Rumplestiltskin

Imagine a tomb.

Imagine your worst enemy is standing atop that tomb and you're inside. Imagine trying to kill that enemy with every arrow in your quiver, every sword you can yield.

Not very productive, is it?

Now you've got the concept, the same concept Charming had when he tossed me into this hellhole. He thought he was truly trapping me in and out: in, where I could release no magic upon the world, his world; out, out of the way of other practitioners of magic who might wish to consult me or join forces with me. Regina, for example, who was known to frequent my doorstep, sniffing like the sleek but greedy hound she is for any tidbits of magic I might throw her. And out, out of his way, as he struggled to take command of a fragmented kingdom—least I, known to be an occasional confederate of the newly deposed George, might choose to align myself with rebel forces. And out, out of the sight of his kind-hearted bride Snow, who was known to have a bit of a soft spot for me, and I for her.

Charming thought, in this hole in the cold, dank ground, his family, his friends, his kingdom, his power would be safe from me—he would be safe from me.

"A scourge," indeed. That's what he called me. And after all I've done for him.

He doesn't know the half of what I've done for him.

Imagine your worst enemy standing atop that tomb and trying to slay you. Now you have the true picture.

Charming thought he'd made his kingdom safe from the Dark One. You really don't think I'd allow that, do you? Anything I wanted done in the world would still be done; I'd already set all that in motion, whether by magic or by manipulation (what your world calls "social engineering." Lovely term.)

He thought he was protecting his world from me. The boy never was one to think things through, or else he would have realized he was also protecting me from his world. Or rather, what was about to happen in his world.

I've been around a very long time, you see. I don't know exactly how long, because I was born a peasant, and peasants in those days were illiterate. I was also born into a large family, so my arrival was nothing special. In fact, if they could have written the date down, my parents probably wouldn't have bothered: they didn't expect me to survive more than a few days, infant health care, sanitation and my own weak constitution considered. I fooled them, though. I've fooled them all.

I've been around a very long time, and I've been the Dark One nearly three hundred years. Being raised an unwanted, kicked-around weakling gave me cellular-level distrust of people; when the dark curse invaded my body, it only enhanced that inclination toward suspicion, so I don't fool easily. It's happened, but it's an event as rare as the arrival of a comet. So when Charming and his bride conspired with Ella and her groom to imprison me, if you think that was a trap I fell into, you're as simple as they.

That was a "trap" I created. I might as well have made it easy for myself—hung a sign above my head: COME GET ME. But Snow is too bright to accept anything that easy, especially from me, so I had to manipulate them into "trapping" me.

A deal's always more fun when the other guy thinks it's his idea.

My imprisonment was my idea; I planted it in their pretty little heads. But you always suspected that, didn't you? You just never could figure out why (you love a man of mystery!).

I wanted to be in that fairy-dust dungeon because the final curse was coming (call it Regina's curse, if you like; I would just as soon you think of it that way. I prefer to be the wizard behind the curtain. Get more done without an audience.). You know the rules of the curse; I needn't take the time to explain it.

If you think it through—as Charming did not—nor Snow, which surprises me; I suppose she was preoccupied with motherhood—it makes sense. Everything I do makes sense, eventually. The fairy dust lining of this hellhole keeps my magic in—but it also keeps magic out. Even the worst magic imaginable.

Which means I have a layer of protection against Regina's (my) curse.

It's not perfect. And that's the beauty of it, really. This hellhole was a mine: it contains pockets of fairy dust. It's not like the lid on a kettle; it's more like a coffee filter. Where the gaps are, magic can get in. The fairy dust will strain the curse, when Regina finally gets off her butt and casts it; I'll be getting the coffee water, not the grounds.

Which gives me a bit of an advantage over everyone else that Regina is dragging along with her to the land without magic: I'll have a few memories left. I have to work to hold onto them, but I have plenty of time for that.

If you know my history, you may wonder what I would want to remember. It's true that it would be so much easier to walk away from the life—the lives—I've led here. Tabla rasa, for me, means freedom. But if you know my history at all, you know there is one memory I will fight like hell to retain: the reason I created this entire situation, the reason—the only reason—I live. Baelfire.

The damned fairies stole him from me. It's poetic justice that their magic will see to it that Regina's (my) curse will not steal him from my heart. As soon as we arrive in the new land, I shall hit the ground running, setting into motion the events that must happen to break the curse and to restore my power, so that I can find Bae. On the day we arrive, numb from the neck up, moving like automatons within the scripts Regina (and I) have written, when no one else can remember their children—I will.

Don't think I'm doing myself any favors. It will hurt like hell to remember him and be unable to start my search for twenty-eight years (10,220 days; 14,726,880 minutes). Every face I look into, I'll be seeking his, though I'll know better. Every child's laugh, I'll think could be his, though I'll know better. Every time the word "Papa" is spoken.

