Archive of Our Own ^beta

He calls Red kid. 

Shouldn’t have put the kid on team extraction. We need to figure out what’s going on with this kid. If she’s hurt, Gerard, the biggest coward Pinocchio’s ever known, fucking Gerard, challenges the perpetrator to a duel.

Pinocchio’s not sure why he’s jealous, nor is he sure that’s the emotion. He knows a book won’t win you a fight. The rules of a sword don’t matter when the game’s played with magic. 

Red’s no kid. She’s a monster, and Pinocchio thinks that with no judgement. No, just jealousy--though the emotion is still murky. She said she chose her path, but Pinocchio doesn’t buy it. Monsters make the path. Monsters make the rules. Monsters can be better than mothers, if the monster’s like Red and the mother is like his own. 

When Pinocchio would smart-talk his dad, his dad would say wisdom’s a burden no child should have to bear. He thought it was his dad smart-talking him back, but he can’t ask for clarity now. All he has of his dad is the blood on his nose.

That same wisdom is what clarifies his emotion. He is not jealous of Red: they are allies in fates they did not choose, even if hers is preferable.

He is jealous of Gerard, who had the option to run and hide. Who believes that horror is temporal and not permanent. Who can call someone who’s fought battles he’s only read about kid, without a single trace of irony. 

Pinocchio has lied. He’s been rude. He didn’t really have a choice. 

He is jealous that Gerard, the kid’s, only punishment was to turn into a frog. 

And your Elody, if Elody had a spider for a face, would you have fallen in love with her? 

Gerard did not have to think about it, but he chose to.

His response whenever someone asked about their marriage was immediate, a reflex. It was going well, as marriages between princes and princesses did. He loved Elody without question--did he, does he, would he love her? Of course, the answer was always of course.

But he listened to Ylfa--a kid much like himself, if he were much kinder--question her own monstrosity. He had not done the same since he turned into a prince, though his webbed feet now warned him the same way a lump would of cancer. Something was wrong, and it was not with the curse placed on him or the cure Elody granted him. It was not, he was beginning to understand, with the creatures Elody left him to fight.

There was only one monster left to consider, and so he thought about Ylfa’s question. 

Gerard was vain. He did not doubt that, nor did he seek to change it. That vanity allowed him to see Elody's beauty when her eyes brightened upon seeing an animal in the woods; when her smile was sly and sarcastic, often directed at him; when her long hair was as wild and tangled as her perfect spirit. 

He was frivolous, but that helped Elody have fun. He could not let the horrors of the world make her forget that she loved to dance. 

He was selfish. That one, that was the one that needed to change. 

Elody loved him as a frog, boldly and without apology. Gerard thought about Ylfa's question and, yes, he thinks he would’ve loved her if she had a spider for a face.  

But he’d never shown her that. 

Ylfa thought she knew hunger. 

She’d been sent to bed without dinner before. She was an obedient child, but only if she knew what the rules were, and only if they made sense. When her mother and grandmother had different rules for her, well, that was trickier--and it did feel like a trick. How could she trust the adults when they didn’t trust one another? 

It was ok, though. She’d wait. Not sleep, but wait for breakfast. It always came, and once she was full--she didn’t forget the hunger, exactly. She just didn’t think it mattered anymore. 

Surely, the woodsman would come. Surely, she just had to wait. Surely, none of this would matter, and she’d eat cinnamon toast rolls with her grandmother for breakfast. 

“It’s not your time, Ylfa.” 

The wolf kept saying that.

“I’ll wait.” 

Ylfa kept saying that, until she learned what hunger was.

She was mostly right before. It had always felt like shame and abandonment, a deserved punishment. It had always felt desperate. It had always felt wrong in her body. 

But it had been temporary, and now it was not. 

She ate the wolf, and she was ashamed. She knew before she even went home that she’d be abandoned again, but she was desperate enough to try. Her entire body was wrong. 

She was still hungry. 

---

The Stepmother had never known hunger. 

