This is a short chapter, I know, but I promise I'll make it up to you in the next one. Take note that the asterisks mark the separation between one world and the next, aka Storybrooke and Corona/Fairy Tale Land. Enjoy!
The door to Mr. Gold's shop slammed shut hard as Hook came storming in, ignoring the CLOSED sign and pounding his way towards the back when Gold was not out in the main shop area.
"Rapunzel?" Mr. Gold asked from behind the curtain just before Hook ripped the fabric from the wall, pinning Gold against the wall and pointing his hook straight at Gold's heart.
"Why does she look like her?" Hook growled. Mr. Gold appeared unfazed by this question, almost as if he had expected him to come.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," he answered calmly.
Hook slammed his hook into the wall next to Gold's head, splintering the wood before pressing it against Gold's neck just enough not to pierce the skin.
"You know exactly what I'm talking about. Why…does she look…like her?" he snarled, an inhuman sound.
"Contrary to what you may have conjured up in your imagination, there was a time when Milah did love me," Gold replied, his tone still calm, collected, though Hook could hear the tension slowly building behind his words.
"And you had a son. Not a daughter," Hook corrected as the girl's face appeared at the front of his mind again, right next to Milah's.
"You may have won her heart with your promise of riches and adventure, but you knew nothing about her," Gold said, his lips curled and his teeth bared in a sneer that reminded Hook of his former crocodile appearance, causing him to press the hook even harder into his neck.
"Tell me what you know, Crocodile, or that little girl of yours will—"
"You won't kill her," he interrupted with a dark smile. "Not if you still believe that she is connected to Milah."
The Crocodile wasn't going to have the upper hand. Not in this. Not when it came to Milah's memory. Hook paused for a moment before a new plan seemed to manifest itself from the memories of what seemed like a past life.
"You're right," he said, that old familiar smirk returning to his face. "I won't kill her. But you of all people know that there are other ways that I can take what you love." Before Gold had a chance to say anything more, Hook released him, turned, and stormed out of the shop.
A hand suddenly burst through a rock wall on the outside of the cave, sending a landslide of rocks out onto a bed of grass. After several silent moments, both Rapunzel and Flynn emerged from beneath the rocks. Rapunzel stood up, a relieved smile on her face as Flynn struggled to pull himself to his feet only to collapse, grasping his injured foot. In the light, Rapunzel could see his face more clearly, and it was as if she could suddenly feel his pain. She'd only known this man for a short period of time – less than an hour – and yet she could already see straight through him…a vulnerability in him that lingered deep below his overconfident, arrogant exterior. And she longed to know more about him. But before she could do that, she had to help him.
"Your hair glows," he muttered, his eyes still wide with shock despite how stark white his face had gone already.
"Eugene," she said, though he couldn't seem to hear her.
"I didn't see that coming. Your hair actually glows," he said again, almost as if he were in a trance.
"Eugene," she urged, trying to get through to him.
"Why does your hair glow?!" he exclaimed as she knelt down, placing her face so close to his that they were nearly touching.
"EUGENE!" she yelled as he snapped back to reality, his eyes focusing on her.
"What?" he asked suddenly.
"It doesn't just glow," she said with a smirk, though his eyebrows furrowed with confusion and a hint of fear.