When I Find You, I'll Find Me,
Written by WickedSong.
Disclaimer/Note : In the first chapter. Okay, so this chapter may be my last update for the next two weeks so I've tried to make it extra long and juicy for you all. I hope I succeeded. (sometimes I have to unfortunately go and knuckle down for uni, you know?) Anyway, this is sort of Gremma-lite, but I hope you see why. I'm trying to weave some things together here and I hope I did a good job at it.
Red and Grumpy stand outside the throne room, each of them nervously pacing. Red's cloak trails behind her as she furiously debates with herself, muttering the pros and cons over and over, while Grumpy walks in circles, silently contemplating the matter that the two are due to discuss with Snow and James.
Grumpy turns to Red. "We have to talk them out of this," he finally says and she holds her hands up, her expression one of 'if you can think of a way I'm in'.
He takes the silent challenge but can think of no option.
"It's what they think is best, for the kingdom, for Emma," she replies after a thoughtful pause. "We have to trust their judgement on this one."
Grumpy sighs. The combined wisdom of the King and Queen has meant that there have been few wrong turns in their leadership; the kingdom has prospered since they began their rule, but their next step is one he does not fully trust.
While Red is more of an optimist by nature, she is also unsure and there has never been a time when she has had major grievances about the decisions of her close friends, until now.
"Desperate times call for desperate measures," adds Red, as she casts her eyes downwards. "Regina's forces grow more powerful, the darkness grows more powerful." She's felt it and she's heard the rumblings of it in the woods.
"The King and Queen will see you now," one of the guards says, his loud and booming voice throwing Red and Grumpy for a moment before they walk into the room.
They've hardly said their hellos when James asks, "What did he say?"
Grumpy nods.
James turns to Snow and while she looks apprehensive she takes a steadying breath. "And you're sure the cage-"
"The fairies are preparing to reinforce the magic but it will take time," Red answers. "The bonds are breaking, Snow, he's getting agitated, speaking about the curse and Regina."
"Are you sure you want to do this? We don't know how much the cage has weakened. It could be dangerous," Grumpy questions.
"We have no choice," Snow concedes.
"Regina's magic," James adds, "it is a constant threat on all of our lives. For all of Emma's life we have just been waiting for her to attack us; we're ready to finally end this." He notes the expressions on his friend's faces. "I understand your concerns-"
"You didn't care until The Huntsman showed up," Grumpy finally says, as if it's the only thing on everyone's mind and he's the only one brave enough to speak it aloud.
"Now wait, I didn't care? This woman's been tormenting us for the last three decades and I-"
"Of course he didn't mean it like that," interrupts Red. "He means that you've never been so active in trying to stop her until The Huntsman arrived. Why?"
Snow looks to her husband and he nods to her. "We don't believe his intentions are what they appear to be." She almost looks as if she doubts herself but then stands resolute. "My instincts have never been wrong about that man. I fear that the Queen did damage that is near irreversible."
"Then why not get rid of him now? Send him to the dungeons; get him out of the way."
James sighs. "We discussed that. But then we remembered that he saved our lives and whether or not it was genuine or not, he saved Emma's. He is thereby innocent until proven guilty."
Red and Grumpy look satisfied with that answer.
"Well, he says he'll meet with you at dusk. Today. Be prepared you two; it's been thirty years, that place is a breeding ground for resentment."
"Thank you Red," Snow says.
Red reaches out and takes her oldest friend's hand. "Do not worry about her Snow. She is as wise as you and James. The best of you two combined."
Another silent thank you is shared between the two before the four leave the throne room.
As Emma lines up another arrow, Snow carefully watches from the distance. "Watch your feet! Remember, shoulder width apart!"
Emma resists the urge to roll her eyes but does what her mother says regardless.
"Draw back to your cheek and-"
Emma listens once more and then sends the arrow flying off onto the red of the target board she had been aiming at.
"Very good," Snow says.
Emma can hear the smile in her voice and smiles herself. "Thanks." She looks around carefully, an action Snow detects.
"Looking for someone?" she teases as she joins her daughter and takes the bow and arrow quiver from her, both of which are hastily taken by a servant to be put back in their proper place. "You know, Red and Grumpy tell me that you and The Huntsman took a stroll in the woods today."
"Oh…yeah," Emma recalls. She still feels extremely tense about the events of that morning. One minute, the two of them had been joking, smiling, laughing, enjoying one another's company and then suddenly the entire mood had changed between them. He had seemed to rebuff her company almost and she had taken offense.
