Rating: M/Explicit
Triggers: Torture and aftermath. I'm going a bit darker than usual, especially at the beginning.
Timeline: 3B
Tonight in a room full of candles
Another cup of ashes drains away
And at times it gets so hard to handle
Knowing one more song has swiftly taken wing
And I'm left alone to hear the song a lonely candle sings…
Tonight, in a room full of candles
Another cup of madness drains away
And at times it gets so hard to handle…
—Stan Rogers, Song of the Candle
Another Cup of Ashes, Another Cup of Madness
Being a hero in an epic is all about mighty deeds and mighty acts and just general mighty mightiness. Being an actual hero is about doing difficult things in spite of unpleasantness, discomfort, unlikely odds and potentially horrible consequences. It is notably unrewarding, and frankly often unpopular, since trying to do "real" good means questioning, not just the beasts who are slaying villagers, but the villagers who act like beasts.
—Jeff Mach, There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN: A Dark Lord's Diary: (A Memoir and Manifesto for Villains and Monsters) (p. 36). FastPencil Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Chapter 1: Unpleasantness, Discomfort and Potentially Horrible Consequences
He was sitting at the wheel and mumbling to himself as he reached for another piece of straw. Spinning cleared the mind, or at least it was supposed to. He was sure it had before. Before, when he'd only had one mind to clear. He fed the straw to the wheel and tried to lose himself in the gleaming thread that wound about the bobbin.
Don't think, he whispered to himself. Don't think about the guests, the heroes who came for help, like they always did. Always taking, never giving unless he demanded it. Why hadn't he thought to demand anything this time? With two minds in his head, he should be thinking more clearly, not less, but instead more often than not, he was muddled. Muddled, befuddled, his thoughts in a puddle. He hated being like this. But he knew why he had to be. All magic came with a price and if the price a heavy one this time, it was still one he was willing to pay.
Even had he thought to, what could he have demanded of his visitors that the witch wouldn't take from him? Besides, they'd come to him to ask for a way to defeat her and once they did, he'd have what he truly wanted. His freedom! The word reverberated in his mind and he giggled. Then, for a moment, he looked up, saw the wooden bars of his prison and quickly looked back to the wheel. He didn't have to. Spinning was mindless work, and normally his thoughts could flow freely, but not with two sets of thoughts all tangled and knotted together.
Couldn't have this work tangled or knotted, though. Whatever else he was, he was a spinner. Always had been. Even when he'd been the village coward, his spinning had been the best in the district. People would let a coward spin their wool if it meant good yarn that wouldn't snap or break at the slightest tug. He might have been hated and shunned, but he'd also been needed and so long as that latter part held true, he'd managed to get by. Always. They could laugh at him, hurt him, loathe him, but if they needed him badly enough, they'd meet his price.
He reached for another piece of straw…
And suddenly, he was down on all fours in his dungeon staring up at—
He shrieked as the five-stranded whip came down on his back, stinging him even through his jerkin and slicing through his exposed shirtsleeves as though they were spun of gossamer. Another blow and he was writhing, trying to scuttle away until a command froze him.
"Stop. Now," Zelena crouched down beside him, the fury in her eyes belying the evenness of her tone, even as she brandished his dagger. He cringed and tried to shrink back, but he might as well have been rooted to the stone floor for all the good it did him. "You've been entertaining in my absence," Zelena hissed. "Having guests over without permission."
Rumple whimpered as she leaped up and he shrieked anew when she brought the whip down for the third time.
"Why did they come here?" She demanded. "What did they ask you and how did you answer? Tell me now, Dark One," she commanded, raising the whip with one hand and holding his dagger with her other, "and don't omit a single detail…"
Regina couldn't deny that it had been unnerving seeing Rumple in his current state. It had been a long time since she'd had to deal with the giggling imp and she realized that she much preferred the more polished version he'd become in Storybrooke.
What was it like—she wondered, as she walked the castle corridor, not really paying attention to where she was going—to be reduced to living in a cage in your own home, just sitting on display in the dining room for anyone to gawk at? He had to hate that.
She found herself on the threshold of the solar—a room she'd seldom used when this had been her castle. Now that Snow had reclaimed it, the room had been furnished and decorated in a way that made it seem homier. Surprising, really, what a change a few brightly-colored tapestries and carpets could wreak.
Belle was ensconced in one of the cushioned window seats, her back against the wall, her stockinged feet flat on the cushions, and her knees bent. She had a book in front of her, balanced against her thighs, but Regina could tell that the young woman's thoughts were thousands of leagues away. She watched for several minutes. Belle never turned the page.
