AN~ This took a lot longer than I expected and I'm sorry. I'm also probably not going to be around much for the upcoming month because I'm going to Italy. So yeah.

QotU: What should I call the sequel? I'm thinking "International Policy and Enemy Extraction," but it doesn't have the same ring as AMaWoS does.

Old QotU Winner: Axel Treehorn. He had suggestions about why.

The story of what happened to Snow was long, and a bit difficult for Sabrina to understand because she wasn't intimately acquainted with the knowledge of how Magicia worked.

The jist of it, though, was that the previous queen of Magica had had two powers which she was born with: the ability to create her childre without a man to help, and a bit of an ability to be a seer. Snow was the only child born without any special talents of her own, but she was also the oldest, the heir to the throne of Magica. There were rumors that Snow was actually the child of a human man, and that even though she was a perfectly capable sorceress, much like her mother, she was not the rightful queen of Magica. There were four assassination attempts throughout her childhood.

So apparently the queen decided it would be a good idea to get Snow safely out of the kingdom. First she sent her to live with some friends outside of the capital, then when that didn't stop the assassins from finding her, she made arrangements for Snow to marry the crown prince of Artisa. This way she'd be out of the kingdom. Her oldest brother would rule as regent, and everyone would be happy.

Except then the queen went crazy. She saw a vision of the prince of Artisa killing Snow, and she went berserk, killing thousands of people, including (apparently) her own daughter and her fiance.

Magicians could deal with a lot of craziness from their rulers. Their current council was an excellent example of this. But they couldn't sit back and watch the queen kill her own daughter and assassinate the future ruler of another kingdom. It was too much. So they rebelled. They decided they'd had enough of somewhat insane rulers, and they killed Bunny and locked all her children in glass cages.

Things would have been fine, but then the council turned out to be just as bad, and one of its members was one of Bunny's children (though apparently not many knew this), working from his prison.

And the council was hungry for more space. So the war happened. Sabrina knew the rest.

It was shocking to find out Snow's story. A princess? Rightful queen? Sabrina almost couldn't believe it.

And yet it somehow made sense.

"Wow," she said, once she'd digested things. "That's... wow."

She'd have said more, but there was a groan from behind her, and she suddenly found herself busy with Puck, which was honestly a little more important than finding out one of her best friends had a complicated history. She'd always assumed Snow's past hid a big secret, after all. Finding out what it was didn't change the fact that Puck was in worse shape than she was, and he needed to be taken care of.

Explaining everything to him took a long time, and taking care of him took even longer. That was okay, though, because they had nothing but time to kill. And keeping busy was better than sitting there, waiting to die, which was their other option.

She'd have liked it if their reunion could have been a little more private (there were intimate ways of expressing her relief at how glad she was that he was alive that she didn't feel comfortable doing in front of a whole bunch of people), but she was glad enough that he would be okay, for now at least, that it wasn't too important.

The joy of knowing Puck was alive didn't keep her satisfied for too long.

There wasn't much to do in this prison. Nobody brought them food or water; it just seemed to appear inside the mirrors, and then Sabrina and Puck would take some. The view outside the windows consisted mostly of birds and clouds. The wall was too thick for Sabrina to get a good view of the ground. There was nothing to read, and though the fellow prisoners said they could see out other mirrors, Sabrina couldn't.

The boredom set in more quickly than Sabrina would have guessed.

She and Puck spent most of their free time trying to recuperate from their injuries, doing exercises and stretches to rebuild injured muscles, and letting the other royal captives tend to broken bones and the like. Sabrina couldn't explain why she trusted these people. Normally she wouldn't have. She blamed magic. But still, she did trust them.

Mostly, they just waited for something to happen.

It was a long wait. Sabrina estimated that they were in that prison for a good month before anything changed.

It was incredibly frustrating not knowing what was happening in the outside world. She could cope with it without going crazy, but just barely. And it made her very angry. She almost broke some of the mirrors, and she yelled at Puck more than once.

After the time she punched him, they took to sparring to keep her from boiling over again.

And they kept waiting.

When things finally changed, it wasn't exactly for the better.

A monstrous man came into their tower through the funny spot on the floor, and suddenly Sabrina and Puck found themselves unable to move.

While they were frozen, the man came up and clapped manacles around their wrists and ankles, chaining them together.

Once the things were on, Sabrina found she could move again, and she demanded, "What's being done with us?"

"Shut up and come with me," the man growled.

"Hey!" Puck snapped. "Watch it! Only I get to be nasty to her."

"Relax," Sabrina said. "I can take care of myself."

The man laughed, deep and menacing. "You've done an excellent job of that," he said, yanking on their chains. "Now follow me, before I have to make you."

