When I Find You, I'll Find Me,
Written by WickedSong.
Disclaimer/Note : I do not own OUAT. This is an AU Gremma (or a new ship name has been brought to my attention; Huntswan) fic, that is inspired by the Disney film, The Lion King II. As well as being posted here, it is also on Archive of our Own, and Tumblr. Basically it is set in a world where the Queen never enacted the Dark Curse and that is all I'm giving away in this note. Please read and if you like the first two chapters, send me a review? Thank you!
His place forever and always is by the Queen's side and he sees no way he can defy his fate. He is broken, he fears, and is now completely devoid of whatever moral compass he once possessed. He has done - and seen things - in the last twenty-four years he has been under her command - that no man should. He is scarred, physically, emotionally, mentally and he is sure that nothing would be able to mend him.
There is only one consolation in all this and it is that the Queen has never been able to regain her previous level of power. In every encounter with King James and Queen Snow she has never been victorious, which means her effects are less far-reaching. There were murmurs and rumours of a terrible curse she was to enact, twenty years ago, but it never came to fruition for reasons that only she herself knows.
The result of her constant failure, however, is that he remains her personal punching bag, her stress relief, against his will. There are still the nights when she forces him to her bedchamber and he thinks that that will be the night he defies her, it will be the night he will take back what is rightfully his, his dignity, his self-respect, his heart. But then he says something, or refuses to kiss her and the chest appears from the bedside table. He wonders how she sleeps knowing a heart is beating next to where she lays but then he knows that years and years of battle have left her with a lack of humanity. She opens the chest, takes out the beating heart, his heart (oh how he longs to have it back in his chest, to feel again, to age again, to rejoin the rest of the world - terrible, wishful dreams, he figures) and squeezes. Sometimes he wishes she would just squeeze too hard, crush it into dust, set him free.
But she's called the Evil Queen for a reason. Death would be a release for her Huntsman, she would lose her most valuable soldier. She would give him freedom he hadn't felt since she took his heart all those years ago, make him happy, almost. That would not do.
So she never does crush his heart. Even when he would go behind her back and save those he was meant to kill for her. He began to do that intentionally after the kingdom had been reclaimed by James and Snow White, hoping that she would get angry enough to kill him. But he'd only be severely punished for his actions and it would come to nothing. She would continue to bring him to the brink and then back again, a constant reminder that she will never let him go. So it got to the point where he stopped rebelling. He was now her perfect soldier, emotionless, without mercy, so unlike the man he used to be. It was his hopelessness, he reflects, that led to this change in behaviour. He's become a shell of the man he used to be. He had never wanted to give up on his hope, when he did so, all those years ago, but there was nothing to hold onto. It was all darkness now, blurred slightly, but darkness all the same. He came to the realisation years ago that he was never going to be freed.
Princess Emma finds the royal life tedious, to say the least. Yes, she has been raised in a life of luxury, she wants for nothing and her parents dote on her. But there is only so much that one person can take of this sort of life, she thinks. A life where she has to constantly stand under a spotlight, a sign of hope for a kingdom of devoted subjects she doesn't think she deserves. For what has she done to earn their trust, respect and love but be born? As far as she can tell her life as a Princess has been one of constant mistakes and missteps, to her own embarrassment and the disappointment of her parents.
They want so much for her to be good at being royal and yet she can't find a way to match up to the expectations of being the future Queen and also being who she wants to be - whoever that person is anyway.
She doesn't know if she will ever find her.
The more she thinks about, the more she thinks she would, if only her parents would ever restrict their dominating control on her life. Where to be, who she was to be there with and what to do is all orchestrated well into advance. She is only allowed out of the palace under strict supervision, even though she is now twenty, for reasons she hadn't understood as a child but is now more aware of. The Evil Queen still lurks in the shadows, her parents tell her, waiting to claim her final revenge on them, for reasons they would not specify.
