Dies Irae: The Templar's Telling - Chapter 4 - Dangerous Man
Fandom: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Belle/Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold
Characters: Mad Hatter | Jefferson, Red Riding Hood | Ruby, Belle (Once Upon a Time), Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, Knave of Hearts | Will Scarlet, Widow Lucas | Granny, Grace | Paige (Once Upon a Time), Jiminy Cricket | Archie Hopper, Blue Fairy | Mother Superior, Queen of Hearts | Cora, Baelfire | Neal Cassidy
Additional Tags: AU, Angst, Violence, Theology, Philosophy, Magic, spirituality, Supernatural Elements, Archaeology, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Major Character Injury, MCD
Series: Part 1 of Dies Irae: The Tellings
Summary:
Seven hundred years old and carrying two lives in a single head, Jefferson is the Order's Templar: the man at the boundary, the keeper of doors; the one who stands between the people he loves and the thing coming for them. He tells the whole of it — the Wound and the Words that hold it, and the found family assembling across hundreds of years around a plain brown cup. He is the one with the flat, accurate voice who has learned to say hard things plainly and to file every grief behind a locked door.
But there is a wrongness in the telling that only his doubled head can feel: an absence with edges, a rescue that isn't coming, a marker missing from the formation. This is the account of what that absence cost, of presence achieved and proven worth its price, of a wall taken down on purpose, and of the two words the whole thing comes to rest on.
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Chapter 4 - Dangerous Man
Before Monday was Edinburgh, and I should tell you about Edinburgh, because you have seen me tired and you have seen me gentle and you have seen me grieve a woman's ordinary life in a lecture hall, and if I leave it there you will have the wrong idea, and the wrong idea about me is the kind of thing that gets people hurt.
I am a dangerous man.
I have been avoiding saying it plainly because it’s the sort of thing that sounds like a boast, and it’s actually the opposite of a boast. It is a confession, and a weariness, and the single most stable fact of my existence across seven hundred years.
I hand over cards, and I drink bad tea, and I stand at the edges of rooms grieving in advance, and all of that is true, and underneath all of it, always, is the other thing, the thing I am for, the thing the Order found in a boy in a field and has been using ever since, because it turns out that a man who can hold two lives in one head can also do the kind of work that breaks most people who attempt it, and it doesn’t break me. It has never once broken me, and that, not breaking is the part I would ask you to be frightened of, if you were the sort of person I ever needed to frighten.
Doctor Reid was that sort of person for one evening.
Let me tell you how it’s done, because the how is the whole of what I am, and I’d rather you saw it clearly than imagined something with more loudness and violence in it.
Reid had taken an apartment in Marchmont, in one of those Edinburgh tenements that stand in a row like upturned ships, all bay windows and pointed gables, respectable, and anonymous, and built to absorb a visiting academic without showing any trace of him.
I let myself in during dinner. I didn’t force anything; forcing leaves marks, and marks are conversation, and I didn’t want a conversation with anyone but Reid. I sat in the chair by the window. I didn’t put on a light and then I did the only thing the work actually requires, the thing that is nine-tenths of everything I’ve ever done in that other capacity: I waited.
People misunderstand waiting.
They think it’s the absence of action, the empty part before the real part starts. It is the real part. Waiting is the work. A man who can truly wait, who can sit in a stranger's chair in the failing blue light of a northern evening and simply be there, without fidgeting, without rehearsal, without building any relationship at all with the passing of the time - a man who can do that has already won every confrontation that follows, because he has already demonstrated, before a single word, that he operates on a different clock than his subject, and the subject feels it in the animal part of himself before his mind has caught up.
Reid came in, reached for the light switch and stopped, because some older, wiser part of him had already registered that the room was occupied by a stillness that didn’t belong to it.
"Close the door, Doctor Reid," I said.
He did.
That is the whole thing, right there, in the first five words and his response to them. He closed the door. He didn’t run, didn’t shout, didn’t flip the switch. He closed the door and stood against it, and in closing it he told me everything I needed to know about how the evening would go, which was: easily.
Some of them are hard. Reid wasn’t going to be hard. Reid was a man whose only real commitment was to his own continuation, and a man like that can always be reached, because you only have to show him, clearly and without heat, where his continuation actually lies.
I have watched men perform this work with menace, with the raised voices, invasion of space, with implied and sometimes explicit violence, and it’s amateur, all of it. It’s the tell of someone who doesn’t have the other thing and is compensating. Menace is emotional. Menace is a man telling you what he’s willing to do; which means he’s negotiating; which means there’s a version where he doesn’t do it; which means there’s hope, and hope is what makes subjects difficult.
