A Bird Trying To Fill The Sea
A/N: Hi there. This is a slow MulanxAurora piece, with heavy doses of Philip and backstory in the beginning. This is an AU where Emma and Mary Margaret don't get transported via the hat. Not yet.
Disclaimer: Thank you, OuAT for giving me a wonderful magical universe to play around with. Naw, not really. OUaT and Disney are not mine.
PART 1
When she dreams, Mulan hears the roar of her River, fresh and deep. Every time her eyelids close its torrents and rapids fill her to the brim. Perhaps someday, her heart would take up its seeming stillness too.
Sometimes a butchering knife eagerly glinting with pig-blood materializes. Or her military comrades appear, guffawing boisterously and clapping her on the back. Most times, her wizened old Mother and Father stand at the threshold of their simple ancestral home, leaning into each other, smiling with relief.
This is where the nightmares start.
She's in a cursed land, with missing footsteps and dried up rivers, paths that fill with cut-throated magical beasts that were worse than the Invaders, a land cursed by evil to eradicate true love.
So when she awakes for the first time in her tent to her nightmare's realization- it seems less frightening, at least it seemed to be so under her stone-faced mask. A world devoid of her family, her brothers-in-arms, and the warmth of the mountains. The cause, she would find out later, was a vengeful Queen who was desperate to see whether in misery, she can find happiness.
Mulan hoped the Queen bled as much as the hearts she crushed.
She cries only once, two tears at best, when after two days by foot across dying jungles, darkened skies, she sees a fallen general's corpse, his spirited horse whinnying as if in mourning for several hours, the skies overcast him stormier.
She would recognize his face anywhere. The sharp sculpt of his chin, the eyelids that now enclosed once fiery eyes. "Mulan. You are not a man."
He never leaves her dreams either.
Her only companion meets her, oddly, in the middle of a dwarf cottage.
She's desperate for supplies, driven on nothing but adrenaline and several days-old goat's blood, her spirits running lower than she could handle. So it is no surprise that at the twitch of a footstep she dexterously unsheathed her sword and aimed it at the assailant's throat, angling for a quick, clean cut if need be.
"Please!" The voice seems higher pitched, almost like a womanish squeal, although she was certain by the man's chest he was no woman. Perhaps a boy. Oh, they were more cunning. She narrows her eyes and twists the blade slightly.
The boy backs away in fear. Raises his arms weakly. Mulan wanted to snort in derision. If he had a white handkerchief and waved it in her face, it would be the same thing.
"I-I know how to open the dwarf's pantry." He pleads, and this forces Mulan to reconsider.
Either leave the boy here to die, ensuring less future headaches, or to strap him along and endure his pathetic form. He was openly afraid of a sword. What properly trained man would do such a thing?
"Alright." She concludes, and withdraws the sword. She does not sheath it. "Show me."
The boy smiles. It is a brightness that Mulan is not familiar with.
The unconscious curl that quirks her lips upwards is strange as well.
"My name is Phillip."
The boy speaks without fear quivering in his voice after five full days, and his lanky form seems to fill out more, fed on sheer game and goat's blood. He seems less unwieldy with a sword as well. One might say, as her elder sister once giggled to her when she was five summers old, he was handsome.
She might learn to tolerate his presence.
Within his next breath he utters, "I'm looking for my true love beauty. She's cursed to a never ending sleep."
She doesn't know why her face falls at this.
"This Maleficient." She pronounces the word to the best of her ability, but her tongue sticks to her teeth and hisses like a dying fire. He tosses her a roguish smile. She grunts.
"She is a dragon." He nods, cutting the next clearing. "And she is the one responsible for your… princess bewitched into a sleep."She quirks an eyebrow, questioning quietly.
He responds immediately. "For ten years, I think. Actually, with no time passing in this godforsaken land, I suppose it is twenty five."
The taut shoulder muscles of her horse indicate that she was close.
Very close it seemed to the dragon's lair.
They stave off the army of trolls and deadly, fire-breathing snakes. The missing witch, it seemed, also had a fondness for exotic, dangerous creatures which had a craving for human flesh.
They reach her grand throne room, and despite the sheer garishness of it all, she plunges her sword onto the chimera and watches it disintegrate at the foot of an ornately, strangely simple basin.
The basin is filled with crystalline fluid, with a vial containing a single lock of hair.
Mulan never was known to resist curiosity, so she uttered a curse under her breath and tosses the delicate golden strand inside.
She sees her face for the first time, and Mulan finally remembers the meaning of breathing.
