Disclaimer: While Rumpie and her family are mine, Rumplestiltskin, Regina and Baelfire are the creations of Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, the OUAT writers and the amazing Robert Carlyle, Lana Parilla and Dylan Schmid.
A/N:This story was originally titled "Ace in the Hole," until I discovered that there are a whole lot of Fanfiction stories with the same title. So I chose what I thought would be a unique title, only to discover there are also some "Saved by Zero" stories! Go figure.
After writing this story, I learned that Wamego, Kansas, is home to the Wizard of Oz Museum and annual festival. I'm not an Oz fan myself, but I think Rumpie is.
Thanks to everyone who's read this story, and especially to those who commented upon it.
Noamg, in answer to your questions: A loophole in Rumple and Regina's agreement allows Rumple to sneak his namesake and her family into other cities. I've revised that paragraph to make the point clearer.
About Gold remembering his FTL past, Horowitz and Kitsis said in a Live Facebook interview that until Emma arrived in SB, Gold didn't remember, so I stuck to that.
Saved by Zero
Chapter 1: Rumplestiltskin
She played a wicked game. Cunning and unpredictable, her moves were; she enjoyed taking reckless risks even more than she enjoyed winning. But she was young and life had yet to test her. As she checked his king, he leaned back in the thickly cushioned chair, the one the family now considered his chair, and watched her from the corner of his eye.
"You're distracted tonight," Rumpie commented. She stood, stretched, and stepped over her baby to reach the sideboard, where she refilled his tankard of mead, then her own. She arranged a triangle of petit fours on a plate and brought it to him, helping herself to one of the treats before she returned to her rocking chair.
"Yes," Rumplestiltskin admitted.
"Shall we talk a while, then, 'of castles and kings and things'?"
He wished it were winter; he longed for a fire to stare at. But summer had arrived, its sounds and scents spilling in through the open windows of Rumpie's elegant home. As always, they were seated in the baby's room, a chess board between them. Laughter rolled in through the window; on the lawn, Rumpie's husband Leofwin and her firstborn, Rumplestiltskin X, chased fireflies. On the rug at her mother's feet, the baby stacked brightly colored wooden blocks.
"He will be seven next week," Rumplestiltskin observed, referring to the boy playing outside.
She beamed. "You always remember."
"It would be bad luck to forget the birthday of one's namesake, dearie. Or at the least, bad manners."
Rumpie settled back into her chair with a sigh. "Seven." She sipped her mead. "And seven years since our first game." She raised her tankard in a salute to him. "Thank you for coming out of the shadows."
He ducked his head in embarrassment. "Entirely selfish on my part, I assure you."
Her eyes widened a bit as a thought occurred to her, but she left it unspoken. Everyone knew that the Dark One lived alone in a castle set far apart from the rest of the world. Everyone knew he kept it barred and bolted, as he did his heart, if he could be said to have one at all, and he emerged only long enough to trick some desperate soul before sealing himself in again. Only the two in this room and the two on the lawn outside knew that every once in a while, the need for a challenging game of chess drove him to seek the company of this young family.
And certainly that was the only reason he came.
"Rumpie."
She sat up a little straighter. He seldom used her nickname, preferring to address her as "dearie" or "child," as he did her children. She in turn addressed him only by his full name, a sign of respect.
His voice, so burdened with sarcasm in the first years of their acquaintanceship, had changed as he came to know her and her family, and now it sounded almost kind. "You and Leofwin and Ten know who I am, what I can do. Yet none of you has ever asked me for more than a game of chess or some stories of my travels. Why? Why have you not asked for magic?"
She thought about that a moment, then shrugged. "We make our own way in life."
"But there could be more. Not even Ten"—this was the family's nickname for Rumplestiltskin X—"has asked for so much as a flying pony."
Her face clouded. "I would be ashamed if he did."
"It is not uncommon for the fairies to select families to patronize. Why should your family not have a patron as well?"
"We don't want to be patronized. Rumplestiltskin, I'm insulted you would suggest such a thing!" Rumpie spat the word out. "A patron! The very idea!"
