"Generous. What have you done that's generous?"
"Everything! Everything that you wanted, I have done."

She's inches away, and the scent of her is wafting under his dilating nostrils.
He's too close to telling her the truth.
He has to curb himself, he has to start biting his tongue soon, or -

Or all of this will have been for nothing.

Sarah, his whole frame is moaning, shuddering for want of her. Don't you know how I suffer for you?

Her eyes tell him no. Cruel eyes, accustomed to accusation.
Now they darken and flash like heavy clouds streaked with lightning as she narrows them.

If he threw himself at her feet now, if he told her the truth, would she believe him?
Would she scorn him, as her entire world collapsed about her ears and her spirit broke?

Not at one point has she really looked at him. Not throughout this whole set up.
He thought he'd caught a hint of it at the ball, the dance he had put so much thought and artistry into, filling in the picture as though with a brush. For a second he'd thought that this had all been worth it, that he'd won some small victory alongside the greater good.

But then she had run. Proven that she held no attachments to him. That her purpose was just as it should be; that her own life and her own world were all that concerned her.

There's no room for him in her narrow walkway, her cocooned moment of redemption and learning.

"You asked that the child be taken, I took him."

He plays his role perfectly despite the tumbling thoughts and the wrenching of his gut as his hands itch to grab her, stall her, destroy her through his own desire for her affections.

"You cowered before me, I was frightening."
He almost flinches at his own voice, so close to the bone, only a few words away from the exact truth of it. Her gaze is sweeping over him with what he can only describe as disgust - it makes his knees weak and his stomach reel.

He knew this would have to happen when he agreed to it.
It doesn't make it any less hard to have his devotion rewarded like this, with such vehemence.

Sarah. If only you knew, if only you knew...
I'm not frightening because you cower. I'm frightening because you need somebody to be scared of.

"I have reordered time," he quickly does so, knowing that it's no good excuse, that it's irrelevent to the both of them. He's skidding around the truth as if to avoid a car crash - clumsy, panicked.

She isn't allowed to understand, but he needs her to. Even if it's only years into the future, when some small, unconscious part of her awakens and her husband asks her what she looks so shocked about. He needs her to know...

That her great journey is all a lie?
That she can only become what she wants to with his help?

"I have turned the world upside down, and I have done it all for you." he almost spits the words. Ignorant, selfish, blinded girl! He's lucky that his fury supports the character that he plays in all this, because he's beyond controlling his emotions. Just her prescense drives him to the darkest places of his mind. Her incomprehension humiliates him, gnaws at him, makes him want to shake her until she snaps.

I'm not the man you think I am.
I'm not your enemy.
Sarah. Sarah. Don't hate me for loving you too much.

She's just standing there, waiting to say the lines. Waiting to break him.

Because she's destined to break him, and he's destined to bow to her ultimate triumph in this fantasy tale, just as all bad characters are.

To allow her the rewards of her efforts. To let her feel as though she's overcome real peril, real loss. As though she's become a better person, learned to love her brother, matured and gained experience, friends. As though she's special for being transported to another realm on an impossible quest.

Why can't she recognise the aeons he has spent building this world for her? Studying her every passion, her every small whim and fleeting obsession.

The amount of times he has paced her room and lifted and held the items most precious to her. Committed them to memory so that he could revive them, grander, more breathtaking, on another plane of their universe.

His love is unleashed unceasingly when he only thinks her name.
The notion of her possessions, the manifestations of her personality, and her cool white face now gazing up at him like the bewitching moon herself - the torrent is too much. He is brimming over, endlessly giving forth every part of his soul to her, and she doesn't even notice.

She only sees what she presumes she should see.

"I'm exhausted from living up to your expectations of me," he states, his whole entity becoming dense and heavy with infinite sorrow. He is giving up because she is more important. Because he's worked too hard to get her to this revelation, to this achievement, to tear it apart now. "Isn't that generous?"

It begins.
She recites the lines from her favourite red book as though she's been destined to do this her whole life. As though she were born for this moment.

Her transformation is complete.

She is the best that she can be. Her life will be beautiful.
She will have meaning and happiness for the rest of her time on God's sacred earth.

"Stop! Wait!" he holds out the crystal to her, playing the last lines of his role for all they're worth. The curtains are closing over him. Soon he will not be able to look her straight in the face, to have her acknowledgement. Soon he will be a ghost again.

Let the crescendo be one she'll never forget, the foe one she will always dream about, "Look, Sarah. Look at what I'm offering you. Your dreams."

He could offer her so much more than dreams.
He could offer her love more intense than the heat of a burning star. A sad love, a spinning love, a love that will live on forever.

"Just let me rule you, and you can have everything that you want."

He is too earnest in this. His mask begins to slip.
Against all his better judgement, he wants her to say yes.
He wants her to be less than she should, so that he too can be less - be selfish.

At least then they will be together. The Fallen still basking in all the bliss of Heaven.

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave."

I am already your slave, Sarah, I am already chained to you.
Love me. Love me. Love me.
Only a little. Only enough to let me love you with all the fire of Hell and all the brightness of Paradise.

I will show you love that no mortal has known. I'll lay our love between the stars.
I will raise you to dizzying heights, I'll keep you forever. Forever young, forever glorious.
Even as the world falls down.

Sarah, Sarah. I've served you for so long.
Just give me enough influence - just sway - so that I can take you.

She remembers her line.
The final act is done.

She thinks she has conquered the most significant obstacle of her young life.
She thinks she has saved her brother from a great danger.
She is free.

Clear, unfazed, overwhelmingly victorious blue halos pierce straight through his soul and skewer his heart, puncture his lungs.

"You have no power over me."

As he falls, he is relieved. For her.
She will never know, and though he will fade with the grey grief of his loss, she will thrive.

Hoggle, Ludo, Didymus, all of them - the products of her imagination, of his artist's hand - crowd around her in her bedroom. She hugs and kisses them all like a champion returned from a great battle. They are her closest companions in this universe, these figments of her dreams, the work of his magic. They make her strong. They will pop up, every now and again, in her life. Just because she needs them. For no reason at all.

She doesn't know that she needs him most of all.
The play is ended, the characters can retire for celebrations.

But he, the leading role, cannot attend.
Nobody is allowed to discover that the male star is also the backstage crew, the director and the writer. Not if she is still going to have her beautiful life, not if he wants to keep his agreement.

In this form it's easy to fly without being stared at. His wings aren't the same shape or texture, but he is airborne, and that's all that matters.

He flies without thinking. He will be back.
For now, the night is his solitary companion, the moon a lazy, cursory eye that hardly cares for his agony.

Perhaps he will fly to the moon and beyond, towards the small rupture in the fabric of space, tucked away where no human can see or comprehend.

He will enter the brief abyss, and then soft radiance will welcome him, and he will be free to take his own shape. He will be smiled at. Congratulated on his great success. Another human destined for greatness, one more bright spot amongst the hazy grey patches, the redemption of her species.

He will have to swallow their compliments and bow before the Throne, pretending that his first loyalty is to his duty.

To a guardian angel, duty is all that matters. The greater good. The benefit of the protected individual.

His heart sears in his chest, and he beats his wings harder.
What good is duty to him now, when he loves her for himself, not for the greater good or even for the Throne?

Perhaps, he thinks tentatively, as though pressing down on a bruise and wincing...

Perhaps now would be a good time to resign.