A Curse Upon Thee 17

A weeping sheet of condensation was all that separated his little shop from the dreary outside world, simple dew-kissed glass against the perpetual purgatory that was Storybrooke’s Main Street.

The shop itself smelled of lemon polish and tightly-leashed power, wood decaying and silver tarnishing in the dark. His own little kingdom; a demesne of dust, debts and deals.

And from its borders, he watched the simple game play out in front of him.

The man this world knew as Mr. Gold stood in the shadows of a display, perfectly still as he rested his weight on the handle of his cane. The ache in his right leg was a reminder of a time before, a weakness of humanity he’d been forced to bear; the constant throb acting as a quiet metronome keeping time in a town that had possessed none for twenty-eight years. 

Truthfully, the old man did not mind the pain much. 

No, it was the humiliation beneath it that rankled more than anything else.

But he’d had many a year to come to terms with that.

Dark eyes peered out the window, unseen and watching all as he waited for one figure in particular. While patience was one of his few virtues, he did not have to exert it for long until it bore fruit. 

Under the gray Maine sky, a flash of bright red swaggered down the sidewalk.

Hair and jacket both a blood red that marked the boy as unique among the myriad of mundane mortals that filled the town, the new deputy was an anomaly for many reasons more than just simple coloring.

Phineas McHale was the stray thread in a tapestry Gold had spent centuries weaving, one that refused all attempts at being plucked or studied.

Dark eyes tracked him, the boy moving with an ego to him he didn’t even seem to notice, a loose-limbed stride that was far more than the simple arrogance of youth. It was as much the walk of someone who truly did not understand how dangerous he was, as well as one who lacked an eye for the nature of the predators watching him.

But Gold saw both.

He saw more than the hair and the bright red leather. He saw the space around the boy, the warped air and the slick distortion that bore a taste of blood and wildness to it. Without the benefit of magic — the thick oiliness of the Darkness beneath his own skin — Gold had only memory and his own human senses. Yet, that was enough here; no spell needed to feel what the boy was leaking into the cracks of the world.

The energy bled from the child, defying the fundamental nature of the Enchanted Forest with every moment he drew breath. Proper magic was coaxed from the earth, pulled from the air, drawn from the blood, or borrowed at a price most terrible and weighty. 

Magic was, at its very core, a transaction with the world. 

But the power radiating from the Irish boy was not pulled, and it certainly was not borrowed.

No, it was dark. Purely negative, and self-sustaining, the boy vented pure malice and raw pressure; an open wound that refused to clot constantly bleeding power into a town designed to smother it.

Fascinating.

A low breath pushed through Gold’s lips, vibrating in the quiet shop and laced with equal parts mirth and covetousness. The former Dark One allowed himself a chuckle as he tore himself away from the glass, cane tapping the floorboards.

The bell above the shop door chimed as soon as he turned, a cheerful sound that always felt like an insult. The larger insult herself swept past the threshold, the bitter chill of the morning and the aggressive scent of expensive apple-scented perfume wafting in with her.

Finn had many names for the woman, but Gold found himself enjoying The Wicked Witch of the West Wing in particular. The show itself was not his favorite but it did flow off the tongue quite well. His lips pursed with amusement, eyes rising to take in the dark pantsuit pressed to a razor’s edge and the icy expression of the woman who wore it just as cutting. 

Regina always wore her absolute authority in a manner most theatrical, with or without the floor-length cape and constant decolletage. “Madam…” He let the vowels drag free, a faint roll of the ‘r’ dropping a half-step softer as he forced her to lean into the quiet.  “Mayor.”

“Mr. Gold.” Imperious as she was, the tightness in her eyes grew more visible day by day; a symbol of the crumbling of her own control. 

Couldn’t even give me a first name, Regina. He smiled back at her, the woman as lazy and impetuous as she had always been. “A lovely morning for a stroll around town, isn’t it?”

“It is.” The smile she returned his way was a polished thing, as pretty and fragile as any ceramic finery. “Even if the streets are a bit more… cluttered… lately.”