Sabrina and Puck shared a look, then, with a grimace, Sabrina stepped forward after the man. It would be better to bide her time and wait for an opportune moment than to resist for the sake of resisting. She'd learned that the hard way.

Sabrina had never been to Magica before, at least not properly. She was suitably impressed. Everything was gray (though she supposed that had something to do with the clouds that covered the sun), and vaguely threatening in its grandiose appearance. She refused to be cowed, though, and she walked with her head held high as the monstrous man led her to what she assumed was her doom.

She half expected ominous music to eminate from nowhere as she walked along, the way it did in theatrical performances when the hero was being led to his or her execution. But she wasn't a hero, and there would be no rescue for her unless she made it herself. Nobody even knew where she was. They might even still think she was in Trickster.

Still, that was no reason to be scared.

She was really very glad that part of her training to be queen included lessons on remaining poised on the outside when inside she just wanted to scream.

Besides, she was waiting for her moment.

Then she'd get them both out of here. Alive.

Or at least Puck. Her kingdom had someone else they could rally around. His didn't. And without Puck, Trickster would stop fighting. Magica would win. So Puck, at least, had to live. Though she'd rather they both survived.

Puck followed his fiancee and that enormous man (the one he wouldn't admit scared him) into a big, round room he recognized (vaguely) from his mother's description of Magica's court. They were in the courtroom.

On one side of the room a bunch of people were clustered, staring at the three of them. On the other side there were a line of thrones on a raised platform. All of them had people in them except the middle one, which was made of silver polished so smooth he was filled with a desire to see his distorted reflection in it like the warped mirrors of Trickster.

The huge man led them to the middle of the empty space in front of the thrones and stopped, standing between Puck and Sabrina, his hands wrapped around their chains.

"Sabrina Grimm and Puck, you are here to stand trial," someone said, the voice exploding through the room.

Puck jumped a little, and looked around, searching for the speaker. Nobody had moved, though. And Sabrina hadn't even blinked. She was just glaring at the empty throne. Puck straightened himself up and tried to look like he wasn't the only one who had no clue what was going on.

"Puck, you are accused of high treason against the realm of Magica, which birthed you, and of stealing state secrets as follows: flight. Transformation. Fire breath. Immortality. The sentence is death."

"Now hold on just a second-" Puck started. He might not have paid too much attention in lessons, but he knew you had to be part of a country to get accused of treason. And he'd never even been to Magica before! Except that time he helped steal back Sabrina's parents. But he hadn't even seen the sky. And there wasn't really a clear border. So yeah.

The voice didn't even pause to let him finish, though. It just continued, "Sabrina Grimm, you are accused of freeing state prisoners, entering the country without permission, and conspiring against the governing board of Magica. The sentence is the same. The council will now try you for guilt."

Sabrina laughed. "Please," she said. "These are nonsense charges. If you're going to kill us, at least be honest about it."

"Excuse me?" the voice from nowhere demanded.

"We all know you're pulling things out of your rear ends," Sabrina said. "Freeing state prisoners? You kidnapped my parents! That in itself is worse than anything you claim to have done to me. Puck's 'stolen state secrets' are talents he was born with! And he's no more traitor to Magica than you people are! You at least were citizens when you fought against the country. I never conspired against you. I just fought back when you invaded my country searching for a prisoner who we never freed. The only thing I've done is coming into the country without permission. If you want to pretend that's something you normally kill people for, fine. But don't lie to my face."

"Very well," the voice said, and Puck was surprised to hear a bit of humor in it. "You, the royalty of Sneak and Trickster, are sentenced to death as casualties of war in order that we of Magica may conquer your countries more easily."

"That's better," Sabrina said, a little bit of a satisfied smile creeping onto her own face. "Now we're on the same page, and we can get on with things."

"We sentence you to death by hanging," the bodiless voice said. "The hanging will occur as soon as feasibly possible. Take them away."

The gigantic man turned around, tugging their chains with him. Puck almost fell over. Sabrina glared at him. She, of course, was still perfectly poised.

"What do you want?" he hissed. "I'm on the wide side of his turn." It was true, but he was pretty sure Sabrina wouldn't have fallen over anyway.

Sabrina just rolled her eyes and walked forward, her head held high. She glared at everyone on their way out. Puck thought she looked beautiful, all regal and angry even when they were-

That was when it hit him. They were going to die. Today. There was no fighting their way out of this. No running. Nobody to save them. He was being led to his death.

The color drained out of his face, and he stumbled again. He wasn't ready to die!

Sabrina looked over at him, and for the first time, Puck noticed that she looked worried.

What she didn't look, though, was terrified. Her eyebrows were drawn together like they did whenever she was scared, and she was trembling the tiniest bit, but more than anything, she looked determined.

And there was no way Puck was going to let himself get outdone by a girl. Not even Sabrina.

