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His eyes, burning her with desperate tenderness just an instant ago, fading – losing focus. His voice, so consciously level, so studiedly calm, slurring – struggling to come across distinctly, carefully enunciating each word. His skin, paling as blood gushes from his wounded heart, dripping on the pavement, unnoticed.

His face, so peaceful.

His fingers, convulsed at the back of a man he embraces with such infinite gentleness.

His fingers, rigid with pain of which he seems unaware.

His pain that tears her apart, his pain that she feels as sharply as if it was her heart slashed open, her limbs losing strength, her life sipping away quietly with every drop of his blood.

Her worst nightmare, his death, played out in reality before her staring eyes. The impossible. The unthinkable.

Worse. It is much worse.

In darkest dreams, in bleakest fears she never pictured herself frozen, unable to move, unable to scream, unable to cry, unable to help – unable to touch him there, just a yard away from her. Watching his final moments, unable to be near.

His lips, getting slack, struggling to smile.

His fingers, trembling.

His eyelids, dropping.

His face so calm and remote, as if he is falling into sleep, unearthly pale, almost translucent in the light that engulfs him.

This is a face of a man she always saw in him – a face she glimpsed in their brightest moments together. His true self. The man she loves.

She sees him fully, finally. And he dies in front of her.

And she just stands there, watching. Unable to blink, to avert her eyes from the unbearable sight.

Knowing that she wouldn't take her gaze off him even if she could.

His face, fading away into the light.

His face, gone.

All of him gone, and her whole self, her life, her past and her future gone with him. Nothing left, not even a stain of blood on the stones.

The curse lifts; there are horrified gasps around her. She doesn't really hear, she isn't really aware of anything around. She slips quietly down, on her knees, stunned, shaking, liquid with weakness, realizing that only the force of the dark spell kept her standing, kept her from falling down – from falling apart.

Nothing to keep her from that, now.

'He is gone'. Is that really her voice? Sounds so different, drowned in a sob.

Nobody takes notice. They have things to do – save themselves, sacrifice themselves.

No wonder, that – what's there to notice? She is not here. She is gone, too.

She wonders why she isn't dead herself, yet – her heart doesn't seem to be beating.

Well, may be she is dead, and gone into her personal hell – to watch him die in front of her, over and over again, unreachable.

Unable to touch him. Unable to say good-bye.

Eventually someone helps her up – Bae, it seems. Kind of him, to remember her when his family is in peril. He shouldn't have bothered, though. She was perfectly fine there, on the pavement, staring at the space where he disappeared.

Still, people around insist on whisking her away; they drag her along like a dead weight, unresisting, uncaring. In a haze, she follows where they lead. Dumbly, she accepts ministrations from Doctor Hopper, earnestly pleading with her to be strong, trying to support her; secretly glad to be really needed now, it seems, when she is so obviously on the verge of collapse. She listens and even nods, she was brought up to be polite, but inside she wonders at him. Doesn't he see he's talking to a dead girl? Doesn't he realize what happened?

He is gone. She saw him die, slowly and painfully, she saw life leaving him ounce by ounce, she saw his last breath, the last quiver of his lips, she saw light fading in his eyes.

And she just stood there, watching.

Not just losing him – losing him like that, unable to connect, unable to help. Her life is not just finished – it has been proved useless, devoid of any meaning. She was not there for him when he suffered – she was not there for him when he died. What was the point of her life, then – what was the point of her entering his life, challenging his peace, reproaching him, urging him to change, making his life more difficult, his choices harder? She wanted to help him, wanted him to believe the best, wanted him to hope… What good all that brought him?

She wanted to bring him back when he went away – she said she'd see him again.

Well, she saw him again. She saw him die.

Was it easier for him to die with her eyes on him? Did it help him?..

What was the point of her stubborn love, with which she tortured him so? Where is that 'forever' that she promised him? What is their bond doing, clasping her heart in such painful grip, now that there is no heart for it to connect to? True love survives beyond the grave, is that it? Is that the reason she still feels she is bounded to him, and he somehow answers her, calls her over to him? Well, why is she still not in the grave, then?

Oh god, he shall have no grave. She has no body to bury – no body to cry over, no waxen brow to touch, no lips to kiss. This man who sighed her name into her lips this morning as they made love, this man who clasped her hand an hour ago, his hand so warm, his touch so intimate, his secret smile so precious – he's gone.

He's gone, and she loves him so much.

He is gone, yet she still feels he loves her.

She must be insane.

As the people of the town say farewell to their loved ones, as the queen makes her sacrifice, letting go of her beloved son, as the mist of the new curse envelops the town in which she was so miserable and so happy she wonders, dully, why fate was so unrelentingly cruel to him – to both of them. What deal could have a price so steep?

Does it even matter any more?..

As the fog clears, she finds herself in the familiar forest – the land of her youth, the land of her past. She is dressed in her evening gown – the one in which she met him, the one in which she embraced him in the woods and first felt it, this love that came to consume her so, to take her over so completely. Was it really then that she loved him – so late after seeing him for the first time? Didn't she love him the instant she heard his laugh, and looked into his strangely kind eyes as he warned her that her vow to be with him is eternal?

She is dressed as if she hadn't met him yet – as if she never met him at all. And she never would, now; the world into which they came is the same as she remembers apart from one thing – he is not here.

And so this world is empty.

She often pictured her life as a deserted windswept dark plane, him her only companion. The gloomy forest in which she stands now is this plane. And he is not here.

She closes her eyes, to shut out the voices around her, to blink away tears. She wants to be alone, now that she is ultimately alone – she wants to listen to her heart, talking to her of him.