He laid a hand across his chest in a gesture of humility. "I apologize."
They sat in silence for a few moments, until the baby, babbling to herself on the rug, decided the time had come to take her first literal step: with both hands she grasped the nearest graspable thing—Rumplestiltskin's pants leg—and, shifting her weight until she found balance, hauled herself to her feet.
Rumplestiltskin's heart broke. . .though he certainly would never have admitted he possessed such an organ.
Rumpie leapt up, gasping, staring, then ran to the window and yelled, "Leofwin! Ten! Amiria is walking! Come and see!" She rushed back to the center of the room, dragging the chess table out of the baby's way. Perplexed, Amiria stared at her mother. The baby's bottom swayed precariously but she kept a tight grip on the imp's pants leg, until the shouts of her brother and her father as they stormed into the house and tore up the stairs distracted her. She teetered, wobbled, then gave up and plopped down to the rug. By the time the rest of the family had arrived, she had forgotten her great adventure and had gone back to stacking her blocks.
Leofwin groaned with mild disappointment at having missed the spectacle. Ten, however, quickly lost interest in his sister and sought some attention for himself. "Look!" He held a glass tube high for all to see—the tube was one of a set that had been left as a gift at his bedside last year, on the fourth day of the first month after harvest. Inside the tube a glowing insect crawled. "It's a firefly." He leaned over Rumplestiltskin's chair, holding the tube close to the imp's nose. "Did you ever see a firefly, Rumplestiltskin?"
"I have. Fascinating creatures, aren't they? They appear to be charged with power."
"You're done with your game?" Leofwin asked. "Shall we go downstairs? Cook should have dinner on the table about now."
Rumplestiltskin seldom stayed for dinner. It made him uncomfortable, as though he were being treated as family, an old bachelor uncle perhaps, instead of the Feared One, the Master of Dark Magic. Or so he said.
But it also made him remember Bae and Belle, which he didn't say.
Tonight had to be different, however. He had instruction to provide. When the meal had been cleared away, the children put to bed, and the cook sent to her quarters for the night, the adults gathered in the parlor. In the lantern-light Leofwin shared gossip he'd heard in the village today: Prince Thomas and Princess Ella were expecting a child.
After the husband and wife had chewed over this tidbit, Leofwin grinned at their visitor. "What news do you bring from the rest of the world?"
Rumplestiltskin's gaze dropped to the wooden floor. He said nothing.
Their expressions fell. "It's bad, isn't it?" Rumpie said lowly. Leofwin instinctively grasped her hand.
"A time of great sorrow is coming, and great loss. But the time will pass, I promise, and when it has, we will know freedom at last."
The husband and the wife fell silent in shock.
Rumplestiltskin couldn't meet their eyes as he continued, "The end to all we have here and all we know is soon at hand. A curse will be unleashed; the world will exist no more."
"Are we going to die?" Rumpie's voice shook. "The children—"
"No, they will live; we all will live, but we will be removed from our lives."
"Don't speak in riddles," Leofwin demanded. "Tell us plainly."
"All of us will be transported to another world, one in which there is no magic. No fairies, no witches, no Dark One." Rumplestiltskin's eyes blazed.
"The curse to end all curses," Rumpie breathed. "I grew up hearing the stories of it, but everyone said it was impossible."
Her husband shrugged. "How is this bad? For those of us who never had magic, it will be a blessing to be released from the power of those who do." Then he remembered to whom he was speaking. "I don't mean to offend, but—"
"Magic steals from those who have it as well as those who wish they had it."
"We will be free, then," Leofwin smiled.
"Free from the tyranny of magic, yes, but adrift from our selves. None of us will remember our lives here."
Rumpie blanched. "Each other? We will not know each other? The children?" She buried her face in her hands and sobbed. "We won't know our own children?"
Leofwin leapt to his feet. "This has to be stopped! No one takes my children from me! Who casts this curse? I'll kill him; that will settle it; I'll kill him now!"
"She who casts the curse is beyond your reach."
