I always knew I wasn't meant for long on this earth, I am a mere pawn, a game piece created to enable those with a greater destiny the chance to get ahead but had I known that my own fate would play such a cruel trick, I would have sacrificed myself in battle long ago. Died in the glory of defeat, basked in the bloody gore of it all as I took my final breaths knowing I had at least tried to live, tried to break out of the confines of being a simple tool rather than the kind of person I wanted to be.

The kind who awoke early in the mornings in order to simply watch over her loved ones as they slept, the kind to be fixing breakfast in the kitchen, using the aroma to awaken her true love and their offspring, to giggle as she is pulled into a backwards embrace, to revel in the loving kiss placed to her temple as a simple gesture of thanks for simply being her…that was supposed to be my life, my happy ending.

The simplicity of such a dream felt surreal in comparison to the life I had lived. The faces of my innocent children replaced with those that my guards had massacred in my thirst for revenge because the one I sought out was the one who had taken that very dream away from me with a simple uttering of words to the one person supposed to love me but never had the heart to…

It seemed only fit that it be Snow's own offspring, born from the true love she had still managed to find even in hiding, be the one to end me…to finish off the job by slowly killing me with love because, foolishly, she had allowed her heart to latch onto mine and I couldn't have that…to love her, it was wrong, a mockery to the love taken from me so long ago.
I shouldn't love her but I did and that fact alone pained me more than any other for I knew, I had felt it every time I would lay awake at night, suffocating in her embrace, that I loved her far more than I had ever loved him.

And so, it was with a heavy heart that I left her warmth that night, it was with a trembling hand that I wrote the note I left on her bedside table and it was with a wracking sob that I looked upon her form for the last time, moonlight highlighting the soft skin I had peppered with kisses and only the most gentle of touches hours earlier…in some way I wanted her to wake up, to open those bright eyes and reassure me that I could do this, that I could let her love me as she had done so many times before…but she couldn't, a slow-building sedation spell had made sure of that.

And now here I stand, on the edge of both insanity and life as I look down into the pitiful reflection looking back up at me from the murky depths below. I wasn't afraid of death, I had faced it many a time before, I had always been ready for it…because I'd never had anything to live for, anything to lose when I finally fell but now? Well now I did…I had a son, he barely acknowledged me as his mother anymore but he was mine both in legality and in my heart.

…and I had her…and I loved her…I love her…

I love her for the simple fact of who she is, her need, annoyingly genetic, to see good in all who surround her but, thanks to her history in this world, the ability to understand that sometimes believing in good just isn't enough to see it.

I love her for the way she loves our son, the awkwardness of their embraces as both still work at building upon a mother/son bond that lingers so close to the surface, just out of reach but getting closer with every smile, every kiss she places to his forehead, every time he slips and calls her 'Mom' as opposed to Emma…and it doesn't hurt anymore, it doesn't sting like it used to because I see the way it lightens her, the way the green of her eyes intensifies with a film of tears as she hears the term she had never thought possible.
And I love her for the challenge, for the way she is able to surprise me in every aspect of life. She doesn't listen to me, doesn't do as I say and for that I am glad, for her inability to take things lying down, I am happy…only right now, as I watch her running towards me, the remnants of the spell causing her movements to appear heavy and sluggish but as always, she fights through it. Determination in her eyes as she comes closer, her arms wrapping around me and pulling me away from the waters edge as my tears instantly spill forth from my heavy eyes. "I couldn't do it…" I whisper, the breath like gas choking me as I try to inhale, her hand rubbing circles on my back in order to aid my attempts somehow. "I couldn't leave you…"

And she simply nods for she understands, she understands more than me that I have fallen into a place neither of us had seen coming. It is only her knowledge of such things as mental illnesses, terms such as depression, that allows her to see past the darkness of my soul to the lightness within, always fighting to get out but unable to.
The weight of my past had never been considered, the sheer horrors of my childhood unbeknownst to any but myself and the woman who had inflicted such terrors upon me…and now Emma…my beautiful Emma, my true love, my soul mate and ultimately, as she was to so many others…my saviour