Chapter 14

Dark Castle, Three Hundred Eight Years After Rumple Became the Dark One

This is it, then. Rumple runs his fingertips over the leather lacings of the steamer trunk, which now contains his most treasured of his treasures: jewels, including the Poseidon League ring, historical artifacts, weaponry, scrolls and books, everything one of a kind and priceless, acquired through deals and, rarely, outright purchases over three hundred years. And on top, four objects valuable to no one, but wrapped within the Golden Fleece and shielded with a layer of magic as if they matter more than anything else: a sketch of Baelfire, drawn by Milah just days before she left with Hook; a shawl, woven by Maerwynn and used as a baby blanket for Bae; a miniature portrait of Belle, painted by an artist in an Agraban bazaar; and the chipped cup. In the lining of his boot he's hidden his dagger.

He forces the emotion from his face, although he's quite alone, and with a seemingly careless flick of his wrist he sends the trunk to an abandoned cottage deep within the woods where the mushrooms grow. The cottage, still the property of a portal jumper who now lives in big-city luxury, has gradually been filled with trunks and boxes of precious goods belonging to the only two people in the world who know what's coming tomorrow.

It would be easy to stay here for the rest of the evening, in his austere bedchamber, reading perhaps, or thinking through last details in the grand scheme, but he forces himself to walk down the long hall to the chambers at the east end. This room in the mornings fills with sunshine, and just outside the tall east-facing windows is an oak tree in which a robin builds her nest every spring. He's counted at least four families raised in that tree: not that he cares about useless creatures, but as master of the castle, he must be aware of everything happening on his property. With two big fireplaces, this room is snug and warm in the winter, bright and sweet-smelling in the spring, and receives shade and a cool breeze in the summer. The walls, painted yellow, are decorated with portraits—none of them significant, none worth a copper—depicting tea-party playing little girls, ball-kicking boys, sprites dancing in waterfalls, picnicking lovers. It's the most comfortable bedroom in the castle, and that's why he's never slept here. After he'd given up on the notion of breaking the spirit of his new caretaker, he'd released her from the dungeon and assigned her to this room.

As soon as he opens the door, he smells fresh-baked bread and roses. His throat clutches. In her wardrobe still hang her dresses: the gold ball-gown she arrived in, the robin's-egg blue work dress he'd given her on her second day here, more work dresses acquired over the years, and colorful shawls and capes and scarves she'd purchased as they traveled the world in search of Bae. In the bottom of the wardrobe are her shoes. He clicks his tongue: whereas his are always properly paired, polished and lined up like King George's soldiers, hers fall all over each other, they're scuffed and run down at the heel and one of them has no mate (He knows how it must feel). She took such good care of their castle, her dresses, her jewelry, her skin, but when it came to shoes, her penchant for chaos ran rampant. He has no idea why, just typical Belle, he supposes: ladylike on the outside, but a caged rebel beneath the skin.

He sits on her loosely made bed (he likes hospital corners: his brief training in the army has in some ways stuck with him). The quilt was made by her great-grandmother on her mother's side: though they were nobles and encouraged to practice the fine arts rather than the practical ones, her maternal heritage is one of pride in the knowledge of work: whether a de Marchand woman actually labored on any sort of an ongoing basis was a moot point; they all learned how to clean and cook and sew and quilt. It stood them in good stead in times of war and, in times of peace, earned their families the respect of the public, for everyone admired a People's Princess. Grandmama de Marchand was, therefore, a quilter; her daughter, a gourmet cook. Belle used to joke that if these grand ladies could see her now, on her knees, scrubbing a stone floor, they'd curtsey to her for carrying family values to the fullest extent.

Belle joked a lot.

So did he, with her. Until her, he never realized he could be witty: playful, yes, with Bae, but hardly witty. Born, as Milah claimed, under a storm cloud, to a mother who disparaged his father, in a community that belittled all three of them, Bae never had the chance to develop a sense of humor. Rumple wonders sometimes what the child might have become if Belle had raised him; he also wonders sometimes what sort of husband he himself might have become, if Belle had been his bride.