I never negotiate and I never threaten, because a threat is a future and I don’t deal in futures. I deal in the present arrangement of facts, and the present arrangement of facts, laid out quietly enough, is more frightening than any threat, because it has already happened and can’t be argued with.
So I didn’t threaten him. I told him what I knew. I told him about the coffee in the Grassmarket, and the photographs, and Langer, and the eight thousand pounds he thought was insulting and was about to learn was the most generous number he would ever be offered. I told him I’d read four months of his correspondence and been in his office seven weeks before. I told him about Cassidy - I’ll come back to Cassidy, there’s a great deal in that name that I didn’t know the weight of yet - and I watched each fact land and close a door behind it, one after another, until Reid was standing in a room with only one door left open, which was the one I was holding.
"I don't know what you think I have, but—"
"Doctor Reid."
His name. That’s the only instrument I used all evening, his own name, returned to him quietly each time he reached for an exit, and each time it stopped him the way a hand on the chest stops a man, except I never touched him, I never rose from the chair until the very end. His name in my mouth was the whole of the pressure, because of how I said it, which was patiently. With infinite patience. With the patience of a man who has all the time in the world and no particular investment in how long the process takes, and that patience is the most frightening thing I own, because most people's fear is metered by the fear of the other person. They can feel the aggressor's impatience, his nerves, his need for it to be over, and they can work in the gaps of it. I have no gaps. I’m not nervous. I’m not in a hurry. I will say your name as many times as it takes and the saying will cost me nothing, and somewhere in the third or fourth repetition the subject understands that he is not up against a man's temper, which has limits, but a man's attention, which does not, and that is the moment they give you everything.
There was a moment - there’s always a moment - where he tested it; a moment where he began to say and if I don't… He got as far as "And if I—" and then he looked at me, and I looked at him, and I did nothing at all.
I want to be precise about that because it’s the truest thing I can show you about what I am: I. Did. Nothing.
I didn’t narrow my eyes, or set my jaw, or lean forward. I simply continued to look at him with the whole of my attention and let him finish the sentence into that attention, and he couldn’t.
The sentence dissolved in his mouth. He couldn’t locate, in my face, the thing his sentence needed in order to be completed, the anger, the threat, the human antagonist who could be defied, because it wasn’t there, and a man cannot defy an absence. He can only stand in front of it and slowly understand that the future he was about to describe has already been foreclosed, not by my will, but by the simple arrangement of the facts, which I was merely reading aloud.
He gave me everything. It took twenty-five minutes. The laptop, the cloud account, the phone cache, the backup he had forgotten his own router was making - I knew about the router because knowing about the router is the job. The job is knowing about the router when the subject has forgotten it exists, and I stood by the window and watched him perform each surrender as a separate, small death, and I felt, watching him, the thing I always feel.
Not triumph. I need you to understand there’s never any triumph in it. What I feel, doing this work, is a kind of sorrow so old it’s stopped having a temperature, because I am watching a man discover the exact dimensions of his own smallness, and there is nothing to enjoy in that. There’s only the doing of a necessary thing to a person who has made himself necessary to do it to.
And then, at the end, I gave him the door.
That’s the part that the men with menace never understand, the part that makes the difference between what I do and what a thug does: you must always, always give them the door. Not as mercy, though it is mercy, and I will not pretend the mercy doesn’t matter to me, because it is nearly the last of my humanity and I spend it deliberately on people who have not earned it precisely because spending it on the deserving would prove nothing. You give them the door because a man with no way out is unpredictable, and a man with exactly one dignified way out will take it every time, and the taking of it makes him yours far more reliably than fear ever could.
"There are two ways to proceed from here," I told him. Then I laid them out, evenly, the way you would explain two train routes to a stranger: the first, where this is the end of it and he goes home and makes different choices; the second, which I would prefer not to have and which he would prefer not to have, and which was therefore in both our interests to avoid.
I did not describe the second.
Describing it would have been a threat, and I do not threaten. I named that it existed, and was worse, and let his own imagination furnish the room, because a man's own imagination is always more thorough and more frightening than anything I could say, and it has the additional virtue of being his, so that when he chooses the first door he experiences it as his choice, freely made, which it is, and which is the whole point.
"I'd encourage you to make the decision tonight," I said. "While your thinking is still clear."
