Chapter Text
It had been days. Almost a full week since the night her marriage had ended.
You can't shut yourself in and mope forever, Belle told herself fiercely. You need to move on with your life.
A week, and she was still bleeding from the hole he had ripped in her heart. Lies, all lies. Everything was over. She shouldn't care anymore. And yet, tonight it hurt worse than ever. She tried to distract herself with a book — a light comedy — but she hadn't turned a single page in the last hour. The pain that should be fading persisted inside her chest, a dull throbbing ache that had woken her out of sleep and lasted all day.
Maybe it was the cold weather. (It had been cold that night, and getting colder. No, don't think about it.) She curled herself deeper into the cushions and focused on her reading. (Alone, no magic.) The words had lost all meaning. (Words are his greatest weapons.) She frowned in annoyance. This was getting her nowhere. She needed a better distraction than a book.
The electronic chime of the doorbell cut through her suffocating thoughts.
It's him! came the instant reaction. A thrill of fear (hope) rushed through her bones. The book dropped onto the couch, her fingers suddenly numb.
It took a moment and a deep breath to restrain her wild speculations, and she told herself to be sensible. It could be a friend, come to comfort her in her distress. (She knew better.) Or they needed her help for yet another magical crisis. (Or at least her knowledge.) It couldn't possibly be him.
Please! I won't be able to come back.
That was why she had done it. To stop him once and for all, no more loopholes or twisting words to manipulate her.
Belle, please. I'm afraid.
She stood up stiffly, forcing away the painful memories. She reached the door, pausing to steady herself before pulling it open. Two blood-stained figures stood on the doorstep, one tall, one small. The smaller one clung to the larger in silence, while the larger opened his mouth and spoke hesitantly.
"Belle?"
She stared at the bloody strip of cloth covering his eyes, shocked speechless. Robin Hood. And the boy: Roland.
Robin Hood tensed in the silence, head tilting towards his young son.
Roland stared anxiously up at Belle. "Yes, Papa, it's her. The library lady."
Robin Hood dropped to one knee with a gasp, hugging his son close. "My lady. I'm so sorry..."
Belle found her voice at last even as she moved to pull him back to his feet. "Robin Hood? What happened to you? Are you all..." She choked on the question. Obviously he wasn't all right. A surge of anger rose through her chest. Impossible suspicion gripped her. "Did he do this to you?"
"'He'..." Robin Hood echoed grimly.
"Rumplestiltskin," Belle hissed the name, feeling ill at having to say it out loud.
"Rumplestiltskin is dead. He was most insistent on that." Robin Hood paused, as if to give her a moment to understand. (But she didn't. She couldn't. Dead!?) "...and far too many others also. Zelena."
"Zelena?" Bewilderment shook Belle from her stunned disbelief. "What does Zelena have to do with it?"
He explained. Perhaps for the sake of Roland, who clung mutely to his father throughout, he kept his words calm and bloodless, but the truth painted a horrifying image in Belle's imagination.
"He came to Baelfire's apartment, where we had been living," Robin said. "It was a surprise to both of us. Then he collapsed, and we called for aid. He was taken to the hospital. Then..."
Robin had been reluctant to help the Dark One, but his sense of honor prevailed (or guilt over taking away the only home left to a man whose son had so recently died), so he stole and delivered the potion Gold bargained for.
Afterwards, Robin had met Marian and Roland in the hospital's waiting area. Having promised Roland a treat for being good, Marian made her way to the cafeteria.
"I'll just be a moment."
But Robin had an impeccable sense of direction and saw that she was going the wrong way. He got up to tell her when he saw her slip down a corridor that was definitely wrong — the same corridor Robin had just left. He smiled uneasily at Roland and said softly, "Wait here. I think Mama's confused."
Why would she go to the Dark One's room? Robin was suspicious and angry. Had he done something to Marian? Was all of this a trick? Fearing for her safety, he moved with a thief's stealth to eavesdrop outside the Dark One's room.
