ENTITLED: Paths of Exile
FANDOM: Once Upon a Time
LENGTH: 10,500 words
SETTING: Alternate timeline? Speculative timeline? Ugh. Picks up about halfway through season two, only Hook doesn't make it to Storybrooke. Because is there even a reason for him to be there? Answer: not really.
DISCLAIMER: WHO EVEN OWNS THESE CHARACTERS? The Brothers Grimm? Disney? ABC? Chinese folklore? Fair game.
NOTES: If you see a section where the first word is in italics, it's a flashback. I guess I could have just made all the words in flashback-sections italicized, but I didn't because of a very good reason: it looks stupid.
SUMMARY: A curse or a promise: the princess who was never given a chance, the warrior who never broke her word, and the pirate who never forgot. An adventure that never happened. — Aurora, Mulan, Phillip, Hook

The three of them stood, watching the last ripples go still across the portal, as two queens and a stranger went chasing back to another world. The pirate sheathed his sword.

"Well, that's customary enchantress for you. Treacherous snake."

He spat into the pool, and then glanced up at them. Aurora recoiled in spite of herself, though she needn't have bothered. Mulan was already blocking her.

"What now, then? You mean to follow them?"

"Them? Them, no. I prefer my company to be less murderous and more useful. It's where they're going that I want, or more specifically, someone there. But if I see the ladies, any of them, they're still a murder uncompleted."

Aurora stared over Mulan's shoulder, watching the quiet rage knot up the pirate's face. He put his hands on his hips, and stared down at the still water for a long moment. Mulan shifted her guard infinitesimally lower. "And have you quarrel with us?"

"Perhaps," he replied, still staring at the water. Then he looked up, and Aurora saw again the terrible greenness of his eyes. There hung a still moment between them, before the man broke away, and began stalking for the forest, and the sea beyond it. "Aye, perhaps. But I'm too angry to remember it now, and it's not as though I can't find you again."

A man would have shouted something goading about Hook's retreat, but Mulan kept silent. Instead, she put away her blade, and watched until he was out of sight. Aurora shifted, and then came around her side. Mulan was frowning towards the shadowy trees.

"There's nothing left for us here," Aurora pointed out quietly. Mulan did not quite turn her head, but instead lead the way in the opposite direction the pirate had gone.

She remembers meeting Phillip, that first time. She'd been a few months younger and so embarrassingly a girl. He'd frightened her, creeping up out of the trees. The first man she'd ever talked to. He hadn't blinked much, and she'd wanted to run away.

"You're a man," she'd said. Meaning, The Man. The one her godmothers had told her about. All her life, saying, There's someone you're meant for, and one day you'll meet him, and everything will be perfect. Obviously, this was it.

"You're a girl," he'd returned. And then he said, "I'm Phillip."

She didn't offer her name. It felt like he might keep it. "What are you doing out here in the woods by yourself?"

He'd raised his eyebrows and smiled at her slightly, as though to suggest what she had said was rather stupid. Aurora hadn't liked that. It made her chest hot and tight and shameful. "These are my woods, you know."

"I've lived here my whole life and never seen you!" Aurora had cried indignantly. Outrageous, that this stranger should claim her trees and creeks and birds.

"Sounds like tax evasion," Phillip had said, still favoring a slightly mocking smile. She hadn't known what that meant, and so could only scowl at him. Luckily, he didn't seem to notice her pause. "Will you tell me your name?"

"Why?"

"Because if you don't, I'll make one up."

She'd thought about it for a moment, and then raised her chin. "Go on, then. What sort of name do I look like?"

"Oh, I don't know. Not a short name, not like Meg or Jane. Perhaps you're a witch, and then your name should be evil—"

"I am not!"

"—like Morgana or Cruelle—"

She'd thought about walking away then, and had felt so impatient with him that she'd misplaced her fear, and failed to notice that he was no longer across the clearing but right before her, and still smiling in that queer way, and his eyes were very dark and very still and filled with great purpose.

"Or perhaps it is a name that is as beautiful as you are," Phillip had said to her, finally, and their eyes had locked and her breath had stopped and everything had started. The look he had given her was frozen in her mind forever, one of her best memories of him. "But if that's the case, I can't think of any."

In her chest, her heart had trembled. She'd watched as his hand came up, and waited in the air between them. Slowly, hardly understanding what the gesture meant, she'd slid her hand into his, and let him touch her knuckles against his mouth.

There was nothing for them, anywhere. It was hard to find a man eaten by his own shadows. Aurora turned the riddle over and over in her head, trying to divine some solution to it. In the meantime, Mulan kept them moving, over hills and through forests, but never too far from the ocean. Sometimes, Aurora would catch sight of the pirate's sails. She wondered if he sailed alone, or if he'd scrounged up a crew from some backwater encampment.

Aurora had grown up in the woods. Different ones, perhaps, but there was still something comforting about walking through the trees and looking up into the night sky. It emptied her head and made her reluctant to ask the pointless question; where do we go now?

Vaguely, they moved towards the Deadlands. Or at least, that was what Aurora assumed. She couldn't think of any other place to start. Nor could she think of anyway to leave the place alive. Everyone knew not to go there. Everyone knew, the only things that could survive in that gray place were things halfway dead already. Like the wraiths.

Her godmothers had told her, it used to be a place just like any other. A kingdom, with a ruler and subjects and cities and forests, and all of it bright and lovely. And then cursed. Terribly cursed, and the worst kind of one, for it was cast with naught but good intentions, so the whole thing muddled up and twisted and killed itself, and everything, and the result was a place where not even good and evil could survive.

But if Phillip was anywhere, it was there.

As she brooded over this, Aurora almost smacked into Mulan, who had suddenly paused to consider the deep, clear pool of water off the side of a river. After a moment, the other woman made for it, tugging away her clothes. "I could use a bath," she called over her shoulder. "Fill up your water flask if you want first."

"I'll join you, if that's alright," Aurora said quickly, and trotted behind Mulan, plucking shyly at the fastenings to her dress.

Mulan stopped at the edge of the water's edge to drop her belongings on the bank, and as she slid out of her tunic, Aurora saw it. She gasped.