He made it. Of course he made it. They almost always make it, the Reids of the world, because the whole of them is arranged around continuation and I had shown them, patiently, where continuation lay.
And then, at the door, with my hand on the frame, I did the one thing I did not strictly need to do, the thing that was not procedure, the thing that was me leaking through the operator the way I always leak through eventually, because seven hundred years has not managed to sand me down to pure function and I have stopped hoping it will. I told him about the work he had been selling. Doctor French's work. I told him he had read enough of it to know it was significant - and he had, that was why he was dangerous, a thief who cannot read the value of what he steals is a nuisance but a thief who can is a threat and I told him that the people he was selling it to would not have used it well.
I didn’t say it to absolve him. I said it because it was true, and because I wanted one true thing to be in the room with him after I left. I wanted one thing that was not about his own small survival, one accurate sentence about the actual weight of what he had almost done, so that if there were anything in him larger than self-preservation - and there is, in most people, buried, unused - it would have something to catch on in the years to come.
That is not mercy either, not quite. It is closer to husbandry. You tend even the poor soil, on the chance that something grows.
When I looked up, he was still processing it, and I left.
In the stairwell, going down; in the field in Champagne seven hundred years ago and also right then, a boy I had trained put his hand on my arm and asked me if the thing we did was a good thing, and I told him what I always told him, what I have never once fully believed and have never once stopped saying: it is a necessary thing, and necessary is the only kind of good our sort are permitted.
He died believing me.
Most of them die believing me.
That’s the other work I do, the quieter kind, the giving of a bearable version of the truth to people who need to be able to keep going, and I have never decided whether it’s a kindness or the deepest cruelty I’m capable of, and I have done it so many times that the question has worn as smooth as a stone.
I sent the message from the close off the Royal Mile.
Materials secured.
Then I stood for a moment in the September dark with the castle floodlit at the end of the close, not looking at it, because the things most worth looking at are better encountered when you are not looking for them, and I let myself feel, for exactly as long as I permit it, the tiredness that this particular work leaves in me, which is different from the tiredness of grief. Grief is heavy. This is thin. This is the tiredness of having been, for an evening, purely the instrument, the edge, the thing the Order forged me into, with all the rest of me - the man who liked Belle's lecture, the man who tips waitresses too much, the man in the field - folded away and held in abeyance so that the edge could do its work unclouded. Coming back from that, refolding myself into a whole person, always takes a little while, and always costs a little more, and I have never told anyone that it costs, because the whole value of me is that it appears to cost nothing.
The phone buzzed.
Understood. Monday.
I understood. On Monday, Belle French would walk into Gold's shop. The photographs were secured. Edinburgh was closed. The groundwork Gold needed was laid, and everything was converging on Monday, the way everything always converges, quietly, on the day it has been arranged to converge on.
I put the phone away. I was suddenly overcome by the tiredness, the thin kind and the heavy kind at once, which happens sometimes, the two tirednesses arriving together like the two lives. I had a flight the next afternoon. I had Grace's recital on the twenty-third, which I would attend the way I attended everything of hers in those years, from the back, at a careful distance, believing the distance was love. I have told you about that, about the room I was always across, and Grace’s was the largest room and the widest distance, and the one I regret most, and I was still years from learning better, still years from the day the distance nearly cost me everything and I finally, far too late, came up the stairs for my own daughter.
But that is later.
For now there was Edinburgh, closed and dark and indifferent, and a flight, and a recital, and a notebook on a kitchen table in Maine that I had never seen and yet knew, in the way I know things, contained more than its owner yet understood.
I walked toward Waverley. The castle stayed lit behind me. I did not look at it.
I am a dangerous man.
I needed you to see it once, plainly, done properly, without noise, so that you would understand what it costs me to be gentle, which is that the gentleness is a choice, made by someone who does not have to make it; the only kind of gentleness that means anything at all.
Now I can tell you about the shadows by Ruby's stairs. Now that you know what was standing in them.
He'd lived with them for two hundred years and yet…he was only just meeting them for the first time.
They were the invisible Dark Ones, those who had a voice in his head but such a bleak or small one that he'd never been able to ascertain a name from them. They were the ones that Nimue's presence overpowered. They were the ones he'd heard more in whispers and shivers and winces; he'd felt their emotions more than he'd heard their voices. But now…now he had names. Now he had stories to go with the names, however short they may have been.
