Disclaimer: This is a not-for-profit work of fiction, I do not claim ownership of the characters or settings in this story.

Notes: Thankyou for everyone who reviewed. I hope you guys like this one.

.


.

They had been waiting for what seemed like a long time – long enough at least for Belle to cajole him into hotdogs and soda from a nearby stand – when Emma finally returned. Alone, Mr Gold noticed. Alone, and with a cagey sort of look about her.

"Hey," she said as she approached, looking uncomfortable, "I'm sorry but… he got away."

Mr Gold exchanged a glance with his wife. Belle hastily finished the last bite of her hotdog and crumpled up her napkin. "Not like a gangster novel my ass," she said, trotting back into the apartment building in her ridiculous heels.

"Wait," Emma said, "where's she going?"

"She's finding a way into the building," Mr Gold responded, as calmly as he could under the circumstances. "And then we'll find my son."

"He's gone," Emma said, glancing back over her shoulder down the street. "Gold, there's no point. He won't be there."

"But he lives here," Mr Gold replied, "he'll be back."

"I got it!" Belle's voice sailed out from the lobby, "someone buzzed us through."

Mr Gold turned away from Emma and walked into the building. Belle stood by the door, holding it open as she waited for him. He stalked through and pressed the button for the elevator. Emma hesitated, then hastily followed before Belle could close the door behind them. The elevator opened. Mr Gold pressed the button for the fourth floor.

"I have hair pins," Belle said, rummaging through her purse, "will those do?"

"They'll do nicely, my dear," Mr Gold replied, watching the floor numbers.

"Wait," Emma said again, looking back and forth between them. "You're going to break in? You can't do that."

"Actually, I can," Mr Gold's voice was cold, "and I will." He accepted a handful of hair pins from Belle as the doors opened again, and strode out into the hall to find number four-oh-seven. The lock on the door was an old-fashioned one, a kind his Storybrooke self was familiar with. He set about picking it, methodically inserting and twisting the hair pins to trip the tumblers, stubbornly ignoring anything Emma had to say about the matter.

"You can't just break in," Emma was protesting again.

"He can," Belle told her, "he's really good at it. He used to try and tell me he didn't know how, but I always knew better."

Lacey always knew better. They may have never talked about it openly, but Lacey had always known there was more to her husband than just landlord and shop owner, or part-time solicitor. It was something Mr Gold had liked about her, the way she saw him for what he was and accepted it unconditionally.

"He might not come back," Emma said.

"Finding people is what you do, Miss Swan," Mr Gold informed her, working on the last tumbler, "I'm simply going to assist you. There may be information here. Who he is, what he does, who he loves."

"No, don't do this. There are things called laws."

Despite her protests, Mr Gold noticed that she didn't try very hard to stop him. The last tumbler clicked into place and he opened the door. The apartment was on the smallish side, lived in but clean, with a few prints hanging in frames on the wall. He spotted a desk and made a beeline for the papers strewn across it. Belle followed, tackling the desk drawers while he scanned the papers on top.

Emma, meanwhile, wandered over to the window. Mr Gold wouldn't have noticed, but he happened to turn slightly just as she stiffened oddly, reaching out for a dream catcher hanging from the window frame.

"Find something, dearie?" he commented, suspicion rearing up at the look on her face.

"Nothing," Emma said, far too quickly, making an aborted move to hide the thing behind her back before realising that would be even more suspicious. "Uh, it's a dream catcher."

"Yes, well, if it's nothing, why are you still holding it?" Mr Gold raised an eyebrow at her, waiting for a response. When she didn't reply immediately his expression hardened into granite. "You're lying to me."

"What is it?" Belle asked, turning to look at them both, abandoning her own search in favour of this confrontation.

"Just get back to looking, ok?" Emma tried on a smile, which fell rather flat.

"No no," Mr Gold took a step towards her, watching her back up closer to the window. "You saw something," he pressed, "tell me."

"You don't know what you're –" Emma began, cut off when Mr Gold growled;

"Tell me!"

"Emma," Belle said hesitantly, "if there's something you should tell us…?"

"No," Emma insisted, dropping the dream catcher like a hot brick and letting it fall to the floor, "there's nothing here. This guy's a ghost."

"You think me a fool?" Mr Gold asked, his voice dripping acid, "you're holding back. I want to know what, and why."

"I'm not holding back," Emma replied, only making it more obvious that she was.

"Did he tell you something?"

"He didn't say anything!"

"But you talked to him."

