Her ears perked themselves towards the heavy doors at the end of the room. A quiet commotion was building; half a dozen footsteps approached the door. The doors creaked open; the shaft of torchlight that poured through momentarily blinded her dark-soaked irises. The footsteps entered. As her eyes adjusted she could make out Rumpel's stubby figure leading a quartet of witches all guarding a smallish ogre. She squinted to make out who it was.
Rumpel's dissonant little voice piped up. "I dunno, not much of a storybook ending. 'The noble Shrek turns himself in, to save a bunch of filthy ogres.'"
Shrek!? Why the heck would Rumpel have heard of him? Was he a spy? Fiona couldn't believe she'd given the ogre even a little credit.
Shackles clanked closed around the ogre's arms.
Looks like Rumpel has double-crossed him, she thought. That's some fairy-tale justice right there. There was no passion in the thought; it was disconnected, watching a scene play out from a distance.
Shrek's voice. "All that matters is that they're free … and Fiona is safe."
Fiona's head twitched sideways involuntarily. What was going on?Free? They're not dead?Her heart dared to send just one little trickle of hope up to her brain, but her mind scoffed. No way, surely Rumpel's double crossing him. Her shoulders slumped.
"Aawww, I bet Fiona'd be really touched to hear that," the imp said in his infuriating nasal voice.
Huh. He didn't deny it. Maybe they were free? But then why does he sound happy? Fiona's hands involuntarily formed stiff Cs, prepared to throttle the little creep.
"But hey! I guess you can tell her … yourself."
"FIONA!" Shrek yelled. Fiona lifted her head to see him lunge forward, desperately grasping for her. In an instant, some unseen motive force in the empty space behind her yanked hard on the chains fastened to her manacles, nearly dislocating her shoulders.
The chains aren't fastened to the wall!? She lunged forward, ready to yank whatever had pulled her right off its grubby little feet. Shrek jerked back. His face twisted in determination as he tried to cross the room to meet her, only for her to be dragged away in synchrony.
Oh. They were chained together.
That's bizarre, she thought. An awful lot of thought went into this contraption built for two.
"Stiltskin! We had a deal! You agreed to free all ogres!"
Shivers ran down Fiona's spine. Shrek had done a deal with Rumpel to free the ogres!? Depending on how you looked at it, that was either braver than anything she'd ever done for them, or stupider. Maybe both.
Maybe there was more going on in this crazy ogre's head than she had estimated. All that matters is that … Fiona is safe.
Fiona's mind, dull for hours, suddenly leapt into action at this bizarre new puzzle. How did the pieces add up? Since meeting his face – with her foot – Fiona saw Shrek as lost in a desperate idolizing crush. This revelation, though, broke that understanding.
What's so important an ogre would pay for it with a Rumpel contract!? Someone lost in a crush wants nothing other than reciprocation; this wasn't that. Shrek had sacrificed himself. For her friends. For her.
Something snapped into place in her mind. He was for real. Maybe really confused, maybe trapped in his own fairy tale, maybe a bit gullible if he'd sign himself over to Rumpel.
His attention for her, his desperation, though: That was somehow genuine. There really was something about that ogre. Something sincere. Maybe that's how he had snuck his way past her armor, right up to her heart.
"Oh yah... but Fiona isn't all ogre, is she?"
Who doesn't know about my enchantment? she thought, exasperated.
"By day one way day, by night another … blardy blardy blar... HAHA Nobody's smart but me!"
Fiona watched the weasel dance out of the room. The heavy doors squealed shut, dropping the room back into the near-black of overcast moonlight and barely perceptible orange glow.
Her eyes readjusted to the dark. She looked up at Shrek.
Her heart was heavy. Her ambition had led all the other ogres to danger and captivity and ultimately "freedom", assuming that wasn't contractual doublespeak for freeing the soul from the body. Now even this last ogre had put everything on the line to follow her lead. All is lost, but you know, we tried.
Almost every thought she'd spared for Shrek that day had been laced in anger, but she wasn't feeling it anymore.Maybe it wasn't fair to be angry at him. You tried, too. "That was a really brave thing you did, Shrek. Thank you."
"No. You were right. I wasn't there for you. And not just at the dragon's keep, but … every day since."
