Gold is up late, doing accounts for the shop, watching some television – because she said he should, and really, it's not entirely unpleasant to have something on in the background as he organises his inventory files – and generally keeping busy.
Five days.
That's how long he's been a Good Person.
Five days since she kissed him in public, and he didn't grab her and ravish her right then and there. Five days since he was attacked in the street, and didn't kill the bastard where he stood. Five days since he started trying to act more human than monster.
And it's not been easy, but her good will is making it worthwhile.
That doesn't mean he trusts himself. No, not at all: who knows better than himself how untrustworthy and downright dishonest he can be?
So he's up late working: because it's that, or end up lying awake, thinking about the woman down the hall. About how that hallway seemed a much greater distance six months ago, and how he really doesn't think she'd mind too much if he just took the twelve steps – he's counted, and hates himself for it – it would take from his door to hers, and went inside.
And that's a train of thought that doesn't end well.
Well, he thinks, with a little smirk, it actually ends very well indeed. It's just the continuation he has a problem with, the fact that she'll inevitably pull away from him come daybreak, how it would change his status from friend and ally to yet another problem in her eyes.
He's a mean, twisted and selfish old man. He'd rather have her next to him in friendship than banished a thousand miles away by a few moments of almost-love.
So he's up late working, and this train of thought has repeated itself at least five or six times in one hour.
It is midnight when he stands, shuffles his papers into something resembling a tidy pile, and hobbles upstairs to bed. He passes her room – it's the first on the right, so she wouldn't have to pass his own bedroom when she first moved in – on his way, and he isn't going to stop.
He isn't going to peek inside, and allow his inappropriately active imagination for a man of his age to run wild.
He almost makes it, before he hears Rose whimper in her cradle, hears the little sobs that will inevitably lead to full on wailing. If they start, they will wake Belle from her well-earned rest, from the sleep that motherhood too often denies her, and anxiety does little to encourage.
So he does what any friend would do: he limps inside, slowly, quietly, and gathers the baby in his arms, rocking and soothing her slowly.
Rose isn't to be quietened in moments, she needs a feed and some attention, and Gold thinks about waking her mother and leaving her to it. Belle would probably prefer it, to be woken and trusted to sooth her own daughter rather than trust someone else.
And he knows, how he knows, how much she's beginning to hate people trying to help and patronising her.
But he's also concerned by the tension she carries in her limbs, by the bags under her eyes which no foundation can hide, and the weariness in her footsteps, sometimes, when she thinks he doesn't notice.
He can take care of a baby for all of five minutes, and settle her back to sleep, without intruding on Belle's well-guarded territory.
So he holds Rose against his shoulder, muffling her just a little against the fabric of his dressing gown, and takes her downstairs to where her bottles are waiting in the refrigerator. He tries not to dwell too long on how calm she is, being fed by him and not her mother, and how the expected ear-drum exploding wailing has not yet begun. The wee one has some lungs on her, and the sense of timing all babies learn fast, and he knows she's just lying in wait.
Still, her whimpering has quietened by the time she pushes the bottle away, and her little fingers are curled into fists, holding onto the flannel of his clothing, and her eyes are half-drawn, close again to sleep.
He feels he's diffused a bomb, saved a city.
He's watched a few too many cartoons late at night and on Saturday mornings already, if that's the analogy he's coming up with.
But Belle insists it's good for the baby, and who is he to argue?
Gently, he rocks Rose in his arms as he carries her upstairs. He tries to set her down, but her eyes fly open and she starts the warning-sobs again, so he sighs – this child will grow into a sociable, perhaps even attention-seeking creature, this he can tell – and carries her back into his room, so at least he can sit in his comfy chair as he holds her.
Rose is asleep within five minutes, curled into his chest with her hands fisted in his pyjamas, and he soon follows suit.
Belle wakes early, feels the wrongness of the room in moments.
