Chapter Text
It was dark when Gothel pulled herself from the lake to the shore. It had been dark when she went under, so she wasn’t sure how long it had been.
She remembered everything, and that Jack Frost had tricked her into this, and he would pay. Him and that useless girl, who had destroyed everything that they’d worked for-
Part of her hair, plastered wet and dripping, fell forward in front of her eyes as she dropped her head downwards, gasping with the effort of pulling herself up.
It was white, almost glowing in the darkness.
Shaking, Gothel put a hand up to touch it, and found - not wet, but frozen. Her breath puffed in the night, shards of ice like knives falling to the stones beneath her. She was-
She pushed herself to her feet and brushed dirt from her velvet robes, and found them patterned with more of the knife-like ice marks. Her hands weren’t wrinkled but smooth, as smooth as they had been in her prime, with no sign of the cuts along her arms where she’d drawn blood for some of her magic. And they were shaking, but she wasn’t cold. Or scared - Gothel had never been scared, not even when she’d been a child and Pitch had come for his tithe. She’d known her purpose then, and now - well, nothing had changed. She was still Gothel, still in control, and those children would get what came their way.
Footsteps crunched along the pebbles. Or - not footsteps, exactly, but sand running between the rocks, shifting like the tide.
Gothel looked up, smoothing her icy hair back out of the way. “Sandman.”
He was squat and golden, standing barely knee high on a smooth boulder that put him at about eye level. He studied her, frowning, and shook his head.
“It was a fair deal,” Gothel said, her smile brittle. “I did not force him to it.”
Sandman raised an eyebrow and sand swirled about him in his approximation of speech.
Gothel studied the symbols and laughed. “No, I will not become a Guardian. We should go our separate ways, Sandman. Nothing good will come of this meeting.”
Sandman sighed and cracked a whip that was formed of the same golden sand as himself.
Gothel raised an elegant, ice-white eyebrow. “Well now, that’s a bit of a stretch. I don’t ascribe to your lofty position, so we must fight?”
“You are not the moon’s avatar,” North said, and the blade of his right sword was at her throat.
Gothel hadn’t heard him arrive, and she side-eyed him as he stood on the shore, implacable in his great red presence.
“This cannot last.”
Sandmand nodded, and his expression was - not kind, but understanding, almost.
“As if you understand,” she hissed at him. “You were given your power, I have had to work to where I am now.”
“And you have done that by kidnapping and imprisonment and extortion. No, you are not a Guardian,” North said, finality in his voice. “And you are not the moon’s avatar, and so you cannot have the moon’s power.”
Gothel studied her hands, turning them over as if to study the power that she held in them. “The moon’s own power, you say?” She smiled. “Does that make me stronger than all of you?”
Oh, but she was cold, terribly so. As if she was still soaking, still drenched in the depths of the dark lake behind her. It bit bone deep and deeper, right to the core of her being.
“It makes you unfit,” North replied.
“It was a gift,” Gothel said, reminding them. “And you cannot take what has been given.”
North dipped his head, conceding her the point, but his blade didn’t waver from her throat.
“Can’t you feel it hurting, though?” That was a new voice, on her other side. Bunny. “That power wasn’t meant for you. Are you cold?” He smiled easily, implacable in the false facade of kindness.
Gothel forced her hands steady, refusing to let Bunny have that satisfaction. She was not scared, she was not cold (but oh, it bit deep into her bones, as if turning them to ice. As if she had moved her last in getting to the shore). “If that is all, gentlemen?”
“The moon has phases,” North said, whether as a warning or as conversation, it was unclear. “And all things must die, in the end.”
“I will rise with the new moon,” Gothel replied, pushing his sword away as she turned to face him. “This phase is mine, given to me by Frost for the girl’s useless life.”
“And it will hurt,” North promised.
“We could help,” Bunny said. “We could make it easier for you to bear.”
Gothel watched Sandman, because he was watching steadily, as if this was all somehow beneath him. “And what does the Sandman think of this offer? You know who I am, what I have done. Who I work with.”
“Ah yes, Pitch.” North smiled. “Where is he now?”
Sandman shook his head and pulled his whip tight between his hands.
Pitch wasn’t coming. Gothel hadn’t seen him in days, but that was normal. This city was not the only place he ruled.
“You won’t take our help, then?” Bunny asked.
Gothel shot him a dismissive glare. “I need nothing from you.”
Bunny looked past her to North and shrugged. “Can’t say we tried. Now, I have Easter to prepare for.” He stepped backwards and into a rabbit hole that opened below him.
North laughed. “Sandy. Jack came to you, did he not? Did he leave instructions?”
The image of a tower floated above Sandman’s head.
Gothel let out a dismissive bark of laughter and stepped sideways, onto the lake. Ice sputtered and formed at her feet, laced with thin cracks and threatening to break at any moment. But it held her weight, as she stepped further out. “I will not be your prisoner.”
North turned to watch her go. “No?”
“No,” she said, with finality.
They were curiously... detached from the whole affair. Neither of them followed after her - Tooth hadn’t even appeared.
Maybe because they knew they could threaten all they wanted, but the power was Gothel’s to do with as she wished.
“Well, North, Sandman.” She dipped her head to them. “It has been so nice to have this little catch up.”
“We should do it more often.” North sheathed his sword and stood beside Sandman’s boulder, folding his arms. “Shall we say in a month’s time?”
A month. They were giving her a month’s reprieve? Gothel laughed. She could do a lot in a month. She and Pitch could rule the world in a month, and then they would have the power to make this permanent, to make her-
The ice cracked underneath her feet and she fell, splashing into the lake. There was a rope - she caught at it to keep her head above water, and tried to focus her new power to freeze the lake about her once more.
North laughed from the shore, a deep belly laugh that echoed about the rock walls above the lake. “Perhaps you will have better luck then, hm?” He walked away, leaving Sandman alone on his rock.
Sandman stepped lightly out over the lake, several feet above the surface of it to look down at Gothel.
She glared back at him and started to pull her way along the rope.
Her movements echoed back from the cliffs, breaking the stillness of the lake.
“Why are you still here?” she spat out, sitting on the rocks at the edge and controlling her breathing so that she wasn’t panting like some dog.
Her breath puffed in the night air, condensing to mist and back to icy shards that fell and scattered across her robes.
Sandman held out a hand, and the image of a girl appeared there, a girl with impossibly long hair.
“Rapunzel,” Gothel growled. “You know she forfeited her gift, too.”
Sandman smiled and shook his head as the hair fell away from the figure, as she was joined by a boy with a staff. Although there were no features to them, Gothel could all but feel the happiness and joy exuding from them.
She growled and lashed out a hand; ice sped from it and pierced the figures, and the sand fell away into the air.
Sandman brushed his hands against himself and dipped his head in farewell.
Gothel watched him disappear into the lightening sky.
A month. A month to plan and grow stronger.
She smiled thinly and got to her feet, glowing with cold and cruel frost in the blackness of the night.
A month was more than long enough.