The Way Curses Are Broken

A Once fanfic

By Snapegirlkmf

A/N: based off of some of episode 3:4 Nasty Habits, but with my own twists and tweaks. What if Bae had gotten captured by Pan as the Pied Piper before Rumple could rescue him? What will both father and son risk to be reunited again? Can such evil be defeated? Can curses old and new be broken by the power of a loving heart?

I do not own OUAT, regretfully. Note: in this story Bae is younger than 14 when called to fight, and Rumple's reason for becoming the Dark One is similar yet different. Enjoy!

1

Bae's Rebellion

"Either you kill me, or I kill your son."

Those words, spoken in a rasping vicious voice more than three months ago, haunted Bae's sleep most nights. He could never forget that horrible day, right after the duke's men, led by some pompous bully name Hodor, had come knocking on the door of his cottage and told him he was drafted to fight in the ongoing conflict between men and ogres on the Southern Border of the Enchanted Forest.

"You're crazy!" he'd cried. "I'm twelve. I'm not old enough to fight. I don't even know how to swing a sword." Twelve going on thirteen. He had a birthday coming up in four months.

"You'll come with us tomorrow, boy. It don't matter how old ye are, ye're coming. The duke orders it!" Hodor said.

"Screw that!" Bae spat, he'd always had a sassy tongue on him when he got angry, and today was no exception. "I'm not going anywhere except to market with my father to sell our thread. I'm a spinner, not a soldier."

"Ye're a sassy whelp that needs some manners beaten into him!" Hodor snarled, raising his hand and trying to cuff Bae on the head.

Trying because Bae wasn't minded to let him. Only one man had the right to lay a hand on him, and that was his papa, Rumplestiltskin. Something Rumple hardly ever did, despite his son's smart mouth. People sneered at him for it, saying he let his son run wild, but Bae knew that wasn't so. His papa simply had different methods of punishment, a fact that his son thanked the gods for, or else he'd have been beaten black and blue long ago.

Bae ducked the other's cuff and drew back, leaning on the sturdy door of the cottage and slamming it shut right in Hodor's nasty red face. He quickly drew the bar down and locked it.

"Let me in, boy! This isn't over!" Hodor pounded the door.

"Up yours!" Bae spat and gave the door the finger, something he could do because his father wasn't there to see it.

After a few more minutes of pounding, Hodor rode off, cursing the brat to the seventh hell.

Tomorrow would be a different story, he vowed. He'd haul the brat off to boot camp and teach the little imp respect for his betters with his blacksnake whip if it killed him. No son of a cowardly crippled spinner was going to backtalk him like that!

Inside the little cottage, Bae lit the lamps, as it was growing on to dusk, and set the table, giving the pot of pea soup with bacon a final stir and making sure the bread warming in the wall oven didn't burn to a crisp, like it had last time he'd tried to warm it. It was just him and his papa, had been since he was four and his slut of a mother had run off to chase dreams and a pirate. Bae could hardly remember her, and wouldn't give her the time of day if he passed her on the street.

Everything he needed, his papa had given to him, and though they were always scraping by, Baelfire never felt that he lacked anything. Well, materially, but in terms of love and affection, never. He loved his father with a fierce adoration, despite the claims of cowardice, and had cheerfully bloodied the nose of many a boy who dared sneer at his father.

He just had set spoons beside their wooden bowls when the door opened and Rumple walked in. "Bae, I'm home!" he called, setting his cloak on the wooden peg beside the door. "I sold all my thread and we've got enough money to pay the rent on the first of next month and some extra to put aside for a rainy day too. And Widow Harkens gave me a peach cobbler for my songbird yellow thread too."

"That's great, Papa," his son said, mustering up a smile. Rumple usually made good deals at the market for his wonderful thread, and he'd taught his son everything he knew about spinning and weaving.

Rumple came to set the cobbler on the table and noted the sudden shadow that flitted over his son's expressive face. "Something wrong, Bae?"

The boy heaved a sigh. "Papa, I've got something to tell you, and you aren't going to like it."

Rumple looked at him sternly. "Baelfire, what have you gotten yourself into now?"

"Papa, it's not something I did," Bae protested. Then he told him about Hodor.

Rumple was horrified. "Son, you cannot fight in this war! Fighting's for grown men, not children, and you're not a man yet. It's . . . it's insane that the duke expects mere children to fight monsters."

"I know, Papa. I told Hodor he was crazy, but he said he'd be back for me tomorrow," Bae said.

"No! They cannot take you away!" the spinner cried. "You're all I have. Without you . . . I would surely shrivel up and become dust."

"Nobody's taking me anywhere, Papa," Bae said quickly, seeing the panic in his father's dark brown eyes.

