Darkness Becomes Her

Chapter One

Another Beginning

The floor could have used a good sweeping.

She noticed it only because she was sitting on the floor, sitting on the floor next to the still, reclining body of her husband - sitting on the floor of his darkened shop, the half-light muting the rich burnished browns of the woods into a cashmere patina.

Yes, she could see the floor needed sweeping.

She was alone, except for him. Everyone else had rushed out of the shop, debouching into the town's square to follow the sweeping, swirling foul entrails of the Dark Curse.

She was alone, unable to abandon him. She looked down at his quiescent form.

Push him away. Push him away so he can't use you anymore, can't lie to you anymore, can't hurt you anymore.

No, no. She would never be strong enough to push him away again.

Belle sat on the floor holding his hand with one of hers and using the other to brush the hair back from his face. She loved this man so much.

She didn't notice anything at first. There was no noise except for the distant shouting in the town square. She assumed there was some type of confrontation between Regina and the Charmings with The Darkness, that It was hunting new prey, some new soul to attach itself to, to consume, to possess.

Perhaps they were fighting it off. Perhaps they had realized some way to contain it. She glanced around. Rumple's dagger was next to her. It was blank now, no name emblazoned on the blade.

Only then, while she glanced at the dagger did she see it, a slight movement catching her eye. A single inky oily filament slithering into the shop, like a slender finger of pure darkness, looking for its target. She saw it as it inevitably made its way to Rumple, tentative at first, but as soon as it touched him, so familiar with his form, his smell, his very essence, it began to wrap itself around his ankle and then it began to tug.

"No!" Belle shouted, standing up, doing her best to get between the tendril and her husband. "You will not have him again! Take me, you son of bitch! Take me!" And she picked up the dagger and began to stab at the Darkness.

And suddenly a whirlwind of Darkness rushed into the room, surrounding her, swallowing her and finally disappearing into her.

Then Belle disappeared.

Out in the courtyard, Emma and Regina were running back to the shop. At moment earlier they had stood together recognizing that the Darkness was seeking a new host, vying for position, each willing to take it on to protect the ones they loved. They had watched it as it touched and tasted each of those in the town square, most shuddering at the acrid, unholy feel of the dark energies.

Then it had abruptly vanished.

"Where did it go?" Snow asked. "I thought it was going to take Emma and then suddenly it was gone."

"Grandpa," Henry said. "It went back to get Grandpa." He was looking toward the shop.

Emma looked at Regina. "Belle's in there with him." She knew, she knew that Belle would throw herself in front of the Darkness. She knew that Belle wouldn't let Gold be taken twice by the Dark Curse. She was already running back to the shop closely followed by the others.

They were met with a rushing, roaring wind, a stinking, fetid whirlwind that smelled like an open sewer kept inside a slaughterhouse. They were brought up short and all immediately covered their mouths and noses, gagging in the stench.

Then everything was clear and calm and silent.

Gold was still lying comatose on the floor of his shop.

Belle was missing.

Regina spoke first, "It took Belle. Where's the dagger?"

Killian winced. "I had almost picked it up but didn't when that thing went out of the shop. The last time I saw it, it was next to the crocodile."

"Then she picked it up," Regina concluded. She looked at the others, "We have a new Dark One."

Thereafter . . .

There was a moment of confusion, of deciding what to do, deciding what needed to be done next. Snow called the hospital for an ambulance.

"He's still alive, right?" She was talking about Gold. "We can't just leave him here."

"But it's probably not a problem the hospital can help him with," Regina told her.

"Perhaps not. But we don't exactly have a Magic Rehab Memorial Clinic we can send him to, do we?" Snow pursued it. "He's not waking up. He's vulnerable. No matter what we think about him, we can't just leave him here."

"Mom's right. He has so many enemies. Any of them could come after him now that he's helpless. We've not always agreed with him . . . okay, okay, we've hardly ever agreed with him," she corrected when all members of the group began to protest. "But it's not right to leave him. It's just not right."

The ambulance had come and the attendants had placed Gold on a stretcher and had taken him on to the Emergency Room. Emma had insisted on going with him. She felt that she had the closest connection with the man; he was the grandfather of her child, the father of her first True Love. She sent everyone else home, letting them know she would call as soon as she knew anything. Killian had protested but had eventually capitulated. He promised to come by and check on her if Gold was put in a room. Regina promised to come by and relieve her in the morning (if it turned out to be necessary).

