Archive of Our Own

“You did the right thing.”

It’s not a phrase Rumpelstiltskin hears often, at least not aimed at him and with full knowledge of the facts.

Belle isn’t speaking to him. She’s moved her things into the spare room, and he swears he wasn’t following her when he caught sight of her down by the docks, throwing the fake dagger he’d tricked her into accepting into the water. She has more friends in town than he ever has, and she’s not finding it difficult to hide from him. Belle may never speak to him again now she knows the truth, and Rumpelstiltskin still can’t find a bone of remorse in his whole body.

Emma Swan takes a seat beside him, and gestures to Ruby for another round. “You’d be the first to think so,” he says, mildly, finishing his drink and nodding in thanks to the wolf girl when she passes him another, wordlessly.

“Yeah well, everyone else seems to have their heads up their asses,” Emma sighs, and takes a long sip of her own scotch. He’s always wondered how the product of Snow White and Prince Charming learned to hold her whiskey, but now’s hardly the time to ask.

“Big talk coming from Regina’s number one fan,” he says, because he’s never been anyone’s ally or friend and he’s hardly starting now. “Wasn’t it you I saw supporting her when she forced me to stay my hand? And standing beside her, when she found out the truth and denounced my apparent crimes to the whole town, including my wife?”

“I thought… I don’t know, I thought they had a better plan to be rid of her than just locking her magical gem of power up in the least secure place in town and putting her in the jail cell,” Emma shakes her head. “I was trying to reason with her, when she decided to shout about it. Zelena's better off dead. We’re all better off.”

“It seems I shall have to dig once again through your genetic history,” he says, impressed for once by the mind the Saviour has on her when she decides to actually use it, “there must be a shred of intelligence lost somewhere in that mix.”

She frowns, but there’s the inkling of a smile on her lips, and he can tell she’s somewhere between flattered on her own account and insulted for her parents. “I know you’d have managed it somehow. I mean, you were pretty dead-set on the curse getting cast, but I don’t think Mar- mom understands that if she’d just killed Regina all those years ago none of this might have happened. Second chances have to be earned, and Zelena got what was coming to her.”

“Thank you,” Rumpelstiltskin says, honesty coming out where his smooth words fail, and they clink their glasses, all but conspirators in a murder that has already been committed.

“Don’t mention it,” Emma says, with a smile that’s trying to be reassuring and actually succeeds, strangely enough, by virtue of its own uncertainty. Rumpelstiltskin lived three hundred years in the Enchanted Forest, but never once did he get a taste of the good and pure world of heroes and dragons that Snow and Charming remember. His world, the lot he was given and the dye he was cast, was far closer to Emma Swan’s, and it’s comforting to have one voice in this whole sanctimonious town that understands pragmatism and justice, rather than infantile good and evil.

“I heard tell,” he says, slowly, cautiously, because he doesn’t know if he needs the answer to this question but he’ll ask it anyway, masochistic to the last, “that the time spell actually worked.”

“It did,” Emma confirms, shifting uncomfortably, and Rumpelstiltskin feels a familiar and ancient stab of anxiety in his gut: whatever she has to say, it won’t be good. “Hook and I… we were sent back to the day my parents first met. You helped us to get home.”

“I helped you?” Rumpelstiltskin raises an eyebrow in surprise, remembering who he had been in those old days, how cold and how cruel. He’s never lost his capacity for cruelty, of course, but he’s surprised she’s still in possession of all her valuables if his past self had anything to do with it. And, of course, he doesn’t remember her. “I think I’d remember seeing the pirate a few decades too soon, at the very least.”

“You drank a memory potion,” Emma says, which of course makes perfect sense. The man he’d been would never have endangered the curse and his plans with inconvenient knowledge of the future. “And you only choked Hook a little.”

“You must have been very, very persuasive, dearie,” he says, taking another long drink, because he’d only have helped her with knowledge of Bae, and he’s another horrid question brewing on his lips, ready to be spoken and to shatter the air.

“I was,” she agrees, with an unhappy smile. “And you locked me in a vault, in the end. With a magic wand, of course.”

“Are you seeking an apology?” he questions, “Because I’m not sure how much of one you’ll get.”

“I’m offering you one, actually,” Emma says, knocking him off guard entirely, throwing him back. “You asked me about Neal, and I told you the truth. I’m sorry that I made you make that choice, I…. I know how much you loved him. I would have done anything to save him, and I’d have cut the bitch to ribbons without a second thought if she’d so much as scratched Henry. I’m sorry I made you forget, and I’m sorry I couldn’t let you save him.”

“I believe that Regina has made the value of consequences more than clear,” he replies, stiffly, unable of thinking of a better response than that. He wants to weep, yet again, for his poor departed boy, the son he couldn’t save even after all this time. The unfairness and raw cruelty of it still makes him want to burn the sky to ashes and rip chasms through the earth, but he will not show that to Emma Swan. Not because it would make him vulnerable, for he thinks she likely understands both the strength and weakness of him now, but because of the burden it would place on her. Emma is the closest thing he has to family now, and the only person in the world who can even comprehend the magnitude of what he has lost. He won’t force her to endure the pain he is in. He’s not been a father for hundreds of years, not really, but he remembers how it is to shelter a child from the worst of the damage.

“I don’t think she’ll ever speak to me again,” she says, with a sadness Rumpelstiltskin understands and an anger he does not.

“You don’t sound altogether regretful,” he notes.

“I saved that woman’s life. Marion’s child has a mother again, her husband has his wife back, and somehow I’m the bad guy?”

“The mind boggles,” he murmurs, dryly. “I don’t suppose you bumped into our resident Evil Queen on your jaunt into the past?”

Emma grimaces, “I kinda got locked up in her dungeons for helping my mother?” she says, with the tone of a child who accidentally smashed a window. “You’d put some kind of a… a glamor on me, so she doesn’t know it was me at all. But I was in the cell next to Marion, and Regina was going to kill us both.”

“The plot thickens,” he says, and all he does is raise two fingers and more scotch appears, courtesy of Granny’s stores. Ruby is chattering to Whale at the end of the bar, and truly he doesn’t wish for her interruption. This doesn’t sound like a moment for which Emma Swan needs an audience. It surprises him how much he actually cares about her feelings: Emma is surely the last person who’d ask for help in that category, for all that she so clearly needs it.

