I was thinking about all the loose ends left by the finale and this felt like a big one…
…
The day of Rumpelstiltskin's funeral was sad one. He could never be buried by Belle's side, the corkscrew twist of the timeline would not allow it. So instead his body had been brought back to Storybrooke, where he could be buried beside his first son Neal.
The congregation, dressed in black, walked slowly to the graveyard. Robin was aware of the looks from the town-folks. She, Alice and Wish-Hook, as they called him, were strangers here. Their relationship with Weaver… Rumple… Mr Gold… was, after all, so different from that of everyone else here.
…
Robin never knew him as a man. He had left Storybrooke with Belle and little Gideon when she had been a baby. She had heard the stories, although her mother had been reluctant to tell them given their unhappy history. He was often portrayed as selfish or cruel and yet for Alice's sake he had given up his chance to be with Belle, his one true love. He had chosen to save Alice from the prison of immortality and encouraged her to follow her heart and be with Robin.
For the sake of their true love he had given up the freedom he had been hunting for for centuries and surrendered to the darkness.
In the Enchanted Forest his cursed dagger had turned him into a creature to pity; crazed and lost in his spinning wheel. Robin had often spied him hiding in the bushes by Alice's cabin, watching them together; drinking in their happiness almost as if it was his own. It was the imp that she knew. A beast who, although shrunk into madness, would always smile when he saw them together.
Now he was dead.
He had sacrificed himself in an act of true selflessness and saved them all. At the same time he gave Alice the happiest of happy ever afters. Rumple's heart now rested in Hook's chest lifting the curse that had separated Alice from her father for over fifteen years.
To Robin, for all he had done for Alice, Rumpelstiltskin was a hero.
…
Alice hung in Robin's arms, her teary-eyed face buried against Robin's shoulder as the coffin was slowly lowered into the earth. Alice had been inconsolable the whole day. Rumple had been a true friend to her and she felt the loss keenly.
Regina was the first to speak. Her eulogy was sad a sweet. A story of Rumple's evolution from a villain to a hero thanks to the love he found.
"And the love he gave…" piped up Alice, her voice clear despite her sorrow. "In the end it was the love he gave that saved him."
Alice looked up at Robin and gave her a sad smile, and then reached out a hand to grasp her father's arm and smiled at him too.
"I will be forever grateful that I knew him and that he gave me the greatest gift of all, a chance to live out my life with the people I love... He was a true hero. I am sure that he's in heaven and he has found his Belle again… because, in the end, he became who he always was but never thought he could become… a good man."
…