29
He is failing his task.
Perhaps he has overestimated himself: his resolve, his willingness to do the right thing, his magical power and ability to fight his father's mind-games, and simply his physical strength. He is exhausted, out of breath, he is losing concentration all the time; sometimes his mind seems to go blank, as if switched off, he is not thinking, he is just reacting to sounds and tricks of light around him. Sometimes he is barely able to move, as if physically oppressed by the heavy, damp and hot darkness that rules the island. His mind and body must be reacting to the strain and speediness of recent events: after centuries of waiting for things to happen, he was assaulted by so many things at once. The breaking of the curse, Belle's return, the consummation of their love, her memory loss, his traveling to New York, finding his son, being attacked, being close to death, finding Belle again, in her dark incarnation, the mad abandonment of their time together, losing his son again, and losing Belle again – forever this time; losing her along with his life. So many things, and they happened so fast – in a matter of weeks, really. He was dying in the back room of his shop just several days ago – and here he is, destined to die, again.
He is an old man. He is not up to such quick changes; the adrenalin rush can only take you so far, and when it ebbs away, you are left failing to perform – weaker then you were before. That must be what is happening to him.
So many excuses, so many clever words to mask just one truth: he overestimated his readiness to die.
He is not ready. He still clings to so many things: his wish to redeem and explain himself; his need to say the right words to the right people; unfinished conversations, unsaid truths, things left undone; love unfulfilled. He did not bury his son and, despite the pain the very thought of him brings, he cannot think of him as if he were dead. Not yet. Perhaps he is in denial, but he does not feel that his boy is gone – he seems to be still here, in the same world.
He is certain that if Bae were indeed dead, he would know it in his bones; even if he'd leave all parental wistful thinking aside, that's how blood magic works. If his son were dead, he would feel dead himself. Yet he is not dead yet, and not ready.
He never told the boy everything he must tell him. How can he die without telling him?..
He never told Belle how much he loves her.
He never reconciled himself with himself, and now he, as he knows himself, must disappear – must seize to be, gone without a trace, without knowing his own heart and sharing it with others.
Ah, but it is not true. There is a person in the world who knows his true self, much better then he ever did or has a chance of knowing. She knows him the way he really is – she knows what's in his heart.
That is why, while he blindly stumbles across the island looking for answers that could only be found inside his soul, She comes to him, trying to guide him – trying to help him to face his end. And he knows, being the greatest wizard in all the lands and knowing every kind of magic worth knowing, that it is not really her – it is just the darkness, which had found a way to invade his mind, manifesting itself in the loveliest form he can imagine. It is not Her – it's his father and his deadly childish pranks; his cruel joy in finding the only thing that really matters to a man's soul, and abusing it.
Yes, being the greatest dark wizard ever he knows darkness even as he looks into her beguilingly gentle eyes, even as she speaks to him in her lovely voice, lulling him into deadly slumber. Yet, being a mere human, crushed by his loss and loneliness, he does not resist the darkness. He does not banish it from his presence – he even welcomes it.
He needs to see her face, even if it is just a trick of light. He needs to hear her voice, even if it is just a whisper of the wind. He needs to feel her warm touch on his cheek, even if he knows her hand would stab him as soon as caress him.
He needs it, this brief illusion, this momentary blindness, this spark of bitter joy that possesses him every time the doppelganger appears by his side, and he sees her gentle face. This second of self-delusion, this self-cheating silent cry – 'It is her!' – he needs them to go on.
He wants to be with her when he dies – it is as simple as that; always has been, always will be. And such is his need that he doesn't care that it is not really her. An illusion will do. So what if his path to death is made easier by an illusion? His death itself will be real enough.
His father thinks he duped him, that his attention is slipping. It is not so. His father, thinking himself the wisest of men, just because he knows what people dream about and rules their imagination, his father, with all his centuries of life and experience, is just a silly boy, really. He never grew up, even when he was an old man; and, trading his son for eternal youth, he cheated himself out of the chance to grow and learn. His are the cleverness and experience of evil; the wisdom and understanding of kindness are unknown to him. He knows no love and no loss; he knows no forgiveness and compassion; so, try as he might, he could never, never show him a truly convincing image of his beloved, a girl whose whole being is love, loss, and compassion.
Belle would never tell him things his father's dark messenger tells him. The need to be strong, the need to be good, the need to do the right thing – yes, that is what she'd say, all right. But one thing is wrong, and it sets everything off.
Belle, real Belle, would never tell him he must die. She just wouldn't have the heart. Even if she knew it was the right – the only thing to do, she'd never bring herself to say the words. In her naivety, in her stubborn optimism she'd urge him to look for other answers, to never give up hope, to believe that fate could be changed. That's what she would do, for she cannot believe that future can be hopeless or unchangeable – never could, never will.
