As I must wait.
[6x17] : "Snow and Charming may thought that they knew was it was the wait, the pain. But Gold knew that it wasn't the case. He knew that ten years, it was nothing."
English version of "Puisqu'il faut attendre."
It hit him as an electroshock, even though he doesn't show it externally. And what happens to him isn't something pleasant. He has the impression to wake up from a long, very long sleep, but it wasn't the case.
His memories hit him just right in the face and he isn't expecting it, and even before the pain, what comes in him is a bad feeling. Because it shouldn't have happened, not a that moment, not right now.
He doesn't like it, and it's simple. He doesn't control anything there, and he grimaces. And suddenly, with this disagreeable feeling, it's the pain in the heart that came then, without warning.
And even before he really had the time to say something, Baelfire's and Belle's face are under his eyes. Just as if they really were there, still with him, alive. As if nothing changed, as if his mistakes hadn't destroy everything.
The Dark One smiled, before he understood that he already lost them, one for ever, and maybe also the other, because would Bae accept to see him again, to talk to him ? Another smile, more twisted and cynical came on the immortal' face.
He then thought about the people who did this, ten years too soon. Snow White and Charming. The one who, despite painful events (caused in part by his own fault. Maybe he didn't like too happy heroes), never gave up to the Darkness.
Who had no idea of what it was ; who hadn't been confronted directly to it. Who lived a real happiness, before a jealous Evil Queen take it from them.
Yes, he was still smiling, as he was walking to the place where he was supposed to see them. In a cold, frozen, almost bitter smile. They didn't know. They knew nothing ; they just wanted to think about them, not about the inhabitants blocked by the Queen's spell (and his spell).
Their behaviour was really not heroic, and even though Rumple couldn't have blamed them for that, he knew he had to stop them. Because the Saviour should be, no matter the price they would have to pay (this price, the price of the waiting, he already pay it).
As they talked, they told him they waited too long, that they wanted to see their daughter, and that he had no one to see outside. Oh, how they were wrong, this prince and this princess who thought that ten years were a hell to wait ! And they had the right to forget (even if he also did, he could easily see what he lost.)
Snow and Charming may thought that they knew was it was the wait, the pain. But Gold knew that it wasn't the case. He knew that ten years, it was nothing.
The pain, it was doing the bad choice, abandoning his son for bad reasons.
It was losing him without wanting it, without choosing it, but doing it despite that.
It was being sorry, have the heart broken into pieces, without being able to do as them, heroes, to have the certitude that you did the good choice.
The waiting, it was decide all these mischievous plan, and trying not to fall again and forever in the darkness, and so may not become the father Baelfire wanted, deserved tohave.
Wait, it had been also, for a time, hope again and see the light in the person of a young servant. Who betrayed him, and that he betrayed too, and that he lost because of his own fault. Because he chose power instead of her.
Unlike them, who knew nothing about all this pain that he endured, he knew what it was to wait during more than three hundred a year. It had been long, terribly long, and the worst in that is that it wasn't even over.
So yes, no matter the time he would need, he would wait, even though he still had eighteen years to wait before seeing his son again.
He would find him, he had no doubts about it.
And no matter that some other could suffer from it, as Snow and Charming.