(closed)

[bigbaddy]

Who: Bigby and Snow White
What: A talk about recent events!
When: During June
Where: In their house in Milton

Content Warnings: Probably nothing, will edit if that changes.

Connor's loss still stings - but Bigby figures that's just going to be a constant hurt now. Even if it's less of one than it was when the boy first disappeared, it's still somewhere in the back of his mind, even months after the fact. (It's mostly the fact that he can't be sure the other is alright, really. If he just knew Connor went back to their world, to their future, that's fine, but..)

He still tries to put it out of his mind a little. They have to keep going in this place, after all, and the constant danger and odd things happening here are a good reminder of the fact that Bigby can't slack off, and can't allow his thoughts to be drawn anywhere else for too long. Especially if they're going to have a repeat this summer of what happened during the last one.

But his mind is also on some recent events. The journey out to Silverpoint, what they found there, going back here..

While he's sitting together on the couch with Snow on a June evening, he's thinking about it enough to bring it up.

"You know-- I didn't expect to actually see people out there in that other town. Seemed like every person here died a while ago, but they were perfectly fine out there." It's a bit of an idle thought, but-- it's still a deep thought about this place and its nature in a way he knows he can only share with Snow.

Most people in this place have never traveled to a different world before, after all. Unlike them.

"I thought this empty place was all there was to this world. Like it's the Darkwalker's freaky little pocket realm, or something like that. But it seems like there's more to it than that."

Comments

[powersuited]

When Bigby doesn’t answer right away, Snow doesn’t press the issue or reiterate the question; what she’s come to learn, both through as many years as she’s known him and the time they’ve been forced to endure against different odds here, is that he’ll talk when he’s ready, and rarely a moment before then. Besides, the silence that so often falls between them these days is a comfortable one, his hand a warm certainty beneath her own as she gives it a reassuring squeeze.

“It… is strange,” she admits, with a soft chuckle. “Sometimes I forget how long it’s been, and then something happens to remind me.” The fact that they’re living together, for one; the fact that she has the ability to turn into a wolf now, for another. She still feels like herself, but it’d be a lie to say that nothing has changed.

“What’s going down without Sheriff Bigby around to keep an eye on things, you mean?” She’s teasing, but there’s a note of sincerity behind it too; she hadn’t considered just how much this all might be weighing on him, and whether it’s even more of a weight after so much time.

“I think about it too. Whether they’ve realized what’s happened to us. Whether it’s been this long back home, or if we’ll go back and it’ll be like we never lost a single day.”

[bigbaddy]

If it wasn't obvious she was teasing, he would consider giving more of an answer to the part about him not being around to keep an eye on things - that she keeps an eye on things too, for one - but Bigby can tell the intention behind her tone, so he doesn't.

Instead he focuses on the more serious part of this. It's not like he hasn't spoken with many people here about their situation, drilled it into the heads of the local idiots to take it seriously, but Snow just understands it on a level that the others here wouldn't. With Connor now being gone, they're the only Fables here.

"Someone must have realized. We're not in the same situation as all those mundies here. People would know."

Not that people back home might not care about the other people now trapped here - but it's just that Fables have a little bit more reason to assume that it might not just be a regular disappearance. That they know about inter-dimensional travel.

"Yet no one's managed to reach us." Bigby doesn't fully sound concerned, but that might just be because it's Bigby, because that tone doesn't come naturally to him. Instead he just seems very serious as he speaks to her.

(He's still not pulling his hand away from her own though, all the same.)

[powersuited]

There have been times, here and there, when Snow has considered whether it might be good for the Interlopers to elect some form of leadership — not out of a desire to control everything herself, but because even Fabletown, eventually, had found itself in need of someone to oversee things, to listen to concerns, to be an advocate. Granted, the Fable who had initially been elected mayor had been more concerned with lining his own pockets than helping the less fortunate among them, but he also isn't mayor anymore for that reason, among others.

Either way, maybe it's something that she should propose, once everyone is in a position to have a meeting about it — a council, rather than one person at the head of their group. Something more democratic, and reflective of who the Interlopers are as a community.

"No, they haven't gotten through. Or they have, and it somehow hasn't made its way to us." She's pulled from her brief reverie by Bigby's musing, and now can't make up her mind about which would be worse — not hearing from them at all, or knowing that they'd tried to reach out and been met with something blocking their efforts.

"I can't decide if I'd rather they knew we were gone," she adds, with a sigh, and after another moment, she shifts in her seat so that she can rest her head on his shoulder, nuzzling there before she overthinks the initiation. "Maybe it has something to do with the Aurora?"

[bigbaddy]

"Wouldn't surprise me," Bigby replies - though he's also adjusting the way they're sitting a little bit to accommodate for the way Snow leans against him. It takes a moment, but then he even moves his arm over her shoulders until he can rest his hand on her arm on the opposite side, drawing her a little bit closer against him.

"Whatever that force is, it's something powerful. It's not like just anything can take away everything that makes us Fables from us. A lot of powerful forces back home wouldn't have been able to do that just like this."

[powersuited]

Bigby's outward observation prompts a visible frown from Snow's side, and she shifts her head along his shoulder until she's able to look at him more directly, chin lifted, her brow sporting a deep furrow.

"Do you think that means we're... aging here, like everyone else?" Without the very thing that makes them Fables, there's a possibility that could include their longevity, and while she doesn't expect to suddenly start seeing grey hairs in the mirror tomorrow, it's also something she's considered ever since discovering that Bigby hadn't been able to transform previously.

They're both wolves now, but in a way that only exists because of the Aurora, and she certainly runs much warmer than she used to, to say nothing of the heightened senses that make his scent that much more overwhelming to her than it once was, but that doesn't mean she's invincible. Neither is he, although he'd readily put himself between her and danger exactly like he had before the change.