Who: Rose and Henry What: Fetching and warming up Where: The Castle When: B.B. (Before Belle) Warnings/Rating: This is Henry. Nada!
In the Beast’s Valley, Old Man Winter spread his cold frosty fingers early and fall did not last long against his withering touch. The night came earlier in the day, and the midnights were even more absolutely black than in summer. All the trees, which had shown stubborn life in green buds and new growth through the spring and summer that Rose stayed in the castle, had gone into dormancy, and to the unskilled eye they looked much like they had when she had first stepped onto the Beast’s forbidding threshold. The black skeletons had some secret life to them, however, and though most of the birds were already flying off to warmer winter nests, there was still the stirring of the odd little animal picking what bits there were to find out of the depths of the forest brush.
Not a damn thing in the woods was scared of Henry. He was a man, an unarmed, unclothed man at that, and he couldn’t have been less intimidating if he tried. He was so cold that he couldn’t feel his feet, his toes, or his prick. The last thing he wanted to do was see Rose, a warm soul that was not the kind of warm he wanted just then. The curse kept Henry together and kept him from dying, but it didn’t keep him comfortable. He wanted to lie down in front of a hearth and burn everything that came to hand until he could feel again, and maybe think about a woman in a way that didn’t hurt.
The book always seemed to find him, wherever he was, and it was only the ongoing conversation with those who replied to him that caused him to bother bringing it along with him. He was fairly sure the fingers of his left hand were frozen in place along its spine, but he didn’t need to open it, just listen to the deep male voice read what was said, line by line, with no interpretive emotion at all. Henry would be surprised to learn that his own statements were communicated with appropriate if approximate punctuation, with such a voice to read him the contents of the book. When the low voice told him that “Rose R.” refused to send anyone but herself, Henry swore aloud into the frigid autumn air. “God’s teeth.”
Still outside the rusted, overgrown gate, Henry decided to curl up with his back against the old wall to conserve heat and some sense of modest. Damn the woman. If she was coming, she better hurry along with it.
Rose had felt every day pass during her time away from the Homelands. She'd felt every minute, and trapped inside the anger of Sid's mind time had passed slower than winter in her mother's cottage in the frozen Witching Wood. But none of those slow, seemingly endless moments compared to being in Sid's mind when he butchered Ian alive, and even that hadn't compared to the slowly growing realization when Sid had decided to kill himself.
Rose had been in so many minds in the past year, and she barely gave any thought to whoever shared space with her. At first, it had been a problem, something to overcome. Then, it had grown to be something good. Olive and Eloise, they had both liked her, and she had liked them, and it had been like having her mother back. But none of that had lasted, and Sid had been different in ways that didn't relate to his anger. Because Rose knew anger. Anger had been guiding her actions since Snow had abandoned her, since she had been cast aside as not good enough by a second son with no fortune. She knew anger, and she'd spent her entire adolescence planning the perfect revenge on her sister, but that had been nothing compared to the physical atrocities Sid had committed.
And it had been nothing compared to the certainty that, in those final moments, she was going to die.
Death, during the Adversary's war, became the norm in the Homelands. Scrolls were handed from hand to hand daily, names and names and names, all of the people dead. People on the good side of the fight, and she and Snow had read them with trepidation, hoping for only names they didn't recognize. But that never happened, and a world that didn't know death learned to know it intimately. But Rose had never died. Snow had never died. And after 2,000 years, half of which were spent watching others perish, death became an elusive nightmare, more frightening with the more time that passed.
But she had blinked back into existence, after the excruciating pain of that bullet, in a familiar mind. And while she had not gotten along with the woman who shared her space once, now it was a comforting blanket. And Rose, while 2,000, was the perpetual teenger; she had been afraid.
She remained afraid.
And atop it all, there was Belle. Belle, who Justine had shown her on the thing she called a laptop. Belle, of the yellow dress and intelligence. Belle, who was the only person who could break the spell. And once, at the beginning, Rose might have been selfless enough to let her come and do as she would. But not anymore. Not now, when she had finally gotten what she had wanted.
And she felt pressure, did Rose, because Henry thought her something pure, something that couldn't be kissed or touched, and Rose knew men. She had lost count of the men she'd laid with. No, not precisely lost count. She had stopped counting at thirty-two. She had stopped, because it had started as something to make Snow suffer, and it had turned into something she was ashamed of. She had stopped counting, but she had not stopped. And Henry's care and caution, they weren't necessary; they only made her worried she would lose him, the longer it persisted.