"Well…" Fiona allowed. "You're here now."
She relaxed her shoulders, her arms moved. The motion rippled up from her manacles, along the chain, through its route up the wall, across the ceiling, down the other wall, and very slightly perturbed Shrek's hands.
The contraption made a fragment of sense now. It was the framework for a sadistic cage match. Some champion would enter the ring and attack the hapless prisoners. She could yank on her chain to create a little freedom to defend herself; in exchange, the other prisoner would be pinned to the wall, an easy kill. The despot got to watch the prisoners rush to destroy their own souls well before the champion impaled their bodies. That little imp was one sick Puck.
"So just a signature and you won the war? Kinda wish I'd thought of that," Fiona offered, half sympathetic, half sardonic.
"I … ah …" Shrek stumbled.
What am I complaining about!? Fiona scolded herself, and forced the bitterness out of her voice. "No. Really. That was an effective operational … op."
Shrek shrugged, an innocent smile picking up one cheek. "Ah'm here now."
The two stood in silence. Shrek wore a rueful smile; his eyes never left her face.
Fiona considered him. She had judged him so many ways that day, mostly dismissively as he stood in the way of her victory. She had dismissed him, but he had persisted.
He'd wriggled his way past the fortress around her heart, and touched it.
His sad smile reflected her feelings of loss: she had tried so hard to achieve her goal, and it had slipped through her hands. Now her hands were tied, and the goal was gone.
I wonder what your goal was, she thought at him. Was a kiss worth all this? She spoke out loud, "Sorry it didn't work out."
The tiniest snort escaped Shrek's nostrils. His lips twisted a bit farther. He paused, never taking his eyes off hers. Finally, "Yah, me too."
·❧·
Indistinct bass thrummed as music swelled in the room above the dungeon. A muffled emcee's vowels conveyed intrigue and immediacy; his message lost as the consonants soaked into the ceiling separating the ogres from the activity above.
A thunderous rumble came from three stories above, and the very ceiling cracked open. Light streamed into the dungeon; colors danced. The muted sound surged into clarity, the bold voice resolved clearly into Rumpelstiltskin's. "The main event of the evening! I present... Shrek … and Fiona!" he announced, bile dripping from vindictive lips.
Fiona and Shrek stared up; a mountain range of pointy silhouettes ringed the gaping maw in the ceiling.
"And now … to put the past behind us once and for all … I give ya! A princess's worst nightmare! Fiona's old flame."
A heavy metallic clicking rang from the end of the room; the hazy orange growing brighter.
"The keeper of the keep..."
Glowing green eyes emerged from the smoke.
"DRAGON!"
The stone floor thundered and shook as the colossus waddled ponderously to the crest of the staircase.
The dragon released a ferocious bellow that made the sound of its footsteps seem gentle by comparison, then unleashed a wicked blast of flame into the room. Preheating the oven for ogre pizza.
The dragon continued its advance, roaring again. It was clearly in a sore mood. Okay, I guess it'll be torture by dragon, then. Fiona exchanged a glance with Shrek.
Stiltskin's cackle rained down from the gaping hole in the ceiling. An audience of witches celebrated alongside him.
Fiona's mind raced, half of it trying to devise a plan to survive the dragon's assault. That was a hard nut to crack. On one hand, she had no model for the Dragon's goals. This was her dragon, after all, the dragon specifically assigned to protect her from inadequate suitors. Ironic, given that her Prince Charming nearly took her out... or maybe he wasn't her prince, and only got through because Fiona had disabled her protective dragon? Was the dragon still mad about that? Probably.
"Spring, summer or faaaall..." belted a new voice from even higher in the room.
Stiltskin's cackle drained away in confusion.
"...all you've got to do is call..."
Even the dragon paused and turned to look at the new development.
"and I'll be there, yeah yeah yeeeeah"
Shrek raised his voice to reach up to the heights of the atrium: "Donkey!?"
The other half of her mind tripped over itself trying to catch up with the new developments. The room kept getting more complicated. The upper level used to be ogres, then empty cages, the lid now peeled back to reveal a coven convention on the layer above, but then even that layer was overshadowed by … a donkey on a disco ball singing Smooth Hits. It was hard to know where she stood when she had no idea who was running the show.
