Fuck, it had been a long day. Hell, it had been a long something, but he wasn't even convinced it was a day. How long had he been here? A few hours, maybe? Half a year? How much time was missing before he'd risen out of the Dark One Vault at the behest of that girl? Had there even been a girl? How was he supposed to know she was real?!
No, she was real. He'd managed to prove that much.
After leaving the shop, he'd scratched his head, unsure what to do or where to go. The images of Belle and Baelfire and Henry swirled in his head, and he knew he had to do something; he wanted that more than anything! But he was slowly coming to believe that he couldn't. Not yet, at least. The encounter with his father had thrown him for a loop he hadn't expected. Loopholes he loved. Loops, on the other hand, he hated with a passion. So as much as he wanted to jump into helping Belle and Bae, he realized that the best thing he could do was put together what had happened to the best of his abilities, try to understand where he was and how he'd lost time, only then, with a foundation properly set, did he figure he'd be able to do something more.
In his search for answers, the first place he'd returned to had been his cabin, or rather the woods by his cabin. The place where he'd emerged and first saw the girl who was chased by the dog. There were prints on the ground. Enormous dog prints that he associated with the three-headed dog he'd seen and shoe prints, an impression made by a thick sole with a dainty foot. Coming back through the vault and everything the girl had said was shrouded in a fog of shock, but he vaguely remembered that she'd been a tiny thing in work boots. In addition to the prints he found, he could see that the vault structure itself was weathered. There had clearly been debris and brush covering it. But it had been moved aside by small, slight fingers.
The girl. She was real. And he was more convinced than ever that she had been there.
He was not, however, convinced that he was dead.
Was that wishful thinking? Perhaps. But in retracing his steps and going over what he knew and the information that was missing, it was a thought he'd stumbled over quite naturally, expecting that he'd be able to convince himself that it was true all too easily. But he couldn't. It was a theory that was taking root in his mind with every shred of evidence he put to it. He was shocked by it! Rightfully so. It was quite the leap to one second believe that he was a dead man living in the realm of the dead and the next believe he might be someone who was alive in the land of the dead. But he was, above all, a logical man. He followed where the evidence led him, and the pile of proof he'd begun to gather, while it didn't prove his theory, didn't disprove it either.
He might not be dead.
The facts didn't support it.
To begin with, everyone he'd met in this town seemed to have an idea of what was happening here. They all seemed to know something he did not like they'd taken some Orientation to the Afterlife course. He had none of their knowledge.
Additionally, if there was a "usual" way to get here, he most certainly hadn't arrived by those means, which led him to consider the means by which he had arrived here. He'd emerged from a vault. A Dark One Vault. Those damn things had been crafted by Dark Ones since the first Dark One! There was a handful of Vaults scattered around the Enchanted Forest, primarily for ease. Hell, even he'd laid one down close to the Dark Castle! But he had no idea how one would have ended up here, in this world. But then again, he didn't know how Granny's, or Belle's Library, or even his Pawn Shop had ended up here either. He assumed that the same person who had crafted this land had also placed the vault, though, of course, the presence of Gorgon told him there had been other Dark Ones in this realm. It was entirely possible one of them had made it, but for what purpose?!
He didn't know. And it didn't matter. No matter who was responsible for it, only what it had the capacity to do. Every Dark One Vault was capable of acting as a hiding place for a Dark One or even the dagger, if so desired, it was storage for the soul of a Dark One if something should ever happen to require a reset point, like a fatal wound that needed to heal, they also served as a birthing chamber, a safe space for new Dark Ones to come through with their magic for the first time and meet their guide. But with the correct symbols, there was one more thing they could do. Dark One Vaults could also act as a summons for the Dark One, calling them forth from anywhere desired.
Symbols that the girl had shown him she'd pushed.
His conclusion?
He couldn't be sure he could definitively say he had a "conclusion" yet. But he knew he wasn't more convinced that he was dead than alive.
