"I could have told him this was always going to be the ending. He wasn't a prince, and only princes can wake the dumb bitches when they fall fully into their glass coffins. They'd been able to play at happy ever after for longer than I'd expected. I didn't think he was going to be grateful about that."
Previous chapter here.
THIS IS THE BEST CHAPTER EVER. While Henry's out asleep and currently not waking up even for true love's kiss and being taken out for medical attention, we get Sloane as the narrator and she's super awesome. Even better than Henry in her own permanently ticked off way. WOOOOOOOOOOOOT!
Anyway, poor Jeff's trying to wake Henry and failing, and Sloane's eating the rest of the unpoisoned apple she gave Henry and trying to think of how to deal with the situation. If a prince is fetched out of Childe to do the job, Henry will wake up as a blank Snow White forever, which both Sloane and Jeff know. Sloane admits that while she always wants to kill/poison people, she also wanted Henry to wake up at the same time. She goes down to HR and demands to know where Henry's been taken, but the HR guy (a Boy Who Cried Wolf, so he knows from lying) insists on stalling Sloane by, among other things, demanding her real name. Which is Amity Green--really? What a totally inappropriate name for that girl originally! Sloane notes that her birth name was no longer safe for her to use. Anyway, Ciara Bloomfield--I wanted her back in the narrative and here she is!--comes in as a temporary team lead while Henry's out. Sloane grumbles about the protocol that she wrote herself in 1884 back when she was the only villain working in the Bureau--she made darned sure all functional members of the team should be given the opportunity to go to the side of their colleague.
Ciara said she followed orders--"That's what I do, Sloane. Because if I start breaking orders, even the ones that sound pointless, I'm going to find myself in front of a door with a key in my hand, and then I'm going to be parted from my head." Interestingly enough later, we find out that Sloane takes orders even though she hates it and it makes her homicidal because "sometimes you have to act against character if you want to have any freedom at all."
So who gave the orders? Sloane's former teammate, now Deputy Director Brewer. She's known him since the time he was excited that his girlfriend, Bloody Mary, was a legend, and remembers when he left the Bureau for thirty years after it all went to hell. So why did you keep me from her? Well, the usual--is Sloane trustable? Especially when Birdie's suborned a bunch of folks they didn't know about? Sloane is all, after all this time you still don't understand me? and Brewer is all, "no one understands you, Sloane, you least of all." But he does get a little kudos from Sloane when he says that if she'd done anything, it would have been huge and showy--plus the wolf boy can verify her. Brewer says he needs Sloane to accept Ciara as temporary leader and get everyone else to as well. As for Henry, well, there's options...like looking for a prince. Oh yeah, and everyone's vacation is canceled except for Jeff because now he's on partner leave. Sloane snaps that it's all Brewer's fault for making it clear to her that she had to find a way without using Bureau resources, and he says he thinks about these things every night. Anyway, everyone heads down to Henry's new bed--Jeff still has to work while on bed duty, apparently.
We find out that Sloane always hated Snow Whites, but Henry was different. She was always there to anchor Sloane, and she came back from the wood an avenging goddess. Of course Sloane cares, and she would have never risked herself by giving her the apple if she hadn't. Sloane liked her, but had to push her away at the same time because she knew what would happen to her allies--the narrative wouldn't stand for it.
"Our relationship was complicated and painful and wonderful and one of the closest things I'd had to a true friendship since Mary. I wanted to tell Andrew that. I wanted to make him understand. I opened my mouth, , and what came out was a genial, 'Go fuck yourself with the nearest vorpal blade. Maybe we'll get lucky, and the snicker-snack will leave you gelded."
Anyway, Sloane does the requested job of announcing Ciara's arrival, and then Ciara enters to re-introduce herself. Ciara reassures everyone she's only temporary, and that everyone in the Bureau is on high alert right now--the inmates at the prison are on the verge of riot. Does anyone know what Birdie wants? Andrew says Birdie went for the ATI Index before, but isn't it just a book? It doesn't control anything...and that's when everyone on the spectrum gapes at him in "dude, you don't get it" mode. The Index links every story in the world to their monomyth. We protect it because when you change it, it changes the stories. The Index was written by people who documented every angle so that they were easier to identify and prevent--but the more they get written down, the more they anchor themselves in public consciousness and the less they change. We keep a list so we know what to fight instead of having no bloody idea. If Birdie gets it, she can rewrite everything to do whatever she wants or write her own stories. And we can't take back the narrative weight we gave it.
