Snape In Love: Chasing Darkness Away

Chapter 27

Absolution

By the time he had finished telling her she had long stopped listening. His voice was no more than an echo from far away and his words eddied in her mind like dying autumn leaves, and she had not the will to gather them and pin them down. She stared unseeing into the distance, the wildness of the landscape before her fading as her mind's eye replaced the scene with one whose horror she no longer needed to imagine.

He gripped her hand more tightly and that part of her that still sat beside him on the granite bench, warmed by the late afternoon sunlight and by his very nearness, was but dimly aware of his mounting panic as he asked,

"Ella? Love, talk to me?"

She turned to him slowly and looked past his eyes, indifferent to his agitation, and the voice with which she spoke seemed not to be her own, being flat and dull and coming from a mouth that may as well have been coated with cotton wool.

"Take Persephone. I'd like some time alone. I need to think."

She withdrew her hands from his and stood, her mind racing ahead of her and away from him as she made towards the comfort of the castle, heedless of his calling after her, his voice broken and fearful. She stumbled blindly up the slope, tears blurring her vision so that all she could see was the green of the lawn against the dark grey stone that drew her inexorably towards its magical embrace, comforting and welcoming. She had to get inside, she had to get away. She had to be on her own.

On her own.

***

The corridors were deserted and she was glad of the solitude. Even the portraits were quiet, and the ghosts conspicuous only by their absence. Nevertheless she fled the main areas of the castle, making for the less used wing that housed the Astronomy Tower, far from the staff quarters and offices. Twin flames of anger and grief fuelled one another inside her and her pace slowed as her lungs began to burn. Halfway up a staircase a sudden stitch in her side caused her to double over in pain as the hot tears that were blinding her continued to spill down her cheeks, and she sank down on the cold stone steps and wept as the staircase ground into life.

By the time the pain in her hip caused by the step against which she lay had become unbearable, her tears had left dry salt tracks on her cheeks and she had stared so long at the grey stone that she felt she could almost see into it. It felt warm now against her cheek and she wished that she could be absorbed into its warmth, for whoever had said that stone was cold was surely wrong. This stone was welcoming, understanding, caring, and she knew it well. If she could become part of the stone she would never need to feel such sorrow again. She would become one with the ancient, ageless mystery of the school, of the bedrock, of the very earth, and her concerns would not matter any more. She closed her eyes as tears welled there once more.

Severus.

She pushed herself up with her arms, taking a deep, shuddering breath and wincing as her body complained of her abuse. Her head felt light and as she got to her feet she had to clutch the banister lest she tumble backwards down the stairs. Looking up, she continued the ascent she had begun she knew not how long ago, and reached a dark, dusty fourth floor corridor. Wearily brushing her hair back from her face she set off along it, numb now, searching for something she could not define.

There was a door halfway down, on the right hand side of the corridor, small and unremarkable in every way save for one. It did not belong at Hogwarts, and Ella knew this because it belonged in the small Axminster-carpeted hall of her parents' home, where it led to the living room. She stared at it uncomprehendingly for a few moments, her mind refusing to accept what she saw while her contrary heart began to beat wildly in her chest as if it was demanding that it be freed of its incarceration there. She took a few faltering steps towards the door and noted that the only way it differed from the one she remembered was the small brass plaque with the intertwined letters "RoR" engraved on it.

She stumbled slightly over a crack in the uneven flags but barely even noticed, until she stood before it with her hand resting on the ceramic doorknob. She recoiled in shock as the contact awoke memories so vivid that she could almost taste the familiar scent of Sunday dinner, and looked down at her feet, feeling comfortably cushioned by the soft woollen carpet even though she still saw the grey stone flags beneath. With one hand over her mouth she reached for the doorknob once more and turned it, her eyes widening as she saw what awaited her inside.

She was in the living room of her parents' house, the house in which she had lived for the first nineteen years of her life. As she turned to take it all in she could scarcely believe her eyes. Everything was exactly as she remembered; the floral three piece suite, the long low table made of Welsh slate, the ornately carved oak sideboard that had belonged to her great grandmother and had always been far too big for the room, her father's Muggle hi-fi unit with its expensive valve radio and old fashioned record deck. She crossed over to the window, wondering how far the illusion would stretch reality, and was slightly disappointed to discover that there was no suburban landscape outside with cars and lawns and children playing. Instead there were rolling hills and brooding mountains and she knew that if she were to look down to the right she might see Godric's Seat. She drew back quickly, a piercing anguish stabbing her soul.

