Chapter 34

A/N. U2's "Original of the Species" inspired this chapter.

Granny's B & B Room 8, 7 pm

"Aw crap."

Belle turns red and stutters, "I must say, that's the first time I've ever received that particular greeting. Is it a New York thing? Then, 'aw crap' to you too, Baelfire. May I come in?" Pointedly, she ignores the clothes, beer cans, dirty plates, a half-eaten pizza slice and jelly donuts with the jelly sucked out strewn all over what was, yesterday, a spotless, sunny and welcoming little room.

Bae pretends to run a hand over his stubble; he's actually testing his beer breath—it's awful, all right, and those pit stains on his t-shirt aren't making the impression he's making on his father's girlfriend any more impressive. There's something about Belle—maybe it's the clear blue eyes?—that instantly makes most people want to be, well, nice. Clean and sweet and innocent. Snow has that quality too, except you always know that at a moment's notice she could make a sword of her barbeque fork and a shield of her cookie sheet. Belle's a different kind of dangerous: those baby blues can bore through your chest and read every stain on your soul, and then make you want to drop to your knees to beg her pardon and offer her your last donut. Bae's met a few clergy like that. Yes, that's what Belle should do, if she ever gets bored with library work: become a parson. Save souls.

"Sorry," he mutters and steps aside, head hanging. His sorry covers everything from his less-than-cordial greeting to the state of his clothes (including the glob of jelly that fell onto his jeans cuff this morning that he just let dry there). He starts to pull his thoughts together. "Uhm, hey, you don't want to sit down in this mess, and I don't want to sit here worrying when you'll notice the jockey shorts I kicked under the bed. If you have something quick to tell me, let's step out in the hall."

"It may not be so quick," she admits—and now that he's brought it up, she can't help but peek under the bed.

"That's what I was afraid of. If you came here to tell me what an ass I'm being, I can save you the time: I already know." He's still hoping to squirm out of this quickly and go back to the Golden Girls marathon.

Instantly, he feels rotten all over again, because she bites her lip and hangs her head too. She's not disgusted by him; she's embarrassed by her own awkwardness, disappointed in herself that her powers of persuasion aren't strong enough for this situation. And then he knows how she got through the crocodile's thick hide, because her own humbleness is thrashing at the barrier of cold anger he's locked himself behind. He has to fight the impulse to start babbling confessions from his catalog of sins, beginning with the temper tantrum he threw at the age of four when Milah made him take a bath. Which, by the way, he really needs now. . . and a toothbrush. Geesh.

"No, I'm not here for accusations. Your father"—carefully chosen words: she could have said Rumplestiltskin, but your father is a reminder of a fact he's never been able to escape, no matter how far he's run and how many times he's changed his name. "He asked me to tell you what's going on. With the town," she adds, lest he thinks the news is personal. "We're all going to have to make a very big decision tomorrow; he wanted you to have time to think about it."

Bae's eyebrows knit: sounds like a trap. Just the kind of thing the Dark One would do: lead him to a gaping hole and demand that he decide whether to jump in. At the moment this thought occurs to him, he doesn't realize just how literally predictive it will be. He holds the door open. "All right. Let's go down to the diner and talk."

Storybrooke General Room 304, 7pm

Visiting hours have started. Gold straightens his tie just in case.

Dove's busy with his Henry assignment; he won't come. Belle's busy with her Bae assignment. The Lost Boys, the Charmings and Emma are gone, making their plans for tomorrow. Whale's off duty (if it weren't a Sunday night, Gold would think the good doctor off spending all the money Gold lost to him in last night's poker game). There isn't anyone else likely to visit, yet Gold finds himself listening for a key in the locked door to his room (his and Regina's room, for tonight). At the least, maybe Tiny will poke his head in to say hi to the man (not mage any more, not ever again) he's guarding.

Gold smoothes his jacket. It's gotten wrinkled as he's been sitting here in the bed. Regina's been gone quite a while: maybe she found a stack of fashion magazines in the gift shop, or a candy striper to harass.

