Chapter Three: Seeing the Truth

Emma watched as Gold slept, sitting across from Neal. She had no idea what was going on, what his spell or potion was supposed to do.

Half an hour after he'd passed out, Gold jerked in his sleep. His face twisted in anguish, head tossing from side to side. "I know, I know..." His voice was a breathless whisper, full of pain and what to her sounded like regret.

Neal reached out and started to shake his shoulder, and Emma caught his hand. "You can't wake him, remember?"

Neal froze, then settled back. "Yeah." He looked down into his father's face. "I know. It's just...it's been a while, you know? Since I saw him look like that."

"Look like what?"

"Like that." Neal tilted his head towards Gold's pained expression. "He used to look like that a lot. Like he was hurting. Ashamed." He shook his head. "My father, he ducked out of a war. Said it was because he didn't want to leave me fatherless. The village called him a coward. So did my mother. Some days, it was bad. Kids teasing me in the village, mocking me. Because of him. He always knew. He never did anything but when I came home after a bad day, he'd take me in his arms, hold me. Just pull me to his chest with that expression on his face. Every time, it was the same."

"What was?" She wasn't sure she wanted to know, but she had to ask. She had a feeling it was important.

"He'd hold me, rocking a little on his stool. Stroke my hair. And he'd whisper, the same thing over and over again. 'I'm sorry Bae. I'm so sorry, my boy. Someday, I hope you'll understand, I hope you'll forgive me.' Every time." Neal looked at her, eyes shining with grief. "Back then, I knew my Papa loved me. More than anything in the world. After he became the Dark One, he never did that again. And he never had that look. Except for the night he let me go."

"Did you forgive him? For being what he was?"

"I never cared until the day he was too scared to come with me to this world." Neal looked at her. "But you know, as much as I hated him for letting me fall, I kind of hated myself too. I'd always promised myself I'd never use those words. The words the villagers used to mock him. But that night, when he was afraid, I called him a coward. I tried to make him feel guilty, to sting him into doing what I wanted him to do." Neal shook his head, a pained laugh on his face. "I never admitted that to anyone, you know? But I can't forget it either."

Emma squeezed his hand comfortingly. "He spent centuries looking for you. I don't think he cares what you said to him. But when this is over, whatever this is, you two can talk, and if it makes you feel better, you can apologize to him. And he can apologize to you."

"He already did." Neal looked down at the sleeping man between them. Gold's face was still twisted in pain. "When he came to find me. When he was dying from Hook's poison."

"Then when he wakes up, you guys make it right." Emma clenched his hand. "Trust me, I know how you feel, kind of." She looked at Mary Margaret and David, standing together on the other side of the room. "Fixing things, it's worth it."

"Yeah." Neal nodded. "As soon as Henry's okay and he wakes up." He gave her hand a squeeze and offered her a weak smile, then both of them settled back into their chairs to wait.

***SM***

The transition from the battlefield startled him. It also left him with no time to prepare as he was hurled into another memory.

The day Milah had run away with Hook. He had gone to the ship, but had refused to fight. He watched himself bow his head in defeat. "I know what happened here." His voice was hoarse.

"Yes, yes you do. But have you admitted the truth? Don't think you have." The Dark One snickered at him. "Admit it now. Tell the truth. Tell yourself the truth now." The whisper shivered through his head like nails on slate. "Come on now, so much to see. Wouldn't want that grandson of yours to perish before we've even gotten started."

A lump filled his throat as he watched himself quivering on the deck of the boat. "I could have picked up the sword. I could have fought."

"And you might have won Milah back. At least parted in better terms. And you'd have proved yourself." Cold, oily laughter. "Funny, you could find the strength to storm a castle for a dagger, but not to fight a pirate for your wife."

"The dagger was to protect Bae!" Anger flickered in him a moment. Then it died in his shame. "But this...I could have fought for her." Milah might not have loved him, but she would have seen him be brave. He would have been able to tell Baelfire that he had at least tried to get his mother back. Instead of lying to the boy that Hook had kidnapped and killed her.

He could have earned some measure of respect from Hook. The pirate had a curious code of ethics. He probably would have avoided the killing blow in the end. There was no glory in killing a crippled man, after all. And if Hook had been the type to kill for nothing, then his surrender wouldn't have saved him.

And he knew it. He'd known it then. He'd known it looking at Hook. But he'd been too much a coward to dare Hook's sword. He'd hid instead behind his son, using Baelfire as an excuse once again. "It was a lie."

"It became a habit. Hide behind your son. Make excuses because of the boy."

"It did." Even after Baelfire had fallen through the portal, he had done it. In fact, even more so. He had manipulated entire kingdoms on the excuse of 'for my son'. He had twisted the fate of worlds with that excuse.

The truth was laid bare in his heart, and it was ashes.

"Finally seeing the truth, are we? About time. After all, there's this little moment..."

Wrench. He was standing in a path, surrounded by soldiers. The leader laughed mockingly, and told him to kneel. To kiss his boot. And he did, and was rewarded with a kick to the face, blood on his mouth, and the knowledge that Baelfire had witnessed his humiliation.

After his transformation, he had gloried in his hatred of the men, delighted in making the captain kiss his boot, then slaughtering his entire force in retaliation for what had been done to him.

He had never admitted to anyone, not even himself, that he had hated himself for not standing up to the men. For not offering to fight. For not defending Baelfire with pride and honor, rather than cringing and grovelling.

"And then, of course, there's this little moment. The moment you fell over the edge. The moment you...became me." An insane goblin giggle.

He stood in a clearing with a dagger clenched in his fist. He summoned the Dark One named on the blade. He challenged him, commanded him. Then he killed him.

Rumplestiltskin fell to his knees, choking.

There was no coming back from murder. And murder he had committed, there in the dark clearing that night.

"Your first unforgivable act. The first true blackening of your heart. You always said it was for your son, but we both know that isn't true, don't we?" The Dark One hissed in his ears.

"No..." His head bowed, throat choked.

To control the Dark One, that he might have justified as being for Bae. But the murder...there was no excuse for the murder. Not when there were so many other options available to him.

He could have had the Dark One take him and Bae somewhere safe, away from the fighting. An easy task for a being of such power.

He could have done as Belle had done, commanded the Dark One to stop the ogres, stop the wars. He had first hand experience with how simple such an order was to fulfill. Ogres were vicious, but against the Dark One, little more than a nuisance.

He could have bargained the Dark One's freedom for safety, security, protection for his son. Or even simply commanded it.

He had known that all of those were options. He had taken none of them.

Instead, he had given in to the worst of himself that night. Let his fear, his anger, his self-loathing and his hatred of the men who had humiliated him take over. And he had committed murder. In some ways, he had killed not only the Dark One that night, but himself as well. He had smothered the better, truer part of his nature in blackness, allowed the monster the Dark One's power made him rise to the surface and take over.

Tears of raw self-loathing streaked his face. "It wasn't for Bae...I did this. I...did this. Because I was angry, because I was too much of a coward. Because I was drunk on power."

"And the mask comes off." A cold, cruel hand fell on his shoulder. "And now we get to see what you did with that power."

His body froze in horror. What he had done...he remembered it. Before his quest to find Baelfire, he had been petty in his violence. But the things he had done even then, the violence, the cruelty...Baelfire had accused him of terrorizing people and leaving him friendless, and he hadn't been wrong.

"No...I don't need to see that."

"Oh, but you do. That's the rules. That's the price. Every. Single. Last. Act." The Dark One laughed. "Every single stain that you've tried to justify dearie."

"No..." He had no time to murmur anything more before the memory dissolved around him.

Author's Note: Things are getting a little more intense...