Back Where She Belongs
Author's Note: My very first "Once Upon a Time" story! Based on the Rumple/Regina scenes from Season 2, Episode 2, "We Are Both." Feedback appreciated.
They belong together?
Well, it's what he tells her at least. It's what he says, briefly after he appears, after she stammers out the words to summon him. She feels ineffectual and out of her element, and he knows it, but he doesn't seem to care.
She supposes she should find him frightening, or repulsive, or both. With his dark clothes and strange eyes and his inhuman skin, something in her should be screaming monster, something in her should be telling her to recoil, to run away.
Instead, she feels a strange sort of … pull.
It's there, like a tug at her consciousness, like a memory she didn't know she had. He talks about holding her in his arms, about her being smaller, more "portable," and she supposes she should find it disturbing, find him disturbing, but she doesn't.
"A little push," he tells her. That's all it will take. All she needs to do to be free of her mother forever.
And when she does do it, when she feels the thrill of the magical energy pulsing through her veins, it's only then that she really tastes repulsion and fear. Because of how using magic makes her feel.
"Because I loved it."
He's looking at her now, as they stand on the road together, grinning wickedly, and she recalls how she lied to him when she said she didn't want to hurt anybody. She does want to hurt somebody. She wants to hurt Snow, and her father, and sometimes she just wants to hurt everyone who gets to be happy and in love while she is alone and miserable and Daniel is lost to her.
She remembers his hands on her face when he talked about how kind and gentle she was. She should have shuddered at the feel of than inhuman skin on hers, but instead … instead his touch was cool, almost soothing, and when he told her she was powerful, that there was so much she could do, she felt her pulse quicken, felt a dark and desperate wanting begin to stir itself deep within her.
And now, standing here with him again, she feels the wanting even more.
"You've discovered who you are," he says, pointing at her. "You could do so much now … if you let me show you how." He speaks the last few words in a strange sort of singsong, somehow playful and sinister at the same time, and she knows him, she feels it in her bones, and he and his magic are the only thing that has made her feel alive since she lost her true love, and …
She smiles at him, not a warm smile, but a small, sly, cold one.
"And what do you get out it?"
"Some day, you'll do something for me." He tries handing the book back to her. "Let me guide you," he continues.
She puts her hand on the book. "And I won't become like her?" She asks him.
"That dearie, is entirely up to you."
She takes the book from him, and their gazes are locked. Yes, she knows him. And he knows her. She feels, quite suddenly and with absolute certainly, that no one, no matter how much she loves them, will ever know heror understand her the way that he does, this Dark One, this twisted little imp, Rumplestiltskin.
"Just say it, Regina. You know you want to."
"Teach me."
"In exchange for a favor later?"
"Yes."
He giggles maniacally. "Deal." He offers her his hand. "Shake on it?"
She takes it, and with a breathless little gasp, finds herself being pulled into his arms. She doesn't struggle, doesn't stiffen. She just breathes in the sweet dark magic of him, lets the rage and the wickedness of it fill the hole of grief and anguish that is in her heart.
She's … home.
"I really am so happy," he whispers, his voice like silk on steel, "That we're back where we belong."
"Together," she whispers back.