She scrambles from her bed, her stomach twisting with an unknown fear, and runs to the cradle, needing to see her daughter's sleeping face to calm her terror.
She lets out a little cry, every bone in her body breaking, heart torn into tiny shreds: the cradle is empty.
Rose is gone.
She leaves the room at a dead-run, heading for Mr Gold's bedroom, needing him to help her marshal the troops, start the search, and burn child-snatching witches in their wake. Her heart hasn't pounded like this since the morning she ran to the convent, since the last time her world was truly smashed and wrecked and burning.
She's ready to scream and run and fight with her bare hands, as she bursts into the room.
Then stops, every muscle suppressed and entirely still, as her mouth falls open, eyes wide and disbelieving.
For there is her daughter, her precious little thing, safe and sound and fast asleep in Mr Gold's arms. And there's Gold, snoring softly in his armchair, cradling her daughter against his chest like he never plans to let go.
And she will kill him, oh yes; she will have his guts for aeroplane elastic when she's done.
She nearly died this morning, when she thought her child had been taken and carried off into the wind. There are so many out there who would do just that, who would rip Rose from her mother's arms and spirit her away, and he knows that and did this anyway.
She wants to kill him.
She wishes she wanted to kill him.
But the pair of them are possibly the most beautiful, the most heart-breaking sight she's ever seen, asleep together, dappled in morning light.
Looking at them, she can almost believe that the Sheriff was right, all those weeks ago, when she assumed them father and daughter. She can almost forget that the child's real father is a monster, an ogre without a soul, and that this house was a prison sentence for Rose's first few months.
Instead, she can spin herself a new story, a new history, and bind the three of them together with sunlight and golden thread. She can create a new world, where they are mother and father and beaming baby girl, and where their love is pure and clean and simple in their wood and stained-glass home. Where there are no wolves or witches waiting at the gates to tear them all apart.
Although even in her real world she's doing a decent job of fighting back those predators, one by one.
She crosses the room slowly, padding across the floorboards on her bare feet, and presses a soft kiss to Rose's forehead.
Then, without more than half a second's hesitation, she rises up a little and does the same again, pressing her lips against the top of Gold's head and breathing in his scent of wood-smoke and leather and old, leather-bound books.
Because here, in this room, just for this one brief and shining moment, they are a family.
And so she is slow about slipping back to the doorway, and lingers for a moment, eyes on the pair of them, close to tears she has no intention of examining or understanding, before she slides back around the door and closes it with a soft click behind her.
Mr Gold is a little disappointed in the town's law enforcement.
It's been a week since he asked the Sheriff – the supposed Saviour, and what a failure of a battle that was shaping up to be – to do one little favour. To track down an actual criminal, and put the cretin where he belongs.
And yet the cells stand empty, and the boy can be spotted every now and then skulking around the streets, and Gold is beginning to wonder if he bet on the right horse.
However, the other option is to go to Regina for help, and that's an impossibility. Not least because he hates no one like he hates her.
Today's visit to the Mayor's office has nothing to do with supplication, with admitting weakness and asking for assistance.
He's here to tell the bitch to leave his girls alone.
So he lets himself in, enjoys the look of annoyed surprise that always graces Regina's features when he shows up uninvited. The same was always true in the old world as well, when he sprung from thin air and appeared before her, offering an easy way out.
"Mr Gold." She greets him, tone flat and unimpressed, "Whatever can I do for you, today?"
"Oh, I don't know, dear." He crosses to her desk, smiles his serpent smile, watches her try to read him. Subtlety was a trait Regina had always lacked. It made her clumsy. "How about answering a few questions for me."
She smirks, inclines her head, "Of course. What's on your mind?"
"When did you become so interested in adoption practices?"
"Excuse me?"
"You never seemed to care much for lost and lonely children in Storybrooke before," he shrugs, "I'm interested to know the roots of your new interest."
She has the nerve to smile, teeth white and gleaming around poisonous red lips, "This is about the French girl."
