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"You can't hold on to both of them," Zelena mocked him.
Rumplestiltskin snarled and sent her crashing into a tree. She fell in an ungraceful heap.
He tossed the dagger behind him, in the direction Belle had taken. He didn't hear the crunch of snowy footsteps, only his son's labored breathing. Then there was no room in his head but-
Madness, his will captive to Belle's.
The witch was stirring.
"Stop her," and there was silence outside. Inside-
Madness, the dagger pressed into his empty hands.
His grip on his son loosened; he pushed his freedom away.
Belle shivered. "You can't, can you?"
She held his dagger - around the noise he answered, "Can't hold both."
Her forehead against his, a spot of warmth in this frigid clearing. "Take us home, Rumple." The words wobbled.
Home, the command as open-ended as they came. Home was his castle, home was Belle, and Baelfire, whom he carried within.
They appeared in her kitchen, still and dark under stone. He crumpled to the floor.
Clamor, shouting. The Dark Ones did not share; they wanted the interloper out.
"No room." He clutched his head. "No Rumple."
The click of metal on slate tile. Her arms around him. He pulled her closer, over his knees, as near as he could get to her.
Eventually the noise subsided, a little.
Belle was still with him. She was-
"Light."
"I can't see a thing in here," she replied.
The simplest spells were barred to him now. He would never have confessed those limits to someone he did not trust, but it was Belle.
“Can’t,” he begged her, repeating the word she’d used.
She didn’t understand that either. She cupped his face, peered fruitlessly down at him in the pitch dark. “Can’t what, Rumple?”
“Can’t... magic.”
“Oh!” Her eyes were wide and unseeing. She fumbled for the dagger she’d laid aside.
Her hand closed on the hilt, its claws in his soul. He grunted.
“Rumple?” he heard an edge of panic in her voice.
He buried his face in her neck, breathed in the scent of her. She would betray him; everyone did. He’d accepted it when he’d thrown the dagger away to save his son. He only hoped for time.
He felt her brace herself, then, “Use your magic as you pl-”
No! He let out a strangled hiss.
She stopped, the command half-woven, its qualifier amputated and raw. It hung in the air, alive with hunger. It would devour them both.
His fear shoved the voices aside. “As necessary,” he whispered. Magic, potent and smothering, lashed him for his interference.
Belle trembled at what she’d nearly done. Then slower, wavering, “Use your magic as you deem necessary,” she said.
He pulled back from her, astonished.
The fireplace was cold, then not. Scones lit around the walls, and Belle blinked in the sudden brightness. He shielded her eyes with his hand, gaped at her like a fool.
Dear gods, she was lovely. She’d returned part of his autonomy, without hesitation; she would have given him so much as to sever restraint from reason and destroy the realms on a whim.
He’d called her ‘gullible’ once, but he’d been mistaken. She simply extended her faith in people to those least deserving. Even, it turned out, to himself.
Her cheek curved against his lower finger. After a moment she released the dagger. He shuddered, and she took his hand, twined it with hers.
"Does it hurt when I hold it?"
"No... tight," he said. It wasn't pain, exactly.
She kissed his hand. "What do you need, Rumple?"
Words would not come; they tangled in his crowded brain, tripped over each other and fell in ruins amidst chaos.
He pointed to the dagger. "You."
She was reluctant to touch it again. He wondered how long that reluctance would last.
He saw her close her eyes, open them to watch him intently, the way he froze at the first brush of her fingers on his dagger, its claws settling in a vice around his will.
Blue.
"What do you need?" she repeated, and it started a torrent of words that threatened to drag him over the edge.
"Stop!” came her horrified whisper.
He gasped for air, his secrets spilled between them.
Metal clattered on stone; the claws receded.
“Rumple, I’m sorry,” he heard her say. Distantly, he marvelled that she hadn’t run from him. He turned his face from her.
She cupped his cheek, held him. Voices clamored; hers was soft, steady as a vow. “I love you, Rumple. All of you.”
Surely not after what she’d heard.
He pressed into her hand, wanting more, craving her. If he loved his captor then so be it. He needed her.
He knew this could not end well; memories not his own were ample proof of the direction their path must take. The dagger corrupted, over time. It consumed anyone who touched it, either side of its curse.
This could not continue, if only because sharing mental space with his son was like living in a house with only curtains between the sleeping spaces.
“Even the parts of you that belong to the darkness,” Belle said.
How was that possible? It was the only thing that could explain her.
He kissed her palm. “Again?”
Her thumb swept over his lips.
The scrape of the dagger, and she held it more gingerly now. "What do you need from me first?"
The words dropped in a trickle from a height, ripples in a pond.
He touched her hand, the hand that held his freedom. "Keep this on you, always, when you bathe and when you sleep."