Later That Evening . . .

For some time now, Emma had been sitting in a hard orange plastic chair in a harshly florescent lit room with sharp edges on the black shadows. The room was set off from the large pulse center of the Emergency Room, a little room where people could be quickly triaged for their next level of service. There were three people hooking Gold up to an IV, to a heart monitor, to other instruments to monitor his breathing, his blood pressure, a myriad of other body functions. They were looking at the telemetry spewing out of one of the machines.

"His heart looks good." Viktor Whale had been called down to the Emergency Room to attend. Despite his other moral crimes, Gold had been a heavy contributor to the hospital. He'd kept it quiet, of course – no need for the residents of the town to think better of the town monster. By the time the ambulance pulled in, the Hospital had marshalled their best trauma team. "In fact, his heart looks excellent."

Emma sat quietly remembering the charred, hardened organ that had been removed from his chest. She had a vague memory that it had been replaced with . . . something glowing¸ glowing white and clear.

"What happened?" Viktor was talking to her.

"He was dying, the human part of him. The Curse was taking over, swallowing him up. If it had been successful then only the Dark One would have remained. So the Apprentice removed his heart, cleansed it, and replaced it, driving out the Dark One. He lost consciousness during . . . the procedure. "

Viktor had listened quietly, long ago having dispensed with his disbelief of magic. "You know that his condition is more likely . . . magical, rather than something physical."

"I do, but I also know that he is more human now than he was before. He has a lot of enemies and he doesn't have magic to heal himself. He's . . . vulnerable. We can protect him in the hospital until he regains consciousness."

"If you want to," Viktor told her dubiously. "So you want to stay with him?"

"I will. Regina will come and relieve me in the morning. There may be some others that will help guard him."

"Why?" Viktor asked. "Why are you doing this?"

"Why?" Emma repeated. She hesitated. She'd already addressed this once with her family and Regina and Killian. How could she explain the debt the town owned him? He was a convoluted bastard but despite of everything he'd done, perhaps because of everything he'd done – they owed him something. He had done what he did for love. Taking on the Dagger Curse, taking years to spin everything together to cast the Dark Curse, even trying to kill Killian to separate himself from the Dagger – this too had been done for love. He had known that he was about to be consumed by the Darkness and that there would be no humanity left to temper the Dark One – so hence all the effort at finding The Author and rewriting history.

Perhaps if he had just rewritten his own history it would have worked, but he had to rewrite everyone. But if the Apprentice had not stepped in, without the re-write, he would have left the town at the mercy of the Dark One and that force would have truly risen and crushed them all. Gold knew that and hadn't wanted the ones he loved to be victims. Emma wondered if the Dark One would have sought out those that Gold had loved to destroy them – for they had thwarted the Darkness in its desire to consume Rumple, the poor cowardly spinner.

"Why?" Emma said again thinking over Viktor's question. "Because it's the right thing to do." She repeated what she had told the others with no hesitancy. She wanted to be there when he woke up.

Would he remember being the Dark One? Would he remember Belle, the death of his son, being Zelena's slave? Would he remember being Gold, the town monster? Would he become the poor spinner again? His situation was unprecedented.

That Same Evening . . .

"What's going to happen now?" Henry asked his mom, Regina.

He, Regina and Robin were sitting in Regina's kitchen. Little Roland had long since been put to bed. They were all sitting around her table having a late night snack – each enjoying a piece of one of Regina's apple tarts and drinking some milk.

"Well, I guess we follow-up with the Apprentice's suggestion and try to figure out how to get to Merlin. We need to save Belle from being the Dark One and figure out some other way to stash the dark powers besides the dagger," she answered him.

"What if . . . what if she doesn't want to stop being the Dark One?" Henry asked. "I know Grandpa . . . he never . . . he had a hard time with the idea of giving up the Dark One's powers."

"You're right there," Regina agreed with him. "He would always choose his powers over everything, anything else."

"What if Belle's the same way? I mean . . . all of a sudden to be so powerful. That's got to be . . . pretty big." Robin asked this.

Regina considered. She couldn't imagine suddenly having so many powers. Hers had developed slowly with a lot of hard work. It would be a heady experience, abruptly being able to do pretty much anything you wanted to. Belle was a very level-headed individual, well, except for her infatuation with Rumple. She was realistic and practical. But becoming the Dark One. What would that feel like?

