A COLD HEART (LT. DUCKLING)

A Cold Heart

Adapted from Metronomeblue

Summary:

Snow Queen AU for the CS January Joy event. (I was a little late in the day but I'm day Nine)

Once upon a time, as all good stories start, there was a mirror. It was an ill-crafted mirror, its glass as pale as ice and as thick, too. It was a mirror made to divide- and divide it did.

One unassuming day, Killian Jones is taken by the Snow Queen. Emma sets out to get him back.

Notes:

This turned out a lot... Darker than I initially wanted it to be. Big surprise, I know, but it was supposed to be relatively fluffy at first.

Once upon a time, as all good stories start, there was a mirror. It was an ill-crafted mirror, its glass as pale as ice and as thick, too. The frame was bent, twisted black metal furling and unfurling around the plane of arsenic-white.

It was a mirror crafted by dark magic, forged in the black heart of madness- nobody remembered who had made it in the first place, but those who did knew its creator only as The Dark One. It was said they had made the mirror to reflect everything as they saw it- dark and ugly, twisted with the creator’s own self-loathing. It corrupted all who looked into it, looked upon it, even those who merely touched it. Through the work of the light fae, the dark mirror was eventually locked away.

The mirror was kept in a tower, high above the earth, its dark magic contained to the room it occupied. It was guarded, kept under the fiercest watch. Until, one day, a pale and wretched stranger came to the tower. She was cold as ice, and as thin, too. White hair and ice-chip eyes were the last thing each fairy saw as they died, an overwhelming cold breaking through their veins, snapping their brittle wings and hardening their skin.

One by one, she decimated the mirror’s defenders and made her way up the endless stairs to the room where the mirror itself was stored. There, however, she found herself thwarted. She kicked the door open, only to find the final guardian of the mirror, a simple light fairy, had done what no other could- she’d destroyed it. The fairy had the mirror hoisted over the windowsill and as she turned to look at the intruder- it fell. The ice witch let out a piercing scream, and threw a blast of magic at the fairy, knocking her back against the wall. She rushed to the window, just in time to see the mirror hit the ground, shattering into a thousand thousand pieces.

The shards of glass and hatred blew apart in the wind, spreading the mirror’s evil across the world and all the worlds outside of it. Once she reached the ground, the ice witch picked up the final, glimmering shard of the mirror- too large for the wind to pick up, too sharp to hold carefully- and thrust it as deeply into her heart as she could.

Many years passed, during which the mirror spread its darkness through the land. The ice witch amassed more power and more and more of the mirror- tiny splinters and large knives of glass piecing together. The more powerful she grew, the more she was feared, and same followed same until she became known by a different name: the Snow Queen.

And it is here that we come to our heroes. The dramatis personae of this story are not limited only to the Queen and her mirror- indeed, they are only the villains. The hero of this story is, in actual fact, a young girl, a princess, by the name of Emma Swan. Only just second to her in importance is her best friend, a daring and kind young boy by the name of Killian Jones, whose house was built seam-to-seam with Emma’s, and whose life intertwined inextricably with hers the day they met.

The first ten years of their lives were, for the most part, uneventful. They played out long, fantastical stories on their connected rooftops, ate together, even fell asleep together sometimes. They were inseparable, and the love that grew between them- borne of friendship and trust and childish promises of the future- soon came to define them. It might even come to save them both, should they be so lucky.

For one day (a 23rd of October, if you must be exact), when the two children were both ten years old and both wiser and more foolish than children ought to be, a shard, a splinter, really, was thrown on the wind into Killian’s left eye. He cried out, and Emma rushed over, trying to help as he pressed a hand to his eye.

“Killian?” She asked, concern and worry suffusing her face. He pushed her away.

“No,” he gasped. He kept a hand pushed out, as if he could keep her away by that alone. “No.” His eyes were wild with fear and disgust, and the hurt in Emma’s eyes couldn’t reach him through it.

He grew more and more vicious as time passed, lashing out at his father, at his older brother, at Emma and her parents and everyone he met. And then, all of a sudden, he disappeared in the night, leaving behind the first frost and a solid sheet of ice on the roof.

Since he was a lieutenant in the local militia and had left town during peacetime in the dead of night, he was presumed dead and his name disgraced as a deserter's.

Emma was furious. Then, as she heard the stories, the rumors, the theories, she became determined- whoever had taken her best friend would be giving him back, if she had even the slightest thing to say about it. So later that night she packed her bags and left. She had no idea where she’d be going, but she knew she’d find him one day.

It took Emma twenty years to find Killian. She wove her way through palaces of flowers and springtime, rivers and summer sunlight, falling leaves and autumn breezes. She walked until her boots wore through, until her hair was long enough to reach her knees and she had a sword forged of dragonfire and pure light. Until she was brave and fierce and ready to fight the winter in its own kingdom.
And then, and only then, did she walk into the snow and wind, armed and ready to reclaim her best friend. Her boots crunched on the ice floor, the frost flowers being crushed with every step she took. The castle was huge- a sprawling, arrogant mass of ice and marble and stardust. She walked into the first hall unsettled, feeling followed and hunted and preyed upon.

“Killian?” Emma’s voice echoed thinly through the ice palace, stolen by the blue walls and frosted floors. She was not afraid. She had come too far to be afraid.

“I’m afraid Killian no longer exists, dear,” a low, cool voice answered her, and Emma swung around to find the Queen herself standing still and immovable before her. She had shocking white hair, plaited and twisted up on her head, and it faded into her white skin. She was dressed in silver and blue, and she shone like a deadly star.

“You killed him?” She asked, voice wavering with the weight of sadness and anger and pain. After all this time, after she’d come all this way… And Killian was gone. He’d been a part of her, even in his absence, for so long she’d forgotten what it was to not have any of him at all. She felt undone. She clutched the sword more tightly in her hands and resolved herself. If he could not be rescued, he could then be avenged.