Villains do not suffer in a story until the hero needs a victory, and fine, Cinderella got it. Perfect, sweet Cinderella, who would not help her sisters. Who would cast her own stepmother as wicked just to make herself more endearing. 

Who would take her own fucking name from her. 

The hunger was new, and it was wrong, but that didn’t matter. If being wicked was wrong, she was just adhering to how her role was written. It felt like opportunity. 

She savored the monsters in the stories she consumed. The Evil Queen, someone who had turned this feeling into power, though The Stepmother saw some wasted potential. Poison apples were a start, a pretty little metaphor, but wouldn’t it be more fun to become the poison yourself? 

The Stepmother ate, and finally, she had agency. She had power. She felt right in her body.

And she was still so, so hungry. 

Gerard was rarely the first one awake.

He was making up for lost time, as he told Elody when she’d tease him for sleeping past breakfast. Frogs, he had to learn, do not sleep the way humans do: they remain alert. He quickly learned why that was necessary.  

Gerard missed the deep rest that’s needed for growth from child to adult, a realization that strikes him as he watches Ylfa and Pinocchio sleep on the rooftop. It’s too early, and too frightening, to process that as a revelation about himself, so he doesn’t. He’s just grateful the kids can sleep despite a world that wants them to be alert.  

“Coffee?”

So, he’s still not the first one awake. He turns towards Timothy, who inexplicably hands him a cannister of soot mixed with water. “Why?” is all Gerard is awake enough to say.

“My husband and I always drank coffee together before Jack woke up,” Timothy says. “It’s a nice ritual.”

Gerard does not know how Elody spent her mornings, and he regrets that he never asked her. “That does sound nice.”

“Oh, I just meant—I’m not flirting with you.”

Gerard sighs and turns his attention back to the kids, the day’s memories passing through him with the blurry edges of a dream. “It doesn’t seem real, what they’ve been through. It’s too much for a kid.”

Timothy eyes him. “Yeah. It is.”

“It’s good that Ylfa has you. And that Pinocchio has Pib, though I’m not sure he’s the best influence.”

Timothy quiets for a moment, then asks, “Did you have anyone? Other than Elody?”

“Well, Fred. And Fred 2, and Fred 3.”

“Anyone you didn’t watch die in front of you?”

Gerard shakes his head. “Just Elody. But she was enough.”

“But she was a kid, too.”

Timothy’s a writer, and Gerard thinks he must be writing Elody’s story in his mind. He tries to do the same, and the antagonist is obvious. “I suppose it’s not fair to ask a kid to be a hero,” Gerard says, glancing at Ylfa.

Timothy follows his gaze. “For some, maybe it’s destiny. Based on what you’ve told us about Elody, and the image we saw of her, I think she’s more the type to fight destiny to do the right thing. Not a hero, exactly. Just someone who helps.”

Gerard feels a pain in his chest, worse than the glass shard that scarred his body. God, he loves her, but God, he kept her from who she was. “She could’ve done more if she wasn’t so concerned with me. I was just some asshole kid.”

“Gerard, I’ve devoted my life to caring for kids, and they’re all kind of assholes. Don’t feel guilty that someone cared about you. You can feel angry that more people didn’t. You deserved better, and I’m sorry you didn’t get it. I’m sorry if I’m the first person who’s told you that.”

It’s so, so early, and Gerard has missed so much rest. Maybe it’s impossible for him to make up for lost time.

“What do I do with that?” he asks. Something cracks his voice: anger or sadness, he’s not sure it matters which. 

“I don’t really know,” Timothy admits. “I think you’re doing what you can with Ylfa and Pinocchio. I think you understand them in a way Pib and I can’t. We can’t stop horrors from happening to them, but it matters that you care when they do.”

Gerard nods: that much, he can do.

Elody did not know fear.

This was intentional: it was not an emotion a princess should be exposed to, or so she was told. “You do not need to understand your subjects to rule them,” one of her advisors said; she was young, so they treated advice as education. “In fact, you’ll make better decisions if you don’t.”

