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Darkness beckoned him.

Even as he kissed her on the steps of his shop, saying a brief good-bye for the part of the day – she had to see her father, he had business to attend to; even as he watched her retreating back, held straight as becomes a princess; even as she suddenly turned to look at him, her eyes unexpectedly sad and searching, and their light grazed him like blue fire; even as his heart lurched forward, urging him to stop her, to hold her to him, to tell her everything… Even then he felt the shadow looming behind his back, reaching to touch his shoulder, masquerading as strands of cold fog enveloping the town. He felt its' breath on his neck, chilling the warmth of her kiss; heard its' whisper, unintelligible but malicious, replacing the memory of her loving words.

He shakes his head, to disperse the spell, and closes his ears. He has no time for all these whispers, for all these shadows. They would have no power over him – he would not let them. He has other plans, other things to do.

He has a life to build – a life to build on the ruins of the life he had before. But there is one thing he must do before he commences this new life; a thing he dreads and longs for.

He has to say farewell: to the man he used to be, to the life he had.

He has to say farewell to his son.

Slowly, very slowly he walks the town, each step leaden, feeling his way almost blindly, finding the cemetery not with his eyes, but with his inner vision – following the call of blood.

There it is. His tombstone, similar to others, standing on green lawn, shaded by old trees.

Lovely spot.

There he is – dead in his arms, buried without him. Buried under the name he has chosen for himself, not under the name his father called him.

There he is, deep beneath the ground. Dead.

Bae.

His son.

The meaning of his life – that life he had before.

Words written on the stone make his heart constrict. 'Beloved son'. She must have told them to write that – she's the only one who understands.

Beloved son. That's what he was, more than anything else. Not much of a lover. Not much of a father. But a son – always. Loved, and loving.

Beloved son.

He stands in front of the stone for a long time, his eyes closed, his hands clasped. Stands there living through his memories – brining up each and every instant of his son's life, even most painful ones. The second he held him in his arms, and his heart melted as the babe touched his face with tiny fingers. His endless crying. His first illness, and his own blind panic as he held his hand to hot, feverish skin of his suffering boy. His rare smiles – he was a quiet child. His fingers clasping his hand as they walked through their village, a cripple with a cane and his shy little boy. His laughter as he played with the dogs that minded the sheep. His concentration as he attempted to master spinning – he was hopeless at that. His pained look as his mother failed to come home, again and again. His tears, loud and desperate, when she failed to come home at all. His eyes, growing old and wise, overnight. His silent support. His attempts to act grown up. The fear in his eyes when he saw him holding the dagger – saw him changing, turning into something alien and evil. The sadness, the growing sadness in his eyes as he watched his father disappearing; as he watched him forgetting his purpose, his heart, his real self; horror in his eyes as he watched him enjoying his dark power – accepting his transformation. Hope in his eyes – strong, everlasting hope; belief in him; love for him. His warm hand, as they shook on their deal.

His scream as he fell into the green pit of the portal; abandoned. Betrayed. Changed forever, just as he was changed by what his father did to him. But stronger – so much stronger. Growing into a man still able to love – into a man able to forgive. Into a man stubborn and willful – that must be in their blood… Into a man passionate and just.

Growing into a man who forgave his father, and clasped his dying hand, and saved him. Growing into a man willing to sacrifice himself for love. Forcing his father to accept that – forcing him with the power of his forgiveness; with the power of his love.

Cruel, cruel child.

A grown man, dead in his arms.

His boy, his beautiful boy, his loving and lost and missed boy.

A child that lost his parent is an orphan. Why is there no word for a parent who lost a child? Perhaps because it is such an abhorrent, unnatural thing that it could not be given a name.

Tears run down his cheeks, unchecked, as he looks back at his life and realizes that, however much he tried, he could not change its' course – its' outcome. He cheated fate, he tricked it to be able to see his son grow and live. But on every turn of the road fate still demanded a sacrifice from one or both of them.

