” Killian returned, crossing his arms over his chest. “Why don’t the other robbers just free themselves?”

Aurora couldn’t help it – she giggled, and that only made Killian scowl. “They can’t just run away from jail,” she explained patiently. “You have to be freed. I have to go and tag them while Mulan guards them so they can escape, and not get caught by Philip or any of the other cops.”

Killian looked like he might have been about to say something, but the roar of Philip’s voice cut over him, the loud “RORA!” causing Aurora to squeak. “It’s him!” she exclaimed, voice high and thin as her eyes darted about nervously to where she could hide. Could she make it back to the corridor in time? She twisted her body around, breathing increasing as she started to hear Philip’s footsteps approaching.

Killian’s fingers wrapped around her hand and he tugged. “Come on!” he whispered, pulling her towards the boundary fence of the school. She began to protest, but Killian simply shushed her and pulled her behind the thick bushes, their bodies pressed between the foliage of the bush and the brick wall that bordered the front of the school grounds. Through the foliage, Aurora could only see a little – Philip’s frame coming around the edge of the building and pausing at the front of the school as he called out her name again. He waited, and for one terrifying moment as her foot slipped and the bush shook – just a little – as her Mary Jane clad foot slid into shrubbery, Aurora feared that he knew just where the two of them hid. Instinctively, her hand tightened its grip on Killian’s, the pressure returned to her as Philip took a single step towards the bush. He’s found us.

“Philip, did you find her?”

“No!”

She dared not breathe, trying desperately to slow her heart. Philip could hear it, she was sure of it. No, she was meant to beat him today, not the other way around! Drawing her feet back towards her, Aurora readied herself to make a blind, possibly hopeless dash away, only to feel her hand being squeezed tighter in warning. She looked back to Killian, who shook his head and pointed with a finger to where Philip stood. Aurora nodded, watching through the bush as Philip turned and headed away from the two of them and soon disappeared around the corner of the building.

Aurora sighed, slumping against the brick fence and expelling the breath she had been holding in a rush. “You’re good at this,” she told Killian, smiling at him. “Hiding and all that. You’d be a great robber!”

“Yeah well...” He shifted away from her, only to remember suddenly that their hands were still linked, and suddenly drawing his hand out of hers and crossing his arms over his chest yet again. “I prefer to be a pirate anyway. I just didn’t want you to get caught – all those other robbers are counting on you, you know.”

“A pirate is a robber,” she informed Killian, “they just sail the seas whereas robbers just... run around I guess!” She giggled, unable to quite stop herself, or the small red blush that rose up in her cheeks once he had withdrawn his hand. “So, we’re kind of the same. You should play with us sometime, and be on my team! Philip always likes to be the cop, but I don’t mind. Sometimes it’s fun to be a robber too, even if I’m not that good at it.” The smile faded slightly from her face, and Killian shifted uncomfortably next to her.

“But... you’re the last one.”

She nodded, gnawing on her bottom lip. “Yep, but that means I gotta free everyone. I’ve gotta sneak up on Mulan. She’s always a cop too, and she’s really good at it.” Her plan to run up to the window in the fort seemed to suddenly be inadequate to the young girl. How would she even get close enough to it, without being seen by the others?

“Well... I could... help,” Killian offered, his cheeks suddenly red for a reason that Aurora didn’t quite understand. “If a robber and a pirate are the same,” he said slowly, as if piecing together a puzzle, “then I have to help you. So... what can we do?”

The plan was simple, distract and run. It wasn’t uncommon for others to join in once the game had started, and all Killian had to do was pretend that Philip had said he could avoid. It was easy, Aurora thought – after all, she knew all of Philip’s code words that he used, and it didn’t matter if Killian had captured Aurora, because he wasn’t really part of the game anyway. It was a perfect plan, and they were the perfect combination of pirate and robber to pull of such a devious plan.

“Philip made me a cop,” Killian announced as they drew closer to the fort and Mulan. For her part, Mulan frowned, but nodded and let Killian and his captive past. “Said to tell you that the ogres have all been caught,” he continued as Aurora pressed a single finger to her lips and began to lead the other robbers out of the window. “And so I guess that means that you’d have won, right? Well, you would have, if I was a cop.”

And then all stealth was abandoned as the robbers bolted in each and every direction, Aurora giggling as she watched the plan unfold.

“Less giggling Aurora, more running!” Killian screamed out as they ran, Mulan chasing after them.

“Next time, you’ll have to be on my team for real!” she yelled back, before careening around the corner.

Jailbreak complete.

[starcrowned]

Little Broken Things

Synopsis:

The grin on the Dark One’s face when she glanced up again chilled her. Despite his pleasant demeanour, underneath it Aurora knew that he was still the same man whose very name sent fear piercing the hearts of all her people. Not my people anymore. Not a Princess if there’s no kingdom. “How observant of you, my dear. No, it’s not. Hook, so eager to save his skin, signed a deal that said he owed me a favour. I thought, perhaps, that he may have tricked me, and such a thing might be… prudent, shall we say? But then he told me of you, and the compass you hold. I propose this my dear, a simple exchange of wares. You give me the compass, I give you the contract for a man who stole your heart and the one favour he signed away. You can ask him to do anything you like, and he must do it. You can take his own heart, if you like. An eye for an eye, as they say.”

Aurora lacks a heart, and Captain Hook owes her a favour.

Status: Complete [1/1]

Word Count: 9, 720

Beta: snakesandadders

An AU OUAT one shot focusing on the events wherein Aurora has lost her heart, and Hook is contracted to her in Storybrooke, Maine.

TW: drugs, drug use, addiction.

  The closer they moved to the portal, the steadier the compass needle pointed in Aurora’s hands.

She knew why. She felt the growing distance between herself and her disembodied heart and knew, without a doubt, that the increasing steadiness in the compass needle corresponded directly to that increasing distance. It made sense, and there was some small measure of comfort in that.

The compass will guide you to your heart’s desire, Hook had said, and that had been one of the few truths he’d said in her presence. In the hands of the others, the compass needle swung about wildly, pointing north and south in equal measure, but in her hands, it found a bearing. Their wants were conflicted, muddled by emotion, but without her heart, all Aurora’s wants were channelled into what she knew she should want. She should want to return Emma and Snow White home, to find a portal back to Storybrooke, to restore the two worlds to their rightful states, and to those wants, Aurora channelled the whole of herself into them.

Before, closer to Cora and her heart, she could still feel it. If she closed her eyes and listened carefully, she could hear the steady sound of her heart, still feel it if she laid a palm across her chest, but those sounds and sensations had faded as the leagues of distance grew. Before, she could still feel something, still thought of Philip and longed to right the wrong that had been done to him, but those too had faded away like dreams and memories, til nothing was left but this purpose.

