Chapter 7: The Things Packed Away

Norah felt raw when she came to, but she was no longer in Gold's shop. She was under a soft duvet that was in a grey slipcover and her head was nestled into a fluffy pillow. The room was dark and she could hear a clock ticking far off somewhere. As she sat up, something moved beside the bed, startling her.

"The girl who cannot die rises once again," said a smooth, velvety voice.

"Where am I?"

"My home," the voice, who Norah then realized it was Gold, said. "After you essentially killed yourself, I gained my wits and realized just who you were."

Norah said nothing. Instead, she put her hand to her chest to check where she had plunged the dagger. She was still wearing the same shirt, but there was no trace of her impulsive act other than dried blood stains.

"How long have you been here?" He asked.

"Just about a hundred years," she said. "Give or take."

"What made you come to Storybrooke?"

Norah chortled. "That's what you want to know? Not, hey, Norah, haven't seen you since you fell into a portal? Or even how I've been?" She had sat all the way up now and crossed her legs under the covers. Gold had at least removed her shoes and she was thankful for that.

"I need to know—"

"Magic," she said. "I have been able to feel small traces of magic here, once in a while, but I felt it when you all came…I was compelled." Norah looked at him in the dark. "They're all from home, aren't they?"

Gold said nothing, but she could see his silhouette in the dark, one elbow on the arm of the chair and his chin resting between his splayed fingers. His legs were crossed, and in his other hand, he loosely held his cane.

"That moment gets played over and over in my mind," she said. "I couldn't fight it. When I was given my life, I was told that if anyone ever told anyone about my power, I would face the consequences."

"It was a bean," he said. "There was a magic bean in your locket. When I learned of your gift it must have triggered the reaction. That bean was only meant for you."

Norah nodded. "I figured that out after the reality of never going back home settled in. Yet, you still tried to follow me. Why?"

Norah could see him readjust himself in his chair. He cleared his throat before he spoke again.

"You need rest," he said. "It's almost three in the morning and I have a shop to open in a few hours."

"But Rumple," she said.

"Don't," he uttered. "Call me that. No one here knows who they are and they don't know my name. Now go back to sleep. We will talk more tomorrow," he said and then left, shutting the door behind him.

Norah didn't go right back to bed after Gold left. In fact she got out, went to the window and peeked through the blinds. It was almost totally silent and still outside. After pacing around the room for almost thirty minutes, she got back under the covers and pulled them up to her neck. The duvet shaped itself around her

and as her body heat radiated underneath the covers, warming her, Norah dropped back off to sleep.

Yet, what had been dreamless before, was no longer that way. Instead she relived that moment she was thrown out of her home world and into the one that was without magic. She saw Rumpelstiltskin's face blink out of view, felt her body hit the ground, and woke to the wet dew on her face, and clothes, in the dark, with everything but her small walnut box on a chain and no one else in sight. Twenty years after the American Civil War, and thirty years before the First World War, Norah found herself in Maine where Storybrooke would eventually appear, but she didn't know that when she arrived.

She spent the next hundred years looking for magic, and though she sometimes found it in the strangest of places, she always seemed to return to somewhere near where she originally landed. Whether it was camping out in the 60s with anti-Vietnam war protesters, or living in a flat in New York before 1980 where she spent quite a few months traveling around the globe, searching for any clues she could find to going back home.

After the restless dreams, morning came and Norah crawled out of bed to find her things in the room with her. She found a bathroom, took a long hot shower to wash off the dried blood that was still on her chest and down her front, disposed of her ruined clothes, and put on new ones before finding Gold sitting in his dining room. He was in a dark striped suit with a deep purple shirt that reminded Norah of one of the chairs that he used to have in his castle when he was not the man he was currently sitting down at a dining room table with coffee and scones.

"Please sit," he said. There was a carafe of coffee in front of him, and a breakfast place setting laid out for her.

"I doubt you really need something to eat since you cannot possibly starve to death, but please, help yourself to some scones baked locally."

"You'd be surprised," Norah said as she sat and loaded her plate with scones. "I've tried not eating, it's not pretty. You also wouldn't believe the kind of hunger you have after coming back to life."

Gold offered a forced smile and sipped his coffee.

