Fic: If We Shadows Have Offended, C.4
Title: If We Shadows Have Offended
Chapter: 4/5
Author: djarum99
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Rating: PG-13-N17 overall
Characters/Pairings: Belle/Rumpelstiltskin, Mr. Gold/Gabrielle French, Regina, Emma, Henry, and other citizens of Storybrooke
Disclaimer: ABC and Disney own the fairytales; I make no profit
Summary: Mr. Gold divines Regina’s secret weapon, and the battle for love begins and ends; title stolen from Mr. Shakespeare. AU after 1x19; this fic required more words than expected, but this is the penultimate chapter.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
All that he loves stands behind him, and love’s betrayal is all that can save them.
Emma is reaching for her gun, he knows without turning his head, and the others are pushing closer, reaching to take him down. Belle screams his name, a plea, and he can hear Baelfire sobbing. Their pain is a threat he cannot allow, and he casts a veil of silence, freezes his followers where they stand.
The Queen stands draped in magic, the midnight raiment of believing she’s won.
“Always dependable, dear Rumpel, and I’ll honor my side of the bargain. You and your son will continue to enjoy such comforts as your curse allows. Do you want to remember all of this? I’m feeling generous today - if you like, I’ll erase the last week as a bonus. You’ve served me well.”
Henry struggles in her arms and then stills as she lifts him to the altar, raises the knife.
Rumpelstiltskin would spare the boy this memory, but he needs him awake, needs Henry’s voice to add to his own.
“A most gracious offer, to be sure, but don’t be too hasty, your Majesty. My curse demands the dearest price, as you are well aware. Your heart must hold its fill of love before you wield the blade.”
He steps forward, his boots swirling magic and the trees’ mournful ash, flattens his palm against Henry’s chest and meets the Queen’s cold eyes.
“This won’t do, it won’t do at all. Remember your father, dearie, remember that my curse must be fed by true love’s sacrifice. Pure, untainted. Remember the day I brought him to you, the day you first held your son.”
“Mom...” The boy is dazed, pleading, but Regina refuses to meet his gaze.
“You’re not my son. You never loved me.”
“But he did. He did. Remember.”
He knows how to recognize a desperate soul, how to sink his teeth into pain’s throat and shake until fangs meet bone. Knows how to sing the words soft, relentless, his lips nearly brushing Regina’s frost-pale cheek.
Only sacrifice can free them, or weave the spell anew. The Queen’s sacrifice, or his own. The curse demands an answer - without it, those in its cobweb thrall are doomed forever to wander the wastelands. His namesake blade snakes cold against his ribs, etching deadly secrets through its leather sheath, his own scaled flesh.
“The scent of the baby’s hair, milky sweet, the feel of his skin, warm satin, the way he looked at you, so trusting, remember...his first smile, first laughter, first words, first steps, his tears, all for you, his mother, remember...he’s two, believing you tuck the sun in bed each night...he’s four, running into your arms...”
“Stop this, stop it now, you malevolent little-” Regina’s hands are shaking, and the air around her flashes with needlepricks of lightning, threads of sapphire light. At her back, the lifeless trees awaken, sere branches writhe to stir the wind, and the forest breathes once more, exhales. Wayward gusts lift the Queen’s hair, tease her skirts, and her body begins to shimmer, a candle flame guttering in the wake of a rising storm.
“You nursed him through fevers, told him stories of his grandfather. He showed you all his treasures, once upon a time, asked you all his questions, and you answered, you answered, and you loved...”
“You bastard. I can’t, I can’t...”
Her dagger flashes in a slow-motion arc, arrowing down like a pitiless hawk to pierce its living target. Staggering backward, he pulls Henry from the stone and into his arms as his legs fail him and he stumbles, collapses across the boy’s body. For a moment, he thinks that death will be kind, a mute and gentle thief - until Regina grasps the bloodied hilt and wrenches her blade from his chest.
His magic falters with his heartbeat, and he can hear the crowd behind them shouting, Belle sobbing, Bae’s struggle against the hands that hold him fast.
“Don’t think you’ve won. I’m taking you with me, Rumpelstiltskin.”
