Falling. Falling. Falling. Mr. Snuggles watched Dawn fall. It was a moment of sheer horror and terror for him, and no word in the English language (or any other for that matter) would ever be able to fully describe the raw, sheer, animal energy and agony he felt as he watched her plummeting to the ground. Something that was halfway between a roar and a scream tore itself from his mouth and he reached out to catch Dawn, one last desperate attempt to save her life. It didn't matter that he and Dawn were no longer on friendly terms. Even he wouldn't be callous enough to let a child die, let alone one whom he had been friends with for all of their lives. Instead, in that one little instant, all that mattered was saving Dawn's life and preventing her from hitting the pavement 300 feet below.
"DAWN!" he shouted her name once as he made a wild swing. His paw managed to brush up against Dawn, but he failed to catch her properly and instead only sent her spinning down to her death even faster. He gave another hoarse roar of terror as he felt something deep within his stuffing began to twist and twitch painfully. He slid down Big Ben's tower, ignoring the sharp stones that dug into his soft body, stripping some of his fur away. He took another wild swing, but this time, his missed entirely. Dawn sailed right past his outstretched paw and he could only cry out one last time before she finally made impact, hitting the ground with a horrific crunch. He hadn't even had time to blink, let alone shimmy down another 50-odd feet of London's mighty clock tower, before she hit the ground.
The sound of the crunch of Dawn's body as it hit the stones was deafening, and Mr. Snuggles had never heard anything louder. Even though the general chaos in the background of London's streets was painfully loud, it was nothing in comparison to that one bone-shattering crack as Dawn slammed into the pavement, the impact flattening her and everything inside of her. Danger Mouse, Penfold and Bernard, who were standing a few feet away, all gasped in horror. They ran over to Dawn's broken body at once, recoiling in terror, grief and disgust as the mushy, messy mass of the girl who used to call herself a princess. She was hardly recognizable now, and she was far more red than she was black by this point, all of her gothy and emo attire stained a painfully-aesthetic crimson.
"Oh, cor!" Penfold gasped, collapsing to his knees. He could hardly comprehend the graphic scene in front of him, and he was only half aware of Bernard swiftly trying to comfort him, plushy arms wrapping around Penfold's chubby belly.
Beside him, Danger Mouse couldn't even speak. He could only stare, open-mouthed in horror as the true severity of this situation sank into his brain. A child was dead. This child, this little girl, was dead. One second she was here, and the next she was totally gone. And she was only about 10 years old! That was a life taken away far too soon and far too fast! She was maybe about 20-odd years younger than Danger Mouse himself, and she was already dead and gone. She would never be able to come back, and the world would never hear her high-pitched giggle again.
But worst of all, to Danger Mouse, was the fact that she was supposed to be one of the very people he protected! His entire life's work was all about saving and protecting London! And that included villains! And in Dawn's case, this identity of "villain" was even more complicated because, dastardly though she was, she was still only a little girl. She had always been his least favorite villain, not just because she was a whiny and annoying little brat, but because she was only a child. It made him feel uncomfortable to fight her, because she was the kind of person he had sworn to protect. It was his duty to protect children, and that was an oath that extended to Dawn, whether she liked it or not.
But now look at her! Dead! Slammed into the sidewalk! Literally, the impact had been hard enough to crack some of the sidewalk, and now her blood was running through those cracks and spilling out onto the road beside them. In the background, other horrified onlookers came to gawk. Eyes and mouths were covered in grief and disgust as curious eyes got a good, hard look at the shattered body of a 10-year-old girl, lying spread-eagled on a broken and bloody sidewalk.
Mr. Snuggles was taking it worst of all, however. He was in total shock, complete and utter lockdown. He could only continue to cling to Big Ben's side and stare down at Dawn's body. He saw everything and nothing. He saw the way the red stained her hair, and the way it tinted her skin. He saw the way it soaked through her dress, making the black fabric even darker than before. He could even smell the rusty tang of her life essence as it continued to spread out in all directions from where she lay.
But even so, he hardly registered any of it. It was not clicking that this body belonged to his beloved little princess, Dawn. He couldn't believe that the dead body down there belonged to Dawn. Not his Dawn! Surely not! She was only a child! This must be some sort of joke or trick or prank! Or maybe she was only knocked out? And that wasn't really an entire body's worth of blood she was losing, right? Maybe that sickening crunch had only been an illusion? Surely Dawn wasn't really dead! It was impossible! Stuff like that didn't happen here! Right? Mr. Snuggles shook his head, half of his brain locked in firm denial and the other totally shut down and unresponsive to anything.
