If We Shadows Have Offended, C.5
Title: If We Shadows Have Offended, C.5
Author: djarum99
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Rating: PG-13-N17 overall
Characters/Pairings: Belle/Rumpelstiltskin, Mr. Gold/Gabrielle French, Regina, Emma, Henry, Snow White/Charming
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. This is the final chapter, the end of the tale and its beginning. A belated birthday gift for florencia7 and pearlseed - love to you both ♥
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Thunderheads scuttle above rolling hills, and at first, he believes magic has failed him, abandoned him in this empty place. But...Belle is here, he can feel her warmth, a steady beckoning flame. The north wind gathers strength and he lifts his head, catches her scent in the promise of rain.
All that remains of the Queen’s soaring castle is a single hawk-eyed gargoyle, marble wings and fanged snout barely clearing the grasping mud. The ruins of a miller’s cottage stand in place of vicious spires, a pile of crumbling stones and mortar - the birthplace of Regina’s rage, and the site of her soul’s final rest.
On the hillside above the mill’s winding stream, Belle stands beside a mound of fresh-turned earth. He knows what she has found courage to do before he sees the shovel, half-hidden at her feet by late autumn’s wilting grass. She’s buried the horror she found here, whatever was left of the Queen, beside a stone inscribed “beloved father,” and a worn slate path to nowhere.
Belle is crying, has somehow found tears to hallow their graves, and he has never loved her more.
Love that aches, deep as Regina’s knife in his chest, and he’s at her side in an instant, reaching to draw her close. Belle’s arms lift in answer...and she slaps him, hard enough to send him reeling, backwards and graceless, until his back scrapes against rough bark. An apple tree. Of course.
“How dare you terrify me like that. How dare you do that to me, your son, to any of us. I know what you’ve been, I’ve honored your damnable secrets, forgiven all your trickery, but this, this...”
Angry, her face streaked with dirt and mourning, Belle is fierce enough to conquer armies, and owns every beat of his heart.
“I couldn’t. Regina would have known. Belle, my Belle, you’re an open book - I’ve always known your truth, and she would have stolen it. I couldn’t.”
“All the years, all the suffering, all the...the side-winding deception - it ends here. Now.”
“As you said, you know better than most what I am, dearie. The Dark One still lives, and the end of that tale hasn’t changed.” He tries to blacken the words with a sneer, but knows he hasn’t succeeded. The world is wavering at the edges, her face a sweet blur, and he’s sliding boneless into the grass.
She’s beside him before he can blink, her hand beneath his shirt.
“You’re hurt.”
“Knives tend to do that.” A curl of his lip is all he can manage, and she ignores the gesture, her clever fingers seeking the damage and finding his dagger, freeing it from the sheath beneath his vest.
“What is this? And why haven’t you healed yourself?”
“This day has taken its toll, not sure I can summon healing’s price, and that...is the instrument of my fate. The Dark One’s blade.”
The thing is an obscenity in her tender hands, a serpent’s tongue of silver bearing his own bitter name. She traces the engraving, doubt and fear clouding her eyes.
“What would you have done, had the Queen not chosen love?”
“Chosen it myself. For you. For Bae. If that blade finds my heart, the Dark One dies with me - the curse would have broken as well.”
Her eyes drift shut, and he’s forgotten how to breathe, or perhaps death has simply grown tired of waiting - he’s run from it so hard, so long.
“Well. Hello, John Wayne.”
The horizon is slipping sideways, and Belle, fierce practical Belle, is applying his dagger’s wickedness to laces and leather, baring his mottled skin.
“Don’t. I don’t want you to see me like this...”
“I fell in love with you like this.”
She had, she had, and that truth washes over him, cool-water balm. The wound has closed, a blaze of scarlet across his heart, and strength flows into his veins with each hesitant brush of her fingers. Thunder rumbles in the highlands and he tangles a hand in the rags of her muddy blue dress, drags her upward to sway in his arms beneath the fall of apple-scented rain. A flick of his wrist and Belle stands gowned in silver; he’s abandoned dragonskin for gold-threaded brocade, for the sake of new beginnings, for Bae.
“It’s time you met my son.”
~~
Henry hadn’t given much thought to the future beyond the curse; he was only ten, after all, and fairytales always stopped at the happy ending - they didn’t say anything about the next day. They didn’t tell you about what Emma called the “downside,” the things grown-ups whispered about in corners. They didn’t tell you that happily ever after might come at a terrible price.
He misses Regina.
He remembers, much more than what he’d told Emma, because he wanted her to keep that look in her eyes, of relief and strength and love, she was his mother and he loved her, he wouldn’t trade that look for pain. But, he remembers, every word Rumpelstiltskin said in that dying forest, everything he saw in the Evil Queen’s eyes when she’d made her choice. When she’d chosen him.
Relief, and strength, and love.
