Icy rain sliced through his very eyelashes. His feet sank into the thick mud, so much so each new step was harder than the last. A shivering, filthy mess, remembering times when he'd been wrapped in furs over lush robes added to the torture. King George, reduced without compunction to George, hobbled downhill into the trees.
The mud came to his knees now, but it beat walking along the road where any moment that ungrateful bastard and his simpering wife and their entourage could recapture him. He didn't care about the drab garment they'd shoved him in once he became a prisoner, thread-bare and patched before it had ever touched him. It was the shoes he hoped would hold out. A flash of lightning split the sky, giving him just enough time to spot a fallen log not too far. At the start of the rumbling thunder he crawled into it.
"Cozy, but I still prefer a draft to this." George barely had enough time to recognize the high-pitched giggle before he heard a snap of fingers. All of a sudden, he found himself squatting in the foyer of the Dark Castle itself, gray but dry, the only color in the entire room a vase of wilting roses.
"That's better," Rumpelstiltskin said, no raindrops on his leathery apparel.
"Please, make a deal with me," George coughed and noticed his fingernails were tinged with blue.
"I already did, dearie. I even compensated you for one twin with another, and it looks like Prince James-Second-Try is doing quite well for himself."
"Don't call him that," George snapped. He followed the imp through a dining room to a parlor, one with little décor or knickknacks, but with a lit fireplace. He couldn't wait for permission. He strode right over to it and held his hands out in front of the fire. "What do you want with me?"
"Why, what kind of subject is that for me to start when I have company?" His hand flew to his heart in mock indignation. "You are the guest. Let's hear what you want first."
"I don't care what I have to do. Give me my kingdom back. Dispose David and Snow White and place me back on the throne as if nothing had ever happened."
"You're sure it isn't just some comfort food you want?" Two steaming bowls of soup appeared on the little table between the two massive easy chairs.
"Don't toy with me, Rumpelstiltskin. You found me and brought me here. That can only mean you want to make a deal." Enough with a king's dignity, he thought, picking up the bowl and letting it heat his palms. A prisoner's desperation would be the key to warmth and some food in his system.
"I do indeed. You know me so well!" With flourish in his arms, he produced a yellowed map with row upon row of trees between the white creases. The green of the forested clusters had begun to fade, but George could see a scattering of black dots with thin script showing the names of villages.
"I won't restore your kingdom to you, or help you find some ironic end to those who disposed of you. However, you can do something for me and get something better than a hiding place."
"And what would that be?"
"A cloaking spell, one that would bend to your will. If you didn't want someone to see you, a tall, gallant, princely someone..." Rumpelstiltskin hissed, adding bite to each syllable. "...you could render yourself invisible until you wanted those around you to see you again. Easy way to evade guards, as long as you see them first."
"And what is the price?"
"Now we're talking! You must go to this grove here on the map." He smacked his hand into the map as hard as he could. "It's a fairy grove. You will act the contrite, penitent man who would be on the brink of self-destruction but for a flicker of light in the form of redemption. Too eloquent for you? Well then, you will go to this grove, befriend the fairies that live there and offer them your services. Weeder of the forest or something like that. You will listen to them, find out everything you can, and report back to me. In exchange, I do not see to it Prince Charming finds you and has you promptly executed for escaping prison. Do we have a deal?"
"That's not a deal, that's blackmail," George said, his chin high.
"Then do we have a blackmail?" Rumpelstiltskin asked, nonplussed, extending his hand.
What choice do I have, George thought, once again sealing his fate with a handshake.
"The deal is struck."
"Hello?" Belle used to shout into the receiver, holding it a good six inches from her ear. The cell phone she had now certainly had its advantages, but she still felt more comfortable with the curly-corded red phone in her apartment.
"Belle, it's Ruby. You need to come meet me at the hospital right away."
"Oh no, are you all right?" She bolted up from the recliner as if it were a hot plate.
"I'm fine. I got a call from V—Dr. Whale." Her voice dropped an octave. "You won't believe who's there."
