A/N: Achren is the evil sorceress queen from Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain. The Prydain wiki describes her as "beautiful, yet very deadly… older than she looks… Proud and ambitious, vengeful when crossed, and merciless when doling out punishment to captives or underlings. Given to fits of rage that fueled her drive for victory, in defeat she became morose, even suicidal." In other words, imagining her as a Dark One isn't that big a stretch…

Episode references: S2E14 (Manhattan); S6E13 (Ill-Boding Patterns).

Chapter 32

"You knew he'd been in the past since Manhattan?" Emma demanded. "And you never said anything?"

Henry tilted his head to one side. "Well, when Dad told me, it was back when I wasn't talking to you." He winced for a moment. "Sorry about that, by the way. But then," he continued, "Grandpa got stabbed and all we were thinking about was getting back home with him, and I still wasn't talking to you if I didn't have to. Plus, Dad was teaching me how to sail the Jolly Roger," he added. "As soon as we got home, you sent me off with Ruby, so you could deal with Cora, only after," he winced again, "Grandma dealt with her, I guess I wasn't thinking much about Dad and Grandpa being in England a hundred years ago. And then, we thought my dad died after Tamara shot him and before I could deal with that, Greg and Tamara dragged me to Neverland, Peter Pan captured me, and after you saved me, I spent most of the trip home and part of the rest of my time in Storybrooke in Pandora's Box and by the time I got out of it, Pan had already cast the curse and you and me went over the town line and forgot everything." He gave her a pained look. "Sorry, Mom, but when I got my memories back, that wasn't the first thing I thought of."

Emma groaned. "Okay, fine, kid. You win. Hey. I don't suppose Neal ever mentioned Zelena?"

Henry frowned. "No. We only talked about England. A little. Or he talked, and I listened and asked a couple of questions."

"And he told you the names he and Gold were using back then," Emma nodded. "Okay. So, it was just the two of them, I take it? Zelena didn't go with them?" Before Henry could reply, she went on quickly, "I know. You said Neal didn't mention her, so I'm guessing she didn't. Regina's been wondering what happened to her is all and from what you're saying, it… sounds like she never made it out of the Enchanted Forest. Unless she somehow made another portal later on."

"I… don't know anything about that," Henry replied.

Emma nodded again and ruffled her son's hair absently. "I know, kid. But if you do remember anything about her later, tell Regina? I think it'll be a load off her mind."

"I will." Conversation over, he pulled out his phone. "Meanwhile, let me just check if Grandpa made his next word." He looked up. "Uh..." He moved aside, so that his mother could see the in-game chat screen. "Maybe it's good we were just talking about this, since he's asking me about it now, too..."

Bae had told Henry. The full import of that revelation crashed in on Rumple with the force of a tidal wave. Bae remembered his being in the past with him. His son hadn't grown up fatherless! At least, Rumple reflected sadly, not as quickly.

Actually, one could argue that… No. No, Bae had been cheated of his childhood, forced to take on adult responsibilities too soon, but he'd done it with his father beside him. At least, until—

A puzzled frown came to his face. If Bae remembered that he'd gone with him, then what had been behind his son's hostility when they'd finally found one another again in Manhattan? Or was that something else that had changed? Because Rumple had definite memories of spending over two centuries trying to find a way to follow his boy to the Land Without Magic. And presumably he—that was to say, the he who'd been left behind—had still done so in the end, else this town probably wouldn't exist. Hard though that meeting had been for him, he knew all too well the pain of being abandoned by a parent. It didn't matter that Rumple had let his boy go in a moment of terror, nor that he'd been trying to yank his boy out of the portal, but that the magic's pull had been too strong, while his own father had sent him away happily, even eagerly, for the promise of eternal youth. It had still been abandonment, and Rumple understood perfectly why Bae was still angry even after so many years.

But since he had gone…

He was getting a headache. One that he'd warrant wasn't a side effect of one or more of his antibiotics or the inoculation Whale had jabbed into his arm earlier. It occurred to him that, perhaps, his memories of that earlier incident were no longer accurate. He'd lived them, yes. But if he'd changed the circumstances, perhaps he was the only one left who could recall how they'd originally played out.