The scar forged a white, harsh trail up along the lower edge of Mulan's left shoulder blade, cutting nearly down to the base of her spine. The wound had been a ragged one, or the repair job sloppy, for there were numerous thin, branching roots that reached from the heart of the damage.

Aurora covered her mouth. "Doesn't it hurt?" she blurted out, in distress.

The muscles below the ravaged skin drew up sharp, and defensive, and Mulan turned to look at Aurora—and the princess saw, now, that the wound on Mulan's back was nothing, nothing compared to the cruelties she had suffered from the front.

Mulan did nothing to hide herself, though Aurora thought that perhaps she wanted to.

"Yes," she said quietly, "Of course it hurt."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—it was rude," Aurora finished, somewhat lamely.

"It's fine," Mulan looked away. "I wouldn't expect a princess to have scars."

Aurora pressed the small, discreet mark cresting her right index finger deep into her palm. It seemed silly to compare. Hesitant, she said, "Sometimes, in the burning room, I would get caught in the fire. I would burn. One time I think I burned alive. I was so tired, I just wanted to die, and then I did. Only I woke back up, and I was in the room again, and my skirt had just caught flame."

Mulan said nothing.

Emboldened, Aurora continued, "Of course, of course it isn't the same—I don't have the marks, but, it—it did hurt. I do remember. I remember the fear. More than the marks, I think that's what's different. I would have done anything to make it stop, the pain, but you aren't afraid of it."

"No." Mulan said suddenly, sharply, "I am always afraid."

Aurora woke to a hand pressed over her mouth. She screamed anyway, and then sank her teeth down with the full intention to tear away flesh if she had to—but found only cloth.

"Shhhut up!" a man's voice snarled, and Aurora tried to strike out at him, but found her wrist caught by another set of hands. She thrashed about desperately, more out of instinct than any sort of strategy—save some dim idea that the noise she made might wake Mulan.

Wrenched to her feet, Aurora stumbled, and then kicked furiously towards the nearest ankle—and then Mulan was there, rising to her feet as she drew her sword in a single, fluid motion. Her hair was still damp and stuck to her face, and there was something beyond anger in her eyes as she snarled, "Release her, or I will cut out your throats and stuff them back in."

Some of the sleep was shaking off of Aurora, and she was aware enough now to realize that the two men must have been pirates—for their shoes were wet and smelled like salt, as though they'd waded ashore. It looked as though Hook had got himself a crew from somewhere, but why had they wanted her—?

Aurora abandoned the thought for a more interesting one, it being, how do I get the knife at my throat to not be there?

"You won't harm her," Mulan called scornfully, "or you would have done it. Someone wants her alive."

Aurora widened her eyes, as if this alone would be enough to communicate. She did not think Mulan even looked at her.

"Fine," one of the pirates yelled, a real note of fear lacing his bravado, "Fine, we won't kill her, but if you keep coming towards us, we'll cut off one of her ears. Or maybe a finger."

Aurora wondered if he'd really do it. She figured Mulan must have been wondering as well, because she had stopped, and her mouth hung open. Slowly, it stretched, and widened as her eyes did, and Aurora watched as an expression of the most pure, honest terror filled the other woman's face. Mulan's fingers went slack, and the sword fell from her hand.

Aurora watched for another second, not understanding, and then she screamed. She felt as though she were watching some violation of Mulan's spirit, a rape of her most basic, fundamental soul. An infraction that went even further than an assault of the body—this was something still more awful, still more cruel. It was terrifying to watch. It was even harder to turn around, her stomach heavy with dread, and knowing.

A wraith. Of course, a wraith. They weren't far from the Deadlands and together in such a large group—

Aurora spun back to face her companion, and the horror of what she had seen, the horror of knowing that what the wraith was taking could be nothing less than the very essence of Mulan's courage.

"Mulan!" Aurora shrieked, her voice wet with tears, "Mulan!"

Mulan fell gracelessly to her knees, still unblinking, still locked in some silent, horrible scream. A trembling began, first in her hands, but then later in her arms, her shoulders, until she shook so violently that her body toppled over and convulsed about on the ground, as though she were having a seizure.

Aurora pitched and beat herself against the restraints of her captors with a desperation that bordered upon insanity. She was numb to the bruises, the torn locks of hair, the snarled, frightened threats the pirates forced into her ears as they tried to drag her quietly away without attracting the wraith's notice. Frustrated, mindless tears flooded Aurora's eyes.

"You promised! You promised me you would help find Phillip!" Aurora screamed, and her voice gave out then, just as the pirates finally managed to get the gag over her mouth. She was crying so hard that the world looked as though it were spinning—a ghastly, sick world, nothing like what she remembered or wanted—and Aurora shut her eyes tightly.

When she opened them, Mulan had stood.

Things began to happen very quickly.

Absolute disbelief filled Aurora's head and made it very difficult to think. She stumbled. The pirates began to swear. One of them released her, and began to sprint away. The wraith was coming towards them. So was Mulan.

It was unlike anything Aurora had ever seen. It was as though Mulan were already dead, but driven to move onward by some ancient calling. There was nothing like compassion or even the most remote humanity in her eyes—only an absolute darkness, the black of an abyss.

The second pirate's grip on Aurora's arm slackened, and she broke free, stumbling. Both men were running now, crashing recklessly through the charred forest. And the wraith was pursuing them.

And, Aurora realized with a shock of horror—her. The wraith was coming for her.

Within the first few terrified steps of her retreat, her long skirts began to tangle themselves around her legs. With a little sob of frustration, Aurora recovered from her stagger, and broke away from the pirates, glancing over her shoulder every few seconds. Mulan was still by far the closest to the wraith, but it seemed uninterested in her now.

For one horrible second, the dark thing considered the path before it, and Aurora could feel the terrible coldness pierce down into her chest, like a surgeon's needles wiggling against her heart.

And then it went for the pirates.

Aurora did not stop running. Mulan would follow, she knew, and it was only so long before the pirates were finished. There was no stopping a wraith. Hatred left a stain.

Gasping, stumbling, the princess kept on through the black trees. At one point, just as she thought she might faint from exhaustion, she thought she heard a long, terrible scream, and the fear she felt then was enough to make her drag herself on for another mile.