And all his happiness was torn away in an instant.
That woman. She's Zelena, and she murdered my wife!
Robin was frozen in horror. Rumplestiltskin, trapped in a hospital bed, was terrified to the point that his heart stopped. Then the alarms blared, and Robin recovered himself enough to peer inside to find Zelena (all illusions dropped) crouched over the Dark One, vulture claws tapping at his face, his chest. She was so intent on her gloating she didn't even notice Robin Hood, only backing away when the emergency response team rushed inside.
It was too late. The man was dead.
"Dead." Belle pressed her fist against her mouth, holding back the sobs that threatened to burst out. (All that time, he had been dying? He never said a word about it to me. Always lies, never the truth. Not until the end...)
I'm afraid.
Robin Hood nodded. "The hospital brought him back once, after he collapsed in the apartment, but this time they couldn't." He paused, then sounded almost pitying when he added, "In this land, saving a life seems as painful as torture in our land. The things they did..."
"I've read about it," Belle managed quickly, seeing the frightened look on Roland's face. "You don't need to say."
"Right. I only thought maybe it explained... if it was revenge..." Robin Hood trailed off.
"R-revenge?" Belle blinked through her tears.
"The man was dead, but the Dark One..."
Her heart squeezed in dread. She knew there was worse to come.
The first victims were the medical personnel trying to save his life. An explosion of magic shattered glass and warped metal, bursting organs and breaking bones. The four closest to the 'corpse' fell to the floor, bleeding from all their orifices.
Amidst the screams of the survivors, the dead man sat up. Opened eyes as black as the void. Eyes that stared directly at the witch, who by then was edging towards the door. Too late. An outstretched hand closed into a fist, and Zelena dangled in the air, strangled by an invisible grip. The other hand swept outwards, sending out a wave of purple magic that froze everyone else in place.
Magic.
But this was the land without magic. Zelena's mouth worked frantically, denying. "Impossible!"
"Surprise, dearie! What do you think the Dark One is, if not 'imported magic', just like your clover from Oz but much more powerful." The Dark One swung his legs over the edge of the hospital bed. He hopped easily to the floor, all the while holding Zelena in the air. Darkness pooled around his feet and crept out in liquid, curling tendrils, as if it could no longer be contained inside the boundaries of a human form.
"Rumple, please," she wheezed. "Have... elixir..."
"Ah ah ah!" cackled the Dark One. "No use calling Rumple-bumple. Your touch scared him right off the mortal coil, alas. Exorcised the last feeble remnants of the little spinner's ghost!"
Zelena forced out another strangled plea. "Deal..."
"You've served your purpose already. No deal." The Dark One closed the distance between them. He ripped out her heart with his free hand and squeezed. Dust trickled between his fingers and Zelena dropped, dead before she hit the floor.
He swept a contemptuous gaze over the magically immobilized witnesses trapped in the room. He grinned and dusted off his hands. "The witch was just the appetizer. Now for the main course..."
The creeping tendrils of darkness grew thicker and continued to spread. They coiled around the remaining survivors one by one, dark energy sinking through the skin and flowing into their veins, streaks of black like some supernaturally charged infection that consumed them from within. Skin shrank as the flesh beneath withered away, drained of life. The pool of darkness seemed to gain substance and depth.
The first victim toppled, dead. Then a second. A third. Then the Dark One turned to the last — Robin Hood, frozen in the doorway with one foot still in the corridor.
The Dark One met his eyes. "You know, actually I'm doing you a favor! You can find your dear departed wife's soul right now, rather than living a lie for another decade or three."
Robin Hood snarled a silent curse, completely unable to break free. Then everything took a turn for the worse.
"Don't hurt my papa!" Roland rushed in front of Robin Hood and brandished a piece of metal. It must have broken off the bed in the explosion.
Roland! Robin desperately tried to shout at his son to flee. He felt as if his heart was about to burst, but his effort was futile.