"Who would do such a thing?" Rumpie cried. "Who would destroy our families, tear us from our husbands, our children? Why?"
"He who created the curse is within your reach."
Leofwin started to pace, his hand on his hip, searching for a weapon that he never carried. "I'll kill him then. That will put an end to it—won't it?" But Rumplestiltskin shook his head and Leofwin groaned.
Rumpie stopped sobbing. In a dead voice she breathed, "You."
"I created the curse."
"To—destroy us?" Leofwin stopped his pacing.
"I paid no heed to anyone else. An unfortunate but necessary consequence, I thought. Families would be torn asunder, but my son would be returned to me."
"I don't understand and I don't want to," Leofwin said. "If you created it, you can stop it."
"The curse cannot be stopped."
"We thought of you as a friend," Rumpie said. "As family. Why have you destroyed us?"
"For my child. Everything for my child." He explained to them how the dark power had come to him, and the price he had paid in the loss of his own soul—and the loss of Bae.
He gave them the truth of his own complicity in the crimes he had fallen victim to. He didn't ask forgiveness; he didn't want to be forgiven. Their shock became anger became rage, and he accepted it all as his due.
"You say we'll remember nothing," Rumpie stood over him, shaking. "But so help me, I will never forget you took my husband and my children from me. I will never forget I hate you."
"You must put aside your hatred long enough to hear me a moment longer," the imp insisted. "There is something you must do; it could give you a chance to find each other again in the new world."
"And why should we believe you when you—" But Leofwin set a staying hand on his wife's shoulder and she shrank under his touch, burying her face in his chest.
"Tell us," Leofwin urged. "If there is a way, we will do it."
Rumplestiltskin snapped his fingers and a leather-bound book appeared, floating in mid-air. He drew it down, ran his hand across the cover.
"This is the book I wrote for you," she said.
"Keep it with you every moment. Don't let it out of your sight. If it is in your hands when the curse strikes, you will have it when you awake in the new world."
"What good will it do, when I won't know who I am? When I won't know my husband and my children?"
"There is some time, a few weeks perhaps. Use the time to write your children's stories in this book. When you arrive in the new world, the stories in this book will pursue you."
At last a glimmer of hope lit her eyes. "I'll draw pictures of the children."
Rumplestiltskin nodded. He opened the book to a blank page. To Leofwin he requested, "Give me your hand."
With some hesitation the young man opened his palm to find that the ends of every finger were damp with black ink. Rumplestiltskin seized the young man's wrist and turned the hand palm down, pressing the fingers upon the empty page. When he released Leofwin's wrist, a black impression of the fingers appeared on the page.
"What is this?"
"This will help you to know each other. Now you, dearie." He created an impression of Rumpie's hand on the page beside her husband's. "You must do the same for the children. One is coming who will break the curse, and then we all will remember. This book will help you find each other, once you remember who you are."
When the ink had dried, he closed the book and lay both his hands on the cover. In a voice so low Rumpie couldn't hear, he spoke some words; his hands glowed, then the book glowed. When the energy dissipated, he explained, "A blessing. I don't know that it will help, but if this book can retain just a shadow of the magic it now holds. . . " He shrugged.
He turned the pages to a portrait, painted in rich colors, of a dark-haired boy with piercing, honest eyes. "I destroyed your family to save my own. I'll carry your hatred into the next world as a personal curse. But let the lineage of that curse end with me. This is Baelfire. He is fourteen and knew nothing of the world he was sent to. If he lives still, he is alone. Through some linguistic acrobatics, I will arrange for you and your family to be sent, not to the facade the rest of us will be trapped in, but into the real world. You will be free. It's a vast land full of souls, and I am asking the impossible, but if somehow. . . if this book retains a shred of its magic. . . " He shook his head in frustration.
Rumpie suggested gently, "Ask us. We won't deny you."
Rumplestiltskin ran his hand across the book one last time, and then he took the leap, doing something he'd never done, in all his years as the Dark One: he asked for help. "Find him if you can, look after him?"
Rumpie touched the portrait. "If I can, I'll tell him his father is looking for him—and loves him."