As soon as she stopped, Mulan was there. Silent, with the flat dark eyes of a shark. It was frightening to look at her. But Aurora was exhausted of fear. She sank to the ground, wheezing, and struggling feebly with her skirts. Ridiculous things. She'd kept them long under the assumption that they might help to keep her warm during her journey, but all they'd done was repeatedly endanger her life.

Mulan drew a dagger, after a few seconds of watching Aurora's failed attempts to rip through the fabric. She began to saw through the velvet and silk with the same care she might have shown to a burlap sack. Aurora could find no energy within herself to protest. She let her head fall back against the ashy tree, and smelt the hard, bitter remains of the fire while Mulan worked. The other girl didn't even seem to be breathing heavily. She didn't seem to be breathing at all.

Alarmed, Aurora reached out, and touched Mulan's wrist. It was still warm.

"You beat it," she said, and a bit of wonder was again in her voice. The greatest warrior in the land, Phillip had said.

"No," Mulan said, and her voice sounded strange, almost as though the words had been selected separately and then put together with too much care—a foreigner's speech, an awkward insecurity with the language. "No, it took something from me."

"But you were dying." Aurora countered, "I thought—I thought—I was so furious, to see you that way, I was so—you should never look that way, never. I thought it took you. Your soul."

"It took," Mulan began, and then stopped. She looked as though she were choking. Finally, she said, "My father. My father taught me, there is something more important than love or honor or duty, and that is a promise. He taught me, the only time I may ever break a promise, is if I am dead. I was in a place where nothing mattered, but a promise was still a contract, still something I had to do. I was not dead. So I moved."

For a moment she said nothing. Then, slowly, Mulan began to tremble. She bit her lip, her breath low and forcibly slow. "I am afraid of death," she said quietly. "Of course I am afraid of death. I am human. But I am also a warrior. I trained, to learn to go on in spite of that fear. To go forward, knowing that I risk everything. There were many times when I thought I would die, when I almost did."

Aurora was silent. She felt helpless, watching Mulan's destroyed composure crumble around her. She wanted to hold the other woman, as if her arms alone might be enough to keep things in place.

"I fought," Mulan whispered, "Because I have loved. That was what I held on to. The honor of my family. My duty to them, to my country. My love for them. I could tell myself—I have made the right choice. I have suffered, but because I have bled, they shall never have to." She stopped, and wiped her eyes, and under her nose. She looked at the ground.

"That thing took all of it away. Everything. I belonged to no one. I could not remember loving anyone, or having been loved. My death had no honor. I had nothing. I meant nothing."

Aurora kept quiet, waiting for the moment Mulan finally, truly broke.

She didn't.

Mulan took a final slow, deep breath, and got to her feet. She pushed the hair out of her still-damp face. "We should be going," she said, and began to walk.

After a moment, Aurora trailed after her, her ankles cool. The scraps of her dress lay forgotten behind her, a brief flag of color in the ruined, dead landscape.

She remembers, the first time Phillip had kissed her, she hadn't known what it meant, but she'd permitted it because she'd liked him and hadn't wanted to be rude. He'd pulled away and called her strange.

"You just put your face on mine!" she'd cried, and flushed hot with anger. "Who's strange?"

"Did you grow up in the woods?" he'd quipped, and then said, "Close your eyes this time."

She'd done so, grumbling. He'd reached for her hand, and she'd jumped, and almost pulled away.

"Hush," he'd said, and ran two light fingers from her hand to wrist to arm to shoulder to neck, and there he'd paused to wrap a hand around the back. He'd picked up her other hand, and laid it against his chest, which burned hot below his shirt. His heart beat somewhere below his palm.

"Alright, you silly girl," he'd said, "I want you to think about what it feels like to be close to someone precious, and what it is to take something—to steal it from time, and hold it to yourself. I want you to count all those warm things and I want you to think about me, and if you want me, because even if you don't know anything except how to run through the trees, I know I want you, and this is how people are supposed to prove it to one another, and to know if what they feel for one another is, actually, real."

Something in her turned over when he'd said that, and she'd opened her mouth to ask him—ask him something—but she forgot what it was as his mouth brushed against her forehead. Her brows and trembling eyelids, the high ridges of her cheekbones and the tip of her nose and then he'd tipped up her face with a thumb under her chin, and he'd kissed the hinges of her jaw, and the shells of her ear—which made her squirm—and then, and then, he'd kissed her softly on the mouth.

Her insides had gone fluttery and light at this time, and she hadn't really known what to do but whimper and reach for him, because he'd done something to make her feel so airy and now she wanted—she needed him to push her back down to earth. But he pulled away.

"So, do you want me?" he'd asked. She'd touched his mouth, stared up at his dark, waiting eyes, and she'd whispered, I want more.

The second time the pirates came, they put herbs on the campfire that burned a sleeping smoke. When she awoke, Aurora was already in the captain's chambers, laid out across his lounge chair. After a few terrified, disoriented seconds, she remembered the man sitting across from her, and did her best to sit up with dignity.

"Caught you," Hook said, with a strange little smile. Aurora looked at him coolly.

"I don't expect to be here much longer," she said, with freezing unconcern.

"You're sure your lady knight will save you?"

Aurora lifted her chin and said, with cold pride, "She could defeat the lot of you in less than a minute. And yes, she will come for me. That I know."

The captain's eyes slid over to her in a sly, cool look. His hand slid with idle consideration along the hook decorating his other wrist. Occasionally, he put the skin of his palm again the point, but never with quite enough pressure. "You speak very highly of your champion," he said lowly. His look was hot and somehow indecent, and Aurora clung to all the cold, hard things within her to withstand it and not look away.

"You've met her," she challenged, in reminder to his old deceptions. Hook smiled slightly.

"Oh, indeed I have. She was good with a sword. It seems that lately I meet none but terrifying women."

"She is more than good with a sword," Aurora said disdainfully. "She is a warrior. Do you even know what that word means?"

"You've done well to improve upon your royal condescension," Hook said mildly. "Now, will you let yourself into your cell, or should I have you dragged?"

"I shall accept nothing less than your personal escort," Aurora said sarcastically, and the pirate barked a laugh at her, before offering his arm.

"Nothing less for a lady of your station."

