Chapter Three: A Plan in Execution

"Maybe life should be about more than just surviving," Rumple suggested quietly. "Maybe it should be about living the life you want… with the person you want to live your life with. And maybe you ought to decide fairly quickly what that means for you."

Rumplestiltskin left it at that, once again letting her lapse back into her own thoughts… which left him to delve into his. If he could get Bae back… maybe there was a way that he could be capable of leaving the Dark Curse behind in this land. Wasn't Bae the only reason he'd taken it on to begin with, all those many, many years ago?

So he and Emma walked silently through the façade of their familiar town, eventually deciding that they were going to have to report back to the others at the boat with nothing in hand. They'd had no luck finding Hook – hadn't actually seen anyone else, and Rumple counted that a small blessing as they came within sight of the boat.

Only to find a collection of people waiting there. The Charmings, Regina, Robin, Henry… along with Hook and numerous other dead men walking.

"Emma! Papa," Bae hissed, and both Emma and Rumple snapped down and around when they saw the way Bae was crouching out of sight behind a tree.

"What's going on?" Emma demanded, joining Bae in his hiding spot while Rumple crouched behind a nearby bush to hear their conversation.

"Hook. Your parents found him and told him your plan… but he turned on them. He," Bae looked at Emma apologetically. "He's messed up, Emma," he said regretfully. "Coming down here turned him completely back to being evil. Now he's decided to take all of your hearts, split them all in two, and give them out to some of his new and old friends who ended up here."

"Is he crazy?" Emma snapped, louder than she'd meant to, judging by the way her eyes widened just a little bit more than they already had. "That whole idea is crazy!"

"But he thinks he has the Dark Curse," Rumple realized aloud. "Even though he doesn't – these thoughts and actions are all him. But if he did have the curse, he would be capable of doing that."

"He isn't though, right?" Bae double-checked. "Because he has my son up there, and if-"

"He won't be able to hurt them, no," Rumple assured him.

Which also meant that he couldn't hurt the actual Dark One, either, Rumple thought, rising to his feet and stalking towards Hook despite Bae and Emma's whispered protests. They didn't want Hook to hear them, of course… but right this second, Rumple didn't care if Hook saw him. He swallowed his nerves with difficulty, hoping that this sudden, rash idea he had been thinking about would work. Because if it didn't… well, their stay to the underworld might become a little more permanent then they'd first hoped.

"My son's been telling me about your plans," Rumple stated calmly, stalking up to stand in front of a sneering Hook, who was at the front of the pack of people surrounding the very one's who'd come to rescue the apparently-undeserving pirate. "Tell me, if we released your people and," Rumple waved at the cronies surrounding Hook, "Theirs, what would have happened to mine?"

"Your people?" Hook repeated with a skeptical smirk as he gestured towards the heroes. "Do you mean them? They're 'your people'?"

"Yes, of course." Or at least he hoped they would be if they made it out of this alive.

"What happens to them is that they die and stay right here where they are in the underworld," an old familiar voice said, freezing Rumplestiltskin in his tracks.

"Milah," he murmured, watching the woman in question come up to wind her arms around Hook.

At the very sight of her his plans changed again. Seeing the sword she still wore around her waist – from the day he'd torn her heart out – he lunged for it, getting it in hand before she could stop him. Oh so predictably, she mimicked him, reaching for the sword that he had on his person – Excalibur. In a single thrust, she plunged the blade into him out of sheer spite before Hook could even begin to stop her. And she paid dearly for it as the Dark Curse began to instantly wind its way through her body.

Hook screamed in rage, declaring as Rumple fell slowly to the ground, "For that, I'm going to kill you all!"

Rumple was only bleeding, but not dead, because it wasn't possible for something to die in the land of the dead – weren't you supposed to be dead already, after all? – and he only barely bit back against sharply informing Hook of his ineptitude. "You can't," he said simply, gasping through the pain of being stabbed, of having the Dark Curse transferred from his body.

Bae, however, didn't know that no one was going to die here, because he emerged from his and Emma's hiding spot, declaring, "Hook, don't! You don't want to kill these people – our friends. Their blood is on your hands. But only if you give into the idea of killing them, and you don't really want to do that."

"Fine," Hook snarled, kicking at the sword – Milah's – that Rumple still held as he declared, "I'll just kill your father, then."

"No!" Bae cried.

"He knew what was going to happen to Milah!" Hook screamed back, glancing at the unconscious woman as he took Excalibur from her hands and pointed it at Rumple. "He did it on purpose, and now he dies for that." Narrowing his eyes at Rumplestiltskin, Hook growled, "Either you get up and fight this or you crawl away and die alone like a coward." The pirate smirked. "You are a coward, after all."

Rumplestiltskin didn't think he was a coward anymore – Merida, at least, had recently taught him better than that – but he was powerless now, and wounded. This wasn't a fight he was likely to win, he knew. Still, no one stepped forward to help him – why would they, just as they were realizing how he'd double-crossed them so that he could obtain the Dark Curse again? – so he struggled onto his feet, clutching his side as he stumbled on his first step.