As it turned out, their new acting mayor had already started organizing a meeting, as well as conducting a quick survey and headcount. Merlin was recruited as the town's technical advisor for magical matters. When Rumplestiltskin and Belle gave their testimony, the Sorcerer's backing made them that much more credible to the townsfolk.
Most were happy enough that Storybrooke had survived intact. That it was now part of the Enchanted Forest made little material difference to them. Whatever connected Storybrooke to the outside world under the Dark Curse still connected them, meaning goods and information reached them just as magically as before, technology miraculously keeping pace as time passed.
"And the price for that magic?" someone was astute enough to ask.
"Fairy dust and true love," Rumple said blandly.
Belle bit her tongue. Merlin and the Blue Fairy had been the third set of visitors to the pawnshop, after the others had left.
A day ago
"You look like you've had better days." Rumple's greeting wasn't exactly welcoming, but Belle admitted he was right. The Sorcerer and the fairy both looked bone-weary, their auras weak and fraying. In time they would recover their magical strength, but for now a child with a stick could probably take them out.
"You could have destroyed us all!" Blue glared at Rumple.
"He saved us," Belle answered before he could. "It was your devoted fanatic who wrote everyone into his twisted idea of the 'greater good'. Where do you think he learned that from?"
Merlin grimaced. "Another misjudgement on our part. Where is Tiberius now?"
Belle summoned the book with a wave of her hand and dropped it onto the counter. "He's bound inside the pages of his own story. A fitting prison, don't you think?"
And Merlin could hardly argue with that, having condemned Isaac Heller to the same fate. "Indeed."
"A bit more leg-room than you granted Mr. Heller," Rumple noted. "And he's not alone in his prison. It seems there's a few who prefer to stay in his version of reality."
Belle was depressed by the thought that had he lived, her father would have been one of those people. She slid the book across the counter to Blue. "Best you take it. Keep it safe. He was one of your people. You owe him that much."
Blue picked up the book reluctantly, distaste written all over her face. "The man went too far. He allowed darkness into his heart. As you have. Beware, child..."
"That 'darkness' is one of the threads holding our realms together," retorted Rumple. "The powers you disdain as not belonging here have made this place their home. People move. Things change. Deal with it."
Blue tucked the book away and gave them a sour look. "It seems we must."
"But is it stable?" Instead of rehashing old arguments, Merlin moved on to more practical concerns. "In the original prophecy given to me, it took another casting of your Dark Curse using the combined powers of the Evil Queen, the Savior, and many others, in addition to the sacrifice of the Dark One and his true love, to bring the realms of story into the waking world."
Belle shut her eyes, imagining that future. The greater good...
"Ambitious," Rumple said coldly.
"But now the realms remain in the Dreamlands, with Storybrooke as their lynchpin," Merlin continued. "Regina powered it with the sacrifice of her father's heart. What happens when that power wanes?"
It all became clear to Belle. She opened her eyes to find Blue. "Fairy dust. Fairy magic. It's all about belief..."
Blue nodded. "It is."
"Well, then. We are here because we believe this to be our home. You can use your magic to keep Storybrooke alive." Belle smiled. "After all, it's for the greater good."
Blue frowned. "But if that belief is tested, or..."
Rumple held up a hand. "Another vial of bottled true love should do the trick. What is true love but faith in the impossible?"
"And your price?" Blue asked warily.
"No more prophecies." Rumple bared his teeth and leaned forward, his voice dropping to a savage whisper, "I heard what you did to my mother. And I'll be needing the wand. You know the one."
The Blue Fairy paled. "Your mother..."
"You didn't want him to know," Belle accused her. "That's why you tried to get me to stop him that time he summoned her, isn't it? You lied to me about her."
"I... It... it was for your own good," Blue stammered.
Merlin sighed. "They deserve the truth, Reul Ghorm. And perhaps we haven't always known what that was. Give him the wand."
It was half of a wand.
"Tiger Lily has the other half," Blue told them when she handed it over. "She broke the wand and stole half when she left the order. She is in Neverland, the last I heard."
"Neverland. Wonderful," Rumple said unenthusiastically, accepting the half wand.
Belle eyed it, sensing the dark power clinging to even the broken half. The wand that banished his mother... "That's dark magic, Blue. I thought you didn't use that."
"Only for the greatest of evils," Blue replied.
