It went against everything in her heart, to leave her true love in Zelena's hands. To turn her back and walk away for a third time. But it was their only hope.
Whether the leaf would have worked to restore his memory or not, Belle didn't know. All she knew was that they didn't have time. That Rumple had run out of time. Because she had seen, and what she had seen was Rumple's life hanging by a thread.
Zelena's sick game had pushed them to this cliff. The dagger impaled his neck, reforged into a deadly collar. Belle could see the psychic imprint of the witch's hand on that collar. It was a pressure unimpeded by physical considerations. The merest thought could signal Rumplestiltskin's execution: decapitated in an instant, and all the power of the Dark One transferred to Zelena.
Twice before, Belle had been unable to save Rumple from the witch. The one time she had, she had matched magic with magic — and that power was what she now lacked. No wonder her husband was obsessed with it. This helplessness, this inability to protect the ones you loved, it was unendurable, but she had no choice but to endure it.
So she fled. There was one place Zelena might not dare to follow, one place Belle might find the power she needed. Belle slipped away while Zelena was distracted and found the door she knew must exist even in this twisted reality.
It was more of a massive metal circle set into the floor — the entrance to the Vault of the Dark One. Belle went down to one knee to examine the eight glyphs set around the inner disk. The right sequence, when pressed, would unlock the door. It was a sequence she had memorized in the course of her research into the Dark One. The last time she had been here, she hadn't tried to go in. She had only wanted Rumple back.
She still wanted him back, but this time, she would go to the source of the darkness herself. She slowly pressed the 'digits' of the code, one after the other, ending on the sun disc in the center (like pressing the 'enter' key, she thought). Sequence completed, she sprang back to watch them light up with golden fire.
Then the lights blinked out. The circular plate descended. Streams of elemental darkness flowed in from the edges, covering the disk and overflowing the rim. Belle could sense the power in it, reshaping reality to reveal a spiral staircase descending into the vault.
She took the path offered. At the bottom of the stairs, a passageway opened up, lit by torches set along the walls. Most of it was illusion, but the dark presence behind the illusion was real enough. Belle let out the breath she had been holding. The so-called vault was a shrine. Not to the gods worshipped by the Avonlean church, but to one of the ancient, alien entities mentioned in Rumple's collection of forbidden texts.
He had told her that Nimue, the first Dark One, had once made a deal with that entity.
Belle prepared herself to do the same. She followed the torchlit way to the place where an iron grate was set in the wall. Behind the grate lay a whispering darkness, a void that felt larger than the tunnel that contained it.
This is the place. Belle dropped to her knees and whispered, "Our Grandmother... please, hear me. I seek your aid..."
Her whisper seemed to hang in the air. Wisps of darkness curled out from the gate, seeming to taste her words. Then more darkness shot out through the grate to envelop Belle in a whirlwind of black tentacles. She froze, letting them whip wildly around her. The wind of their passage sounded like hissing voices to her ears.
Gradually the tentacles withdrew. They coiled together and the heads loomed up above her, becoming serpents with jewel-red eyes glittering at her. The mass of serpents shaped itself into something resembling a human form. In place of the head, two hooded serpents, larger than the rest, were set face to face like two rearing cobras.
All the voices became one. "I hear you, child. You wish to save... your husband."
"Yes." Belle risked a glance at the double faces. Each had one eye visible to her, one eye hidden. This was the embodiment of the entity behind the Dark One's curse. She shuddered, knowing it could destroy her with a thought. She didn't dare say too much, but waiting was agony. The space between them seemed suffused with dread, emanating from the unnatural creature with every slow exhale of the hundred intertwined snakes.
Finally, it spoke again. "Your husband. Served me well, he has, my horse these three centuries and more."
Even better if you hadn't ridden him into the ground. Belle clamped her jaws tight to keep the thought from escaping her lips, but it was futile.
"A spirited child," the voice commented. "You remind me of Nimue. Alas, she failed in the end..."
Despite herself, Belle found herself wondering about the precise nature of Nimue's dealings with the darkness. She and all the other previous Dark Ones haunted Rumple's memories, but after so long, much of the finer detail had been lost.
"It costs little to tell, and it may benefit me in the end," said the voice, to Belle's surprise. "She wanted justice for her people. A warlord called Vortigan slaughtered her village, and only she escaped alive. This shrine was built by her ancestors, who came to this land from another. She felt I had failed in my duty to protect them..."