Severus.

She did not want to think of him at the moment so she turned from the window and sank on to the smaller of the two sofas, in her long accustomed place. It felt exactly as she remembered, and exactly as the real thing had felt beneath her in the storage unit weeks earlier. The lowering of her line of sight meant that her gaze now fell on a corner table under which had always been stored a red plastic box full of Phoebe's board books and brightly coloured toys. Seeing them again brought hot tears to her eyes and her vision blurred as she stared unblinkingly at items she had bought for her baby sister all those long years ago.

After a while she roused herself for long enough to curl her legs underneath her and she rested her head on the arm of the sofa. She was numb, her mind empty of all thoughts bar one; he had been there when they had died.

The shadows lengthened and the light dimmed. She stared fixedly at a point high on the far wall, where the light floral wallpaper gave way to simple plaster coving and an elaborately artexed ceiling. Although she knew there were no cars passing outside, she could hear the distant hum of their engines and saw the tramlines their headlights made across the wall and along the ceiling. She remembered childhood nights lying in her bed waiting for the Sandman, watching those very same lines shine through the gap in her curtains and travel across her bedroom.

The memory jolted her from her sombre reverie. Her bedroom had been immediately above this room which meant that it was from there that the Death Eaters and their vile leader - and Severus - had watched her family die. Her bedroom, her own private place with the daisy-patterned duvet on the bed and the Art Deco posters from Athena on the walls, the paper lantern shade and the cosmetics-cluttered dressing table. She scrambled upright and clutched her stomach as dry heaves wracked her body. They had stood in her bedroom and watched through the floor as her mother and her father and her sister had succumbed to the most terrible poison imaginable. They had stood there and stroked themselves and they had laughed as her father had choked, mocked as her mother had coughed blood and bile, crowed as her precious baby sister, her beloved Phoebe, had alternately stiffened and writhed in pain on her mother's knee crying dry tears of uncomprehending torment. They had robbed her of them and they had violated her to do it.

And he had been there. He had watched. He had been a part of it.

She paced the room hugging her arms around her body, trying to quell her nausea until eventually it receded a little and she sat back down again, sighing deeply. She needed to think, and she closed her eyes for a moment trying to tamp down the queasiness that still threatened to reassert itself. She was sitting in the living room of her parents' house, or at least a representation of it that the school seemed to believe she needed. The Room of Requirement was evidently directing her to come to terms with Severus' latest revelation, one way or another.

For the first time since her desperate flight from him earlier that afternoon, she wondered how he was, and where he was. She thought for a moment about Persephone, knowing that whatever else he was doing at that moment he would have ensured their daughter's comfort was not compromised by his own distress. She knew that he would be distressed by her behaviour, and rightly so; he had always been terribly insecure in her love and she supposed that she now knew exactly why he had always felt that he did not deserve happiness, least of all with her.

And she did love him. Her feelings for him had never been in doubt and they would never change; but she needed to take stock of what she had learned, surely he would understand that. The Room of Requirement seemed to understand it, for as she sat the physical shapes around her began to shift and coalesce into different walls and darker furnishings until she realised with some measure of alarm that she was sitting on a bench in the corner of a smoky, noisy bar. The Room had taken her back to the very pub wherein she had caroused in blissful ignorance while she was orphaned by a monster.

She looked around, turning to face the bar just as the barman reached for the remote control and turned up the volume of the small television above the long row of optics. With a sudden adrenaline thrill she recognised her home, cordoned off with yellow tape and expressionless uniformed policemen, and her heart pounded wildly in her chest in a reprise that had been delayed for sixteen years.

Her mouth was dry and her eyes wide as she screamed at the barman to turn up the sound, leaping from her seat and lunging for the remote control, watching the green lines march across the screen until they reached the far side and the barman shook his head and turned away.

Her surroundings changed again and she was back in the familiar living room. Reliving it all was desolation and yet she relived every step. The journey home had been interminable. Back at her lodgings and unaware of how she had got there, she was greeted by two WPCs who had been professionally sympathetic and had helped her gather some belongings before helping her into the back of a police car and driving her two hundred miles down a dark motorway, back to her home town.

Her home town, but not her home. They had not taken her home, oh no. It was three days before the forensic experts had given up their fruitless search for evidence and by the time they had finished emptying every drawer and examining every detail of her old life it was no longer her home. She had taken nothing from it, nothing at all, instructing the family solicitor to 'deal with it' and settle the bill and his fee from the estate.