Rumpie and her servants were hanging the wash when a thundercloud suddenly appeared and a sheet of rain fell straight down upon the clothesline. The servants scrambled to gather the wash and carry it inside, but Rumpie, shielding her eyes from the rain, studied the strange sky: except for the single cloud hovering above her clothesline, the rest of the sky was sunny. Rain fell on no home besides hers.
"All right, I'm alone now," she called, and Rumplestiltskin appeared behind her holding an umbrella. She came under its shelter. "I would admire your very fine joke, but—"
He nodded. "It's time." The irises of his eyes, normally large and giving the illusion of innocence, had shrunk. His whole body seemed to have shrunk, collapsing in on itself.
"You can stop it." Rumpie struck his chest with her fist. "Do something to the Queen—send a dragon after her, send a tornado to sweep her up and whisk her away. You can stop this."
"But I won't."
"Don't take my babies away from me." She lost her fortitude and crumpled into his arms. The rain continued to fall, as if he had forgotten to shut it off.
He released the umbrella to hold her; the umbrella floated overhead, making small adjustments in its position to coincide with wind movements. "You will find them again, I promise." He tilted his head to catch her eye. "Your lineage has many generations to go yet."
"Your magic will bring them back to me?"
"No. Yours will." He waved a hand and the umbrella and the rain disappeared. "In a few days you will hear reports that I have been captured, rendered powerless. The reports will be true. The prison they have prepared for me radiates with fairy magic so strong I will be defenseless against it."
Rumpie snorted. "Fairies! Nasty, supercilious, sanctimonious, prevaricating, nasty little bugs in high heels!"
"Aye, fairies. Charming—" he corrected himself, his voice bitter—"that is, the King will declare a feast to celebrate the capture of 'the scourge.' Queen Snow will announce her pregnancy. And when all that happens, child, it will be time for you and Leofwin to cling to each other and the book as tight as you can, because soon thereafter Regina will return and the curse will be unleashed."
A new thought occurred to her. "What will happen to you?"
"Like everyone else, I will be removed to the new land. I will remember nothing until the day the savior arrives." Rumplestiltskin squeezed her shoulders. "And she will arrive, I promise you, and she will break the curse and all of us will be free."
"And Leofwin and I will find each other—"
"And remember."
"And you will find Baelfire."
"And remember."
"Rumplestiltskin. . . will Baelfire remember you?"
The imp studied the bright blue sky. "You best finish your laundry now, dearie." He raised his hand, summoning the magic to take him away, but she grasped his sleeve.
"Rumplestiltskin! Will we see you again? Ever?"
He thought for a moment, then gave a reply he hadn't used in centuries: "I don't know."
Ella and Charming conned Rumplestiltskin, as planned, but the magic exacted a price: Thomas vanished. Charming's royal guards dumped him into a former fairy dust mine, now converted to a prison for a single occupant, as planned. Charming stared at him silently for several minutes before walking away. Charming the duplicitous, Charming the betrayer. After all Rumple had done to ensure this boy's union with Snow White.
Then, as might be expected, the guards gathered around and stared, careful to remain an arm's length away from the bars. They wanted a show, so he gave them one, rushing at the bars, shrieking, thrashing his body about; they laughed at the madman, and one of them tossed a bucket of slops at him, and they laughed harder. He shouted threats to them, addressing them by name, and two of them ran off, having heard the legend that by knowing one's name, Rumplestiltskin gained possession over one's soul. The sergeant of the guards decided to exert his authority by chunking rocks at the prisoner. His eyes enlarged, Rumple pointed a bony finger at the sergeant, who suddenly remembered an urgent report that had to be filed and beat a hasty retreat.
He amazed the rest of them then—and surprised himself—by climbing the bars, finding finger- and toe-holds in the ceiling, and hanging upside down like a bat. More of them backed off, concerned they'd been mislead about the power of faint veins of fairy dust to dampen Dark magic.
He continued to hang like that until, bored, the remaining guards gave up and walked away. He then dropped to the floor and limped to the "bed" with which they had furnished the cell: a raised slab of stone.