The cell he let her into was of reasonable accommodation, with minimal filth. Aurora passed the days laying in her cot, brooding over the potential plots the pirate may have concocted. On the third day, when he saw fit to pay her visit, she asked him.

"Am I to be bait for Mulan?"

"Alas, poor princess. So readily do you think of yourself as a bargaining chip for others."

"Am I?" Aurora asked again.

"In truth, you are my parley with the wraiths. Your warrior means nothing to me."

Aurora stared at him, and her stomach turned with cold knots. "Why?"

"There is a man—a monster—I need killed. At present, his power is such that I may not harm him, nor is he in any place I might reach. But a wraith? Even a shadow like him cannot hide from their darkness. And even if they cannot kill him completely, they can take him to a place, weaken him to a point, where what I desire shall be at last possible."

Aurora stared at him in horror. "You don't know what you're talking about. That—that place—there is no leaving it, nor is there anything but pain and madness. If you go there, you shall damn your soul to an endless misery."

"Ah, princess." Hook's head rolled to the side as he considered her, and then he pulled back his arms from the bars of her cell, to riffle through his pockets, and withdraw a key. He opened the door, and Aurora sat up a little straighter. He watched her, one eyebrow raised. "Well? Aren't you going to come out? Or do you think you might throw yourself over the rail in a poetic drowning?"

She got to her feet, and stepped towards him. Her hands had begun to tremble, so she tucked them into the folds of her skirt. He noticed immediately, and reached for her wrist in a single, casual movement. Aurora jumped. His skin was very rough, more broken than Phillip's had been.

"You said you have also lost your true love?" he asked. Aurora stared at him.

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

She swallowed. Indecent, the way he looked at her. The promise of violence followed him like a shadow, unsettling the still planes of his face. He turned her hand over and looked down at it, his brown fingers pressing and examining her slim white ones. His hair fell into his face as he did so. Her heart was beating very quickly.

"Because if you truly did, then you must know. You must know that there is no greater pain, no worse punishment. If the price of his suffering were the destruction of the entire world, it would still be a bargain I would leap at. I have no interest left in this world but the repayment of what he has done me. What I once loved—drink, women, fighting—all meaningless."

He looked at her intently, to see if she understood. Once, she might have agreed. The fury she had felt after loosing Phillip, before she had found her hope again—had overwhelmed her, choking away her reason and compassion. "Perhaps I am even helping you," the pirate said, "By giving you to the wraiths. You may find him, where they take you."

Aurora swallowed down her memories and nightmares. "Perhaps I shall find only you." She said boldly, and yanked back her hand.

Hook smirked at her. "Oh, darling girl," he nearly crooned, "Perhaps then, you should learn what it is to be with a man."

Without further ado, he turned and walked back on deck. It was several minutes before Aurora dared to follow.

Aurora scarcely had to wait another day before a hand (small even in spite of its strength) shook her gently awake. She opened her eyes, and looked through the darkness until she found Mulan's face.

"What took you so long?" she whispered. Mulan's eyes flashed.

"Your cell door is unlocked," she growled, "Why didn't you escape?"

"Why, because I knew you'd be coming here," Aurora said with some surprise. "If I wandered off now it'd be harder for you to find me."

"You're getting rather casual about being taken prisoner," Mulan hissed, and jerked Aurora to her feet. Aurora moaned a little.

"Oh, hold on, hold on, let me get my shoes," she complained. She ignored the intense sulk Mulan was directing towards her as she did up the laces, and then followed her rescuer up onto the main deck.

"You just wanted to hitch a ride for as long as possible, didn't you?" Mulan accused. "That's why you didn't swim ashore. Never mind that I haven't slept in three days, catching up to you on foot."

"Sorry," Aurora grumbled. She felt that Mulan was being a little more hostile than was strictly necessary. "But it is going in the same direction as us—"

"If you scream, I'll let you drown," Mulan threatened, and shoved Aurora over the ship's deck. She toppled through the air, managing a muffled squeak before she hit the water—hard—and then had to thrash her way back up to the surface, fighting against the drag her heavy skirts created.

Gasping, Aurora snapped back up towards the ship, "Don't you dare land on me!" before Mulan leapt after her.

Aurora cursed quietly, and then began struggling to shore. She rather wished the ship had kept her for another day or so. Her dress really was appalling. Someone should have outfitted her better for adventures. Aurora's general discontentment with the world grew infinitesimally larger as she swam, and when she finally crawled up the beach to collapse shakily into the sand, her first action was to gasp complaints at Mulan.

"You brute."

"I don't like you very much right now either," Mulan said icily. Aurora had another sharp thing fairly leaping off her tongue before she checked herself, thinking for the first time of the hollow-eyed thing Mulan had become, the last time she'd seen her.

Instead, Aurora asked, with new kindness, "How are you?"

"Fine," Mulan said tersely. After a moment, she conceded, "Tired. I'm tired."

"Are you—" Aurora broke off awkwardly, and then said, "I was worried. On the ship, I was worried. I didn't think the wraiths would come out to sea, but I wasn't sure about you. Did you run into any more of them?"

Mulan laughed shortly, horribly. "I don't think I would be here, if I had."

Aurora nodded. She tried to think of the right thing to say. "Thank you for coming for me," she said at last.

Mulan nodded. She came over, and offered a hand with which she pulled Aurora to her feet. "Of course."

"You really are the strongest person I know," Aurora blurted, with a little blush. "I couldn't get anything done without you. I'm sorry you have to do everything."

"You aren't so bad," Mulan muttered, and then said, "Well, you're better, anyways."

Aurora shoved her, and together, they walked again into the dead forest.

She remembers the day her life was ruined.

"A princess?" How stupid. Her godmothers crowded around her, tittering.

"No, no, darling, you've been born a princess and what a good one you'll be! We saw to that. Beautiful and sweet, and everyone will love you. You'll see. You'll marry The Man you were always meant to marry. You'll see. Everything will be just perfect."

Aurora had felt her stomach dropping out from her. A princess. She cried, "But I don't even know how to talk to people! I don't—you three are the only people I've ever seen in my whole life!"

And Phillip, of course. But she didn't mention that.

Phillip.

Aurora's lips pressed together.