Even with this threat looming she can never help being adventurous. She's like her mother and her father in spirit and her skills. She can handle a sword, a bow and arrow, she can hunt and ride horses. She can be self-sufficient, she knows she can, if only they would give her the chance.
She's not some damsel, she can save herself which is why one day she chooses to sneak out of the castle, climb on her horse, bow and arrow on her back, and hunt for herself. Her father and his men usually go out to do so for feasts and grand dinners but this time she will bring back her own prey. She sees it as the only way to finally free herself, to show that she can.
Her curls flow in the wind and she feels so liberated out by herself, no guards to slow her down or tell her to turn back. Just herself and her thoughts. There have only been a few select times she has ever had this luxury and she does not intend to squander it, savouring each moment instead for as long as she can.
As she rides she begins to lose herself in the sounds of nature, in the rhythmic sound of her horse galloping along that she fails to notice her arrival in a clearing until she hears a shuffling sound by some nearby bushes. Her eyes had been closed, she realises, as a cold chill runs down her spine. She shakes her head and opens one eye slowly. All good on the left, she notes, and she smiles, feeling stupid for believing that there was anything out of the ordinary. She opens the other eye and again, there is nothing wrong.
Everything in her says that she should ride away, back to the palace, leave this to another day when she can be more sure that it's safe. But she's never really listened to herself.
Jumping off her horse, she stands by him, ties him to a tree and gives his head a small pat. He whinnies but she assures, "I'll be back in a minute." She doesn't intend to really leave this area anyway, seeing a trail that she believes, if what her parents taught her in her teenage years is true, means deer are nearby.
Her horse whinnies again.
"Phillipe, quiet!"
She takes her bow in hand, and retrieves an arrow. It is in this moment that she feels truly alive. Stuffy meetings and balls have never been her style; this is where she feels free.
But it's not a deer that she sees.
It's a man.
He's tall and looks to be maybe two, three years older than her. He has brown hair and stubble on his face and appears to be looking for something.
Phillipe makes a more urgent whinny and Emma turns to shush him but she finds that she didn't do so in time. The man is now looking at her in confusion. She looks back and is torn between heeding Phillipe's warning and taking one step forward. She takes the step forward and a wolf appears, in front of her, walking out of the bushes into the clearing.
She jumps back in surprise.
"Heel," she hears a voice say and she looks up to see the man walking towards her. At his voice, the wolf turns his head and eagerly bounds up to him.
The man kneels before the wolf and begins to quietly stroke his fur. Emma is fascinated by the display.
She tries to find her voice but can't seem to. She gives a small cough.
The man looks up and it looks as if he wants to smile at her but he can't. Almost as if there's a barrier there.
She takes one more step, curiosity striking her as she tries to hear what he is saying to the wolf but she cannot.
Suddenly he stands and she stops walking. He looks at her for a long moment, regarding her and again he tries to smile and again, it's almost like he physically can't. He looks lifeless.
"Hey, what's your name?" she asks, with a smile, finally managing to find her voice.
He blinks in surprise and is silent.
"I'm-"
"I know who you are," he admits quickly and quietly.
It's her turn to blink in surprise.
"Then why can't you tell me who you are?" She folds her arms.
Again, he is completely surprised and she is as well by this brashness she is exhibiting in front of a stranger. Her parents didn't bring her up in this fashion but in this moment she doesn't really care. She rarely meets new people outside the castle walls. This is a change, an experience, she muses.
He gives what seems like a shadow of a smile. "Perhaps there are reasons for that, Princess," he says. She scowls slightly at the emphasis and he notices this. "You do not like being called by your title, Your Highness?"
In this moment he feels almost…alive and he doesn't know why.
Before she can say anything in reply, and she curses the smirk that graces her face, his face instantly darkens. He looks to the wolf by his side, moves his hand and the creature seems to take this as a signal of some sort, giving a low growl and then running off into the heart of the wood.
