Want and need were two very different things. He'd said that to Belle once, not too long ago, in fact. After a beautiful night together, he'd woken her the next morning so she could release him, and she'd begged him to stay by her side. And what had he told her? He'd said that he'd wanted to stay with her too, but want and need were two very different things, and he'd needed to go.

Fuck fate, always coming back to bite him in the ass. Looking back on that, he felt foolish. What would the harm of another hour with her have been? What would the harm of another day have been? From where he stood now, he'd pay handsomely to have that day with her back, not be eating his own damn words!

Want and need were two very different things…he very much so wanted to go see Belle now that he was back in town and well enough to do so. But he recognized that he needed to stay away.

One of the reasons he'd left in the first place was to give her time to adjust. Though it felt like an eternity had passed between the day he'd left the hospital and now, the truth was that it had only been a couple of days ago. And to add fuel to the fire, he'd broken the rules by calling her. He was supposed to leave her alone while he was gone; calling her, even if he had been certain that he was going to die, was not part of the plan. If he'd upset her with that call, then he knew that he needed to give her more time to sort through it. As much as he wanted to, going to see Belle wasn't an option.

And he wanted to spend time with his son, who had taken up residence for the moment at Granny's Bed and Breakfast. But he had the good sense to understand that once again what he really needed to do was keep his distance.

These past few days had been overwhelming for him; meeting his son, getting stabbed by Hook, nearly killed by Cora, and then assisting Mary Margaret in killing the bitch himself. But he recognized that if these few days had been a lot for him, then for Baelfire, they were even more overwhelming. Not only had Baelfire experienced all of those things with him, but he'd also done it with hardly any warning, taken off for a brand-new town at barely a moment's notice, and in addition encountered Emma Swan again as well as learned that he'd sired a child with her that he hadn't known about for well over a decade. That kind of news was not something someone got over in a couple of hours. Becoming a father was something that took time to process; most had the grace of at least a few months before the baby arrived, Bae was trying to adjust as he walked his eleven-year-old to and from school.

He wanted to see his son just as much as he wanted to see Belle, to tell her about how he'd not only found his son but also somehow gained a grandson in the process and about the role that boy was likely destined to play in his fate…but he needed to keep his distance from both of them. From all three of them?

As much as he felt the distance ripped at his soul, at least he knew there was something to be done.

Just because he couldn't be with Belle and Baelfire didn't mean that he couldn't do everything in his power to make the world a better place for them once it was time to traverse it together for a time. Cora was dead and gone, and he was perfectly fine with that, even after her admission that she'd loved him. But Regina…

Regina was still out there somewhere. And he'd meant what he'd said the day Cora had died. She was going to need to be managed. She'd been upset that her mother died, and rightly so after her last words. That was a punch to the gut he hadn't anticipated. Regina had always longed to have her mother's approval and love. To have achieved it and lost it so quickly would be deeply traumatizing to her. Emma was right; he knew her better than anyone, he'd managed her longer than anyone, much to his own displeasure, he felt a strange obligation to do it now.

He didn't like to admit to something like that, but it was the truth. He believed what he'd said. He'd colluded with Mary Margaret to do the right thing, and questionable methods be damned, there had been no other way. If this were decades ago, he wouldn't have batted an eye at Regina's potential rage, but now…now things were different. Something inside of him had shifted. He felt responsible. Whether that was because Bae was now around, and he wanted to prove to him that he was a good man or because he actually felt like Cora's murder was his fault was all up for debate. But at the end of the day, the fact remained. He felt responsible for Regina, and whatever came next after what she'd done.

So, he stayed away from the two people in the world he wanted to see and instead focused on what he needed to do…find Regina. The clever little witch could be incredibly resourceful when she wanted, using her magic to conceal herself, keeping herself hidden even from him. It was only the day after Cora's death when he finally got a hint about her location in a very unexpected way.

"Hey, I wanted you to know I took an interesting call earlier today that I thought you should know about."

"Do tell, Mr. Dove," he encouraged over the phone as he walked through Regina's empty house, hoping for some glimmer that might help him locate her. The truth was that if it had been anyone else on the phone, he probably wouldn't have taken the call. But he was working on keeping the bird close to him, and with their business relationship on the rocks, he wanted to be a good employer.

"I can't tell you the names of my sources, only that the information is good. I checked it out."