Well. That was something easy enough to check up on.

He brought up the game. Henry had made his move. Jolly. A fine word that would have been even finer had Henry managed to get the J on the triple letter score, instead one of the two Ls. And if he hadn't left Rumple with a clear path to a triple word score, but right now that was an unnecessary distraction.

He opened the chat window. Henry, he keyed carefully—a touch screen was nowhere near as easy to type on as the Underwood No. 5 he'd used at the bank—what else do you recall about that journey to Manhattan?

Henry's reply was succinct and lacking both capitalization and punctuation. Rumple read the lone 'everything' and grimaced. And then, almost at once, a new line of type appeared: Why? What do you want to know?

Rumple considered. I believe that 'everything' would sum up the answer to that question nicely. But perhaps, you might begin with what happened when first you clapped eyes on your father.

"Henry, go wait in the bathroom."

And there they went again. Right when something exciting was about to go down, it was always, "Henry, go with Ruby." "Henry, stay at Granny's." At the back of his mind, he'd been almost celebrating that apart from the whole 'going on an adventure outside Storybrooke with his mom and Mr. Gold' he was actually going on an adventure. No way they'd be able to shunt him off to the background now!

"Henry, go!"

He'd been wrong. Of course, they could. And they were. At least, his mother was. And just when things were getting interesting, too! But even through the bathroom door, he could hear Mr. Gold shouting.

"Did he tell you something?"

"Gold!" Mom didn't shout back, but her voice seemed to fill the area.

"Did he tell you something?!"

Mom was trying to calm him down, but she was getting agitated too, and Mr. Gold was getting angrier as he demanded answers. And then, he heard a new voice shout, "Hey! Leave her alone!"

For a moment, there was silence. And then, in a far gentler tone than he'd been using until now, Henry heard Mr. Gold say, "Bae… you came back for me."

"No," the new voice said harshly. "I came to make sure you didn't hurt her. And to see if you'd… Well, the hell with that, you haven't. I've seen what you do to people who break deals and the only reason you haven't done it here is because you can't."

"Please, Bae," Mr. Gold sounded unnervingly like he was about to cry, "I just want to talk."

"I've got no interest in talking to you," the other voice—Baelfire, obviously—shot back. "I'd hoped. I saw what you became after— I wanted so much for… for something to have started, but I've just remembered why I needed that bean in the first place. The father I know, the father I hoped to see…He's dead. He died over a century ago. You aren't him. Now go."

Henry had read his storybook cover to cover, backwards and forwards, under his covers with a flashlight, and side to side. He knew what kind of a person Rumpelstiltskin really was, for all he usually tried to hide it. But hearing those words, the coldness and finality with which they were uttered, Henry couldn't help the sick feeling in his stomach. It was mirrored by the pain in Mr. Gold's voice when he spoke next.

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Get out of my apartment!"

Henry couldn't take it anymore. He didn't want to hear the rest of this conversation. It was private and personal and even though that normally wouldn't have stopped him, he had a very clear feeling that this really wasn't meant for his ears. So, he clapped his hands over them. It didn't help enough. Although he could no longer hear what was being said, he could still hear the shouting and the accusatory tone of voice and—

Before he knew it, he had the bathroom door open and was back in the living room. "M-mom?" he began, hoping that whatever they were going to say or do, they wouldn't want to do it in front of him. As one, three faces turned to him and he managed to ask, "W-what's going on?"

And that, of course, was when his world really started to turn upside-down.

It had been like pulling teeth to get the story out of Henry, and Rumple really thought that Henry probably remembered more than he'd relayed.

Grandpa? Are you okay?

Rumple blinked at the new text that had just appeared on the chat screen. He supposed it had been a few minutes since Henry had typed in his account, and he hadn't responded.

Fine, he typed back. Nurse came in. A lie, yes, but one that harmed nobody.

I'm sorry, Henry typed. I was just reading over what I wrote you and I didn't realize how bad it would sound written down. Maybe this should have waited until I came to see you.

