"He's lucky to be alive. And he won't be if he keeps going like this."
Snow watched, eyebrows pulled upwards, mouth screwed into a sour pucker and her hands wringing nervously in front of her as she looked down to the ratty couch below - to where Bigby sat, breaths jagged in response to the ugly gunshot sprinkling his chest and throat along with a spray of thick blood. His eyes, while still open and slightly there, were also a bit glazed over through his firey shots of pain, and the only response, besides those glazed orbs sometimes shooting over to stare in her direction, was the twitching of his broken arm which Snow had already successfully set and bound during her anxious wait for Doctor Swineheart. Every now and then it looked as if he was about to say something, but he would just be shushed by a stern look from either Swineheart or Snow White herself.
Seeing Bigby like that was hard. Almost harder than when he was, in the form of a giant, rage-induced animal she hadn't seen for years since coming here, sprawled out on the rain-slicked pavement at her feet, a pool of darkened, sticky blood - his blood - soaking into her white clothes and dirtying her pale knees and hands - flowing underneath fingernails which she knew she would now forever be scrubbing. Almost harder than when, with the help of the girls down at the Puddin' and Pie, Bigby was half-pulled and half-hobbled to the open and only somewhat inviting doors of Georgie 's vehicle - something which had become a possibility simply and only when it was broken into by a woman with a constricting ribbon slinking around her throat, and when it struck Snow that she wouldn't be able to get Bigby out of there in anything else without the public seeing something (neither would she be able to drive him straight to Swineheart's office). It was illegal, and Snow knew that at some point down the line this would bite her, but at that moment she really hadn't given a damn. Almost harder than when...
Almost.
Snow didn't realize she had been asked to do something until the Doctor had stepped forward, callused hand lying gently against the larger, burly man's shoulder, and had raised his eyebrows expectantly in her general direction while still keeping his focus completely to the continuous twitch of Bigby Wolf's lips.
"Oh, yes, of course."
She walked forward, heels (which she could swear were still smeared with the familiar stick of blood) clacking against Bigby's apartment floors as she neared his body. Once right in front of him at his spot on the quickly-staining couch below, she lifted the red-marred, once petite and elegant looking hands at her sides to his left arm - the injured one - gingerly grasped it, and set to keeping it steady and straight as the man was slowly pushed downwards until he was laying down and somewhat relaxed against the bullets still stinging at his sides.
"Snow," he coughed, his voice still hoarse from exertion. "I can-"
"I know you can," Snow said in turn, eyebrows and mouth crinkling up into a saddened smile.
"But the more you rest the faster you heal." And then, seeing as he was opening his mouth for yet another time, she allowed herself the slip of a slight giggle against pink cheeks. "And I'm fine, before you ask. I can only hope Crane is too..."
And that was that, for the moment. Snow allowed herself to fly away from the scene for just a bit, her eyes glazing over themselves - out of exhaustion or simple relief as her mind was finally shown something else to think about, she didn't know. Bigby's shirt being yanked slightly at as a pair of scissors met fabric with a hair-raising snip of metal, and only the tiniest hisses and flinches as bullets were dug and lifted from his skin with utmost care and experience, and Snow drifted away, into her thoughts. Where was Crane being taken? Obviously the Tweedles were deeper involved in this than she could have ever expected - would they still be in place, blood trickling from them, when they got back to the scene (hopefully) tomorrow? What about the girls and Crane's comment at the Pudding and Pie? And who was this new Bloody Mary character?
All of a sudden, Snow felt like grabbing one of Doctor Swineheart's scalpels, and screaming that name into a nearby window.
Eventually Snow White tasked herself to the ever helpful act of continuous pacing. Walking back and forth with her frizzed black hair in a hand, her mind buzzed and rang against her ears with thousands of possibilities. What was she going to do back at the office? For the entirety of Fabletown? Word was spreading about these happenings faster than she had wanted or anticipated, and with Bigby now helpless and sprawled out for anyone to take advantage of or sneak in on...
She stopped in her place with a sigh, and, after looking over to see a small kitchen, said for the first time in what seemed like years, "I need a drink."
She was on her way to fulfill that particular promise, as well, until Doctor Swineheart ceased his patching with a rather concerned hiss and called back for her:
"Actually, Miss Snow... you might want to stay here for this."