He ought to use this time to make plans too, continue his studies. He picks up Manipulation of Atoms and Ions. It's meant for physicists; he can't understand most of it, but he's making his best effort. Something tells him that something in here could enable him to understand how the magic-stealing device works; if he could figure that out, perhaps he could figure out how to reverse it. If he achieves that goal, maybe he can get his magic back. . . or more. It's highly unlikely he'd be able to separate his own magic from that of the other mages who've been executed with this device. An interesting thought: he could end up a super-mage.

How stupid that would be. He knows how sick—physically and mentally—a mage will become if he or she acquires magic from opposing sources. Mixing sorcerer magic with fairy magic or pixie magic is like mixing ammonia with bleach. Cora would've risked it; Rumplestiltskin, no matter how starved for magic, never will.

He picks up his phone and dashes out a text to Emma: that device, wherever Emma's keeping it, needs to be stored in isolation, lest contact with another electronic device or a chemical might interact with it. And the device needs to be locked in an iron box, where Regina's mirror magic can't see it, because if Regina should suddenly remember what she saw Tamara do to Rumple with that device, the queen will come after it. She has just enough Cora in her to be tempted by that wealth of power.

Warning sent, Gold resumes his studies. He wishes that, back in the old world, when he'd made that deal to exchange unlimited funding for instruction in reanimation, he'd made Frankenstein live up to his end of the bargain. Gold could sure use some knowledge of—gulp—science, right now.

Sheriff's Office 7 pm

"Crap on a cracker."

"What's that you say, my golden beauty?" Hook's laying the accent on thick. How can he keep at it, flirting hour after hour with every female over the age of 18 (Emma suspects Granny's even been his target a time or two) and being shot down every time? Doesn't the man ever quit?

Then Emma remembers his never-ending attacks on the crocodile. Her question is answered. "Shut up," she growls, throwing the last stale bear claw at him. It hits the lock on the cell and flies apart. Crap, she'll have to sweep that up—later.

It's 7 o'clock now and she's supposed to be headed over to Dove's. Mitch the bartender has arrived to guard the prisoner; the sheriff should be free to go. She needs a hug from Henry, a hot shower and an early bedtime, but now she learns she needs an iron lockbox first, and she's a bit alarmed to find that it might not have been wise for her to stick that taser thing of Tamara's in the evidence closet. She gulps the dregs of a cold cup of coffee and begins to search the office for a lockbox.

Belle's Apartment 7:30 pm

The diner and every other restaurant in town being closed—it is a Sunday night, after all—Belle has taken Bae back to her apartment to cook him a proper meal. She sends him to the shower first and with a soft blush offers him a change of clothes from her closet (a pair of jeans and a Polo shirt with a small paint stain). "He helped me paint my apartment a couple of months ago," she explains. She doesn't have to identify "he." The brightness in her eyes informs Bae that for Belle, there is and always will be only one "he."

Bae envies them that. For all the beautiful smiles Tam gave him, never once did he see her eyes shine the way Belle's do whenever she mentions "him." As he scrubs with her rose-scented soap, he wonders how he got here—how she got him here, when he has a shower and his own clothes just six blocks away. Must be the same way she got "him" to wear the jeans. Bae would have liked to have seen that, would like to see her work her magic on the old man.

When he comes into the kitchen, she sets a head of lettuce in his hands. "Here, you make the salad. Tomatoes and carrots are in the crisper; the bowl's in the cupboard above the sink." As they cook, she reports on the revelations from the meeting. He's silent except for the crunching of his knife as he slices carrots.

"There will be a town meeting tomorrow, 6 pm, at City Hall. We'll take a vote then to decide whether to fight or leave," she concludes.

"What does he recommend?" Bae's knife slips and a slice of carrot skitters across the chopping board and onto the counter. He tosses the slice into the garbage disposal.

She drops a package of spaghetti into a pot of boiling water and gives it a stir before she answers. She's chosen her words carefully, aware that what she says now could influence Bae's decision. Nervously she wipes her hands on her apron. "There are three hundred of us living here. Ninety-two children under the age of 16; seventy-one people over the age of sixty; twenty-one people in the hospital with various illnesses and injuries." She draws in a deep breath. "Four mages, including Emma and Henry. What would you do, Bae?"