So he took a deep breath, stood up straight, and walked forward, trying hard not to look like he was copying Sabrina's pose.

They walked through the dark empty halls of Magica towards who knows where for a very long time. Puck was proud of how well he fought back his panic. Whenever thoughts like I'm too beautiful to die or No not yet not yet not yet popped back into his head, he shoved them to the side, looking at Sabrina for reassurance.

The longer they walked, though, the less calm looking at Sabrina made him. At first she just looked proud and angry. But the further they walked, the less composed Sabrina seemed. Her eyes started darting around, and she'd switched to walking on her toes the way she did when she was getting ready for a fight, or preparing to bolt.

He was pretty sure that if Sabrina was getting nervous, it would be okay for him to get nervous.

But when she looked over at him, he gave her a sly smile. He just couldn't take the absolute dread that was starting to show in her eyes.

She gave him a tiny smile back, but then she went straight back to what she'd been doing before: darting her eyes everywhere, searching desperately for- well, he didn't know what. Something. Probably a way to get them out. That was the kind of thing she'd do.

That explained why she'd been so much more composed than him. She hadn't given up on them getting out. And he- he hadn't even tried to think of a way to escape. He felt kind of dumb, now. Worthless. Again.

But honestly, there was nothing. Maybe if either of them had had a weapon, but he couldn't even access his wings- he'd tried. They were well and truly stuck. And if they trusted this one guard to watch them for this whole walk, he had to be something to worry about.

And then there was a door in front of them. Puck had been so caught up in trying to think of a way to get them out that he hadn't noticed it until it was right in front of them.

The door slid open silently without anyone touching it, and Puck found himself walking across a narrow bridge onto a plateau. There was a clear walkway down the center of the thing, but on either side crowds of people pressed into each other. Everything was eerily silent. It skeeved Puck out.

At the other end of the path was a platform, and from a pole above it hung two nooses. Puck swallowed. He was looking at his future, and it wasn't looking very long.

They walked in silence, Puck trying to slow himself down incrementally, but getting tugged forward by the monster man every couple feet.

It seemed as if time were speeding up. Puck blinked, and suddenly the end of the path seemed half as far away.

He was going to die. He could feel his heartbeat in his ears. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum. There was no other sound. He was going to die. Today.

And then it was like the world exploded.

It didn't, really. But it felt like it.

What actually happened was that Sabrina jumped up, wrapping her chains around the enormous man's neck. While they were still clanging together, she shouted "Run!" to Puck. Since the man was too busy trying to keep himself from choking to hold onto Puck's chains, it was the perfect opportunity.

Of course, it would have helped if Puck hadn't spent the first twenty seconds frozen in shock.

By the time he could think again, everyone was running around, screaming. He tried to fight his way through the roar of the crowd, but it was hard, especially since people kept stepping on the chains between his feet, or catching their arms on the ones between his arms, or grabbing him, or running in front of him, or bumping him from all sides. He settled on just getting lost enough in the crowd that he could maybe work his way out of the chains.

There was another roar, this one louder and more animalistic than any of the noises coming out of the people in the crowd, and Puck turned around to see-

Sabrina, clinging to the back of something that definitely was not a monstrous man. It was just a monster, seven feet tall at least, and angry.

Sabrina looked tinier than ever on the back of that huge furry thing. There was no way she'd be able to hang on for long.

She was still trying, though, her face as determined as Puck had ever seen it, twisting the chain around the monster's neck and not letting herself get battered around so much that she fell off the thing.

But how much longer could she hold on?

He didn't think it would be a lot of time.

And then- and then-

Puck pushed that thought aside and threw himself back through the crowd faster than he'd run away, determined to save Sabrina the way she was obviously trying to save him.

But then the world went silent again, and Puck found himself completely unable to move. He was pushing between two people, in the middle of calling out Sabrina's name, and then he couldn't move; didn't even fall over. Nothing moved.

Until someone did.

A single woman in red (one spot of bright color in a purple-gray world), one Puck recognized from his trial, walked forward among the crowd. She pulled Sabrina off the monster and placed her on the ground. Then her eyes roved the crowd until they came to rest on Puck. She walked forward and grabbed Puck by the chains, dragging him back to the monster. She smiled and walked back to the platform and the nooses hanging from it. She snapped her fingers.

Everything came back to life.

It wasn't wild, though. The people scooted back to their spots lining the pathway without saying anything, and the monster slowly morphed back into something more human. Not even Sabrina put up much of a fight.

The monster-man tugged on their chains, and Sabrina and Puck walked forward.

Puck glanced over at Sabrina. She wasn't looking around with determination anymore, or even in desperation. She was just shuffling along, with her eyes on the ground and her back slouched. She looked defeated. It was heartbreaking.

And Puck wasn't the kind of guy who found much in life to make him sad. He'd never even really cried for his father (except once, but that didn't count. Nobody had seen him).

