Disclaimer: I don't own Once Upon a Time. I wish I did, but I don't.
He spun to forget.
He spun to forget his old life, the one before he had gained his powers. He spun to forget the destruction he witnessed as a soldier fighting the ogres. He spun to forget the ever – constant fear, and the moment when he decided to run away.
He spun to forget the look on his wife's face when he returned home. At first joyful, happy that he had come back to her safe and sound. Then, when the truth came out, that look had changed to one of hatred, of revulsion. She had screamed and yelled at him for shirking his duty, called him coward numerous times.
She would have left him. He knew that for certain. But she went into labor before she could go, and died during the birth. After her death, he would have fallen apart, shattered into a million little pieces on the floor. Yet he had this tiny little bundle to take care of. A son to nurture, to teach and above all, to protect from the evils of the world.
He spun for his son, to forget that look of fear in his eyes. Fear that he had put there by becoming powerful; by becoming so strong nobody would ever dare call him coward again.
He made threads of gold to forget the moment when he found his son's body, mauled by ogres. To forget that the only reason his son had died was because he was running away from his father. To forget the fact that he had failed in his duty, had failed to protect the only thing in the world that he had loved.
He recalls giving a young woman a vial of magicked water once, to help her forget certain memories. But he has no need for mystic water.
Just watching as the spindle goes round and round – that was his magic cure.
A/N: There's going to be one more part after this. Thanks for reading Part One!