Bigby entered his apartment, closed the door behind him, and leaned against it. No one else was here.
There was a body odor, a dead kind of smell, with an extra metallic scent. No one had cleaned up the blood trail from yesterday, which ran from the door to his chair. There were hoofprints through half of it.
It had been three, four days by now. Days of constant alert. Days of fighting. Days of paying close attention. All to take down the Crooked Man. And Bigby couldn't even say for sure if it had all been worth it.
He dug in his pocket, pounded the pack, grabbed a cigarette and lit it up. He regretted it instantly. This was a stimulant. A familiar, comforting stimulant, but still. What he needed was sleep.
He headed into the kitchen and grabbed the last beer from the fridge. He flipped the top off and gulped it fast. Cig was the upper, beer was the downer, hopefully somewhere in between those lay peace.
He leaned against the sink, finishing the bottle. The open window in here hadn't helped the smell.
He set the empty beer down, headed toward his chair. There was blood on the chair, but his only other place to sleep was the floor, and he wasn't in the mood. He put the cig down in the ashtray and sat down.
Pain shot through his side. The smell of fresh blood hit him. One of the wounds had opened up again.
Dammit. He should sleep, but … dammit.
He headed into the bathroom, lit only by the red neon lights outside, and eased his shirt off. He couldn't see the fresh damage in the shadows, so he flicked the light on.
He saw himself in the mirror, inescapable now. What a fucking mess he was. A hulking mass of muscle, dried blood, scrapes, cuts, scar tissue, and bandages. His eyes were rimmed red, heavy-lidded. The fresh blood was from the silver bullet wound in his side.
Looking at himself in totality, he was reminded of everything he'd ignored the last few days: the fear in TJ's eyes, the fear in the Tweedle's eyes, the way so many of them looked at him with that fear. And more, some of the comments, the ones that weren't fearful or angry: good little doggie. Good little pup. Do you have a pet? Not technically.
He allowed himself a moment of self-pity: he would never fully be accepted here. They would always either fear him or deride him. And that trial … they weren't happy even now. Even after all this. His job was to look after them; what had been the point of it?
He shook it off. Exhaustion. That's all this was. That and the cigs and booze.
He heard a knock on the front door.
Bigby went back to the main room and could smell her, even from the hallway. Intoxicating, everywhere, he knew that smell by heart. It was Snow.
"Come in."
He found his smoldering cigarette and picked it up as she entered, taking a long drag, trying to deaden that smell, her smell, all around him.
"I'm sorry. I know it's late."
Snow closed the door behind her as he took a long drag. There was a good twelve feet between them, she at the door and he leaning against his chair.
She looked around, avoiding looking at his shirtless body. "Where's Colin?"
"Sent him back."
Her face showed relief. "I know that wasn't easy."
"It wasn't."
"Well. I appreciate it."
She looked at him levelly. He returned her look.
"Why are you here, Snow."
"I need to ask you something."
Obviously. He felt impatience tugging at him. And her scent was everywhere. His cig was almost gone and she was overpowering him. It took restraint to wait for her.
"Crane is gone. The Crooked Man is gone. It's a new day. I want to … I need to talk to you about this before we can move forward. After everything we've seen these last few days, we need to be better."
"I've agreed with you every time you've brought this up, Snow. Why-"
"Because I don't want what happened these last few days to happen again."
His brow furrowed as he finished the cig and stubbed it out.
She straightened, her full height, gathering her authority.
"You do enjoy it, Bigby. The … violence. I've seen the joy in your eyes when you took down the Tweedles, when you tortured... And we can't do it this way anymore. If you hurt anyone in Fabletown again, you have to step down from your position as Sheriff."
Her words, her ice cold face and words, hit him hard. He was tired - tired of talking, tired of always being wrong, too violent or too meek. He wanted to break things.
He took a step toward her. She didn't flinch.
"I am not your lapdog. I could snap anyone in half if I wanted, but I don't. I do my job. I get done what needs to get done. I got you who you needed, and I solved our problems. Don't like it? Fuck off."
Surprise registered on her face. He so very rarely pushed back that hard with her. Always with everyone else. Never with her. But she still didn't flinch.
"You know why I'm asking this, Bigby. You know why and how things need to change. You've seen it yourself."
Her smell was everywhere, and he could smell the fear in her too, even if her face wasn't showing it. He became aware of how he was standing. What he must have looked like, shirtless, caked in blood and bandages, hulking over her.
He sagged back against the chair.
"I'm sorry, Snow. I'm tired. Is this really a conversation we need to have right now?"
She took a breath. Shook her head.
"No. I … no. I shouldn't have done it this way. You're right. This is not the time."
"Look. If I make you uncomfortable, or Fabletown wants me out, then we'll talk. After I've had sleep. I need sleep. Okay?"
"Of course."
She turned, put her hand on the doorknob. Stopped.
He followed her eyes down to where she was looking: the blood on the floor. His blood, from when Blood Mary had shot him, had broken his arm.
He looked back up to her face.
She was very still. "Do you remember when we met?"
Barely. "Long time ago now."
