"Baelfire's doing well in his magic lesson," Rumpelstiltskin told his wife. "Though I'm not sure he likes them. If he wanted to stop, he'd tell me, wouldn't he?"

Belle didn't answer, though he hadn't been expecting her to. Nearly a year after her sacrifice, he wasn't quite ready accept that she might never wake up. He reached over to stroke her hair, twirling one lock around his finger. She looked peaceful, but he doubt she was at peace on the inside. No one knew what happened when someone fell under a sleeping curse because no one had ever woken up from one.

She would be the first, Rumpelstiltskin vowed silently.

"You should see him now," he muttered. "He's growing up so fast." A moment of silent passed as the words hung in the air. "We both miss you." He didn't know if people under sleeping curses could hear what was going on around them, but he liked to think they could. He liked to imagine that Belle heard everyone word and was just to open her eyes and have a ral conversation with him.

Not for the first time and certainly not the last, he cursed Fiona for everything she had taken from him. She was probably long-gone by now, wreaking mayhem in some other kingdom, but Rumpelstiltskin would never forgive her to wreck she had made of his life. First, by trying to taking his innocence when he was a boy, then causing him to loose his young adulthood to a horrible curse, then getting Tiger Lily placed under house arrest so that she could never leave the fairy realm again, and now, because of her, his beloved Belle seemed doomed to never again open her eyes.

He was going to kill her for that. First he would torture her. First he would do all manner of unspeakable things. Things Belle and Baelfire would never think he was capable of. Things that out to be keep far, far away from their beautiful eyes and sensitive ears. Even now, Fiona was ruining his life by turning him into someone his loved ones wouldn't recognize.

No, he realized, that was all him. He chose how he responded to what had happened. Fine, if he became a monster, then he would embrace it. That didn't mean he had to let his family see, but he would embrace it. He didn't want to know what Belle or Baelfire would think, but he wondered about Tiger Lily. Tiger Lily, the only parental figure who had never let him down. Never hurt or abandoned him. So of course, she had instead been taken from him. When his biological mother passed away a few years ago, he had hardly felt anything, but Tiger Lily's imprisonment had cut like a knife to the ribs.

Now all he had left with Baelfire.

A maid knocked on the door, then quietly entered at his beckoning. "Your Highness, Prince Baelfire has cannot be found."

Rumpelstiltskin turned, unsure that he had heard her correctly. He studied her for a moment. She was middle-aged and clearly worried, her hands wringing the hem of her apron nervously.

"Explain what you mean by that," Rumpelstiltskin asked, his voice low and dangerous.

She froze for a moment, then answered. "He-he went for a ride earlier this morning and said he'd have lunch at the nearby town, so we didn't worry. But now it's nearly evening and he hasn't returned. I sent someone to town to fetch him, or to see where he had been that morning, but the townsfolk claim he wasn't in town all day. So now we have no idea where he went. Some of his belongings are missing...he might have left of his own account."

"Hope that you find him before I lose my patience with you," Rumpelstiltskin commanded coldly.

The maid turned white with fear, something that surprised him. "Y-y-yes Your Rightness." When he dismissed her with a wave of his hand, she curtsied and fled from the room as though hell-hounds were biting at her heels. Rumpelstiltskin, surprised by his own behavior, felt unsettled by the encounter in more ways that one.

He shook his head, he was overthinking it. Rumpelsstiltskin squashed down any feeling of guilt he felt for his treatment of the maid. After all, she shouldn't have lost track of Baelfire in the first place. He just needed to focus on finding his son and breaking his wife's curse.

Fortunately for Emma and David, Mr. Gold was in the first place they looked. In his pawn shop, behind the counter, reading a book. He didn't look up or move when they entered. David's nose wrinkled like he just smelled something foul, but Emma was too worried about Ava to worry about his rudeness.

"Gold..." Emma hesitated. "Rumpelstiltskin?"

Rumpelstiltskin slammed his book shut and set it down on the counter. "Took you long enough. Here I was, beginning to fear that you would never figure it out. But you did, and not a moment too soon. Well, let's get started breaking this curse."

"Hold on," Emma replied coolly. "I don't trust you and I really doubt you trust me, but I need something first."

"I sure you do," Rumpelstiltskin's voice was just as cool, "But I have spent the last thirty years watching my wife waste away under a sleeping curse, waiting for her to wake up, and now that you have the power to wake her, I'm not waiting a moment longer."

Emma and David looked at each other, both feeling uneasy. David asked, "So, Belle's not a regular coma? She's been under a sleeping curse this whole time?"