As she dug in, he folded his hands in front of him and cleared his throat.

"Don't you have a shop to open?" Norah said before he could say anything.

"Haven't lost your witty tongue, I see," he replied. "I've decided to make it a late morning."

"You said we would talk," Norah said after swishing down a mouthful of hot coffee, "so let's talk."

"You want to know about what happened after you went through the portal."

"Yes, I do. You tried to follow me," Norah said. "Why? Why would you follow me if you didn't even follow your s—"

"Stop there," Gold said. "On second thought…"

Norah watched Gold do something funny. This new man, the man she once knew as an unyielding and unpredictable force of power, who she was learning to know as a man of directness, and deeply secretive, suddenly looked as if he were becoming a third man. Or perhaps, perhaps it was the third man who had existed long before, the one of uncertainty and fear who was slipping through.

"…I spent years looking for a way…" he couldn't even make eye contact with her. "For you both," he whispered.

"I spent a hundred years looking for a way back," said Norah.

"No success finding your way," Gold replied.

"Yet, here you are," Norah said, smiling. Gold, this time, looked her in the eye and returned a genuine—although minute—smile.

"Here I am through a vast number of events I set in motion, all things I saw—glimpses of—but the future never showed me you."

His tone had returned to the silky, direct tone of the man who held many secrets. He finished his coffee and poured himself and Norah refills. She almost felt a chill when he spoke. A feeling that shook her deeply and it felt almost as if no time had passed between the two of them.

"You're particularly unique," he continued. "You were never cursed, but born with the gift, but for what reason, and bestowed by whom, I do not know."

"I never knew," Norah said, remembering the faces of her parents with a tinge of the memory of her first death. "I was twenty-eight when I died the first time. The Blue Fairy came soon after and told me that I could tell no one. The only people who knew were my parents and they took my secret to their graves.

"Twenty-eight?" Gold asked as if he hadn't heard the rest of what she said.

Norah nodded. He looked puzzled, a look Norah knew well. It was a turn of his head and his furrowed brow that was an unmistakable Rumpelstiltskin look when he was trying to figure out his next move when something unexpected happened.

"That night we first met," he said. "I was there for you. Your power…it was so strong and I had felt it for years, but it wasn't until that night I was able to find you."

Norah felt a little betrayed, but she had always suspected that the Dark One, back in the Enchanted Forest, knew more about her than he let on.

"I suspected you were just difficult to kill when you survived all those tasks, but I never thought that it would be impossible."

"Oh," Nora replied. "I died on every single one," she laughed.

"Oh really?" He asked, smiling.

"Do you remember the one where you wanted me to fight the sea monster?"

"The one where I asked for its liver?"

"Yeah," she said. "I died like three times."

Gold laughed. "No wonder it took so long. I thought you had decided to run off and I almost went looking for you." He was continuing to smile and that made her feel good. "I never really needed it. I just wanted to see if you'd do it."

Norah let out a cackling laugh, as it struck her to be hilarious in hindsight. She realized there was so much they did miss. So much they needed to catch up on, yet the man who called himself Gold, was morphing back and forth from one identity to the other before her eyes. She didn't know which one she was connecting to, if all, a few, or none at all. Perhaps it was all still a charade and Gold was using her as a pawn, just as before.

"This place is cursed," said Gold. "I helped a queen…an evil queen, many, many years after you were gone. I guess you will know in time, but it will be years before I…we…will be able to try and return home," he said. "Twenty-eight, if we're being exact."

The number caught Norah's attention.

"Why so specific?"

Gold shrugged in a very Rumple-like manner.

"I guess white magic enjoys appearing when a woman is twenty-eight."

Briefly, Norah remembered something back from before she went into Storybrooke. She remembered the diner where she stopped and had a burger and the story about some children being found out in the forest.

"Those kids," she said.

"Kids? As in, plural?"

Norah nodded. "A boy and a baby girl, I think."

Suddenly Gold's eyes grew dark. "What boy?"

Norah pushed her coffee away and threw her hands up in the air. "I'm not the one who put all this curse stuff in motion," she said, her irritation slipping into her tone. "I'm just relieved…" Her heart suddenly felt very heavy. Almost too heavy to bear and she considered taking the nearby butter knife and doing the same as she did with her dagger the day before.

