The twin golden blades gleamed with power, etched with divine sigils. Belle stared as her husband lifted them up to catch the light, mesmerized by their beauty.
The Shears of Destiny.
The Blue Fairy had secreted them away in her cache of forbidden magical objects, along with the Black Fairy's wand and the broken half of the dark wand of exile.
My father wanted to use the Shears on me, Belle remembered. Would it have made any difference if he had used them as he had wished? Was it really her destiny to be with Rumple? She refused to believe that she would stop loving him just because someone used a pair of magical scissors on her.
What exactly did they do? What had they done to Rumple? According to Tiger Lily, it had been his fate to be a Savior, and when that fate was cut, he lost his innate magic which was somehow tied to his destiny, and ceased to be a Savior. But what did that mean? How could it change his nature or the choices he made? Didn't everyone have the freedom to make their own choices? Belle had always wanted to believe in free will.
Rumplestiltskin looked almost wistful as he examined the shears.
Belle took them gently from his hands. "It doesn't matter about your fate. I don't think magic, however powerful, can truly change who you are. Not your true self."
Rumple blinked, focusing on her. He chuckled softly, "No? Perhaps not someone like you, but I've never been a strong man."
"That's not true," Belle protested. The more she learned of his past, the more she appreciated his resilience — but perhaps that was not seen as strength in a world which valued force over endurance.
"Strong enough," Cogsworth broke in. "By my calculations, that puts your odds of ultimate success at..."
Rumple held up a hand before the Timer could begin reciting figures at them. He glanced over at Tiger Lily and Blue. "Still, I'd like to know how the fairies came in possession of this little trinket and just how often they've used it to snip off inconvenient fates..."
Blue drew herself up with her most self-righteous expression. "They were given to us by the gods, in order to protect the world from the most terrible villains."
"By cutting their lives short? Sounds rather dark to me!" sneered Rumple.
Belle studied the magic in the shears. Yes, they certainly could be used that way, but even a kitchen knife could end a life. This was something more subtle. Through the light reflected off the blades, she could see the thread of her own life, extending mistily into the future. By concentrating on the thread, she could bring out different aspects of her future. These blades could selectively pare bits off her life. They could slice off the magic Prometheus had infused into her soul. But to cut away her 'fate'? She wondered what exactly a 'destiny' was comprised of. Could the shears make her forget things? Forget people? Just how far did its power extend?
"It doesn't have to kill," said Tiger Lily. "Or I would never have lent them to Fiona."
"But it can drain their lives of power and luck, is that how it works?" Rumple took the shears back from Belle. "Leaving them dogged by ill fortune."
Luck! Belle didn't like the idea of lives governed by luck any more than she liked the idea of fate, but her studies of magic had demonstrated that luck was a tangible quality that could be manipulated — notably, by artifacts such as the Shears of Destiny. It went along with the powers of prophecy in shaping events. It couldn't control everything, but it couldn't be ignored, either. Rumple, being a seer, must be intimately familiar with that kind of magic.
"It's something of a conundrum," said Cogsworth. "Fairies claim to respect the forces of destiny, yet wield an instrument to counter those very forces."
"'Conundrum'?" snorted Rumple. "I call it hypocrisy." He flicked his wrist, vanishing the shears in a puff of maroon smoke.
"You can't keep them!" blurted the Blue Fairy.
"Can't I, dearie?" Rumple smirked, raising an eyebrow.
"Of course he can," sang the ghost through the fairy's mouth. She laughed in childish delight. "Better him than you, you smug bitch! What good have you ever done with them?"
"I—" the Blue Fairy spluttered.
"That's neither here nor there," interrupted Tiger Lily. "We have the wands we needed. That's enough."
"She's right, Rumple," said Belle. "Bae is waiting for us to get back."
Not only Bae, of course. Peter Pan was there to meet them as they sailed back into the waters of Neverland, just as he had before. After toying sadistically with Blue and wringing the truth out of her, Pan kept his word and released the Lost Boys from his eternal games.
Not all of the Lost Boys had any family to return to, but Belle knew that Cogsworth and Lumiere would do their best. Those who had no one left could find new homes in Schlaraffenland, as promised to them by Baelfire. Baelfire traveled with them to see his promise through, and the two griffons as well — Belle suspected at Rumple's behest — to act as the boy's bodyguards. This left Belle, Rumple, and the two fairies to go with Pan to the dark fairy realm to find Rumple's mother.
Rumple grudgingly accepted a gift of pixie dust from his smirking father and used it to mend the wand of exile. After a few moments of study, he nodded. "It'll do."
