Chapter 7
A/N. Thank you for the reviews, everybody! As you may have noticed, I am inspired and influenced by them. I did go back to earlier chapters to add some lines, to try to make it clearer that although the group had differing reasons for the expulsion, the one they all agreed upon, and the deciding factor, was Henry's protection. That's why Regina wasn't exiled. But perhaps Emma's role as savior isn't over yet.
"Good morning. Coffee?"
Hook sets a cup before her as Regina nods dully and drops into her chair at the head of the dining table. He's already doctored the coffee for her; he knows just how she likes it. He lifts the silver cover from the china plate he has waiting at her seat: this morning he's prepared kippers, eggs benedict and fruit cocktail.
"I can't eat all this," she complains, as she always does, but she unfolds her napkin and spreads it across her lap.
He sits down at her right. His place is empty; he's already eaten and tidied up. After two years of soft living, he's still an early riser and a bit of a neat freak, a leftover from a lifetime of living in cramped quarters. Regina is neither of those things, but she's still clever and stylish and lovely, a passionate and imaginative lover, and dark as night, so he gravitates toward her. It's not love; it's an alliance of body and mind. Besides, her house is so much more spacious than his apartment above the Rabbit Hole.
Sometimes he thinks he can see a future with her. Other times, he thinks he can't see a future.
She's polished off the kippers and is attacking the eggs benedict with abandon. "I've got a meeting at nine," she says.
He nods. He's not due in to work until ten, but he'll drive in to the studio with her. "Did you have a good time last night?"
She winks at him. "And again this morning."
"You didn't sleep well," he criticizes. "You thrashed about like an ogre was at your throat."
"Dreaming."
"A nightmare, I take it."
"No, in fact, the opposite. It excited me."
He grins. "Dreaming of me, love?"
She starts to sniff, then changes her mind. "As a matter of fact, you were in it. We sailed back to Neverland and found the Dark One's dagger."
He leans forward on his elbows. "And then what?"
"And then," she waves her fork, "I was the most powerful being the world has ever known."
"Regina," he sighs, "look at all you have here. Will you never be satisfied?"
Back in the old days, in the Dark Castle, after she stopped fearing him, Belle would make up excuses to touch her employer–briefly and innocently, because she was a maiden and he was the master of the castle–but touch him nontheless, in silent, subconscious encouragement to trust her and to open up. After three hundred years alone, human touch was foreign and disturbing to him for a very long time, but gradually he stopped flinching.
Now it's Rumple's turn. He need not be sneaky about it; she welcomes the small, everyday touches–the brush of his hand against hers as he gives her something, the resting of his hand on her back as they walk–as readily as she does the intimate ones they share at night. But he finds excuses just the same, to reassure himself without admitting it, she suspects, that she's really here. That he hasn't lost her.
She's come to understand this about him: he doesn't trust words, especially his own, so this is how he talks when the topic is most difficult: through his hands. And if no one is listening, his hands communicate through the spinning wheel.
She worries when she notices he hasn't built a spinning wheel in Neverland. The absence of a wheel informs her just how isolated he's been, that he stopped communicating even with the wheel.
"Mr. Cassidy?"
Bae stops pounding the base of the ketchup bottle long enough to glance at the man standing over his booth. "Yeah, that's me."
The man's in a business suit—tailored, but not of the same class as the ones Bae's father used to wear (Bae wonders briefly what his father does wear these days: it's not as though there's a Men's Wearhouse on the island). His hair is shoulder-length, like Rumple's. He presents Bae with a business card, but Bae tries to wave it away. "Thanks, but I'm not in the market for real estate or life insurance or funeral plans."
The man chuckles. "None of the above, Mr. Cassidy. I'm a banker. Before you think I'm trying to sell you a personal investment plan, let me tell you, I manage your father's accounts."
"Oh." Bae sets the ketchup bottle down. He casts a longing look at his scrambled eggs: oh well, Granny won't object to reheating them. "You want to sit down, Mr. . . ?"
"Dale. Thanks, but I've got a board meeting in fifteen; I just popped in for a bagel." He shows Bae the sack he's carrying. "But I would like to meet with you sometime this week. The bank needs to know what you'd like us to do with those accounts. And then there's the properties your father rents—rented—out; with him gone, the tenants don't know where to make their payments. You see, he always collected the rent himself. Kept meticulous records, accurate to the penny. He seems—seemed—to take great pride in his recordkeeping. Anyway, so we ought to talk about his extensive holdings; they're all yours now."
"What?" Bae chokes.