"This is about you coming to my home and harassing my guests," he replies, without a single note out of place, without a crack in his geniality, and yet there is a blizzard in his words, "It's not good practice, dearie."
He comes to sit in the uncomfortable chair in front of her desk, relaxing as if he's at home, making a point about true dominance and balance of power.
"She's in need of guidance, Mr Gold," her tone is firm, as if he's one of her oblivious, stupid town folk, "And she is a resident of this town. It is my job to provide for all residents, with or without your permission."
"Then keep the electricity running and the drainage working," he almost snaps, almost, "But keep your greedy little fingers out of other people's business."
"Why, Mr Gold," she leans back, laughing at him, "I cannot imagine why you care so much."
"I'm invested in her wellbeing." He doesn't want to give her anything, not one sliver of ammunition against her. But he needs her to leave Belle alone, to keep her poisonous influence away from Rose's innocent little world.
"She's nearly thirty years younger than you, dear." Regina puts on a mask of friendly, maternal care, "Perhaps you should allow someone else to care for her, and allow the child to be placed where she can be safe? You're not, after all, known for your love of children."
Mr Gold is ninety-per cent certain that she knows he remembers. But they've never discussed it, and he doesn't plan to play that card over something so small as his personal happiness. So he inclines his head, and smiles as if he's been half-beaten, and swallows the cursewords that burn at his tongue.
"Be that as it may, both Miss French and her infant are happy and seem to have no plans to leave my home. I would appreciate it if you respected their wishes, if not mine." He stands, leans over, grins into her face and plays his ace, "Please."
The smile falls from her face, and she nods once, eyes curiously blank.
Curses will do that. Deals spun from magic cannot be broken, no matter how far you try to bend them to your will.
He nods, victorious, "Thank you for your time, Madame Mayor. Always a pleasure."
Then he turns, dramatic to the last, and stalks from the room as if he is still a Dark One clad in dragonhide and golden scales, and not the lame and altogether too soft human man he has become.
Belle has no idea at all what she thinks she's doing.
None whatsoever.
But Rose has grown so much, and Archie mentioned something about family – she got him off the topic quickly, but the thought is still embedded in her mind – and it's time now to go home.
Not home home, the pinkish-red wooden house on the corner by the forest.
No, the house she stops in front of is white, with picket fences and a shop in the downstairs. This is the home she's been running from for almost a decade. This is the home she once swore her daughter would never know.
But still, here she stands, with her baby in the pram and the door closed in front of her, whitewashed wood and frosted glass.
The last time she stood here, she was an angry, sobbing teenager, screaming abuse at her father and clutching her bad-boy lover like he was the only thing that mattered.
Now she is a woman, calm and composed, clutching her daughter because she is the only thing that matters, and for a moment she feels one hundred years old.
Then she takes a deep breath, and rings the doorbell.
It takes hours for someone to answer – it's probably only a minute or so, but her stomach is coiled in snarled and angry knots and Rose's eyes are a little fearful, feeling as she does her mama's shaking fingers. Then Moe French pulls the door open, and glares out unseeingly for a moment.
After a long few seconds, he registers what he's seeing, and stands for a moment just… staring at her. It's a little unnerving, and Belle starts to wonder if this was such a good idea.
It wasn't. She knows it wasn't. But she did it anyway.
The story of her life so far, apparently.
"Hello, papa."
"Isobel?" he's staring at her, eyes narrowed, as if he doesn't believe that she can be real. And then his eyes pan down to Rose, and widen and shoot back to hers, and she waits for the awful moment.
When he calls her a whore, and her daughter a bastard child, and casts them from his doorstep.
She braces herself for the body blow.
"And who is this?" he asks, quietly.
"Papa, this is Rose." She smiles, tries to communicate her hopes, how much she needs him to accept them both, "She's your granddaughter."
He stares down for what feels like days, and Belle holds her breath.