It is all right for his father's puppet to say the words urging him towards death, though – they need to be said; he knows he has to die, no matter what his love hopes for, and hearing that from her lips helps, somehow.
His father wants to distract him with her image – wants to lure him away from the island yet, in his clumsy and childishly rush way, inadvertently helps him to strengthen his resolve. The irony of that!.. Every time the illusionary Belle comes, he is a step closer to saying farewell to the real one; he is an inch closer to letting go of all his hopes – really, really letting go of them.
It is just that he is not ready yet. Not quite.
He seems to be in control – he thinks he is in control, despite his weakness and lapses of reason. He is aware of himself, of things around him; he is alert to magic around him, though its' nature is alien to him; reckless freedom of his father's willful self that rules the island is opposed to the structured self-control that is necessary to be him – the Dark One, whose power is dependent on control; hence the dagger, the ultimate tool of control. That is why he removes his shadow (God, who would have thought is will be so painful? But then, didn't they say that man's shadow is a reflection of his soul? Well, it is no wonder it is painful to remove it, then), and sends it away with his dagger. His father and his wild will must never get hold of it – unspeakable pain and horror would ensue.
He is also aware that his companions are not making any progress. No wonder, that: they can't. Their efforts are futile; Emma's magic, even if she develops it, will not help. It is useful for minor technical tasks, and he admires her progress as he senses it. Yet nothing, no amount of light magic, can help defeat Pan, simply because his magic is not dark or light – it is a thing wrapped it itself, completely unique, a product of his unruly mind and selfish heart. You've got to destroy the man to stop the magic.
Sounds simple enough, if the man you mean is not your own father; for, despite all that he knows about Pan, all that he learned about him in past centuries, all the hurt induced by him, he is still his own flesh and blood. And he still loves him, and remembers how he worshipped him, and the laughs they had, and the good times. And he still thinks, foolishly, that something could be changed between them. After all, he is a father himself, and has – had… – a son.
Did not Bae give him the benefit of the doubt when they met? Did not he try to save him? Did not he go with him – and the rest of the family – to know him better, to give him a chance to redeem himself? Wasn't he hurt when he believed that his father did not change? Would he like it if his son, upon seeing him after many years, instantly stabbed him through the heart instead of at least trying to talk?
Doesn't he owe it to his father to try and talk to him before killing them both, leaving things unresolved for all eternity?
He is not ready to do that. Not yet. Not all his hopes are lost, yet.
But they will be, eventually, he feels them slipping farther and farther away from him with every second he spends in this realm of darkness, so he has to prepare himself. There are certain things to be done – rituals to be performed. Dead of the Dark One is a major magical event, always. None of these deaths were self-inflicted, yet. The force possessed by the Dark Ones was always transferred from human to human; it never went free. If the Dark One will kill himself, there will be no body to host this power. It will be unleashed into the world, great and dangerous, uncontrolled by and uncontained in human body. This power needs to be structured. It needs to be shown a way to return to the place of darkness from where it first emerged. And there is a method to achieve that: the body of the Dark One must become a map for the forces within. He knows how it is done – he studied all the books on the subject once he became the vessel of this power. He did it out of curiosity and general discipline of his mind: he had no intention to kill himself, then; he had no intention to die, ever; but he studied the ways and the means.
He knows he has to create a potion – a simplistic, tribal one, ancient as the emergence of the Dark One itself, and powerful in a primeval way of all old magic, – that would turn his body into a totem of his power, his face into a mask of darkness inside.
He prepares it with great care, knowing that on his father's island every plant could look deceivingly different, and soil itself might contain something vicious; when the potion is ready, he paints his face with it, feeling instant connection with the tribal magus that first brewed the concoction.
He feels the paint seep through his skin, changing his blood, giving it new structure.
He feels at once revived and detached from himself.
He is almost ready – almost done.
And that is when his fate, ever alert in its' wish to laugh at him, strikes, bringing him back Bae, alive and unhurt, and bringing all his hopes and will to live back.
His boy needs him; he talks to him. They plan and fight together, and it feels like a chance to relive all the games that they had in such long-gone past, and like a chance to get to know him as a grown man, to get accustomed to him, so changed and yet still the same, to realize, deep inside, that this strong man, battered by life and still possessing such vigor, is his beautiful boy – the same babe he held in his arms, the same boy he brought up alone, the same teenager he couldn't connect with.
