It was a simple question, really, but it stopped her for a minute. What about love? "Love. Love's a folly, a foolish dream, something that all the fairy tales tell about. It never really happens. People fool themselves into it. 'Surely, this must be love. I feel different than I did yesterday.' I have news for you. You've changed. You spent eleven years becoming a new person, a better person, someone everyone admires. What if I changed, into something worse? What if Sirene influenced me, for good? What if I'm a bad person? I've done things that I never would have had nightmares of before. I did them. Me. Lille. The perfect little nice girl that you said you loved. I'm not naïve and innocent and willing to risk everything for something that I assumed to be love. What if it isn't enough?"

"This is love. You forgot, Lille. I've had that silly feeling of girlfriends before. I've never found anyone else that I didn't grow tired of, want to exchange for some newer model. Look at Mako. He isn't a bad person, but has some sort of past that he alludes to when he can't help it." That was the longest speech he had ever heard from her. From the look on her face, it wouldn't be the last.

"Are you sure?" The dagger glinted. Morning was coming soon, another sunrise. The palest streaks of dawn crossed the sky, transparent streamers spread by celestial dancers shedding night's cloaks.

"I hope so, because this is the strongest I've ever felt. I can't lose you again, Aquiline. I just can't. Just put the dagger down for a moment. I swear on anything you wish, if necessary, that I will not touch it." He didn't move any closer. It was her move, now.

Giving him a suspicious look, one that he never would have imagined on Aquiline, the dagger fell to rest in the sand. The hilt protruded above the beach, winking in the morning light. She watched him for any sudden moves. She couldn't trust anyone with that knife. It was the only way to end the pride-gift's curse.

"Is everything supposed to automatically be fine, just because the fairy tale conditions are satisfied? Life isn't like that, Jesse." Her sharp tone was not influenced only by the knife, shown by only a small lessening in the vehemence of her tone. "Life is a lot harder than happily ever after."

"Stories always do stop there, Aquiline, but life doesn't. I'm not expecting everything to be smooth-stemmed roses, but it can't all be thorns, either. You're ignoring all the roses in the briars. We can work it out. Together. That's a very important part of the ever after that no one seems to know about."

"I can't." She had almost looked persuaded by his level tone. "The merfolk still need me. Until the curse is broken, and daughter of fin and tail is loved by man of flesh and land, there will be no mermen. Merfolk can still live in the oceans, once I break the spell once and for all."

"It's already broken."

"What?"

"Can't you see, Lille? You've been losing that grey look to you, bit by bit. Your eyes aren't quite as clouded. You're breathing like a landlubber, not a dolphin remembering to take in air. Your voice sounds a lot more normal than before. You changed your tail to legs, without anyone's input but your own." Why couldn't she figure it out? She was free of the spell that had taken so many from her family. "You needed someone to love you, after just a year on land. I did, I do, and I will. You are free of any hold she had on you."

"I am?" She thought for a moment, taking in some other level of thought that no one else would wish to experience. The other presence was gone. Sirene was completely out of her mind. There were traces of the sea-witch, but there was no longer a conscious stream of vile and disgusting thoughts.

"I am," she repeated, a firm statement. "She can't control me now." She grabbed the knife from the sand. Its influence was nothing, and she couldn't even hear the softest of malicious whispers from the weapon. She really was free. She dropped the knife carelessly, watching it fall haphazardly to lie on the sand like a dying monster.

"You are." He knew that she had to admit it before it had truly counted. Shock was a powerful factor. However impatient he was to make sure she was completely fine, he had to wait for the facts to settle in.

"You did it! The curse is gone. It's never coming back!" Aquiline beamed, and for a moment looked nothing at all like an animated corpse.

"We did it, Aquiline. Come on. Your feet are a positive mess, you're still too sick to be wandering around in the dead of night, and Candy and Mako are not happy that I came to talk to you alone." Dawn was more pronounced, and he could see the road. That was a much easier route, unlike the cliff path she had chosen.

"I can't come with you." The smile disappeared abruptly, a switch shut off in her mind with a definite click.

"Why?"

"I don't know who I am anymore, Jesse."

"You are Aquiline. You are the most brilliant dancer I've ever seen. You are so saintedly noble that, if you weren't you, I could hate you for it. You make me want to be a better person. You're the only girl I've ever loved. You are the only mermaid I've ever met, but I have no doubt that you're the most beautiful. You're prettier than Sirene ever was, you know." And I was a fool to not realize that fact.

"I have a name. I have a skill shared by all mermaids that comes from pain. All grace and lightness comes from that pain, and teaches easier ways to walk and twirl and dance. Noble? I'm just doing what any mermaid would do. I'm not who I was twelve years ago, when I fell in love with you, or even eleven, when you decided that you loved me." Fogged eyes looked even more distant as she spoke, staring at something beyond him. "I've changed, Jesse, and not for the better. I'm suspicious, I'm cynical, I'm bitter, and nothing at all like someone you called Lille."