Regina lifts the dagger to strike again and Henry slips from his arms, grabs her ankle, pulls, and the woman who once called him son falls howling onto her own weapon. Perhaps it’s magic that finds its mark, his, or Regina’s own; perhaps it’s merely fate’s caprice that holds her knife true, drives it home.
A kindness of ravens, a murder of crows, the sound of a thousand beating wings and the wail of all hope dying. The Black Queen dissolves into dark-winged mist, clawing holes in what’s left of the sky, dragging this world with her and all its feeble stars...
~~
Moldy straw beneath his boots, torchlight and leather, smooth against his skin; he’s returned, and all is as it was, the kingdoms restored and his soul in ashes. He rages, snarls, hurls the fury of every magick he knows to blaze and die against the bars, but the fairy’s spell holds true. He stills, waits for clarity, hands slick with his own darkling blood, and he remembers - someone still owes him a favor.
~~
It’s an hour or more before Emma finds him, following the thread of his wheedling voice through the labyrinth of her parent’s...dungeons? Not an idea that fits with what she knows of them, in this world, which still isn’t nearly enough. His summons had nipped at her ear in the middle of explanations jumbled with hugs from tiny women with glittering wings, a host of people both fey and familiar, her mother’s bold laughter and her father’s strong arms, a giddy celebration that didn’t feel quite right. There’s a vague, niggling sense of things left undone, but she’s uncertain of her role here, and his whisper cast across her mind’s surface had felt like a skipping stone of relief.
Come, free me, and once again she is the key.
Literally, it seems. When she finally reaches his cell, she kneels beside the door, cautiously - he’s not a man, not here, and she’s more frightened now than she’d been through all of Storybrooke’s strange last days. He’s crouched just out of reach of the flickering light, and she remembers that day at the hospital, the day they’d rescued Belle.
“Mr. Gold?”
He’s grinning with teeth that are far too sharp, eyes hidden beneath a wild-wind tangle, his fingers lacing lightning into cat’s cradle patterns of fire. She’s still wearing her gun, and her hand wanders to the holster of its own accord. When he moves to grasp her wrist, his skin shimmers in the torch’s glow and he leans close to breathe an answer.
“Yes, dearie. And, no. You know my name.”
“Rumpelstiltskin.”
“Princess Emma. I’m so pleased to finally make your acquaintance.”
The words are sarcastic, a sibilant hiss, but his touch is oddly comforting, and she feels her heartbeat slow. He’s wearing what looks like ragged snakeskin, stained deep red across his chest, and his hands - his hands are bleeding, painting runes on the sleeve of her shirt.
“I woke up inside a tree,” she says, and face to face with a wounded sorcerer it sounds rational, a conversational comparison of apocalyptic notes. “Why are you...here?”
“Emma, sweet, strong Emma, that’s a story for the ages, for Henry’s book and a long winter’s night. Now, you must free me, let me find her. You must bid the spell be broken.”
“To find Belle? Where is she? And, I’m not at all sure that I should. You were dangerous there, you took Henry, and here, you’re...”
He laughs, high-pitched and eerie and like nothing she’s heard from Mr. Gold. Like nothing she’s heard anywhere, a sound that belongs to the shadows.
“Here, I’m something far worse, something you can’t begin to imagine. The Queen took Belle before the curse, locked her away in a place like this one. She’s...” He lifts his hands to the bars, black talons scrabbling to find the right phrase, and settles for what Emma thinks just might be honesty.
“I’m hers. I have to find her. My son, my Bae - he’s safe?”
“Yes. He’s with my parents, and Henry. He’s confused, but he knows that you...you saved us.”
In the end, he had, though she suspects Rumpelstiltskin is at least in part their destiny’s maker. Someday she means to have that story, but at the moment, she’d like nothing more than to smash her fist into his face. He took Henry, pushed him into that witch’s arms - that knowledge gleams certain, sharp and bright.
“Speak the words and let me go.”
It isn’t a command, it’s a plea, and for the first time she sees his eyes, terrifying and inhuman and filled with...fear? Hope? Without understanding the impulse, she lays a shaking hand against his cheek, feels love’s burn beneath flesh and bone, and knows that he speaks the truth. Punching his lights out may just have to wait.
“OK, then...and wow, the weird just keeps on coming. What, exactly, am I supposed to say?”
