The Wolf Among Us: Season Two

Episode 3: Chapter 1

"Well, that's rather ominous. Are you going to go right now?" Snow asks, looking up from the note and turning her gaze to the sheriff.

"Don't you mean are we going to go right now?" Bigby replies, partially joking about how Snow has been inserting herself into his investigations recently and partially inviting her to come with him.

"Isn't there a rather large possibility of this being dangerous, though?" Snow says cautiously. As much as she knew she wanted to be valued and involved in the going ons in the Business Office and the Sheriff's Office, dealing with dangerous or even life threatening situations wasn't exactly her area of expertise.

"We don't work with Mundies, they won't be as mad at us as they were with others." Bigby sighs, glancing over at Rapunzel as she lay unconscious in her hospital bed. "And as far as I'm aware, they're both human Fables, so they won't morph into a talking Lion or Dragon." He chuckles, realizing that he's not only convincing Snow but also himself that the situation won't be dangerous.

"You're right." Snow shrugs, looking over at her long lost friend Rapunzel. As the sheriff watches her, he notices that her eyes slowly shift from showing pity, to anger, to determination. "Well then, what are we waiting for?" She asks rhetorically as she walks with her head high over towards the hospital room door.

The sheriff nods and follows her out of the room, down the elevator, and back out on the street. The morning sun had fully risen and the daily hustle and bustle had begun on the New York streets. As people walked down the sidewalks on their way to work, Bigby and Snow felt flashes of panic, worry, and fear as they imagined the worst of what Arabella and John were capable of.

Snow calls over a cab for them and they enter the back seats. Bigby gives the driver the address, reading off of the note from Arabella. Although he is able to put on a calm voice, anger bubbles inside of him. Holly, a relatively innocent and downtrodden soul, and Rapunzel, a kind woman and friend of Snow, had both been attacked by these monsters and Bigby was seeking justice. No, not justice, vengeance. It was something he had always struggled with, and something Snow had gotten onto him for many a times.

The sheriff all too often let his emotions get the best of him, and punished criminals just as harshly as they had attacked their victims. An eye for an eye, in his mind. Most of Fabletown seemed to go along with it, with their dishing out of the death penalty via the Witching Well, although none of them would ever admit it. They reprimanded Bigby for being violent, yet they secretly craved the violence as well. He was their scapegoat for their own sins.

"We're here." Snow said quietly as the taxi came to a halt. Bigby paid the driver and climbed out of the car. Having not smoked in about an hour, Bigby's senses were overpowering him and causing him to have a small headache. He, however, suppressed the urge to smoke, as they may help him out if Arabella were to attack him or, God forbid, Snow.

"I think it's just down there." Snow motions towards the end of the block as the two step off of the road and onto the sidewalk. Large, red bricked buildings, most of which were older than most of the Mundies in New York, lined the street. Upon closer inspection, Bigby saw that they were standing in front of a building with the numbers 002 painted on it in large, white, uniform numbers, a detail Snow must have already noticed in order to guess where warehouse #4 was.

The two walk in absolute silence, accompanied only by the soft, muffled, racket of machinery inside the buildings. They both stop in front of the building marked 004 and, without saying a word, begin to walk up to the large, iron front door. As they reach the entrance Bigby sticks his hand out, motioning for Snow to stay back, as he presses his ear up against the door and tries to listen inside. Unable to hear anything, Bigby steps back before opening the door.

Standing in the middle of the low ceiling and dimly lit room was the woman Bigby had seen in Rapunzel's hospital room before, the woman he had marked as Arabella Miller. Hearing the heavy door creak open, Arabella jerks her head towards the entrance and quickly raises the gun she held in her hand and points it at Bigby as a sort of reflex.

"It's about time." She spits through clenched teeth as she walks over towards the wall. Bigby looks over towards the wall that she was walking to and sees a man slouching with duct tape over his mouth and his hands behind his back. He was clinging to consciousness. Was this another one of Arabella's victims? Snow notices the man as well and has no idea who he is. To Bigby, however, he seems vaguely familiar, yet he doesn't know for sure who the man is.

"John and I were starting to worry you had forgotten about us, weren't we, John?" Arabella asks the man that she pulls up from the ground, still keeping her gun focused on Bigby the entire time. It wasn't much of a threat to him, though, having guns pointed at him had become rather common over the past few weeks, during which he had also realized just how little of an effect regular bullets were on him.

"John." Bigby muttered as he remembered where he recognized the man from. He was running out of the alleyway with Rapunzel when Bigby found her stabbed. It still didn't make total sense to the sheriff. If John and Arabelle were conspiring together, why did she have him tied up and clearly either drugged or otherwise made unconscious?

"I'm guessing you found some of John's letters, the idiot was never very careful or secretive, and sadly that's what got him into this situation right now." Arabella explains, being cryptic as ever and worrying the sheriff, which is an emotion he seldom felt. He knew that criminals, especially attempted murderers, are never very good at the whole empathy thing, he assumes that it was part of their whole psychopath thing. However, when someone is able to correctly guess what you're thinking and feeling, it makes you realize how you're one step behind.

Arabella moves her gun to be pointed towards John's head, interrupting Bigby's thoughts. She hasn't murdered anyone yet, she may still stand a chance to not be punished by death by Fabletown. Someone as insane and violent as her deserves to suffer behind bars, not to receive a rather quick death with little suffering, which is what she would experience if she were to be thrown down the witching well.

Snow's brain was going down the same path but for very different reasons. Although this wench had deeply hurt the lives of Holly and Rapunzel, one of Snow's oldest friends, Snow didn't yearn for her to suffer, she didn't directly wish for anyone to suffer, but purely face the consequences of their own actions. If she were to kill John, then so be it, she would most likely be punished by death. This logical and by the book reasoning, however, didn't stop Snow from gasping as the gun became positioned onto the man drooping over unconscious in Arabella's grasp.

"Arabella, you don't have to do this." Bigby calls out, his mind spinning in the background. Why on Earth would Arabella even want to kill John? Was it because of his lack of secrecy that she had mentioned? It was, afterall, what led to Arabella being discovered as well. As these thoughts races through Bigby's mind, John began to open his eyes as he regained consciousness.

"Actually, sheriff, I do. We had a message to spread and I'm very sure that by this evening, John and I will be the talk of the town. Our kind has always been superior to the Mundies and deep down inside you know it!" Arabella spits as she clearly becomes even more enraged. "Think about it, there isn't a single way in which Mundies are better. We can produce and use magic, we can live tenfold as long as them, we get shot-" She continues her speech, pausing to point her gun back at the sheriff and shoot him right in the center of the stomach. "We heal." She comments as Bigby merely falls a few steps back and tightly grasps his hand over the wound, barely wincing at the pain.

Snow, however, is filled with worry at both the sound and the sight. She clasps her hand over her mouth and has to try her best to stop herself from shrieking. However, after seeing the sheriff's small reaction to the bullet, she refocuses her attention on Arabella.

"Living in this insipid realm with these useless Mundies is an insult and a disgrace to Fables. The Mundy-lovers among us needed a small reminder of the good old days in the Homelands, and how this world has corrupted us." Arabella continues, explaining her and John's attacks. "All of this was for Fablekind, and one day, when the Mundies have ruined us completely, you will realize that." She says calmly before putting a bullet through John's head, and then her own.