59
Her life felt like a nightmare — a very, very bad dream in which terrible things happen irrationally, suddenly, inescapably, they are mounting, any hope of deliverance mocks you and turns into something worse, until one is trapped — suffocated. Only when one if having a nightmare, one can wake up. She couldn't. There is no waking up from reality. This incredible, impossible chain of events she lived through — all of it was real, and it rumbled around her, horrible and uncontrollable.
It would seem that falling into a portal and finding herself in actual hell was the beginning of it, but it was not — this dreamlike sequence started before, on the night when her husband became the Dark One again and she fell into his long-forgotten embrace, drawn there by his darkness. Everything after that was of this unbelievable yet terrifyingly real quality she experienced now. Her falling into the portal with the witch's baby in her arms. Finding her husband. Finding out the truth about her husband. Learning about her pregnancy. Learning about the terrible deal attached to the fate of her baby — the baby she was not ready to have. Her fury, her helplessness — that's when the sense of being trapped came. Her futile attempts to reason with him and to stand her ground against his new-and-old irresistibly charming self. She knew he is unbelievably appealing and attractive when he is dark and not ashamed of it — that's how he was when she first met him and loved him. That's how he looked now as they strolled together across Underbrooke, trying to solve their problems. He was magnificent, ironic, superior yet indulging, he teased her and smiled at her, and every nerve in her body was aflame with his closeness, with admiration mixed with exasperation just as it was then, and she loved the feeling and was ashamed of it at the same time. He was not green and golden in appearance now, but inside he was the same lovable monster, parading all his best and worst qualities, and she was secretly trilled to see the man she fell in love with once again.
And then Gaston came along, just as he did then, though she didn't know it at the time. She was ashamed to admit that she almost completely forgotten about her ex fiancé — she never gave him a thought in years, actually. Now she remembered their story, and the way she acted when he first courted her. In a way, that whole situation was a miniature version of her relationship with her husband: she found out that the man in question was not entirely up to her standards, and she tried to change him for the better, and it was all in vain, as she learned now.
Was she shocked when she learned that her husband killed this boy somewhere along the way? Not really, she wasn't: it was just one of the things he'd do. But she found herself really vexed at the perspective of him killing him again, so to speak. Not only for Gaston's sake — she knew the guy was rotten. She didn't want her husband to commit yet another crime — not in front of her. It was very much alike to the feeling she had in the woods once, when he was getting ready to shoot the thief from the magical arrow — she didn't want him to do anything bad in front of her, wanted him to restrain himself for her sake. She knew the situation was different, that the thief didn't present any danger while Gaston, armed with arrows dipped into the river of lost souls did, and she knew that Gaston was actually already dead, but still — it was the principle of the thing. So she was rightfully indignant when her husband said "Enough of these games", and left her alone to solve the problem in his own way. Indignant, but not surprised — that was simply... Him, something he would always do, and quite possibly this time he was right.
And then Hades came along and reminded her that this whole situation was not just about her and her suitors — not any more. It was about her future baby, whose presence she didn't feel yet and of whose reality she had almost forgotten. Hades reminded her that her husband and his goodness and their relationship were not a priority any longer. It was not just about him and her. Choices she made, her action or inaction now affected their child, and it was the subject of the deal she was offered: refrain from the men's fight, and be rewarded for that. Stand aside. Let them solve their differences on their own. Stay away, don't meddle, and your child will be safe. She was offered a deal that promised her peace and safety on one condition — that she would let evil be committed in front of her eyes as she stood silently watching.
She wondered if this sly God of the underworld knew that was one thing of which she was incapable.
Of course she interfered. When she arrived at the pier she found exactly the situation she expected to find: her husband powerful and victorious, ready to dispose of his not-too-innocent victim. And she knew she couldn't stay away. She couldn't watch a man die. She couldn't watch her husband commit a crime and degrade himself. She had to stop him, had to do something, anything to stop him. But would he listen? Would he, in his newly found superiority, pause for long enough to hear her plea? She needed something stronger than words to support her claim. She needed a foolproof tool to make sure he listens and obeys.
What was that thing in her, that terrible dark something in her that whispered, softly: "His dagger. He might ignore you, but he would obey his dagger"? Was it there before, this slighted, insecure part of her that didn't trust him at all? It must have been — it must have been inside her when she was Lacey, ready to do anything to bind him to her, even urge him to do unspeakably bad things. It must have been inside her when she first controlled him with the dagger; it must have been in her when she cast him out of Storybrooke and out of her life, refusing him any chance of redemption. It must have been inside her all along, for it was remarkably, unbelievably easy to succumb to it — to let it guide her as she walked up to him, and spoke to him the words of deepest love and affection, lied to him through her teeth, lulled him into security with a passionate kiss — and betrayed him.
