She is not without sin.
As susceptible to her darker desires and impulses as his once prized pupil had been and just as formidable when she needed to be.
This is how Emma had once nearly killed the Evil Queen.
She had been so curious, seemingly out of the blue, particularly about what it meant to be a savior. "There must be some advantages to it. Not just the ability to break a dark curse that was never cast."
And she'd been relentless in her quest for answers. Managing to coax from him a theory he'd had about her. "It's not just that you're the savior that matters but that you are also the product of true love. It makes the magic you naturally possess unique and unpredictably powerful."
"How so?" she had asked.
It was not long after that when the Dark One found himself being unexpectedly and desperately beckoned to her side.
"She tried to rip my heart out but it didn't work." Emma did not look up as she described the encounter, eyes too entranced by the pitiful sight and sounds of the woman laying helplessly at her feet. "I managed to strike back while she was distracted."
Rumplestiltskin sauntered closer to study the carnage wrecked upon his former student. The Queen groaned and gurgled up blood in a fit of coughs as she clutched at her abdomen frantically. Her brown eyes, once she was able to focus them upwards, begged for him to save her though the added sneer she gave suggested only contempt at the prospect of having to plead for it.
He promptly aligned himself next to the Princess, glimpsed the dagger still held tightly in her right hand, before bemoaning woefully, "It's a sad thing to see such ingenuity go to utter waste."
With that and a brisk flick of his wrist the damage was swiftly undone to Her Majesty. Emma gaped at him openly, as did Regina. He spared the latter a single warning glance before snatching up the blonde and ushering them both away in a puff of smoke.
Once they had reappeared into the darkened castle, he turned his head away, declaring to the two figures standing and waiting nearby, "as promised."
Emma whipped her head around to see who he was talking to. Her whole body turned to stone.
"Your daughter's hands remain clean."
He gives them a quick look over before adding, "Symbolically speaking, of course. She'll need to wash off the actual blood for the expression to ring true."
Emma shoved herself away from his hold, marching towards her parents in a flustered rage, "what have you done?"
"Stopped you from making a terrible mistake," Snow said, looking at her daughter with a mixture of disappointment and sadness. "We are not cold blooded killers, Emma. We raised you to be stronger than that, to be better than them. It's what has always separated us from the evil in this world."
"The Evil Queen attacked me. I was only defending myself."
"You knowingly went wondering alone into the borders of her land looking for a confrontation. You wanted her to find you." David said harshly, echoing his wife's disapproval. "You planned this."
Her father's accusations—seemingly accurate accusations by his daughter's reactions—silenced the Princess completely.
So instead she directed her vexation at him. "What did you promise the Dark One for this?"
Said Dark One chimed in shamelessly before the King and Queen could, "an invitation, dearie."
All three royals shot him a heated glare before Emma turned back to her parents for further clarification. Finally, Snow explained.
"To the ball we were going to surprise you with for your birthday."
Mortified and furious by the unwanted turn of events, Emma threw the bloodied blade to the floor, beaten; it clattered against the stone loudly as she spun on her heels and marched straight out of the throne room. Rumplestiltskin watched her go, thoroughly besotted by those same turn of events.
"See you at the party," he declared gleefully at Charming and Snow before vanishing from sight.
.
.
.
.
She is resigned to her impending fate.
This Rumplestiltskin had not wanted. Nor the weight of the unease that follows and sits upon his shoulders and against is chest at the realization of the fact.
They sit across from one another in the carriage; the journey to Her Majesty's castle a long and rocky one. Both swaying from side to side as the horses trotted forward on the uneven road though they're eyes rarely wavered from one another. Assessing and calculating, with even the occasional flash of bewilderment by the changing shades of the other's.
"Why not just magically transport us there?"
She is better now, for the most part. He had made it so.
"Why are you prolonging this? It seems cruel, even by your standards." Emma inquired insistently, not out of fear but more so a detached curiosity. "Just give me to her and collect your prize."
"Perhaps I'm savoring my victory." He rebuffs, unamused. "You have turned out to be no more than an inconvenience to me and my time after all these years. Time I could have had with her. It's almost cathartic to be wasting yours now."
"Of what is left of it, you mean." She snapped back.
They carry on in silence after that, their final destination drawing nearer with each passing moment unspoken. Emma actively avoids his gaze until finally Rumplestiltskin is unable to help himself.
"It didn't need to be this way." He reprimands sharply, incapable any longer to shake off the anger at her incessant stubbornness and the path it's led them to. "I offered you ample opportunity to avoid this particular ending for yourself."
She is visibly stunned by his declaration, by the raw and unadulterated bitterness of it.
Momentarily at least, inspired and seemingly finding her next course of words on a whim. "You know, I asked my father once if a self-proclaimed beast such as you could ever love someone purely and without ulterior motive. " She paused then; to gradually remember the details that followed. "He told me that he believed that you could. That he even suspected that you had. And that he believed wholeheartedly that anyone could be made better by love."
Emma shakes her head at the memory, a bemused but weary sort of smirk dancing across her lips as she reminisced and finally concluded, "I am not so certain of that."
He can only nod agreeably, "I've always considered myself a difficult man to love."
"Loving you was not the problem." She conceded, sighing at the crux of the matter. "Being loved by you was."
The carriage soon slowed. Then came to a dead stop.
.
.
.
.
She is so very happy, some of the time.
He finds ways to make her forget her growing anger and resentment towards him, of her frustration and exhaustion with their dealings together, and of his ongoing manipulations of them to try and tame his seemingly never-ending want and obsession with having her near. Ardently seeking out ways instead to make her flash a real smile for him and be thoroughly delighted by his antics as he had once done so easily back when she had been nothing more to Rumplestiltskin than an exasperating but good-spirited child to amuse his loneliness with.
When they had toyed with the novice elements of magic to pull off pranks and played games of grand and make believe adventures with each other.
A simpler time, for them both, "there are really other worlds?"
Emma asked him dubiously, and for what felt like the hundredth time that day, as he led her down the empty hallway; on their way to being transported to the room with the other worldly doors. She held on tightly to his hand today as he guided her; a clear indication of the excitement she surely felt at the prospect of such a strange and wonderful journey to be had.
"Stop asking that question," he scolded though his tone remained light and nearly teasing, "I'm showing you, aren't I."
"I know but it's just so hard to imagine," Emma said.
"There are many different worlds to explore and see. Some too fantastical to even begin to explain with any clear logic, such is the place called Wonderland. You remember hearing stories of that one." He elaborated, determined to excite her further. "Then there are others that are so odd that they lack any color to them at all. I knew a mad doctor in that one."
Once they had arrived, the hat of an old friend gripped in hand, Emma finally asked, "which one will you take me to?"
"Wherever you'd like to go," he urged her forward. "The final choice, as always, is yours alone to make."
She'd barely been able to suppress her wide grin then as she slipped away and wondered past each and every door tempted but studiously before making her decision. Rumplestiltskin's hungry eyes had never strayed once from the sight of its joyful glow.
Oh yes, he could make her so very happy, some of the time.
Author's Notes:
It's an early Christmas miracle :) This story keeps wanting to evolve so I've decided to let it. Its definitely expanded beyond the two/maybe three chapters I initially planned for it to be.
Hope you all are still liking it. Cheers! Xoxox