All that she had left was the purpose of guiding them home. No one could stand against Cora; her heart was lost, Philip too, both cruelly stolen with no hope of being regained. Whatever chance of a happy ending she had had, had been lost and torn from her. That life, Aurora felt, was over. What right did she have to it anymore? In what world would it work? A heartless girl and a soulless boy, too broken to have a happy ending, not even in their world. True love’s kiss could break a curse, but it couldn’t restore what had been lost.

But a heartless girl could use a compass. That much, she could still do.

“Mind telling me how much further you lot are going to drag me along? These cuffs are starting to chafe, you know.”

She was almost surprised that she could still feel indignation, though the sensation of it was smaller than it should have been. Hook’s very life was a gift to him, rather than a right he had earned. After all, he had played them, releasing her to allow Cora to play her like a puppet, whispering words through her mouth to mislead her companions. And, for all of that, he still had expected them to take him to Storybrooke, to allow him to barter for his passage, when they had successfully bound Cora using the Dark One’s ink.

Emma had wanted to leave him behind, and Mulan had agreed with her, mistrusting in him, but it had been Snow who had persuaded them to take him along, clapped in iron chains when he had exclaimed, in one last attempt to prove the value of his life, that he knew where Aurora’s heart was kept. It was the first they had heard of the theft of it, and the first time that Aurora had been able to speak her own words since it had been taken, just an abandoned puppet that had somehow learned to move without a puppeteer. Mulan had wanted his heart then, but Snow had soothed her, promised that they would retrieve Aurora’s heart as soon as possible, as soon as they had the portal open and access to one who could restore her heart to her without damage.

There was a sound of clinking metal, and Aurora turned her head in time to see Mulan yank at the chains binding Hook, her expression one of tightly controlled fury. I failed Philip, I failed to protect you, Mulan had said, but in the face of Aurora’s own inability to keep what should have impossible to remove from her, to keep something so intrinsic and needed as her heart, Aurora didn’t think that Mulan failed at all. It had been her, always her that failed. “Not long now,” she answered, voice impassive and cool. As always, Mulan blanched that the sound of her speaking, at the impersonal and unemotional way she moved and reacted.

We’ll get you your heart back, and Philip his soul. We’ll reunite you both. I swear it Aurora, I swear it. But all the promises Mulan made meant nothing – even if they found her heart, even if Hook didn’t betray them again and lead them astray or crush it under the heel of his boot, they had no way or knowledge of how to restore it to her, or how to restore Philip’s soul to him.

We’ll just have to content ourselves with being two little broken things instead, and learn to live as such.

It wouldn’t be so hard, she supposed; her mother had always told her she was much too stubborn for her own good. Perhaps it might even be good to be without her heart.

Her eyes moved to Hook’s, and saw his own recoil from her detached gaze. Why are you so afraid? Aurora thought, her eyes remaining steady on his. Whatever sly remark he had prepared and on the tip of his tongue fell away in the face of her constant, cold eyes, looking away before four seconds had passed. You made me like this in the first place. You stole my heart and let others play it like I used to play a harp, plucking and pulling at the strings so vehemently that my body was forced to follow. Why should you get to turn your eyes away from what you caused?

He didn’t hear her thoughts – even taking her heart has not given him such powers as the ability to know what crossed through her mind – and he didn’t speak to her again until they reach the patch of ground where the compass began to spin in constant circles.

The stolen wardrobe ashes slid through Emma’s fingers – just like her blood should have slid through his fingers, if he hadn’t stolen her heart through dark magic, but instead pried it from her chest with the wicked, gruesome hook that has replaced his left hand – and where the ashes fell, the ground cracked open, a geyser of water spurting upwards like the fountains that used to adorn her palace gardens. When the flow of water subsided into a puddle that pools around their feet, there were nervous glances, clutching of hands together, wary expressions, but none on Aurora’s face and no hands grasp at hers.

It hit her then, suddenly and with great impact – she no longer had a purpose, her part in the story over and done with. She had guided them home, and now the heartless girl must go back to whatever she did before. The prospect of sleeping again is the sole thing that broke through to her enough to cause real emotion, real expression of those sensations in her body’s reaction – her phantom heart, barely heard and barely felt, beat faster at the thought of lying back down to sleep the rest of her life away, her palms sweating and breath coming painfully short into her chest. There was nothing here in this world but sleep and a soulless boy who lost his all coming to find her. All she had left was a palace overrun by nature and reminders of dreams that would no longer be fulfilled. This world had nothing left to offer her, and the world they come from, Storybrooke, might hold nothing for her either, but at least it wouldn’t be this. At least it won’t be filled with the reminders of all she had come to lose.

So when Emma asked who might take try the portal first, it was Aurora who stepped forward. It might have been counted as fearlessness, she supposed, but for that emotion, it required her to feel fear, to know it and combat it. Aurora didn’t feel fear, not in the face of anything excepting a long, cursed sleep and the strange dream world she was forced to wander for three decades, or the burning room she returned to now in place of dreaming. Those could disappear in time, if she was treated by those who knew magic, the fairies or worse yet, the Dark One. It was something to hold onto, something to grasp at, a purpose, a driving force, a goal to reach for.

So she stepped through the portal, inhaling air from one world and exhaling it in another, more aware of the silence in her chest than the strange new things around her. A hand pressed against her breast, waiting to feel the thump thump of her phantom heart underneath her palm, but finding only a silence, both in mind and body, the distance between the worlds too large to be bridged even by the call of a body to its heart.

And when Hook followed them, Aurora felt no indignation or rage or fury in the way he avoided her gaze, or the smug look on his face at finally, finally, finding himself in the same realm as Rumplestiltskin.

In fact, she felt nothing at all.

    “We need to go back home now, Aurora.  We need to get your heart back.”

It was easy to ignore Mulan, to let the words wash over her like water. Any weight they may have carried was lost with all the other emotions held in her heart. No, not lost. Misplaced. Far, far away, back in the Enchanted Kingdom, where my heart is. It was easy to pretend that she didn’t want to return because she saw no reason to pretend that with a lack of her heart, came a lack of valuing it, but that was not the truth of it.  

Aurora could still recall the way those emotions had felt, likening them to physical sensations she could properly articulate – warm sunlight had become happiness, and shivering, cold, due to winter rain had become sadness to her mind – she simply couldn’t feel them any longer. She knew they existed, knew that she was capable of love like fire and anger like lightning crashing down from the Heavens as well, but couldn’t bring herself to want to return to the Enchanted Kingdom to find even just a small measure of happiness. Because with happiness, there was also sorrow, powerful longing for a soulless boy who could not be restored to her, and grief, overwhelming and consuming – that Aurora recalled as well – for her lost family, lost love, and lost land.

She wasn’t happy here, nor was she content, but even the blankness of this existence was better than the sorrow that would follow her if she found her heart again.

