Chapter Text
His knees started to ache within a few minutes of Zelena’s departure. The command that had sent him there had been non-verbal, but no less powerful because of it—and neither had been the pain that ripped through his body upon receiving it. Zelena’d stormed out, as she tended to do when she was in a temper, but she’d left Rumplestiltskin on his knees, and now he was stuck.
The dagger worked like that, he’d realized almost a year ago with an utterly sinking heart. Oh, he’d known in theory how very thoroughly the dagger could control him, but until he’d felt the soul-constricting dominance in practice, Rumplestiltskin had never thought much on it. Zoso had obviously not felt like explaining much about the curse when he’d tricked him into killing him, and Rumplestiltskin had spent three centuries keeping the dagger out of anyone else’s hands, so he’d never experienced it firsthand. He’d known letting it fall into someone else’s hands would be bad…he’d just never realized it could be like this. Never realized that the control would be so complete.
Zelena didn’t even have to give a verbal command. Her thoughts, coupled with her magic and her hold on the dagger, were enough to send Rumplestiltskin crashing to his knees and pain ripping through his system. White flashed before his eyes, and though the pain was not as great as she had caused him before—Zelena wanted him to listen, after all, to her gloating and to her fury—it was the fact that she could cause it that frightened him so much. He’d never expected the dagger itself to be an instrument for torturing the Dark One, but it was. It bound him up more thoroughly than any cage, with invisible chains of magic wrapping around him and holding him to whatever its holder wanted. And once a command was given, it lasted.
Which was why he was still on his knees when Zelena returned several hours later.
She cocked her head in a mock question, smiling at him. “Did you finally decide to be a good little Dark One and kneel to your mistress?”
Rumplestiltskin glared, feeling his lips twist up into a snarl. They both knew why he was on his knees, and it wasn’t because there was a submissive bone in his body.
“Are you still angry at me?” Zelena asked in that childish voice she loved to adopt, leaning against the front of the cage and peering down at him. The dagger was in her hand, of course. It never wasn’t, not in his presence, even though his curse would not let him take it from her. That was the catch, the one he hated the most. He couldn’t harm the individual who possessed the dagger, couldn’t take the dagger from them…and couldn’t even pick it up if it was put down. No, the holder had to either lose possession of the dagger or it had to be handed to the Dark One. Otherwise, he could do nothing.
“ ‘Still’ is a very poorly chosen word, dearie,” he spat, hating looking up at her and taking refuge in a sneer. His fury was the only defense he had, and they both knew it was a flimsy one.
“Oh, are you trying to fight your curse again, Rumple?” She threw him a pouty face, but he didn’t miss the gleam in her eye. “We both know that won’t work.”
He could only glare, still on his knees and already feeling his curse well up inside him. His head was starting to pound, Zelena’s words digging deeper and deeper, stabbing hooks into his soul and shredding it. No, he couldn’t fight his own curse. Rumplestiltskin had learned that from vast personal experience, had been left screaming and convulsing as his own magic tore into him for trying to resist a simple command from Zelena. The first time he’d tried to fight had been back in the Enchanted Forest, when the Witch had ordered him to kill Belle. The fact that he’d been in a fog after being brought back from the Vault and then absorbing Bae had been the only thing that let him hesitate for so long, and even then the curse had built and built, pressing in on him and making it hard to breathe, to think, to feel anything but pain.
Later, he’d learned that it was far worse, and even in the depths of his madness, Rumplestiltskin had not been able to resist the curse. He was the Dark One, and that dagger owned him. Particularly now that he was fully, if heartbrokenly, himself. Fighting against the curse only wound up with him obeying in the end, and—
Suddenly, Zelena opened the door to the cage, drifting inside and wearing that bright half-mad smile of hers. Rumplestiltskin watched her warily, trying not to swallow and wishing he could get away from her. That desire must have shown on his face, however, because she quirked a nasty grin at him and said “Stay down.”
Had anyone ever dared treat him like was some pet to command, Rumplestiltskin would have ripped their heart out and crushed it before their very eyes, probably after tearing them limb from limb and making certain they survived the painful experience. But now he could only stay, trapped on his knees more thoroughly than he could have been if she’d chained him there. Slowly, Zelena reached out with her free hand to stroke his hair, and he jerked his head away. Or tried to. The last thing he wanted was for her to touch him, but Rumplestiltskin could barely even flinch away. Despite his best efforts, his head only moved an inch.