She had wanted to see the bodies, to try to comprehend what had happened and to say her goodbyes. It was impossible, they told her. She had wanted to give them a proper wizarding funeral, but she had not been there. If she had been able to intervene before the Muggle authorities had swarmed all over her life and finished off the decimation Voldemort had put into play, then she would have been able to cast wards and seek help of her own. She wondered to whom she would have turned. It would have been Dumbledore, of course, but she had not been there. She had been two hundred miles away from home and she had not even felt the moments of their deaths. She had been too late to turn to him for help and by the time she had shaken off the caring attentions of the police counsellors she felt too guilty and ashamed to turn to him for solace. She should have been there with them.

The room shifted and shimmered again and she was no longer alone. Her father was sitting on the sofa beside her mother and Phoebe was cradled in his arms. They were terrified, staring in horror as silvery fumes curled and licked their way out of the neck of a long glass vial which lay on its side on the low slate table. Instinctively, Ella looked up to the ceiling expecting to see the gathered Death Eaters through its translucency, but all she could see was the chandelier and the swirling plaster patterns that surrounded it. Half relieved that she did not have to see the jeers and the sick pleasure they took from their sport or catch sight of the expression on her husband's face as he bore witness, she turned her attention back to her loved ones and wept as she watched them die, one by one.

Much later, when thankfully they had faded from view and her skin was taut with dried tears, she reached for her emerald and clutched it in her fist, afraid to learn what her flight from Severus had done to him and hearing her mother's voice in her head as she accepted where her future truly lay.

He witnessed your deaths. He never told me.

"He's telling you now, my darling.

He watched and did nothing.

What could he have done?

He should never have gone along with it; he should never have made the poison.

But he did. And it's done.

He still makes potions.

Yes, he does.

How can he bear to?

Part of him can't, but he does it anyway.

He's done it all these years, hating himself.

He repents. He has lived with his regret.

I wasn't there with you.

No, and so you have lived with your regret too, but you must let it go.

I ought to have been there with you.

You couldn't have been.

But I should have been.

But then you too would have been lost, and what then of him?

We would never have known one another.

You needed to be here, now, for him, with him.

My life is with him.

Your life was meant for this.

I love him more than my life.

He is your life."

He is my life.

Severus.

She looked into the emerald, stroking its surface gently as she watched her husband pace the length of their rooms from end to end, Persephone in his arms. She felt a sharp pang of sorrow as she was struck by the realisation that she had left him sitting at Godric's Seat with their daughter, just as in the nightmarish vision Voldemort had shown her. She wondered whether he remembered that; of course he did. He would doubtless be brooding on it at that very moment, castigating his weakness in allowing her back into his life and convinced that she would be seeking out Sirius Black to rescue her from the farcical horror that was her marriage. His face was grim, his mouth set in a tight line, and even though the greenish cast of the emerald distorted all that she saw, still she knew how he suffered.

Oh, Severus!

She had lingered in the Room of Requirement for long enough. Scrambling to her feet she hastened to the door, hesitating as she pulled it open but only for long enough to take a last look at something she knew she would never see again, and to whisper,

"Thank you."

***

"Ella? Love, talk to me!" he had said, but he had known that she would flee. Finally he had told her the truth, the complete and unabridged version, and finally he had fulfilled his own prophecy by driving her away. He watched her run, calling after her in the vain hope that he could halt her flight, but deep in his heart he knew better. Persephone mewled softly in his arms and he held her close to him, wondering what would become of him without her. He nuzzled her tiny head with his nose, her fragrant baby scalp sending a rush of love through him until his breath caught and his eyes prickled with emotion. He could not be without them, he simply could not. They were his life, his all, his past present and future. If Ella left and took their daughter with her...

He shuddered and fought the urge to howl with pain. Carefully he placed Persephone in her pushchair and began the slow trek back to the school. He had presented Ella with a raft of evidence and his guilt had never been in question, so now he would return to their rooms and he would wait for her verdict, and then he would relinquish his child to her and begin his sentence.

Hours passed. He performed each duty to Persephone as if it was his last; the last time he would change her, the last time he would feed her and wind her, the last time he would cradle her in his arms and press the tip of his finger to her palm and watch as she grasped it, the last time he would look into her deep blue eyes and feel the delirious joy of her perfection and her connection to him. In between, as she slept, he sat watching her and wondering how he would ever manage to live without her near.