“There was something else,” Emma admits. “I… I saw her burn my mother at the stake. I mean, Snow turned herself into a bug or something and came back, she wasn’t dead dead, but…”

“It can’t be easy to sympathise with Regina now, having seen her murder your mother not two days ago,” Rumpelstiltskin nods.

“Yeah!” Emma cries, “Like, I’ve been hearing stories of the big bad Evil Queen since I got here, but I’d never seen her in action. I know actions have consequences, but God, I’d still have saved everyone in those cells if I’d had the chance. I know she’s changed, but the look in her eyes… she’s still not sorry. She’d not do it again, but she’d not take it back either.”

“Regina is a very complicated person,” Rumpelstiltskin agrees, with a sly smile. “Remorse isn’t in her nature. She gets it from her mother.”

“I’d have been all for her letting you kill Zelena,” Emma tells him. “I’d have strangled her with my bare hands. But Zelena she allows to live, because she’s her sister, and Marion can die because, what, she’s Regina’s boyfriend’s wife?”

“Self interest is a powerful motivator, dear,” Rumpelstiltskin says with an ironic smile, “Regina’s a good person when it suits her, much like the rest of us.”

“It’s bullshit,” Emma spits, and downs her whiskey. She’s swaying a little, lips looser and eyes bleary, but she’s had three in quick succession and still seems in full possession of her faculties, which is impressive. “She’s mad at you too, you know, for killing Zelena.”

“I’m not surprised,” he says, because he’d noticed as much when Regina had missed his eyes on the street that morning, and elected to speak to Belle right in front of him. Belle hates the woman, and with good reason, but somehow their disdain for him seems to have united them. “She saw herself in Zelena and wanted to prove to everyone how well she’d changed by helping someone else.”

“Never mind how much damage Zelena had done, or what anyone else thought,” Emma shakes her head, “it wasn’t her call! It just… it wasn’t, and her attitude is getting really old.”

“Your mother wouldn’t approve of such talk,” he notes.

“My mother is right now trying to talk Regina out of murdering Robin Hood’s wife,” Emma tells him, bluntly. “And her husband and children are alive and well. It wasn’t her call either.”

“There’s a reason justice in this world isn’t done by the families,” Rumpelstiltskin points out.

“Yeah cause every crime would warrant the death penalty, I know,” Emma nods, as if she’s heard this song before. “But see, this world, my world, doesn’t have psychopathic witches using mind-control and dark magic to kill innocent people and delete whole families from history.” She closes her eyes in thought and when she opens them she’s looking right at him, “Look, I’ve been in jail, out there in the real world. I’ve also worked for law enforcement, or at least with them. In the real world, there’s law, and it mostly works. People do bad stuff, they get hunted down, they suffer for it, and hopefully they don’t do it again. At least that’s the theory. But in this world? In the world that’s now apparently my home? There is no law. There’s no punishment, no due process, there’s just who’s more powerful and who doesn’t get caught in the crossfire, and even if she’d never hurt anyone else again Neal would still be dead and someone has to suffer for that.”

“Well, someone needed to get that off her chest,” he raises his eyebrows, impressed, and she nods and takes a deep breath, as if surprised by her own outburst.

“Yeah, well, you did the right thing, Gold,” she tells him, again. “In a world of monsters and witches and no law at all, you did the right thing.”

“Thank you,” he says, and her hand closes over his on the bar and squeezes it, and they’re silent for a long time, camaraderie leaving them silent as they drink and mourn together, truly united for the first time in their grief.

---

Rumpelstiltskin appreciates the memory of Emma Swan’s support, but he doesn’t expect anything more than a conversation over scotch and the occasional smile in the street. He certainly doesn’t expect her to show up in his shop a week later bearing coffee and doughnuts, smiling like a friend.

“If I spend another hour in that apartment with that baby and my parents I’m going to scream,” she says, by way of hello, and sets the food down on the counter. Then she registers his look of surprise. “What?”

“If you hadn’t noticed, dear, I think you’ve got the wrong shop,” he says, dryly. “There are many other establishments on this block with far friendlier owners than I, perhaps you’re lost?”

“Okay, so Granny and Ruby are fighting again cause Ruby’s dating Whale and Granny doesn’t approve. Meanwhile the library is… well, there’s reasons I’m not going there, and Regina’s not talking to me.”

“And the pirate?” he raises an eyebrow, “Surely your new beau has more than enough time for a coffee or five, it’s hardly as if he’s gainfully employed.”

“Hook is with Henry,” Emma says.

“Ah,” Rumpelstiltskin nods around the knife once again in his back, and wishes he had his cane to brace himself on, anything to do to increase his physical defence.

“What?” she cries, indignantly, apparently reading his entirely disapproving look.

“I’d just expect you to be with your darling new family, dear,” he says, coldly. “The pirate is calling with his - I’m sure considerable if right now entirely unimaginable - charms. Perhaps today he can teach you how to apply eyeliner so as to blend with the local raccoon population.”

“I came in peace!” Emma objects, “I brought coffee and doughnuts!”

“Indeed, and one can only imagine what you meant to accomplish.”

“You’re the only man in town who spends his whole day alone,” Emma says, and Rumpelstiltskin is brought up short, because he’d only three weeks ago married the love of his life, and somehow yes, Emma’s right, he’s still on his own. “Okay? And you don’t seem to have the balls to go apologise to Belle, or she won’t forgive you, and in either case you’re not in a position to push people away right now.”

“And what if I told you, dearie,” he sneers, “That the idea of you leaving my grandson with his step-grandfather makes me physically sick?”

She stops, stock still, and gapes at him. “What?” she stammers, weakly, and Rumpelstiltskin smirks because of course Hook never told her that, never told her the details of Milah and Bae and all that had happened, and, likely as not, had assumed that with Bae cold in the ground the truth would die with him.

The idea of Killian Jones profiting from Bae’s death makes Rumpelstiltskin homicidally angry and sick to his stomach, and he’s not kind or good enough of a man to let the past lie. If it must always come back to haunt and ruin his present, then surely Killian Jones should receive the same treatment.