Rumple was shaking his head a bit, as he replied. I did ask. And I didn't want to wait. But I am gratified to know that you plan to return. In the meanwhile…

He made his next word on the board; it only earned him twelve points, but unless Henry could come up with a seven-letter word ending in 'K', the triple word score was safe.

As he waited for his grandson to take his next turn, his face was creased in a frown. The scene Henry described was so very close to the one he recalled, but there were a number of glaring differences. So. He had changed the past. Perhaps, not drastically, but still, some of his efforts had clearly had some sort of effect. But in the long run, did anything he'd accomplished truly matter?

And had he accomplished anything else?

A new word appeared on the board, and he started. Then, his lips relaxed in a rueful smile. Artwork. Well. His grandson had just given him a puzzle to ponder and there was no denying he could do with a bit of intellectual stimulation. He supposed the lad had earned that triple-word, after all.

"I remember that," Emma said slowly, in response to Rumple's query the next day. "Yeah, I mean at the time, I thought Neal was talking about the guy you used to be, uh, before you got your hands on the dagger, but he wasn't, was he?"

Rumple shook his head. "No. No, evidently, he recalled my being with him in this world's past, but…"

"How does that work?" Emma asked. "I-I mean, if you went through the portal with him, then how did you create the curse that brought us all here, if you were…?"

Rumple smiled. "Because it wasn't my younger self who went through the portal. I—the current version of me, that is—crossed over, leaving my younger self behind. And he—or I, I suppose—never gave up hope of finding him." He chuckled slightly and Emma tilted her head.

"What's so funny?"

"Well," Rumple sighed, "since I don't have any recollection of what my younger self did after Bae and I went over—that is to say, my memories of that period of my life do not include a two-hundred-odd-years older version of me popping in to spend the better part of a year with me—I can't say for certain. But I've always tried to protect what was mine, even when I had no power to do so. And seeing as my younger self accused me on more than one occasion of coming to take Bae away from him, well, I shouldn't wonder if he spent the next two hundred years cursing my name."

"Uh… considering that it was his name, too," Emma replied, "maybe not."

Rumple's eyebrows shot up. "Well, perhaps you're right," he allowed. "Of course, the irony was that I was actually trying to ensure that Bae wouldn't feel the need to obtain that portal bean in the first place…"

"I missed you at the common this week," Morraine said, as she set a basket of fresh vegetables down on the new stone windowsill of the hut-that-was-no-longer-a-hovel.

Bae looked up from his sketching. "Thanks," he said, smiling. "I missed you, too."

"How come you didn't answer when I knocked?" she asked. "And how did you build on so quickly?"

Reflexively, Bae's gaze strayed from the new wooden front door, solid oak and sturdy enough to probably outlast the rest of the house to the other door in the opposite wall. "Papa needed a workroom," he explained, ducking the 'how' for the 'why' that hadn't been asked of him. "Sorry about that," he added. "Papa doesn't want me letting people in now."

Morraine frowned. Then, she gripped the sill with both hands, hauled herself onto it, and slid inside. "Surely, he didn't mean me?" she asked, not sounding very sure. "Bae, what's wrong?"

Bae shook his head. "Nothing," he said, feeling his smile stiffen as his voice rose slightly higher. "Everything's wonderful. Thanks to Papa, the war's over, we're all home safe, there's going to be a bumper crop, and Papa made a deal with the duke that we don't have to pay taxes or tithes for the next three years. What could be wrong?"

Morraine sat down at the table beside him. "I never see you anymore. Bae. When's the last time you were outside?"

Bae shook his head. "I have everything I need here."

"Nonsense!" a merry voice chortled and both teens started. The door to the workroom hadn't opened, but suddenly, Rumpelstiltskin was in the room with them. "The ogres are gone, the village is safe, and you're free to romp about as children ought. So, off you go then! And be sure you're home for supper."

Bae hesitated. "Don't you need me to card the wool?"

The Dark One giggled. "Not when magic can get the job done. Run along now! Both of you," he added with another giggle.

Morraine took his hand. "Come on, then!" she said with a grin. She dipped a hasty curtsey. "And thank you!"