Belle had been silent for a long time after he'd shown her the chronicles. She'd seemed to have given up on talking to him in order to explore them more when suddenly, after what felt like an eon, she'd looked up at him and asked, "Have you read all of these?"
He'd shaken his head. "I know that if things were reversed, and if it were you with my curse, reading them would have been your first course of action, but believe me when I say that I had very little interest in the writings of those who came before me. I only ever ventured into them when it was necessary. Which is why I say that it's possible there are answers in these books, but I can't say for certain."
That had been all Belle needed to take charge. She insisted that they needed to go through them. All of them right then and there, though looking at some of Nimue's ancient writing gave her pause.
"I'll take the older ones," he volunteered. "One of the benefits of being the Dark One and inheriting their knowledge is that I should be able to read their writing with little trouble."
"This is how you know so many languages," she realized. "How you've read more books than I could imagine."
He nodded. "Wasn't all done by me. Here. You should start here…"
He picked out the recent ones that he knew of for her, his closest ancestors: Morgana, Indie, who had killed Morgana, James, who had killed Indie, Hilaria, who had killed James, Gorgon, who had killed Hilaria, Zoso, who had killed Gorgon, and…well, she turned his away when he tried to give them to her.
"It's the strangest genealogy I've ever heard…" she muttered as he set them before her with explanation. He agreed before settling into his own seat and beginning to read, picking up with the ramblings of Nimue before she'd been killed by Bruno.
Frederick. Jennifer. Jenson. Norman.
That was proof that not all the stories and names he encountered were strange to him. Admittedly, he'd never known that the man who finally killed Nimue was Bruno, but given her prestige in the memories and her habit of leaning more toward jealousy, he wouldn't have been surprised if Nimue kept him quiet all the time out of spite. And the others were Dark Ones only briefly. Frederick lasted seven days before his wife killed him. Jennifer lasted two months before her first lover, Jenson, stole it from her. He lasted about a year before it went to Norman, the first name and story that was familiar.
He was the father of the twin girls he'd occasionally seen and heard from, Jennifer and Catherine. He had longed to be free from the Curse for as long as he'd had it, only accidentally acquiring it because he'd broken into the Dark One's home looking for riches, found himself under attack, and stupidly grabbed the blade the Dark One kept on him for protection. One lucky thrust and that was it for both of them.
Jennifer and Catherine had taken on the curse by attempting a loophole; the twins had held the blade together when they killed their father, hoping it would free him and be unsure of who to dwell in. They'd become twin Dark Ones instead. And prominent ones. Even in the memories, they'd been easily corruptible and were the only Dark Ones he knew of who had ever used the magic to purposefully age themselves up. They'd done a lot of work for Nimue, in her attempt to end Light Magic. They'd been killed when Frederick, another Dark One he couldn't identify, tricked Jennifer into falling in love with him against her sister's knowledge. He'd gotten her to show him the dagger, and to his disgusting joy, when he'd killed one, they'd both died.
After Frederick was Erik, Kazeem killed him. Gareth killed him. Hildegard killed him. Jovi, the Dark One who had taught him to transport himself from place to place, killed her.
Mortimer, Francesca, Percival, Claudia, Tomas…another name he recognized. He was the one who had taken advantage of Ophelia, who had made Tomas pay for it with his life. Oliver, the youngest Dark One, had freed her from her curse.
Taka had followed, then Georgina, Mary, Jadis, Timothy, Maya, Morgana, Indie, Liesel, James, Larry, Hilaria, Gorgon, Zoso, Rumpelstitlskin…Emma.
He swallowed hard as he glanced over at Belle and excused himself to go upstairs to fetch the coffee and delay himself further by making her some tea. Belle didn't seem to be having as difficult a time reading the Chronicles as he did, but that made sense. They were personal to him, the names, the journals, the thoughts; they were real to him in a way they couldn't be to her. The most he'd gotten out of her since they started had been when she'd suddenly looked up at him with wide eyes and asked, "If they've always been in your mind…does that mean that…when we were…together, they were there?"
He hadn't needed much prompting to figure out what she was talking about.
"No, the voices aren't alive like that," he'd explained. "They're echoes of memories. And even if they were…they're always silent around you. I think it's why it's so easy to sleep when you are with me. The voices are strongest when I'm tempted to stray from them. When you are around, I'm not tempted; I'm committed. They don't stand a chance against you."
