To Have a Heart

Summary: Ravenna wanted her heart. It could have once belonged to her, but that time had long since passed.
Disclaimer: I don't own Snow White and the Huntsman (SWATH, I love this abbreviation). Wish I did though, it's so pretty. Also, I'll make sure to move this to the right category, once it EXISTS. For now, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
Pairing: Snow White/Eric (The Huntsman), Snow White/William (past/unrequited)
Spoilers: Pretty much everything, so don't read if you don't want to spoil the movie for yourself.

"You cannot have my heart," Snow White whispered mournfully to the queen above her.

It was almost painful to watch the once coldly beautiful woman, who had possessed a spine of ice and steel and will stronger and more dangerous than that, cower and crawl away from her. She clutched at the fatal wound at her chest, the wound Snow White knew was where her heart was. There was an irony in that, she supposed as she followed Ravenna. The queen stared fearfully up at her as she continued curling in on herself, her magic rapidly failing to sustain her. She aged before Snow White's eyes, life seeping out of her more quickly than the princess could believe.

She wanted to cry at the sight and so she did. Since the moment she'd touched minds with Ravenna's in the snowy wood, she'd come to terms with the fact that she would have to kill the queen for the sake of the kingdom. As long as she lived, no one would be safe or happy. And living would offer the shattered, twisted woman no relief or salvation. Those were the only comforts Snow White had found in the horrible thing she was being forced to do. Killing the woman who she still called stepmother in her own mind meant sacrificing the innocence so many lauded her for having.

How could she still be innocent when she was guilty of killing the last family she still had?

Doubtless, no one would be able to understand how she could still love Ravenna. How she could've ever once loved Ravenna. She'd told Eric that she'd hated the queen before coming to pity her. Through all of that she'd still loved. Loved a woman who had possessed the potential to heal her heart from the pain of losing her mother. Ravenna had promised not to take her mother's place, and Snow White would not have hated her even if she'd tried. What was the love of a kingdom to a little girl who could think of nothing but having a mother to hold and love her again? She'd loved Ravenna so fiercely for her kind smile and the soft caresses she'd applied to her hair and face. Snow White had made a promise herself that day that she'd find room in her heart for two mothers.

After the fall of the castle, Snow White had tried to believe in her even through the hate and sorrow of losing her father and everything else in that one night.

She didn't have me killed. Maybe she could love me.

She kept me all these years. Maybe she could love me.

She didn't let Finn or any other man violate me. Maybe she could love me.

It had taken looking into Ravenna's mind to finally crush the naive hope that her stepmother could ever love her. She couldn't and never would love Snow White. Ravenna could only love herself, now that her brother was dead. And she would always hate men, hate kings, hate the good of this world.* Above all she would hate Snow White, who dared to exist and threaten her power and immortality.

So tragic was it that Ravenna hated her so much, that she was blinded to the fact that Snow White's heart could've belonged to her in its entirety. Not simply the weak, deluded part that had held on for so long in vain. If only Ravenna had loved her like a daughter, Snow White would have willingly given up anything, her throne, her beauty, her heart, to her stepmother. Ravenna would not have even had to ask and Snow White would have done it for love.

Love was a powerful and dangerous thing. Someone like Ravenna could not understand love. Love was the true power of the heart. Her father was dead and yet the love his people had for him lived on. Eric's Sara was dead and yet his love for her had cut a path through the Dark Forest like no other force could. It was the love she had for her friends, love ones, and what little love and mercy she still had for Ravenna that caused her to rise up against the queen and put her down. Ravenna would finally know the peace and salvation she had sought in death at Snow White's hands.

Snow White wept as she reached forward and closed the queen's eyes, drawing her arm back to herself and beginning to stand. Her eyes fell upon the large circular object before her. For a moment she was entranced by her reflection in the golden surface before her gaze was drawn away by something else being reflected in the gold.

A tightness in her chest eased. Eric had survived the battle. She didn't turn to greet him, choosing to observe him a while longer without him knowing. He stood quietly at the archway, his axe lowered yet still in hand and ready to be swung at a moment's notice. It was so typical of him she felt the need to laugh bubble up despite the somber passing of Ravenna. For so long, she'd been dead to the world trapped in the prison she'd been kept in. Snow White had rescued herself from the tower, but Eric had rescued her from the Dark Forest, from the queen's men, and from the curse.