"Had you?" Belle risked a glance upwards. She could never stay frightened of anyone telling a story.
"Uprooted and transplanted, I am not what I was. Offerings of hearts and flowers are not enough when there is no anchor. I did not then have substance in this world."
"I don't understand..."
"I sent her to the Sorcerer."
"Merlin?" Belle nodded to herself. Rumple had told her that Merlin and Nimue had been lovers once. That she had stolen his power and that he had bound her to the dagger.
"His power stems from the Holy Grail. The grail was there from the beginning, implicit in the foundation. It became a lure to countless power-hungry villains, including Vortigan, but Merlin kept it hidden. Once Nimue became close to him..."
"She drank from it?" Belle guessed.
"She did. Once she had the power, she crushed Vortigan's heart. But Merlin turned away from her, then."
"Because she had darkened herself..." Belle winced, understanding him all too well. But Nimue had already drunk from the foundation of this earth, thus becoming the anchor — the physical manifestation of the will of the darkness.
"And so she could only offer blood on the altar, but not flowers. She and those who came after carried me, my power, but not all of it..." A vast sigh gusted through the dark tunnels. "A one-headed serpent..."
And this being, whose name Belle didn't know beyond Our Grandmother had two. She said slowly, piecing the hints together, "And so is Rumple... but if I can save him..."
"His life balances on the edge of the blade," the darkness warned her.
"We share true love! I won't let him fall," Belle insisted.
"Words. Do you have the power to hold his life?"
"No," Belle sighed. "No, of course not. That's why I'm here, after all."
"Her grip is too tight. The witch, she must die. You must kill her," said the darkness coldly. "That power, I can give you. For a price."
Kill Zelena? The thought twisted uncomfortably in Belle's conscience. She knew murder was wrong. A hero would give Zelena a chance. Would try to persuade her to be better, before resorting to violence. But Belle also knew that this was the third time Zelena had enslaved Rumplestiltskin. This time, she was closer to killing him than ever before.
"This gift, can you accept it?" asked the darkness.
"To kill Zelena?" Belle murmured. It was crossing a line. Then a chill ran through her. It was a line she had crossed before. She had told herself they were monsters, that they had killed her mother, but Belle had made the choice to summon the Dark One. She had wanted her people safe, and had asked no questions about how that would be accomplished. She had known ogres would die, and hadn't asked how many. They killed my mother! Or so Belle had believed at the time. And Zelena killed his son. Belle took in a shuddering breath. And now she's brought him to the edge of death. She could. She could kill Zelena. The question was, "You want her dead, too. Why?"
"She is a wound that must be cauterized." The darkness seethed in resentment. "They meddle with fate. Their instrument, she is, the hand that spins the hat. You, with all your perception, can you not see it?"
Belle closed her eyes, thinking back to what she had seen. The hat! The Sorcerer's hat. Zelena must have reclaimed her magic from it. No, more than that. The void she had glimpsed, the hungry nothingness that threatened to swallow Rumplestiltskin... She opened her eyes with a gasp. "The hat! It's still open!"
"Yes..." hissed the darkness. "It eats and eats, power and more power. Kill the witch to close the hat."
"Right. Ok. I'll do it." Belle remembered what she was dealing with. "You'll help me, for a price. But as it's something you want, too, you should give me a discount!"
The darkness chuckled. "A small price, then. The leaf you carry. Give it to me."
Belle's hand flew to cover the leaf tucked into her waistband. She needed it to restore Rumple's memories. How could she give that up? "No, I can't!"
"It's nothing for nothing."
"It's something for nothing if I can't restore his true self," objected Belle.
The darkness was silent for a long moment, as if inviting her to think about what she had said. Then, "He will not be her slave, nor will he die at her hands. Is his freedom 'nothing'?"
Belle lowered her head in acknowledgement. She had spoken carelessly. "And... the hat. You said it was draining your power. That can't be an accident. Someone must have made that happen, for a reason."
"Yes."
"Well? What is that reason?"
"To rectify the soul of the story, this story," said the darkness. This story, meaning this alternate reality they had been forced into.
"If the hat is closed, will the story return to the one I remember, the one it was before?" If they could do that, then would everyone's memories return to normal, including Rumple's? "That's what I wanted to do..."
"No. What is, continues. The inertia of reality. But the hand that steers, the hand of the thief, will no longer have the power to turn the wheel."
