"Dragons!" someone screamed.
Belle looked up to see them flying out of the flaming portal that lit up the Wood like a temporary sun. Two dragons... and two griffons. The dragons dropped like oversized falcons, one towards Zelena, and the other right at Belle, or rather the Dark One right behind her, the one who held Rumple in silent servitude in his beast form.
Dark and light magic rose in defense, barely deflecting the dragons.
More magic, fast and dazzling, from the griffons. Then two human figures launched themselves from their backs, blurred within a shield of brilliant white light. Miracle of miracles, one of the human figures tore the dagger away from Zelena's hand.
Belle felt the change in the violent tremor that shook through Rumple. He reared up and broke away towards the boy holding the dagger. Baelfire! she realized.
"Papa!" Baelfire stumbled away from the witch, spinning around in confusion on seeing so many Rumplestiltskins gathered in the Wood.
At the same time, the other Dark One vanished from Rumple's back and reappeared to catch Zelena as she fell, loosed from the power of the dagger.
And in the midst of the chaos, the ancient Queen of Nevethe focused a bolt of pure energy at the witch and her Dark One. All around the field, dry, withered leaves floated down, the most ancient of trees speeding from summer to winter in a single moment. The dust red moons faded from the sky.
A wail of loss rose from the army of Timers.
The Dark One — the one that had dared challenge the Wood Beyond — screamed and unraveled into a thousand threads of darkness that writhed for a moment before losing all human shape and draining into the ground.
Zelena was nowhere to be seen.
The battle was over. The dragons resumed their human forms, as did Rumple. Belle rushed over to hug him in relief, along with his son. She saw out of the corner of her eye that Snow White and her prince were there, too, talking to the girl who had helped Baelfire with that burst of light magic. Belle heard the name "Emma" and started. Was that...?
Before Belle could ask about it, Rumple abruptly grabbed her by the wrist, and Baelfire on the other side.
"We're done," he said flatly. Darkness flared around him, pulling the three of them into the shadow realm. The next moment, Belle was blinking at the light, the sky suddenly bright. She focused on their surroundings and recognized the courtyard of the Dark Castle. A flurry of wings marked the arrival of the two griffons, who must have flown in on the tail end of Rumple's spell. Rumple released Belle and his son, then turned away in the abrupt, jittery manner he had when he was upset.
"Rumple?" Belle caught his arm and caught his gaze, seeing anger and fear in his eyes. "What is it?"
"Papa?" Baelfire looked more confused than anything. He tentatively offered the dagger in his hand to Rumple.
Rumple flinched, but after a moment he snatched the dagger from his son, vanishing it in a puff of smoke. His fingers twitched and rubbed against his palms as if burned. He said raggedly, "You're safe..."
"What happened?" Baelfire asked.
"Zelena," hissed Rumple.
"Is she dead?" wondered Belle. Despite herself, she hoped so with a bone-deep weariness. Exhaustion had caught up with her now that the battle was over and her magic no longer yoked to the other Dark One.
"The Queen turned the full force of her power on her," said Rumple, but his eyes slid away unhappily. "It's hard to see how she could have survived that." Not a lie, but Belle sensed an evasion. Some dark thought...
"All the leaves fell from her tree," Belle noted. "Does that mean... does it mean the Queen died, too?" She remembered the heart-wrenching cries of the assembled Timers.
"She must have burned up her last reservoirs of energy... to make certain that Zelena was utterly destroyed." Rumple shot Belle an unhappy glance. "She was with child. Zelena's and... the other Dark One."
Belle's eyes widened. Her hand moved in sympathy over her own abdomen. "Did... did the Queen know?"
"Oh, yes."
"Is that why you left, Papa?" asked Baelfire. "Because she killed a baby?" His expression turned troubled. "But Lily and Emma are back there, and Emma's parents..."
"Lily?" Belle didn't recognize the name.
"Maleficent's daughter," explained Baelfire. "She and Emma grew up as sisters."
"Then no doubt Maleficent will protect them. Maleficent is a cunning old dragon. You don't have to worry about her," said Rumple.
"A cunning old dragon with an understandable grudge against Snow White and James!" Belle reminded him.
"If she hasn't killed them yet, she's unlikely to suddenly change her mind." Rumplestiltskin's words were not exactly reassuring, but Belle told herself the Timers wouldn't allow further violence in their wood, and Maleficent was no Zelena. He shook his head. "Enough. I fulfilled my end of the deal — Emma and her parents were reunited. Whatever happens next is up to them."
