Heart in Hand
Author's Note: Because I just can't stop writing about them. Based on Season 2, Episode 5, "The Doctor." Rumple reflects on making Regina his "monster." Please review!
It's for her own good, really.
It's what he tells himself at least.
Or what he would tell himself, if he cared about her pain.
But he doesn't care. Well of course he doesn't. After all, he is Rumplestiltskin, the Dark One, and she … she is just a tool he needs to figure out how to properly wield.
And she is unwieldy at that. It's just so damn frustrating, working with her. She has more potential than her mother, more potential than that annoying Jefferson, more potential than anyone he's ever thought to train, but all this love, this heartache … it's holding her back.
Daniel is lost to her. She needs to accept that. She needs to let go. She needs to move on.
He's simply … helping her through the grieving process, so to speak.
Still, he doesn't enjoy making the deal as much as he usually does. But really, that's only because he doesn't enjoy dealing with him.
"Doctor" Victor Frankenstein is the most arrogant man he's ever met, in this realm or any other. The very idea that he thinks himself more powerful, that he thinks himself capable of doing something that he, the Dark One, with all his magic, cannot …
In his mind, he casts a curse on him. One day, he vows, one day, that man will come to him needing magic, his magic, and he will give it, but not out of kindness or pity. Just to prove a point. Just to prove who the powerful one really is.
In the meantime, his focus is on Regina. The last vestiges of decency and humanity are clinging to her quite stubbornly, and he needs to see her shed them before they can go any further in their magic. He understand, he really does – it took him a while to fully embrace evil himself – but Jefferson didn't get the shoes, and damn it, he can see her, he can see Regina wielding the Dark Curse, she's the only one who can, and he has gone to far and done too much to grow a conscience now.
After all, when you come right down to it, a conscience is just a cricket that needs to be stepped upon.
But is it really his conscience that stirs at the thought of Regina?
The flash of her smile when she gets a spell right, the pride he feels at her accomplishments, the fierce joy he sees shining through her eyes …
The scent of apples on her skin …
It is never enough. Without Bae, nothing will ever be enough. He will do nothing else. He will love nothing else. Not until he finds his son.
And if he has to make a monster out of Regina to do it, if he has to turn the sweet little baby girl who giggled and cooed in his arms, who is now this beautiful, broken young woman in front of him, into someone as evil and twisted as himself …
Well then, so be it.
Regina comes back to him, dressed all in black and as lovely as ever. She tears the woman's heart out, right in front of his face. He watches, entranced by her, as she holds the heart in her hand.
Then, without hesitation, she crushes it.
And she smiles at him.
So he's made his monster. He's taken someone so kind, so gentle, so innocent, and made her into …
No. She's not innocent. No one is innocent, he reminds himself. She chose this.
She chose him.
So he smiles back at her, and the lessons begin again, with renewed vigor.
Though sometimes, much later, he will wonder, on any given day, just whose heart she's holding in her hand.