He moves back from the spikes, grinning, expectant. She could swear the cell behind him twists and shivers, like the air above a fire, like a hot desert wind. Turning him loose has to be number one on her Top Ten List of Bad Ideas, but she already knows what she’s going to do, and somehow, she knows the words. Deep breath, and-
“This cage was forged by command of my blood, and by my blood I release you.”
Something inside her awakens and stirs, and there’s a firework crackle as wood begins to snap and splinter.
“Yeah. Weird doesn’t begin to cover-”
The door swings open and he’s beside her in a heartbeat, too close. Closer, and his breath ghosts her neck, she catches his scent - sweetgrass and leather, blood-copper and desperation.
“Henry, your son, he’s alright?”
She hadn’t expected that.
“Yes. Shaken up, but he doesn’t remember...everything. I don’t understand, he was born there and I was so afraid he wouldn’t come back with us. Was it your doing?”
“No, dearie. It was yours. Love is the most powerful magic.”
There’s such longing in his voice, those eyes, such longing to believe. Someday, she’ll learn what’s behind that - her curiosity, it seems, has followed her into this impossible world.
“Then...I hope that you find yours, Rumpelstiltskin. Give mine to Belle, when you find her.”
“When I find her. Hold on to your son, Princess. Hold tight. And, as for that favor you owe me-”
“I set you free.”
“And I merely asked. Favors owed to me are more...formal arrangements. You must promise me, dear Emma, that you will protect my son. At any cost, no matter what may happen.”
Before she can answer, before she can stop him, he flicks his nail across her wrist, draws a line of beaded scarlet. Wrapping ravaged fingers tight against her skin, he mingles her blood with his own, seals the bargain and her scratch with a single stroke of his fingertip. It tingles, and he had no need for magic, not in this, not with her.
“I give you my promise as a mother. I will protect your son.”
What happens next is exactly what she expected, and he’s gone in a swirl of red-moon dust; the dark is thrumming and the air is electric and she’s...totally and completely lost. The dungeon’s tunnels are a foggy maze, but Henry is here, and he’s waiting, for her. She conjures an image of his face in sunlight and finds her way at a loping run.
Chapter Five
Chapter: 4/5
Author: djarum99
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Rating: PG-13-N17 overall
Characters/Pairings: Belle/Rumpelstiltskin, Mr. Gold/Gabrielle French, Regina, Emma, Henry, and other citizens of Storybrooke
Disclaimer: ABC and Disney own the fairytales; I make no profit
Summary: Mr. Gold divines Regina’s secret weapon, and the battle for love begins and ends; title stolen from Mr. Shakespeare. AU after 1x19; this fic required more words than expected, but this is the penultimate chapter.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
All that he loves stands behind him, and love’s betrayal is all that can save them.
Emma is reaching for her gun, he knows without turning his head, and the others are pushing closer, reaching to take him down. Belle screams his name, a plea, and he can hear Baelfire sobbing. Their pain is a threat he cannot allow, and he casts a veil of silence, freezes his followers where they stand.
The Queen stands draped in magic, the midnight raiment of believing she’s won.
“Always dependable, dear Rumpel, and I’ll honor my side of the bargain. You and your son will continue to enjoy such comforts as your curse allows. Do you want to remember all of this? I’m feeling generous today - if you like, I’ll erase the last week as a bonus. You’ve served me well.”
Henry struggles in her arms and then stills as she lifts him to the altar, raises the knife.
Rumpelstiltskin would spare the boy this memory, but he needs him awake, needs Henry’s voice to add to his own.
“A most gracious offer, to be sure, but don’t be too hasty, your Majesty. My curse demands the dearest price, as you are well aware. Your heart must hold its fill of love before you wield the blade.”
He steps forward, his boots swirling magic and the trees’ mournful ash, flattens his palm against Henry’s chest and meets the Queen’s cold eyes.
“This won’t do, it won’t do at all. Remember your father, dearie, remember that my curse must be fed by true love’s sacrifice. Pure, untainted. Remember the day I brought him to you, the day you first held your son.”
“Mom...” The boy is dazed, pleading, but Regina refuses to meet his gaze.
“You’re not my son. You never loved me.”
“But he did. He did. Remember.”
