Author's note: Well, if Rumbelle is "Beauty and the Beast", I guess GoldenHook is the "Loathly Lady" story? With either of them as the loathly lady, depending on how you look at it...

Lat never a man a wooing wend,
That lacketh thingis three;
A routh o' gould, an open heart,
Ay fu' o' charity. — "King Henry", Child ballad 32

Quiet.

It was so quiet that for a moment Rogers thought they had died, but then he heard the exhausted breaths of his companions, loud in the stillness that followed the storm. The air smelled of mud and wet leaves. The ritual chanting had ended.

In that silence, the stabbing pain in his heart pulsed louder than ever. It was a deafening thunder in his ears alone. But when he looked, Gothel was gone. A tree stood where she had been. Assured of his daughter's safety, Rogers let go of her hand and stumbled away, hoping for a reprieve from the poison.

"Ivy!" Tilly ran into Ivy's embrace and the two danced a little circle. Rogers smiled to see it. Ivy's forced transformation must have been undone when Gothel had been defeated. But when he looked at the bigger, ritual circle, it was empty.

"The coven," he gasped hoarsely.

"They went willingly," said Weaver. "Loyal to the end, they are all, along with Gothel, part of the World Tree." One knee still on the ground, the tip of his dagger digging into the dirt, Weaver stared up at the branches. "I did warn her, back in our world. But perhaps she would consider it worth the price, to bring back the Tree."

"Is it dangerous?" The question came from Neal, who was now standing a few paces away, an arm wrapped protectively around Henry.

The Crocodile's son and grandson, thought Rogers, not sure how it had happened, but he was glad to see them alive.

Weaver scoffed. "We're the dangerous ones. Gothel had a point. The Tree may help balance our sins." Then he glanced sharply at Rogers. "You're still poisoned."

Rogers forced a grin. "Aye, same old, same old — nothing new there."

But Weaver saw through the lie. "It's worse than it was. You were holding her hand. That much close contact—"

"She needed me." Rogers glared at him, willing him to let it go. He didn't need everyone staring at him as he tried to conceal a wave of pain. "I'll be fine."

"Rogers..." Weaver clambered to his feet and closed the distance between them, reaching out for Rogers' wrist to check his pulse. "You're dying."

"He's what?" Neal looked shocked. "Wait, but you said any curse can be broken by true love's kiss. Can't he and his daughter...?"

Weaver looked grim. "No. It's a curse on the poison, not on the victim. The poison is a living thing, a kind of fungus originating in Wonderland. It infects the heart and slowly supplants it. There's no cure."

"Papa?" Tilly's frightened eyes met his.

Rogers sighed. "I'm sorry, Starfish." This world wasn't the escape they had hoped for, but at least he wouldn't die without knowing who they were.

"What's wrong? Can I help?" Stacy's offer was soft, hesitant. Freed from Gothel's control, the girl had a dazed look about her. Her sister hovered nearby, but didn't speak. Perhaps she knew what Rogers would say.

"It's as the Crocodile said: there's no cure." Rogers felt another sharp twinge in his heart, which felt too heavy for his chest. He doubled over, forearms braced against his knees as he tried to catch his breath.

"Just sit down," Weaver advised, lending an arm to help him down. He glanced at Stacy. "You may not be able to cure him, but you can mask the pain. For a while, at least."

"Ok, yeah, sure." Stacy listened with admirable focus as the Crocodile instructed her on the spell.

Roni rolled her eyes. "Beware of taking lessons from the Dark One. Next thing you know you'll be ripping out hearts left and right."

"I would never!" Stacy sounded aghast.

"Of course not, love," Rogers said. Another spasm of pain overtook him, and he gritted his teeth, biting back a groan. Weaver knelt behind him, cushioning him as he slumped over. Then the pain receded, but he knew the relief was only temporary. Rogers aimed a scowl at Roni. "Don't scare the lass."

"Miss Belfrey, when you were under Gothel's enchantment, your mind was attuned to the World Tree," said Weaver, his voice soft and inexorable. "Pain is a response bred into animal life, because they have the capacity to avoid it. Plants have no such recourse, thus pain is irrelevant to them. You need to remember how that felt, and share it with Detective Rogers here."

"Ok. I'll try."