“I wonder what it would have been like, had we been here when the curse was.” She didn’t need to say the other words; they played across both of their minds. If the Dark Curse had taken them, rather than sparing them, then Philip would never have met the wraith that had taken his very self away from him, and Aurora would still have her heart. There would have been twenty eight years of unhappiness, but then a future of bright, radiant happiness to behold. That, Aurora could have taken. But this? Twenty eight years of wandering through a dreamscape that tormented her, and no future to behold? It felt more like a Dark Curse than anything the inhabitants of Storybrooke had experienced.

    The emptiness was a consuming void, a black hole in her chest that sucked her dry. She had never realised just how crucial her heart could be, until it was no longer there, and she could feel the absence of every emotion within her like a gaping chasm. It was more than simply lacking in the highest and strongest of emotions; even the subtler ones were missing. There was no such thing as peacefulness or relaxation, no serenity or joy, simply nothing. It wasn’t static or white noise, nothing even attempted to fill that gap, and therefore, made it that much wider and more noticeable to her.

All around her, people laughed and grimaced and cried. They threw tantrums and were affronted and fell in love, and all of those things Aurora remembered, but couldn’t feel, not even if she tried.

Her life took on a routine: breakfast with Mulan at a quarter past seven each and every morning, and then, at eight on the dot, arrival at Storybrooke Senior High School to complete a day of classes. The hours in between the end of school and the end of Mulan’s work, Aurora spent at Granny’s Diner, sitting at a window seat and observing the people as they walked by, naming the emotions they experienced by their expressions, and wishing that she could still be jealous of them for that simple pleasure of simply feeling.

When it got to be too much, when each named emotion only serves to prompt memories of times when she herself experienced them, Aurora would place a hand to her chest, close her eyes, and imagine the feeling of her heart beatuntil Mulan came to the diner and together, they both walked home. Sometimes, Aurora would humour Mulan and do more than simply sit in her room and complete whatever homework had been assigned to her; sometimes she would listen to the strange type of music that was heard on the radio, or watch the plays on the television, but she grew to be easily bored by them. She could understand the actions of the characters, but couldn’t connect to them, or empathise to their plights. She couldn’t laugh at the jokes, only fake tight smiles in attempts to soothe Mulan’s worry.

They always said heartless as if it meant to be cruel, Aurora had thought, but that’s wrong. Heartless people can’t even be cruel. You can’t be anything at all.

She was a marionette with its strings cut away, and like the puppet, she had fallen into a heap of wooden limbs and a lifeless face.

  “Hello, dear. I’ve been searching for you.”

It was a mockery, even if Rumplestiltskin didn’t mean it to be so. Everyone always searched for her, but she never moved, always found in the same places – in the Sands whilst she was asleep, and now here at Granny’s Diner. “I’ve hardly been inconsistent in my whereabouts, sir,” she answered back stiffly as he took a seat opposite her, back straightening instinctively. This is the Dark One, and he would destroy everything just to watch it burn. It wasn’t fear, or wariness, but logic that prompted her to draw herself back and hold herself away. He took hearts, made deals that were double edged, deals that you would regret as soon as the shine was rubbed away to reveal the dark, rotting core of it. Her father had warned her of his kind, her mother had held him with fear. We do not treat with sorcerers Aurora. They bring nothing but disaster and trouble with them. “But had I known that you were searching for me, I would not have kept you looking.” The tight smile felt odd and out of place on her expression, so unused to it now, only her memories of lessons with her mother in how to dress and act as befitting her noble birth that prompted it to exist at all.

“Of course, of course,” he said, taking the hat from his head and placing it on the table. He looked different from the man she had seen, just once, in her parents’ palace. His skin was as smooth as hers, and his eyes no more wild than hers were, no longer the memory of strangely coloured skin and a lilting voice that sang out its threats. “I’ve come to offer you something, Princess, if you have half a mind to hear it.”

“I make no deals with sorcerers, no matter how powerful they may be,” Aurora replied instantly, jaw clenching as a ghost of a smile flicked across Rumplestiltskin’s face. They called him Mr. Gold here, but he was still the Dark One, still Rumplestiltskin, and no matter how different the two worlds were, Aurora would not treat with sorcerers. Her family had been treated too roughly and callously by their kind of risk any kind of interaction again.

“Yes, your mother said something to the same effect. Unfortunate, that. I might have been able to tell her of Maleficent’s plan for you... for a price, of course. But that is neither here nor there, is it? Do you want something, Princess?” he asked, and Aurora jerked at the sudden change in conversation, blue eyes following the movement of Rumplestiltskin’s arm to gesture to the menu. “I have it on good authority that the hamburgers here are simply the best that can be found.”

She shook her head, pressing her lips together to stop herself from speaking. Whatever she said, whatever she did, could be a trap, all part of the game that they had begun playing as soon as Rumplestiltskin had spoken the first word to her. Her mother’s lessons drifted through her mind as the silence between the two stretched, strangely taut and thick, and, finally, Aurora managed to reply in the face of his expectant expression. He’s waiting for me to make a wrong move, isn’t he? “No, thank you. I have enough.”

He observed her face carefully, eyes intent on hers, but Aurora refused to turn away. I am a Princess of the Sands, and I am not easily cowed.  At length, he nodded, drawing his hand back and clasping his hands together. “Shall I be direct then, your highness? I find myself in the rare position of wanting something, your compass, to be exact. I’m a fair man – of course, I shall give you something for it.” He smiled at her, white straight teeth being revealed. For one moment, Aurora was tempted to tell the man in front of her that she had used to believe that he had possessed fangs, rather than teeth. “Name your price, Princess, and we can decide from there.”

What use did he have with her compass? It worked only if you were focused, knew exactly what it was that you wanted, and refused to even so much as think of anything else that you might covet or desire. Once more, her lips pressed together firmly as Aurora turned his words over in her mind, examining them as if she could reveal the trick behind Rumplestiltskin’s words.  There had to be a trick – someone as powerful as the Dark One didn’t simply ask for things when he could obtain them with a click of his fingers. Her hand reached to her bag, drawing back the flap and searching for the compass, the cool metal of it comfortable and familiar in her hand. She could recall all of the compass’ details, and there was nothing more to it than its function as a compass. There was no magical incantation written on its surface, no strange metallic pattern which could make it serve as a key. All it was, and all it would ever be, was a compass that led you to your heart’s desire. Without her conscious knowledge, she shook her head, a knee jerk reaction to the deal offered to her. “No. I don’t... I don’t make deals with sorcerers.”

His face was pained, the smile falling from his face. It made her question just what it was that the man in front of her wanted to find, what he desired to find in the new strange world around him. Or did he want to find something in the Enchanted Kingdom, as barren and desolate as it had become after the Dark Curse had flooded through it as an instrument of a dark queen’s wrath? And how was she, a little Princess with no kingdom and no heart to her name, meant to stand in the way of a Dark One and what they wanted? “What can I offer you, sweet Princess, for that compass? I know what it points to, how it works, and I would pay handsomely for such a thing. Do you want riches? Dresses? A tiara greater than any other?”