His moods seemed to change like that, she had begun to notice. Emma turns to her mother. "Why was he working for her?"
"Why was-" Snow begins absent-mindedly, but then she realises what her daughter is asking. "Oh…you mean why was The Huntsman working for Regina?"
Emma nods.
"It's a long story, sweetheart. And I'm not entirely sure if it's my place to tell you."
"But-"
"All I will say is that she blamed me for something that went horribly wrong in her past, just before she married your grandfather." The issue of her late father is still something Snow struggles talking about, especially since she had never recovered fully from the devastating blow of finding out he had been murdered by the genie he had called a friend – or at least that had been where the accusations had been directed.
The genie had disappeared, never seen or heard from again, and before she knew it, Snow was running for her own life. It was in that moment, when The Huntsman had raised his dagger, and she had witnessed the entirety of her short life flitting across her mind, that the idea of Regina being behind her father's murder had entered her mind and had frankly never left.
"What was that?" Emma questions eagerly. She and her mother now walk in step, Snow deep in thought.
"You're old enough now to know I guess." She takes her daughter's hand and leads her to the stables, the closest that she can find to a quiet place, which is away from the hustle and bustle of the castle.
Once they are seated, Snow tells her daughter. She tells her about Regina's One True Love, Daniel, a poor stable boy who worked on her parents' land. She tells her about the day Regina saved her life and that only a day later Regina was to be her new mother.
"I was ecstatic, Emma. I had never had a mother before. I thought everything was going to be perfect."
Continuing her story, Snow tells of the despair her younger self felt when she had found Regina and Daniel kissing, declaring their love for one another in the stables, only weeks before she was to be wed to her father.
"She talked of true love with such hope and light; saying it was magic, magic that created happiness. I didn't believe her at first but eventually…eventually I did."
Emma sits in shocked silence, at the idea of someone so cruel once being so kind, as her mother explains about Regina's mother, Cora, who went on to murder Daniel, in a horrible fashion that Snow cannot bear to describe.
"It was my fault," Snow says. Emma takes her mother's hand and shakes her head. "No, Emma, it was. I told Cora. I told her about them. She manipulated me but I still gave away the secret. I didn't know until years and years later the damage that one little secret that I didn't keep, had cost."
A sinking feeling appeared suddenly in Emma's stomach. She almost wished she hadn't started this now. This knowledge did nothing but intensify the fears that lay deep-rooted within her, that she had had since birth about The Evil Queen and what she was capable of.
"How does The Huntsman fit into this?" she asks, trying to get her mind off the more disturbing details of her mother's story. "Where does he fit into this?"
Snow looks up, and finds, to her utmost surprise, The Huntsman standing at the entrance of the stables.
"Maybe he will tell you himself."
The Huntsman stares blankly ahead at Snow but becomes more alert when Emma turns to look at him, with hopeful yet reproachful eyes. He believes this to be another test, much like his first night in the castle, when the cricket analysed him for the entire Royal Family to see.
Snow stands. "Remember you have a lesson with your tutor in half an hour," she says to her daughter, "and then we have to look over the preparations for your birthday celebrations next week."
Emma nods and she remains seated while she watches her mother stroll casually past The Huntsman, who doesn't leave, but instead sits on the seat her mother just vacated.
"Quite a strange place to have a conversation," he muses after an awkward silence passes over them.
Emma nods. "Yes, but sometimes it's the only place to really talk." She can't really say she did a lot of talking in her exchange with her mother. Mostly she had listened, quite taken aback and with a degree of sadness, fear and horror.
"I heard your mother telling you about her," The Huntsman begins, looking fairly uncomfortable.
"You say her name with so much resentment," Emma comments, and he suddenly realises that he had never noticed that before.
He figures that there must be some truth to it.
"What did she do to you and what does it have to do with my mother and what she just told me?" In a moment, Emma's expression has changed from her looking as if she's trying to process all the information just given to her, and she now looks fierce, and ready to interrogate him.
She truly has the look of her father.
"Why must you know?" challenges The Huntsman.
She doesn't give a verbal answer, only tilts her head to the side, like she is determined that this time she will find answers for her questions.
Backed into a figurative corner, he gives a resigned sigh. "Almost thirty years ago I was enlisted by The Evil Queen to pose as one of her late husband's – your grandfather's – knights and take your mother into the woods and…" he trails off, unable to think of how to explain it. "…to take her heart."
