Mr. Gold leaned casually inside the doorframe of his pawnshop, cane hooked into the crook of one arm. He didn't move, but his smile grew feral as he watched the approach of one Ruby Lucas, heels clicking tentatively on the sidewalk. She stopped just out of his reach.
"Good morning, dearie." Gold eyed today's ensemble: black lace tank, flimsy red scarf, red mini skirt that squeaked when she leaned into her red, red heels. The wolf girl sure did like dressing herself in blood.
"You have something for me, don't you?"
Wordlessly she produced a diner bag and a disposable cup of coffee, still steaming. Ruby held them out and, when he wagged a finger at her, reluctantly moved forward. Mr. Gold waited until her arm actually passed the barrier between street and pawnshop before snatching it all from her hands. He peered into the bag—one bagel with cream cheese and strips of lox. Good.
"Thank you, dearie. I expect you back at 5:00 sharp to pick up my trash. Do give granny my best."
Ruby glared ferociously and Gold liked to imagine that a little bit of yellow seeped into her irises. With a growl she spun on her heels, stalking back the way she'd come. Gold watched her leather clad ass indifferently.
"Good day to you too," he called.
It really was an excellent deal. Widow Lucas provided him with breakfast every morning, did his grocery shopping every Sunday, and made trips to Storybrooke's smaller markets for specialty items twice each month. In exchange, she was given a lowered rent on her precious diner and the promise that when she had the funds she could buy the building from him, no strings attached. The only one who didn't seem to appreciate their deal was his little errand wolf. The younger Ms. Lucas always kept her distance, nose wrinkling like she smelled something dangerous.
Gold smiled. She probably did.
He didn't bother sitting down, just pulled his breakfast out and set the coffee on the
table under the window. Gold liked to watch Storybrooke come alive as he ate, its residents coming and going with a monotony that was more than a little disturbing. For a town that was populated with some of the most meddlesome and foolhardy people he'd ever had the misfortune of meeting, they sure didn't do much.
After the wolf girl, Snow drove by on her way to Storybrooke Elementary. Exactly a minute after that, one of the dwarfs—Sneezy, that much was obvious—headed in the opposite direction, towards the convenience story. Geppetto would stroll by once Sneezy reached the stop sign, always whistling and always carrying a selection of tools. By the time Gold had downed half his coffee the cricket was passing his shop, that spotted mutt of his pulling him along. Jiminy always ran a little faster when he spotted Gold, even though he'd never so much as taken a threatening step near him.
Gold hadn't left the shop at all. Not once in three years.
He growled, resisting the urge to turn around and smash a few unfortunate antiques. It might be worth it, just to call the wolf girl back and make her clean it all up. But no, his routine wasn't through just yet.
Gold popped the rest of the bagel into his mouth, catching a glimpse of the Blue Fairy down a ways. She was the last of them. It should be any second now. Doctor Frankenstein had already come and gone, his familiar early morning bottle glinting through the windshield. There wasn't anyone else who passed this way and the oriental clock to his left had already begun to chime: 8:00 am. Gold frowned. This wasn't right. Where the hell was—?
There.
He eagerly leaned forward, right on the balls of his feet. With a hand planted on either side of the door Gold balanced himself, as far out as possible without actually crossing the line. He could see her, just across the street, rolling her own cup of coffee between her hands.
He smiled, joy and disbelief filling him.
Leave it to Belle to be nearly late in a town that never changed.
She was definitely in a hurry. Tossing her cup at the nearest trashcan—terrible aim, dearie—she frantically stuck pins in her hair, trying to tame it as she ran. Belle was wearing her green dress today, the one with the gold trim. In his weaker moments, Gold liked to pretend that it was woven with some of hisgold, that a little of his spinning had found its way over from their world. As he watched, Belle smoothed the rest of her curls over her shoulder and pulled a book from the satchel at her side. She had her nose halfway down the page as she rounded the corner.
Then she was gone. Off to the library.