He flicked the wand with delicate precision, drawing out its magic to shape the key that would unlock the passage to the dark realm. The transition crept up on them — no flashy portal, but a melting away of light and color and warmth into a world of seemingly endless tunnels.
Somewhere, a child was crying.
They followed the sound, hearts heavy with the weight of the dark magic that permeated the air like dust. A distant steady tapping dogged their footsteps. Space settled around them to form long, curving passages mined out of solidified darkness. The two fairies fluttered ahead and down the branches to widen their search.
The rough walls gradually smoothed and straightened until they found themselves in pale corridors lit at regular intervals by magical torches fixed to the walls. Then they turned a corner into a hallway lined with small prison cells, metal bars locking a child inside each one. Whichever child had been crying went silent. Shocked, terrified eyes stared out at them. Some sat on their beds and some pressed up against the bars.
Belle gasped.
"So this is what she does with the children she steals? Seems a waste," said Rumplestiltskin, his tone light but his eyes troubled.
The children looked too frightened to answer. What had the Black Fairy done to them? Surveying them, Belle saw that some were missing limbs, some had facial deformities, and one was obviously blind.
Belle forced herself to smile. "It's all right. We won't hurt you. We're here to help."
Finally, one of them whispered, "You... you can't be here. If she catches you..."
"She can't do anything to us." Belle hoped it was true, but a glance at Rumple showed a painful vulnerability in his eyes. Magic or no magic, his mother could wound him like no other.
Pan snorted and shook his head. "A pathetic lot they are. Half of them are malformed little beasts. What with all these years lurking in the dark, her standards must have slipped!"
That was enough to shake Rumple out of his daze. He growled at his father, "Shut the hell up."
The fairies swooped in, dissipating the growing tension for now. Tiger Lily pointed at one of the corridors. "She's down that way. Quick, before she finds us."
But Belle didn't want to abandon the children just when she had offered them hope. "You go. I'll wait here, with the children."
Rumple looked torn, but finally nodded tautly. "Wish me luck."
"Always." Her smile came more naturally as she turned it on her husband. "It'll be all right, Rumple. Go talk to her."
Rumplestiltskin tried to hold onto Belle's optimism as he set off in the direction Tiger Lily had indicated. In the heart of the labyrinth of tunnels hacked out of the dark realm, the Black Fairy had hewn out a spacious chamber, lit and furnished to equal any sorcerer's laboratory in the sunlit realms.
She sensed them before they had even crossed the threshold, calling out, "Who dares trespass in my realm?"
Rumplestiltskin froze, his heart beating painfully at the sound of a voice he had no conscious memory of. His mother. He took a deep breath and stepped into the chamber.
She was a tall, slender woman, long hair a few shades darker than his own and pinned back by a black-feathered circlet. She wore a black dress, which only emphasized the pallor of her skin, and looked younger than her son, though not as absurdly young as Pan. She turned to face him fully, her lips twitching in an unwelcoming smile. "Rumplestiltskin."
"So you know who I am?" He searched her eyes for recognition, but she spoke as if to a stranger.
"Oh, who hasn't heard of the Dark One." Her glance flickered past him. "And Peter Pan. What illustrious guests!"
Pan was speechless, for once. He stared at the Black Fairy, the silence stretching out awkwardly. Rumplestiltskin could feel her gathering her magic in preparation for a fight, and he quietly did the same. Then Pan broke the silence. "So it's true."
"What?" The Black Fairy took a tiny, startled step backwards.
Pan stepped forward to stand next to Rumplestiltskin. "They lied to me. All those years we thought you were dead..."
"What are you babbling about? 'They,' who?" The Black Fairy frowned, waving a hand to send a pulse of dark magic through the chamber. "Who else is here? Show yourselves!"
Blue and Tiger Lily fluttered into the chamber, swept in by the magic.
"You!" snarled the Black Fairy. "What is this? All the pain you put me through wasn't enough? You're willing to ally yourselves with monsters just to slay the great evil? It's not that easy!" Another, sharper burst of magic shot out from her hand.
Rumplestiltskin blocked instinctively, but didn't return the attack.
Tiger Lily had the presence of mind to call out, "Fiona, wait!"
The Black Fairy sent the next spell straight at Tiger Lily, who barely managed to dodge in time. "You took my son from me!"
"We brought him back! He's here!"
"What!?" The Black Fairy was shocked into stillness.
Pan took another step towards her. "Take a closer look, love. Don't tell me you've forgotten us."
The Black Fairy's face twisted back into its mask of arrogance. "Nonsense. I've never met either of you before in my life."