Regina remembered that there had been times she had envied Rumple the depth and breadth of his powers. He did so many things so effortlessly that took so much energy from herself.

What would Belle be feeling right now?

Still That Evening . . .

Belle was feeling fantastic.

She had immediately focused on getting the fuck out of the shop and away from all the would-be do-gooders. She had transported herself to the safest place she knew – Gold's Victorian. She had quickly placed wards around the house and increased the physical locks on the doors and windows. On a whim she'd had the rose bushes grow at a prodigious rate and, just for fun, she pushed them into full bloom - lovely red roses growing eight feet high and five feet thick all around the house, an impenetrable hedge of thorns and brambles.

Now she was resting comfortably in her old room, the one she'd used before she had married Rumple. She did a bit of re-decoration, making the carpet plusher, the bed cushier, the curtains velvetier, changing the little wooden chair in the corner into a comfy wingback with an ottoman. She sat down in it putting her feet up and summoned up some of Gold's top notch whiskey, a glass and a little side table (with a coaster). She began to consider her options. She probably should've taken Rumple with her. They would likely stash him away somewhere.

She snorted. Hell, it was also possible that they would just leave him on the shop floor, going back to their own little homes and their own little families and screw him. They had never cared about what was happening to him before – leaving him in Zelena's clutches for a year following the death of his beloved son.

But she didn't think that they would want her to get with him. No, no, they could not risk having the Dark One and the former Dark One becoming allies.

But Rumple would certainly be on her side.

Wouldn't he?

You are so much stronger than Rumple.

She heard the voice inside her head. It was melodic and soothing.

Yes, yes, Belle the Wonderful. Belle the Considerate. You are strong, very strong. Rumple was always weak, cowardly, never really wanting to use all the power that was available to him. He was weakened by his love for his son and for . . . herself.

Belle searched the fragments of memories that she recognized belonged to previous Dark Ones. She could name some of them. As she scanned these older memories, she realized something. So many of these former Dark Ones were idiots - power-hungry, arrogant idiots. They did not know how fragile their grasp on their autonomy was. They did not protect themselves and often ended up as slaves to other, lesser mortals. Even clever Rumple, clever, clever Rumple had eventually fallen. But Belle was more clever than Rumple. Belle would not let anyone enslave her.

She saw a pattern among the Dark Ones' behaviors. They would often be so drunk on their own powers that they would quickly grow careless. Belle smiled. Yes, she would see one of the most common patterns, how the Dark Ones would often take beautiful women, willing or not, to their beds. These women would soon enough discover their weakness and would slay the Dark Ones as they rested following a good fuck. Yes, there were plenty of female Dark Ones in the long history, many of them were the former mistresses of their predecessors.

Rumple, she perceived, was one of the longest lived of the Dark Ones. He was clever, clever and had a remarkable gift for self-preservation. And he was careful, oh so careful. But he was a disappointment. He could have ruled the world, had all creatures bowing before him, his pick of women. But instead he spent all that time furthering his knowledge, studying, gathering information so that he could create the Dark Curse.

It was a pretty impressive feat, even the Dark One had to admit this. Belle could see only some of the threads of the rich tapestry that Rumple had woven with this intensely intricate spell.

Oh, and somewhere along the line, Rumple had acquired the Seer's gift. But none of that gift had passed onto Belle. She was not able to foresee the future.

As Belle sat savoring the whiskey (odd, she had never liked whiskey before), she also began to realize that her memory of things, of the Others, of the vast fund of knowledge that Rumple had gathered, all of this, was incomplete.

It was because he had not died. It was because the transfer of the Entity had not been straight-forward, so much of the information had not come into her. She was like one of the younger versions of the Dark One, still in its infancy, still lacking much, much knowledge.

She poured herself a second glass of whiskey.

They were going to try to find Merlin, weren't they? She wouldn't want them to do that. Merlin would be able to garner the Dark One and put it somewhere, somewhere where it would be neutered and useless. She would have to stop them from finding Merlin or, failing that, she would have to get to him first.

And she would have to kill him.

She sighed. Belle didn't like the idea of killing. Killing was icky. And . . . and . . . what was that other thing? Oh yes, killing was wrong, not wrong like turning down the corner of a page to keep your place in a book, but really, really wrong. She knew that. Yes, she knew that.