“That’s not fair,” Elody said, because she was young.

Her advisor smiled, and Elody learned a smile was not always an expression to trust. “Just be glad you’re on the right side of it, kid.”

“I believe you mean ‘your highness.’” She’d never corrected someone on that before.

“Now you’ve got it.”

She did not have her parents, but that did not create fear. She only understood that the worst thing that could happen, could happen. She did not know there were worse things.

Until Gerard.

“I do not wish to frighten you, Princess,” he said early on, before he told a story of dogs who made all of his friends dinner.

“Then how can I understand?” she asked.

“Do you have to?”

“You’re my friend, so…yes. Yes, I think I do. And you should call me Elody.”

“Very well, Elody.”

He told stories of teeth, and screams, and people who could help pretending they couldn’t see or hear—that was the worst part.

So, she checked on Gerard every day, and snuck him into the castle as often as she could. She chased predators, animal and human alike, away from him and the various Fred’s. She saw, she heard, and she was afraid.

Years later, Gerard had forgotten fear. Elody believed it was intentional, and she did not fault him for it, but she could not love him for it. She left the castle to help others like him who were not offered the same privilege.

She heard of the raid on the castle from a new advisor; she’d long fired the ones from her youth.

“And Gerard?” she asked.  “Is he safe?”

“…We’re not sure. No one’s seen him, but no one’s seen a body either.” Her advisor paused. “I’m sorry, Elody.”

War didn’t scare Elody, and neither did death—she understood its inevitably. She was better suited to a battlefield than a castle.

But she was afraid again.

It was not supposed to get cold in Greenleigh.

The snow flurried like it did in stories, the ground frozen and the grass frosted. Gerard saw how it could be beautiful, but it was an invasion in his kingdom: a threat of Snowhold’s magic. 

The Fred’s burrowed underground while they still could, burying themselves alive in order to survive. It was an animal instinct Gerard did not have. He knew his blood ran cold now, but it was hard to accept his interior had changed as much as his exterior.

As the snow picked up, it did matter what Gerard did or did not want to accept. He was cold, and he was in danger.

He heard footsteps crack the ice and studied their nature. Sly and careful, that was an animal, smart enough to stalk their prey. Loud and cocky, that was a man, cruel enough to hunt for the sake of a kill. Fast like they’re running away from something, but also eager like they’re running to something—

That was Elody. Gerard listened for her every day.

She scooped him up and studied him, a smile splitting her face the way her boots did the ice. “You’re ok.”

“I don’t know for how much longer,” Gerard said.

She nodded and put him in the pocket of a cloak that did not belong to her. Gerard did not ask where she got it; he knew she flirted with guards to get away with visiting him. Men like that use everyone for their benefit, she said once. I’m only evening the scales.

“I can’t bring you to the castle,” she said. “The snow has everyone on high alert. But, I got one of the soldiers to teach me how to make fire—don’t get jealous, true love.” She winked: it was a running joke between them.

“Why would I be jealous when we’re about to have a candlelight date?”

“God, you’re flirty.”

Elody started the fire, mumbling instructions as she went. The snow brought challenges, but that did not deter her—and of course not, because nothing ever did. Gerard was as impressed as he always and ever was by her, solving a problem that wasn’t even her own.

“Hey, your highness,” Elody said at the first flicker of flame. “Are you paying attention? You won’t always have a princess to save you.”

“I am always paying attention to you, Elody.”

Her cheeks flushed, red as the fire she started. 

“I’ll stay with you until someone comes looking for me,” Elody said. “I’ve heard of people telling stories around campfires. Might be a nice way to pass the time.”

She was almost shy when she said it, and Elody was rarely shy.

“I have a story,” Gerard said, then made his voice deep and dramatic. “About frogs who buried themselves alive to survive winter.”

Elody went wide-eyed, a glimpse of the sheltered girl he’d met years ago. “Tell me.”