Henry doesn’t have words for it, this ache that has changed him forever. He knows enough to find a place for it, a safe locked box in his heart. It’s a part of him now, and maybe someday he’ll know how to unlock it and bring the ache out into the light. Because there is light, here, his mother and his friends and a whole new world. A world with magic.
He thinks the boy who is Rumpelstiltskin’s son (Rumpelstiltskin’s son, how weird is that) might understand; Henry doesn’t know his story, not yet, but he will. There are a lot of people here, a lot of chapters, that weren’t in the Book. Bae might understand how hard it is to read between the lines, about the shadows hidden in pages bright with gold-leaf and princess gowns, and the love that sometimes lies buried in evil’s deep, dark heart.
They’re sharing a room (in Snow White and Prince Charming’s castle, how cool is that), playing a game that Bae calls “fox and geese” that’s an awful lot like checkers. Waiting. Henry hoped that living in the Enchanted Forest didn’t mean waiting for adults to make things happen as often as it did in Storybrooke. Emma had brought them dinner, looking like she did when things were happening that she didn’t know how to explain.
“Bae, your father is here, he’s safe. He’s gone to find Belle, the woman he was with when he found you. She’s...important to him.”
“He loves her. I could tell. But, he’s still the Dark One, and everything is different here. I was only gone a few hours, and it’s all different.” Bae had that face Henry sees in the mirror sometimes, when he’s trying to be brave and it really isn’t working.
Emma had touched Bae’s hand, knelt beside him on the marble floor. “Your father loves you. I promised him I’d protect you, and I will. Parents...well, sometimes we make mistakes. Big ones. He’s spent a long time trying to make up for his, trying to find you. When he comes back, he’ll help you understand.”
His mom had almost managed to look like she believed it, almost, and Henry had hoped Bae didn’t notice the tell-tale quiver in her smile.
She’d taken his own hand then, squeezed it tight. “I have to go - there’s a lot to sort out about what happens next. Henry knows the story, better than anyone. Let him tell you what he knows, and then get some sleep.”
Henry did tell him, and Bae filled in some of the gaps. Ogre wars, a village on the edge of the forest, a poor spinner and what he’d done to save his son. Bae told him about the Blue Fairy, and a magic bean that opened the way between the worlds. There was more, Henry could tell, things that hurt too much to say.
They fell asleep as the sunset flared against the western windows, and Henry awoke to see Rumpelstiltskin sitting at the foot of Baelfire’s bed. A woman stood beside him, wearing a dress made out of moonlight.
Beauty, and her Beast.
She moved to lean above him, brush his hair back from his eyes.
“I think they need some time alone, and I’m starving. Would you care to help me find the kitchens?”
Henry nodded, and they made their way down torch lit staircases, through glittering high-ceilinged rooms that looked exactly like a fairytale should, until they found a pantry the size of Storybrooke’s supermarket. Belle made sandwiches, and they scattered crumbs and watched the moons rise (two of them, we’re not in Kansas) from the shelter of a window seat in the empty marble hall. Their whispers echoed against vast ivory walls, as she gave him the unfamiliar names of mountains and the strange stars of this world’s sky.
“I’m going to miss peanut butter, and hockey, but I think this is a good place. I think it’s going to be okay.”
“So do I, Henry. So do I.”
He fell asleep against a silk-clad shoulder, and woke for only a moment when her sorcerer found them, spirited him back to his warm bed.
Rumpelstiltskin. How cool was that.
~~
They commandeer a bedchamber, too weary to move further than a few steps down the stone-tiled hall. Candles flare and a fire kindles with a wave of his right hand; Rumpelstiltkin turns to Belle, and there is one thing left, the final step of a journey five centuries too long.
He’s terrified, a coward once more, but her eyes give him the answer and he knows what he must do.
“Kiss me, Belle. This time, I won’t run.”
Her mouth is warm, and she tastes of summer, of salvation. The kiss lasts a thousand days and nights and he’s drifting, drowning in a wailing sea, the Dark One’s death throes, a hollow tide of raven’s bones. Light filters the darkness above him, a glow that forces him upward, pulls him to the surface, and he’s back in Belle’s arms, back in his body on solid ground.
It hurts. Everywhere, sparks and cinders, but his leg is whole, his chest, and Belle’s eyes are wide with...wonder? Terror? True love’s kiss, but it hasn’t broken his curse - he can still feel enchantment coursing in his blood, its essence unfamiliar, not fire’s burn but ocean cool, flowing blue and silent.
The Dark One’s voice is silenced... gone.
“You’re... What did we do?” Belle lifts his hand, his human hand, and cradles it to cup her cheek. No green-gold scales, no raptor’s claws, but power pulses beneath his skin, shimmering like sunlight on water.
“I still have magic.”
~~
Belle teeters on the precipice of joy and fear, finds her balance in eyes that still glow amber, kisses him once more. She draws Rumpelstiltskin into her arms, croons low and soft against his hair, a song of forever, of choosing him. Belle chooses love, knowing love to be a dragon both dangerous and frail, the guardian of both darkness and light.
