Chapter XIII

The Pawn Broker

Emma didn't trust Gold as far as she could throw him. In fact, she could probably throw him farther than her trust stretched. She didn't know much about the pawn broker but she knew enough to know he was bad freaking news. Mr. Gold, or Rumplestiltskin, was into some pretty fucked up deals: baby trading, fire setting, assault, he had sent a soul sucking wraith after Regina when she had been locked in a jail cell, unable to defend herself. He had also, according to Hook (who probably wasn't the best source of information) killed his wife in cold blood. She was also pretty damn sure that he'd had a hand in Snow making the decision to manipulate Regina into killing Cora. Emma felt the hairs on the nape of her neck stand up, that was just the shit that she knew about. They didn't hand out names like The Dark One for hugging kittens and selling the most Girl Scout cookies. Who knew what he had done? Finally, as if the rest wasn't bad enough, he was a lawyer and that was enough all on its own.

"You wanted to chat." She spat the word at him, "so get on with it."

She really hated lawyers.

Gold walked along, his cane tapping a steady rhythm on the sidewalk. "Things have changed, Sheriff Swan, and I think you have noticed."

Emma sank her hands into her pockets. That was an understatement if she'd ever heard one.

"What changed, exactly, Mr. Gold?"

She wasn't going to give anything to Gold, she was going to play her cards close to her chest. She hadn't been the third best bounty hunter in Boston by playing it fast and loose. Information was worth its weight in, well, gold.

He looked her up and down, his ice cold eyes left goose bumps in their wake. Her skin prickled uncomfortably and she felt slimy. He was sizing her up, and trying to figure her out. He wanted to know how much she knew.

"Well there is the small matter of the fact that yesterday the forest was violently reclaiming the very streets we're walking on and today everything is bright, beautiful, and cheerful: A perfect New England morning."

Emma shrugged, "Well this is Storybrooke. Crazy shit tends to happen pretty often." Though even she had to admit that the seeing the streets being tree raped had been a little crazier than usual.

"You have a dead man for a deputy, Miss Swan. That doesn't strike you as especially odd?"

So he did remember, somehow Emma wasn't surprised. Gold always seemed to be one step ahead of everyone else. It was almost like he could see the freaking future or something.

"Compared to some of the other things" and people "I've seen lately, Graham is the least of my worries."

He paused, mid-step, "So you do remember."

She tilted her head to the side, "And so do you." So it was an even playing field, then. He remembered, she remembered, it was practically a party.

"What did Regina do?"

It was in the way he said her name, the way his eyes flashed, and the little quirk of his sleazy brow: Emma didn't like it.

"Why do you think Regina had something to do with it?"

This was really not a conversation they should be having out in the open. No one was paying attention to them, though. It was Mayberry, Maine and everyone was caught up in their own Andy Griffith bullshit about baking pies and breaking streetlights. Even if some hapless citizen overheard them, the conversation would make absolutely no sense. Magic, mystery and the mayor? She had lived it and it still didn't make sense to her. Still, though, she directed their walk towards Gold's Little Shop of Horrors.

"Whatever it was that she did with that pesky trigger device took a great deal of magic. That sort of power could have only come from either myself or Her Majesty. I know where I was. I was in my shop, holding my Belle in my arms when it all came to an end. When I woke up I was alone, Belle was Lacey once more and a dead man was walking the streets."

The way he said 'Lacey' made her think that maybe he didn't like Belle's cursed wild child personality. It was one of the few things that they had in common.

"Magic can do many many things." His eyes sparked, "Many dark and vicious things. Many bright and glorious things. It cannot make true love and it cannot bring back the dead."

Emma wondered if he knew that Graham wasn't the only one back from the dead. Since he'd had a hand in her death in the first place, she decided to keep Cora's resurrection to herself. He would find out soon enough, but not from her. They had reached Gold's Shop she paused there and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Graham seems pretty healthy to me."

Gold crossed his hands over the top of his cane and leaned towards her. "My curse should not have been able to be recast, Savior. Not without preparation, not without sacrifice, not without a price."