He knows how to recognize a desperate soul, how to sink his teeth into pain’s throat and shake until fangs meet bone. Knows how to sing the words soft, relentless, his lips nearly brushing Regina’s frost-pale cheek.
Only sacrifice can free them, or weave the spell anew. The Queen’s sacrifice, or his own. The curse demands an answer - without it, those in its cobweb thrall are doomed forever to wander the wastelands. His namesake blade snakes cold against his ribs, etching deadly secrets through its leather sheath, his own scaled flesh.
“The scent of the baby’s hair, milky sweet, the feel of his skin, warm satin, the way he looked at you, so trusting, remember...his first smile, first laughter, first words, first steps, his tears, all for you, his mother, remember...he’s two, believing you tuck the sun in bed each night...he’s four, running into your arms...”
“Stop this, stop it now, you malevolent little-” Regina’s hands are shaking, and the air around her flashes with needlepricks of lightning, threads of sapphire light. At her back, the lifeless trees awaken, sere branches writhe to stir the wind, and the forest breathes once more, exhales. Wayward gusts lift the Queen’s hair, tease her skirts, and her body begins to shimmer, a candle flame guttering in the wake of a rising storm.
“You nursed him through fevers, told him stories of his grandfather. He showed you all his treasures, once upon a time, asked you all his questions, and you answered, you answered, and you loved...”
“You bastard. I can’t, I can’t...”
Her dagger flashes in a slow-motion arc, arrowing down like a pitiless hawk to pierce its living target. Staggering backward, he pulls Henry from the stone and into his arms as his legs fail him and he stumbles, collapses across the boy’s body. For a moment, he thinks that death will be kind, a mute and gentle thief - until Regina grasps the bloodied hilt and wrenches her blade from his chest.
His magic falters with his heartbeat, and he can hear the crowd behind them shouting, Belle sobbing, Bae’s struggle against the hands that hold him fast.
“Don’t think you’ve won. I’m taking you with me, Rumpelstiltskin.”
Regina lifts the dagger to strike again and Henry slips from his arms, grabs her ankle, pulls, and the woman who once called him son falls howling onto her own weapon. Perhaps it’s magic that finds its mark, his, or Regina’s own; perhaps it’s merely fate’s caprice that holds her knife true, drives it home.
A kindness of ravens, a murder of crows, the sound of a thousand beating wings and the wail of all hope dying. The Black Queen dissolves into dark-winged mist, clawing holes in what’s left of the sky, dragging this world with her and all its feeble stars...
~~
Moldy straw beneath his boots, torchlight and leather, smooth against his skin; he’s returned, and all is as it was, the kingdoms restored and his soul in ashes. He rages, snarls, hurls the fury of every magick he knows to blaze and die against the bars, but the fairy’s spell holds true. He stills, waits for clarity, hands slick with his own darkling blood, and he remembers - someone still owes him a favor.
~~
It’s an hour or more before Emma finds him, following the thread of his wheedling voice through the labyrinth of her parent’s...dungeons? Not an idea that fits with what she knows of them, in this world, which still isn’t nearly enough. His summons had nipped at her ear in the middle of explanations jumbled with hugs from tiny women with glittering wings, a host of people both fey and familiar, her mother’s bold laughter and her father’s strong arms, a giddy celebration that didn’t feel quite right. There’s a vague, niggling sense of things left undone, but she’s uncertain of her role here, and his whisper cast across her mind’s surface had felt like a skipping stone of relief.
Come, free me, and once again she is the key.
Literally, it seems. When she finally reaches his cell, she kneels beside the door, cautiously - he’s not a man, not here, and she’s more frightened now than she’d been through all of Storybrooke’s strange last days. He’s crouched just out of reach of the flickering light, and she remembers that day at the hospital, the day they’d rescued Belle.
“Mr. Gold?”
He’s grinning with teeth that are far too sharp, eyes hidden beneath a wild-wind tangle, his fingers lacing lightning into cat’s cradle patterns of fire. She’s still wearing her gun, and her hand wanders to the holster of its own accord. When he moves to grasp her wrist, his skin shimmers in the torch’s glow and he leans close to breathe an answer.
“Yes, dearie. And, no. You know my name.”
“Rumpelstiltskin.”