"But what can we do? I cannot protect you . . . not like this," he gestured uselessly at his crippled leg, bitterness etching his expressive face, much like his son's. Frantic to try and protect the only family he had left in the world, the only person who loved him and he loved in return, Rumple said, "Maybe . . . maybe you can hide away in the hills for a bit. You know, in the cave we found."

"For how long, Papa? I can't hide there forever, and they'll be watching the cottage, waiting for you to betray me and then they'll have me," Bae pointed out. "It's not safe here for us anymore. So we should leave."

"And go where?"

"Anywhere's better than here," Bae persuaded. His father was a homebody, and disliked traveling, but they had no choice. Bae couldn't wait to shake the dust of this place from his boots. "We can find another village, in another kingdom, and get a fresh start."

"Okay. Pack your things. We'll leave tonight, late, before anyone thinks to look for us," Rumple decided. "But first let's eat, no sense letting good food go to waste."

That night found them packed and on the road, and still traveling the next morning. Despite his crippled leg, Rumple could move pretty quickly when he needed to, and nothing mattered more to him than getting away from those who would steal his son from him in a war that showed no signs of ending.

They took the road leading out of the Enchanted Forest, towards the neighboring kingdom of Starkkhard, ruled by the powerful warlord Gervaise. Gervaise had terrorized all his neighbors because he controlled the might of the powerful sorcerer called the Dark One. Not even the duke dared to cross him.

Rumple prayed they could put enough distance between their village in a day to enable them to double back and seek a back way out of the forest, for there was no way he wanted to end up in Gervaise's kingdom.

Around midday, satisfied that no pursuit was forthcoming, Rumple and Bae decided to make camp in a small culvert beside the road and rest for a few hours.

They both rolled themselves in their cloaks after eating a quick meal of bread and cheese and spring water, falling asleep soon afterwards.

Bae shuddered as he recalled what had happened next.

"Either you kill me, or I kill your son."

Bae had woken feeling that there was something wrong, and when he opened his eyes, he found the tip of a very sharp dagger pressed against his throat. "Hey! What—"

"Do as I say, boy, or else!" a raspy voice hissed in his ear. "Wake your father there."

Bae gulped hard, figuring they were about to be robbed by brigands . . . at least that's all he hoped they would do to him and Rumple. So he obeyed, calling out to Rumple.

"Bae?" Rumple said sleepily. "What is it?" He sat up, and gasped when he saw what was going on.

An elderly man had a dagger to his son's throat.

"Please, don't hurt my son," Rumple cried. "I'll give you whatever we have, just don't hurt my boy." He went to fumble in their packs for the little money they had.

"I don't want money," rasped the man, he looked frail, but his grip on Baelfire belied his looks. He wore a dark cape and a robe, almost like a monk.

"Then what do you want?" Rumple asked desperately.

"One thing and one thing only."

"What is it? Let my son go and I'll do whatever you want."

The old man smiled, a cold grimace of satisfaction. "Will you now, coward?"

"Yes! Please! Just don't hurt my son."

"My papa's not a coward!" Bae snarled, the old defense springing off his lips, despite his own peril. "You are, for threatening unarmed people!"

"Silence!" snarled the man. Then he turned his gaze to Rumple again. "I want you to kill me . . . with the dagger at my belt."

"What?" Rumple stared at the other man. Surely he was mad, to make such a request? Mad as a dog with foaming mouth sickness.

"You heard me. Either you kill me or I kill your son." He pressed the dagger harder against Bae's throat and the boy whimpered as the sharpened steel cut into his tender skin.

"Papa, don't!" Bae cried, sensing there was some trick, some trap, in this request.

"I have to!" Rumple insisted, though his very soul cringed at doing harm to anyone, for any reason.

"Come on, coward! Do it!" taunted the old man. "For once in your life, do the brave thing!"

"How is killing you in cold blood brave?" Rumple wondered.

"Just do it! Or your precious boy is food for the worms!"

His hands shaking, Rumple picked up the dagger at the man's belt. It was a long knife, wavy, made of a strange sort of black metal, with the word Zoso carved on it in silver letters. "Let my boy go and I'll do it," he bargained.

"Do I have your word?"

Bae shook his head slightly. This was wrong. He could feel it. This crazy man was using them . . . for what purpose he didn't know, and didn't care, but there was something terribly wrong going on here. "Papa . . .no . . ."

Rumple gazed into Bae's eyes, and whispered again, "I have to, Bae!" He swallowed hard. "You've got a deal. Let him go."

The old man shoved Baelfire hard, knocking him off to one side. Then he tore his robe open and said in a soft challenging voice, "Do it!"

"Why?" Rumple queried as he raised the dagger.