If he went and died on that first war, his son would have been fatherless – left to the care of a woman who was not capable of caring for anyone but herself.

If he did not become the Dark One, his son would have died on his own war.

If he did not kill his mother, she would have come with her lover and took his son away.

If he did not fall into the pit of light his father would have been gone, slowly taken over by darkness. His loss was the only thing that made him remain human – his loss, and his wish to redeem himself. For the sake of his boy he left his heart alive – for the sake of his boy he still believed in love and hope. For the love of his boy there was still something human in him when She entered his life; and then the real torture began.

Standing there in front of his son's grave he gives words to the thought that is alone enough to destroy him: he could never have had both of them. From that moment, that very first moment when he nearly lost his power to her love he knew – it was either Belle, or Bae.

Fate told him to make a choice, then – an impossible choice.

Abandoning his son was unthinkable.

Letting go of her love was unbearable.

He should have known he couldn't change that deal. Yet still he tried. Fooling himself, deluding himself it would work. Hoping against hope. Fighting for the lost cause.

When he tricked fate and survived the pirate's attack he did it to be with her; he wanted to be with her at any cost, and alienated his son.

If he died then, he would have died forgiven.

But if he died then, he would not have been able to help his family. His father would have destroyed them.

If he died then, he wouldn't be able to die for them later.

They should have left him dead. He was much better off dead. But they loved him too much – his son and his bride loved him too much to let him rest in peace.

His eyes are closed, but he sees it again – that night on the clearing in the dark forest, that night when darkness lured them to resurrect him. He remembers the pain of his rebirth, as sacrificial blood called to him to come back to life. He remembers his awe and terror.

He remembers opening his eyes, and looking at her stricken face, and speaking her name with sadness and horror, thinking: 'Not her! Don't let it be her who gave her life for me!'

Noticing his son's body on the ground in an instant and feeling his newly born heart stop.

He had made his choice then. With the first thought he had – the thought of her; with the first word he uttered – her name – he made his choice.

His impossible choice.

He broke the covenant – the sacred covenant between a child and his parent; simple, as all ancient magic, and all-powerful: a child always comes first.

He has no one to blame but himself. This girl, this mad girl he killed – she was but an instrument of fate; darkness tricked her, darkness deluded her just as it deludes everyone else.

Yet still she had to die.

His son's soul was promised to darkness when he gave his life for his father. Darkness did not get it – it cannot gain power over the soul given away for the sake of love. But it still demanded a soul, and he gave it a soul – a wicked, dark soul. She wanted to raise the Dark One – she was the one who should have paid for that, by giving her life to animate his body, and her soul to darkness to ensure his power.

And now she paid that price.

He killed her, and sent her soul where it belongs, and to do that he stained his love with evasions and lies. Yet he had to do it. Not for himself, whatever he told himself. Not even for Belle. Certainly not just for revenge.

He did it so that darkness could have no possible claim on his boy.

He is dead. Let him rest in peace, as he could not.

He is dead, and his soul is safe.

And with that his life, the life he had before, is over.

He was a father, more than anything else.

And now he is a father no more.

He failed – he failed in this life that he had before. He made a wrong choice.

He chose to be a man who loves a woman who had now agreed to become his wife.

This is his new life, and he would give all that he has not to fail it as he failed his old one. He has to be good and true for her, as he failed to be for his son. He has to put her before everything else in the world. He has to live for her, with his every breath and heartbeat. He should give her everything she ever wanted; atone his every guilt; keep her safe from harm.

She is the only person he has left in the world, the only soul he loves, the only body he craves, and his love for her is the meaning of his existence now.

This is his new covenant.

Darkness, loitering in the fog behind his shoulder, takes a shade back.

He loves her.

That is all there is to him, now.

He opens his eyes, and runs his palms across his wet cheeks. He walks away from his son's grave, not looking back, yet hearing his voice, that voice that used to live inside his head…

'Let go. I need you to'.

Never, Bae. Never.