"What do you mean? I still love you."

"I need to find myself. I need more than being Aquiline, loved by someone. I have to be more than the famous Dr. Jesse Dalton's fiancée, then wife. I need to find where I fit in, how I fit in, why I fit in, and who I fit in with." That was what she wanted most. She needed a place where she could finally be Aquiline, and finally find exactly who Aquiline was. She was a princess, and loved by a human, and a good dancer, but that wasn't what made her into a good or bad person.

"I don't understand." Was she trying to say something else?

"Yes, you do. You were going to star in a movie, being the byline under "Daredevil" Derek Dalton. You never really wanted to be an actor. You wanted an identity, quick and easy and guaranteed to sit well with the ladies." Her words were harsh, but had been true.

"Then, you decided to be a good person. You went to college. You became a professional marine biologist, and found a world of your own. People respect you for that. I need a real life, not the half-existence of the always-clichéd happily-ever-after. What's next? You saved me from the dreaded curse. Now what happens? No one has ever reached this point in the fairy tale. All the kin of mine died before anything close to this, or killed themselves after too much time with Sirene." No mermaid was made for that existence.

"I need to find something of my own, Jesse," she said, slightly breathless from the speech. "I need to go my own way, to find what makes me different and myself as opposed to someone else."

"Must you?" He had few things to say. Aquiline was making up for a year of silence with enough speeches to cover almost two.

"I have colors to earn, a reputation to make, and a dragon to slay." She saw the smooth road in for the first time in the lightening dawn, seeing the easy way for the first time. She could just walk down that smooth road, back to the comfortable research center. She could forget a few things still possible for her to do. She could, for once, not have to worry about anything but being happy.

"Can't you at least say hello?" She doesn't have to leave now, of all times. She's been gone for eleven years. A few minutes before setting off on her glorious quest will make no difference.

"No. I need to do this. If I do go back, I won't leave until tomorrow. Then, there'll be tests to take, results to wait for, errands to run, lives to lead, and a million other small things. I'll never do this. I'll always be someone's shadow, and never stand as an entity in the darkness. I'll need a light to exist."

"I've waited for you," he argued, tired of being patient and accepting. "I've wasted eleven years of my life hoping that you could come back to me."

"Look at me. I'm half dead, as you have said in so few words. I have to fix wrongs. Do you know what I've done? No, you wouldn't. Mako would understand, but he had time for atonement long ago. Sirene fumed about that, the two years he spent in the Pacific. He fixed problems, and saved more lives than I can count. Candy went with him, but you can't follow me. He stayed above the water. You just don't have the gills, and no technological substitute will do."

"Why are you so bent on leaving me?" he asked, before he could rethink the question. He might not want to hear the answer.

"I'm not. I want to stay here, more than you know. But I have to go. Will you let me?"

"I don't see how I can stop you," he snapped. She wouldn't listen to a thing he said. He already knew that reason, threats, and bribes would be no good. She looked to be at least as stubborn as him.

"Do you love me, Jesse?" she asked. Her voice was almost sweet again, and the tone was a replica a girl of sweet seventeen asking the question for the first time.

"Yes." No matter how infuriating her insistence on leaving was, he could give no other answer. He did love her, and knew that nothing would stop that. Love is not an emotion the heart forgets, especially when the brain remains paralyzed about the impossibility of the match. He never had believed in ghosts or mermaids or mythical beings, until he watched Lille grow a tail before his eyes.

"Let me go."

"I've never been able to keep you." She had escaped him last time, sprouting scales from her dress even as he watched in shock.

Aquiline smiled, and the expression somehow full of equal regret and hope. "I'll be back. I saved you once, now you've saved me. The third time will give us our shot at happily ever after." She would be back for him, come Sirene or high water. If she didn't return, she was six feet below the silt on the floor of the ocean.

"Third time's the charm, they do say."

"I'll be back, I swear it. I'll find you, wherever you may be." She brushed a chilled hand across his neck, wishing for what must have been the millionth time that he had gills. He could come with her, if he did.

He had too many questions. He couldn't pick one to ask, as all seemed equally pressing. Where was she going? What signs should he watch for? When could he expect her? What was she doing? How could he know if she was succeeding? Was she sure that she couldn't use any help?

She was gone before he could ask any of them. She took the dagger, and danced across the remaining beach. Her legs sprouted into a tail, a sight he was sure that he never would grow used to, and she dove in. He thought that he saw a head bob above the water, and an arm gesture in what was unmistakably blowing a kiss. He may have imagined it. Under the circumstances, it was more than likely. He kept the image as a memory, regardless of its questionable status of fact or fiction. He would need some memory to keep alive. She would come back, after all. She had before, and perhaps the third time she wouldn't leave.