A sharp yank pulled his head backwards; Zelena had buried her fingers in his hair and now pulled his head back to expose his throat. “I think you need a lesson in the cost of defiance,” she told him, her voice no longer playful.
“I think you’re looking for an excuse,” Rumplestiltskin snorted, letting anger fuel the sharpness in his voice, using it to mask the way his heart was pounding wildly. “We both know what I can and cannot do, dearie. So let’s not pretend you’re doing this for anything other than your own amusement.”
“And I think you need to learn to be properly submissive, slave,” Zelena snapped. Resistance always angered her; how many times daily did she remind him that she was the one with the power? As if he could forget.
“Not very likely.”
“We’ll see about that,” the Witch replied darkly, and movement caught the corner of his left eye as she gestured with the dagger.
That was all he saw. Agony exploded within his body, lighting nerve endings on fire and making Rumplestiltskin convulse helplessly. He couldn’t move; his curse held him on his knees and Zelena’s hand remained locked in his hair, but stars exploded in front of his eyes and all he could do was scream. Claws of magic tore into him as spasm after spasm shook his body; his own magic was his torturer as the curse translated Zelena’s desires into pain. She held him under for longer than ever before: a minute passed, then two, and then finally five while Rumplestiltskin screamed, shaking and twitching until he was hoarse and would not have been able to keep himself upright if Zelena had not been holding him up.
Finally, she waved the dagger and the pain stopped, leaving him gasping for air and shaking sickly. The cage was spinning, and what little Rumplestiltskin could see of his surroundings was a blurred mess of darkness and tiny pinpricks of light. Lightbulbs? A final convulsion ripped through his body as the pain tapered off, and Zelena released him to collapse into a heap on the floor.
A long moment passed before he could make out the shoes just inches away from his face, his eyes still trying to roll back in pain. His muscles were still spasming and his limbs twitched a time or two. Stopping them was utterly beyond his control, and a breathless whimper escaped as he managed to start breathing again. Rumplestiltskin’s heart was still thundering in his ears, sounding like a drum being beat on the inside of his skull. Everything hurt, and his chest was suspiciously tight, his throat unbelievably raw. Magic still raced through his system, his magic, magic he could no longer control without a command and that burned as much as the pain did. This wasn’t the first time Zelena had felt the need to hurt him using his own curse, but had undoubtedly been the longest. And now she stood over him, chuckling and watching him struggle for focus.
“Get up,” Zelena ordered, and before Rumplestiltskin could begin to contemplate making his leaden limbs respond, his curse took care of the problem for him. Numbness bled into shooting pain as his knees protested the sudden shift, but there was no getting around the command. Staggering to his feet as the dizziness finally receded enough to let him see straight, Rumplestiltskin watched Zelena warily, still breathing hard.
He hated this. Hated being defenseless. Hated having his own magic used to control him, to hurt him. Rumplestiltskin had never considered himself a particularly courageous man, and what Zelena could do to him terrified him, because she’d been right when she told him—so many times—that he couldn’t hurt her. Perhaps more importantly, however, he couldn’t stop her from hurting him. And she wanted to. He could see it in her eyes, could see the anticipation and the glee. Zelena had always been the type to lash out when someone bested her, and now he was more than a convenient target. Regina had outsmarted her, had taken everything she’d ever wanted, but Rumplestiltskin had always been the puppetmaster. He’d known she was unstable and unsafe when he’d rejected her, but he’d been untouchable then, with nothing to fear. He had never once imagined that the power dynamic between them could shift so dramatically.
She grabbed his hair again, viciously twisting his head around to make him look straight ahead as Zelena stepped close to him, her left hip brushing into his right as she leaned forward to speak in his ear. “I’m going to make you regret what you said earlier.”
“And which bit would that be?” he asked, tension ripping across his shoulders and using all his self-control to sound as if he didn’t care. As if he didn’t know how he couldn’t do a damn thing to stop her.
“You know which part.” He could feel her snarl against his face, her lips were so close. The dagger came up again, and Rumplestiltskin flinched slightly despite his best efforts not to. But the pain did not come immediately; instead the dagger came up to rest against his throat, the sharp edge nestling up to his collarbone.
“Ah,” Rumplestiltskin said casually, allowing his tone to turn to the old sarcastic sing-song of mockery. “About how I chose Regina over you, and how I’d do the same thing all over again?”
Taunting her was a bad idea, but what else could he do? Zelena was already determined. She did not, however, respond in the furious manner he’d expected. Instead, Rumplestiltskin suddenly felt the dagger bite down into his collarbone, its tip tearing into the already tattered collar of his shirt as the blade sliced into skin, deep enough to hit bone.