And, as she stands there with her eyes closed, watching the darkness and the emptiness, her heart suddenly gives a jolt, and her eyes are blinded by sudden, forceful spark of light; her love for him, stubborn as ever, refusing to believe it is unrequited now, has been waiting for this moment of quiet to assault her. And the light is so bright, and the pulling at her heart is so strong that she has no choice but to trust them, against all reason and logic. A thought comes to her – not a thought, really, a revelation; if she feels him like that, then it means that his soul is alive, somewhere, calling to her. And if his soul is alive enough to love her, then she'll find a way to bring him back.

Madness, surely. But she was always prone to wild beliefs. She believed she could save him from his curse. She believed they would be together even when he cast her away. She believed they would be together despite everything that ever stood between them. She loved him when she was a sad, conflicted little slut, and believed he could love her. She believed he would come back alive from his quest for death – and he did!..

Is it so hard to believe he could come back from the dead? Not so hard at all.

She opens her eyes and looks at the world with new determination – with a sort of hysterical cheerfulness installed in her. People cast worried glances at her smiling face – all except Bae, who is talking with the Charmings, voicing his own faith that his father could be alive, somehow.

She smiles, quietly. She has an ally, it seems.

She chooses a moment to come up to him and voice her support. He seems to be surprised at her sudden change of heart, gone from despair to hope in five minutes. And, looking in his doubting eyes, she understands that she cannot explain it – not properly. This talk of sudden light behind her closed eyelids – it is going to sound like ravings of the madwoman, who lost her mind to grief and loss. So she has to come up with another, logical reason for her optimism, and she mentions his dagger.

If he were truly, irrevocably gone, the dagger would have been left behind, useless and devoid of all magical power. Yet it is gone with him, they are still connected – so there must be hope.

Not such a bad thought, that. She actually has a point.

Bae nods, convinced by her odd logic, probably just because he wants to believe the impossible – wants it as much as she wants, though for different reasons. So, misunderstood and accompanied by pitying glances they depart from the company of the good ones, as he called them, and start on their journey – on their quest of desperate love.

They make a good team, his son and herself, and they get on well. She feels deep tenderness towards him, this big and burly man with such a sort heart – for her, Bae is still a small boy she imagined when he told her of his lost son; it is as if she inherited some of his parental love and parental illusions.

She looks at the man, often, and wonders at how blood works; he looks nothing like his father, it seems. Yet then comes something – a glance, a flicker of a smile, a wave of a hand – and she sees him in this other man, and her heart is torn open all over. And she tells it to be still – to be patient. To keep faith.

It is a blinding thing, faith, and a terrible thing, hope. They make you oblivious of so many things; they cloud your reason, they make you cut corners.

They make you forget the simplest, basic rule He always repeated; magic has a price. If you engage in magic, you should be prepared to pay. You should at least learn the price. And, when things that are supposed to be incredibly hard to reach suddenly bring themselves to you on the plate, you should ask yourself – what was written in small print on that contract that you signed with fate? That book on the history of the Dark Ones, the book in which the key to his vault was hidden – what does it say? How does it end?

Two children lost in the darkness, they do not stop to ask themselves the price. Two children wandering in the woods, they do not think – they just want to find him, a man of darkness that means all the light to them.

She is blinded, blinded by hope. She is torn, torn with his closeness – the farther they go on their quest, the surer she becomes that she is right, he is there somewhere, she feels him; and he wants her, and he will be with her, soon.

As she stands on the snow-covered clearing in the darkest heart of the dark forest, a place weirdly quiet, as if oppressed by the magical forces abound, she feels no danger – her skin tingles with anticipation.

And when it becomes clear that the evil and cunning enemy led them on their way, it is a cruel awakening, but not the loss of hopes. She knows now that she was right – he is not lost forever. She'd just have to find a way – a right way to bring him back.

But his son is faster, and more determined, and more desperate – he doesn't have her mad conviction, he goes by simple logic and will, as most men do.

And, as he presses the key into the door of the vault, and as forces of magic around them come to life and start moving, their dark shapes almost visible against the snowstorm, a deep and cold dread comes upon her. She was always alert to magic – he believed she does have magic herself – and she knows that magic she witnesses now is not good. It is deeply dark – darker than anything she ever imagined, and she cannot think of the price for that.

She is terrified, frozen on the spot, almost as she was when she watched him die. As in a dream, as in a nightmare she sees the vault open, and a dark liquid shape emerge from of it. And her horror and dread are made even deeper and painful as she watches the shape shift, assuming human form, for she feels him, now – really feels him.

It is him.

He is back.

He opens his eyes, and looks at her with infinite sadness.

And she is struck, pierced through the heart with a sudden glimpse of his face, as she saw it fading into the light – his peaceful, peaceful face. And a simple and terrible thought strikes her… He died in peace. He fulfilled his destiny.

He died in peace, and he didn't want to be brought back.

She did the wrong thing.

She was selfish, and unthinking, and she made a terrible mistake.

Her heart is bleak with sadness. She failed him. She betrayed the man he was when he died, this man she always saw in him, and brought him back as this cursed thing, to suffer and to struggle, yet again.

She hardly registers the horror that happens around her; Bae's demise, his father's desperate attempt to save him, the evil witch with her devious plan, triumphing. When he is ordered to kill her, she is not scared – she is ready, she deserves it; she should have died then, when he walked into the light, died then with him.

But when he tells her to run, she does.

She stumbles through the dark forest, seeing his tortured face in her mind, choking on her sobs. And she feels his call to her, his desperate longing for her, his wish to bring her back; and she feels his conscious effort to severe the bond, to dim its' light – so that she could get away, so that she could be safe and free. And for once, she does not oppose him.

Guilt and darkness have entered her heart, and they make her run through the night, run farther and farther away from the man she loves – from the man whom she wanted to free, but delivered instead into the hands of the torturer.