“He’s told you of the poor, innocent lover of his whom I killed, yes?” he asks, through gritted, bared teeth, and Emma nods, suddenly wide-eyed and scared as a little girl and for all that Rumpelstiltskin wants to stop, wants to allow Henry’s mother and Bae’s love her peace of mind, she must know the truth. Emma Swan is strong to her fingertips and kind of heart, and she’s the only person in town right now who seems to understand how he feels. If she wants to reach under his skin and find his heart, then this time he will not start based on lies and omissions. He’s learned his lesson with that, at last, however long it might have taken him. “She was my wife.”

“What?” Emma gasps, and takes a step back, her hands at last leaving the counter. She’s all but begging for him to stop now, to take it back, but Rumpelstiltskin is a cruel man with a broken heart and so he continues, inexorable and terrible.

“Milah was Baelfire’s mother, Henry’s grandmother,” he tells her, softly. “One day, when Bae was only six years old, Bae was poisoned by a snake in the back garden. While I was convincing a local warlock to save our dying son, Milah met a charming pirate in the village tavern. After what I had to promise to save him… she couldn’t even look me in the eye anymore. A week later, a friend of hers came to tell me that pirates had kidnapped my wife. Naturally, I went to beg for her release. I was a poor man, Miss Swan, I was limp and crippled and poor, and I had no way of duelling your dashing pirate for my wife’s safety. He promised to do terrible things to her if I didn’t risk my life in a pointless duel. He would have killed me, and orphaned Bae. I walked away.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why didn’t you fight?”

“Miss Swan, imagine I went into the back and fetched my largest hammer, and used it to crush your left leg. I then subjected you to five years of malnourishment, during which time everyone else who could look after Henry abandoned you, and spat at you while they did. The only other person Henry had in the world was then kidnapped, and held at ransom, and you untrained in combat. Would you risk Henry’s living parent for the sake of a duel you couldn’t win? For honour?”

“Killian wouldn’t have hurt her,” she argues, stubbornly.

“Perhaps not now,” Rumpelstiltskin agrees, “but what of the man you first met? The man who locked you in my jail cell and left you to die? Who stabbed me in the chest and shot Belle over the town line? Would he have done it?”

She cannot deny that. The victory sickens him.

“But… he said you killed her. You said you killed her!”

“I did,” he agrees, easily, long since having made peace with what had happened between himself and his wife. “It was many years later. Baelfire had fallen through the portal, I had started seeking a way to find him, and I heard of a pirate with a magic bean. It was then that I was reunited with my estranged wife, and learned the truth: that she’d never been in any danger, and that I’d felt wracked with guilt for a decade over nothing. She’d run away with him while Bae was still recovering from his illness, and she never looked back. She didn’t care about Bae or where he’d gone, she didn’t…” his mouth is choked with bitterness, with ashes, and he swallows hard before he continues. The image of that long-dead woman learning at last of her son’s fate, impossible though it might be, is still almost too much for him. “She said terrible things, unforgivable things, that day. I ripped her heart from her chest, and crushed it, and I regretted it the moment I had, but a monster cannot show mercy.”

“That’s why he wanted to kill you,” she says, her tone numb with shock.

“Indeed,” he confirms, with a sociopathic smile. “I do wonder why he never told you.”

“I… I have to go,” she gathers her coat and her coffee, but leaves his and the doughnuts as she leaves, and even in her misery and her shock she still doesn’t look like she hates him.

Rumpelstiltskin is aware that he’s a self-sabotaging old bastard, but he alone seems to feel that Emma Swan, of all the people in this town, deserves the truth.

---

He doesn’t expect to see Emma on friendly terms again.

Her new baby brother is apparently growing more every day, and he sees them all in Granny’s sometimes, the full Charming family all together. Regina is skulking, pining for her apparently lost lover – Rumpelstiltskin sees Robin Hood and his family around sometimes too, and he gathers Belle had a word at some point for his former captive extends a wary smile of greeting when he does – and no one else seems to be creating trouble, at least not yet.

He sees Belle, too, his absent wife. She has dinner in the oven for him in the evenings as a pointed reminder that she still exists in his home and that he isn’t welcome to speak to her, and he no longer attempts to disturb her when her nose is stuck in a book. It appears that she no longer believes simply leaving is her best option, when he has betrayed her so completely; now she exists as a permanent source of guilt, haunting his home like her ghost before her, refusing to be touched.

It gives him hope, truth be told, when all is said and done, that she remains. She’s angry, yes, and hurt too, but she made vows and she intends to keep them, apparently. This suffering is almost wholesome: he deserves it, he supposes, and she’s not a cruel woman, she does not enjoy his pain. She will not extend it overmuch.

Belle will speak to him eventually, and they can have a resumption of their blazing row from the night she discovered the truth about Zelena’s death and the false dagger. When she’s ready to listen, and he’s ready to apologise, for neither of those was true three weeks ago.

Emma and Hook are secretive in their movements, and he supposes her father might not approve. Rumpelstiltskin tries not to see the woman who loved his son once again in the arms of Killian Jones, for all that Emma is not Milah and her love for Bae was something quite different. In an odd way Rumpelstiltskin feels déjà vu, in these opening weeks after Zelena’s defeat: Belle is there but not there, his but not his; Snow and Charming are disgustingly happy together; Regina plots revenge for a lost lover; Baelfire, lost forever now though he is, has lost yet another important woman to Killian Jones.

Rumpelstiltskin feels he’s lost her too, of course, but he had been a fool to think that Emma Swan could have valued his company, his understanding, in any real way. To think of her as family. But then, he’d driven her away with a cruel, cold truth, and isn’t that what he’s always done to those who could care for him?

He doesn’t expect to see her on a bright morning in June, suddenly appearing at his side with yet another cup of coffee, out of breath from running. “Jesus, Gold, you move fast for someone your age.”

Were he the age he appears, he thinks he’d take offence, but she knows of his centuries of life and so the joke passes unremarked upon. “Are you lost again, dear?” he snaps, and she rolls her eyes.

“No, I saw you walking and thought we could talk. Is something wrong?”

“Do you want to hear the objections of your father or your lover first?” he asks, solicitously.