His curse? Did he mean the crazy evil curse that had brought everyone over from The Happy Fun Time Forest and stolen their memories? That was Regina's curse. She had been all vengeance-happy and Coo Coo for Cocoa Puffs and had cast it to punish Snow. Henry's book was pretty specific about that part of the story.

"What did she do?" His voice was hot with anger now, and his accent heavier. "She took away my Belle again and I want her back." Gold reached out and grabbed her by the shoulder. "Tell me!"

She jerked away, "We saved the entire fucking town, Gold. It would be hard to snuggle with your cuddle-buddy Belle if you were both dead. Show some freaking gratitude."

He blinked, shook his head and then blinked again. "We?"

Well fuck. She hadn't meant to tell him that. Ah well, if she wanted to figure this whole thing out it was probably better to at least let him know what had happened. She jerked her head, "Let's take this inside." She watched the wheeling and dealing devil, or The Demon as Hook had called him, unlock the door.

"Yeah. We. Regina and me. The Evil Queen and the Savior, Swan and Mills de-triggering diamonds and saving the day. No sweat and no worries needed." Okay so it hadn't gone exactly like that, precisely. Rumple-freaking-stiltskin did not need to know about her and Regina. In fact he was the last dude on the planet that she wanted around her family. He was Henry's grandfather, but she didn't have to like that fact, and she definitely didn't. She was pretty sure that Regina was even more upset about the connection. Well, that had been the brief impression she had got. They really needed to talk about it at some point. They needed to talk about a lot of things. If, you know, she could get past her overwhelming need to kiss the brunette senseless every time she got within four feet of her. Okay, like six feet.

"The two of you worked together? Aren't you quite the pair? Racing to rescues and giggling like school girls the whole time. What's next family picnics in the park with Henry and a dog named Spot?"

She smirked a little because that sounded good to her.

"All smiles" He rounded on her with a snarl, "while the father of your son rots in some unknown land? Dead for a wicked queen that he never knew. My son."

He lashed out and his cane crashed through one of the gleaming display cases with the violent crack of broken glass.

"Where is my son, Savior? Where is Bae?"

The old rage boiled up in his chest and he could taste bile and blood on his tongue. Without Belle to soothe his rage, the deliciously dark desires that dwelled in his soul took over for a moment. Violence was a familiar indulgence, one that filled him simultaneously with relief and a touch of obscene pleasure. The combination allowed him a moment of clarity.

"So why" He rested on his cane again, careful of the shattered glass on the wood floor beneath him, "is the Queen's pet huntsman" and the damned dragon "alive and my son still dead, Savior? Where is my Baelfire?"

Emma Swan, the babe who had been prophesized to break his curse, stood before him. The woman who had borne his grandchild and then abandoned him, just like Milah had Bae. The saying that "time healed all wounds" had been just as prevalent in The Enchanted Forest as it was in Storybrooke, and equally untrue. It was, in fact, utter drivel. The pain of losing Bae and then Belle had burnt like acid and ice for almost three hundred years. Some days it was less acute, of course. It could be pushed to the back of his mind by other matters, but it never fully left him. The pain and empty place in his heart where the two loves of his life belonged was a constant in his life.

He had finally found them again. He'd had them both-finally. Found them, only to have them ripped away once more. It was the sweetest agony he had ever experienced.

"Here's the thing. I don't know where Neal is. Or why he isn't here. This whole magic thing isn't my usually shtick. What I do know, though, is that he went down fighting. He was-"She paused and pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers, "brave strong and true. He and I might have had our differences, but he was a good guy. A true hero. You should be proud."

"Proud?"

Rage: dark as pitch, hot as molten steel and cloying as cheap perfume, rushed through his system. "I would rather have my son, my living and breathing Bae than a dead hero."

This had been the nightmare scenario that he had worked hard and sacrificed so very much to avoid. Be it in a war against ogres or a scuffle to save a woman he'd never known, dead was dead. His sweet boy was gone.

