[December 10th] [Once Upon a Time] Another Time and Place

[insaneladybug.livejournal.com]

Annnd I wrote a new vignette for my Once series that picks up after 3A. I always seem to get plunnied when bizarre stuff happens on the show.

Title: Another Time and Place
Day/Theme: December 10th - I needed to be somewhere different. Maybe I needed to be someone different, too.
Series: Once Upon a Time
Character/Pairing: Rumbelle
Rating: K/G


By Lucky_Ladybug

Rumpelstiltskin didn’t know why he was so drawn to that mysterious and disturbing book Belle had found in the library. But after a fitful sleep he awakened early Monday morning, troubled by thoughts of the alternate tales about him, Belle, and Bae. Unable to return to sleep, he finally got up and got dressed, then slipped out into the crisp autumn early morning. The streets of Storybrooke were mostly deserted at this time of the day. He could go about his errand without much chance of being seen.

Perhaps it was silly or paranoid, but he found it was difficult to abide the thought of leaving Storybrooke and going on to New York while that blasted book was left here in the library. When they didn’t know how it had come to be, he honestly had to wonder if magic was involved. And if it had been composed by a magic hand, it could be added to while they were gone. However, if he removed it from the town with them, there would be no way anyone could add to it by magical means.

The library was dark and deserted when he arrived. He unlocked the door and stealthily crept inside, shutting the door behind him. The room cast eerie shadows across the walls and the floor as he moved across it, guided by the light of his flashlight. Soon he was in the back room again and opening the trunk, while the flashlight remained positioned atop a stack of shelves.

He frowned as he lifted the heavy volume. It would not be easy to cart this with them to New York. And he would have to explain to Bae what it was. But that would be better than leaving it behind. It was such a bizarre weapon, but obviously it was something that was being used against them somehow, someway—even if only for some unknown person to vent their frustrations without being able to carry them out.

He wasn’t sure what possessed him to close the trunk and then set the book on top of it to examine the final pages of the tale. But when he turned to the back, he stopped short in disbelieving shock. More had been added to the book since he had last looked at it late Saturday night. Now there was some outlandish tale of him wandering in New York and making the acquaintance of several unsavory characters who wanted to get back into Storybrooke as much as he did.

He flipped through the pages in bewilderment. Each story seemed worse than the one before it. Now the darkness of the magic of The Dark One was consuming him, warping his personality, and leading him on a path of imminent death. Mixed in with that was some idea about the Author of Henry’s book being able to write the characters into new adventures and Rumpel buying into some idea of Regina’s that they weren’t bad, they had just been written that way, and the Author could write them into new and happier fates.

Rumpel shook his head. He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be worried, but when he knew this hadn’t been in the book before, he was inclined to lean towards the latter. He could scarcely comprehend being the way he was depicted here. He had always acknowledged his own faults and bad decisions and didn’t try to blame someone else for how he had turned out, as Regina often did. As if he would ever believe some Author could really write him into a new fate. As he and Belle had discussed, they were the real people on whom the fairytales had been based. They were certainly not fictional characters that could be manipulated by some writer’s whims.

This story arc culminated with him dying and the Author managing to pull the darkness out of him and leave him with a clean slate to start over. The darkness, almost like an entity unto itself, looked for a new host. But when it tried to claim Regina, Emma stepped in and took it on herself to save her.

Now Rumpel did scoff. Emma Swan as The Dark One? Him completely pure? No one was all good or all bad; everyone was a mixture of both. They could remove The Dark One’s curse from him, but it almost sounded like the Author had gone a step farther and taken all the natural darkness as well, leaving his heart and soul entirely white.

Some more pages had been added as well. He sighed and took up the book, sitting on the trunk with the tome on his lap. Now that he had read this much of the nonsense, he supposed he had better see what else there was.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, poring over the remainder of the pages, but when Belle’s voice suddenly spoke out of the darkness, he jumped a mile.

“Rumpel?”

He looked up. “Belle . . .”

Belle came into the room, not looking surprised. “I knew you were as bothered about this book as I was, if not more.” She sat on the trunk next to him. “When I didn’t find you at your home, I thought you might be here.”

“You’re up early, aren’t you?” Rumpel commented.

Belle shrugged. “We’re leaving today, aren’t we?”

“But not this early.”

Belle looked at the book. “How far have you read now?”

“Almost to where it leaves off,” Rumpel replied. “But Belle . . . there’s more here than when we found it!”

“What?” Belle stared at the book. “That’s impossible, unless someone sneaked in here and added more pages. Or unless . . .” She trailed off.

“Unless the new pages are being added through magic,” Rumpel finished. “I’m just finishing a story arc where Emma is The Dark One, only she also infected Hook somehow and now he wants to destroy the darkness.” He hesitated, keeping one hand on the current page and not furthering his description of the story.

“What else?” Belle asked quietly. “Rumpel, I know you wouldn’t be so shaken just by that.” She frowned. “If Emma is The Dark One, does that mean you’re . . . dead?”

“No, I’m alive,” Rumpel said quickly. “We even seemed to be at a pretty good place in our relationship. But then you . . .” He hesitated again, but knew he’d have to continue now. “You decided out of the blue that you wanted to ‘step back.’ You said you’d been trying for years to help me heal my heart and now you had to protect your own.”

Belle stared at him. “And I decided this without anything prompting me to it?!”

