Pale/Grey prompt with sleapyGazelle
Inspired by OzQueene on AO3 and FF
On those nights she cannot sleep, she looks at sweet sweet Phillip beside her and wonders if she can voice why she wishes she can forever stay awake. How can she put into words the feeling of falling and never reaching the ground. Endless. Endless. Endless. She looks at Phillip who breathes sweet sweet dreams and waits for the sun to rise.
In the morning when Phillip awakes, she will put on a smile befitting of a Princess and do her duty that she is realizing with startling clarity she may be unequipped for. After all, the fairies have no use for politics, no use for royal etiquette, no use for veiled words and smothered rage. So she learns because she has to and then she learns some more because nothing is more terrifying than the unknown and the knowledge that she will be helpless once again before a simple object.
But the dreams never cease and tonight, she is falling once again, feet scrambling to land, hand reaching to hold something, anything, but there is nothing but blackness and the fall. Endless. Endless. Endless. She wakes up to white sheets curling around her legs, white spots dancing in her vision, and a white white face looking back at her. She realizes with a start that she's not alone in the darkness and that sweet sweet Phillip has an iron grip on her arm as if pulling her from the deep.
Maybe he had.
He is breathless, still, unmoving in the blackness of the night. His face is unreadable and his hold is taut, strong, almost bruising, but she relishes it because the pain is real and she has never felt more alive and awake than this moment.
She wonders if he knows what falling feels like.
Sweet sweet Phillip continues his watch but she knows what he is thinking. His mind is racing through the thousand and one questions, searching, searching, searching to find the least amount of questions to ask in order not to hurt her. And because he is sweet sweet Phillip, he finds his question and asks in a tone she'd only heard in the dark recesses of her mind. "For how long?"
For how long? For how long what? For how long she's had dreams? For how long she's been falling? For how long she's been slipping away because she's being called a name she was given but has never heard for sixteen years until she woke up with a crown on her head?
There is a beat, two, of silence until she swallows hard and answers in a small, small voice, "For as long as I can remember."
"Is it her doing?," He asks second and she bows her head, ignoring the tremors; she's no longer certain who is shaking who awake and she doesn't mind not knowing.
"Perhaps. Or maybe it just is. Who knows how magic works? It is not for us to know." After all, they are just mere mortals who adhere to magical beings.
Phillip releases her, clearly unhappy, but remains at her side, white knuckled hands splayed out on the bed. He sighs and it is a long sound, wispy and lonely; he does not speak for a long moment and she knows he is struggling to understand. "Is there nothing I can do?"
She turns to him, rolling with the white white sheets to face him. The silver moon and her gentle glow light up sweet sweet Phillip who knows what it is like to rise, to fight, to win, but doesn't know what it is like to fall. So she takes his hands in hers and kisses them with an ache in her heart that she cannot put into words. "Being with you is enough. That you are here, alive and well, is enough."
"No," sweet sweet Phillip responds in kind, not ungently. "There must be something to be done. I… That is…" He stops to look out the open window and into the starry sky, focusing on something far far away. "I didn't think we'd both suffer like this."
Suddenly, the air is thin and she can't breathe because sweet sweet Phillip, the man who had pulled her out of the deep the first time around, and every time since, is saying that he knows what it is like to fall and she is realizing with sharp sharp clarity that he has never talked about the time in between her long sleep and her fall into darkness. She licks her lips, the red red lips that Flora had blessed, and they are dry just like her voice. She struggles to breathe, to find words, and she does; they come out hoarse, raw, as if disused for a long long time. "She made you sleep too?"
He says nothing for a long time. He only looks out into the distance and she knows that he need not respond for her to know the answer to her question. "It's horrible, isn't it? The fall?"
She holds his hands tighter and doesn't let go. She lets the silence be the answer to his third question because there is no need to answer when sweet sweet Phillip finally turns to look at her with an expression she had never seen before. There is something too familiar in his eyes and she realizes with a rush of sharp sharp pain that she has seen it before; after all, she's seen it everyday in her own eyes ever since she awoke with that crown on her head.
She wonders why she's never seen it before. Perhaps she had but pretended not to see, just like she is pretending now about how she doesn't feel the delicate tremors in his fingers.
"Aurora,"Phillip whispers, pulling her closer so that the white white sheets unwind, forgotten at the foot of the bed. "Come and dream with me," he murmurs, and she nods, falls back into bed with him. They lay together, hand in hand, and Aurora has never felt this warm in her entire life.
Come and dream with me. Together. Are the unspoken words sweet sweet Phillip asks and what can she do but say yes to this man who understands what it is like to fall. Endless. Endless. Endless.
The gentle moon is slipping from the sky as easily as they fall asleep and this time, for the first time since the fall, she is falling together with someone who knows what it is like to overcome. She takes the hand offered to her and doesn't let go.
- Was super inspired by OzQueen who wrote the Enchanted Sleep as a fall. Thank you for the inspiration.
- Hope you enjoy this simple interaction between Aurora and Phillip. I wanted to portray them as a beautiful understanding couple. Hope that comes across.
- Thanks for reading~ Drop a comment if you like~