It had been a long trip. Well, a week. Closer to two, actually. He supposed two weeks wasn't that long in the scheme of things, but it had felt long, which in and of itself was curious. His little expeditions never felt long before, and certainly not…tedious. Yes, he supposed 'tedious' was the right word, though he would never have thought it. He had always enjoyed these little outings; he did enjoy them. People very often came to him — whatever they thought or said of him, they still came — but often it was expedient to venture out to them, and how he loved to be there, to see it. To pull the strings of the world and watch them dance.
Still, he could not deny that this time it had felt, well, tedious. All those people, scurrying around like ants. So consumed by things that did not matter at all. Betrayal. Revenge. Fear. Anger. Love. He had tasted them all, and he was done. It was amusing really. And it was baffling. No one seemed to understand that what really mattered was power. No one except the Queen. Which, he supposed, was why he respected her.
It was important, he believed, to respect one's enemies. And what they could do.
Still… Still, perhaps he would wait a bit before answering another summons. Really, he was growing tired of all this running around. All those letters, the little pleas of help me help me, piling up, until there weren't enough hours in the day, not even if he froze time — which he had to do, once or twice — and the headaches afterwards were hardly worth the effort. Much like the letter her good and royal father had written when he sent for him.
The memory of it still made Rumplestiltskin grind his teeth. That insufferable prick. Sent for him, like a servant. As if the Dark One's magic was at his beck and call, to do with as he pleased. Well, he had shown that fat foolish bastard. He had taken what was most dear to him, let her be the servant. Let her come when he called. It was wonderfully funny. When you thought about it. Which he did.
Not often.
Some of the time.
The problem was, you see, that the silly girl simply didn't understand humor. Half of the joke in getting a darling, pampered little princess to fetch and carry and scrub his floors was that she was supposed to whine about it. Fuss about breaking her nails and ruining her dress. Blubber a bit. Moan — no. Not moan. Complain. Yes, 'complain' was better.
Did she?
No, she did not, the irrational girl.
She simply…simply…went about her chores. Dusting and polishing and cooking (heaven help him, though she was getting better at that). She'd ruined that magnificent golden gown of hers mopping the floors and washing the dishes and hauling laundry out to the line, and she had yet to say a word about it. He was prepared for when she asked him for another dress. He had been prepared, since the first week, having judged a week an adequate time for even the most spoiled princess to realize her heavy satin finery would not do for drudgery. He had planned to give her something plain and coarse and very maid-like, to make a point that her life as a petted princess and dearest daughter was now over. He'd even practiced the look he would give her, once or twice. A nice mix of amusement and condescension. But he couldn't bloody amusingly condescend when she simply…did her work. Poured the tea. Made the beds. Beat the damn carpets. And not once was there an I never learnt how or princesses are not expected to know that or can't you simply have magic do this? He was ready for those, he had practiced — he had quite a good well, you will simply have to learn now, but his best was the of course I can have magic do it. Because that was part of the joke, wasn't it? He could have had magic do it all, and he made her do it. He'd ransomed her at the price of her village, stolen her away from her family, left her kingdom without an heir and forced her into a life of endless and exhausting toil simply because he could. That was what made it so funny. He didn't really need her at all.
Not really.
Well…yes, so she was…useful. He would admit to that, at least. He had ordered her to help sort all the requests (he knew full well she read everything else in the castle), and she was thorough and organized, and Rumplestiltskin discovered it helped him decide which to choose and which to toss into the fireplace. She would make that amusing little face, and that little line would appear between her brows, and her eyes would go hard as sapphire. This last time she had wadded up the request and tried to throw it into the fire. But he had said, fair is fair, and winked it out of her hands.
She had said, nothing you do is fair.
And he had said, I am the fairest of them all, dearie. Everyone knows the rules. If you want to play, then you must pay. Your father knew that when he wrote to me.
Really, it amazed him how many people failed to fully comprehend that. How many would listen to his terms and strike the deal, and then rail and cry and act completely shocked when it was time to pay the piper. It was getting…
Tedious.
A rest was what he needed. A little quiet time at home (not that the castle was quiet, exactly, with that girl gallumping about the place and disturbing his things in the name of cleanliness and talking to herself). He really should devote more time to researching the arcane arts; he had been focusing his energies on dark magic, and it would never do for the great and terrible Dark One to pigeonhole himself. He hoped Belle had kept the place tidy. He was in no mood to return to a dusty, cluttered castle…as, well as he used to. (Simply because he could use magic to clean the place didn't mean he remembered to.) (He was a busy and important person and he had many more important things to attend to than washing dishes.) If she had let the place go, there would be…well, a reckoning. Surely.