He screamed, knees buckling, and did not have to look to see the latticework of dark purple and black lines bursting outwards from the wound. Rumplestiltskin had seen it before, knew what damage the dagger did to his body. It created wounds even he could not heal, sent acid running through his veins; even a slight cut was poison, not deadly, but horrible all the same. Yet before he could fall, Zelena’s sharp command cut through the fog of pain:
“Stay standing!” Her hand was still tight in his hair, and yanked to keep his head back, the dagger still at his throat. Rumplestiltskin swayed and stumbled, the left side of his neck on fire as Zelena ground the sharp edge into his wound.
His hands, useless at his sides, clenched into fists. Near the beginning, back when her control had been something he still thought he could fight, Rumplestiltskin had tried to push Zelena away when she came too close, unable to hurt her but still not willing to be submissive. But she’d ordered him never to do so again, and like all other commands, that one stuck. Until she changed her mind or someone else acquired the dagger, Rumplestiltskin would be utterly unable to push her away. Or to pull away from her. She’d commanded he never do that, either.
His chest was heaving now; it took several moments for the rapid burn to die down, for the acidic taste of the dagger’s cut to dull enough for Rumplestiltskin to focus. His head swam with pain, making him dizzy all over again. The agony was near-on crippling, and a shadow of it would linger until the wound closed on its own. No amount of magic could even do so much as mitigate the damage. He just had to live with it, shaking in pain though he was.
“I thought you said you were going to change the past,” Rumplestiltskin rasped at her. “What happened to your ‘second chance’?”
Another yank on his hair; the dagger went right into the same wound and twisted, making Rumplestiltskin howl. Fortunately, however, she did not open a new wound, which allowed him to regain coherency fast enough to hear Zelena’s response:
“Oh, I am. But we’ll get to that, Rumple. First, I’m going to make you regret your choices. Bit by bloody bit.”
Somehow, he did not think that she’d chosen that word by accident, and Rumplestiltskin swallowed. Zelena’s hand was still tangled in his hair, her lips still close to his face and her body pressing against his own. He would have given anything to be able to pull away from her, but he couldn’t, and being trapped always brought out the worst in him.
“I hate to disappoint you, dear, but having to listen to you ramble onwards about it isn’t going to do the trick.”
“Pain,” Zelena hissed, too angry to even channel a silent desire into the dagger, but her fury still accomplished her goal nicely.
Agony rocketed through him, a rainbow of brilliant colors flashing before his eyes as every nerve in Rumplestiltskin’s body exploded. Only the earlier command to stand kept him on his feet. Even when Rumplestiltskin was completely blind with pain, the curse would make his body, his magic, obey, and it did now. His body started convulsing within moments; magic was driven by emotion, and his curse interpreted a seething Zelena as one who wanted who wanted him to hurt. So her rage translated into screaming convulsions, muscles shaking and legs that could barely hold him up. Somewhere in the middle of it, as minutes ticked by and Rumplestiltskin screeched his soul out, Zelena spun him around and shoved him against the side of the cage. His face crashed into the mesh hard, but he hardly noticed.
She held him there as his screams turned into sobs and the curse kept lashing at him. The pressure built and built, magic ripping and tearing at the man buried beneath the Dark One, agony digging into his bones, tissue, and muscles, making even those ache. He had no control over his body, barely any awareness of where he was or what was happening aside from the agony. Tremors started racing through him, one after another, harder and harder as the pain just continued to build. It had never been like this before, never so bad, not even a few minutes earlier when Zelena had held him on his knees for the same sort of torture. Rumplestiltskin’s mind was shutting down, pain overcoming every sense, and it still didn’t stop. Vaguely, he thought he heard Zelena’s trilling laughter coming from behind him, but there was no way to be sure as he choked out racking sobs, barely able to suck in a breath between them as the pressure continued to build.
His body was pressed against the mesh with his head still pulled back by the hair when Zelena finally allowed the pain to stop, shaking and struggling to breathe through the pain. Several additional moments passed before Rumplestiltskin could even make out the cage that was a handful of inches from his face; all the while, he continued to spasm. The tremors just wouldn’t stop; even as the curse’s attack died down, the magic lingered a moment longer, trailing over him and making him tremble.
“That was seven minutes,” Zelena whispered into his ear, pressing against his back. “Do you want to try for longer?”
He tried to shake his head and couldn’t. Her grip on his hair was still too tight. Only then did Rumplestiltskin realize that his face was wet with tears.
