A/N: I love Tim Burton and I am going to do more of these Halloween segments because I can work so well with the Tudor timeline and some of the characters are so similar to his puppet creations in Nightmare and Corpse Bride. I cried the first time I saw the latter because I felt that Emily was such a tragic figure and when I saw the Tudors I couldn't help but think these two seem alike, so this idea of doing a fic about Emily being her reincarnation is very old indeed, but since I started doing these one shot that parallel each other, I decided to give this a shot and make it part of the same universe so it is a tie in with my other stories of Rose Petals, Love will set us free, Now and Forever and so on.
So please read and leave a review!
"I was a bride. My dreams were taken from me. But now, now I've stolen them from someone else. I love you Victor but you are not mine."
~Emily the Corpse Bride
"Wait, I made a promise."
"You kept your promise. You set me free." I said and put the ring back in his hands. "Now I can do the same for you." And I turned my back and exited the church and looked up at the night sky. The moon never looked so full and beautiful.
I could feel myself being lifted away piece by piece. I had been a bride … once … many, many years ago. But my time had long gone past by.
~o~
Kitty Howard thought she had met her match with Francis Dereham, he was handsome and he had a magical voice.
When he promised her to make her his wife, she was happy but her step-grandmother, the Duchess Dowager didn't let her marry him. She was only fourteen. "And you must remember what the other man did."
"That's true. But this time will be different granny" –she told her. But she didn't believe her. She knew her charge well. She had her head stuck in the clouds and even after what that man Weston did, she still believed in fairy tales of love and knights in shining armor, sweeping girls off their feet.
When it turned out that Francis was the same and he intended to kill her and run off with her money, she lied to him and told him that they could run away if he did something for her first. He believed her because she lied so well. But the bastard returned and when he did, it was at the happiest moment (or at least she thought at the time) of her life. She was Queen of England and her uncle told her that if she gave the King a son then she would be his queen and who knows! In a few years her son could be prince of Wales since poor Edward was so bony, sick and weak to be king.
But here was Dereham to take her dreams. She didn't care if he blackmailed her, she could deal with his kind; but her husband was paranoid and who knew what was on his mind? One day he thought something was good, the next he hated it.
If Henry caught wind of this … No! She had to make sure nobody knew. So she employed him as her secretary and people got suspicious and they talked. (They always talked). And then there was the lady Mary, that washed up old princess. She loved to talk. She got Henry to fire two of her maids and like a lost puppy he did her bidding. And she felt so good that she went a step further and visited her again to mock her and tell her how old she looked. (It was a lie of course. The former princess looked good. But no use telling your enemy that when they are at their lowest).
But life screwed her up again. One handsome page caught her attention. He noticed her too and Jane Parker encouraged it. "After all, what harm it could do?" Days turned into months and a year after she married Henry, fingers started pointing in her directions. Accusations started, everybody who had welcomed her and called her 'Her Majesty' called her a harlot and laughed in her face as she knelt in front of her husband and begged him not to take her away.
"Good riddance." She heard one of the Seymour brothers say, looking at her with the most condescending glance. But what surprised her was the lady Mary. She didn't look happy or pleased with the outcome. Any normal person would at seeing their enemy sunk so low, and especially when that person humiliated you but nothing about the lady Mary was normal. There was no expression in her face at all.
When she resigned herself to her fate, she began humming. An old tune she heard in her dreams. And when they moved her from Syon House to the Tower of London she asked for a block, so she could practice. Then the day came and she went to her execution with a calm expression which turned to a smile when she looked up to the sky and said "Life is beautiful" then knelt and put her head on the block and knew no more…
~o~
That had been so long ago. When I died, I thought I was going crazy and I asked Elder Grupnick what this meant and he told me these were memories of my past life. I had been a bride once too, a wonderful queen who begged for others, who tried to do her best but who was repudiated by everyone, and cast aside when I dared to do what women were never allowed to do: fall in love. And I thought that meeting Victor, that I would finally have what was denied to me but I was wrong. He deserves to be happy just as I will finally be.
I am free. I sighed and I felt my spirit soar, never to be seen again by mortal or immortal eyes. I was finally one with the source and I would never have to suffer.