Testing the fairy dust's strength, he raised his hands and ordered his magic forth. His hands tingled, and for just a moment he felt normal, but then the tingling dissipated and his hands grew cold. His head ached.
He stripped down and washed as best he could with the bucket of water they had provided, then dressed and stretched out on the cold stone.
He was too old for such antics.
The sergeant of the guards remembered at last to bring the prisoner some food—cold meatless stew, stale bread, a mug of weak lager—and a fresh bucket of water. Rumple said nothing but stared at them intently as the sergeant, whip at the ready, opened the cell long enough to allow an underling to enter, drop the plate and the bowl and the bucket on the ground, and back out hastily. Just as a reminder of their positions, the sergeant slashed out three times with his whip. The first slash cut Rumple's cheek; the others tore his shirt. The sergeant chuckled, locked the cell again and spun on his heel.
When they had gone, Rumple touched his bleeding cheek. With a frown he pulled his hand away, wondering why the injury persisted, and then he remembered his magic had been suppressed; he could no longer heal himself. He washed the cuts and lay down again, too discouraged to bother with the food.
Charming hadn't come back. Apparently the reports he was receiving from the sergeant of the guard satisfied him that the prisoner was well under control.
The food came more frequently, but no better.
He'd expected this—he'd orchestrated this—all of it part of the plan, all of it bringing him closer to Bae. But he'd been the Dark One a long, long time and had forgotten what physical pain felt like. He had forgotten what boredom and humiliation felt like.
Loneliness, though, he'd never forgotten.
Showtime.
His ears burned and his hands tingled: the magic, waking and raising its head weakly like a mewling newborn kitten, was signaling him of a summons. Not that he needed magic to figure out that, since Regina had yet to activate the curse, she would be back for further instruction. From the darkness of his cavernous prison cell, he put the crazy on for her, fluttering his fingers, sing-songing his welcome, giggling like a madman. Regina needed to be pushed back, even more so than all the others: the crazier she thought him to be, the more powerful she would assume him to be. He teased her a little, letting it slip that Charming and Snow had paid him an information-seeking visit too. Ah, the imagination that woman lacked. He took advantage of it, dangling a carrot in front of her only to jerk it away by revealing a prediction of the Curse Breaker's coming.
She asked his price for another lesson in curse creation. In his anxiousness to see the curse enacted, he had momentarily forgotten he was supposed to make trades for information, but her reminder set him back in line. As his answer formed in his head, for a moment his face revealed his pain: I want Bae returned to me.But he'd been the Dark One a long, long time, and he knew better than to reveal such precious information to Regina. As far as she knew, he had loved only one in his lifetime, and Regina had taken great pleasure in watching him disintegrate when she had reported the death of that loved one. Let her continue to think Belle had been Rumplestiltskin's only link to humanity.
So he asked for the obvious—wealth—and in her lack of imagination she expected this answer and was satisfied. But the trickster in him required one last prank, as it well might be his last chance for a joke in this world: in return for instruction, she would have to agree that in the new world, if he made a request of her using the word "please," she would fulfill that request without question. Just a joke, initially, but later he realized it had been a lucky break.
She agreed, assuming that because the curse would obliterate his memory, the "please" clause was moot. If he were completely honest with her, his first lesson would have included a rule: "Assume nothing when dealing with one whose imagination exceeds your own." But then, if he were completely honest with her, he would never have allowed her to think the curse would make her happy.
He provided the answers she sought; the curse would be enacted. Tonight he would lie down on a stone bed in this musty cell, but soon, he would awaken in luxury, a new man.
A man, not an imp. A man living at last in the same land as his son.
He awoke in the dawn to a hiss that sounded remarkably like his name being spoken. He found, weaving itself in and out of the bars of his cell, a mud-colored snake, whom he greeted with a yawn. "Yes, Your Majesty?"
The snake reared its head as if to strike but instead transformed into Regina.
"Back so soon?" He flew at the bars of his cell, thrusting his face at her, twisting his features in the most hideous fashion, and growling, "Have you turned coward, Your Majesty? Couldn't bring yourself to extricate the heart of dear old papa?"