"Never mind why! Just keep to your bargain, spinner!"

"And if I don't?"

"The cut I gave him is poisoned. He'll die in fifteen minutes," the old man cackled. "Unless you keep to your agreement! Strike! Once I'm dead, the poison will disappear! But only then! Kill me!"

And then Rumplestiltskin committed the most desperate act of his life, because he would do whatever he had to in order to save his child.

He stabbed the crazy old man in the heart with his own dagger . . . and in so doing took the curse of the Dark One upon himself, all unwitting.

That had been three months ago, and since then Bae had watched his father, the gentle spinner and decent man he adored, become someone he didn't know, a stranger wearing a facsimile of Rumple's face, transformed by the curse of the Dark One into a monster with glittering gold skin, ebony nails, and reptilian eyes.

The physical changes were bad enough, but the way Rumple's personality had shifted was the worst. Bae had always counted on his father to be calm and collected, to seek reasonable solutions to problems before violence, to be thoughtful and considerate of others feelings even when they were indifferent or nasty to him. Some might have termed that cowardice, but Bae knew better. His father was no coward, simply a gentle man who empathized with others.

It was Bae who had his mother's quicksilver temper, and her sharp tongue, though to be fair, he only mouthed off to those who slighted his father, or who attempted to cheat them on market day.

But since taking on the Dark One's awful mantle, a thing which Bae knew he was partially responsible for, Rumple had become like a man possessed. He was quick to lash out, full of anger, uncaring about anyone's feelings, quick to use his magic to hurt people.

Bae was horrified at how his father had changed, the way the curse had overtaken him, making the spinner into a beast he hardly recognized. The only thing that remained the same was Rumple's love for his son.

Or so Bae had thought at first. But gradually, as time passed, he began to see that too, had been altered. Always before, there had been an easy camaraderie between them, a playfulness, demonstrated in affectionate gestures and banter. Now, Rumplestiltskin spent most of his time away from the drafty abandoned keep they called home, going out to make deals with hapless folk, driven to do so by the dagger's need to dominate and the dark magic's need to feed off the despair of mortals.

And when he was home, he seemed obsessed with gathering things, pretty baubles, and ancient magical objects, which was not like the father Bae knew at all. He also seemed determined to keep Baelfire indoors all the time, only letting him go as far as the front gate of the keep, and never beyond it.

It was starting to drive the normally active boy crazy. He felt like a prisoner in his own home, such as it was.

The last straw for him came on a windy day in mid-March. Bae was drawing on the worn table in the keep's main room, after reorganizing a storage room on the second floor, throwing out all the junk collected in it over years, and sweeping the floor, since his father had wanted a room where he could brew potions.

He was sketching on a piece of parchment with a stub of charcoal, since his quill had broken and he hadn't wanted to ask Rumple to get a new one. These days, any request made of the Dark One usually involved a price that the petitioner had to be desperate to pay. He had never demanded a price of Baelfire, not yet anyway, but Bae was taking no chances. Besides, he could draw as well with charcoal as with ink.

He sketched, letting his longing for his lost father to spill over onto the parchment, drawing a picture of Rumple as he had known him before the curse. He then began to draw himself beside his father, the way it had been, when Rumple was just a simple country spinner, and a loving father, instead of this coldhearted possessive beast.

He had just finished putting the finishing touches on the sketch, which had him smiling up at Rumple, and signed his name at the bottom, when the door opened and his papa entered.

"Bae, I've brought you a gift," the Dark One announced. "A new penknife. See, it has a handle of real dragonbone, it's made of mithril, one of the hardest metals known to man." He laid a fine knife down on the table beside the picture Bae had just finished.

Bae looked up. "That's nice, Papa. But I don't need a new knife, my old one's good enough."

Rumple looked hurt at his son's rejection of his present. "This one is much finer. I made a deal with a merchant for it."

"Then you keep it," Bae said quickly. He set his charcoal down on the table and waited for his father to notice his drawing. The old Rumplestiltskin would have spotted the sketch in a heartbeat and been delighted with his son's artistic talent.

But the Dark One barely glanced at the parchment, instead frowning at the boy and saying, "Then what do you want, Bae? What's wrong with you, son?"

Bae stared up Rumple. "What's wrong with me? I should be asking you that question, Papa. What's wrong with you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you're not the same man you always were. This curse . . . it's changed you. Made you hard and cold. Can't you see that?"

Rumplestiltskin blinked. There were times that he felt . . . lost . . . alone . . . prey to insidious whispers from deep within his subconscious . . . but then he would use his magic and the lonely lost feeling would go away, eclipsed by the rush of power the dark magic always gave him. "I . . . I only want to make you happy, Bae. Tell me what you want, and I'll get it for you."

