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TWENTY SIX; ON MY DEATHBED
"He's married?"
"Well, engaged, technically."
"Which means eventual marriage!"
The pair of women, featuring a blonde and a brunette, were stationed outside one of the Jolly Roger's cabins, below the deck. It had been decades since Sage had first stepped foot on a pirate ship and it felt like walking into a graveyard, sensing the ghosts whispering around her. But right now wasn't the moment to be dreading on old memories and false promises ― the entire group, including Sage, needed to be focused on getting back to Storybrooke. The topic of conversation was instead drawn onto Neal and his surprising commitment of love to a unknown women named Tamara.
"Keep your voice down!" hissed Emma, who gave a quick glance to the open hatch that led to the main deck, where Henry and his father were currently at. "Yes, it was a surprise and he did kind of spring it on me, but according to him, he's been trying to break the news to me during the entire trip, just never got the opportunity for it. Besides, we dated over a decade ago. It's not like he owes me anything."
Sage rolled her eyes and scoffed, "He sent you off to prison when you were seventeen and very pregnant. Then during your entire relationship he lied and didn't tell you he was the son of Rumpelstiltskin or where he actually comes from. Trust me, he owes you a lifetime of favors." A couple of seconds of pure silence passed, before the brunette asked the not necessarily important inquiries. "So this Tamara girl, was she...pretty, or nice at least?"
Emma shrugged her shoulders, "She was pretty and nice, I guess. I don't know, our introduction was kind of cut short considering Gold was in the apartment, dying! To be honest, she seemed a bit confused about everything."
"That's understandable. Neal is leaving New York quite abruptly, with no explanation what so ever." continued Sage. "If that was my fiancee, I'd be pretty damn puzzled as well."
Their conversation swerved into a completely different direction once both females heard the jumble of ruffled whimpers coming from a nearby cabin. The only person below deck, besides the pair of females, was Rumpelstiltskin, whose wound was not unsurprisingly not progressing.
Emma closed her eyes for a second, "This is all just becoming too stressful."
"Amen to that." mumbled the brunette as she pushed open the door to let in both herself and Emma. Like any other cabin in the ship; the walls made of wooden boards were painted a light green, there were bunk-beds built in with cots, ropes sewn together to create hammocks, and trunks locking inside unknown treasures. One of the wonderful things about pirate ships was that inside, there were thousands of stories to be told.
In one of the lower cots lied Gold, who could barely sit up by himself and was pressing a bloody cloth to his open, vigorously painful wound on his chest. Sage watched as he let out exhales of frustration and squirmed in his discomforting bunk bed. "You don't look comfortable."
"The poison racing towards my heart will have that effect." snapped Gold, who despite slowly withering away into nothing, but a soulless body, still managed to add a sprinkle of sarcasm into his words.
Emma took a tentative step forward, "Tell me about this, uh, knife of yours. Cora and Regina ― if they do have it, they can make you do anything?"
He gave a jerky nod, "Indeed."
Her brow arched, "Like...kill us all?"
"One of the cons about being the Dark One." Sage took a seat on one of the hanging hammocks and leaned on her bent knees. She glanced between Rumple's pained expression to Emma's reluctant face, "You get all this power and one little trinket can control your whole being."
A bitter, harsh chuckle ripped its way through the elder man's sore throat, "Yeah, you're hoping I bleed to death now, aren't you?"
Emma hesitated, her face deadpan without a single dripping ounce of emotion or agreement with what Gold was saying, before firmly replying, "You're Henry's grandfather. We're family now. Me and Sage are going to save you."
"I feel so reassured." He sardonically quipped, his narrowed eyes shutting tightly once another hateful cough wretched out of his throat.
"Would it kill you to have a little faith in us?" Sage inquired, annoyed at the cynicalism in the older man's voice. Annoyance tended to make her a bit harsher. "Oh wait, that's already happening, isn't it?"
Rumple opened his mouth to angrily retort, but Emma was already clasping her hands onto the brunette's shoulders and leading her out of the downstairs cabin, "Okay, why don't we go, before you piss him off even more."
With that, the two left the room and firmly shut the door behind them, leaving Gold to cough and hack in pain by himself. Despite their differences, an immense amount of anxiety over Gold's wound was bubbling up inside of Sage. If he did die, which was an extreme possibility, not only would Henry lose his grandfather, but all the dark magic would be up for grabs. During their time working together, Rumple didn't discuss how to status of Dark One worked or the rules that came along with it, but Sage could take a very educated guess and say that once the Dark One is dead, that magic has to go somewhere.
