William found her in the garden. To be precise, she was working in the garden, soil smudged on her cheek, hands obscured in potting mix.
He paused, too uncertain of himself to trust he knew where he stood. Snow was the love of his life, but they had been parted for so long, did the bonds they forged during childhood still mean the same to her as they did to him?
Somehow he doubted it, and that doubt had led him to come looking for her. She had grown up without him, and he without her, and though he knew it wasn't the way it was supposed to be, he knew it could nto be undone.
"Your mother loved these gardens, you know." He said thoughtfully, pausing by the framework of a shrub that had, once, bloomed with life and hope.
She straightened, turned a surprised gaze upon him, too engrossed in her work to have heard his approach. The smile she gave him made her look like her ten year old self - unencumbered by evil, untouched by the pressures of ruling.
"I know. There's so much to be done - but this - I wanted to be the one to bring beauty back to this place." She gazed around her mother's walled garden, discarded for so many years, filled with weeds and lifeless, twisted twigs stretching to the sky. But already, green shoots told of the care Snow White had put into restoring life.
"You will." He spoke with such quiet faith in his tone he drew her eye and she stepped closer, studying him reflexively.
The familiar planes of his face were still there, leftover from childhood, though his face was more angular now, far less round and soft. His eyes had remained the same though, clear and true and hiding nothing.
"William, what's wrong?" She asked, shifting her body marginally closer without taking a step. He ran a hand through his hair, searching for words, feeling an undercurrent of tension - not quite danger, not enough to make him long for the safety of his bow in his hands - but enough that he fumbled for words and let the silence stretch longer than it should.
"I wasn't the one to wake you." He tried to make it sound like a question but it was more statement of fact. "Was I?" He added, trying to dispel the note of misery.
She flinched slightly, but she didn't deny it. "I don't think of it that way." She murmured, eyes unfocused, as memories rushed by her mind, not pausing quite long enough for her to make out any details. "I needed both of you with me." Her voice rang with conviction, but it wasn't the answer William bore out hope for. Snow reached for his hand, feeling the contrast of soft skin an tough callouses, used to bearing the tension of a bowstring.
"I needed you both then. I need you both now." She vowed, and William smiled softly, sadly, and squeezed her fingers once before letting his grip fall.
"You should go find him." He said, not without some regret. Snow saw the boy who had once been her faithful companion looking out through his eyes. He'd always been right then, too. Always known the path that, while not always right, took them home in the end.
Some paths were not meant to be the right way. They were simply the way you had to go, the way you felt the inexorable pull like a force of nature. They might be rugged paths, untamed paths, but that didn't make them inherently wrong.
"Do you know where he is?" Snow asked, not realizing she held her breath in waiting for an answer.
William chuckled once, softly. "Where else? He's in the forest."
Snow paused, and smiled back at him. She really did love him. It would be easy to stay at his side. To let him support her, and the kingdom, and to find out over the coming moons what had changed and what stayed the same about him.
"Thank you, William. For everything." She reached up and planted a brief kiss along his cheekbone, and then she was gone. William watched her go for a moment, then knelt down to continue clearing the nearest garden bed.
She didn't bother to saddle her white stallion, finding her balance easily bareback when not burdened with armour. He galloped steady across the bridge and through the village, as if the forest too, was where he wanted to be. She dismounted once the secure warmth of the budding trees surrounded them, scanning the earth - soft in the wake of recent rain - for prints. The way he had showed her.
She spotted the movement of him, solid against the greenery, a flash of dark sandy hair. She hesitated only a moment, the same way she had paused during that first tumultuous encounter.
"Eric!"