Chapter Seven—"Coming Home"

The rock—portal, Emma reminded herself—spat them out in front of a large castle built of white stone. It was surrounded by high walls with gray-roofed turrets, and though the tops of the walls looked a little run down and worse for the wear, the entire structure was still damn imposing. They'd landed on their feet, which was a better manner of arrival than Emma recalled from her last trip to the Enchanted Forest, but they'd also been deposited outside the walls, which seemed a tad inconvenient.

Henry, of course, didn't think that way. "That's a real castle!" her son gushed, staring wide-eyed at the forty foot high walls. He swung to look at Emma. "Is that Grandma and Grandpa's castle?"

"No," Emma replied, frowning and searching her memory. "I remember that castle, and it didn't look anything like this."

No, the castle she'd been born in had been much more attractive and a hell of a lot less foreboding. Even after the curse had torn through it. She turned to Hook, mentally slapping herself for not demanding more details before touching that damn rock.

"Where the hell are we?" she demanded, and was a little bit gratified to watch the pirate squirm.

"Well, the lad's not too far off. He just chose the wrong grandparent," Hook replied none too helpfully.

"What?"

The pirate shrugged, busy slipping the Stone of Giramphiel into a pouch on his belt and pulling his hook out. As he spoke, he unscrewed the fake hand and replaced it with his trademark weapon. "This is the Dark Castle, Miss Swan. It belonged to Rumplestiltskin."

"He had a castle?" Henry asked, even as Emma pointed out:

"He's dead."

"Well, Baelfire's the one who suggested we re-appropriate it, as it does belong to him these days," was the easy answer. "And besides, your parents' castle is currently occupied by the Witch. We couldn't exactly share with her now, could we?"

Handsome or no, there were times that Emma wanted to punch Hook right in the face, and this was certainly one of them. "You couldn't have mentioned that earlier?" she snarled.

"You didn't ask, love—Hey!"

Emma'd finally had it, and she hit him in the shoulder. Hard.

"Snow, they're here!" Ruby—who had chosen to keep her Storybrooke name—burst into her rooms with no warning, and the door slammed against the wall with a crash.

"What?" Feeling absurdly clumsy, Snow spun around to face her old friend.

"Emma and Henry. They're back." And then Ruby was gone, leaving Snow to negotiate the winding stairs on her own, all the while reminding herself that if she tripped and fell, it would take even longer to see her daughter and her grandson than if she just took her time. Still, it seemed to take forever to reach the great hall—

And then she arrived, and there they were. Emma was dressed in jeans and that same old red leather jacket, her blonde hair loose and falling everywhere. Henry seemed immensely taller than he had before, but was talking to Jiminy Cricket with the same delighted animation, his face all smiles and his eyes dancing. Hook stood close by, looking insufferably pleased with himself—but Snow barely noticed him as she came through the doorway, feeling like she was trying to walk underwater.

"Emma." She whispered the word, but her daughter somehow heard it anyway—and suddenly there Emma was, in her arms. Henry followed only a moment later, and Snow suddenly felt whole again.

Oh, she wished David was here and not with the army. She knew he'd never forgive himself for missing this moment, and the only thing keeping it from being utterly perfect was his absence. Still, Snow's smile was so huge that it hurt her face. She'd just have to speak for the both of them.

"We've missed you so much," she breathed into Emma's hair. "Both of you. It's so good to see you again."

"We missed you, too, Grandma," Henry piped up immediately, smiling cheekily as he pulled back. "When we remembered, anyway."

Despite herself, Snow laughed. "I bet you did. And look at you! You've grown so much."

"I am thirteen now," her grandson pointed out.

"And never tires of reminding me of that," Emma put in, wearing a long-suffering look. Snow, however, only pulled her close for one more hug.

"You look wonderful," she said feelingly.

"Thanks." Emma's smile was tiny, but it was real, and her daughter was back. But Emma looked around, her quizzical eyes sweeping over the Great Hall. "Where's everyone else?"

Hook looked like he wanted to say something, but Snow got in first:

"Your father and Baelfire—I mean Neal—are off with the army. I assume Hook told you what's been going on?"

"Yeah, he might have said something about a Witch, a war, and really bad stuff happening," Emma replied succinctly.

