Emma thought within a couple days, she'd spot her large, dark brown wolf bounding through the snow-covered underbrush of the forest, none the worse for wear after their flight from the cabin. A few days stretched into a week and a half, however, and the blonde began to lose faith. Snow fell almost constantly in that time and only allowed the woman and her horse perhaps a day's reprieve total. For a while, Emma directed her steed out of the forest in search of easier footing and a means of visual navigation across the kingdom, but beyond the protection of the enormous trees, the wind whipped cruelly, which forced the pair into the trees again. The wind didn't penetrate the woods when they traveled deep enough, but even still, the scent of burned wood was unmistakeable. In fact, one day, Emma watched helplessly as ash fell with the snow, and it took all the willpower in the world to keep her thoughts from drifting to the worse. Did they kill Red? Her family? Their kingdom? What about Regina or the dwarves? The woman chewed her bottom lip in thought and inhaled deeply, worried. Able to sense her companion's distress, the large mare below her loosed a half-hearted hop of a buck, which effectively wrenched the blonde's mind to the present.
Emma tugged the reins and the horse came to a stiff halt. She didn't even know where she wanted to go except that it needed to be away from what she'd come to call home over the past two years. She likened summers here to those in Boston or perhaps slightly farther south, but winters here were certainly more mild than those in Maine. This one everyone told her was an exception, however. It snowed a lot, yes, but never like this. Temperatures remained bitterly low, and Emma ached for Storybrooke's variety of heated buildings or that realm's winter clothing. Here, she shivered beneath two cloaks (she'd pulled Red's on under her own in vain attempt to keep warm), and her fingers felt stiff and frozen in her leather gloves. Some days she swore the snow that threatened to bury both horse and rider would turn to ice and stick her to the seat of her saddle. Eventually, legs stiff from cold refused to bend to allow her into the saddle, and so from that day forward, she led the equally cold and exhausted gray mare through the forest on foot.
Nights were no better. Fear of discovery meant absolutely no fires at night, even though every fiber of Emma's being wanted nothing more than to stick herself so close to an open flame that it burned her skin. It also meant she couldn't really cook anything she managed to kill with her bow and arrows. Twice she lit a fire during the day and cooked everything she could find and then rationed the meat to eat later, but as soon as she finished, she dumped enough snow on the fire to smother even smoke. The mare survived somehow, too. Emma saw her scrape through the snow a few times and nibble at whatever leaf litter she found there, and occasionally while they walked, the mare lipped hibernating buds from otherwise sparse-looking branches. They managed, however uncomfortably. Emma took to sleeping curled up against a tree, or better, her horse's stomach when the mare occasionally laid down for the evening. She always awoke the next morning miserable, tired, and frozen, and this one was no different. The mare's leg twitched and her body moved, which instantly woke Emma. The blonde mourned the loss of the animal's warm body as she crawled away from the horse as the beast rolled. If she weren't so busy hating everything else, Emma would have been annoyed. With a huff and a grunt, the big horse rolled until she got to her feet and then shook excess snow off her coat furiously. With shaking arms, Emma managed to lift the saddle onto the horse's back and then loosely buckled the girth so as not to bother the mare while she walked. She slipped a hand out of her glove and with a wince, she closed her fingers around the searinly cold steel of the bit. If it hurt her hand to touch, she couldn't imagine sticking it in the horse's mouth until it warmed somewhat. After weather and metal leeched most of the warmth from her hand, she coaxed the bridle onto the gray horse's head, took the reins, and began another day of trudging through thick snow and hidden roots. For probably an hour they walked before the blonde heard footsteps from somewhere nearby. Largely, the snow muffled all sound, but the footfalls she heard were not the careful ones of a tracker, but rather those of a foot soldier. The voices came next, also muffled by the snow before they became more audible. Emma didn't recognize the language.
Immediately, panic surged through the woman's tired limbs as she dropped the reins and tightened the girth as fast as she could, which caused the mare to sidestep a few times in surprise. Even though her tired, sore body complained when she lifted a leg to the stirrup, Emma managed to heave herself into the saddle, and then leaned forward on the mare's neck and grabbed the reins after grabbing at them uselessly a few times. She urged the tired horse into a sloppy canter, no longer taking care to be silent. Just then, the voices became louder and the steps turned into what could have been a stampede of people. Emma couldn't see them, but these were the people Red feared when she left her many nights ago. As nerves got the better of her, she pushed the mare into a clumsy gallop and stooped herself tight against the horse's neck in order to avoid some of the branches that hung in her way, heavy with snow. Twigs and pine needles whipped at her face and pulled her hair, but still she ran, legitimately scared for the first time in over a week.
