A/N: Welcome to For the Sake of Family! This will be an allies-to-friends-to-lovers slow burn wherein Rumple gets a significant other who is more age appropriate and more morally grey (no hate on Belle, though). There likely will be around 21 to 25 chapters split across three parts and an epilogue.
This story starts during the Enchanted Forest segment of the episode "Desperate Souls". For most of it's length it will be set entirely in the Enchanted Forest well before most of the main characters are born.
Disclaimer: I don't own Once Upon a Time of any of their characters. I only own my opinions of those characters and the things I make up.
*Revision Announcement* This first chapter has been revised and re-posted as of 8/2/2021. Here's to hoping its the last version of my final chapter.
Part 1: Loss and Gain
Chapter 1: Desperate Souls
I was still so very young when I first met Rumplestiltskin. I was a fully trained and emotionally raw mage, less than a decade removed from the death of my older brother and less than a year removed from the disappearance of my eldest brother. My mentor had likewise met an early end, and five years after his death, I was beginning to realize the full potential and prowess that Zoso had cultivated in me; when combined with the unfortunate curse that had, amongst other things, stalled my aging, and the absence of anyone to keep my pride in check, I had become overconfident, arrogant, even reckless. Like many young sorcerers, I was also full of untempered passion, something that, when combined with my rocky past and unfortunate lycanthropic affliction, could lead to both deep sympathies and harsh cruelties.
By that time, the Orgre Wars had been raging on and off for decades, plaguing several kingdoms that bordered the ogres' mountainous home territories. I had originally arrived in a port city of the kingdom of Ulstead while on the hunt for my missing brother, Tor, but had paused my search in the wake of the rumors I heard. Under the king's direction, the region of the Frontlands had long been placed under martial law for it's proximity to the front lines, and hushed stories told of a demon plaguing the area, bound through unnatural magics to a dagger that sat in the control of the Duke of the Frontlands.
Descriptions of this demon and this dagger had seemed jarringly familiar. By all accounts, my mentor had died when a deal with a pair of dragons had gone awry; when those smug lizards finally relinquished the body, I had even found his signet ring on the charred, unrecognizable corpse. I had nonetheless held suspicions- some might say denials- about Zoso's true whereabouts. When I inherited his house, one of my only shreds of evidence presented itself: the absence of his dagger. He had been so protective over it that I had only fully glimpsed it a handful of times, and it was otherwise kept locked away beyond traps and blood-magic wards. If he had had it with him when he faced the dragons, they would have surely taken it, and when pressed, they claimed to have done just that. Yet when given a purposefully inaccurate description of the knife, they agreed wholeheartedly that that was the dagger they had taken.
To hear that Zoso's dagger had seemingly resurfaced in the Frontlands had presented a hope that I could not resist, and so I made my way towards the area, scouring for information. I quickly came across a farmer in a Frontland tavern who claimed to know more than the legends implied- who claimed to have seen the dagger being wielded by the Duke's men to summon the demon to their aid. He would trade all the information he had on the subject for my aide. And so I accompanied him on the road to his farm, full of hope and anger and worn-out grief at the idea of finding my mentor after so long.
These were the conditions under which I first observed Rumplestiltskin and Baelfire. In all the years I have been blessed- and cursed- with magic, I can rarely recall wanting to use it as cruelly and as mercilessly on a man as I had wanted to use it on Hordor. I have always had a particular hatred for bullies; at that age, it often manifested as bar fights and street brawls, and when I saw fully armed and armored soldiers corner a crippled peasant and his son, I was more than eager to intervene. But that farmer had clapped a meaty paw of a hand on my shoulder and wrenched me deeper into the forest, more concerned about being seen with an unsavory mage than with the safety of a stranger. By the time I had rewarded the farmer for his man-handling, the soldiers had moved on and a passing beggar had stopped to help the pair, and so, fuming, I continued on to my client's home.
That client proved an interesting distraction, at least for the evening. I had developed enough of a working intuition to have suspected that things were not as they seemed with him, but I was just confident enough and just reckless enough to want to see what would happen. I had originally taken interest in his problem because he claimed that his farmland was being harried by an ill-tempered unicorn, and though I was doubtful of his identification of the creature, the prospect of collecting spell components was tempting enough to draw me in. I was mildly shocked to indeed find a stockily-built, pitch-black unicorn in one of the more remote pasture. He'd appeared to have kicked down a section of fence to chase away the farmer's geldings and enjoy his mares. He was a spirited and beautiful animal that I took to immediately, and I devoted the early hours of night to building some trust with him. In the following years, I would reflect that acquiring Umbra was the only good thing to come of those few days.
Though I had been surprised to find a unicorn in such a place, I was less shocked to find the small detachment of soldiers waiting for me when I entered the farmhouse; Umbra was far too inclined towards human contact to have not spent time around people, and I'd quickly- and correctly- suspected that he'd been planted on the property as bait. A half-dozen elite Frontland guards met their end from Durendal's edge as I swept through the steps of the Willow Way. To this day, I am not the best student to have been trained by Fa Hua, but a legendary sword and a werewolf's heightened movement could make even a mediocre practitioner of the Willow Way into a deadly swordsman.