“Well?” Zelena demanded, yanking his hair for emphasis and making him grimace.
How had his hands wound up holding onto the mesh so tightly? “No,” Rumplestiltskin wheezed, his voice much more quiet than he would have liked it to be.
She giggled again, her lips right up against his left ear. Where was the dagger? Rumplestiltskin couldn’t see it from his angle, and couldn’t move from where he was trapped between Zelena and the front of the cage. “It’s amazing what this curse will make you do, isn’t it? I wonder if I could tell it to hurt you all the time, and then tell you to function, anyway? Would you like that, for the next time we go after my little sister? Or would you like me to tell you to visit your precious little Belle, and have the curse hurt you if she touches you? And not let you pull away?”
Rumplestiltskin shuddered, closing his eyes against the thought of his curse somehow making him endure that. But he wouldn’t beg, wouldn’t let himself—he wasn’t the terrified spinner any longer; he was the Dark One, and he’d be damned if he’d let Zelena cow him into showing that kind of weakness. Even if he was terrified, he’d bottle it up inside and hide it in any way he could. Zelena jerked on his hair again, and a hiss of pain escaped despite his gritted teeth.
“Would you like that?” she repeated, and when he did not respond immediately, flicked the dagger until a jolt of pain made him cry out and convulse. “Answer me!”
“No,” he said softly, getting in before the curse could force him to respond. His body was still trembling from the seven-minute marathon of pain, and Rumplestiltskin had no desire to give the curse another excuse to attack. His voice was still hoarse from all the screaming.
“Well, then you’d best be a good boy, hm?”
Finally, Zelena released his hair, shoving Rumplestiltskin’s face into the mess. The impact hurt and his neck creaked in protest, but it was better than having his neck jerked back like that, and breathing was suddenly just a little bit easier. The question had been rhetorical, so he could ignore it without any ill effects. But he was still stuck between her and the cage, still had nowhere to go and no way to fight back. He could only stand there shaking…and wait.
“So tell me,” Zelena said conversationally, her tone suddenly pensive. Her right hand dropped to his shoulder, and then drifted over to the back of his neck, slipping under his hair and then stopping there, her long fingers caressing his skin. Rumplestiltskin shuddered at her touch, but she continued: “In this…human body of yours, how quickly do your wounds heal? Wounds other than those caused by the dagger, obviously. Does your curse take care of them for you?”
Rumplestiltskin didn’t want to answer that question—out of anything she could have asked, that filled him with dread almost more than anything else could. But his curse gave him no choice, and the moment he even thought about resisting, pressure started building again, pain ripping into him, so the first word tumbled out: “No.” He caught his breath with an effort, hating the way his body still shook. “It doesn’t.”
There had to be some way to regain control of this situation, but Rumplestiltskin couldn’t see it.
“Interesting,” Zelena purred now, and he could feel her smile on his back. “But they can’t kill you, those wounds?”
“No.” The ominous turn of this conversation made him swallow again, but he couldn’t lie to her while she had the dagger. Where there was magic, his curse would keep him alive. Rumplestiltskin knew that even the dreamshade wouldn’t have killed him if Hook had stabbed him in Storybrooke; only outside the town was he mortal.
“Good.” Her fingers tightened on his neck. “I think I like you like this, Rumple. So handsome, and so…vulnerable.”
No, he definitely didn’t like where this conversation was going. In the past, Zelena had been content with using the dagger to hurt him, with forcing him to his knees and relishing her control over him. Now she seemed to be heading off in a different direction. Of course, he was fully sane now, the only resident in his own mind, unless one counted the curse he’d shared his soul with for three centuries. His curse didn’t count, though, and Zelena knew it. Rumplestiltskin was as sane as he was ever going to be, and apparently she had been waiting for that.
“If you think—” he started, twisting to look at her. But neither the motion nor the sentence ever finished; Zelena’s hand on the back of his neck tightened and shoved forward, slamming his face against the mesh and cutting him off.
“Stay facing that way. I like you like that,” Zelena said the first words flippantly, but then her tone turned dangerously possessive: “What I think, Rumple, is that I’m going to do whatever I want to you, and you can’t resist me, can you?”
He wanted to say yes. He burned to say yes, to spin around and rip her heart out, to hold it in his hands and watch the shock color her face while he squeezed the life out of it. But Rumplestiltskin’s limbs would not listen to his commands. His body obeyed her commands, now. His soul was not his own.