"That's putting it mildly," Snow breathed. For some reason, Tinker Bell's warning about the Blue Fairy suddenly started ringing in her ears; hadn't it been Blue who insisted that the Witch wanted Henry, and it was safest to bring them back quickly? Stop that. You're being paranoid. Blue has never done anything other than help us.

Except for the one crucial lie that made Emma grow up without either one of her parents.

Emma's next words jerked Snow out of her reverie. "So, um, Hook also might have mentioned that I'm going to have a sibling? Though he didn't say that you looked ready to pop."

"I've got a month yet," Snow laughed, grateful, as always, for her daughter's blunt attitude. "But yes. You're going to be a big sister."

"A really big sister. I'm thirty!" Emma objected.

"The better for changing diapers, my dear."

"What? No! I've done—or at least I remember doing that enough with Henry, thanks." Emma's shocked expression only grew more comical as she tried to straighten out her own memories with the ones she'd been given, but Snow resisted the urge to laugh at her. Instead, she squeezed her daughter's arm.

"Well, maybe you can teach me a thing or two, then," she smiled.

Emma actually blushed. However, Henry was looking around hopefully, and Snow's heart constricted as she realized who he had to be searching for.

"Regina's not—" Snow started to say gently, only to be cut off.

"Not interrupting your touching family reunion, am I?" Regina strode into the room like she always did, confident and poised, as if she owned anywhere she went. Snow had envied that grace as a little girl, and hated it as Mary Margaret, but now that she'd finally repaired her relationship with her stepmother, she just viewed it as one of Regina's many strengths.

"Mom!" Henry flew into Regina's arms, and Snow felt a warm smile creeping onto her own face. She couldn't exactly pinpoint when Regina and Emma had both become Henry's mothers, but odd though the family dynamic was, it worked. And it was what Henry wanted, so that was what counted the most. Still, she couldn't contain her own surprise at seeing Regina. After all, she'd heard from Robin just the evening before, and the outlaw had definitely been in Bremen with Regina at the time.

"Welcome back, Regina," Snow said as Robin and Tinker Bell trailed into the room behind her, with the rests of the merry men trickling in one by one behind them. "You're early. We didn't expect you back for at least two weeks."

Regina looked up from her tight embrace with Henry. "Yes, well, nothing went according to plan." The queen grimaced moodily. "And I had a bit of…help in bringing us back."

"If this is what you call 'a bit of help,' dearie, I hate to think of what you'd think of as a truly desperate situation," a familiar voice put in, and Snow wheeled to face the doorway. Her mouth dropped open.

"Rumplestiltskin?"

"It's always nice to be remembered," the man in question quipped, walking casually into the room with Belle by his side.

A moment passed before Snow's brain could catch up with her eyes and tell her what was wrong, but he looked like…Gold. The gray-gold shimmering skin was nowhere to be seen, and his features were entirely human, if thinner than she remembered. But the knowing smile was one she knew entirely too well, both in Storybrooke and in the Enchanted Forest.

"Hold on a minute, here," Emma interjected, turning to look at Snow in confusion. "Isn't he supposed to be dead?"

"Yes, actually. This is…rather unexpected. And kind of, um, worrisome." Glancing Regina's way, Snow tried to ask the question without actually asking it, but her stepmother only rolled her eyes.

"Oh, trust me, it's him. No one else could be as perfectly infuriating as he's managed to be in the last few hours," Regina replied. Rumplestiltskin, on the other hand, only chuckled quietly, but Snow still gave him a hard look.

"We watched you die," she pointed out. "We all did."

"Are you so sure about that?" he countered, and Snow had to agree with Regina. He was every bit as cryptic and cagey as she remembered.

"Yes," Snow snapped, quickly running out of patience—particularly with Charming Junior choosing that moment to practice the backstroke. Emma had been a troublesome child to carry, but this little one was trying to give his or her big sister a run for her money.

Rumplestiltskin—or was he Gold?—held up one finger with a familiar flourish. "Strictly speaking, you watched me disappear, not die. Now, as I did intend to kill myself along with Pan, you can be forgiven for thinking I did, but the important part is that we were all incorrect in that assumption." He smiled, then, very faintly. "I'll spare you the long and complicated explanation. The short version is that although I didn't die, my curse did break, and I wound up back here as the guest of some truly unpleasant individuals. In Bremen, coincidentally enough."

"The 'object' the Witch's forces were guarding was him," Belle put in as Snow tried to wrap her mind around the explanation. Belle was grinning when she said it; Snow hadn't seen her look this alive since before they left Storybrooke.

