AN: I've got nothing. If you've made it this far, you'll probably like it. Also, ouch, my Snape feelings. (PG-13)

Magic: that most primeval of forces, spinning outward from the cardinal sin of commerce. It could give a man anything, anything at all, but always for a price. The cruelest irony of magic, the place in the seed-fields of power and annals of history where it stopped being merely parlor tricks became an adversary, was that it knew the value of everything yet cared nothing for the cost. A poor man's supper and a Lord's maiden daughter could purchase the same miracles — what mattered, in the end, was the loss and suffering.

Perhaps the Blue Fairy would not articulate it so harshly, but this living beast with divergent Hydra-heads and starving maws twisted and anguished within Rumpelstiltskin, and he knew it well. Its name was Guilt, or maybe Regret. Whatever he called it, he carried it with him — always, and always the misery spread.

Magic and pain, the two undeniable facts of life, were not improved by any number of ill-gotten gains. He didn't even want one quarter of his own possessions, it was all just rubbish that the magic accumulated in its wake.

They hadn't been garbage, though. Not his Belle, nor Bae. To him, she was everything, and he cast her out. He threw her away. It was his fault.

The Grail gathered dust in his cupboard, the useless spoil of another pointless deal. He knew others who would give their own mothers to take it from him, but — like all the pieces in his collection — it was not for sale. They stood as reminders, a testament to his power and a mausoleum to his failure. Everything in the castle was dusty, forgotten with the turn of a wooden wheel, except for a small, chipped cup on a pedestal. Rumpelstiltskin would not — could not — simply find another girl to clean for him. That would be like trying to forget her too, a plan he'd tested on Snow White, and forgetting Belle… forgetting Belle would be like forgetting Bae. If he forgot them, he would utterly break under the magic's weight and lose all sense of meaning.

He needed to work harder, smarter, and see through his plans while they still had momentum. Rumpelstiltskin refused to let the toil of lifetimes come to nothing. The Blue Fairy would not defeat him.

It wouldn't be much longer, then he'd have room to breathe. Twenty years or so — the Fates hadn't quite settled their differences on that point — but the Curse was his own creature and he knew it better than he knew himself. It would make him forget, the Dark One would release him, and — if he was very lucky — he might even get a few nights of decent sleep, comforted by his own ignorance before it all returned again. All of the pieces were in play; he simply had to do the impossible, then find a place to lie low and wait.

Bottling love: True Love, more to the point. It was easy enough to brew up a wave of lust or a haze of fondness that lasted a few days, but True Love? True Love was Bae and Belle and sunlight caught in the window pane, with dusty drapes and a muddy leather ball. He'd tried desperately, so many times he lost count, to let it be his own love that carried them over into the Land Without Magic. He commanded all the forces of the cosmos, chewed up time and spat it out, and pleaded with whatever Gods would hear him to please, please — just this one time — please let it work. Please.

It never worked. He'd seen every future in every reality, under every set of circumstances that he could concoct until the mere thought of brewing the potion with his own heart made him grow fearful and wince in pain at the poignant loss and forsaken opportunities. He hadn't know he'd failed so badly. Not until it was too late. Each and every botched brewing experiment stung, and each one ripped out another sliver of his ability to contain the beast.

Just because his pain wasn't enough to purchase a bottle of True Love from the Magic didn't mean it bought him nothing. He kept the mis-steps all tucked away, safer than any of the other junk littering his estate. They were his medicine, he their slave.

It was heady stuff to see what might have been if his love ran true. Addictive, to the point of distraction, but it was the best escape — the only escape he'd ever known. Then it would be over, and he'd have to tear the cork from another bottle with shaking hands to slake the deep ache of reality.

That was the price you paid for meddling with magic: misery.

Misery had never tasted so sweet, so hopefully overflowing with possibilities. For a time, they made him something like happy, guzzled down in messy slurps. Then he would come back to himself, a failure in the art of potion-making, bewitched by what he'd seen, and he would remember something. She died. Bae left him. Those were the days when simply forgetting seemed most tempting, but he couldn't do it. Not when he'd come so very far, and struggled for so very long.

The best ones he decanted off, sipping from his hip flask. The medicine went down like a drowning man finding air or dying man reaching water. One by one they vanished down his throat, beautiful and transcendent, never to return again. He tried to savor them, to keep the visage of her close to him as he dealt with numberless unpleasantries. High functioning, they called it.

