The internet was fascinating.

This world, although magicless, never ceased to impress him. The way the people here could store all that information in such tiny capsules was amazing, even to Rumple.

And though he'd never openly admit it, certain websites were addicting-YouTube, especially. And the way he could keep up with his stocks and business things was certainly helpful.

One day, as he was sitting in Granny's, laptop open on the table in front of him, it came as a surprise to him as none other than Ruby sat down next to him, breathless, and spun the laptop to face her.

He looked up in annoyance. The curse was broken; didn't she realize that he wasn't one to be messed with? But she didn't seem to notice his expression.

"Holy crap," she said. "Mr. Gold, you need to see this."

He made a show of sighing exasperatedly. "I'm busy, you know."

But she ignored him, typing something much faster than he ever could. "Fanfictions," she said quickly. "Music videos, Tumblr posts, fanart, photo edits. Millions of them."

All he could do was stare at her blankly. "What?"

"They're stories and pictures and videos, a bunch of them. All online." She looked up. "And all about us."

He paused. "You mean the fairytales about us?"

"No!" She shook her head. "Not just Rumplestiltskin, Mr. Gold, too. And me. And Emma. And Mary Margaret, and Hook, and Belle, and everyone. Everyone in this whole town, all of our history-it's public."

"What?"

She spun the laptop towards him, scrolling down the search engine's image setting, under 'Rumbelle edits'.

He felt cold. Displayed there were pieces of his life, of his storyline with Belle, spread out in the different edits and images. Who could have gotten those pictures? How could anyone have known?

He felt Ruby staring at him, waiting for a reaction, but all he could do was search different things. 'Belle French'. 'Rumplestiltskin'. 'Baelfire'. 'Killian Jones'. He searched them all, everyone in the town that he could think of, and about half of them showed up. For some reason, not everyone was online-only, really, the ones that had played a big part in the curse.

He thanked Ruby a few minutes later, and got up and walked home.

For the rest of the day he tried to push it all out of his head, but two a.m. found him scrolling through countless pages of fanfiction, fanart, and everything else he could get his hands on.

It was scary, at first, and the-mature, shall we say?-imaginations of some of the authors and artists was a bit disgusting. Especially the ones concerning Hook.

But as the hours passed by, he started to feel something, something unmistakably good, that he couldn't place. He found himself attached to the 'Rumbelle' pages (a name which he found quite charming), and even his own fanpages.

That bit was weird, the fanpages-and as he read through them he realized why he felt so good.

These people, these fans, seemed to know him better than anyone else. Better than he knew his own self, to be perfectly honest.

And they loved him.

He hadn't found any insults thrown at him-in fact, not once did he read the word Monster. Instead, he read about his goodness, and how much he loved and needed love as much as anyone else. And how there were people, millions of people, who had cried when he cried. Who laughed whenever he made a joke. And who thought, if you could actually believe this, that he was "perfect".

He felt it all, rushing over him in a wave of emotions. Images of Milah and Hook and the soldiers flooded through his mind, playing back different taunts and insults that had been thrown at him.

They loved him.

And he remembered the days, all of the days spent alone in misery, all of the pain that had turned to hatred towards everyone else, all of the endless hours of spinning to try and forget his past.

They loved him.

And he wasn't ashamed to cry.