Pan fell silent. Rumplestiltskin found himself sympathizing with his father. He didn't know what to say, either, but Pan looked absolutely gutted. For a long time, Rumplestiltskin had thought his father incapable of love, but after seeing the genuine anger Pan had shown towards the fairies, Rumplestiltskin couldn't help but mourn for the family they could have been. Not that he forgave his father for his abandonment, but now... whatever he felt on finally meeting his mother must pale in comparison to the pain of not being recognized by a wife thought lost forever.
Just when the silence stretched on too long, and Rumplestiltskin wanted desperately to make some quip, anything to break the awkwardness, Pan flicked a hand.
A man stood where the boy had been. Papa, cried the lost child inside the Dark One at seeing that once-familiar silhouette. The voice, too, changed to the one that haunted his nightmares. "Maybe this will jog your memory."
The Black Fairy gasped, her mask shattering in even greater shock than her son's at the transformation. "Malcolm?"
"Aye, love."
The Black Fairy's gaze turned to Rumplestiltskin. "And this..."
"That's right, Mother." Rumplestiltskin, still trembling from the memories stirred up by his father's reversion, hardly knew what words came out of his mouth as he stared at the woman in front of him. Nothing felt real anymore. "Rumplestiltskin is your son."
The Black Fairy's eyes went wide. "The Dark One." Her voice shook as she looked back at her husband. "Malcolm! You... you let our son become the Dark One?"
Rumplestiltskin closed his eyes, gritting his teeth against the inevitable rejection. The familiar pain sliced through the dream-like haze, grounding him again. What else could he have expected? No mother wanted her child to grow up to be a monster. He felt a hand clap his shoulder.
"Not bad, eh, for the son of a coward," said Malcolm. "Most powerful sorcerer in the realm and all. Chin up, laddie. She just needs a moment to get over the shock."
Then he felt a soft touch on his cheek. His mother's voice was almost inaudible but close enough to stir his hair. "Son... I'm so sorry. I didn't mean..."
Rumplestiltskin jerked away, blinking at the Black Fairy in sudden angry suspicion. "You didn't mean to choose your power over me?" He remembered what Tiger Lily had told him of his mother's banishment. "You didn't mean to abandon me?"
The Black Fairy looked at him with eyes full of pain. Malcolm, Malcolm, was at her side gripping one of her hands. Her next words cut the more sharply for their familiarity: "I was trying to protect you."
Rumplestiltskin shook his head.
"It was a trick, son," said Malcolm. "Take it from me, I know when a game has no winning move. If she hadn't cut your fate, you would have been a fairy's plaything..."
"He would have been a great hero!" the Blue Fairy insisted. Then her voice changed to that of the ghost, Adele. "And died, a great inspiration to others! Yes, you've sung that song before. Dark One, you should count yourself lucky your mother was there to cut away your doom."
"She sentenced me to a life of cowardice," whispered Rumplestiltskin.
"Nonsense," said Adele. "If you need 'fate' to make you brave, that's not real courage, any more than courage you drink out of a bottle, and I saw enough of that in Halborg."
Rumplestiltskin flinched as if struck. Trying to blame other people for your own faults? sneered the darkness. You should know better by now. He shook his head and muttered weakly, "But Blue banished her for it..."
"Ha. She would have banished her either way. I know how she thinks. Last thing she wants to keep around is a fairy who won't listen to her orders." Adele twisted in the air, the battle for control of the body playing out on her face. The ghost won the round, continuing with, "You were fated to grow up motherless, and that's not down to the shears. Blue would have preferred a Savior orphan for her own shaping, but..." Then the fairy seized control again. "She became the Great Evil, child. I acted for the safety of all the realms."
Rumplestiltskin choked out a bitter laugh. Great Evil? He looked at his parents, then at the fairies. They were all monsters, and so was he.
"Don't listen to her." Adele had seized control again. "We'll leave you to your family reunion." She darted away down the tunnel, Tiger Lily following more slowly in her wake.
"'Great Evil'?" Malcolm chuckled. "That'll be the day. Fiona—"
"Fiona is dead." The Black Fairy pulled away from Malcolm and circled behind a table, pausing to flip unseeing through the pages of a weathered tome. "I'm the Black Fairy now, bound to this dark, wretched place. I swore to return for my family, but..." She raised her eyes to look at them. "For all that this realm stands outside time, it's cheated me all the same."
"We can make a fresh start," said Malcolm. "We're all here now, aren't we?"
The Black Fairy shook her head. "I don't even know who you are now. Peter Pan? All those years... what happened to you?"
"Well, that's something of a curious story, eh, Rumple?"
Rumplestiltskin met his father's eyes numbly. "Is that what we're calling it now?"
