Zelena's hand tightened around the dagger. "Dark One," she whispered. "I summon thee." She waited.
Nothing.
She gripped harder, knuckles whitening. "Dark One, I summon thee!"
Angrily, she thrust the dagger back into its sheath and glared at the monkey who had brought the report. "Summon the others and show me where Rumplestiltskin has gone." Without waiting to see if she was obeyed, she went to fetch her broom, thinking over what she'd been told. A witch and a boy had somehow freed Rumplestiltskin from the dagger's control. It wasn't possible! Or it shouldn't be.
But, what made Zelena seethe was that, whoever this woman was, Rumplestiltskin had left with her. Another trollop, another pretty face trying to dazzle the Dark One with whatever pathetic talents she had. Why? What was wrong with him? Belle was bad enough. Zelena had heard her talking in Rumplestiltskin's castle. "I love him," the little tart had said. "All of him. Even the parts that belong to the darkness."
Even the parts that belong to the darkness! The little princess must have nearly broken her arm, patting herself on the back for that one, as if it were an accomplishment to love Dark One for what he truly was.
If only Belle had taken the key to the vault. If only it had been her life lost to bring Rumplestiltskin back to life. He would have still had his precious son and he would finally have been rid of that sanctimonious little chit.
She'd told herself it didn't matter. Oh, Baelfire would die, but her spell could change that—or could change that if she wanted it to.
Zelena imagined the look on Rumplestiltskin's face when she saved his son, when she brought Baelfire back to him. She would be a princess in this new world she created. Her mother would marry King Leopold. He would raise Zelena as his daughter. There would never even be a Regina.
As for Belle, whatever had amused Rumplestiltskin in having a dainty, little noblewoman cook and scrub for him would be forgotten when a royal princess declared her love for the sorcerer. He would finally, finally see that she was the one meant to be with him. Working together, they could rule their entire world, she thought, immortal emperor and empress. He would look in her eyes and she would be his happily ever after, his everything.
Happy ending. Rumplestiltskin had called that maggoty son of his that. But, surely, he would see the truth once the world finally went the way it should have all along. And, really, what did he even need the brat for? What was Baelfire's mother except a pirate's lightskirt? For all Rumplestiltskin knew, the boy wasn't even his.
She'd be doing him a favor, Zelena thought, to make him forget the little worm ever existed. After three hundred years of Rumplestiltskin desperately searching for him, the squirming larva had practically slammed the door in his father's face, not willing to listen to anything he had to say. He wouldn't even use the name Rumplestiltskin had given him. There were spells, she thought, spells for memory. She would take away this pain, she told herself, she would make him forget the ungrateful brat had ever been born. Then, they could finally be happy together, the way they were meant to be.
X
Rumplestiltskin had a death grip on his staff, knowing what would happen if he lost it. He tried to stand between Bae and what he could see coming. Meanwhile, he saw Miss Swan drawing her gun.
"Wait," he told her.
Miss Swan looked at him as though he were insane. Still insane. But, before she could make whatever snide comment she was no doubt trying to come up with, Alix' flowers took flight.
Patterns. That was how Alix' magic worked. Millions of people in this world knew what was supposed to happen when the Wicked Witch and poppies met up, and that created a momentum Alix could draw on.
It also created weaknesses, dozens of weaknesses. Zelena wasn't her sister. Regina had always been bored with subtlety, with understanding the nuances and balance of a spell, happily substituting power for nuance. Oh, Zelena was much the same. But, she could be subtle when needed to be. She could take the time to think and plot rather than just charge ahead. That was how she'd tricked Bae into bringing him back in the first place. If she realized what Alix was doing, if she stopped and thought about how those patterns could be changed to work for her. . . .
But, Zelena only looked around at her fallen army with distaste, not that she seemed to mind the loss. They'd been a tool to her, something to do the dirty work so she could keep her hands clean, not a weapon. The flowers that came towards her burst into flames, but the ones around her minions remained untouched.
Round one to them.
Zelena ignored the Savior, her sister, and everyone else gathering around, concentrating on Rumplestiltskin. "What are you doing, slave?" she asked. "I thought I'd broken you of playing with trollops."
Broken him.
Rumplestiltskin's jaw clenched, remembering the times she'd said that, the times she'd ordered him out of the cage, commanding him to fulfill her warped fantasies while telling him over and over again how much better this was than anything Belle could offer him.
