How to Tell a Fairy Tale
DISCLAIMER: I hold no rights whatsoever to the characters or the shows used or referenced.
*A/N* Can I just say that if it had been my show, I would have never come up with this Cure-nonsense and HOW could they let Katherine die? How?!
Well, done ranting. Please enjoy and have a look at my other stories as well if you'd like!
Huge thank you, as always, goes to LetMeWalkTheEarthWithYou for giving it a read beforehand!
Once upon a time, there was a girl that lived forever.
(Let us be honest, the story doesn't really start like that. But then again - we're all stories in the end - who knows? For this isn't about the girl, about the truth, not really; fairy tales never are. It's all about the story. So perhaps this is the trick. Perhaps, if that way you like the story better, then that is how the story begins.)
Some say she was a wicked, cunning demon of a woman who hurt people wherever she went and cared only about herself; others say she was just a girl too deeply hurt to trust and scared out of her mind.
But whoever tells the story, they say she was being hunted.
Some say by the devil made flesh, others say by a man so old and hurt and disappointed that he knew nothing but violence and fear to make himself heard. For what reason he hunted her, nobody can quite agree on anymore, and sometimes it is said that even the hunter himself had forgotten. All that mattered was that he wanted her dead and she ran away from him, for a century and another and another and another…
Perhaps, they say, he would have killed her there and then, the moment he laid eyes on her; perhaps he would have, if it had not been for Elijah, his right hand, his faithful servant.
(Nobody really called him that, but this is a fairy tale. It was added for drama. You know how this works.)
In some of the stories, they say he was his brother. But it matters not. What matters is that he was loyal to the hunter, despite of what he did and whether or not Elijah agreed with him.
Elijah met her in a big crowd, some say it was the hunter's birthday banquet, others say it was public execution. And when he spotted her (this is a fairy tale, remember?) for a moment he thought his world had stopped turning. The candlelight shimmered on her dark brown curls and her eyes sparkled like the most precious piece of jewellery. He found her more beautiful than all the rich ladies in the room put together, and when he talked to her she had him well and truly bewitched. She was intelligent, charming and she seemed so innocent to him - her innocence he admired beyond everything else.
When the hunter told him that he wanted to kill her, Elijah was distraught. He sought for a way to save her, a way that would somehow get them both what they wanted, for there was no way he could fail the hunter. Some say he loved him, others say he feared for his life, but it matters not.
But before he could do anything, she took matters into her own hands and fled from the hunter's castle. The hunter was furious, he believed that Elijah had something to do with it, that Elijah had chosen her over him.
Elijah swore to go after, swore to return her to the hunter so he could kill her.
And go after her he did. Finally, he found her, after he had roamed the hunter's lands in search for her all night. He could hear her quick, ragged breath, her heart racing in panic; could smell her blood and the sweat on her brow and the scent of her hair. There he stood, less than a hundred feet away from her, nothing between them but trees and the cool night air and the hunter's wrath. And he hesitated.
He let her escape, though he felt betrayed and hurt. He let her run, not knowing why himself. Maybe he hoped that one day he could convince the hunter to let her go, or maybe he just did not know how he could bring himself to kill her.
The truth is, however, quite simply, that he saved her life because he loved her. He loved her then and he'd love her for the rest of his eternal life, through betrayal and hurt and loss. (Because in a fairy tale, love is eternal. Always.)
Over the centuries, they say, he met her several times, but she always escaped. One or two times, he let her, the other she slipped through his fingers all by herself, looking back at him over her shoulder with just a glimpse of softness in her eyes and a sweet smile on her full red lips.
He could feel his heart swell and break all at once each time, and knew he would never truly fall for anybody else in this world.
.
.
Whether she loved him or not?
Of course she did. (True love is not real unless it is returned. Again, this is a fairy tale. Where's the point in telling a story about a love that was never real?)
(Whether she really did?
She was grateful that he saved her, that much was certain. From time to time that gratitude was all that kept her running - how could she disappoint him, how could she let them catch her again, when he had risked everything to let her escape?
And she thought of him, not constantly, not with fervent longing and feeling sick and sore at the thought of him. But she did. She remembered a carefree time spent between the hedges and rosebushes of an English garden, remembered his kind dark eyes and his gentle voice, his careful sincere answers to her questions.
But mostly she thought of him when she found herself cornered, when she was scared and hurt. It wasn't deliberate, but she never lost that deep seated faith that somehow, if all else failed, he would come to save her.
But did she love him?
She was never really sure. How could she be, when she had never allowed herself to be truly in love, when she never could because it would surely have meant her death? She never knew what true love felt like. All she knew was that, when she told him she loved him, she had never meant those words more.
Elijah never found out if his love was returned. The story goes he still wonders.)
.
.
The people call her Katherine, but that was not what she was called, it never had been.
Her name was Katerina, and there was no one to ever say it quite like he did.
.
.
Some say he was forever meant to chase her, her soft skin always just out of his fingers' reach. Others say they made it in the end, somehow, that they got to spend the rest of eternity together.
(This is a fairy tale, and a fairy tale needs a happy ending.)
.
(People never tell the story the way it really ended, maybe they never found out, maybe they just don't accept it. But truth is that she died, old and desperate and alone; and that it took him years to even learn of her death.
He rarely ever sleeps now, for when he closes his eyes he sees the days that never came, sees her in his arms, loved and in peace, and in the morning he wakes up screaming.
Rumour has it he spread the happy ending himself - so to, in a way, give her the life they might have led. The life he wanted for her.)
.
(The good news is, this is a fairy tale. It's not about the truth. It's all about the story. Perhaps, if that way you like the story better, then that is how the story ends.
Perhaps they got their happy ending after all.
We're all stories in the end.)
Quotes:
"I'll be a story in your head. But that's okay, we're all stories in the end." - from The Big Bang (Doctor Who, Series 5 Episode 13
"And the times we had, eh? Would've had. Never had. In your dreams, they'll still be there. The Doctor and Amy Pond... and the days that never came." - from The Big Bang (Doctor Who, Series 5 Episode 13)
"True love is not real unless it is returned." - from Klaus (The Vampire Diaries, Series 2 Episode 19)
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