"How much comfort would it have been to you when Henry was lying dead in that hospital bed-"

He swung his cane wildly and felt a pulse of pure satisfaction when it tangled, ripped and shattered through glass beads and unicorns.

"Sorry that your boy is dead but at least he died a hero."

Only Henry had not died. The Savior had laid a sweet kiss on his brow and he had been perfectly fine. Bae had been shot and fallen into a portal, he had slipped right through the Savior's fingers.

"You're just like your love besotted parents." He sneered with every ounce of venom in body and pondered the consequences of murdering Emma Swan where she stood. "When are you people going to figure it out?"

How had their world functioned when being led by blind fools like Snow White and her ilk? Three hundred years and he still had no inkling. "There are no heroes and there are no villains. This is not Henry's Book. There is no good or evil, only power." He looked at the woman before him, the daughter of a Princess and a shepherd, the prophesized Savior, a puppet. His puppet. "There are victors and the histories they pen. War is a game, love is a lie and happiness is fleeting. Ask you new best friend about that."

The woman that Baelfire had died for. He swung his cane, the damn walking stick that he had tied himself to when he chose his son over his own honor, into the wall. One of the many paintings that hung there, a portrait of the very young and beautiful mother of Cinderella that Jiminy and his lovely parents had pilfered years before for him, fell to the ground: wood frame broken and glass shattered. The shards sliced the canvas and marred the dead girl's face.

"Death is death. There is nothing noble about it, nothing honorable or admirable. Ask your dear friend Graham about that. Better yet ask the woman who squeezed his heart to dust." He paused for a moment, suddenly nostalgic, though he wasn't sure why. "I taught her that, you know."

He watched Emma blink, as if surprised. Had she imagined Cora and Regina having tea time and magic lessons together? How quaint and completely inaccurate.

"Just after her dear Daniel couldn't be revived. No True Love's Kiss, no magic, no science, just death. That's all we are in the end, Miss Swan: lifeless corpses. Some of us are lucky enough to have a loved one clinging to us, weeping over our demise." Cora and Daniel, and even Henry Senior had been so lucky. Regina had wept over them. She had mourned Daniel three times and Cora twice. A lowly stable boy and a heartless witch earned a river's worth of tears and what did his Bae get? "And others are shot and fall into a portal." He stepped forward, nose to nose with the infuriating blonde sheriff. "Forever lost."

Emma Swan, to her credit or naiveté, did not flinch. "Yeah just like last time. At least he wasn't fourteen and begging for his Papa this time." She raised her jaw, foolishly brave like her insufferable father, "His last words were about Henry. His son. He's a better man and better father than you ever dreamed of being. A better father dead than you are alive." She stepped away, her point made, and turned to leave.

"Tell me, Sheriff Swan, is the woman who killed my Bae, this Tamara, is she still alive? Is she still in Storybrooke?" Was the woman who had toyed with his son's heart and then shot him in it still in his town?

The woman didn't answer but her fists clenched. She looked back over her shoulder at him and he could see the truth in her eyes. The murderess was in Storybrooke, walking free.

"She's cursed."

Her words were terse and clipped, more Regina Mills than Emma Swan.

"That doesn't wash the blood from her hands, Dearie."

He could feel it pulsing inside him, electric and addictive. It made his entire body hum with dark desire. What had dear Cora called it? Bloodlust. His craving for the filthy woman's blood on his hands was almost sexual.

"Killing her won't bring Neal back."

He chuckled, the bloodlust clouded and almost lessened the grief. The heartless huntsman, the damn dragon, those lives he could excuse. Tamara, though, she would die and by his hand. Perhaps her man as well. Not for Regina's sake, she had deserved whatever they had done to her, but the man had made a fool of his son and that was unforgivable.

"No." He grinned and tilted his head a little, "It will not bring him back, if this miracle curse couldn't save him than nothing will. I, however, will feel somewhat better."

Emma crossed her arms over her chest, defensive and angered, "And it's all about you, isn't it?"

He leaned on his cane, hands folded over the handle, the perfect picture of a calm man, "Yes."

Author's Note: No cupcake for Emma...sad.