20
Some days she felt like she was battering her head against the brick wall. Some nights she felt she was blessed. Everything in her life – everything about Him – was extreme. There was either despair or ecstasy, and nothing in between. Nothing normal. The man she knew during the day baffled and frustrated her – he was remote, incommunicative, closed like an oyster; if she asked him something, he brushed her away or joked, trying to sound lighthearted. He never really opened to her, never explained her things and she felt that her ultimate wish – to know him – kept eluding her. During the day he behaved as if admitting his devotion to her was a sign of weakness. If anyone saw them together, they would not believe that these two people shared a bed – that passion bound them with quite frightening force. They were almost awkward around each other. He was ceremonious and distant with her when they were dressed; his clothes were like armor against her and his own feelings towards her. She understood that: her lover was fiercely proud, and could not admit how much he depended on her. Yet she was hurt, for she felt she deserved such an admission. She knew how much she means to him, for the man she knew at night was completely opposed to his buttoned-up day version. He was revealed to her to the extreme; he was not simply naked, it seemed that he had no skin and she could touch his raw flesh any moment, and to hurt him terribly as well as give him unrivalled pleasure. No barriers stood between them then – she could ask for anything and have her wish granted instantly. Yet it was no use – at night, all she could think of asking was him: his touch, his kiss, his voice whispering her name. And that he gave her without asking.
She knew him inside out, knew every inch of his body and felt his every mood, and yet she did not know him at all. It was so frustrating. She felt like a girl in some old tale that was abducted by a monster and married to him and then was visited by her husband only at night, in complete darkness, and was sworn to never try and have a look at him. One night, as he slept, she did have a look, and saw a beautiful youth instead of a beast she expected, but then she scorched him with oil from her lamp, accidentally, and he woke up and was gone, and she had to spend a lifetime looking for him, and he only reappeared as she was dying of broken heart. She didn't want such a fate. She didn't think she needed to prove her love – it was apparent. And it hurt her that her lover kept hiding from her.
It frightened her how dependent on him she had become. The image of herself standing on the empty terrain with no one but him to keep her company has become absolute – it seized to be an image and became reality. Back in the old times she had a memory of her family; though distant, they existed, and there was a remote possibility of seeing them again. Here, in this world, he was her only companion – the only human being that she saw or talked to. He seemed to be sheltering her from the world – he kept her locked in the house, not as a prisoner, of course, she never thought that, but closely guarded still. She could understand him and his worries – she was abducted once, she was taken from him, and he spent a long time believing her lost forever, and he was not a man to forget that easily. He was very possessive, and he cared for her – of course he had to make sure no harm befell her. Yet she did wonder sometimes why he couldn't trust her a little more. She was not a child, after all.
What disturbed her even more than his paranoid obsession with her security were her own feelings. She felt she was completely wrapped in him – she thought only of him, she was restless if he were away, she longed for him constantly. In a way, she was almost as paranoid as he. Perhaps the memory of their separation, the time she spent in prison wishing desperately to be reunited with him, left its mark. Every moment he was away, she would panic: what if he never returned? What if they were lost to each other again? How would she live without him – what would she live for? He was her whole world, and not just because she knew no other men. She just felt that this one, her man, was irreplaceable for her. And it was not simply emotional despondency. She realized, with a measure of surprise natural in a girl raised up as a princess in an ancient kingdom, that she was physically… obsessed with him. His closeness, the feel of his skin, his scent, the touch of his lips, the fullness and hunger she felt as he entered her body, the look of his eyes, the sight of his intense face – all that was like a drug to her. She could spend hours just looking at him or gently caressing him. Sometimes, when he slept, she would lay by his side, watching his face, weary and relaxed, marveling at his fine, dry features; she'd run her fingers through his hair, straight and graying now, but just as silky as his 'beastly' mane used to be; she'd look at his body, at his beautiful hands and feet and his brittle spine, and remember that morning in the Dark Castle when she saw him sleeping on the bed naked and became acutely aware of him, physically. She thought him alien and beautiful then, and thought that touching him would be impossible. Yet now, she was not so sure. She felt that, if things worked out differently between them, she'd have loved to run her hand across his gold-speckled skin. It felt wonderful to press her face to his back and embrace him, kissing him between shoulder blades, running her hands across his stomach and towards his groin; it felt wonderful to hear his exited grunt, to feel his fingers entwine with hers as he caught her hand, and to feel his body tensing and hardening under her touch. He was like a drug to her; his reaction to her was a drug more powerful still. Perhaps such was the way of each and every love. She wouldn't know: her love for him was the only love she knew.
