Snow
Regina is coming. I know this as surely as I know my baby's name. She is coming and because she can't kill us, she will make good on her threat to ruin us with her curse, even though she'll be destroying her own life in the process. Charming tries to deny it, for my sake; his gallantry makes me love him all the more, yet we can't play this game much longer. Regina is coming; no amount of wishing will make that not so.
In the evenings I sit beside the fire and try to knit, but my fingers fumble, my mind wanders. I was not made for sitting and knitting. I sing my baby songs instead, soothing songs, because I believe she can sense the strife around me and her father, and I don't want her coming into this world with worries already placed on her tiny shoulders. Babies should believe their world is a safe and comfortable one.
But Regina is coming; soon we will have to face that fact. A war council will be called; the arguments will begin; we will figure out our options and draw up our war plans. Let there be no doubt: there must be war.
I trust my husband with my life, with my baby's life, but there are three pieces of information I have yet to share with him because it's not the right time. The first is that I've already seen our baby, in what most would say was a dream, but I know it to have been a vision. She has my chin and her father's eyes, and her name is Emma, and someday she will slay dragons.
This piece of information raises the warrior in me. When the time comes, I will fight Regina, curse or no.
Ten weeks it has been since a very pregnant Ella and her prince came to ask Charming's help. I was left out of this council, a highly unusual omission, for Charming and I have always made all decisions together, just as we have always fought our enemies. For the baby's welfare, Charming said, that's why we must spare you from the horrible things that are happening. For Emma, I told myself silently, I will accept this exclusion. My pregnancy has not been easy, complicated by my lack of appetite and proper rest. I must think of Emma first, and not just as a mother, but as the queen and the mother of the next queen. For Emma and for my people, then, I allow myself to draw back from the affairs of state.
But when I learned the outcome of that meeting—when I learned that the three of them had conspired against the most powerful mage in the world, and when I learned that they had, through their elegant trickery and a moment of weakness on his part, captured and imprisoned Rumplestiltskin, I grew angry—at them, for leaving me out of the discussion; at myself, for allowing it to happen under my nose. Truly, they never, never should have done it.
No one cheats Rumplestiltskin.
And especially not us. We are honorable people. We lead a kingdom; our people need us to be honorable. Our daughter needs us to be honorable.
Danger has been brought down upon our heads. But there is no going back now, and no going forward: we can't release him or banish him or execute him. Unless Regina's curse succeeds, he will remain our prisoner for the rest of our lives, for our children's lives, our grandchildren's, and on into eternity, until our lineage dies out, for the Dark One cannot die.
Except he can. That is my second secret: I know there is a way to kill the Dark One. I heard rumor of it first long ago, while Cora was still alive, before my father married Regina; I heard confirmation of it after my father died and Queen Regina began studying the black arts. It became a matter of primary interest to Regina, once she had completed her apprenticeship: she consulted book after book, mage after mage, in answer to the question of how to kill her former master. Whether she sought to take his power or take revenge for some grievance—perhaps some deal she'd made with him that didn't go as she wanted—I don't know; perhaps both.
I don't know the means, but I do know it is possible to kill the Dark One. As I contemplate the future that we and our descendants are now locked into because we hold the Dark One prisoner, I wonder if it wouldn't be wiser for all of us, for our kingdom and the kingdoms to come, if we relieved ourselves of this burden.
If we learned the means and killed Rumplestiltskin.
He suffers. I am not permitted to enter the underground cell in which he is kept—not good for the baby; it's dark and damp and cold there, and no telling what Rumplestiltskin might do to me. I argue that there's nothing more than shouting that he can do: the fairy dust blocks his magic, and though he is strong, he can't break through the barriers the dwarves have erected. No human contact can be permitted, Charming says then; he may be caged and de-fanged, but he still can bite. He has power in his words.
Charming doesn't realize what he's said. My heart sinks. Dark and dank and cold. No human contact. And we, the honorable, do this to our prisoner. How does this punishment compare, I wonder, to what he has done? I bribe the guards who take him his meals; they show me what they have been feeding him. I am sick at stomach and sick at heart.
He is a killer. He is a cheat and a mangler of the truth. He is a danger to the stability of our fragile alliances with other kingdoms, for he is no respecter of treaties; he is a kingdom unto himself and he needs no other, so he flits from nation to nation.
But. . .we wouldn't be here if not for him. Charming would be a half-starved shepherd married off to a merchant's daughter for a sackful of grain as dowry. I would be hiding in the forest. Regina and George would rule these lands and Emma would not exist.
I know what Rumplestiltskin has done for us. I am grateful. It pains me and shames me that he suffers. I will force changes; I will ensure he's treated humanely. But at the same time I wonder: would it be more merciful if we could execute him?
But I remember our attempted execution of Regina. If I couldn't go through with it then, against one would will kill my husband and me and our baby, I could not go through with it now, against one who brought my husband and me and our baby together.
Is there no other way to stop him? As he took away Regina's power to kill us, could she take away his power to kill?
But when I consider this possibility—I'm not so sure I want his powers taken away. And that is my third secret: for all her boast, for all her rage, Regina is afraid of Rumplestiltskin. He may be the only thing left in this world that can stop her.
The man we hold prisoner in a dark, dank, cold cell—the man we deny clean water and fresh air and sunshine and a bed—the man we feed maggots to—this man may be our last hope.