White looked back at once, and walked back over to Bigby's side. Bigby's side which had been hit with a silver bullet, his fine skin having blackened and peeled away with a sickening bubble and sear of smoke, blood just now beginning to clot at site of the wound. Bigby, who stayed silent as he tried not to appear worried or in pain, had set his jaw, back straightened and locked in place with a tenseness she had only ever seen from him just hours -or maybe was it only short minutes - ago, when a certain Mary had shot him with it in the first place. Eyes wide, yellow glistening at the edges of his blurred irises, eyebrows furrowed and looking angry. A type of fear that probably no-one else but Snow White would recognize.
Snow didn't say anything. Just nodded. She knew what to do.
Snow, with another sad sigh, moved to the right side of Bigby's couch, crouching down on the floor behind where his head sat heavily against the nearest, lumpy pillow. Lips moving in a quiet, humming and rythmic murmur the likes of which Swineheart most likely couldn't hear, she brought a sightly shaking hand to the base of Bigby's skull, thin fingers running downwards through his messy dark brown hair in a comforting scratch - and with that Snow could feel him shivering, bumps of flesh flying down his neck.
Bigby still stayed quiet, whether out of being embarrased, in pain, or just tired of this entire fucking day, she didn't know. Probably all three. And in response to that silence, she had to ask herself at that moment... was this right? Should she be coddling him like this? - he was a grown man after all, and he had gone through things like this by himself before. If not easily, than at least willingly. And it wasn't as if she liked the prospect of this entire thing either, face warming uncomfortably as the Doctor hovering over both of them shot a mournful (if slightly knowing at the very edges, at least in Snow White's own view) glance before turning for the last time to Bigby's injured side.
But as the wound was touched, fiddled at, sterilized, and Bigby let out a gut-wrenching and primal-sounding growl (one which Snow could very clearly remember as the one from before, a sharp and unforgiving heel finding snapping contact at an injured and broken body's arm) before once again falling silent with a groan (almost-whine) that Snow knew he hated that he let out... she realized that this was now as much for her as it was for this man.
And that he had been a lone wolf for just a little too long.
It was then that Doctor Swineheart injected Bigby with a dose of Barmecidal ambrosia, instructed Snow to ensure he slept these injuries off, and left. Not that Miss Snow was particularly listening. Mind and brain tugged and at and squished with lethargy, and her heart aching every time she thought of Bigby - now sleeping - broken on the ground, pouring clouds above washing blood across the dirtied pavement in disgustingly beautiful and painted swirls, her body was too spent for any of this. For this thinking about... about...
About if, if this was what she was experiencing... then what exactly had happened when Bigby thought he saw her head rolling back and forth in a shivering pool of blood? When he thought that she was dead?
If it was the other way around, Snow now wondered if she would be able to live with herself, and was more sorry she had gotten angry over Tweedle Dum's interrogation than nearly anything else - she still felt her weary and shocked brain reaching forever outwards to a collection of knives which were surely resting in the nearby cupboards and drawers of the kitchen, and screaming out that one name five times in a mirror. An eye for an eye, as the witches on the thirteenth floor sometimes joked, sometimes said seriously.
Snow tried her absolute hardest to dissect the implications of those sentences - her own words - and found her face slightly burning as she now genuinely wondered (and mourned) what could have possibly happened in the short time she had been effectively dead. Apparently Bigby cared - though he always had, in a way. But how much? And what did this fear of Bigby's pain mean of her?
This was all too confusing and tiresome for a late night of continuous thinking, so, Snow jumping as she realized that her hand had yet to cease its rhythmic scratching, she decided it was time to join Bigby and get some sleep, before her thought led her to travel even farther down these roads. These endless, spiraling roads, which dragged on for what seemed like eternity and dotted itself with twists and turns and thoughts unimaginable - and only if squinted at by an outsider truly appeared straight.
And she would go to sleep. She would. As soon as she was confident that mirror was turned around, the doors and windows were locked, and Bigby was completely okay.
xxx
Bigby woke up a few short hours later, clock to the side impossible to discern the time from in its place in the shadows - when Snow had, without realizing or permitting it herself, dozed for just a second, heavy head cradled by one hand falling to the couch. She had woke up in just a short second, but now...
Bigby groaned, limbs a bit too groggy and filled with lethargy and the aches of gunshot to move at all, and his head moved slighty from side to side as he attempted to process exactly where he was. He could feel the cool crawl of a strange liquid flowing through his veins and trickling into a vice of haze against his brain, usually accurate eyes picking up only the fuzzy picture of the creaking wood of his apartment all around him - and his nose, by far one of his biggest assets and as far as he could currently tell the only feature of his now working properly, could clearly pick up the faint and rather splotchy scent of alcohol and drugs, as well as... the arguably more elegant and sweet one of a Miss Snow White. Though her scent was undeniably stronger than any of the others surrounding him, and he could clearly feel the light pressure of her hand resting against his cheeks, he couldn't exactly see her, head too heavy attached to his neck to be moved far and eyes not at all reliable at the moment. But she was there.