Her godmothers were all exchanging looks and patting at her, "Oh, sweet girl, oh…" they crooned, "It's not such a bad thing! You'll be perfect, you'll see. We promise you, everything will be perfect. Your birthday's just tomorrow, and after that, you'll be moved to the castle. You'll go back to your old life."

"But I don't want this! I don't want this at all!" Aurora wailed. "I just want to stay here! I don't know anything about what you want me to do! I don't know any of those people! Will you even come with me?"

"Oh, you won't want us there," her godmothers protested, with wide eyes and small, pinched mouths. Shocked at the very idea. Shocked that there could be any sort of a problem. Aurora couldn't stand it any longer.

"And I can't marry some stranger!" she exploded, "I just can't! I already—I already found someone!"

The three women stopped, staring at her. Finally, the eldest asked, "Who?"

"Phillip," Aurora said firmly, and then added, "I met him in the forest. A few months ago."

"Phillip?" they all squawked, and then exploded into giggles, "But that's him! That's the prince!"

Aurora stared around. "What do you mean?"

"You've been engaged since you were babies! He's your true love!"

Aurora's stomach shrank up. Her true love? Certainly, she did love Phillip—of course she loved Phillip—but the whole thing began to seem too convenient to her, as though the entire world were suddenly conspiring an elaborate trap.

"You knew I was seeing him," Aurora accused, "Didn't you? You must have known. You probably know him!"

"Darling, no!" The youngest howled, "No, no, of course not! You've just been brought together, is all! It's quite natural! Fate, you know!"

Aurora scowled. "I don't believe you. I don't believe any of this! Why would you tell me this now?"

There was a sudden, more serious pause, while the three godmothers all exchanged glances. Finally, one said, "There's something you need to know. Something bad."

At last, something Aurora could believe. She stared at her godmothers expectantly.

"A curse," the eldest confessed.

"Most foul," agreed the middle child.

"We had to protect you. The king, your father, ordered it," concluded the youngest.

"What sort of curse?" Aurora asked suspiciously.

"An evil fairy—" began the eldest, before the youngest interrupted.

"Oh, don't call her a fairy."

"A sorceress—" the eldest corrected, with a glare.

The youngest crossed her arms and muttered, almost inaudibly, "Witch."

"Cursed you, out of spite for your parents. On your eighteenth birthday, the day you are destined to rise to power and marry your prince, you shall prick your finger on a spindle, and fall into a deep sleep, taking the whole kingdom with you. None shall wake until you are kissed by your true love." The middle child recited, with rushed irritability. The other two jabbed her with their elbows. Aurora did not feel this to be enormously terrifying.

"Then all I have to do is keep away from spinning wheels. For one day," she summarized, feeling slightly insulted. Did they think she was an idiot?

"You don't know her," the godmothers rushed to say, "You don't know. She's tricky. Very clever. Whispers poison in your ear, makes you do all sorts of things. You don't know."

Aurora folded her arms, and kept silent.

"So, it should all be fine!" the godmothers said brightly. "You're warned, you'll keep away, and in a few days time, you'll be queen of the kingdom!"

"It's not fine," Aurora said quietly, but none heard her.

In the middle of nothing, they found a castle.

Gray as everything else was, it seemed tall with nothing standing around it. Even far off as it was, Aurora knew it must have been massive, at least twice the size her father's had been. She and Mulan made camp some distance away, and lay silently near each other, watching the old fortress. It was never truly dark in the Deadlands, nor was there ever any wind. Mulan lay with her head on one elbow, the other hand still clutching her sword. Neither had unpacked any more than they had to. They saw no wraiths, but Aurora imagined she could feel them moving silently through the earth and clouds, patrolling their lost kingdom.

"The witch that did what she did to you came from here," Mulan said finally. Aurora looked at her, eyes wide.

"No!"

"Yes," Mulan said, simply. She looked at the castle for a long time, and then said, "It was centuries ago. I think that's what made her wrong. She lost everyone she loved, by her own error. She was supposed to be a princess, just like you. But the kingdom fell under siege. Her people were starving. She tried to call down some dark magic on the enemy army that surrounded the castle, but lost control. It was a fire curse. Everything burned. The forest, the rivers, the invading army, her people. Her family. It's said that the fires lasted for years. They just went on burning, and burning, and when there was nothing left for the fire to eat, it went to some other world, and went on there."

Aurora sat still, her eyes wide in horror. Mulan did not look at her, but kept talking in that same flat, almost scholarly tone.

"She couldn't forgive herself. She couldn't let go. I think perhaps she hoped to sacrifice your kingdom to bring back her own."

"No," Aurora said suddenly, "No, I don't think that was it at all."

Mulan looked at her curiously, but Aurora turned away. A frown built between her eyebrows, furrowing the pale skin. Curses and promises and magic, and the two roads a ruler could take. Always, the witch tested her. Always, the cruel voice whispering in her ear, "You see yourself that you cannot do this."

Aurora closed her eyes tightly, and told herself to think of Phillip. Phillip, who needed her. Phillip, the rightful king. Phillip, who she loved a thousand times more than her own life.

"The pirate said something to me," Aurora said quietly, "I didn't tell you. He wants to use me to bargain with the wraiths. He thinks they want me, because I'm a princess or because of the witch—because of Maleficent's—curse. He wants to use them as his hunting dogs but that—that isn't important. What I meant is," she hesitated, "He thinks that maybe the only way I can find Phillip is if I go back to the fire room. To their world."

Mulan sat up straight, and glared down at her, "No."

"But Mulan, it makes sense!" Aurora cried, "We both know we can wander this land until we are dead and we will never find him! Phillip isn't here! He isn't in that castle and he isn't in any castle because he isn't in this world!"

"I swore to him that I would keep you safe," Mulan hissed. "I swore. If we go there—"

"If I go there, Mulan, if I go!" Aurora cried. "You know it is what I must do! You know! The answer is so obvious but I was so afraid! I was afraid to even think of it! I am afraid of pain and I am afraid of dying and I am—I want to throw up when I even think of that place but who am I if I do not go? Who am I, who cannot risk herself when I have nothing to lose and everything to gain? How may I even dare talk to you, you who are so brave without exception?"