“Neither,” she replies, steel in her voice he recognises and accepts. He doesn’t want to talk to Princess Emma, daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, the lover of a pirate. If he must speak, he’d have it be to Emma Swan, the orphan who grew up hard in the real world and fell in love with his son. The woman he supposes her whole family now wishes were lost forever, for she’s harder to deal with and will never quite fit with this strange little world of theirs. “I can talk to whoever I want.”

“Your choices must be limited to wind up with me,” he notes, and she looks like she’s about to smack him.

“God, no wonder it took you so long to hook up with Belle!” she cries, “Is this what you do to everyone who tries to get to know you?”

He considers, “It depends, how do you feel about eternity as a toad?”

She stares at him, then snorts a laugh and shakes her head. He stares at her, and she looks at him through a thick curtain of blonde hair, “You said that to Belle too,” she explains, with a laugh. “When I was trapped in the past, she said you could be more polite to her and you threatened to turn her into a frog or something. How do you have any friends?”

“Simple,” he smirked, “I spend a lot of time down at the pond.”

She stares at him for a moment, speechless, and he rolls his eyes. “That was a joke, Miss Swan,” he says, after a moment. “I do hope you recognise it.”

She laughs, then, a startled but genuine sound. “C’mon Gold, I’ve spent enough time in this town by now that I’m allowed to be suspicious.”

“It must be rather nice living somewhere without such suspicions,” he muses, “where a snail is really a snail and not the man down the road fallen afoul of a sorcerer.”

Emma nods and it’s amusingly heartfelt, “Those were the days.”

“And yet you remain,” he says, as they start to walk once more. “I’m sure your parents are thrilled.”

“It seemed to be everyone’s choice, yeah,” she nods. “New York was… awesome, really awesome, but home is home, you know?”

“I suppose,” he murmurs, noncommittally, as he looks up at the slate-grey sky and doesn’t think about the word itself. Home. The word has little meaning these days, wife or no wife, house or no house. Someday he hopes that Belle will be all the home he needs, but therein lies the fault in their marriage that runs far deeper than his lies or her expectations: his home was with Bae, and Bae is gone, and nothing and no one could ever replace him.

And in that, Rumpelstiltskin thinks with a sidelong glance to the woman at his side, Emma Swan is the only person in this world or any other who could possibly understand.

“I’m sorry,” she says, again, as she seems to in every glance his way and every word she’s said since that awful, fateful day. “I… I know you must hate me.”

He frowns at her, although in all honesty he cannot tell her for sure. “Hate you, dear?” he asks, sliding his emotion once more beneath the calm mask of Mr Gold, the man she knows and recognises. “Whatever for?”

“For everything,” she shakes her head, “For not saving him, for not… not letting you save him? For letting my parents name their kid after him, when they barely knew him? For Hook? Pick a reason, Gold!”

“And why in the world would you care if I hated you or not?” he asks, mildly, although every word she said had rung true and he’s not sure at all how he is to respond. “I’m hardly of any import to you now.”

“You’re the only person in this goddamn town who’s not all wrapped up in some Disney movie version of reality,” she says, “and Neal loved you till the end. You’re Henry’s grandfather… you’re family. I care, so answer the goddamn question.”

“Your mother’s getting to you, dearie,” he says, to push her off the scent of his confusion. “Emotional outbursts, caring, whatever next?”

“Birds will be lining up to pick my clothes out in the morning,” she growls, and he laughs at the image presented.

“You’d have made an interesting princess, I’m sure,” he agrees, but she’s eyeing him closely, and he knows she’s noticed how he’s evaded her question. He does wonder how thoughtfulness and cunning found its way into the progeny of Snow White and Prince Charming, but he supposes a long, hard life will breed such traits into almost anyone.

“Will you let me apologise?” she asks, again, “Or do you want me gone? Decide now, Gold, or I’ll annoy you forever.”

“There’s…” he takes a deep breath, and exhales it slowly, trying to let go of the anger before it takes root, to make what he says true because Emma deserves that at least. “No, I do not hate you, Miss Swan,” he says, at last. “You of all people need not apologise to me.”

“No one’s apologised to me either,” she admits, “Ever. I just felt like someone ought to.”

“You may court whomever you choose to,” he says, “and I am sure that you fought as hard as I did to… to save him. Of all people in this world, I’d not doubt that of you.”

“I loved him,” she admits, softly, as if it’s a crime or a confession of guilt. “I really did… I loved him right until the end, and I was so angry with him for so long but it didn’t matter. He was home for me, I guess. And maybe we’d never have been my parents. Maybe we couldn’t have had the house and the fence and the dog running around but we had something. We had the back of a car and he made me laugh and he understood me, you know? We had everything. I just didn’t know it until he was gone.”

“You knew my son in a very different time and place,” Rumpelstiltskin remarks, somewhat wistfully. “I lost him when he was still only a young boy, only just fourteen. And then when I found him again, my boy was all grown up, a grown man ready to be a father himself. I missed all those stages in between.”

“Would you like me to tell you?” she offers, hesitantly.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t want to rehash old memories,” he says, quickly, brushing off an offer that’s too tempting to contemplate. “Especially with a sentimental old monster like me.”

“No, I would,” she objects, quick as her mother with a bow, “I… Henry listens sometimes, but I don’t want to put it on him unless he asks. It’s too painful, he lost him so fast…”

“We all did,” Rumpelstiltskin murmurs, and Emma’s quick nod is all the solidarity he needs. That someone else still sheds real, genuine tears over his poor slain son is all the comfort in the world.

“Yeah… and like, Killian’s great, but he hardly wants to hear about me grieving for my ex boyfriend, which I get. He and Neal had their own history and I know he’s grieving in his own way… I don’t know, I just feel like everyone is aggressively moving forward, you know? He wants to talk about our future, and my parents are all about the new baby, and Henry’s thinking about high school and how that’s going to work with us here. And I’m just…”

“Drifting?” he supplies, and she looks at him with surprise, and nods.

“Exactly. I thought with Zelena dead and Killian and I together, and our choice to stay here, everything would feel fresh and new. Like we could just start over and do it right this time.”

“The world is smiling and you can’t smile with it,” Rumpelstiltskin says, slowly, because good lord he knows the feeling: he laughed maniacally for three centuries to hide it, after all.