"Where is he? Where is the son of a bitch?" Ruby raced into the hospital, gold replacing her hazel irises, the whites of her eyes disappearing, and it was not even a full moon.
"Ruby, stop!" she called, watching Dr. Whale throw his arms around her, holding her back from the room.
"Monsters," it sounded like he'd whispered in her ear, some reference to something Belle didn't know. Loosening in his grasp, she inhaled and closed her eyes. When she opened them, Ruby was back. Belle sighed.
"He's pretty banged up, a little dehydrated, stitches in a few places, sprained ankle," Dr. Whale said outside D. A. Spencer's room. "If I had to venture a guess, I'd say he was running and then tripped and fell downhill...more a girl-in-a-horror-movie thing, but known to happen to older men, too." He cleared his throat when Belle didn't laugh. "We're going to keep him overnight for observation and then I didn't know if you two were..." Glancing at Ruby, he cleared his throat again.
"You aren't supposed to tell just anyone what's wrong with a patient," Belle said.
"I...I was under the impression..." Looking at Ruby one more time, he lowered his voice. "You're not acting sheriff yet?"
"No, not yet, but, you know, soon." She shrugged.
Dr. Whale's head fell back against the glass wall that stood between them and the patient while he stared up at the ceiling. "Okay, make a citizen's arrest."
"What's that?"
"Look, we have no mayor, no sheriff, not even an official deputy running around. Believe me, David Nolan decked me pretty good. My jaw would start acting up if he were around." Whale stroked his jaw and smiled. "You just tell him you're making a citizen's arrest, tell him why, and find a way to detain him until somebody official comes along, which, if you two play your cards right, will be yourselves. You're running unopposed."
"Thanks," she said after a pause. "I, I'll want to talk to him when he wakes up. Ruby, maybe you could buy Dr. Whale some coffee or something?"
"Sure," Ruby said, slipping her jacket over her shoulder. "Let's go."
She sat at the edge of his bedside, wringing her hands. Detaining him while still in the hospital was possible, if not ideal, and she wouldn't stuff her worst enemy in her old cell in the basement. There was an element of presence in her demeanor that had never formed, trivial bits from stories—character names, settings about details, recurring themes—filling in that particular space of her brain. She'd used confrontation as a last resort because it seemed she was incapable of intimidating anyone. Appealing to another's better judgment worked better for her, but she just knew that wouldn't work now. His eyelashes fluttered. Her chest heaved.
"Hello, Mr. Spencer." A series of blinks from glacier-blue eyes answered her, a still moment of contemplation.
"I've seen you before."
"Yes, I was at Granny's the night you confronted David Nolan. That was the night you cut up Billy."
"The mouse," he whispered, not from regret but from exhaustion.
"He was a man, and he was someone's friend." Standing up, she hoped she appeared to be towering over him. "I need you to tell me what happened to you."
"I don't have to tell you a thing," he said, straightening his body until he lied rigid. With the button, he brought himself to a reclining position, the bed his throne.
"You took a man's life. You're nothing but a danger to Storybrooke."
"I don't know who you were in the real world, the one we're from, but I happened to be a king. That may have happened by blood, but it was a thirty-year reign. You don't rule a kingdom for thirty years if you're the kind of person who answers to a simpering wholesome little girl playing detective," he said without flinching. For not even two seconds, she considered playing her princess card, turning up a futile smile at how little that would accomplish. Well, no appealing to one's better judgment, she thought. She would have to tell a little white lie.
"Are you a reader, Mr. Spencer?" She knew he wouldn't answer, so she leaned down closer, as she'd seen them do on Law and Order. "It's a hobby of mine. I just finished a wonderful play, Hamlet. Do you know it? It's about a prince and the torture he undergoes deciding how to act after realizing his uncle murdered his father. It's a play about poisons, really. How he did it was Claudius, the uncle, dropped some poison into the king's ear. I'm not sure how that works, but there's a poisoned chalice at the end, which Hamlet forces his uncle to drink from and kills him. What's sad is that his own mother also drank from it, by mistake. It would be so easy for someone to slip some poison into the hospital food or a drink, or maybe even your medicine. Do you see the point I'm trying to make?"