The Dark One laughed and seized the boy in magic's grip, dangling him midair. The fragment of metal clattered on the floor. Darkness writhed beneath, tendrils waving hungrily just short of Roland's feet. "Naughty, naughty."
But instead of draining the boy's life, the Dark One stood for a long, long moment staring past Roland to Robin Hood. The mad laughter faded, leaving nothing behind.
Robin Hood could only watch wordlessly, pleading with his eyes to spare an innocent child.
"Hmmm," the Dark One said at last. He closed his eyes and inhaled. All the darkness in the room seemed to flow back into his human form. He flicked his wrist. Roland vanished in a cloud of purple smoke. Then the Dark One opened his eyes again. No longer black voids, they now appeared an eerie striated black and gold, reminiscent of a lizard's eyes. He moved next to Robin Hood and touched him lightly on the shoulder.
Robin Hood trembled involuntarily, chilled by the dark energy emanating from that hand.
The Dark One bent his head to whisper in Robin's ear. "I'll send you with a message, but first..."
Faster than he could blink, shadows flew into his face and he felt a stabbing pain as his eyes were torn from their sockets. He clenched his jaws on the scream trapped in his throat. Liquid dripped down his face that he couldn't wipe away. At his shoulder, the Dark One whispered his message, all the while wrapping a strip of gauze over his eyes and around his head.
Then the cold engulfed him and he felt himself fall into a screaming vortex.
"And when I could move again, I was here, in Storybrooke, outside your house," Robin Hood finished his tale. "Roland was here, too."
"And... and the message?" Belle dreaded the answer but she had to know.
"It's for you."
Belle nodded, bracing herself. The Dark One wore her husband's face. If it retained any of its host's memories, how it must hate and despise her.
"A message," Robin Hood repeated. "'From the blind to the blind,' he said."
"Go on." Belle closed her eyes. Blind. That was precisely what she had thought to herself when the damned gauntlet had led her to the dagger. Her marriage had been a lie, and she hadn't seen it, any more than Robin had seen through Zelena's disguise.
"A fool is a fool, and dead is dead," he quoted, his voice taking on a sing-song cadence that struck Belle with bitter familiarity. "It's all for nothing, the blood you've shed."
Belle repeated the words, turning them over in her mind. "That's all?"
"That's all." Robin Hood cleared his throat. "Don't take it to heart, my lady. The Dark One is taunting us, taking pleasure in our pain."
Belle shuddered. She sensed more to the words, a cruel riddle she couldn't unravel with her grief-mired mind. But there was no point worrying Robin. "Thank... thank you for telling me. I could... I could drive you to the hospital?" Seeing Robin Hood flinch, Belle amended her suggestion. "Or I can call Regina."
He nodded quickly. "We would be most grateful."
Belle called, briefly explained, and waited. Everything had gone numb and distant. She watched Regina arrive in a cloud of magic, stepped back to be more conveniently ignored, and was alone again a minute later.
Alone. Truly alone. No matter how much she had told herself she didn't care, she had never wanted—
She cut herself off. He can't be gone. He... She remembered Robin's story. He spared Roland. Even after killing everyone else. He had Robin Hood for a 'messenger', but a child was no use to him.
A small glimmer of hope lifted her thoughts. The Dark One was about to murder him... but something stopped him. Belle remembered what Baelfire had once told her about his father.
He took on the Dark One's curse to save all the children. And he did. Whatever else, that much is true.
Belle wiped her eyes and muttered to herself, "Rumplestiltskin would never kill a child!"
That meant he was still in there, somewhere. And suddenly she knew how she could prove it: the dagger! If his name was still written on the blade, then he wasn't really gone.
Instead of going back inside the house, Belle climbed into the car (Rumple's car, full of memories) and drove away. For the first time, the dagger represented something more than betrayal and misery. She had tried to forget it existed, but now it was a symbol of hope, one she needed to see with her own eyes.
But at the back of her mind, the Dark One's words echoed ominously. Dead is dead.