· draco dormiens ; dark!baelfire {OPEN}
Time carves into a man as the sea carves into rocks; beating unevenly against man’s shell, day by day, it eventually leaves a visible, often painful trail. Life had dug its claws into this particular man so many years ago, that while the memories were faint and distant in his mind, their carvings were fresh upon his features. Where there had once been a lively young man with a perpetual spark of mischief in his eyes, the only way said spark would be set ablaze was through particularly morbid happenstances. He had secluded himself from what was left of the people he had once deemed friends, and become a hermit of sorts, not unlike what his father had been like, what seemed like a lifetime ago now.
As if to pay tribute to the events in his past that had caused him to become this way, he had taken on the name of Baelfire once more; while the expression in his eyes was dull and distant, the fire within him raged with a fury it had never seen before. He had lost everything and had so very little left to lose—-but what little he did have left, he was going to fight for, tooth, claw and tricks.
How had he gone from regretful, yet caring father to a spiteful man, scarred and made blunt by life? Well, as in all cases, all it took was that one final nudge. Perhaps insanity ran in the family, though he would never again be able to get a certified answer to that question, as what little blood-related family he had, had either passed away or remained in another land, far outside of his reach. And the loneliness had seeped into his brain before long, wrapping long-winded tendrils around his mind and twisting it into something far more obscure.
For a little while, he’d had hope that, by finding the Dark One’s dagger, he would either find a way to bring his father back, or be able to use its power to travel back to the world Emma and Henry were trapped in. That hope had soon faded; it had not taken him very long after arriving at Rumplestiltskin’s castle to find the dagger, located neatly in one of the cabinets his father had previously used for larger trinkets—-but the dagger did nothing for him, but corrupt him. Day after day, he would sit by the window and look out over the horizon while contemplating a solution to a pressing problem, his fingers firmly gripping the handle of the dagger as he carefully went over every single idea that would pop into his mind, no matter how high the levels of insanity. And with each passing day, his ideas would lose touch of reality just a little more. Insanity crept in like a sleeper agent, and the dagger twisted him into a creature whose inner darkness could very well manage to rival his father’s.
Did he possess magic, like his father had? Perhaps. He had never cared to test, always been too busy with his musings to focus on many other things that did not involve keeping his body from deteriorating. The times when he was spotted outside the castle became less and less, and lately, the inhabitants of the Enchanted Forest had whispered about the darkness that inhabited the castle. Whether they spoke of him or what had gotten a hold of him was yet to be uncovered, but one thing was very certain. The Dark One’s powers had inevitably pried into his very core, and it was only a matter of time now before the fire inside him would be lit. And once that happened, there would be hell to pay.
A creaking of the door at the far end of the main hall shook Baelfire from his thoughts, which disturbed him greatly; what with the subconscious fear he had struck into the hearts of many civilians, nobody dared disturb him anymore nowadays. Who, then, was it that dared invade his home without prior warning, to stir him from his thoughts? Eyes narrowed before they fixed on the door, and inevitably, the figure that would pass through it moments after. He took a deep breath, cleared his throat—-and the door slammed shut behind the person in the distance, blowing out several of the candles that lit their part of the room with it.
“Now—-just who are you, and what is your business here?”