"Oh." Dale raises an eyebrow. "He didn't tell you. I suppose there wasn't time. So much happening all at once. Anyway, all of his accounts and his property have three co-owners listed: him, of course, Ms. French, and you. Ms. French came to see me before she left, to inform me that she wouldn't be coming back. She signed everything over to you." Dale opens his briefcase and extracts a white envelope. "She left this for you."
"All mine." Bae says, his voice bitter. He accepts the envelope.
"All one-point-two-five billion dollars' worth." Dale lays his business card beside Bae's coffee cup. "To do with as you like."
"No foolin'?"
"No foolin'. You can leave it alone, let it grow as it has been: I can hire people to manage the rental properties and run the pawnshop for you; I can manage the accounts. Or you can liquidate any or all of it. Of course, since no one in the outside world can get into Storybrooke, and no one here has that kind of money. . . ."
Bae grins slyly. "Or I could give it all away to charity, in my father's name."
Dale looks shocked. "That would have him rolling over in his—oh. Sorry. I didn't mean that."
"Yeah, well, I guess for all financial purposes, and pretty much everything else, he is in his grave, isn't he?" Bae stabs his fork at his eggs.
Dale clears his throat. "Again, I'm sorry; I didn't mean to suggest that at all. But give me a call when you're ready to go over the specifics. We really do need you to make some decisions soon; it's too much money to ignore. Have a good day, Mr. Cassidy."
Ruby comes by with the coffee pot as Dale leaves. "So what did Alan want?"
"You know him, then?"
"Sure. Small town."
"Seems I've inherited my dad's money." Bae mumbles into his coffee cup, "Baby, you're a rich man."
"Oh." Ruby purses her lips. "I'm sorry." She walks off with his plate before he can ask what she means. As he waits for his eggs, he slides his bread knife into the envelope and tears the seam.
The handwriting in the letter is elegant; the spelling, archaic. "Dear Baelfire." Belle was the only one in Storybrooke who refused to call him Neal. Even his father had made an effort to remember the new name. "I have no explanation for what your father did, or didn't do, the day this town was attacked. I've tried and tried to make sense of it, but I can't. But I pray that you will understand that in this land and our old one, no one and nothing means more to your father than you, and I'm sure he would have felt the same about Henry. I believe he feels that way about me too.
"Everyone—and I'm afraid you, too—thinks he cared only about power. The truth of it is that, in the old land, he saw magic as the only way to protect you, and that's why he pursued it and clung to it, and in this land, he thought only magic would enable him to find you again. That doesn't justify the horrible things he did, but please remember it whenever you feel anger against him, or shame for being his son, rising up in you.
"What he told you he tried to do to Henry is so horrendous and shocking that I understand why you and the others thought he had to be banished. You will probably think I'm crazy—you won't be the first to say that—but I've seen the love that's in his heart and I don't believe he could have hurt Henry. I don't believe it. I understand, however, how you do. Perhaps none of us, not even your father, will never know the truth.
"I'm not going to ask you if you can forgive him. You'll ask yourself that question over and over for the rest of your life, I'm sure, and maybe every time, the answer will be different. But I will ask you to remember that he loved you from the first moment of your existence, and that love never wavered.
"I wish I could have gotten to know you, Baelfire. I hope you find love and happiness.
Belle."
Bae folds the letter and slides it into his jacket. He decides that after breakfast he'll visit the sheriff's office, ask Emma out for tonight. She's always able to make him laugh and he needs that right now. Probably, she could use it, too.
Belle's voice is thick and scratchy as she strolls into the kitchen, bids him good morning and pours herself a cup.
He's at the stove, setting a skillet on the flames to heat. "Seagull eggs and boar bacon for breakfast. Acquired tastes, but–" he conjures a bottle of ketchup, making her laugh.
She draws the lace curtain aside and looks out onto the day, then frowns. "What time is it?"
"Not a relatable question here, sweetheart. For each forward motion of the clock, there's a backward motion." He comes up behind her to encircle her waist. "But if you're wondering how long you slept, yes, a long time."
"And well." She turns in his arms and slides her hands up his chest to his unevenly cut hair. "I didn't wake once." She doesn't mention her recurring nightmare: no need; it's gone now. She examines him. "And you?"
He nods. "Well."
The hatchet job he's done at the nape of his neck reminds her how long he's been alone, and she feels so sorry for him. "I'll cut your hair for you today."
"Thank you, sweetheart."
"Rumple, the haircut, the food, your clothes, sleeping on the ground—why have you been living so rough? Why didn't you use your magic to make yourself comfortable?"