Later, as the shadows lengthened and night's cold fingers traced their way across the nursery, he adjourned to their sitting room and sat by the lifeless grate, letting the darkness and the silent solitude creep into his bones and consume him. He did not know where she was, and he did not know what form her revenge would take; would she storm in to their rooms in a blaze of righteous indignation, grab their baby and spit in his face on her way out, promising him that he would never lay eyes on either of them again? Or would she slip into the room with her hand clasped in Sirius Black's, telling him that at last the scales had fallen from her eyes and she knew where her future lay and it was far from him?

Ah, Sirius Black. Voldemort had shown her visions of a life with Sirius Black and she had repudiated it, but that had been before, when he was still deluding himself that she could love him; and one part of Voldemort's vision had already come true, after all. She had left him and Persephone alone at Godric's Seat. Surely that was a portent that could not easily be dismissed.

Severus began to sink ever deeper into a mire of despair, the thoughts whirling around his brain a miasma of conflicting images and memories. All the time there was a lone voice in his head telling him that she needed this time away from him in order that she could come to terms with the enormity of his confession and come back to him, for she had known already the greater part of it and had loved him all the same. Had married him in spite of it all, telling him it only made her love him more. This was just one more piece of information for her to process, the last piece in the jigsaw that was their life. As time went on he had to work very hard to silence that dissenting voice for it was trying to fill him with hope that he could not afford to have.

He sat, and he waited. A beam of silver cast its light across the room, illuminating the door at its far end with a ghostly luminescence. Lighting her way back to him, he thought mordantly, and almost laughed. He bit it back because it threatened to become a sob and there would be time enough for howling to the moon later, after she had gone.

At last he heard the familiar sound of her footfalls as they clipped along the corridor. Such a sound would normally make his heart sing with joy, but tonight it gave out a dirge-like threnody. He tried to ascertain her mood from the rhythm of her step, and scoffed at himself in disgust for the desperation inherent in such an attempt. Ah, but was that not the crux of the matter? He was desperate and would soon be distraught, for now the door creaked open and everything that made his life worthwhile was to be snatched back from his pleading grasp.

He watched as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her. The shaft of moonlight made her insubstantial as a wraith, and bleached her of all colour. She could almost be an old sepia photograph, he mused, and it was quite apt for soon all he would have left of her would be old and fading memories.

"Have you made a decision?" Will you leave me again?

His voice, once he had found it, was hollow and the words echoed around the room and inside his head and he wanted to scream so that he could drown out her answer.

"There was never a decision to make."

He did not know what she meant. The implication was that she might stay, but he knew better than to trust the partisan pleas of his heart, and besides, she was moving across the room now and her face was in shadow. He could not ascertain her mood because the tension in the air was coiled so tightly around him that he was almost suffocating in it.

"Severus, are you alright?" she asked, coming to sit before him, perching on the edge of the low table and resting her hands on his knees.

"Am I?" he replied, more harshly than he intended. "I'm not the one who's just realised they've been trapped in marriage to a monster who just stood by - stood by! - while their family - "

"Severus, no. No more. Please. We've talked so much over the last few days. I don't want to talk any more! I just want to - "

"Ella, I understand. I've always expected it. Just - wherever you go, please, let me see our daughter once in a while." His voice cracked and his lips tightened as he tried to preserve some small measure of dignity. Ella sighed and lowered her head and he balled his fists to prevent himself reaching for his wand and Obliviating her of all that he had spent the last days confessing.

She reached into her robe and withdrew her wand, muttering "Lumos!" and illuminating the wall sconces with a soft warm glow.

"Oh, Severus. You are so quick to jump to the wrong conclusion! I don't want to talk any more because I just want to be with you! I am so sorry. I just ran off and left you sitting there, and I've been gone such a long time. I hardly realised how late it was, you see, but I should have thought of you, I knew you'd be worried."

He swallowed hard.

"Where were you?"

"At home."

Severus frowned, failing to understand. She looked up and saw his confusion and continued gently,

"The Room of Requirement. I've never seen it before, but today there it was...and it was home, so I went in and I sat and thought, and then..."

She trailed off, looking past him and into a corner where the shadows danced in the flickering firelight from the sconces. He studied her closely, drinking in every detail of her face and hoping even though it ran against all the odds that it would not be the last time he was allowed such a luxury. He dared not interrupt her or try to hurry her along so that he could have his answer, in case the sparks of hope that were igniting in his breast were suddenly extinguished by her change of heart.

"I saw it all, Severus. Everything. Oh, not you, not any one in my bedroom watching - " At this he started, horror-stricken, remembering her room, Ella's room if he had but known, and she grasped his hands and leaned towards him earnestly, their knees touching - "but I saw Phoebe, and Mum and Dad. I was there when they died, this time. I needed to be there, you see, with them. The Room let me do that!"