"Don't put words in my mouth –"

"Tell me!"

Belle stepped forward hurriedly, putting a hand on Mr Gold's arm before he could raise his cane even an inch from the floor. "Emma, please," she pleaded, her soft tone a jarring contrast to her husband's glare, "this is important."

"No."

"You made a deal," Belle insisted quietly, "you promised. You have a debt that you owed to us, and it looks like you've betrayed us. Emma, you betrayed a man looking for his son. I thought we were friends. I thought we could trust you."

"This isn't my fault," Emma said firmly, "when I made the deal I didn't know…" she trailed off.

"Know what?" Mr Gold pressed, eyes narrowed.

Which was when the door opened, admitting a stocky brown-haired man with Milah's eyes. All movement in the apartment stopped. Mr Gold froze, he could feel it come over himself. A wash of ice down his spine as he looked at the man in the doorway and recognised his face. Unlike with August's charade there was no room for doubt in him. This was his son. "Bae," he breathed, any anger at Emma's deception vanishing at the sight of him. "You came back."

"For her," Baelfire said, and gestured towards Emma, who stood frozen by the window, the dream catcher on the floor in front of her, "not for you. I've seen what you do to people who break deals."

He would remember the worst. He was only a child when Rumpelstiltskin had gained his curse and gone drunk on the power that came with it. Mr Gold swallowed. He straightened. "Please, Bae, just let me explain."

"I have no interest in talking to you," Baelfire replied, his cool tone of voice so like Mr Gold's could be, "you can go."

"I'm not going anywhere," Mr Gold insisted gently, "not until we speak."

"Get out of my apartment!"

The shout was sudden and unexpected. Even Emma looked uncertain. "Neal…" she said.

"Emma, I got this," Baelfire – Neal – replied.

Things snapped into place. "You two know each other," Mr Gold said aloud. It was a realisation he'd been coming to since he saw the way Emma reacted to that dream catcher. Now that he'd said it aloud it was obvious. Emma would never just let someone go for no reason. Like her parents she wasn't one to break her word lightly. "You two know each other. How?"

"You sent me chasing after him," Emma explained, the excuse weak.

Belle's hand stopped him again before he could speak. She looked back and forth between Emma and Neal. "You were in love," she said, the words sending a bolt of shock through his system. "I recognise the look," Belle continued, "you knew each other once, and you were in love."

"Who are you?" Neal demanded, eyeing her with open suspicion, especially the hand she had on Mr Gold's arm.

"I'm Belle," she replied, in her diplomat's voice, "once of Avonlea, now of Storybrooke. Previously known as Lacey Gold. Also sometimes called the Enchantress. Baelfire… Neal we've come a long way to find you. Your father isn't here to hurt you, or Emma, all he wants is a chance to talk."

"To talk," Neal repeated dryly. He glanced at Emma, then shrugged and looked back at Belle and his father. "Ok, fine. Three minutes, and then you're out."

"Three minutes," Mr Gold agreed, not about to turn down the opportunity, no matter how small a window it was.

"Clock's ticking," Neal pointed out mercilessly.

"I know I've made mistakes," Mr Gold began, brutally honest even as he chose his words for maximum effect, "but you must believe me. I want to make up for it. If I could change how things happened, I would have, in a second I would have, but I can't. All I can do is ask for a chance to make it up to you. There's no greater pain than regret."

"Try abandonment," Neal replied, unmoved.

"Try three hundred years," Belle piped up softly, a reassuring presence at Mr Gold's side. "Three hundred years of searching, looking for a way to cross between worlds and find you. You were fourteen, you can't have spent more than twenty years in this world."

A brief spark of surprise crossed Neal's face, quickly stamped out by a glare that was heavily tempered with resentment. "He still abandoned me."

"Let me make it up to you," Mr Gold said, "please."

"How are you going to do that?" Neal demanded. "I grew up alone. I grew up without a father. You can make up for that?"

"I can try. Come with us to Storybrooke. Let us get to know each other again, give me a chance to repair what I broke."

Neal hesitated, but his response made it clear he wasn't won over; "Two minutes."

"I can't make up for lost time," Mr Gold continued firmly, "I know that. All I can ask for is a chance. Bae… give me a chance, let me prove to you that I've changed. You… you once loved me."

"You were once a good man."