Everyone had their reasons and their exceptions. Belle didn't bother to answer. Let the silence highlight the hypocrisy. There was plenty of that going around, not exempting herself or Rumple. Transparency. Checks and balances, she thought.
Rumple stowed the half wand away. "It all depends on your point of view. But disagreements notwithstanding, no doubt we'll muddle through somehow."
Now
"Fairy dust and true love?" The crowd muttered it back and forth to each other and to Merlin. "Does that mean we won't be able to love anymore? Or is someone gonna crush the heart of the one they love most?"
"No, that won't be necessary." Merlin projected his voice above the muttering crowd. "Magic can be distilled from true love into a potion without harming the original souce, using a method devised by Rumplestiltskin."
"I'll spare you the technical details," Rumple told them. He didn't mention that the potion in question would be brewed from the Dark One's true love.
Was that part of Our Grandmother's plan to tie herself into the fabric of this reality? Belle wondered. Would that be bad? But her own mother had also come to the Enchanted Forest from elsewhere and made it her home. Tiberius called them monsters and demons, refusing to acknowledge their humanity and preferring to live in a shut book. Belle would rather extend a welcoming hand. Enmity wasn't inevitable or immutable.
"What about the town line?" someone else asked.
Merlin explained that they could now cross it without ill effect into the rest of the Enchanted Forest. Visitors who had never been to Storybrooke would need an invitation to be able to find the town.
"And the Land Without Magic?"
"Only reachable through magic, using the resonance of dreams," said Merlin, who had centuries of practice in dream travel while bound in a tree. "For example, we can borrow someone's dream of a highway and drive out of Storybrooke to the corresponding reality. Or a door in the mansion may open into another world..."
After all the upheavals the town had weathered, this latest storm was taken in stride. Even the revelation that they were all some kind of dream denizens was not much of a shock to people who had already found themselves to be fictional characters.
The true loss was felt later. Merlin and Delphine White (who retained her oracular gifts even in human form) conducted a thorough census, determining who had gone where... and who was gone forever. There were no bodies to find. The mayor arranged for a memorial service for their dead, with portraits in lieu of coffins. Archie, by common agreement the best at these sorts of things, presided.
Besides Belle's father, the list of the dead included the Apprentice, Grand Pabbie of the Arendelle trolls, two of the fairies, and Jafar of Agrabah. Tiberius must have drained too much of their magic, thought Belle. Otherwise, Tiberius had thought of himself as a benevolent hero who protected the common people. With the power of the Author at his fingertips, he had not needed to use force to maintain his tyranny. The few other deaths had fallen disproportionately among the non-humans. (The ogres held their own memorial rites deep in the Infinite Forest.)
Those who had taken refuge in the Wood Beyond returned in the middle of the memorial servive, quietly slipping in at the back of the crowd. One of them, a tall man made even taller by a black fedora with a cluster of feathers fastened to the hatband, came to the fore afterwards, dropping a red rose in front of the portrait of Maurice. He gave it a short bow of respect before approaching a startled Belle.
Then she saw the horned and winged shadow behind the man and gasped in recognition. "You're the one from the Wood. Heiyan."
He smiled and doffed his hat. "Your mother sent me to see that your strays returned home safely."
Belle glanced at the rose.
"And to pay her respects," he added. "She loved him once."
Belle sighed. What was there to say? She remembered the changes her father had wanted written into their story. She swallowed back tears of anger and regret before she could speak again. "He loved her, too, in a way."
Heiyan nodded. He twiddled with his hat, glancing around the cemetery. "As for you and your husband..."
"What about us?" Belle replied sharply, catching a hint of disapproval in his tone.
He looked at her over his hat for a long moment. Then he flipped it back onto his head and shrugged. "Nothing. You've planted your tree here."
She blinked, trying to parse his statement. Did he mean the tree she had found in the Wood Beyond, the one that had restored her true memories when her life had been rewritten? The power of true love, contained in its leaves. "What do you mean? Isn't the tree still there?"
"Ah, well, maybe, maybe not." He waved a hand ambiguously. "The soul of the tree, captured in a bottle, then poured into the magic here."
"You mean Rumple's potion," Belle said, illuminated. "What difference does that make?"
"Its power will not be added to the Wood Beyond."
Belle thought about that. Then she shrugged. "That's all to the good. I remember a saying about eggs and baskets."