At the moment, his leading theory, if he was alive, was that he was in limbo. He'd killed Pan with his own dagger, and in the same stroke, he'd also torn through his own heart. The dagger was designed to transfer power to anyone that wielded it against the Dark One, anyone who landed a fatal blow to the heart with the dagger. He had guessed, though now he thought it was more of a stupid assumption, that if he killed himself the Curse would die. Instead, it appeared that the Curse had only rebounded. In stabbing himself in the heart, he'd created something like a circular current for the magic. It might have left, but it would have only flowed right back into him. And not knowing what to do, it did what it always did under similar circumstances. It reset. It would have sought to deliver him to his vault, but with the Curse of Regina and Pan active and simultaneously destroying and rebuilding, it would have interfered with the Dark One Magic. What the magic would have done with him in that case was anyone's guess. Instead of rising in the Enchanted Forest, it seemed like his soul had been caught in the crossfire and packed away for a while. Until the girl here had pressed the right symbols. And the Vault worked once more as it always had and summoned him, and now…here he was. Alive, maybe. With his dagger. Still the Dark One. But stuck in the Underworld.
Maybe alive. Maybe dead.
Limbo.
It was a long-shot theory, one he didn't know could ever be tested again and wasn't sure he could ever prove without giving someone the dagger and asking them to stab him and see what happened, but he sure as hell wasn't going to let that happen.
The weight of the crystal ball in his pocket was a reminder that drew his attention from himself and back to the people that needed it most. He wasn't sure about the state of his being. But he was sure Baelfire was not where he was supposed to be. His focus had to be first and foremost on getting Belle and Bae back to Henry and Emma, reuniting them. And if he was alive and able to transport himself between worlds, being there for them would be much easier than pulling the strings from another realm. His hope of getting back to them so easily was unlikely. But unlikely situations sometimes called for unlikely solutions. If he was going to fix this mess, he had to try almost everything.
It was all just information, he told himself. It was all information that would help him further down the road. He'd done the impossible and crossed words once for his family before; he could do it again. But he'd only manage to do that with all the information he could gather, and this...this was an important piece that was easy to prove.
So, he stood in his cabin, closed his eyes, and held his dagger in his hand because even if he was convinced it would fail, he wanted to give his magic the best chance it had. He pictured himself beside Belle, in the place where he had seen her and his son. He imagined his magic taking him to that cave, crossing realms, escaping.
He didn't need to open his eyes to know it hadn't been successful. If he was alive, then the Enchanted Forest was out of his reach from here.
But he wasn't going to stop there. He'd seen Henry with Emma in an apartment of some kind. Getting to either party would work in the end he just needed to get there! Eyes closed, dagger in hand, he imagined himself in that very apartment, appearing before two stunned familiar faces, before his grandson.
But alas, nothing happened. The Enchanted Forest was cut off, that made sense because of the magic that Regina would have used. The World Without Magic being inaccessible wasn't new to him, but now…now there was another possibility. If there was even a glimmer of magic left in the wood that had once been Storybrooke, he might be able to access The World Without Magic that way. He was doubtful, but still…
He closed his eyes and imagined himself standing outside his former home, imagined the spongey feel of the grass in the yard, the angle of the sun, the cool breeze when it blew in from the-
Something was different. Something took his breath away as he realized that the magic had worked. He was no longer in his cabin! He held his breath as he opened his eyes.
It wasn't his home that greeted him, not exactly. It was his, but it wasn't. The Victorian House he'd owned in Storybrooke sat before him, but it was surrounded by the red haze that he'd encountered all day from the Underworld. The windows were boarded up. One of the balcony doors upstairs hung open from one of its hinges. The paint was chipped and missing in entire patches in some areas. And one of the stairs was broken. But it was his house. An abandoned version of his home, but his all the same.
His.
He stared open-mouthed at it, taking in the shock of it for a moment before that word repeated in his head. His. His home. He'd wanted to go to his home, and since his magic couldn't take him to that land, it had brought him here, where the same person who had designed his shop and the cabin and the vault and everything else in this messed up town had also left his house. His house.
