The walls had seemed to have begun closing in on him, reminding him in echoes of memories of the Queen's sharp, cold cage and his inability to leave its confines for anything but the excursions the Queen sent him on, each less palatable than the last. The stables had hardly been his first thought, for all that he had been drawn always more to the company of animals than he had of men. How could they be, when he had spent so much time in his youth confused as to why any animal would submit themselves to the control of men, and so much time later too aware that he understood the feeling of having been yoked too well.

Out in the openness of the air and the freedom from mirrors, he had roamed the hotel grounds for hours, loosing the tightness that wrapped around his chest under the guise of continuing his explorations of the Nexus. It was only later that he neared the stables and was drawn on by the faint knickering and pawing of the horses in their stalls, curious to see what animals there were under those roofs.

Names laced themselves into his memory, colored his thoughts with which personality they belonged to. Even as they were weaving themselves into one another with every passing day to allow him room to breathe without tripping accidental over some remembered horror done by or done to him. His being caught up in the mire of his thoughts and the senses that belonged to the Huntsman far more than Graham had him missing the latter being called out. Then the title Regina had bestowed on him. Finally the name the Queen had taken and turned into a title at her command, leaving nausea roiling faintly at the sound of it.

His head jerked over at the sound of it, ripped suddenly from his thoughts by one word. He turned the corner of the stables to see Snow's Prince standing there and found himself asking, "David? Or should I call you Prince?"