She swallowed, prompted him. "What do I need to keep it safe?"
He found he was able to focus this way. He traced the length of her thigh with a finger. He'd never seen her in trousers before; the sight stole his few remaining thoughts from him.
A sheath followed his finger's path, over her clothing, its straps wrapping high on her leg. She squirmed to settle it.
Again, his finger down the line of it, and a shimmer of magic followed.
He looked up to find her cheeks damp with tears. He'd given her the tools to keep him captive.
"Rumple, I can't do this to you."
He felt his son stir restlessly, listening. Dismay ordered the words for him. "Must," he said. "Bae dies."
She gulped for breath, and nodded resolutely. He almost smiled; his Belle was strong.
"Ask me," he said. He couldn't think straight - she would have to do it for him.
"Is Neal... is Baelfire safe?"
She'd known his son as 'Neal.' Rumplestiltskin didn’t like that.
"For now." He could hear him, distantly.
She sheathed his dagger and released it, watched him.
He couldn’t hide the apprehension that bled out of him, less so with his mind crowded as it was.
She pressed her forehead to his. “Tell me how to make this easier for you.”
He didn’t deserve her. “You would?”
“Anything, Rumple.”
To trust was the surest way to be hurt. To ask was to open himself to being denied. And yet… what more could be taken from him?
He wrapped his hand around her delicate wrist, pressed his lips into her fingers. The voices seemed quieter when her skin touched his. He wanted to kiss her, wanted like he wanted air to breathe.
He guided her hand back to his dagger, but this time he did not let go of her. “Ask me?”
Her hand upon its hilt, “What were you trying to tell me, Rumple?”
The magic pulled words from him that he had been unable to form.
“Everyone who has ever controlled the Dark Ones has abused the power, Belle. Even those with the best of intentions.”
He only hoped that when the time came, he would remember that he loved her.
“I don’t want to,” she said, and he was unable to continue.
He ducked his head; silence hung between them.
“Rumple?”
He looked up at her, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
She winced. “I’m terrible at this.”
Her other hand buried itself in his curls, scratching gently at his scalp. It felt good.
“Please tell me,” she said, and it was enough.
“It is easy to justify; we are monsters, not human.”
Her face clouded, but she let him be.
“If I held this-” his fingers ran across her wrist, where her blood pulsed closest to the surface “-while you controlled me, but let go, then that would mean that I have withdrawn my consent.”
He wouldn’t have put it quite so baldly, but perhaps it was better.
“Your consent,” she whispered. “That is what I have taken from you, isn’t it?”
“It is what I gave up,” he answered. It was what no one had returned to any of the Dark Ones, ever. He didn’t expect her to.
Except… she had, in that clearing, and now.
“So when I ask you something as unwise as I have done, you could also tell me then, right?”
Relief. Maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as every other occasion. Centuries of inherited memories told him that it could be much, much worse.
“Yes.”
She offered him a tremulous smile. "Things are always better after a cup of tea. Will you be alright while I start some?"
"Yes." He could provide her with tea, but it tasted better when she made it. ‘Made with love’ wasn’t a figure of speech in this land - it was magic as real as anything he was capable of wielding.
She knew his habits, and found him at his spinning wheel, the spokes running too fast. Her hand on his shoulder brought them to a halt.
Things were indeed better after a cup of tea; it seemed chamomile worked even on Dark Ones, when they let it.
Night was falling outside.
His feet swinging in constant motion under the table, she asked him, “Do you sleep in this land?"
Without her hand on the dagger, the answer was difficult. "Sometimes."
She frowned. “Rumple, how much is Bae… aware?”
He struggled with the words. “Too much for… sleeping.”
She took his tea from him. “I’ve missed you,” she said, setting cup and saucer aside, “and I’d like to show you, but….”
“Sleeping only,” he agreed.
"You never told me where your bedroom was."
They left the tea on the table. Her arm in his, he showed her.
~
She woke draped over him, the shape of him familiar. The texture of him was different. His skin was made up of tiny scales in mottled greys and greens, glossy to the point of appearing wet, but warm and dry to the touch.
The dagger weighed heavily in its sheath upon her thigh. It moved from one side to the next when she turned over in the bed. There had been a lot of turning in the bed last night, and none of it the fun kind. She hadn’t worn so much clothing to sleep since before she’d met Rumplestiltskin.
He was awake, his overly large irises refracting the morning light in shifting, intricate color. She wondered how long he’d lain there, unwilling to disturb her.
She’d known this version of him longer than she’d known him as human in Storybrooke, but never had she had the opportunity to study him as she wished. It didn’t seem quite fair to do so when he was defenseless to her, either in his cognitive faculties or his free will.
Her Rumplestiltskin, vibrant and sharp, with a keen wit that could flay a man alive with mere words, was lost to a self-induced madness that left him barely able to form complete sentences.