Too aware of Belle beside him, and Emma standing by the window pretending she wasn't there, Mr Gold knew full well that a pretty lie wouldn't help him here. He wasn't a good man. Frankly he didn't want to be a good man, not in the way that the Charmings were good. But he had changed. Everyone who had been cursed to live in Storybrooke had changed, even if they didn't yet realise it.

"I've changed," he told his son. "I came here, to this city, without magic."

"Does Storybrooke have magic?" Neal asked pointedly.

"Yes," Belle answered for him, "we needed it to leave. We couldn't cross the town border without it. Not without losing ourselves, our memories, forever."

"You chose magic over me."

Neal's eyes were on his, hurt and betrayed. Mr Gold shook his head. "No, Bae. Never. I was a coward, I panicked, and I lost you. In one second I lost everything I held dear. But it was never a choice."

That at least was true, in its way. The blue fairy had meddled, and given them a solution that would have solved all of Baelfire's problems in only the most literal sense whilst also removing the curse of the Dark One from the Enchanted Forest forever. Rumpelstiltskin had always had his theories as to which part the fairy had thought the more important, more noble cause.

And he didn't remember it as a decision. He remembered it as a vice that wound around his heart, a physical pain that shot through his body. He remembered letting go, not because he wanted to, but because something, some part of him, forced him to. It had been long before he fully realised the nature of his curse, that it would protect itself at all costs and the only way to rid himself of it would be to pass it on to someone else through death. Sometimes he wondered if the fairy knew that, but had decided it worth the cost of trying anyway.

"Every night," Neal told him, hands curling into fists by his sides to hide the way his hands trembled, "I used to dream about it. Every night I saw my hand, wrapped around yours, and every night I saw you let go. Do you know what that did to me? Do you know how much I've gone through?"

He could say yes. He could claim that he knew, because he'd had those nightmares himself for a hundred years. But that wasn't what his son wanted to hear. So he said no, shoulders sagging under the weight of it. "No," Mr Gold sighed, "no, I don't."

He moved then, walking away from Belle's reassuring hand towards the door. Neal stepped out of his way, suspicion giving way to confusion when his father didn't try to touch him and instead just walked through the door and down the hall to the elevator. Mr Gold pressed the call button and stood there, stubbornly not looking back. If he looked back the stinging in his eyes would turn to tears, and he hadn't given in to that in over a century.

.


.

Belle stood there in shock as her husband walked away, sorrow and defeat in every line of his body. This was not the way she thought things would have gone. She'd imagined they'd be awkward, yes. And painful. But she'd pictured it as the good kind of pain, the healing pain. Not…. this. The elevator pinged its arrival before she had recovered enough to react, and by the time she got out to the hall the doors were already closing. Back in the apartment Emma was apologising. Belle was not in the mood to apologise. She wasn't in the mood to play at being kind or compassionate, or to grasp for words and phrases to try and sway Neal to her way of thinking.

She was in the mood for a good stiff drink, every part of her craving a good bottle of white wine, and the very thought of that made her angry. Angry at Regina, for making her this way, angry at this world for its lack of magic, angry that they had come all this way seemingly for nothing.

She stomped back into the apartment, heels clicking dangerously, and took her handbag from her shoulder so she was holding it by the straps. Eyes narrowed, she marched straight up to Neal and hit him with it – though not as hard as she could have.

"Hey!" He reacted by jumping back and aiming a shocked glare at her. "What the hell was that for?"

"He didn't tell me for years that he had a son, because it was too painful," Belle informed him, very tempted to whack him again (she knew that was the Lacey side of her talking, the part of her that had never learned the benefits of tact), "he moved mountains to get to you, and you say 'he abandoned me'?"

"Lacey –" Emma began, then corrected herself; "Belle –"

Belle held up a hand to silence her, manicured finger pointing dangerously at her friend. "Emma, don't. I am angry, I am tired, and I am not in the mood to be nice about this."

"Nice?" Neal repeated, incredulous. "You already broke into my apartment! You sent her to chase me down! What the hell part of all this was being nice?"

"You don't get the moral high ground here," Belle informed Neal, swinging around to point at him. "You ran. You ran without knowing why we were here or who we were. You ran without knowing it was your father who was looking for you, or why he might want to see you. You ran, and when you did find out the who and the why the only reason you came back was because you thought the worst of him."

"I've seen what he does to people who break deals," Neal shot back.

"So have I! And let me tell you every single time it's always been someone who is quite happy to take the magic, or the money, and who only balks when it turns out their greed might have consequences. You have a child's memories of your father. You saw him cursed with darkness, changed from the man you knew. You saw him abandon you, but you never saw any of what happened afterwards. And now you refuse to even give yourself a chance to know him."