As he rests on her bed, he counts the dresses hanging in her wardrobe. If Belle were here, if she were standing in this room, packing to leave, preparing to abandon him, as she should have long ago, running off to find her own Prince Charming, she would huff at the waste here. Box these clothes up and deliver them to the poorhouse in Alsford, she would insist: clothes are made to be used, needs are made to be met, people are made to serve other people.

As she served him, always to the best of her ability. As, eventually, he came to serve her.

He waves his hand and the clothes, even the worn-heeled shoes, vanish; in the morning, the widow who manages the Alsford poorhouse will find these clothes freshly laundered and neatly boxed on her doorstep. "As you wish, Belle," he murmurs, walking out, closing her door behind him.

And then it's time to face Bae's room.

Well, the term isn't completely correct. Bae never lived here: Rumple bought the castle from a family heavy in titles but light in pockets; their fool of a father had ordered the castle constructed at the peak of a mountain because he wanted to look down upon his neighbors. It didn't occur to him at the time that he would have no neighbors, the nearest town being half-a-day's ride below; nor did it occur to him that for six months out of every year, the road up to his fortress would be impassible, due to either snow or flood, and he would be trapped inside with a very bored wife. They stuck it out, though, for ten years, until with the birth of their ninth child (because those winter nights were so very long), he just couldn't take it any more and upon the break of spring was seen running all the way down his mountain, screaming at the top of his lungs as his children and servants and wife impassively watched him go. When it became clear he wasn't going to return, the wife sent the servants away, sold off the furniture and went with her brood to live with her mother-in-law in the Southern Isles, where she sipped rum from a cocoanut shell as her children ran barefoot through the jungles. And so the revenue department took possession of the rather large estate and sold it to Rumple for the mere price of the back taxes because what man in his right mind would want to live at the top of a mountain?

But it was just perfect for the image Rumple wanted to portray: a distant and mysterious Dark One, unlike his predecessors, who, when not busy torturing the enemies of their dagger owners, enjoyed frequenting taverns and whorehouses, both homegrown and exotic. Rumple just wanted to be left alone, so an inaccessible castle fit the bill.

But the first chamber he furnished, upon taking ownership, was this one, the biggest on the first floor, consisting of four rooms: a bathing room (Rumple conjured a geyser in the bathtub, so that the water would always be warm), a bedroom with a king-sized bed and three wardrobes, a play room, with shelves upon shelves of toys, games and books that Rumple changed out every year with objects suited to a progressively older child, and a deep closet-within-a-closet which a young boy could pretend was a cave or an older boy could retreat to, to think his private thoughts.

Rumple had no idea how old Bae might be at any given year. From his studies and his travels, he understood that time moved faster in some lands than in others. Deep in Rumple's heart, however, Bae would remain a child forever: sometimes fourteen, sometimes four, sometimes four days old, but always a child. Rumple tried to trick himself out of this illusion by marking the passing of the years on a calendar and marking the likely growth of his son on the back of Bae's bedroom door: five foot five at 14, five foot six at 15—he imagined a major growth spurt at 16, which was when he himself had come into his full height. Rumple stopped marking the door in the year Bae should have turned 18.

In the year Bae should have turned 24, Rumple started weaving baby clothes and buying baby toys all over again. He wanted to be prepared, just in case he was a grandfather now. He bought things suitable for girls as well as boys. He had no preference for the gender of his grandchild, as long as the youngster was healthy. . .and unafraid of imps. In the year Bae should have turned 50, Rumple furnished the west-facing balcony with rocking chairs and imagined he and Bae would sit here as the sun went down, rocking Bae's grandchildren to sleep.

In the year Bae should have turned 150, Rumple with a flick of his hand turned all the drapes black and closed off this room. In that year he made no deals.

