AN: This is rather a long chapter but I thought it was necessary to really ground the story… I've been thinking about writing this (or something like this) for a long time, so I'm eager to read your reactions. It's a little different from what I usually do, a blend of horror and romance, probably dark in tone. Hope you'll enjoy it. Comments are welcome.

…

Maybe the right way to think about it is through dominoes. Yes, now, Emma's sure that's what it felt like. Imagine a great line of dominoes the length of a great house, cold and straight and bleach-white except for the little blotches of color on the surface.

The blotches are red, of course. But we'll get to that.

Emma was twenty-one years old when she married Adam Gold. At the beginning, it felt very peculiar to use his first name – around town, everyone knew him as Mr. Gold, and there was an air of awe about it. Mr. Gold wasn't just anyone. People shrank to let him through when he walked in a room, and they stood up, waited for him to greet them with a nod before saying, How'd you do, sir?

That he was much older than Emma had never seemed to matter. Really, in town, you got the feeling Adam Gold was much older than everyone, had been the first one to arrive to Storybrooke and would be the last one standing.

So many years have passed that Emma can't really say what attracted her about him. His ageless charisma and the power radiating from his presence must have been a part of it. Now, it'd be all too easy to call her a fool, but she was young – so young she was nearly a different person, barely a woman. And there was something magnetic about Mr. Gold. The black, expensive suit, draping his body like raven wings, down to the immaculate leather Derbies on his feet, whose elegant tread would make everyone so nervous. It was like watching the villagers hurry to get everything in order when the monarch comes to visit. Mr. Gold's smile was not pleasant, but it had a certain allure – precisely the allure of experience, though his face showed no trace of age, was smooth like the surface of a mirror.

Oh, anyway. No point in thinking all of this over. Though it should count for something that Emma wasn't unhappy with him – there were actually a few moments of genuine joy, happening nearly at random. When she picked a fresh rose from the garden and trapped the scent in her lungs, and he parked the car in the driveway, coming home from work, and smiling at her – Careful not to prick your thumb, dearie. I've been told that's bad luck. That was happiness, probably, the blind happiness of ignorance, but how would she have known the difference?

But then something happened and the dominoes started tumbling one after the other, their house of cards blown into the wind before Emma could realize it was gone.

It was her fault, really. She'd been away at her parents' house for a week and he wasn't expecting her for another few days, but she'd meant to surprise him. Mr. Gold wasn't the sort of man who enjoys surprises and she ought to have known that, had been married to him for the past six years, so you could say the blame was partly hers.

Maybe just for standing on the altar in front of him and saying I do, when his smile was wicked and his eyes were cold as ice, when she should have known better, when she should have run for her life.

…

Emma didn't come home early that day just to discover how evil a man her husband was. One of her colleagues had called because of a huge administrative problem, it was an all-hands-on-deck situation, and it would really help if Emma could be back by Monday morning. She'd thought, fine, driving home on Sunday afternoon. She'd be back early enough to surprise Adam and they could go out for dinner – nowhere fancy enough that would require a reservation, but Emma wasn't keen on those, didn't really care whether she got her food from a five-star restaurant or at Granny's.

Of course, Adam would act very polite and concerned about the problems at her workplace. She didn't think he suspected she could tell, even from the mock interest in his voice, that he thought of her job as a mere hobby. Harmless but unrequired, given how much money he made being the head of his nation-wide successful enterprise.

Emma didn't really know what his enterprise was, if it sold insurance, paper, bloody buttons. Didn't even know that it sold anything. As a rule, she and Adam never talked much about his job; this, she recalls, was as much her fault as his. She never asked, for starters, and he had a way of making it sound like it would bore her. Also, he actually came off as chivalrous for not hogging the spotlight. The extremely wealthy man who'd rather hear about his wife's day at work than show off with extraordinary tales of how he'd tripled the number on their bank account in just two years.

It was flattering for them both. Oh, she always fought the stereotype but part of her liked being seen in relation to her all-powerful husband. Though she was a smart (not as smart as she thought) and educated woman, working among people she respected, it was pleasant to be more than that. As if Adam's mystical charm cloaked her and gave her an almost supernatural allure.