After a couple of more hours of sailing across the sea and going further up the eastern coast line, the Captain's ship steadily docked into Storybrooke's port. Everybody pilled up onto the front of the ship, including Rumple who was being held up by Neal. A group of people were waiting for them at the harbor, including David, Mary Margaret, and Ruby. As they all walked down the boardwalk leading to the mainland, David rushed up and helped Neal guide his father down the path. Mary Margaret's expression was plastered with concern as she looked over at her daughter and her dearest friend, "Are you two okay?"
Sage nodded on behalf of both of them, "Yeah, we're okay. Just a very exciting trip to New York is all."
She shoved her hands into her jacket pockets as she watched David and Neal make their way over to the Charming family's truck. Rumple was getting worse by the minute, evident by the sweat beaming down his forehead, the tired bags under his eyes, and the wobbliness of his weary legs. Henry walked alongside the male trio, a relaxed grin on his face, "Uh, I drove a ship!"
David quirked an amused brow at him, "Did you now?"
"Yeah, my dad showed me how." replied the boy, with a certain kind of pride in his voice, like he was beyond happy to say now that he had a father.
No one had informed David of this revelation since he snapped his head up and looked over at Neal in utter shock. Neal, on the other hand, just flashed him a smile, "That's me."
After their brief introduction was made, the two healthier men were indeed able to drag Rumple over to the back of the truck and sit him down. "Thank you, thank you." mumbled the elder man in a tired breath.
"Is Cora trying to control you with the dagger?"
Gold chuckled harshly and dryly, the humor he had a couple of hours ago slipping from his mind, "Oh, you'd know if she was, cause most of you would be dead by now."
Sage pulled her attention away from the conversing couple and walked back over to the pair of females by Henry. If the knowledge that Cora was back in town was unbeknownst to them, then Storybrooke may have seemed relatively peaceful and quiet. Before the curse was broken that's how it was, every hour of every single day. Like autopilot or a constant loop. But the group of heroes did in fact know that Cora and her wicked daughter had reconnected, creating an underlying tone of anxiousness course through everyone's system. No one felt this nervousness more than Sage. It almost felt like she was back in Wonderland, facing off against the Queen of Hearts.
The trio of females, along with Henry, made their way over to Gold, who was surprisingly able to steady himself against the hardness of the car, "You okay?" The blonde savior asked.
He nodded, shakily, "Ah, I'm beginning to feel a bit stronger. Take me back to my shop. There's magic there that can protect us."
The two men returned to their positions and helped guide Rumple into the backseat of the car. Emma and Sage spun on their heels to face the eleven year old boy, who had already caught onto what they were thinking. "Let me guess, I get to go with Ruby."
Sage frowned at the boy, knowing that he wanted to fight along in this battle against Cora and Regina instead of sitting on the sidelines. Unfortunately for him though, he was still a kid and due to the fact that two of the most evil women in all the realms was hiding away in their hometown, Emma and Sage were feeling extremely overprotective. "You got it, kid. Trust me, you'll be a hell of a lot safer with her than with us at the moment."
Ruby glanced in between the two women, "I'll keep him out of the crossfire."
"Thank you."
Henry didn't argue with either of them, but he did feel the need to give some words of encouragement, "Don't look so worried. You'll stop Cora. You won't let her get away."
Sage brightly smiled down at the boy, loving his optimism and only hoping that his confidence in them was rightly put.
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The rusty golden bell hanging above the pawn shop's door rung rapidly as the group busted into the store with a frail and limp Rumpelstiltskin in tow. Just like back at the dock, David and Neal were on either sides of the elderly man, guiding him towards the back of the building. On his way, Rumple mumbled something incoherent to Emma, which cause the blonde female to frantically search around the room of antiques. Sage slowly took a few steps pass the doorway, her eyes taking in the familiar site of Gold's shop and all of its mysteries. Despite their peculiar and practically life-threatening circumstance, coming back to Storybrooke almost felt like coming home ― not that she knew what that meant, but if she had to take a guess, it would feel something like this. After her gazing came to a pause, the brunette proceed to follow the others into the backroom.
Rumple weakly plopped himself on the edge of the twin-sized, makeshift bed that was stationed beside one of the walls. His wrinkled hand still clung onto the wooden cane that was pinching in the floorboards, "Emma, did you find it?"
"Yeah, there's nothing in it!" Emma walked forward with a large, empty jar, but once she shook the container slightly, an obvious rattle was heard. "What the hell?"