"I thought I'd never see home again, or anything from it. Especially you."

Neither of them said anything for a long time. Eventually, Gold rose from his chair using his cane to support himself.

"We need to go to my shop," he said. "There is something there I have to show you."

Obediently, almost as before, Norah walked with him to his shop, but as per his request, she kept a couple of paces behind him as not to arouse attention.

They arrived twenty minutes later from his house, entering the front, but despite their presence, Gold locked the door behind them. She followed him, not to the back of his shop, but into one of the corners where he unstacked a few boxes, put the one he was looking for on a nearby glass case, and removed the lid.

"Not everything in my shop is for sale, yet, some of my most precious things are hidden in plain sight."

Gold unpacked the box. Inside were a few things Norah left behind in his castle. Leather straps she used to wear around her wrist, one of her notebooks she used for keeping track of the information from the Dark One's quests, and some of her riding maps. He unfolded the maps and revealed a few flat pieces of parchment that had been tucked inside.

He turned over a piece and revealed a rough drawing of Norah chopping wood from her first day.

"I wasn't an artist, but there are several I want you do have."

Norah flipped each of them over, every one of them was a candid pose, something Norah had been doing without realizing that Rumpelstiltskin was watching. One was of her hanging upside down from her first monster task, and another was just of her sitting in a window sill of the castle as she carefully honed her short sword.

She didn't know what to say, but thank you, was what came out.

"They were all I had in my workshop for the longest time until the Blue Fairy told me that you were gone to a place you would never return from."

Norah's eyes drifted to the things remaining in the box, a few items she did not recognize.

"That's when I realized you had been sent to the land without magic."

Her eyes snapped up. "Wait, I thought you said you didn't know I was here?"

"I never said that," he replied. "I never saw you in the future, but I knew what the Blue Fairy meant when she said you would never return."

Norah's eyes fell back on the contents of the box and she reached inside to pull out a chipped teacup.

"What's this? I don't think this is—"

Before Norah could get a good look at the cup, Gold snatched it away. He took it in both hands, and stared at it for a long while before taking it to the back of his shop.

"Another story for another day," he said when he returned. "Something that belonged to someone who is long gone."

The man before her looked sad, almost broken. Norah, without putting much thought behind it, reached out and touched his arm. He didn't flinch, although he did stare at her hand as if it didn't belong there. Norah drew it away, feeling embarrassed.

"I am not looking for sympathy, least of all from you." His words did not sound as if they were meant to harm. "I don't think I deserve it," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"I…Norah I coursed you into revealing your gift. It's my fault that you were banished here alone."

His words were a truth she had already figured out and had long forgiven him for, but she wondered if there was something else.

"Why are you giving me these?" She asked. "Why show me this?"

He sighed, deeply.

"Because I am trying to show you that I never gave up." His voice was quiet, almost meek. "Every choice I made. Every deal. It was towards trying to get here, to you and to..."

"Baelfire, I know."

Norah didn't like that she was feeling so many emotions at once. Even though it seemed like their old times had returned, a hundred years still punctuated whatever friendship—if you could even call it that—there was.

But, before she could press any further, Gold put the box away, except for the maps, which he pushed into Norah's hands, and told her he had to open up shop. Norah asked if she could make some tea and he pointed her to a silver pot which she took and found what she needed in the back of the shop.

Gold opened the pawn store and after they had tea, Norah asked about being made useful. He gave her a cloth and pointed her to a mobile made of glass unicorns. "Give it a good shine, would you?"

The morning outside was cold and wet. It had rained in the night and the still cloudy sky caused Gold's shop to feel dark, but Norah was starting to feel as if it were kind of a sanctuary. There were a few things she recognized from home as she polished the little glass unicorns and it made her feel like she hadn't been gone so long.

Norah was almost finished when Gold suddenly stood very rigid.

"Go in the back," he spat at her. "Go in the back and don't make a sound."

Again, Norah followed his orders and slipped away, but just enough so she could see what was going on in the shop. Gold situated himself behind the counter where the silver teapot was and began to look as if he were cleaning it.

The door opened and the mayor, Regina Mills, stepped in.

"I'm not happy," she said.

"I believe Dr. Hopper's office is down the street," Gold replied without missing a beat.

