- Roused

- Chapter 048

~ Strength

The mothers are trying to hold themselves together.


The princesses are in an exhausted sleep after eating, luckily Mary had been experimenting with a vegetable soup and something was ready for them.

The Queens are in a room near the bottom of the stairs. It looks like it was used as an office at one time, with a desk, table and some chairs, but there are crates and a barrel too.

"I don't know if I am strong enough to do this." Queen Leah says sitting heavily in a chair, her graying blonde hair easy to see with her head down; tears dripping off of her nose onto the stone floor. She was so emotionally drained, her baby finally coming home, her baby was in trouble, a war, and now this. Why was everything falling apart?

"I'll admit, that was pretty bad. We are all still alive. There is still hope. And we will get through even this." There were tears stains on Queen Rebecca's face and her hands gripped the table, holding herself up, and encouraging herself with the family mantra.

"But how? Everything we've tried has failed." Queen Leah asks from despair.

"Because they are our daughters and we are their mothers! I waited and kept hope alive for eighteen years and I didn't even know if she was alive. And I'll be damned if I let something like this take my daughter away from me!" Queen Rebecca snarls, picking up the heavy, wood table and slamming it back down, turning toward Queen Leah.

"I love her too much and she loves me back, even if we can't say it like that. You were strong enough to send Aurora away to protect her, you are strong enough to be here for her to help her heal!" Stated Queen Rebecca with all the ferocity of a mama bear.

"You love Aurora, don't you?" she demands.

Queen Leah was looking at Queen Rebecca with wide eyed amazement.

"I-I do, b-but the way she ate that apple. It was the most-most obscene thing I'd ever seen. I've seen starving wolves eat a deer with less relish. But it's like she is something completely alien." She looked with pleading eyes to Queen Rebecca.

"I know that was disturbing, but that appears to have only been hunger; terrible, terrible hunger. We could barely feed them fast enough with the rest of the food, for all they are exhausted. Besides, Rapunzel reacted much like that to the palace library." Queen Rebecca almost waving that off.

"What concerns me was that somehow we stepped on one of Rapunzel's snakes, and a really big one at that. She called me mother; she's never done that before. She was panic-stricken over the thought of a punishment. She is so weak and defenseless right now, she didn't need that. I'm glad they were able to eat some more before falling asleep on us." Tears are standing in her eyes again as she drags a chair over to sit next to Leah.

"I take it that punishment was fairly common with the kidnapper," asks Queen Leah.

"Yes, but none have had anything like this reaction."

"Any idea why?"

"No. We'll have to talk about it, but not until she recovers. She's described so many punishments. They've all been attacks on her spirit, to keep her down and in the tower. This was different."

"Like what?"

"So many, but the one that sticks out in my mind was the one she told us of when we were at her tower. There is a lock and key to the window she would look out of, there weren't many windows in the tower, but this was the big one she would lean out of and look at the sky and talk to the birds. Gothel would lock it for days, if she was bad." Queen Rebecca looks pensive.

"That doesn't sound all that bad." Queen Leah sounded tentatively hopeful.

"That's what you might think, but she lived her whole life in a room only about 30 feet across. Her only friends were Pascal and the birds. The only thing she would be able to see from the other windows would be the rock of the canyon walls, less then 500 feet away. Gothel took the whole world away from her." She gestures to the window, closing her hand into a fist.

"That's terrible. How can anyone be like that?" Queen Leah says with a gasp.

"People can do terrible things for the sake of greed." Said Queen Rebecca, standing and settling her dress.

"Now, we don't know how long they will sleep, we got lucky that we had those apples and we had sent for food already, but it takes too long to go down to the kitchens and return. I think that we should convert a room up here into a kitchen, so it doesn't take so long." Moving into a more practical frame of mind. Doing worked better then worrying.

"Yes, and we should take this room for ourselves, I want to be close to Aurora and I am sure you want to be close to Rapunzel. I've been trying to help Stefan with the war, but the men will have to see to the war themselves, now," said Queen Leah, focusing on doing.

"I hope this is the right thing to do, putting them up here. We know she doesn't like her room and since Maleficent came to her there, I can't say that I blame her. Phillip woke her in that room, so it has just got to be the happiest room in the castle for her," hopes Queen Leah, looking up through the ceiling to where her daughter lays injured and exhausted.

"The cottage may have been better, but it is out of reach now. This is the best we have, so it will have to do. Having Rapunzel in there with her was a great idea. They are best friends now and that has got to be comforting. Being close is good for us too; we need to make sure to get up to comfort their nightmares. They will be having new ones, now," finishes Queen Rebecca grimly, looking up to the room their babies are in.

"Yes, I'm sure. I'll talk to the staff and have them set up something," states Queen Leah.


- End on Chapter 048

Author's Note: That was very tough. The mothers are hanging on to hope with their fingernails. Their babies were hurt, terribly hurt. Like a sword through their own guts.

Can you feel the mother's desperate worry?