Title: Tempered In the Fire of Your Eyes

Author: Jedi Buttercup

Rating: T

Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not.

Summary: It takes more than a name, or an axe, or a bow. 1200 words.

Spoilers: Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)

Notes: For lizimajig in Yuletide 2013. Post-movie triofic.

In a kinder world, one man's love might have been enough to wake the destined princess from her sleeping curse.

In a world where her mother had married anyone but the king whose blood sang with the land, and lived to see her daughter's carefree hand joined in marriage with a bachelor hunter who'd never gone to war or met a spirited woman named Sarah: she might have been just Snow with her Eric, and that would have been enough ... if her adventures ever brought her afoul of the curse at all.

Or in a world where Ravenna had never slain her father, and she had learned the steps of dance and ruling alike at the side of the boy whose path had followed hers every day of their lives: she might have been Queen Snow to her Prince Consort William, and that would have been enough ... should such darkness ever trespass upon their land.

But such fancies are for fairy tales. This world is not so kind; the darkness has ruled it for too long. Snow White, the heart of the kingdom, missed the years she should have spent learning to manage her father's realm locked up with only birdsong for lessons and the whispers of Ravenna's other prisoners for occasional company. The huntsman whose hands defend her and carry out her will is a rough-edged, wounded creature, guided more by loyalty and instinct than obedience, who only let go the grief of his last, lost love in acknowledging that he had opened his heart enough to grieve her as well. And the Duke's son came of age impatient and desperate to prove his own worth, suffocated by his father's despair and drowning in misplaced guilt.

Snow has known since the moment she woke with the taste of both men's tears on her tongue that she would need them both ... and not only due to the hunger of flesh long denied any semblance of kindness or care. Heart, hand, and head: it will take all three of them together to become the ruler the land needs to repair the wounds Ravenna clawed deep into the kingdom and its people. If there is any selfishness in her, it is this: she will take no other - but she will take them both. If they do not deny her, what right has any other?

They have been forged and twice-forged in the anger of the lost; but they have also turned from that anger to save one another. And in their footsteps, side by side by side, the kingdom begins to bloom anew.

"It's coming along well," Eric says, tickling the whiskered heads of wheat with his fingertips as they stroll through the fields below the village.

Snow, trailing along at his side, reaches to capture his other hand with her own, twining their fingers together. She grins at the contentment in his expression, then throws a teasing glance back over her shoulder to William. Between the two of them, she has no other guard today, though undoubtedly the Duke has men waiting in the tavern, ready to respond to the slightest alarm.

"Reminds me of that last summer," she said. "Do you remember the bird with the broken wing, William?"

William has fallen behind, bent over a small object sticking out of the soft, dark earth; he looks up as she speaks, a wry smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "I remember thinking we'd get in trouble for bothering your mother with it. But of course, you could do no wrong in the Queen's eyes."

A glint of rusted metal catches the light between his fingers as he stands: an arrowhead or shard of armor, left behind by Ravenna's wars. He pockets it as she laughs, to discard later, then jogs to catch up.

"Now, don't fill Eric's ears with lies," she chides him. "He was not here; he doesn't know how much trouble I was as a child."

Eric tugs at her hand, chuckling, and looks down at her with smile lines crinkling around his eyes. "As a child? You have given me nothing but trouble as a woman grown; I shudder to imagine what you were like, with so much spirit trapped in an even smaller form."

"Is that so?" she replies, archly, stopping in her tracks: dwelling in the moment, the soft rich soil under her boots, the sweet scents in the air, the warm sun on her hair, the shared joy and trust in their teasing. But she arches her eyebrows nonetheless, pretending to take offense; no sense making it too easy.

"Careful, you'll offend her royal ego," William smirks as he approaches.

"Then I'll just have to soothe it again, won't I," Eric says, bemused, and leans down to meet her in a kiss.

His lips are chapped, his chin and cheeks bristly with beard; William, when she turns to him a moment later, tastes sweet from the berries he'd sampled in the next field over.

"Consider it soothed," she says, bemused. "Though it may need further soothing, oh, at the next line of trees?"

She grins as both men turn to look at the row of dark trunks that have stood unadorned for a decade, now sprouting crowns formed of all the shades of green imaginable - and the moment their attention is entirely off her, she picks up her skirts and bolts. She has not got out of the habit of wearing leather trousers under her gowns; it is only practical for days like these.

"Why that..."

"Snow!"

Laughter rings out behind her, and the sound of two pairs of boots pounding after her in tandem.

On the morrow, they will assemble the council again: Eric serving as representative of the people, William speaking in his father's place for military matters and the recent embassies to surrounding realms to notify them of Ravenna's defeat, and Snow mediating between those who had bowed the knee to Ravenna for their own survival and those who had fought and survived without the Usurper Queen's begrudging tolerance. She will sit alone, for she will not dilute her authority before those who yet work to undermine her - but what use has she for a husband, after all, when she has her Huntsman and her loyal Knight at her side?

On the morrow, she will rule - but she only rules because she loves; and she only lives because she is loved. Moments like this one are every bit as vital as those she spends on her throne.

She stumbles to a halt under the eave of the trees, cheeks flushed and heart racing; she turns to watch them follow after, delayed by laughing attempts to shove one another out of their way. Eric gets in a heel against William's ankle only a few lengths away - but William snags a hand in Eric's shirt as he goes down, twisting and pulling Eric after him. They sprawl full against one another, breath swift from exertion and laughter - and her own catches in her chest at the picture they make together.

No, it is not a kind world. But in this realm they have built from the ashes, this, this is enough.

-x-