"My foster-my daughter Ava is under a sleeping curse now," Emma said. "Regina's no help, so we were hoping you might have a curse."

Rumpelstiltskin laughed without humor, "If I had a curse to sleeping curses, none of us would be in this mess."

"I think you owe us all an explanation for," David cross his arms. "Are you on Regina's side? Were you just manipulating her? What's your role to play in this?"

Rumpelstiltskin contemplated for a minute, "I hate having to explain myself, but I know I won't get anywhere with you unless I do. Regina thinks that casting this curse was her idea but really it was something that I planted in her head. She was desperate and alone, and that made her useful to me."

"She killed her own father to cast this," David shook his head in disgust, "And you were just using her?"

"Don't feel too much pity. She's a big girl, she knew she had the chance to back out," Rumpelstiltskin shrugged. He had just said she was desperate and alone, but neither David nor Emma were in the mood in argue. Especially not on Regina's behalf. "Belle broke a curse that had been placed on me by... it's not important who. Just that in the process, she placed herself under a sleeping curse. Belle is a better wife than I could ever deserve, but since I'm the man she chose, I do everything for her and our son."

"Killian?" Emma guessed.

Rumpelstiltskin looked disgusted. "No, not him. He's...forget it. He's not important to this."

Emma felt a flare of anger at his dismissal of Killian, but smothered it because she knew she still needed answers. "If not him, then who?"

"My first son, Baelfire. After Belle fell under the sleeping curse, I found a way to become The Dark One so that I would have enough power to break the curse. But having that much power changed me in ways that my son could not stand. He fled, and I've been trying to find him and break my wife's curse ever since."

"You seem to really care about your family," Emma noted. "Care you explain how you ended up with Killian's mom?"

"She had the original manuscript with the instructions on how to cast the curse. I had to get to her, and... There was only one thing she had on her mind."

"So when you cheated on your comatose wife with a married woman, it's was really for her benefit," Emma scoffed. "I'm sure she'll love to hear all about that." When Rumpelstiltskin winced, she wondered if she was taking it too far, but she was so angry about everything Killian had been through and the way Rumpelstiltskin talked about him. "You have one son you'd move kingdoms for and another you barely acknowledge. How did you get like that?"

"We are running out of time," Rumpelstiltskin dodged, his voice as icy as Emma or David had ever heard it, "For both Belle and Ava. Don't worry about my children, just your own."

"As much as I sympathize with Killian, he's right," David stated, though he didn't look the least bit happy about it. "Tell us, why did you chose this curse and how can Emma break it?"

"This curse has two special properties that are the reasons I chose it: first, that it would carry Baelfire along wherever he was because I used some of my own blood in it and second, that it affects other spells in unpredictable ways. I had hoped that I would reunite with Baelfire in Storybrooke and Belle would be free of her sleeping curse, but it didn't work out that way."

Emma lunged forward without thinking, her fists pummeling Rumpelstiltskin as he raised his arms up to block her blows. "Do you have any idea what you've done?" she screamed as David pulled her off him. "All the lives you ruined! Priscilla and Paige, Flora and Connor, Killian, my family. Me. You selfish piece of shit!"

Rumpelstiltskin rubbed his face where she had struck him, already swelling and turning red. "I'll thank you not to hit me again Miss Swan. Anyway, I've been trying to rectify my mistake since I made it."

"I'm sure you have," Emma spat.

"Do you know why Regina hasn't killed you yet? Because I convinced her that if she murdered someone, the curse would break. Do you the block on your mind disappeared? Because I gave you manticore venom."

"You are such a saint," Emma said sarcastically as she shrugged out of David's arms. "Truly, I am eternally grateful. You know, I'm starting to see why your son ran away. And if your wife was your true love, you could have just kissed her awake, you wouldn't need to do all this bullshit."

Rumpelstiltskin moved closer, until their faces were nearly touching. His voice was so low, it was practically a whisper. "Curse me all you like when this is over, when both our loved ones are awake and safe, but right now, I'm not your enemy. Don't make me your enemy."

Emma felt a shiver go down her spine, but she refused to back down. "We'll finish this later," she agreed.

David stepped in between his daughter and the Dark One, "Alright, with that out of the way, tell us what Emma needs to do to break the curse and how that will save Ava."

Rumpelstiltskin explained, "Many of the curses people were already under suddenly stopped working when the curse was first cast. It stands to reason that when it breaks, the rest of those curses will go the same way. It's the only chance either Belle or Ava. The curse's magical energy still present and you, Miss Swan, have a special connection to add to that none of us do. If you can concentrate it into one place and destroy it, that do the trick."

"Fine," Emma nodded. "Let's do this."