“I couldn’t find anything that could have prompted it,” Rumpel said helplessly. “And now as Hook’s destroying the darkness, I’ve decided to take it back again, even though I’d previously been rendered as I am now, a mortal man without power. I told Emma that The Dark One was who I really am.”

He looked down at the pages. There was nothing in the story to indicate it, but he had to wonder if the fictional him’s actions had been motivated by Belle leaving him. Just as the real him had felt when she had become Lacey, this other him might have decided that there was no point even trying to be good if she didn’t care anymore.

He looked up as Belle laid her hand over his. “But that isn’t who you are,” she said earnestly. “You’re so much more than that.” She paused, then added, “You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he said, and knew he really meant it. “I know that, Belle, because of you.”

“I’m glad,” Belle declared. “And you know I wouldn’t leave you for no reason? If we were at a good place in our relationship, as we are now, I wouldn’t have any reason to leave. Nothing would make me happier than to stay with you.”

“I would hope so,” Rumpel said sincerely. He had really known, but it was good to hear her say it.

“Rumpel . . .” Belle watched him closely. “Is something else bothering you? Something besides wondering how this book exists and who could be behind it?”

Rumpel sighed. “Well, that’s the thing, Belle. In some eerie way, some of what’s written here doesn’t sound like impossibilities. Those earliest chapters, where Bae is dead and I’m taken prisoner by that Zelena woman after being revived, aren’t so far-fetched. Bae would have used the Vault if you hadn’t managed to convince him not to. And if he were dead and I was being tortured and helpless to fight back, I can’t say that I wouldn’t have snapped.” He stood, closing the book loudly. “I could very easily become obsessed with power and having more, so that I could never be abused like that again.” He paused. “I wonder if that’s what bothers me the most. Suppose some version of these events play out someday. Bae—or even you—could die. And now I’m no longer The Dark One. I could technically be caught and tortured and not be able to fight back.”

Belle stood too. “I’m going to pray that nothing like that happens,” she vowed. “What upsets me the most is that it almost sounds like you’re being punished for trying to do the right thing. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that the you in this story couldn’t take it any more.”

“And taking back the darkness just when I was free of it and after it had already almost destroyed me. . . .” Rumpel shook his head. “Even though I still wish in some ways that I had it and I feel vulnerable without it, I can’t feature myself doing something that idiotic unless . . .” He trailed off again, not sure he wanted to finish that thought out loud.

“Unless what?” Belle prompted quietly.

Rumpel sighed. “Unless I was either pushed into feeling like I couldn’t protect you and Bae without it . . . or unless I felt I had nothing else to live for.”

Belle rocked back, processing those words even as she hated to think of Rumpel being put in such a position. “Well,” she said at last, “you already discovered in the past what happened when you took the power the first time with the intention of helping Neal. You did at first, but then it gradually began to consume and warp you and led to your relying on it so much that you and Neal were separated because of it.”

“I know,” Rumpel nodded, both with some sorrow and some impatience.

“But as for feeling that you had nothing else to live for . . .” Belle came to stand directly in front of him. “I would hope and pray that such a time as that will never come.”

“As long as I have you and Bae, it won’t,” Rumpel said emphatically.

“And you won’t lose us,” Belle insisted. “We’re a family, and we’re going to stay that way.”

“I hope so.” Rumpel looked down at the book, still troubled. “But I just can’t help but wonder about this. At my current state in this mixed-up tale, I’m supposed to be more powerful than before. What if in some future part of the story that will be written in here later, it’s revealed that I finally got so upset that I found and used some forbidden power to send all of us back to the point when everything went so wrong so we could do our lives over from that point and Bae would still be alive? Maybe that’s even why I wanted to become more powerful, instead of the other reasons I’m theorizing. In other words . . . what if we find out that these stories are things that really happened to us that we’ve forgotten now? You suggested that when we first found this book.”

“I know, but I don’t really believe that, and I know you really don’t,” Belle retorted. “But even if that could possibly be true, apparently we succeeded in doing our lives over better from that point on, so it doesn’t really matter whether these terrible things happened or not. In this existence, they haven’t.” She paused. “Do you honestly believe you would have done some of the things you did in those stories, though? Even if under some circumstances you would become obsessed with power again, I can’t believe you would ever do some of those other things. You’ve never wanted world domination, for one thing.”

“I know. And I don’t want to think I would ever deceive you as I did with the fake Dagger and making you think you had the real one that could control me.” Rumpel frowned.

Belle laid her hand over his. “And I would never try to control you with the Dagger, if you were still bound by it,” she said, “especially if you had already suffered unspeakable torture at the hands of some madwoman who had the Dagger and used it to force you to bend to her every whim.”

Rumpel looked down at their hands and then up into Belle’s unwavering gaze. “I’m glad you insisted that we talk things out when we need to. It doesn’t seem like we succeeded very often with that in this book.”

“It sounds like even when we did, everything inexplicably turned against us anyway,” Belle replied. “If these things never happened to us, it still sounds like someone has a very disturbing grudge against us to write them. We’re just going around and around in circles in these stories without any real resolution for long.”

“And we may never know the truth about this book,” Rumpel said in frustration. “But even if we never do, I’m not going to leave it here when we go to New York.”

“You’re bringing it with us?” Belle said in surprise.

“That’s the safest course of action, especially since we don’t know if these pages are being added by magic,” Rumpel said. “If they are, who knows what else the author might do.”

“That’s probably true,” Belle relented. “Well, if there’s room for it, we’d better bring it. But we’ll have to tell Neal about it.”

“I’m planning to,” Rumpel promised.