50

How maddening it was to realize that, for once in his life, everything he wanted or needed was within his grasp, and could be reached without magic - yet his own body, humanly frail and magically dangerous, hindered him and forced him to take actions he would have rather avoided.

His wife loved him - he could not doubt it any more. The moment he gave her heart back to her, and left her with her new suitor, honestly trying to give her space to build a good life without him, a wave of her affection reached him, pulled at him with all its' former force, called to his heart, drawing out almost all its' failing strength. And he knew that her love would come with all its' wonderful and maddening qualities - hopefulness and stubbornness, striving to make him better and inability to let him go. When he had to reject her, when he had to leave her, even when he died - in the past she'd always refuse to believe that everything was over, and he was grateful to her for her undying faith and he was exasperated with her youthful blindness and he was deadly tired and moved to tears. She loved him, and she would never let him go: she'd insist she'd see him again, and it filled his heart with hope and longing and despair, for at his age and with all the time he had on his shoulders he knew that some things just cannot be. And despite this knowledge he always succumbed to her hoping and the pull of their love, and he knew he'd succumb to them again now.

And he knew he could turn back this very instant, and take her in his arms, and kiss her, and let his tears flow into her hair, and her hair would smell of autumn forest, and her eyes would shine, and her lips would be warm and trembling, and they would rebuild everything that they lost.

But he couldn't do it.

There was no time for that.

There was hardly time for anything at all.

Events of the last days took their toll on him. He felt too much - he suffered too much, raged and hoped too much. He barely had the strength to stand, let alone transport himself around town on his various and mostly futile errands. Yet when Belle called him through the wishing-well, he had to answer her call - and no words can describe the elation of their brief reunion and the pain of her unthinkable rejection and the rage that consumed him when he realized that the whole scene was orchestrated by Regina, and the fear he felt when he saw that his wife was in evil power, and the sadness that fell upon his soul when he realized that his former pupil, his adopted daughter could be so cruel to him. Events of this hour alone could have killed him, and he was mildly surprised that they didn't.

He wondered how ungrateful and ungenerous people could be - especially good people who counted themselves as heroes. Emma, the Savior, wanted to help everyone but him; what happened to her promise to save him, for he is her family? Did she forget that her son is his grandson as soon as she forgot she ever loved his father? The pirate, her new lover, so heroic and noble now - was it good, did it accord with his "code" to sneer at the old and sick man publicly - to glee in his imminent death? And Regina, her most of all people - she was so changed, a proper hero now... Was it really heroic to humiliate her old teacher, to abuse his feelings, to blackmail him with the death of his true love? Her own lover's heart was once crushed in front of her eyes, and she was ready to do the same thing to another human being. How can a person do that, and still think that she deserves a happy ending? But then, she was always selfish and also unnaturally edgy about his feeling to Belle - she always tried to ruin their love... He wondered why - wondered if perhaps there was a hint of jealousy in that. She and Zelena were sisters, after all, and Cora's daughters - they all had that possessive vein in them; that hint of "how could you care for anyone but me" attitude to him; that must have been running in the family.

Surely she realized that her precious Robin Hood was in no real danger - he was much more useful to everyone alive than dead. But she was blind to reason, and immune to pity and kindness. The moment she saw a chance, she turned to her former villainous self... The scene by the wishing-well was planned and executed by the Evil Queen in all her former glory, not by the "hero" she deemed herself to be now. How couldn't she see it?

How couldn't they all see how fine a line there was between being a hero and a villain?

He could have been a hero once. He was a hero. He became a wizard to protect his son - to save all the children at the frontiers of the Ogre Wars. And he did save them!.. There was no selfishness in his actions then. All that he ever did was done to protect his loved ones. Yet he was a villain, and even dying for the sake of others - a sacrifice forgotten by everyone - didn't make him a hero in their eyes. He was always the Dark One - a man to be feared, mistrusted and haunted.

Even now, when he was dying again, they couldn't stop - they wouldn't leave him in peace. He felt their rage as he was settling in the back room of his shop, the only place were he felt safe, not because no one could enter it - goodness knows there were enough wizards and witches in this town to break any protective spell, but because it was the only place that felt like... home. It was full of magical things that kept him company when the town was cursed, and they consoled him in his partial madness as he kept remembering his old magical life in a world were there was no apparent magic. It was a place where he worked and planned and thought. It was a place where he was reunited with Her, and where he first knew her body and where their souls touched. It was a place where his son had first shown a sign that he forgave him and came into his embrace. It was a place where his father's cruelty pushed him to one truly heroic act of his life. It was a place where he loved and cried and smiled and held his wife in his arms, and these bittersweet memories surrounded him now as he sat and waited for his world to change - or for his death to come. Settling there in his happy and safe place he heard them, there in town, running around and screaming that they must stop the Dark One.