He made up a story and gave it a happy ending, because that’s what he needed the Fred’s to have. They were both quiet when it over, enjoying the possibility of happily ever after.

“You know,” Elody said after a while, shy but not quite as shy as before. “I’m really happy like this. Happier than I ever am at the castle. I could sit at the pond with you, by a fire, telling stories for the rest of my life.”

“Hashtag pond life,” Gerard said.

Elody rolled her eyes. “Congratulations on ruining the moment in record time, true love.”

It no longer felt like a joke.

Gerard, do you promise not to be mad at me?

I thought the hot dogs would make you like Toy Island.

Gerard was angry, but not for the reasons the children thought.

He defaulted to walking alongside Timothy when he felt like this. Gerard could converse with Rosamund for hours about royal nonsense, or he could detail his sword forms to (he was sure) a rapt audience in Pib, but Mother Goose was the only one who understood his feelings before he could name them.

“Look, what Snow White said,” Timothy said, before Gerard offered that he wanted to talk. “There are a lot of reasons Elody wouldn’t have mentioned that she was married. I wouldn’t assume—”

“It’s not that.”

Timothy looked surprised, and Gerard understood. He loved Elody more than anyone in the world—or worlds, as it were. He was beginning to realize he also loved her at the expense of everyone else.

“The kids,” Gerard said. “I don’t want to get mad at them, but their behaviour puts us in danger. Puts them in danger. I don’t know how else to communicate the severity of that.”

“I understand that.”

When Ylfa was scared to disobey him, when Pinocchio was desperate to please him, Gerard remembered what adults did with their perceived misbehavior in the past. You are not my daughter. I never should have made you. He suspected, that if his parents ever found him as a frog, they would’ve said the same sentiment to him.

“But just because I’m angry, or upset—I’m not going to leave. I’m not going to reject them. I don’t think they know that, and I think that’s my fault.”

“Ylfa and Pinocchio have been let down by most of the adults in their lives,” Timothy says. “It’s not fair to put the trauma that’s caused solely on your shoulders. You’re here, so I know what you’re saying to be true, but….”

“But?”

“I don’t know, I think it’s like being in love. You can show someone that you love them every day, but you still need to say it.”

Gerard knew he’d done the opposite with Elody.

“Will that matter?” he asked.  “If there are days like today, when I get like this, and don’t show it as well as I should?

“You don’t have to be the perfect person to be perfect for them, Gerard. They’re smart kids. They understand that you’re huma—well, you know. Just, try not to stay angry at yourself. That will not help any of you heal.”

Gerard was cursed as a child for who he was. When he was cursed again as an adult, it was clear it was not a behaviour he’d grown out of, but an intrinsic flaw in who he was. He did not know if he deserved to believe another story about himself.

But.

He refused to let Yfla and Pinocchio believe the same story about themselves, so he would have to try.

When Elody found Gerard’s body, the anger left her, but so did everything else.

It was a new feeling, to not feeling anything at all. It was not like herself, always chastised for caring too much about the servants’ wellbeing, about the homes of those who didn’t live in castles, about wars that weren’t hers to fight.

About a frog in a pond.

And where did that get her, anyway? Her servants were killed, their children were killed. Homes were destroyed. The war was ongoing, and it was worse. Everything was worse.

Gerard brought her love, but that came easy to her. His body brought grief, but she’d already felt that when she realized all the predators he faced as a frog. When he became a human, and stared at himself for hours in the mirror, never quite recognizing the man he didn’t get to grow into. When he started to turn into a frog again—she noticed long before Gerard acknowledged it, of course she did—and her feelings about her marriage became too obvious to ignore.

She cared too much. And she was fucking done.

Cinderella found her, mentioned she’d spoken to Gerard’s cousin—Rosamund, an unfamiliar name, but everything had become unfamiliar to her. She observed the world as a third-party, unbelievable joy alongside unimaginable horror, and wondered what it be would like to know those feelings again.

She was not convinced it was worth it to find out.

