Chapter 18
"Rumple kept his word to end the war and bring the children home; he performed other acts of charity as well, and he made his and Bae's life very comfortable. But he became increasingly dependent upon magic and increasingly susceptible to the dark forces woven into his brain. Soon the only part of Rumple that remained was his heart. As long as Bae occupied it, the Dark One couldn't get in. And Belle, that has never changed. You and Bae are my shield.
"Rumple couldn't control his rage in those days. Later, he learned how to control the magic and how to bargain with the Dark One, but in the first year, he was as much a destroyer as his predecessors had been.
"Bae was losing him, so Bae called. . . called upon the Reul Ghorm. And oh gods, it was the spinsters all over again–maybe it was the Fates forcing an outcome, for the fairy gave Bae a magic bean to escape the hell their life had become. He thought it was meant as a way for Rumple to escape the Dark One too, and he tried to take Rumple with him, but the Dark One spoke paranoia into Rumple's ear and he clung, sobbing and trembling, to his dagger as Bae fell away from him, falling into the Land without Magic. Falling into this world, alone.
"He went crazy then, Rumple did. He'd done seemingly crazy things before, but always with a calculated purpose, but this time he tore through the village, setting fires, raising whirlwinds, throwing lightning, upturning carts and uprooting trees with a flick of his hand. When he was finished with the town he kept walking, into the forest; more destruction and upheaval; kept walking, village after village, day after day, destroying, and finally when he was worn out he sat down on a mountaintop and shouted until his voice left him, and then, finally, he wept. His rampage had ruined an entire kingdom. For the first time since he'd killed Zoso, he felt cursed.
"When he had nothing left inside, he was too tired to go on, so he built a castle right there on the mountain. He holed up there. I think he wanted to die there. A year, two, he'd been gone; who knows? It doesn't matter when you're immortal and alone. But one morning he awoke to a bird singing and a sharp feeling in his gut that he finally recognized as hope. What if the bean had sent Bae to a land of magic instead? Magic, like water, seeks its own, and Bae was no mage: what if he thought the wrong thought as he fell into the vortex?
"Rumple ran back to the Forest, the village, his cottage, in search of a sign. He tortured the villagers for information, but no one had found a lost kid with brown eyes. He decided to go to the source of all this trouble.
"Rumple summoned the fairy, demanding her assistance, but she told him it was his own fault he'd lost Bae. He badgered her until she inadvertently revealed that perhaps a curse could take him to the Land without Magic.
"I've often doubted whether the fairy expected Rumple to choose Bae over the dagger. It would seem to be the easiest way to destroy the Dark One: send him to a land without magic. But good can't exist without evil, creation can't come about without destruction, white magic can't exist without dark, and the Blue Fairy can't exist without the Dark One. If I knew that, wouldn't she? And would she wish herself out of existence to be rid of me?
"Perhaps the fairy never intended for Rumple to go with Bae; if that's the case, she was very clever, because the loss of his son effectively rerouted Rumple. From that moment on, his only thought was to find his son again. As an unleashed Dark One, he could have wreaked havoc across the realms, but instead he studied magic in all its forms, searching for a way to find Bae. Sending his son away was, you see, a very effective way of manipulating the Dark One, distracting him from the pursuit of chaos. He shut himself away with his potions and his books, coming out into the world only to acquire things that might help him build knowledge and power.
"He found the Seer again, the same one who had pushed him into maiming himself. He took her power–as Zoso had been, she was exhausted from the burden and wanted to be rid of it, though it meant her death. As she died she gave him a gift: she predicted he would find his son again but only through a curse, and that curse would have to be cast by someone else. An inconvenience, he thought; he would now have to wait for the right soul to come along, because only once in a lifetime does a person become so hopeless as to permanently turn his back on humanity, and only when a soul has reached that state is it ready to cast a curse. After a century of study and practice, Rumple gained sufficient control of his Sight to find the person who could cast the curse, and then he had to set the stage for her arrival. He had to make her life miserable from the very start, rob her of all opportunities for love, beginning with her mother. That mother was the miller's daughter, whose story I told you yesterday.