"Hmm. Next time you visit, you can say it to the Queen's face. I'll bring the popcorn." Heiyan bowed again. "Your mother sends her love. And her invitation, of course. Bring grandchildren!"
"Wait..." Before Belle could form a coherent reply, Heiyan vanished in a cloud of smoke.
Once they were home again, thoughts of her father's fate preyed on Belle's mind. She remembered what Rumple had said before about the afterlife and wondered if it still held true. The shrill cries of the death birds echoed in her memories.
"What happened to my father's soul, do you think?" she asked him, lying in bed and unable to sleep even after her tears had dried.
Rumple shook his head slowly. His description to her before had held so little hope. No wonder he didn't want to repeat it to her.
Belle sighed. "I don't want him to suffer. I don't..." I don't want US to suffer. She pressed her lips together, biting back the words, but he seemed to hear them nevertheless.
"Our Grandmother may have some influence there," he offered tentatively. He rolled towards her and wrapped his arms around her. "We are hers, now, as she is ours. In some sense."
"As well as the Holy Grail." Not the divine marriage Tiberius had tried to arrange, but rather something else: a binding between the native gods and the foreign, their powers merged in a wand and a coin, with Rumple and Belle as the living embodiment of that bond. And perhaps not only the living. In her dream, she had seen Rumple as the ferryman, Charon. "You know, Our Grandmother hinted that you have an affinity with death..."
"I've killed many people, including myself." He sounded resigned, neither proud nor repentant. "Does that qualify as an 'affinity'?"
"But you came back. And you killed and brought me back, too." She felt a shudder run through him. She caught his hand and pressed it against her chest.
"Not an experience I'm eager to reprise," he whispered.
"No, but..." She sighed. "Maybe there's something we can do for the dead."
"Maybe. But the living can't help the dead. Only the dead..." He swallowed uneasily. When she turned to look at him, he met her with a gentle kiss.
She recoiled before she could stop herself, panicking at the touch to her face. She caught her breath shakily. "Sorry. I'm sorry. It just reminded me of, of that thing. The bhole."
"No, no, I'm sorry." He held himself still, waiting for her permission to move or touch her. "I won't..."
She eased back into his arms. "Only the dead can help the dead? I suppose it will have to wait."
"Sweetheart..." Rumple froze again. "I love you. Don't... I don't..."
I don't want to think about your death...
She closed her eyes. It wasn't that she wanted to think about it. Sometimes all they could do was distract themselves. "When the time comes, we can face it together."
"But not now," he pleaded.
Not now, she agreed, letting him cling to her and distract her, however carefully they had to navigate their latest minefield of nightmares and memories.
"Now that things have settled a bit, we should take the time to sort out your unfulfilled deals before some other crisis hits," Belle said to Rumple over breakfast a few days later. Given the passage of time, she was less prone to bursting into tears at random, but felt restless with her own thoughts and wanted to busy herself with someone else's problems for a while.
Rumple grumbled, "I'm surprised the heroes haven't shown up on our doorstep already."
"Well, Snow and David have an infant at home. And Emma and Lily have been a bit distracted," said Belle. She had seen them at Granny's together. "I think they've reconnected. They were close as children, and now with Hook gone..."
"Ms. Swan finally kicked the pirate to the curb, I take it?" Rumple sounded pleased.
"I think she saw something in the Wood Beyond," Belle speculated. "That place is full of visions — possible pasts and futures. Red heard her talking to Killian. Something about him..." She trailed off, wishing she hadn't brought it up.
Too late. Rumple wouldn't let it go. "What about him?"
She sighed, lowering her eyes. "It seems Hook made a deal with Pan. Sold Neal — Baelfire — to him."
"Ah," he breathed. "That."
Belle's gaze shot up. "You knew?"
He sighed, rubbing his face with a hand. "He was in my head. Some memories came through."
Belle nodded. She should have thought of that. "Well, after Emma confronted him about it, he saw that it was the last straw. So he took off in the Jolly Roger..."
"Hmph," Rumple snorted. "Good riddance. So, if Ms. Swan truly wishes to work things out with Maleficent's daughter, the natural balance needs to be restored."
"Exactly!" Belle beamed, leaning forward a little. "I have some ideas on that, actually..."
Part of it was that they had the experience from sharing their own hearts and channeling the darkness between them. Part of it came from Lily having been one of Tiberius's prisoners in the lake. The bhole really was effective at draining all kinds of magical energy from someone while keeping them alive. Even though the Inquisitor's reality had been shattered, some effects lingered. Lily's darkness, having been sucked out and digested, was now easier to shift around.
