He'd moved. She hadn't expected that. But when she came slamming back through the door of the shop ahead of the others she saw that he was facing the other direction and for a moment she was frozen. Half her heart hopeful, the other half fearful. Dead or alive. Dark One or Rumpelstiltskin. "Rumple?" she questioned. He didn't stir. And she took that as a somewhat positive sign, though at this point anything that led her to believe he wasn't the Dark One was a good sign.
"Rumple? Can you hear me?" she asked falling down onto the floor next to him. His heart was beating, faster than it had been before. She thought that it might jump out of his chest any moment now. But he didn't respond to her voice at all and her heart broke at the thought that for even one moment he might have regained consciousness, realized that she was gone, and thought that she'd left him again, that he was alone. "No, no, no," she cried leaning over him again, that thought too much to bear at a time like this. "I'm here. If you can hear me I'm here and help is coming, just hold on a little longer. Don't give up, please don't give up yet...ever!"
The sound of the bell chiming behind her made her pull away to see David, Mary Margaret, and Killian step into the room.
"How's he doing?" David asked.
She shook her head but didn't dare speak the words. If he could still hear her she didn't want him to have even the slightest thought that she believed he wasn't going to make it through this. She wouldn't give him permission to think that way. "Where is Emma? And Henry?" she asked instead. "Did he find-"
"The apprentice needed something to help," Killian explained. Emma is assisting him.
"I don't understand…the apprentice?" she questioned reaching for Rumple's limp hand and hoping he'd heard that. Help. It was on the way.
"The uh…'poor old man' I believe you once called him. The stories we found about a boy were true, the Sorcerer had an apprentice and he grew up, that's who I trapped in the hat." Her stomach fell. The apprentice was...him?! The man that Rumple and Killian had put in the hat before the fairies? He was out of the hat? Sure it was possible, she knew it was. The fairies had figured out how to liberate him as well, that had always been the plan but...when?! And…he was going to help? Why? After all that Rumple had put him through why would he be willing to try and save him? Did it matter? She looked back at her husband, pulled her hand from his to run her fingers through his hair and came to the conclusion that it could matter later, after all of this was over. After the apprentice helped.
"Alright," Emma declared ushering Henry and an older gentleman into the shop. "It's not much but we think we have a plan." Emma nodded and the old man stepped up. In his hand was something familiar, something she'd never wanted to see again and never thought she would see again.
"The hat again…" Killian drawled unimpressed. "Haven't we been down this road before?"
"Have you?" the old man questioned getting to his knees. "How so?"
"Months ago, after we trapped you we trapped the fairies as well," Killian explained as the Apprentice set the hat, still in its golden boxed form, down on the floor beside him. "He tried to free himself from the dagger!"
"This is not unlike that," the man replied. "We're pulling the darkness from him and containing it."
That was…not the plan that she'd even contemplated! Remove the darkness from within him and they'd be left with…Rumpelstiltskin. Only Rumpelstiltskin. Rumpelstiltskin without the magic of the Dark One! Ordinary. A man. That would be a sight to behold, one she'd only ever caught a glimpse of before, but had seemed so impossible since that moment she hadn't even considered it. And yet as stunned as she was at the wonderful thought there was only one thing that she cared about right now.
"Does that mean that his heart will be healed?" she asked.
"Perhaps," the man answered. "If the strength is there. This is more dark power than the hat has ever been asked to contain."
"Do what you need to do," Emma encouraged, making her want to step forward and hug her for her kindness in all of this. But now wasn't the time. Not when the apprentice held his hand over Rumple's chest.
"Purest evil, blackest bloom, darkness too can find its doom," the man chanted. A worded spell, which meant it was an ancient incantation. Not as old as the ritual to bring back the fairies but a chant used expertly meant she couldn't even begin to fathom how old that meant this man was but…it worked. Suddenly, in his hand he held the still beating heart of her husband. So black and dark compared to her own that the one spot, that one flicker of red that he'd spoken of, was only a deep purple.
With a gesture so easy that it made their weeks of research look pathetic the apprentice brought the hat forth from its protective chamber. Containment of Dark Magic. There was a time that she had wondered why such a hat had ever been created, but looking at it now, the only salvation left in the world for a man that could know no redemption…suddenly she saw the good that it had been created for. It would work now for them. Wouldn't it?
There was a familiar shimmer of energy in the room just then. One that she recognized came from powerful magic as the apprentice rose and held the hat open before his heart. "Never a-dying, but contained, bound within the falcons chamber. Shorn of anger, thornless danger, there forever to remain!"
The incantation cast she watched with bated breath as magic, good clean light magic reached out through the brim of the hat and latched onto his heart. No. Not quite his heart. Just the darkness in it. It was black as ink, coming off in vine like tendrils that struggled against its new captor for freedom just as he always had. The thought came back to her again as she watched. Just how much of her husband was the Dark One? How much wasn't?
Just as quickly as it had all began it stopped.
The light magic receded back into the recesses of the hat, there to be trapped forever, and what was left…it was spectacular. Miraculous! So much so she couldn't even be sure that she knew what she was seeing!
His heart wasn't like hers, red and bright and spotless. It was pure! Light, shiny, and so white!
She was nearly speechless at the sight of it and if the others noticed they said nothing. The apprentice seemed unsurprised by the development. He merely knelt back down on the floor beside her, returned the hat to its place, then replaced his heart.
Things were still. Too still. Aside from the old man's labored breaths there was no sound in the room and she wasted no time placing her hand over his chest where his had been. His heart was beating, steady and strong, the normal familiar rhythm only she would ever be able to pick out because it sang her to sleep every night.
But something else was wrong.
His chest. It wasn't rising and falling the way it should. "He's barely breathing," she informed the man. But she couldn't think about what to do now. If what they'd done was successful then he wasn't as he had been. He wasn't magical anymore. If what she thought had happened really had then that meant...he was mortal. Mortal. It was a breathtaking concept. Him being what he was, with all his power, she understood that he would keep her young and never aging forever but now...now they truly could grow old together. So long as he made it out of this. So long as he woke up and began to breath normally again. Could the Apprentice help that? Could Emma? Or since he was mortal should they just call an ambulance like they would any other non-magical human being?
"Rumpelstiltskin was the Dark One for centuries," the man reasoned as he rose looking nearly as exhausted as Rumple had before all this happened. "His return to the man he used to be will not be easy. This will preserve him," and with his words she could see the shimmer of a spell, a protection spell, and strong one by the looks of it, fell over him. "Until we can discern if we can help him," the man finished unexpectedly.
If?! Conditionally?
"If…?" she questioned. No. No there was no 'if' in this. Not this time. He would be back. He had to be back. She was going to help him, she was going to save him and stay with him for as long as it took, bring him back to the person he'd been before this had all happened to him. No matter what would come. But she wasn't stupid, she already knew what that meant.
Everything was about to change…
Well, welcome to the end. I really hope that you enjoyed this story! The next story in the Moments series is Moments Taken and you can find it by simply heading over to my profile. It begins with the Darkness possessing Emma in "Operation Mongoose Part 2" and ends with the moment Emma and Killian enact the curse to go back to Storybrooke in "The Borken Heart".
Of course, if you liked what you read please review! I love getting those wonderful little gems in my inbox and communicating with the people reading on a personal level. And if you want to read more please check out any of the other fictions in the Moments Series. For more information on the Moments Series, upcoming fictions, posting and publishing dates, or a reading order check out my profile. Peace and Happy Reading!