So he whispered "Hey," in her direction. When Sabrina looked up, he grinned at her. "We're not done yet," he said under his breath.

Sabrina gave him a tight smile, bu she didn't look too encouraged.

"I mean it," Puck insisted. It was funny, a few minutes ago, he'd been sure they were down for the count. But now that Sabrina was looking like she'd given up, he found that he was about as far from ready to go down without a fight as it was possible to be. He had no idea how they'd make it out of this, but he knew they would. Somehow. Or he was convincing himself of it, just to wipe that look of defeat off Sabrina's face. So he added, "We'll figure something out."

Something in her eyes must have convinced her he was serious, because this time when she smiled at him around their enormous guard-monster-person, the fire was back in her eyes.

Puck leaned back with a sigh. There was that, at least. Now he could go back to panicking.

And he did panic, numbly, all the way up the walk and straight into the noose. Because no matter what he'd said to Sabrina, they were going to die.

"Any last words?" the woman in red asked as the monstrous man forced their necks into the ropes. The man next to her snickered, his arm on the lever that would drop them to their deaths.

Sabrina looked down at them disdainfully and said, "It won't work. Killing us."

Her voice was so steady, so mildly amused by what they were doing, so brave, that Puck felt more in love with her than ever, and awed by her, by how strong and amazing she was. He didn't deserve her. (He refused to think that he was never going to have her, not really. Not today.) Here she was sassing these people and it was all he could do to keep from begging for his life.

The woman laughed and said, "Keep telling yourself that."

Puck and Sabrina looked at each other. Sabrina reached out and grabbed his hand in her own. He took it back, squeezing it tight, and suddenly he was calm. He stopped trying to fight the chains blocking his magic, stopped pleading inside his head for a way out, stopped wanting to cry. He just looked at Sabrina, and she looked back, and they were both calm.

"I love you," he said. It was the first time he'd said it, and he wanted it to be the last thing he said, if he had to die today. He wanted her to know.

She opened her mouth to answer him, but before she could say anything, the floor dropped out from under them and they went plummeting to their fates.

AN~ I EXPECTED to be able to finish things up this chapter. But NOO, I had to write MORE. So you get at least one whole chapter more and then maybe an epilogue.

Feature: "Princess Academy" by Ice Queen and Fire Queen
If you liked how I handled Bradley, you'll probably like this fic. Ice Queen and Fire Queen is a pretty frequent updater with solid writing skills, and she's working on getting better all the time. This story isn't too far in, but I expect good things.

Many Review Replies:

1-2-4: Well, there's a sequel in the works, so don't be sad about the ending! I'm already trying to write the opening. Not sure how to do it, but it'll happen. Also, um... that's a really weird request, and I'm not entirely sure why you'd want that. Plus I'm not a hundred percent convinced that this is you. It'd be really easy for someone else to be mad at you and ask for this using your name. 'Cause you DEFINITELY don't type like you're 78.

Axel Treehorn: Hmph you and your other things to do. :)
Please don't kill yourself. I've never heard of Daughter of Evil, but from a quick Google search it looks like an anime which is cool. Unnoticed is fine for real life but you've already passed that point here. :) I KNOW YOU EXIST
You're the only person I've ever met who ships Sadley as a serious thing. You're also the only openly male SG fanficer I've met which means you should totally sign up 'cause we need some more variety. It also explains your name 'cause I thought you were spelling the car part wrong.
Dude what did you EXPECT going into the M-rated section? (I'm sorry you experienced something you weren't ready for but I'm laughing because so many people go to M-fics in this category and they freak out and I'm just going 'you poor innocent children don't go to other fandoms stay here where I can protect you.')

Guest 1: Thanks for reviewing! (Also you're welcome and I'm sorry it took so long.) I'm glad you like it! I'll miss this story, too, but I'm 90% sure I'm going to be writing a sequel, so there's that!

Guest 2: I updated!

Guest on chapter 2: Aw, thanks!

Julia: I updated! I hope it lived up to your expectations!

Reeder: Chapter 16: Calm down you can hate whatever color you want.
Chapter 17: Honestly I'd be down with learning to fly.
Chapter 21: That's a pretty good one.
... You know these are closed, right? Once the next chapter's published answering the QotU is just for fun. And even if they weren't, you'd have to say something about the chapter to be eligible.

SilSha:No, I don't think it was shorter, actually... Thanks! You reviewed actually ON my birthday (I think. I got the email on my birthday...) Glad you won spirit week, even if it means less time for reading. If it makes you feel better, I'm planning on writing a sequel. QotU: I figured that was part of it. Okay that's fine about the game thing I don't play video games except like sims, so...

Weirdgurl: Well, I'm glad you like it so much! Thanks!