"They say beasts need to be trained," she'd told him, standing so close her tongue flicked against his ear, warm and damp as she whispered to him. "Beasts with bad habits need to be broken." And that's what she did. Tried to do. He didn't know which anymore.
He held the staff between them. "Stay back, Zelena."
"What is she?" Zelena sneered as she glanced at Alix. "Another witch you trained? Another failure? She obviously wasn't good enough for what you needed, to cast your curse, but that's what you go running back to the moment my back's turned."
Alix rolled her eyes. "Sweet mother, you're tiresome, aren't you?" She switched to a bored, lecturing tone. "You control his powers, physical and magical, because of that bloody knife. It doesn't care if it's his true love or a lump of nose-snot holding it." She smiled sweetly. "It doesn't even care if you're a failure he rejected. But, it doesn't give you his heart or his soul. Honestly, haven't you ever read an instruction manual? This isn't rocket science."
"Who are you?" Zelena said. "Some little witch he promised to train? A fallen fairy begging him for favors?" Rumplestiltskin almost choked on that one. "You're not important, whatever you think. Go away and I'll let you live. You're not worth the trouble of tracking down."
"Ooo, are you promising a cat-fight if I stick around? I bet all the boys in Storybrooke are pulling out their smart phones to record it as we speak." Her pleasant, mocking expression changed. Alix snarled like a beast, showing her teeth. "By rights, you're his kill. He owns your blood, as far as I'm concerned. I guess I'll have to apologize for stealing it."
Zelena smiled. "Will you?" she asked and threw a wall of fire at Alix.
X
Not good, Alix thought as the wave of fire hit her. She'd meant to distract Zelena but she'd really been hoping for something other than fire as an opening attack. Fire was Alix element. Air, Earth, they steadied her. Fire sang in her blood, begging for more. . . .
She drank it in, standing in the center of the inferno, unharmed. She heard the flames whispering to her, demanding to be fed. Fire was the great hunger. It would devour the world if it was left free to do it.
So easy, she thought, to do just that.
No, I am more than the instincts that shape me. I am what I choose to be. And I do not choose to be destruction.
She felt her hair coming loose, felt it mingling with the flames.
She breathed, thinking of pine-scented air, of salt-winds from the sea, the damp smell of earth blanketed with autumn leaves, the harder scents of sand and stone, trying to steady her mind.
I am the weaving woman. I catch the echoes of the past in my webs and my hair itself is a net.
This fire, it wasn't just destruction or magic or flame. Or it was all those things, but conjured by Zelena's mad rage. That was why it found its echo so quickly inside her. Devouring hunger, that was close to the core of what Alix was, much as she tried to hold it back from her soul's heart. It was always there, trying to find its way in.
It lived inside Zelena, too, she thought, and it had eaten her from the inside out. That was what she had conjured this out of.
What will I catch in my threads, Zelena, now you have given me the fires of your heart?
X
Belle watched Alix rush into the flames and saw them gather around her. She crouched like a cat in its heart, a figure made of fire, the white-gold hidden in the red petals center. Belle saw her hair stream out, writhing like serpents. She heard the flames hiss.
Then, she saw them change.
Figures appeared in the flames, faces writhing in torment. Men, women, children. Belle saw the man she recognized as Little John as he screamed in the hospital before transforming into a winged ape. She saw Bae dying by the Vault of the Dark One. She saw herself, weeping as she reached out to Rumplestiltskin in his cage. Philip and his princess, Aurora, were changed into beasts. They were distorted and twisted by the dancing flames, but Belle could name them all.
But, strangers also began to appear. A girl screaming by a well, horrified by some nightmare only she could see. A great city rose against an unfamiliar sky. A man was struck down, crying out in fear as he was changed into what Belle somehow knew was the first of Zelena's flying soldiers.
A woman with a kind face was gathering herbs by the riverside when she looked up to speak to someone beside her. Her face changed to shock, then horror as a spell struck her into the water. She reached out to someone, crying desperately for help as she drowned.
A man, tense with fear, opened a door. Unlike the woman, there was no surprise in his face as his heart was torn out of him.
It was an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of pain, of death. There were dozens—no, hundreds of them, distorted by pain, fear, death.
Rumple could see the future.
Alecto could see the past.
Belle knew this. But, it wasn't till she saw Rumple, scaled and madly spinning away, that she understood.
These were the images of Zelena's past. These were the people she had tortured and killed.