Emma tries to speak but he turns. "What is it!?"
"The woods aren't safe, Princess, get home before you can't," he warns her. He wonders why momentarily. His humanity fled him years ago, didn't it?
"What does that mean?" When he refuses to answer she shakes her head and runs to catch up with him.
He sighs and stops his quick stride, turning to face her. "I have no time to explain this to you but-"
Five, six, no seven, he estimates of the Queen's best men walk out into their path, surrounding them at either side.
Emma darts her head around warily, trying to figure out some way to gain the upper hand in this situation but she can't.
She goes to her belt where a dagger should be but finds she forgot to take it in her haste this morning. She winces internally, and determines that her best choice will be her bow and arrow but she has no time to do anything as an arrow whizzes past her eyes and hits one of the soldiers in the arm.
Had he been meaning to only injure, she wonders, as she looks to the man.
"Go," he tells her.
Her expression tells him that she thinks he's insane but as he goes to take another arrow, the other soldiers do not move in on him.
Why are they so afraid of him, she wonders?
"Go," he urges in a more desperate tone.
Why is he letting her go?
Why is he defying her?
This would keep the Queen happy for days, the Princess in her clutches, the ultimate vengeance, but the Huntsman can't do it.
"Hurry!"
Emma begins to run, running, running, and she only looks back once, to find that the soldiers have advanced on the man with the bow and arrows.
She fumbles with her own for a second before, and she hopes her aim is still as good as the last time she handled a bow and arrow, she sends one into the mix. She isn't sure who she hits but is somewhat relieved to find that it isn't the man who just gave her a chance to run.
She knew the armour those men wore well; the former Queen's men. Her mother's step-mother's soldiers. How this man struck that fear into them she didn't know but she was eternally grateful.
Setting her bow up again with another arrow she doesn't have to fire it when she hears horses behind her and her father is there, with his best knights, sword already drawn.
He doesn't look at her, although he recognises her presence, before he runs into the fray. The soldiers notice him and don't stay to fight, retreating back into the heart of the forest. The man, whose name she still hasn't found out, isn't anywhere to be seen.
Silently, she hopes that he got out alive.
It feels like it did twenty-four years ago, like he's more susceptible to the pain he had been able to harden himself against for so long. The Queen is furiously hovering over him, pacing in the chamber of hearts, squeezing the heart, anger etched along her face. Whenever she remembers what he did she squeezes much harder and his cries of pain reverberate against the castle walls. She doesn't even flinch at the guttural noises anymore; they are all worthless cries to her.
"You seem to have forgotten your place, Huntsman," she tells him with another crush of the heart.
He feels the end. And welcomes it. She's about to finish him, he dares to hope. But then the weight eases in his chest, the pain almost subsides and he looks up, tears of pain clouding his vision briefly, to see that she is still holding the heart, but her torture has stopped.
She stoops down to his level and takes his chin in her hand. "I could never kill you."
He wrests his face away and resolves to stare down at the floor. "I wish you would," he growls.
She laughs. It's cold and sends icy shivers down his back. "All the more reason not to, my dear."
Someone knocks on the door as she puts the Huntsman's heart back in its safe place. She calls out to them to enter while the Huntsman shakily stands on his feet.
A soldier walks in, head bowed. "One man down, three injured."
"At your hand?" The Queen asks the Huntsman.
The soldier cuts in, shaking his head. "He only injured one in the arm. It was the King who caused the fatality."
The Queen dismisses him with her hand and he leaves.
"I do not understand your motivations but you will be sure it never happens again, Huntsman. Your acts of mercy once almost cost you your life, do not forget that."
"This is no sort of life."
He's feeling so much more braver, alert, than he has in years and he doesn't understand why, only that there was a spark in the Princess that made him almost want to smile, to tease, to engage with another person for the first time in so long.
More insolence, the Queen thinks worriedly, as she walks back over to her hearts.
His screams don't die out until dawn the next day.