Gold sighed, leaning back and rubbing at his leg. That, at least, would truly never change. Belle was Storybrooke's perfect little librarian, as enamored with her books now as she had been when she'd browsed his own collection, back in the Dark Castle. Now she spent her days catering to Snow's brats and the nuns' book club, but come 6:15 she'd be right there again, walking parallel to his shop on her way home to her father.
Gold grimaced. Even thinking the name "Maurice" left a bad taste in his mouth. A pity, given how good Widow Lucas's coffee was this morning. He took another long drink, gaze focused to the south where he knew that three blocks down there was a tiny flower shop.
Sir Maurice. Or rather, Moe French as he was called here, the simple father of Storybrooke's lovely Belle. Gold hissed against the Styrofoam, his lips curling in disgust. It didn't matter that Regina had lied about Belle's passing, or that there had never been any clerics flaying her perfect skin; he still despised that pathetic lord turned florist. Any father who drove his business into the ground and expected his daughter to pick up the pieces was no true father at all. Really, he should have seen it back in Avonlea. How dare he? What fool of a man let his greatest treasure walk away in the hands of a monster? At first Gold had thought Maurice gave in out of respect for his daughter's decision, but now he knew it was only fear; the crippling need to be free of the ogres. Gold grinned humorlessly. Oh yes, he recognized cowardice when he saw it, but he could never condone it. The man should have taken up a sword against him that day, deal or no deal.
Yet if he had, Gold knew would have never had Belle.
With another grimace he turned back inside. There was nothing else out there worth looking at.
Passing through the curtain that separated the shop from the back, Gold settled at the table dominating the room. It was cluttered beyond all hope of organization from a hundred knick-knacks; some that needed cleaning and others that needed repair. The only other furniture in the room was a simple bed and a door that lead to a cupboard-sized bathroom, housing only a toilet and a shower he barely fit into. Looking around, Gold gave an exaggerated flourish of welcome to an invisible audience, with a muttered, "Welcome home!" Really, this was as far from a 'home' as anything could get, merely a space with the bare necessities that Regina had been oh so kind to provide him with. The loneliness aside, Gold would take his Dark Castle over this hovel any day. At least a castle had more than two rooms.
Viciously he plucked up a Geneva drive, one of the many gears belonging to a delicate little clock he was trying to get up and running. Gold twirled it between his fingers, wondering idly how it would look cutting into the throat of one Regina Mills. He did sometimes ponder, given the choice of only having one, who he would choose to kill: Regina or Maurice. Probably Regina. After all, though bearing his own sins, Maurice had never dared to outsmart him.
"You always were an apt pupil, weren't you, dearie?" he muttered to the cog. "Always going above and beyond. I'll admit it! I should have been far more specific in our dealings. How very remiss of me."
It was true. He'd underestimated how much control Regina was able to maintain while casting the curse. After all, her frantic expedition down to his cage hadn't exactly inspired confidence. How was he to know that she'd succeed in pulling a few strings? The condition of a wealthy existence and an added "please" getting him whatever he wanted from her had seemed like more than enough. Besides, he'd thought, what could she possibly do to him in a land without magic?
Except there wasmagic. Just a little.
With a curse Gold threw the cog down, too angry for the work. Feeling drawn to a bit of self-mockery he limped back into the shop, stopping at the front door. Slowly, with an almost scientific curiosity, he extended his hand until it just passed the threshold—
—and hissed at the bite of magic; stumbling back. His bad leg took more weight than it was prepared for and nearly buckled, his breakfast table the only thing saving him from a nasty fall. As if his situation weren't bad enough, this godforsaken world had decided to cripple him again too.
Gold absently shook his injured hand, watching as the purple smoke evaporated. It looked at bit like he'd been burned—his skin reddened around the nails and knuckles—but he knew, if he showed it to anyone else, that they would see nothing.
Oh yes, Regina had found magic. Maybe she'd brought it over from their world, maybe she'd discovered a bit hidden here. It didn't matter.The would-be queen had just enough power for one spell and she'd used it on him, trapping him in this pitiful excuse of a shop. Out from one cage and into another. She really was smarter than she looked.
