Summary: What if Rumplestiltskin failed to kill the Dark One?
A/N: This is about the blackest thing I've ever written. May god have mercy on me for it. All characters will probably be included eventually. Based on the proverb rhyme For the Want of a Nail.
Warnings: This is Chapter One, and it's got attempted murder, mass murder, implied rape, child abduction, slavery, and all around nightmarish horror. And it's probably only going to get blacker from here on out. You have been warned….
Chapter One: Rumplestiltskin
The two men stood in the clearing, the light of the torch on the floor flickering across their faces.
"It's almost dawn. That means it's your son's birthday. I bet Hordor and his men are already on their way to your house." The taunt was clear in the deep voice of the Dark One as he faced the spinner in front of him.
"No! They can't take him!"
Zoso moved closer to the little man who now held the dagger, his hood still shading half of his face, his skin glittering strangely.
"You don't control them, you control me. Have you ever wondered, was he really your child at all? Unlike you, he's not a coward, and yearns to fight and die in glory. What a poor bargain that would be to lay down your soul to save your bastard son! So I ask you, what would you have me do?" The Dark One enunciated each terrible word as clear as a bell in his rumbling voice, and they all sounded like a nails being hammered in the coffin of any hopes Rumplestiltskin had left. He had no alternative; the only option left to him to save Bae was...
"Die!"
Rumplestiltskin moved to thrust the dagger upwards and into the chest of the Dark One, ending his terrible reign over his people's lives. As he did so, however, his knee gave way and he twisted as he pitched forward, slightly to the left. He felt the dagger slide beneath the ribs of Dark One, but the solid mass of heart he expected to meet was not there. The two men staggered backwards, hanging on to each other for support, like a pair of drunkards outside the village tavern.
Still holding the hilt of the dagger, Rumplestiltskin stared into the face of the man he was trying to murder. Zoso stared back at him, his face contorted with pain, but his life did not ebb from his eyes, they way they both expected. As the moments passed, the hot spurt of desperate rage that had given the spinner the momentary courage to use the dagger faded away, and the realisation of what had almost happened began to sink in.
"You fool!" The Dark One hissed, pushing Rumplestiltskin away from him. Without the support of his staff, the spinner crumpled to the ground. Zoso stood over him, the hilt of the dagger protruding grotesquely from his chest, one inch to the left of the place Rumplestiltskin had aimed for.
With a grunt of exertion, the Dark One pulled the dagger from his chest. There was a sucking sound as his body released its hold on the blade. He held it out again. "Only a direct blow to the heart can kill the Dark One! Take the blade and strike again, little man! Strike again and cleanly this time, if you want to save your son!"
"I can't!" gasped the figure on the forest floor. "I can't! I can't do it! I can't kill a man, not in cold blood!"
"Not even for your boy?" Zoso crooned. "The last part left of your family? The sun is rising, and the soldiers will take him today. Do you want him to face what you had to? The mud? The blood? The dying screams of the men around him as the Ogres rip through the infantry while their commanders look on from a distance? He will see death all around him and feel his own life slip away when the clubs of the Ogres strike him down, and shatter his body. Is that what you want for him?"
Rumplestiltskin was curled up in a ball at his feet, sobbing in earnest now, clasping his hands to the side of his head to try and block out the awful words being poured into them. "I can't! I can't kill a man, not even for Bae!" The words were repeated, over and over, a litany of despair from the lips of a broken man.
Realising it was futile, the Dark One disappeared with a scream of rage, leaving the spinner prostrate on the dirt as the sun crept over the horizon.
By the time Rumplestiltskin came to himself, the sun was high in the sky. With a cry he scrabbled in the dirt for his stick, levering himself up from the ground uncertainly, before starting off as fast as he could towards home.
As he cleared the forest, he could see a column of black smoke rising in the distance. He tried to hobble faster, his knee agonisingly painful, his gut twisting with anxiety as he realised what lay in the direction of the column of smoke. The closer he got, the more the coldness at the pit of his stomach solidified into a hard ball of fear, the terror rising in his blood as the certainty that the smoke came from his own village became more concrete.