“Not the same way,” she agrees. “Not the way they want.”

“People always seem to seek me out in the dark, when the light gets too much for them,” he muses.

“That’s not what this is about.” She shakes her head, sighing, “Wow, I think you might be even more messed up than I am.”

“I’ve had three hundred years more experience, dearie,” he notes, dryly, “I’d be very impressed, if worried, if you managed to have worse problems in your meagre twenty-eight.” He stops, as they’re outside his house, and regards her. “Why did you seek me out, then, if not simply because misery loves company?”

“Because I need family who aren’t Disney characters on acid,” she sighs, after a long pause, and for his little chuckle at the apt description he even earns a smile, “And because I need to share him with someone. Someone who doesn’t just want to pretend it was some great and noble sacrifice, and we should all be grateful and brave and happy to be alive. It was noble, and he died a hero, but that doesn’t stop me from being really, terrifyingly angry that he died at all, or from missing him every goddamn day.”

“Maybe someday I’ll share your ability to notice the nobility,” he says. “But you knew a grown man, Miss Swan, capable of making that choice. I couldn’t look at that man he became and not see the fourteen-year-old boy who slipped from my grasp and fell out of the world.”

“I know,” she nods, “I know and I’m so sorry. When I saw Henry about to give his heart to Pan, making that choice, I my own heart nearly stopped. I’d have happily died to save him then, and he could have been a grown man and I’d have felt the exact same way. I can’t imagine how you feel now. I can’t imagine how it’d ever stop.”

He nods, shortly, because he won’t cry here and now, not even in front of Emma Swan, and turns to leave, to enter his gate and return to his cold house and his all but absent wife. “Thank you,” he says, softly, his hand on the latch. “But you’re wrong at the end there, Miss Swan. You’re possibly the only person in this town who can imagine how I feel every day and night.”

He starts up the path, toward the door, and he’s on his steps when he hears her call out. “Gold, wait!”

He turns around, and she’s stood at the gate, watching him with an expression he recognises: she’s also trying not to cry in front of him. “I… I have some photos. And some old things. I never took them out of the Bug, and… I have some things. I could bring them by sometime. I could… I could share him with you.”

“As could I, Miss Swan,” he replies, around the growing lump in his throat. “Tomorrow, then?”

She stares at him for a moment, and then nods, tightly. “Tomorrow. I’ll come by the shop.”

She vanishes around the corner, away from him, and Rumpelstiltskin into his home. Belle looks at him, up from her book, when he passes the living room, and for the first time he notices she reads by the open window, and her book is upside down.

“Hey,” she says, a little timidly, when he does not immediately pass her by. She hasn’t greeted him in so long the word sounds rusty. “How’s Emma?”

“She’s… about as well as can be expected,” he replies, slowly, for she has not willingly spoken to him in days, weeks, since their fight. It’s an uneasy air that gathers around them here, but at least she is speaking, and the ice perhaps has begun to crack if not thaw. “I believe her family keeps her occupied.”

The lingering note, that her family lives and loves her while she is all he has left, and she has all but left him these past weeks, hangs in the air.

“That’s good,” Belle nods, at last. “Everyone needs their family.”

“Indeed they do,” he agrees, and vanishes to his room without a word, to break apart once again in peace. She doesn’t follow, but she talks to him a little at dinner, and that night she even lets him kiss her cheek goodnight.

---

Emma comes by the shop the next day with a box of old things and photographs, just as promised. He takes them to the bed in the back, where they can rifle through in peace, and turns the front door to closed.

“He had an old polaroid camera,” she explains, when she opens the box and he sees the mass of small white pictures. “He liked to take photos of everything he saw… until we ran out of film.”

“Drinking in the world around him,” Rumpelstiltskin smiles, fondly, holding a picture his son must have taken of the grand canyon, “that sounds like him. His mother was quite the artist, you know, and he always had her talent.”

Emma nodded, “He was always saying that, that if he had the money he’d go to art school and make something of himself. But we didn’t always have enough for food, so school was a bit out of reach.”

“So he took photographs,” Rumpelstiltskin nods, “to make up for the loss.”

“And because he…” Emma trails off, and Rumpelstiltskin is afraid of the look on her face, her sudden silence.

“What, dear?” he asks, blandly, “Cat got your tongue?”

“No, I just… he said he was happy. With me, I mean, when we found the instants for the camera and he started taking pictures. He said he was happy, and he wanted to remember, because happiness doesn’t last forever but it’s damn worth it while it lasts.”

“He was… he was happy, with you?” Rumpelstiltskin checks, his voice crumbling, his throat aching with the growing lump but the question so very, very important.

“Yes,” Emma nods, and she’s crying too, fat tears rolling down her cheeks, tears he’s certain she hasn’t shed since the funeral he couldn’t attend. “He was happy. I know he was. We were going to be so happy and then all of this bullshit got in the way.”

“I wish you had been,” Rumpelstiltskin admits, his own voice choked but his hand coming to rest awkwardly, fatherly, on Emma’s shoulder. “I’d so much rather he’d have been happy with you, away from me, than come back here to be miserable and to die.”

“He’d call that self-pitying horseshit,” Emma objects, shaking her head. “He missed you every day. He taught me what home was long before we made one of our own: he always said he was running from the only thing he ever wanted.”

Rumpelstiltskin’s whole body breaks in front of her, and all of a sudden he’s drawing Emma in close and she’s got her arms around his ribs, and they’re both crying, both weak and leaning on one another, both unable to keep from sobbing. It’s like a body blow, to know that his son loved him even while he was angry and betrayed and lost in the word; to know that he had been happy, once, with Emma Swan and the back of their car, and that the curse – his curse – had ripped that all away.

And yet, there is solace in this, and healing, and comfort. To know that someone else is hurting this deeply, and to know that for all that the grief and the anger and the bone-deep ache of loss will never go away, Bae’s life had been happy for a time.

They cry themselves out on one another’s shoulders, and then set to choosing the best of Bae’s photographs to display somewhere in the back room, with his ball and his cloak and the few little things Emma still has of his. She keeps the swan pendant around her throat; Rumpelstiltskin’s heart swells three sizes for her when she refuses to part with it.

