Oubliette

6

The staircase Snow had hurried up, that seemed to go on forever finally spilled out into a large room, a room that had her head spinning just at first glance. It was like the painting she saw once of the mundy artist Escher's 𝑅𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑡𝑦, stairs going every direction to the point she couldn't tell which way was up or down. But just standing their ogling it wasn't helping, and it was wasting time.

Taking a deep breath, she moved off to her right, the only path she could and hurried down a set of stairs only to jog right up another. She paused at it's ledge, peeking over to see the vast fall and the Emperor looking up at her like a pond reflection. Gasping she stepped back and noticed an arch to her left and hurried toward it.

The Emperor appeared in her way like magic though he'd only stepped his way over the edge, righting himself. Startled she steps back and he holds up one of his infamous crystal balls and making sure she was watching he gave it a forceful heave to the opposite side of the chasmic illusion. The ball hit with a high clink as it bounced and continued on down—up—across the stairs until it came into contact with a very small and repulsive creature, with pointed white beard to match its hair that sat under a pointed cap held in place by a set of high pointed ears. Blank beady eyes glared down at her as a wicked set of lips turned up in mischief while it waved a vial over it's head then turned to run.

Snow's blood began to boil at what she saw, and before she even thought of a plan took off after the dwarf. If she caught it, the only rational thing flying through her mind —the only thing—was strangling it to death.

She couldn't keep track of where she was going or where she'd been, this room was so much more of a labyrinth than the one outside the goblin city walls and the dwarf— he was always one step ahead of her, though it wasn't hard to do in this place.

"Stop!" She yells after it, but she'd only get a tittering laugh as a response and it would find a way to disappear only to reappear below or above her.

Finally she came up to the edge of one flat, and peering over, the dwarf had stopped to sit down on an arch that was laying horizontal, "Stop you fucking sack of shit!"

The dwarf turned enough to look over its shoulder up at Snow, that wicked smile widening, taunting her with the belief it was safe and she would do nothing to catch it. Taking a deep breath, Snow took the leap.

She expected to fall hard and fast down to the flat space of the archway, but instead her fall became slow and the room around her started to break away and dissolve as the stairs began to float in their many pieces around. Snow did land on something flat and solid, looking around her it was the only thing. The dwarf was gone, it was just her.

Until ℎ𝑒 stepped from the shadows.

Snow was done playing all these little games, the time was up, and she had won. She had made it. "Give me my husband."

The Emperor steps forward, further from the shadows, "Snow, beware." He strolls onward, making his way at a distance around the woman, letting her eyes follow him. "I have been generous up until now, but I can be cruel."

"Generous!" She replies with soft incredulity. "What have you done that's 𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑠?"

The Emperor comes to a standstill opposite now from which he'd started, "𝐸𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔!" He snaps at her. "Everything that you wanted I have done." He begins to circle her and she follows him, keeping him in her sights as he speaks in a risen tone. "You asked that your husband be taken. 𝐼 took him. You cowered before me. I was frightening. I have reordered time. I have turned the world upside-down, and I have done it all for 𝑦𝑜𝑢!" He stops at the point in which he began, taking a deep breath, his voice returning to a softer level in his fatigue. "I am exhausted from living up to your expectations of me. Isn't that 𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑠?"

Snow had stayed quiet up until then, listening to the Emperor's woes, his complaints and it made her think of herself and how she'd been since entering the labyrinth. How far she'd come. How yes, at first she had wished away her husband, his overbearing pigheadedness in practically everything they did, suffocating her and she just wanted a moment's peace. Then the moment he was gone, that the Emperor took not just him but her memories of who he was and left that void with her, she wanted nothing more than to have him back.    

"Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the goblin city, for my will is as strong as yours. And my—"

"Stop!" The Emperor shouts, his eyes widening and for the first time since she'd seen him, he look frightened. "Wait! Look, Snow. Look what I'm offering you—your dreams." He says, holding up one of his crystal balls to show her a world without her husband, that overbearing, overprotective fluff of a man.

"And my kingdom is great." She continues, determined. There was nothing more she wanted. Nothing the Emperor could offer her that would change her mind.

"I ask for so little. Just let me rule you, and you can have everything that you want." He was pleading with her, and this proved that Snow was on the verge of victory.

Her brows furrowed slightly. No man would ever rule her, no man could ever give her everything that she wanted, because her husband wasn't a man. Snow's blue eyes locked gazes with the Emperor and the woman that stood before him was not who had just ventured through the labyrinth, she wasn't a woman who had sent away her husband.

"I am 𝑆𝑛𝑜𝑤 goddamn 𝑊ℎ𝑖𝑡𝑒. I look after 𝑚𝑦𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓. I look after my 𝑜𝑤𝑛. And I 𝑛𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 lose. You have no power over me!"

A clock in the distance chimed and everything around her began to fade and disappear until Snow was left standing alone in the middle of Wolf Manor.

"𝐵𝑖𝑔𝑏𝑦." She mouths, and there was the memory, the man she'd been searching for. That was his name. That big old bad wolf. A wide smile overtook her lips.

"𝐵𝑖𝑔𝑏𝑦!" She shouts with a laugh of relief and looks around her, but saw no indication he was there. "Bigby?" She shouts again then from the corner of her eye catches the sight of a familiar figure stepping in through a doorway.

"Snow?" Bigby pads over silently to the raven haired woman, feeling like he was in a daze, unsure if this was real or not. If he was still being tricked by the Emperor—𝐴𝑑𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑎𝑟𝑦. "You're gonna wake the cubs. . ." He says gently before leaning down to kiss her on the cheek, but instead was surprised when Snow threw her arms around his neck, clinging to him fiercely. "I'm tickled to see you too Snow, but—"

"Oh, shut up you big old wolf and just kiss your wife." Snow says as she looked up at him, beaming relentlessly. His arms wound around her small frame and held her to him. No, no 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 was real.

He chuckles, and shakes his head slightly with a small amount of bafflement as to what had gotten into her, but why question the very reason to his beating heart, "Yes ma'am."