Disclaimer: It's the show's world. I just play in it (with my own toys).
10
Gold wanted to be anywhere but his shop when Finn turned up the next afternoon, waving a sheet of paper.
"I expect yours to be the first name on this petition," she said cheerfully, sliding it across the counter to him. "A few people already asked to sign, but I told them that you would get to do the honors."
He eyed her warily. Did she know? Was she testing him? Why was she here?
She frowned under the intensity of his gaze. "What's wrong?"
And just like that, he fixed his mouth in a polite smile and looked down at the paper.
August was no threat to him, and he knew how to handle Regina. It was easy to pull the strings of people when he knew their motivations, when he knew what they remembered of their lives in the other land - and especially when they didn't.
But he could not read this woman. He knew who she was, and she was still a mystery to him.
And because she was still a mystery to him, he could not afford to give himself away.
He produced a pen from his jacket pocket and scrawled his name on the first line, passing the sheet back to her.
"May I borrow that?" she asked, gesturing to his pen.
He nodded curtly and handed it to her. She signed K. Andersen beneath his signature and offered the pen back. As Gold reached for it, she pulled it back, her fingers grazing his in the process. A thin bolt of electricity ran up his arm.
"What's wrong?" she asked again, her voice more insistent, holding the pen out of reach.
"Nothing," he replied dismissively, turning his palm up. "My pen, please."
She shook her head. "No, something's happened. What is it?"
"I don't believe that it's any of your business, Miss Andersen."
"Maybe not," she said, setting the pen on the counter, "but if something's wrong, I want to help."
"Why?"
She frowned. "Because I want to help."
"That does not-"
He waved his hand irritably, but she caught it between both of hers, and it startled him into silence. The gesture reminded him so much of Belle that he didn't know what to do, and he could only stare down at her hands clasped around his.
"If something is bad enough that you can't keep it off your face, I don't want you to have to handle it alone. You don't have many friends in this town. Any, really. I've been there. Let me help."
She didn't know. How could she hold his hand so tightly and sound so sincere, almost pleading, if she knew?
Gold withdrew his hand from her grasp and gripped his cane to stop his fingers from trembling. He felt exposed, and he could not abide such vulnerability.
"A kind offer but no," he said finally. "Will that be all, Miss Andersen?"
"Mr. Gold-"
"Will that be all?" he asked again, voice harsh.
She sighed irritably. "Don't think this is over," she warned, heading for the door.
"Good luck with your petition," he said off-handedly, pulling back the curtain to his office as the door to the shop slammed shut in response.
Guilt was a funny thing, he thought as he eyed the receiver on his desk. When she had begun explaining to Henry how her mother had kidnapped her, Gold had turned the device off, unwilling to listen to the details he already knew.
If it had been anyone else, he may not have cared. He had done plenty of things for which he should be sorry and wasn't. This should have been another one of those things, justified in his search for Baelfire, but she was not like the rest in this town.
She did not cower and move away from him quickly, and she didn't try to avoid his temper through flattery. She smiled warmly at him when she was in a good mood and snapped at him when she was angry. She had invited him out to lunch. She had told August that she liked him, that the only reason she hadn't been forthcoming about her identity was to keep him interested.
What he had done to her was only a small thing on the whole, but the fact that she seemed genuinely to enjoy spending time with him - and perhaps even to care for him, given her reaction to thinking he was in trouble - made him regret it more than some of the worst sins he had committed.
He couldn't let her find out.