The closer he got, the more smoke there was, until he realised that the fire causing it must be bigger than he thought. Making his way along the road, there were none of the usual signs of rural life as he passed through the fields on the outskirts of the village. The cows still grazed in their fields, but no maids were milking them, though it was past time and the cows' udders hung full beneath them. The heat of the day was steadily increasing as he walked, though the leaves were turning on the trees and the grey clouds hung low in the sky.
Rounding the corner, Rumplestiltskin realised with horror that the heat came from the blaze burning through most of the village. It wasn't a large village, and most of the buildings were thatched with straw or reed. A fire that took hold in thatch was almost impossible to put out without taking the entire roof off. It smouldered in any remnants until it burned though to clear air, where it would reignite and set the whole chain reaction off again. By the look of some of the buildings, the fires had been burning for some hours.
Even so, he would have expected that the villagers would at least try and save the outbuildings where they had stored the food for the in coming year. Shortly after harvest, the barns and storage pits were full to capacity, yet he still saw no one making any attempt to save any of the building left. The cold ball of fear at the pit of his belly cramped again, as Rumplestiltskin realised that even with the fire, something was very, very wrong with the village.
Hobbling through, holding his free arm up to shield his face from the scorching heat, coughing from the smoke and smell, he arrived at the village square and found out why no one was in the fields, or trying to extinguish the flames.
The row of bodies lay in a line across the width of the square, face down in the dirt. So many of them, in places they were piled on top of each other. Most of the men and a few of the women, their throats slashed and their lifeblood drained from them, mingling in a great sticky lake spread out around them. Little children lay mixed in with their parents. The heat from the fire was already drying it, turning it into a dark, solid mass that was starting to attract flies. The sightless eyes of the ranks of the dead were still open, a milky film starting to cover them. Arms and legs lay splayed in the position they were flung into. Staring in horror, Rumplestiltskin recognised people he had grown up with, his neighbours, some of them the parents of Bae's friends... Bae!
The thought of his boy sent fresh life back into the spinners shock numbed legs, and he staggered onwards. Rounding the corner at the opposite end of the village, Rumplestiltskin saw the burnt and blackened ruins of what had been their home, the fire still burning in some places. Even from this distance he could see the charred wreckage of his spinning wheel, still upright in the centre of the single long room. There had been no children older than five left lying in the village square, and grimly Rumplestiltskin wondered what had happened to the others, what he might find in the ruins of his house.
As he was about to reach his doorstep, a firm hand closed around his arm, and a voice called his name. Whirling around, his frantic eyes met those of Saoirse, the woman who had once told him his wife had been taken by pirates. Her face was streaked with grime, her eyes were red rimmed and her dress torn and muddy. She was saying something, he could see her lips moving, but he couldn't seem to hear anything over the roar of the flames, which was odd, since the fire was almost burned out in this part of the village.
She was tugging on his arm now, her eyes soft with compassion, but Rumplestiltskin couldn't leave this place. This was his home. Bae was here. He needed to be here when Bae got in from playing. He would be hungry. Confused, frowned at the woman trying to take him away from where he was needed, raising his hand to brush hers off his arm.
He paused to look at his hand, it shook wildly as he raised it. He looked back at Saoirse face, bemused as it retreated, the blackness overwhelming him.
When he came round again, a while later, he was lying under the shade of a copse of trees just outside the village. There was a cool cloth on his brow, and he could hear people nearby. Someone was sobbing, another voice murmured soothingly. With a groan, he brought his hand up to his head, tried to sit up.
"Gently! Gently!" a woman's voice reproved him as his head swan and spots danced in front of his eyes. A hand was placed supportively on his back, and someone removed the cloth from his head. "You've had a terrible shock. We all have. Drink this and see how you feel."
The hand that raised a cup to his lips trembled as badly as his own had in the moments before he passed out on his own doorstep. He took an unsteady drink of the water, gulping the tepid liquid down his parched throat. When he was done, he finally took a moment to look around him. Of their village of over two hundred people, there were just eleven of them huddled together under the trees.