She wondered if he knew she'd been awake the entire time. Her eyes had been closed, and her body had not answered her call to move, but her mind had stayed alert. She'd heard William's desperate attempts to wake her. Heard Eric's bellows for someone, anyone to save her. It seemed almost as if she was floating as they carried her to the Duke's castle. She'd felt the maidservants strip her and bathe her. (What she would have given to have had the agency of movement to enjoy her first real bath since childhood.) She'd been placed in a clean dress and laid upon soft furs. For a day, she'd lain there until Eric had come to her when the hall she'd been placed in had gone dark and all she could see was the dim light of the torches through her eyelids.

Her heart had ached as he spoke. She could hear the loss in his voice as he told her of Sara. Wondered over the way his voice broke as he mourned her. Her rough, broken huntsman had only become more broken. Snow White had wanted to place her hands upon his face, in his large hands, run them through his locks. To steal away all of his sorrow and tell him she'd much rather stay there with him than be queen of anything much less of angels.

And wasn't that a funny thing to have thought?

She hadn't understood her feelings until he'd placed his lips upon hers. It was so much more different than William's kiss, both the real and the fake one. More sensation. More feeling. More.

Snow White loved Eric. And if she was right, Eric loved her too.

Ravenna's hatred had sunken her into a waking sleep, and Eric's love had pulled her from it. He'd given a girl he thought dead his twice rent heart and in that moment she gave him her own in return. The queen could not have taken her heart. There had been a time when it might have been hers but it had long since passed.

Her heart now belonged to another.

And as she turned, she found Eric now at her shoulder, staring softly down at her. He spared Ravenna a single glance before returning his gaze to her face.

"You are crying."

Snow White said nothing, but nodded. He began to lift his hands but he paused and looked down at them and a frown pulled at his features. Stooping, he gently placed his axe upon the stone floor before straightening and dragging his palms down his jerkin. Finally, he reached forward, tenderly placing a hand on either side of her face and used his thumbs to wipe away the tear tracks.

"I am sorry it had to be you that this task fell to," he murmured to her.

She nodded.

"Still, I'm glad that what I taught you served you well." His eyes clouded over for a moment. "Kept you alive."

"Thank you," she said to him, not sure thing exactly she was thanking him for.

Everything she supposed.

"Don't thank me yet," Eric remarked, a cocky grin replacing the grim expression he'd been wearing before, "You still owe me quite a bit of gold princess."

She couldn't help her smile. How her huntsman loved to play the cad to hide his large and noble heart from her. He couldn't. She didn't need to hold it in her hand to know that he had one and that it was hers. Moving forward, she wrapped her arms around his large frame and placed her head on his chest. The sound she found there was comforting and wonderful as it echoed through her every fiber.

When the time was right, she'd tell him and let him hear the sound of the heart he now possessed.

Fin

AN: Saw the movie Friday and loved it. Of course, I'm a huge nerd and showed up to the movie with my Mjolnir. The biggest thing for me was the relationship between Snow and Ravenna. In every telling and retelling of the story of Snow White, I try to pick apart their dynamic because the evil queen stepmother is always the one constant in every telling I encounter. Not to mention the movie really bamf'ed up Ravenna. So I wanted to focus on her and then of course throw in some Snow/Huntsman-y goodness because COME ON, Chris Hemsworth guys. Sam Caflin's pretty, but who is he in comparison with the God of Thunder? Am I right? There are other more legitimate reasons, but hotness is the most valid for me right now.

Three final things:

1) I'm SO sorry people who have been reading my other stories and waiting patiently for updates. Again, RL decided to kick me in the kidney. But now summer is here and I have a lot of free time to write as evidenced by this SWATH one-shot. I promise, I'm getting back to work.

2) The deer with tree antlers. Was I the only one who thought of Princess Mononoke?

3) Look for the asterisk * I had an extra thing about Ravenna hating Christians. My headcannon is that Ravenna and Finn were originally from a (Norse) pagan tribe that had been sacked by Christians (Crusaders maybe?). Other noted things we Snow's prayer and the writing on the Ravenna's mirror that is definitely some kind of foreign. Food for thought, i just left it out so I wouldn't confuse anyone.