They wanted to stop the Dark One, but they had no idea what they were talking about. Even he had no clear idea what will happen if the author wouldn't be able to change his destiny and save his life. What will happen when his human body, that body that loved and suffered and fought and hoped, would die, and only his magically changed soul would remain? Would darkness that created him keep the same human shape, so as to trick and fool everyone who knew him? Would it roam the world in the shapeless form of some dark mist, swirling everywhere as it wishes? He rather thought it would want to keep the body - it wanted to have a body to start with, otherwise there wouldn't be a Dark One at all. What a strange thing it would be, to be physically the same, the frail old gentleman whom everybody knew so well, yet to have not a single human thought and feeling. But then, he wouldn't be aware of that strange state - he would be gone, and his curiosity with him. He - or rather the darkness - would be unstoppable then. Partly human, he could be controlled and killed by his dagger. Inhuman, he would be just a cruel, senseless force. Not something they'd want to meet, but would they stop and listen to him explain that? Never. They always know what is the best way, the heroes.

Oh he wished he were his former self - strong enough to oppose them, to manipulate them and bend them to his will... He would have made them see reason; they all wanted their happy endings, and there was a way to get them - if only they'd have stopped screaming, looked into their souls and admitted: nobody is a hero, and nobody is a villain. They don't live in a book, they write the story. All they needed - all of them - was time and space to write it the way it should be.

But he was not strong enough, and he didn't have time to write his own story. So, stumbling around his shop, leaning unto things, trembling all over and feeling how life seeps out of him with every passing second he had to trick Regina into finding magical ink for him - and suffer another bout of her sneering and end up gasping for breath on the floor, wondering yet again how cruel a hero could be: he told her he was dying, and all she did was raise an eyebrow.

And he had to put his fate into the hands of the mediocre author, a petty small-time crook who had no kindness or wisdom, and no understanding of human nature, and whose ability to write anything properly was not to be trusted.

But he had no choice. His only chance to stay alive and to live through the love he knew to be possible in reality was to change reality - to be moved to an illusionary world where he never did a bad thing in his life and darkness had no claim on him.

Listening to the ticking of old clock, touching warm wood of the floor on which he sat as the ruffian wrote his book. It was a pity to leave all that behind - it was a nice world, and he loved many things in it. It was real, and held memories and hopes. She loved him here. His son was buried here. It was a good place to build a life, and it was interesting to be a wizard in a world that looked so ordinary, and he liked these stupid burgers and his dapper suits and the smell of salt in the air as he walked with his wife along the pier. It was a pity to part with all that.

But there was no choice.

Closing his eyes and picturing Her face and her smile, he was building into the magic of the new book one main, essential thing - their love for each other. Let this young man write anything else the way he wants, let him change things the way his limited imagination would allow. The only thing that mattered was to be alive, and to be with her - in any shape or form, on any conditions, whatever the price.

Falling into the light of the curse that the author enacted when his new magical book was finished felt like dying there, on the Main Street of this town, embracing his father, detached from himself and thinking of his loved ones.

Perhaps he was dying - the pain of the transition was quite fierce.

Perhaps it would have been a good thing to die now, harming nobody, knowing nothing, disappearing between the pages of a book, dissolved into the fragments of light and shadow, into dark letters on white paper, turned into a story written a long time ago and read by Her with interest and compassion, and then forgotten as all childhood fairy tales are forgotten.

It would have been nice to go like this.

He was so tired.

But he could not leave Her.

She loved him.

She wanted to be with him.

He had to stay alive.

He had no choice.

He closed his eyes, wishing for just one thing - to see her face when he opens them again.

It was Her.

There, in the middle of the dimly lit and crowded room, She stood out, even though in reality she was standing in the background. In the sea of anxious faces, turned towards him in reaction to his greeting, Her face shone, making everything else fade out and blur.

It was Her. The One. The girl he never hoped to find, though somehow always knew he would. Or the other way round. The girl for whom he always waited and for whom he searched eagerly, forever telling himself that she doesn't exist anywhere but in his imagination, and even if she did exist, she wouldn't be destined for him. He waited for her as ordinary people wait for miracles, and the feeling was bitter for him: even the most powerful wizard cannot create a miracle for himself; yet he waited still, with elation of expectation and disappointments of failure.

Yet today, there was no elation, no expectation of anything. He came here, to this little kingdom, out of boredom. Their request was so small, so easily answered there was actually no need for him to come at all. Defeating the ogres for him is routine; he could have done it without leaving his chair. Yet he was bored, and he was amused by this king's offer of a reward of gold - didn't he know that good deeds come with no price, they are their own rewards? And he felt it was polite to show his face when he was obliging people.

He certainly didn't come here looking for love.

Yet he came into the room, and he uttered his first words, and they turned to him, startled, and there She was, standing amongst them, solemn and silent, looking at him with those incredible eyes. Not scared of the Ogres or intimidated by the presence of a wizard like the rest of them; no, she looked expectant and curios and somehow a little exited as if she, too, was waiting for him.

The girl whose face, whose magically blue eyes promised him one thing that he, a man who spent his life helping others, never deemed possible for himself: happiness.