She liked being Emma Swan, but she also liked being Mr. Gold's wife.

If Emma's guilty of anything, that's the heart of it – not negligence and certainly not complicity. But you be the judge of that.

When she came home that Sunday evening, a little excited – and, for whatever reason, a little afraid – she parked in the driveway and realized Adam's car was gone. Though night had fallen already, it was only six thirty p.m. Probably, her husband was still at work, which nipped Emma's plan to surprise him in the bud – he'd see her car when he came home, and she wouldn't want to show up at his workplace and risk interrupting him while he was doing something important. That he never talked about his work had actually made Emma take it much more seriously than she would have, if she'd known precisely what went on in that enterprise of him. If she had access to those business meetings, her husband's daily labor, then surely she'd realize it wasn't so impressive, was just like any other routine work.

Surely.

Well, so much for spicing up their marriage by having her husband think she was full of surprises (he was fuller of them than she could guess). She'd just call him at work, ask around what time he'd be home. Maybe order something for dinner – Adam liked homemade food but Emma had never had the knack of cooking or otherwise playing the housewife.

And he'd never made her.

Does that count for something? She asks. You tell me.

Unlocking the door and stepping inside her unlit house, Emma realized she'd almost never been alone there at night. How strange the shape of some objects appeared, when they were all too familiar in broad daylight. The majestic curve of the banister, the stairs climbing upwards, deeper into the layers of darkness.

Switching on the light in the hall didn't fully remove this sense of strangeness, as if Emma had walked into a house that looked exactly like hers but wasn't quite, had an alien air to it.

Now, Emma was rather eager to call Adam and for him to get home as fast as possible. You're being ridiculous, she thought, but didn't manage to shake the impression that she'd set foot in a hostile dimension.

Hastily, Emma fumbled through her purse for her cell phone, but just as she was about to speed-dial her husband's number, she saw something, in the corner of her eye, something that made her hand still, her whole body alert.

At the opposite end of the corridor, the basement door was unusually opened, and a lamp was burning bright at the bottom of the stairs.

Emma could count the time that she'd been to the basement on the fingers of one hand. It just wasn't a room they made much use of, never even stored anything of importance there. Why would Adam have gone down there? Why would he have left the light on? It just wasn't like him, showing negligence.

"Adam?" Emma called.

Startled at the fear in her voice. You can't deny what the body betrays. She was afraid, in her own house, calling for her own husband.

No answer came. Instead, there was a muffled groan. It made Emma think of a wounded animal but human.

"Jesus," she breathed, making her way towards the light, slowing inevitably as she reached the staircase. "What's the matter with you?" Saying the words out loud to break the overwhelming spell of silence. "There's no one down there. He just forgot to switch the light off. People forget."

But the sound of her voice didn't sound reassuring, was outweighed by the sudden ominousness of the house. It's like it's alive, she thought, but it's not my friend. The house, actually, no longer felt hers

(it was never hers)

but Adam's. This should have felt reassuring, but it didn't, of course.

Slowly, one footstep after the other, Emma climbed down the stairs to the basement. All the time, confusion ruled, and she alternately couldn't understand why she was going down there, why she was afraid and why she hadn't started being afraid long ago.

Suddenly – amusing enough that it should feel so sudden, when Emma's descent seemed to have lasted ages – Emma was standing at the bottom of the stairs, and what she saw punched the air out of her lungs. Somehow, she'd known something terrible was waiting for her here and yet it must have been on an unconscious level, because things couldn't really change, because after all she was happily married and tonight was a night like any other.

Except it was not.

In front of Emma was a man – not a man, a prisoner – because his hands and feet were tied to the chair he'd been made to sit in, thick inches of rope that looked a little like snakes.

"Oh God," someone said, a woman's voice, probably her own. "Oh my God."

A layer of silver tape covered his mouth. Blood trickled from his left eyebrow, he looked roughed up but not seriously injured. Distress in his eyes, a stranger's eyes, trying to communicate, and Emma knew she ought to listen. But right now, the man wasn't a man, just some terrible ungraspable thing that had happened to her, shattered the screen between her world and the truth. He was the sky that had fallen on her head.

How long, before she was able to move, to think – who could tell? There are moments when time loses all meaning.