"I want my father back!" Bae snapped, frustration welling within him.

"I'm right here, son."

"No, you're not! The Dark One is! That's not my papa! Every time you leave here and use your magic, you become someone I don't know . . . someone dark and cold . . .and my papa was never like that."

"Bae . . . I know things are different now, but I'm trying to give you a better life now than we had before. I can conjure anything you desire, my magic makes me strong. No one laughs at me now, or points at me in the street, or throws mud at me."

"No, they run away from you and make the sign to ward off evil," Bae pointed out. "How is that better, Papa?"

His son's words caused him no small amount of anguish, because he knew that Bae was right . . . there was something very wrong with him, but he didn't know how to fix it, and the only thing that seemed to make him feel anything these days was using the magic the dagger had given him. "Bae," he tried again to get his son to talk with him, the way they used to. "Tell me what you want and I'll get it for you."

"I want to have a normal life . . . like other boys my age. Since we've come here, you haven't let me out of the castle. I don't have any friends . . . can't even make any here, shut away like this," Bae blurted, his misery finally finding its voice.

"Son, you have to stay here. I have enemies, they'd love to get their hands on you. I just want you to be safe," Rumple began.

"You wouldn't have enemies, Papa, if you would just leave people alone and go back to being nice to people," Bae snapped. "And I'm not a baby, you don't need to wrap me up in cotton wool. What's the harm in me going down to the village and talking to people?"

"It's too dangerous. You don't know what you're asking," Rumple insisted, a sudden irrational fear growing within him. He feared that if Bae left the sanctuary of the castle, something would happen to him. And he could never let that happen.

"Yes, I do!" his son cried, his eyes turning stormy. "I'm asking for you to treat me like a kid instead of a prisoner."

"A prisoner? It's not like I'm locking you in your room. You have the whole castle to explore and the grounds too," Rumple argued.

"Oh,great! A drafty abandoned keep and miles of boring grass and trees, real wonderful. Just what I've dreamed of," Bae said sarcastically. "It's like paradise."

Rumple scowled, not liking his son's tone at all. "Hey! You watch your tone, young man. I'm your father, not one of your peers."

"Then maybe you ought to act like it!"

Rumple felt his temper, always close to the surface these days, start to surge up inside him. "Excuse me? Don't give me any of your sass, Baelfire! You're not too old to spank, mister."

"I'm almost thirteen, Papa," Bae cried, flinching slightly at the threat. He knew his tone was just this side of disrespect, and normally he would have never been so belligerent, but he was so sick of being stuck here, and all he wanted was a chance to see something outside this castle, talk to someone his own age. Was that so much to ask?

"Almost thirteen or not, you don't speak to me like that. I thought I taught you better," Rumple scolded.

"Fine! Then I'm done talking," Bae said rebelliously. He got up and stalked to the back door.

"Come back here!" Rumple yelled. "Baelfire! Where do you think you're going?"

"Out to get some air, it's like a tomb in here," he called over his shoulder, slamming the door behind him.

As he walked across the yard, he paused, waiting to see if his father would come after him. The old Rumple would have done so, would have come out to scold and lecture, and Bae knew he would have been in serious trouble for backtalking his papa that way. Angry as he was, Bae would have almost welcomed the lecture, would have taken whatever punishment Rumple meted out, because even that was better than this cold indifference.

He waited a minute, expecting to see Rumple come through the door, disappointment written all over his face, but the door remained shut.

His shoulders slumped. The shut door was an answer in itself. His papa didn't really care about him anymore.

He continued walking across the lawn, his heart heavy within him. He looked around at the windswept landscape and thought rebelliously that for once he wasn't going to do what was expected of him. For once he was going to do just as he damn well pleased, and if his papa didn't like it, too damn bad!

He jogged across the fallow field to the low stone wall that surrounded most of the empty pasture, and climbed over it easily.

Once on the other side, he gave a quick glance backward at the solitary keep of gray stone, standing like a lonely sentinel on the hill.

No Rumplestiltskin.

I don't care! I'm going to have some fun for a change, Bae thought, swallowing the lump in his throat. He trotted through the bracken and down the path to the village, trying desperately to think about something other than the mess his relationship with his father had become. I don't care! He can stay up there and molder away with his books and potions. He blinked back tears, for they gave the lie to his defiant thoughts, proving they were but a sham.

Squaring his shoulders, he headed down the trail, tilting his head slightly.

Someone was playing music in the distance. Some kind of flute or pipes or something. He listened for a moment, then quickened his steps. The music was catchy, and where there was music, there were usually people. The jaunty tune filled the lonely spaces within his soul, and made him forget, just for awhile, his longing to have his papa back the way he was before the dagger's curse.