“Did you sleep?” she asked him. The insole of her foot stroked along his leg.
He almost focused on her. “A little,” he replied, and she rejoiced at this bit of clarity.
“What are we going to do, Rumple?”
He looked right through her for a moment, until his hand shot up to grasp hers. Very gently, he laid it over the sheath holding his dagger.
Her heart sank. She’d hoped he could communicate without that coercion. This could not continue.
She repositioned his hand on her wrist before she touched the hilt. He watched her as though he truly did not believe that someone would give him back his choice. She could live the rest of her life without seeing that expression on him, ever again.
She sorted through ways to phrase her question. The dagger’s interpretation was altogether too literal for her comfort.
“What do you want to do about Baelfire?” she asked.
His reply came promptly, sounding almost like his normal self. “Transfer his mark to the witch using the key.”
“A life for a life,” she remembered. “Like the wraith’s amulet?”
He winced. “Yes.”
Belle should be appalled. Rumplestiltskin waited, in slips and flashes, as though expecting exactly that, but-
“She would have killed Baelfire and taken your dagger.”
His mouth twisted.
Belle felt sick. Why would the witch have been content with that?
“Would you stop me?” he asked her. His thumb smoothed over her skin.
She sighed and let go of the hilt. The tension melted from him.
There were many questions Belle could have asked, but she’d learned her lesson about open-ended queries.
“Baelfire said that we needed your darkness,” she told him. “He wants your help to get to his own son.”
With childlike wonder, Rumplestiltskin repeated, “Bae?”
Belle smiled. “He did.”
No manner of curse could mask the man she’d fallen in love with.
“I will not stop you,” she told him solemnly. “I will help you, if you need me to.”
~
In the end, they did not need to seek out Zelena; she came to the Summer Palace, alighted from her broom in the midst of those gathered with Belle.
As bold as brass, but then recoiled when she saw who was also present. He’d hidden his magical signature from her long ago.
Rumplestiltskin grinned with all of his teeth. There was nothing wrong with his power, given rein; he pinned her to the wall as if she were a struggling, squawking bird.
“Hey!”
A whiny one.
He had a focal now, a place on which the whirlwind turned.
He silenced her; as little as the sounds of death bothered him, Belle must not be exposed. As an afterthought, he walled off their audience. These people’s consciences chose the oddest times to rear their heads.
It was the work of a moment to transfer Baelfire’s mark, branded into Zelena’s hand. Thereafter, every moment she breathed was another that she threatened his family, but the vault owned her life now, and no one must cheat it.
He stepped back, his magic trapping her as she writhed. Belle slipped her hand into his, sorrow in her eyes, even for the woman who had tried to destroy them.
“Was there no other way?”
She asked this of him only now. He brought her hand to his mouth, kissed her fingers.
Her hand in his was solace, lent quiet to the voices. Just a little while longer, he told them.
Belle watched with him, her innocence crumbling, until the unmistakable stench of death reached him. He let his former student fall, turned his back on her, and ground the memory of her beneath his heel.
“You did it,” Belle said.
He couldn’t maintain the barrier; it vanished as he released the magic holding his son.
Sound flooded in, Snow’s shrill demands, Regina’s acerbic snipe, and David’s deeper tones.
The separation threw him backward; he fell, his head hitting the stone floor. Nausea lurched through him, the pain of the blow unmitigated by his magic, the dagger still in Belle’s possession.
He heard a shuffling, startled cries, and Baelfire: “Papa?”
There was room in his head and-
Joy, his son filling his field of vision, cradling him, the motion causing his world to stutter, Belle at his side.
Baelfire glanced between them, the dagger in Belle’s hands. “You gave that up, for me?”
Distantly, he heard Regina removing her sister’s body, and David shooing the others from the room. Tears ran freely from him, his son whole and alive.
“I would do anything for you.”
Belle took his hand. He swallowed, unable to look at her. This was when he would need to remember that he loved her, because no one ever returned the dagger to the Dark Ones.
Except her, the hilt in his palm.
The pain went away.
He sat up slowly, clinging to his son. The Dark Ones were beasts, monsters, not human, and he no better than any of them.
“No one has ever given this back,” he whispered.
She brushed his hair from his face, tucking it behind his ear. “You didn’t tell me that. Did you think I wouldn’t?”
He managed a weak smile. “I should have known better. You let me keep my secrets.”
“Most of them,” she said ruefully.
“Ah yes, that.” He looked away. What did he need? A great many things that he never would have confessed otherwise. Some that he was ashamed of, but others that he would not dare ask of her.
Who could love a beast to that degree?
“All of you, Rumple,” Belle reminded him. “Even the parts of you that belong to the darkness.”
It was the only thing that could explain her.
~