“Do you think I’m simply a spoiled princess?” she challenged, brow furrowing together. It was all they ever thought of her, a damsel of simple desires and a simple mind, unable to know what she wanted without help. But she did – she knew what she wanted, and what she didn’t. Her hands rose up to the table, clutching desperately to the compass, trying to remind the man in front of her that for all of her words, she still possessed the compass. It was all that she had, to keep her safe; she had something he wanted, and while he wanted it, she was safe, so long as he didn’t decide to pry it from her dead hands. “I want my heart, Rumplestiltskin. I want what was stolen from me, but I won’t make a deal with you that would make me rue the day I made it.”

Rumplestiltskin nodded, Aurora frowning at the single action. If he knew that she knew what his deals were, at their very heart, then why would he stay? She had never felt more like the helpless damsel that they all took her as, hopelessly behind in their game. Whatever it was that Rumplestiltskin knew, she didn’t, and the lack of her knowledge was apparently. “Alas my dear, it won’t do you much good to have it,” he replied, eyes flicking down to the compass in her hands before rising to meet her once more. “And before you demand it Princess, I would not trade you your heart for that compass. It would be best if you forget about it, I believe.”

“Why?” The word burst from her lips. She knew it was still there, and as time wore on, she desired to find it more and more. One could only take so much of the crushing blankness that came from having a missing heart, but Aurora couldn’t bear to return to the Enchanted Kingdom, to see her kingdom destroyed and her lost love. “Can’t you, of all people, return a heart, or a soul, to someone? Can’t it be undone?”

The look was so fleeting that she was almost sure it was her imagination, but Aurora thought she saw pity in his expression. "No, dearie. Magic leaves a mark on all it touches. It comes, as you well know, with a price,” was his simple reply, and just like that, with those simple words, it was as if the air has escaped from the diner. There’s no hope for either of us. “Your heart would destroy you, should it ever be placed once more in your chest, Princess. The darkness that pulled it out, my dear, would start to eat you should it ever be put back in. Your heart is changed, for the worse.”

I am a Princess, and a Princess does not show weakness. The defeat that bowed her back was banished from her mind, and Aurora straightened. “Then you have nothing I want, Rumplestiltskin, and one cannot make a trade if one lacks something to give the other,” she managed, praying that the man would leave her be to dwell on the impossibility of Mulan’s desire to ever restore her heart to her, or Philip’s soul to him. We are broken things that cannot be fixed. How sad it must be to think of.

“Surely there are other things you might want, dear. What about this?” Long fingers pulled a scroll from the inside of Rumplestiltskin’s coat with a flourish and placed it before her, the roll of paper neatly contained with a bow tie. She stared at it, unsure if she wanted to pull the string and reveal its contents. “The pirate who stole your heart managed to escape from the Storybrooke jail last night, and made the misguided move as to confront me for conceived... wrongs. I agreed to spare him his life, when he decided to barter with me.” He claimed to have information that I would greatly enjoy.”

“He always said you took something from him,” she remembered, and was surprised to see the Dark One nod, yet again.

“Yes, but he took something from me first. My wife Milah, actually,” he informed her as Aurora played with the end of the bow, before tugging it undone and smoothing the roll out in front of her. “Surprised? Well, I doubt you are given your... condition.” The look on Rumplestiltskin’s face was almost apologetic as he delicately stated the last word. He’s humouring me, trying to win my favour. But why? Aurora didn’t understand. By all accounts, the Dark One was ruthless, and took what he wanted by force. What game was he playing with her, or had the Dark Curse changed him so much as well? “You’d have thought it was all said and done, considering how much time has passed, but he holds quite a grudge. I try to take his heart, take my wife’s, he tricks me, I take a hand, he swears to destroy me... it’s a great tale to be told, if I may be so bold.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Her fingers played with the edges of the paper as she observed Rumplestiltskin. You’ll regret any dealings you have with sorcerers, Aurora. Don’t trust them.

“So you understand me, Princess. I offer you Hook because I understand your anger. He’s a selfish man, and he takes things as he pleases. Please, feel free to peruse the contract.”

Slowly, Aurora let her eyes drift down to scan the print, silence falling between the pair as she took in the words and her brow furrowed. “But this contract... it’s not information in exchange for safe passage.” Aurora frowned, reading the words written in the small, fine print, her mind telling her to push the man away and leave. If he tricked Hook, he’ll trick me, all to get what he wants.

The grin on the Dark One’s face when she glanced up again chilled her. Despite his pleasant demeanour, underneath it Aurora knew that he was still the same man whose very name sent fear piercing the hearts of all her people. Not my people anymore. Not a Princess if there’s no kingdom. “How observant of you, my dear. No, it’s not. Hook, so eager to save his skin, signed a deal that said he owed me a favour. I thought, perhaps, that he may have tricked me, and such a thing might be... prudent, shall we say? But then he told me of you, and the compass you hold. I propose this my dear, a simple exchange of wares. You give me the compass, I give you the contract for a man who stole your heart and the one favour he signed away. You can ask him to do anything you like, and he must do it. You can take his own heart, if you like. An eye for an eye, as they say.”

It would be justice, her mind told her that. He had taken her heart and given her body over to Cora, let her be played like a puppet, and now she could do the same. Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you, her mother had said. Maybe Hook deserved to be in contract to her. Maybe it would be as close as she could get to closure. “So, there will be no deal? No hidden catch? The favour he owes is mine, and the compass is yours?” Aurora asked, meeting Rumplestiltskin’s gaze warily. Never make deals with sorcerers Aurora, for magic has a price; her mother had said that to, but the desire for justice – not revenge, she could no longer feel the anger required for it – burned through her and erased her sense of caution and the doubts she harboured. He had stolen her heart...

“Well, you can’t return it if he finds a way to escape your favour and trick you, but otherwise, yes, though, if we both find our ends of the bargain to be... unsatisfactory, I do suppose we can arrange a mutual returning of respective property.” Rumplestiltskin’s voice was silky smooth, and all too calm. How much does he gain from this? How much do I lose? But there was no time to think of it – the Dark One’s fingers drummed onto the surface of the table, the veneer of patience and ease fading as his body shifted, hands occasionally creeping forward towards the compass in Aurora’s hands. “Do we have a deal then, Princess?”

Aurora nodded, almost afraid to say the words, and carefully placed the compass on the table. With a single gesture of his hands, the words on the Dark One’s contracts shifted and changed, Aurora scanning them with sudden fear that she had been tricked once more, only to find names changed, her name suddenly in the place of Rumplestiltskin’s. He didn’t trick me. I don’t understand. The Dark One always tricked everyone, always had an underlying reason for every action he did. Engaging in a simple trade of property was not his method of operation and yet, by all accounts, it was what he was giving to her – a contract, now held in her name, in exchange for a compass. “Why are you doing this? What are you going to do with it?” she demanded as Rumplestiltskin rose, watching as he paused and turned on his heel, leaning on his cane. She should have been afraid of what happened then, of his reaction to her sudden outburst and insistent tone of voice, but there was nothing, only silence in the cavity in her chest.