Bae hoped he wasn't making a mistake. The more time Papa spent in that room, the stranger he seemed. Lately, Bae felt as though his presence was the only thing keeping Papa from losing himself completely and the more time he spent away the worse Papa seemed when he got back. But the day was warm and sunny, the air smelled of fresh hay, and he'd barely seen Morraine since her return. Suppressing his qualms, he let her pull him along.

Rumpelstiltskin waited until the two youths had put enough distance between themselves and the hut that he was certain they wouldn't be back before he went back inside and closed the door. His smile fell away, as he went back into the new workroom. "All right," he said testily. "I sent him off to play. But if any harm befall him—"

"It won't," his elder self said quietly. "And time spent with friends will do him a world of good."

"I don't like him out of my sight," the younger Rumple snarled. "What if Beowulf has a younger brother or a son out to avenge him?"

"He doesn't," the elder said. "But why speculate? You know how to make a scrying crystal to see for yourself. Or, at least," he turned his attention inward for a moment, searching the memories of his predecessors, "Achren did. She'll be happy to show you."

His younger self's face contorted in a sly frown. "I see what you're up to. Bae says the more magic I use, the more I change. He doesn't like me dabbling. And yet, here you are encouraging me to use more, as if I don't have enough voices leading me down that path." One lip curled back revealing yellowed teeth. "You mean to turn him against me and then? You'll take him and he'll go willingly!"

The elder Rumple bit back an angry retort. The more he antagonized his younger self, the less likely it was that he'd be able to keep him from driving Bae away. He reminded himself that this younger version didn't have the benefit of centuries of experience. He hadn't yet learned how to be patient and bide his time. Here he was, flush with power for the first time in his life, drinking it in like the finest of clarets, casting magic about willy-nilly and heedless of the price it commanded. Still, the elder Rumple believed that it might be possible to temper this newly-awake Dark One, instruct him—not in magic; they both had the same teachers in their heads for that—but in discipline and moderation. If his younger self would only manage to learn to delay gratification, if he wasn't so quick to demand his due and exact retribution for every slight or damage, no matter how small or inadvertent, then perhaps Bae would never seek out that blue flea.

"Do you think so little of him, then?" he asked sadly. "That he'd willingly abandon you for a man he didn't know existed less than two seasons ago?"

"He's a child!" his younger self shot back. "Easily led, easily influenced."

"He's older than his years," the elder retorted, still keeping his tone soft. "Adult enough for the army, until you put an end to that war—"

"With no help coming from you."

"I didn't need any the first time," Rumple pointed out. He still would have gone with his younger self, but for the point that Zelena had raised. With the dagger now bearing his—their—name, when Bae had wielded it, would it have controlled both of them? The memories of his year of slavery were still too fresh. His younger self, who still equated power with freedom, had easily forgiven his son. The man he'd become was no longer certain he'd have that magnanimity in him if put to the test. And so, knowing what was coming, he'd contrived to be as far away from the front as possible. Far enough away that he wouldn't be able to transport himself back in one leap. He still wasn't sure whether he'd actually felt the dagger's tug when Bae used it, or whether he'd merely felt the urge to return and witness afresh what would transpire, but by the time he'd reached the battlefield, the deed had been done and Beowulf slain. Funny. When he'd actually done the deed, the struggle, the rage, the screams, the blood… It had all seemed to last so much longer. But really, it didn't take that long to kill a man when you just wanted to get it over with.

He took another breath. "Just… try to remember that he's not quite as young as you seem to think he is. He's getting to an age where most would chafe at restrictions, particularly when they see the freedom their friends enjoy. But since he isn't yet saddled with all an adult's responsibilities," he smiled, "well, if you must treat him like a child, perhaps you ought to do it by letting him run about and play with his friends outdoors."

His younger self frowned as he turned the words over in his head, but after a moment he gave a grudging nod.

The elder Rumple smiled encouragingly and breathed an inward sigh of relief.

It was maybe an hour later that Rumple rose to his feet. "I'm heading into the village," he told his younger self. "Did you need anything?"

The younger Rumple barely looked up from his spinning. "If I did, dearie, I'd have it already," he giggled. "But if you're not back at sunset I'll not wait supper."