She stuck her hand inside the open object, her callous fingers dainty searching around the circular space. Eventually, her index and thumb grasped an unnoticeable yet thick and long stick that was translucent in the eyes of the people. A faint smirk quirked at the ends of older man's lips, something vaguely smug and amused in his expression, "Invisible chalk. Use it in the front doorway. Draw a line. The rest of you, you might want to prepare for battle."
Everyone turned to leave, but a voice called out to a particular pixie-haired princess, "Oh. Oh, wait, wait. Please. Can you ―Get me a warmer blanket? In that cabinet."
Being the almost-too generous person that she was, Mary Margaret complied and reached over to the cabinet door. Sage stayed behind in the doorway, watching the ebony-haired woman and waiting for them to leave together. She opened the cabinet door, but once her eyes saw the inside exterior, her movement halted and her posture became stiff. With her brows furrowed and confusion glazing her vision, Sage watched as her good friend reached inside and pulled out an unknown object. It looked almost like a wax candle, with the bottom handle being made with black metal and embedded with dark ruby jewels, and the top white piece having twisted lines drawn on.
There were very few moments in the long-history of their friendship that Sage had seen Mary Margaret liked this, with her misty eyes and voice as quiet as a mouse, "Why do you have this?"
Rumple grunted out a response, "For a rainy day."
Sage pushed herself off of the wall and stepped closer to her short-haired friend, her look cemented on the candle, "What the hell is that?"
"It's an enchanted candle, dearie. By lighting it and saying the victim's name three times, you can save someone's life by taking another." The older man explained with his voice strained and his eyes becoming unfocused from the immense pain spreading through-out his body. "An eye-for-an-eye, of sorts."
A flash of nervousness made its way into Mary Margaret's face, "You're not getting any better, are you?"
He pointed his shaky, nimble finger at the mystical object in the former princess's hands, "The candle can save me. There's nothing else."
"I wouldn't use this to save my own mother." The woman scoffed out, creating a train of even more puzzlement and surprise inside Sage. It wasn't often that Mary Margaret spoke about her mother, for obvious reasons. It was the same reason that Sage didn't talk about hers. There was too much pain inside their childhood memories, to the point where it made it emotional unbearable to converse about. "What makes you think I would use it for you?"
"Because you're all grown up now." Rumple hissed out, frustration building up in his tone. "And for once, our interests are aligned."
"She dies instead of you."
"I know you can do this." The man narrowed his eyes at her, like looking through someone's soul and coming out with all their secrets. "I know you want to." His attention, for a brief moment, switched over to the long-haired woman who was still waiting in the room. "Sage can assist you."
"Excuse me?" responded Sage, whose eyebrows nearly rose to her hairline in both shock and defensiveness.
He rolled his eyes, apparently becoming annoyed at her obliviousness, "I know you Sage, better than you know yourself. Despite you becoming this 'hero' ― " The word was hissed venomously through his yellow teeth, following a humorless chuckle. "― you cannot and will not convince me that even after all this time, you don't want to watch your Queen be destroyed."
The brunette woman opened her mouth a few times, pushing herself to fiercely argue against his statement, to insist that revenge was no longer on her agenda. The last part was true and evident, otherwise Sage would have been hunting her down ever since she learned she was in Storybrooke. It's been years since Thomas had been murdered and while that pain still lingers, the desire to kill Cora with her own two hands had long since been forgotten.
Scoffing, she shook her head vehemently, "You don't a damn thing about me anymore. I don't want to kill anyone."
"Keep fooling yourself, dearie." Rumple was confident in his assessments, which only buried the woman's confidence into the ground. Even in the modern world, he still knew the cracks in her system. Even after years of no longer working together, he could still play her like an instrument and create a perfect melody. "That anger, that hatred, that you feel is still within you. It will stay inside of you for the rest of your life, because of what Cora put you through. Stop lying to yourself and admit that this is what you want, to see a gravestone with her name on it."
Mary Margaret leaned over to Sage's ear, but kept her back facing the older man, wanting to have a semi-private conversation despite not being alone in the building. "He has a point."
Her friend snapped her eyes at her, puzzled at the former princess's words, "Are you kidding me? Don't tell me you're actually considering this."
"We have the power to kill her with this candle. If we kill her, it would be quick and easy." The woman's hazel eyes were drifting away from Sage's face while the tone of her words were shaky. It sounded like she wasn't trying to convince Sage, but herself.
