Chapter Four - Pain
"Give me my son!" Dark Emma demanded again, her right hand clenched tight around the dark dagger.
"Never!" Regina declared, getting shakily to her feet and readying one of her fireballs.
Emma swatted Regina's fireball away as if it were merely a pesky fly. She raised the dagger and charged at Regina with murder in her eyes. But just as her blade slashed forward towards Regina's throat, Robin Hood drove in front of Regina and took the injury instead. The former outlaw slumped to the ground... his eyes fixed and unmoving.
"NO!" Regina screamed as she caught Robin's body mid-slump, letting it bear them both to the pavement.
Snow, Charming and Hook stood in shocked silence around Regina as Emma shrugged them off and vanished in a puff of black smoke.
00EMMA00
It's several hours later and Emma Swan, The Dark One... is bored. Sitting at the counter in the apartment she'd shared with her parents and baby brother, she spun the dagger idly on the cracked surface, and tried to think of a something to do while she waited. She felt its presence and addressed it without turning around, "Not you again."
A shadowy figure had appeared behind her. It wore a long black hood which hid its face. "How did it feel?" it asked.
Emma shrugged, "I have no idea what you mean." she lied. "Besides..." she added waving her dagger, "...the Dark One feels nothing."
"We both know that's not true."
Emma made a rude gesture and resumed her dagger spinning.
The shadow giggled archly, "Gesticulate all you want Dearie, there are some things you can never take back."
"He jumped in front of my knife. Not my fault."
"Oh I wasn't referring the thief, Dearie. Robin Hood simply crossed one Dark One too many, Noo no, I was actually talking about my grandson... you know the one I mean. Talkative, loves cinnamon, is currently lying unconscious on your floor..."
Emma looked down at Henry who was as the shadow said unconscious on the floor.
"That was an accident." said Emma firmly, "After the... incident in town; I went to find him..."
"Planning to run away were you? Trust me, Dearie. It doesn't work."
"...Henry said he didn't want to come with me and when I tried to use magic to drag him towards me it... it went wrong somehow" she said softly, looking down at her hands as if they belonged to another, "Instead of pulling him closer it shoved him back towards the wall and knocked him out."
"Sounds like your new dark nature isn't getting along too well with your old white magic." said the shadow. It looked down at Henry, "Why don't you use your healing magic to wake him up?" it asked. "It's not hard, let me show you..."
"No!" she said moving between her son and the shadow, "I'm afraid if I use my healing that could go wrong too and I'll hurt him even more." Her jaw tightened, "Besides, I don't think you can help me anyhow. You're nothing but a shadow, Rumplestiltskin."
Shadow Rumple smiled under his dark robes, "Don't be afraid to ask for help if you need it Dark One, I'll always be around..." the shadow giggled again as it disappeared.
The clock chime brought Emma back to herself and she smiled putting the shadow out her mind. She knew what she needed.
00EMMA00
Tired from a night of fruitless searching for Henry the people of storybrook met up at Granny's Dinner to plan their next move...
Snow cradled the glass of hot chocolate between her palms, letting the warmth sink in as she waited for it to cool down to a reasonable sipping temperature.
Charming slipped his arm around Snow's shoulder and kissed her on the side of her head, "I think we should call off the search for tonight. Henry could be anywhere by now."
"But we can't just give up." Snow said, as tears began to form in her tired coal black eyes.
"It's pointless!" said Regina knocking back a shot of bourbon, "If Emma wants to hide Henry, she can easily poof off with him in a moment's notice the minute one of the search parties gets close."
"For all we know they could be in Timbuktu by now." Grumpy muttered over the rim of his second beer.
"No." Regina shook her head, "Magic doesn't work like that here. Believe me if Gold could've gotten out of town with all his magic he'd have done it a long time ago. No no, in this realm magic only works within the boundaries of Storybrook itself. They're both still here. Emma just doesn't want to be found."
"They could've opened a portal or a magic door or something..." Ruby offered.
"Passage into other realms is rare and hard to come by. Like refills." Regina reminded the often absent waitress.
"Only because someone destroyed our entire bean crop..." Grumpy grumbled, reminding everyone that Regina had razed the magic bean fields last year.