"And - and what now?" he said carefully, frozen to the spot while he waited for her reply. She looked at him gravely and sighed, releasing his hands. He felt a leaden weight in his stomach and no words would come when he opened his mouth to speak, but she was not getting up to leave. She climbed on to the sofa beside him, kneeling, and slipped her arms around his neck, pulling him to her. He closed his eyes in relief and held her to him, splaying out his hands across her back and underneath her hair, revelling in the sensation as it slipped over his fingers. He buried his face in her neck and kissed the soft skin behind her ear.

"Now, we carry on," she said softly.

"I thought I'd lost you," he confessed in a whisper. "I couldn't bear to lose you again, Ella."

"You'll never lose me, love. Never," she murmured, stroking his hair and planting kisses along his brow and on his eyelids, making her way tenderly to his waiting lips. "Let me show you how happy you make me." She spoke these last into his mouth and he moaned with relief as the tips of their tongues touched. He hardly dared to believe that nothing had changed, when everything had changed. She still loved him, she still needed him, despite or perhaps because of his complete honesty, and she was kissing all of his fear away.

He thought all this, and yet when they parted and she rested her forehead against his he still stiffened for a moment, still fearing that now she would tell him that she had made a mistake, that kissing him again had not been the same as before, not now that she knew the whole truth of it; that there was a taint to their love now that would not be expunged. That the rock of her love was crumbling into a seething ocean of remorse and that she would never forgive herself for loving him. That she would leave, soon, in order to hold on to the last vestiges of her self respect. That it was over.

She saw the fear in his eyes, for she said,

"Severus, I mean it. Believe it. Please."

He tried. Pushing away all of his fears, all of his regrets and self recriminations, he let himself embrace her love for him with a whole and an open heart that swelled until it pained him that they were two souls and not one. Crushing her to his breast he heard her gasp with pleasure and he leaned forward, twisting her underneath him until the weight of his body pushed her into the soft cushions of the sofa. He looked down at her, her face flushed with love, moist lips parted in a soft smile and her hair fanning out around her like a nimbus of copper in the warm firelight, and was hypnotised once more by her eyes. So many shades of green showed so many different moods, and perhaps it was simply a combination of the firelight and his intense relief but tonight he saw even more. Tonight he saw an unblemished future, if he would just relinquish his guilt, as she had. She had always been so certain of what life held in store for them. All he had to do was let go and allow her to take him along with her. His gaze dropped to her lips and his instincts took over as his arms slipped under her and pulled their bodies together. Her hands were tangling in his hair in the way he loved so well, stroking him. Needing him, desperately. He felt giddy with love for her and even though his inclination was to talk, to analyse the reasons for her decision to stay in order to make absolutely sure that his future was secure, it was evident as his fingers grazed the clasp of her bra that they both had a raging need to consummate their new understanding. He unfastened it expertly, feeling her shiver underneath him. There would be a lifetime for them to talk, and perhaps after all this closeness was enough, for now. Her lips found his hungrily and as his hand slid under her blouse to free her heavy breasts she plunged her tongue into his mouth and arched into his hand. He could not suppress an exultant smile and she felt it and returned it, their teeth clashing together.

"Do you believe me?" she asked breathlessly, opening the top buttons of his shirt and sliding her hand underneath.

"Yes!" he replied, realising at last that he meant it.

"Then love me!" Her hand tightened in his hair and she pulled his head back, reaching up to drag her mouth along his jaw and down to his shoulder, drawing the skin into her mouth and making him hiss as the sensitive nerve endings there sent an almost unbearable tingle straight to the small of his back. He tried half heartedly to wriggle from her grasp and she laughed, a deep, throaty, irresistibly alluring sound that never failed to fill him with joy. "You're not going anywhere, Severus Snape!" she said.

"Not even the bedroom?" he asked as he moved down her body, positioning himself between her legs and removing her upper garments while nuzzling her breasts, kissing and licking the creamy white flesh while her hands worked unerringly to unfasten his trousers.

"Not unless we can accomplish it like this," she answered, pushing his trousers down past his hips and kneading his buttocks, pulling him against her and making him groan in anticipation of the promise in her voice.

"Easily done, then," he said huskily, embracing her. "Apparate!"

She screamed in surprise as they disapparated with a loud crack, only to reappear on their bed, entwined as closely as before.

