Disclaimer: I do not own OUATIW or anything revolving around it. I only wish.

This fic kind of managed to sneak up on me - I was very much multishipping Alice with Cyrus and Will for the first two episodes because I didn't want to get myself into another ship that will probably be sunk at the end of the show...but after 1x03, I can't help myself anymore. So this happened. It's obviously AU from some point after 1x03 but as canon compliant as possible.

He does not know where they went wrong. He does not know how she got under his skin and made him feel again. They have no future, but he cannot help but want what they could have had.

Part of him wishes that there was never a Cyrus and never an Anastasia to keep them apart. Cyrus still holds Alice's heart as much as Anastasia destroyed his. This girl makes him want to feel again, no matter how much it hurt. She makes him – him, Will Scarlett, the Knave of Hearts – want to feel again. She makes him want to be a good man for her sake.

He had no idea that he was so masochistic that he would let that happen. He cannot watch someone fall again. She might not fall as Anastasia did, but she will fall. She will fall away from him. She will go off with Cyrus and they will be happy together.

In the end, it will all be for nothing. Well, not nothing. Alice will be happy. That is all Will really wants. He wants her to be happy. She deserves that, he thinks. She has lost her love and found him again.

Will has long been content to be the bad guy. That is the part he has played for a long time; it is an easier part to play, to pretend that he does not have a heart than to feel the cold, empty thing in his chest. It is easier for him to pretend that it doesn't hurt, that he doesn't know what love is. If he does not let it in, it will not be able to hurt him. The longer he puts it off, the more he knows it will hurt in the end. He knows because it already hurts and eventually he will not be able to ignore it any longer.

So he does the only thing he can do. He follows her through Wonderland on her quest to find her genie. He jokes and whines and teases her. He slowly falls in love with her. He starts to feel again – he starts to hope. It is a false hope, but he cannot help himself. She makes Will Scarlett want to be like he used to be: happy, idealistic – everything he used to be before Anastasia ripped it away. Maleficent was wrong, though. She had said that the mirror would only bring him misery. It did not. It also brought him joy. It was the kind of joy that was so sharp that it hurt.

As they reach the place where Cyrus is being held, Will knows what must happen. He knows that this is the end of the journey. He knows that he is in love again and that he loves Alice more than he ever loved Anastasia. Anastasia was his first love, but Alice would be his last.

In the end, he knows what must happen. He knows that it is the right thing to do, to reunite her with the man she has spent years loving. He can give her the happily ever after she wants and he hates himself for it, because it is not the happy ending the two of them deserve.

He has one consolation: he and Alice might never grown old together, but now she will never grow old at all. She will be with her love forever. He will be doomed to never see her again. He will never see her again. He cannot take her happy ending away from her. Not after everything they have been through. Not with what he means to do.

Even the Knave of Hearts can be too noble sometimes. He wants to kick himself for it.