Disclaimer: I own nothing. Set post series.
WOULD YOU SIT ON HER THRONE?
Virginia woke with a shout. Wolf was crouched almost on top of her, his eyes flashing gold, concern bright across his face. Virginia heaved in wild heavy breaths, her fingers digging into Wolf's skin, into the realness of him. She was warm and alive; she wasn't buried in ice or was it glass? It'd felt so cold but whatever she'd been trapped in had been carved with amazing care. And there'd been flowers growing amongst the frost and dirt.
"My love," Wolf's voice penetrated her thoughts. "Huff-puff, you were dreaming again."
Virginia tried to steady her breathing, a hand automatically dropping to her swollen stomach. There was movement. Wolf's hand joined hers, his eyes closing as he concentrated. It wasn't long before he started nodding.
"Strong heart, little paws moving, awake now and if the mouth could it would cry."
Okay. Virginia felt some tension leave her and Wolf was there, sliding an arm around her, pillowing her head, helping her changing body find a more comfortable position. His rich smell surrounded her and Virginia pressed into it, feeling Wolf worry against her, murmuring to himself as he did.
"That's the second time this week, my love. Dreams-."
"I know," Virginia interrupted, exasperated and worried and trying to push it all away, especially any of Wolf's insistence about destiny, again. "They mean things in the Nine Kingdoms but we're here, Wolf, and here dreams can just mean bad cheese or worse days."
Wolf kissed her hair, his voice gentle and serious, "But the Nine Kingdoms are still with us, they're in my blood and our cub..."
"They'll carry it too."
Virginia pressed closer to Wolf. She'd never dreamed so vividly until the forest, eating the mushrooms and drinking the water. Now, back home again, she kept dreaming like that only it felt like living, like memories. But she knew they weren't.
The Kingdoms. They'd turned her world upside down, they'd made her dad a fugitive and the happiest he'd been in years. They'd brought her Wolf and their child and so briefly, Virginia's mother.
Sometimes, Virginia dreamed of water over her head and a face changing through the ripples as strong hands held her down and a huntsman watched. She dreamed of blood dripping onto snow and coating her hands.
She closed her eyes and tried to sleep again as Wolf crooned and rubbed her back.
"The Kingdoms are trying to tell you something," he said softly, at the edge of Virginia's wakefulness. "Huff-puff, Virginia, they always will. It's our destiny to be part of more than one Kingdom."
However Virginia felt about it, the Kingdoms wouldn't let her ignore her dreams. During her and Wolf's visit to the Fourth Kingdom later that week, King Wendell requested to talk to her privately, on a matter he claimed she could help with. Wolf was busy talking to some of Wendell's recent hires who all had wolf blood. He was beside himself with excitement at seeing wolves serving the King.
Virginia found it difficult to think of Wendell without Prince and there he was, trotting along beside the King. He seemed pleased to see Virginia, sitting at her feet once Wendell offered her a typically overly-golden chair in a quiet but luxurious room. There weren't any guards or overdressed courtiers present, Wendell himself offered her a goblet of fruit juice and told her that her father would be joining them for dinner.
Wendell still carried himself with overconfidence but according to Virginia's dad and a few of Wolf's contacts, he'd been making smart decisions too. He was maturing into a role that seemed way too heavy and grand to Virginia. All those people relying on him...
"Lately, I find I've been dreaming of my grandmother."
Wendell's words cut through Virginia's distracted thoughts. His grandmother. He'd been dreaming of Snow White. Virginia tensed. She'd been trying not to think about dreams at all, least of all hers. The baby was changing her body and now her mind was going the same way, snagged by magic, by the Kingdoms.
"It's always the last time I saw her, before she left this castle forever, and I remember thinking how red her lips were and why wasn't she cold? She wasn't wearing gloves." Wendell wore a soft smile as he continued. "Now I see ice forming around her but she doesn't cry out and there's blood all over the snow and..."
"And flowers," added Virginia quietly before she could stop herself, her own dreams too much on her mind.
Wendell nodded, his eyes wistful but getting brighter, pleased as though he was being proven right. "Flowers. Like the rosebud she gave me."
Like the flower the rosebud had become, bursting open when Virginia had talked to her mother's still cold body. The smell of it had stayed with her for days after.
Wendell's dream, the images. It sounded like it was all the same as Virginia's. So not only was Virginia being plagued by dreams that wouldn't let her rest properly but the King of the Fourth Kingdom was having the same dream? Virginia felt even more exhausted, more harried. Why couldn't she just rest? Have some peace. Hadn't she earned it? Please?
And how was the shared dream even possible? Virginia knew she shouldn't be surprised but she was a New York girl through and through, and magic would always instinctively seem like a laughable fairytale, the kind that never came true, even now. How were she and Wendell sharing a dream? They really barely knew each other.
They were both silent for a few moments, lost in their own thoughts probably. Virginia pushed hers away from the impossibility of what was happening (again) and focused thankfully on Wendell instead. What had it been like, to say goodbye to Snow White as she'd left them all, walking through the snow, never to return. She'd left so many people behind that'd loved her. She'd seemed at peace when Virginia had seen her.
And now Virginia, and Wendell, were dreaming of her, her story. Why?
"Wolf keeps telling me the dreams mean something, that it's all our destiny. I just...can't sleep properly and I really really need to sleep."
"My grandmother was the wisest of us all. It was always said that her mother knew from the moment she saw her own blood fall on the snow that she would not live to raise her child."
Virginia remembered that story; sitting in a cold cavern deep in the mountain, Snow White telling a tale that Virginia had thought she'd known. The Kingdoms had a way of twisting whatever Virginia knew. She wasn't always grateful for that.