Regina hesitated for a moment. She and Belle had what might euphemistically be termed a 'complicated history'. They weren't friends by any stretch of the imagination. Then again, Regina wasn't accustomed to having friends. Still, something made her think that the other woman might need one. And given that there didn't appear to be a Charming in sight and that Regina thought she could hazard a guess as to why the younger woman was so upset, she took a step into the room and said softly, "Belle?"
Belle turned to face her. And then she sat up straighter and swung her feet onto the floor. "We… we shouldn't have left him like that," she said, her voice a hoarse whisper.
Regina had been thinking much the same thing. With a sigh, she drew closer and took a seat on one of the couches, and wished that Snow had left at least one straight-backed chair. "What choice did we have?" she asked, not unkindly. "As long as Zelena has the dagger, she can summon him back anytime she wants to and order him to tell her anything he might learn from us."
Belle nodded. "And there's no way to neutralize the dagger," she said, not really asking.
Regina shook her head. Then a thought occurred to her. "Actually…" she said slowly. Then she stopped. "It doesn't matter."
"What?"
Regina took another breath. "It was after I'd taken you captive," she said. "I don't know if he ever mentioned it."
"Mentioned what?" Belle asked.
"Rumple was Snow and Charming's prisoner for a few months," Regina said. "They had him shut away in a specially-constructed cell in the dwarf mines, one Blue and her followers had a hand in designing."
Belle's eyes widened. "Why would—" She stopped. "Sorry. You're saying…"
"The cell was built to neutralize all magic," Regina said. "No spell can be cast from within. If anybody were to enter it under any sort of enchantment, say a glamor spell, the enchantment would unravel as soon as they'd crossed its threshold. And yes, it should block the dagger's commands, too."
A hopeful smile bloomed across Belle's face. "Then, we could—" She blinked. In the twinkling of an eye, the solar had vanished. She and Regina were standing in a dimly-lit underground chamber. Before them, Belle saw a barricade of vertical bars—half rising from the floor and half descending from the ceiling, their pointed shafts meeting in the middle. The chamber behind those bars was even more poorly lit, but Belle could see that it wasn't very large—though it did seem a bit bigger than the cage in the castle had been. It smelled damp and musty and there were no paintings or tapestries to soften the rough stone walls. Nor was there any window, any stick of furniture, nor even any straw.
She turned to Regina in horror. "Here?" she asked. "They put him…"
"I thought if you saw it, you'd realize how unsuitable it was," Regina said. "I don't envy him his current quarters, but at least in his castle there's more daylight. And that cage may be small, but it's in a more open space."
Belle's eyes darted frantically over every inch of their surroundings. "But she won't be able to control him," she said.
"We'd be taking him out of one cage and locking him in another."
Belle pressed her lips together tightly and nodded. Then she took another breath. "Does it… have to look so… so…" She frowned. "If we furnished it," she said, "put in lamps, a-and tapestries and…"
"Belle."
"Look, I know it would still be a cage, but at least he'd be away from her! A-and she won't be able to use him against us. And he doesn't really care about the light, as long as he has enough to read by; he had tapestries nailed over the windows when I first went to work for him." She turned anguished eyes on the queen. "Couldn't we… go back and ask him what he'd rather? I-instead of assuming we know?"
"You want to go back there?" Regina demanded incredulously. "We were lucky Zelena didn't come home early the first time!"
"I know," Belle said. "I know. But can't we chance it one more time? If he says no, then… that's it. Either way, at least he'll know we cared enough to try to help him. The way we left him…"
Regina sighed. "Well, you do make one good point: if Rumple's with us, Zelena won't be able to use him against us." She took another breath. "And maybe you make another one, too: asking him for information and then leaving him behind without a backwards glance was a trifle more callous than sits well with me. All right."
Belle blinked. "You'll do it?" she asked hopefully.
"One more visit to the castle. We ask him; we hang around long enough to make sure he understands clearly the living arrangements we can provide for him, we get a coherent yes or no out of him, and we act accordingly. But if he rejects the proposal, we focus on finding a way to defeat my sister with the help he already gave us and hope it doesn't take too long. We can't keep… popping in on him; it's dangerous for us and for him."
Belle nodded. "Agreed. When do we leave?"
Regina took hold of her wrist. "Now."
It took Rumple a moment to realize that the blows the witch had been using to punctuate his accounting had finally stopped falling. Shaking and groaning, he looked up to see Zelena studying him, a speculative gleam in her eye. Despite himself, his trembling grew more pronounced. In the days since he'd become her captive, Zelena had already demonstrated an imaginative streak that meant him no good.
She smiled then, and it was all he could do not to whimper when she raised the dagger. "Come along, Rumple."
Helpless to resist, he rose to his feet and followed his captor, wincing as the fabric of the shirt beneath his jerkin shifted over his injuries.