And it does not matter that his son is angry with him and doesn't trust him fully – how could he, all of a sudden? It does not matter that his son's judgment is so easily influenced by Pan; after all, the crime his father accuses him of was his intention a while ago. When his son leaves him behind, magically paralyzed, tricks him to make him stay away from his family, it hurts as hell – it hurts like a stab in the back. But still it is an action of a man alive and therefore prone to error. Still it is something that could be discussed and amended, between father and son. There is a present and a future in this small betrayal. It is a connection. It is a mistake that could be rectified by life…
If someone has a life to correct mistakes. If someone has a future to look forward to.
And he doesn't.
He stands there, in the middle of the musty jungle, slowly waiting for the spell with which his son stranded him to pass, and feels tears slowly making their way down his immobile face. He is crushed now, his heart is in pieces, his grief so strong that, if he had a voice, he would howl. His loss was not enough to destroy him; his separation with his love was not enough to destroy him. His son's betrayal was not enough; it was nothing, really. It was the renewal of hopes, the intense desire to live, the clear sense of the future to come, that crushed him; for he has no right to hopes, no chance to live, and he has no future. All the light, all the chances of redemption, of being with his loved ones are not for him. They were shown to him, they are here, in his grasp – but that means nothing. For all the good things to happen, for all happy endings to come true, he still has to die.
That is when his heart truly despairs.
And that is when darkness, which lay in waiting, watching his struggles, springs at him.
Belle comes to him; his bewitchingly gentle messenger of doom comes to him, but she now changes her tone. She used to speak to him of death, trying to weaken his resolve with words he needed to hear, but didn't want to.
She now tells him things he wants to hear – tells him of things he wants more then anything else in the world. Life. Love. Future with his family. Light. Peace.
'Leave this place. Come back to me. You don't have to die – there must be another way', she says, and she reaches to caress his face.
These are words that Belle, real Belle, would say. These are things she would wish.
'Take my hand, and all will be well', she says. And it is so tempting. It sounds so right.
He knows it is still not her, doesn't he? He knows, in his mind, that it is still the darkness speaking. Yet mind is powerless when heart speaks; and right now darkness speaks from his heart, which it penetrated as he allowed himself to hope, and to despair.
Darkness glows from within, as love would. It wants to console him, as love would.
Darkness replaced love, and it is not cold and dangerous anymore. It is warm and welcoming, like the putrid air of the jungle, and he is gone. Defeated.
His father had won.
But there are different kinds of love in the world, and love that saves him is… unexpected. It is a bitter, complicated, passionate and undeclared love of a girl whom he brought up – a girl that always loved him as a father of sorts, though she'd never voice it – she'd rather die then admit it. Regina, his pupil, his creation, his adopted daughter, comes in to snap his reverie – to bring him back to his senses, she chases away his tormenting illusion, and leaves him chastened and slightly disoriented, but grateful nevertheless.
Hers is a different faith, a different brand of optimism to the one Belle possesses; Regina never hopes blindly, she believes in action. And, crushed and weary as he is by his lonely desperate musings, he lets himself be talked into action. Even though she just saved him from a deeply embarrassing situation, he still feels her respect – she still treats him as her teacher, looks up to him for solutions and help. And, gradually, he starts feeling like his old self. The trickster. The king of loopholes. The man smart enough to achieve his goals, yet save his skin.
He does know that it is wrong to feel like that, doesn't he? He does know that, despite all tricks, there is no way to beat fate in this particular issue? Magic simply doesn't work like that; for every short-cut there is a price. There is a price for Pan's destruction, and no amount of wiggling around would reduce it. Yet such is the power of hope renewed that he tells himself there is a way to change his destiny. Such is the power of love that he is ready to risk everything for a chance to fulfill it.
As he prepares his coded message to Belle, to be sent with a mermaid, he is smiling in a silly, absurdly relieved way. He is talking to her, and he seems to see her face as he phrases the instructions; he sees her shining eyes, her wonderment, he hears the happy gasp she utters as she sees his smile. She will do what he needs, and they will succeed; she will see him again, and he will see her.
There is hope.
He sends the mermaid away with a message of love. 'Tell Belle that I love her, and that I am coming back', he says.
He will say those words into his darling girl's smiling lips, soon.
The splash of a tail in the dark water, the whisper of the wind.
It is such a mild, sweet night. The air on the island seems to be purer now, when he is done despairing.
He breaths deeply, catches Regina's quizzical look at him, and smiles almost shyly.
His heart is full of love – he can feel the light.
But where there's light, there's shadow. And deep there, in his heart, this shadow lurks: darkness, which found its' way inside and has no intention of leaving, is biding its' time, smiling like a mischievous boy.