Gold could read the particular brittle smugness wafting off her as they shared morning pleasantries, two monsters of a different make pretending to be servants of the people. Plotting again, silly girl? The Nolan woman, undoubtedly. She had conveniently vanished, and Regina had been quite the busy little bee laying her own trail of breadcrumbs straight to the door of Mary Margaret Blanchard’s little loft. Your mother would be so ashamed.

Not with the task, of course.

But undoubtedly so with the chosen method.

A petty pedestrian frame-job. Might as well have just burnt the woman at the stake.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry for the clutter.” Gold tilted his head. “These things do have a way of sorting themselves out. Eventually, of course.”

“Eventually, yes.” Regina’s eyes narrowed, what little warmth she offered vanishing as her voice regained its usual thorns. “Your little deputy seems to be settling in nicely. Given his sudden elevation in status. Vagrant to law enforcement.” The words positively dripped venom, Regina unable to hide her own jealousy at the boy’s own innate gifts. “I suppose this town has been gathering its fair share of strays.”

“My deputy…” Gold’s smile failed to reach his eyes. “He’s not my anything, Regina. Simply a former employee, a lost boy looking to find his way and find a wage.” He leaned slightly heavier on his cane, gold ring on his finger catching dim light. “Though I do hope you’re not planning anything… reckless. Again.”

Regina’s near-flinch was sweeter than any apple, the woman almost biting her lip. “Reckless?”

“The boy pretends with a smile, but he does have a temper, doesn’t he?” Gold tapped that ringed finger against the head of his cane. “All that youth and energy to go with it along with such a distinct lack of care for authority. Quite the combination.”

Regina’s chin lifted, pure aristocratic rage slipping past onto a face that only knew municipal authority. “I’m sure I have no idea what you mean, Mr. Gold.”

“Of course, of course.” Gold’s head dipped toward the Mills woman, a mocking half-bow to the power in Storybrooke. “My mistake, dearie.”

She held his eyes for a second more, before turning on her heel without so much as a polite goodbye. The doorbell chimed its cheerful song behind her as Gold watched the woman retreat down the sidewalk, utterly unimpressed as he had been since he had come to know her. Playing at schemes the way a spoiled child took to chess… He tutted his tongue.

Regina was obsessed with taking pieces, the girl completely blind to control of the board. All tactics and no strategy, that one. 

Her mother had been the same; the flaw not quite fatal, but at the very least terminal. At the very least, Cora would have simply ripped the heart from the Nolan woman’s chest and crushed it on the town square to make a point. Regina was wrapping it in a box and burying it in the woods. Too much pride in the performance and far too little patience for the long game.

If Snow White could not suffer today, tomorrow and every day, Regina would not know a moment’s rest. Squandering your leverage for petty immediate cruelty…

It was no wonder she swore vengeance on a child, that one.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

An hour later, the pawnbroker locked his shop and stepped out into the biting wind, bad leg dragging behind him as his cane took the brunt of the weight. 

The Sherrif’s station was a few block’s down, several minutes of pained walking bringing him to exactly where he needed to be as he paused across the street from it under the shadow of an awning. Dark eyes traced the scene inside, cheap horizontal blinds raised high for him to see the menagerie of broken things arranged out on the stage. 

Emma Swan — the Savior herself — sat at the battered desk, posture rigid and shoulders up around her ears. For a wrecking ball that was slowly inevitably swinging toward Regina’s glass cawstle, the woman managed to make the mundane and banal stressors of life her dragon to slay. Perched on the corner of a filing cabinet was the Lucas girl, the wolf wrapped in denim and red lipstick, vibrating with a wild, caged heat she didn’t even know she possessed.

And leaning against the back wall, nursing a paper cup of coffee, was the red boy

It was as dark as any magic the Dark One had ever wielded. Pure, crystallized negativity, yet infinitesimally smaller; a flickering candle compared to the raging, forest-consuming bonfire of what he knew as true power.

And yet it bled free, as free as human will and desire with the boy noticing no strain.