She'd sighed with relief so great she hadn't even blushed at what they'd been talking about. He wished he could have shared in that relief, wished he could have looked at all the studying they were doing with the same kind of cold, carefree eyes that a researcher like Belle was capable of looking at it. But it was difficult, painful.
He hated the voices in his head, perhaps hated it even more than he'd hated the chains of the dagger. But knowing their names and their stories, watching as Nimue suppressed the memories of those who, like himself, hadn't pursued the destruction of Light Magic the way she wanted. He wasn't sure it was any better. It was easy to see why Belle would be so concerned about what they saw in his mind. There were several times he'd had to remind himself that they were not real, not souls, that they had passed on centuries ago. They were only an echo of a memory. And yet still capable of so much destruction.
With a deep breath, he took the tea and the coffee in his hands and headed back to the dungeon the basement felt as though it was becoming. At the top of the stairs, he saw Belle close her phone and set it aside before she dropped her face into her hands and rubbed. She'd made several calls over the course of the night. No one had picked up. If they were sane, they were asleep or napping, trying to get some semblance of rest before they were needed for Emma.
Given when Merida had woken him this morning, and when Belle usually woke up, they were both frighteningly close to hitting the twenty-four-hour mark. And he felt it in his entire body.
"I brought you tea," he muttered. "Still no word?"
She shook her head. "I can't find anything," she exclaimed, changing the subject. "She doesn't want the baby but Zelena. The only reason I can think she'd want that is if she wants to destroy dark magic, but that doesn't make any sense! I feel like I'm going in circles."
That was probably also the fault of exhaustion, at least in some part. He set the cup of tea down close, and she was quick to snatch it up and drink. She savored it, closing her eyes and sighing. And when she opened those eyes again…they landed on something that made her breath catch. He followed her gaze into the corner, where the boxes of his things were stacked. Obviously, this wasn't the first time he'd seen them, but she didn't know that. She didn't know that he'd been sneaking into the basement ever since he got back to town and already knew what was in those boxes.
Although, now that he thought about it, a clean shirt and tie would be welcome. He was fairly sure he'd been in this suit since before Isaac rewrote history. That thought alone made him want to burn it.
"I uh…I did it after you left," Belle choked out as he moved mindlessly over to the stack and opened one to see if there was a new change of clothes he could get out of it. "After I…made you…"
He didn't react. He wasn't entirely sure he had the energy to react, and even if he did, he wasn't sure what that reaction would be. Probably something akin to when he'd first come down here and discovered it months ago, but now…
"After I got home, you…you were everywhere, haunting me. I thought I wanted to move on, clear you out in every possible way so that I could carry on with my life and start a new one from the fragments, but…I think it was more to do with guilt. Sending you over the town line…I don't regret it…but at the same time, I do. I'm sorry I didn't handle things…better."
If he was honest, he was more worried about her. He'd known that doing what she did was going to leave her with guilt. He hadn't wanted that for her. And hearing confirmation of it…it was so strange not to have a black heart, not to feel vengeance. Only sympathy for the woman whose heart he'd felt breaking that night. He'd broken it. He'd given her very little choice in the matter.
"In hindsight, if I handled things like our marriage better, we wouldn't have been at the town line in the first place," he added. "I'm sorry I didn't consider my choices better."
Because he understood now that there was a choice involved. Hindsight was twenty-twenty, and from his perspective now he could see the opportunities he'd had to be truthful with her, to ask for her assistance, to tell her the things that he'd struggled to get out of his mouth when Nimue was in his head. And he'd known that doing those were better options! For him and for her, but Nimue and the other Dark Ones, they could just be so convincing! Perhaps that was why he was so determined to be truthful with her now. He didn't want to go through that again; he didn't want her to carry guilt or have doubts.
"Belle," he turned away from his past and stepped up closer to her, as close as he felt she was likely to allow him without pulling back or flinching. He knew that reaction was one that he'd caused, one that might take her some time to unlearn after what had been done, but it was also one of the reasons he wanted to be close when he repeated the words he'd said before. It was only through repetition that he was going to get her to see she could trust him again. "I meant what I said before, when we were at the shop. I want to be the hero that you deserve. I want to become worthy of the love that you once had for me. That I hope you still have for me. If we could start from the beginning…"
From the beginning…when he'd been cursed and couldn't let it go because of Baelfire? When they first got here, and he'd been terrified of anyone figuring out what role he'd actually played in the Curse? When she'd come back to him, and he'd feared what she'd see so much he'd practically held her prisoner in the house?
