wonderwoundedh
She had auburn hair. Beautiful, really. Something he liked to look at from behind the stacks when she stopped to peruse the book she had in her hand at the time. Pretty curls. He missed her when she didn't come into the library for the day.
His face, next to hers, looked so weathered in comparison. She was so young and fresh - so alive - and it was the last straw. He would have to let her go. He was stealing her youth, letting her live out the best years of his life while he approached his twilight. It was wrong. Even if he loved her.
His fingers were sticky, coated with deep red blood, and they grasped at her hair, her anything as she slipped, down, to the wet road where she collapsed and grew silent. If she died, so would he.
There was a tiredness to his bones, a fatigue he couldn't quite shift as he took up his favourite chair by the fire. He was old now, not the man he had been once, and he only wished that he'd seen it coming, that he could have prepared himself for the failures in his future, now his past.
He willed his magic from his fingertips, summoning it through his flesh to spill out and find her. Find Belle. He just needed to know she was safe - that she was alive - and then he could rest easy. Then he could slip away forever, knowing he had not doomed her to death or a life half-lived.