All magic comes with a price, and this is the price I'm paying for my (Regina's) curse. But during those twenty-eight years, as I wait for the curse-breaker to become the woman she will have to be if she's to save us, I will pay with my memories and my nightmares for breaking my deal with my son, and I will be ready.

A hundred times I write—slowly, carefully, because each stroke of the quill burns another memory—the curse-breaker's name on a scroll I begged from Charming (so that I could write my last will and testament, I claimed; no captor could refuse such a plea). It's not magic; it's muscle memory. Her name is carved into the cells of my blood: Emma, Emma, Emma. In the new land, in my deepest sleep, my hand will move automatically, scratching her name on my blankets: Emma, Emma, Emma.

And this is where the magic comes in: that name is my trigger. When she arrives in our façade of a town, as soon as I hear her speak her name, a kernel of magic will burst open in my head, and I will remember everything else about my lives, and I can begin the work of shaping this lost child-woman into a dragon-slaying curse-breaker. She will despise me for it, but a curse-breaker she will become. She won't be the first to hate me for providing an education. Her own parents and the curse-caster all were schooled by me, and all have hated me for it. As long as it achieves my aims—as long as it provides a cog in the grand machine that will bring me to Bae, they may hate me all they please.

Figuring out how to get the savior to come to this façade of a town, in a land so vast and so full of distractions, that took me years. At last a vision showed me what to do. Prophesy is the most difficult of all forms of magic, and the most draining; I practiced it rarely. Until I discovered the formula that would produce the final curse, I had little interest in seeing the future. Managing the present was work enough, thank you very much. But when all the elements were in place to assemble the curse, I needed information about the future, so I sequestered myself for days on end to devote every grain of my magic, every drop of my energy to visions. It was through visions I learned of Emma, of course; and visions showed me the lure that would bring her to us.

In my visions I saw her, alone and despairing (though not afraid—she carries dragon-slayer blood in her veins) in a prison. When I first made this discovery, I broke off the vision immediately: seeing her in prison sent me into a selfish depression. For you see, a prophet doesn't watch a vision unfold from a safe distance; he lives it. He touches and tastes and smells and breathes it right along those who people the vision. So when I saw the young curse-breaker in prison—though it was, as prisons go, quite clean and comfortable, nothing like this hellhole her father has dumped me in—I. . . yes, all right, I empathized with her. The Dark One, dearies, does have a conscience, fight it as I must.

When I had hardened my heart, I looked again, and I saw something I had overlooked: the curse-breaker wasn't alone after all. And that's how I found out about Henry.

He wasn't always called Henry. You know how he acquired that name. In the beginning, his mother called him Neal, after his father. Not out loud—she never spoke his name out loud. Instinctually, for she's a princess of the Enchanted Forest, though she doesn't know that, she knows that names have power, and she believed she would never see this child again after his birth, so she had no right to have power over him. What she didn't realize then was that this child would have such power over her.

In my visions I saw him, the boy who will be king—for, yes, he will return to the Enchanted Forest when he has reached his majority and he will be king over all the land. Under him, the fragmentation that exists now will exist no more. I saw him being born, I saw him being taken away. I saw his mother sign a contract giving up her rights to him.

As soon as I saw a contract being signed, I had my entrée. Rumplestiltskin is a master of the contract. Through a contract I would bring Neal-Henry to Storybrooke; he would be the hook to reel Emma in.

Did I just say "hook"? Egads.

I am where I want to be, perfectly positioned for the arrival of the curse. I will admit, however, I didn't expect it to be quite such a hellhole. Truly, I expected better of Charming. He has provided me with no fire to warm myself, no bed to sleep in, no water to wash myself, not even a change of clothes; the "food" his guards thrust at me twice a day consists of a cup of weak wine and a plate of pottage, meatless unless you consider maggots meat. What it lacks in nourishment, it makes up in grease. I sleep on a mat on the dirt. I haven't seen a ray of sun- or moonlight in two months. I have no light, no books, no conversation, no sense of time. The air is foul and damp and my lungs ache as I breathe in dust.

No human contact is permitted. I'm considered too dangerous, even in this malnourished, dehydrated condition. Just as well, I suppose: no one would come near me in my unwashed state.

Regina will come, despite the prohibition. Regina is no respecter of laws, not even her own. She needs guidance and shoring up before she casts the curse. And she needs to gloat: her old master thrown low. She has sought my downfall ever since she discovered the hoax Frankenstein, the Hatter and I perpetrated on her. Fair retribution, I suppose.

Someday, when my work is done and my son stands by my side again, I shall balance the scales with the lovely queen and with the shepherd-prince too.

What the lad doesn't realize, all warm and toasty with his lovely bride in bed three stories above my head, is that he's in prison too.