She kisses him once more, and the magic responds, a resonant hum blurring all the lines between them, binding them tight with spun-gold music fine as his spindle’s strands.
Rumplestiltskin has claimed Fortune’s rarest gift, the pearl of a second chance, but the custom of loss leaves him cautious, and his touch has left her wanting.
He’s taught her the value of contracts, and it is time to offer a deal.
“I love you, Rumpelstiltskin. But, there must be rules. For power, for compassion. They must be of your own making - I’ll not serve as your conscience.”
“You’d hoped for a different transformation, from that kiss. An ordinary man.” Releasing her, his hands trail flickering blue fire in the lonely space between them and he stills, pain honing the planes of his face.
“No. A man who could love. You.”
She smiles when he pulls her beneath him, tugs at her gown’s stubborn laces, impatient. Her hands thread his hair, trace the line of his throat, flared wings of bone, and her lips find the hollow between.
“I’m becoming quite the harlot, bedding a different man each day. You’re...beautiful, like this.”
He’s distracted, fumbling to free them both from clothing, but he frowns at her description as he works to bare her skin, part her thighs.
“Not so difficult, to improve on a monster.”
“I meant like this, so focused, so...hungry. For me.”
“I’ve wanted you since the day I heard your summons, since the day I first...”
A vision of her family’s beleaguered hall - a phantom in gold silk, her shade, scrying desperate maps of warfare, her father’s weary face. Breathing a plea, his name...Curiosity, recognition - want, hopeless and deep...
His mouth has found her breasts, and she arcs into his touch, her body bowline tight.
“I saw, myself and my father, I saw myself as you did that day, felt what you felt...oh. Oh.”
A curl of lips against her skin, and he’s laughing, the sound thrumming against her ribs.
“A gift, love. Hush, let me give you another. Let me.”
He doesn’t stop talking, his voice rough at her belly, hot, and lower, his tongue and the words and the ghost of his breath, stealing her own. “...like honey, my Belle, want to drink you down, so sweet...,” words she’s never heard before, etching spells into her flesh until she shatters, beneath his mouth, beneath his sorcerer’s fingers and the candles’ teardrop light. Gathering her up, he’s still talking, eyes on her face, hands trying to gentle her down - she’s soaring, refusing gravity. He’s hard against her palm and she urges him in deep, rolls her hips, meets him thrust for thrust, spreads her wings and they’re flying together, unbound. Not Gold, not the Dark Castle’s master, but lean muscle and bone that is hers and familiar, her name on his lips as he’s falling.
Perhaps it’s unfair, to choose such a moment, but he’s not known for being forthright, her spinner of deals and magic, and she’s a woman who lives in the present and has waited far too long.
“Marry me, Rumpelstiltskin. Marry me.”
He stops talking.
Levers himself up on his elbows, still inside her, and stares. “You would be...my wife?”
“I would.”
“Mother to my son?”
His eyes are dark behind the fall of his hair, silver-foxed silk that ripples like water, damp with his sweat and her own.
“Yes.”
“Mistress of my Dark Castle?” A quirk, just there, at the corner of his mouth.
“I’ll not be your caretaker.”
“My wife.”
He’s kissing her again, and it tastes of years of longing, years of pain, of ‘yes.’ A prickle of heat round her finger, and when they break apart, a ring, sapphires and gold and a binding.
“The deal is struck. It’s forever, dearie.” The imp’s ghost flickers in lines bracketing his eyes, and she kisses their spiderweb tracery, the thin scar at his upper lip.
“Forever.”
~~
The council chamber buzzes like an angry hornet’s nest, and Snow White’s temples throb, her head feeling fit to burst. Rumpelstiltskin stands before them, ramrod straight and hissing fury - he’s really not helping matters, not when he’s petitioned for what amounts to mercy, a slate wiped clean, a new beginning. Not when memory’s return is fresh in their minds.
Still, what he asks is what they need. A new beginning. Hellish as some aspects of Storybrooke had been, it had given them all a different perspective. A world without happy endings and love just out of reach; maybe they would be willing to fight harder for the love and peace of this world. Maybe they would be willing to risk its price.
James rises to his feet, lifts his sword and commands the council’s silence - he’s both glorious and dear, himself again, and the ache in her head recedes to a dull throb. Rumpelstiltskin gives her a narrow-eyed glance, grazes her sleeve with his fingertips, and the ache disappears completely. He winks - “remember, dearie, ‘twas me that gave true love a push” - and she nods, smiles at Belle bold and calm at his side.
Standing on tiptoe to reach her husband’s ear, she whispers, and he smiles in agreement. She knows those assembled here will listen - they did take back the kingdom, after all, the two of them together.
“Enough. If we wish to make this world whole again, to make it the place we’ve dreamed it can be, we must act accordingly. Rumpelstiltskin and his family will have our protection, if he will meet our terms. No harm will come to anyone - and the word ‘harm’ is not open to any interpretation but that of this council. Is that understood?”