The voice from above, presumably Donkey, answered Shrek's call with "...aaaaaand Puss!"
"in BOOTS!" called Puss, a metallic dance step clanging from above.
Puss! She couldn't see the cat from directly below, but those two syllables were enough to identify him for sure. Had Puss sold her out to Rumpel? No, that didn't make sense; Rumpel seemed as surprised as anybody about the new arrivals. Fiona instinctively balled her fists, as though it was even possible to become ready in this disorder.
A chorus of ogre horn reverberated through the room, its tones so low it was difficult to fix its source. Shrek's face registered shock. Fiona's, an unexpected relief. She had no idea what it even meant, but it was the battle cry of her people. Something was going right.
In a flash, the confusion exploded into pure chaos. The disco ball shattered into dozens of mirror shards. From behind each polished metal shield a mass of green muscle dropped from the sky, each to a different point in the room, a cluster bomb of ogres. Witches instantly scrambled airborne, swooping around the space, flashing in and out of gaily hued spotlights.
Four different emotions blasted through Fiona's being in as many heartbeats.
Thum-thump. At first, raw confusion from the cascade of ogres.
Thum-thump. Her family was alive! Tingling rushed up her spine.
Thum-thump. Her ogre warriors were free and storming the castle! Oh yeah! THAT'S my team!A rush of celebration; her blood ran hot with excitement. I knew they had it in them!
Thum-thump. I'm chained to a wall and the only reason this dragon hasn't eaten me already is that she was also distracted. Dragon turned her attention back to the two ogres in the dungeon, snapping Fiona's own attention back from the spectacle above to the threat in front of her. Fiona took a step back, visualizing the semicircle of freedom afforded by the geometry of her chains.
CLANK! The dragon's head thudded onto the stone floor, followed in quick succession by an outsized cauldron lid, a miniature mangy mule, and her own comically corpulent cat.
Orange flashes and concussions in the layer above made time stutter.
"Donkey!" came Shrek's voice, close and immediate, "Woo her!"
Fiona turned to see the woozy woolly donkey trying to focus on Shrek. "Woo whooo!?"
"YOUR WIFE!" Shrek urged. Fiona's brow knit in confusion. Whatever fairytale Shrek got his alternate facts from was surely bizarre.
Donkey turned in terror to face the dragon. For a long moment, the beasts studied each other. The donkey's terror subsided; the dragon's fury softened. It's … working? she marveled.
A blast resounded above and shattered the delicate harmony. Dragon reared up and snapped up the donkey in a single serving.
She couldn't even masticate properly before Puss drove his rapier between scales and into her shoulder, enough to make a sharp irritation. Fiona flinched – she'd only been terrified of that Dragon for the last thirty seconds, but she'd had some level of compassion for her for much of her life.
Dragon convulsed in frustration, releasing a roar – and a donkey – spinning up into the air. She twisted on herself and snapped at the cat. Puss reflexively leapt away to her tail. She whipped it around intending to flatten the cat. Instead, the cat soared across the room directly towards Fiona, and the tail slammed violently into the wall behind Shrek.
Dragon tracked the arc of the offending feline as Fiona intercepted his flight. Furious, the dragon reared back to attack.
Fiona, on pure instinct, crouched and turned to protect Puss from the blast – yeah, I'm going out as charcoal – and had her arms nearly ripped out of their sockets as she was snatched towards the ceiling by the manacles. A brilliant burst of orange flame curled around at floor level below her, reducing the wooden columns to embers.
Her surprise at still existing was instantly replaced with panic: If her arms were up there, what was holding Puss?
"Fiona! Hold on!" rang Shrek's voice from behind the Dragon. She tracked the path of the chains up to the ceiling, around a pulley, and back down into Shrek's hands. Dragon's swing at Puss had freed the chains from the wall, and Shrek had exploited the slack to rip her out of harm's way.
Maybe it's good to have him on my team after all.
Dragon's head followed Fiona's path into the sky; she looked to be refilling for another blackening belch. By this time Fiona had grabbed the chains, relieving the slicing pain in her wrists. She had also felt a weight hanging from her belt, slightly altering her balance – Puss was along for the ride!