“Oh no, dear.” She smiled brilliantly, something glittering and sad hidden between her lips. “He merely belongs to me, now. The boy you knew will never again exist.” He was alive. Killian was alive, even if he wasn’t himself, he was alive. She broke a flickering smile, half-heartbreak half-joy.

“He’s not yours,” Emma said, soft but strong.

“He’ll always be mine,” the Queen said, unperturbed. Emma opened her mouth to argue but was blindsided by a long blade burying itself in her stomach. The pain was excruciating. She screamed once, loud and long, and felt herself grow paralyzed, her limbs ceasing to respond and her lungs closing. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t blink. She didn’t feel the need to, and it was wrong. It was as if she’d become a statue- immobile. She wanted to cry even more. The sword was clutched in her hands, and she couldn’t let it go.

The Queen had had Killian sat in her courtroom, at the end of a very long hall. The longer he sat there, the more the splinter dug into him, making its way from his eye to his heart. Burning, freezing, itching- it never left him alone. He could feel only the splinter, not even the ravenous cold touching him, covering him, freezing him solid. But the Queen wanted him to hear this. She wanted him to hear Emma scream. She had told him, that first night when she’d taken him from his home, that love was the only thing he should fear. He had believed her. But even now, even now…

“Emma!” Killian looked up, even the splinter of darkness in his heart not enough to keep him from fearing for her. He stood, knowing the Snow Queen would punish him, and he ran to where he had heard her scream.

“Hello, darling,” the Queen said demurely, as though Emma’s dead body wasn’t spread over the cold ice between them. Killian fell to his knees, cradling her head in his lap. Inside of him, the furious shard burned white-hot and ice-cold, at war with his love and their friendship and all the swirling fear in his heart. He bent over her, searching desperately for a breath, a heartbeat, anything to tell him she was alive. He heard nothing. The cold ice inside of him grew, feathering out its insidious reaches from heart to head to toe. He could feel her still-warm blood, turning cold on his hands, could feel her icy skin and see her turning white and blue, becoming like everything else in the Queen’s cold realm.

The Queen smiled innocently down at him, her eyes lovingly tracing the frost creeping up his knees and across his arms. “Do you see?” She asked Killian, lifting his chin with one porcelain hand. “There’s very little to be afraid of now.” He trembled, the ice in his veins spreading to his limbs, then creeping it’s way, immutably, inconsolably, to his heart. He didn’t fight it anymore, the sight of Emma splayed and bloody across the blue ice floor had robbed him of his resistance. He had no heart left to save.

Killian looked up through his bloodied hair, teeth grit around the absolute despair in his heart. “Your highness,” he said, the warmth leaching from his voice even as he spoke. “As you command.” Her grin grew, sweet and cold as frosted clover. If Emma could move, she’d scream again.

The Queen lifted Killian up, letting Emma’s head slip sluggishly from his lap as he stood. Emma struggled, fruitlessly, to call out, to stop him from following her, but she could do nothing but lie there and will herself to move.

And move she did. The hand holding the sword began to prickle- like it was defrosting, like it was melting away. It twitched- just the fingers at first, then the whole hand. The defrosting feeling slipped down her arm to her body, and more and more she could move. She could hear Killian’s footsteps, crushing ice flowers as he walked. She willed herself to stand, her feet still half-frozen, her hands weak from cold. But the sword warned her, and her heart burned with her love for him, and she fought through it.

“Killian,” she whispered, her breath crackling like fire in her mouth. “I’m coming for you.”

And she did. The Snow Queen thought her dead, thought the ice cold of her blade had killed her finally and completely. So Emma was able to walk behind her, to melt the frost beneath her feet with the power of the sword and make no sound as she moved. She was able to strike her down, blade of light and fire snapping like an ice pick through the Queen’s frozen heart. Killian shuddered, arching back as if he, too, had been struck, and collapsed in mirrored motion with the Queen. They fell opposite, her head toward his feet and his head toward hers- Emma paused, hoping she hadn’t judged wrongly.

“Killian,” she repeated, reaching for him. If, after all this time, she had been the one to kill him… But no, there was his breath, his heartbeat, his ice-cold skin flushed blue and white. “Please,” she muttered, drawing him into her lap as he had done to her only moments before. “Please, Killian.”

He woke slowly, and in the meantime she wept. For their lost childhoods, for the years they would never have together, for the love they bore each other which was lost to the snow and the Queen. For the boy she’d known and feared she’d never get back. For the girl she had once been and the woman she’d become. Her tears fell in his eyes, light and fire and sadness tracing that long path to his heart, melting the arsenic-white glass which had ruled him for so long, which had overtaken him so entirely.

“I’ve missed you,” he rasped, reaching up to trace a lock of her hair. He smiled, and for a moment they were children again- too wise and told foolish, too young and too old.

“Killian,” she gasped, smiling so brightly and so sadly she became incandescent. Like a soft and radiant star.

“I love you,” he said quietly, as if realizing something he had never said was pressing now at his lips. “I love you."

“I know,” Emma whispered, another tear falling into his clearing eyes. “I love you, too.”

Neither one noticed the Snow Queen’s body melting, her blood turning to crimson poppies, her skin turning to stone, her bones to snowdrops, and her locks of hair to lilies- they were so blind to everything but each other they hardly noticed the arrival of springtime.

But it arrived.

There were others touched by the mirror, others burned by the frost, but their stories are their own to tell. This one ends here, even though it doesn’t. Emma and Killian fought other battles and saved other lives, but this story must end, as all good stories do, with the words ‘and they lived happily ever after.’

(Because they did.)