Chapter 4: I Would Rather Die...
The grief of their presence, the grief of their grief, is overwhelming. Filling her nye constantly with the desperate urge to cry, that bloats and bloats, growing larger and larger, but her eyes cannot sting, her throat cannot catch, her tears cannot fall. She can only drown. They whistle as they work on their task. A glass coffin to hold her body forever, too beautiful to even be buried in the ground. Its own curse, its own miracle.
She can hear the movements and clatter of the tools. The small grunts of work. She knows by the way they breathe and the sounds as they finish pieces, what is happening not too far from her. A whimpered heavy sigh followed by a sneeze as something is sawed free is Dopey and Sneezy to her far left. Happy's voice, low and somber, anything but his name, telling them where to wrap the root-work. The whistling goes on, and it is the torrent of their work, the torrent of her great pain. Because soon it will all be gone.
Soon they will go. Taking their maddening comfort, their well known tune, and leaving her in silence alone, forever. Then it will only be her, her tomb, and the glass coffin. Their slow steady work, without breaks, breaks her heart, but it is the whistling that makes her want to break most. It fills her with each new drop of regret. That she will never see their faces again. That she will never tell them all that was in her heart, gratitude unmeasured for saving her when she was lost, not once, but twice. From the world and from herself.
Without words she knows them by their touch even. The respectful steady hands of Doc, who checked her for the smallest signs of life, and then changed her out of her fur and leathers into a soft gown. The languid, slow touch to Sleepy as he crossed her arms, murmuring 'so she'll be comfortable.' The timid, gentle shake of Bashful's fingertips as he continued to brush early winter's slushy snow free from her face and hair. It is Grumpy only whom she knows by his absence.
He can angrily growl orders, and he can give her a castle of glass to hold her for eternity, but he cannot touch her. Not since they carried her here. He had lost so much already. She knows him only by his breath, in his nose and out his mouth, threatening to shudder but never allowed, somewhere feet above her, right as the glass monster swallows her whole. Each moment a regret for the grave hurt she's paid their grand kindness with now, too.
"You're too late. "
"...Open it."
"I'm sorry. She's gone."
She doesn't know how long it is before these blurry sounds, like words echoing through water, dribble toward her. They love her too well to put her in the ground, but she regrets how they've taken with themselves even the wind and the sounds of the forest, too. They mean to protect her, but they cut her off. How soon, soon, it will be as her Stepmother said, only her own thoughts and the dreams of her regrets.
From so far away she struggled to focus, from the mire, from the darkness, from the endless weight each new second, each new thought, each new regret, lends to an endless eternity of grains of sands left to add up. Voices like whispers through walls. The glass coffin, but something in her stirs still. As though her frozen heart could lurch, could demand. The voice that isn't Doc's or Grumpy's. The one that had followed, from further away, slowly and then suddenly closer like it was approaching through a tunnel.
"At least let me say goodbye."
Oh, Charming. If she could laugh and smile and sob, it would have all happened here. He was free. Somehow he was free. Her Stepmother had kept her word. Or he'd freed himself. But he was free. Alive, free, and so grief stricken in so few words. The pause that had followed before the sliding sound of the glass coffin being pulled back and the soft, whisper cold snowflakes found her cheeks again.
A sound less than a foot from her that had to be hands on the side of the coffin again. His hands. Charming's. Everything that was everything rested in that sound. In the regrets for him that clouded the lake of her still heart, her mind falling through the endless darkness of her thoughts, or what once was dreamt in only the most secret, sacred places.
I will find you.
I will always find you.
They had been his words. Always his words, and the last words she'd shouted to him as he rolled away in the cage, blood dripping from her mouth. She regretted that she hadn't been unable to see them through. She had not found him. Only a mirror. Only her stepmother, the apple and this deal. Here he was, proving he had found her. Again. Not on the hill close to where she'd once been saved by her Stepmother, but deep into the heart of The Enchanted Forest where the dwarfs brought her to her last home.
She regretted that she couldn't see his blue, blue eyes. She regretted that she would never see his fawn hair turn silver. She regretted that she'd never meet his mother, the woman who could stand the mettle of King George and still bequeath rings that had earned his fierce loyalty. She regretted not holding out one day longer before drinking the potion. She regretted that this was how her dear friends and her Charming would meet, over her body, in grief.
She regretted that his path had to change now, and wondered where it might lead. Her heart, dead and still, screamed at the half formed notions of his life beyond this moment, this day. Whose hand would come to rest in his, once his heart accepted this terrible truth? Would he return to Abigail? Would he return here to her across the years? Would his children play in these woods? She regretted the loss of a life, any life, they might have one had, children, joy, the love that should have been more than a diamond, cold and eternal in her chest.
She regretted that she hadn't told him she loved him. Oh, he knew. She knew that. That Red had told him. That her actions had told him. That he'd argued that she did, that it was True Love, even when the potion had her saying she hadn't and didn't. But that she hadn't said it the forest, when her memory came back. That she hadn't said it to the mirror, with their hands against each other but a million miles apart.
That she hadn't said it in her own words. Regretted that in this moment, when his warm breath touched her lips and she knew, without needing to see, he would kiss her goodbye, the she could not tell him, that she loved him so greatly, beyond words and deeds, with every part of her heart and soul, that she would make the choice again, gladly sacrifice her world for him, bite into that same apple every day of the rest of her eternity, for his freedom, for his life, for his love.