Gold had nearly killed himself that first day, before he knew that magic held him here. He'd appeared with the rest of Storybrooke in an instant, as he now knew, but at the time it had merely felt like another typical day in an otherwise mundane life, one that he couldn't be bothered to examine too closely. Gold had been polishing some of his merchandise when he just happened to look up and out the window. It being 8:00am, he saw her.
Belle. Hurrying to work just like she had this morning. Of course, Gold hadn't understood his fascination with her then. He knew from the curses' memories that she was Belle French, daughter of the florist and town librarian, but he didn't know her.Not then anyway. Nevertheless, she was beautiful and Mr. Gold of Storybrooke was a collector of beautiful things. All at once he wanted to meet her, some buried part of him recognizing Belle. Gold had stood, deciding that today would be an excellent day to visit the library. He'd put down his tools, grabbed the closed sign, hurried through the door—
—and was promptly thrown back so violently that he slammed into the far counter, knocking himself out.
When he'd awoken, Gold not only had a splitting headache and a horribly bruised back, but also two sets of memories to sort through. It wasn't entirely surprising that the curse's hold on him had broken. After all, his interest in Belle told him it had been tenuous to begin with—no doubt a result of his own magic—and it was a bit hard to remain a simple pawnbroker who didn't believe in such things when there was a goddamn magical barrier surrounding your shop. It hadn't taken him long to piece it all together: who he was, who he was supposed tothinkhe was, the curse, his little 'apartment' in the back, the fact that anyone could come in but he couldn't get out…
The fact that Belle was alive, right there and he couldn't get to her.
After that, Gold had promptly destroyed half his wares.
"This is indeed hell," he muttered, recalling the satisfying feeling of smashing object after object with his cane. "The final twist of the knife, eh? I'm so sorry, love."
He'd done everything he could to get out of course, to get back to her, but Gold had none of his own magic available to him. It quickly became clear that he couldn't knock anyone else out of their cursed states (he'd tried, doing everything he could to enrage the wolf girl each full moon) and it was equally impossible to convince them that magic existed. After that first day, Gold had made a quick call to Sheriff Graham, "requesting" access to the security camera across the street. Instead of being thrown like a rag doll from Regina's spell, the footage showed him approaching the door… and then edging away, running like a skittish colt with his whole frame trembling.
Apparently, Mr. Gold of Storybrooke had always been terribly agoraphobic.
"You do have a sense of humor, don't you, dearie?" Gold threw his pocket change at the doorway, sneering when it passed through harmlessly. "No happy endings you said and my my, you kept that promise! I can see but can't touch, is that it? And of course, Belle hasn't a clue. She doesn't know, she doesn't care! You just thought this through wonderfully, Regina. Oh well done."
By the time he'd well and truly resigned himself to being stuck, Gold had watched Belle pass his shop twice a day for three months, never deviating in her routine. It had occurred to him that he could just shout out to her… but nothing good could come from that. Here, they weren't even acquaintances. Here, Gold was the town pariah, the strange recluse who made paupers of them all and who hadn't onceleft his shop. So what did young, beautiful women do when they heard monsters shouting at them from their lair?
"They run," Gold whispered. His last coin flew through the barrier and landed with a clack in the street.
He wouldn't be able to take it. He'd break. What if he called to her and she panicked, looking for safety in the arms of another man? Worse yet, what if she decided to take another route to work? No. Gold knew he couldn't risk the little bit of Belle he still had. So for now he'd watch and wait, biding his time until little Emma showed up to save them all.
"Three years down," he muttered, easing onto the table. "Only twenty-five more to go."
Gold knew he wouldn't be getting any work done today, not when his thoughts had already taken such a dark turn. He'd practice waiting instead—wait for 6:15 to roll around, when Belle would rush by and he'd get another wonderful, fleeting glimpse.
Seated as comfortably as possible given his leg, Gold settled in. What he couldn't know was that for the first time in three years Belle wouldn't be passing his shop at 6:15. Stuck inside as he was, Gold hadn't a clue that on this particular day, Belle never even made it to the library.