Belle sighed, not sure what to hope for. Emma clearly had another family, now. How well would Snow White accept that? Would she see the 'monsters' in a more human light? Or would she try to justify her actions to her daughter?
Rumple looked at her, his expression softening. "You're tired." He glanced at Baelfire. "Both of you. You need rest... everything else can wait."
Belle nodded. He was right; even the walk across the courtyard and into their bedroom felt exhausting. She was half-asleep already, her thoughts becoming less coherent. Vaguely, she heard Rumple speaking to the chamberlain and then to Baelfire before joining her in bed.
She slept through the rest of the day and didn't fully wake until the next morning. She found herself alone. At first she thought nothing of it, but Rumple didn't join them for breakfast and she began to worry, though when Baelfire remarked on his father's absence, she forced a smile. "It's probably nothing. He just needs some time after what happened. Look, I'll go talk to him..."
"I'll come, too," Baelfire said quickly. "What... what did happen? I didn't want to ask yesterday — he looked so... I didn't want to upset him. I know it was bad."
Belle explained briefly as they walked through the castle, concluding, "So you came just in time. I don't know what we would have done if they had taken over the Wood. Died, I suppose."
Baelfire's face darkened as he listened. "Don't say that. You and Papa would have found a way!"
Belle wasn't as sure, remembering how helpless she had felt, trapped in the other Dark One's spell — she had given herself up, which made it that much harder to resist. "Maybe."
They found the Dark One hidden away in his tower work room, sitting at the wheel in the corner, spinning straw to gold. He barely glanced up at their entrance. "Belle. Bae."
"Rumple, are you all right?" Belle knew it was a useless question, and she could feel the turmoil under the calm surface through the link they shared. She touched him hesitantly on the shoulder, feeling the tension in his forced stillness.
"Fine. I was just... thinking." The wheel creaked and turned. A sigh. "Bae... I'm sorry. I was too weak to protect you. I let you fall into another world without me. Again."
"It's not your fault," Baelfire said in a low voice. "Belle told me what happened."
Belle sat down next to Rumple. "No one blames you. I wasn't strong enough to hold onto you, either."
Rumple ducked his head in a tiny nod. "Bae... what happened in the other realm? You found Maleficent? Was it her spell that aged Emma so quickly?"
"No, no, it wasn't Maleficent. Something happened with the portal. Time went all out of joint." Baelfire recounted his adventures. When he reached the part about promising the elf a favor from the Dark One, Rumplestiltskin stiffened for a moment.
Then he sighed, "A price I will gladly pay, for your safe return, Bae. But if they want to collect on the debt, let them knock on my door as they please."
"Fair enough." Baelfire ventured a small smile. "Anyway, that was how I came to meet Emma." He told them about their 'liberation' of the traders' ship, and their raid on Simon Gittian's mansion and Maleficent's rescue, then about how the dragon sorceress had summoned Snow White and James.
Belle saw her husband twitch, obviously biting back agitated exclamations at all the times his son had put himself in danger and Rumple hadn't even known, much less been able to protect him. She hugged him in reassurance. "It's all right. He's safe home, now."
Rumple nodded. "For which I apparently must thank Maleficent..."
Baelfire looked a little abashed. "She'll probably want a favor, too."
"I am truly grateful, son." He managed a smile. "Especially given that our past meetings have not always ended on such happy terms."
"Well, I'm happy," said Belle. "And I think Maleficent is no more a monster than you are, Rumple."
"Or no less," he muttered. "So she has a daughter. All these years she was childless — what changed? I wonder who the father is. Did she say?"
Baelfire shook his head, looking embarrassed. "It seemed rude to ask straight out."
The next visitors to knock at the castle door were not elves. It wasn't Maleficent, either. A week later, Belle found two Timers outside the gates.
"Cogsworth! Lumiere!" Belle was caught off guard. They had not needed to knock, before. Rumplestiltskin must have locked the castle wards against them.
"Belle," said Lumiere. Cogsworth only managed a small nod. Both Timers were haggard, faded shadows of their usual selves. Belle was relieved to see them alive, but there was a distance that hadn't been there before the battle — before she had felt the massed power of the Wood aimed at her. (Not her, not really, but all the same she had made her choice and so had they.)
"Were you sent here by Nevethe?" The question came out like an accusation. Why did you vanish before? Why didn't you come sooner?
"The Queen is gone," Cogsworth sighed.
"Dead, you mean? Or missing?"
"I mean the likelihood of anyone meeting her at any point forward from now is vanishingly small, in that the expected time of such an event exceeds by at least a thousand times the age of the universe," Cogsworth clarified his statement in a subdued voice.