"Fairy godmothers appear in many ways and my grandmother always said she was destined to advise others, especially in times of great need," Wendell mused.
Virginia shifted slightly. She hadn't told anyone, not even Wolf, about her encounter with Snow White. Wolf would believe her but it still felt like a hallucination from a desperate situation, especially when Virginia had gone back and the cavern had been empty. So much of what'd happened in the other Kingdoms felt far away when she was in New York, like ridiculous fairytales. But a half-wolf shared her bed and her Dad was an adviser to a King that'd been a dog when they'd first met. Prince was currently keeping her feet warm; Virginia petted him with a half smile.
Wendell continued, "I don't feel terribly afraid in those dreams. I'm always so glad to see her."
Yeah, Virginia smiled a little, thinking about Snow White; the warmth she'd exuded, her surety and her smile. She'd been a calming loving presence. A ghost. A figment of Virginia's imagination telling her what she'd needed to hear? No, because her Dad's bad luck had turned and his back had been miraculously fixed.
Snow White appeared when she was needed. So why was she needed now?
"I don't understand," Virginia murmured, her voice getting stronger as she continued. "Why are we both dreaming about her?"
Wendell laced his gloved fingers together importantly, "I rather hoped you could tell me."
"Me?"
"Yes, I'm quite sure you're there too, in my dreams."
Virginia was speechless. She didn't see Wendell in her dreams, only Snow White. No, it was like she was Snow White and then sometimes herself too. Why? Virginia pressed a reflexive hand to her belly. Was this a warning? About her child? Why hadn't Snow White just appeared, like she had before? Where was her body now?
Virginia let out a disbelieving laugh, "Wendell, I...I really don't know. I just have these crazy dreams and I'm her but I'm not and I don't know what any of it means."
You are standing on the edge of greatness.
No, I'm not.
Virginia remembered how lost she'd felt, how hopeless everything had seemed. She'd been sure that she couldn't find her way in the dark. Snow White had told her she had to, and she had. Snow White Falls had been loud and had showed Virginia and her Dad the way out of the mountain. Snow White had been guiding them. When Virginia really thought about her journey through the Kingdoms, she saw Snow White, protecting them at every step. Meeting Snow White, talking to her, Virginia had felt so comforted, so reassured. She hadn't found that anywhere else. Sometimes it wasn't a comfort to hold onto that, because when she really thought about it, she missed that too-brief feeling so much.
"There was a...moment," Virginia settled on eventually because Wendell was clearly serious about looking to her for answers and she really wanted to end this conversation. "She told me I had to be brave and not cold."
Wendell didn't look surprised, "Being brave...that sounds like her. She was sure I could be great and brave for this Kingdom. Instead, I got turned into a dog and nearly...well, I have a lot to thank you and your bravery for, Virginia."
He looked young again but not uncomfortable thanking her. He was growing up and...and he missed his grandmother. Virginia understood that, too well. Her mother was a sour stew of memories, not something she liked to think about, anymore than she had before first arriving in the Fourth Kingdom. Snow White was a different kind of avoidance.
"You took the throne after everything that happened, that's pretty brave," Virginia told him.
"I'm trying but well, it's very hard work and not always fun," Wendell confessed. "So many people to talk to, so many boring meetings and long papers to look through, so many decisions to make."
"And you get to live in a beautiful castle full of people waiting on you hand and foot," Virginia pointed out, privately thinking she'd hate the complete lack of privacy and weight of decisions. "And your grandmother saw something in you, remember."
Snow White's blood flowed in him. The baby kicked suddenly, apparently agreeing. Wendell got to his feet, his expression telling Virginia to do the same when she didn't immediately copy him. Right, royal protocol, Virginia was never going to get it right. Even her Dad knew when to sit and stand up now; weirdly he seemed a natural at court.
"My grandmother had a great destiny; it is all any of us can hope for. Perhaps our dreams are a reminder of that."
Virginia's jaw tightened. The baby kicked again.
Wolf always fell asleep quickly, even here in an unbelievable palace. He kicked and twitched in his sleep and crooned in his throat but he always stayed close to Virginia except on full moon nights. Now Virginia watched as he slept and apparently dreamed. She didn't want to sleep yet. Out there, there were fairy godmothers, impossible magic, and destinies. Destiny sounded so unchangeable, so decided.
Did that mean that it hadn't been her choice to help the Nine Kingdoms? That Wolf hadn't been her decision at all? That the choices he'd made hadn't been his choices either? Everyone seemed so accepting of destiny in the Nine Kingdoms, apparently it explained everything. But the destiny of Virginia's Dad had changed when Prince had run through the traveling mirror to New York, only maybe that had been her Dad's destiny, and Wendell's, all along.
And what about Virginia's mother? And Snow White herself? Everything they'd all been through and suffered, all 'meant to be' instead of their mistakes, their bravery, their choices. Snow White had said that she'd chosen to let her wicked stepmother into the dwarves' cottage, knowing that there was a chance she'd get hurt. The dreams should mean that nothing was really decided or fixed, that real choice and consequence was always, always, possible.
Blood on snow and flowers in frost. Water over Virginia's head, a bow that never missed, rings she recognized worn by older hands. Everything was so cold.
It was dark in the room Wendell had made theirs in the castle. But Virginia could spy the glint of gold all around them and she could hear Wolf so clearly. Their baby was quiet for once. Virginia still pressed a hand to her stomach, for the baby, for the sick rebellious feeling she could feel there as she mentally turned everything over. She wanted peace and space. But she had to keep learning to see in the dark.
-the end