A/N: Based on the beautiful song 'Once Upon a Time' by Sutton Foster. I know I have already posted a fic where this song is the basis, but I couldn't resist! I just felt the song tied so beautifully with the Ben/Lucy relationship... Anyway, Enjoy!
We were so young, didn't have a care in the world…
It is astonishing the twists and turns that life can make. Something so beautiful can become something so ugly, so tarnished.
That's exactly how my life has been for the past few days now. So much had happened so fast… Ben… Oh my darling how could this happen to us?
I plead to them… Oh how I tried and tried to convince them not to take my love away, insisted desperately that my husband was a good man…
But they wouldn't listen…
They took Ben away, chained up like a wild animal, and forced him onto a ship that was set to sail to an unknown land, never to be seen again.
Sweet bliss had been replaced with sorrow so very quickly. The world seemed so much sweeter than we knew before, we so were so naive, so young…
So utterly oblivious to the fact that nothing lasts forever.
The memories still remained though. Those beautiful, beautiful memories… We went out to the fields all the time as teenagers, sat beneath the aged weeping willow and planned our futures together. Planning how we would one day live out by the sea and away from the big cities… To raise our children in love and grow old together…
Oh but twas not to be… Not now, not when fate has been so cruel and unmerciful to them.
Whatever was left of my innocence had been stolen from me, ripped out of my grasp so fast I could barely put up a fight. Ever since that awful Judge laid his vile hands upon me, in front of everyone at that party! The memory was still so vivid in my mind. It was torture of the highest calibre!
Oh but I could put an end to it all right now if I wanted to… It would be so simple just to end it all now. The bottle of poison was inches away from grasp after all!
In need of clarification, I went over to the bassinet and gazed down upon my sleeping daughter. So innocent… So pure… She didn't deserve this life. She deserved to have a mother and father to care for her, to have a house full of love and light not sadness and gloom…
I tentatively bent down and pressed a quivering kiss to her soft cheek, causing her to shift and mumble in her sleep, "Mama…"
Tears filled my eyes, almost tearing apart my plan. No… I had to do this. This was the only way she was going to have a good life. I placed the letter down into the bassinet, The Lovetts were good people. Nellie swore they would give Johanna a good home, and I could only trust her on that.
Walking over and picking up the arsenic, I walked down the stairs and out into the dark streets, stopping in the middle of an abandoned alley. With shaking hands, I unscrewed the lid and raised it to my lips. This was it, the end to my tale… My proposed fairytale that went horrifyingly astray…
"Good bye, my love."
And with that, I swallowed the harsh liquid in one swift gulp. Falling to the floor, I swore I heard Johanna wake with a cry as I blacked out.
What a cruel trick of fate… Somehow once upon a time never came again…
A/N: Reviews? :)