She made her way to the chair and ripped the tape from his mouth still without really thinking. It seemed like the thing to do. The chair he was sitting in had been brought down from the dining room – Emma had always liked those chairs, so beautifully old-fashioned, the sort you would have found in an enchanted castle.

I'm dreaming, she thought.

Then the man started speaking, exhaling as if he hadn't breathed in months, filling the room with the proof of his existence, and she knew she was not.

"Thank heaven. I thought for sure I'd die in here. I don't mean to rush you, love, but do you think you could untie me? He could be back any minute."

Emma stared, could do nothing but stare, couldn't fully convince herself the man before her was real. For starters, you could tell he didn't belong in Storybrooke. There was something altogether too rugged about him for him to have been bred in this town. He had a foreign air to him; it wasn't just the accent. Everything from the way he was dressed to the lively spirit you caught glimpses of on his face, the twitch in his mouth, the way his eyes moved, felt like a vivid opposition to the domestic sphere he had so brutally intruded. Undomesticated. He made Emma think of the sea, for some reason – maybe just because it would have been just as absurd to discover it was hiding inside her basement.

"Who are you?" She asked.

"All in good time," he promised. Was trying to smile, to look charming, as if he might coax her into letting him go. "I've got nothing to hide, you got my word on that. But I'm sure you realize we haven't got all day. I suggest we both get out of here before he gets back."

"Who?"

"Rumpelstiltskin, of course."

Emma wanted to speak, but it felt like what would come out of her mouth would be insubstantial and absurd, like soap bubbles. A prisoner bleeding in my basement, talking to me about fairytale creatures.

The stranger looked extensively at her, the blue eyes lingering especially on her face and on her wedding ring – it was a ruby, unusually enough. Adam enjoyed defying the norm – red's the color of lust, dearie. Let's not go with what's expected – let's be more honest than that, shall we?

Honest, Emma thought.

The man smiled at her, a smile that was indefinable, not charm, not games and not sympathy but something that might have inspired all three.

"Mrs. Gold, are you?" He said. "And I'll bet you don't know, don't have the first idea, who your husband is."

Sighing. Looking uncompromisingly at her. His voice didn't seem to come from his body but somewhere far away from here, a place whose depths went beyond Emma's understanding.

"I'm sorry," he didn't sound sorry but made an effort to look it. "This is a shock to you, but I don't have time to explain – you need to untie me so we can get out of here."

Practical thoughts made it easier to keep it together. Crouching to the man's height, she started tugging at the ropes around his wrists. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled to the elbow and she shuddered at the touch of warm skin, the pelt of black hairs on his forearms. Sudden apprehension rocketed her heartbeat, at the thought of touching another man than her husband in his own house. How ridiculous. Honey, I swear, this isn't what it looks like. And what did this look like, anyway, her struggling with the ties of a complete stranger?

Maybe the man was full of lies. Maybe he'd broken into their home and Adam had restrained him before going to the police. Maybe –

"No, you're not going to go anywhere like that," he interrupted. She'd managed to loosen the ties a little, but there had to be a quicker option. "Why don't you go get a knife upstairs?"

The reflection in his eyes was a miniature of Emma's face, different from how she'd ever seen it. She looked like a fearful cat with all its hairs standing on end, faced with something it doesn't have the means to identify. Enemy or friend? The stranger, her husband. If one was the latter than the other was necessarily the former.

"Oh, you can trust me, love," he sighed. "I'm not the dangerous kind."

She didn't believe that for a minute. But it was plausible to think he wouldn't try to hurt her, was just looking to save his neck – and anyway, what else was she supposed to do, let him rot?

"I'll go," she said, moving back to better appraise the stranger, smiling at her even from his predicament. "When I get back, I want you to tell me who you are and what you're doing here."

"Fair enough." He agreed.

…

Climbing back upstairs, returning to a more familiar environment somehow made Emma feel even curiouser. To find a man tied up in your basement isn't exactly everyday material, but at least the basement was unknown ground, even had the uncanny eeriness of nightmares – as all basements do. Upstairs, the world as Emma knew it reemerged, but bathed in this same dream-texture of danger, so everything she knew was reinvented. Like looking into a face you know by heart and suddenly find a mere change in the features – say, a wicked smile – can transform it beyond recognition.