But Zelena noticed his hesitation, and Rumplestiltskin felt the sudden twitch of the dagger right before pain hit him, and the scream exploded out of his chest. Thankfully, the curse-caused agony only lasted a moment, but it was enough to leave him shaking and panting again. Zelena did not wait for him to swallow back the pain.
“Can you?” she repeated ominously, and his curse read her insistence as a repeated command; pressure reared up immediately, the words echoing in his mind and cutting in deeply. Rumplestiltskin saw white.
“No.” The word came out as a raw whisper.
“Good. I’m glad we’re in agreement, then.” With a final shove, Zelena stepped back, releasing his neck. “Take your clothes off.”
“What?”
“Do it!” Pain accompanied the command, and the resulting convulsion almost knocked Rumplestiltskin off his feet. But he didn’t care, not about this; he’d endure the pain if he had to. He knew he couldn’t stop her, and yet he had to fight this.
Submitting to her whims was one thing. Being used as a tool to threaten others he could deal with. But this? No. This he would not submit to. Not while he had any fight left in him. Even if I know it’s pointless in the end, this I will fight. Perhaps it wouldn’t be worth the pain, but Rumplestiltskin knew he wouldn’t ever be able to look himself in the eye again if he didn’t resist that command, didn’t resist what came after. Belle. He needed to think about Belle. She was his reason for fighting, and if he could just cling to that—
He’d hesitated long enough that the pressure was already rising like a vicious storm within his mind; when the word came out, it was almost a whimper of pain: “No.”
Already past seeing, Rumplestiltskin could only feel the dagger move. He was forced to his knees before he knew what had hit him, already screaming and thrashing, the world entering a flat spin of all-encompassing pain. Somewhere in there he wound up curled up on his side on the dirty floor, convulsing hard enough that his body came off the floor a few times, crashing back down hard enough to leave bruises. Rumplestiltskin didn’t notice. The combination of the agony caused by attempting to resist a command and Zelena’s addition on top of that made his body jerk wildly, and he started sobbing between his screams, unstoppable tears streaming down his face.
The pressure in his head was too much. The command echoed and echoed, growing louder and louder in his mind until it drowned out anything else, any conscious thought or desire. Soon enough, Rumplestiltskin couldn’t even remember why he was fighting, couldn’t contemplate doing so—and yet even when he would have given in, Zelena did not let up. She probably didn’t know that his curse would punish him as thoroughly as she could, that it was, and Rumplestiltskin’s thrashing was becoming wild. His screams were now decidedly inhuman, both higher pitched and softer, and a distant part of Rumplestiltskin noted that there was blood streaking down his face along with the tears.
Finally, Zelena flicked the dagger aside, and left Rumplestiltskin twitching and crying on the floor. The last command continued to echo in his ears even though Zelena had not spoken in ten minutes, and his hands started to move on their own until Zelena ordered:
“Get up.”
Still shaking spastically in pain, Rumplestiltskin found himself on his feet before his sluggish mind had even finished comprehending the words, swaying drunkenly. But it was a new command, one that the curse could decide was more important than the last one, so the agonizing pressure in his head finally relented, leaving him to notice the blood dripping from his nose and the way his limbs kept spasming sickly. Was he whimpering?
“Do I have to repeat myself?” his former student asked primly. Rumplestiltskin was half facing her now, swaying on his feet, and he could see her gesture meaningfully with the dagger through the tears blurring his vision.
The curse could, too, and it dug its claws in again, remembering the previous command. Rumplestiltskin flinched wildly, pain and pressure filling his mind, and he shook his head desperately, unable to even verbalize his acquiescence. Why had he tried to fight? He could hardly remember now. His body was burning, still twitching randomly as his breathing came in small, hiccupping gasps.
“Is that a no?” Zelena demanded, and a new surge of agony hit even as he tried to answer. Rumplestiltskin tried to scream, but it hurt too much.
“I heard you,” he managed to gasp after a moment, shudder after shudder running through his body.
“Then do it.”