Of course she looked better. Snow could only imagine how heartbroken she would have been if she'd lost Charming, or even thought she had. Frankly, Snow had always been surprised that Belle was managing to function so well. In Belle's position, she would have just wanted to curl up and wallow in her grief, but the other woman never had. She'd pushed onwards, kept fighting, and refused to give in. Snow had always liked her—even if she never had understood how such a good person could fall for Rumplestiltskin—but in the last year, Belle had been truly impressive.

"So, you've been alive this whole time?" Snow asked dubiously. Her eyes narrowed. If there was one thing she'd learned about Rumplestiltskin, it was that he didn't do anything without an ulterior motive. Had spent an entire year waiting for the 'right' moment to reappear? If so, how in the world could he be so cruel to a woman who so plainly loved him?

Surprisingly, Rumplestiltskin grimaced. "Indeed I have."

"And that's it?" she couldn't stop herself from asking.

"Oh, I'm sure someone will share the gruesome details with you, dearie, but I see no reason for that to be me." His face closed off as he spoke, and Belle looked his way worriedly, but Rumplestiltskin only smiled Gold's nastiest smile. "Excuse me."

He vanished, leaving Belle to sigh and then—surprisingly—exchange a loaded glance with Regina, of all people. However, since the best way to get information about Rumplestiltskin was often to ask someone else, Snow looked to Belle. She was almost as confused as Emma's expression said her daughter was, but first things first.

"So. Rumplestiltskin isn't the Dark One any longer?" Snow asked slowly. Regina answered first:

"He says his curse is broken."

Belle gave the queen a hard look. "He wouldn't lie about that."

"I'm not sure I'd put lying about anything past Gold," Emma put in, and Snow very much wanted to agree with her daughter. Regina, however, shook her head.

"I don't think he's lying," she said decisively. "Oh, he isn't telling the whole truth, either—and that should surprise no one in this room—but I don't think he expected to have magic. He does, though."

Regina exchanged another look with Belle, and there was so obviously something neither woman was saying. However, neither of them volunteered the information, either, and Snow had a feeling that pressing that point would get her nowhere. So, she took a deep breath and banished her worries on that front. She and Regina were still learning to trust one another, but if Snow didn't try to respect her stepmother's desire to keep her own counsel, they'd never manage. Henry's eyes had been darting between his adopted mother, grandmother, and Belle during the conversation, and when Regina didn't offer further explanation, he asked:

"That's a good thing, right? It means he isn't evil."

Regina was silent, leaving Snow to look at Belle. "I…I'm not sure. Does it?"

"I think it means he's still Rumplestiltskin," Belle explained with a genuine smile. "He hasn't been purely evil in a long time. No more than Regina has."

"Then what does this change, if anything?" Emma demanded. "And if he's been alive this whole time, why the hell is he only popping up now? I mean, no offense, but that's pretty horrible. Especially to you."

The last bit was directed at Belle, but Tinker Bell spoke up. "His magic isn't normal," the fairy said bluntly, and for the first time, Snow noticed how worn down Tink looked. "It's not like it was before, and it's not like Regina's, either. Frankly, it's not like anything I've ever even heard of before."

"Tink's right," Regina admitted after a moment's hesitation. "But I can't say I'm surprised. Rumplestiltskin…he's always known more than he lets on."

Tinker Bell still didn't look happy, but Regina caught her eye and shook her head before the fairy could say more. Then the sorceress continued:

"And the rest of it isn't what you think," she told Snow and Emma, shooting a loaded glance Henry's way as she spoke. "Where we found him…well, let's just say he wasn't going anywhere. Whoever held him made sure of that."

The press of people in his castle was just too much. Oh, Belle had told him that she and Baelfire had volunteered the Dark Castle as a base of operations, and from an intellectual perspective, he had no problem with that. Using the Dark Castle made sense, and he'd been thought dead, anyway. Rumplestiltskin's frequent need to get away from people wasn't something either Belle or his son needed to consider while making that decision, and even now, they weren't wrong. He just craved quiet, wanted peace, needed time to figure out what in the world was going on.

