Snow's fingers tightened into a white-knuckle grip around the phone as she stared sightlessly across the Business Office. Behind her, a groan, then the thump of a body hitting the hard flagstone floor.
The droning dial tone clicked off, but Snow had dropped it as she spun around. He couldn't be that bad, right? Collapsing from his seat?
He was.
Bigby lay face-down. Unmoving.
Snow mumbled something to Swineheart - to hold the line, that something had happened, that she needed him at the Business Office right away. Then she dropped the receiver and knelt by Bigby. Heaved him onto his back for the second time in the past ten minutes and felt for a pulse.
Nothing but feverishly hot skin, then the pumpl of his heartbeat. Snow huffed out a breath and hung her head, squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed the lump in her throat.
Grimble had called her in a panic, pleading with her to come down immediately. When she had…The alley that Bigby had torn Tweedle Dum's neck to shreds in had swam in front of her eyes. It had been a completely different scene - only one Tweedle, middle of the day and Bigby very thoroughly human - but she knew it was only different because of the collar. Without the witches' magic, there would surely be another bloodbath set at the foot of the Business Office.
Yet even without said bloodbath, she wasn't happier with this outcome.
Bigby was pale. Unusually so for anyone, let alone him. He had fought. Hard. Blood oozed from his chest and shoulder, red fingerprints around his throat were turning a nasty blue-black and his breathing was unsteady.
It was utterly stupid to weigh his wellbeing higher than their fellow Fables.
But, a tiny part of her whispered, it might not be just his wellbeing. Perhaps it would be his life, too?
Even the thought of Bigby dying was wrong. Especially in a fight! Bigby would shut down if Snow asked, but she knew he loved the thrill of a fight. He was good at fighting. For it to injure him this much…
Bigby had taken a silver bullet, shook it off and asked for more. Not to mention the countless shotgun slugs he'd had fired into him that he'd walked through, but now just one had him knocked out and pale as death.
Snow sighed, her hands fiddling in her lap. She had done all she could for now. Swineheart would get there soo and he'd sort out whatever was wrong with Bigby. And then they'd track down this so-called 'Saint' and find out which of the other Fable settlements had been so foolhardy as to attack them.
She'd known, way back when Fabletown was first forming, that granting amnesty to everyone wouldn't exactly be good for politics, but she hadn't thought the other towns would attack without even trying to talk it out first! And if talking was the first option, sending a common thug to kill her Sheriff was the last fucking option!
If she even thought about the outright accusation that she'd ever set Bigby on the other Fable settlements, Snow would march out into the street and start hunting down that insolent pig, Sheriff in tow or not.
With a calming breath, Snow reached into her pocket - this skirt was her favourite, simply for having them - and felt the calming, cold weight of Winter. With the click of a button, the pen would transform into the enchanted sword that Snow had wielded when fleeing the Adversary in the Homelands. Since Bigby wasn't as powerful as usual, she'd taken to carrying it around again, which had certainly paid off today. But the readiness for violence that the blade incited in her… Fabletown already had one monster in its Business Office, they didn't need another.
A groan from below her and Snow shook the thoughts away. Bigby wasn't a monster - he was a man. A scary one, when he wanted to be, but a man nonetheless.
She forgot all about that when she saw the light emanating from the collar around Bigby's neck.
Casting a sickly, yellow-green light on the flagstones around him, the runes glowed. The light started slow at first, then steadily grew stronger and stronger until the grey floor was washed over with green. Juddering suddenly, darkness spread out into the glow, spindly at first and then growing wider, firmer. Trunks of black shouldered their way into the green-tinged circle of light around Bigby's collar. From them, branches reached out until the shadows in the light were trees. Towering trees.
Snow was frozen for a moment, then she shot upright.
Magic. It had to be.
She glanced around, but nothing else was out of place. Then a closer look at the trees painted in the spaces left by the light and-
'The Black Forest,' Snow whispered, a cold shudder rippling down her back.
The Black Forest. Home of the Big Bad Wolf.
A creaking groan and a crack appeared in one of the runes. Right in the centre, sitting above Bigby's adam's apple. It was carved into silver but the crack was there, spilling sickly green light.