Shiiiiiiiiiit.
The gang heads off to Birdie's exploded house, and Sloane deduces that with a Cinderella, a Rapunzel and a Mother Hubbard, they must be in a skyscraper/hotel with an avian theme. Like the Swan, Demi suggests. There ya go, because the narrative is all about being on the nose. Sloane suspects Andy of tricking her somehow, as he's telling her off during this scene, but she can't figure out how that happened, only that bad things are going to follow.
There's definitely some interesting things about Ciara that Sloane can't help but note, mostly that she's turning into something new because she's wrestling her story to a standstill. She's also got great green light and car handling karma. "My story ends in decapitation or widowhood. So it's trying to fit me into something else. I think it's hybridizing me a bit with Sweet Polly Oliver and a little bit with Anne the Pirate Queen. Any ship I sail finds calm seas and safe harbor, and that includes the cars I drive."
Anyway, as the group pulls up safely and nicely at the Swan, Sloane can feel sticky cotton candy tangling her up somehow. Her anger breaks that up a bit--the madder she gets, the more the narrative recognizes her and restricts her less. She's good at running, but when she runs into pitch on the floor and super laced up boots she can't get out of quickly without a knife and glass people about to explode in the room... Sloane yells to everyone else to stay back and not get trapped too. Demi raises her flute, but that'll make the statues go boom. Ciara gets whopping bonus points for figuring out how to solve this problem--she throws herself at Sloane to catch her, and she's got a knife. I'm not at all sure how Sloane got out of those shoes easily while carrying a full grown woman and managed to make a break for it--I don't think that's even anatomically possible even with fairy tale weightlifting. Anyway, the team gets out and makes it to the car before the building explodes on everyone. As the wreckage turns into glass, Sloane wonders what they're going to do about it. And nobody has any idea.
HOLY SHIT THIS CHAPTER WAS SOOOOOOO GOOD. I'm giving it four and a half stars for near epic. Sloane backstory? Sloane having feelings for Henry? Ciara being awesome? I love, love, love this! Sloane forever!
Quote Corner (note: all quotes by Sloane unless said otherwise):
- "I've never understood the way Snow Whites yearn for apples, but then, they've never understood the way I long to kill them all, so I figure it balances out in the end."
- "Having friends is awful."
- "What they forgot was that people who were waiting for their stories to activate tended to hate and resent the people who were living the tales that they were always meant to embody, and that people who'd been averted were afraid of the narrative coming back for a second pass."
- "It gets excited when it thinks we're going to start opening doors that we're supposed to leave alone."--Ciara on her hair getting bluer and bluer.
- "I've always found profanity to be a lot like bacon. It works wonders on the flavor of your speech, but it lacks impact when used excessively." --Ciara
- "I also regret to inform you that you're not allowed to kill me, as I am your temporary field leader." --Ciara
- "There was a reason why I'd always held Henry at arm's length, even when she was struggling to get closer to me: even when I wanted, more than anything, to be her friend. Because I'd always known that this would be the end. Someone like me doesn't get to be friends with the princesses.We always wind up getting left behind."
- "He'd loved a happy ever after. He'd lost it all to once upon a time. 'Henry thinks you're a norm,' I snapped. It was the nastiest thing I could think of to say." --directed at Brewer.
- "That's the thing about being me: I can always find something to fight over. Call it my superpower."
- "You are a wicked, wicked child, and I will never ask you to be a good girl, but I will always ask you to be better." --Sloane's mother, once upon a time.
- "The Index was our greatest weapon and our greatest burden, all at the same time."
- "The Bureau only kept me fed and free because I was useful to them, and being useful meant embracing the parts of myself that played most into my story. I would lose myself someday, and all for the sake of serving them a little better in the time I was allotted. I'd already had a fuck-lot more time than anyone else got."
- "But that was not to be, and instead of becoming the Girl Who Runs, I became a girl who was always running, running from herself, running towards the story, running for the things that would destroy me. I just wished they'd hurry up and get on with that."
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