“He still has magic. How can we trust him?” Midas glowers from his far corner, and the Blue Fairy flits above a sea of murmuring assent, hovers near the dais that holds the royal thrones.
“The evil that had no place here is gone - true love has broken his curse, and left something else in its stead.”
James runs a hand across his mouth, holding Rumpelstiltskin’s dark-eyed gaze. “This...something else. Does it meet with your approval?”
Reul Ghorm, they called her in the Frontlands; an acolyte of this world’s wellspring magic, and wed to its safe-keeping. There’s a glint of calculation in the Blue Fairy’s eyes, the parsing of weakness and strategy.
“Rumpelstiltskin retains the magic of this world; he spent centuries collecting every glimmer he could find, and now love has tethered it fast to his soul. As to my approval - well, that hardly matters. His power’s use is up to him. And, perhaps, to you. He’ll bear watching. I could-”
“He will be watched - by me, my husband, by his wife and by this council.”
The fairy opens her mouth to protest, thinks better of it, and dips her head in acknowledgment. Snow stands shoulder to shoulder with her own wayward prince, and grants Rumpelstiltskin clemency. She knows there will be repercussions, hopes she won’t be proven wrong. Watching Belle take his hand to lead Rumpelstiltskin from the throne room, Snow places her faith in the gods of hearth and home, in the love shining clear in the sorcerer’s eyes.
~~
Leaning up, Belle nips sharp at his throat, causes Rumpelstiltskin’s steps to weave as they halt outside Baelfire’s door. His son, and now hers, a gift from her husband, soon to be; Snow has promised them a wedding, a quiet affair by this world’s standards. Belle has sent word to her father in the Frontlands, and he has sent reserved acceptance. There is work to be done, amends to be made, but she knows her father will recognize happiness when he sees it, will wish her joy and good fortune. He will likely need time to wish the same for Rumpelstiltskin, but they have forever, time for all that and more.
“Watching over you, by the royal council’s charge - I believe that would that make me your fairy godmother. Do you suppose I’ll grow a pair of wings?”
“I’ll pluck them from your shoulders the very second that you do.”
“I’ll lend you my scissors. You must forge your own chains for power. My choice lies in whether or not I find them...tolerable.”
He takes her hand, splays her fingers across his chest, starfish pale against dark linen. Sweeps into a bow, and she remembers him at his spinner’s wheel, hears the echo of trilling laughter.
“I will strive always, milady, to be tolerable.”
“You have enemies who would test your forbearance. Enemies, perhaps, with magic of their own.” Belle had not found the Blue Fairy charming, had found a bitterroot tint in her spun-sugar smile, heard sanctimony’s flat notes beneath tinkling laughter.
“I’m more worried about my son. I don’t know how...I’ve hurt him, Belle. I’m not sure he can forgive me, not sure I can ever deserve such a thing.”
Rumpelstiltskin must find his own way in magic, but in love, she can steady his hand.
“I’ll help you to earn it, as will Bae. He loves you.”
Lifting her hand, he kisses her palm, the ring on her finger, tastes her heartline’s salt with a flick of his tongue.
“I will try to be the man you both deserve.”
“And be trying, no doubt - as will I.”
“Second thoughts?” A smile dark as sin, and he’s a charlatan in this, if not magic, his eyes all false arrogance and doubt...but still, he knows her answer, draws her close.
“No. Not one.”
The air around them stills, draws breath, and magic swirls diamonds beneath their feet, rises up to mock the stars.
~~
Once upon a time, a spinner of wool became a weaver of dark magic, and lost what he held most dear - his son. The grieving sorcerer became fear’s slave, a dragon, whose very name inspired terror.
Once upon a time, a dragon fell in love, with a maiden whose gift was divining the light only the soul’s blackest night can reveal. True Love’s kiss can break any curse, but, this is, after all, a fairytale, ancient and dark as such tales should be - and no quest is ever that simple. The spinner scorned love for the sake of fear, and ripped the world apart at its fault lines.
Once upon a time (because this is, after all, a fairytale), Fate smiled, spun her wheel, and the sorcerer, his son, and the clear-eyed maiden fought their way to a happy ending. Fate grinned, wide and red, and left the sorcerer with magic - the kind born of dreams and dust and starlight, but magic just the same.
Once upon a time, and now, love and magic always come at a price - but love is the better steward of souls, and the sorcerer has paid love’s toll in the coin of blood and tears. A spinner of gold and maker of deals, a husband and a father, he spends his days with laughing children in a castle that welcomes the sun. Aligning himself with kings and queens for the good of all the Forest, he has forsworn the crushing of snails. Rumpelstiltskin wields magic, but with care, discretion: swords that crumble at an enemy’s touch, wards against plague, starvation, and locusts - and, the occasional outbreak of boils and maledictions, for those deserving few. This is, after all, a fairytale, as fierce and bright as such tales should be. Beauty fell in love with a Beast, and in love he remains, always, the most dangerous of dragons.