"I told you that Rumple taught Cora magic, so that she would have a purpose in life: a way to achieve the status she craved. Without that purpose, she might have fallen prey to love and kindness, but that purpose gave her the strength to take her own heart out. Only a heartless woman could raise the curse caster. I told you about Daniel, who very nearly distracted Regina from her destiny, until Cora set her on the path.
"What I didn't quite tell you yesterday was that Rumple very nearly was yanked off the path too, by love. Or what he thought was love. I suppose in some ways Cora was like Milah: young and beautiful and headstrong. But as he instructed her, he saw that she was like the Dark One: calculating, manipulative, calloused, and lusting after blood as well as power. She gave him permission to be evil; she thrilled in it. She made him feel accepted, admired, and what man doesn't crave that? And when he touched her soft skin she yielded to him with a passion as violent as his. He thought he loved her and he said so. She said she loved him. She promised to leave Prince Henry for him. They would become the King and Queen of Darkness, wreaking havoc to their hearts' content.
"The space in his heart where he kept his love for Bae fought against this craving, but it was losing ground; he would have surrendered himself to Cora. Though who knows? Perhaps he would have eventually fought his way free of her. It became a moot point, because she chose Henry, whom she could easily control. Perhaps she suspected Rumple would have someday recovered from her. She chose Henry and yanked her heart out so that she would never be swayed by love again, and Rumple retreated to his castle again to lick his wounds. He decided then he would never allow a woman to get under his skin again, and he held to that decision for another century, until yet another Ogres War and a plea for help led him to a lovely, brave, curious and very patient woman who, he discovered, could make him turn away from evil and towards the love he'd always needed.
"But before then. . . before he recovered the flicker of humanity in himself, while he was still reeling from Cora's betrayal, the opportunity for revenge fell into his lap and he simply couldn't. . . Yes, he could have resisted it, but he didn't. When the pirate crossed his path again, he wanted to drive a sword into him, watch his blood gush across the dock, hear him scream for mercy with his last breath. Not because he'd stolen Rumple's wife, but because he'd stolen Bae's mother. But as he plunged his hand into the pirate's chest to yank out his heart, Rumple was interrupted by the woman the pirate had claimed was dead. It wouldn't be the last time that particular lie was used on him.
"Milah offered him a way out of his misery: a magic bean, the last in known existence, the way to Bae. He would have gladly traded his entire fortune and all his magic for it, but then the Dark One spoke in his ear, reminding him she'd betrayed him, humiliated him, abandoned him, much as his father had–and yet that was acceptable to him; he would have paid that price in return for the years of happiness he'd had with Bae. But what was unacceptable, unbearable to him, was that what she had done to him, she'd done to Bae as well. Her actions had left Bae motherless, and it was her fault, her damned wanderlust and lust for a pretty pirate that had brought them to this. If she had been the wife and mother she had vowed to be, none of this would have ever happened. Bae would have grown up to be a. . .merchant maybe, with kids of his own, and maybe with a passel of gray-eyed brothers and sisters and I–when she sneered at me and said she had never loved me, I reached into her chest and pulled out her heart and crushed it to dust, and oh gods, if I hadn't done that, if I hadn't done that. . . !"
"You'd have gotten the bean," Emma's tone is matter-of-fact. "And found Bae. You sold your son out for the satisfaction of revenge."
Belle is on her knees before him now, stroking his hair, drawing him into her chest where he can hide his tears from Charming's daughter. Even here, where he's richer in knowledge as well as money than the lot of them put together, he's still vulnerable to humiliation. Belle lets him hide against her. She smoothes his hair and kisses his cheek and whispers, "It's not over. We'll find him."