"How can I know him?" Neal asked, and somewhere beneath the anger there was a hint of pleading. "How can I trust him after what he did? He's the Dark One! I spent my whole life running from him, trying to forget."

"And he's spent his whole life trying to make up for the worst mistake he ever made." Belle paused, half for the effect, and half because she desperately needed to catch her breath. "Letting you go."

Neal stepped back. He slumped against the wall, hand raising to run over his face. The anger drained out of him, leaving only the pleading and the despair.

Emma was looking at Belle oddly, as if only just seeing her. Or as if she was seeing the her that Snow White and Prince James had seen before, the one that made it into the pages of Henry's book. "He planned this," Emma said with dawning understanding, "from the beginning. He knew I'd never let Ashley go through with that deal. I'm the only one who can cross the town line without the curse affecting me. He knew that. That's what the deal was about, wasn't it? The favour. He knew what it was going to be the moment he came to talk to me about finding Ashley."

Belle shrugged helplessly. There was no use denying that sort of thing now. "Probably," she admitted. "He's sneaky like that."

"And Henry?" Emma asked, "was that on purpose too? Did he arrange for Henry to be the mayor's son just so that he'd come and find me?"

Belle shook her head. "He was still cursed then. He couldn't have known."

"Who's Henry?"

Neal's voice made Emma stiffen. Once again she looked as if she'd rather be anywhere but where she was now. "My son," she explained, very reluctantly.

"You have a son?"

Emma looked uncomfortable. "Yeah, I do. Henry. He's back in Storybrooke."

"How old is he?"

Emma looked away, not answering. Belle looked back and forth between them, suddenly feeling very much out of place as she began to understand why her friend had been so cagey since finding out who Baelfire was.

"Is he mine?" Neal asked, searching Emma's face, "Emma, is he mine?"

"Yes," she answered, eyes on the floor so she didn't risk meeting his gaze.

Neal raised a hand to his face again, looking as if his world had just collapsed. He breathed in heavily, obviously overwhelmed. If not by everything that had happened already then by the sudden revelation that he had a child. The hand dropped, revealing a stricken expression. "Were you even going to tell me?"

Emma stubbornly didn't respond, crossing her arms over her chest defensively.

Belle fiddled with the strap of her bag, feeling that this conversation had taken a very awkward turn. Her anger at the situation had dulled to a low buzz, something sharp and acidic at the back of her throat – like the burn from the whiskey that she used to drink only on special occasions or very bad days. Today felt like a very bad day. The burn, more than the awkwardness, was her cue to leave. "Emma," she said softly. "I need to go back to the hotel. This is a disaster, and I need to get back there before I decide to go to a bar instead."

Emma didn't respond straight away, too busy not looking at Neal. When she did look up she saw the tense look on Belle's face and the way her hands were clutched white-knuckled around the straps of her handbag. "Ok," she said, uncrossing her arms and moving towards her friend. "Ok, we're going." She paused near Neal and the door. "I'm sorry, Neal," she told him, still not quite able to look him in the eye, "I just… I didn't think I'd ever see you again."

.


.

Mr Gold was sitting on the bed in the hotel, cane dangling uselessly from one hand, shoulders slumped in defeat. He had planned on checking that the airline had seats available for a flight that evening, but somehow when he got into the hotel room he'd found himself just sitting down instead. He had no idea how long he'd been sitting there unable to do more than just stare absently at the floor when the door opened, admitting Emma and his wife.

"… doesn't work?" Emma was asking, concern in her voice.

Belle shook her head. "I tried it," she confirmed with a sigh, "it doesn't. It won't until we get back to Storybrooke."

"No luck then?" Mr Gold asked. He'd meant for it to be a sarcastic drawl, but somehow it came out bland and toneless instead.

"Well…" Emma hedged, obviously reluctant to relay whatever had happened after he'd left.

Belle sat down on the bed next to him. She kicked off her shoes one by one, letting them skitter across the floor. "You have a grandson," she informed him without any frills. "It turns out Henry is Baelfire's. He seemed rather shocked at the revelation."

Mr Gold's eyebrows shot upwards, the news startling enough that it actually caused a reaction. He looked at Emma, then his wife. "Well," he said, not sure how to feel about that titbit of information, "this family tree is getting quite convoluted."