And so, uncaring, she set out. Bundled in layers and wearing a hooded cloak that was rose trimmed with red, she set out. She had two men from the village with her, one carrying clothing for Henry, and the other carrying a bundle with wood, food, warmth to drink.
"Henry!" she called out, loudly and not caring how far her voice traveled. Beneath the hard earth, there were still seeds, the beginnings of things that would respond to her, should she need them to. "Henry!"
Henry was too cold to be truly worried about Rose’s state. In the first hour, the first two hours, he had the leisure to be concerned for her. He had not stopped wanting to see her, and he longed to see her still, but he was cold, and had he not been what he was, he would be dead, or at least like dead, and in what men called a cold sleep. It was an unpleasant feeling, knowing the cold. He could have slept, but he was not tired, he was simply wishing he wasn’t awake.
And then he heard her voice.
He brought his head up out of his knees. The day was waning quickly, and the sky was purple. “Here.” He did not rise, but tested his limbs. He still felt whole, despite the numbness, the painful tingling. Perhaps humanity would linger for a few hours still. He hoped that there would be something to clothe him so he could hold her without making a fool of himself by either ice or flame.
Seeing her with two men, two men that were as solid as he, forced him into something more like wakefulness, but he could not rise, though he attempted it. His pale feet moved weakly in the scrub at the foot of the wall, hard plants with small leaves and crisp white blossoms with stout petals. They took advantage of the pale winter sun and were largely undisturbed by even his best efforts as he looked up and squinted at the shapes approaching.
God, perhaps this would become even more mortifying.
Rose might be a perpetual teenager, but she wasn't stupid. Once Henry called out, she held out her arm and refused to let the men from the village continue on. They, of course, knew what she had been (and done) at Snow's court, because everyone knew, but her presence at the castle made them stop and listen, though they had no real respect for her. But that wasn't her concern; she was accustomed to the price of her actions. Just then, she could just make out skin and hair near the wall beside the rusted and overgrown gate, and that was all the indication she needed. She took the clothing from one man, and she bid the one with the makings of a fire to start a blaze. Even if Henry only stood near the heat for a few seconds, it would make his walk the rest of the way to the castle easier.
With his clothing draped over one rose-fabric clad arm, Rose made her way to where he was, and she was even decent enough to keep her amber gaze entirely at eye-level; a strange kindness from the redhead who was hardly ever kind to anyone at all.
She held out the clothing. "Telling me not to do things is a waste of breath. If my mother was here, she would tell you that I never listened, even as a little girl. She blamed the red hair," she admitted, some sad fondness in her voice when she spoke of her mother. "Hurry and get dressed, so I can look at you," she said, shifting from one foot to the other, in order to avoid the snow seeping through her soles.
Behind them, from where she'd come, the scent of flames touched the cool, crisp air. The sound of crackling wood followed, and she tucked her gloved hands into the long sleeves of her cloak.
Impossibly, Henry felt more of an animal crouched there at his own front gate than he had when they had first met, and he had threatened her with his teeth. He could not bring himself to wish she had not come. He was too cold, and he was wise enough in the ways of the woods to realize that numb feeling wasn’t good. He felt a cutting wind, but nothing moved around him, no leaves, no grass. It smelled like smoke, but maybe he was imagining that. He felt stupid.
Henry’s eyes were bright and autumn orange as he gazed clearly into her face. He was grateful she wasn’t mocking him, and when he looked behind her, still more grateful there were no more staring eyes. “I was going to bring you some late apples. From the woods. But I dropped them,” he said, wistfully, eyes shifting back toward the trees, then again to her face. He had some difficulty putting an arm out for the fabric, but once it came away from his shoulder he managed.
Without attempting to stand, Henry pulled the fabric clumsily over his shoulders. He did not attempt to fight with the breeches or the shirt or the thick wool of the shepherd’s wrap, he just pulled the cloak back over his scarred shoulders and leaned into the circle of protection. He didn’t feel anything, not right away. Again he looked up at her, this time with a mixture of resignation and trust, and put out his left arm, bare to the elbow beneath the fabric she had brought. His fingers were gray with cold. “Help me up.” His tone was a request, not a command.
"We can go look, once you warm up," she offered, entirely unaware of his dented pride. Her gaze followed his toward the trees, and she was still lost in their splendor when his gaze shifted back to her. She didn't fear winter. Her mother had taught her to stay alive, but it had been a formality. Since her earliest memory, she remembered the fields and trees and animals sheltering her, and she'd never been afraid. Men, those needed to be feared. Women too, with their lying tongues and their venom. But not the woods or the creatures within them. They were honest in a way people weren't. She looked back at him then, cheeks red with the cold, flush and vibrant, and her copper hair escaping with abandon from the hood of her cloak as she handed out the clothing.