Wonder of wonders, the girl summoned her green magic and infused it into Rogers. A moment of dizziness, and then the world seemed to re-adjust itself. His body felt distant, numb. He felt no inclination to move. Had she turned him into a tree after all?

"Did I do that right?" Stacy looked past Rogers towards Weaver.

"Ask your patient." Weaver's voice startled him at how close it was. He must still be holding him, even if Rogers couldn't feel it.

For a moment, Rogers couldn't speak, having forgotten how. Then he shook away the delusion and forced himself to take a breath. "Aye, love. Thank you."

"I'm sorry. I only wanted to help." Stacy pulled away and turned to her sister. "When Gothel came to me, I thought... it seemed like the right thing to do. I didn't mean..."

Ivy pulled Stacy into a hug. "It's all right. I know. The things I did, I thought the same thing."

"Lovely," Roni interrupted them. "Now that you've kissed and made up, there's someone else who could use your help."

"Facilier," said Weaver.

Roni nodded tightly. "Gothel did something to him, just like she did to Anastasia. I'm afraid he might..." She swallowed the unlucky words before they could escape, but it was clear what she meant.

"Ivy?" Stacy gave her sister a frightened glance. "Can you... can you come, too?"

Ivy grimaced, looking torn, but followed Stacy and Roni to where Samdi lay, apparently still unconscious.

Tilly hovered by Rogers, as close as she dared. "Papa, just hang on. Your heart is strong. You can't die..." Tears shone in her eyes. "Please..."

Rogers looked away. "I'm sorry, Starfish. I've lived longer than most, but it's my time. I have my family with me. It's all I could ask."

"Papa!" Tilly clenched her fists, as if she would otherwise run to his side, an act that would only hasten his demise.

Weaver sighed. "May we all be so fortunate in our deaths. No regrets about missing your chance at vengeance?"

Rogers snorted. "I'll see you in hell, Crocodile, even if I won't be the one to send you there." Rather the reverse, he thought. Ironic of fate to decree that he should die cradled in his enemy's lap instead. Enemy? No point in lying to himself anymore. The Crocodile had stopped being his enemy long before the Dark Curse had been cast, and here in this new land, poor innocent Rogers had imagined a future where they could be together. Now he knew it for a vain hope.

"Don't say that, Papa! There must be some way to save you," insisted Tilly.

"There's nothing to be done." Rogers longed to go to his daughter, but even had he the strength to move, he knew she would flee his touch for his sake.

"That's not quite true, is it?" Neal spoke up unexpectedly, his gaze and his question directed not at Rogers, but at Weaver. Neal and Henry had been hanging back at the fringes, giving Rogers and his daughter their space. But now Neal stared at Weaver. "You know something, don't you, Papa?"

Feeling Weaver flinch, Rogers frowned at Neal. "Baelfire, don't."

But Weaver's reply was calm, as if he had expected the accusation. "You know me, I always have a loophole."

"Well? What is it?" Neal demanded.

Rogers waited, wanting to know the answer, too. What possible loophole could he have?

"I don't know, son. It's only a guess, until..."

"Until what? If you can save his life, you have to try."

"You can?" Tilly's voice was filled with hope, and Rogers silently cursed Neal when he saw the look on his daughter's face. It would only hurt her more if that hope failed.

"I was going to say, until I check." Weaver shifted aside, freeing one hand from Rogers.

"No, not that!" Tilly turned pale, and Rogers extended his curses to the Crocodile. What the hell was he doing now? Rogers wished he could see his face, but the angle of Weaver's head hid his expression.

"'Pure', in the magical sense, is a technical term, not always aligned with quotidian moral sensibilities. As we've seen today." Weaver paused, and Rogers felt a ripple of magic. Then Weaver's hand came into view. He had ripped out his own heart.

Rogers gasped, and he wasn't the only one. The heart wasn't black, wasn't red. It was a soft gold, pulsing with an inner light.

Weaver said in an odd, strangled voice, "Well. That answers that, doesn't it?"

"No, you can't!" Tilly's eyes were wide, panicked. "It's my fault. I made you the Guardian. And I used the wishing powder, but I didn't know what it meant. You'll die. I don't want you to die for him, that's not right. That's not..."

"It's not your fault, Tilly," Weaver said gently. "It's my choice."

Rogers froze as he understood what Weaver meant. Damn that man!

"Shit, Papa." Neal stepped forward to stop Weaver. "I didn't mean..."