None of it hoarded deep in the chest, limited by intricate incantations or bound by the punitive strictness of enchanted commerce. No, it just existed as free as air, spreading from the boy like smoke from a flame that never burned down to ashes.

And he knew nothing of it.

Such a waste.

In another world, another time, he would not have stood watching. Gold’s hand tightened on the head of his cane as the knuckles went white from the force. But Gold was not that being anymore. 

Not here. 

Not in this cursed, stagnant little prison. 

Thanks to Regina’s foolish whims, he had only his mind, his money, and his ledgers.

And the boy was too strong besides.

Not powerful. Strong. The difference was mathematical but it was a difference all the same.

Power was a resource, fluid and present. It could be drained, tricked, siphoned or bought for the price of a firstborn child. Strength was a simpler and baser thing.

Strength had to be broken first.

The boy had taken wounds that should have left him crippled and blows that should have left him bleeding out and dying. Yet, his strange darkness did its part to keep him among the living, constantly and unconsciously reinforcing the boy’s flesh all the way down to the bone.

If Gold cornered him, the boy would wring his neck and leave him gutted like a prize pitbull would an old weak mutt. Casual inhuman violence against old age, a bad leg, and no magic to speak of… 

Unacceptable.

The boy was the key, Gold knew that much.

Not to the curse itself — Miss Swan held that singular honor — but to the aftermath. The foreign magic leaking from the boy’s pores was not of the Enchanted Forest and certainly not of this mundane realm. 

A foreign element.

And foreign elements were exactly what a man needed to crack a sealed door.

Beneath the town, deep in the forgotten earth, the well waited for something to unleash that sealed-over wellspring. The magic trapped beyond it was a stagnant pool, inaccessible, locked shut and sealed over even tighter by the parameters of that fool girl’s stupider curse.

But that bleeding darkness… that raw, un-contracted negativity the boy paraded around with like a toy. It could act as a catalyst as powerful as true love itself. 

A corrosive acid to eat through the lock.

But the boy refused to cooperate.

Like any other, he thought himself too smart and too independent to be tied down by any offer or deal or even simple ‘kindness’. Immune to the usual levers and too aware of what they meant even if he didn’t have the words for them, the boy was as feral as his own energies.

An animal suspicious of the trap, even with the teeth hidden away.

He would not be bought. He could not be tricked into a signature. He barely accepted a gentlemen’s agreement. Smart… There was a cunning to him, even if he lacked the knowledge to wield it to the utmost. 

Gold’s mind played back their first true meeting, a simple conversation, in his own shop. He had balked at mere word of a contract, a flash of visceral terror overriding that smug gaze before the absolute instinctual refusal. ‘No contracts. I don’t sign anything.’

If only, he could be simply taken by force.

But no.

Not while the boy stood so firmly on his own two feet, not with a strength that allowed him to treat bone like simple twigs. Surrounded by his new little pack, he bore a social power that was almost more annoying than the strength that surpassed simple mortality.

Still, though… The boy might be unnecessary in the short term. He hoped so, at least. All he needed was for Regina to overplay her usual hand and be her usual self. The curse was already fraying, after all. He could feel it in his bones, an ache deeper than the ruined leg. Emma Swan was chipping away at the foundation ever since she stepped in Storybrooke, her introduction all he needed to regain a fraction of who he once was. 

Chaos. Distraction. Opportunity.

Yes, Finn McHale was strong now. 

Cocky, hale, and hearty enough to think himself immortal under a shield of sarcasm and iron fists. But no one, no one, was ever as untouchable as they believed. No one would stay strong forever. 

After all, the boy had already made the fatal mistake of acquiring attachments. He cared for Emma Swan, and he and the Lucas girl were rutting all over the town. He had all but put down roots in Storybrooke and begun building his own home.

Attachments meant leverage. Leverage meant pain.

Injury would come and exhaustion would set in. 

Trust would inevitably be misplaced, as it always, always was, and something would do him the favor of running the boy ragged and push young McHale to his limits.

And he would be there to tip him the rest of the way.

With a smile, Mr. Gold turned his back on the Sheriff’s station and began the slow, rhythmic walk back to his shop.