"I don't regret it, but I do" was what she'd said about sending him over the town line. It seemed contradictory, but he understood it. He understood it because it was nice to say that if they went back to the beginning, then they'd do everything differently. But the reality was that he wasn't sure he would. He could only do this moment differently, this moment and every moment they had together until the end. But would it be enough?
Belle cleared her throat and pulled her hands out of his grasp. He hadn't even realized that he'd reached out to hold them until she did. Now he felt their absence as his flesh cooled where she'd left her imprint.
"There has to be something here," she muttered, turning back to her books. "We can't do this; we have to keep looking."
He took a steady breath and tried to tell himself that she was right. He tried to tell himself that it wasn't a rejection, just…logical.
But how logical was it if they were both bone tired and walked away in a few hours with nothing to show but a sleepless night? Maybe he had missed something in the earlier Chronicles. Maybe it would be a better idea to have this conversation later. Maybe he could get more done on his own.
"Rumple, I-"
"You know, if the others haven't called you yet and nothing has happened, then it's safe to assume that we have a bit of time," he dismissed for her. "You look exhausted. Perhaps you should go upstairs and rest for a while. I'll continue to look through the Chronicles."
Belle sighed and rubbed her forehead as she looked out over the books on the table before them. Clearly, she was torn between wanting to stay and help but also give in to her body's desire to sleep. It was probably also a secret desire not to spend so much time alone with him in the room when he kept making it awkward. He wanted to be patient; he wanted to wait for her…but oh how he wished they could truly just soar over this awkward in-between phase they were in and get right back to where they'd been before. He hadn't been "gentle" and "timid" and "slow" with her since the castle. He wasn't sure how long he could do that now.
"Yeah, that might be best," she finally nodded, grabbing the tome of Zoso's that she'd been reading before he left and clutching it to her chest as she moved around him to the stairs. That had taken less argument than he thought it would. Was that good?
"Rumple…"
He lifted his head to find her at the stairs, looking just as bone tired as he felt but with uncertainty in her eyes. "I can trust you, can't I? If you find something…you'll tell me?"
He stopped himself from opening his mouth to answer in the affirmative. What good would that do? He could name a dozen times in their life, their marriage, when he'd told her that she could trust him and then he'd turned around and destroyed it. Wasn't that the reason some part of her felt as though she had to ask the question in the first place? Because his trust was worth nothing at the moment?
In this moment…
"The only way to prove it to you is if you give me the chance," he said instead. It seemed a better answer than "yes." And he watched for a moment as she considered those words, as she rocked a little, vacillating between staying and going. But in the end, she climbed the stairs before her and left him to his work.
Today I plan on working on stuff, trying to 'beat the deadline' for getting things at least in part outlined, so that I don't end up stalled and blocked in a couple of weeks when the new school year starts. I have noticed that when I'm not writing, I'm a sore headed bear.
So, I'll be continuing the outlining for The Dark One's Telling, and hopefully get at least part way into His Telling before my brain shuts down from creativity.
So feel free to ask questions about anything you'd like. I'll try and give you some good answers.
Hola, peeps! Happy Tuesday! I'm cautiously optimistic that things are going to get back to normal around here today. I did get some writing done yesterday despite a massive headache, but recent events also inspired me to make a back-up plan for posting Flufftober in case illness abounds again between now and finishing it (which, with three kids going back to school in 16 days, is likely, so yay for plans!).
I do plan to post daily through October for the event as I did last year. But I am also significantly upping my word count this year (37K still to go in 51 days). It's doable, but just in case things get stupid for whatever reason, I made a plan to space out the chapters every few days up until the end of the year. That said, still gunning for the original goal. My momentum isn't snuffed out yet! Regardless, expect the first chapter on September 30th/ October 1st. If Plan B gets initiated, a chapter will be posted ~every 3 days.
Also doing one Sicktember drabble each night right now, so those will all be ready for September 1st. My current Rumbelle Trope Bingo prompt will get some attention probably later in the week, but it's nearing completion. Then I have to start thinking about the next one!
So! Lots doin'! Inbox is open if you'd like to drop a line/ question/ comment/ request about whatever! Have a great day!
The Chronicles of the Dark One: Heart of the Beast
Chapter 28: The Dark One Chronicles
The hour was becoming a pressing issue, one like he hadn't encountered for centuries. He got tired as the Dark One, but his healing magic made the urge to sleep optional, something he rarely indulged in until Belle came around. Now that he was human, he was suddenly aware of just how heavy his eyelids were, how slow they were to open after every blink, the weight of his head on his neck. He'd slept the previous night, poorly, but he'd slept. He wasn't used to his body needing more so soon.