A lotus face, two dew drop eyelids, lips fairer than firelight. Most importantly, a chest rising and falling in a soothing rhythm, too deep to be mere sleep. She looks away abruptly, too afraid to be entranced longer than she should. She resumes her battle, finally paying mind to Philip's outraged calls of help.
A dragon did not deserve such truthful beauty. A prince did not either.
Most of all, Mulan thought ruefully, she deserves her least of all.
"I know how to reach her."
She gasps finally escaping the damning castle. Philip looks at her sharply. "What do you mean." His voice is equal parts hopeful and dangerous.
"The tower she is locked in. It is located far, far away. But we can get there. Several years journey."
Philip's face blossoms, a light she'd never seen entering his eyes for the first time. "But we can get there!" He exclaims, and in a rush of emotion envelops her into a huge, brotherly hug.
She had been hugged before. By men who thought she was a man. Never by a man fully knowing she was a woman. That she was Mulan.
She had frozen. Philip did not mind, stepped back.
He mistook her paralysis for despair. He gently took her hand. "Do not worry." He tells her gently. "You will always be important to me."
And I will find your princess for you, Mulan swore silently, and I will protect her for as long as I live.
Three years, and when they step into the Enchanted Forest's soil her spine shudders at broken, dark magic. It was potent in the air more than anywhere else she knew, growing stronger and stronger as she became closer to the tower.
She and Philip were more manic now, she could see it in his pupil's reflection of her gaze. They had barely slept for days, barely eaten nor drunk water. He, driven by true love's promise. She, perhaps driven by something that she dared not name, something eerily similar, but she felt it pulling at her stronger.
Philip may have loved her his whole life, Mulan thinks. But if a mere reflection of her would be enough to send Mulan into a thirst that not even the Seven Rivers can quench, she would not bear to see the Princess in blood and flesh.
"A rabbit's tail cannot grow too long." Mulan sagely informs Philip one day, eyes tired of sun and moon light.
They burst into laughter, almost hysterically, until an arrow wizzes out to slice the sound into two.
Silence. One beat. Two beats.
"Who's there!" Mulan barks, and Philip shoots her an alarmed look.
The fabled Lancelot saunters into the clearing, greeting their raised sword and bow with a somber smile.
"Welcome, my friends, to our survivors' camp."
"You're welcome." The fallen knight quips amusedly as the duo ravenously devour the various sweetmeats and fruits, a look of sheer bliss crossing their faces.
"How many day's journey is it to the West Tower?" The female, whom he had come to respect as Mulan, enquired after several minutes worth of chewing. The man nodded in eager agreement.
Lancelot links his fingers in deep thought. "Oh, several fortnights. Past the trolls and the wolf-packs? Two days."
A look of understanding passes between the two and when the older woman soon asks him about troll-defeating techniques, he is only happy to oblige.
"You see, you have to hit them right in the eye…"
They have reached the tower. It looms in front of them, almost tauntingly, bolted by locks that no fire nor sheer force can overcome.
"Magic," Philip helpfully points out. "We need an unlocking spell." Mulan, fortunately, was prepared for this.
She uncaps a scroll and ignores the baffled look on her companion's face. "What?" She questions. "I made a deal with an imp. He happened to have one of these."
She recites it slowly, closes her eyes when for a brief moment it does not seem to work.
But the doors are flung open, and Philip looks straight ahead across the fallen courtyard.
To the sleeping beauty encased in a morbidly ornate chamber.
Mulan wore her helmet, her face once again enclosed by chainmail and the royal wreaths of the Emperor. She lets herself feel fear for the first time.
Her mind points out to her that the Princess has a name, Aurora. Philip breathes it for the first time, kissing her fair lips. Something deep inside her clenches.
Aurora. She internally recites it. She feels lighter. An appropriate name.
She soon reminds herself that she is Mulan, warrior of the Yellow River, conqueror of the Black Mountain, the most honored daughter in her long cursed Kingdom. But nothing stops her from softening at the sight of her princess.
She tears her eyes away. The princess's footsteps are light and nimble as Philip leads her by the hand downstairs. He introduces her by the unwise title of friend.
"Friend?" She echoes incredulously. Twelve years of companionship, living as brothers, and Mulan was a mere friend, after all. She removes her helmet.
She dares herself to look at the princess. "She's a girl?" The princess betrays surprise and suspicion.