She watched him, concern and no impatience, as he pulled the fabric over his shoulders. And she knew enough of a man's pride not to offer aid, to wait until it was requested, but she moved immediately when it was. Her fingers closed on his forearm, and she offered her sturdiness and a bit of aid in getting him upright. "There's a fire. I'll send the men away, and you can warm up before putting on the rest," she offered. She didn't wait for his agreement before calling out for the men to leave, her voice imperious and nothing like a lowborn child born and bred in a cottage.
The idea of staying in the woods in this fragile skin was daunting. Henry’s mouth flexed with concern, but he did not deny her offer. Perhaps she knew that if she wished for apples in the frozen wood, he would go find them.
Henry lurched into upright. He wasn’t at full height, but he caught himself before he fell and leaned on her without alternative. Partly because he did not want to lean and partly because he wanted to hold her, Henry put the arm out with its full drape of cloth, the length of it such that not a sliver of flesh was revealed, and wrapped her into it, pulling her under his arm. He made a sound as the cold air came out of his lungs, but he refused to make it a pained gasp. He coughed instead, and they moved toward the fire. Henry left the book murmuring the words of some far away author, knowing it would find its way to him again, untroubled by its presence diminishing presence.
As they neared the small growing flame banked in old paving stones, he watched the retreating backs of the villagers with surprise and frozen curiosity, slow-moving and transparent. “There are many men in the village?” he asked her, his tone making it clear he had not expected people to return to his lands with such haste.
She didn't realize, until that cough, just how cold he was. A lifetime spent surviving in a nearly endless winter made her take for granted that he was fine, and she hadn't thought to ask how long he'd been outdoors. No apples, she decided, and only enough time at the fire to make the walk back more tolerable. She merely stayed close to him, nearly hidden within the cloth that was draped along his shoulders and arms, adding body heat to the licking flames. She turned, catching his profile, and looking for some sign that he was comfortable enough to move on.
Once they were inside, and once he was warmed through, then she would yell at him.
His question about the men in the village caused her to look up, and she looked in the direction the men had gone. "Not many yet, but enough. They come from the South and West, from the villages outside the Witching Wood. It's said you have empty homes and fields that haven't been tended for years," she explained, wondering that he hadn't gone to look, now that he was sometimes human. "We can go there one day, once you're warm and have shoes." She didn't add that being seen with her would hardly endear him to his people. There was time for that later, just as there was time for a solution later. Just then, it didn't matter very much. There was still yelling to do, and there was still the matter of Belle.
She looked back at him once more. "Did you miss me while I was gone?" she asked, copper flame and a slight narrowing of her eyes.
Henry too was a survivor. He had survived all the Witch’s torments are sustained a sense of self despite it, refused to bend to her will, and harbored his own methods of will that had nothing to do with the sensations of the body. It remained a harsh truth, however, that no matter how hardened by war and suffering, there were few who could survive in the woods on a cold October without clothing or shelter. Once they were near enough to the fire that he could stand to the edge of downwind, Henry blinked through the smoke and leaned a little heavier on her shoulder. He did not attempt to sit down, and as soon as they were still, it became obvious that he was shivering, a steady vibration that went to his bones and back out again. He kept his teeth clenched so they wouldn’t clatter.
“I do not know if it is wise for me to go into the village. I could change, I could hurt someone. I do not think they want… a king.” He said the word with a strange, stony tone. He looked at her again, intent. His nose was long and cold and his lips were blue, but he bent all the way down close so he could put his forehead down on her hair above her ear. The arm around her shoulders pulled her a little closer. “When I had the mind to miss anything,” he said, with a smile in his voice. “Did you miss me?”
She didn't like how blue his lips were, and she didn't like how cold his forehead felt against her skin. "They want a king," she assured him. This wasn't Fabletown or the mundane world. Here, people wanted to live as they had, with few changes, and enigmatic rulers were the best kind. Youth and beauty was valued in this place where death was infrequent and violent, and nothing made people feel safe like a return to frivolity. "They want a ruler who will throw banquets and balls that they can tell stories about, and that they can aspire to attend. A ruler whose castle employs them, and puts food on their table in winter. Someone fair, who they like. Someone handsome," she finished with a smile. She'd spent her life in a cottage, but she and Snow had done little more than dream about being princesses in a proper court. And Charming had been anything but when it came to his wife and fidelity, but his people had adored him all the same.
