Fic: The Lesser of Two Evils - Chapter Five
Title: The Lesser of Two Evils
Rating: PG-13
Pairings/Characters: Mr Gold/Emma Swan, Henry (and later on August and Regina)
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for everything surely XD
Summary: My new Golden Swan continuing drama. Emma and Gold's complicated relationship takes a turn for the worse when potions and magical artifacts become involved. Written from ideas presented by the lovely missbreese
X-Posted to FF.net here
Chapter One :: Chapter Two :: Chapter Three :: Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Emma is silent for several moments, and eventually I release her from my grip, giving her up to her obvious shock. It will take time for her to come around. Instead I turn to the dagger on the office floor, stooping down to pick it up. I see my name still etched into the shining blade, as fresh as it was all those decades ago when it was newly formed.
Rumpelstiltskin.
And now the princess knows my name, and no amount of my potions can reverse the effects of this kind of magic. Taking control of the Dark One has touched her mind, tainted it with the darkest of magics. There is nothing for it but the truth.
Or a version of it, at least.
I trace a line down the blade with my finger, and see Emma finally stirring in the corner of my eye. She looks at me with eyes wide, then down to the dagger with a quiver on her lip that would be quite comely we're I not in a state of shock myself.
I almost kissed her, after all, under the dagger's command.
A connection I ought to have made sooner suddenly emerges.
I almost kissed her, under her command.
"You wanted me to kiss you," I state, resuming my place opposite her desk.
The fear in her face breaks a little.
"Could we, just for a moment, focus on the fact that that thing is... is..."
"Magic," I finish.
She shakes her head a little at first, but then settles again warily.
"Magic," she repeats, "Right."
We sit in silence for a moment, and another thought surfaces as my shock begins to ebb away. She still doesn't know what the dagger means, even if she knows what it does.
"What's the matter Sheriff?" I ask. "Don't you believe in voodoo?"
Her mouth is open a little in the short pause that it takes to collect herself.
"Not as a rule," she replies.
"And yet..." I say, letting the dagger come to rest on the table between us.
Emma leans forward to take another look at it, then shakes off her stunned visage.
"You've slipped me something."
I am taken aback.
"Sorry?"
"Don't play that with me Gold," she says harshly. "This isn't real. You've drugged me. You must have."
I raise an eyebrow. "Why is that always your first conclusion with me?"
She furrows her brow at this, and I know I've said too much. The magic of the potion is only so-so, any simple trigger could cause her to remember the events of the hailstorm night.
"When have I ever said-"
"Anyway," I cut in carefully. "I'll just take this off your hands now, and-"
She bats my hand from the blade, snatching it up quickly.
"Oh no no no. You think I'm gonna let you just run off with this?"
"Better to keep it with you, eh?" I ask, frustrated with myself that I didn't keep it in my grasp when I had the chance. But there is something about her that so often leaves me off my guard. It was her I thought of when the Spinning Wheel fell on me that night, when I wasn't concentrating on moving it in the right way.
"What's that supposed to mean?" She asks.
I watch the dagger carefully as she passes it from palm to palm.
"Not to be pedantic about it, but you did just force me to kiss you with that blade's power. God only knows what you'll do if I let you keep hold of it."
Her face flushes, and I know I've hit my mark dead centre. She stumbles over the next few words.
"I... I just... I wanted to think of something extreme," she rationalises on. "Something you'd be unlikely to do on your own."
The set up of her words is too sweet an opportunity not to take.
"Then you thought wrong about the kissing."
"I-"
She begins to talk almost as though she was expecting me to say something else. Then my phrasing sinks in, and she is silent. She returns to looking at the dagger.
"So..." Emma begins again, after a few awkward moments that I relish in. "Seeing as we're both residents of Crazy Town right now, I'm going to try to follow your logic."
"Go on then."
She waves the dagger at me rather too casually.
"This thing is full of voodoo magic?"
"Correct," I reply.
"Uh huh."
She takes the information in.
"And it controls you?"
I nod.
"Just you?"
I nod again.
"That's generally how voodoo works, dear."
She glowers at my tone of voice.
"So if I have this... I'm the boss of you."
I see where this is going now, and I deeply regret my last patronising words to her.
"Emma," I begin, but I can feel a kind of panic taking me by the back of the head. Her hand is on the hilt of the blade and she is silent, just watching me with a shadow of a smile.
"Now, Emma, just consider-" I begin again, but it is no use. The force of the blade is upon me, and there is no escape. I hear her words in my head.
No more talking, Gold.
And I am silent. And though I can think of many silver-tongued phrases to persuade her out of abusing the blade's power, they will no longer aid me.
Stand up.
I stand, and as soon as I do the command is altered.
Sit down.
I do. And she chuckles to herself. The look on her face is hard to distinguish, somewhere between amusement and amazement. She contemplates the blade again, changing hands. For a moment as she changes, I feel the strength to speak returns.
"Please," is all that comes out.
And this time when she speaks it isn't in my head, though I can feel her presence there pressing in on my mind.
"Just one more," she says, her voice breathless. "I just need to prove it to myself. Just one more."
I close my eyes, alert to all the horrifying prospects that could now befall me. And what comes next is both a shock and a relief.
Cry.
I see her way of thinking. The tears come so instantly that no-body could fake such a reaction. A sudden sadness sweeps me and I feel my face contort, but I am almost absent from the scene. Her shocked expression is a mile away, and I am lost to the blackness of the Dark Blade's trance.
And then I am not.
I feel my wet face being cupped by hands roughened from weeks of digging through the woods and locking up rusty jail cells. She finds my eyes, and I look into the depths of hers, see that she too is teary now.
"I'm sorry." She speaks softly. It's a tone I've never heard her use before. "I... I believe you now. I'm sorry."
Chapter Six
I don't know how many updates there will be this week, as once again I'm quite ill and stuck in bed. *sigh*