"I trust you."

"Yesterday, an unidentified woman's body turned up in the morgue, laying out on a gurney, with a note attached to her. The note was from Regina Mills."

He came to an absolute standstill on the second-floor landing at the news. Turning Cora into the morgue was a bit surprising for Regina…but he didn't have anything else to go on, and he'd tried the method of searching for Cora's body. It, too, remained missing. He had no reason to doubt the bird.

"Go on…"

"The note didn't explain who the woman was, only that she was to be prepared for burial and delivered to the Storybrooke cemetery this morning for a wake, in a few hours, before burial in the Mills' Mausoleum that afternoon."

Then again…perhaps he was wrong. Regina had kept her father's body in that mausoleum. Before he'd died, she'd kept Danial in the family plot as well until she'd given up hope of saving him. Even then, she'd granted him a nice little tombstone on her old family property. Turning Cora into the morgue so she could have a proper burial…perhaps that was exactly what Regina would have done. She'd want to tie up all her loose ends before attempting any new plans that she had.

"Any word on where Regina is now?"

"No. In the last few days, she's been spotted at town hall and seems to have moved back into her office and resumed some of her work, though I don't remember that election being held," he muttered sarcastically. "But the building seems empty now. The family mausoleum is her other favorite hiding place, but it's hard to tell if anyone is in there or not. And with magic, she doesn't exactly need to use the front door. The Queen can come and go as she pleases."

"Indeed," he agreed. So he didn't know where she was now, but he knew where she would be soon enough; that was worth something. "Well, your instincts were correct, Mr. Dove," he stated, turning around to move back down the stairs. With this news, he could stop searching. "This is valuable information indeed. I'm pleased you decided to share it with me."

"Yeah, don't read too much into this, Gold. Telling you has nothing to do with loyalty. Me and my family live here in Storybrooke too. If Regina is up to something, then I want my family kept safe. I've worked for you long enough to know that the only one who ever had an iota of knowledge about how to deal with the Evil Queen was you. You're the only one I could tell if I was worried. The benefit to me and mine, if the Evil Queen is contained, is worth far more than anything you could ever give me."

He got to the bottom of the stairs and positively beamed at the bird's comments.

"Well now…look who's starting to sound like a Dark One."

"Fuck off, Gold," Dove spat into the phone before hanging up abruptly. He was certain Dove meant him to be insulted by such a remark, but he only chuckled a bit as he shook his head and left the house. With Dove's information, he no longer needed to find Regina. Only wait for her.

She wanted a funeral for her mother…he'd make sure to attend. He made sure to get himself home quickly after that call, not difficult, seeing as how magic was the only form of transportation he had at the moment. He put on the best black suit he had, then sat outside the cemetery, out of sight, waiting for the Evil Queen to arrive at the mausoleum. Barely five minutes after arrival, she walked up dressed in her trademark black. And just like that, he had Regina in his grasp.

He summoned a rose into his hand and sent his senses out. There were no other heartbeats close by. It was only her. Out of respect, he gave her two minutes, counted out one hundred and twenty seconds in his head, then went in. The dank space the cemetery offered was lit with candles and smelled musty. It was hardly a comforting parlor at a funeral home, but considering who it was for and who was in attendance, the scenery was fitting. Before he even rounded the corner, he heard the sounds of weeping. When he turned to find Regina, she was there; her hair was tucked simply behind her ears, revealing her face that he could see was tear-stained.

He took a breath then moved forward timidly, trying to make noise so that she'd know he was there. He didn't want to take her by surprise. "Black always was your color," he whispered when she didn't take note.

She looked up at him from beside her mother's coffin with wild eyes. That wasn't a good sign. "I'm here to bury my mother. So, if you came to gloat-"

Before she could finish that sentence, he raised the flower he'd brought for her to see. "I came to pay my respects," he commented, moving forward carefully. Management. This was about managing Regina. It wasn't just about keeping Storybrooke safe. It was about keeping Belle and Baelfire and even Henry and Emma safe from her as well. He had to manage her, and that meant not scaring her.

"We had our differences," he added gently, laying his flower over a fresh one he assumed she'd brought on top of the coffin. "But Cora will always have a special place in my heart."