“Just like you Princess, I lost something important to me,” he answered, voice calm and soft, “but I intend to find it, with this little compass that worked so well for you. Now, if that’ll be all, I bid you a good day, your highness.” Donning his hat, he tipped it towards her in a display of unexpected deference and exited the diner, leaving just as much as unexplained as before, leaving Aurora wondering if she had not just damned the entirety of the world, for the sake of her justice.

    Hook found her only two days later as she walked to the high school, hand reaching out to grasp painfully tight on her shoulders. Pain she could still feel; it didn’t need her heart to inspire it, and it was one of the few reminders that she was real.

“You hold my contract.” The words left his mouth like a curse. “Look sweetheart, I know we’ve had our past differences, but if you’d be so kind as to release me from it, we can go our different ways, as I’m sure you don’t have the greatest fondness for me.”

Aurora glanced up, raising her eyebrows. Was he trying to play on the hatred and anger she had once felt, once she had realised that he had taken her heart? It’s not in here anymore for you to use against me, Hook. “No. I won’t. I like to see people pay for the things that they have done, to see justice. A true kingdom is measured by the blind justice it dispenses, my father said.” Her father, lost and gone. Was he here, in this world too? Or had he died, fighting for his people, for their people? “I paid for this contract, and I will use it, in due time. You will, at the very least, recompense me for the theft of my heart.” She wasn’t exactly sure when she had decided to use the contract, but she had, and the knowledge that she could exact the justice she deserved soothed her. I can’t get my heart back, but you’ll pay for taking it in the first place.

But his eyes showed something haunted and wary as she looked again, and Aurora glanced back down at her feet. It is dangerous to confuse justice with vengeance, Mulan had said, and Aurora had not heeded her then. Perhaps she should heed her now, to pay her back for all the things that the warrior woman did for her, for all the protection and companionship she provided when Aurora lacked all others. “I’ll decide today what is required of you, Hook. I’ll be at Granny’s Diner later,” she said, and then readjusted the straps of her bag and walked away.

    “Well, what do you want?”

Hook had arrived shortly after she had, a wild look in his eyes that spoke of the fear of what Aurora could force him to do with just one order as he had sat down in the seat and demanded to know what she wished of him. He was a pirate, she mused, and a pirate longed for freedom above all. What she had, and what he had signed away, stripped him of that freedom, or his life, or his everything, depending on the words that left her lips. It was a twisted power, one that could be used to harm and curse, and Aurora disliked it, though it was too late to return it. And he’ll think me weak if I don’t use it.

It wasn’t like she wanted to take his heart. It wasn’t like she wanted to curse him and make him feel the same ache that she did. She just wanted justice. All Aurora wanted was for him to know the consequences of his actions.

“You could have been like this too,” she told him, running a finger along the top of the milkshake glass. It sung out at her touch, the sound hovering in the air and in her ears. Pretty, like windchimes. “The Dark One could have ripped out your heart and made you like this too. Maybe then, you wouldn’t have attacked him. You wouldn’t have felt for Milah at all, not then. You’d have remembered it, but the feelings would have disappeared. Suddenly, revenge would have just seemed to be a foolish thought, the product of a mind that had been compromised by irrational emotions.” She paused, finger halting on the lip of the glass before glancing up.

Though he didn’t physically recoil at the sight of her wide, blank gaze, his eyes did. His eyes widened a little, lips pressing ever so slightly more together. “I think you’d have been a better pirate if he had taken your heart from you. You’d have known who to cross and who not to cross. Been a more prudent one, one not so likely to make as many foolish decisions.”

“We all do foolish things,” he replied, though his voice held a tremor that betrayed him. Was his fear of her and what she might ask, or the fact that now she knew what had occurred to him? Did his voice tremble because he knew what it might feel like to place his hand inside his chest and pull out his own beating heart, the heartstrings snapping with each tug to rend the organ from its rightful place in the body? “Angering a Dark One usually presents a lowered chance of survival, I’ll agree to that, but surely you’d have done the same sweetheart. After all, didn’t you try to kill the milady over there for your love?” The grin returned to his face as he leaned forward over the booth, bringing their faces in closer. He’s mimicking intimacy. Trying to subconsciously persuade me into thinking we have a kinship of some kind. And they did, in a way – no one ever forgot the person who ripped their heart out.

She drew back, finger falling from the glass to the booth’s surface. “I could ask you to rip your heart out, you realise. That’s what justice is meant to be, yes? An eye for an eye, a torn out heart for a torn out heart.” Her brow furrowed. Rarely did justice mirror back the same act – a thief lost a hand, rather than suffered a theft, a man who spoke against his king lost his life. Maybe I ought to ask for more then. But what more was there that the pirate before her could offer? He had stolen her heart, and there was nothing that he could do to compensate for its loss. I don’t want anything from you, Hook. I just want the heart I can never place back in my chest. I just want to go back to feeling again.

His face paled at her words, perhaps, for the first time, understanding that without her heart, no mercy or story could sway her. She had no emotions for his charm to work on, only the blank logic left to her in her mind. “Is that the favour you want from me? You want me to rip out my heart and hand it over to you, Princess?”

“No, I don’t want your heart.” I want mine, and you’ll give it to me. The idea dawned to her slowly, the only thing she could possibly want from a pirate like him in her current state, the only thing he alone could provide to her – or would provide to her. Her heart couldn’t be placed in her chest to make her feel once more, but there were other ways to give her emotion, and he, of all people, would not be averse to getting them for her.

“You broke me. Reached into my chest and pulled out my heart, and now it can never be put back in. You broke me.” There was no condemnation or anger in her words, and that, more than anything else, was what Aurora thought caused the pirate before her to stiffen as if she had hit him. Anger, she figured, he could understand, and the same went for condemnation, but the simple statement of fact, irrefutable, was harder to shrug easily away with a simple well, I am a pirate, sweetheart. There was no overreaction to make fun of, no weakness to exploit, only the cold, cruel certainty that he had been responsible for the move that had taken the plucky princess and replaced her with a stone cold mannequin with her resemblance. “Gutted me like you would a fish, pulled out all my insides and discarded them away. But I want them back. Taking my heart doesn’t stop me from knowing what I’m suddenly missing. I know happiness, and sadness, love and loneliness, and I can’t have any of them, can’t have my heart put back in my chest without it consuming me, and can’t go near it without acutely pining for it. So you’re going to do what I want, and fulfil your contract to me, Hook. You’re going to make me feel again.”