"You are not fair to yourself or to me," Mulan snapped. "Do you really think I would just allow you to go—"

"You must!" Aurora shouted, "You must, Mulan! Even if I am afraid of dying, what point is there in living if it is not with him? I know I am weak, I know I have failed you and him and my kingdom before I have even begun to rule, but let me try, for God's sake, let me try to do the hard thing."

Mulan had gone very pale. Her eyes stood out dark and tense in her face when she asked, very softly, "I do not protect you only for Phillip. I protect you because you are my friend. Do not ask me to throw away everything I am, Aurora, because I can't. I can't just let you go, knowing I might have saved you."

Aurora's throat closed up. She stared at Mulan in shock, as tenderness and fear and rebellion shook her heart. At last, she reached out, and clasped Mulan's hand in her own. She said no more. As the two of them lay back down, Mulan said, quietly, "You are not one tenth as weak as you believe, princess."

In the castle, Aurora's steps echoed against the high ceilings and walls, all made from blackened stone. Mulan led the way, her sword drawn, perhaps more for comfort than any sort of practicality. Aurora had turned her shaking fists to hide in the folds of her skirts. Death hung like a smell in the air, which was unflinchingly still, save the occasional swirling mote of dust and ash. The rooms were heavy with their ghosts.

"Perhaps we should check the dungeon," Mulan whispered. Aurora shook her head, shivering. Irons or bars wouldn't hold Phillip, she knew. Instead, she turned down the next great corridor, and walked, her soft steps ringing impossibly loud, almost screaming her existence as the last living thing, until she had reached the throne room.

The throne was still there. Perhaps it had been made from magic or perhaps cursed into a state beyond decay, but the throne was still there, and empty, but a ringing sort of emptiness. The emptiness that had once been filled by kings.

Aurora stepped nearer, and the door slammed shut behind her. Despite herself, Aurora screamed, and spun about. Mulan was already battering away from the other side, shouting muffled oaths. And standing between the two woman, leaning casually against the now locked door, was a man with a hook for a hand.

"You!" Aurora gasped, and stepped hastily backwards, her heart beating very, very fast.

"Me," said the pirate quietly.

Aurora forced herself to laugh, and then wished she hadn't. The sound she made was pitiful, too fast and pitched higher than she would have believed. "So you can run your own errands?"

"You can only ask so much of another man," Hook said softly. He walked towards her, but slowly. Mulan had begun slamming something that sounded like a battering ram against the door, which shook against its frame. Aurora wanted to laugh. She tried to imagine what the other woman was using, for of course Mulan couldn't raise an entire battering ram by herself—could she?

"So you've come to offer me to the wraiths?" Aurora asked, and wiped her palms against her skirts.

"No," Hook said, "I'm offering you to her."

He was looking at something over her shoulder, something that must have been where the once empty throne was. Slowly, Aurora turned.

The witch was sitting proud and ghostly in the high black chair, her legs crossed at the knee. The apparition smiled.

"No," Aurora whispered. "No, no, no, you're dead."

"My entire kingdom is dead, little princess. And yet, here we are." As she spoke, the room filled with wraiths. Seething, cruel, the furious dead. They flew about Aurora and Hook, who stumbled towards one another instinctively, as though drawn towards each others lives.

The witch got to her feet. She towered over Aurora, and the pirate as well. The longer Aurora looked, the larger Maleficent seemed to grow, with those awful, beautiful skirts creeping like smoke across the floor. She snapped her fingers, and from that smoke a thing began to grow. Four legs, and a wheel, and finally the long, cruel spindle. Aurora's heart twisted around.

"Your greatest love or your greatest fear, I wonder which is stronger?" The witch purred. She blinked colorless, cat-shaped eyes, and laughed a sad, horrible laugh. "You see? Even in death, I offer you the choices that no one else will."

Mulan had dropped whatever it was she was using earlier. It sounded as though she were trying to punch her way through the door. Aurora stared at the spinning wheel, that portal to hell, that mechanism of her every darkest nightmare.

Hook took her by the waist, and pushed her forward. Aurora stumbled.

"Stop!" the witch snapped, "I said, she will choose."

"I need you to kill a man for me," Hook gasped, his eyes wild, still holding onto Aurora, though he no longer forced her towards the wheel. She felt almost glad for it. A terrible shaking seemed to have forced its way into the marrow of her bones. "I need you to kill the Dark One. To use one of your wraiths. To send him to that place where there is nothing but fire. And me. I will kill him there."

The witch laughed. She looked at him, and said, "What will you give me?"

"Anything I have," Hook said, "My life, my heart, anything."

"You tire me," the witch said, and waved her hand dismissively, before pausing to think. "I can send you to the world he walks in, but on one condition. You must kill the witch who imprisoned me there."

"Yes," Hook said immediately. He released Aurora, and stepped nearer the throne. "Name her and it is done."

"Regina," Maleficent said, with a strange and terrible smile, and as one, the wraiths flew towards the pirate, surrounding him, and darkening, until there was a sudden, short cry of the fear he had claimed not to feel—and the witch smiles a final, cruel smile—and then gone. All of it, gone, save Aurora, and the spindle.

Aurora looked, and looked. Such a strange device, she'd always thought. She stepped closer. She couldn't hear Mulan anymore. She couldn't hear anything. Always, the same pattern, the same decision. She reached out her hand, set the old scar against the tip of the skewer. Things ought to come full circle. Things ought to have balance. Phillip had saved her, once. He had risked everything for her.

She remembers, meeting him in the woods, and not knowing what a man was. She remembers, the first time he'd said her name, the first time he kissed her, the sudden flush of knowing love. She remembers, the whisper of fate and her godmothers and indeed the entire kingdom—he is your true love.

She remembers, how he'd kissed her awake. She remembers, losing him. She remembers, having her insides washed out and dead and she remembers feeling that she had died with him, that whatever small parts of her were good and brave were because of him, because she had wanted to be good enough for him, for the role she was meant to play. His true love and his queen.

Her eyes filled with tears.

She remembers, the pirates and the fighting and the wraiths and the fear. She remembers the burning room and dying in it, over and over again, and the terrible, drawn out pain. She remembers the echoing loneliness of lost souls. She remembers her failures, her endless failures. She remembers Mulan. Mulan, who had said she was not weak, she was not a coward, she was a friend. She remembers Mulan standing with her face emptied out and lost and fighting anyway, fighting because she had promised.