"He is meaning: she is dead," said Lumiere.
"I'm sorry." Belle gestured them inside, leading them to the great hall. She knew that though there were multiple versions of herself, Rumple, and everyone else in the Enchanted Forest, the Timers were different. The Wood Beyond was the only Wood Beyond, and its Queen sat at the hub of all realms, existing simultaneously in all of them.
"It was foretold," said Cogsworth glumly.
Belle nodded, thinking how awful it must be to foresee one's own end. Or was it a relief to know and have the time to make one's peace with it? To have time to plan and prepare. She wondered how the succession in Nevethe was determined. Had the old queen designated an heir? Did the Timers hold an election? "Who rules the Wood Beyond now? Or have you decided yet?"
Lumiere shuffled, a nervous tic, his wings and tail twitching. "Yes. That is the very thing we are here for to discuss." He cast his gaze around the great hall. "We must to speak with you and Rumplestiltskin..."
"Oh." Belle sighed. Rumple had holed himself away for most of the past week. She wasn't sure what precisely the other Dark One had done to him, but she had a sense of lingering pain. The trauma of being controlled again sent him into a brooding withdrawal, Belle unable to do much besides being there for him. He hadn't wanted to talk to her, hadn't wanted to talk to anyone. She had wanted to give him time and space to heal. A week... how long was a week? "I'll see if I can find him."
She knew perfectly well where he was, but the two Timers allowed her the polite fiction and didn't try to follow her.
Rumplestiltskin sat at his spinning wheel as if it was unimaginable that he be anywhere else, as if he had become part of the Dark Castle, a ghost haunting the tower. Before Belle could say anything, he held up a forbidding hand. "No."
"No?"
"You know what the word means, and so do they." Rumple set aside the spinning and stood up, only to pace furiously back and forth. "You may tell them so, if you wish. I don't want to see them."
"But Rumple, they're your friends..."
"That was before. Today they are here as emissaries of Nevethe." Rumple whirled and wagged a finger in her face. "Don't you dare deny it."
Belle bit her lip. It was true, but it didn't make the other part untrue. "All right, but Nevethe helped you. You told me... it was their vision that gave you a path to find Bae."
Rumple's face twisted as if in pain. He bowed his head, hands dragged over his eyes. He rasped, "I know. I do owe them, but everything I did for Bae... am I to throw it all away to become an even worse monster? Belle, you condemned Snow White for what she did to Maleficent's baby. Nevethe did worse to Zelena's child..."
"But you can change that. I think they want us to find the Wood Beyond a successor to the old queen." Belle took his hand. She had faith in him, even if he had none in himself. "If they lost their way, we can help them find it again."
"Lost their way? It's always been their way. They crave hegemony!" Rumple laughed bitterly. "And you misunderstand. They don't want us to find them a successor. They want us to be that successor..."
"What? How...?" Belle remembered the vast, ancient Queen... practically a god in her own right. How could they ever match that?
Rumple scoffed. He reached forward with his free hand and lifted the crystal that had hung on a chain around her neck since she was a child. It had been his betrothal gift to Belle, her mother had said. "These crystals come from Nevethe. They're more than pretty stones... they marked us for a long, long time. Only I didn't understand until now what they were truly asking..."
Belle caught his hand. She stared at his ring with the matching crystal. "What do you mean?"
He pulled back. A flick of his fingers sent the dagger into his hand. He showed her: not his own dagger, but the other Dark One's, the name black on black until it could no longer be seen, only felt in the indentation of the metal. "When he bound me to his dagger, I was... I was part of him, and his thoughts, his memories... we shared them. We share them still... gods, it would be better to forget, but I can't..."
Belle shivered, remembering the cold, blank eyes of the other Rumplestiltskin. His aura had exuded a darkness that went deeper than anything she had ever sensed before, a rage that could tear apart entire worlds and not be sated. And now her Rumple had that ghost inside him. No wonder he looked so haunted. She whispered, "Rumple..."
"The worst part. The worst part is, it could be me. I know how he fell. He loved her, you know." A twist of his hand, and the dagger vanished again. "No matter how it came about."
Belle nodded dumbly. She had known it when she learned that the other Rumplestiltskin had fathered a child on her, something only possible with the magic of true love.
"He was desperate to protect her. Nevethe sent her assassins to execute mother and child, and the Dark One... he did what he had to do." Rumple looked at her, love and fear both visible in his eyes. "I would do the same. Belle... that's what they want."
"But the other tried to destroy Nevethe. They can't want that..."