His reaction wasn’t as she had hoped, no easy laugh and quick grin saying, well, that’s easy to do. There was no quick fix, not even one that a pirate, who has travelled the world and amassed rare and great treasures, knew. By rights, she ought to have taken her words back, to hold them in until she found something else that Captain Hook could do for her, but the only thing she wanted was her ability to feel again. The thought consumed her, how she might circle and avoid the consequences of restoring her heart to her body, and so she lets the silence permeate the air between them until the seriousness in her wish sunk in to the pirate. And when it does, he leaned back, all pretense of closeness gone, only resignation and exasperation painted on his expression. “How, Princess? In case you forgot in the time it took you to make that speech, you haven’t got a heart.”

Aurora shrugged. That was her wish, but it was his dilemma as to know how to fulfil it.  “A heart holds emotion, not sensation. Give me a chemical to take the place of a heart, and supply it to me until I can feel on my own again, and your contract is fulfilled. You’ll even get paid for it. Now, isn’t that a reward too good for the likes of you?”

His jaw clenched as Hook rose from the seat. “Right. I’ll see what I can manage, Princess.” And with a mocking bow, he left.

They met in the shadows, Hook rightly afraid of the consequences of supplying Aurora. “The Swan girl is going to have my head for this, you know? Or your little swordswoman,” he’d told her, but she’d shrugged, and handed over the money, eager and impatient for the drugs he promised her. It was the last thread that she held onto, the idea that she could feel again. Even if it was real, a product of a chemical in her blood, it was still something. He shook his head the first time as he pocketed the money and drew out the tiny packet of glowing powder, placing it in her hand.

“What is this, fairy dust?” she’d asked, opening the bag to rub the small granules between her fingers. There was no sudden glow of warmth inside of her, nothing to suggest any return of emotion, but she ignored the insistent voice in her mind that told her it wouldn’t work. “Do I just... inhale it?”

Hook chuckled, a warm sound in the darkness. “No Princess, this is pixie dust. Fairy dust is magical – pixie dust is lesser, lower quality fairy dust really. Less transforming into rainbows and puppies, more general euphoric kick. Makes you feel like you’re flying... or so I’ve heard. You want to put it on your tongue. Effect might be slow, but it works, for sure.”

“Still only speaking from what you’ve heard?” she retorted, as she drew her finger out of the bag, the golden glow of the dust clinging to its tip. There was another laugh, soft and grudgingly given, but Aurora paid it no mind as she placed her fingertip onto her tongue. It tasted strange, not like any kind of food she’d ever known, but more like sensations – sunlight on skin, a warmth rising in her mouth that spread through her body as she stood there, waiting for the effect to finish.

“Don’t use it all at once though,” Hook advised, leaning forward to watch her closely, his hand reaching to tilt her chin upwards so he could look into her eyes. Was he looking for sign of emotion returning to her, waiting to see if he knew a way to fulfil his contract with her? “Only a little bit at a time, otherwise you start running down the street, stark naked and then your warrior woman would definitely be taking something from my body. Are we understood, Princess?”

She could feel it, slowly but steadily growing in her body. Wonder. Numbed and faint to be sure, but wonder all the same, and with it came other sensations. The faintest stirrings of happiness, coiling somewhere in her chest and then –

She smiled. Without forcing the muscles to move and contract, without a conscious decision. “I can feel..” she whispered out, clutching a hand to her mouth as she stifled a laugh – a laugh. All these things, she’d never thought to have again, were there.

“Well congratulations Princess. You know where to reach me, when you need more,” was his reply, and though he tried to hide it, she saw the ghost of a smile on his face as he walked away and left her with the glowing powder that restored part of what had been lost to her.

    The happiness never lasted long, fading away gradually until she was left, once more, in the hollow ache of emotionlessness. It seemed to hurt worse then, after experiencing an elation so high that it felt like she was the sun and radiating out happiness and joy with every breath she took. And what was worse was the tiredness that came as the effects of the powder dissipated, the lethargy that drained her dry. He gave her other things, drugs from both worlds, to help her regain other sensations, but the lethargy never abated. There was always a price to pay, and for all the highs she felt in the grasp of the chemicals, she felt the lows the most.

It was contentment that she began to long for the most. The others she could feel through the chemicals that Hook supplied her with, but not contentment, the steady enjoyment of life like a warm spring day, where the air was pleasant and the weather fine, not too warm, not too cold, and the songbirds sung in the trees. That kind of serenity had been lost to her, the middle ground between peace and ecstasy, and Aurora didn’t know how to regain it. Morphine gave her peace, as well as marijuana, while speed and Ecstasy gave her the rush, the euphoria, her life becoming a ride of chemical highs and lows, and she longed for the steady peace of contentment, but no drug could give her that.

But even the lows were worth the high, and worth the toll it took on her if it meant she could, for a small space of time, feel again.

Aurora told no one of what she did in the dead of night, or how she could smile and laugh without a hollow tone permeating through her voice. She told no one of the cravings for her emotions, or the insistent need she had to gain more of the powders and vials of liquids, brushing away the words said to her and the furrowed glances that came from Hook as she begun to call on his services more often. “Aren’t you happy to be fulfilling your contract?” she asked when he protested to her third sale in a week, and he had stared after her as she taken the packet of pixie dust from his hand and ran away before she could think of how her cravings had reduced her thoughts to how soon she could take another hit of the powders he supplied.

    “What are you doing to her?”

“I asked him to, Mulan. I asked him to get me these things!” Aurora exclaimed, backing away from Hook as Mulan advanced. She should have known that Mulan would find out, having had grown careless, but covering her tracks had been the last thing on Aurora’s mind when she had snuck out in the dark night to meet Hook again. All that had ruled her mind was the desire to feel again and to stop the shaking of her body. “I need them.”

Even after seven months of hearing her emotionless voice, Mulan still flinched away from it. She knows it’s not me. She knows I’m meant to be more than this. “I need to feel things, even just chemical things.” Aurora continued, avoiding Mulan’s gaze, unsure if she wanted to see what was written there. Disappointment? Shame? A princess wasn’t meant to be beholden to packets of powders, but Aurora was. If my parents saw me now... “My heart isn’t here to do it anymore, but these chemicals – the pixie dust, the drugs, they do. They can let me feel happy again, and I miss happy, Mulan. I miss enjoying the summer days and enjoying a horse or laughing.”

“Then we’ll get you back your heart! Aurora, I’ve been asking you for months to go back home, to find your heart and restore it to you-“

Aurora shook her head, and the single action was enough to halt Mulan’s words. She glanced upwards, watching as Mulan’s face drained of colour as the plan was once more rejected. How many times had Aurora refused to travel back to the Enchanted Kingdom? It was selfish of her, Aurora knew that, but she couldn’t. So much had been lost there that couldn’t be regained – her soul, Philip’s heart, her home in the Sands. “I can’t. I can’t have it back,” Aurora answered. She should have been weeping – she had before, coming down from the highs when her thoughts turned melancholy – cried and screamed into her pillow in grief for all the things lost, but she didn’t cry now. She had no heart to feel the loss, and no powders in her blood to make up for its absence.