In the next year, he began studying the science of time in earnest, and he tested magic's ability to affect time. He never found a way to manipulate time, not to speed it or slow it or transcend it. Unlike some of his fellow mages, he never attempted, however, to cheat Death. Some decisions must be left to Nature.

He now opened the door to Bae's rooms for the first time in a hundred and fifty years. A self-perpetuating spell kept the place free of dust and mice: the castle changed the bed linens once a year and opened the windows on warm days to allow fresh air in. And Belle had come in, she'd told him as much, to clean, before she knew what these rooms were. When she had learned their purpose, she asked if she should keep out, but after giving it some thought he'd decided he liked the idea of her cleaning these rooms. Bae would have liked the idea too: it felt kind of motherly.

If, where Bae is now, time moves at the same pace as it does in the Enchanted Forest, he is three hundred twenty-three years old. Rumple tries not to think about that. Only once, on Bae's 150th birthday, had he allowed the thought that Bae might not be alive—by the dictates of Nature, should not be alive. The worlds are strange and unpredictable; only love could be counted on, and Rumple has to believe that Love (for, though he doesn't know for sure, that's how he thinks of Love, as a living being whose name should be capitalized) will not allow Death to find Bae before Rumple does. No one, not even the Original Dark One, could be so cruel.

Rumple renews the perpetual cleaning spell on Bae's bedchambers and he fluffs the pillows before he extinguishes the light.

Tomorrow, Cinderella will summon him; tomorrow, she, Charming and Thomas will lie to him and imprison him. Tomorrow, Cinderella's lies will force her debt to him to climb, to a price so high that the rules of magic will insist the debt cannot be left behind when the curse sweeps her and Rumple and everyone else to the new land. And there, Cinderella will cheat him again, and the debt will skyrocket, until in desperation the savior herself will intervene; and being the savior, she will take the debt onto herself.

The last, and most important, piece of the plan will fall into place then: in payment for Cinderella's debt, the savior will save Rumplestiltskin. Then, and only then, will he have Bae back.

But tomorrow, Rumple must begin to pay for his crimes—but not, as Charming and Snow think, his crimes against the kingdom. In his own mind, Rumple will be paying for his crimes against Love.

Neverland, Present Day

"So, Rumpie, shall we play?" Pan is leaning casually against the doorframe. He flicks a warning finger at Belle. "No help from you, Clochette. You know the rules."

Belle shakes her head. "No magic. The rules say nothing about moral support. Besides, I may not be bound to those rules, considering who I am at the moment."

Pan shrugs. "I suppose I needn't quibble. You have no powers in there, anyway."

Belle juts her chin out defiantly. "I have love."

Pan scoffs, because he knows the truth of things: love is just the pretty label people put on more animalistic emotions like possessiveness and lust. And he scoffs because she's just reminded him that "who she is at the moment" is a magicless, mild-mannered and rather small mortal: she doesn't even have a sword or a hook with which to put up any kind of challenge. She goes by the name "Belle" and that's appropriate: a bell is a hunk of tin that makes a short-lived, pretty sound but otherwise has no use.

He turns his attention to the real threat—the real opportunity—the Dark One. Now there's power: those who possess magic can see his power rolling off of him in waves that make their own skin tingle and their tongues loll for just a taste of it as it's carried on the air. And everyone knows that to kill the Dark One is to obtain all his powers, all at once. What must that feel like, Pan wonders, that first rush as the most immense magic in the world seeps into one's skin, streaks through one's bloodstream and races to the heart and the brain? He's about to find out, for he knows Rumple so well. "I'm offering you a deal, Rumpie." Yes, he's fully aware—and now Rumple is fully aware that he's fully aware—that Rumplestiltskin has inherited their father's disease: he can't resist deals.