"More fungible, as it were," concluded Belle. "At least in theory."
With the two of them working together, practice lived up to theory (although they did choose an empty stretch of woods for the spell, just as a safety precaution), and for the first time since she was born, Lily was free of the dark cloud that had jinxed her whole life.
Maleficent was pleased. Snow White and David were wary.
Cruella, who had tagged along under the guise of 'moral support' for Maleficent, cackled drunkenly. It was only early afternoon, but she was already three sheets to the wind. Copious quantities of gin was apparently her coping technique when faced with single life in a small town. "Oh, good show, darlings. Now what about me, short stuff?"
Rumple smirked. "Feeling lonely without your furry friends?" He snapped his fingers, conjuring the last of Isaac's book pages to his hand.
"Give me that!" Cruella tottered forward, arm outstretched, but Rumple dodged gracefully out of reach.
Belle rolled her eyes. "Be nice." Feeling that this would go better without spectators, she teleported themselves and Cruella to the pawnshop and made sure the sign on the door was locked and turned to "CLOSED".
Rumple spread the papers out on a counter, fanning them out to reveal that they were all blank.
Cruella snatched them up and flipped them over to see that it made no difference. Still blank. She flung them down. Eyes narrowed, she glanced from Rumple to Belle and back again. "What's all this?"
Rumple gathered up and straightened the papers again, smoothing the crease where they had been folded. "These were the pages from Mr. Heller's book that contained your story. Alas, everything was erased when I used the power contained within to, uh, awaken the Dreamer."
"So what does that mean for me?" Cruella twisted her fingers into the white fur stole draped around her neck. "I'm not about to vanish into thin air...?"
"No, but the tweaks he added are gone," Rumple said.
"Yes, I noticed the local wildlife has become rather uncooperative." Cruella eyed them speculatively. "On the other hand..."
"That addendum, too. Isaac's restriction on your ability to take life is lifted." Belle joined Rumple behind the counter. "I suppose it's no use appealing to your conscience..."
Cruella scoffed. "That didn't even work on your besotted fool of a husband. Why would I give a damn?"
"Having the ability to kill is one thing, being able to bear the consequences is another," Rumple warned.
"I like to have the option." Cruella leaned forward and tapped a finger on the counter. "So that's a start, darling, but you promised me a happy ending. Something tells me I'm not going to find that in Dullsville here."
"Patience, dearie." Rumple was unruffled. "I need to make some arrangements. Come back in three days."
After a token complaint, Cruella flounced off.
Belle looked at Rumple. "What arrangements?"
"I think I mentioned before that some of Bae's memories bled through when he shared my mind," he said. "It seems not all of the damned fireflies are a waste of space."
"You want me to help Cruella de Vil?" Tinker Bell sounded incredulous.
Rumple had arranged for her to meet them at the shop the next day. Now he smirked at her, spreading his hands out placatingly. "You're the only fairy who gives a damn. Who better?"
"You tried to help Regina, even when Blue told you it was hopeless," Belle pointed out.
"Yeah, and look where that got me," came Tink's bitter response.
"Look where Regina is now," Rumple countered. "While I didn't appreciate your efforts at the time, and neither did she, the knowledge that someone sincerely tried to help her was one of the threads she clung to even in the depths of darkness. Even if she rejected that help." He glanced at Belle and added in a low voice, "I speak from personal experience. As you may imagine."
Tink's expression softened as she looked at them. Then she shook her head. "But Cruella? A woman who revels in darkness? I heard she murdered her own family..."
"As have I," Rumple noted dryly. "There's usually more to the story than 'darkness'."
"That..." Tink blinked, taken aback. "That was different. Pan, he was going to kill people, condemn us to his Dark Curse."
"You can't judge a person without knowing their full story." It was something Belle's mother had drummed into her, something she continued to believe. Cruella's story was something Rumple had researched, being too meticulous in his deal-making to promise happily ever after without finding out the details. "Cruella is another child who could have been helped by a fairy godmother, but wasn't."
"It's true she killed her parents. But you have to remember that the pain inflicted by family can wound deeper than that inflicted by strangers," said Rumple, again clearly speaking from experience.
"What..." Tink cleared her throat. "What did they do to her?"