She saw them before they saw her. They dressed in mostly white, probably leather or some sort of wool, and they wore tabards that bore a white, simplistic bear's skull on a field of silvery gray. Emma's stiff fingers grappled for the bow tied to her saddle and she wrenched it free, pulled an arrow from the quiver under it and loosed an arrow that found its mark at the base of one man's neck. The blonde felt a pang of guilt as he fell lifeless against his cohort, but right now, she didn't have time for moral conundrums. The next arrow bounced uselessly off a tree and she cursed, but the one that followed stuck itself into another's eye. Now they expected her, and Emma didn't have time to slow her horse when the five that remained dropped to their knees with halberds aimed up at her. She dropped her bow and hauled backwards on the reins, but it was too late. The points missed the gray mare's chest by a breath, but one shredded through the horse's shoulder, while another sliced along the animal's neck. The horse screamed in pain and spooked backwards, slipping, but she maintained her balance and shot off in another direction heedlessly. Now without her bow, Emma pulled her father's sword from its holster tied to the saddle and hefted it in one arm as the mare bolted through trees and branches. By the time the princess saw the rogue footman, it was too late. She wrenched backwards on the bit once more and the mare obeyed immediately, but not before the man's halberd pierced leather like butter and buried itself in Emma's lower ribs on her left side. The force threw her from the saddle and she landed on her back with such force that the air left her lungs and refused to return for agonizing seconds. The mare shrieked, reared, and bolted again, leaving Emma stunned and alone against someone who clearly wanted her dead.
The blonde scrambled to her feet just before the bloodied metal blade hit the snow where she once laid. Emma swung the sword randomly and luckily parried another strike. Pain sent fire through her veins and she pulled herself together long enough to relieve the man of his hand. While incapacitated with surprise, the blonde sent the blade through the man's chest before she had a chance to think on it twice. With a grunt, she removed it and limped in the direction she faced. She shook with nerves and adrenaline as she moved, which kept the pain of the obvious wound in her side and what was probably a sprained ankle minimal enough to concentrate on staying alive. Before she knew it, two more men with halberds and bear skull tabards appeared out of the white world, and after a short fight, she cut them down too. How many did she see initially? She dragged the red-stained tip of her sword through the snow as she continued to stumble along, but the universe answered the question for her. The blade of the halberd clipped her face and left a thin, red line of blood across the top of her cheekbone below her right eye. Emma hissed in pain and threw herself to the side. She caught herself on a tree with her left forearm and raised the sword just in time to block the down-swipe from her attacker. They went on like this until Emma's sword arm shook and ached with exhaustion, and her opponent pressed harder. Spotting an opening, the man swapped ends of his weapon and jabbed the blonde in the sternum with the butt of the halberd hard enough to send her careening and eventually onto her back in the snow. Blindly, she swung her sword up and shuddered as it made contact with something she likened to rotting fruit before it stuck there. She peered up to see the edge of her sword jutting out of the man's temple. He stared down at her blankly for a second before his body fell to the ground at her side, lifeless. The blonde sucked in a much needed breath of icy air and laid there for a minute, utterly exhausted. Somehow, she survived. Once she reacquired a tenuous grasp on the ability to control her limbs, the woman rolled herself onto her stomach and slammed the tip of her sword into the frozen ground to use it as a level to pull herself onto her feet. Coming down from the high fueled by terror and the primal need to stay alive meant she felt every single ache in her body. She could hardly feel her feet or her hands from the cold, her cheek stung, her ankle ached… and all that paled in comparison to the agony caused by the hole in her side. Right hand still curled tightly around the end of her sword, Emma touched the wound with her free hand and whimpered involuntarily. She stared at the wound and her now blood-covered hand. Red soaked her left side and extend midway down her thigh, and the pain only increased with each passing second. Lips parted, the woman's eyes lifted as she searched the world of white and gray and black for signs of her mare. She needed to get the hell out of here.