Fitting she should have this thought in mind, when she stepped inside the kitchen. Padding the floor as noiselessly as she could and not even switching on the lights, as if the house would wake up and betray her – the chandelier falling from the ceiling and pinning her to the ground until the master of the house came home to find and punish her.

This isn't really happening. Of course, it was, but Emma couldn't imagine the night would have real consequences.

Though the room was dark, the huge window pane opening on their garden and a moonlit sky enabled Emma to make her way to the right drawer and comfortably fumble for a knife – she was thinking, big or small, and should I take just one, in case the prisoner tries to take it from me?

Something else she might have seen through the window, if she had looked, was her husband's car, parked next to hers.

"Looking for something, dear?"

Emma started, clasped a hand to her breast, turning round to find her husband standing by the doorframe.

She hadn't heard him walk in, hadn't heard his key in the lock – but then, she wasn't sure she'd locked the door behind her and Adam was always very good at surprising people. Moving himself in utter silence, like a cat that's somewhere one second and gone the next.

Her husband didn't look different from when she'd last seen him. It was the same long silver-brown hair framing his face, the same elegance in his arched brows, the same paradox of playfulness and patience in his eyes.

Yet her heart hammered in her chest with senseless terror. I'm afraid of my husband. She waited for the words to feel absurd and for the fear to vanish but they never did.

"I was –" Emma started.

"Early." You couldn't tell, from the look in his eyes, whether he was pleased (yet again, you could never tell most of the time and Adam Gold was a very difficult man to please). "I wasn't expecting you until another few days."

Swallowing the lump in her throat. Casualness was the last thing that might save her. He doesn't have to know I went down to the basement. "I wanted it to be a surprise," she smiled, pretended there was no irony in such a statement.

Adam gave the kitchen a look of appraisal. "Why didn't you switch on the lights?"

Good question indeed. Why, why, why?

A chuckle left her husband's lips. Strange, that his smile was not really different from usual, that he'd looked exactly like this when he'd kissed her goodbye a week ago or asked for her hand in marriage.

"Ah, never mind that." He resumed. "Come closer then – that I might give you a proper greeting."

But Emma didn't move, felt her bones freeze inside her body. He wants to get me away from the drawer.

Adam looked fixedly at her for a few seconds, and they were cold, fatal seconds. Merciless in his decisions as ever. Right now, Emma needed to believe she'd never known his mercilessness, had never had an occasion to witness it, but something in her gut knew she was wrong; there'd been clues. But there was no time to call herself a fool.

"Oh, dearie," he sighed. "You look like you've seen something you shouldn't have. Tell me, did the light draw you in? You were always too much like a butterfly, attracted to shiny things, going places that are best left alone. Curiosity killed the cat, Emma dear. There's a reason why people say that."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You wouldn't look at me like that if you didn't."

No, probably not.

In fact, Emma realized her eyes were wide with apprehension, her mind wild with horrific visions. Any minute now, Adam Gold would zip out of his husband suit and he'd reveal himself as the monster that had always lurked behind his tame marital affection. He'd look like a grinning goblin, something horrible.

Why were people so cautious to please him around town? Why did they stand up when he entered a room? Not because they respected him. Because they feared him.

Hadn't she always known this, in the back of her mind?

"I am sorry, dearie," he said. Took only one step closer, offering his face to the moonlight that gave him a spectral halo through the window. He looked like a being made of midnight-black. "You were never meant to look behind that door, to know who I was beyond our private life – I assure you. This isn't what I wanted. You were going to stay at my side as I grew old, bear me a few children."

"No."

"Don't fight this," speaking softly, intent on sparing her unnecessary suffering.

Before there was time for resistance, he was leaning into her, stroking the side of her face with his fingers. It wasn't cold or frightful like the touch of Death. Just her husband.

"People will say men like me are incapable of love," he said, "but that's only lazy thinking. I did love you, darling. You should know this, right in this instant. I never loved anything more dearly. It's only that people must believe love is unconquerable, surpasses all other ambitions. I had better plans for us. But I'm sorry to say, Emma," to his credit, the look in his eyes did look rueful, "I have even greater plans for myself."