Her expression was vicious with triumph, but Rumplestiltskin tried not to notice it, tried not to look at her as his hands carried out the command. Off came his tattered suit jacket, then the slightly better-off vest, followed by the shirt that had blood on its collar from the wound Zelena had inflicted on his collarbone. The pressure eased as he complied, but he’d already removed his shoes and socks before his hands would stop shaking. Swallowing hard—the thousand reasons why he didn’t want to do this started to well up the moment his mind started working again—Rumplestiltskin woodenly removed his stained trousers. He only hesitated a moment after that, but his curse swept into the gap, anyway, and he convulsed, gasping sharply in pain as stars exploded in front of his eyes. Belle…
The resistance burned out with the next stab of pain; Rumplestiltskin staggered, barely catching himself before he could fall. His entire body was shaking again, but he got his boxers off before he the curse could attack him once more. Only then did the pressure of that last command finally leave his mind, only once he was standing naked and trembling in front of Zelena, still reeling from the magic that had ripped at his soul. He was still breathing hard, struggling to regain control and failing. His tears had slowed to a trickle but not quite stopped; he swayed slightly as he stood, still dizzy and twitching. The wound on his neck was burning acidic poison, and Rumplestiltskin knew far worse was to come.
Zelena stepped close to him again. “What’s this?” Her hand came up to his face, touching the blood still dripping out of his nose. He flinched; the flow had slowed, but blood had already covered his face and gotten in his mouth.
“My curse…doesn’t appreciate resistance.” Rumplestiltskin didn’t have the energy to find a way around answering the question. Pressure rose in his mind when he even contemplated that, and while he could ignore that under normal circumstances and dance around answers with the best of them, now he was too hurt. Everything was still too raw. He swayed again, and barely caught himself, another whimper emerging.
“Doesn’t it?” Of course she sounded pleased; Zelena smiled, waving a hand to clean the blood away. Magic tingled against his face, but Rumplestiltskin didn’t bother to move. Compared to what he was certain she had in mind, this was nothing.
“Obviously,” he answered tightly, swallowing again as Zelena grabbed his chin, turning his head so she could study his face and make sure all the blood was gone. He let her do it, didn’t fight her hold, but couldn’t stop the slight tremor that shook him. Standing there naked in front of Zelena made him feel incredibly vulnerable, even more so than he had the first moment she’d picked up his dagger.
“Is that why you’re shaking?” Zelena asked in that mocking, childish voice of hers, and Rumplestiltskin felt his temper rise to meet it.
“Stab me in the heart and find out for yourself,” he snapped, sick and tired of her games.
“Why would I want to do that when you’re so much fun to play with?” she giggled.
“I’m not your toy,” Rumplestiltskin snarled, and finally his anger lent him the strength he’d been lacking, pushing some of the exhaustion aside long enough for him to glare.
“Oh, but you are. The very best toy.” Her hand tightened on his chin, gripping his jaw hard enough to hurt, but it was the sudden slash of the dagger that made him scream. The blade cut into the soft flesh of his abdomen, fire exploding outwards from the wound. It wasn’t too deep, but surface wound or not, the black and purple tendrils of poison raced outwards from the cut, which stretched from his left hip to the right hand side of his lower rib cage. A normal knife could cause him pain like a normal person, but this was so much worse. This was darkness eating his flesh, and he tried to double over, only to be held still by the hand gripping his jaw. “Stay up.”
Wheezing and whimpering, Rumplestiltskin had no choice but to comply. Closing his eyes against the pain didn’t help; that only made him more aware of his own vulnerability, and he snapped them open again, needing to see what Zelena was doing. Immediately, he almost wished he hadn’t. The dagger came up again, and as Zelena pushed his chin upwards, it cut into the left side of his collarbone, mirroring the wound on the right side and slicing sink and tissue straight down to the bone, then cutting into the side of his neck for good measure.
Acid boiled into the wound, making him shriek and convulse. Instinct made his hands try to come up again in a pointless effort to defend himself, but the curse stopped them with a stab of pain that made his mind turn agonized cartwheels and Rumplestiltskin shudder. Before he’d managed to recover, he felt the hand leave his chin and move around to the back of his neck, lifting his hair and pushing his chin down towards his chest. The dagger came down there as well, cutting more carefully but no less painfully. Stumbling, Rumplestiltskin caught himself on the cage as he sobbed out another scream, feeling the dagger trace down his back, cutting skin from his left shoulder to his right hip.
“Better,” Zelena said, and there was a note in her voice that he really didn’t like.
There were only five cuts, but the group of them was enough to make his entire upper body feel like it was on fire. Glancing down, Rumplestiltskin finally saw the blackened mess emerging from the wound on his abdomen, watching the skin around the bleeding cut turn purple with an infection that grew faster than anything a non-magical weapon could inflict. His breathing was coming in gasps again, harder and harder. The feeling of acid boiling through his veins made his chest tight with pain, made breathing hard. The less logical part of Rumplestiltskin’s mind wondered if that acid had somehow made it into his lungs; the rest of him just hurt.
“I have a present for you, pet.”
*********
TBC.