No, it's not over: there's more of the story to tell. But she's holding him, loving him, because she doesn't know it all, and he needs her. "Tell me about him," she urges. "This child you would have given up magic for."
"But I didn't," he snaps. He pushes her away. "I clung to the dagger then and after I chose revenge over a real opportunity, I leaned on magic again. The curse that you all think was Regina's, I created it and steered her into casting it."
"Three hundred families torn apart and dragged to a strange land," Emma clarifies.
Belle crumples onto her haunches.
"Yes," he admits.
"Memories clouded over with lies."
"Yes."
"Children and parents pulled apart, some of them thrust into fake families."
"Yes."
"A baby torn from her mother's. . . A newborn baby. . . ." Emma gulps her tears.
"Yes."
Belle is staring at him, shaking her head, her hand covering her mouth.
"To bring you here. Not to end a war or escape a plague. Just to transport you here. Nothing more."
"Yes."
Belle scrambles to her feet and backs away from him. "Jo and me and Adelena," she stutters. "Your curse did this."
"I grew up in foster homes. I thought my parents had dumped me like trash on the side of the road. And all so–what? So I could be your curse breaker?" Emma stands over him. His head is bowed; he's small and old in his kitchen chair with his cane lying at his feet. "So I could fetch your potion for you?" She slaps him. "I'm done being your puppet, you son of a bitch." She walks out, ignoring his call.
"Ms. Swan, I'm sorry! We can fix this, but I need your help."
The front door slams and Belle jerks as though awakened from a spell. She doesn't look back as she starts up the stairs.
"Belle! Where are you going?"
She sounds tired. "I promised you forever, but that doesn't mean it has to be in the same room. I need some time alone. I'm going to sleep in the nursery."
He listens to her footfalls recede. Then a door closes and there's only the sound of the grandfather clock ticking in the dining room.
And magic throbbing in the basement below.
Magic can soften the hardened heart of the savior, bend her toward serving a father in his quest to reunite with his son. With magic he can enter Emma's dreams and pluck the strings of her guilt. It won't be difficult: she once gave up her child too and now will fight witches and dragons to win him back. Surely she can understand how Gold feels.
With magic he can underscore the music Belle listens to as she cooks, plant subliminal nuggets of emotion: tiny and trivial memories of their life together, here and in the old world. So she can't forget, won't turn away from him.
Magic can unravel the memories of the past thirty years, the false memories that it created. Blow away the anger and the grief in one gentle sweep. They don't need divorce papers and custody agreements; they just need magic. Rumplestiltskin owes them that, doesn't he?
He retrieves the ornamental egg from the basement, but instead of hopping in his car to complete his mission, he sits down heavily in the kitchen again, the egg in his lap. He's wrung out emotionally and exhausted physically, and upstairs, the only woman who ever truly loved him is lying alone; she's turned her back on him, as they all have. Like Milah and Bae, Belle is ashamed of him.
This. He rolls the egg between his hands, feeling the magic hum. Long ago, this power seeped into his soul and blackened it; when he awoke from the curse, magicless, he wasn't free: magic had left its stain. Using magic to manipulate others' dreams and thoughts is just a more impressive version of the shell game. Conned emotion is less than worthless. Love must be given freely or it's not love at all.
Magic con games are not the way. As clearly as if she were standing here, speaking to him, he can hear Belle say that the return of magic will not result in the return of Baelfire–or her. But the return of his humanity might. Has he been wrong all along: is forgiveness the highest magic?
If it's not too late. Is there a limit to the patience of love?
He carries the egg to his den and locks it in his safe, and then he reaches for his last shred of strength, which he finds not in three centuries of accumulated knowledge or power, but in fragile, newborn hope. Listing to the left, he drags himself upstairs and knocks at the door of the nursery.
He read it somewhere: Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. Powerful words of hope.
He draws in a breath and leans heavily on his cane, waiting.
The door opens.