Rumple dropped his gaze to his ring and toyed with it with his other hand, as if pondering whether to take it off. "That's where you come in, sweetheart." He let his hands fall to his sides. "They think you can draw deeply enough into the light to balance the dark. Because..."
"Because I would never let you fall," she realized.
"We're all falling, all the time," he corrected. "But if we fall together, we define our positions relative to each other..."
"And leave the world standing. I think I see."
"You would be the only light to keep me from drowning in an ocean of darkness," he said bleakly. "That is the price of such power. And as for you..." He took both of her hands in his. "To take that much light into your heart..."
It would change her, she knew, but she wouldn't regret it if it saved her true love's soul. Do the brave thing. "I won't let you drown."
He smiled sadly. "You are the kindest, most generous person I know. You see goodness in monsters and care even for a villain who deserves no mercy."
"You're not..." she protested. "I see goodness because you are good."
He sighed. "That is a lie you tell to comfort us both, but it is a lie that will burn away under the light. Brightness illuminates, brightness denies the shadows mortals live in, and few can endure it."
"How do you even know?" Belle didn't want to believe him, but clearly he did.
"The Dark Ones have a saying: those who do magic out of the goodness of their hearts end up with empty hearts." He grimaced. "Selflessly pure light magic comes at a cost. You've met the king of the griffons. You've met the Blue Fairy. Humanity is a fragile quality, too easy to lose without even noticing. Darkness is more obvious..."
"That can't be right." Belle thought back to her encounters in the land above the clouds and with the Blue Fairy, both of whom definitely used light magic. She remembered what the ghost child and Rumple's mother had told them. "But Tiger Lily wasn't like that."
"Tiger Lily is far less powerful. And I doubt either the griffon king or the blue nuisance started out so heartless as they ended."
"You think that would happen to me?"
"It takes a strong person to keep the light from burning away their hearts." He didn't meet her eyes. "Not to lose themselves. I can't ask you for that sacrifice."
"You don't have to ask," Belle whispered. "But it's like you said — if we fall, we fall together. I know you. You won't let me burn away any more than I would let you drown. I love you and I won't let this destroy us." She reached out and wrapped her arms around him. "We'll find a way."
"Oh, sweetheart." He melted into the hug. "Nevethe doesn't deserve you. Let them find some other Rumplestiltskin, some other Belle. They have enough of them — we all saw that!"
"And if none of them want the job, either?" The idea of so many near-duplicates of herself had become rather unsettling when seen in the flesh.
"An infinite universe full of infinite variations. Someone will be willing and able."
"And if it's someone who sees eye to eye with Nevethe? Nothing will change." Belle threw his own words back at him. "You said they craved hegemony."
"Everything under their all-seeing eye, all worlds shaped to their visions," muttered Rumple reluctantly. "All Dark Ones subtly guided to their purposes..."
"Well, then."
"Well, then, nothing. We have our family to think of." He drew back, glancing down as if he could see the child growing inside her. "Bae. His little sister. And any others that may follow. Isn't that something you want?"
"Of course, but..."
"I almost lost Bae when I became the Dark One, Belle. He couldn't see his papa in me anymore!" Rumple turned away. He slumped over a table, gripping the edge as if clinging to a receding hope. "You think taking on even more darkness will work out any better?"
Belle wanted to think that it would, because this time Bae would understand. This time they would face it together as a family. She wanted to have faith in father and son, and in herself. But she knew how often things had gone badly for Rumplestiltskin in a long, long life full of rejection and dashed hopes. "I think you can trust yourself to try your best."
"And if it's not enough? I don't want to fail him again. I don't want to fail you."
She almost told him not to be a coward, then bit her tongue. He had his reasons, and reason to distrust Belle's own foolhardiness. She had rashly charged into danger before, and only Rumple's intervention had saved her life. His fears were not unfounded. She had no right to make the choice for him. "Fine. If that's your decision..."
"It is."
When he showed no sign of moving, Belle sighed. "I suppose you want me to tell Lumiere and Cogsworth."
"Tell them to go to hell for all I care."
Just as well he left the diplomacy to her. But maybe he was a bad influence on her, because when Belle returned to the great hall, it was to bluntly tell them, "If Rumple's right about why you're here, he's not interested."
Cogsworth and Lumiere looked at each other, then at Belle. It was Lumiere who said wearily, "So be it. Fate may be having other ideas. Tell him... tell him we are sorry for it."
The silence hung heavily between them after that, no one finding anything meaningful to say, and the Timers left with disheartened farewells on all sides.