Author: djarum99
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Rating: PG-13-N17 overall
Characters/Pairings: Belle/Rumpelstiltskin, Mr. Gold/Gabrielle French, Regina, Emma, Henry, Snow White/Charming
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. This is the final chapter, the end of the tale and its beginning. A belated birthday gift for florencia7 and pearlseed - love to you both ♥
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Thunderheads scuttle above rolling hills, and at first, he believes magic has failed him, abandoned him in this empty place. But...Belle is here, he can feel her warmth, a steady beckoning flame. The north wind gathers strength and he lifts his head, catches her scent in the promise of rain.
All that remains of the Queen’s soaring castle is a single hawk-eyed gargoyle, marble wings and fanged snout barely clearing the grasping mud. The ruins of a miller’s cottage stand in place of vicious spires, a pile of crumbling stones and mortar - the birthplace of Regina’s rage, and the site of her soul’s final rest.
On the hillside above the mill’s winding stream, Belle stands beside a mound of fresh-turned earth. He knows what she has found courage to do before he sees the shovel, half-hidden at her feet by late autumn’s wilting grass. She’s buried the horror she found here, whatever was left of the Queen, beside a stone inscribed “beloved father,” and a worn slate path to nowhere.
Belle is crying, has somehow found tears to hallow their graves, and he has never loved her more.
Love that aches, deep as Regina’s knife in his chest, and he’s at her side in an instant, reaching to draw her close. Belle’s arms lift in answer...and she slaps him, hard enough to send him reeling, backwards and graceless, until his back scrapes against rough bark. An apple tree. Of course.
“How dare you terrify me like that. How dare you do that to me, your son, to any of us. I know what you’ve been, I’ve honored your damnable secrets, forgiven all your trickery, but this, this...”
Angry, her face streaked with dirt and mourning, Belle is fierce enough to conquer armies, and owns every beat of his heart.
“I couldn’t. Regina would have known. Belle, my Belle, you’re an open book - I’ve always known your truth, and she would have stolen it. I couldn’t.”
“All the years, all the suffering, all the...the side-winding deception - it ends here. Now.”
“As you said, you know better than most what I am, dearie. The Dark One still lives, and the end of that tale hasn’t changed.” He tries to blacken the words with a sneer, but knows he hasn’t succeeded. The world is wavering at the edges, her face a sweet blur, and he’s sliding boneless into the grass.
She’s beside him before he can blink, her hand beneath his shirt.
“You’re hurt.”
“Knives tend to do that.” A curl of his lip is all he can manage, and she ignores the gesture, her clever fingers seeking the damage and finding his dagger, freeing it from the sheath beneath his vest.
“What is this? And why haven’t you healed yourself?”
“This day has taken its toll, not sure I can summon healing’s price, and that...is the instrument of my fate. The Dark One’s blade.”
The thing is an obscenity in her tender hands, a serpent’s tongue of silver bearing his own bitter name. She traces the engraving, doubt and fear clouding her eyes.
“What would you have done, had the Queen not chosen love?”
“Chosen it myself. For you. For Bae. If that blade finds my heart, the Dark One dies with me - the curse would have broken as well.”
Her eyes drift shut, and he’s forgotten how to breathe, or perhaps death has simply grown tired of waiting - he’s run from it so hard, so long.
“Well. Hello, John Wayne.”
The horizon is slipping sideways, and Belle, fierce practical Belle, is applying his dagger’s wickedness to laces and leather, baring his mottled skin.
“Don’t. I don’t want you to see me like this...”
“I fell in love with you like this.”
She had, she had, and that truth washes over him, cool-water balm. The wound has closed, a blaze of scarlet across his heart, and strength flows into his veins with each hesitant brush of her fingers. Thunder rumbles in the highlands and he tangles a hand in the rags of her muddy blue dress, drags her upward to sway in his arms beneath the fall of apple-scented rain. A flick of his wrist and Belle stands gowned in silver; he’s abandoned dragonskin for gold-threaded brocade, for the sake of new beginnings, for Bae.
“It’s time you met my son.”
~~
Henry hadn’t given much thought to the future beyond the curse; he was only ten, after all, and fairytales always stopped at the happy ending - they didn’t say anything about the next day. They didn’t tell you about what Emma called the “downside,” the things grown-ups whispered about in corners. They didn’t tell you that happily ever after might come at a terrible price.
He misses Regina.
He remembers, much more than what he’d told Emma, because he wanted her to keep that look in her eyes, of relief and strength and love, she was his mother and he loved her, he wouldn’t trade that look for pain. But, he remembers, every word Rumpelstiltskin said in that dying forest, everything he saw in the Evil Queen’s eyes when she’d made her choice. When she’d chosen him.
Relief, and strength, and love.
Henry doesn’t have words for it, this ache that has changed him forever. He knows enough to find a place for it, a safe locked box in his heart. It’s a part of him now, and maybe someday he’ll know how to unlock it and bring the ache out into the light. Because there is light, here, his mother and his friends and a whole new world. A world with magic.