His face was so strange as he listened to her declaration of love — it was so intense, yet so full of pain. His dark eyes were bottomless, deep in their sadness, and there was such abandonment of despair in the way he kissed her.
And when she withdrew from him, taking the dagger and issuing her commands, his face was so... unsurprised that her heart fell, and unfamiliar coldness gripped her.
He looked as if he knew what she was doing, knew it all along, and succumbed to their fate.
Something very, very bad was happening to them, that very instant. She had a feeling, completely irrational, it seemed, that she had done something wrong. But she couldn't, could she? She did the right thing — she stopped her beloved husband from committing a crime, and that was a good thing to do. It was a right thing to do... So what if she had to trick him to do it? Her intention was good, and didn't he himself always say that sometimes you had to do bad things for all the good reasons?..
He always said so, and she always opposed him, telling him incessantly that the end didn't justify the means, and he never listened.
And now she committed the very same mistake.
It is amazing how fast our mind works in stressful situations. She barely had time to hold up the dagger and issue her commands, yet she already felt the guilt, and sensed the wrongness of her doing. Yet it all took but an instant — a mere moment, for immediately after that things started happening around her, and time seemed to move even faster.
Gaston saw that his enemy was helpless, and raised his bow with poisoned arrows, pointing at her husband, who stood immobile, accepting his fate. And she was instantly reminded of that moment many years ago in his castle when the thief whom Regina loved now fired an arrow at his chest, and she moved as if to shield him, and her mind screamed a silent "No! Not him! Let him be spared!"
Exactly the same thing happened now — she saw danger, and was seized by terrible fear for him, and she moved as if to shield him, pushing Gaston away, accidentally tripping him off the pier and into the water — right into the river of lost souls.
The water gloved eerie green for an instant, and then was still and dark. Gaston was gone — his soul was gone, irrevocably and forever, without a chance of redemption. And it was not her husband who did it — not the Dark One, always ready to sacrifice anyone for his own safety.
She did it. With her own hands. With her own stupidly proud heart, with her stubbornness that let her believe she knew what was just — what was best.
She betrayed her husband to stop him doing the dark did, and it led to her doing the deed herself. With her best intentions she committed the vilest crime. She meant to do a good thing, but did the opposite. She lied, she tricked, she abused her power, and she destroyed a man's soul — all within five minutes of a her life. Why, even faster.
A dark pit opened in her chest, right where the heart was. Confusion, guilt, doubt, self-justification, regret, anger at him for bringing her into this situation — for meddling with her mind, for confusing her in what was wrong and right. She felt awful — stunned, shocked, disoriented, yet she was grateful to feel him by her side — she could see it in his eyes not only that he was deeply sorry for what happened, but that he understood what she was going through. Of course he would — he found himself in the same position often enough... All the time, in fact.
As she leaned to his chest, finding slight consolation in his embrace, a new thought struck her — at least now, when Gaston was gone, her deal with Hades was honored and her child to be was safe. That was a consolation in itself, and there was no need, no need at all to mention to him or to herself even that when she was pushing Gaston off the pier she didn't think of the baby at all — her thoughts were only about her husband.
And that was when Hades himself appeared upon the scene to sneer at her and to remind her that their deal wasn't about destroying Gaston with her own hands. It was about her staying away from the fight altogether.
So she found herself back to square one — baby still in danger, problem still unresolved... But she was not really back to where she started. She was much worse off — she was not an innocent victim any more. She did terrible things, but all in vain.
She felt her husband's hands on her shoulders, he was embracing her protectively. She heard him whispering that he was sorry — he never meant "that" to happen to her. And she knew exactly what he means: "that" was stepping over the mark, succumbing to dark ends for good means... Becoming so terrifyingly like himself.
He walked her back to the shop, supporting her as if she was ill — she actually felt ill, overwhelmed with everything that took place on the pier, unable to grasp it, to take it in fully. Fighting the nightmarish reality of what happened.
Once they were back in the shop, he busied himself with something common — making tea, perhaps, he always believed that a good cup of tea could fix a lot of things.
She sat on the chair, shivering, watching him move around the shop. He clearly decided to postpone all discussions until she felt calmer. He probably felt useless and helpless right now — he knew what she was going through and he refrained from interfering. Unlike her in similar situations he didn't poke into her heart, he gave her time to adjust. And him being so understanding and so obviously kind somehow made it worse for her. She felt anger mounting in her heart — anger at him.
She needed to get that — whatever "that" was out of her system, she couldn't bear his silent patience, which for her was loaded with unspoken accusations, so she forced him to talk, and ugly things were said. He practically told her out right that things wouldn't have gone that way if she didn't stick her nose into it. He would have solved the problem in his own way, and nobody would have been the worse for that. She tried to justify herself. Both of them concentrated on Gaston's demise — both were carefully avoiding the episode with her lie and her taking the dagger. Both were evasive — she felt how mutual honesty on which he insisted before and which she actually found invigorating was slipping from them.