Belle would have been proud of him. He didn't lie. Cora always would have a special place in his heart, admittedly it was probably one of the blackest parts of it that hadn't seen light or goodness in eons...but she probably wouldn't have had it any other way. Regina, on the other hand…

"You killed her to save your own life," she growled at him.

"Sadly, desperate times call for desperate measures." And no one would have agreed with him more than Cora. Or Regina…

"Like getting Mary Margaret to trick me into killing my own mother?!" He tried to remember to breathe. Perhaps she'd already forgotten the lengths that Regina had been willing to go to keep Cora out of Storybrooke in the first place. He didn't know what Regina had been up to with Cora since he'd been gone, but she had obviously done a number on her to twist her sense of morality this badly. "You may be able to hide behind your dagger, but she can't. She's going to die for what she did."

"Oh, come on," he huffed at her, trying desperately to make her see how ridiculous a statement like that was all the while trying not to let her see how desperate he was for her to understand it. This was what he was worried about. She needed to be managed. "We both know killing her will cost you the thing you want most-Henry!"

That got a reaction from her. Up until that moment, she'd been staring at him intently, eyeing him up as if he were the enemy but at the mention of her son…ah, yes. That was the key. She knew exactly what he was talking about; she knew she couldn't have her cake and eat it too, and yet the way she'd looked away from him in that moment suggested that she was willing to at least give it a try.

"Why don't you just give up this obsession with vengeance? You know it can never make you happy."

"Yes, it will."

Stubborn woman.

"You had a whole curse worth of vengeance, and what did it get you? A gaping hole in your heart." Just as he'd once promised it would, just as the Curse was designed to do.

"That was your Curse."

"Which you cast," he spat back. At the end of the day, he wasn't the creator of the Curse, and he wasn't the caster. He was the architect. Storybrooke was her world, her life, her Curse playing out. She had to see that if he stood a chance of managing this situation. "Still haven't learned your lesson, have you?"

"What lesson?"

"The same one your mother learned a long time ago. You can't have everything." He paused, giving it a moment to sink in as she glanced back at her mother's coffin. "She wanted power, ripped out her own heart to get it." The cost of her power was Regina, he wanted badly to add that in, for her to make that connection, but he knew that a reminder like that might just send her over the edge already at a time like this. It was better to start getting Regna's head out of the past and start thinking about the future. "You want vengeance? Henry's the price you'll pay. Time to cut your losses."

He held his breath as he watched her, head bowed before her mother's casket. He hoped it would serve as a reminder of what she'd rather not have, that she would allow herself to put Henry in her shoes and ask if this was what he wanted for her, for them to have.

And then she shook her head. She raised her chin parallel with the ground and looked him over with a gaze that threatened to strike him down. He knew that look.

Fuck.

"Never," she swore. "I will have my son, and I will have my vengeance. I will find a way to have everything!"

She took only a single steadying breath before turning her head away from him and letting her black eyes fall on the wall opposite them. It was a bad sign, a very bad sign.

This scene was a bitch to write, yet I'm hopeful that it came out as well as I think it did. On the one hand, there are many things here I dislike, none of which I would consider my fault. I would have liked to add time here. I'd have added a day or two between death and burial to tighten the tension. But alas, in this episode, Neal states that it's "day 3 of being a dad," and that means that this takes place the next day. Like I told you, season 2 is where the timeline goes wonky. It starts week by week, and now we are firmly in "this is a day-by-day situation." In addition to all that...the freaking setting. Where the hell is this taking place? I always thought it was the mausoleum, but while the atmosphere is correct, the layouts don't match. The set design doesn't match. I just have to assume that it's a spare room or building the cemetery keeps for funerals. That's not uncommon, but they are usually nicer than this. Still, even with some of the dumb stuff, there are some really good things here. We see Rumple being a little vulnerable here as he's still got a wall between himself and Henry but also starting to come around more and more to the fact that Henry is his grandson. And y'all, I cannot tell you the fun that I had writing the Dove/Rumple conversation in this chapter. I love that dynamic so freaking much. I hope you do too.

Thank you, rsbeall12 and Grace5231973, for your reviews of the last chapter. I'm excited to present this episode to you. This one really has Rumple dealing with a lot of people he hasn't really dealt with on a personal level up until now. Plus, even though he's not here, it'll eventually be very heavy on the Rumple/Henry stuff. Those conversations are coming up very soon, and I think you'll be quite pleased with them when they do. Peace and Happy Reading!