There were no more words then, but the thick substance of nothingness that followed didn't feel exactly like silence. Adam's hand lowered from her cheek and maybe you could say that he was going for her throat.

No time to know for certain.

Soon – Emma blinked in surprise at the sound – there came a sudden, almost funny-sounding bang, hollow and shrill, an act of betrayal against their grave and grieving silence.

Trying to inhale through your stun-open mouth but finding no air. Blinking again, as if it would take her away from this terrible dimension in which her husband had wanted to murder her and life-as-she-knew-it was right around the corner.

Like a stuffed puppet, Adam Gold collapsed on the ground and behind him was the erect, smiling stranger.

"You're welcome, love."

Emma looked down, didn't feel grateful. The man had used a metal vase to knock out her husband – she remembered being bemused that it hadn't broke, that the vase just lay pathetic on the floor with its scattered roses and the rigid, lifeless-looking figure of the man whose bed she'd shared for six years.

"Is he dead?" The lack of emotion in her voice shocked her.

"Oh, I'd say not."

A few seconds, gazing at scene on the ground, the unusualness of seeing Adam in a powerless position, lying amidst the red flowers he'd bought for her last week and which were beginning to fade – everything he bought her was always red.

"I don't feel anything," she said.

"That's all right." Absently, she noticed the patience in his voice, accepting this moment for what it was, giving her time to gather herself into something whole after the identity she'd built for most of her adult life had shattered.

Those pieces never fit exactly as they did, you know. Once you've picked up all of the small bits you could find, they never form the same image again. Never.

"When you're ready, love."

Emma turned to the man. Standing, he looked much taller than she'd expected, calmer than when he'd been in the basement. "How did you get out of that chair?" She asked.

"Oh, you'd loosened the ropes enough that it could be done. When I realized you weren't getting down, heard voices upstairs, I thought it was high time I got you some assistance."

"You could have just run and left me there," she said this matter-of-factly, gratefulness still out of reach.

"What, when you'd gone through all that trouble already? No, Mrs. Gold – I'm a man of honor. Well," he conceded with a twinkle, "let's say a thief of honor. Now, I'm afraid we need to get out of here – it's best we're out of reach by the time your husband wakes up."

"You can run. I'll go to the police."

Now, the stranger chuckled. "Oh, you really don't know what you just got yourself into, did you? Your husband owns the police, Mrs. Gold. You go to them, you'll be dead within the hour."

A shudder crawled down her spine. "Emma," she said. Could no longer bear to hear the title she'd taken pride in.

"Emma," he repeated. She could hear the haste now, in his voice, though he'd been patient enough to mask it. "I'll talk you through the details, I swear, but there's simply no time to argue. If we don't get out of this house soon, we'll both be good as dead – you must trust me."

"Trust you?" A chuckle of outrage on her lips. What does trust mean, when your husband has tried to kill you, when you realize you've never seen his real face in the nude?

Seriousness gave the stranger's eyes a darker tinge. "Cruel as it may sound, Emma. I have no reason to betray you. Because out there," glancing out the window, at the woods surrounding the house, "the only thing you and I will have to rely on is you and I."

No fear in Emma's chest. No room for emotion at all, tonight – strangely enough. The first second of rest I get, she thought, I'm going to cry and cry and cry. But she was wrong.

"If I'm going to follow you," she said, a complete stranger, "I'm going to want to know your name."

The smile on his lips looked wicked in its own way, but warmer than her husband's – human enough that there was room for playfulness, passion. "You can call me Jones," he said.

It was a decent start. Anyway, it was the start they got.

And so Emma followed the stranger outside, into the darkness – what other choice did she have, would you have done anything else? Well, maybe. As she is being judged for her actions, giving her account of what happened to her and Killian Jones, after they fled her husband's house, she realizes it doesn't matter, what the law thinks.

Emma knows what justice is.

And though her life's crammed full of regrets, becoming a fugitive alongside that man she barely knew isn't one of them.

She looks into the face of her jury and says without shame, "I'd go with him again, if faced with that same decision. I'd go without a second thought. I'd go to the end of the world."