Nobody had ever expected Aurora to keep a promise.

Nobody had thought she could do it.

Except, perhaps, the witch.

The witch who had made all her mistakes, who had done it all wrong and played the bad guy. The witch who had known Aurora's weaknesses because she had carried them too. The witch who had believed that the second time around, things could be fixed.

The spindle was very sharp. Just like last time. It slid through her skin so easily, it almost didn't hurt.

The ground flew up to meet her. Aurora's eyes slid swiftly shut, as she heard Mulan scream, as she heard the cruel, frightening old friend whisper in her ear, "Little princess, will you save us all?"

She remembers waking just before sunset, lost in the unfamiliar royal bedchamber a servant had showed her to. The room was stripped, as it hadn't been when she went to sleep. The only thing left was a spinning wheel, placed appealingly by a window. And, lingering in the shadows beside it, a tall, cruel looking woman.

The witch had looked at Aurora and smiled a cruel, mocking smile, made of all teeth and thinly stretched lips. "My gift is not your doom, but your liberation," she said.

Aurora did not move from the bed, her muscles held taut. She pondered screaming.

"The things that were given you," the witch continued, "Beauty, goodness, a pretty singing voice—such worthlessness, becoming only a princess. The other thing given, I suppose. Your birthright. Your engagement."

Aurora's fingers were wrapped tight around themselves, hard against the palm of her hands.

"But will he be a good king?" the witch asked. "By marrying him you are, in effect, giving him power over the kingdom you were born to be responsible for. And that will be the end of it. Your looks will not end a famine, your voice cannot stop a war. They raised you in the woods, in secret, for your whole life, lest you somehow grew a political mind. Do you still not understand, you stupid girl, that you have been set up to fail since the moment you were born?"

A harsh silence filled Aurora's head. Numb with terror, the suspicions she held still were over-ruled but the dull knowledge that what the witch had said to her—was true. Of course it was true. How could she be expected to rule a kingdom? Of course she wasn't—

"You see yourself that you cannot do this." The witch purred, now advancing upon Aurora, but with excessive leisure. Her confidence was well placed. Aurora's mind was working frantically, trying to see a way out of the trap she had never fully noticed, rather than the one immediately before her. Maleficent laid a gentle, cruelly manicured hand upon the princess' shoulder. "Perhaps in time, you will come to understand how to be a good queen. If you are not too busy having royal babies, of course. But in the meantime—in the meantime…your husband must be a worthy man. Or else he shall lead the kingdom to ruin before you are ready to help him."

Aurora swallowed. She could not stop looking at the spinning wheel. An innocent enough device, she thought. Rather strange looking. She wondered how it worked.

Maleficent followed her gaze. She chuckled. "Your father the king had all the spinning wheels in the kingdom burned years ago, after I announced my intentions. An idiot. As if I, in all my power, could not simply build a new one."

"I don't see how my going along with what you say will solve anything," Aurora said quietly. The sun, now almost set, reached out a long yellow finger to stroke down the now gleaming spindle. In spite of herself, the princess shuddered.

"You and all the kingdom shall sleep," Maleficent whispered, "A week, a year, a century. As long as it takes. Waking you shall not be easy. I shall make sure of that. It will take a brave man, a cunning one, and most of all—one with considerable patience. And even if he can manage all his trials, there is still the matter of love. Only one who loves you truly shall prove equal to awakening you. Now you understand, don't you? They may call me wicked long after I die, but men have never liked a woman who knew her way to power."

Aurora took a step forward. There was a sort of ringing in her ears. Doubts and confusion pulsed against her head. "I love Phillip," she said uncertainly. Of course she loved Phillip. She was meant to love Phillip.

"Sweet girl," Maleficent hummed, "There is so much more to it than that."

Aurora looked over her shoulder into the arched, made-up face. "I cannot deny what you have said to me," she said quietly, "Be it a trick or not, for your wickedness you have not disproven—what you say about me is perhaps true. But you are wrong in thinking he will fail."

"Am I?"

"Yes." Aurora said firmly. "Yes. He will come for me. He must."

"If you are so certain of his worth, than why do you still test him?" Maleficent smiled. Her mouth was a ghastly red.

Aurora stretched out her hand, and laid a fingertip against the long, gleaming needle.

"So that he will have reason to kill you," she whispered, and pushed down.

Again.

Endless. Too hot, hot around the ankles, a heat that meant stinging, that meant a little too much, a blister boiling up, and Aurora knew all about burns. She knew every kind, and how long it took for every part of a human to char—surprisingly long—

Her skirts were on fire. She didn't have time for them.

"Phillip!" she screamed, "Phillip, where are you?"

Sharp pain at first, then slow and aching. Burns. She knew all sorts about burns. Even the witch would have burned here, Aurora thought. Leave the skirts. The skirts always came back.

"Phillip!"

She crouched, head spinning, coughing on the thick, sooty air, and she rubbed and rubbed at her eyes to clear them but it just ground the ash in further, and the floor below her strained and strained and Aurora screamed and jumped away just as it folded out from beneath her.

"Phillip!" she sobbed, and then ran, because she had nothing else. No where to go and nothing to fight with and no one to find and she was a stupid, stupid girl and the witch had been right about her, everyone had been right about her. Raised in the woods but still spoiled and rotten and she couldn't be strong but she couldn't be a princess either.

"Phillip, please!" Aurora screamed again. Her legs were searing hot, and she was afraid to look at them—things always hurt worse when you saw them, how bad it really was. Her skirts were on fire. Had that happened before? Again? She shrieked and stopped running to beat at them, scorching her fists and hair. A blaze shot up just before her face and Aurora screamed as she threw herself back, weeping as another long tendril of hair caught light and began to sizzle nastily.

"No, no, I don't want to," she whimpered, peering around again through the endless, burning room. Her knees shook, and her eyes stung so badly that it was all she could do to keep them open. A swarm of fresh sparks danced up before her face and one caught at the back of her throat, stinging worse than she could have imagined, and she doubled up, couching and crying, with her eyes shut tight, and her fingers pressed over her ears. Back in the dark.