"It's all right, son. Your papa is still somewhere out there, but this is the only father Alice has."

You're not expendable! Rogers wanted to shout. Even if there was another version of Rumplestiltskin in the world, it wasn't the same man they had come to know... and love. He grabbed for Weaver's wrist. "Put that back in your chest." His arm was too shaky, his grip too weak, but Weaver paused and didn't pull away. He tilted his head to meet Rogers' eyes. Rogers shook his head. "It's my choice. I don't want you to pay for my mistakes."

Weaver's mouth twisted into a crooked smile. "It's not as if I don't have enough of my own. And I'm older than you."

"A handful of years against the hundreds we've survived."

"You'd have your chance to skin your Crocodile. Milah will be happy you finally avenged her."

"It won't be much comfort to her to hear you sacrificed yourself for me when you wouldn't do it for her!" Rogers regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. Guilt filled him at the shamed look on Weaver's face. For a moment, he was looking again at the face of the spinner he had first met in the tavern. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

"It's true," Weaver whispered bitterly. "I've always been a coward."

"No, mate. We both know I could have killed you the moment you set foot on the Jolly Roger." Back then, he had preferred to toy with the man first. A bully, indeed, he thought, ashamed to remember what he had been. "You had courage enough to walk on board and ask me to my face to let Milah go."

"But not enough to fight for her."

"No, you were right to walk away. Your son needed you. I wish I had been able to be as brave for my child's sake." Rogers closed his eyes. "And that's why I don't deserve your sacrifice."

Stalemate. Weaver was a stubborn bastard, but so was Rogers, and he knew Weaver wouldn't force him to accept a heart against his will.

The stalemate could only end with Rogers' death, but he was content with that. He wouldn't be able to face his daughter, or himself honestly in the mirror, if he bought his survival with Weaver's heart. It was enough to know that Rumplestiltskin had made the offer and meant it. To know that he cared, after all. "You'll look after Alice, aye?"

"Papa!" Tilly's anguish was almost too much to bear, but Rogers forced himself to smile at her.

Then Henry spoke up. "There may be another way. I read something in the book..." He looked at his father. "The book is all true, isn't it?"

Neal nodded. "Maybe not in your reality, but it all happened in the other one. The book has its own magic. It holds the true story rather than the lies people tell each other."

"Well, there was a story about the time my grandparents — I mean, the ones in the other reality — the time they had to cast the Dark Curse. And the price was the heart of the person they loved the most." Henry's voice broke as he spoke, and Rogers remembered that Henry, too, had cast that same curse. "My grandfather would have died, but then the Evil Queen split my grandmother's heart and gave each of them half, so they both lived."

Rogers met Weaver's eyes. Was this their loophole? Was it possible to cheat the price of magic like this?

"I don't know," Weaver whispered. "I don't. It seems too easy." He turned to Henry and raised his voice to say, "If it's true... I didn't know. I would have told you. I'm sorry, Henry. I failed you."

Neal hugged his son. "No one knew."

"I crushed her heart," Henry said dully, his face twisted with guilt. "She didn't have to die."

"You didn't know," Neal repeated. "But Henry, death isn't the end, it's a doorway, and I've been on the other side. She's there, she hasn't forgotten you, and she regrets none of it. Everything you both did was to give your people their best chance."

"Why couldn't you have given me the book sooner? Before the curse?" Henry pushed his father away, anger overriding his grief. "Why?"

"It was the curse that made my return possible," said Neal gently. "I'm sorry, Henry. I wish we could have saved her. But if you hadn't done it, none of you would ever have existed, not even as dead souls."

No one spoke for a long time. Rogers knew how much it must have cost Henry to volunteer that particular story. He couldn't let it be for nothing. Rogers looked for Roni, but before anyone could call their version of the Evil Queen over, Tilly cut their thoughts short.

"I can do it," she declared. "If the Evil Queen can do it, I can. And it's my papa. She doesn't love him, but I do."

As Hook's original heart shriveled, disintegrating at last into a crumbling mass of cursed spores, the new half heart filled its place, keeping him alive. The poison was not so easily banished. Spores infiltrated the new heart, attacking it as viciously as they had the old. Weaver felt the poison stabbing through him as if it were in his own heart. It was his heart, no matter its physical location. Tilly's magic had split it into two pieces, but one heart was still only one heart.