But you can rest in peace. Papa will not bother you anymore.

The rest of the day goes on in a kind of haze – he cannot concentrate on anything properly. So many things happened so fast, so much changed, and he must be getting old – he is losing his touch, he makes silly mistakes, he slips all the time; they nearly caught him with their security tapes, how could he have been so careless? Yes, he must be getting old. Or did his imprisonment damage him more than he realizes?..

She gave him such a sad look when he put a spell on the tape – she must have felt something; she always does. But then she clasped his hand, and gave it a reassuring squeeze, and he told himself: 'She'd understand'.

She really, really would.

He should have taken the dagger back when she brought it to him, when she questioned him about it with such baffled sincerity. But he slipped again – he actually let it out that this dagger is not as important as she thinks. Yet it is, in a way. He gave it to her with words of love and, even if the blade itself is no token of power, it is a token of the promise he gave her.

'I am, now and forever, yours'.

Magic happened when he said those words, and this is the magic that lingers on the dagger – her dagger – now.

So let her keep it, or hide it, or lose it – let her do whatever she wants with it. If anyone else takes it now, it would be dead in their hands – this dagger gives power over him only to her.

He spends a long time preparing the wedding; choosing the flowers and the place, charming her a dress, decorating his house with flowers – she'd like that, she loved it when he gave her a rose, and, though she never knew that he killed her fiancé to give her this little present, if she knew, she'd have appreciated that roses he picked for her today are real; no magic about them, he just collected the whole stock of roses her father had, and told him, grudgingly, that his debt is forgotten. He still owed him, after all.

He comes back into his house for the first time in a year – for the first time since that enchanted night they spent here when he returned from the island; for the first time since that day when he had to leave her again forever, as he thought then. Even though full of his things, the place looks empty, unlived in; of course, she didn't spend much time here, she mostly remained in the shop. His steps echo in twilit rooms; the blinds are closed. He walks up the stairs into his bedroom. It feels strange to walk up without his limp – without his cane; the last time they went up here with Belle, kissing, and he had no mind to notice this strangeness. He opens the door, and looks at the room where he spent so many lonely nights during the curse. The place looks bleak; it needs to be refreshed – the whole house needs to be refreshed, it looks like a tomb, it is unfit for his young bride. He closes his eyes, forming a mental picture of what it all should look like to please her. When he opens them, everything's done.

There are many perks to being the Dark One.

Choosing a suit for himself he feels absurdly nervous and a little silly: just how awkward is all that, dressing up for a wedding, being a man of his age – being him. Fingering his silk tie he has a momentary vision of his hand, as it used to be when she met him and first loved him – his green leathery clawed paw, and of how she touched it tenderly.

How could she love him? What did she see in him, then, to look at him with awe and wonder – to smile at him – to cry at being rejected by him? What did she see in him when he saw nothing in himself – when he was nothing but a malicious creature glorying in his cursedness – fully enjoying his damnation – his power, his allure, his wit, and the awe in which he held the world? Yes, that was the worst about him, then: he was mad, cruel, evil and ruthless, he played people, he pulled strings and he giggled and danced and clicked his claws, and he loved every minute of it.

It took her clear vision and her courage to look at him with compassion and tell him he's ugly. It took the openness of her heart to remind him that he used to be different. It took the force of her love to remind him of his loss.

Her love made him remember his purpose – his quest for the son he betrayed. She woke him up from his delirious self-enjoyment, and gave him strength to be human again. Her love, which it was so unbearable to give up, made him remember his duty; when the choice was placed before him then, he chose cruelly, he hurt himself and her, but he chose as a father should have chosen. The man he was when he strolled into her father's castle and snatched her away would not have had the strength to choose wisely. The man he became after months of loving her was capable of sacrifice for the right cause.

Ah, the irony of that: he needed to love her to become a man who could give her up.

He walks up to the mirror to adjust his tie, and looks at his drawn, brooding face.