Snow got up from her stool and stood by Regina's side, subtly reminding everyone that Regina was now on their side, "Don't worry." she said putting a hand on Regina's shoulder. "She's his mother. She won't hurt him."
Charming nodded, adding, "Speaking of mothers, maybe you and I should go home and check on baby Neal. He could probably use..."
"NEAL!" Snow screamed running for the door, "I left him with Belle this morning!"
"But Belle's been sitting with Gold all night hasn't she?" Charming asked, joining his wife in her panic.
"Glad to see you finally remembered your son." Granny said from behind the counter where she stood with her arms crossed. "Don't worry; he's back in the kitchen sleeping off his dinner. Belle dropped him off here earlier." Granny frowned, "Though why she'd want to waste her time watching Gold sleep is beyond me..."
Looking suitably chastened, Snow and Charming thanked Granny and went back to check on their son.
Setting her drink back on the counter Regina tuned out the rabble as her thoughts turned to a subject she'd been avoiding for hours. Roland, I'll have to tell him about his father soon. It'll be even worse if he hears it from someone else. She rose unsteadily to her feet and quickly downed the rest of her drink. Best to get it over with, she thought heading for the door. But as her hand reached for the door it was flung open in her face, nearly knocking her over as Emma entered the dinner.
Emma Swan now dressed in a sparkling white pant suit covered in gaudy sequence and accented with a black swan feather boa swaggered into the dinner and approached the counter. "Hot chocolate" she ordered, fixing Granny with a militant stare, "NO cinnamon." Regina glared at her briefly and then she did a very un-Regina like thing and simply walked out the door that Emma had conveniently left open, rather than start another confrontation.
"Emma?" Snow came running out of the kitchen holding baby Neal with Charming nipping at her heals, "Honey... are you ok?"
"Of course she's not ok." interjected Grumpy, "She just absorbed the darkest evil in all the realms. How could she possibly be ok..."
"Leroy please." Charming chided, as he and Snow moved to flank Emma, not in a military sense or anything, more as a show of support.
You... look... good?" said Snow, stumbling over her words. "Very... radiant."
"Yeah I'm positively sparkling these days."
"Emma... what happened to you when you disappeared?" Snow asked, her voice full of motherly concern.
"Nothing happened." Emma lied to her mother, "I just vanished..."
00EMMA00
It had seemed like the right thing, the heroic thing, but as the blackness funneled into her, Emma knew she'd made the wrong call. She could feel it creeping up her body like she was drowning in the darkness. The blackness was absolute, it was unchanging and inescapable ...and then it wasn't. The dark mist lifted like a veil before her eyes and she saw that she was no longer in Storybrooke, but in a village. Though she was sure she'd never been in this particular village before, she was sure she was back in The Enchanted Forest. Suddenly she heard a soft voice in the forest and in the blink of an eye she was transported deep into the wood, along a winding road that had clearly never seen concrete.
Ahead she saw a man and boy stumbling down the road.
"It feels wrong to run away." said the boy.
"It's worse to die, son." the man replied, "I'm not having you taken away to the Ogres' war."
Emma noticed the man walked with a crutch. He also looked scared to death. Just then a beggar appeared, funny that she hadn't noticed him before...
"Alms for the poor?" the beggar called in a thin voice, "Alms for the poor?"
The lame man must've been moved by his plea, for despite his own impoverished appearance he dug into his small purse and handed the beggar a few coins.
"Oh! Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!" the beggar chorused, moving off towards the town, no doubt to try his luck with the people there.
Emma wasn't interested in the beggar just now. She watched as the man and boy continued their slow flight into the woods.
"Are we sure there's no other way?" the boy asked.
"Oh, I can't lose you, Bae. You're all I've got left, son. You don't understand what war is like – what they do to you..."
"Bae?" Emma repeated the name under her breath like a prayer, as the pieces fell into place in her mind. Neal! Her mind reeled at the thought, but somehow she knew she was witnessing something that had happened centuries ago to the first man she had ever truly loved. But if the child is Neal than that must be his father Rum...
"That's right Dearie, it's all starting knit together now isn't it."
