"PLEASE, NO! STOP! PLEASE!"
These are the words Ava yelped everyday, repeatedly. Because she just couldn't act like a "normal child" as her mother referred to it. She just didn't understand how to be a good girl, and here she was, being beaten just like she did each day. She was only 6 but she had so many bruises and scrapes that not even an adult should have them. Her name wasn't even Ava, her mother didn't name her, she just heard another child named that and called herself that in her head, of course she never said that in front of her mother.
-====={¥}=====-
Rumplestiltskin was walking home from a deal, he would usually just poof himself back to his castle but said castle wasn't far away from his deal and it was nice to take a stroll once in a while. He was just think about that horrid night he let his son Baelfire fall through the portal when he heard a child's scream from far off. He thought about whether he should go investigate or leave the child to deal with whatever she was screaming about. The child did sound fairly young. The dark one in him would have left the young girl but, the father side of him that he hadn't brought out in hundreds of years won over and he poofed over to the source to find, oh gods no, a woman, who he presumed was the child's mother beating this poor girl. And the worst part of it all was he didn't know how to stop it, for the first time in centuries, he felt completely helpless. He decided he would save the child and magicked the woman to the dungeons in his castle, he would teach her a lesson once he found the young girl a new home with loving parents instead of that, monster.
-====={¥}=====-
Jenna didn't know what to think, her mother had just disappeared in front of her eyes presumably by the funny looking man a few trees away.
"Wh- who are you?"
"Rumplestlitskin, I heard you screaming and thought I would go and see why, now, I need you to answer 2 very important questions, first, what is your name? second, why was that woman beating you?"
Ava bowed her head, these are the two questions she dreaded being asked. She started weeping, she didn't have a name and she didn't know why "that woman" was beating her. She knew she was being a bad girl but she didn't know what she did to deserve that title.
"I- I don't know" she sobbed
The strange man named Rumplestiltskin ran to her side as Ava curled up into a ball on the ground.
"Hey, hey, hey, it's ok if you don't know why she was hurting you, I'm not mad, just calm down and tell me your name"
Ava nodded, it eased her to know that he wasn't angry or going to hurt her, the man seemed nice but he didn't seem to understand that she didn't know what her name was so she tried stating it in a clearer form.
"I don't-" she sniffled "h-have a-a name"