She brought up the baby question — the one in which his guilt in making the deal with Hades was apparent, the one where she could blame him wholeheartedly, shifting the blame from herself. Her mind was muddled, distorted — she was jumping from blaming him for everything to hoping he would solve everything, and then to blaming herself for everything and deciding that she had to act to solve their problems her own way, in futile hope that things wouldn't get even worse than they were right now. And in this mixture of emotions she said one thing that, immediately after it escaped her lips, fell between herself and her husband as the heaviest stone.
"I killed a man, and I thought I did it to save our baby! But I only saved you!..."
She was actually trying to explain how guilty she felt about not thinking of their baby at the moment when she attacked Gaston. What she wanted to say was "If only I consciously acted to save the child, I would have felt better, because it wouldn't have been quite so selfish". But instead of that excuse, lame as it was she said... what she said. That he wasn't worth saving. That it was demeaning for her to have acted in his interest. That he wasn't worth the fight.
She never saw his face quite so changed as then. So hurt. So shocked. So hopeless. There were no tears, as when she pushed him out of town. No resignation, as when she told him she has to leave him by the wishing well. No anger, as when she kissed him for the first time, trying to change him. This time, the moment of shock was followed by complete stillness — as if she struck him a fatal blow.
She killed something in him when she said those words. His faith in her love, most probably.
He recovered quickly enough, as he would always do for her sake — he certainly didn't press the matter, he pretended not to notice, tried to keep talking about different plans to save the child. But she could not bear talking to him any more — the memory of her words stood before them, and the more studiously he avoided the matter, the more they burned her.
For the second time in few hours she stormed out of the shop, muttering that she needed to be alone to think.
She stood in the middle of the street, furiously thinking. She did and said terrible things today, she changed in a way she would never have conceived possible. And she had to undo what she did — she had to find a way to right what was wrong. She had to find a way, a good and safe way to save their child, without implicating her husband further. She had to do something so that both of them wouldn't slip further down the road to damnation, she along with him this time. There must have been ways apart from dark magic and dark deals to assure their safety. And she had to do it alone, without the aid of her husband — she felt too much alike him now to be able to control him, and she was not sure of herself any more — not at all. She saw her good intentions pave her way to hell, literally. She had to find some other way. She had to use things she always believed in... Hope. And love.
Hades, who scared and disgusted her, was not free from human emotions, it seemed. She learned that he was tender about the witch — that was why he brought her here. Perhaps she might use that. Perhaps she might appeal to their better feelings and simply ask them to spare her. That was hardly likely, but not entirely impossible, and wasn't she the one who always believed in unlikely things and by her sheer faith made them happen?
She turned her back on her husband's shop and started walking towards Zelena's house.
It never occurred to her that she continued to act exactly as her husband would have acted — she was planning to use her adversary's only vulnerable spot to influence him.
It never occurred to her that, in coming to ask the witch who killed Bae for help she was betraying her husband in a worse way than ever.
She felt certain qualms, that was true — she remembered the witch's obsession with her husband all too well, and remembered all the humiliations to which she subjected him — both of them. But she reminded herself that Zelena was a mother now — a deprived and unhappy mother, whose child was taken from her. Perhaps she would sympathize with her on this ground.
And perhaps she might learn something from that woman who was so obsessed about her husband once and now seemed to be completely over him.
Perhaps she herself would feel better, would feel whole again if she learned to detach herself from him somehow.
Zelena was not very helpful — not at first. She seemed to question, and question rightly, why would Belle, who always hated her, come to her for help. She sneered at her, but that was to be expected. Yet gradually as they talked she visibly warmed to her — mutual irritation with the Dark One helped, as did the motherhood question.
She professed herself unable to influence Hades, however, and Belle felt so cast down by it that she felt funny — her head spun, she was all weak. It couldn't have been the sickness already — nobody is sick at so early a stage of pregnancy. It must have been stress and might have been simple hunger — she hadn't eaten in a long time. But she mentioned pregnancy sickness all the same — she was too tired to come into too many details.
And then Zelena let it slip that she had no experience of such sickness, for her pregnancy ended too quickly for that — that it ended because the baby was forced out of her by Dark Swan.
If she gave it a moment and thought properly she would have understood that the witch was most probably lying — she was pregnant long enough to feel the effects, and if she wasn't sick, well may be she was just that type of woman: not everyone feels the sickness. But she couldn't think properly — she was mesmerized with the terrible idea that Zelena's words planted into her mind: the idea that Hades might do the same to her — that he might speed her pregnancy up.
If she thought properly she would have realized that she has no idea if Hades actually wants her baby for anything, and wants it fast — it was much more logical of him to keep her pregnant as long as was possible so that he wouldn't lose his leverage on the Dark One.