She wants to gather Rose into her blanket, hide her innocent little eyes from the world and run far and fast, hide someplace warm and dark, away from her father's eyes. This was the worst idea she's ever, ever had.
Stupid child, why would she put herself through this again? Why risk this?
She's about to leg it, to run and run and keep running, when his eyes meet hers.
They're warm, warmer than they've been since she was sixteen, and filled with tears, "She's beautiful, Izzy." Then his arms, warm and strong and familiar and so completely home are around her, and his tears are in her hair, and she's cradling her daughter between them, sobbing like a lost child into her father's chest.
They go inside, but Moe's arm never leaves her shoulders, and his eyes are always on Rose's.
And she feels softer than she has in years, like the weight of the world has shifted from her shoulders, like the world could end right then and her father would stand between her and oblivion, unshakeable.
It's a childish feeling, naïve and hopeless, but she's missed it more than oxygen.
They sit on her mama's old couch, as close as possible, and Belle hands Rose to her grandfather without a moment's hesitation. The last eight years of separation, their year of anger and hurt and slammed doors, of suspicion and hypocrisy, melt and fall between them.
They are family, and now things are the way the need to be.
Moe holds Rose in his arms like she's made of hand-blown glass, of bone china, like he'll break her if he shifts his fingers wrong.
The man is massive, protective, intimidating, but his hands are delicate, the hands of a man who spent his life among flowers. He understands, and of course he does, and Belle cannot remember her anger, her pain, when he already loves the centre of her gravity within minutes of introduction.
"How old is she?"
"Six months and eight days last Thursday," Belle smiles, a watery smile.
"Oh," he nods, but he looks so hurt she wants to curl up and die, "She's a pretty little thing."
"I would have brought her sooner, but…"
"You thought I wouldn't want to see her." He nods, sadly, and Belle's pain recedes a little. Because she did, and with good reason: they'd barely spoken in near on a decade, and their last fight had been ugly and fierce.
Who was to say he would look at Rose and not see his ruined daughter and her good-for-nothing ex-boyfriend?
"You can understand why."
"Yes." He nods, and takes a deep breath, still not meeting her eyes, "You should have come home, you know. I mean: you could have. When you had her."
"No," she shakes her head, "I really couldn't."
"You're living with Mr Gold now. The Mayor came by especially to tell me." His voice is curiously cold, detached. Belle feels a little of her warmth fade away, a little of the old resentment crawl back inside.
"He offered me a place to stay. And I haven't regretted a day of it since the moment I moved in."
It's a lie, but a small one, and she wills it to be true. Perhaps if she wishes hard enough, their new deal will outshine the old, and nothing nefarious need have happened at all.
"You could have come home."
He's still cooing down at her baby, eyes locked on her, and Belle wants her back so badly it physically hurts.
"No. I couldn't. You know that."
"You stormed out of here eight years ago, Isobel. Do you really think I can hold a grudge for that long?"
The anger that boils to the surface, that colours her words, is an old and festering one, "I didn't storm out of anywhere: you threw me out on my ass because I made a few bad decisions."
"You can't understand." He mutters, bitterly, as if she's seventeen again, a foolish and naïve child believing herself a warrior.
"I'm a mother now, papa. I'm an adult. You could have come and found me whenever you damn well pleased, and I never heard a word. You shut me out like I was shameful!"
"You shouldn't have had to turn to him."
"I didn't have to." Except she did, and she would rather have jumped off a cliff into the ocean than brought Rose back here, with her tail between her legs because she couldn't hold up her end of their silent war. The lair of an impersonal monster was preferable to this house, haunted with ill will and bad memories.
"Then why did you?"
"Because George spits at me in the street, and Ruby and Granny's place is tiny, and the convent shut me out, and you abandoned me when I needed you." She says, the words boiling and rolling off her tongue faster and faster, unstoppable, flowing with the tears on her cheeks and staining the pale pink upholstery.
