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As soon as the doors had been shut and locked, the same thick, blood-red smoke appeared, covering Rumpelstiltskin as he walked towards the exit of his castle until all that was left was the airy wisps of where the Imp had once been. Really now, the woman cleaning his floor didn’t expect him to be available at all hours of the day now did she? Well, he didn’t care if she did; that wasn’t part of the deal.

When he materialized once more, he was miles from his castle, standing just on the edge of the forest now adorned in a rather ratty looking brown cloak. He flipped the hood up and over his head, letting the long, greasy strands of his hair curtain his face as he stepped into the dark forest without a moment’s hesitation; after all, when you’re The Dark One, what have you to fear?

The journey he took was a familiar one; one he had been taking every day for the past week; a journey that he both looked forward to in anticipation and regretted with all his heart at the same time.

His keen tracking skills led him to a small area that was somewhat new to him; however the subject matter of what was hiding in this thicket of trees he was all but too familiar with. He stood behind a tree, his dead eyes peering out from behind it as they fell upon the very person of his search and just as each time he made this journey and found his target, he felt his heart drop down to his boots.

Why he had thought that today, as opposed to the last seven, would be any easier he wasn’t sure. There was nothing easy about seeing the very product of his jealousy, and there was nothing easy about seeing the ruin he had brought to a truly innocent person’s life.

Rumpelstilskin felt tears brimming to his eyes as his hand started reaching out to the person still a great distance away, wishing with all his heart he could touch her, and tell her that everything was going to be alright.

“Belle…”

It was hardly above a whisper, and yet that simple word rolling off of his tongue hurt him more than any sort of physical pain he had ever endured in his life. A single tear pushed itself from the Imp’s eye and rolled down his cheek, his arm outstretched to her despite her being so far away. Finding his ridiculous hand movement pointless, he returned his hand to his side and simply watched as he had been doing every day since she had fled to the forest.

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Had it already been an hour? Maybe two? He didn’t know. The only indication that time had passed was that the sun was sitting differently in the sky casting an all new feeling of shadows on the thicket. His tears had dried up long ago but his body had grown numb watching the very beauty that made him question everything he had ever done.
A twig snapped a hundred or so yards away and the Imp was quick to react. A small search party of three or so soldiers were closing in fast on Belle, two with their swords drawn and one with an arrow notched into a bow who took the lead. The bowman called out Belle’s name, having spotted her hiding place and the beauty took off in the run of her life, determined to not be found.

Rumpelstilskin narrowed his eyes as he watched the three men pursue after his beauty, even after she had made it perfectly clear that she wanted to be left alone. Anger began to boil up in his deflated heart and with a snap of his fingers, the Imp was gone, only to materialize in front of the soldiers.

He gave them no time to react, nor did he speak a word. The bowman was sent flying into a tree by an unseen force, his back bending into the wood of the trunk tighter and tighter until the sound of bone snapping finally echoed through the trees and the body fell life-less to the forest floor.

By now the two other soldiers had their wits about them and began to charge The Dark One, however neither of them knew of the dangers they were facing until it was too late. With a puff of purple smoke surrounding the both of them, the soldiers were no longer and instead two small rats scurried over one another in fright.

Rumpelstilskin bent down and picked one of the rats up by the tail and with an amused smirk, removed the tail from the rat sending the now tail-less creature plummeting to the ground, breaking it’s legs upon impact. He hovered his boot over the defenseless creature and sent it pummeling down, grinding hit boot side to side as he felt each and every bone of the tiny creature fracture. He only stopped to watch as the second rat squeaked and squealed and scampered away for his very life to an unknown place deep within the forest. With an unsettling giggle, Rumpelstilskin pocketed the rat tail and disappeared in his puff of blood red smoke, now to appear where Belle had stopped for the moment though this time he took the hiding place of a high-up tree branch, still far enough away from her that she wouldn’t see.

“I’ll look after you Belle, I promise…”