"Worse than the abandonment I suffered." Rumple sighed. "For Cruella, the person who treated her with the most kindness was also the person who was cruelest to her..."
"Her father." Belle closed her eyes, forcing back the tears that threatened to choke her. But no, at least Belle's father had not done that. "He was guilty of unspeakable crimes."
"Whether unspoken or unheard, it amounted to the same thing," said Rumple. "Her mother turned a blind eye, as she did to the sins of husbands number two and three. She blamed her daughter and kept her imprisoned inside her own room. But the resulting carnage turned out in her favor, financially speaking. Until Mr. Heller's meddling, of course."
Tink looked appalled.
"At first, I think Cruella just wanted him to stop." Belle had seen the brittle edges of the past in Cruella's aura: a child's first attempts to control her fate. "She was too young to understand fully. But then... someone treated like a monster, often grows into the role forced upon them..."
"Hmm," Rumple agreed softly. Belle squeezed his hand. If it was true for him, it could be true for others, and he knew that better than most.
"But she's not that child now. You really think I can help her?" Tink's initial horror had given way to uncertainty. "At least with Regina, I had—"
Belle set a vial of glittering dust on the counter. "We found this in the sorcerer's mansion."
Tink's eyes widened. "Is that...?"
"Pixie dust," confirmed Rumple. "But there's more to pixie dust than finding romantic love. I suggest you use it to guide her to her best path, in a more general sense."
"And don't give up even if it's hard at first." Belle had her own store of personal experience on that account.
Tink met their determined expressions and sighed. "Not how I expected this day to go, but..." She finally nodded, scooping up the vial of pixie dust. "I'll try my best."
"You're subcontracting my happily ever after to a mosquito?" Cruella took to the idea of a fairy godmother less gracefully than said fairy.
"Fairy!" Tink shot back. "And it is our stock in trade..."
"Magical career counseling?" sniped Cruella.
"What do you have to lose? Give her a chance," Belle urged. "If it doesn't work, you can try something else."
Eventually, Cruella was persuaded enough to let Rumple take them to her original realm. She wasn't suited to small town life. Nor did she appreciate the heroes and villains mentality of the Enchanted Forest, much less Camelot or Neverland. Oz was too silly for her tastes, and Wonderland too nonsensical. So back to 1920s England they went. Rumple sorted out her legal inheritance, arranging for her mother's estate to be liquidated, leaving Cruella with enough cash to pursue the glamourous lifestyle she preferred.
"Speaking of mothers, what about yours?" Belle brought up the topic over breakfast one morning. "Blue said the other half of the wand that banished your mother is on Neverland. Maybe Tink knows something about it."
"Maybe." He didn't say any more about it then, but later he did ask Tink if she knew a fairy called "Tiger Lily."
"She's a fairy?" Tink exclaimed. "I had no idea. She was on the island before any of us except Pan himself. She lives in a secret cave on top of a mountain that no one else could find. She used to come down and trade with the Lost Boys sometimes."
"I see," said Rumple. "No one mentioned any of this when we were there for Henry."
Tink shrugged. "Sorry. But who wouldn't be wary of betraying someone's secret to the Dark One and the Evil Queen?"
Belle sighed, but Rumple merely nodded. "Understandable."
"Do you want to find her, this Tiger Lily?" Belle asked him later when they were alone. "She was supposed to be your fairy godmother."
He scoffed. "At least that's one abandonment I was spared the knowledge of, growing up."
"She must have had her reasons," Belle tried, but not managing to convince even herself. How could she abandon a baby to a man like Malcolm? And it wasn't even that she had other babies to look after, if she went and hid herself on Neverland for the next few centuries!
Rumple waved it off. "Everyone has their reasons. Selfishness. Fear. Greed..."
Belle sighed. "That can't be the whole story. There was more to your mother's, after all. Don't you want to hear it from her own mouth? If what the Apprentice told us was true... don't you want to give your mother another chance, someday?"
"Someday. Not today." His face shuttered. "We're here for Cruella's story, not mine."
"All right," Belle said softly, covering his hand with her own. Someday he would be ready. She just wanted him to know she would be there for him when he was.
Belle and Rumple parted ways with Cruella and Tink a few weeks later, both sides feeling mildly optimistic.
"Do you really think this will work?" Belle asked Rumple privately. "Have you seen anything of her future?"
He merely shrugged. "A glimpse or two. It's her choice. But pixie dust is powerful magic."