"Hey you!" Shrek successfully demanded the dragon's attention, and began leading her on a chase around the room, his path lengthening his end of the chain and continuing to hoist Fiona and her housecat cargo higher into the room.
Suddenly she understood there was freedom. A length of chain meant there were choices. Opportunity to do something to affect her fate. Shrek had shown her a weapon. Actually, they were a weapon; a bolas that could transfer energy from one end to the other.
Hanging there, Fiona was cargo. She couldn't do anything until she had a solid surface to push or pull against. She had gained so much altitude she was at the level of the other ogre's cages. She swung on her chains until she intercepted the wall and gained a footing in the ornate carved decorations of the repurposed dungeon.
It took almost no time for the dragon, herself a fraction of the size of the entire room, to catch up with Shrek. She snapped, inches short of his shorts. The freedom she'd gained Fiona instantly spent, launching out into the room, the tension she put into the rope launching Shrek off the floor into an arc just outside a Dragon radius.
She swung hard through the room, her valor rewarded with a snap of dragon's teeth, each one bigger than her head, safe only by virtue of moving so fast at the bottom of the arc. At the top of her swing, the chains yanked back on her – Shrek must have reached his own terminus – and she soared back towards the center of the room, twenty feet up, chains falling slack below. She needed support now or she'd end up a messy splatter on the floor.
She was soaring through the upper level of the dungeon tangled with hanging cages. She reached out and intercepted one, arresting her descent. Shrek flew an opposing path, and deployed the same tactic.
Fiona swung on the cage, adding energy she could use once she figured out where to go next. Puss clawed his way through her hair until his boots found purchase on the cage floor.
Shrek hung from his own cage by his left hand; his right extended to her. The decision was obvious. He was genuine, he'd already made this opportunity. She lunged off her perch.
She trusted him. She hadn't thought about it, but somehow, she'd come to know it.
She clasped his wrist; he secured hers. They were connected.
Shrek swung her around to the opposite side of the cage that suspended them. He released her hand with perfect timing so she could grab the cage bottom with both of her hands. The two ogres climbed up opposite sides of the cage, their steps balancing each other, until they reunited at the top. Fiona hung on his shoulder; Shrek pulled her in by the waist, both bringing their center of mass into the chain for stability. They fit remarkably well together in that precarious perch.
Dragon paced angrily below. They were far above the floor, but she was a big dragon – she could easily reach them just on her tiptoes.
And that she did. The dragon looked right through the iron bars, and lunged directly towards them.
Fiona shouted "JUMP!" just as the dragon impacted the cage with a resounding clang. Shrek anticipated her plan. The ogres pushed off one another, propelling each other through the heights to adjacent suspended cages.
The dragon had wedged her head into the cage, momentarily trapped by the fishhook action of her horns and scales.
Each ogre caught hold of their own manacle chain.
They'd now experienced the interplay of their weights played against one another, him lifting her, her returning the favor; pulling together at the top of the cage, pushing off. They'd found a tool and a rhythm that connected them. They could each feel the music; she could hear the next measure in her head.
If they both jumped away, they could tension the chain between them and direct their motion tangentially, swinging around the room; they could wrap up the rest of Dragon's limbs, neutralizing her. For it to have a chance of working, he had to be thinking of the same plan. But … it was the only plan.
They caught each others' gaze, exchanging looks of determination. He was in on the plan.
"NOW!" Shrek shouted.
Both crouched, and both leapt.
Fiona fell through the space. The chain went taught, flipping her around to being suspended by her grip on the chains. The music worked; they were exactly in sync.
Shrek's greater bulk set him into a lower orbit; Fiona was on a course to fly over him. She looked down and saw his face radiating sheer joy. Her own joy surged: she wasn't dead, she wasn't even playing Rumpel's cruel game. There was a sliver of hope again. And there was a spark.
"Wooooo hooooo!" Fiona whooped victoriously at Shrek's receding form.
Shrek was approaching apogee; she turned into the rushing wind to anticipate meeting him on the opposite side of the transit.
For his part, Shrek managed a loop-de-loop around Dragon's tail, entangling it in the convoluted system of tension and momentum and ogre masses.
Their chains twisted around the dragon's massive bulk, wrapping up her delicate wings. The scheme was working.