Pan gestures to the cave behind him. "You've heard the legends, so you have a vague idea what'll happen in there and why. See, I think Old Tink here has a screw loose. I think she's confused you and Henry. I think Henry's the true Bearer of Light and you're the fraud you always were. King of the Cowards. If I'm right, you'd better turn around and high-tail it out of here right now, because what happened to them"—he gestures to the skeletons at their feet—"will happen to you, in triplicate, because you have so much more to answer for, don't you? But supposing you are the mage the Original Ones chose to finish this millennia-old game of theirs. This is where we'll find out." He stands aside and sweeps his hand toward the room behind him, so dark that Rumple can't see into it. "Your proving ground: your own private Hell. The Bearer of Light will walk out undamaged, proven my equal. You win this game and you'll win the right to fight me."

Pan waves a hand at the cave. "Look inside, Rumpie." He grips his brother's arm and propels him toward the mouth of the cave, but forces him to stop just at the entrance.

Rumplestiltskin looks. The front of the cave is nothing other than what one would expect of a cave: stone, dirt, stalactites and stalagmites, moisture dripping from the ceiling. But he hears a rustling like bat wings from deep within, and as he listens more closely he hears sobbing and moaning, and as his eyes adjust to the darkness in the far recess of the cave, he can detect shapes and movement. He raises the ball of light he carries in his hand, and now he can see clearly: wire cages, 2-feet high, 4-feet wide, stacked atop each other and reaching so far up that he can't count them.

Inside each cage, huddled, knees to chest, shivering, crying, moaning, hands gripping bars to rattle them, is a shadow. As his light shines through the cave and reflects off the wires, the shadows cease their moaning and twist their heads awkwardly towards his light. Their fingers cram between the wires and strain in a mad attempt to touch the light. Their empty eyes stare back at him.

"Now here's the big prize, Rumpie. You defeat me and all the souls in my cages will go free, including one I think you'll recognize. Look close now, to your left, that cage at the very top of the nearest stack. The small shadow there, see it? Well, your eyes will tell you it looks no different from any of the others, just smaller, but if you focus on it, you'll recognize it."

Rumple stares and the designated shadow, which also seems newer, more human than the rest, stares back at him. The shadow blinks and Rumple recognizes the eyes. He can't help but call out to it: "Henry!"

"Got it in one." Pan clasps Rumple's shoulder in congratulations. "You see, it doesn't matter what happens back on the island. Your friends may defeat my Lost Boys and take Henry's body back, but you and I both know, the body's not much good without the shadow, is it? So now that you see the prizes to be had, I'm sure you're going to accept my offer, aren't you?" He gives Rumple a push into the cave. "Go in, little brother, and play my game. I call it Regret or Blame."

Rumple allows himself to be pushed inside. He keeps his hand stretched out before him to that his light will show him where he's stepping, but he suspects it doesn't matter: he's still thinking in terms of the natural world, and this is Pan's realm. He's expected to fall, all right, but not from a simple trip over a stone.

He begins to breathe more heavily now and a cold sweat dampens his hair. He's had a dread, if not an outright phobia, of dark, underground places ever since his stay in Charming's mine-prison.

Pan's voice rings out behind him, bouncing softly off the cave walls. Rumple feels a warmth beside him and he casts a hasty glance to the right: Belle is beside him, studying the cave. The Storybrooke attire that she was wearing a minute ago has changed: she's now dressed in leather trousers and a velvet maroon doublet. Her hair is bound back and her mouth is drawn in a flat line. She's ready for war.

"The rules, Rumpie. You're going to square off with your past, and if you can come out again with your mind intact, you win. Sounds simple, yes? But it took me ages to prepare: you have so much damage in your past, I had trouble choosing which parts to use! But to make this a little more entertaining—oh, hell, let's be honest: to torture you into insanity—I've added a twist."

Rumple feels something cold and hard appear in the palm of his right hand. He brings the hand closer to the light in his left hand, and now he can see a gold coin emblazoned with the mask of tragedy. He rolls it over to see the obverse: the mask of comedy.

"At the start of each move, you'll flip this coin. Heads, and the round will consist of Blame. Tails, and the round will consist of Regret. I know how you'll play the Blame Game: you'll become defensive, make excuses, lash out with lies and accusations, and then retreat to lick your wounds. The Blame Game is easy for you: you've played it all your life. But the Regret Game, now that's a whole other matter, because when was the last time that anyone showed you any sympathy?" Pan laughs and gives Rumple a push.