Power swirled around him, deep and merciless, sharp to taste and utterly intoxicating. Every movement made magic crackle through his veins, through every bone and every muscle. It made everything easy, simple, effortless. Magic had been different in Storybrooke, and there Rumplestiltskin had always been careful not to tip his hand, not to show how easily he could manipulate magic powers other than dark magic, and also to hide how the difference could handicap him as easily as it could Regina or any other. This, however, was nothing like that. This power wasn't even like anything he'd experienced in the Enchanted Forest before the curse, not the well of darkness from which his curse drew power or the other types of magic he had meticulously taught himself over the centuries. No, this was different. Magic came as easily as breathing, travelled from his mind to his fingertips without so much as a heartbeat coming in between. He could feel the power with every breath he took, could sense it gathering, waiting, watching and ready.

And it was absolutely terrifying.

He had to get away, needed to not be around people, even his own sometime allies. He should have said something to Henry—the boy was his grandson, and had been watching him with wide eyes—but Rumplestiltskin's ability to act civilly had vanished with Snow White's probing questions. His hands wanted desperately to shake, and he still wanted to curl up in a corner and wait for the storm of nightmares to pass. How many hours had it been since the pain had abruptly stopped? Not enough. He'd dreaded one of them asking why he was so thin, or Regina pointing out that the first bit of conscious and coherent magic he'd preformed after his magic had healed him wasn't just to clothe himself. He'd also immediately thrown up a bit of a glamour to hide his frailty and the shadows he knew filled his face. Rumplestiltskin didn't want to explain what he'd gone through, not to these people who he cared very little for, and certainly not when he wasn't at all certain that he could do so without going to pieces.

So he'd taken himself to his old bedroom, the one place he could be certain that no one in the castle would venture. No one in their right mind wanted to come after the beast in his own den, after all. Even with his curse broken, they'd undoubtedly see him as a monster; he wasn't sure he wasn't one, so why not use that image? His bedchamber looked recently lived in, but those were Belle's hairs he recognized in a carelessly thrown aside hairbrush. Rumplestiltskin wasn't actually certain that he could face Belle at the moment, but he definitely knew he wasn't up to dealing with anyone else. Not until he got control of whatever this was.

Dropping his dragonskin coat onto the floor without so much as a thought, Rumplestiltskin half-walked, half-stumbled his way over to the bed. Collapsing into a sitting position, he dropped his aching head into pale and very human hands. Very shaking hands.

Letting out a breath, he dropped the glamour, and little though he wanted to, knocked aside the blocks he'd put up in his mind to protect himself from the memories. When he'd thrown those barriers up, he'd known that doing so was unhealthy, but Rumplestiltskin hadn't been comfortable with showing weaknesses in front of others for longer than he could remember. They'd already seen too much. He hadn't been able to stop Regina, Robin, and Belle from seeing the extent of his injuries, but that was all he planned to allow his old pupil and her outlaw to see. Long an expert in only allowing people to see what he wanted them to, Rumplestiltskin—

The last block vanished, and images swept through his mind too quickly to catalog. Pain. Fear. A hand touching the back of his neck and then power surging, magic not of his own, tearing and crushing and trying to bury all that he'd ever been. Good, bad, ugly, or evil, she had tried to erase everything that made him Rumplestiltskin, but why? He didn't even know who that female fae had been, knew nothing about her save for the fact that she terrified him and possessed a power unmatched by anything he had ever encountered before. Her orders had been the ones that brought him pain, Rumplestiltskin knew. Whatever game the other fae were playing was hers, and he'd been…what in it?

Not quite a pawn. Something else entirely.

"Embrace the darkness," she whispered in his ear as Rumplestiltskin sobbed in pain, his body convulsing. His forehead rested weakly against the stone wall, and he was too drained to even try to escape the hand stroking the back of his head.

Had that been all she asked, he would probably have done it. A distant corner of his mind recognized his dagger nearby, could feel the oppressive darkness emulating from it, was aware of the curse, his curse, straining for release. Looking for a home. It wanted him, and she wanted to give it back.

"Let go of your conscious self." Her fingers played in his hair, making him flinch. His heart, already beating erratically, stuttered slightly, and he wanted her to stop touching him even more than he wanted the torture to stop. "Become your rage, your pain, and your fury. I will give you the means with which to wreak revenge upon the world."

Vengeance. The terrified spinner inside him had once yearned for it, for power over those who had hurt him. They had reviled him, spat on him, called him coward and endangered his son—

Baelfire. His son.

