I don't own anything, or anything that has to do with Ever After.
She always seems to fall asleep incredible fast the second she decides she wants to, always on her stomach too. Henry notices this after only about a week of marriage. He is so in love with her that everything about her fascinates him, all her little traits make him smile, and every time he looks at her his heart does flip flops in his chest.
He, on the other had, has never been able to fall asleep when he wants to, not even now, with an angel sleeping next to him.
So he watches her, from her long soft hair, her perfect skin and juicy lips sticking out from the mass of pillows she has dove into. Sometimes he is scared to death she will suffocate in her sleep. That is another reason he has a hard time sleeping, what if something were to happen to her when he wasn't there to protect her, although to this date she has been the one doing to protecting.
Or maybe, one day he'll fall asleep next to her, and wake up and find out she was just a dream.
One night, a hot night, the sheets fall and little lower than usual.
He hasn't seen these before, in the night, when they are together and it its dark. He hasn't felt them in their fits of passion. But now, now with the moonlight shining into the open windows, they are in plain view.
The scars.
They are not in straight horizontal lines along her back, but they are crisscrossing, and randomly placed all around her delicate back in a jumble of hurt and pain.
He reaches out and touched them, thankful she doesn't awake. Henry has tears in is eyes.
It become like a ritual during the summer months. He memorizes the patterns. Patterns that make him think of maps that great philosophers study and draw. Maps of the places they will go, the places she can see. They are maps of where their future will take them, of where their love has brought them.
Sometimes he sees them as patterns, like the ones that graze red pillows and green lounges, the ones that decorate the many fine silk curtains hanging around the entire castle. They are the sign of riches, and he has every type he could want.
His eyes tell him that they are vines, with beautiful leaves and flowers growing out of them. They are the vines that crawl outside the castle walls, and up the trellises of the garden where she likes to sit and read.
They transform into the ruins he used to play in as a young boy. Were he would jump and crawl and gaze. The place, that although is destroyed, fallen and broken, is still one of the most beautiful and breathtaking places in the entire world.
Much like her.
Then, he realizes, that these scares are not maps, or embroidery, and they are certainly not vines of roses, or the place he loved as a child. They are scars. Scars that made her hurt and weep. These are scars that she doesn't deserve to have places on her back forever.
He probably could have prevented some of these scars. He doesn't know how but he knows he could have. He could have loved her like this sooner, he could have forgiven her, accepted her.
But he didn't, and now he knows which scars he put their on her back.
It is the only time she has ever broken his heart.
This ritual never gets old, and he still thinks of these things each night before he goes to bed.
In more than one ways he is thankful she can no longer sleep on her stomach due to her protruding tummy.
Eventually, though, the beautiful baby is born, and she goes back to sleeping with her back exposed.
Three baby's and five years later, he still looks at the scars, not as often, but not never either.
He can no longer feel them, and they begin to fade.
He wonders if they are fading with time or it his just his imagination.
Eventually, he can't see them at all.
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