"A woman." Mulan replied, almost haughtily. Philip looked at her warningly. He had prepared her for this, several days before. "No machismo, Mulan." He had explicitly told her. "She is a princess but she'd be more comfortable if you behaved like a woman."
This was too complicated. Mulan preferred not feeling at all. Nothing hurt more than seeing them kiss repeatedly, her eyes shining with adoration and love for a man who did not deserve her.
But she was bound to duty more than anything, and she will continue her life's promise.
Mulan realizes the heartbreaking truth when Philip refuses to pass her the kindle for the fire. His eyes are shining with unshed tears and anger boils up in her that upsets her calm pretense.
The river in her churns restlessly.
The bitter reality causes a lump to form in her throat. Philip and his princess deserved a peaceful ending, she cursed to all the ancestors she could remember. An ending she desperately needs for them to realize.
Every look at her princess is painful. The princess is more wary of her, but she is a fool.
She thinks Mulan loves Philip. If only Aurora knew the truth, she would have more reason to be terrified.
"Goodbye, my Mulan."
The whisper is woven into the fabric of the River, now red and angry.
It appears to her nearly four months into her mourning.
Philip does not look at either one of them.
He faces the Wraith, and he is reduced to the boy that she met in that dwarf cottage, the man whom she developed and protected vanquished by sacrifice for true love.
"I love you." He says, and Mulan knows it is not the same for both of them.
Six tears slip unnoticed from Mulan's cheeks this time.
The woods are quiet, and the fireflies waltz in the pungent air.
Mulan remembers the tale her mother used to tell her, about the man who studied hard by firefly light and snow.
Perhaps it means more now, Mulan thinks, as she uses her silk cloth to gently capture each swiveling insect.
The princess, who had refused to move from the spot that remained of Philip, looks up at her with red-rimmed eyes.
"What are you doing?" Aurora demands, grief rasping her sweet voice.
Mulan does not respond. But she does offer her a small half-smile.
The water, when drawn and quartered is raised up in the well by fingers used to dainty needlework and the perfume of roses.
Lately, they've held squelched mud, the blood of common animals, unshed tears and heartbreak of the likes Aurora has never seen.
The woman next to her does not speak, she sharpens her sword onto an egg and occasionally lifts it up in the air. A dark look of satisfaction passes the warrior's eyes as the sword glints.
In fact, Aurora notes bitterly, she does not even offer help as the princess half-stumbles across the deserted village with the pail of water.
"Does your blood thirst get quenched, or the does it grow stronger?" Aurora asks her curiously, fed up with the weeks of silence aside from necessary instructions.
The woman remains quiet for a long time. Aurora resumes bathing the horses, almost scrubbing too roughly. Mulan had to show her that too.
"For a woman so accustomed to such barbaric activities, you definitely seem a lot shier than Philip told me you were."
Mentioning his name and insulting her at the same time- a heady combination. But Aurora would resort to anything, anything to break the maddeningly slow thawing ice between them.
Mulan digs her precious sword into the deep soil and swivels around to meet her. Stares at her straight in the eyes.
"There is nothing barbaric about protecting the ones you love."
Aurora struggled for a reply. "Well, since he's dead- what's the point?" Her voice cracks with the exhaustion and sheer stress of trying to stay alive in the land fraught with danger. "What's the point in keeping me alive?" The words are broken, and she wants to crumple into the ground.
Mulan stands up abruptly and saunters so close to her, she can feel the hot billows of her breath upon her cheeks. "Don't." She utters, low and violent, her eyes not bloodthirsty but desperate in their need. Mulan grips her elbows tightly. She is paralyzed, but not out of fear. But of sheer anticipation.
Her eyes are black, like a frozen lake at night. "Don't you dare." Mulan chokes out, the most emotion she has displayed in sixteen days. When Mulan searches her face for the last time and walks away to resume sharpening her sword, Aurora does not feel so defeated anymore.
But it does not lessen her anger.
When Mulan tells her to stay in the survivor's camp, something about finding the culprit for the Wraith's intrusion into their world, she spits the worst insults she can find. Mulan endures the verbal abuse, cutting her off by informing that she was leaving that night.
"Mulan." Aurora calls out softly, and Mulan stops herself from exiting the tent's flaps. She dared to say the warrior's name for the first time since they met. "Please. Wherever you go, I will follow."
She knew that Mulan couldn't sense out her half-lie. So she is completely fine when Mulan leaves her after a long pause, refusing to look at her face. "I'm sorry," Mulan says. She appeared sincere.
Wherever she went, she will follow- but Aurora won't seek her permission.