“We have much to discuss,” Cinderella said. “But I have reason to believe your husband is still alive—not as he was, but reborn into another story.”

“My husband is a corpse,” Elody said. “And he will become a corpse in every story.”

“Yes. That is true.”

“So I am not sure why I’d seek out another story like that.”

“That is not exactly what I’m proposing.”

It was an end, and Elody had already ended. The Gerard in another story, well, she knew how that would turn out too. She did not want to think about how he’d face what was in-between without the walls of a castle to protect him, or her to talk to. She did not want him to know that either.

Elody took her wedding ring off. Nothing had changed. Her husband had died, and so had she. The End.

“I’ll come with you.”

Gerard had not seen Elody cry in years.

It was not always like that. In their early days at the pond, Gerard saw a young girl who was not allowed to act as one, who was asked to sacrifice the freedom her youth should’ve allowed her. She was still kind, and she was still funny, but she carried that.

“Elody,” he said, one night after her visits had become routine. She’d been strangely quiet, rolling her golden ball underneath her hand, but never letting it get away from her. “It’s ok if you miss her.”

Elody shook her head. “There are people who have more to miss than I do. I need to be there for them.”

Gerard did not know yet if Elody was his true love, but he knew that he loved her. “Of course,” he said. “But, here? It’s just me, Elody. It’s ok.”

Elody glanced at him, and Gerard watched her expression crack—but she did not seem broken at all once she started to cry.  So, he made no attempt at comfort, other than to sit with her through it.

“I can’t do this at the castle,” Elody said.

“Then find me when you need to, and I promise to be here. I mean, I can’t exactly survive anywhere else—”

Elody’s smile was only stronger after its break. “Please don’t ruin the moment, Gerard.”

Years later, Gerard was a human, they were married, and everything was as it should be. Elody’s last tears were at their wedding, and Gerard thought it beautiful that her last cry was inspired by joy.

Until one night, she proposed a walk to the pond. Gerard heard the romance in the idea, but not the desperation in Elody’s voice.

He was rambling when they reached the pond—their first ball as a married couple was soon, and they should rehearse a waltz to impress. Elody broke his monologue not with agreement, or a tease that Gerard would cherish, but with her tears.

Gerard was startled; he thought they were past this. “My love,” he said, gentle. “What is it?”

“Is it ok if I miss this?” Elody asked. “I love you, and I love that you’re safe now, and fucking fine, I love that you’re handsome, but do you remember when it was just us here?”

“Of course,” Gerard said, genuinely confused. “But now we’re together, and we’re safe. There are people to carry the hard things for us now. You do not have to feel this way any longer.”

Gerard brushed the tears from her cheek, and she started at his fingers, more analytical than appreciative. “You couldn’t do that before,” she said.

“Things are better now, Elody.”

“…Right,” she said, then echoed him. “Of course.”

“You’ll feel better once we’re back home.”

He held her hand as they walked back, and for years, considered it a grace that was the last time he saw her cry.

---

Elody weeps.

It’s been years. There were no tears when she found Gerad’s body; there was nothing when she found Gerard’s body. But now, that body was closer to the frog she fell in love with than the prince she tried to stay in love with. And it was turning its back on her, in a way she’d felt for years but never seen.

Cinderella holds one side of her and Snow White the other, her sisters keeping her standing. “I’m sorry,” she chokes out, to them, to the dead body she found who, surprise, isn’t actually dead after all, but who still isn’t with her, who can maybe never be with her again, to her fucking true love, she doesn’t know. She does not understand anything right now, and she weeps.

“It’s ok,” Cinderella says. “It’s just us.”  

Gerard received his last birthday card when he was ten years old.

In one of the servant’s calligraphy, it read: Welcome to double digits: you’re all grown now. Happy Birthday! It wasn’t signed, nor it was addressed to him.

At least it could serve a purpose now. Elody would turn eighteen tomorrow, and Gerard wrote to her in his own clumsy script.