His boy had known love, more than once. And there is some peace to be found in knowing that.

---

When he gets home that night, he thinks he sees Emma Swan walking away down the sidewalk, and Belle confirms it: she was there to drop of some last minute items she found, and to talk. She will not explain further, but at dinner there is a bunch of red carnations in the centre of the table, and Belle joins him once again.

For just a moment they talk like they used to, and her hand rests over his on the table.

“I’m glad you have Emma, now,” she tells him, when the dishes are at last empty and they’re trying to forestall the inevitable, cold and quiet goodnight. “I think she understands better than I do. You need someone, don’t you?”

“I could explain, Belle,” he sighs. “If only you would listen.”

“I’m right here Rumple,” she says. “And I want to be able to listen, and maybe even forget that you lied to me, betrayed me, and humiliated me for your revenge! You took advantage of my faith in you. I had to hear what you'd done from Regina, I had to stand there and hear her tell me you'd murdered her sister, and tricked me with a fake dagger, and that I'd been a fool to believe you on either count. Can you imagine how it felt to hear that, coming from her? You should have told me the truth, up front. Instead you treated me like a naive little girl and tried to keep me in the dark!”

“You were kept in a cage for so long, Belle,” he sighs, praying she can see the parallel, that she can empathise and understand. "Please, you have to understand why I did it."

“I never wanted Regina dead.”

“No, but she didn’t kill the person you loved more than anyone in the world. I know you’ve been hurt, Belle. I know I was the cause of most of it. But you’ve been good and beautiful and loved your whole life. You’ve never been in a corner and had to do terrible things to save your loved ones.”

“It’s not an excuse,” she says, stiffly, trying to muster the anger she’d had before, the righteousness and the strength of her convictions. “Murder is never the solution.”

“I spent three hundred years polluting my soul to find my son, Belle,” he tells her, bluntly, because if it’s truth she wants then truth she shall receive. “I even sacrificed your love for me to find him, and I love you more than I ever thought I’d love anyone who wasn’t Bae. Can you possibly imagine that? Imagine having everything taken from you, your reason for living and your only victory and even the control of your own mind and body? Did Regina’s torments come close to that?”

She swallows, hard, and stares at him. “No,” she admits, at last. “You were safe and alive, and so was my father, and I could scream all I liked.”

“So could I,” he scoffs, bitterly. “She enjoyed my screams.”

“Gods, Rumple,” she whimpers, and her hand is once more on his, squeezing hard. “I want to trust you so badly. But you lied to me, the moment you had the chance. Why couldn’t you have just proposed? Why did you have to build our future on a lie?”

“I could barely think for weeks after her defeat,” he admits, “that day… I saw you in the light, and I knew she had to die and I knew I couldn’t ever let anyone, even you, hold the dagger, but what more could I offer you? A broken heart and soul wrapped in an old, battered body, which could be forced to kill you at any moment? The dagger is at least worth something. I can’t even offer you my whole heart. I love you more than life itself, but I lost the most important part of me and he’ll never come back. Why would you want to settle for that?”

“I’ve never settled for you, Rumple,” she tells him, softly, with such heart-breaking sincerity that he almost believes it. “Even now, even a week ago when I wanted so badly to hate you, I love you.”

“What a terrible fate you were handed, my dear,” he murmurs, his thumb playing with the back of her hand and his eyes there and not on hers. “To be enslaved in love to a man who will never be worthy of it.”

Belle sighs, and brushes her skirt with her free hand, but she doesn’t leave. “That’s always been our problem,” she says at last. “Not that I will always share your heart with Baelfire, because I knew that before we even kissed and it only made me love you more. There’s a ridiculous notion that one must be worthy of love in order to receive it, and it’s not true. I love you, even if sometimes I can’t stand you, and that won’t change.”

“You’ve been a ghost in this house for weeks,” he points out, a masochist to the last, even now disputing the very words he’s longed to hear for so long. “You thought me unworthy then.”

“No, I thought you untrustworthy,” she corrects him. “And my heart is forever yours but sometimes I still have to protect it, and gods above, Rumple, it still hurts to look at you.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, shortly.

“For what?”

“For making you suffer,” he says, “I never intended to cause you pain. I didn’t want to lie to you.”

“But you’d do it again,” she says, trembling but firm, his strong little Belle. “You’d lie to me again to kill her.”

“You had no right to ask that of me,” he tells her. “I would do anything for you, my love, but I couldn’t let her live while Bae lay cold in the ground. What claim did you have on her fate that I did not?”

“I lost you!” she cries, throwing her hands up, breaking their contact at last and he winces at the loss. “I lost you, and then you came back and I couldn’t believe we’d done it, and then you were mad and trapped and lost again and she might have killed you, and I’d have been powerless to stop her. I lost you twice, Rumple. How did I know I’d not lose you again, if you killed her like you did Pan? I couldn’t stand frozen and watch as I lost you again.”

“And instead, you come into my shop, and tell me I’m above killing her? We could have talked about this. I could have explained. But once again you made it into a black and white question that I couldn’t answer.”

“And once again you lied to me, and went behind my back!”

“She couldn’t live a second longer!” he hurls back, and now they’re both on their feet, screaming once again but now it feels so much better, because it’s all out in the open and so now, at last, they can end this.

“Is that what we are, then?” she demands, “When all is said and done, you’re a liar and a killer, and I’m a naive girl in love who wants life to be black and white?”

“You’re too good for me, Belle,” he begs. “Too good and too pure.”

“And you’re as dark as you ever were,” she replies, softly. “As dark as when I met you. I’ve done nothing to make anything better, have I?”

“I willingly died to save the town,” he reminds her, “before Zelena broke every part of me worth loving, I was strong because of you. Zelena was as bad as he was, and she’d have done as much damage given the chance. What’s so different this time?”

“I…” she takes a deep breath, and shakes her head, “Gods, I don’t know. You lied to me. That’s what’s different.”

“I’m trying, Belle,” he promises, “but she set me back a long, long way.”

“I know,” she nods, “I… I’m sorry, Rumple.”

The world stands still. He cannot breathe.

“For what?”

“For not listening,” she says, “and not speaking in return. Perhaps you’re not the only one who needs to change.”