"Perhaps I missed you," she said playfully, though there was more to it than that. She'd been afraid, and she'd been certain she would never see him again, not in any form. And she would have stayed there for hours, had he not been so cold and shivering. But it was impossible to hide from that when his arms trembled around her, and she pointed her nose toward the castle. "We should start back, if you think you can move. I don't think we should linger here, even with a fire," she said, the decision a new one, because blue lips weren't good at all, and the hearth would be warmer, without the whipping winds of winter.
Henry bowed his head as if under a weight. Never in his life had Henry worn a crown, but he had felt its weight before. Sometimes he wondered what his father would think of the things he had done in his short rule. “My time as king is marked by blood and loss. I do not know I would do any better than I had then,” he said quietly, speaking only because she was the only one to hear. “The castle is not wealthy. I have no coffers, no secret stores of gold. I am certainly not handsome for most of my days and nights.” He lifted his chin enough to give her a slight sideways smile.
Henry did not like the implication that he could not move. He squinted at her, and despite the truth he was able to say, quite equivocally, “I cannot die by cold. I can move.” He began to demonstrate, pulling her neck and shoulder a little closer without meaning to and putting out a long step. He paused to pull on the shepherd’s wool coat and step into the breeches under the massive length of the cloak, moving a little stiffly but managing the task. Rising to his full height again and feeling a little closer to human, though still frigidly stiff, he pulled the cloak a little closer and took Rose’s hand. It was like gripping ice.
"Your time as king was marked by blood and loss. Now it's marked with rebirth, and just because you don't want to be the king doesn't change the fact that you are the king," she explained. It was the reason she'd offered to become his mistress, rather than to let him court her. Eventually, he would take his rightful place. Even if he wasn't always a man, his presence would be noted and commented on, even more than it already was, and things would change. "More villagers will come, and they will pay their taxes and fill your coffers, and the fields will give fruit and vegetables again, and the animals will return to the forests for hunting." It was the way of things. It was the way of nature, and Rose understood nature. For all its wildness and unpredictableness, it was cyclical and steady.
She had no idea if his claim about being unable to die by cold was true, so, for once, she didn't argue. She let him shift and move, and she let him slip the breeches on, and she kept her teeth from chattering at how cold his fingers were through sheer force of will. It made her tug him with impatience that she couldn't hide, however, the snow crunching beneath shoes that suddenly seemed too thin. "I can die by cold. I'll have someone douse the fire once we're inside," she said, wanting to move, despite understanding that it was hard for him. But movement was heat, and heat was survival.
It was obvious by the expression on Henry’s face that he had not considered himself a king of anything for a very long time. He was disturbed by it, but not in the traditional way. Henry was a leader of men, a skill learned by fire death and blade. The idea that there were men to lead was one he was slow to bring to the front of his mind and doings. Eventually he gave a hoarse, humorless laugh. “There is no guarantee the Witch is gone. Besides, no king is a king for a few unpredictable hours of each passing moon.” His grip on her hand tightened, but his skin was warming quickly, so quickly that it brought tingles of returning sensation, and he gave himself a shake.
“Still.” Thoughtfully, Henry turned his head to look in the direction of the village. “Some tithe should be made if homes are made on my land.” Henry came from a very long line of feudal kings, and none would be surprised by such a demand. It did not even occur to him that anyone would.
Eventually the gate and overgrown surroundings gave way to one of the side gardens, and from thence, the kitchens.
She kept quiet, while he came to his "own" decision about the tithing, and she just smiled and pressed closer to his side, now that the heat from her fingers had made his own grip not so very cold. She wasn't worried about the Witch any longer. Perhaps she should be, but she wasn't. The curse didn't seem as important now that the girl in the yellow dress had come. She'd take regular transformations over the uncertainty of a broken curse, young and selfish little girl that she was. She feared change almost as much as she feared losing him, because the two were inexorably intertwined.
The side gardens were thriving. In fact, everything green that lived within those overgrown gates was bright and vibrant. Greens, reds and yellows, soft grasses underfoot, peeking through the snow with magical persistence. They'd be slumbering again shortly, but her nervousness when she found that he was out in the cold had made her magic just a little unchecked, and it made things bloom where they ought not, through the hard winter earth and packed white snow.
