4 May 2014

He walked slowly around his shop, touching familiar objects. He'd come home.

He didn't expect a homecoming party; heroes don't celebrate the return of local villains, even if, for a few minutes, their goals had aligned. The town would just as soon he'd returned back to the Dark vault when they arrested Zelena: his disappearance would have solved a bit of a dilemma for them, in deciding whether to punish him for his villainy while under Zelena's control. In the end, they'd apparently decided by silent consent not to decide; once they'd captured Zelena, they simply walked away from him, leaving him alone in the barn. Their dismissal of him could be perceived as an act of cowardice; he did, after all, still have his magic, and even with Regina on their side, they couldn't have withstood another magic fight.

As they turned their backs on him, he snatched up his dagger and in its place in the dirt, he left a fake. With a small movement he drew Regina's attention to the fake, his own version of the pea-in-the-shell game, and Regina grabbed the dagger, throwing him a small smirk. She and the other heroes would believe he was now under their control; they would, of course, "manage" his behavior for his own good. The Dark One could not be trusted, especially after a year under Zelena's rule, whereas, apparently, the newly reformed Regina could be—could be depended upon to wield the Dark One wisely. Once she'd pocketed the fake dagger, she turned her attention back to Zelena. She needn't give a second thought to her new slave.

So he wasn't surprised the heroes had chosen to ignore him—doing nothing for him in his freedom, just as they'd done nothing for him in his captivity. No one, not even his son's beloved, had bothered to ask if he needed a doctor or a cup of water or a ride into town. Absorbed in themselves, their newborn, their new prisoner, not one of them had spared a word for him.

But deep down, the little boy in him had hoped for. . .something.

He stared into the mirror on the wall. He'd cleaned himself up before transporting himself here; even after all he'd been through, he still took pride in his appearance. His cheeks, always lean, had sunken; his skin, naturally leathery, had paled from months underground. The few strands of gray in his hair had become streaks. But the most noticeable change—and he would have to cover up this change before he reunited with Belle, lest he alarm her—was the death in his eyes.

He had to do something about that, or else he'd find himself drawn back to the vault. He needed fire.

The shopkeeper's bell above his door jangled and Belle threw herself into his arms. As he stroked her hair and kissed away her tears, a flame flickered in his belly. He was so tired, so hopeless: Cora, Hook, Pan and Zelena were just the beginning. As long as he remained bound to the dagger, he was vulnerable, and anyone he allowed near him was at risk. No one should have to pay with their lives for loving him.

He'd only just been freed. His physical and mental states were so deteriorated, he was fit company for no one, and after time interminable in the vault, his soul had all but rotted away. Holding Belle against his barely beating heart, he wondered if he should chase her away again, as he had so many times before, but Hook's attack upon her had proven to him it was too late. As far as his enemies were concerned, she was his and he, hers. He owed it to her to protect her, and he could only do that by keeping her close.

He tried to warn her—he had changed, but not as she hoped. "I will never comprehend why you continue to stand by my side." Besotted by hope, she wouldn't listen. Oh, how he hated betraying her, but his options left him no real choice: he could be the forgiving man she wished for, or he could continue on his course of killing off all who threatened his family, thereby sending an unmistakable message, and perhaps, the next would-be-Dark-One killer would leave Belle and Henry alone.

He doubted whether, given only those options, even the great hero Charming would have made a different choice. So, though he was hardly husband material, he asked her to marry him, in words as lovely as she was, because she deserved poetry and flowers and happy-ever-afters. He led her into believing he'd pledged his troth on the blade of his dagger, and then he'd given her the dagger, the seat of all his power and the symbol of his faith.

Except it was almost all a deception. Not a lie, he pleaded with himself; simply a failure to correct her misconceptions about the dagger. And if a deception is no better than a lie, didn't it take some of the wrong out of it, that it was for her protection? Didn't the truthfulness of his love set to rights the lie?

She'd seen his madness. She'd seen the sick state his imprisonments—the vault, the cage—had driven him to. Yet, perhaps because she'd been subjected to similar treatment at Regina's hands and had never surrendered, she couldn't see the death in his eyes.

That would come later.

But she'd stand by him, he was as sure of it as he was sure that he needed her (that if he still had his heart, it would be filled with love for her—and someday, when they were free to leave this town and go someplace safer—not safe, for they would never be safe; Hook's pursuing him to Manhattan had proven that—he would reclaim his heart and they would run). They had, unwittingly perhaps, naively, certainly, pledged themselves to each other long ago. Now they would put that pledge in writing for the rest of the world to acknowledge. She would stand by him, and he would draw her closer and protect her with every resource at his disposal. . . as he should have done Bae.

He could never make things right, but he could achieve justice. And it would have to be him to pursue it. If he'd ever harbored, for the smallest moment, the illusion that the law would achieve justice for Bae, this day had proven that notion foolish. Just as he had always been, from the day three hundred years ago when Malcolm took him away from security and comfort and made a junior con man of him, Rumplestiltskin was solely responsible for his own welfare, his own protection. He was his own provider, his own teacher, his own nurturer, his own defender, his own law and his own avenging angel.

And so, moments after the proposal, his new fiancée had left the warmth of his arms to speak to her father (yes, Rumple silently admitted, he should have gone with her; he should have tried to make amends with her father so that the marriage could start with a clean slate, but he had another duty to fulfill first, so he allowed Belle to talk herself into going to Moe alone). And once she had gone, he took his dagger, the real one, to the jail and he bought justice for Bae, at a very heavy cost.

"I don't lie," he'd once insisted to Charming.

But now, all that changed.

Standing in the jailhouse, trying to figure out what had happened to Zelena, the heroes turned to him, as they always did, for an educated guess. Regina turned upon him. "Unless you did something to her."

There was no time to craft words. He had to lie—for Belle's sake, he reminded himself. To protect Belle. So he broke his code; it was surprisingly easy, thanks to the scheme he'd set up with the fake dagger. With a plain "no" and an application of magic to the surveillance tape, he flat-out lied. Belle backed him up in the lie—he'd sunk to a new low, using a member of his family to sell a lie.

Superficially, it was easy; that night, when he walked Belle home and left her, bewildered and a little insulted, at her doorstep with no more than a kiss on the forehead, he found lies, even to Regina, didn't sit well in his gut.