Summonings were the most irritating part of being a Dark One. He was lucky enough that they didn't happen often, but when they did, it always seemed to interrupt something important.
He had a lesson with Regina tonight at midnight. He was determined to take her out into the dark woods and force that firepower out of her if it was the last thing he did! She was getting so close to using that power and being a self-sustaining sorceress and yet…
He was far away. He'd been about to leave when he sensed the calling. It was strong, but not to the point that he had to go. Still, the feeling that he had inside of him told him that he wanted to go, that it would be profitable. And though Regina was waiting for him, his curiosity was piqued enough that he allowed his magic to carry him there. He was there, but he maintained that there was no rule he had to be happy about it.
But determined as he was to be uninterested the second he arrived, he found himself swallowed up in mystery. There was snow on the ground and floating in the air. His breath came out in puffs of white as he looked around. It was nearly pitch-black outside, no street lights were lit, the moon was hidden behind the clouds, but he could still make out that he was in a town square of some kind. And he was alone. That was odd. For the summoning to work someone had to have enacted it, but it appeared that there was no one around. Everyone was in their bed asleep. But when he extended his senses he could make out two heartbeats nearby, both quick. It was when he spun around to locate one of them that he found the body. By the well there was a woman laying on the ground. He advanced on her, the direction of one of the heartbeats, thinking it might be her own, that she was the summoner and was dying, but it was very clear to him the closer he got that the woman was not the owner of the heartbeat. She was not the owner of any heartbeat. She was dead.
Newly dead it appeared. He knelt down next to her and put his hand to her cheek and still felt some warmth, despite the cold, despite the fact that she must have been freezing before she'd died. There were at least two inches of snow on the ground, and yet she wore no shoes, nothing on her feet whatsoever except a bracelet around her ankle. She was covered in jewelry now that he looked at her. Bracelets on her wrists, necklaces that had settled against her chest, large earrings, even a stud of some kind in her nose, a thin skirt and blouse and a head covering…she was a gypsy. He'd seen enough of them before in his village to know the look of them and he traded with one named Clopin when he came around or had a need. Probably she'd been out here because she hadn't a home, but…
Blood. He smelled it before he could see it. There was a bruise, a collection of it gathered under the skin at her neck. She hadn't dropped dead of the cold or starvation. She'd been murdered.
The two heartbeats? Was the killer still in the area? Perhaps he was the one who had summoned him. He made a motion to stand up and look for the owner of the heartbeats but felt a pull back to the woman. There was something here…something about her that called to the powers within him. Magic. Gypsies often claimed to practice magic, but it was usually no more than parlor tricks, the same sleight of hand that his father had practiced or else simple potions or charms that they made. But the magic he sensed on her was no potion or charm. It was strong. It tasted familiar and yet he couldn't place it. It called to him.
He narrowed his focus, determined to find what it was on her that held such power. There was a bundle of some kind in her arms, covered with a white blanket of some kind. But that wasn't it. He sensed no magic from that blanket and curious as he was decided to investigate when he'd found…there…it was coming from her thigh.
"Ah…if you would excuse me, I don't believe you'll mind," he muttered to himself as he pulled the fabric of her skirt up her leg. He'd been about to promise the dead woman he wouldn't leave her in such a state when the most unexpected sight struck him across the face. Hidden around her upper thigh was a garter of some kind. It was tight so that it clung to the skin and fashioned into a sheath to hold a dagger, but that wasn't what surprised him. It was the fact that around her dagger, shoved hastily between skin and holster were wands. Fairy wands. Seven of them to be exact. The seven he'd seen in his vision? No. He'd seen six in his vision, not seven. On furter inspection there were two that had been missing in that vision, one that wasn't present at all. And of the two that he'd never seen before…one was different. Not just from the other mysterious wand, but from all the others. It was the one that called to him. There was darkness in it.
He had no witty reply or remark as he reached forward and plucked it free from her. Part of him expected to feel nothing, that he'd discover it was a fake, merely a wand-shaped object with inferior magic meant to be passed off as a fairy wand. But it wasn't. The power radiated through him just as it had the first time he'd held the dagger in his hand and the magic he felt matched that what he felt when he'd come into contact with the Blue Fairy. It was a genuine fairy wand.
"Now, where did you get that?"
"A stolen good, no doubt."
He didn't startle easily anymore, but he found himself quickly reaching out to brush the woman's skirt back over her legs and tuck the wand into his jacket before he turned and beheld a tall figure dressed in black before him. What an interesting contrast. He was dressed in black but nearly as pale as the snow around them. His gray hair looked white in the dark and the smell of sweat rolled off of him in waves. And his heart…his heart was racing.
"You killed her," he assumed gently.
"Is it murder to crush a bug beneath a boot?" he responded quickly.
Oh, his words spoke as though it was nothing, his face echoed that remark, and yet his heart suggested this was anything but minor. The man was terrified. He liked that. There was something about the man that made him despise him from the very beginning, but it was the smell that was on him at the moment that made him want to break his neck now most of all. It wasn't just sweat he smelled. He carried with him the smell of sex. And now that he was here, he could all too easily make out the scent of him on the woman. A bug, was she? What did that make him? A flea?