Emma spun around to see a man in dark robes. His face was half hidden by the deep cowl he wore, but the specter's twisted smile was unmistakably golden.
"Gold." she hissed through clenched teeth, "Why did you bring me here?"
"I?" the specter's voice dissolved into a high giggle, "I have done nothing Dark One. This journey you're on isn't by my will. I am dead after all." he chuckled, "Mostly dead anyway."
"Take me back to Storybook and I'll be happy to finish the job." she growled.
The specter of Rumpelstiltskin placed a vaguely transparent hand to his heart in a pantomime of hurt feelings, "Such hostility."
"Oh yeah." Emma nodded emphatically.
The specter giggled again and disappeared just as she lunged at his throat. Emma's hands clenched and unclenched with anger. Everybody in this whole damn universe is a dirty rotten bastard. Hearing a jeering sort of laughter, she turned around to see the lame man and his so... and Baelfire... were now surrounded by soldiers who were mocking Rumplestiltskin...
"Hmmm... what was your name?" the lead soldier asked, "Spindleshanks? Threadwhistle? Hobblefoot?"
The boy spoke up proudly, "His name's Rumplestiltskin!"
Frightened by his son's boldness, Rumplestiltskin hushed his son, but the soldier all to clearly recognized his name. "Ah... the man who ran. Is this your boy? How old is he? What's your name?"
"I'm Baelfire and I'm thirteen."
"When's your birthday?"
"In two days time."
Rumpelstiltskin blanched; did his son not understand the danger he was in? "Hush, boy!" he said. Tears started to form in his eyes.
"Did you teach him how to run as well, Rumpelstiltskin? Did he tell you? Did he tell you how he ran and the ogres turned the tide of the battle, and all the others were killed, and he returned home to a wife who could not bear the sight of him?"
"Please…" Rumpelstiltskin begged, willing the swaggering soldier to be silent.
"You see, women do not like to be married to cowards."
"Please don't speak to my boy like that."
"It's treason to avoid service. Take the boy now."
"No, no, no, no! What do you want?"
"What do I want? You have no money, no influence, no land, no title, no power. The truth is, all you really have is... fealty. Kiss my boot."
"I don't understand..."
"You asked my price. Kiss my boot."
"Not in front of my boy."
"Kiss my boot!"
Emma watched in disgust as Rumplestiltskin fell to his knees and kissed the soldiers filthy boots. "Right." she said, "That's enough of that!" charging at the men Emma expelled a bolt of lightning at the lead soldier's arrogant head, but the bolt went right through him and disappeared in a disappointing pop.
"I'm afraid you can't change the past my child. No matter how much you may wish too."
Emma spun round to see the shadow had returned. Yet when she squinted her eyes a bit she realized that this shadow was different, greyer in the places the other was golden and where Gold had been slightly transparent, she could see right through Zoso. "Oh, great, another one, so who exactly are you?" she asked.
"Oh, just another part of you my child" the grey shadow said, "Another dark desperate soul who placed themselves beyond redemption." he threw back the hood of his cloak, "My name was Zoso."
"Ok. Nice to meet you, 'Zoso', well not exactly nice, but you know what I mean." Emma said, crossing her arms, "So I have a few questions." the shadow nodded, which Emma took as a signal to continue, "Alright... let's start with why are I am here? Why doesn't my magic work anymore? Oh and you wouldn't happen to know how I can get rid of this, you know, 'Dark One' thing would you?"
Zoso smiled revealing an incomplete set of jagged yellow teeth, "You're here to meet yourself, child and you're magic doesn't work because this is the Shadowland of Memory and nothing can truly be altered here. And as for your last question, The Dark Ones hosts have been trying to rid themselves of the dark curse for many centuries. None have succeeded, though Rumplestiltskin came close."
"You meant that wizard hat thing where he tried to murder Hook?"
Zoso nodded solemnly. "Pity you didn't allow him to succeed. You might have saved the realms from a new kind of Dark Age."
"Oh please! Gold wasn't doing that for the realms, he was doing it for himself!"
"And you?"
"I'm doing this for my family and for my friends! Totally different."
"The shadow remained silent.
"Are you going guys going to be poofing in and out of my life all night like the old Dickens play or what?" Emma asked.
