Author's note: This is just a drabble I wrote a long time ago. I decided to share it here too, since I deleted my livejournal where it was posted originally.
He wouldn't make it today. He knew that as soon as he opened his eyes. He couldn't move his legs anymore. He lifted his upper body and leaned on his elbows to take a look at them. The transformation had now completely turned both of his legs to wood and he could feel that it had spread up to his hips.
He groaned with pain and fell back into the pillows. So that's it, he thought bitterly. This is how everything ends, just the same way it started all those years ago. He once was made of wood and now he was turning back to wood. He couldn't help but laugh at the irony of it. All this was happening because he was not good. Not good enough. He was a failure. He had failed Emma. He had failed his father. He had failed basically every living soul in town. And now he had to pay the price.
He lay there and listened to the persistent tick-tock of the clock, that slowly but steadily extracted every little bit of life that was still left inside him. And while the physical pain nagged on his body and the shame and guilt nagged on his mind, all he could do was wait.
His thoughts went back to his father. Three days. That's all he got with him. Yet those three days were more precious to him than any other day in his entire life, even though the old man didn't remember nor recognize him. Yes, he had traveled the world and seen all sorts of wondrous places. But it was his father's little wood shop that made him feel like home for the first time in 28 years. He just wished he had found the courage to face him earlier. They could have had much more time together, if he hadn't been such a coward.
But that was just one regret on a very long list of regrets. Most of them had to do with Emma. He regretted that he had left her alone in the home when they were kids. He regretted that he hadn't found her earlier. He regretted that he put her in jail. And he regretted that he couldn't make her believe. Not for his own sake, but for hers and everyone else's in town. It pained him that the people in this town would never be truly free. Emma would never be reunited with her parents. All the loving couples and families would never find each other. And his father, the man whose love was big enough to breathe life into a dead piece of wood, would never realize that he once had had a son who loved him with all his heart.
After two hours of lying in bed and starring at the ceiling he just wanted it to be over. He couldn't take the pain and his torturing thoughts anymore. He just couldn't. He tried to distract himself by comparing the pain with something else. Was this what phantom limb pains felt like? Feeling something that was dead and gone? Maybe.
He tried to focus on the beating of his heart. Oddly enough it seemed to have the same rhythm as the ticking of the clock. The difference was that his heart would stop beating soon enough, whereas the clock would keep ticking. Not exactly the right thoughts to calm his frantic mind.
Nothing helped.
Suddenly Emma was there. She was upset about something. Something had happened to Henry. But he also realized that she could see now what was happening with him. So she did believe after all. He was so relieved.
He knew he couldn't help her with her mission anymore. But he could still strengthen her courage and give her faith in her abilities. He knew she could still save Henry and the whole town. It was not too late. And that's what he told her with his dying breath.
And while his mind and body died, something within him came to life again: Hope.