“Not change,” he shakes his head, and cups her face in his hand. “Please, don’t change, my Belle. Just… learn, with me. We all have to learn.”

“I love you,” she bites her lip, and then smiles, the barest hint of a smile but it feels like the dawn breaking. “Someday you might even learn that well enough to remember it.”

“And I love you too,” he replies. “More every day.”

He leans in to kiss her, and, when their lips touch and she moans and holds him close and deepens their kiss, for the first time in over a year everything feels the world might not have ended after all.

---

The next night, they go to Granny’s for dinner, tentatively hand-in-hand. The dagger – the real one – is locked safely away in a safe in their home. Belle has vowed never to touch it, never to use it, and the vault is blood sealed anyhow. She won’t get the chance. Rumplestiltskin hates that he thinks that way, hates that his boundless, eternal suspicion extends even to Belle, but when he told her that she didn’t flinch or turn away.

Trust has to be earned, she’d said. She was referring to them both.

After everything that has happened since she watched him die in the centre of Main Street, Rumplestiltskin doesn’t know how to trust at all anymore. He’s going to learn, though; just like she is.

It’s a process of picking up the pieces, all that remains of what came before, and trying to build something new from them.

Belle smiles up at him as they reach the diner, and squeezes his hand. She hasn’t moved her things from her room – he will kiss her goodnight, tonight, and they will sleep apart and close their distance slowly. They’ve agreed he will call her cell phone, one room apart, if his nightmares wake him and he needs her voice. It’s new, and awkward, and difficult, but it’s better than silence, better than coldness, better than distrust and deceit. It gives him time to make space for her in his heart again. It gives her time to come to terms with how greatly her husband has changed in their time apart.

They are planning a honeymoon, for when that chasm finally closes. It’s time to get out of Storybrooke; it’s time for Belle to see the world.

She’s agreed he can take the dagger, when the time comes. He couldn’t leave without it, even though the thought of having it near him makes his skin crawl. He knows she’s hoping he’ll change his mind by the time it does; he hopes so, too.

The diner is busy when they enter. Regina sits at the bar, alone, resolutely not looking at either of the happy families occupying booths. She does not see how Robin stares at her, even while he laughs and talks with his wife and son; she does not see the regret on Emma’s face whenever she looks across the room. She doesn’t see, so she doesn’t react, and maybe it’s better that way. For all their regrets, neither Robin nor Emma can give Regina what she wants: they cannot regret bringing Marion back from the dead.

Belle leads Rumpelstiltskin to the far booth, away from the crowds. Emma is with her parents, her baby brother, her boyfriend, and her son, but she smiles at Rumpelstiltskin as they pass. He nods in return, and then looks away before the pirate can glare too strongly. For a moment he can feel the ghost that stands between them like a physical thing. Hook should be sat with Regina, outcast and glowering into his whiskey. Bae should be sat with Emma and their son.

Belle and Rumpelstiltskin take their seats. Ruby bounces over with their menus, and Rumpelstiltskin pretends not to notice while she and Belle have a somewhat hushed conversation, and the wolf-girl continuously glances in his direction.

“Miss Lucas,” he says, at last, “Would you prefer to take my seat to converse with my wife? I’m sure I can make myself scarce for long enough for her to fill you in.”

“Rumple, I-“ Belle starts, but he holds up a hand and slips out of the booth.

“You should have a moment with your friend,” he says, gently. He knows how vital Ruby’s friendship was to Belle, that long year while he was enslaved to Zelena. He can only imagine it has continued while they have been together but not speaking. He’d rather he and Belle were alone all of the time, with no interruptions or interlopers, but he has tried to isolate her before and lost her as a result. Belle needs her friends, and so Rumpelstiltskin squeezes her hand to reassure her, and goes to the bar until the waitress is finished gossiping.

Regina rolls her eyes when he sits down. “I’m done here,” she mutters to Granny, and slams down a twenty-dollar bill for her drinks.

“Perhaps when you’re finished sulking, we can have an overdue talk, dearie,” Rumpelstiltskin returns, his eyes on the bar and not on her. He can’t look her in the eye. Whenever he does, he sees her holding the dagger, forcing him to spare Zelena’s miserable life and dishonour his son’s sacrifice out of cheap sentimentality. He acknowledges the hand he has played in making her what she is: a woman so desperate for family that she will grasp at any connection with both hands, ruthless enough to trample anyone who gets in her way.

Rumpelstiltskin knows how that feels. How many lives did he ruin to find Bae? How many friends and family members must have mourned Belle when he ripped her away from them?

He’d understand, if she bothered to speak to him. But it’s always been easier for Regina to turn to anger and hate, than to address what’s really hurting. He had a hand in that too. The most important lesson he ever taught her was to never show weakness.

“Go to hell, Rumple,” she snarls, and stalks out without another word. The bell jangles as she slams the door. She doesn’t see the eyes watching her leave: Robin, heartbroken and unable to express it; Marion, wary and watchful; Henry, sympathetic and determined; Emma, helpless and so very, very sorry.

Henry gets out of the booth, scrambling over Hook and Snow in the process, and for a moment he looks as if he’s going to follow after Regina. Emma’s hand on his arm stops him. “Let her go, kid.”

Henry stops, and has a moment of indecision. Then he sits back down. Hook tries to distract him with something or other; Rumpelstiltskin looks away, and tries not to see Milah’s husband with Bae’s son. He tries: he doesn’t really succeed.

He’s focusing so hard on the drink Granny shoved in front of him that he doesn’t notice another body take the space beside him. “Mysteries of the universe in that glass?” Emma asks. She gestures for Granny to bring her the same. He shrugs. “How come you’re not sitting with Belle? You seemed pretty tight when you came in together.”

“Ruby wants to hear all about our reunion,” Rumpelstiltskin sighs. “It happened last night, if you were wondering.”

“You talked about things?” Rumpelstiltskin shrugs.

“It’s a start,” he says. “There’s a world of difference between my wife and I.”

“I get that,” Emma nods. “I... that was something that was always easy with me and Neal. We were very similar people. There wasn’t a lot about me that needed a tonne of explaining.”

“There’s nobody like me, dearie,” Rumpelstiltskin murmurs, and takes a sip of his scotch. He heard Emma snort.