"I've been thinking, Rumple," she began, as she led him down the flagstone hallway. "I'm beginning to suspect that you may not be nearly so… limited as you think."
He would have stopped in his tracks, were the dagger not compelling him forward. "Two minds, one head, interwoven knotted thread," he sang softly.
Zelena shook her head. "I know that's what you believe," she replied. "And since magic is predicated on belief, and since you're quite the stubborn one when you're convinced you're in the right, well I imagine even the dagger may come up short against your mulishness. But every now and again," she pulled open the heavy wooden door before them and led him into the kitchen," I think it's important to test limitations."
With a wave of her hand, an ornate, straight-backed wooden armchair detached itself from a table by the wall and floated to the stone hearth, where a roast rotated slowly on the spit. "Have a seat, Rumple. Make yourself as comfortable as you can… without magic," she added as an afterthought, giggling at him in a way that made it clear to him that the frustration he'd thought he'd hidden must have shown on his face. He didn't know what his back looked like now; the jerkin had given him some protection, but the flesh felt raw and every time his shirt moved, it felt as though it was pulling on a scab. And now, he couldn't even try to cast a healing spell—not that it was likely to work in his current condition, but he still would have tried it—to deal with the damage!
"All cozy?" Zelena asked in a sticky-sweet voice. "Good. I do think the dining room's a bit drafty. I'm sure you feel the chill of it in your cage, particularly at night. Perhaps," she gestured to the roaring fire before him, "this might be a nice change of pace for you. After that little unpleasantness a few minutes ago."
Rumple eyed her warily. If she truly had any regrets about what she'd done to him, she wouldn't have forbidden him to heal himself. She was planning something and it wasn't going to be pleasant. He understood that much.
"I have a few errands to run," Zelena went on conversationally. She cupped her hands together before him. A cloud of green smoke obscured them for a moment and when it dissipated, they held a pair of shoes. Iron shoes, Rumple realized, suddenly cognizant of exactly how close to the fire he was sitting.
Zelena's smile widened. At her gesture, leather straps suddenly sprang forth from the back of the chair, criss-crossing as they passed over him from each shoulder to the opposite hip and fastened him firmly in place. Simultaneously, a wooden board extended from the edge of the chair's seat, forcing his legs upwards. "Hold still, Rumple," she murmured, bending down to unlace and remove his boots. After a moment's hesitation, she briskly rolled up the hem of his trousers. "Garters are annoying things, aren't they?" she asked, sounding almost friendly as she undid the ribbon below and pulled off his sock. Then she did the same for his other leg.
"This is what's going to happen," Zelena said, still friendly. "I'm going to let you wear your new shoes while I'm away. I would imagine that, in short order, this fire won't seem nearly as cozy and inviting. But I did leave your hands free, so you should be able to cast a spell to keep the heat at bay, so long as you can keep your focus. Of course, should your concentration falter for longer than a few seconds, well, I would imagine that it would be extremely hard to regain it." Her voice hardened. "Iron does warm up quickly, after all. And that fire must be… what? Five hundred degrees? Maybe six? No, I'd think that if anything distracts you…" Her tone went back to false-friendly, "…say, an itch. Or a mosquito. Or another mind sharing your skull," she continued, "you'll probably need to endure the natural consequences of sitting this close to my dinner." She giggled. "But then, you're immortal! So, as painful as you might find the experience, at least it won't kill you!" Her smile turned predatory. "On the other hand, your feet might end up as well-done as my leg of lamb," she went on, gesturing to the spit for emphasis. "You'd probably lose them in that case. I suppose I could always conjure you up a new pair, when I've some task for you where you'll need them. The rest of the time? Mmm, I guess it'll depend on how well you behave."
She picked up one of the shoes.
Eyes wide, Rumple struggled in his bonds, shaking his head desperately. "N-no!" he gasped. "Please!"
"Oh, don't be such a baby about it," Zelena teased, slipping the first shoe on his foot. "I should be back by dinnertime. And with any luck? You'll discover that with the right incentive, you can still cast a proper spell after all." She picked up the second shoe. "Necessity and desperation are such wonderful instructors, aren't they?" she beamed, fastening that one as well. At her gesture, the board beneath his calves fell away and his feet dropped heavily to the hearth. At the same time, the back legs of the chair rose sharply, tilting him forward, so that his feet were nearly touching the burning wood. Rumple gripped the armrests frantically, eyes wide, as a strangled whimper escaped his throat.
Zelena surveyed her handiwork critically. "I suppose that will do," she sighed. "Focus well, Rumple. I'll be back to check on what's left of you in a bit."
She sauntered off, her laughter tinkling musically behind him, as Rumple frantically tried to remember the spell he needed before it was too late.