The princess turned around, only to be met with a sharp, intense pain at the junction of her left shoulder. She staggered backwards with a cry and gaped at the arrow that now protruded from the spot. Another chased it, landing closer to her heart. Tears blurred her vision as she stared helplessly at the shafts. White-feather fletched shafts. Her arrows. Beyond the mocking white feathers, she saw the final footman. She'd miscounted by one. He stood perhaps twenty feet in front of her, arrow notched and ready to end this struggle. Emma's head swam with thoughts just then. How easy it would be to just let go, she thought, to let that last arrow hit its mark. She figured she would fall backwards and if that arrow didn't kill her, the man would hopefully put her out of her misery before she bled to death, cold and alone. Dying wouldn't be so bad. She thought about Boston, about Storybrooke, about Henry… The curse broke and they returned to the land of fairy tales. She became a stranger in her own home, or so it felt for a while. She thought of her parents, of Regina, the woman everyone hated and now tentatively trusted. A hot tear rolled down her cheek as she looked through the man holding her bow. Her thoughts landed on Red. No, she had to get through this. Her family needed her, every one of them. As her assailant drew the bowstring taught, Emma screamed and ripped the sword's tip from the ground. In one practiced motion, she arced the blade over her head and hurled it two-handed at her attacker with every ounce of her remaining strength, the momentum of which sent her sailing head first into the ground. The arrows snapped and the shafts bit deeper into her flesh on impact, but the muffled cry and final gurgle told her the sword hit her target before he could loose the arrow. For a long time, Emma simply laid there, both too afraid to get up for fear of another attacker and too utterly spent to force herself to move. Through half closed eyes, she watched snow fall through the mostly bare trees and wondered if she'd every see her family again.
But she lived. So long as no one else lunged at her through the trees, she'd be okay. The princess rolled onto her back and took note of the enormous patch of red in the snow where she landed and closed her eyes with a shuddering sigh. Actually, there was a good chance she wouldn't make it at this point. Try as she may to sit up, her body refused. The hole in her side throbbed powerfully and the two broken arrows embedded in her chest sent jolts of searing pain through her entire body, and all the blonde could manage was a choked sob to the snow-dampened quiet of the forest. At length, she crawled to the man she felled with a well-placed sword and wrenched the blade from his lifeless body. Once again, she used it to drag herself to her feet, but needed both hands wrapped tightly around the handle to bring herself upright. Immediately, she crashed against the nearest tree and clasped a hand to her side, eyes closed. She gathered her bearings for a minute before she willed her feet to move, but her wounds tormented her with each step. Emma didn't know how far she walked before her sword fell from her hands and she dropped against a hollow log, unable to continue. She slouched and pressed her hand against the deep laceration on her side as hard as she dared, and she bit her lip until it bled to muffle the scream that ripped from her throat. Her eyes would hardly focus anymore as awareness slipped into the blackness of caving vision, and because of this, it came as a surprise when a rush of warm air met the exposed skin of her face and neck.
"Oh Emma," the familiar voice cooed. Finally, the princess willed herself to focus and she found herself face-to-face with a familiar brunette. Four deep claw marks and a bruise atop one of her cheekbones marred her pretty face, but her green eyes were clear and currently filled with concern. The blonde's mouth moved wordlessly until she choked out a sob and brought a shaking, bloody hand to the woman's face. Her fingers left smudges of her own blood on the woman's face, but the other didn't seem to mind. The speaker curled her long fingers around Emma's hand for a moment, and then took the blonde's face in her own hands. Red's fingertips felt like divine fire against her skin, her very presence like summer sun in this frozen hell. The brunette wiped away stray tears as fast as they fell, and then leaned back to inspect the damage.
"Gods you are cold," the woman whispered to herself before her hands left Emma's face. In response, the blonde whimpered at the loss of contact and tried to follow where her lover's hands moved, but the strength to hold her head up waned before she could find them. Red tugged Emma's gray cloak tighter around her and then knelt over her legs to place a lingering kiss on her forehead.
"You stay alive, Emma Swan," she commanded, "Don't you dare die before I come back." Red rocked back onto her feet to stand and Emma keened, terrified suddenly.
"D-don't leave," she begged, voice hoarse from disuse, and one hand extended weakly towards the brunette before it dropped limply onto her lap. The familiar woman melted into a blurry mass of dark brown and sprinted away soundlessly through the snow. The last thing Emma remembered before the dark took her was cold and silence that screamed.