Chapter 35
Belle has come across some interesting speculation in a scroll written by Blue's immediate predecessor. Gold growls when she first shows him the translation, for the topic of the discourse is how one might divest the Dark One of his (or in two cases, her, for there have been two female Dark Ones) power.
"Aw, consider the source, sweetheart," he complains. "Why give any credence to anything this fairy wrote? Besides, most of this is hogwash. It's the fairy version of 'step on a crack, break your mama's back.'"
But he does consider it, when he calms down, days later. Other than the known fact that stabbing the Dark One with his/her dagger will transfer the powers, everything else the fairy wrote is just speculation and much of it is hogwash. But the fairy quotes a prediction: "'When black and white shall unite, all rivers shall bleed and all roads shall lead into one, for Time and Distance will be broken and hold no sway.'"
"I hate these damn writers that think by wrapping everything in mysterious metaphors they're creating something people will take seriously," Gold grumbles to Belle. "Why can't they just say 'Two parts elf claw, one part unicorn horn and bake at 450 for 30 minutes?'"
She giggles. "Where's the poetry in that?"
"If I wanted poetry, I'd read Robert Burns. It's a formula I want."
"Josiah, are you in there?" But the bird is preoccupied with the toy bell hanging from the roof of its cage. Gold sits down at his table and watches, hoping for an indication that Dove somehow remembers who he is, who they are. "Josiah?"
The bird ignores him. Gold clears a space on the table and conjures a box of dominoes. He glances up, but the bird isn't watching, so he plays both sides.
"They have no idea," he mutters, laying a tile for Dove. "Not even Belle. Sympathetic as she is, still, she was born a noble, respected. Beautiful, and so she was admired. Snow too: noble, beautiful." He lays the next tile with a snap; his teeth grit. "He's the worst: born poor, but tall and handsome and strong. He has no idea what it's like." Gold can't bring himself to say the name of the man he envies. "Puny. Homely. Short." He bites the words. "Runtling." He glances at the bird. "That's what he called me–my own father. Unless he was drunk, and then it was 'the whore's worthless spawn.'" He sets another tile, his voice shaking. "Not even the suits and the Cadillac can make me charming. None of them know one damn thing about it." Except Emma: even when she's laughing with Henry, Gold can see the fear in her eyes. Once abandoned, never secure. Still, she has power of her own and no one's asking her to give it up.
Then again, her power didn't get her best friend turned into a bird, did it? And her power isn't keeping her from her son, so what does she know?
"Take it away and what am I?" He lays another tile. "Just a lame runtling in an expensive suit. How can I protect myself and my family if I give up my magic?" He watches the bird for a reaction that doesn't come. "Magic is what I was meant to be. Give it up, when it's what makes me myself? No one has a right to ask that of another." It's the same as asking Josiah to give up his humanity.
"Take it away and I'm dust." Take it away and Josiah is a man again. Take it away and Regina lives. Take it away and Henry, Emma and Bae have a chance to find each other. Take it away and give Belle a husband she can respect. Take it away and break down all the barriers between Rumplestiltskin and Baelfire.
Not Belle or Bae. The choice has never been either Belle or Bae. The choice is either the Dark One or Belle and Bae. Choose them, lose himself. Save himself, lose them.
Wild-eyed, Gold raises his head from the game. The dove is staring at him.
Though she's no chemist–and on multiple occasions, her efforts spoil the potion they're brewing–Blue shows a natural affinity for herbal medicine. Her magic can quickly diagnose illness or injury, and her ever broadening and deepening knowledge of the native plants in this part of Maine enables her to prescribe successful treatments. She has a delicate touch that enables her to produce intricate healing potions.
"You have a gift," Gold tells her on the day she manages to blend three herbs together that he can't get to combine. "You could serve this town well as a Healer, save a lot of people from surgery."
She blushes. Pale-faced, five-hundred-year-old Blue actually blushes. "I never explored this art before. With fairy dust, I could cure most illnesses or injuries immediately. But now that our diamond supply is nearly depleted, it helps to have an alternative."
She's thawing, he thinks; she will never understand humans because fairies lack passion and impulse, but she's warming up a bit. And if the Reul Ghorm can change, ever so slightly, like an iceberg being shaped by the sea, can't the Dark One? He suspects she's having an effect on him too, though he's hard pressed to identify it, thick-skinned old crocodile that he is.
Belle gives him her funny little smile when he compliments Blue's healing talent. He finds it necessary to backpedal, pointing out her tendency to blow things up–she's wrecked the lab four times and singed Josiah's feathers (with her talent she healed him instantly). "I'm proud of you," Belle says when they're alone.