Sage gently grasped the pixie-haired female's arm, tenderly pulling her back from reality, "That's not how death works, Snow. You can't kill someone and just walk away from it. You can't go back to being the person you once were."
Like always, Gold was able to slither his way into the conversation, even when he was sickly frail and on the brink of death, "All of your loved ones will die if you don't use that candle! There's no other way to stop Cora. I know this and Sage knows this. Sometimes death is the only way to win a war."
A faint whisper slipped from Mary Margaret's rosy lips, "I can't lose someone else."
"Neither can I." Sage quietly responded, her voice cracking and her mind conflicted as she ran a hand through her hickory hair. She hated the fact that she was now actually debating this, arguing with her own subconscious on whether or not to murder someone. She thought the days of unsteady morals and heinous acts were over for her. A very large part of her brain needed someone to rationally convince her that this whole plan would fail, even if her and Snow would do it. "Even if we were to do this, the candle only works if you whisper the victim's name over them."
"The heart will do."
Harsh realization struck her over the head with a glass bottle. A solemn expression seeped into Sage's face, "Cora's heart ― it's not in her body."
The man gave a shaky nod, "Use the candle, curse the heart. And then ― here comes the tricky part."
"That's not the tricky part?"
"You have to put the heart back inside Cora's body." A small, satisfied smirk grew on the older man's mouth. He could sense both of the females' brains absorbing this information, could feel that their moral beliefs of what was right or wrong was twisting. He was beginning to convince them. "She will die, and I will live."
Mary Margaret perked up, a small corner of both her heart and brain pressing her next words forward, "There's another way. I get Cora's heart, I control her and make her do the right thing, and I let you die. Takes care of two evils at once."
A wicked laugh came out of Rumple's sweat coated body, quivering from both the poisonous wound and the woman's reasoning, "I'm just imagining poor Henry's face when he finds out that you killed his grandpa."
That's what did it for Sage, that's what made the bridge in her mind open. Now, the idea of killing Cora didn't seem so bad, if it meant that Gold could live. Whether or not she liked it, the man was biologically related to the young boy and Henry being Henry, had already formed an emotional attachment to him. Despite hating the way that Rumple's simple words were getting underneath her skin and playing with her heart, she still looked over at Mary Margaret with half-pleading eyes, "We can't do that to Henry, we can't just sit back and let his grandfather die."
At that moment, Emma walked into the room after completing her task of creating the invisible barrier at the front door, "I drew the invisible line. I ―think. What now? You cast a protection spell?"
"No, no. You're going to do that for me." responded Rumple, to which the blonde look utterly confused and surprised by the man's statement. "I'm relying on you. I would ask Sage, but there's something important on her mind."
Sage glared at him, wishing that her blonde friend wasn't in the room so she could let out all the hateful words and feelings that were building up inside of her. But he was right, there was an important decision weighing down on both her and Mary Margaret's shoulders. The unfortunate part of this ordeal was that the tock was ticking and neither woman had enough time to fully think this through.
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The mausoleum that stood in the middle of the Storybrooke graveyard automatically gave a mood of ominous mystery. It was secluded in a much more private section of the cemetery, with only a couple of headstones within reach of it. There was stone pillars near the front entrance, accompanied by a triangle roof and encrusted with designs on the sides of the walls. It looked like something from royalty, which was no surprise considering it was a tomb dedicated to deceased family members of Regina and she's always been the one for glamorous establishments.
Underneath the building was an underground vault where the former evil queen stored the hearts from her victims. Sage was familiar with the subterranean room considering she had been in one back in the Enchanted Forest. Back in Wonderland, when Cora was the Queen of Hearts, most of her soldiers were rumored to being controlled by her and that she had a secret vault to store their hearts in. Judging from the vault that Sage and Mary Margaret were currently sneaking into, Regina took some tips from her mother and decided to have of her own.
Once inside, both of them immediately noticed the predicament of finding Cora's missing heart. They had no idea where it was stored and that vault had various corridors leading into different rooms. Sage doubted the beating heart would just be lying around in plain site, but if they were both lucky, the gang back at Gold's pawnshop would be able to fight off Regina and Cora, who had arrived at the store a few seconds, before her and Snow made their way out.
The pair of women walked into one of the main rooms of the vault. The entrance way was shaped in an arch and the ceiling was almost circular with the walls being built with bricks. Velvet-covered chests, nightstands, and armories were scattered around the hardwood floor. The only up-right chest was towards the side of the room with its lock undone and a humming sound coming from it. When Sage walked over and opened the two doors, she was met with a illuminating red heart inside a wooden box.