She thrust her face right back at him, her eyes wild, her teeth flashing. In that moment he doubted her sanity, but he was too practiced a showman to reveal his shaken confidence. "Oh, I've done the deed, all right," she sneered. "I have the heart and I shall perform the ceremony at midnight, three days from now. After my father's funeral."
He was slightly taken aback by this news, but he wouldn't let her see that. "And you've come to me for a pat on the head, I suppose."
She laughed. "I've done what you couldn't. Do you think I care for the approval of a coward?"
"Then why have you disturbed my sleep?"
"The work!" She threw her hands into the air. "There's so damn much work to this curse!"
"Surely you're not so naïve as to expect you could simply rip out Papa's heart and then lie back on your chaise lounge waiting for the new world to arrive at your doorstep? Of course there's work! Decisions to make! Plans to draw up! Details upon details!"
"I haven't time for all this. I have a state funeral to arrange. Do you know how time-consuming a state funeral is?"
"You must create identities and false memories for every soul in your kingdom. Well, you can't have them just standing around vacant-headed, now can you? Where would be the suffering in that? You must give them new, miserable lives."
"I've done that, for the ones that matter."
"And you've fulfilled your obligation to me, I presume?"
"Don't worry about it. You'll have everything I promised; I already wrote it into the curse." She sighed wearily. "I wasted two hours on you. But the rest of it—"
"And the village itself. Have you thought of that? Will you design an entire village, set apart from the rest in the new world, or will you. . . appropriate an existing village?"
"Oh who has time for such trivialities!"
"You must make the time, Your Majesty. Now, if you'd like my recommendation, I would start fresh; stealing someone else's village would require a war, and who has the time for that?"
"You do it." She threw her hands into the air. "You're just sitting around all day anyway; you design the village. Show me your plans tomorrow." She flicked her hand a stack of scrolls and a quill appeared on his stone bed.
"I shall take on this laborious task, but it'll cost you."
She squinted at him through the spikes that served as bars to his cell. "What are you thinking now, you insane imp?"
"Have you tried sleeping on a stone bed? Eating nothing but stale bread and cold stew twice a day?" He crossed his arms. "Hardly appropriate treatment for the most powerful and feared man in all the land."
"Is that all?" She waved her hand and the stone bed disappeared in a cloud of purple; when the smoke dissipated, a canopied bed stood in the place of the stone one. A wingback chair stood in one corner, and a dining table, already spread with a five-course meal, appeared in the other.
"But you must cast a spell on my guards, so they won't see my new provisions."
"Of course. Do you think I just fell off the turnip cart?"
"And light. I require light to work on these plans."
A candelabra appeared on the dining table.
He wrinkled his nose. "And a change of clothes. These are rather stale."
She thrust her hands on her hips. "Anything else? I suppose next you'll want a madrigal choir to sing you to sleep."
"Now that would be a nice touch."
Regina appeared again, this time as a black widow spider dangling from a web attached to the ceiling—and well out of reach. He chuckled and complimented her choice in arachnids. "Yes, I thought it quite appropriate, considering," she answered; her voice reminded him of a cat preening itself—and then he remembered he rather liked cats, so he gave up that metaphor.
"There's a. . .slight complication," she admitted.
"Must I solve all your problems for you? I have a list to complete, as you may recall: three hundred souls who need identities." He no longer could make things appear by magic, but he still had a few ordinary sleight-of-hand tricks he could fall back on, so with a flick of his wrist he produced a thick scroll. "Unlike you, I have the focus required to see a task through to its completion. My list is nearly complete. You may admire it at your leisure or simply thank me now in the knowledge that it is a most creative and well-thought-out plan."
She snatched the scroll and gave it a quick glance, mumbling her way through the first half-dozen names. "Radegund, wife of Burchard: baker. Clothild, daughter of Burchard: laundress. Burchard: builder. Leofwin: enforcer of laws. Rumpie, wife of Leofwin: keeper of books. Hildebald: grower. Hiltrude—" She thrust the scroll back at him. "Inconsequentials. What do I care? I know none of these people. Finish it and I will return for it in the morning. Now, we will discuss my problem."