Belle, he could tell, felt the same. He wasn't sure how she'd been sleeping all these nights when he'd been in that magically induced coma, but at least on the drive home he was quick to realize the tell-tale signs that she was in need of rest. The way she yawned, the way she rested her arm against the car and her head against her fist, her silence even.
Belle didn't complain further when they left the hospital. She didn't ask questions about where he was taking her, and when he pulled up to the house, she didn't seem surprised. He couldn't rest, he had a hunch and time was now of the essence, he wanted to investigate, no matter how much coffee it meant he had to consume to keep himself awake. But he was at least somewhat hopeful that when they got home, Belle would retire. Still, there wasn't a bit of him that was shocked when she'd gotten in the door, hung up her coat, and said, "If you need me, I'll be in the basement."
Of course she would. And it was probably a good thing too. He could use her help, use her eyes, no matter how tired they were. If she was just as determined as he was, then there was another secret it was time she knew about.
"Belle." She turned around and paused in the hallway, looking back at him with a strange mix of curiosity and fear, as if she were worried about where whatever he had to say to her next might lead. If he was honest, so was he.
"Under the staircase, there is a trunk. If Emma hasn't taken it yet…it might contain something that might aid in your search."
Her brow furrowed in confusion at his instructions, but eventually she nodded. He stayed where he was in the hallway just long enough to see if the magic he'd once placed on the door worked for her. When it did, and she disappeared down the stairs, he hobbled into the kitchen to start the coffee. It was going to be a long night. A lot had changed in this house since he'd been gone, but Belle, being a tea drinker, never touched the grounds he kept on a high shelf. And he figured he may as well give her a head start on the trunk, to decide for herself what she thought about its contents, to come up with some of the many questions she would no doubt want to ask when he finally arrived behind her only…
He'd forgotten. The chest was bewitched. It was the same spell he'd put on the handle of the doorknob for the basement, only years ago, as the Dark One, he'd given her access to the basement. The trunk that she'd apparently never noticed under the stairs, however-
"Ow!" he heard her gasp as he rushed to the top of the stairs to stop her. He was obviously too late, and now she clutched her hand to her chest as she looked up at the stairs he was already on his way down.
"You didn't think it would be that easy, did you?" he joked, unsure he was joking with her or himself. "Nothing with me ever is…"
He held his breath as he reached his own hand out for the latches on the trunk. The fact that the trunk was still here and that the door had worked the same way were encouraging to him that it might still be intact, but he still felt his skin tingle as he touched the cool metal.
The Identification Spell warmed beneath his touch, then cooled with recognition. Apparently, in her haste to get the sword, Nimue hadn't thought to have Emma reclaim the Chronicles. He hoped that wasn't an omen suggesting there was nothing in them. There had to be.
Belle's eyes turned to saucers as he opened the lid with a groan and she saw the volumes of journals and personal items for the first time. She almost immediately dropped to her knees before the trunk and reached in to pull one of his own out. Then another. And another until soon he wasn't sure which journals belonged to who. She was getting back to ancient times now, to Nimue herself. Of course, her language would be far too old for even Belle to translate, but the one good thing about having that bitch in his head for centuries meant that he could. Belle, on the other hand, after digging to the bottom and observing the foreign language, turned back to the newer ones that she could easily read. His own. He felt a piece of his soul hitch as she began to place them together, recognizing his handwriting. He'd never counted how many he'd filled up before, but soon she had a stack of thirteen before her.
It was only then that she looked up at him, her gaze seeking answers to questions she hadn't yet spoken but he could all too easily guess because once upon a time Zoso had shown the Chronicles to him and he'd looked them over with the same fascinated curiosity.
"What are these?" she finally asked.
"I've always just called them the Dark One Chronicles," he answered, looking around and finding a stool to sit on so he could make himself comfortable. They still had several minutes before his coffee was done, but even then, he was determined not to move until she had as many answers as her heart desired. He wanted to be truthful.
"Merlin wasn't the only one who kept spell books and records; in fact, I tend to think that was where Nimue got the idea. There has been a compulsion from every Dark One over time to find these books and journals, to keep them safe in one place so that they can be easily passed on to the next Dark One upon demise."
"How? You'd be dead?"
