Disclaimer: I don't own Once Upon a Time.

AN: This is a prompt of my own creation. It's Snow's point of view from the time she went on the run from Regina up to where she parted ways with Charming at the Troll Bridge. It's a bit of angst, dealing with Snow's feelings. I feel that Snow's pain is glossed over and ignored. We get plenty of the pains of certain former villains, but rarely do the true victims get much of a voice.

If you have requested a prompt, I promise I'm not ignoring it and will get to it once I find the voice for your request. :)

Once Upon a Snowing

Hope

Snow ran as fast as could through the thick forest, as the Black Knights gained on her. She passed a tree where a wanted poster with her face on it was tacked. Tears blurred her vision, as she ran and the vicious words stung. Murder. Treason. Crimes Against the Queen. Such ugly accusations.

One week ago, she was a princess with her whole life ahead of her. Sweet, naive, perhaps a bit spoiled, but her mother had made sure to teach her to always be kind; to do good. She was the apple of her father's eye. Snow knew he wasn't a perfect man, but she had been too naive to see the cracks in his marriage to Regina or see the thinly veiled hatred that Regina harbored for her beneath the skin.

She had never meant to tell Cora the secret. She was but a child, even more naive and still grieving the loss of her mother. At ten-years-old, the thought that a mother could be anything but wonderful had truly never occurred to her. Again, it was naive, but she had been ten, after all.

She loved her father dearly though, so when the Black Knights had stormed toward her in the palace gardens, claiming she was to be arrested for her father's murder by order of the Queen, she had frozen. Fortunately, she had managed to move well enough to flee her castle, the very place she had rarely left in her young life, and tumbled into the thick forest. She would have been caught right away had she not tumbled down a steep ravine and hidden in the pile of leaves at the bottom, quietly sobbing in grief at Regina's betrayal and all her wounds.

She had limped to the nearest village when it was safe and her people had taken pity on her. They hid her, cleaned her up, fed her, and gave her more suitable clothing for dwelling in the forest. Her ruined dress provided no warmth or maneuverability. It was clear that her people did not believe the Queen's claims and still harbored a great deal of loyalty to her father.

Snow was mostly on her own after that, forced to grow up very quickly. Thankfully, she had kept up her archery skills after Hercules had begun her training and had managed to catch game. She had always loved animals and so she sobbed the whole time she skinned her first rabbit. She managed to catch enough game on most days to fill her stomach, usually getting by with merely one meal a day.

Over time, she got better and learned to make snares from the local villagers, allowing her to catch more game. Skinning her game got easier, until she didn't even feel a twinge of regret any longer. This was her life; always her or them, eat or be eaten, kill or be killed.

Most nights, she cried herself to sleep in whatever small tree trunk or hovel she had managed to find that day. She was just a child when she made that mistake. She had never meant to hurt Regina, but she didn't deserve this. She didn't deserve to be hunted like an animal. She knew Regina was in pain, but so was Snow.

Regina's pain spurred her hatred on and Snow's pain helped her survive. Holding onto hope wasn't easy, but she decided then that the Queen would not break her. She still cried many nights, for the cold and despair and loneliness was sometimes too much. But she resolved the next day that she would not be broken. Lost perhaps, but never broken.

By her twenty-fifth birthday, Snow White was the Enchanted Forest's most notorious bandit, earning her comparisons to Sherwood Forest's own Robin Hood. But Regina's need for vengeance only grew into an obsession and the bandit princess experienced one close call after another.

Perhaps her closest call was at the hands of notorious bounty hunter the Woodcutter. Her capture had been successful and she was sure her death would be quite imminent at the Queen's hands, as she was locked in his horrifying mobile dungeon. But a passerby saved her life and together, they took the bounty hunter down. She never saw his face, but she imagined his eyes to be as kind as his voice.

By the time she was twenty-eight, she realized that Regina would never stop until she saw her dead. So Snow accepted that leaving her Kingdom would be the only way she might survive. Fleeing the Enchanted Forest wasn't cheap though and she set her sights on a royal carriage one afternoon. A carefully laid trap lured the royal from his carriage and allowed her to snatch a pouch of jewels from a naggy princess with a bad attitude.

What she didn't count on was the Prince being clever enough to discover her ruse with the fallen tree and give chase. What surprised her more is that he caught her, only stopping his attempt to subdue her when he discovered she was female. He called her a girl, but Snow White hadn't been a girl in a very long time. She was a woman and made that quite clear with a rock to his face. She fled, rolling her eyes, as he promised to find her.

Yeah right...no one was going to find her. She had the jewels and she'd be boarding the first available ship out of this place.

Surprises were not something Snow had come to enjoy. Finding herself strung up in a net with that handsome face staring up at her with a smugness she wanted to slap off him was perhaps the biggest surprise she had in a long time. She was bandit Snow, after all. She was not often bested by many these days. But this arrogant, charming prince, who had infuriated her from the moment she encountered him had done as he promised. He found her, captured her, and requested she return a ring inside the pouch, claiming she was welcome to rest of the baubles. That surprised her too. Most royals were greedy and she didn't expect him to be different. First chance she got when he cut her down, she pushed him into the stream and ran off, still with his baubles, only to run straight into a Black Knight.

She had been in serious trouble then when he managed to get her on his horse. She was sure it was over and then a carefully aimed arrow had eliminated the Black Knight and he was helping her up. She was stunned. He had no reason to save her, especially after she had shoved him in the river. She couldn't stop looking at him with anything other than awe. He stated it was the honorable thing to do, but his eyes told of more.

When they arrived at the Troll Bridge, things quickly went bad and they fought together. For the first time since she had been on the run, she wasn't fighting alone. She managed to get the pouch of jewels back from them and prepared to flee. But as she turned back and saw he wasn't behind her, she witnessed him at the mercy of the trolls, as they prepared to kill him. Her heart hammered in her chest and the thought of him being killed left her with an empty feeling she wasn't prepared for.

Almost without thinking, she used the dark fairy dust she was saving and turned the trolls into bugs, which were easily squashed.

When he expressed his awe at her saving his life, she parroted his line about honor back to him. But she was sure her eyes spoke of more. And as they prepared to part ways, she felt an ache in her heart at that. She wondered if he did too.

She returned the pouch of jewels to him and he offered her the rest of them, stating he only required the ring. But she politely refused and she wasn't quite sure why. The jewels would have bought her passage out of the Kingdom. But suddenly, she wasn't so eager to leave.

When he opened the pouch and fished the ring out, he looked at him fondly, jokingly commenting that it probably wasn't her style. What had possessed her to try the thing on she was unsure at the time. But she was struck by the way the silver band with a peridot gem looked so right on her finger, like it was meant to be there.

She wasn't the only one struck by it, for the look of longing reverence on his face was unmistakable. So she had to break the tension by taking it off and commenting that he was right. It wasn't her style.

They parted ways, but not before he made it clear that he would find her should she ever need anything. She almost believed him and could not imagine at that time what he would come to mean to her. She was a lost princess, but it was that day in the shadow of the troll bridge that she found her home. It was not a place, not her palace or her lavish room with the canopy bed she had once had. It was him. Somehow, this Charmingly infuriating prince restored her hope in a way she didn't know was possible again. Hope bloomed in the lost princess' heart again that day. Hope for an actual future. Hope for a life of more than just surviving. And even more, perhaps hope for true love, a concept she regarded as fake and silly at the beginning of that very day. But now, she almost believed in it again; that perhaps true love could be real, after all...