"Snow?" he managed to call, voice rumbling and scratchy even more than usual. "Are you there?"
Her voice came through the darkness: "Yes, Bigby. Now go back to sleep - you need to rest if you're even going to think about starting back on this case tomorrow."
The voice was somehow mumbled within his ears, as if balls of cotton had been ever stuffed into them as he slept, though Snow was right beside him. What had happened? Why was he in his apartment?
As if Snow could tell herself what the confused man had been thinking, the comfortable graze at his face then became a pat. "Something happened when tracking a lead today, Bigby. You should remember everything tomorrow if everything goes well, but until then... just try to go back asleep, okay?"
She sounded as if she were talking to a child, in a way, her motherly and rather comforting tone sounding nearly identical to the scene in which she had had conversation with Toad's son, or the previously-believed 'Rachel'. And Bigby couldn't tell why. Couldn't tell anything, really. The only thing that his body registered was a faint and chilling rush of happiness as something wired effortlessly across his warming and pounding scalp, and the fact that he felt more than ever that laughing was a thing to do. For everyone to do. Happy. Happiest guy-
Barmecidal ambrosia.
At once Bigby shook his head, the slight juttering motion at once clearing a bit of the fog out of his brain - and with that parting of fog at the horizon, the sea of his mind was rediscovered, memories of a gun packed with heated silver held by woman by the name, or at the very least the nickname, of Bloody Mary. He saw her at once advancing on him, or more accurately, to both he and Snow, with a cheerful smile and sharpened axe thrown over her shoulder - asking for Crane. The sack of flour. Snow White giving... giving...
"Well, uh, are you alright?"
"I'm fine Bigby. Luckily I managed to get you to your apartment and call Swineheart before you bled out. For now... for now I've just been thinking, I guess."
... giving Bloody Mary Crane in exchange for his life.
"It... wasn't your fault, Snow. You know that."
Bigby Wolf, at this point, honestly didn't know where exactly his words were coming from, the cooling high of the drugs still rushing though his veins and the smell of which filling his nostrils at once - he simply accepted what was being said from his own mouth, involuntary as they might have been, seeing them as a gift and blessing as the rest of his tired and lagging body was allowed to sag against what distinctly felt like the plush of pillows underneath him. Nothing made sense, but he knew what he was doing. He would handle it, no matter what. Like always.
"I know, Bigby... it's just, things are so backwards now. I keep trying to build up some hope... but... I guess it's just not working."
Hope for what? Bigby knew he knew. Just forgot, was all. His brain had started its attempt to reboot, allow him to once again think clearly against the water sloshing and pulling antagonistically against the stem of his brain - though it wasn't exactly working.
"You... ya... figure it ou'... always do..."
He was slurring now. Or at least he thought he was. That reboot wasn't exactly working, and the barmecidal ambrosia was insistant with its constriction of the vital areas of both speech and movement enough to continue to keep his eyes open reliably.
"Thank you, Bigby. I know. But..."
Shake of head. Fog cleared. A little. Barmecidal ambrosia.
"But what?"
"It's... nothing. I shouldn't have said anything..."
Silence.
"It's just... two things, actually. Earlier today, I don't know if you can remember or not, but, if you can... why did you let Tweedle Dee live? I... honestly thought you weren't going to..."
Shook his head. He could speak once again, if just for a short time, and even if the words which were forcibly coughed from his aching lungs seemed as if he had been smoking earlier in the day.
"I've done things I'm not proud of, Snow, and you know that. Like I told Holly, just because I live in the Woodlands, it doesn't mean I'm not an outcast." He hadn't meant to say that. But he did. "I try to make up for it whenever I can."
And that was around the time his brain decided to shut down completely, medicine injected into him now completely taking hold and making it impossible to truly continue intelligently. He didn't even hear what Snow said next, assuming the young woman had at all in the first place, and instead his mind was filled with he stressful image of a young woman and the chilling scraping of metal on concrete.
Then, after a few seconds: "... about when you found my - Lily's - head. How... was it? How were you?"
Could barely talk. Couldn't tell if he was dreaming. Just managed to cough out: "Felt like... shit."
There was a small sigh, a pair of what felt like lips, and then sleep took him.