"The dragon goes under the bridge!" Shrek shouted, as if the plan needed further explanation. If she weren't gasping for breath in the rushing wind, Fiona would have erupted in laughter at the absurdity.
With each arc around the dragon, the slack in the chains grew shorter, the curve tighter, and their angular momentum converted into more speed.
"Through the loop!" she chimed in, swinging deftly through the gap between Shrek's chains.
"...and finally..." Shrek yelled, the lengths of chain almost spent. The two ogres dropped from their flight onto the center of Dragon's back.
"Into the castle!" they sang in unison.
Both ogres gave a hearty heave on their manacle chains, removing the last degree of freedom from Dragon's legs, sending her toppling to the floor of the dungeon.
The ogres each exchanged a raised eyebrow. Fiona took Shrek's wrist.
"Oh!" she exclaimed. Her hands had found the manacle, the chain that bound them together. She kept his wrist in her right hand and reached her left around to the rear hip of her belt, extracting the iron toothpick.
Shrek tipped his head, ears perked. "What's that for?"
"That's the thing I use to clean my teeth with," she answered coyly, not looking up.
She slipped the head of the nail deftly into the mechanism and sprung it open.
Shrek's eyebrows rose, impressed.
She repeated the exercise on his left hand, setting him free.
Shrek turned an open palm toward her hand, offering to take the pick and return the favor. Fiona chuckled; this wasn't a time to teach a new skill. "I got it." Fiona worked at her own bindings.
Above, the tenor of the battle changed; explosions and chattering and whooshing giving way to the now dominant sound of heavy footfalls of overtaking ogre fighters. The shift dragged Shrek's attention skyward, to the chaos, the ornate ceiling with its gash admitting a fog of rosy predawn light.
Freeing her right hand with her left took a bit longer.
The ogres on one side of the balcony were focusing their attention on some disturbance. Fiona looked up from her manacle project, continuing working the mechanism by feel. She saw Shrek's eyebrows shoot up, and followed his gaze just in time to watch the diminutive dictator tip backwards from a high railing and plummet directly towards the dungeon floor they occupied. Before he became an impblot, in fact before he even passed below the gaping ballroom floor, his trajectory intercepted his airborne goose.
Fiona's last handcuff clattered down the dragon's scales; she returned the toothpick to her hip. She straightened, continuing to follow the ridiculous spectacle of the goose's flight bobbing and recovering as it arrested Rumpelstiltskin's momentum.
The goose finally started gaining altitude in the center of the huge space, out of reach of the ogre army on the surrounding floor and balcony. No way! We've got to get him! The bird was clawing its way to the gash in the roof and freedom beyond.
Shrek had coiled up one of his freed chains, spinning up its momentum with his left arm. Fiona could see the play unfolding. Yes! She wrapped one arm around his shoulders and grabbed his vest with the other. His arm found her waist effortlessly, securing her hip in his big hand.
Shrek's pitch connected, snapping the manacle around one fat gooseleg.
"Hahah!" he erupted, delighted with his hail mary.
"C'mon Fifi! Go! Go!" Rumpel urged. Fiona expected their combined weight would surely ground the goose, but she was one determined bird. Fiona and Shrek were drawn airborne by chain again, this time locked together in an embrace. "Witches, close up the floor!"
The elaborate mechanism clanked and thumped as the room worked at dividing itself once again into dungeon and ballroom. The couple slipped through the closing aperture. Rumpel shrieked and hollered; dozens of eyes turned up to follow his desperate reach for escape.
Fiona set herself to jump onto the ballroom floor, and Shrek opened his grip to make it work, following her lead a heartbeat behind. Braced on his feet, Shrek re-gripped the goose's leash and pulled hard on the poultry, sending Rumpel tumbling into space.
Fiona's face became pure determination. Shrek's tug was literally delivering Rumpel's head—and the rest of him—into her hands. She had half a mind to let him crumple on the marble, but … half a step to the left, and she caught him.
Fiona hoisted the cretin by his scruff, and cheered aloud "VICTORY IS OURS!"
A raucous cheer sounded from the ogre army.
Fiona extended him towards Brogan, who took great pleasure in depositing him into Cookie's ham-sized arms. "Looks like we're having curly-toed weirdo for breakfast."