Zoso shook his head, "We are but shadows Emma. Memories if you like. We're here because we're part of you now and you need to know yourself before you can move on."
Emma looked back at the road to see Rumple and Bae had been joined by the beggar once more, "Wait!" she spun back around to face the shadow, "That's you! You were the beggar!"
Zoso nodded, "I was the beggar." he confirmed, "But it wasn't really gold that I was begging for." he paused, "I begged for death." The shadow reached out his hand and touched Emma on the shoulder and the scene changed. They were now in a clearing apparently somewhere deeper in the woods. The road was gone at any rate and before her a different scene was playing out... Rumplestiltskin stood in the middle of the clearing holding up his dagger... no, not his dagger yet. The engraving on the knife bore Zoso's name. He was trying to summon The Dark One!
"Zoso... ZOSO! I summon thee!"
Nothing happened at first, but just when Rumple seemed to be losing all hope that his plan could work, The Dark One appeared behind him, startling him.
"You were asking for me?" The Dark One intoned.
"Submit, O Dark One! I control you!"
The words were strong, but Emma could feel the fear behind his eyes so strongly that it almost seemed like the fear belonged to her. Maybe it did now.
"Yes, you do. Wield the power wisely. You can wield at any time now. It's almost dawn. That means it's your son's birthday. I bet Hordor and his men are already on their way to your house."
A sudden wave of fear nearly dropped the bottom out of Emma's stomach.
"No, they can't take him!"
"You don't control them; you control me. Have you ever wondered, was he really your child at all? Unlike you, he's not a coward and yearns to fight and die in glory."
"Talk about a low blow." Emma muttered, wishing she had the power to stop what was about to happen.
"What a poor bargain that would be," Zoso continued, "to lay down your soul to save your bastard son." he paused, "So, I ask you... what would you have me do?"
I look of determination crossed Rumpelstiltskin's weak face, "Die." without hesitating he plunged the knife into Zoso's chest.
Bad move, thought Emma even as Zoso began to laugh revealing his true identity to his unfortunate savior.
"It's you. You're the beggar."
Sounds like the poor bastard has finally realized that he's been tricked, thought Emma with a surprising stab of sympathy. She wasn't entirely sure if the sympathy came from her or from Zoso.
"Looks like you made a deal you didn't understand. I don't think you're going to do that again."
Guess that's where the deals came in...
"You told me to kill you..." Rumple said, the hurt plain in his voice.
"My life was such a burden. You'll see. Magic always comes with a price and now, it's yours to pay."
Once more a knot of fear ripped away at Emma's stomach. It was hers to pay now. She realized for the first time the true enormity of what she'd done.
"Why me? Why me?" Rumple demanded.
"I know how to recognize a desperate soul."
"No! No! Stay! You have to tell me what to do! Tell me what to do!" Rumple cried in anguish and regret. His skin began to take on a golden hue as he removed the dagger from Zoso's body only to see that the name on the dagger had changed. Now it bore his own name in deep engraved letters. Tears flowed down his cheeks as he disappeared from the clearing in a puff of black smoke leaving the dagger behind to fall noiselessly to the soft ground.
"No wait!" Emma cried, rushing into the clearing. "Where did he go?" she asked, turning back to the shadow. "Why I'm right here, Dearie," said the shadow, dropping his hood to reveal that Gold's shadow had returned.
Emma looked down at the dagger lying at her feet, still stained crimson with Zoso's blood. "Why did you leave it behind? Surely..."
"He'll come back for it later." Shadow Rumple said, "luckily for him no one else came along and snatched it up while he was ...here."
"And by here you mean, HERE." Emma indicated the woods around them, but the shadow knew what she meant. "So you went through this too? Why?"
"All Dark Ones must come here first." he confirmed, "Though I have to admit, Dearie, I don't really know why."
"What happened when you were here?" she asked.
"Oh same old same old." Rumple said in a strange sing song voice, "I came. I saw. I left."
"But what exactly did you see Gold? Why do you always have to talk in riddles! You're dead, stop acting like a child."