He drops the carrots into the bowl and starts slicing tomatoes. "I'm not a good one to ask," he admits. "I have a history of running."

"Your father"—again with the your father—"recommends that we evacuate. He says only magic can fight magic." She takes out a frying pan and sets it on a burner, turning up the heat.

"He's right."

She's reaching into the refrigerator for a package of bacon, so she doesn't hear Bae's comment. As she chops the bacon, she adds, "He says Pan will kill all the adults and enslave the children."

"He's right," Bae says again.

She drops the bacon into the hot pan, and grease pops as the meat sizzles. She barely notices; she's busy wondering. "Bae, do you know Peter Pan?"

He gives her that pirate smile that he throws around when he wants to charm people rather than deal with them honestly. "Nobody really knows Peter Pan. He likes to catch you off-guard."

She repeats, "Bae, do you know him? Have you met him?"

Caught, he pauses in mid-tomato. "I was him, until I chose to come here and grow up."

Her face glows now, as if she's just discovered a fascinating new book in her library. She craves to follow the trail of this conversation, learn the full story, but there is more urgent work to be done. "The one who calls himself Pan now. Do you know him?"

Bae's knife makes puree out of the tomato. "Yeah. He arrived in Neverland during my administration. He's one of the reasons I decided to grow up: I couldn't rein him in. My successor vowed to keep him in check, but here we are."

"Can he be bargained with?"

"Belle, Fourteen's role models are Genghis Khan and Ivan the Terrible."

She starts chopping an onion. "Can he be defeated?"

"Not with three mages, unless one of them has access to nuclear missiles."

They fall silent as he finishes the salad and she fries the onion. Finally another idea occurs to her, "Can he be outsmarted?"

Bae is slow in answering that question. "It remains to be seen. He's so ruthless, few have tried. It makes more sense to evacuate." It's a sign of maturity in him, a mark of experience, that Bae even acknowledges this option, one that in his youth he would have labeled "cowardly." But having been a leader, responsible for the lives of small children, he holds another perspective.

She asks for the third time, "Is that how you'll vote, Bae?"

"It's not for me to say. This isn't my community," he says quickly, but then he winces. "That's a lie. My son is here. I do have a stake in this town."

"And your father is here. You have a right to vote, even if you choose to go back to New York before Pan arrives."

"Henry can come with me. And Emma—I can keep them safe from him."

"From whom?" Belle's voice chills. "From Pan—or from your father?"

Bae begins to set the table so he doesn't have to look at her, clatters the silverware so he doesn't have to speak.

Belle seizes his arm to force him around to face her. "It was self-defense, Baelfire. Your father didn't intend to kill her."

"He killed my mother." The fourteen-year-old emerges from beneath the years of experience. "He intended that. Reached in, grabbed her heart and crushed it like it was a clod of dirt. No self-defense there. She was trying to get away from him. She made a deal with him, in fact: her life for a magic bean. He broke his deal with her too. Did you know all that, Belle? Or did he conveniently forget to mention it to you? And do you know why he killed her? All because she told him she never loved him. What do you think of that, Belle? What do you think he'd do to you, if you ever tried to leave him?"

She turns off the skillet, withdraws a chair from the kitchen table and sits down heavily. "Sit down, Bae. Please." She doesn't know what to say to him.

But he leans on one of the other chairs instead of sitting. "You're going to try to convince me he's changed. You're going to say that was hundreds of years ago, and Tamara was just an accident, and he's just a well-mannered gentleman in a tailored suit now."

"No," she says, remembering Gold's attack upon her father.

"I tried for a century to find a reason to forgive him for killing my mother and abandoning me. I tried to convince myself it was the Dark One's fault, not my father's. But I finally had to admit to myself that he chose to be the Dark One, and when he had the chance to be free of his curse, he wouldn't take it. He's beyond forgiving."