·❧·
The burst of pure instinctive action had come to an end; Fiona's conscious mind reeled to understand how her world had just transformed. Minutes ago she was squaring up to face her slow torture, or perhaps her fiery death, taking solace in one little spark of joy before she vanished. Now, that spark had ignited and was burning hot. The thin thread she was surprised connected her to Shrek turned out to be a stout pair of chains that let them disarm a dragon together.
Most of all, she'd accomplished her mission! She did it! Well, they had all done it. And Shrek, the goofball that couldn't operate a toilet brush, had come through in the clutch.
"Hey," Fiona said, turning to Shrek. "We make a pretty good team."
It was a surprisingly pointed statement from an ogress who'd just built a huge team to take down a tyrant.
Fiona's purpose had just evaporated, completed. She had no idea what her purpose would be tomorrow, but she had this deep intuition that maybe she'd want Shrek on her team to attack it.
"You have no idea," Shrek said, his words carrying an overwhelming intensity.
A pit formed in her chest. Her intuition wasn't a surprise to him. In fact, it's what he'd been trying to tell her all along. This distraction, this interruption to her most important day? He was something more.
She reached for his hand, but before she could take it, he brought it up in front of himself, visibly perturbed, for it was glowing an iridescent green-gold, shimmering, sparking.
Confusion and worry clouded her face. Pumpkin bomb side effects? "Shrek?"
Shrek tottered; Fiona ran towards him. He fell hard to the stone floor.
"His day is up! His day is—eerk" Cookie terminated Rumpel's outburst with a carefully calibrated squeeze, a bit past choke, a shade short of collapsed lung.
Shrek was obviously in pain, but appeared as though he expected it. "Shrek?" Fiona prompted, probing for an explanation.
"It's alright."
Alright!? How could this possibly be alright? How could you even know what's happening? What IS happening?
It doesn't even matter what's happening! We've won! You can't be hurt! It can't happen! "There has to be something I can do!"
"You've already done everything for me, Fiona."
The Occam's Razor explanation she'd been using all day, that Shrek was acting out a bizarre fantasy to court her, would have to be a pretty long con, since evidently he was carrying it through to his grave. That explanation was utterly defunct. She had no other answer for his inexplicable claims, but she did know he was utterly, deadly serious about every sentence.
"You gave me a home, and a family..."
Yeah, like that one. She took him at his word. Fiona had daydreamed about a family forever ago, but had locked that fantasy up tight in her transition from hero bait to nocturnal heroine. Nobody was going to settle down with an ogress who disappeared all day every day. "You have kids?"
"We have kids!"
Her blood ran cold. We have kids? Me!? The abstract idea of family, of domestic peace, escaped its prison and suddenly took on a very tangible possibility. It hurt too much to hope.
"Fergus, Farkle, and a little girl named—"
"Felicia!" Fiona said in unison with Shrek, her face lighting up in recognition. Hope she did. Her eyes swelled with joy. The claims were absurd, but the evidence was even more extraordinary. "I've always wanted to have a daughter named Felicia."
"And someday," Shrek said, producing a hand-stitched doll and placing it gently into her hand, "you will."
Fiona gasped. She examined the toy. A physical token from Shrek's unbelievable fairy tale.
It broke her. It broke her disbelief. It crumbled the bulwark that kept the dreams inside and the promise out. Tears moistened her lids.
"D'ye know what the best part of today was?"
Fiona studied him. A tear rolled onto her cheek.
Shrek continued, "I got the chance to fall in love with you … all over again!"
Fiona abandoned every doubt. Love. Two more tears followed the wet track down her cheek. The hint of a smile tugged at her lips, recognition that she would hold back the tide no longer. She leaned in to capture him with a kiss. To drag him away from the magic that threatened him, whatever peril he was already surrendering to. A stout rope joined them now; all she had to do was admit it, tie it to her heart, hold him close.
She held his head, she met his lips. He was so frail; holding himself up on the floor as magical energy ripped through him, but he gently returned the kiss, his eyes closed to absorb her touch, his face utterly at peace.
The massive ogre that had yanked her free of a dragon's fireball just minutes earlier felt so fragile, so vulnerable in her embrace, almost ethereal. His body dissolved into a gentle breeze, a sparkling void, like a dream vanishing as the rising sun obliterates it with reality.