But at last, feeling returned to several of the onlookers and they began to dial for help. Cops and ambulances arrived on the scene in record time. The moment one shell-shocked nurse reached out to scrape Dawn off the sidewalk, however, Mr. Snuggles roared from overhead, still frozen onto Big Ben's side. The sight of someone trying to remove Dawn and take her away from him, however, woke him up.
"NO!" he roared. "DON'T TOUCH HER!" then he leapt off the side of Big Ben, shaking the earth as he hit the ground. Everyone in the area backed up in fear, already tensing for some sort of attack. Even the nurse that had tried to pick up Dawn's body was retreating.
Mr. Snuggles, however, had no interest in any of them. Instead, with all the care and tenderness any teddy bear could ever have, Mr. Snuggles knelt down and gently picked Dawn's body up right off the pavement. It wasn't an easy removal, sickening as that was to say, but Mr. Snuggles did not care. All that mattered now was Dawn. With a strange mix of strength and softness, he was able to peel her body from the pavement and cradle her bloody body in his fluffy arms before carrying her away, every step causing the ground to shake a little.
"Chief?" Penfold whispered, still kneeling on the ground with Bernard rubbing his face into his back.
"Let them go," Danger Mouse answered, subdued, finally kneeling down beside Penfold to hug him as well. The onlookers, understanding what Danger Mouse's gesture meant, bowed their heads in respect and grief. No one made any attempt to stop Mr. Snuggles or fetch Dawn's body from him. Instead, they only sent in a cleanup crew to wash the gore from the sidewalks.
But while Penfold, Danger Mouse and the others remained around Big Ben, Mr. Snuggles carried Dawn all the way back home. He shouldered his massive body inside the house and into Dawn's room, using the magical tiara resting upon his head to shrink down just a bit so that he could stand inside the room comfortably. Unthinking, he set her body upon her bed and pulled the blankets up around her, as though he were only tucking her in for a nap that she would wake up from in a matter of hours.
"There you go, Dawn, all nice and cozy now, aren't you?" he asked hollowly as he fluffed the pillow underneath her dirty, tangled black locks. They were drenched in blood and stuck to her back, which was equally wet and red. Because it had been her face that had made impact with the ground, that was what suffered the most disfigurement.
Both of her eyes were bruised, her forehead was flattened and cracked, her cheeks had several gnashes and bruises, her nose had been flattened and her lips had been smashed into her teeth and half of her teeth were missing, only bloody holes remaining in their place. The redness poured out of her mouth. She looked like a vampire. Her nose was broken beyond recognition. Her entire face was cut up and bruised, so covered in red and black that not a trace of her usual skin tone could be seen.
A normal person would've been driven to madness, or at least driven to sickness, at the gruesome and graphic disfigurement of this little girl, but Mr. Snuggles was still so stuck in shock that the true horrors and extent of Dawn's injuries were totally lost upon him. Instead, he could only stare down at her mutilated face and shake his head slowly.
"There you go, Dawn," he repeated, thoughtlessly. "Here you are now, all nice and cozy in your bed. I'll watch over you, and I'll keep you safe until you wake up again. And then, we can play whatever you want. You can pick the first game," he continued to ramble on, slowly and softly, to Dawn's corpse. He hardly noticed how ruined her bed was becoming. All he could do was kneel beside her and watch, keeping a silent vigil over the empty shell of a body that remained.
Dimly, in the back of his numb mind, he could only muse on how much she reminded him of Sleeping Beauty at this moment. Perhaps she was no beauty, but that ugliness and disfigurement was still not registering with him. Mr. Snuggles could only see the Dawn that lay underneath all the scars and pain. He could only see the little girl that used to be. Because of that, he saw neither corpse nor Dark Dawn. He only saw a Sleeping Beauty. And like Sleeping Beauty, she would wake up some day. He was sure of it. He just had to wait. But until then?
"I'll watch over you, and I'll keep you safe until you wake up again..."
AN: This is my last "falling sequence during the Big Ben Battle of Dark Dawn" fic, I swear! I just wanted to do a darker, sadder ending where Snuggles fails to save Dawn and she dies as a result. Enjoy the gothy angst! It's what Dark Dawn would've wanted!