"Oh, you beast!" she exclaimed, but her eyes were dancing and he laughed breathlessly, still completely overcome with relief as she pushed him off her only to straddle him, her voluptuous breasts inches from his face and her still-clothed thighs gripping his bare flesh and grinding against his hardness wantonly. "I'll make you pay for frightening me like that!"

"Frighten you? By doing something completely natural that wizards and witches have done for centuries?" Snape's breathing was becoming laboured now and his hands reached for her breasts.

"Apparation doesn't feel natural!" she retorted, covering his hands with hers and pressing them against her. "And you know how much I hate it! But speaking of things witches and wizards have done for centuries..."

Ella stretched out on top of him and licked his lips before claiming them in a tender, teasing kiss. His hands still cupped her breasts and he moaned as she began to move down his body and out of his reach until she stood at the foot of the bed. He propped himself up on his elbows and watched as she unfastened her skirt and let it fall to the floor, revealing the small lace triangle of her panties. He smiled wolfishly as she hooked her thumbs under the elastic and drew them down her legs until they too were on the floor and she stood naked before him, her eyes heavy lidded with passion as they travelled the length of his body. Licking her lower lip unconsciously she climbed back on to the bed, very slowly, settling herself. Bliss, always bliss, and he groaned her name and arched up to meet her mindlessly. He lifted his head to look down at her, but the sight of her hair spilling across his thighs was too much for him to bear and he had to reach down and push her shoulders, mumbling incoherently,

"Ella, no...no more, I can't stand it...here, come here - "

She cut him off by kissing him firmly, swirling her tongue around his. Sliding one hand down over her buttocks he slipped the other between their bodies, stroking her in the way he knew would make her scream and feeling her quiver.

He knew her so well, he mused, listening to her little whimpers as they vibrated in his mouth, for he would not let her break their kiss and he moved his free hand back up to her head, crushing their mouths together as her lips drew back into a cry of ecstasy. Flipping them over so that she was beneath him, he parted her legs with his and gazed deep into her eyes, questioning.

"Now, Severus! Oh gods, now!" He exhaled raggedly and cupped her beloved face in his hands, and her eyes widened and then she moaned with pleasure. "Aaah!"

"Ella..." he murmured, cheek to cheek with her, nuzzling her ear and feeling her nails rake his back as her hands sought purchase. "Oh, my Ella!"

It was always the same; an incredible conjoining that made him wonder at the rightness of the world and everything in it that had conspired to bring them to that point. He supposed that was one of the more surprising things that his relationship with Ella had taught him; the Fates schemed incessantly, of course, spinning the skeins of lives into tapestries of varying hues, but they did not, after all, always conspire against him. He lifted his head and their gazes locked, smouldering passion reflected back at him, setting him aflame with its incandescence, urging him on to new heights as her fingers tightened on his shoulders and her whimpers increased in pitch. He thought he would run mad with longing for her, for surely not even this was enough, surely a melding of their bodies as well as their souls was all that would be able to calm the fever that set his every nerve tingling. Blood was rushing in his ears and he gave himself over to answering her moans with a steady, breathless chant of her name, Ella, his mantra, his centre, his life, his soul. Then at last he was hovering on the very edge of release and it was sublime.

He had heard it said that one's life could pass before one's eyes at the moment of death. Over the years he had had good cause to brood on such a likelihood, facing the possibility on occasions too many to enumerate. His would not have contained many happy scenes, until Ella. Now all that he wanted to do was live and create more memories with her, so that when his time came he would face the ferryman with a nostalgic smile on his face. He had also heard it said that each climax was a little like dying, and so he was not surprised that all the love he felt for Ella, and had ever felt, came back to him now, a kaleidoscope of images flashing in and out of his mind's eye. It was indescribable and all the time he was within her and she was all around him, and he knew, he knew the rightness of it.

Drowning in the turbulent depths of her eyes, he wrapped himself around her and they clung to one another as the waves of their climaxes began to crash over them. He knew how much she loved him and he knew exactly how he made her feel, and so as she cried out his name and arched into him her bliss pushed him over the edge and he came into her, his wife, his life's mate, shouting out her name with the most joyous elation he had ever felt.

Afterwards, when they lay tangled together in an exhausted afterglow, he kissed her. Side by side, their noses touching and their eyes smouldering with the embers of their shared passion, their lips brushed and caressed while their gentle fingers touched and stroked hair and cheeks. They loved one another deep into the night and beyond, grateful to have found and healed one another and content in the knowledge that each had chased the other's darkness away.

THE END.