Ever After
By Vanilla Tiger
AN: AU, before Angel and company make it to Pylea
Feedback to fitchers_bird@yahoo.co.uk
Fred had always thought that someone else would come to save her. She'd never
been a hero, noble and brave. She wasn't sure what she had been before. There
had never been a role for a girl who found safety in numbers in those old fairy
tales she used to read.
Pylea made her a damsel in distress, like one of those beautiful princesses
who always got rescued by the hero. They'd get married and live happily ever
after. The End.
No-one ever came for Fred.
So she hid in a cave and wrote on the walls and one day she finally managed
to open a portal like the one that brought her to Pylea. She didn't know where
it led, but if it led away from the monsters it had to be someplace good.
And maybe it would take her back home, where she see her parents and eat tacos
and not have to hide in the shadows all the time. Perhaps then she'd be able
to find her hero so he could tell why he never came.
The portal didn't lead to Earth. Fred found herself in a dry and dusty place
that felt almost like home. People didn't see a girl falling out of nowhere.
There were no people there to see. When she found some others, they shied away
from the strange girl who dressed weird and talked funny and didn't seem to
know the most basic information. Then there the man-shaped monsters that tried
to hurt her so she had to hurt them but they were many and she was alone...
Then another girl, pretty and fairy-like, came and helped her. "You don't
belong here," she said as she smiled and held out her hand.
Touching her felt right, like poetry, like the simplest form of an equation.
But then more bad men came, these ones different with cold blue hands, who locked
them in a metal box. River screamed and fought, and as she stroked her calm
Fred realised that she had to be the hero now.
She had to think. The metal box was a puzzle, and Fred had always been able
to solve puzzles easily. Outside there they found all sorts of toys and tricks.
Fred was good at making things, and it turned out that River was good at using
them.
As they tried to find a way out, they came across River's friends. Fred would
have ran then, skittish from years of hiding, but River made her stay. Now she's
the newest member of the crew.
She doesn't interact fully with the others as of yet, but that will come with
time. For now she's content to hide in the shadows (It's okay this time because
she knows she can leave whenever she wants. She knows that and she will one
day.) and just watch.
To her, the captain is a hero just like in her old storybooks. On occasion she
has considered how her life would have been if he had managed to rescue her
from Pylea. Maybe she would be home by now.
Still those moments pass quickly and it is to River's bunk Fred returns each
night.
Besides she doesn't need a hero anymore. The beautiful princesses can rescue
each other and together they will make their own happy ending.