"It's not a subtle one," he retorted.
"No, maybe not, but..." She pinched the sheets, plucking and rolling her hand along. "You do have to eat and drink, doesn't matter where. I know the nuns took you in, for example. I have nothing better to do, though, and there are poisons that have no taste."
"Threatening me isn't wise," he said.
"I don't see why it isn't. You've been in hiding because everyone knows you're a murderer. Dr. Whale wouldn't need much temptation to put down whatever cause of death he wanted. And I would get away with it." She hoisted herself back up and rested her weight on her arm. "See, I'm honest, Mr. Spencer. People believe me when I say things. Even now if you told anyone I threatened you, they wouldn't believe you. They wouldn't believe you because you're a murderer and I've never threatened anyone."
Spencer eyed her, a simmering hatred behind his cold eyes. With just the faintest twitching of a vein in his neck, his mouth dropped open a centimeter.
"The nuns threw me out."
"The nuns threw you out?" It sounded like the zany plot of a television show, large penguin-dressed old women with rulers forcing a man to run a gauntlet.
"I made a deal with Rumpelstiltskin, not long after that ungrateful imposter and his wife dethroned me. I was to report back to him on what the fairies were doing, how much magic they had. I had started with his suggestion, that I be repentant and do chores for them to gain their trust. They seemed suspicious so I said that he had hired me to spy on them but that I didn't want to. I wanted to protect them from him. That, they believed."
"What happened?"
"I reported back to Rumpelstiltskin. I chose the power I'd seen firsthand over the fluffy, flighty power they had. Once he had everything he wanted, he considered our deal complete and he burned their hollow to the ground."
Belle bit her lip, hearing about such atrocities not new, but still always left her nauseated.
"It was before his own imprisonment, of course," Spencer continued. "The Blue Fairy had been working on proving he was behind that all this time. Once she learned my part, the ire began." He wrinkled his face in pain, reliving his beating. He did not speak again until he composed himself. "She said she wished for nothing more than for the portal that took his son to have taken him, too, that our world wouldn't be able to survive both his and the fairies' power. It was the longest I'd heard her speak, raving about how she'd finally found a way to see the end of him."
"What did she mean?" she breathed. No. The words of the prophesy, that a boy would be his undoing with her own selfish, careless Lacey advising him to just get rid of those who stood in his way, echoed in her mind.
"I don't know more than that. Now, I would like to get some rest without fear of eating whatever is on the tray when I wake up. I told you what I know. No need to fear poisoning?"
"Not by me," she said, seeing Whale and Ruby return, laughing and talking like old friends. Good thing she'd calmed down. Leaving the room without looking back at him, she reached for both Ruby's hands. "You're okay?"
"Yeah, just a, a reflex," she said. "What did you find out?"
"I think our friends are in danger." Her hand clasped the back of her neck as she paced. Rumple, his entire family, the people who had welcomed her into their circle and helped her adapt to this new world and its oddities. She clamped her eyes shut, willing a plan, anything. A lively imagination and a knack for remembering stories never left Belle with empty darkness when she closed her eyes until now.
"There has to be a way to communicate with them," Ruby said. Belle refused to shake her head.
"I think I might know a way," Whale said. "Follow me."
A/N: Do NOT make a citizen's arrest this way. All that really is is assessing a situation and calling the police. You can't even handcuff or tie up anyone you would be doing this to. Just some artistic license and I would hope you don't learn laws from OUAT. I also think it would be presumptuous of Belle to live in Rumple's house while he's gone for some reason. They weren't living together as of the finale and I just felt it would be more in-character for her to hang onto whatever living arrangements she already had until he came back. Neither of them exactly mind taking it slow.
Also, a few people have asked about what happened to Wendy. Don't think I've forgotten. That tale won't be in the next chapter, but it will be after some action has happened so to keep the story's pacing how I want it. I appreciate every review.