"Just tell me!" demanded the Black Fairy.
"Now, where should I start..." Malcolm scratched his chin, but didn't immediately continue.
The Black Fairy made an impatient gesture. "Son of a coward? That's what you said, Malcolm. What did you mean by that? Since when have you been a coward?"
Rumplestiltskin scowled, remembering Hordor's words: Women don't like to be married to cowards.
Malcolm glanced at him, mouth twisting as if he could guess his son's thoughts. "It was the Duke, wasn't it? Got himself a hankering to sit himself on his cousin's royal throne. Couldn't do that without raising up an army, and let's just say I had better things to do with my life."
"You deserted," said Rumplestiltskin flatly. He had grown up under the shadow of his father's reputation, only to repeat his mistakes.
"What would you have me do? Abandon my infant son?"
"You did it anyway! All you managed was to delay it for a few years." Rumplestiltskin took a shuddering breath, wanting to cry.
Like father, like son, eh? jeered the darkness, its voice amplified by the dark magic all around them.
The Black Fairy stared at Malcolm in horror. "You abandoned our son?"
"It wasn't much of a life, was it?" spat Malcolm. "The Duke won his war, but people remembered. Who wants to hire the coward? I was lucky to be paid half what I should have been, and that was when they allowed me to work at all and didn't just run me off with a good beating when they found out who I was..."
Gods. Was that how it had been? Rumplestiltskin had always thought his father preferred to play the part of a itinerant grifter, cheating at games and spending his time in the tavern. But now he remembered his own difficulties in the marketplace, no one willing to give the deserter a fair price for his yarn.
"Seven years I stuck it out, but then the boy came home with a miracle — a magic bean." As Malcolm unspooled the whole vile tale, the suffocating darkness surrounding them grew thunderous.
Rumplestiltskin saw the matching darkness in the Black Fairy's eyes. Was her rage on his behalf? His father had never... but this was his mother. He wanted so badly to believe it was true that he didn't dare think it. Not in a realm that was as steeped in magic as Neverland. He could only watch distantly as his father was lifted up by that power and slammed into a wall with bone-shattering force, force enough to kill anyone with less magic than Peter Pan.
"You threw him away!" The Black Fairy's upraised hand closed into a fist, choking her erstwhile husband.
Malcolm gasped for breath, fighting free of her spell to spit out his defense. "I sent him to my mother's spinster aunts. They provided better for him than I ever could. It was for his own good."
And where have we heard THAT before? Rumplestiltskin didn't want to think it, wanted to crawl away in shame. Their family history was an unrelenting wheel of misery and bad choices.
"He needed his father!"
Malcolm drew a scraping breath through the magic constricting his throat. "Well, a boy with no mother must needs grow up quickly. Better to learn it sooner than later."
"You let him become the Dark One," accused the Black Fairy, which Rumplestiltskin found surreal, considering what she was. A hysterical giggle threatened to burst out. She looked at him with an anguished gaze. "You let him take on that curse..."
"He was willing to do anything to protect his own child." Malcolm explained about the ogres. "Took him nigh on fifteen years, but the lad finally stopped running away and made his stand — even killed a man. All so that his son could live. I think he gets that from you, dear."
Looking shaken, the Black Fairy released her stranglehold, her arm dropping to her side. "And what if he had failed? Our grandson would have been eaten by ogres!"
"I would have sent my Shadow to fetch him to Neverland first." Malcolm shrugged, rubbing at his throat and stretching his neck this way and that. "Had to do that anyway, didn't I, when he ran away from his father?"
"You!" Rumplestiltskin burst out in fury. "You knew I was looking for him. You must have known. But you trapped him there in your sick little games."
"Better me than your mother. At least my Lost Boys have fun with me. She keeps hers all locked up behind bars."
"I'm keeping them safe!" The Black Fairy met Rumplestiltskin's eyes, and he could read the guilt beneath her words as she seemed to plead for his understanding. "You have no idea how dangerous this realm is. Dark fairy dust everywhere, curses lurking in the walls... any stray wish could set them off."
"Enough!" Rumplestiltskin didn't want to hear it. He could understand his parents all too well. What was the use? They were where they were, and the children were still captive here. Bae would want them freed, just as he had wanted the Lost boys sent home. Because Bae wasn't like his parents or grandparents — the cycle ended here. "No more empty justifications!"
The force of his shout shook them both into momentary silence.
The two who were glaring daggers at each other dropped their eyes, glancing warily at Rumplestiltskin without meeting his gaze. He turned and stalked off back down the dim passageway. Belle would be there. If only she was with him, maybe his jumble of feelings would make sense.