My dearest Elody,

I am sorry I do not have a present for you. I will admit, I have enjoyed our birthday celebrations at the pond so much that I did not think about what they would look like in a castle. More fitting of a princess than what I’ve offered you before, I’m sure. I look forward to it, but not to the judgement of the men who danced with you before I was able to.

Forgive me, Elody, for this is not about me. Though, you can probably tell this card was first intended to for me. You have been grown for longer than you should have needed to be, though some will only acknowledge that once you’re eighteen. I would tell you to forgive them as well, but I do not believe you should.

Elody, I have not written in a long time, but I enjoy writing your name. There is something about marking it on parchment that feels like defining our story. Elody, Elody, Elody, we will fill many pages with our happiness. I am sure of that.

I love you. Even if you were not my true love, and I was still a frog, I would still love you, and I would still choose you. I believe you know that, but it feels important to write it into the truth of our story.

Soon, we will marry, and that is the time to build traditions. Perhaps this could be one, where I write to you every year that I am granted your company. I am sure I will not run out of things to say. I am sure that I will not grow tired of writing your name.

I am sure of us, Elody.

Love, Gerard

When Elody finished reading the card, she looked at Gerard the way she did before she first kissed him. It was a look he saw less and less as the years went on, and so he wrote to her more and more, until he wasn’t sure if Elody even read some of the letters he wrote her.

As Gerard flees the Snow Queen’s castle, he looks for Elody, and finds her weeping on the ramparts.

She cannot look at him at all.

I think I would have Timothy keep death in it.

Gerard tries to forget the words as soon as he hears them. His own fault for eavespeeping, not that he acknowledges that – he just wanted some gossip, a mindless distraction, confirmation there were problems he’d never have to face himself. Instead, he’s listening to a kid philosophize about why bad things need to happen to her.

Whiskey, that would have to work instead. And it does, the burn in his throat keeping his brain from echoing Ylfa’s words. And then there’s Tom Thumb, with solutions: you can change, things can be better, and all you need to do is follow this thirty-day program. Gerard thinks he feels better, and he falls asleep.

When Tomb Thumb wakes him up, it feels like a predator in the woods. It interrupts the illusion, reminds Gerard that his only safe reality is one designed by dreams and whiskey. He just wants to go back to sleep.

Before he can, he feels claws on his legs.

“Here I go, sleepwalking again.”

Gerard smiles in spite of himself. As Ylfa leans against him, she clutches the Golden Goose’s feather to her chest, much like Elody would clutch her golden ball—both of them clinging to the remnants of what death took from them.

And Ylfa would still keep death in the story.

More than even beginnings and endings, for me, it’s been an evolution or a transformation.

She’s the bravest person Gerard knows, perhaps not in spite of the horrors of her story, but because of them. Gerard does not think that’s fair, and it’s certainly not kind, but it’s reality without the blurry edges of alcohol and subconscious fantasies. He’s not only grateful for who she’s become, but he knows all the worlds are better for it.

A 5AM workout routine is not going to transform Gerard. If the horrors are here, he has to go through them to evolve. And he already knew that, but if destiny was going to separate him from Elody, he’d forgotten the point of it.

Ylfa shifts against him. Of course there’s still a point.

“Red.”

Ylfa pretends to snore, loudly.

“Red, I know you’re asleep, so I promise I’ll also say this when you can hear me. Forgive me for eavespeeping, but I know that you want to keep death in the story. I think that’s brave, but you already know that you’re brave. I also think it will help a lot of people, even if they don’t realize it. I think it’s the right choice in a world where there are few of those. I don’t believe I have any claim to be proud of you, but I am.”

There’s quiet, then, “Promise you won’t be mad, Gerard?”

“I promise.”

“Ok. I must be sleep talking. Classic Ylfa.”

That is exactly who Gerard aspires to be.

The path feels wrong under Ylfa’s feet.

It always has, but that feeling used to live only in her mind, and now it’s infected her body too. It’s easier to accept, the same way a broken bone is easier to accept than fractures of the brain.