Exactly what he had feared happens. Emma leans back, looking terrified of him. And why shouldn't she, he thinks. He is the exact monster that she is imagining right now.
And worst of all, and he doesn't know why he does, but he feels like he has to prove to her that he is not. Or that he was not. That the man who did that twenty-six years ago was noble, and tried to help those he was tasked to kill, or help to kill, or-
"Why didn't you?" she asks. It's barely audible.
The Huntsman wrings his hands together. "I couldn't. Your mother was pure of heart, kind. She didn't deserve to die."
The words remind him of the conversation with The Evil Queen which ended in his own heart being mercilessly pulled from his chest.
Emma looks as if she can hardly comprehend this. "And my father? How did you save him?"
"She was going to execute him. I let him go and gave him his weapon, provisions, so he could get to your mother, after she was put under the Sleeping Curse."
That was a story of her mother and father she knew about. That the entire kingdom knew about. How True Love's Kiss, the strongest magic of all, had woken her mother from one of the most terrible curses imaginable, and then they had taken back the kingdom.
One more question still burned on the fringes of Emma's mind. "What about you?"
Nervously, The Huntsman continued to wring his hands together. "What about me?"
"Why are you so…young still?"
Unexpectedly, The Huntsman lets out a small chuckle. He then stops himself, eyes widening. He's not meant to feel…
"What's the matter?" Emma asks, at the sudden terror that washes over his face.
"It's nothing," he answers. Finally he looks at her and takes a deep breath before answering her other question, or he's about to, before the stable door swings open, revealing a stout woman looking out of breath and angry.
"Princess, I've been looking everywhere for you! Your lesson started five minutes ago."
Emma's eyes widen. "Oh…I-I'm sorry."
"And to spend it cavorting with men in the stables…People will talk, Highness," her tutor admonishes. "I expect to see you in the study in precisely two minutes time and if not I will be speaking to your mother and father."
Emma nods hastily. "Yes, Helene."
Helene shoots another stern look to Emma and then one of immense distrust to The Huntsman, before leaving the stables, keeping the door open behind her for good measure.
"You're what, twenty, twenty-one-"
"Twenty-two," Emma clarifies. "My birthday falls close to my father's so we have my celebrations a couple of weeks later," she further adds.
"And you still have a tutor at twenty-two?"
Emma shrugs. "It's not wrong to be knowledgeable, I guess. Besides, if I am to be Queen, I have to know about other kingdoms, their history, and their cultures."
The Huntsman shrugs back at her. "She seems nice," he says in relation to Helene.
Emma laughs, and the sound brings a smile to his lips.
Emma's previous question seems to have been forgotten and The Huntsman is relieved. How did you tell someone that you had no heart? That the piece of you that made you human had been taken from you by force by someone who used it in whatever sick game she had planned. Who was currently using it in this game that Emma wasn't even aware she and her family were embroiled in.
Somehow the air seemed heavy and he found it hard to breathe. For a moment it felt like the usual torture he'd undergo at Regina's hand but then the panic lessened.
Emma hadn't seemed to notice as she stood and nodded to him. "Anyway, I must go. You'll be at dinner tonight, won't you?" She doesn't add that she missed his presence at lunch, which he had declined an invitation to.
For a moment as he looks at her he considers turning down this offer also but her smile causes him to think for an extra moment. And in that moment he decides he wants to go, he wants to do this, and not because of the plans that Regina has, but because he genuinely wants to see her again.
Once she leaves, it takes what seems like forever, as he sits in the solitude of the stables, that that feeling has been growing and growing more and more since that second encounter in the woods.
There is a high pitched giggling; the sound of a madman, as Snow and James, accompanied by Red and Grumpy, navigate their way down the corridor where the dungeon lays, in the old abandoned mine.
"Rumplestiltskin!" calls Grumpy. "The King and Queen wish to speak to you!"
This is met only by silence.
"Rumplestiltskin!" Grumpy calls again, moving forward slightly, shining his the light of the fire in front of him. "Show yourself!"
Growing tired of the silence, James steps forward, inching closer and closer to the cage, specially reinforced with fairy dust in order to immobolise the imp's seemingly limitless power.
He shines his own torch in front of the cage.