From behind him, the Black Fairy said softly, "I'm sorry, son. I was only trying to protect you. Everything else..."
And with that, they were at it again, muttering resentfully at each other.
"You can't keep him tied to your apron strings forever, dear!" hissed Malcolm. "How old is he now? A few hundred? He has a wife... his second! And a son of his own..."
"You're one to speak," the Black Fairy snarled back. "It's time to stop living through your son. Oh, don't give me that look. You can't hide it from me, what you did. What you're still doing. It has to stop! Give back what you took, Malcolm."
"What? You left me with this helpless, squirming, needy larva pulling at me, taking everything I had, eating my dreams alive. If he gives a little back, that's no more than I'm owed!"
It took Rumplestiltskin everything he had not to turn around and lash out at his father. He had always known this, it wasn't a surprise, he told himself. No reason to be hurt again.
"A little, Malcolm? It's been, what did you say, a few hundred years!" The Black Fairy was not so constrained, and Rumplestiltskin felt a twinge in his heart. Was that what it was like to have a parent on his side? "And for what? It's kept you from growing up. From being a father."
"Who wants to be a father?" retorted Malcolm.
"You did! You did, once. And you were, for seven years. What happened, Malcolm? A moment of temptation, a moment of weakness? A shadow whispering in your ear?"
After a long pause, Malcolm muttered, "Maybe. It was so long ago..."
"We wanted a family, once. When our child was born, before the fairies, before everything, we were so happy. Do you remember? I think you must, or why else are you here?"
A low sigh. Then, "I wanted to see you, Fiona."
A brittle laugh. "Fiona died a long time ago."
"And there I was, hoping..."
"This is the dark fairy realm, where all hope is buried."
"A ghost of a hope, then. Your son grew up to be a necromancer, you know. Isn't that right, laddie? Think you can raise some hope up from the grave for us all?"
Rumplestiltskin didn't dare turn around. He knew the story. To look hope in the eye was to lose it. But in his heart he heard a different thought, in a soft, warm voice utterly unlike his own: No, that's not the story. To look backward is to look into the past. Hope is what you see when you look forward.
He looked up and saw her. "Belle."
She met him with a quick smile, barely dampened by the darkness that pressed in around them. "Rumple. You found her?"
It wasn't enough. No matter how much Zelena pretended, Rumple still resisted her, and the baby would never be truly theirs. Someday the little cuckoo would grow up to be a threat to any real children Zelena coaxed out of her Dark One. The knowledge that the little brat was destined to be a Savior preyed on her mind. The last thing she wanted was a hero to disrupt her plans.
Rumple didn't volunteer his opinion, but Zelena could see the spark of rebellion in his eyes. Even with his serving maid forgotten, he refused to devote his whole heart to the (far more deserving) Zelena. On closer inspection, she realized that two other souls still had a claim on her imp.
"Your son, Rumple. Where is he?"
But even compelled by the dagger, he couldn't answer what he didn't know. Luckily, Zelena had resources he did not. A truth hidden in one world was revealed in another, and with the power of his tree at her command, she found what she wanted to know.
"Peter Pan is your father?" Zelena petted her imp in sympathy and cooed, "Poor Rumple. You never said..."
The imp was tense and wary under her touch, still trying to pull away. But she would fix that. She met with Pan in Neverland, offering a deal too tempting to resist.
"Oh dear, look at you — not even Pan can hold back time forever." Zelena smiled wickedly at the boyish demon. "How long has it been? Your son's childish faith is wearing thin."
"Don't worry yourself, love," sneered Pan. "I have it well in hand."
"Oh, do you?" Zelena smirked. "Truest Believer? I'm afraid that train has truly and hopelessly derailed. Lucky for you that I'm here to help you."
"Oh? Do tell."
"You need power... what better than this new baby?" With a swirl of magic, Emma appeared in Zelena's arms. "She was born with the pure light magic of a Savior. Her heart can keep you going for centuries."
An avaricious gleam lit Pan's eyes. "Indeed. And what's the price for your generosity?"
"Nothing much. Just give me everything you have of your wayward son — oh yes, I know exactly who he is — and that includes Baelfire."
To Zelena's delight, Pan agreed. She soon left his miserable little island behind, Rumple's son in tow. Without magic, he was no match for her when she took his life, bathing the tree in his blood. The sickly thing blackened further, yet also grew in power, new shoots springing out from the dead trunk, Zelena's own magic fed by the sacrifice.
Rumplestiltskin was wholly hers, now. She looked in his eyes and saw only love reflected back. Together, they could have everything. Family, power, the world. With their combined powers, even the Wood Beyond was within their grasp.