The Winter Rose
Snow feels chilled to her bones, everywhere she had tried to find shelter tonight had turned her away. She supposes she shouldn't blame them, after all, who would want to help a nobleman's daughter accused of murder? She wills her body on, just a few more steps, just a few more and she'll be somewhere else somewhere warm, with soup in her belly.
Maybe she is dreaming because in the next moment she gets her wish, she feels someone lifting her up into their arms and taking her into the safety of what feels like a castle.
"It's alright." Her saviour says reassuringly. "You are going to be alright." Snow feels so weak but, she focuses on his eyes. They are a beautiful blue and although everything else is blurring, her saviour is definitely handsome. The welcome heat of a roaring fire invades her senses, he's wrapped a thick black robe around her, and Snow feels as if he's trying to shield her even more. "You can't save me," Snow says resigned. "It's too late."
"No." Her saviour says, with complete devoted faith in his eyes. "I refuse to believe that."
"You're charming." Snow says, she feels him smile. The most gorgeous, almost defiant smile. "My name… is David."
"Charming." Snow repeats almost playfully.
"Alright." David concedes with a chuckle, looking at her, he feels this strange pull in his heart, but he can't focus on that now. He settles her down into the wooden felt chair his mother used to love and re-secures his robe around her.
"Stop trying to save me Charming." Snow insists flatly. "I am not worth it."
"And who are you to decide that?" David says. if he keeps her talking long enough, he's sure he can get through to her. She doesn't even know it but, her stubbornness seems to be making her stronger. "Someone who knows the world and knows its cruelty."
"That's still no reason to give up." David implored looking deeply into her eyes. Snow feels as if she's going wherever he is as well. He's so annoyingly wonderful.
"I am NOT giving up." Snow raises her voice.
"Good." David grins, before getting up to find her some food and wine. He's a lord but since his mother's death he has kept no servants on. He has enough gold to live on for the rest of his life but, he prefers to give as much to the people as he can. He lives a good life, a modest life and until this maddening woman a quite uneventful one too.
He finds some bread, dry meat and pours some wine into a wooden cup.
"Here." He bends down and passes her the wine, their fingers touch for a brief moment in the transfer, they both shyly pull them back. "Thank you, Charming." Snow elongates the last word affectionately before taking a sip of the wine to soothe her parched throat. "Stop it. Stop Snow he's not yours. He probably has a wife and a child and why are you now imagining yourself carrying his child? And kissing him and loving him. Gods somebody take this feeling away. As the days went on, Snow became stronger and that comfortable chair became a room with a comfortable handcrafted bed. At first, Snow had politely refused but, as soon as she had realised it was his mother's room and how much he missed her she couldn't refuse.
"It's been two years and her loss still lingers."
"I miss my mother and father as well." Snow said solemnly, putting a hand gently on his one night as they sit conversing by the fire. She's still guarded, but he's slowly breaking down all of Snow's defences. Charming, who wakes up early every morning just to make her porridge and honey, Charming who took her into the village to buy her a new dress. She picked the simplest dress she could find and he still looked at her like she was the sun.
The way he's looking at her right now.
"You lost your parents as well." "I'm so sorry." David said. If only she'd tell him her name.
"Don't be. My mother died of fever when I was twelve and my father was… he was taken from me five years this winter." By my spurned almost stepmother Cora who poisoned him. Snow doesn't say. Can't say. Because if she tells him, then she'll have to run, if she tells him he won't believe her.
They never do.
"Tell me your name, please." Charming pleads.
"I can't." Snow sighs, "If I tell you my name, you will despise me and I could not bear that."
"I could never despise you." Charming strokes away a tear from her face. "I love you."
"No." Snow sobs. "Please love someone else. Anyone else."
David feels crestfallen, "You don't feel the same?"
"I do, I do feel the same!" Snow says passionately. "I've loved you since the first moment I saw you."
David feels elated but, before he can process the conflicting emotions, she kisses him. It starts off softly, gently but then before she can break it, he responds just as lovingly. They take small stops for air but still continue kissing for several minutes before Snow finally pulls away. Their foreheads are still touching and their hands are entwined. "My name is Snow White. I am accused of murdering my father."
Snow watches his face intently, waiting to be called a monster, a witch, murderess. Those words don't come. Instead he pulls her close and Snow sobs into his shoulder. "You didn't do it, my darling. Stop punishing yourself."
"That's what people believed at first, but then Cora, dripped poison in their ears, I was never charged but suggestion is powerful enough to change people's minds. Suddenly, people I had played with as a babe did not want their children near me, I was thrown out of my home with few possessions except the ones I could squirrel away." "I sold them all for far less than they were worth but, it got me food and lodgings with a kindly grandmother and her granddaughter. I started to feel safe and obtained some work as a seamstress thanks to them still, my identity ruined their reputation. I ran, to spare them."
"Just as you thought saying nothing to me would spare my feelings." David realised.
"That was my intention. I thought perhaps I could slip away." Snow gasped as Charming kissed her unexpectedly before breaking it. "Slip away by all means my darling but not without me by your side."
"You assume too much Charming." Snow teased, dotting a finger along his heart and then back up in a light bop of his nose. "Do I?"
"Yes, what if you snore?"
"I do no such thing!" David tickles her, making her gorgeous laughter sing out for everyone to hear.
"Well, how am I to know?" Snow kisses his chin, the scar she gave him last week playing in a field together.
"That is very true." David ponders playfully, "What could we do about that?" "There's only one solution- you sleep outside and I listen and tell you he next morning." Snow chuckles.
"Or… you could marry me and we will find out together." Snow suggests, taking him completely by surprise. "Unless…"
"No, no of course I want to marry you. I was going to ask on your birthday, then, I realised, I did not know it. And also, that I did not need to know it. I would marry you on any day, any hour any moment you wished."
David bends down and produces his mother's ring from his pocket and loops it onto her finger.
"Snow- will you?"
But he needn't have asked because he knows the answer. "Of course." They kiss and he spins her around in his arms and they laugh and laugh together. Snow is hesitant.
"What's wrong?"
"There's still the matter of my murderous near stepmother." Snow answers.
David ponders. "Ah, I'm open to suggestions."
"Here's one. Marry me first, and then, on our honeymoon we are going to expose Cora for the murderous wretch she really is."
"How will we do it?" David asks lovingly.
"Like we shall do everything from this day forward. Together." Snow gushes before they seal the plan with a long and promise filled kiss.