"Well, you know, vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess."
― Cynthia Hand, The Afterlife of Holly Chase

Stave Two: The Harvest of Vice

The sound of someone on the ground floor fussing with the lock startled Rumple, jerking his attention away from the book. From downstairs, he could hear the chime of the grandfather clock in the hall striking the hour, and he blinked and rubbed at his eyes when he counted twelve strokes. He'd only meant to stay here for a few minutes. Suppose Belle came in? This was her home now, unless she'd gone back to the apartment behind the library. He supposed she might have done so, but it was also possible that she was merely out for the evening and might be back at any moment.

He wouldn't have believed that she could move on so quickly, had he not seen it tonight with his own eyes, but evidently she'd found someone new in short order. And if she did bring him back here, he had no wish to either confront her or worse, conceal himself to witness just how far that relationship might have advanced. He needed to leave at once.

He was about to teleport back to the cabin, when he remembered the current state of his heart. He oughtn't to risk using magic unless there was truly no choice. And since Belle wasn't here, he could certainly depart by more conventional means.

He got up abruptly, set the book back down where he'd found it, and made his way to the bedroom door. He'd closed it automatically through force of habit. Now, he began to reach for the knob.

And then, all at once, he pulled back his hand. For just an instant, the ornate pattern on the knob had seemed to reconfigure itself into a human face, a face he recognized at once, even though he hadn't seen it in decades. He bent down to examine it better, but when he did, he saw only the same doorknob he'd always seen, an object so familiar he'd all but stopped looking at it.

He could have sworn…

He opened the door, stepped out into the hallway, and looked at the knob on the other side. Nothing untoward, there. No middle-aged face with a headband of fabric tied in place with a narrow leather strap, close-cropped hair, and geometric tattoos. His mind must have been playing tricks on him. He gave the door a push to close it and it must have been a bit harder than he'd intended, for the door slammed shut.

The sound echoed in the empty house and then it seemed to Rumple that every bit of bric-a-brac, every piece of crockery, and every crystal hanging from the chandelier in the dining room below was swaying and vibrating, adding its echoes to that of the door.

His eyes narrowed. This didn't feel like any magic he knew, but it wasn't natural either. He felt suddenly colder than he should have and yet, there was perspiration beading his forehead as his mouth went dry. He didn't know what was going on, but he most definitely did not care for it.

He strode hurriedly to the staircase and made his way downstairs. On his way to the front door, he paused. Part of him wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible, but another part was far more pragmatic. That part recalled that he had a number of magical spell components in the basement, if Belle hadn't destroyed the lot. There was no such paraphernalia at the cabin. Best to collect what he could in case he needed it. Hoping he wasn't making a serious error in judgment, he turned on his heel and headed for the basement.

The basement laboratory was untouched, as he'd expected. When Belle had first entered his employ, he'd impressed on her that magical items could not be disposed of without the proper precautions—which varied depending on the material. He imagined that she'd thought it better to lock the door to the downstairs and leave everything as it was. Sensible, though easily bypassed, and with no magic needed; he still retained his old lock-picking skills. He went to the multi-drawered cabinet where he kept most of his vials and powder packets and then he froze. He blinked and rubbed at his eyes. Every knob on every drawer sported the same visage he'd seen upstairs.

He frowned. He hadn't thought about Fendrake in decades, so why, tonight, was the healer's face haunting him?

"Ridiculous," Rumple muttered, doing his best to convince himself it was still his imagination. It certainly wasn't magic; he would have sensed that! He opened one drawer, snatched up the small drawstring pouches inside, and slid them into his pocket. From another drawer, he pulled out a belled wand. He wasn't about to banish any wraiths, he didn't think, and after a moment, he returned it to its place. The bells tinkled as he set it down. Half a second later, the glass and crystal vials on the shelves seemed to chime in. Rumple whirled in their direction to see that the bottles and jars were swaying slightly in all directions, bumping gently into each other. The overhead light fixture arced wildly back and forth and Rumple barely got out of the way before it hit the cement floor with a loud crash. Even with that sound reverberating in his ears, it seemed to him that he could hear the same chiming and clinking coming from upstairs! Storybrooke wasn't supposed to be on an earthquake fault line…

He started up the basement stairs and then took a step backwards so suddenly that he just barely caught hold of the bannister before he took a tumble. An ethereal figure seemed almost to be swimming through the basement door coming toward him. Rumple gaped at it. Despite its ragged appearance, the chains that surrounded it, and the haunted despair in its eyes, Rumple knew it at once. "Fendrake?"