She goes onto all fours and into the forest, understanding its danger in a way she didn’t the last time she made this choice.  It still feels like home: the texture of the leaves reminds her of her grandmother’s quilt, the noise of the animals reminds her of her grandmother cursing during gin rummy, the smell of the trees reminds her of her grandmother’s cinnamon toast rolls.

She gathers and hoards the memories, because she knows what she has to give, and she knows the Baba Yaga knows it too.

Ylfa is distracted by a young girl on the path, bright red cloak standing out against the green of the forest. She watches her eye the wildflowers, and wonders what they remind the girl of. Maybe it’s not something she knows yet; maybe it’s a promise of her future rather than relic of her past.

Ylfa blows the girl off the path, and questions if Death did the same to her. Perhaps she needed a reminder of what was to come to make the right choice for herself.

She chats with the girl, and she is as familiar as the forest. She asks her name, and the girl cannot say it.

Ylfa remembers watching The Stepmother eat her grandmother, the second time she’d watched her be consumed. Strangely, she seems like more of a person now that Ylfa sees her as a girl than when she only knew her as her grandmother. She may not have a name in this story, but she still matters in it, and in Ylfa’s story yet to come. Ylfa takes comfort in that.

Ylfa understands her role as her grandmother leads her to her own grandmother’s house. If she is Death, she is glad to walk alongside the one person who won’t judge her for being that. They see the wolf in you and they love it too. You’re not a monster. You’re not.  

Though, she was speaking of Ylfa’s friends, and they’ve confirmed what her grandmother said. Rosamund insisted they stray together. The frog prince—Ylfa can’t vocalize his name in her mind, and she can’t think about why right now—told her that maybe she is exactly who she needs to be to survive in this world. Pib not only rescued her, but sat with her after he did. Timothy told her she could never overstay her welcome. Pinocchio started snowball fights with her, and that was classic preteen friend—maybe even crush?—behaviour.

In holding onto her grandmother’s memory, Ylfa was also holding onto who she is to her grandmother. A rebellious child, who does not follow the path the world wants her to, but is loved all the same. She wants to be someone who loves like that, and when she considers her love for not only her friends, but Little Miss Muffet, Mira, The Golden Goose, and even The Big Bad Wolf itself, she hopes she’s making her grandmother proud. She hopes she’ll continue to even after she forgets who her inspiration is.  

If that is who she can be as Death, she is glad she will be the one to walk people to the end of the path.

“Princess, is it your time to rest? Or do you want your story to continue?”

Rosamund is glad to be asked.

This is what she wants: a chance to write her own story outside of the narrative that’s planned for her. She is not ready to rest--she already rested for a hundred fucking years--and true love is no longer an option. It must be something else; there has to be something else for her to choose. She will take her scrap of a page and discover what it is.  

“I don’t think it’s my time to rest.”

“Then I think—”

She feels the briars before she sees them, wrapping around her heart the way she guaranteed a lover never would. With each pulse of her heart, the briars pierce it.

But her heart must be stronger than everything than every piece of Thumbelina, because she splits in half.

“I take it back!” Rosamund yells. “I take it back!”

“Oh, my dear Rosamund.”

The voice comes from a briar that’s coiled itself into her ear. It’s unrecognizable as any individual fairy, but it drips with both the saccharine sweetness and depraved wickedness Rosamund has realized they all possess.

“You cannot take a choice back, my girl. This is why you should have trusted the ending that was written for you.” The voice tuts, a disapproving parental figure that never gave Rosamund anything but rules. “Your gifts did not come without a curse. You have sacrificed the one condition that would break it. You have rejected rest. What did you think was left for you, Sleeping Beauty?”

Rosamund tries to use her own voice, but a briar invades her mouth and replaces her smile. Its teeth are sharper than her own.

“Oh, I know what’s that like.”

The voice in Rosmaund’s heads changes, a conspiratorial older sister like she tried to be Red. The briars morph into thick strands of golden hair.