“When magic takes a heart from someone, it makes it more powerful. The magic bleeds into the heart to keep it alive, to keep the link between body and heart and, in return, the heart absorbs it. I can’t have my heart anymore, Mulan – my body would never handle it. It would begin to kill me as soon as it entered my chest, and I’d spend the last days of my life in agony as my heart – my heart – began to destroy me. I can never have my heart again.”

“So you use these? I swore to Philip that I would –“

“Protect me?” How could she make Mulan see? This wasn’t a wilful child reaching for the things that would irk those around her, this was a desperate soul reaching for the things that could hold her together.  How could she explain how it felt to not feel, when Mulan could feel? Aurora would never have understood the sensation, had it been explained to her when she’d had a heart. It was impossible to comprehend the way it felt to not feel, but she had to try. “Mulan, this... I need these. Not feeling is... there’s nothing. The sun shines and you feel nothing. Someone dies and you feel nothing. And I still remember that I can, that I used to be able to. That my mother’s favourite sound was that of my laughter, and I don’t even know how to laugh anymore unless I use these. I abhor it when I can, but that’s the thing. Most of the time Mulan, I can’t. I don’t like anything, I don’t hate anything – I’m blank, and dead. And if I go back home, I’ll feel – but all I’ll feel is grief for the world that I’ve lost, for my father and mother and Philip. I’d rather be here than there, and use what Hook gives me, no matter the cost.”

The swordswoman’s eyes flicked between Hook and Aurora, hands clenched together. “Next time I see you giving her anything Hook, I’ll take your other hand,” Mulan growled out through clenched teeth before turning to Aurora.

It was only then that Aurora saw the sheen of her eyes, and realised that Mulan had tears for her. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and was surprised by Mulan’s arms coming around her to embrace her.

“I’m sorry I failed you, Aurora,” Mulan whispered, before all went black.

    They held her separately from all the other patients of the hospital, her screams upsetting the other patients. Tied to the bed, she wrenched and raged and screamed, though her mind didn’t understand why, strugglingly against the Velcro ties that held her down. Her body screamed for the drugs suddenly removed from her system, needing that chemical rush, while her mind told her that if she still had her heart, she’d not need the rush at all. Mind and body clashed in a perplexing and strange way, if there was no middle ground to breach the gap. Aurora had never quite known just how much her heart could do, until it wasn’t there to do it. Her body shook and trembled, rejecting all food that Doctor Whale gave to her while phantom itches threatened to drive her to insanity.

Outside her room, the world continued, voices soft so they did not disturb the girl inside.

“What’s happening to her? Whale won’t let me in to see her.” Mulan, her voice raised and loud, even despite the shushes and murmurs of the other. Concern, worry.

“She’s in withdrawal from the drugs Hook gave her.” Emma, voice practical though her tone held something else. Disgust? Are you disgusted with me, Emma?

“Well, aren’t there meant to be some kind of program for this kind of thing here? Where you wean her off? She’s not meant to scream!”

“We’ve tried Mulan, we have.” Snow’s voice, placating. Aurora could imagine Snow placing her arms on Mulan and trying to soothe her with tiny pats, just like she had when Aurora had been afraid to sleep.

“Hook skipped town, Mulan. Skipped town, left Aurora in the lurch, and now we can’t even get any of that damned dust to wean her off it slowly. I tell you, when I get my hands on that man, I’m going to wrench his head from his shoulders for getting her hooked on that shit.”

I wasn’t hooked on the dust, Aurora thought as the trembling racked her body again, I was hooked on feeling again.

    He had expected something... grander.

He should have known better of course. Those months spent with Cora had proven her to be a woman of practicality, rather than excessive vanity, and a jewel encrusted box never served better than a less ornate one, unless the purpose was simply to give him more coin when he fenced it to the thieves of the world. But that had never been the purpose of the box, and as such, it was plain, indistinguishable from every box around it except for the carefully marked Aurora on the lid of the box. A plain wooden box, housing an extraordinary object. A princess’ heart, and all that goes with it.A thing that, on the outside, appeared disposable and worthless, but Hook knew its worth. The contents of the box were priceless, and though he might have usually have fenced it for an exorbitant price, he knew that such an action was not an option.

Perhaps it was a matter of his honour, whatever little he claimed to have – to return what he had stolen and undo his wrongs – but then, if he lived by that, he wouldn’t have been much of a pirate at all. No, it wasn’t that, though he’d loftily claim it as such if any ever brought it up to him, before noting, as if in afterthought, that by returning to Aurora her heart, he was freed from any more stipulations in his contract to her. Lying, after all, had become easy to him somewhere along the line, and he could pretend that it was anything other than regret at his action and horror at what he had reduced the princess to that had sent him through the portal. Not many would defy people such as Cora so defiantly, but she had, fearlessly, boldly, and in those moments in the pit, the Princess Aurora had exhibited greater fearlessness than he had in front of Cora, and he could respect that, pirate though he was. He hadn’t understood that taking her heart would mean separating her from herself. Surely, that was more to do with the removal of a soul, yes?

But he’d been wrong, and the further Aurora moved from her heart, the more he saw it. The glimmers had left her eyes first, and then her sharp wit had followed. Emotional reactions had become harder to find, and then even physical reactions – dilation of pupils, increases in breathing – had become altogether absent. It was like he had ripped out whatever fire she had inside of her instead of her heart, and watching those blank eyes bore into him, day after day in Storybrooke, or her mindless pursuit of emotion through chemicals, caused his gut to twist inside of him. You could have been like this too, she’d said, and that night, he had tossed in his bed, dreaming of the damned Crocodile tearing out his heart and the slow loss of all that he was. He couldn’t restore her heart to her, he could, at least, give her back her connection to it.

So that plain wooden box, with its precious cargo, found itself gently placed in his satchel and carried across the Enchanted Kingdom, into the world of Storybrooke. It was there, in that strange foreign world they now called home, that he hid it underneath the floorboards of Aurora’s bedroom. I call us even now, Princess – as even as we’re ever going to be. It was all he could do, and all he could hope was that it was enough to stop the twinges of guilt that roiled in his stomach at the sight her blank expressions and vacant eyes.

    The next day, Hook, head covered, wandered into Storybrooke hospital, searching her out. It wasn’t hard to find her, with just a wink here and a sly remark there. One of the many advantages to this world, he had found, was that fewer people believed that sexual endeavours should remain solely in marriage beds, making Hook greatly fond of this world. It had its charms he supposed, and some were much greater than others. As he wandered past her open door, he saw it.