“Princess Emma. I’m so pleased to finally make your acquaintance.”
The words are sarcastic, a sibilant hiss, but his touch is oddly comforting, and she feels her heartbeat slow. He’s wearing what looks like ragged snakeskin, stained deep red across his chest, and his hands - his hands are bleeding, painting runes on the sleeve of her shirt.
“I woke up inside a tree,” she says, and face to face with a wounded sorcerer it sounds rational, a conversational comparison of apocalyptic notes. “Why are you...here?”
“Emma, sweet, strong Emma, that’s a story for the ages, for Henry’s book and a long winter’s night. Now, you must free me, let me find her. You must bid the spell be broken.”
“To find Belle? Where is she? And, I’m not at all sure that I should. You were dangerous there, you took Henry, and here, you’re...”
He laughs, high-pitched and eerie and like nothing she’s heard from Mr. Gold. Like nothing she’s heard anywhere, a sound that belongs to the shadows.
“Here, I’m something far worse, something you can’t begin to imagine. The Queen took Belle before the curse, locked her away in a place like this one. She’s...” He lifts his hands to the bars, black talons scrabbling to find the right phrase, and settles for what Emma thinks just might be honesty.
“I’m hers. I have to find her. My son, my Bae - he’s safe?”
“Yes. He’s with my parents, and Henry. He’s confused, but he knows that you...you saved us.”
In the end, he had, though she suspects Rumpelstiltskin is at least in part their destiny’s maker. Someday she means to have that story, but at the moment, she’d like nothing more than to smash her fist into his face. He took Henry, pushed him into that witch’s arms - that knowledge gleams certain, sharp and bright.
“Speak the words and let me go.”
It isn’t a command, it’s a plea, and for the first time she sees his eyes, terrifying and inhuman and filled with...fear? Hope? Without understanding the impulse, she lays a shaking hand against his cheek, feels love’s burn beneath flesh and bone, and knows that he speaks the truth. Punching his lights out may just have to wait.
“OK, then...and wow, the weird just keeps on coming. What, exactly, am I supposed to say?”
He moves back from the spikes, grinning, expectant. She could swear the cell behind him twists and shivers, like the air above a fire, like a hot desert wind. Turning him loose has to be number one on her Top Ten List of Bad Ideas, but she already knows what she’s going to do, and somehow, she knows the words. Deep breath, and-
“This cage was forged by command of my blood, and by my blood I release you.”
Something inside her awakens and stirs, and there’s a firework crackle as wood begins to snap and splinter.
“Yeah. Weird doesn’t begin to cover-”
The door swings open and he’s beside her in a heartbeat, too close. Closer, and his breath ghosts her neck, she catches his scent - sweetgrass and leather, blood-copper and desperation.
“Henry, your son, he’s alright?”
She hadn’t expected that.
“Yes. Shaken up, but he doesn’t remember...everything. I don’t understand, he was born there and I was so afraid he wouldn’t come back with us. Was it your doing?”
“No, dearie. It was yours. Love is the most powerful magic.”
There’s such longing in his voice, those eyes, such longing to believe. Someday, she’ll learn what’s behind that - her curiosity, it seems, has followed her into this impossible world.
“Then...I hope that you find yours, Rumpelstiltskin. Give mine to Belle, when you find her.”
“When I find her. Hold on to your son, Princess. Hold tight. And, as for that favor you owe me-”
“I set you free.”
“And I merely asked. Favors owed to me are more...formal arrangements. You must promise me, dear Emma, that you will protect my son. At any cost, no matter what may happen.”
Before she can answer, before she can stop him, he flicks his nail across her wrist, draws a line of beaded scarlet. Wrapping ravaged fingers tight against her skin, he mingles her blood with his own, seals the bargain and her scratch with a single stroke of his fingertip. It tingles, and he had no need for magic, not in this, not with her.
“I give you my promise as a mother. I will protect your son.”
What happens next is exactly what she expected, and he’s gone in a swirl of red-moon dust; the dark is thrumming and the air is electric and she’s...totally and completely lost. The dungeon’s tunnels are a foggy maze, but Henry is here, and he’s waiting, for her. She conjures an image of his face in sunlight and finds her way at a loping run.
Chapter Five