Rose sees her mother's distress, and begins to cry, too. Belle takes her back without a word to Moe, and holds her close, rocking her tight and swearing never to let go again.
"I'm sorry, Isobel." He says, and she can see his eyes, wide and pleading, begging her to believe it.
And she wants to, more than anything in the world.
Belle has been strong and solitary for so long, and even now, with Gold so firmly planted at her side, she needs her papa as much as Rose needs her.
She needs him to wrap his arms back around her, and fight off all the monsters; to kiss her forehead at night, and guarantee that the sun will rise tomorrow. She needs him to banish every dark thought with a broad, safe smile and a bad joke.
But he hasn't been that man since she was a child herself. Since she watched her hero fall from his pedestal, into a crumpled and dirty heap at her feet.
She was a fool to come here, and expect her statue to be back on its plinth, strong and tall and perfect once more.
She was a fool to think that anything could change overnight.
"I'm not, but I accept your apology," she says, finally, when she has control of her voice, "What did the Mayor say?"
"She wants me to convince you to give her up, and leave that man's home. To come back where you belong." He nods to Rose, whimpering quietly against her mother's shoulder.
She clenches her arms a little tighter, becomes for a moment a lioness ready for battle.
"I won't." he promises, and she's stunned for a moment, "You're a mother, Isobel. And much as I'd like you and Rose to come and stay here, you're a woman with her own mind. No one can take that from you. And I'll murder any bastard who tries."
She smiles, and it's a cracked and broken smile, but it's at least real.
"Could you at least stop by every now and then?" he asks, "I'd like… I'd like to get to know my daughter, and granddaughter, a little better. If that's alright?"
And she nods, even as she cries, because she needs to get to know her father, too.
He's home late, whistling like he did when he was young, the feeling of a day well-spent settling happily in his bones.
He went to see Regina, and sorted the bitch out once and for all.
And she'd smiled her bitter, poisoned-apple smile, and been forced to comply. He wonders why he didn't think of it sooner.
And then remembers: he can't tell Belle about the power he has over Regina. He can't tell her about the bargain, or the Curse, or the persuasive skills he acquired in the process.
He doesn't want to lie to her, but this is the best way for things to be.
"You sound cheerful," she smiles when she sees him. She's settled on the couch, reading with her legs crossed. Rose is nowhere to be seen, so he assumes she's probably asleep upstairs. The baby monitor on Belle's lap makes a small noise, a baby snuffling in her sleep. He wishes Belle's smile didn't have to be so filled with relief at this little reassurance.
One day, he wants her to live without worrying that someone will steal away her baby.
He wants her to be able to blink without fear.
"Good day, then?" she asks.
"Oh, yes," he grins, and comes to sit next to her.
"What happened?" she asks, and places a finger against her chin, "No, wait, let me guess!" she points at him, a gesture so much a mimic of himself – of Rumpelstiltskin, although that's impossible – that he's a little taken aback, "You went and bullied the Mayor and the Sheriff, all in one day!"
"The Mayor deserves anything I can throw at her, dear, you of all people should understand that. And I saw the Sheriff a week ago, not today. Half-marks there, love."
She's glaring at him, the smile gone from her face, and he wonders if gentle humor is really the best response here. "Emma came by here today, asking if I'd seen George around, if he'd threatened me."
"She takes her sodding time, doesn't she?" he mutters, because what good is a Saviour when she can't get around to doing her bloody job?
"Why is she trying to track him down?" there's a dangerous note in her voice, "Who got her involved?"
"Emma will help. She's going to lock George Gaston up for as long as possible."
"For what, exactly?"
"For assault, battery, grievous bodily harm, and vandalism."
Her face doesn't light the way he'd hoped it would: in fact, she's frowning, "But when he gets out… he'll come right for us. He's just going to get angrier."
"He's already attacking young women in the street, Belle," he reasons, "He needs to be put where he can't hurt anyone."