"Found it." The brunette quietly announced to her friend as she picked up the little carrier and placed it on top of the chest. With nimble fingers, she slipped off the golden hook keeping it closed and opened the slid. Cora's heart was softly beating, but the color pink was rare and the organ was mostly covered by trails of dark black. She spared once more glance to the woman next to her, needing to hear the words come out of her mouth, "Are you sure you want to do this?"
Loud and unsteady breaths of air came out of Mary Margaret's mouth as she stayed silent for a couple of seconds. Once her moment of pondering was done, she confidently gave her answer, "It's the only way to stop her."
Sage nodded, before gently cupping the heart and slowly removing it from its box. In the mean time, Mary Margaret was grabbing the mystical candle from her messenger's bag with a box of fire-starters. After scrapping a match against the nearby chest, the short-haired female lit both ends of the candle. The Chamberlain woman held the heart out in front of her as her friend carefully gripped the candle above it. As liquefied candle wax dripped from both edges and the sound of a heart's constant beat filled their ears, both women began to say the name, "Cora, Cora, Cora."
Quickly as she could, Sage reached down and blew out both lit ends of the candle. Mary Margaret slipped the now useless object back into the bag while the opposite woman gently placed the heart back into the box and closed the lid. "Simple and easy, right?" She looked over at her pixie-haired friend, hoping to find some kind of conviction in her hazel eyes, but the former princess refused to look at her.
The sentence was the only thing she replied with, "We've got to go."
Together, they took the box and made their way out of the room until another set of footsteps was made heard of. Neither of them expected Regina, of all people, to be walking down the corridor towards them. Once the former queen noticed the two females, her face grew sour and twisted, "Both of you have no right to be here. And you both have no right to that!"
For a second, Sage froze and words were caught in the middle of her throat. Surprisingly, Mary Margaret was the one who came with a strong front, her face stoic and never wavering, "We were going to give it to you."
"What?"
"She can't love you, you know. She doesn't have her heart." The rival of the queen continued to explain, shadowing over her and Sage's true intentions for being here. "With it, maybe she can. That's why you've never felt she loved you. She doesn't have her heart. But we do."
Regina rose her brows, looking at the women in disbelief, "You're doing this for me?"
Sage stepped up to the plate, adopting Mary Margaret's ease when it came to lying to the mayor, "Think about it. What would happen if Cora had her heart back? Back inside her?"
"She told me she took it out to protect herself."
"And did it work?" challenged Mary Margaret, who was not backing down, but instead striding forward with her life. "The person she was before ― do you think that person survived? She can't love, so she can't love you."
"She always wanted the best for me." Tears welled up in Regina's dark eyes, conveying all the neglect she had felt over Cora never really giving a damn about it. "That's love."
"Imagine real love. You'd have a mother, and a start on making a family Henry could be a part of. Or, you could have her be the Dark One." The once natural sympathetic voice of Mary Margaret transitioned into emotionless and somber, the ultimatum given to Regina hanging in the air. "The choice is yours."
Sage held out the box in front of her, willing to wait as long as she had to if it meant Regina made a decision. The former evil queen kept her watered eyes glued onto the heart of her mother, the anticipation thick and cloudy in the air as she remained motionless. Out of the blue, the woman snatched the wooden box out of Sage's hands and disappeared in a puff of smoke. Both females remained frozen in the spot, standing in the entrance way without a single noise being transpired through-out the vault.
"Oh god." The two whispered words barely left Sage's parted lips as she realized what had just happened. They didn't have to curse the heart. They didn't have to use the candle in order to stop Cora. All they had to do was steal the heart and force it back into Cora's chest. Maybe that could have stop Cora's plan for ultimate power or maybe it wouldn't have changed a damn thing. But Sage did know that this was not the path they should have taken'. "What did we just do?"
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AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is an important author's note so please take the time to read this. If you've read my latest author's note talking about the future of some of my stories then this is just me reiterating. Originally, my plan was to continue this book into a series that would end somewhere around season five/six. But time has passed, my likes/dislikes have changed since I first created Smother, and I no longer have an interest in Once Upon A Time. Maybe one day, my interest will peak once more and I will be most invested in Sage Chamberlain, but at the moment, I'm not. As of right now, I am not planning on writing a sequel to this book, but I will finish Smother. I apologize to anyone hoping that I would write more OUAT books.