"Some of us need to sleep, dearie, how rude, how rude." There is a tutting noise and finally Rumplestiltskin reveals himself. "You're late. I almost thought you wouldn't show up. I would have been fairly disappointed."
"You know why we're here," James replies, his voice irate.
Rumplestiltskin dramatically rolls his eyes. "First her, now you, I'm definitely popular these days."
Snow steps forward quickly. "Her? Her who?"
"Who do you think dearie?" the imp teases. "Your charming ex-step-mother, of course."
"What?" Red and Grumpy both say as they step towards the cage, just steps behind Snow and James.
Rumplestiltskin gives a look of pause. "Oh wait…should I have said that?"
"What is she planning?"
"Some people think I know everything, don't they?" replies Rumplestiltskin. He turns and holds one finger up. "And aha! Of course I do. But all knowledge, as with magic, and my deals, well, they come with a price."
"You tell us what we need to know or I swear-"
Hands clasped to the bars, Rumplestiltskin peers his head forward, looking directly at James. "Your Majesty, you always question me on this. I understand why you continue to do so. You know everything comes at a price with me."
"James-"
"She's always been much smarter than you, dearie," comments Rumplestiltskin, directing his attention towards Snow.
"What do you want?"
"Only one thing," he leans forward, "a lock of your daughter's hair."
James looks at Grumpy and Red who stare back at him with equally as confused expressions. Snow closes her eyes, thinking, before snapping them open again. "Done!"
"Snow!"
"We have to find out," she implores to her husband, who looks shocked.
"Still your better half, I see," remarks Rumpelstiltskin. "So ask away, dearies."
"Regina, what is she up to? And what happened to the curse that she was planning to cast?"
Rumplestiltskin tuts at the King once more. "That's two questions. Luckily for you, I can answer them in one and since there's nothing else I need…I will answer them."
"Hurry it up, Rumplestiltskin," warns Grumpy.
"Manners, manners," the imp reprimands before giving a shrill giggle. "The curse didn't work because the heart she used to cast it was too weak to sustain it. A small patch of our world was sent into the realm where happy endings would cease to exist. But no one lived there. Nothing grew, it was a patch of land. It has been," he closes his eyes, trying to find the right number, "twenty-two years since this failed?"
James nodded.
"Oh thank goodness, I thought I was going rusty," Rumplestiltskin says before continuing with, "She believes she's finally found a way to enact her revenge, her final revenge on the pair of you and your daughter. Only," he laughs, "she has grown bitter, her heart encrusted deep in darkness, much like mine I suppose." With a thoughtful pause, which James is sure is there just for dramatic flair, the Dark One explains further, "and has forgotten that there are some forms of magic which have been pre-determined since the beginning of time, some forms which no obstacle can obstruct."
"The bond she cannot sever is one which has been formed in all of our worlds, all of our universes, much like the one that you two share," continues Rumplestiltskin. "What is it you two always say? I will always find you?" he asks sarcastically. "That aside, you two must look to the beginning." He turns to Snow. "Especially you dearie. Your beginning is the most important."
"How does that help us?!" demands James, drawing his sword. "I should just cut your hand off right now, like I swore I would the last time."
"I've helped you," Rumplestiltskin answers. "Just not in the way you would've liked and to that I say," he pauses, "bad luck."
"Let's go," Red says to the other three, casting one more look to the creature behind the bars before turning around, Grumpy at her heel.
James puts an arm around Snow and leads her away.
"And so you don't forget about our deal," Rumplestiltskin speaks up again, causing the royal couple to turn to him, "I foresee that the next week, amid the celebrations, will bring my words to light. I expect the girl's hair by morning."
"And if we don't?" contests James.
"These bars won't keep me contained for long. The fairies won't make the dust in time. I'm not a good enemy to have, Your Majesties, and I'll make more hell for you than Regina ever could dream of."
Our Huntsman has some serious things to face now as his ability to feel - or lack thereof is seriously being called into question. But why could that be, I suppose ;)
Also, I just really love writing Rumplestiltskin's dialogue, I don't even know, he's such a colourful character and I just find it so easy to do so.
Please review, and thanks as always, for the lovely reviews and favourites and alerts! Also, a shoutout to one of my bestest tumblr friends, Molly (eggsoswin, GO AND FOLLOW HER IF YOU HAVE A TUMBLR YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT) for making a graphic of this story and the lovely praise I read about in the tags of everyone who reblogged it...well, it brought tears to my eyes, I will not lie).
WickedSong x