He doesn't escape Death. Instead, the relatively jovial fellow finishes his song, and then surrounded by his friends (and Madalena, and some random guy), Galavant is taken into the bright light. And by taken, he means he's shoved through the door rather roughly by the spectres that surround him. All the while he shouts incessantly that he has to go back, that he has to tell her-
"Galavant!"
Well that's new. He can hear Isabella's voice.
He continues banging against the door, wondering why he wasn't quick enough this time to run away and-
"Wake. Up!"
He opens his eyes and that explains it. It was just a dream and Isabella's now hovering over him, with a concerned look in her eye. Immediately he wants to tell her that it was nothing and she should go back to sleep but as as soon as he goes to do so she gives him that look and he knows there's no way out of this one.
"You've been shouting for the last five minutes," Isabella tells him, a knowing look in her eye.
Galavant sits up and blearily rubs at his eyes. "Sorry."
She shakes her head. "Don't be. I just-you looked quite distressed." And now she's worried about him.
Again, he goes to tell her that it's not a big deal. Because it isn't, really. He's a hero, and heroes don't have nightmares. Heroes don't get scared.
But he thinks better of protesting. He knows if he tells her that she'll never believe it. Besides, it's not true at all. Heroes do get scared and heroes do have nightmares, just like the ones he's been having since coming back from the dead.
They haven't happened every night of course, and they've been even less frequent since he reunited with Isabella. But still, maybe talking about it would be a good thing.
He figures it can't be any worse of an idea than Sid's lullaby - good dreams only, good dreams only - which hadn't actually worked at all.
"It's about...," Galavant starts, but he can't quite figure the best way to phrase it. Maybe he should sing it instead, that always seems to do the trick when he's in a situation he can't quite articulate.
"When you died," Isabella finishes quietly, and Galavant gives a small, apologetic smile her way when he nods.
Isabella gives a small nod of her own in response. Of course he told her about it, at her own insistence, once the battle was over. Still, he could tell the notion made her more than a little uncomfortable, especially whenever Sid or Richard - and sometimes Roberta - brought it up while telling the stories of their adventures.
Nevertheless, Isabella shuffles closer to him, and places a comforting hand on his shoulder. "So what about death?" she prods. Helpfully, as it so happens, because he isn't sure exactly how to continue.
"Well, when I...die," he starts, awkwardly, "in my dream, I mean, everything happens like it did then. The musical number, Death, Sid, Madalena, Richard, Roberta-"
"Even the random guy?" Isabella questions. Galavant gives her a confused look and she shakes her head. "Irrelevant, I guess."
Galavant gives a small shake of his head. "Even the random guy," he concedes. "But then I see you, and I realise what's happened, but this time I don't. That is to say, I can't-"
Isabella gives his shoulder a squeeze. "You don't come back, do you?"
He was going to say 'I don't knee Death in the groin this time', but her description is a little more succinct.
"Yeah, yeah that's it."
It's more than a little stifling to talk about, and that damn tune keeps going round and round in his head.
Goodbye, yes it's time to say goodbyeee…
"But you did. It's just a dream, right?" Isabella continues, her voice a little lighter now, and rousing him from the song stuck inside his head. Now he understands why the pirates got so irritated by his own song in the end.
Galavant gives a non-committal shrug of his shoulders. "I guess but-"
It hangs in the air. The big 'what if'. Really, it's quite massive when it comes to death.
Isabella's hand falls from his shoulder and takes his. He grasps her hand tightly and looks up at her. She smiles at him but she sees the doubt that flickers across her face.
The 'what if' terrifies her, as it terrifies him. It's the one thing he had to reassure her of when he first told her this story. That he wasn't going anywhere, that he wouldn't leave her side again. All he really wanted now was to marry her, and live a quiet life by the sea.
There wasn't much chance of dying there.
Isabella makes a small noise - something akin to determination - and then turns around to him. "Take your shirt off."
Galavant wrinkles his nose at the suggestion. "Izzy, I don't see how that's going to help. Unless we're going to-"
She shakes her head, and gives a small laugh, which is comforting considering what they're talking about. "Just do what I say," a pause, "please."
It's the exact same look she gave him before he proposed to her. If he's being honest he's not sure he'll ever be able to say no to her face ever again.
So he does what she asks and takes his shirt off, discarding it on the floor beside the bed.
Isabella smiles, smugly, and it makes him smile too. "Thank you," she says, before she pulls the bed covers down a little further so that his bare torso is fully in sight.
He's suddenly a little self-conscious when she places her small hand on the scar just beside his heart. She's seen him shirtless since they reunited, of course she has, but those particular activities didn't involve an awful lot of silence and staring and she's never really focused on the scar before tonight.
She examines it carefully, and then looks up at him, sincerity in her eyes. "Do you know what I see what I look at this?"
He shakes his head, and raises a quizzical eyebrow at her. "Where I was impaled by my sword?"
Isabella rolls her eyes and shakes her head. "No."
By now she's moved around so she's sitting right in front of him, and he rests his arms around her waist.
"I see a reminder of what you did. Richard can go around claiming that his virgin beard hair,"Isabella gives a slight chuckle and wrinkle of her nose at the word-for-word description Richard himself had so proudly used,"brought you back to life but I know the truth."
He realises what she means.
"It was you," he says. She blushes and looks away slightly. But she's smiling.
Galavant places a hand on top of the one she rests on his chest, and another on her cheek.
Eventually, after a silent moment passes, she looks back at him, and nods. "Exactly. You came back from the dead for me. That's what I see, Gal." She leans forward. "And that's what you have to remember too."
He closes the gap and kisses her. She kisses him back, and they both know it isn't the world's best kiss – not yet – but it's amazing how it doesn't matter at all.
Not when they'd been apart for so long.
Eventually, after a lot of kissing - they have a lot of practising to do after all, Isabella falls back asleep.
Galavant has an arm around her and her snores are like music to his ears. Truthfully, it feels like he's on the verge of a song himself. But it's late, and his eyelids are heavy.
He can save that musical number for another day.
And this time, when he falls asleep, the dream is different. Death is nowhere to be seen, and that damned song isn't going round and round in his head. The only similarity at all is that Isabella is there again.
But instead of standing in a dim room, she's by a cottage that sits on the seaside. She smiles at him, surrounded by a gaggle of children - theirchildren, he quickly realises.
He starts towards them - his family, his future. Isabella and those seven children she had sung about.
There's a smile on his face, and that new song resounding in his heart, and he thinks that it doesn't really surprise him at all.
Even in a dream of his own, of course, Isabella won that battle.
ENDNOTE: I never thought I would ever write Galavant fic (even though the show is my heart and soul). But there's so little of it (and not a lot of Gal x Izzy fic which is just a travesty!) and there's so much fic I wanted to see that no one else had written so hey, I gave it my best shot. It was really hard to get the tone of the show and I don't think I've fully succeeded, but at the same time I wasn't really aiming to fully emulate the show, if you know what I mean. Nevertheless, I tried so please be gentle with me, please!
(p.s. really weird to post anything at all after over a year of nothing but hey that's where my confidence has been this past year unfortunately and I hope I can maybe post one or two other little fics I have saved in my drafts at some point too!)