He turns his back to her, presumably to drop bacon into the skillet, but she suspects it's also to hide his face from her. His shoulders rise and fall once in a shrug. "I avoided using magic, until yesterday. I thought if I. . . separated from it, I might. . . find myself again."
She asks gently, "Did it help?"
"I'm not sure." He leans on the counter a moment, as though suddenly tired, then resumes his cooking. "I think a person defines himself in context."
"In context," she echoes. "You mean, with other people."
Belle now feels a little guilty for having urged him to break his sobriety from magic. She runs her fingertip along the rim of her coffee cup as she looks around the lovely cottage: it and everything in it, including the coffee she's drinking and the robe she's wearing, he produced with magic, for her sake. In Storybrooke, she knows from her conversations with Leroy that even a little backsliding can be a dangerous thing for an addict—and she's wondered at times if her beloved suffers from this affliction. "Rumple, would you prefer to continue to refrain from using magic? Do you feel better, healthier, without it?"
He considers the question as he forks up the bacon from the skillet. After a long silence, he answers, "Truthfully, no. Without magic, everything moves slower. Colors fade. Sounds lose their edges. Textures roughen. And I feel older, much older." He leans on his hands for a moment before looking over his shoulder at her. "It isn't the magic that's the problem, Belle. It's how I respond to other people. I was at my worst when I felt threatened. I've had no threats here, other than a few pesky mosquitoes, so the monster has remained dormant. I haven't fooled myself into thinking it's gone."
He suddenly smiles and plucks an egg from a basket. "One egg?" He balances it on the tip of his index finger and makes it spin, like a basketball player spinning a basketball, then conjures a second egg and spins it on the index finger of his other hand. "Or two, my dear?"
Later, they will talk more of his absention from magic, but he's cluing her in that he needs warmth and humor right now, so she permits him to lighten the mood. She rewards him with a giggle. "One until I've acquired the taste." She sashes her robe as she watches him toss the eggs up, catch them in mid-air, then crack them simultaneously on the rim of the skillet.
"Bravo!" she applauds. "I suppose I should offer to help, but I feel so lazy." She stretches her arms and yawns.
"Be as lazy as you like. We have no schedule—couldn't if we wanted to." He whisks the eggs in a bowl, then pours them into the skillet. He shows her what he scavenged from the jungle this morning. "Wild onions. They're strong, so I'll go easy on them. I've gotten used to them."
His comment reminds her how long he's been here. "Almost two years," she remarks; she doesn't have to explain what she means. "What do you miss most, Rumple? Besides people."
A stiffening of his back warns her to steer clear of mention of the people. He's quiet a while, busy chopping onion. "My shop, I suppose. But not so much the things in it." He gives her a small smile over his shoulder. "You'll be happy to hear I found my affection for things has dimmed. I miss standing at the counter and looking out into the street in the afternoons, when school let out. The town really came alive then." He pauses. "I miss things that never were. I would've liked for my shop to be the one the kids popped into on their way home, the one with comic books and gumball machines. The one they came to on the last day of summer to buy their school supplies. The one they came to in February to buy their Valentines and those little conversation hearts." He sprinkles the onion onto the eggs.
"You wanted a store like Clark's."
His smile grows rueful. "His was one of the parts I used to fantasize about playing. Minus the allergies. I also wanted to be Prince Charming and dash about on a white horse, to the admiration of men and the sighs of ladies."
She suggests, "Couldn't magic have made you whatever you wanted to be?"
"Magic can do much, but a boar's ear transmuted into a silk purse is still, fundamentally, a boar's ear." He folds the omelettes over. "And you, sweet one? What part would you have liked to have played?"
She shudders. "Not Lacey, that's for sure. I'm still embarrassed when I walk past the Rabbit Hole, wondering what they think of me."
"They know you were cursed." He slides an omelette onto a plate and adds strips of bacon.
Belle accepts the plate and bites into a strip of bacon. "Was she as awful as I remember? She pushed you to do nasty things."
"Nothing that I hadn't done before."
"You forgive her, then."
"Just as you forgive me." There's a note of amazement in the sentence.
"Our love is complicated, but stronger for it." They finish their breakfast and she rises. "I should dress. If you'll conjure me that little tartan skirt? And that black turtleneck, I think."
"I like that turtleneck." Color rises in his cheeks.
She's brought back the temptation of magic, but she's brought back other temptations too, ones that she's sure are good for him. That will be her work here: to be good for him, and to help him to be good for her.