He thinks the boy who is Rumpelstiltskin’s son (Rumpelstiltskin’s son, how weird is that) might understand; Henry doesn’t know his story, not yet, but he will. There are a lot of people here, a lot of chapters, that weren’t in the Book. Bae might understand how hard it is to read between the lines, about the shadows hidden in pages bright with gold-leaf and princess gowns, and the love that sometimes lies buried in evil’s deep, dark heart.
They’re sharing a room (in Snow White and Prince Charming’s castle, how cool is that), playing a game that Bae calls “fox and geese” that’s an awful lot like checkers. Waiting. Henry hoped that living in the Enchanted Forest didn’t mean waiting for adults to make things happen as often as it did in Storybrooke. Emma had brought them dinner, looking like she did when things were happening that she didn’t know how to explain.
“Bae, your father is here, he’s safe. He’s gone to find Belle, the woman he was with when he found you. She’s...important to him.”
“He loves her. I could tell. But, he’s still the Dark One, and everything is different here. I was only gone a few hours, and it’s all different.” Bae had that face Henry sees in the mirror sometimes, when he’s trying to be brave and it really isn’t working.
Emma had touched Bae’s hand, knelt beside him on the marble floor. “Your father loves you. I promised him I’d protect you, and I will. Parents...well, sometimes we make mistakes. Big ones. He’s spent a long time trying to make up for his, trying to find you. When he comes back, he’ll help you understand.”
His mom had almost managed to look like she believed it, almost, and Henry had hoped Bae didn’t notice the tell-tale quiver in her smile.
She’d taken his own hand then, squeezed it tight. “I have to go - there’s a lot to sort out about what happens next. Henry knows the story, better than anyone. Let him tell you what he knows, and then get some sleep.”
Henry did tell him, and Bae filled in some of the gaps. Ogre wars, a village on the edge of the forest, a poor spinner and what he’d done to save his son. Bae told him about the Blue Fairy, and a magic bean that opened the way between the worlds. There was more, Henry could tell, things that hurt too much to say.
They fell asleep as the sunset flared against the western windows, and Henry awoke to see Rumpelstiltskin sitting at the foot of Baelfire’s bed. A woman stood beside him, wearing a dress made out of moonlight.
Beauty, and her Beast.
She moved to lean above him, brush his hair back from his eyes.
“I think they need some time alone, and I’m starving. Would you care to help me find the kitchens?”
Henry nodded, and they made their way down torch lit staircases, through glittering high-ceilinged rooms that looked exactly like a fairytale should, until they found a pantry the size of Storybrooke’s supermarket. Belle made sandwiches, and they scattered crumbs and watched the moons rise (two of them, we’re not in Kansas) from the shelter of a window seat in the empty marble hall. Their whispers echoed against vast ivory walls, as she gave him the unfamiliar names of mountains and the strange stars of this world’s sky.
“I’m going to miss peanut butter, and hockey, but I think this is a good place. I think it’s going to be okay.”
“So do I, Henry. So do I.”
He fell asleep against a silk-clad shoulder, and woke for only a moment when her sorcerer found them, spirited him back to his warm bed.
Rumpelstiltskin. How cool was that.
~~
They commandeer a bedchamber, too weary to move further than a few steps down the stone-tiled hall. Candles flare and a fire kindles with a wave of his right hand; Rumpelstiltkin turns to Belle, and there is one thing left, the final step of a journey five centuries too long.
He’s terrified, a coward once more, but her eyes give him the answer and he knows what he must do.
“Kiss me, Belle. This time, I won’t run.”
Her mouth is warm, and she tastes of summer, of salvation. The kiss lasts a thousand days and nights and he’s drifting, drowning in a wailing sea, the Dark One’s death throes, a hollow tide of raven’s bones. Light filters the darkness above him, a glow that forces him upward, pulls him to the surface, and he’s back in Belle’s arms, back in his body on solid ground.
It hurts. Everywhere, sparks and cinders, but his leg is whole, his chest, and Belle’s eyes are wide with...wonder? Terror? True love’s kiss, but it hasn’t broken his curse - he can still feel enchantment coursing in his blood, its essence unfamiliar, not fire’s burn but ocean cool, flowing blue and silent.
The Dark One’s voice is silenced... gone.
“You’re... What did we do?” Belle lifts his hand, his human hand, and cradles it to cup her cheek. No green-gold scales, no raptor’s claws, but power pulses beneath his skin, shimmering like sunlight on water.
“I still have magic.”
~~
Belle teeters on the precipice of joy and fear, finds her balance in eyes that still glow amber, kisses him once more. She draws Rumpelstiltskin into her arms, croons low and soft against his hair, a song of forever, of choosing him. Belle chooses love, knowing love to be a dragon both dangerous and frail, the guardian of both darkness and light.