She had barely stepped into the kitchens before she began barking orders, every bit the fishwife in red. She shoved the cloak off her head, and she summoned a chair forward and asked the fires be stoked higher - the hearth, and the hall, and the one in the largest room in the wing he preferred.
Henry looked out over his gardens. He still thought of them as his, for enough time had passed since the departure of his father, brother and mother from this mortal coil that he could not think of them otherwise. There was a time, not too far gone, that he would have been enraged to see the influence of magic so close to his home, but it seemed now a foolish waste of energy to even think of anger. Rose might prefer this constant, unexpected shift of forms, but Henry hated and feared the long periods of unexpected blackness, the few waking moments where he knew not where he was nor how he came to be there. This total lack of control was as draining and tortuous as the continued existence in his old beastly form. He could not think which he preferred, only that he hated both.
Soon they were through the kitchen door. The invisible servants stopped cooking and cleaning. Reed chairs scraped as unseen people stood or gave way in their path. Henry released Rose's hand as soon as they were under cover, reclaiming both of his arms to wrap the cloak's dark folds closer around his tall, faintly uneven silhouette. No one present received a smile from him. None moved forward into his path. Some things would not change.
Henry sat at a recently vacated chair by the fire. Someone had sewn rags into its woven seat, and it held firm under his weight. The autumn locks on his forehead began to glisten as they melted and then dried. His gaze grew thoughtful and green. He thought of food but could not bring himself to move. His thawing limbs tingled and then hurt in successive waves. "You make yourself at home," he observed to Rose, half-teasing and half-earnest.
"I'm not good at being a guest," Rose admitted, and she looked up at the low roof above their heads. "If this is to be my home, shouldn't I make myself at home?" she asked, pacing nervously, the adrenaline from going out to seek him finally having nowhere to hide itself in the kitchen. She paced behind him. She paced in front of him. Her arms were deep in the arms of her cloak, over her belly, and the fabric trailed behind her as a reminder, damp and red at the ends. "I know you're much more traditional than I am," she acknowledged. "I don't trust men well, and I don't trust marriage, but I'm willing to risk that with you," she admitted. "But home must be home, or I'll finish refurbishing the farmhouse, and I'll stay there," she said, because if there was something she yearned for - that she had yearned for since she left home - it was a place that was hers. The cottage had felt like home, but she had left it behind, and she missed that feeling of ownership. "Plus, we have to patch all the holes, which requires bossing your magical things around," she added, stopping in front of him with a stamp of feet. "If you wanted a princess who was content to be waited on, you picked the wrong witch," she added, a smile lighting her features.
She reached out a hand to touch his cheek, then, hoping she felt warmth beneath her fingers. "You should rest," she added reluctantly, because she knew he wouldn't allow her to go with him, should he decide not to argue with her recommendation.
“I like that you make your home here. It is your home, and you are welcome. Perhaps I was not very good at expressing that when you first came,” Henry commented, smiling ever so slightly into the fire and venturing one palm out toward it in an attempt to thaw his long fingers. He ran his thumb over the soft side of his last knuckle on the first and second finger. He hadn’t drawn a bow in a very long time. Perhaps, if there were villagers, there would be a bowyer. His bones were stiff under his muscles.
“You mean the servants?” Henry corrected absently. “I suppose they are there to be bossed. My mother was cross with me when I was sharp-tongued, however.” He frowned to himself. “She would not be pleased with my behavior these last… few years.” It had been decades, but he wasn’t sure how many. “It is better to manage in the westerly wings of the castle in the winter. The wind does not howl so hard, as the hills shelter that side.” Henry exchanged hands to press a palm again toward the embers.
He tipped his chin to look up at her with one eye through a roguish fringe of amber silk hair. He smiled.
Her brow furrowed when he mentioned servants, because she'd seen no servants here, only magical things. But perhaps it was like the film that horrible Justine showed her, and the magical things had been servants once. The furrow smoothed, because she decided that must be it, and she watched some movement at the board at the corner of the kitchen with curiosity and appreciation for the magic of the curse. Most of the curses she and Snow encountered as children affected one person, not entire castles. This was like Briar's curse then, and that had been erased with love, too.
She hated curses that needed to be fixed with love.
She looked up toward the westerly wing when he mentioned it, her expression changing from an disapproving line to something lighter. "I'll have them light the fires there," she said, stepping away and giving him a look that was all faux sternness. "Don't look at me like that, Henry, not when you won't even kiss me," she told him, and she turned on one rose heel and began toward the wing in question.
"Come when you're warmed," she called back. "I'll be safely in my quarters of purity by then!"