Fendrake's ghost said nothing as it drifted closer. Rumple reached into his pocket for one of the pouches he'd taken a moment ago, and in so doing, took his hand off the bannister. A wave of cold air seemed to emanate from the spirit bearing down on him and Rumple shrank away from it.

His foot came down on empty space, and he shrieked as he lost his balance and toppled down the stairs.

When he opened his eyes again, he was stiff and sore and ached all over. Nothing seemed to be broken, though, and after a moment, he rose painfully to his feet with a groan. It must have been stress, he told himself. Stress over banishment and his heart, stress over having to work with two women who didn't trust him any farther than they could throw him and, while he might be slender and slightly-built, they weren't that strong to start with. Stress over what he'd just seen in his shop window hadn't helped either. But tension made him excitable and, perhaps it was excusable that he'd been jumping at shadows. That was all they were, after all. Shadows.

By the time he'd made his way up the stairs, he almost believed it.

At least, until he stepped into his living room and saw Fendrake the healer seated comfortably in his favorite easy chair.

"Hello, Rumpelstiltskin," the ghost greeted him rattling heavy chains. The chains were wound about the ghost, encircling his wrists, his ankles, his neck, and his waist. They pooled on the ground beside the chair and led back to the wall behind. Even then, Rumple couldn't see the ends of them, for they appeared to have passed through from the other side of the wall.

Rumple's eyes widened. And then he shook his head. "No," he said crossly. "No, you're not real."

"No?" Fendrake asked. "And yet, you can see me?"

"Yes."

"Hear me?"

"Yes."

"Then why do you doubt the evidence of your senses?"

Rumple tilted his head to one side. "Because they can be confounded by magical illusion," he retorted.

"And yet, you detect no magic here now."

"Then it's a ruse of some other kind," Rumple snapped. "Judicious application of cosmetics, theatrical special effects—"

"Ah, but who besides yourself would recall my voice?"

"I don't recall it," Rumple lied. "After all these years, my memories have faded. They've doubtless become distorted. Furthermore, it's not the first time I've been duped by someone claiming to come from my past."

"Have I made any such claim?" the ghost asked.

Rumple blinked. "No," he admitted.

"And that individual who did so made a claim that you desperately wished to be true. Is that the case now?"

"No," Rumple admitted again. And then angrily, "How would you know about that anyway, hey? Did Booth put you up to—?" He stopped. "No, he's just a child now. He wouldn't remember anything about you, if ever he knew it in the first place. Someone else, then."

"And who might that be?" Fendrake asked. "Everyone who knew of me but you is now dead. Even I am."

Rumple turned away in irritation. "Then you aren't truly here. You're just a memory, or a hallucination. Doubtless brought on by nerves, or perhaps indigestion."

"You haven't eaten in over twelve hours," the apparition remarked.

"I suppose that as a product of my subconscious, you would be privy to that information," Rumple returned. It would also explain how it knew about Booth trying to pass himself off as Bae. If he was carrying on a conversation with a figment of his imagination, well, that was worrisome for a number of reasons. But as this was all in his head, of course the hallucination would know his thoughts and memories.

"Perhaps," the ghost said, "this will convince you." He rose up from the chair, and seemed to swell until he towered over Rumple, standing nearly three times the latter's size. Seeing that the ghostly head was nowhere near the room's ceiling, Rumple found himself wondering whether the house had grown larger or whether he'd grown smaller. And then, ghostly fingers reached into his chest and gently, plucked out his heart. Rumple's eyes went wide, and he reached out to grasp that wrist, but his hands past through it as though it held no more substance than the wind. Fendrake could hold it easily enough, though.

"It's as I feared," the dead healer said. "If it was Dark at our last meeting, how much more so has it become in the last six decades. And how much Darker might mine have become, had I lived another sixty years?"

"Oh, don't give me that!" Rumple snapped. "I'm the Dark One. You were a healer."

"Who callously played on my clients' desperation to enrich myself."

"Well, you couldn't have been expected to ply your trade for free," Rumple allowed. "No. Murder darkens a heart. So does betrayal. But what you're talking about? That's hardly something I'd call a vice; it's simply… business."