"Me? I've accomplished nothing. I'm no closer to breaking that curse than I was two months ago. I've made no progress whatsoever."
"I wouldn't say that."
After supper and the dishes and the homework are all done, the family adjourns to the living room for a little television before bed. Belle and Gold exchange a glance: it's Monday and The Best of the Boston Ballet is on, but Henry and Emma have no interest in high culture. Belle smiles at Gold—she doesn't mind at all; there will time enough for ballets and symphonies; they should enjoy their family while they can. So she hands Henry the remote and invites him to take control of the Ultra HD 4K (which Henry's already suggested Emma buy when they move into their own apartment).
Henry flips around, grazing among the fifty channels, thankfully bypassing the Kardashians and Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo, before he settles on an original Star Trek. Henry sprawls across the carpet, Emma seated on the floor beside him, while on the couch Belle offers her lap as Gold's pillow.
Emma smiles up at them. "This is nice." Then she focuses on the television.
Gold half-listens to the episode. He picks up Belle's hand from his hip and laces his fingers through hers, brings their joined hands up to his chest, to his heart. It's her left hand. He will put a ring on that hand someday soon.
On the screen, an oversized Apollo is bemoaning the Enterprise's crew's rejection of him. "I would have loved you as a father loves his children. Did I ask so much?"
Captain Kirk rather callously replies, "We've outgrown you."
"I feel sorry for Apollo," Belle says. "It must be awful, to be left behind like that."
After the episode is over, Henry sits up. "Grandpa, were there really gods in the Enchanted Forest? My book says you and the Reul Ghorm were the oldest and most powerful of all the magical beings. Did you ever meet any gods? Or were you like a god?"
Gold's eyes fly open. His mouth opens and closes and opens again as he sits up. "Not like a god, no, I, ah, well—"
"Yeah, 'Grandpa,' tell us about the old days," Emma teases.
"Yes, well, I have seen quite a number of old days," he quips. "But—are you sure you want to get into this now, Henry? It's nearly your bedtime."
Emma looks at the clock on the cable box. "He's right. We'll have to save this discussion for the weekend. Off to bed, young man." She grabs her son's arm and hauls him to his feet, and they patter up the stairs, Henry still yakking about the Greek and Roman mythology he's been taught in school.
"Dodged that bullet," Gold sighs.
"Not so fast, my darling. Henry's got me curious now: did you ever meet any gods?"
"Sweetheart, I was just Number 33 in a line of Dark Ones. Why would a god have any interest in me?"
"Because you were the most powerful mage in the universe for three hundred years." She kisses his nose. "And you were the smartest."
"Well, I can't argue with you there. But no, I never met any gods. . . as far as I know. I understand the gods of olden times liked to transform themselves into animals when they went slumming, so who can say for sure?"
"But I do think we should tell Henry about the Enchanted Forest someday," Belle protests. "It's his heritage. I can tell him about Avonlea, but you have such a wider and deeper view of history than I do." She bats her eyelashes playfully.
"Is that a sly remark about my age, dearie?" He wags a finger at her. "Perhaps I should throw you over my shoulder like the caveman I am and haul you off to bed too."
She flips her hair at him. "I'd like to see you try." Before she can catch her breath, she's naked, standing in the shower, with water drenching her and an equally naked albeit middle-aged boyfriend reaching around her for the shampoo.
But as he shows her just how much energy an old man can muster, he's still reflecting on Henry's questions and Kirk's easy dismissal of the Powers That Were.
As he watches Belle sleep, the Dark One wonders what's come over him. Soft, he's grown soft in his body and soft in his soul. This one sleeping beside him has robbed him of his strength. Those sleeping down the hallway, and the bird sleeping in the laundry room, and even the fairy sleeping in the convent, they have made him weak. A weak Dark One is a very dangerous thing, vulnerable, ready to have his powers plucked from him, because for the Dark One there is no source of protection but himself: no law to guard him, no friends to shelter him, no army to come to his defense.
Even worse, he's a Dark One associating with the Reul Ghorm. Good gods, the balance between good and evil will unhinge. The universe will go careening off into chaos any day now.
Then a sound in the hallway alerts the Dark One: a door creaking open, footfalls across the wooden floor, another door clicking shut. Then there's another sound and the Dark One fades away as Gold the father takes over, his heart filling with warmth at the sound a toilet flushing.