What happened to that man? How did he become a coward again – how did he become a cheep cheat who lies to her and holds things back from her? He lost too much, he suffered too much, but is that, really, a good excuse?

'I know you are a changed man', she told him today when he blatantly lied to her about the dagger. She meant 'changed for better'; yet he knows differently. He is a changed man, indeed. He definitely is not the man he used to be. But who is he, now?

He stares into his own dark, uncertain eyes, and darkness stares back at him.

He closes his eyes with a sigh and in the darkness of his mind he sees her face – her smiling eyes, her magical eyes, deep and light and knowing.

She knows him so much better then he knows himself.

She'll tell him who he is, and what she'd tell him would be the truth.

He opens his eyes, and they are his own again. Sad, and old, and tired. But human.

They have one more thing to do before the wedding – they have to attend the ceremony of the naming of the prince. He feels like ditching it – he is deeply uneasy about the whole thing. He'd face the people in town for the first time since he was forced to threaten them on the main street, and they'd fear him and pity him, and both would be unbearable.

Snow White is holding her infant and, as he enters, she gives him a soppy look, and he feels his heart go heavy. He knows what they'll do.

He knows the name of their prince.

When one of the dwarfs comes up to him, intending to say something, he feels like hissing and, seeing his look, poor fellow makes himself scarce.

They pronounce a name, and he feels those tiny fingers touching his face, again, and feels his heart stop, again.

God bless them, and damn them, those heroes.

They mean well – they are trying to make his boy's memory live on. But by doing this, by making his son one of them, they are taking him away from him with absolute finality.

Darkness is locked out of the café, pressing itself to the window, looking for a way in.

But she is holding his hand, and he feels her warmth by his side, and he tells his heart to beat again.

She is here, and she will soon become his wife.

All will be well.

They part at the doors of the café: she goes to her father to put on her dress; he goes back to the house, to check everything for the last time and to dress, too.

When everything is done to his satisfaction, he checks himself in the mirror.

He looks absurd, though impeccably dressed.

He gets a brief and grotesque vision of what his wedding to her would have looked like, if he married her then – if things were easy and perfect then, and he would have wed her in the Dark Castle. It would have been a grand affair, as befitted his style. She would have looked lovely in a dress of pale gold; he would have made her one just like the dress in which he first saw her – it was so lovely. He would have looked… just as weird as he looks now; wrong for her, in so many ways. What has he done to her, so many years ago, coming into her life and filling it with pain and loss? Why did he have to bind her to him, and drag her down with him? Love is the most powerful magic in the world, and it comes with the steepest price. She loves him, and she is paying the price that should have been paid by him – paying it with him…

All because she loves him.

Love is the most powerful magic in the world, and comes with the steepest price. And, unlike any other magic, it cannot be controlled or refused or forewarned of.

We do not choose whom we love. We just love, and we pay – with our whole lives.

That deal is struck.

He stands on the forest clearing chosen for the ceremony in a company of the magical cricket, called to witness their vows. A magical being able to spot a lie in every heart… Was that a wise choice of a witness, he wonders?

'His heart is true'. That's what Belle said about him, once.

She knows better.

The forest around him is dark – so very, very dark, despite all the candlelight.

It breathes, and whispers, and beckons to him.

He closes his ears, he closes his mind.

It will not claim him. He would not let it.

She knows him better than he knows himself.

And then she comes and, as he sees her slight figure, dressed in white, approaching through the darkness, she looks literally as a ray of light. She steps carefully on her high heels, obviously nervous, hands slightly shaking – she is so fragile, his bride, she is like a china doll. Awkward, like a child; trusting, giving her life over to him; innocent, as a flower pressed to his face; hopeful, as if seeing the light; gentle, like a lover; powerful, casting a spell on him by her very presence.

And his heart goes out to her, and his eyes water, as he looks at her – hurt by her brightness, grateful for her existence.

She tells him she lost him and found him, and the cricket beams at her: it is the truth.