X
Names and faces flitted past Alix. She caught strands of names and stories. A creature or fire, not unlike her, betrayed Belle and Baelfire, before doing what he could to save them. She saw Bae once again lying in the snow, the brand burned into his hand as the life was torn from him and his father was restored.
Anger, pain, revenge clawed through her, demanding she give it its due.
Alix gritted her teeth. No. Fire did not command her. No one commanded her. She was Erinye. She was the hatred that never dies. Whole kingdoms had fallen to her in her infancy. She commanded the flames, no one else—certainly not this madwoman or her crimes.
Alix reached out to the echoes of pain around her, weaving their threads into the bits and pieces of nightmare she had let creep into Zelena's house these past nights.
They swirled around her, taking form, congealing. Owl bones made of flame, burning leaves, fiery shadows spun to life around her, their faces woven into the forms of Zelena's fears, the many victims she had struck down. Alix stood up. Shakily (but only a little shakily) she stepped out of the flames (her hair, uncooperative as always, still hissed like fire in the rain, some of the ends shaping themselves into burning serpent-heads. Candle-flame fangs snapped at the air).
X
Belle watched the army of burning sticks and bones form around Alecto. She gripped the bowl tight, not sure if she shouldn't be trying to defend Storybrooke from them as well as Zelena. She felt a hand on her shoulder.
"Don't," Rumplestiltskin told her.
Emma was the one who said what Belle was beginning to wonder. "Gold, what is she? And can we trust her? And how come Zelena isn't controlling you?"
"I have a . . . temporary respite. It may or may not last, depending on how this fight goes. As for Alix, I didn't ask her here to fight for me. She's. . . ." he hesitated. "She's not always sane. And this may bring out the worst in her."
"Didn't—so what did you bring her here for?"
"To save Bae."
"To save—" That was when Emma saw the teenaged boy standing by Rumplestiltskin, white-faced, his hand clenched tight around a small pouch he wore on a cord around his neck. Emma looked at Rumplestiltskin. "He's not—he isn't—"
That was when the ground exploded, holes being shot through the road as waterlines broke, geysering their contents up into the street.
Belle's hands clenched around the bowl of poppies, telling the small flowers to hold on.
X
The streams of water were barely ankle deep but they hit with force. Alix saw people knocked off their feet, including Rumplestiltskin (he kept a death grip on the staff). But, waves of it rose up around her small army of ghosts.
"It seems I'm melting them," Zelena said as they sputtered out.
Alix grinned toothily. "Because they scared you. Admit it, Greenie, the past terrifies you, doesn't it? No wonder. You have such a lot of it."
"Once I change the past, you think that will matter?"
Alix wanted to give a cheeky reply, but a growl—a true growl, like a lion fighting for its meat—built in her chest and tore out of her. "Stupid witch," she spat. "Rumplestiltskin sees the future. I see the past. You can no more escape it than a tree can shed its roots. The past is a disease. It infects the present. It corrupts our futures. You can't change it. It's rotting you from the inside. It made you."
"Then, I will unmake it."
Talk about a brick wall. "Don't you understand? It is you. You carry it in every memory woven in your mind and every thread that weaves your flesh. How will you escape the darkness behind your own eyes?"
Zelena looked smug. "I think I just did. Or wasn't that what you were trying to send against me?"
Then, the water rose up, engulfing Alix.
The growl rose in her again. Fire was in her blood. It wanted to fight, to annihilate. Alix pulled it back, old lessons running through her head (so many eons ago, funny how the lessons of childhood always came back at moments like this).
She was fire. And she was night.
She didn't like water, but not because it was her opposite. It was a part of her, the cold darkness of the bottomless seas, the light dancing on waves or burning the eyes of those who went blind in the snow. Wonders that fell into its deeps might be found, still whole, millennia later—whole, but not unchanged. Preserver and transformer—weaver. The slow steps of its tidal dance were made in answer to the moon's music, servant of night's mistress, patiently keeping its secrets in the hidden darkness of its heart.
Revealer of truth, maker of dreams and lies. . . . She spun her thoughts into cold stillness, the memories of the fire-ghosts flickered in it, changing. Fire held only pain, destruction. Fire was forgetfulness, oblivion. Water held meaning.
The past is a disease. It infects the present. It corrupts our futures.