"You're right," Belle says. "It would take a saint to forgive all the evil he's done. I don't know if you know this, Bae, but back in the old country, Regina imprisoned me, and when the curse brought me here, I was still her prisoner, trapped in a tiny room that only Regina and her minions knew existed. I was there for 28 years, and for most of those years, I was trapped in my own mind too, because the curse and the drugs that were pumped into me had me believing I was mentally ill. I'm struggling with the forgiveness question too, mostly trying to forgive Regina, but I'm also working on forgiving your father for putting me in a position where she could abduct me. It's a day-to-day thing. I suppose it's easier for me to forgive him than it is for you, but I'm asking you to consider one thing: try to see how deeply he loves.

"I first learned about you when I discovered a room full of your clothes and toys in the Dark Castle. You'd been gone more than two hundred years by then, but he'd kept your things, preserved them with magic so they wouldn't deteriorate. Not that he thought you'd someday walk back in again, still fourteen years old; he kept those things as incentive to keep searching. Most of the deals he made in those days—many of the wrongdoings—they were all to enable the curse to happen so he could come here to find you. No, that doesn't excuse him: he was damned bloody-minded about it. He knew innocent people were getting hurt, but he kept on, to get to you. Morally, what he did was reprehensible and deserves retribution; emotionally, perhaps it's understandable, when you realize it was the only way he could get here. And if you walk away, if you take Henry with you, he'll let you go, but he'll never stop looking for you.

"I've thought a lot about forgiveness, and who deserves it, and when. But what I've figured out is that the only reason for forgiveness is—forgiveness. You don't give it because the other person earned it. You give it because you can. And despite what you feel, I know you can, because I know you must see the love in him."

Bae shakes his head. "I can't. I can't forgive him."

"I understand it's a big ask, to forgive him once and for all. Forever is so monumental that it's too much to do, especially if you're carrying the weight of your grief alone. But you don't have to be alone, Bae. And if forever is too much, how about this? Forgive him just for today. Let tomorrow take care of itself. Is that possible, to forgive him for one day?"

"I don't know."

She won't press further, lest she drive him away. She stands and transfers the spaghetti to the skillet. "Would you beat four eggs, please?"

He fetches down a bowl and gets to work on the eggs. They move about the small kitchen silently until the meal is on the table, and as they sit, she pours glasses of tea.

"Smells good." Bae swirls noodles around his fork. "Tamara and I hardly ever cook. She works such long"—he stops to correct himself. "Worked such long hours. She owned a book store."

"Really?" Belle perks up. "Tell me about it. Tell me about her."

He gives her an odd look: she wants to hear about the woman her lover killed? But he starts easy, talking about the store, and slips into his memories of Tamara, and he doesn't know how it happens, but something he'll say about Tam will remind him of something about Henry or Emma, and pretty soon he's even talking about his father in the pre-Dark days. She's asking the most innocent questions in her shy way, and she's adding stories of her own, and they even find a few funny tales to tell. When he leaves, his belly full, his heart warm, he's smiling and so is she, and she hasn't mentioned it again, but walking back to the inn to pick up a change of clothes before heading over to Dove's, he finds himself remembering, Is that possible, forgive him for one day?

Storybrooke General 7:30 pm

"Hi, Grampa!"

Gold raises his head from Manipulation and glances at the door—it's still closed. Then he looks to his left, where Henry, and behind him, Dove, stand. He frowns slightly. "Good evening, Mr. Dove. Henry, did you use magic to come here?"

"There wasn't time to drive." Henry plops onto the bed, just barely missing landing on Gold's knee, but that's okay: Henry's on his good side. "Emma's taking a bath and Neal's coming over soon as he'd done talking to"—he pauses, not sure what identifier to use, grandma being incorrect on so many levels; he settles for just her name—"Belle. So we've only got a minute but I wanted to see how you're doing and you don't have Skype on your phone yet. You should download the app. Want me to do it for you?"

"Later, Henry." Gold inspects the fingers on one of Henry's hands. "How do your hands feel? Are they sore? Hot?"

"They tingle."

"If your hands ever start to hurt, that means it's time for you to rest the magic, okay? How does your head feel?"

"Okay. How does yours feel?" Henry lays his palm against Gold's forehead as if checking for a fever. "You have black eyes. Did somebody punch you?"

Gold chuckles. "It's a symptom of the concussion. I'm better. I'll leave here tomorrow."