It was fate, of course. Destiny always had a terrible sense of humour. Everything intertwined, Emma was the saviour and Henry was both the reason she came to Storybrooke and the reason she came to believe. The curse, created for the sole purpose of finding his son. It made sense – in that perverse way that fate had – that Emma and Henry would be part of that too.

Emma sat down heavily on the other bed. "Your wife is one persuasive lady," she told him, in an altogether transparent attempt to change the topic, "and you're one sneaky guy, Gold. How long were you plotting this?"

"Oh, no longer than a century or two." He sighed, and raised a hand to touch the scarf wrapped around his neck. "I suppose we best go home," Mr Gold noted, "this magic wasn't designed to last forever."

And Baelfire knew where they were. He would either come and find them in his own time, or not at all. It spoke to how much Rumpelstiltskin had changed that giving him that choice was even an option. He had thought about forcing Neal to go with them, even abducting him if necessary. Once they had crossed the town line he could reverse the clock, he could erase the years Baelfire had spent in this world, make him fourteen again and take his second chance. But he had a feeling Belle wouldn't like that, and their dear saviour certainly wouldn't. Taking that road would make life much harder than it had to be.

So he would leave it up to Baelfire to decide.

"You gave it a shot," Emma said, awkwardly sympathetic, "you apologised, and he listened. It may not be everything you wanted, but it's a start, right?"

"Lets go home," Belle agreed. She sighed, moving to lean against his side. "Remember when you could take us home in just a blink of an eye? I miss that. I miss the Dark Castle."

She was talking about going home, he knew, not just to Storybrooke. About finding a way back to the Enchanted Forest. Mr Gold had to admit, despite the many conveniences of this world, there were things back home that this world just couldn't equal. And there was a way. Of course there was a way. Nothing was impossible. He'd just need a little time to find it… and then the people of Storybrooke would thank their beloved Snow and Charming, conveniently forgetting that he had done all the work.

"I think it's time," Mr Gold sighed. "I'll begin work when we return to Storybrooke."

"Work? On going home?" Emma was frowning at him, "you mean to the Enchanted Forest? Mary-Margaret told me they weren't even sure it still exists."

"Oh, it exists. It's just a wee bit difficult to get to without the proper, ah, ingredients." Like magic beans, which were about as easy to come by as hen's teeth even in a world where they existed at all.

"But you can do it, right?"

Mr Gold looked across at the sheriff, noting her posture and the way she was very obviously trying to keep her face clear of emotion. "Wee bit nervous are we, dearie?" he asked, needling just for the sake of it. "Worried you might not like the White Castle of Starrow and your parents' lands?"

"What's the White Castle of Starrow?" Emma asked, latching onto that as a means not to answer the more uncomfortable questions.

"Starrow was Snow White's kingdom," Belle answered, with a subtle poke to her husband to tell him to play nice. At least for now. "Regina ruled it for a while before they won it back from her. Prince Charming comes from Leed, a kingdom that shared its border with Starrow. The White Castle is where you were born, where your parents were meant to rule."

"So where's the Dark Castle? Where did you come from?"

Mr Gold suppressed a small, sly smile, beginning to wonder if Emma wasn't also trying to cheer them up a bit. An odd suspicion to have, but surely her parents would have told her this by now, or she would have read it in Henry's book. "Me? I come from nightmares, dearie. Didn't your parents tell you that?"

Belle elbowed him, much less subtle this time. "The Dark Castle is in no-man's-land in the forest between Starrow and Leed. I come from Leed, Rumpel never told me where he comes from but I always thought it would be somewhere in the south given his accent."

Mr Gold couldn't help a smile at that. "Clever Belle," he said, the words familiar and affectionate.

.


.

The trip back to Storybrooke was subdued. Mr Gold endured the plane ride in silence, only perking up a little when they were back on solid ground. True, they hadn't exactly succeeded in reuniting him with his son, but at least he knew Baelfire was alive and well… And since it had been revealed that Henry was Baelfire's son Mr Gold had a suspicion that sooner or later he would make his way to Storybrooke for a visit. The connection was there, it just needed time to be reforged. They reached Storybrooke in record time, cruising down the main street to see Prince James and Henry dueling with wooden swords. Mr Gold stopped the car to let Emma out there, watching as the boy dropped his sword when he saw her and ran to give her a hug.

"Good grief," he heard Belle mutter, "I'm a grandmother."

Mr Gold laughed. "Step-grandmother, dearie," he reminded her evilly.

"Am I allowed to be a wicked step-grandmother, do you think?" she asked.