She let go of the doorknob. Turned around again. "I was a prisoner. Shackles. No sword could cut them. But your teeth could. You freed me. You've never turned on me, Bigby."
He remembered the comments again: Dog wants a biscuit, good little doggy.
But her smell … her scent had changed. And she was giving him this look, with a little smile…
"I knew when you bit through the chains that bound me. I knew that you were the one to do that for other people, the way you did it for me. That's why I came to find you, all those years later, when we were building this place."
He cocked his head. She hadn't moved a muscle, but he could sense something pulling her to him.
He was gentle, as he always was, only with her.
"Snow. It's all right. Tell me what's on your mind."
She took a breath. It was hard for her to let her walls down, just as hard as it was for him to keep his temper. He could see it so clearly now.
"When you…"
She looked at him, now the walls were all the way down, looked at him from all the way across the room like there was no distance between them at all.
"When you nearly died, I understood, finally. The way you felt. When you thought I was dead."
"I know. And I know you don't belong to me, Snow. I don't expect anything. Either way."
She wanted to say something else, but held back.
He held her eyes - and for the first time, looked her back in the same way. He relaxed, leaning back.
They let the moment spool out for a second, looking at each other. She had that same look on her face that she'd had the last time they were here together - her gentle touch on his arm. She wanted to touch him. He knew it. Could FEEL it.
He moved toward her, differently this time, closing the physical distance in moments, all anger gone, and she watched him come while biting her lip just slightly, her eyes sliding all over his scarred and muscled body as he moved.
He stopped. He'd closed the entire distance between them. They were inches apart now.
Then her scent changed again, and she seemed to shrug something off. She broke eye contact, looked down at the floor.
"Bigby. I … I've seen the way you look at me. I know the way you look at me. And we can't."
He decided to call her bluff, because she'd come to him tonight, and every sign she gave off said she wanted to. There was adrenaline in his veins, loving the feeling of that look in her eyes, the push-pull of wanting and not wanting. He could hear her heart racing, her quick breathing.
"Snow. Let's be honest with each other. For once. We both want to. And I see no reason why we can't."
She stood firm. That distance, that coldness, had come back.
"Well I do. It would damage the reputation of this office if we did. And we've already suffered enough damage. All of us."
She was holding him to it, her eyes not wavering from his.
"Prostitution, slavery, neglect - those things happened on our watch through our lack of attention. We can't keep paying more attention to ourselves than to the people we care for."
He took one final step. Less than an inch apart. They were so close that he couldn't breathe from her smell. He could feel the heat her body gave off, her heartbeat drowning everything out. He wanted to consume every single ounce of her.
"I've heard this song and dance before."
This only got her walls up higher.
"I sing and dance it, Bigby, because it's important and I mean what I say."
He stopped speaking, just watched her. He watched her eyes flick down to his chest again. Back up to his eyes.
"Fucking won't stop us from doing our jobs."
The bluntness of the word made her blink - but she didn't flinch, not even a little. Because she was, quite possibly, the only one in the world who wasn't afraid of him.
"You know it will."
He wasn't an idiot. He could see the determination in her - something she never shook off entirely, that authority, that strength. And he also knew that, if she wanted something, anything, no matter what it was, he would do it. Always.
Like a good doggy.
He hated himself then, hated the hold she had over him, the hold this world had, the manners he had to stick to, when all he wanted more than anything was to give in to the animal instincts, to break things, to destroy things, and to-
It was as if she heard every single thought. She took a step back, even though it took her away from the door, toward the kitchen. She repeated the same lines she always did, like convincing herself:
"I have a job to do. I need to do it."
He turned away. Letting her go. He headed back toward the chair.
"We both do, Snow."
He grabbed a discarded pair of pants, searched through the pockets, turned up another pack of cigarettes, this one nearly empty. By the time he produced one, stuck it between his lips, and turned back around, she'd gone back to the door.
He lit the cigarette and took a long, deep inhale of it. He wanted to deaden everything. Especially her smell. Especially that.
There was sadness on her face as she watched him do it.
"It isn't like the old days, is it?"
He exhaled, letting the smoke drift up past him. "How's that?"
"We do still have the desire deep down to eat each other's hearts … but we've learned."
He took a longer drag. Exhaled. "Learned."
"To be like the mundies. Like people."
"We are not people, Snow."
That small smile was back on her face. Clear affection. "I didn't say we were."
He heard the words in the back of his head again: good little doggy. Dog wants a biscuit.
Exhaustion returned.
"Go. I gotta get some sleep. We'll deal with it all tomorrow."
"Of course. Goodnight."
She turned, opened the door, and finally, finally left, taking her smell with her.
There was silence and emptiness all around him now and he wondered what the hell he'd done all this for. The world was cold, and dark, and he did not fit in it. All of the work of the last few days. What had it been for?
In another time, long long ago, he would have wanted to destroy things now.
His chair beckoned. The blood on it didn't matter.
He grabbed another beer from the kitchen, sat down, and drank until he passed out in his chair, his cigarette burning to ashes in his fingers. And as he slept, he dreamed of her by his side: two stories, two myths, two eternal fables, at first written separately, then joining, never to be completely pulled apart again.