She knows better. She knows everything there is to know.

He tells her she changed him, and the cricket nods contentedly: it is the truth.

A changed man, indeed.

'I will never forget the distance between what I was and what I am', he tells her, and realizes that, however hard is the journey, however uncertain its' outcome, it is a journey for the better.

'How you could see the man behind the monster I will never know', he tells her, and hears their voices, from such a long time ago: 'You have to go, because I am still a monster' – 'And this is exactly the reason I have to stay'.

She told him that she loves him the way he is then… Whom does she love now? Whom has she found?

'But that monster is gone', she says, and the cricket nods, again. It is the truth.

How can it be the truth?

'The man behind him is flawed, but we all are. And I love you for it', she says.

A man. A flawed man whom she knows and loves – loves him because he's imperfect.

That's who he is.

She looks up at him with tears brimming in her eyes; all her pain, all her losses are in her eyes as she looks up at him – just as she looked at him in his castle when she first reached to kiss him – wanting to save him.

He kisses her with a sob and, as their lips meet, magic happens around them; a ripple of light charges through the forest, enveloping them, and darkness retreats a step farther.

He is hers now. He belongs to her.

'Now, and forever, yours'.

They walk up to the house holding hands, two babes in the woods, even though he is old, and she is full of promise. At the doors of the house he picks her up into his arms – something he couldn't do while he was a cripple, something he'd definitely do if they were in enchanted land. And, as she gasps and smiles at all the roses filling the house, all he can think of is that moment in the past when she fell into his arms and he was transfixed by her closeness – torn with desire, overcome with the miracle of holding her to him, feeling her skin, sensing her scent.

He knew her and loved her many times – not as many as he would have chosen, for fate was cruel to them, but he knew her and loved her; she had been his. But today everything feels differently – today everything has, somehow, come back to the innocent longing of their first touch, their first smile; his want for her wakes up as it woke up then, when he watched her around the castle, unable to take his eyes of her, noticing her bare arms, the curves of her body, her fluttering eyelashes and the way she bit her lip, and longed to touch her and taste her, and castigated himself for daring to entertain such dreams, and succumbed to them.

He knew his hands would tremble, as he'd take off her dress; they tremble now. He knew his breath would catch, as he'd see her breasts, luminously white, nipples dark and small like rosebuds; it catches now. He knew his heart would beat madly as he'd run his palms down her legs; it beats madly now – and calms, suddenly peaceful, as he kneels before her and kisses her feet. And his heart accelerates again as he removes her underwear and looks at her, legs spread for him, breasts heaving, eyes mellow – hands reaching towards him, palms coming to rest on his shoulders as he bends to touch her lower lips, kissing them as he would kiss her mouth, making her tremble, making her grip his shoulders harder. Tender and gentle, her body is tender and gentle just as her heart is; and just as generous, and given to him.

Kissing her on the mouth, deeply, breathing in her breath.

His.

Stroking her flesh, gently, feeling her inner trembling.

His.

Entering her, slowly, cherishing each instant, feeling her tighten around him.

His.

Feeling her move with him, urging him deeper. Hearing her shallow breathing. Kissing her lips. Touching her breast, stroking her nipple with his fingertips. Feeling her shudder. Hearing her low moan. Moaning with her.

Claiming her, and claimed by her.

His. She is his, and he is hers.

Now and forever, yours.

The new covenant, sealed.

His existence, given a meaning.

His new life, commenced.

Holding her to him, wrapping her in his arms as she cries; stroking her hair and her back, whispering gentle rubbish; kissing her tears.

Drifting into sleep by her warm side, tired, spent, knowing he can rest in peace now.

He can sleep now, he can close his eyes.

She is his.

The night behind their windows is dark; it seems to be looking in through the glass. But it cannot enter – the room is dark, but it is brightly lit at the same time; lit with her presence, with all his flowers. With his peace.

He can sleep now, he can close his eyes.

He is hers.

He is safe in her arms.

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