Rumple would know what to do. He'd walked the moral knife edge for longer than . . . anybody. He would know. She would definitely have to recruit Rumple to her side.

She smiled. That should be easy.

He loved her, right?

Late That Evening . . .

Emma was still sitting on the first evening watch. Gold had been put into a hospital bed into a spacious private room with a singularly ugly brown lounger chair, a small fridge and a large television set. There was a closet and several drawers. Closed off by a door, there was also a small bathroom with a shower in one corner of the room. The floors were the hard, cold, ubiquitous dark green hospital tiles with small flecks of white floating in them. The walls were painted the pale mint green that was supposed to be relaxing but actually made a person feel nauseated. The room was filled with an artificial smell of betadine and chlorine bleach with just a hint of vomit. The lights, the lights were again the harsh florescents that had been down in the ER.

True to his word, once he had learned that Gold had been admitted, Killian had come by and brought Emma food, stopping by the cafeteria and making a selection from the meager choices that were still available, leftovers from the day's preparations, food that would be thrown out in the morning if not eaten by the truly hungry this night. He'd gotten the best of the choices, a couple of sandwiches, some yogurt and some iced tea.

"He doesn't look so threatening like this, does he?" he'd said to Emma standing at the foot of Gold's bed. The man was still hooked up to machines that monitored his heart, his blood pressure, his temperature and respiration. The man looked frail and small wrapped in the contraptions of twenty-first century medicine.

"Regina had found out that he'd been hospitalized in New York," Emma told him. "She told me that he'd had two heart attacks while he was there, one actually in the hospital when Zelena had visited him. They had barely pulled him through."

"All those years of bad deeds catching up with him," Killian told her.

"Perhaps, but Regina explained to me that it wasn't the Dark One that was dying. It was Rumplestiltskin. The Dark One was killing him. If Rumplestiltskin had died we would have been left with the monster, with no shred of humanity, of mercy."

Killian sniffed, "Not that the man had had much of those things to begin with."

"Killian," Emma chastised him gently, "as I hear it, you ran off with his wife, leaving him with a small child."

"Yeah. . . ." Killian shifted uncomfortably. "Milah and I . . . well, we were in love, really in love. She always regretted leaving her child behind. When Bae fell by my boat in Neverland, I took him in, kind of adopted him in Milah's memory. He was a likeable kid, much more likeable than his father."

"But you can understand why Gold was never too fond of you."

"I can. It's taken me a while to get there, but I . . . . I was not very nice to him," Killian confessed. "Right after Milah left him, he came to my ship and tried to get her back and I . . . I taunted him, challenged him to a sword fight."

"That wasn't very fair. The man was a cripple."

"Exactly. So, I admit, I wasn't the nicest person back then. I've grown. I've tried to change."

Emma leaned over and kissed him. "You have, darling. You have. You understand why I'm here?"

"Not really. But I understand you feel that you need to be."

"If for no other reason that this is my child's grandfather. He's family. Yes, I feel I need to be here."

Killian kept her company for a while, sharing some of the hospital's food that he brought up for her, but it was very boring work. There was no change in Gold's condition. It was after eleven when Killian finally gave her a hug and a quick kiss and left.

Emma kept the room in somber half-light. It didn't seem quite appropriate to have the bright artificial lights of the hospital filling the space, not that they were cheerful or anything – just bright. Emma washed her face off and used her finger to brush her teeth. She then settled in on the lounger that was in the room, huddled under a thin hospital blanket. Exhausted, she felt into a deep slumber.

Much Later That Night . . .

The room was dark with only the lights of the machines winking their pinpoint lights, red and yellow, on and off, on and off – quiet with only the soft humming of the same machines. Occasionally the shadow of one of the nursing staff would flit by the door.

Asleep, Emma missed her when she arrived, stepping out of the dark shadows of the room. The figure was slight, dressed in liquid black silk which draped her petite figure and swirled silently as she moved. Her hair was long and black and curling at the ends. She moved silently and quickly, stopping at the side of Rumple's bed.

"Darling," she cooed to him. "Still sleeping, I see." She bent over and kissed him directly on the lips. "Soon, my love. Soon."

Down at the nurse's station, a bored nurse was watching a re-run of Fairytale Theater on late night television and missed the spike in Mr. Gold's heartbeat.

NEXT: Emma and others try to figure out why Mr. Gold is not waking up from his coma

Belle begins the search for a way to Camelot