Alix pushed it back, but only enough to speak freely. Alix let her heart beat and felt its rhythm echoed in the cold around her, like a wave pulled by the tide. She let it draw fire away from her, becoming water, finding meaning in what she had seen in the flames.
"Your mother," Alix breathed. "The woman who raised you, you killed her. Jealous. You were jealous. Your father feared you, avoided you. But, never her. He loved her. You thought he would love you if only she were done away. You told him it was an accident, that you pushed her into the river, that your magic had slipped through your control. And he believed you. Or you thought he did. You told him you would keep it in check, and you tried because you hoped it would make him love you. But, you saw the fear in his eyes. He drank the better to hide from the truth. But, you knew he saw what you are."
Zelena shrugged. "He wasn't my father." She conjured another spell. Darkness, like the shadows out of the ocean depths, tangled as seaweed around a kraken's nest, wrapping around the unwary swimmer and dragging her down. Their tangled growths as sharp as the poisoned edges of certain corals.
Accident or intent, Alix didn't know, but the spell latched onto the element she had shaped herself to, the water's darkness and killing strength. It sucked up the water that had surrounded her. Even as she raised her arms to fight it off, she felt its knife-edge against her skin, trying to slice its way in, hungry as a shark after its prey.
X
"He wasn't my father," Belle heard Zelena say as she conjured another spell and threw it at Alecto. "That's why he hated me, why he was convinced I was wicked. But, I found a use for him all the same."
"Curse of the Empty-Hearted," Alecto gasped out between trying to do . . . something to hold back the shadows. "You . . . baked him . . . into a pie."
The Curse of the Empty-hearted, Belle knew this spell. Regina had tried to kill Snow once to cast it. It was made from the heart of the one you hated most. It couldn't create love but it could make whoever was tricked into eating believe they loved you.
Zelena grimaced. "A pity Rumple wouldn't eat it."
Rumplestiltskin? Zelena had tried to cast this spell on Rumplestiltskin? And she'd murdered her father to do it?
It was before she had the dagger, Belle thought. Once she had it, she could have forced him to eat anything she wanted.
The shadows were reaching for Alecto's mouth, toothed-edges reaching hungrily. Alecto was trying to hold them back, but they seemed to be digging into her flesh. "I—never did—steal hearts—" she said. "Stupid—spell."
"You don't know what you're missing," Zelena smirked. "Too late now."
She had to do something, Belle thought. The poppies wouldn't stop her. She'd just burned them last time—but—
Belle remembered things Rumplestiltskin had told her about spells. She didn't have any magic, but Alecto had somehow handed this one off to her, linking her to it. She'd told her to concentrate, to visualize to get it to do what she wanted.
Belle thought of the figures sleeping beneath the piles of flowers (they had clung to their prey despite the waves of water). She tried to visualize the flowers as if she were inside them (like Alecto, standing the heart of Zelena's flames), part of the magic telling them to sleep, her voice whispering into their dreams.
Fly, she told them. She visualized Zelena as a shadow of black and green. Go to her. Swarm her. Stop her.
The flowers shifted, but weren't pushed aside. They held onto the apes rising up. The creatures didn't try to fly. Instead, they ran on all fours across the ground, claws clattering against the damp pavement and splashing in the puddles. They charged at Zelena.
"No!" Alecto cried. "Stay back!"
The flowers burst into flames. The apes screamed, batting at the fires, rolling on the ground to put them out.
Fire burned across the shadow-weed burrowing across Alecto as she tore it off and threw it aside. She leaped across the remaining distance between her and the witch as lightly as one of the apes might have if it had stretched its wings. She seized Zelena by the throat. "You baked your father into a pie?" Alecto said, smiling. Her skin was as white as the heart of a furnace. Her hair writhed around her like flames, tormented faces appearing and disappearing as they danced. "I ate mine raw."
She'd been telling the truth about not using magic to steal hearts. As her hands stretched out into talons and tore through Zelena's chest, there was no spell making it neat and tidy. The thing she brought out was a dark, wet lump of flesh. It was still pulsing as she held it up for Zelena to see. Belle didn't know how it was possible, but the light of life still shone in Zelena's eyes.
Smiling, Alecto closed her claws around the heart, slicing it to bits. The light went out of Zelena's eyes as they closed. Alecto dropped her and the heart like so much garbage. Then, she turned around and faced them, a mad killer's smile on her inhuman face. In the blood-covered hand that had held Zelena's heart, she now held Rumplestiltskin's dagger.