"I suppose we've done all we can." Belle had seen enough of Tink now to know the fairy wouldn't stop at just helping Cruella. Even if one person couldn't save all the children, she could still help. It was a start. "Time to go back to Storybrooke?"
Rumple shook his head. "One more thing. Let's go see how our favorite Author is doing..."
Isaac's face fell when he opened the door to find them standing on his porch. "You. I thought I had seen the last of you."
"I should kill you. Do you have any idea of the suffering you caused with that 'story'?" Now that their world could be considered 'saved', they had the leisure to track down the man who had made Tiberius's vision into reality. Raising his cane to point at Isaac's chest, Rumple shoved him back until all three of them stood in the foyer.
Isaac lifted his hands placatingly. "Hey, I'm a writer. That's kinda our job, making our characters suffer. Adversity brings out the truth hidden under the surface..."
"We're not your characters!" Belle saw him squirm. He knew his guilt; he just didn't want to admit it. "Whatever frustration you felt with the job you were actually assigned, whatever unexpected price you had to pay for that enchanted pen, you didn't have to take it out on us, the people of the realms of story."
Isaac shook his head. "You said it yourself. Realms of story. You're fictional characters. If you weren't, how could I rewrite anyone's life? I'm just a normal guy, creative talent aside."
"In that case, you're just as fictional as we are, now," Rumple reminded him. He bared his teeth in a murderous grin. "One whose story I could bring to an end right now."
Isaac backed away until he hit the table behind him. Without taking his eyes off Rumple, he fumbled with the drawer under the table. His hand came back holding a pistol. "Stay back!"
Rumple struck the gun from his grip before he could start to aim it. "Now, now, Mr. Heller."
"Rumple, don't. We discussed this." Belle shared her husband's anger, but murder wasn't the answer. They couldn't leave him to the judgement of the local courts, either, given that he had committed no crime recognized by the law. Private, magical, nonlethal vengeance was the compromise they had agreed on. I just want him to understand the pain he caused, she had said.
So now he would. Cornered by two people with magic when he had none, Isaac had no choice but to submit to their judgement.
"We're not going to kill you." Rumple used his magic to immobilize Isaac while Belle forced him to drink the potion they had prepared.
"You can think of it as a gift," Belle told him. "From you to me, from me to you. I'll be able to sleep in peace again. You'll learn what it is to... well, you'll find out. Perhaps you'll be able to put that knowledge into your art. Perhaps you'll only suffer."
"What my wife means is, is that it's your problem now, Mr. Heller."
They returned to a quieter Storybrooke than they had left. A late lunch at Granny's filled them in on the latest gossip. Regina had gone off with Robin Hood and his merry band to be heroes in the Sherwood Forest, maybe even to reform the local government rather than haphazardly redistributing the taxes through violence and trickery.
"Something had to stick after twenty-eight years as the mayor, one hopes," was Rumple's comment. "I wish her luck, and I mean that sincerely."
Snow and David had moved to a farm on the outskirts of Storybrooke.
"David's old sheep dog showed up after the shake-up," Ruby told Belle.
The "shake-up"? Was that what they were calling it now? Belle smiled and nodded. "I'm happy for them."
Emma was still sheriff. She and Lily were openly dating now. Henry was thrilled at the prospect of adding dragons to his already over-complicated family tree. He showed up at the library to enlist Belle's aid in translating old books of history and geography from the Enchanted Forest, in preparation for spending the next month there with his other mother.
"We should invite him to the Dark Castle sometime," Belle suggested after telling Rumple about Henry's visit. "If it's still there..."
"Yes. We were there for a time, before you woke up," he said. "It seems both places are our home."
We are both. That had become part of Storybrooke's idiom ever since the first Dark Curse broke. And it was true of themselves, as beings of both light and dark, outsider and native. Belle nodded. "The Dark Castle was where I got to know you first, the 'forever' I promised. It will always be 'home'."
"And Storybrooke was where we found each other again." His face was full of wonder, as if contemplating an undeserved miracle.
"It's where we chose each other." After everything that had happened, after all the choices they had made, right or wrong, that was the one that mattered.
They were home.
Author's note: And that's all, folks! I know the show's been over for like five years now, but these idiots continue to rattle around in my head, so... here I still am. Thank you to everyone who read, kudosed, commented or reviewed, etc. I appreciate it!