Rumpelstiltskin became a master of this new, half-drunken sin. Every drought from the flask unfurled new memories from lives they'd never lived, a sharp counter-point to the mess of Kings and Queens taking shape around him. Stealing the shepherdess' son was particularly difficult, he'd dreamed an entire lifetime in one sitting, and when it was gone — when not a single drop remained — he wept for the faces of children he could never reclaim.

When the potion was gone, the images vanished with it, and no two were ever the same.

He'd been a gunslinger once. An outlaw on the brink of drinking himself to death, when she smiled at him. That man, the better man, protected what was his. He barely believed the stranger who, in a different reality, could have been him deserved the chances Belle gave him, but then — the gunslinger couldn't believe it either. That man had everything. Everything except for Baelfire, but Rumpelstiltskin drank himself silly anyway to look just a little longer on the chubby cheeks of his blue-eyed daughters playing dollies on the cabin floor.

Losing them to the crushing sorrow of an empty bottle nearly killed him, and that was it. He was whipped. No matter how much it hurt, Rumpelstiltskin couldn't stop himself from drinking in the next bottle.

Rumpelstiltskin knew his own love could never be bottled; it was too impure, too volatile, and the other part of the puzzle — Bae and Belle — were gone. It took components he didn't have for the Magic to set, and — poor steward that he was — he'd let them slip through his fingers. These fantasies, though… They spoke of possibility. If he'd behaved differently, then maybe… Even knowing that he needed Snow White and her Prince to make the potion work, he continued to drive himself half-mad day-dreaming.

She was in trouble in the next one. So small, and scared. But brave — yes, that was his girl brandishing a fire-iron and battering her assailant bloody. He'd married her instantly, as soon as she'd let him. He would never let her go again. The scene played out for him in the forest as he engaged in his own sword fight. Belle was safe in this drea. Bae was safe too, and they were a family.

When that one was gone, his ennui almost swallowed him. He swore them off only to pour more of the poison down his throat the second his real memories became too strong.

How differently their lives would have been if he'd simply accepted her; the lives they could have lived in the Castle astounded him, but they were — all of them — without Bae. He'd never admit how badly that tempted him. A lesser man would have gone insane, making love to her in his dreams as the fool-knight walked in; making love to her in her marriage-bed when her husband was a disinterested twit; knowing he'd never really touch her warm, soft skin again.

They should be together; in any other reality, if he made a single choice differently, they would be happy. Rumpelstiltskin felt he'd aged centuries in the span of days after he emptied the bottle where she ran away with him to have their baby, but he kept on drinking.

She loved him in the dreams, always smiled so nicely and kissed him like he meant something. They had families, grew old and died happy, with grand children he adored and when the bottle dried up he mourned their passing, knowing he'd never see them again.

At the bottom of every bottle, once it was empty, a funeral was waiting. It was a hungry, empty pit slowly eating its way through him. Rumpelstiltskin knew it was killing him, that the madness was spreading.

He didn't care, he had to have more of it.

He was dreaming stolen kisses in a wooded glade, his Lady always daring to meet him, when they carted him away to a stinking cage. He — this version of himself — had to find her again; she couldn't mean to abandon him, when she didn't know he was really…

They took his possessions when they locked him up. Fifteen paces down the hall, first door on the left. His affects were there, including the flask. Two more mouthfuls and he'd know how the story ended; two more mouthfuls, and another funeral, but at least he'd be able to see her again.

It was madness, the cruelest torture, to sit powerless with his happiness just beyond the bars. Why did he have to claim the twins? He knew they were imaginary. The Magic said he could would profit by it away, so he'd taken the risk. He had to get out of this cage.

Rumpelstiltskin needed his medicine. It made him want to be better, to deserve her, and dulled the screams of "Papa," the never-ending refrain of "she died," wracking his brain.

All magic ever brought was misery, yet there was no price he would not pay for one last taste of the stuff. Just one more, to finish the bottle, and then he would go along peacefully. She'd be alive and real, for as long as the illusion lasted, and that would be enough for him. It was all he had, so it had to be.

Maybe they were right to call him crazy.

Fin.

Citations: (re)read these if you need something to make it through the day. Go get 'em!

An Inward Treasure by Fyre (AO3)
Chevalier by 0ceanofdarkness (Tumblr)
Not a Bad Life by Rufeepeach (Tumblr)
Strange Bedfellows by ddagent (AO3)
Stolen by Sapsorrow86 (FFN)
The Tune of Bullets by Bad Faery (FFN)