His absence tugged at her awareness. She cautiously opened her eyes, afraid of what she wouldn't see. She blinked. He was gone. She blinked again, desperate to be wrong, trying to bring him back into focus. The rope connecting him to her, now secured soundly around her heart, ripped violently out of her chest.
Fiona kneeled in place. Her body felt like a big empty vessel into which a bucket of ice water had been dumped; her abdomen a sack of chilled fluid.
Loss.
She'd lost so much in her life; every time she'd found a silver lining. She'd lost so very much in this single day; every time she'd found a glimmer of hope. The last silver shred had been the spark of warmth in a cold heart; the last loss was, she thought, her very life. And yet this loss: it was a hundred times worse.
Lost. The idea of looking for a silver lining didn't even occur to her now.
A room full of beating hearts, but she felt none, not even her own. Fiona couldn't bear to form a thought. She folded up under a crushing sensation. Her ears burned.
"Fiona! The sunrise!"
Puss' voice sounded distant but his message urgent.
"You're still … an ogre!"
Confusion. Fiona examined her hand. Green, meaty.
She was fully her.
"True love's form!" she gasped.
"Impossible!" the imp objected.
Her entire conception of the universe came unhinged again, for the second time in as many years. She'd spent her youth believing in stupid magic, then finally, painfully, ripped that horrible lie from her soul. She'd made herself into her own ogress, proud, strong, making the rules she lived by.
"The kiss worked!" she exclaimed.
So for a very brief moment, she felt elated that she was transforming into an all-ogre. That happy thought was chased down by the next: The stupid magic was real, just … not in the way she'd grown up believing. Was her pride, her strength the lie? Was she supposed to have simply waited?
And now the knight in shining armor — well, he was sort of a one-of-a-kind knight — had vanished before she even understood that he was her True Love?
Her hands gripped the space in front of her breast, as though she could snatch a last glittering golden bit of dust from her departed lover.
The twisted sensation of working out her place in the world fell out of focus as her thoughts were overtaken by the spark, the connection she'd found with Shrek. It had been real! In the pain, joy.
So many disappointments, so many silver linings, what a lurching ride it had been. But here she was, her victory attained, surrounded by her friends. She'd escaped the hateful curse that kept her from living a full life as an authentic ogress. And the icing on top? She'd even managed to stumble across that which she had long ago abandoned, that which had forsaken her: True Love.
A morning breeze picked up.
The night that had reached rock bottom with her chained in a dungeon and fated to die had given way to a new day. A day like no other she'd ever experienced. She was a crazy stew of love, loss, and anticipation to discover what would become of her in this new day.
The wind ripped into the castle, rising to a gale.
The storm darkened the room, except unnaturally. The tempest twisted up tighter, tearing pieces of the room away like paper; dragging bits of the bright morning sky into the castle with it. Fiona's eyes opened wide, adrenaline pumped back through her body. She shot to her feet, intensely alert, hands open and ready for battle … but it wasn't witch magic, and Rumpelstiltskin was still secure in Cookie's arms …
A witch vanished in a poof of yellow smoke, making a small pop. Another illusion? Another witch vanished. Then an ogre, then pop pop pop three witches in quick succession.
Brogan disappeared. Her heart simply stopped beating. Akzer, his arm clenched around his sister – pop pop – both disintegrated into a shower of sparks. Fiona's eyes widened to nearly spheres and she reached out towards Gretched, just as she too puffed into nothing.
A blast snatched away Cookie, dropping Rumpel to the floor, then another vanquished the stupid goose. For his part, Rumpel seemed as confused as she was.
Fiona's heart tore in two. Forget missing out on her knight, her only friends had all simply … disintegrated. Everyone she'd cared for, the life she'd built … gone.
Before her very eyes, the donkey exploded in a flash of light, followed instantly by Puss. Even her kitty!
She sensed a seismic swell of grief build up behind her chest, a torrent ready to wash away everything she lived for. Before grief could crash over her and dissolve her very bones, darkness claimed her peripheral vision and a chaotic noise rang in her ears. Her tunnel vision collapsed to black and she was no more.