Wonder and hope, two emotions so foreign to him since Milah’s death, both inspired by the soft upward pull of Aurora’s lips into the beginning of the smallest of smiles as she sat upright, no longer the nervous desperate wreck that had come to him demanding drugs, but the princess who had fought against Cora and accompanied him to the beanstalk. Well, what do you know. Sometimes, he thought in a rare fit of poetic expression as he watched, two broken things can form a whole.

He smiled, backing away from the door and turning around. She wasn’t whole, but she wasn’t broken either, and Hook would be lying if he said that the thought wasn’t something he was proud of causing.

[starcrowned]

OUAT 2.08 Into The Deep Thoughts

UNDER THE CUT

    “You stole my heart.”

It’s a measure of him that he still manages to smirk, even with a sword pointed to his throat. “Sweetheart, you give me too much credit. You basically gave it away.”

She doesn’t care for the double play on words – her heart, as it always has, belongs to Phillip, whether or not it was beating inside her chest. But the fact remains that he took her heart and played her, let her be used as a puppet by Cora. She has always been used, her curse used to cripple her family, and now her stolen heart used to render her into Cora’s minion, leading the group into traps, feeding Cora information and misleading them. Every trap and pitfall they had fallen into, is her fault, and his by extension. All Aurora can think of is how she worried about Emma leaving Hook at the top of the beanstalk, and how she had asked for his whereabouts, trusting that some part of her old world – the world where people could be trusted – remained, only to be proven wrong. Even thinking of it makes her heart hurt, in the physical, rather than emotional way, but she refuses to rub at the place where it was reinserted, and the scar that is forming there. She is strong, and she will be like her father, refusing to show weakness against her enemies. She is, after all, a King’s daughter, just as much as a Queen’s.

She draws the dagger out from underneath her cloak and steps forward, placing the tip of it lightly against Hook’s neck. Mulan’s sword draws back, and Aurora forces down the urge to thank her. They attacked her because she was the weakest link, or so they supposed, but now, with Aurora’s dagger pressed against Hook’s throat, she thinks at least he might see that they are wrong. Her hands are steady and her expression is cool – she is not some quailing princess who squeals and is easily frightened. She is not weak. She is the daughter of a King and a Queen, and even though she is in a forest, the hem of her dress caked in mud and all traces of her royal heritage absent in her appearance, Aurora has never felt more like the royalty she is. She feels it in the way she stands, the royal bearing, standing tall and straight, the cool, imperial expression that gives away nothing. She is a princess, and a Queen to be, and somehow, Aurora feels like she suddenly has grown from a child to a Queen in the space of time it took for her dagger to replace the threat that Mulan’s sword had held.

The tip of the dagger breaks skin, and a bead of blood is drawn out. For the first time, she sees doubt flash through Hook’s eyes. “Do you know what it’s like Hook, to be trapped inside of yourself? I was there, screaming for them to hear me, screaming that I wasn’t thinking any of the words that I was saying, but they couldn’t hear me. You stole my heart and gave me marionette strings like a doll.” Her eyes are narrowed, the blue of her irises turning cold and flinty as she rotates the dagger point in her hand. It would be easy to do, to mete out justice like this, to push the dagger into the flesh of his throat. She would have done it to Snow White, for Phillip, but this rage is greater. Once more, someone took away her choices and forced her hand, but in a much worse way. She had chosen her curse, chosen to take it and save her kingdom, but she had never chosen to be Cora’s prisoner, or her tool. “In due time pirate, I’ll mete out your justice. But until then, you will just have to rest assured that you will never find your own revenge. Revenge after all, must not be confused with justice.”

Their eyes meet just once more as Aurora steps back and twists the hook from the stump of his arm, taking with her his namesake and his freedom as Emma claps, with a certain amount of relish, a pair of cuffs around him and leads him away. Mulan stays by her side. “You’re learning, Princess.”

Aurora shakes her head. “No, I’ve learnt. Revenge is not justice.”

But oh, how she wishes it was.

[starcrowned]

writer writes a note - or two.

So, there's a few questions here, and it relates to fanfics. If you feel the need to read, please do - it's all under the cut. But, if you feel this is completely irrelevant to the sleeping hook tag, feel free to scroll on!

Anyway, now that you've clicked on the read more button (thank you, muchly appreciated! ^^) down to business.

Two main questions:

What should I call my fic, and anyone want to volunteer to berate me for errors that my sleepaddled brain cannot process?

The first question relates to a second fic I'm writing on Sleeping Hook (both this and Blessed are being written simultaneously), which is summarised as thus:

He didn’t know it, but with every thrust of the boat against the breaking sea waves, he sailed her to her doom.

Princess Talia of the Sands was once cursed to endure a hundred years of ageless sleep, and wake to find all that she loved to be lost to her - forever. But when her true love, the Prince Stefan, found her and kissed her, the dark curse wrought upon the princess was broken by true love’s kiss, and Maleficent’s plan failed, and the evil sorceress was defeated and retreated to the Forbidden Fortress to live out the rest of her days.

But now, years on, at the celebration of the now-Queen Talia’s daughter’s impending marriage to Prince Phillip, Maleficent chooses to strike once more, and offers the kingdom a choice: give up the Princess Aurora to suffer the same curse as her mother, to sleep an ageless sleep for a hundred years, or watch helplessly on as Maleficent unleashed her full powers to destroy the kingdom that had thought they had bested her.

Aurora, unable to stand by the destruction of her home, her people and her kingdom, seeks to give herself over to Maleficent and bear the sleeping curse that threatened to destroy her mother - but first, she needs to find her way to Maleficent, and for that, Aurora needs a pirate to smuggle her from the grip of her parents, unwilling to send their daughter to the same fate that had taken her mother years before.

The tentative working title of the project isLay Me Down, but there's a multitude of other names I have lined up for the project, including and not limited to:

Heavy In Your Arms

Hold Me In The Dark

Humming Hallelujah In The Dark (taken from the wonderful, wonderful song "Stranger" by Katie Costello which immediately put me in mind of Sleeping Hook)

And other titles you can think of to suggest. Help me name my fic?

Second question is more an open invitation for anyone and everyone to berate me for any errors I make. I'm not begging for a beta, though I should probably and try and find one to make my writing better one day, but more asking you all to - if you want, and have time to - critique me, really. Tell me to look up my rules in comma use, or check my spelling a bit more, or see if a paragraph flows well. I'm not askinganyof you to nitpick the piece apart - primarily, writing fanfiction is about enjoyment, so asking you guys to focus on my syntax and vocabulary while reading is just unfair- but more saying, "hey, if, when you read it, you notice an error or mistake that jars you and detracts from the whole experience,pleaselet me know in some way". I don't mind at all, I promise! Really, I just want for people to lose themselves in the story, and I hate thinking that my own laziness has done something to take away from that experience.

So yes, that's all. Just a note to say you can be mean to me, and help me name a second fic? Please?