"He'll be inside just long enough to get mad enough to do real damage," she says, her eyes cold and dark, "Yes, thank you."
"What would you have me do?" he asks, annoyed by her lack of gratitude for his actions, "Leave him out there, where he can threaten you whenever he damn well pleases? You still have the scars, dear, don't pretend you don't want him to go down for that alone."
"I want him out of my life, and out of Rose's." she replies, jaw tight, as she stands and starts to pace "What happens beyond that is none of my business."
"Then I think a nice jail cell is the best place possible, don't you agree?"
She looks at him without malice, but with a terror she's held for far too long, "If he is sent to prison for what he did to us, then he'll always remember it. He'll come back: he's too stupid to be able to move on. If we just let it go, he'll stop eventually."
He can't believe how naïve, how dense she can be even after all she's been through, "He's a father, Belle." He says, standing to take her hands, trying to soothe her "Do you know what that means? He'll never forget that, he'll always come after Rose, always."
He doesn't expect the anger that flashes into her eyes, as she tears her hands from his, "How dare you? He's no more Rose's father than Archie Hopper is! He happened to be there when I got pregnant, and that's it."
"He doesn't see it that way."
"And that's why I want him far, far away from us, preferably without any memory of Rose at all. I don't need him to keep being reminded of what I did to him, of what he feels an entitlement to."
"He has no hold over you: he wouldn't be able to claim custody from you with a criminal record and a domestic violence conviction."
"He doesn't have to: brick through the window ring any bells?" she's almost hysterical, running hands through her thick dark hair, trembling from head to toe, eyes wet and wide and wild.
"Belle, Belle," he tries to soothe her, wraps arms around her as if she's Rose, but she's too far gone: she pushes him away, tearing around the room like a caged animal. "He'll be gone. And you'll be free to live your life."
She whirls to face him; "You had no right to go see the Sheriff without my permission. No right at all."
"I'm sorry, dear, but I can do as I please." He smiles, all needles and nastiness, Rumpelstiltskin shining through. She doesn't even flinch, and he isn't surprised; she's Belle and she's strong as old leather and iron nails, a warrior in full armour, and treating her as if she is anything less is lying through action.
"Not when your help is unneeded. I can deal with George, one way or the other. Rose is my responsibility."
"What happened today, Belle?" he asks, quietly: this anger isn't all about him. He hasn't seen her this wound up in all the time he's known her, and he needs to know why.
"Nothing." She turns away from him, goes to leave, but he's had enough of this. He catches her arm – she could pull away, he wouldn't stop her – and she turns back to him, and looks so damn broken that the world stops making any sense at all.
"What happened?" he puts all the affection, the tenderness, he needs for her to understand in his voice. She isn't alone, and he isn't going to stop helping her, and she has to understand that.
"I went to see my father." She replies, and a hundred disparate and jagged pieces fall into place.
"And?" he prompts, heart in his throat, thumb tracing idle circles on the inside of her wrist.
"He… he wishes I'd moved in with him. He acted as if he'd given me a goddamn choice."
Her voice is so hard, so angry: angrier than she should ever be. His own fear of being alone, of her leaving with Rose to her family home, the place where she should have been all this time, can wait.
Right now his Belle is sobbing, and his arms have wrapped around her, and that's the only thing that could possibly matter at all.
But she's breaking away, and staring at him, wide-eyed and fearful, and she tears from the room as if her life depends upon it.
He hears the door slam, and knows he isn't welcome.
Hours later, when he comes to bed, he passes her room and still hears her sobbing. It takes all he has not to break their final wall and go inside, invade her safe space, to offer what comfort he can.
Her pain is his pain, and this hurts like blazes.
But he's half the problem, and he knows her too well: she needs time to cry alone, to fall apart without someone to watch and see and remember. So she can put her armour back on, and come out the calm, competent, tough-as-nails woman she needs to be.
So he leaves her to her agony, and limps to bed with his knee aching like it hasn't in months.