Saoirse, he knew. Marek, the village baker and his two sons sat together a short distance away. Marek, with a blank look of incomprehension on his face, Janek, his oldest son was murmuring soothingly to his father, trying to get him to drink. Yuri, his second son, was tending to raw burns on his father's hands and arms.
Old Stefan and his wife Mathilde sat with their arms around each other, staring at the still burning wreckage of their home.
Three young women sat holding hands, their clothing also torn and muddy, their hair tangled and filled with twigs and leaves.
Bridget, the finest seamstress in the village, sat with her head in her hands, rocking gently backwards and forwards, keening softly to herself.
Aside from a couple of pails, cups and baskets, none of them had anything but the clothes on their backs. Rumplestiltskin looked at Saoirse. "What happened?" In spite of the water, his voice was cracked and dry. "My boy? My Bae? Where is he?"
"It was the soldiers." Saoirse said. "Hodor and his men came back. They knew it was Baelfire's birthday, they arrived early in the morning, still half drunk. You weren't there, so they took Bae and two of the other boys. You would have been so proud of him, Rumplestiltskin. He was so brave, and good about it. He looked for you, but no one knew where you were. They were about to ride off when Senna pushed in front of them to ask about Morraine. I was too far away to hear what Hodor said, but Senna cried out and fainted, and Caradoc... " he voice broke slightly "Caradoc had been chopping wood. He still had his axe in his hand. He swung it at Hodor. We thought it would be like last time, the Dark One would stop it, however he chose to, but he wasn't there."
Saoirse broke off, her eyes pained with the recollection. "It was a wild swing, anyone could have seen it, it barely even touched Hodor. Whatever was said, Caradoc was too grief maddened by it to hit anyone properly, but they stuck him down for it none the less. The Senna came at them, screaming, and before anyone knew it, the whole village was on the soldiers. I've never seen it happen before. The Dark One never let's anyone who could be useful in fighting get killed like that., but he never arrived. And our people, they fought using pitchforks and rakes! Against horses and swords!" Saoirse was weeping now.
"They rounded everyone up, stood us all in the square and divided us. The women and older children on one side, the men and the babes on the other. The families who refused to be parted were all put with the men. Then in front of us all the soldiers cut their throats, one by one. They made us watch as they killed out husbands!" She broke off, sobbing in raw grief as the memory overwhelmed her.
The three girls moved over to comfort her. One of the three girls, Hilda, he thought her name was, carried on " I heard them talking," she said "Those of fighting age, or near enough, would go to the lines. The women they was going to send to serve in the camps. Hodor told them to set fire to the houses, they was going to use us as an example so as no one ever tried to defy the Duke again." Her voice was flat, her face expressionless, but her hands were white where they gripped each other as she carried on "They made us wait while they made sure the fires had taken hold. Everyone was staring at the flames. Me, and Heidi and Lara was right at the back, next to Saoirse. She told us we had to go, quiet like, so we all crept into the bushes while they was watching the burning. When they moved off, no one noticed we'd gone. Then we hid, until we heard Marek and the boys come back, and we all come out here." She turned back to Saoirse "If it weren't for Saoirse, we'd have been gone too. We all knows what happens to the women who ends up serving in the camps."
Janek looked over "We'd gone to the market in Longbourne. Father wanted to try selling some bread there. Me and Yuri went to carry for him. We left this morning before sunrise, and at midday we come home to this. Our mother's in the square with the little ones, Saoirse said she went for one of the guards when he tried to take me sister. I had five younger brothers and sisters this morning. Now there's only me and Yuri left. Father hasn't said a word since he saw me mother lying there. He tried to get into our house, to find the little 'uns, but the beams had fallen in with the fire and he couldn't shift them, try as he did. The little 'uns is in the square with me mother anyway. We tried to tell him, but he wouldn't listen."
Rumplestiltskin let their words wash over him. In all of their stories, only one fact stood out to him. Bae was gone. He'd burned down the Duke's castle, nearly killed a man to try and save his boy, and he'd failed. Bae was gone, away to the lines, his father had failed him when he needed him the most. Rumplestiltskin had nothing left.