He wanted to be in the Enchanted Forest or the World Without Magic, but to do that, it was clearly going to take more work than just a run-of-the-mill parlor trick for a Dark One. It was going to take work and learning. He was going to need a home base. The castle had been that for him in the Enchanted Forest; his shop had done the job in Storybrooke, but seeing as how that was occupied by someone…he rubbed his fingers together as he looked the place over, the magic beneath his skin itching to do something.
He didn't want to bring attention to himself, but what the hell did he care? If he was in limbo, then he wasn't of this world, and the worst that could happen was he would go back into the vault where he might be summoned into the realm he actually wanted to be in. Hell, he'd do the deed again right now if he weren't worried he'd spend longer in the limbo of the Dark One Vault than in this place using his time constructively!
It wasn't his first choice, given all the memories he was sure would haunt him here, but the only other option was the cabin, and the memories there were just as bad. He may as well assume his old flare for panache if he was going to do this.
So, he let magic pour out of his body and seep into the house. He used his energy to revive it. The broken step, he fixed. The paint he restored. The boards over the windows he obliterated and then healed the glass broken behind it.
He let his magic work as he ushered himself up those stairs and used his magic to open the doors wide. Inside he was greeted with dust, clutter, and furniture covered in white sheets. He allowed himself to do what he'd never done in the Enchanted Forest; he used his magic to clean. He eliminated the dust, blew the sheets off the furniture, and made the clutter disappear. In seconds he accomplished a cleaning that would easily have taken Belle two weeks, if not more. And when he was done, he lit a fire in the grate, fashioned a key for himself that would fit the door, and then coated the rest of the house in protection spell after protection spell.
It wasn't quite the statement that his castle had been in the Enchanted Forest, but it also wasn't the home that he'd known in Storybrooke. It felt like a cross between the two, a copy of the house he'd owned with all the intimidation of the castle.
He moved up the stairs; all of them. He climbed beyond the second floor into the rarely visited third floor until he emerged into the room where the balcony door had been broken. It was fixed now, completely healed, and now he opened it wide and stepped out onto that balcony to look over the view that matched the one he'd had in Storybrooke but couldn't manage to conjure the same feeling he'd had when looking over it before.
He turned back to the room he'd emerged from. The space was darker than the rest of the house, quieter, colder, and more sinister. It would do. It wasn't quite like his tower, but it also wasn't like the basement. It was unique, and considering the work ahead of him, he quickly realized this would be an excellent place to set up shop.
He was going to need a workspace. He had one in every realm, so he may as well have one here. From this place, he would work. From here, he would figure out precisely what the hell he was and how he'd gotten here. He would get back to his son and Belle. He would get his son back to his grandson. He would fix the errors that Regina had crafted and make this better. He didn't care if it killed him.
Okay, so here's a curious thing Rumple is starting to explore. Is he dead? Or has he merely been summoned to the Underworld? I tried to make some of his thoughts here copy a lot of what the fandom was saying after season 3A when no one knew what was going on. There was a considerable debate then as to whether Rumple would be dead or if it wouldn't have worked that way because he was alive. Here, Rumple struggles with questions like that as he tries to once again cross realms to get back to his family. I think for some (like myself, which was surprising) it was a real departure from what I had always assumed. But the more I looked into it, the more I found that it was plausible. What do you think?
Thank you, Jennifer Baratta and Rsbeall12, for reviewing the last chapter. I'm curious about what you think of this chapter and Rumple's musings here. I hope you will like the idea of him "setting up shop" in the attic of his Storybrooke house. I wanted a place where he could work and study in private, but I didn't want it to be somewhere familiar. I wanted it to be brand new. This was an answer I stumbled upon as I wrote and came to find that I really liked it. I hope you will too. Up next, we've got another blast from Rumple's past coming at you, and I'm excited for you to get to read it! Peace and Happy Reading!