“It’s a shame we never got to talk.” Rapunzel’s voice comes from everywhere her hair touches.  “We have a lot in common. Locked away, someone else claiming to know what’s best for us, unable to make our own choices…”  

The briars spin, like hair being twirled around a finger.

“But when we did write our own story, we gained power. I know it hurts, Rosamund. I know it may not seem like it, but my hair hurts too. It chokes me, and restrains me, but more importantly than any of that, it keeps me safe—”

She’s cut off, because Gerard is eating Rapunzel on the battlefield. Her voice returns, hoarse from screaming. It sounds the way her hair feels in Rosamund’s throat.

“He will consume all of you, Rosamund. He has already done so to Elody in their marriage, though she does not recognize that. You must him put him to sleep.”

Rosamund cannot see a prince on the battlefield, only a monster. 

Suddenly, the hair transforms into chains.  

“Hello, my love.”

The deep, cruel voice of the Baron of Bricks feels like the weight of the chains on Rosamund’s skin. It comes from the ones trapping her heart into beating.

“I know, of course, that I am not your true love,” he says. “I know you will not get that. But, I do believe we have more in common than either of us first thought. You have rejected death, and I respect that, but I must warn you that it will not last as long as Death is around. She just took a Beast. She can certainly take a Princess.”

Rosamund cannot see a girl on the battlefield, only The Big Bad Wolf.

“If you need to put her in a stew, I have a recipe. Otherwise, you have all the tools you require. You must put her to sleep.”

The chains drop, but Rosamund is quickly snatched up by sharp claws. The Baba Yaga runs them down her face, her neck, and finally stops at the same wrists she considered feasting on. Her voice comes from the wounds she created.

“Thank you, Princess, for your gift. I am taking good care of your true love. He is only feeling the pain you would have caused each other after happily ever after.”

She cackles, and it infects the wounds.

“You made a wise choice in putting him to sleep.”

The claws release Rosamund, and the briars consume her again. Slowly, a pattern appears on them that represents a kind of evil she still had not accepted existed.

“I am sorry my son could not keep you safe, Rosamund. You do not need to worry about punishing him for that; I assure you I will take care of it.”

The Stepmother’s voice sounds like Rosamund’s own thoughts.

“Sleeping Beauty, I know what it’s like to have a role assigned to you. But, I also know what it’s like to edit the story. We can change this together. You can make your own choices, just as you wished. Put them all to sleep, Rosamund, and we will write the stories this world deserves.”

There is no happy ending for Rosamund. Only what must be done in this room.

Gerard knew Death.

He’d run from it and towards it, experienced it through a memory he owned but didn’t live through, freed it from chains at a young girl’s request.

He knew the body underneath him was one that had carried him before, that had protected him, that had cared for him, when none of those things should’ve been a child’s responsibility. He’d watched it break its bones, contorting itself into new ways to feel pain to prevent others from feeling the hurt that was meant for them. He understood it only identified as a princess or monster, and the latter were defeating the former in battle. Death knew who it needed to be.

He’d talked with Death. About Elody, because it asked without the judgement of his other companions. About parents neither of them deserved. About who they needed to be to survive in this world.

This was not what he meant.

There was no cruelty in Death, but there was none of the compassion that he knew either. There was no humour that would joke about the buoy of destiny. There was no playfulness that would start a snowball fight. There was no rebellion that would stray from the path of everyone’s fate.

Gerard watches the girl split from the wolf, and tries to scream. Red. Ylfa. You are not a hindrance to who you have to be. Come back. I need your help to walk me down the path. I am sorry that we all need your help.

He can’t, of course. He’s dead.

Death picks up Elody. Gerard pretends it’s a glimpse of the girl, a preteen pulling an elaborate scheme to reunite them, and not simply what it has to do.

As Death rides into shadows, Gerard sees Rosamund reach for the girl amidst the swirling pages and ink. He vows to do the same in any story he writes.