For just because u said so
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1.
She should have known better than to trust him. That was the main thing, she thought. That she'd made a fool of herself over a pair of grey eyes and a crooked smile and the pervasive, alluring lie that she was different than the others was secondary to that. If she'd never trusted him she wouldn't be here now.
2.
"You thought I cared about you, princess?" He'd felt his chest clench as he'd said the words, as he'd watched her face go from disbelief to fear to the shuttered, cold indifference he'd worked so hard to open.
3.
She fled to the cottage where they'd spent so many afternoons, where they'd pretended time didn't matter, to get away from his words. She had the door shut before she felt the trap close around her. Tricked, she wanted to scream. All lies, all a trick to get her here. She turned and pounded on the wood but she was stuck. Nothing would open. Magic was wrapping her like a child in a blanket and she made it to the bed – to their bed – before she couldn't fight the spells anymore and fell into a sleep like death.
4.
He stood outside the cottage and coaxed the roses to grow. By the time he was done the thicket obscured the building and he let himself cry. "I'll be back," he promised. "When this madness is over, when it's safe for you, I'll be back. Even if you hate me when you wake, hate me and live."
5.
She dreamed. She saw him, roses painted on a leering mask. "I like them, Lestrange," he snapped. "What's it to you?" She saw him kill and hunt and destroy and stand every year weeping at a thicket she didn't know. She saw him never age and knew he'd done something terrible. "It's not ending," he said at that thicket. "I had to do it so I could come and get you. Someday, my briar rose, some day." He buried his pale face in blood soaked hands. "I don't expect you to forgive me. I can't even forgive myself anymore."
6.
He picked them off, one by one. Unfortunate accidents. Debauchery gone wrong. He picked and picked at picked at the circle until it was gone and he picked and picked and picked at the man's soul until it was destroyed and then he killed the monster.
"99 years," he said, looking down at the pale, deformed body as it bled out into the dirt. "How poetic."
7.
It took him a year to face her. He locked himself into a world of his own and repented, a word that sounds innocuous and that meant blood and screaming and pain and when he was done, when he learned exactly how much it hurt to sew your soul back together, he released the charms on the roses and the cottage and sat and waited for her to wake.
8.
"I think," she said, "you're supposed to kiss me to break the spell."
9.
"I didn't want to presume I was your true love anymore," he whispered. "I'm not worth loving anymore."
10.
So she kissed him.