He tapped his temple to remind her of their previous conversation. "But the magic wouldn't. The collective knowledge of the Dark One always lives on. Zoso, the Dark One who appeared to me, whispered the instructions to me within the first days of my acceptance of the curse. I retrieved them and kept them safe ever since, adding to them as I saw fit, of course."
He reached forward and grabbed a couple that he recognized from when he'd first taken the Seer's power. These ones were filled mostly with her voice, her riddles and visions, sketches of the people he'd seen but hadn't met yet, places he had only been to in his mind. It had helped then to write it all down and when the time was right, dump them in the same damn trunk every Dark One had used for centuries.
"So…if the knowledge is passed down, why hasn't Emma come to get them yet?"
If only he knew…
"Could be any number of reasons. The fact that she still hears voices means that she probably hasn't accepted her Darkness the way she thinks she has, the way that she should to be a true Dark One. She might not know they exist, or since she's still communing with the voices in her head and doing their bidding, she might not think she has to. It's the same information; her way would take significantly less time than our way."
Assuming she figured out how to bully the memories who were less than forthcoming, although with Nimue poised to succeed, the Original would likely do all the bullying for her.
"You think the answer is here?!"
He didn't know. The Chronicles were less complete than the memories because there was obviously no rule about writing everything down, but…Nimue and the ones who had engaged in her orders were meticulous. He would assume that if Emma were following her orders, then she would likely be listening to one of them, and they would have easily documented everything. It was very possible that the answer was here. And it would be a very, very long night indeed.
With that thought, he began to loosen his tie and pull it from his shirt. "Whatever Emma is doing, she's motivated by something, and her knowledge is coming from somewhere. I already told you this is the same information. It's our best chance to figure out what she's planning."
"But if that were true, wouldn't you know what it was? You had the Darkness inside you for years."
"Accepting the Darkness for my own purposes is different than accepting the Darkness for their purposes. Every Dark One takes on the curse for their own reasons and chooses what to do with it by their own free will. I all but shut the voices out once Bae had gone, except on the odd occasion that they had something helpful to offer."
Once he'd figured out that he had the power over them, he'd been a lot more stable. If Emma hadn't realized that yet-
"You were the Dark One before Neal left you, Rumple. Weren't you tempted?"
Tempted? To follow Nimue's orders? To destroy Light Magic?
"Not as much as you may think. First, I had a son to save, then I had a son to raise, and then a son to protect as well as a craft to learn. There was very little time for self-exploration and discovery. Children tend to do that to parents."
She nodded as she looked back at the books in her hand. He could see that there were more questions she wanted to ask, and he watched her carefully for them, trying to think about what she might want or need to know about the books in the trunk. He waited…
The mood is I survived an unexpectedly stupid weekend. I got my Writing Battle story in with minutes to spare last night after running my husband back and forth to the hospital all weekend. Worry is not conducive to my productivity.
I barely touched Flufftober this weekend, but I did add 1500 words to my next Rumbelle Trope Bingo prompt. I'm a little nervous about it but also glad I'm challenging myself. Still hoping to have that by this weekend, but I want to get caught up on Flufftober first. Hopefully things get back to normal here quickly.
As I write this, my plane is taxiing to the runway to begin the flight back to NC.
I had a fun, but very bittersweet time at the 60th anniversary Star Trek convention. Getting to see good friends who live a long way away is always great until you have to say goodbye. That moment was today, just a few short hours ago, so my heart is light, but heavy, so heavy, at the same time. Both things are true. And, since we are told that this is a weight restricted flight, I'd better reach for the light half - for now.
In writing news, I'm still plugging away at the various parts of the Dies Irae pics. Next up is the next chapter of The Templar's Telling. I feel like I'm running out of time to get all the outlining finished.
I've also been thinking about Cobra: In Your Prayers. We will see what happens there.
One very cool thing that came out of the convention was sitting with @peacehopeandrats and a friend, a youngster whom we've known since she was a wee baby. So much so that I consider her more of an adoptive daughter of sorts, and helping her to organize her OUAT fan fic thoughts. He idea is crazy good, and I really hope that she goes ahead and writes it. Coaching The Next Generation of fic writers, the irony is not lost on me.
School starts again, for the teachers, in a week. I'm not ready. Actually though I have to go in on Wednesday for a Department meeting, and a student meeting as well. That's what leadership gets you. You go back ahead of everyone else... and I'm still not ready!
So now, in the amount of time it has taken me to type this post, we are in the air, and on the way home.