He stumbles and the light in his left hand flickers out, but as Belle slides an arm under his shoulder to steady him, he discovers he doesn't need his light; he can see through the darkness, and on the walls of the cave the show is about to begin.

Pan's voice mocks him. "Flip the coin, dearie, and let's begin."

Former Fairy Dust Mine, Three Hundred Nine Years After Rumple Became the Dark One

Frankly, Rumple had expected better from Charming. Four months and nineteen days ago, the boy-prince and his little band of con artists had locked the Dark One in this secret cage, far far away from society, deep deep underground so no one could find him (and plenty of people were searching for him, too—opportunists who thought they'd swap his release for some tremendous price, because who would've guessed that the Dark One intended to be imprisoned?). Now Charming is sitting warm and cozy many miles away in the Spiral Castle with his wife the queen—his pregnant wife, pregnant with the savior. He's besieged with behests and requests and threats, because that's what governance is: a never-ending struggle to maintain the status quo when everyone around you, even those you consider friends, would tear it down. He takes it all on himself, sparing his wife, who's preoccupied not only with the normal fears of a first-time mother, but also with the fears instilled in her by the deposed Regina, who's now rattling the walls of the kingdom—and who's let it be known she possesses the Curse to End All Curses and won't hesitate to use it (her mentor will make sure of that).

Rumple would feel sorry for the boy—he used to respect the former shepherd (the connection of sharing a former professional brotherhood) and he has a soft spot for Snow—but not after this. Not after the way Charming has treated him.

For in this cold, damp underground prison cell, which the guards keep dusted with fairy dust because they know it inhibits his magic and makes him queasy, they've provided not a stick of furniture, not a blanket, not a book, not a coat, not a change of clothes, not a fireplace or a candle or a window. For his meals he's brought moldy bread and maggot-infested meat; the single bucket of water they provide him each morning—not enough to wash his body, let alone his clothes—isn't fit to drink: it tastes of sulfur, and that's on the days that the guards forget to piss in it.

Once they figured out he was well and truly imprisoned, and growing sick in body and mind, the guards realized they could taunt and torture him with impunity. The name calling, insults and threats, the slaps, the stick pokes and the thrown rocks, he's used to: he's had two lifetimes of bullying. It's when they talk trash about Belle that he literally climbs the walls, for Regina has spread her filth far and wide, and all of the Enchanted Forest knows what happened to the Dark One's Whore. This, then, is apparently Charming's idea of a rehabilitation program.

But Regina herself is an outlaw now. She visits often, coming in the form of some cave-dwelling creature so that she doesn't attract the guards' attention, and they speak at length of the details of the curse. She sees that he's weak and half-crazy in his prison and she thinks she outpowers him. She makes curse-related promises and she thinks she's outsmarting him. But she's all the company he has, and at least they're making progress on the curse. When she's gone he sits in a corner that the guards can't reach and he draws his knees to his chest and rocks back and forth, back and forth, reminding himself it's all for Bae, all for Love. And it's what the Dark One deserves.

Neverland, Present Day

He glances at Belle, who's watching him with encouragement and confidence in her eyes. If he survives Neverland and manages to find a way back to Storybrooke, as she and her blood-sister believe with every ounce of their innocent faith, he will drop to his knees at her feet, he swears he will, and he will tell her the secret still remaining between them, after all the other secrets he revealed to her in the Dark Castle: he will tell her he needs her.

And then he'll move heaven and earth to make certain he can finally carry out the plan they made in those last days in the Enchanted Forest: he'll marry her. He knows she'll have him in his entirety, monster and man.

Belle smiles at him, her love shining through her eyes. He lets the magic of that love wash over him: it's what Rumplestiltskin deserves.

He tosses the coin, snatches it from the dank air and flips it onto the back of his hand.

It's heads.