His family, safe and comfortable in the home he and Belle provide for them. This is what he wants, not the Dark thoughts, not the scent of blood, not revenge or people cowering. And as for the delicate balance between good and evil, who's to say that a truce between the Reul Ghorm and the Dark One has unbalanced anything? Maybe it's exactly what the Fates have planned. A time for change. Maybe the next generation's Dark One and Reul Ghorm will carve out a new path. Or maybe it's time for the Dark One and the Reul Ghorm to come to an end: maybe the universe doesn't need them any more. We've outgrown you.
"Do you enjoy having your powers back?" Gold makes his tone casual, doesn't even look at Blue as he asks the question. "Here, hand me that jar of King of Bitters, please." She does and he taps a sprinkle of it into his beaker.
"Enjoy?" she repeats thoughtfully. "Well. . . ."
His eyebrows rise. He's never known a magic practitioner who didn't enjoy the power.
"I wonder," she says slowly.
"Wonder? What's to wonder?"
"You know, I was born with magic. Until Emma broke the curse, I had no point of comparison. But now that I know what it's like to be human. . . ." She hands him a glass pipette and a bottle of alonin. "But it's a moot point, isn't it? Magic is my destiny. It's why I was created: so I can serve mankind through magic. And I really do enjoy creating healing potions. I've been working with Dr. Whale, and I think we're making progress in bringing some feeling back into Micky Nesmith's legs. We have hope he may walk again. So yes, I enjoy that aspect of magic, very much."
"In all your books, did you ever come across any speculation about. . . an end to us, to the Dark One and the Reul Ghorm? Where we wouldn't exist any more?"
She falls silent. He looks over his shoulder at her; she's gone pale.
"This world doesn't need the likes of us, does it?" he asks softly.
"But the old world—I believe some realms still need our kind." She wipes her hands on her apron. "I believe the Enchanted Forest, even now, needs our kind. The people Regina left behind, I think they need our kind."
"They haven't forgotten us, after thirty years?"
"Us?" She gestures to herself and him. "You and me, yes. I think they've forgotten us. But I think the Fates have replaced us. The universe can't tolerate a void."
He blinks. "A new Dark One and Reul Ghorm."
"Yes. I think so."
He tries to quip, "Good thing we're not going back, then, or it'd be a showdown at the OK Corral."
"Not for me." She purses her lips. "If there's another Reul Ghorm, I say, let her have the job. I'm a nun now, and that's a commitment I cherish."
"You didn't choose it, though. You had no more choice in it than you did with your former occupation."
She spreads her hands. "This may surprise you, Rumplestiltskin, especially after talking to all those families whose lives were disrupted, but for some of us, it wasn't a matter of making the best of what the curse gave us—it was a matter of us making the best of us. Regina probably thought she was punishing me by making me human, but I think I'm better for it—and I've thanked her."
"You're kidding."
"No. I visit her in the evenings; it's part of my duty as a nun: 'For I was in prison and you came to me.'" Her face scrunches up. "To be honest with you, at first I thought it was a waste of time. She will never change, and she'll only revile me, so why should I go to her, when there are families out there who'd be glad to see me? And it seems I was right about her, but I've found those visits have changed me."
He swallows hard. "And me? You're not coming here for the lab work, are you? Have I been—a waste of time?"
"We haven't broken the curse yet, but I'd say we've broken other barriers. I've enjoyed getting to know you, Mr. Gold, and your wonderful family. The love between you and them is a transformative power that transcends anything magic can do, and it's been a privilege for me to observe it at work. If you don't mind just one piece of advice?"
Here it comes: the lecture. But she surprises him by leaning in conspiratorially. "Marry her. Show her how strong your trust in her is—and how much your faith in yourself has grown."
The three-hundred-year-old imp blushes. "Working on it."
"And here, in this world, I think you're right: this world doesn't need a Dark One or a Reul Ghorm." She touches his arm, and this time his skin doesn't burn. "But us, Blue and Rumplestiltskin, I think there's a need for us. Micky Nesmith would say so. Henry would say so. And about sixty families who got free legal aid would say so." She pauses to consider. "What I think is that the Dark One and the Reul Ghorm were left behind in the Enchanted Forest when the curse created Storybrooke. And what's left—us—are a couple of magic-using humans who haven't realized that yet. Or maybe we just don't want to. Let's face it: when you've been an icon for as long as we have, it's hard to change."
"But you think we have."
"I think we're humans now. Very old and magic-possessing, yes, but ordinary, flawed humans."
He surveys his heart as he studies her, and then he realizes, "I don't hate you any more."
"And I don't fear you any more." She hands him a tin of powdered Devil's Breath.