“I guess not,” she agrees. “You know, Killian…”

“Don’t finish that sentence, Miss Swan,” Rumpelstiltskin warns. “Belle and I have our differences but your pirate is another species.”

Emma gives him a long look, and for a moment he sees it, the reason they’ve been getting along so well these past few weeks: she’s looking at him, but she’s trying to see Bae. And, he supposes, he’s doing much the same.

“He’s… yeah,” Emma swallows, and nods. She glances over her shoulder; Hook is watching them with hard eyes despite his easy smile. “We’re very different people too.”

“Something the matter?” Rumpelstiltskin asks. He’s about to add a snide remark about trouble in paradise, but he bites his tongue. He’s one to talk.

“You said a while back… I don’t know, something about Belle not filling the space inside you where Neal should be.”

“Nothing can fill it,” he says. “And I doubt it will ever heal.”

“Right,” Emma nods. “I just… it’s a bit different I guess. He was your son, and you’re not… I mean you’re not trying to work out how to feel about another kid, you know? You and Belle are totally different.”

“But you’re trying to have the same sort of relationship with the pirate that you had with my son,” Rumpelstiltskin finishes her thought when she trails off. Emma doesn’t nod, or do anything to indicate her agreement. She doesn’t correct him either. They drink in silence for a long moment, and Rumpelstiltskin wonders how much longer he should give his wife before returning to her side.

“He’s got a lot of feelings,” Emma says, at last. “About me.”

“Yes, he’s made that very clear.”

Emma snorts. “He chased me for months, even before… and then he came to New York. I mean, he sold his ship to get a magic bean to make it to me. And he keeps saying he loves me, he keeps wanting to spend time together and go for walks and dinner and I…”

“You’re still grieving a heavy loss,” Rumpelstiltskin says. “It’s hard to feel free with that weight on your back.”

“He deserves better than that,” Emma says.

“Debatable,” Rumpelstiltskin replies. She scowls and shoves him, hard.

“I don’t care about you guys and your feud,” she says. “And I’m sure as hell not refereeing.”

“So long as the two of you don’t become attached at the hip, surely any regard for you doesn’t entail suffering him?”

Emma looks at him, sidelong, her eyes gleaming. “Careful, Gold, someone might overhear and think you have a heart.”

Rumpelstiltskin glances behind him, and sees that Ruby was standing up, finishing their conversation. He meets Belle’s gaze, and saw them soften, an ocean of love in her deep blue eyes. He doesn’t think he’d ever understand what he’s done to deserve it, but Belle thinks that’s part of their problem. Until he learns to believe she can love him, to trust in her love, he’ll always have one foot out the door.

He’s working to change that. Maybe someday he’d even succeed.

“Lack of heart has never been my issue, Emma,” he said. He didn’t think he’d ever called her by her forename before, but it seemed about time, and if she didn’t comment on it neither would he.

“I guess not,” she concedes. “At least you don’t have to worry about that. You’re… you’re hurting, but you know you’re still capable of loving someone, and you know you love Belle. You don’t lie awake at night worrying that a dead guy would hate you if you fell for someone else.”

“There are many other reasons I lie awake,” Rumpelstiltskin tells her. “Most of them bright green.”

“I guess,” Emma keeps chewing on her lip.

“It can be difficult, to be with someone who is better at expressing their feelings than you are,” he said. “It requires an ability to be vulnerable, and neither of us has any facility with that.”

“Yeah,” Emma nods. She looks so small, so young and sad, that for a moment Rumpelstiltskin thinks he catches a glimpse of the young woman Bae fell in love with. That strange paternal feeling rises in him again. For the first time in a while, he feels the urge to be just a little selfless.

Rumpelstiltskin catches Belle’s eye, and held up one finger, to stall her coming over. There is something that needs saying, and he can’t understand why he’s doing it, why he’s even considering posthumously giving Emma Baelfire’s blessing to love the man who stole Bae’s mother away, but here he is. Perhaps this is part of the learning he’s committed to: Emma’s happiness matters, even if by proxy it means that Killian Jones might be happy too.

“Do you know how your pirate knew to come fetch you?” Rumpelstiltskin asks. Emma shakes her head, confused.

“I assumed my parents told him,” she replies. “I mean, they were all fighting Zelena, right?”

Rumpelstiltskin purses his lips, and shakes his head. “Zelena couldn’t control us, when… when I wasn’t in control of our body,” he swallows hard, and tries to not balk at even talking about it. He has to learn to talk about it. Belle needs him to talk about it. “She never locked the cell. She didn’t know he could get out, sometimes. He sent a note via dove, when we knew the curse was coming. My son believed in your pirate’s regard for you, at least. He believed that for you, even Killian Jones might do the right thing.”

“Oh.” Emma is silent, chewing her bottom lip, processing the information.

“And for what it’s worth, he trusted the pirate to save you. Whether Killian Jones is able to make good on that faith is another matter, but you would know better than I.”

Emma looked at him, and behind her “He… he’d want me to be happy, right? To move on?”

“I know he would,” Rumpelstiltskin says. “With whomever that may be.

“For you too,” she tells him. “He loved you.”

“I know he did,” Rumpelstiltskin nods. He slides off the bar stool, and Emma follows. “He would want both of us to try and find some peace.”

He meets Hook’s eye over Emma’s shoulder, and holds it for a long moment. He hopes the feeling is communicated: if Hook proves himself unworthy of the blessing he doesn’t know he’s been handed, he will find out there are worse things to lose than a hand.

“Thanks, Gold,” Emma smiles, a real smile, and then he is stunned when she leans forward and kisses his cheek. He nods, swallowing around an odd lump in his throat. She’s a sweet girl, Emma Swan, for all her hard pragmatism. He can see why Bae loved her so much.

He makes his way back to Belle, and Emma sits back with her family, and when Belle takes his hand over the table he squeezes it hard. She’s alive, and here with him, and she knows everything and still loves him, and maybe it’s almost enough. Maybe this time he can take hold of this chance at happiness, and not push it away.

He clings to Belle like a lifeline, and finds hope in her eyes. Bae would want him to be happy. It’s a long way off, but for the first time in months, Rumpelstiltskin thinks he might just be able to try.