"Business?!" Fendrake cried, as the glassware began to rattle about again in counterpart to the chains surrounding the spectre. "Humanity was my business! Common welfare was my business! Charity, mercy, kindness, forgiveness, all of that was my business! And yet, I chose to focus on the least important part of my business and now, I pay a price far heavier than any magic ever exacted!" He loomed higher over Rumple and Rumple truly felt as though he were shrinking. At least, the floor seemed to be rushing to meet him, and the room was swimming, and the way Fendrake's ragged garb seemed to undulate made his head spin. And then, for the second time in less than an hour, he fainted.

The first thing Rumple registered was a shock of cold air, blasting him, blowing his hair back from his face, gusting through his garments, chilling him to the bone. The second was that his hand was even colder. He'd thankfully never experienced frostbite himself, but he'd heard the symptoms described and they sprang into his mind now. The third was that he didn't feel anything solid beneath his feet. He forced his eyes open and immediately shut them again with a strangled cry. Fendrake had a firm grasp of his hand and the two of them seemed to be flying through the air! Hesitantly, he opened his eyes once more. The two of them certainly weren't alone. All about them, other spirits floated, all chained—some more heavily than others—all wretched. Wailing surrounded them and Rumple couldn't tell how much of the sound was emanating from these other ghosts and how much from the winds that buffeted them.

He'd flown through the air like this exactly once, snatched away by the shadow that had become his father's ally in Neverland. For a child of ten, the experience had been terrifying. Three hundred years later, it still was. He bit back a shriek of his own and squeezed Fendrake's hand in a vise-like grip, gritting his teeth and forcing himself to endure that icy contact.

And then they were back in his living room. Fendrake's hand slid out of—no through his, and he tumbled onto the sofa. With a clanking and clinking of chains, Fendrake floated down and settled once more in the easy chair. "I presume you're convinced of my authenticity now?" the dead healer asked.

Rumple pumped his head up and down several times. "Yes," he said quickly. "Yes, yes, of course I am. B-but why are you here?"

"For your welfare," came the reply, which elicited a startled laugh from Rumple.

"Indeed? Well, one might think that taking a man with a heart condition on a harrowing flight in arctic temperatures would imply the direct opposite!"

Fendrake half rose from the chair and the chandelier and glassware again began to sway.

"I'm sorry!" Rumple said quickly. "I didn't mean to cause offense!"

The swaying stopped. "I've come tonight to warn you," Fendrake said, sitting back down in the chair. "There is still a chance for you to escape the doom that awaits you as I could not. You shall have the opportunity."

Rumple blinked. "Thank you," he said uncertainly.

The ghost wasn't finished. "You will be visited by three spirits."

"That's my chance?" Rumple gaped. "If they're any of the lot we passed outside just now, I really think I'd rather not."

"Then you will not be able to avoid the judgment that Fate has already laid out for you," Fendrake returned. "Expect the first tomorrow at the first hour past midnight."

"If I'm to face them, then you may as well send them all along at once and let me get them over with."

"The second will come at the same time, the night after. The third, on the following night at the last stroke of midnight. We will not meet again in this life, and for your sake, hope that we shan't in the afterlife either. But for the welfare of which I spoke, recall this conversation that has passed between us. Farewell!"

At that, Fendrake arose from the chair, drifted several feet up and then floated backwards, passing through the living room window as though the glass wasn't there. Rumple hurried to look outside and swallowed hard. The other chained spirits were still out there, each face bearing an expression of wretched misery. As Rumple watched, Fendrake took his place among them, his own countenance just as despairing. Then the wind picked up and seemed to carry them away, and he still couldn't tell whether the mournful cries were coming from gust or ghost.

For several long moments, Rumple remained at the window. When he could see the spirits no longer, he wiped sweaty hands on his trousers. "It's all humbug," he muttered, but he couldn't make himself believe it. The spirits might be gone now, but he had no wish to venture out and risk encountering another.

He knew it was a foolish thought. Fendrake hadn't waylaid him on the street; he'd come into this house, past defenses mechanical and magical, as though neither existed. If any of the other ghosts out there wanted to talk to him, they were likely capable of doing the same. He still couldn't bring himself to leave the house, though, not tonight.

Hoping that Belle wasn't residing here now, he stumbled back up the stairs to the second floor, made his way to his bedroom, changed quickly into his nightclothes, and collapsed into bed.

Perhaps, it was nerves, perhaps it was shock, or perhaps it was his heart condition, but although Dark Ones weren't supposed to require sleep, tonight's events had taken their toll and he felt utterly drained. He was asleep almost before he could pull up the coverlet.