Henry squints. "That's not what Emma said the doctor said."

Gold winks, despite the black eyes. "That's what I say. I presume your magic brought Mr. Dove here too?" At Henry's nod, he continues, "You have remarkable abilities, my boy, and I know you're itching to test them, but you really mustn't experiment on your own. Especially not when it involves other people. You could have hurt Mr. Dove."

"He wouldn't let me leave without him."

"That's true, sir," Dove agrees. "Master Henry sufficiently proved to me his ability to transport me safely—he moved my refrigerator into the back yard."

"Indeed? Henry, do we have a deal? You won't practice magic without supervision, and I'll give you lessons." Gold offer a handshake.

"We have a deal." Henry wriggles, feeling very adult.

"Henry. . .when Regina needed help, how did you know that?" Gold's head has started to pound again; he wishes he could conjure some ibuprofen.

"I heard her crying." He taps his head. "In my mind. And I knew she couldn't use her magic. I could feel it." He runs a finger along the veins in his wrist. "Here. It was like—it felt like she was trying to move her hand but it wouldn't move, and her hands wouldn't get warm. You know how, when you're getting ready to use your magic, your hands get warm and your fingers feel like they're buzzing?"

Gold nods. "You—are you saying you can feel it when Regina uses her magic?"

"Yeah. My veins get hot. And then I can see what she's telling the magic to do. In my mind, I can see it." He points to his wrist again. "I feel it here first, that somebody's talking to their magic, and then I see what they're doing in my mind."

"Describe it for me. Regina used magic tonight, several times. Tell me about one of those times."

Henry screws up his face in concentration. "She thought about the cafeteria, and she went there. She didn't like their coffee, so she made some with her coffee machine at home and brought it here. With magic."

Gold exchanges glances with Dove: the latter is wondering if Henry is fantasizing, but the amazement in the former's eyes answers that question.

As the boy continues to talk, a bottle of aspirin appears in his hand and gives it to Gold, who accepts it absentmindedly. "And she did something with a mirror—she saw things, things that you were thinking. I don't understand that." Henry suddenly giggles. "And the shorts! She took your shorts off and made your pants bigger."

"That's enough, Henry; that's enough examples," Gold interrupts. A hasty sideways glance assures him Dove is not laughing: the handyman's features remain fixedly curious about Henry's abilities, but uninterested in learning any more about Gold's shorts. "What happens when you see these images? Is it like watching television, or like dreaming?"

"Like dreaming, I guess, because I know what she's going to do when she thinks it, and how she's going to do it."

"Indeed," Gold mutters, opening the aspirin and swallowing two. "Is it uncomfortable?"

"No. I can do it with Emma. She hardly ever uses magic, but when she does I can see it in my head." He leans forward conspiratorially. "Like, she couldn't find one of those iron boxes you told her to find, so she magicked it."

"Conjured," Gold corrects. "Magic is a noun; conjure is the verb."

"I can do it with you, too, but," Henry's voice takes on a note of sadness, "I don't feel your magic in my wrist any more. But when you think about doing magic, I can see it."

"My gods," Gold says softly. Then his hand closes around the aspirin bottle. "Is that why you conjured this for me?"

"Yeah. Is that okay?" A typical kid despite his unique powers, the boy's worried he's screwed up.

"It's okay."

Henry snaps his fingers in victory and practically shouts, "Right now! You're telling your magic to open that window over there." He sobers as he realizes, "I'm sorry your magic is gone, Grampa. That must be the pits."

"We have much to talk about, young man," Gold concludes. "But shouldn't you be getting back to Mr. Dove's house now?"

"Okay." Henry slides off the bed and moves to stand beside Dove.

"One moment, Henry," Gold wiggles his finger and Henry returns to his side. "Thank you for the aspirin." Gold leans over and kisses the boy's forehead. If Gold still had his magic, this wouldn't be just a goodnight kiss from an elder to a child; it would be the conveyance of a blessing, from a master mage to his eventual replacement from the next generation. But he has no magic to transfer the blessing, so it must be a simple grandpa-grandchild kiss.

Henry's pleased with it anyway. Probably more so.