If she thought properly she would have realized that she doesn't even know if Hades is capable of such magic — he forced her husband to work for him, so perhaps there were things that only Dark One can do, and he couldn't.
If she thought properly she would have understood that, if such danger existed, she had better discuss it with her husband, who knew much more about dark magic than anyone else.
But she couldn't think properly. She stood there, in the middle of dusty and dark kitchen, stunned, with a glass of water in her hand, listening to Zelena's voice, mesmerized by its' sound, by the green glow of the witch's eyes.
If she thought properly she would have recognized the feeling of helpless despondency she experienced now — she felt exactly the same on the forest road by the Dark One's castle many years ago when she was talking to Regina, and Regina convinced her to try and kiss Him for the first time — to betray his trust for the first time.
But she couldn't think properly. Submissive and duped, she listened how the witch explained unspeakable horrors to her — and then suggested the way out of it: put herself under a sleeping curse for as long as she slept there would be no baby, and no danger would befall it.
She walked out of her house still as if spellbound, clutching the needle with a sleeping curse potion in her hand, and walked straight back to her husband with it.
If she thought properly she would have stopped right there and considered: she resigned to avoid dark magic in solving her problem, and urged her husband to refrain from it. Yet sleeping curse is the darkest magic there was, as evil as it comes — yet she was ready to use it on herself, and on her unborn child.
But she couldn't think properly.
She was caught in her never-ending nightmare, and events seemed to carry her along with them, and she had no power over them.
She longed to be spared the necessity to think — to decide, and to act. Today she thought, decided, and acted, and her every thought, decision and action turned things for the worse. She was unsure of her every thought — of her every impulse and action now.
She lost herself. She was in an alien world — the world in which evil people acted and made choices, the world in which her husband felt at ease, the world where she couldn't find herself, however hard she tried.
Perhaps it was a good idea to let him act on his own — to take herself off the scene, so that he wouldn't be troubled with conscience in her presence, and she wouldn't have to suffer all these thoughts, decisions, and hard choices.
If she thought properly she would have realized that this idea was just as ill-judged as everything else she did that day.
But she couldn't think properly. She wanted out — she wanted to leave things in his hands, and be oblivious to the world around.
So she walked into his shop, and confronted him with her wonderful new idea. As she spoke, explaining herself rapidly, she was painfully aware she was blabbering — all things came muddled in her speech: Zelena, the speeding up of the pregnancy, the wonderful benefits of the sleeping curse.
He was stunned — he barely had time to register her words, and no time to properly oppose her. His questions were rapid — random. Why Zelena — why did she suddenly decide to trust her? She brushed that away. What made her think that Hades would want to speed the pregnancy up? She brushed that away too, watching utter bewilderment on her husband's face give way to irritation.
If she thought properly, she would have stopped right then and actually talked it out with him.
But she couldn't think properly. She didn't want to think at all. She was so tired. She wanted everything to be taken off her hands and off her mind, as quickly as possible.
And perhaps he secretly agreed with her. When he tried to take the poisoned needle away from her, she told him that she could prick her finger quicker than he'll stop her. They both knew it was not true — he could freeze her any moment and do whatever he wanted with that needle.
But he didn't stop her. He tried to reason with her — he told her that he wouldn't be able to wake her from the sleeping curse, that he wasn't the man for that. He appealed to the trust and honesty they briefly enjoyed earlier today. He was brutal in his refusal to change even for the sake of waking her up.
If she thought properly she would have appreciated that. He was probably trying to jerk her back to reality with his harsh words. But as it was now it only stirred her anger at him — she told him she didn't expect him to wake her up. Her father would do it, she said.
If she thought properly she would have understood that her father, who failed her and let her down repeatedly, was hardly a man for this task. And that there was nobody else in the whole world who loved her truly as her dark husband did.
But she didn't think properly.
Instead, she made that small, that tiny movement with her hand, and pricked her finger.
Incredible how slowly time could move at such moments. She saw her husband's horror-struck face, his panic-filled eyes — she heard his anguished cry. All the thoughts that couldn't break through her confusion in these last few hours suddenly rushed into her mind.
She was doing something irresponsible, ill-judged and dangerous... They should have talked about it properly... She was using dark magic... There was no way of telling what would happen — how it would affect her, and the baby... She had no reason to trust Zelena — why did she ever decide to trust this murderer?.. Was there even a way to undo what she's done?..
She felt her husband's warm and trembling arms around her as she fell. She was falling, and he was catching her — he was always there to catch her, how could she doubt him?..
She was falling — falling into darkness and oblivion... Falling to a place where she wouldn't have to think — where she'd find peace... Falling into peaceful, peaceful dream.
Or was she finally falling into a real nightmare?
It all took but an instant.
She felt a pang of pain, and the pressure of his arms, and the stub of fear, and the stirring of hope.
And then she felt nothing at all.
