A/N: Because I felt like throwing things when the the Huntsman was the one to wake her. I do not own this movie, dialogue, or characters. If I did, things might have gone like this with all its implications for the end and stuff I didn't cover.
She stared at him, breath coming in short, eyes wide. Gods, she looked like nothing more than a scared kit. He sighed.
"Here." He handed her a knife and pulled one of her arms up. "Enemy comes at you, you block here. Let him use his weight against you. You wait for him to get close, and then you stab up with your knife, to the hilt. You understand?" He dropped away as she nodded, and started to walk forward again. If he didn't keep putting his feet in front of each other, she might end up as something of a student of his. He had no use for children.
"I don't think I could do that."
"You may not have a choice." With that, he cut off the conversation.
The Duke could try all he wanted, but there was no chance William was going to leave her again. She was the fire in his heart, that hope that kept burning. No candle or torch flashing then gone, but a proper hearth fire that burned with proper care and he would not let her go out.
Not again.
Two arrows for the man that would quench her spark without knowing her favorite color. Another arrow in the lackey that didn't know how quickly she could run while laughing. He rammed the life out of the man that thought he could capture the only girl who caught on to how he could palm apples.
It occurred to him that he shouldn't revel in death.
He loosed an arrow into the man who probably hadn't considered how she cared for any and all living creatures she came across, even those that might try to kill her.
He'd think on philosophy later. He had a princess to find and help.
She wasn't his apprentice, foolish dwarves. She never could be. She was no kit of his. A proper kit would have started to pick up his movements, mimic him. Maybe she'd then stop leaving such an obvious trail.
Eric shook his head. It was too easy to fall into thinking himself a wolf or fox after years hunting. But he was a man, and men didn't have kits.
But at least he was a little more confident in her abilities to survive. Maybe she was a proper kit after all, picking up some tips. The dwarves were a huge boon as well, now that they'd stopped threatening to kill him.
There was the sound of hooves, and Eric knew the queen's men had come.
He held her in her initial grief, and while he was sorry for the dwarf's death, William could not summon tears befitting the sacrifice.
He had found her. It was all true. He should not have believed the Queen for a second. She was a killer of kings. How could he have trusted her words?
"Snow," he breathed, and she believed him sad. But how could he be truly sad with her in his arms?
There was no worse feeling than waking up with his kit gone.
He shook the younger man awake. "William!" He awoke disoriented, but with one glance, he knew what was wrong.
It was oddly peaceful, the curse. Stranger than anything.
Perhaps she was dead. But how could she still perceive was going on? Still have her heart break at William's face, his feather-light grip that quickly turned desperate?
William kissed her.
And Snow White fought to move, fought to reach for him. He desperately needed a slap.
As quickly as she decided on that course of action, she calmed herself. First of all, the curse was still in place and a platform to carry to the Duke's castle was being built. Secondly, William had come back into her life only a little while ago. How was he supposed to know that his childhood love was still that? With a dose of adulation. All he needed was a little time to actually know her again and maybe it would become true, curse-breaking love.
If all curses came with brilliant acquisitions of understanding, Snow White wanted to be cursed again. At least until she could figure this whole "queen" thing out.
Oh hey, that looks like it would be the trellis of the Duke's castle.
Blissfully, they had handmaidens change her into a white dress and wash her. She was a little sick of being dirty. But those same girls closed her eyes. Well, she could try to sleep. If you can sleep while cursed.
Eric stood there in the quiet, almost empty room. The candles burned beautifully. Like her life, they would flicker out all too soon.
It wasn't fair, death. Though perhaps that was the alcohol talking. But death had still taken his wife and refused to claim him as well. Now, there was his kit, lying out on what could easily become a funeral pyre. Then she would truly burn, a bright light for all, for however sad and short she might flare.
"You deserved better than me," he remembered muttering. How many of his words slipped out, he didn't know. They were lost in a flurry of grief and anger.
But he did remember bending down and gently kissing her forehead through his tears before stumbling away.
A father's love.
She still can't see, but all the unshed tears she's been holding in can finally fall.
He thinks himself her father.
Her toes and fingers curl as she fights her way out of the curse, led by the shining light of one huntsman's hope. She was his hope, his light, and he wanted to protect it to the end.
He wants to protect his kit.
And if there's one thing Nature understands, or this "representative of life" she's supposed to be, it's the fierce, primal love of a parent for its kit.
She snaps her jaws like a fox and her eyes fly open.