Belle bit her lip. It was a chance, wasn't it? More of a chance if whoever was behind all this didn't have the power of the darkness at its disposal. She could still save Rumple, once Zelena was no longer a threat. How much faith did she have in their true love? Could she be enough in herself, without the magic of the Wood? She would have to be. She pulled out the leaf and held it up with both hands. "A gift for a gift. I accept your offer."
Too late for second thoughts.
A tendril of darkness snaked out from the seething mass to pluck the leaf from her hands. The green of the leaf turned orange, then gold, as it was consumed in a blaze of light. Only a tiny spark remained, flying to her right palm and sinking in.
Belle drew in a sharp breath, wanting to cry out upon seeing the symbol of her true love burn. She flexed her fingers — now forged by that fire into a deadly weapon.
"Hide yourself." More tentacles unraveled from the mass to fly around Belle, vibrating and thinning into a gauze-like drapery of invisibility around her. The remainder shrank away into the void behind the iron grate, leaving only a hissing wind behind.
I will summon the witch, it seemed to say.
Belle nodded, retreated until her back was against the wall, and waited.
'Summoning' did not mean the teleportation Belle had expected. Instead, Zelena walked of her own accord down through the gateway Belle had left open, descending into the depths in pursuit of the Evil Queen — Regina, in all her Enchanted Forest finery — who strode forward in all confidence of being followed. As if she had promised a secret, infuriating and irresistible, to her ever-envious, ever-insecure half-sister.
The Evil Queen vanished like smoke in front of the iron grate.
Illusion! Belle realized.
As did Zelena, who after a brief, stunned outcry, sneered at the grate: "Cheap tricks won't get you anywhere. What are you playing at? You know you can't harm me."
The darkness seemed to cower away from her, receding back into the space behind the grate at her presence.
Belle's jaw tightened as she saw that Zelena was right. Her control of the dagger meant she controlled all manifestations of the darkness in this world. That ended now. Now, while Zelena's back was turned to her.
Belle lunged forward, right hand outstretched with her fingers splayed like talons. She closed her eyes, letting herself be guided by the preternatural vision her mother had given her. With uncanny speed and precision, she thrust her hand through every material and magical barrier as if it didn't exist to close around Zelena's beating heart.
She squeezed. Intent was everything. Blood and muscle were as dust, crumbling in her fist. Even as Belle yanked her hand back, Zelena slumped forward, collapsing lifeless to the ground.
Dead.
The witch could no longer hurt Rumple, and the world was spared the horrors of a Dark One Zelena. Beneath her, the floor took on a liquid sheen. Darkness saturated her clothes, seeped into her skin. Tiny bubbles formed, turning into a corrosive foam that dissolved the corpse into a puddle of black slime.
Melted. Just like in the book, was Belle's startled thought, but she had no time to wonder any further.
The Dark One was here. Slithering down the corridor, head slightly lifted, eyes glowing a murderous red in the torchlight.
"Rumple!" Belle called out, but there was no recognition behind those eyes. She could see nothing human there, only a beast's instinct to defend its territory.
The serpent closed the distance between them, launching itself with shocking speed.
Just before it could sink its fangs into her flesh, her own hands lashed out. Guided by the same preternatural insight that led her to Zelena's heart, her fingers landed on the collar nailed into the serpent's neck and she found herself staring into its face. Its momentum was not so easily stopped; heavier than she had expected, it knocked her off her feet. She landed on her back, the mass of the serpent coiling around her.
She dared not let go, but dared not squeeze too tightly, either, knowing how close the dagger was to decapitating him. She could only catch his gaze, hoping to remind him of who she was, but the glare of the void blinded her. Silk ribbons twined around the collar glowed with all the colors of the sorcerer's hat. In this reality, its magic had been unwoven and rewoven to become part of the Dark One's curse.
"The hat," she gasped. "You have to close the hat, Rumple!"
But she could see that he had nothing left — he was being eaten up from the inside. The hat was taking his thoughts along with his magic, leaving nothing behind but the will of whoever held that dagger. She would have to direct him step by step.
Belle summoned everything she remembered from watching Rumple manipulate the hat. It seemed an eternity ago. Slowly, carefully, she retraced the spell. With her hands on the dagger, she cast the spell through him. Finally, the hat sank into itself, the void folded and shuttered away behind the silk ribbons twisted into the Dark One's collar. The colors faded to a dull black.