With a blade to his neck, the farmer who had hired me was quick to claim that he'd been forced into the ruse, that the Duke's men had occupied his home and held his family hostage. My hunt for the dagger had not gone unnoticed, and the Duke was anxious to get rid of me before I could find it.
I'd cocked my head to hear that. "And why would that be, boy?" I had queried, sickly sweet.
"They know who you are. That demon that stalks the front lines, that slaughters ogres and haunts men. They fear that you could take the dagger. They fear what you could do with him."
I'd blinked in surprise at that, processing. When I was fresh from my apprenticeship, I had indeed built a reputation by working for nobles and military officers and peasants alike in the turmoil of the Ogre Wars. Some simply wanted to add magical firepower to their battles against the beasts; others turned their attention against other humans. By all available information, the Duke should not have immediately thought me an enemy.
If he had my teacher, however, that would be another story. If he had somehow bent Zoso to his will, then the Duke would know through him what I was like; he would know that I would retaliate for my mentor's imprisonment. It was another scrap of hope to add to my collection, and a few more probing questions got the farmer to point me towards a nearby town, where several children were within days of the age of enlistment, and where another detachment of the Duke's men would inevitably appear.
I did consider killing the farmer, or at least enacting some form of punishment. But then his young son emerged from hiding, and stared at us with such terror that I'd sighed, sheathed my sword, and stalked from the house. I mounted Umbra and set us down the road, hopes and fears and anger circling in my head as I made my way towards the Frontlands town.
The new moon was high overhead when a cloaked figure materialized from the darkness in front of me, sending Umbra rearing onto his back legs, then to snorting and huffing and dancing away.
"Bloody fucking hell!" I shouted at the cloaked figure as I struggled to keep my seat. Something about the figure was insistently familiar. The beggar from earlier, my mind had supplied.
"Ellyn Davina Jones." The figure drawled in one of the gravliest voice I've ever heard, pulling his hood back to reveal a familiar face and the whisper of a smile. For a second I was a thirteen-year-old again.
"Zoso." I breathed, and lept from Umbra's back. Though my mentor was rarely the hugging type during our years together, he wrapped me in a hug the minute my feet touched the ground. I often wonder if that was the only way he knew how to even come close to an apology.
When we parted, and I looked into my mentor's face for the first time in five years, I was vibrating with anger and hair's breadth from slapping him.
"You're supposed to be dead." I said coldly.
His expression shuttered. "It didn't take."
"I'd be happy to remedy that." I snarled. "You rat fucking bastard. Is it all true, then? You're some powerful sorcerer with a dumbass title? I had a funeral for you, Zoso."
A twinge of guilt sparked across his face, but just a twinge, drowned out by his annoyance at being spoken to like that.
"A powerful sorcerer makes powerful enemies. If I had stayed, they would have come after you to get to the Dagger."
"And what? What're they going to do, kill me?"
"You are not indestructible, Ellyn." He snapped. I opened my mouth to reply, and he cut in, "I do not have time to fight about this. Listen carefully to me, Ellyn Davina. You need to leave this place."
"Fat chance." I snarled, then paused at the fear in his voice. Realization and horror crawled up my spine. "Is it all true, then? The Duke can control you with that knife?"
"Yes. I am lucky to even be speaking to you. If he orders me to, I will hunt you down. I will kill you." He put his hands on my shoulders, his near-black eyes red and bloodshot. "Do you understand me, Ellyn? It does not matter if I can bear it. I will do it."
There was something in the way he said it, something in the shake of his voice, that told me he had already done things he did not want to bear. Pain and fear shot through my chest to see him like that.
"I can help, then. You know I can."
"No. When he learns that you are alive, it will only be a matter of time before he sends me. You must go. Run fast, run far. And pray that the Duke loses the Dagger before I get to you."
That last statement caught my attention. "You have a plan, don't you?" I thought back to earlier in the day, when I had seen him help the spinner to his feet. "You don't just help people for free. It's got to do with that spinner and his kid, yeah?"
"Their lives are expendable. Even my life is drawing to a close. But yours? Yours is neither."
"What do you mean, drawing to a close?" Cold terror shot up my spine. "Just what are you planning?"
I saw the answer. I saw it in the wave of guilt and grief and unbelievable exhaustion that swept across his face, that seemed to physically weigh on his frame.
"I'm sorry." He took a shakey breath. "I wish I had more time. There is so much you need to know. So much I should have told you-" He stopped dead, glanced to the side as though someone was calling for him. "I have to go."
"What? No, Zoso, listen-"
He enveloped me in another hug, and for a minute I was speechless to be receiving a second one in such a short time. In a way, it only added to my mounting dread.
"You are my legacy, Ellyn." He told me. "It is more than I deserve."
And then he was gone, and for a minute I stared numbly down the road, shell-shocked and uncomprehending. Enough time must have passed for it to become concerning, because Umbra took a few steps towards me and knickered. Slowly, I turned back to him, gave him a half-hearted pat on the shoulder, and swung onto his back. We set off back down the road towards the Frontland town, every step further driving into my mind the need to find that Dagger.