A/N. This story takes place right after "The Price of Gold."

Charming

I haven't been sleeping well lately. And it's not because my eight-months-pregnant wife keeps getting up in the middle of the night to use the chamber pot. It's like they say: it's not easy being king. Or more precisely, the queen's consort.

We live in one of Leopold's smaller castles: we sold the others to raise money for our armies. The war may be over, George and Regina are deposed, but the battles rage on: loyalists to the former king and queen, and opportunists who see what a mess things are in and think they can depose us. It's always something. If not a rebel uprising, it's backstabbing and power-grabbing in the inner circle, or it's the public, crying for a reduction in taxes, or it's neighboring royals, wanting us to help them fight their wars or feed their people. Like we don't have troubles enough of our own.

And the worst of it all: we won but we didn't eliminate our enemies. George is still out there somewhere; we're not hearing a peep about him, so I suppose he's run off to another land and most likely he'll be trying to build himself back up to take his kingdom back. He's not one to know when he's beat.

And Regina. She's still calling herself a queen, though she has no realm to rule. She has a following though: hangers-on who believe she'll rise again because she still has her magic. I won't say it to anyone, especially my pregnant wife, who has enough to deal with, but I'm sure we'll hear from Regina again, and I'm not so sure we'll beat her next time. Rumor has it her magic's growing stronger and so is her desperation. She loves wealth and power, but she'll gladly sacrifice them both if it means she can kill Snow. She can't even get it through her thick skull that she will never be able kill Snow! Rumplestiltskin's protection spell sees to that. How do you beat an enemy like Regina? I suppose we'll have to figure it out. But I can't help wishing I hadn't let Snow talk me into stopping Regina's execution.

And now Regina's plotting this "curse to end all curses" and though I had some doubts—I mean, it sounds impossible, what she claims she's going to do; she's powerful, yes, and devious and crafty and all that, but this curse, if it really will do what she says it will, well, it would take someone with a whole lot more patience than she has to create a thing like that. She's smart enough, but she's not an original thinker, just doesn't have the patience to make a new idea come to pass. Well, maybe it won't work the way she says, but the fairies say there is some kind of disturbance in the air, and Snow's birds are growing crazy over it, so we have to take it seriously. But how do you prepare for a curse that's supposed to take your entire kingdom off to some foreign land and wipe out everybody's memories?

So we've got George, who's out to get me; we've got Regina, who's out to get Snow with this curse; and we've got a kingdom in chaos. In the middle of all this, we're trying to start our family.

But at least we've got one less thing to worry about: Rumplestiltskin. The world's a little safer—hell, a lot safer—now that he's locked up tight. If I've got anything to say about it, he's going to spend the rest of—well, I was going to say "his life in prison," but he's immortal. I know that's true: I've seen enough people try to kill him. I would've executed him myself right after we caught him, if he could be killed.

Some nights when I can't sleep, I think whatever "curse" Regina's got in mind may not be all that bad. Seems like we're already cursed.

Some nights when I can't sleep, it's the prisoner downstairs I'm worrying about. George and Regina are out there loose, and he's locked up tight but—but I wonder if it wasn't too easy, the way we caught him. I mean, they say he's three hundred years old, and we know he's the most powerful mage of all, and he's the Dark One, the most hated being in the world. A guy like that has got to have people trying to catch and control him every day, right? I've had a bunch of run-ins with him myself, and—the guy's smart. He figure you out just by looking at you. It was a pretty clever trick we came up with to catch him: we took advantage of that compulsion he has to make deals. But still I wonder. . . .

He's down there, living just three stories down, directly under my bedroom. Sometimes I almost think I can hear him breathing. Or laughing.

I'm doing what I can to weaken him. I'm not sure I completely trust that fairy dust. A weak, sick Dark One may be our only hope for keeping him in check. I'd kill him if I could. My family and my people would be safer for it. That sounds cruel, maybe even inhumane, but I have a kingdom to protect. And the morning after we announced we had him locked up, every village in the Enchanted Forest celebrated.

Snow wants to go down there. She says she's worried about the curse and wants him to prophesy for her. She wants to hear that the baby will be all right, that she and I will find a way to keep our family together. Even if it's in this horrible place Regina's threatening us with, as long we're together, Snow believes we'll make it work. I've been resisting her requests to see Rumplestiltskin, because I know she has an ulterior motive. She's too kind, and she wants to make sure he's all right down there. If she saw what we've been doing, it would break her heart; she wouldn't understand. These are the hard decisions a leader must make.

Besides, after the way we tricked him, he'd tear this castle down around our ears if he could. Our baby's not safe as long as he's alive.

I keep wondering, though. All the evil he's done—he's a killer, a baby-snatcher, a cheat, a liar—but in all his dealings with me and Snow, he was. . . helpful. Snow even says she thinks he's genuinely concerned for her. I can't forget what he did to my parents, taking a baby away from them, and then to my mother in her old age when she needed me most, but he took me away. That's the worst crime, even worse than murder, I think, to steal kids from loving parents. Like he wanted to do with Ella's baby.

But then he did help me to find Snow and stop her from assassinating Regina, and all he charged me for it was a cloak. That deal's never made sense to me: he's the most powerful mage in the world; if he's cold, all he's got to do is snap is fingers and he can turn winter into summer. What's he need a used cloak for?

And the ring. He made me fight a dragon for that deal, and it was my ring to begin with; I guess I got cheated. But when he gave it to me, the things he said. . . .and he threw in a new suit of clothes too. I still have that suit; it's held up well. It's just that—well, I suppose he was fooling me, but those times I dealt with him, I thought he almost liked me. That he was on our side, me and Snow.

I thought getting Rumplestiltskin out of the way would feel a lot better than it does.