Another groan, another crack.
Another.
Another.
Snow backed up, her hand finding its way into her pocket to curl around Winter.
The once-clear trees faded, blurring at the edges as the light strengthened. It grew brighter, brighter, until all she could see of Bigby's immobile form was a blinding bright white.
Was someone tampering with the collar's magic? Had it simply failed?
Snow doubted it.
A final, rumbling groan and the light guttered out. The magic dwindled, sputtered, died.
Silence. Broken only by the rapid staccato of Snow's heartbeat in her ears.
Then Bigby moaned, shifting a little. His eyelids fluttered.
Snow hesitantly stepped forward, 'Bigby?'
He twitched, eyes moving beneath the lids. Then they blinked open.
Yellow.
Snow leapt backwards just in time to avoid the mountain of fur that shot from where her friend had been lying a moment before.
She kept going back.
Ran into something and she stopped, pressed up against it, chest heaving. Winter was in hand and no longer a pen. The familiar weight, perfectly balanced, was calming. Snow focused on it, how the blade pulled her arm down, how she knew exactly where the tip was, how the crossguard was a line of cold pressed against her hand. Down to the feel of worn leather, she knew Winter from tip to hilt.
The blind panic receded.
Snow stared up at the lump of fur lying flat on its back, legs brushing the ceiling and fought the urge to run.
Irrational, irrational fear!
She knew it- no. Him. She knew him.
'Bigby,' Snow croaked out, her grip on Winter tightening as she tried to lower it, but her arms seemed to seize up. As if her joints were rusted hinges.
The Wolf's head was upside down with his ears flattened to the sides by the posture. Huge mouth closed, huge teeth covered, huge eyes shut.
The Wolf slept.
It didn't help.
Snow could feel how her heart raced. How her blood thumped in her ears, rushed through her veins, throbbed in the base of her neck. She felt faint. She felt scared.
The last time she'd seen the Wolf, she'd nearly died.
Walking the forests of Northern Europe. Trees towering above her. Twigs crackling underfoot.
The trek to get there always blurs together when she remembers.
It's overshadowed by the glowing yellow eyes. Legs towering above her. Branches snapping against its sides.
A voice which, even then, had been familiar. Familiar from it booming across a bloodsoaked battlefield. Familiar from the growl she could hear beneath it.
They had talked.
Snow had been there to recruit it for Fabletown, afterall.
One thing lead to another, then she held out the knife King Cole had entrusted to her. One stained with the curse of lycanthropy.
Those glowing eyes had filled with rage.
Snow remembered little else but pain from there. She bore the scars for centuries until they finally faded. Puncture wounds the diameter of her fist, gashes in her skin the width of her forearm.
It was pure luck she survived. Nothing else. Just the paper-thin strand of chance saving her from death.
And from that bloody night in one of Europe's forests, Bigby had emerged.
He'd not been called that at first. It had been 'Wolf'. Then Big B. Wolf as a joke. Trying to make him less terrifying. It had eventually stuck.
Snow hadn't gone near him the first few years. She'd kept Winter on her hip, especially if seeing him was unavoidable.
Then the first rabbit had found its way to her doorstep.
It kept on for a month or two. Rabbits, birds, maybe a fox. She'd caught him eventually. At first dismissed it as the disgusting habits of an equally disgusting animal. Then she'd asked him.
An apology. He hadn't known how they - how people - said sorry. Snow hadn't wanted to believe it, but Bigby hadn't even known how to walk when he first shifted into a human.
Things had progressed from there.
Snow had talked to him, haltingly at first, then more freely. As the years passed, that animalistic gleam to his eye disappeared. The odd mannerisms (gestures she couldn't understand, sounds she didn't want to understand and licking being understandable if she thought about it but still easily the worst) had faded away as she taught be example.
And as Snow stared up at that huge head, with it's closed jaw, hidden teeth and shut eyes, she knew Bigby wouldn't hurt her.
But the terror tightened around her heart all the same.
AN: Hellooooo. Hope you liked! For Snow's fear, I'm pulling from phobias I have so yeah. Irrational fear sucks absolute balls ;-; lmk your thoughts!