Belle let out a sigh of relief. Now she just needed to remind him of who he was. Her Rumple was still in there, he had to be. However deeply Zelena had buried him inside the beast, Belle refused to give up hope. She rolled onto her side and sat up, gently drawing the now unresisting serpent with her. She kept her hands on the collar, remembering how she used to rest them on his shoulders. She peered into eyes that had gone dim and whispered, "Please, Rumple..."
He showed no sign of recognition.
"It's me, Belle. Do you remember? Do you remember that I love you?" she tried, her voice trembling as she forced back her tears. "Please, please, come back to me..."
The serpent shuddered against her, heavy coils sliding along her legs.
Was he trying? She tried to encourage him, "Remember who you are. You are human. Let go of the beast. Be human again..."
The sense of dark magic writhing just beneath his skin intensified. The serpent dissolved into a cloud of smoke. The smoke vanished in turn to reveal a man kneeling before her, naked except for the collar. His skin glittered in the torchlight, gold with a tinge of green.
His head was tilted down, hair veiling his face.
Belle's heart leaped. She pulled him closer and angled herself to catch his mouth for a kiss. His lips were dry and unyielding, his body still, except for the tiny shivers he couldn't seem to control. She held the kiss until even she had to admit that it wasn't working. She drew back a little. She could feel the tension in his muscles where she was still holding him on the shoulders, her fingertips tangled with the ribbons of his collar. She murmured in despair, "It's true love. I know it's true love..."
At her words, Rumple flinched. He whispered hoarsely, not meeting her eyes, "Yes, yes, I love you. Only you. Always have, always will." His hands stuttered into motion, stroking along her sides in a mockery of seduction. "You are the most powerful. The cleverest and most beautiful. The most wicked... my darling Zelena..."
Belle's blood ran cold. She suddenly realized she was still touching the collar — his dagger — and her desperate plea had been transmuted by his curse into a command. A command to love her. A command such as he must have heard a hundred times from her, from the witch. Heard so many times that he couldn't even tell the difference between them.
"No! I'm sorry, I didn't mean..." Belle's hands jerked back in revulsion.
Rumple's response was instant. His head came up, the imp's reptilian eyes blazing with fury, and his hands shot out to close around her throat, strangling her cry of protest.
Her eyes went wide, but she made no attempt to struggle. She willed him to see, to see her, that she was not Zelena.
"I'll rip out your wagging tongue," he snarled. "Stuff it down your gullet and let you choke. I'll take you apart, slice by slice, a cut for every wretched command that came from your mouth... and there have been many, dearie, oh, so, so many..."
He could do it, she knew. With or without magic. She had seen how much pent-up violence he held, magnified by his curse. It was the last thing she wanted to see now, especially directed at her. But she also didn't want to fight him, not like that. She had already inadvertently forced him into this state through the dagger. Its control was even more absolute than she had imagined.
Magic can't make someone love you. That was one of the fundamental laws of magic. But it could force someone to behave as if they did. And she had done that. A fatal mistake.
He lifted her up with unnerving strength, shaking her hard enough to rattle her teeth. "Nothing to say?" Speech was impossible with his vise-grip around her neck. He giggled shrilly at his own jest.
Belle concentrated on staying conscious and not struggling. She had to prove to him that she was not Zelena. Her vision was blackening around the edges when he abruptly threw her, hard, against the wall. She slid to the ground, gasping for air and rubbing at her throat. She forced out another apology. "Rumple, I'm so, so sorry. I'm Belle, I'm not her, I swear I didn't mean to command you..."
He crouched before her, his face a mask of cruelty. "Lovely, lovely words. If lacking, oh, the slightest bit of truth!"
Now the tears were flowing uncontrollably, and she was the one thrown back into memory, facing the Dark One after her first attempt at a true love's kiss. She couldn't help sobbing, "It's true. I love you. I'm not lying. I was just trying to help you remember..."
"Oh, dearie, I remember far too much!" he hissed. His hand shot out, thrusting straight into her chest.
Belle froze. Her heart pounded, caught in his grip. She glanced instinctively at the collar around his neck, close now, close enough for her to reach. Was she fast enough? No! I can't, not that...
But he had already caught the direction of her glance. "Lies. Nothing but lies!"
Belle forced herself to relax. She kept her hands limply by her sides and met his eyes. "No. We've had this conversation before. It's true love. You want to take my heart? I give it to you freely."
He took her at her word. The next moment, he stood up, looming over her with her heart in his hand. She thought distantly, It was darker before, after we shared it. So the Author really did undo our bond...
Then he crushed the heart.