It hurt her terribly to wake up alone in their bed – she felt cold and neglected when he'd wake up before her, dress and go on his secret errands, which he did quite often; in this world, his habit of going to bed late and sleeping long into the morning has changed – he was an early riser now. One morning, she woke up alone after a really bad dream – a dream in which his double nature revealed itself in a particularly nasty way, a dream in which he didn't seem to care for her at all. Finding him gone, she felt close to tears – she was frightened, she needed his compassion; she wanted him near her. She felt desolate, and she went looking for him, and found him in his basement spinning and doing magic. His insistence on magic was just one of many things about which he'd keep her in the dark, and that morning, after her nightmare, it was too much. She did not object to magic as such – she was clever enough to understand it was important to him. She just wanted to be told why. Why was spinning and brewing some potion more important then being near her as she woke up? Why was magic more important then she was? She confronted him, got his usual brush-off, and suddenly had it again, this horrible feeling of being unable to reach him. She was angry; he was the meaning of her life, yet he kept being elusive with her. She needed to make a stand – to show him that his attitude hurt her.
She ran away, and life promptly gave her a harsh lesson. It seemed that the second she was out of his sight, she was in danger. She was abducted again, and her own father, whom she just found, threatened to destroy her memory simply out of spite towards her lover – that was a blow that nearly crushed her. She felt awful, as if she were not a living person, but a thing – an object of trade-off between grown-ups. That was when she realized she had to get herself some life of her own. It was self-destructive to depend on someone as much as she depended on Him. What would become of her if they were separated again? What would become of her if he died? She had to become a wholesome being that she had been before he took her away from her father's castle, otherwise she wouldn't survive. She felt awful as she told him he should stay away from her – telling him to leave her alone felt like cutting off her hand or tearing her heart out. Even as she spoke, she wondered if she were destroying her life. Yet she braced herself, and spoke of her feelings, and was pierced by the despair in his eyes.
But, oh wonder of wonders, it helped. He did come around – he changed his ways about her. He did what she always wanted him to do – he spoke to her, frankly. As he stood in the library he opened for her, as he told her his story, as he confessed his feelings and fears she could sense his tension; revealing himself like that was physically painful for him. Yet he did it, for her, and she knew than that he truly loved her. And she realized suddenly: that was where her strength lay. It was in his love. That was something that would give her courage and power to survive if she found herself alone. Whatever happened, he loved her; however difficult it was for him to express himself, he loved her; whenever he would admit it or not, he needed her. That was her reason to live. It was strange to realize that being the love of somebody's life is the reason for your existence. She was raised up in a place and in times when love was an abstract concept rather then reality to be taken into consideration. She was raised to serve her country by being a good wife and a proper queen. She was prepared for a life of duty and never really expected to love and to be loved. Yet that was exactly what has become her duty. She loved a very difficult man, and was loved by him. That was a full-time job, and only she could do it.
And, as she realized all that, her love became her choice. It was not simply conditioned by magical deals and transcendent bonds anymore; she was with him not just because a spell separated her from the rest of the world and she had no one else but him to turn to. Her love was part of herself – a conscious decision as well as emotion. And whatever weird things he did now, whatever unpleasant stories she learned about him, it did not matter anymore – she knew there was nothing irrational in her attachment to him. She stayed with him for herself. She knew that people in town thought her crazy for being with him; they could not understand what 'such a good girl was doing with this bastard'. They thought she was wasting her life, yet she didn't care what they thought. Even he could not fully grasp why she stayed with him – she saw it in his eyes sometimes: the wonderment at her presence, the sadness at her devotion, and the unasked question of the reasons for her dedication. He asked her why she came back, all that time ago, and she couldn't give him a coherent answer. He seemed to be asking it all the time, still – there was often a look in his eyes that said: 'You couldn't be real, and mine. I will lose you eventually'. She was ready to fight that look now. She just would not let him lose her. Her answer would have been simple now. 'I came back because I wanted to', she'd have said.
She was back into his bed very soon after their talk in the library – he was so upset after his confrontation with Regina in the diner that she just had to go with him and comfort him in a way she knew best; she couldn't bear to see how worried for her he was, and how he needed to be reassured of her presence in his life; also, she wanted to come to his bed – she missed him so much. She did not hurry to move back into his house – she wanted a bit of space to let her newly found confidence grow. There was no hurry – she knew there would be time for everything now that she finally was at peace with herself. She felt secure in his arms as he came to comfort her when the pirate attacked her in the library. She felt very strong and proud as she helped him when the scarf he needed to find his son was stolen. She stood by his side as he tested the potion necessary to cross the town border. She felt she was fulfilling her duty, and she knew she was exactly where she was needed. In a way, it was not that different from serving her country, as she was prepared to – only she was serving her heart now, and gloried in it.
As they stood by the border, he outside the line, but still knowing himself and loving her, she inside, reaching towards him with her whole being, the moment was truly magical. Never, never was she surer of herself and of him. Never, never had she loved him more. She felt that nothing was beyond their power now – nothing could ever come between them; they were truly and fully united. She looked into his eyes, and knew she were home.
And then she felt a searing pain, and a wave of unnatural coldness, and her mind went blank; she found herself alone in a vastness filled with nothing, blinded by darkness, frightened and lost, and in her head she screamed like a wounded animal.
Only it was a silent scream, and nobody heard it.