"Oh, no, no, no! Especially if the bug bites," he smiled, playing his game. "Though it is a bit odd to crush that bug after you've enjoyed the bite."
The man held his position, looking down his nose at him stoically as ever as his heart raced faster. Any more and it wouldn't be able to go much longer.
"I haven't the faintest idea of what you're implying."
"No?! Oh, come now! Surely your father once explained the concept of the birds and the bees to you. The snake in the grass? The eel in the cave?"
"Enough of this foolishness!" he spat quickly. "She's a gypsy! I'm the magistrate! I'd never dirty myself by joining to a lowly, heathen witch! And I didn't call you so that you could make such slanderous accusations!"
"Well, then why did you call me, governor?"
Immediately the man finally yielded, at least slightly. It was a small step back that he took, but a step nonetheless.
"She's well known to the people here, but only I saw her and the rest of her gypsy vermin for what they were. Liars, thieves, murderers, swindlers…"
"And your brand of evil is better than theirs?"
"My brand is justice."
"And this is justice?"
"I caught her with stolen goods; she ran, I pursued, justice was done. I have no guilt."
"But you're willing to make a deal with me so that they don't discover the body or what you've done to her."
"I never said-"
"But it's written all over your face, dearie! It's in the tap-tap-tap of your scared black heart! Why else would you call me here?"
The man stared. He never broke eye contact; it was the look of a man who wanted to deny the claims he'd given to him but couldn't. He'd never said the words, nor had he indicated what he really wanted, but he'd gotten the idea well enough.
"Worry not, magistrate. I'll remove the body for you, clothes, jewels, and all. I'll make it so it never happened, but you know…all magic comes with a price."
"What do you want?" he questioned calmly.
The wands. He wanted the wands, in fact, he would settle only for the wand in his jacket right now but since he had the opportunity to acquire the others…
He'd been about to demand them when a rustling behind him made him pause. The bundle in the woman's arms…it was moving. The second heartbeat…
"A baby?!" he questioned, moving to it and scooping whatever it was out of the woman's arms. Most certainly a baby. It made little noise but gurgling and fit in his arms as Baelfire had. And yet when he rose and got the blanket sorted to pull it over his face he nearly had to hold in his gasp.
A baby it was, but it was also hideously deformed. The nose was pressed in and up, there was a bulge over one of its eyes so that it could barely open it, the face was square and the jaw almost flat. And now that he knew to feel for it, he could feel the hunch in its back.
From close by he suddenly heard a gasp. "A monster!" the magistrate roared.
Were these the stolen goods the magistrate thought she'd had? He found it difficult to believe. There was snow everywhere, and yet the blanket was dry. The magistrate had tupped his mother and never noticed that the bundle she carried was a baby?! Even worse, judging by the nose they shared…his son.
"Yours perhaps?" he questioned holding it out for them.
"Mine?! Outrageous! The spawn of a demon! Take it away, send it back to hell where it belongs!"
And they called him evil? They dared to say he was wicked when such a man, uncursed by darkness, was out and walking around among them?!
He wanted the wand, but he already had it. He'd promised to remove the woman and all on her, and the way he suddenly saw it, that meant the wand was his. Why trade for something he already had when what he really wanted was to see this man suffer, see him struggle, and fear for his life as those he hunted. A little humility could do him good.
"Not so fast!" he commented quickly. "My price…is this!" he stated, holding the bundle out to him and dropping him into his arms.
"What? You want...it?!"
"No! I want you to care for 'it'! Raise it as your own!"
Because it was his own.
"What?! I'm to be saddled with this misshapen-"
"For the removal of his mother, that the world may never know what happened here tonight, you'll raise the child. You'll care for him. Think of it as redemption! Fatherhood is far from the worst price I could claim." The way he saw it, he was only forcing him to do what he should have done long ago.
In his stunned silence, he turned and lifted the woman off the ground gently. There was a lovely place next to his aunt's graves that he could bury the poor girl. As for the wand in his jacket, and those still attached to the gypsy girl, there was a lovely place in his castle that he could put them.
"Oh! And when I say 'care for the child' I do mean it. Wouldn't want a body to resurface years later and the truth to come out, now would we?!"
He didn't wait for an answer, just took the woman and his wands, and left the Judge with his son.
So Rumple finds himself some wands. We know of course that he has wands in the show, we see a small collection of them when he gets to The Shop, but we also know that he has them in this world. Specifically, we know that he possesses one very important wand. At the moment he doesn't know what he's really got or what he's found but if you are a die-hard fan, you know what he's just fallen into possession of. It'll be a game-changer in the future and really a stroke of luck that he's found it. Gotta thank the Seer for those pushes.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, MissAmande, Alarda, Jennifer Baratta, and Grace5231973 for your reviews. I hope that you like this chapter. I hope you don't mind how I used the Hunckback of Notre Dame story to aid in getting the wands and I really hope you aren't disappointed that he didn't acquire them all by wheeling and dealing and trading. If I had added all that in I think it would have been just too much. Getting them in this way seemed appropriate to me. Peace and Happy Reading!
