( love lies bleeding )

I do not own The Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, or any other number of things related to the film.

I do, however, own this fanfic.

Nyah.

xx

xx

So this is how it ends.

My hand plunged deeper into your chest and I couldn't control it, the blade like butter sliding thickly into you and past the flesh -- warm upspurts of blood drenching your collar from the veins, so drenched -- and the twist of my knuckles turning white as I lurched forward, my whole body involuntarily, and the calloused pads of my fingertips sliding on the hilt that was somehow so slippery with prespiration. You weren't entirely slain, in that moment; your heart still shook so loudly inside of us, your expression the shocked and hurting mirror image of my own, and you were bleeding out your blood for me because you loved me, because you thought that you could love me more in death.

I laid there screaming when we hit the floor. I crawled on top of you, kneeled over your waist, sobbing. You wanted to look at her. I cradled your head in the flesh arc of my palms, keeping your eyes on me, unfocused, turned away -- the golden flicker of eyelash stirring on your cheek -- their depths dark and terrifying as your soul fought to stream by me from your body so fast that it would hit me with its last warmth, aching in the marrow of my bones.

I cried for you and I cried for me and I cried for us. I was so horrified, brother. The anger in me wanted to pour out in one great ribbon and fly to her where she stood. She would be impaled upon a spearhead of my grief.

Instead, I huddled in the corner, shrieking and moaning and sobbing low sounds like a dying beast as you dragged yourself skeletally to her throne, and she pierced you instead with that thorn of devotion, stroking your sweaty snarly tangles of blonde hair, your smiling mouth as you confessed you didn't want to die, at all.
You wanted life and she could give it to you.

She plunged the stake into your gallant breast, heaving so violently, and struck you blind; a temptress. You, like Merlin: captured with a spell.

And so, I was the one to kill her, finally.

I brought the end to her with a thrust into the mirror glass, with one great heave of an enchanted axe that sent her shattering. Her screams were terrible, I know. They rattled against my every skin-cell, shaking me.

My heart cried out to you when you hurled yourself -- a great burst of flame, of life, of death -- from that high window, and I had thought you'd died a second time, must have. How many times could she take you away from me?

I wanted to leap inside of you so that I could keep you safe.
In my body, you would never die.

I would stop breathing so you could.

Now, let me tell you something, little brother. The kiss I gave Angelika, the kiss that woke her up, the one that made me hesitate, first, over her mossy grave, sleeping so beautifully; you know the kiss. The one that brushed my lips to hers, and was, from the deepest dug-up caverns of my soul, supposed to be the kiss of One True Love, or she would never wake to see the world of light henceforth? You know the kiss.

Well, Will, brother, let me explain. Let me tell you, because it will tear me apart if I can't tell you, if you mustn't know, if I must hold it in because it would be better for you, never knowing.

It was not a kiss of True Love.
It was a deceptive thorny flower and I'm sorry.

True Love's kiss was the one I never gave to you.

I'm sorry that I killed you; that I let you die, and that I wasn't dead. Sorry that you couldn't have felt the things I felt and have been spared the pain that haunts you in your most secret of dreams.

They are your secret dreams, I know, because they are the dreams you have away from me.

But please believe me when I say it. True Love's kiss was meant for your lips, and only yours.
I wanted the copper of your blood and the slow passage of your breath.
I wanted the steady warmth falling between the leaves to dapple on your cheeks and the fine bridge of your nose, and golden locks of hair, laid in boyishly curling bands across your forehead. I wanted to gather you up to me so that I could press my ear against you, and be certain that your heart was beating; our eternal requiem.

My brother, you stole her kiss from me.
She stole yours from me.

So many things you, through the duration of our lives, have stolen from me.

Not this one thing which ranks higher in my heart above any other; no, not that. I won't let you. With hateful words and quick tongue, and the kisses and touches that only lovers share -- and brothers do not -- that you deny me, they bring further cracking to myself, and more long-suffering to my silently complaining heart. But my heart and the love for which it beats is what cannot be stolen by you.
You cannot steal the love of you from me.

That night, by candleglow I watched you laying in your bed, your face leaned on both leisurely folded arms, and your breath stirring on your lips. Light and shadow moved over you from the fire by the bed, and blood stirred the roses to the surface of your cheeks, warmed by life's warmth alone and comfort flames that baked the hearth.

The distinction of your lips and eyes were obscured, but the mouth was sweet, and full, and shadows cast long under your brow. I crept closer to you by the bed, glasses pushed up and sitting on my nose, and the book -- mine, half scorched but salvaged -- laying open on the floor to a new page that I had not yet written in.

I dared to lay down next to you flat on my back, a hair's breadth from your body, pressing in closeness to mine. You were thinking about something in depth, I could tell it from your easy silence and your expression of soft repose, and I was glad for the distraction on your part. Otherwise, you might have seen me struggling to breathe.

'Will,' I said, and you looked over at me.

'What is it, Jake?' You answered, languidly.

I could smell traces of liquor on your breath. I wanted so badly to hold you against me, to accidentally reclaim the kiss you'd never give.

'I'm glad. . .that you're alive.'

And that was all. I held the pressing thoughts inside my head, so many of them, wanting to stream out and jump onto my lips, commanding you; demanding of you the answers that I needed so desperately to hear.

I wanted to know why you had died for me, if you would die for me again, and why you ever let go of my hand in return for that wicked blade, sinking into your chest and stemming the pulse of your heart. I wanted to know why you fell for the Mirror Queen -- was it the dark lust in her eyes, or ancient spells that spoke strongest to you? -- and why you spurned the True Love buried deep inside of me, and instead went tumbling with Angelika in the grass outside the place where you'd lain fallen, dead.

I wondered, did the closeness of my heart to yours will your blood to stir inside your veins again?
The feather of my breath against your lips: was it enough to bring life back?

I would do anything for you, I wanted to say. And I wanted to reach across the tiny space that distanced us to hold your hand and never let it loose.

Instead, I said, 'I'm glad that you're alive.'

You shocked me when you brushed your fingers against mine, and closed your eyes.

'So am I, Jake,' you murmured, and your eyes fluttered briefly behind your lids.

You whispered 'Thank You', later, in your sleep. I held on to you so tightly when I knew you wouldn't wake to catch me in the act. The shame was like a blanket creeping over me.

The love was more.

And so, when you fitted your arms snug around me, too, and flattened your warm palms against the small of my back, murmuring, I did not question what was not meant to be, but that I longed for; what could never be, and should never become flesh between us.
My most intense and secretive desire that couldn't be, not ever, no matter how deeply I longed, or with how much of my heart I wanted it.

The damp flutter of your breath against my cheek, and the rough pads of your thumbs basing themselves at the dark roots of my hair, stroking like Mother did to our sweet, darling dead Lotte once, so tenderly, and feeling the strong tremble of your heart against my own -- both of our hearts, living, alive -- it was enough,
and I was lulled to sleep by knowing that we'd face the world again, tomorrow.

Together, with open arms.

-end