With a small, satisfied smile, Rumplestiltskin neatly re-rolled the scroll, smoothing his features as he smoothed the parchment. "I'm listening."
The witch began to pace, her black crinoline skirt flaring. "It's Maleficent."
"Ah. I presume you don't want to simply eliminate her."
"Of course not." Regina raised her chin. "She's a friend." She added in a mutter, "My only friend."
"I see." Rumplestiltskin sat on the edge of his canopied bed. He crossed his legs and thought a moment. "Find a realm jumper, send her. . . send her to Wonderland. Let her ask sanctuary from the Red Queen."
Regina hooted. "Oooh no. Put those two together? Don't be ridiculous." She resumed her pacing. "If she behaves, I may find use for her. If not—"
"You want her where no one else may use her." He thought some more, then the irises of his eyes expanded. "Maleficent takes great pride in her shape-shifting. I have often heard her claim her superiority in that regard."
Regina snorted. "I swear the woman spends half of her day prancing around as a dragon."
"Precisely. Suppose a clever minion of yours paid her a visit, just before midnight, two days hence, and asked her to demonstrate her great power."
"Yeeees," Regina hissed, halting her march across the cavern. "Whatever form she's in when the curse strikes, she will be stuck in forever—"
"—because she will have been transported to a land without magic."
"I like it." She ran a hand through her hair. "A perfect punishment for the showoff."
Regina flicked a hand, preparing to exit by means of magic. "Oh. I'll send one of my minions around in the morning for those plans."
"Ah-ah-ah," he corrected. "You really must get used to leaving a room in the traditional way. Remember, in two days, you will surrender your magic."
"It will be worth it, to watch Snow suffer for the rest of eternity." With a flick of her wrist she was gone.
But it was Regina herself who appeared at his cell in the morning. "It happens tonight. One more small problem."
"Yes?" Rumple set aside his breakfast, a bowl of exotic fruit—that had started out as a bowl of gruel provided by his guard.
"Where do I keep her?" Regina began pacing again. "A small village—where do I hide a dragon?"
"Oh. True, a dragon requires a large hiding space." Rumple spread out the multitude of scrolls across his dining table. He frowned as he studied his intricate designs. "The building must be kept locked at all times," he murmured. "Yet, from the outside, it must appear nondescript. . . . Yes, I think I have the place. I've constructed a library here, you see, over the tunnel through which the curse will bring us to the new world. As the leader of our new village, you will have dominion over all public buildings, so your order will be sufficient to close the library, and you alone will have authority to access the building whenever you wish. I do hate to see this lovely library I've planned go to waste, however."
"Do it."
"And the librarian?"
"What?"
"The librarian. She who runs the library. I've already selected someone for that position, you may recall."
"What do I care about a library person?" Regina fumed. "Find another place for her. And while you're at it, I want my Huntsman to be the enforcer of laws, so find another place for the sheriff you selected."
Rumplestiltskin smiled blandly. "As you wish, Your Majesty." He made some notes, then presented her with his finished plans—trusting that she wouldn't notice just how literally he had interpreted her command to "find another place."
With neither a timepiece nor a view of the outside world, Rumple couldn't tell the time with any certainty, but as the hours wore on, he came to realize that Regina had failed again. Midnight had come and gone and nothing had changed.
Perhaps she had overslept.
He could feel it now, a change in air pressure; then he could smell it: sulfur, wet leaves, rotting apples, burning flesh. Ah, yes. He quickly washed and changed his clothes, then sat in his wingback chair to wait as the air around him thickened and turned black. In the distance he heard someone scream, but already he felt so far removed from this world that another's terror had no effect on him.
He had planned for even this moment: in his last thoughts as Rumplestiltskin, he called from his memory the music of Belle's laugh, the diamond sparkle in her sky-blue eyes, and the warmth of his infant son's hand wrapping around his finger and holding on, as if for dear life.