Disclaimer: Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine own - unfortunately.
AN: I grant you another of my ITW oneshots! And this one will actually stay a oneshot - I don't want two multi-chaps for one section going at once.
She was all alone, it was dark. Despite the blackness that surrounded her, Leanette could tell that the curse had not been reactivated. She was still standing up straight - she was not again hunched over. Her hands found each other, they still felt creamy and smooth. Everyone was gone, she was no longer in the woods, and the curse hadn't been reactivated like she'd planned on. So many questions were whirling around in her brain that it brought on a migrane. Where was she? Why hadn't the curse reactivated? Why was she surrounded by pure blackness? Why was she there? How did she get there?
"Leanette," spoke a voice. Leanette jumped at the sound and was blinded by a sudden bright light. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut. She knew that voice.
"M-Mother?!" she was shocked. She didn't believe it. She slowly opened her eyes, afraid of what she'd see. There stood her mother with glowing bright blue eyes, firey red curls, and she was wearing the most beautiful white gown. It appeared to be made of silk and flowed at least ten feet behind her. She appeared not to have aged since the last time Leanette had saw her.
"Yes, child," her mother answered. Leanette slowly looked around. All she could see was blackness, other than the bright light radiating around her mother.
"Where are we?" she asked. She feared the answer. Her mother didn't appear to have aged since the last time she'd seen her, and the said time was when she attended her open-coffin funeral. "Am I. . .?" she couldn't finish the question. Her mouth suddenly dried up, as if she were attempting to eat cotton.
"Dead?" her mother finished before laughing. "Oh no - no, Leanette, you're not dead. And neither am I for a matter of fact. We've simply come into a new world. A level higher then the world before,"
"So to that world I am dead," Leanette stated.
"Not quite," Leanette was confused. She knew of many possible supernatural things that could happen, but this just didn't make any sense at all. "You can travel back and forth between worlds, and still be alive and known in both," she was starting to make out her reflection in the mud. "There are about a hundred levels of life. Most choose not to return to the previous level when they realize the level they've been promoted to is better than the one they came from," Hurt and anger pulsed through Leanette all at once. She could connect the dots.
"Why, mother? Why did you not return to me?" her voice was smaller than she would've liked. Tears formed in her eyes. "Do you have any idea how alone I've been without you? Do you have any idea what struggle I went through when I received my powers after your 'death'? Huh?"
Remorse was beginning to show on her mother's face. "Yes, I know. I saw, I've been watching," This hurt Leanette even more.
"Oh that's just fantastic! You really knew how much pain I had gone through and still chose not to return? Do you not love me?"
Tears were now forming in her mother's eyes. "Of course I love you,"
"Then why would you do that? Why put an entire world between yourself and your daughter who needed you?"
"Because this world is better. This world has no pain," was Leanette's mother's answer. Leanette laughed bitterly. That conversation was over.
"Goodbye. Don't ever expect to see me in this world," she walked away into the darkness until she came upon the woods that she called home.
It wasn't perfect, but it was where she chose to be. She preferred a world where people would felt both the good and the bad, and where the bad often brought people together. She couldn't exist in the world her mother chose to be. Leanette hadn't thought of herself as bad, just right. Now she realized she was bad and that she had brought people together that would never have met if it weren't for her. It wasn't happy, but it wasn't fake either. She didn't care how many 'levels' of life there were, she'd stick to this one. It may not always have a happy ever after, but the real world doesn't always have happy ever afters. The woods in which she lived was the only true real world.