Rumple started down the road, his thoughts in turmoil. His younger self didn't seem to notice how much his power had already come to consume him. At this rate, it would be a miracle if Bae stayed around as long as he had in Rumple's memories. He shouldn't have suggested the scrying crystal, but perhaps it had been the right thing to do after all. The suggestion, not the scrying, at least. Ever since that sorry business with Beowulf, his younger self had refused nearly all of Rumple's counsel.

"You're trying to control me!" he'd snapped. "You want to harness my power and add it to your own!" It did no good to point out that his younger self's power was already Rumple's own. His younger self was like a child with a stuffed toy, clutching it close and ready to throw a tantrum at the mere hint that someone might want to take it away. Rumple had been frankly surprised when his younger self had agreed to let Bae go off with Morraine. But from the way he'd reacted when Rumple had suggested the scrying… Well, reverse psychology hadn't been the intention, but it might just prove an effective tactic in the long run.

Hoof-beats sounded behind him and he moved to the side of the road to let the wagons pass. There were three, each a cage on wheels that carried a dozen or so captives, their wrists chained, their clothing ragged and dirty, their faces blank or despairing. It wasn't until they were a quarter mile or so down the road that Rumple realized that one of them had been Zelena. He wondered whether that would be the last time their paths would cross.

"Bae!" Morraine exclaimed excitedly, "Look! Rowanberries!"

Baelfire's eyes lit up, as he saw the clusters of scarlet fruit hanging among the mountain ash boughs at the edge of the wood on the village's outskirts. "I'd forgotten it was the season," he replied. "I haven't had rowanberry preserves since we finished our last crock midwinter." His face fell. "Wish I'd thought to bring a bucket."

Morraine was already taking off her shawl. "Here," she said laying it on the ground. "Looks like someone's beaten us to the lower branches, but there's plenty higher up."

Bae hung back. "Papa doesn't like me climbing trees," he said nervously.

"I won't tell him," Morraine replied, eyes dancing.

"I can't," Bae said.

"Baelfire!"

"No, I mean I really can't." He looked down at the ground. "Papa never let me, so I don't know how."

Understanding dawned in the girl's eyes. "I'll climb then," she said. "You stay down here. Maybe you can still reach some of them. And if not," she grinned, "well, once it starts raining berries, gather up whatever doesn't land in my shawl and toss them in!"

Bae's embarrassment gave way to a relieved grin. He watched as Morraine scaled the tree, her hands and feet finding easy purchase in the silvery branches. Then he turned his attention to the lower boughs.

The earlier berry-pickers had either missed or left behind a few clusters. By the time Bae had collected them, Morraine had begun her task. Many of the berries did land in her shawl, but more fell on the springy turf, landing more-or-less intact, and Bae hastened to scoop them up. It really was a perfect late summer's day. Warm, but not oppressively so, with just enough of a breeze to refresh. The scent of guild weed perfumed the air, and while Bae didn't always usually notice such things, he had to admit it had been a long time since he'd breathed in that fragrance. He wondered whether it was the sort of thing that went into ladies' perfumes, or if the scent was 'too common'. He wondered whether Morraine would appreciate such a gift, if it were possible to obtain it. He wond—

A mailed glove clamped down on his mouth, a muscular arm encircled his chest and pinned him to its owner, who had crept up unseen behind him, and a harsh voice growled in his ear, "You. The boy who controls the Dark One!"

What? Through the gauntlet, Bae tried to protest that his attacker was making a mistake, that he didn't control Papa, but the man didn't seem interested in listening.

Above, a branch splintered and the man just barely managed to sidestep as it came down. "Let him loose!" a furious voice called from the branches.

"You hold your position if you know what's good for you, girl!" the man called back. "My business is with the lad." He began dragging Bae toward the wood.

"Now," he said, "as soon as we're away from prying eyes, you're going to tell me exactly how it is you command the Dark One and why he obeys you. And then? You'll teach me that same trick. If you don't…" The man chuckled mirthlessly. "Well, perhaps, I'll decide that your little friend in the tree is worth my time after all."