Mulan was afraid of the dark, ever since the wraiths. She pretended not to be, but Aurora knew. It must have been hard, to lie awake at night, staring at the edges of dark trees and wondering what was out there; if maybe something was looking back. What was the face of a nightmare?

How had she done it? Aurora wondered, with her face now pressed against her knees, the awful heat rising and swallowing her. She felt like she might faint. She hoped it meant death.

He taught me, the only time I may ever break a promise, is if I am dead.

Oh, of course. Mulan and her promises. Her noble words. Aurora had admired that. No one had ever asked her for anything, so she'd never had to promise it. Maybe that was what made her so weak. Weak, and dying.

She stood, and almost veered into a bank of flames as she staggered, and had to leap back with a cry of fright. She didn't look down. She didn't look at the hurts.

It was true, anyway. The pirate had been right. Losing Phillip had been worse than any of it. If she could survive that, she could survive anything.

She remembers. The fluttery, sweet feeling that started at the sensitive gap between her lips, and spread down across her face and neck, a feeling more pleasurable but as uncontrollable as a shiver. And her lungs swelled up as she inhaled—as she drew in that first breath, as she was unmade and made again, a second birth.

She remembers. Her fingers curled. There was a breeze pricking against the little hairs on her forearms, lifting them—and she'd forgotten the wind, forgotten the smell and the life of it. She'd forgotten the bright, piercing blaze of sun behind her eyelids, more brilliant than any fire, more alive and more real and more complicated than any tortured nightmare she could conjure again, and again—

She remembers. The feeling at her mouth, the pressure, pushing her eyes closed more tightly and her fingers still curling, now ready to reach up, now ready to slit open her eyes against the light, and to look forward—murky, but clearing, but she'd never have needed eyes anyway, not when she knew. She'd always known he would come for her.

She remembers.

Fire was just fire. She was so tired of being burned. Tired of running pointlessly from something inescapable, tired of crying for help that wouldn't come, tired of looking for escape. How was she supposed to find Phillip this way? How was she supposed to be a queen, this way?

Aurora turned back, and walked through the fire. It roared up around her face, too hot to open her eyes, too hot to scream. Her lips split, her skin seared, her hair caught alight. It was maddeningly painful. She wondered if this was what Phillip had felt. She wondered what he had gone through, when he had gone looking for her. Eyes tightly shut, she stretched out her hand, and found his.

Of course.

She dared squint her eyes open. She could barely see him, something was milky about her vision, and she wondered if he even recognized her, with her sins and weakness all burned away. Sweet Phillip, looking at her with those steady dark eyes. Aurora touched his face, and said, in a voice made hoarse from coughing and smoke, "I cannot sing anymore and my beauty is ruined but I have learned things in giving them up. I have learned not to run away and I have learned to trust and I have learned to be a little more clever, I think, and I believe that these things are better than what I have lost but I hope you still love me. I wouldn't blame you if you didn't but I hope you do because I could not have done any of these things if I had not wanted to be with you. To save you and to be worthy of what you need from me. I love you, too much. The end."

And so she kissed him, half-blind eyes closed tightly, and her blistered fingers wrapped tightly through his hair. Tears came weeping from her eyes, feeling almost sweet against her skin. She kissed him through pain and fire and their ending, until, until…

She kept her eyes closed and so could see nothing, but the air felt clear and cool against her cheeks, and she could feel Phillip still there beside her.

"You were born beautiful and you will die beautiful. Even if you did burn half your hair off."

Aurora's eyes opened involuntarily as her hands flew up to her hair—which was still there. Her hands didn't hurt. She pulled her hands down and stared at the skin of them—perfect, save the small scar on the tip of one finger. Just as it had happened last time, burns healed with true love's kiss. Such a silly thing. She couldn't help but grin. More than that, though—more than just her hands, the grey and dead world she had left Mulan in was different now, lightening somehow. The clouds were parting; some of the dead air was being released into the heavens. The dead, the wraiths, were letting go.

She looked up at Phillip, and said wonderingly, "I did it. I found you."

He kissed her again. She threw her arms around his shoulders, a sort of manic glee bubbling over in her chest. "I found you, I found you," she whispered again into his neck, and he kissed her hair. She started to laugh, and then stopped, remembering. Mulan. Of course, Mulan!

"Phillip!" Aurora cried, "Oh Phillip, we must find Mulan! She came all this way with me and then there was a sort of, a sort of ambush—and I had to leave her here to find you but she was all alone and oh, I don't know if even she could survive there—!"

"Haven't you heard? I'm the greatest warrior in the land," Mulan's voice said from behind her.

With a cry of delight, Aurora turned. Mulan was smiling wryly at the pair of them, her face lit up with joy. And yet, Aurora thought she saw, if even for only a moment, a flicker of something achingly sad. She was covered in soot, and Aurora saw immediately the shiny, raw burns covering Mulan's shins and forearms. She gasped.

"Oh, Mulan! You followed me?"

"Well, I tried to." Mulan muttered, but Aurora ignored her, choosing instead to inspect the other woman's wounds.

"It seems unfair, that you're the only one who walked away hurt from all of this," Phillip said quietly. Mulan lifted her eyes to his face, and after a second, replied.

"That's just who I am, your highness. I wouldn't have it any other way." After a moment, she looked over her shoulder, across the brightening land. "It would seem the curse is broken."

Aurora wrinkled her nose. "What curse?"

"All of them. The one that kept the witch and her ghosts here, and the one she cast on you when you were a baby," Mulan said quietly. "The one we thought Phillip had broken, when he woke you. But we got something wrong, didn't we? It was you all along. You were supposed to wake him. It was never about how strong he was, but how strong you could become. The mistakes you could unmake."

Aurora's eyes widened, and she glanced up at Phillip, who shrugged ruefully and said, "But it was you who was there for the whole thing. Doesn't that make you the true hero, Mulan?"

"Of course not," Mulan said firmly, "Now kiss again and let's be on our way. People should be waking up now." She turned brusquely and began marching away. Aurora glanced up at Phillip, who grinned down at her, and slid his hand around her own.

"My little hero," he said, "Not such a princess now, are you?"

"Of course not," Aurora said archly, and followed after Mulan, her heart light and her mind clear. "I'm your queen."