One pure heart. Weaver would have laughed, if he could muster the strength for it. Only in the eyes of someone as mad as Alice could the Dark One's heart be transformed into something pure. But it was enough. The poison gradually weakened. If he was the Guardian, then this was what he guarded: these lives were under his protection.

Especially this one. He held to that thought as the poison dissipated.

One heart. How could one heart beat for two lives? When Henry suggested it, Rumplestiltskin hadn't believed it, not for himself. The Charming couple were fate's darlings, and their true love was capable of miracles, but he was nothing. A coward who had succumbed to dark magic. He had let Alice split his heart, but braced himself for failure.

Now that Hook was freed of the poison, the two halves of Weaver's heart stuttered, beating in awful syncopation in a futile attempt to keep two bodies alive. Never mind, he could fix it. He reached for his half of the heart, but Tilly grabbed his wrist, stopping him. Like father, like daughter, he thought in a daze.

"Don't you dare!" Tilly glared at him as if she could save him by sheer force of will.

"It's... not working," Weaver gasped. "Only way... save... your father."

"Both of you." Tilly pulled at him, and he found his fingers entangled with another's. Rogers. "You have to believe."

"Believe?"

"True love," Tilly said fiercely.

Weaver groaned and fell back. Love? It had only ever been an illusion. His heart beat a jagged, painful rhythm, torn in two. Then Tilly's magic washed through them, matching the rough edges of their lives together.

"Crocodile," said Hook softly.

No, Rogers. It was only Rogers who could believe in something so ridiculous. Rogers was a fool.

"Who's the fool? You're the one sacrificing your life."

Weaver startled at the reply to his unvoiced thoughts. Or had the words leaked through his teeth? No. He hadn't spoken aloud. Yet...

You gave me your heart, came the answering thought.

Of course. He could lie with what he said or didn't say, but what was the use of that when everything hidden in his heart was exposed in another man's chest? Tilly's spell bound them together, forging a connection. The question was—

But can you accept mine?

—could the connection be sustained? One heart, two lives — a metaphor made literal by magic. Perhaps Weaver and Rogers could share a love untainted by past sins, but they weren't even real. Was it possible for fake people to have true love?

The contradiction threatened to rip them apart. But Rogers refused to let go. Despite everything, despite the restoration of his memories, he was as endearingly optimistic as ever.

Rumplestiltskin had let go, once, long ago in a nonexistent past, and regretted it forever. But this time?

A hand squeezed his shoulder, and he heard Neal's voice by his ear. "Hang on, Papa. You can do it."

Please.

Love, like magic, required a leap of faith.

"I don't know." He was afraid, as he was always afraid, that he would ruin this, as he ruined everything. True love? A mockery of fate, to dangle such hope in front of the monster whose Dark Curse had destroyed his own grandson's chance at true love. It was too cruel. Wasn't it better to let Rogers go, to let him live out this second chance of a life, rather than drag both of them back into the darkness?

Your death won't make Henry any happier. He's no villain to take joy in your destruction.

I destroyed myself a long time ago. You knew that, when you named me 'demon'. What could Hook see in him except a mirage? I'm no one's happy ending.

Some of us beg to differ!

You have Alice, Weaver thought. Free, uncursed. You can be happy. You don't need me.

You say that, Crocodile, but I notice you haven't let go yet.

I... It was true. Their fingers remained interlaced, Tilly's hand resting over them both, keeping the magic alive. But what if—

Devil take your 'what if'! I'll take my chances, if you will.

You'd never be free of me. Is that really what you want?

"It wasn't so bad," said Rogers. A warm rush of memories followed his words, and Weaver remembered the home they had made in the wish realm. It had felt like family, however grudgingly Rumplestiltskin had allowed Hook across his threshold at first.

"Perhaps not," Weaver conceded. And perhaps some trace of memory had bled through the curse. Of all the people in Hyperion Heights, it was only Rogers that Detective Weaver had sought out to be his partner. For the job, he had told himself — but the truth was that he had always wanted more. More than Rumplestiltskin had been willing to admit to in the Enchanted Forest. He hadn't trusted it to be real, but it was different with Weaver and Rogers. A second chance. Bae had showed him it was possible. And now...

You haven't let go. Rogers squeezed Weaver's hand.

No. (Never.)

One heart. Two lives.