She kisses him once more, and the magic responds, a resonant hum blurring all the lines between them, binding them tight with spun-gold music fine as his spindle’s strands.
Rumplestiltskin has claimed Fortune’s rarest gift, the pearl of a second chance, but the custom of loss leaves him cautious, and his touch has left her wanting.
He’s taught her the value of contracts, and it is time to offer a deal.
“I love you, Rumpelstiltskin. But, there must be rules. For power, for compassion. They must be of your own making - I’ll not serve as your conscience.”
“You’d hoped for a different transformation, from that kiss. An ordinary man.” Releasing her, his hands trail flickering blue fire in the lonely space between them and he stills, pain honing the planes of his face.
“No. A man who could love. You.”
She smiles when he pulls her beneath him, tugs at her gown’s stubborn laces, impatient. Her hands thread his hair, trace the line of his throat, flared wings of bone, and her lips find the hollow between.
“I’m becoming quite the harlot, bedding a different man each day. You’re...beautiful, like this.”
He’s distracted, fumbling to free them both from clothing, but he frowns at her description as he works to bare her skin, part her thighs.
“Not so difficult, to improve on a monster.”
“I meant like this, so focused, so...hungry. For me.”
“I’ve wanted you since the day I heard your summons, since the day I first...”
A vision of her family’s beleaguered hall - a phantom in gold silk, her shade, scrying desperate maps of warfare, her father’s weary face. Breathing a plea, his name...Curiosity, recognition - want, hopeless and deep...
His mouth has found her breasts, and she arcs into his touch, her body bowline tight.
“I saw, myself and my father, I saw myself as you did that day, felt what you felt...oh. Oh.”
A curl of lips against her skin, and he’s laughing, the sound thrumming against her ribs.
“A gift, love. Hush, let me give you another. Let me.”
He doesn’t stop talking, his voice rough at her belly, hot, and lower, his tongue and the words and the ghost of his breath, stealing her own. “...like honey, my Belle, want to drink you down, so sweet...,” words she’s never heard before, etching spells into her flesh until she shatters, beneath his mouth, beneath his sorcerer’s fingers and the candles’ teardrop light. Gathering her up, he’s still talking, eyes on her face, hands trying to gentle her down - she’s soaring, refusing gravity. He’s hard against her palm and she urges him in deep, rolls her hips, meets him thrust for thrust, spreads her wings and they’re flying together, unbound. Not Gold, not the Dark Castle’s master, but lean muscle and bone that is hers and familiar, her name on his lips as he’s falling.
Perhaps it’s unfair, to choose such a moment, but he’s not known for being forthright, her spinner of deals and magic, and she’s a woman who lives in the present and has waited far too long.
“Marry me, Rumpelstiltskin. Marry me.”
He stops talking.
Levers himself up on his elbows, still inside her, and stares. “You would be...my wife?”
“I would.”
“Mother to my son?”
His eyes are dark behind the fall of his hair, silver-foxed silk that ripples like water, damp with his sweat and her own.
“Yes.”
“Mistress of my Dark Castle?” A quirk, just there, at the corner of his mouth.
“I’ll not be your caretaker.”
“My wife.”
He’s kissing her again, and it tastes of years of longing, years of pain, of ‘yes.’ A prickle of heat round her finger, and when they break apart, a ring, sapphires and gold and a binding.
“The deal is struck. It’s forever, dearie.” The imp’s ghost flickers in lines bracketing his eyes, and she kisses their spiderweb tracery, the thin scar at his upper lip.
“Forever.”
~~
The council chamber buzzes like an angry hornet’s nest, and Snow White’s temples throb, her head feeling fit to burst. Rumpelstiltskin stands before them, ramrod straight and hissing fury - he’s really not helping matters, not when he’s petitioned for what amounts to mercy, a slate wiped clean, a new beginning. Not when memory’s return is fresh in their minds.
Still, what he asks is what they need. A new beginning. Hellish as some aspects of Storybrooke had been, it had given them all a different perspective. A world without happy endings and love just out of reach; maybe they would be willing to fight harder for the love and peace of this world. Maybe they would be willing to risk its price.
James rises to his feet, lifts his sword and commands the council’s silence - he’s both glorious and dear, himself again, and the ache in her head recedes to a dull throb. Rumpelstiltskin gives her a narrow-eyed glance, grazes her sleeve with his fingertips, and the ache disappears completely. He winks - “remember, dearie, ‘twas me that gave true love a push” - and she nods, smiles at Belle bold and calm at his side.
Standing on tiptoe to reach her husband’s ear, she whispers, and he smiles in agreement. She knows those assembled here will listen - they did take back the kingdom, after all, the two of them together.
“Enough. If we wish to make this world whole again, to make it the place we’ve dreamed it can be, we must act accordingly. Rumpelstiltskin and his family will have our protection, if he will meet our terms. No harm will come to anyone - and the word ‘harm’ is not open to any interpretation but that of this council. Is that understood?”