Rumplestiltskin wondered how long she would bide her time before trying to escape — because that was surely what she was doing. He knew that was what all this was — all this promptness and kindness and…and all the other -nesses. Biding her time, acting the meek miss so he would not suspect her, and the moment she thought she was safe — gone. Well, he did suspect her. A deal was a deal, but he knew full well that no one stayed at the Dark Castle. Not voluntarily. If he was fair and honest (which he was, of occasion, though only in private), he would admit that most of them probably did not like being kept in the dungeon, in chains. But the end was the same. Everyone tried to escape. And no one succeeded.
Not even him.
Rumplestiltskin shook his head. No, no, that was ridiculous. Of course he never wished to escape. There was nothing to escape to. There was nothing to escape from, he told himself. He had power — real power — more power than anyone else in the world. Really, he needed a nice long rest if these were the sort of ridiculous thoughts that popped into your head when you were overtired.
He saw the glint of the towers amid the mountains. And ignored the warm pull in his chest. Especially the reckless, irrational thought that popped into his head, unbidden and unwanted: home.
Gold stood outside for a long while, staring at his front door, keys in his hand. He had to go inside. He had to eat, and sleep. To keep his strength. But first, he had to go inside.
He unlocked the door and stepped inside. He was keenly aware of the rap of his cane against the polished wooden floors, of the click of his shoes. Of the way the sound echoed throughout the room, and how empty it made it feel. They were sounds that made him acutely, brutally aware of how empty the house was. He had never thought about the sounds before. Well, not much. He had grown used to them, the lonely simple sounds of one person moving about. After all, there had only been a very brief time when he would come back and…someone would be there.
He didn't allow himself to think about it. He tried not to think about it. He wasn't ready to think, to feel, to lose this fog that kept him back from the edge, where he teetered on the brink of something truly terrible. There was a glass bowl on the table by the door where he put his keys every day. There was the brass coat tree to hang his coat and scarf. He should put his keys in the bowl. Hear them clink against the glass. He should hang up his coat on the arms of the tree and go down the dark hall to the kitchen and have something to eat. He needed to keep up his strength. He needed to not think. Not about tomorrow, not about what he would do when he could think. Not about all of the days, the years that Belle had been here. Here and alive. Twenty-eight years, and he hadn't known.
But he didn't allow himself to think about that. To think about her would be to be devastated by relief. By joy. Belle. Alive. After all these years, after all this time, alive.
Gold stared at the glass bowl, but his hand wouldn't reach out and drop the keys.
Abruptly he turned and slammed out of the house, not able to listen to the clink of the keys against glass, not able to think about that sound echoing throughout his home, through the emptiness and the silence until he would not be able to ignore either.
He went to his shop. He told himself that he would spin. He would watch the wheel and listen to the clacks of the wood, and forget. At the very least he would be able to not think. He would do that.
But he wasn't thinking as he opened the shop door — hard. So hard that the wood rattled in its hinges and the glass burst apart. Something in him burst with it, and he felt the cane in his hands and he gave in to the need he hadn't been thinking about, the terrible need to see something shatter and break apart.
Eventually someone called the sheriff. Gold realized this when he heard the crunch of footsteps over the broken glass. He was on the floor, not entirely sure how long he had been sitting there, half-leaning against the remnants of a broken and tortured display case, and exhaustion finally, blessedly numbing him.
Sheriff Swan cast one long look over the ruin of his store. She sighed. "Jesus Christ."
"I'm afraid we're not open," Gold managed. There was a stitch in his side, and as he pulled in air it scraped like sandpaper against his lungs.
The good sheriff cocked an eyebrow at this. "Got a noise complaint. Said they heard shouting, sounds of stuff breaking, and — and this is a quote — 'prolific obscenities.'"
He forced himself to give her a thin smile. "Spring cleaning. I'm afraid I've never been fond of it."
She regarded him for a long moment, but when she finally spoke all she said was, "Give you a lift to the hospital?"
And he rasped, before he could stop himself, "She's awake?"
"No," the sheriff said after a moment, her face cautiously blank. "Your hands."
Gold looked down. His hands were bleeding. There was quite a bit of glass about, and he had cut his hands up rather badly. But not, he decided, too badly. "No. Thank you."
The sheriff sighed, and muttered Jesus again. To which Gold offered a polite smile and said, "However, I do appreciate your concern."
She watched him for a minute before answering. "You know," she began slowly, "I really, really hate not knowing what's going on. I hate it so much that I make it a point to find out. One way or another, however long it takes," she said, giving him a smile that was all flash and sharp edges and no soul. "You could call it a personal mission — or a quest."
He sincerely hoped so. "Thank you, sheriff," Gold said, rising. "I apologize about the noise."