25 Drabble Meme | #1 - Strength

Nothing so strong as gentleness and nothing so gentle as true strength. Was that how the saying went? Gold liked it, wherever it came from, but then he always admired a delicate hand. A harder touch tempered steel into a sword, but it was intricacy that gave the blade its character, that made the blade sharp enough to cut. He began to see he was right in choosing Diaval to be his first real employee, because bird or man, he shared Gold's affinity for little things and the gentleness with which one handled them. His clerk was also, to his credit, gentle with his employer's ever-shifting moods, his sensitivity to certain subjects, his temper. He knew nothing of the Maleficent he'd served under, but he imagined that if she were anything like the one he knew, then a presence such as his would have calmed and soothed her.

25 Drabble Meme | #2 - Music

"That's not the first time you've chosen that song."

Rumpelstiltskin glanced up from his reading, first to the tea he gathered to his lips to take a taste, then to the man who had spoken. Sensing he might find it wise to join him again and that he would pry with still more useless questions, he might have looked a bit sour.
The song in question that he'd chosen on the jukebox crooned gently in the background. One he knew -- from his cursed self's vinyl collection, but he'd been thinking of it often of late.

Killian Jones was right. It seemed he chose it every other night he came in.

"...Was there something you wanted to add to that observation?"

Jones pulled a face and, as expected -- sadly, sank into the chair across from him. "Why you like it so much?"

"Who said I liked it?"

The smallest twitches of a smile touched the corners of the pirates lips, like he knew the Dark One was having him on and it'd been far too easy to catch him at it. "Why else would you pick it?"

"It's suited my mood lately."

Jones paused a moment to just listen to the end. It gave Rumpelstiltskin a few blissful minutes of uninterrupted music. When the song ended, clicking over to the next song on the album, his unwanted companion resumed his line of commentary. "I don't really understand all the references. It sounds sad, though."

Rumpelstiltskin turned the page. "It's told from the point of view of a boy whose brother went off to war and came back damaged, changed, and unable to live as he once did before going. He is now traveling away again to a facility in Spain -- a country in the world without magic -- where he can be cared for. His brother reflects on his condition, knowing he has gone away, but he keeps seeing people on the street that he mistakes for him." He punctuated this with another look to be certain his lecture still had an audience. "It makes him cry."

Something he'd come to appreciate about Captain Hook -- though he would never admit it -- was that he had become a man who listened, quite intently. It was not a trait he would have credited him before. What was more, when he explained the song, he could see the dots connecting behind his eyes -- not just to the words he heard in the song, but perhaps even in Rumpelstiltskin's desire to hear it.

"I'm not saying I haven't done my fair share of wallowing, so don't mistake me, but why do you do it to yourself?"

He didn't have to specify what he meant, and Rumpelstiltskin wasn't feeling facetious enough to dodge. "Because I would rather that than feel nothing at all."

25 Drabble Meme | #3 - Cold

( Cut for Content. Trigger Warning for References to Sexual Assault )