He'd promised to be a better man. Not perfect, but better. Capable of darkness, but not this—Pain. White hot agony laced through his body; she must have felt his resistance gathering, must have seen the tension in his shoulders that told him he wanted something other than just to let go, to become putty in her hands. Her hand tightened painfully on the back of his head, and Rumplestiltskin whimpered into the gag.

"This will not stop until you are mine," she hissed furiously. "Embrace what you are, or suffer for eternity.

"Do not look for death, Rumplestiltskin, for it cannot save you from me."

Gasping, Rumplestiltskin tore himself free of the memory, doubled over and panting for air. She'd wanted to reset the curse, to force it back into him. She held the dagger—and still did; it had been nowhere in that hut when Belle and the others found him—and obviously wanted control of the Dark One. But she hadn't wanted him for the same reasons others would. Her power dwarfed that of the curse. So why?

Looking at the situation logically did nothing to stop his trembling, did nothing to banish the feeling that more pain was to come. He'd lived that nightmare for the last year, and even though Rumplestiltskin knew that this was reality and not a dream, he couldn't escape the way his entire body tensed, bracing itself for torture his psyche knew would come. He'd never thought of himself as anything other than a coward, and if she had asked for anything else, he probably would have crumbled to pieces and given in within weeks. Perhaps he would have lasted months, at the outside; he was stubborn, after all. But she had demanded the one thing that he had never given up: his sense of self. The curse had stained and shredded his soul beyond repair centuries ago, but he'd reclaimed a tiny bit of himself along the way. Somehow, despite being the Dark One, he'd also been Rumplestiltskin, and he was loath to give that up.

Add that to the fact that for the first time in forever, he actually had someone, two someones, to fight for, and Rumplestiltskin resisted. If she had only wanted him to embrace the darkness and to let the curse back in, the pain could have made him do so. Easily. He'd lived with the curse for so long that living without it was far more terrifying than living with it, darkness and all. Even though he was now grateful that he was in complete ownership of his battered soul, it would have seemed a small price to pay in order to make the pain stop. But she'd wanted the one thing he could not, would not, give.

She'd been well on her way to getting it, anyway, though. Even as he struggled to regulate his rapid breathing, Rumplestiltskin knew that was true. His mind had fragmented under the continuous pressure, and nothing made sense. There were memories there that didn't belong to him, images that he knew came through another man's eyes, one long dead and gone. Someone powerful and yet defeated. Old friend, she had said, as if she was talking to someone other than Rumplestiltskin. Or was he just going mad?

When had tears started streaking down his face? Memories reared up again, and he started shaking harder and harder. Arms snaking around his torso, he finally gave in to the urge to curl up on the bed. Rumplestiltskin closed his eyes as his cheek landed on the silky red and gold coverlet, hugging himself tightly and still trying not to hyperventilate. He remembered too much: battles and friendship, betrayal and pain, darkness and magic and too much pain. He remembered giving in where he hadn't, remembered what happened when the torture dragged on for years and years and eternity until he forgot his own name—

Rumplestiltskin. His name was Rumplestiltskin, and these memories were not his. Why, then, did they make him sob his soul out, rocking back and forth on the bed and curling up as tightly as his thin body would allow?

Yet even when he managed to swallow back the memories he knew (hoped?) weren't his, images he knew were born of his own experiences rose to replace them. He remembered the pain and blood everywhere, feeling and screaming like he would be ripped in half. He remembered the first time the hot irons touched down on his eyes, wailing in agony and unable to breathe because it hurt so badly. He remembered her hand in his hair and darkness lashing into him, her voice as she whispered in an almost friendly manner while he wanted to die. He'd been so alone and there'd been no one coming, because even if he hadn't made more enemies than friends in his long life, everyone that mattered thought he was dead, and maybe they were just better off that way.

The material under his face was soaking wet and heavy, now, but he hardly noticed. His mind just wanted to fold under, and he couldn't fight anymore. So he finally let go of the last shreds of his dignity and self-control (both painstakingly reassembled for the benefit of those had been watching) and just let himself break down.

A/N: I apologize to everyone for the long wait for this chapter – crazy times at work and horrible weather absolutely sucked away my creativity! However, I do hope that this chapter doesn't disappoint. Stay tuned for Chapter 8: "Choices and Consequences" in which Rumplestiltskin starts figuring out the price of his new magic, Regina and Henry finally reunite, Bae proves sneaky, and Henry kicks off "Operation Jellyfish."

In the meantime, please review to let me know what you think!