"Oh I don't want to talk to him, I want to talk to you."

Norah, now a little too scared to be seen, quietly moved from her vantage point and hid deeper into the back, but remained in earshot of the conversation.

"Very well madam mayor, what do you want to talk about?"

"This town…this isn't the deal we made," she said, her voice sounding desperate.

There wasn't a whole lot Norah yet knew about Storybrooke, but she did know about Rumpelstiltskin's deals and that most of the time, they were in his favour. Hearing Regina complain only further strengthened Gold's words that he had said to her earlier. Perhaps he is telling the truth?

"I'm sorry…I don't know what you're talking about," Gold said.

Norah had to supress a laugh. He sounded sincere, even though she knew that he wasn't.

There was a long silence between both of them until finally Regina said, "You don't, do you?" Norah could hear the woman's heels clicking on the floor of the shop as she walked around. "I was supposed to be happy here."

"Well…forgive me madam…you're the mayor," Gold replied. "You're the most powerful woman in the town. What is there to be unhappy about?"

"Everyone in this town does exactly what I want them to do," she said, her voice sounding more desperate than before.

Gold chortled a bit. "And that's a problem?"

"Well they do it because they have to, not because they want to," she replied. "It's not

real."

"I'm sorry, what exactly is it you want?" Gold asked.

"Nothing you can give me," Regina answered, sounding defeated. She walked out of the shop after and it was a few minutes before Gold stepped into the back and found Norah sitting on the ground with her back to the wall.

"Well, that was interesting," she said, pushing herself up from the floor.

"Indeed it was," he replied. "Regina is dangerous so do your best to stay far, far away from her."

"You lied to her," Norah said. "Why?"

"Well we can't go spoiling all the fun just yet. Regina is on the warpath for something and I don't want to get in the middle of it. Especially when we haven't been here that long," he said.

Gold locked the door to his shop and turned his sign from 'We're open,' to 'closed.' The sun was starting to peek through the clouds outside as he also shut the blinds.

"There are some things I need to start setting in motion," Gold said. "And I may need your help."

Norah nodded without saying anything as Gold began to poke around, pulling things here and there from boxes and cupboards and re-stashing them elsewhere.

"You know," she said after there was a long silence. "There is something I wanted to ask you for a very long time."

Gold looked at her from the box he had his hands deep into with a bit of apprehension in his eyes.

"The dagger. Was that meant for me?"

"Of course not," he said. He dropped what he was doing and went over to her, putting both his hands on either of her shoulders. "That was an accident, one I should have seen that day, but I didn't know they were going to be lethal."

Norah wasn't sure she believed him, but she had nothing else to go on. She thought back to the drawings he had given her. They weren't detailed, but she felt that they definitely captured something. Was it a thought? Or maybe just the way he had perceived her then and there?

"I had collected you, Norah," he said. "I was never going to let you go until my curiosity got the best of me."

This was not new to her. Norah had always suspected that Rumpelstiltskin was merely adding her to his collection of magical things she was helping him amass in those few years she was in his service and it was something she had grown okay with then. But, to hear it out loud made her a little sad. The truth really did hurt sometimes.

She sighed and rubbed her face, trying to collect her thoughts. Forgiveness was still on the tip of her tongue, but her gut told her that giving into whatever plan might have been going through his head would be too soon.

Gold hadn't let go of her shoulders just yet. She could feel him looking down at her but she couldn't meet his eyes. Norah wasn't really ready to fully give in to him.

Norah now had the upper hand in this situation. But how could she use it to her advantage?

"Regardless of what happened," Norah began. "Our deal…"

"Is something I cannot fulfil here," Gold said, finishing her thought. He let go of her shoulders finally and walked back behind the counter where the teapot had been. "Without magic, I cannot help your condition, if it is indeed something you want to break? I do have to say, immortality has its benefits."

Norah sneered. "I've lived a long, long, long time," she said. "I've lived most of it alone as one tends to do when they outlive everyone around them."

Suddenly, Gold got a twinkle in his eye that gave Norah pause.

"Everyone but…" Gold grinned. He grinned in that wide, wild way that threw Norah back to over a hundred years before.

"The Dark One," Norah finished.

"Exactly."