Rumple giggled, "Well let's me think back now... it's been every such a long life I led after all. Things get hazy... Oh yes. I remember appearing in a quaint little village full of strange people who completely ignored me when I begged them for help. Not that I'm not used to being ignored, but these people really took things too far..."
"They couldn't see you!" snapped Emma. "Just... just get on with it." she added in a more civil tone.
"Fine." said Gold, "After a time I felt myself drawn, as it were, towards a certain humble cottage on the edge of town and there I witnessed a most... touching domestic scene between a baker and his wife. Apparently they'd been wed for quite some time now and the wife was getting a mite... impatient about having a child and she was demanding that her husband go into the garden of the witch next door..."
"A witch lived next door?" Emma rolled her eyes, "Ok, I can see that this won't go well. Why in Hell didn't they just move?"
"House hunting in the Enchanted Forest is a more complicated affair than you might realize."
"Fine. So the baker went into the witch's garden..." Emma prompted, deciding she might as well hear the rest of the story.
"Yes, and he stole some cabbage..."
"Cabbage really?"
"What did you expect a doughnut bush?"
Emma rolled her eyes again and motioned for him to continue.
"The cabbage was magical you see and by eating it, the baker's wife was able to become pregnant at last and all was well for a time. But as the baker's wife's belly grew she demanded more and more cabbage from the witch's garden. Nothing else would satisfy her hunger and one day the baker's luck ran out and the witch caught him stealing her cabbage."
"I bet that went well."
"Indeed not, for the witch demanded payment for the pilfered magic and the baker being a poor man had no money to pay her with. So..." the shadow paused, "she took his wife and their unborn child and sent them away to another realm where the baker could never hope to see them again."
The shadow of Rumplestiltskin paused and Emma knew he was sad, because she felt it too.
"Did he ever find her?" she asked.
"He looked for a long time. He roamed the realms asking for news of his wife and their child. Paying calls on every witch and wizard he could find to beg them to help him, but none of them would interfere in the matter. The baker grew old wandering, until one day he chanced to meet a soldier with an invisible cloak who promised to help him find his wife if he could kill a particular pig..."
"That's it? All those years wandering and all needed to do was to kill a pig?"
"I'm afraid it wasn't as easy as that."
"It never is, but go on, what was the catch?"
"The 'catch' was that the pig was invisible. It sounded like an impossible task, but the baker was a desperate man so he agreed to try. The soldier handed the baker a dagger and pointed to his right, saying 'the pig is over there, can't you hear it?'. The baker lunged at the spot where the bird had been only to hear pig grunts coming from behind him. Round and round he danced stabbing at the air, trying to stab the pig, but what he didn't know was that the invisible pig never existed. It was simply the soldier in his invisible cloak playing a trick on him. The soldier easy avoided his blows until the baker's feigned a stab to the right while holding his leg out behind him hoping to trip the pig up."
"Did it work?"
"It did. The baker felt the heavy body fall to the ground and he stabbed it. He was trying to kill the pig of course, but you can guess what he really killed."
"The previous Dark One?"
Gold nodded, "I never got to hear Claus' story I'm afraid. But I got the impression from Zoso that he was rather a silly little man and being the Dark One was one big joke to him."
"Did Zoso find his wife and child at least?"
"He did, but alas they were terrified of him and what he'd become. Also the wife had remarried in the far away realm the witch had sent her too and thanks to all that cabbage it had been a rather productive marriage. Fourteen boys in fact, and they did not appreciate mummy ex showing up from what I heard."
"That's too bad." Emma asked, "So did you ever meet Claus when you were in limboland? Is he going to show up here in a few minutes to show me his story?"
"The memories fade." said Shadow Rumple, "The further into the past the more faded they become... and Zoso clearly had little interest in keeping Claus' memories alive." he paused, adding forebodingly, "The memories of the hosts fade away with time, Dearie, but remember this well new Dark One... HE always abides..."
"What the Hell does that mean?!" Emma demanded, but the shadow of Rumplestiltskin had already fled.
Emma felt a deep overwhelming nausea hit her. Almost against her will she turned around to see that a new shadow was coming for her. As the darkness came for her Emma willed herself to run, but her legs refused to obey and as the dark shadow inundated her, the last vestiges of the woman who used to be Emma Swan began to scream.