Reflection (Neverland Archives I)

VIII

Pain.

There is pain when Ivy wakes. It radiates from her chest, tight and aching. She lifts a hand to the space, moves the bodice of her dress so she can see... she nearly screams. There is a scar across her chest that wasn't there before, right above her heart.

Her heart... she can't... she feels her own neck, her wrist, listens closely.

It's like she's encased in marble all over again.

She can't hear or feel her heartbeat.

"Look who's awake." Henric's voice, rough around the edges. She turns her head to see him sitting in a chair near the bed. They're in the cabin, and sunlight slants through the window behind Henric. "It's about time."

"What..." Her voice is hoarse, and it sounds very far away to her ears. "What did you do to me...?"

Henric sighs. "I really am sorry about this, you know. But I couldn't have you running off to get yourself killed looking for your Prince."

Ivy sits up, wincing at the pain in her chest. It pulls and stings. "What..." Everything feels... dull. As if there's a wool blanket over her head.

"Had to take your heart," Henric says, gesturing at her casually. "If it's mine, you can't leave me or you'll die." He smiles easily.

Everything in Ivy recoils in horror.

She's heard of this before, heard of the power capable of doing it. But her heart... she can't... no...

"Where is it?" She demands, dropping her bare feet to the floor. Henric snorts.

"I'm not telling you. Then you'll go and find it, can't have that." He reaches out and lifts a strand of her dark hair. "You're mine now, Ebony, that's all. But don't worry." He brushes the strand behind her ear. She tries not to flinch. "It won't be so bad. I'm not a bad guy, you know."

Something inside her is breaking and shattering and melting. She doesn't care to know what it is, nor does she try to stop it.

Shattering. Shattering doesn't sound so bad now.

"Where is Castor?" She asks, her lips numb.

Henric sighs. "I told you, Beauty, he's done for. Forget about him."

She flinches. "No. I don't believe you."

"Believe what you like," Henric says, shrugging. "You can't go after him now, anyway. If you're away from me for too long, you'll die." He takes her chin between two fingers gently, moving her head a little. "Don't want that, now do you?" Henric kisses her temple. "Now that you're awake, we can get moving. I'm going to saddle the horse. Don't go anywhere." He chuckles to himself as if he thinks he's funny before leaving the cabin.

The wooden door swings shut behind him.

Ivy remembers the last time she saw that door closed.

If she hadn't left the cabin that night, would Cas still be alive? Is he even dead? No. She can't think that. He has to be alive.

She has to know.

She eyes the door, then the window on the other side of the cabin. She doesn't care if she dies.

She doesn't want to live without Castor, anyway.

She climbs through the window and doesn't even feel the splinters in her skin. She runs across the forest floor and doesn't notice the cuts that mar her bare feet from the rocks and sticks and brambles.

She knows this forest.

She practically grew up in this forest, spent two years traveling it with the dwarves. She whispers to it, calls to it, sings to it as she runs.

The Faerie Forest is alive, and Ivory begs it to hear her plea for help.

It takes her only moments to find him, doubtless thanks to the Forest. He's in the vale, the vale he went to every night when his curse and the darkness turned him from man to animal. The vale in which they met years ago. The vale in which they shared their first kiss. The vale in which he proposed to her.

When she finds him, Ivy wishes she'd stayed in the cabin. She wishes she hadn't come.

Not knowing was better.

Ivy collapses by the body of the white hart. Blood mats his thick coat. They left the arrows that killed him, didn't bother to take them out. Their fletching and shafts are wet with Castor's blood. His head... there's nothing there. Just a bloody stump.

They took his head, will give it to the Queen if they haven't already. They'll mount it on her trophy wall and no one will ever know what became of the Prince. She'll probably tell them he ran away like a coward, or something else that will sully his memory and reputation.

Ivory buries her face in his shoulder and screams. She screams for the years they lost in stone, and she screams for the pain of the few moments they had together. She screams in agony at the pain ripping through her soul, and she screams in rage at the unjustness of it all. She screams because she has no other way to release everything that's breaking inside her.

She screams, but she keeps shattering, even when she thinks there's nothing left that can break. When her voice is gone and the tears have all dried up, Ivy pulls the arrows out of him. She uses the arrowheads to dig a hole in the soft ground beneath the trees. She digs for hours, even when her nails break, even when her hands blister and bleed.

She digs until she has dug a grave big enough to fit the body of the beautiful white hart. Since he died in this form, he'll never again walk about in his human body. He'll never walk about in any form. He won't sit beside her reading his poetry to her.

He won't sit in the shadow she casts to hide from the afternoon sun and to remember that she existed. He won't visit the garden and the vale every day to remind himself that she lived when everyone else has forgotten.

He won't breathe. He won't say her name. He won't kiss her or hold her ever again.

Castor is dead.

And Ivory is dying. She can feel it happening, her blood becoming sluggish, her body leaden. She barely has the strength to drag Castor's body to the grave and push him in. It takes everything in her to shove the pile of dirt and grass back into the hole on top of him.

She has nothing with which to mark his grave.

The Queen took the ring he gave her.

Ivory wishes she could turn to stone again above his grave, that she could become his marker and watch over him forever.

She collapses atop the freshly turned earth.

She is ready to die. Perhaps no one will bother to bury her, and she'll still become his marker, her bones turning to bleach on the ground atop him.

It doesn't sound like such a bad fate...