“He still has magic. How can we trust him?” Midas glowers from his far corner, and the Blue Fairy flits above a sea of murmuring assent, hovers near the dais that holds the royal thrones.
“The evil that had no place here is gone - true love has broken his curse, and left something else in its stead.”
James runs a hand across his mouth, holding Rumpelstiltskin’s dark-eyed gaze. “This...something else. Does it meet with your approval?”
Reul Ghorm, they called her in the Frontlands; an acolyte of this world’s wellspring magic, and wed to its safe-keeping. There’s a glint of calculation in the Blue Fairy’s eyes, the parsing of weakness and strategy.
“Rumpelstiltskin retains the magic of this world; he spent centuries collecting every glimmer he could find, and now love has tethered it fast to his soul. As to my approval - well, that hardly matters. His power’s use is up to him. And, perhaps, to you. He’ll bear watching. I could-”
“He will be watched - by me, my husband, by his wife and by this council.”
The fairy opens her mouth to protest, thinks better of it, and dips her head in acknowledgment. Snow stands shoulder to shoulder with her own wayward prince, and grants Rumpelstiltskin clemency. She knows there will be repercussions, hopes she won’t be proven wrong. Watching Belle take his hand to lead Rumpelstiltskin from the throne room, Snow places her faith in the gods of hearth and home, in the love shining clear in the sorcerer’s eyes.
~~
Leaning up, Belle nips sharp at his throat, causes Rumpelstiltskin’s steps to weave as they halt outside Baelfire’s door. His son, and now hers, a gift from her husband, soon to be; Snow has promised them a wedding, a quiet affair by this world’s standards. Belle has sent word to her father in the Frontlands, and he has sent reserved acceptance. There is work to be done, amends to be made, but she knows her father will recognize happiness when he sees it, will wish her joy and good fortune. He will likely need time to wish the same for Rumpelstiltskin, but they have forever, time for all that and more.
“Watching over you, by the royal council’s charge - I believe that would that make me your fairy godmother. Do you suppose I’ll grow a pair of wings?”
“I’ll pluck them from your shoulders the very second that you do.”
“I’ll lend you my scissors. You must forge your own chains for power. My choice lies in whether or not I find them...tolerable.”
He takes her hand, splays her fingers across his chest, starfish pale against dark linen. Sweeps into a bow, and she remembers him at his spinner’s wheel, hears the echo of trilling laughter.
“I will strive always, milady, to be tolerable.”
“You have enemies who would test your forbearance. Enemies, perhaps, with magic of their own.” Belle had not found the Blue Fairy charming, had found a bitterroot tint in her spun-sugar smile, heard sanctimony’s flat notes beneath tinkling laughter.
“I’m more worried about my son. I don’t know how...I’ve hurt him, Belle. I’m not sure he can forgive me, not sure I can ever deserve such a thing.”
Rumpelstiltskin must find his own way in magic, but in love, she can steady his hand.
“I’ll help you to earn it, as will Bae. He loves you.”
Lifting her hand, he kisses her palm, the ring on her finger, tastes her heartline’s salt with a flick of his tongue.
“I will try to be the man you both deserve.”
“And be trying, no doubt - as will I.”
“Second thoughts?” A smile dark as sin, and he’s a charlatan in this, if not magic, his eyes all false arrogance and doubt...but still, he knows her answer, draws her close.
“No. Not one.”
The air around them stills, draws breath, and magic swirls diamonds beneath their feet, rises up to mock the stars.
~~
Once upon a time, a spinner of wool became a weaver of dark magic, and lost what he held most dear - his son. The grieving sorcerer became fear’s slave, a dragon, whose very name inspired terror.
Once upon a time, a dragon fell in love, with a maiden whose gift was divining the light only the soul’s blackest night can reveal. True Love’s kiss can break any curse, but, this is, after all, a fairytale, ancient and dark as such tales should be - and no quest is ever that simple. The spinner scorned love for the sake of fear, and ripped the world apart at its fault lines.
Once upon a time (because this is, after all, a fairytale), Fate smiled, spun her wheel, and the sorcerer, his son, and the clear-eyed maiden fought their way to a happy ending. Fate grinned, wide and red, and left the sorcerer with magic - the kind born of dreams and dust and starlight, but magic just the same.
Once upon a time, and now, love and magic always come at a price - but love is the better steward of souls, and the sorcerer has paid love’s toll in the coin of blood and tears. A spinner of gold and maker of deals, a husband and a father, he spends his days with laughing children in a castle that welcomes the sun. Aligning himself with kings and queens for the good of all the Forest, he has forsworn the crushing of snails. Rumpelstiltskin wields magic, but with care, discretion: swords that crumble at an enemy’s touch, wards against plague, starvation, and locusts - and, the occasional outbreak of boils and maledictions, for those deserving few. This is, after all, a fairytale, as fierce and bright as such tales should be. Beauty fell in love with a Beast, and in love he remains, always, the most dangerous of dragons.