Chapter 44

A/N. Bono & Bob Dylan's "Love Rescue Me" inspired this chapter.

Each time she lets Henry go, Emma frets. Not out loud: she's the sheriff (and the princess, but she likes being the sheriff far more, because it's a title she earns, every day. Besides, who knows what the hell a princess is?). But when no one's looking she'll chew her fingernails, wishing she had a bear claw or at least a jelly donut to chew instead, and she'll get short-tempered with whoever happens to be in her line of sight, and she'll really take it out on Hook, finding something devious in anything he says. "You're acting all pirate-y," she'll snap at him, and he'll snap back, "Well, what do you expect? It is my chosen profession."

She'll feel guilty then, because he didn't have much choice in any of this, did he? What Evaton needs in this first stage of its development are builders and farmers, hunters and gatherers. He can't hammer a nail straight and when he walks into the barn with a bucket, the cows all stampede. He can't weave or ride or rope or hold a bow; he does, however, show a talent for butchering meat, so that becomes his new profession. And he has a knack for predicting the weather; the farmers find this handy. But, Emma decides, a pirate without a ship is like a mom without her child, so she says nothing when she catches him staring off into the horizon. When she thinks of it that way, she can almost sympathize—and then he'll lay some lame double entendre on Snow, right under David's nose, and Emma loses all hope for his rehabilitation.

And then she forgets all about Hook, because she hears Dove's rickety old wagon, something he found rotting in one of Regina's barns and has tried to repair himself, despite Regina's many offers to conjure a new one. Those squeaking springs signal the return of Henry, and Emma can stop fidgeting for another week, while Henry's where she can see him. As she hugs him (secretly inspecting him for damage) she wonders if she'll ever trust Regina enough to stop worrying when he's in the queen's care.

One morning in the second week of the therapy, as the men are fishing, Bae blurts, "Will it happen to me?"

Archie drops his fishing pole in surprise. "What? Will what happen to you?"

"This sickness." Bae looks Archie in the eye, as if daring him to deny the possibility. "I have magic. If I started using it—not that I plan to, but if I did—would I get hooked on it? Aren't addictions passed down through families?"

"No. . . Bae. . . ." Rumple tries to protest.

"I'm not an expert on magic, but from what your dad's taught me, magic isn't genetic; it's acquired, either as a gift or a curse. When two people from the same family happen to have magical abilities, it's probably because the shared environment created a propensity toward seeking magic as a means of solving problems," Archie explains. "How did magic come to you, Bae?"

"In Neverland a pixie offered to teach me how to fly. I couldn't see any harm in it; in fact, it seemed like a smart idea, to be able to get away from pirates. So I started flying, all over the place, and the more I flew, the safer I felt, and the higher I flew, the more of my past I forgot. When I flew, I left memories behind on the ground. I didn't realize then that I was practicing magic. Then Nibs fell out of a tree and broke his arm, and I didn't know what to do and the pixie wouldn't come when I called her. I was thinking about the times you would just touch something that was broken and mend it. Nibs was hurting so bad, all I wanted to do was make him better, and my hand lit up, and I touched his shoulder." As Bae relates the story, he raises his hand: it's glowing with an orange light, the color of autumn leaves. He flicks his hand as if to extinguish the light, but it remains.

Rumple reaches out a comforting hand, but withdraws it hastily: he must not touch that which is magic. He lowers his hand and his head: will he never be free to touch his son or his grandson again?

The light glows brighter, and Rumple can feel in the memory of his own cells what Bae must be feeling in his: the hope that comes with this power, the sense of freedom, and magic's push to be put to use. In Rumple's case, the push was a shove that caused him to fall from grace. But Bae's magic was the gift of a pixie, playful perhaps but not driven to destruction.

"How do I shut it off?"

Rumple smiles wryly. "Think about baseball."

Bae's hand stops glowing.

"It's not malicious magic you have, son. You won't become like me," Rumple assures him. "You couldn't, anyway; you aren't a coward."

"You're wrong, Dad. I've been running ever since I fell into that hole."

"Things are different now, aren't they?" Archie asks. "You're here, for your son, for your father, and you're talking."

Bae shrugs. "Yeah, but I still feel like taking off."

"Will you?"

"I need to be role model for my kid, don't I?" Bae answers. "Like my old man's a role model for me."

Like my old man's a role model for me. Rumple has never heard a more powerful spell spoken. The words, a blessing, break the chains of craving for him, set him free. In days future, when the craving comes over him and he thinks he needs magic, Bae's blessing will wash over him.

"You've heard the questions I've asked your father," Archie replies. "You've heard him describe what it feels like for him when he uses magic, and when he feels he needs to but can't. Have you heard anything that gives you cause to worry for yourself?"

Bae's voice drops to a near whisper. "I don't want to be like him. I understand now, it wasn't his choice, but all the evil his magic drove him to—how can I avoid that? I have magic too. And Henry—will he become—like that?"

"It's not the same, Bae," Rumple argues. "If it were—if your magic had come to you through a curse—it would have driven you, as mine did me. There were times when I could control myself, but other times when I couldn't, when I lost myself and the Dark One took over. If dark magic had a hold on you, you'd have left a trail of destruction everywhere you traveled. But that's not you, Bae, and it never will be. What's in you is a call to help people. If that wasn't so, as angry as you were with me, you would have left me bleeding on your doorstep after Hook attacked me. And Henry—his magic is something new to this world, something pure. Like his mother's, a product and a gift of True Love, incapable of being abused."

"Have you done anything by magic that you regret, Bae?" Archie prods.

"I don't know. I mean, no, but that's because I've always avoided using it. If I started, I don't know if I could control it or it would control me." Disgust rises above the confusion in Bae's voice.

Archie observes, "That's a common feeling for an adult child of—"

"An addict," Rumple finishes. His stomach churns, but the boulder that's been sitting on his chest for months rolls away. Names have power, and to speak this name for himself aloud, he can gain control of it; the more the name is used, the more common it will become and the weaker its power over him will become.

Rumple explains, "It's your choice, Bae, whether you ever use your magic or not. I doubt if the pixie intended it to be a burden for you. But—apart from the fact that you're my son and I want the best for you—I can tell you that your magic carries no darkness in it. I can feel it when I touch you, and it's nothing like the power that I had, or the power that flows through Regina. I had tremendous power, but it was the power of a fool, acquired through my own ignorance, and the darkness in that power drove me to crave more of it, with no regard to what it was doing to my body or my soul. Regina. . .she started from a dark place, and in full knowledge of the consequences, she invited evil in. For you and Henry and Emma, it's the opposite: you started from a place of innocence, and you attracted magic that will enable you to do greater good, if you pursue it. But white magic gives you the choice, always."

They fall silent as they consider his claims, until Archie adds, "Baelfire, something I'd have you consider. Addictions can't be cured, but they can be fought, day by day, and I have every confidence that your father will come out on top of that battle. He has so many reasons to win, and no compelling reason not to." He smiles at Rumple. "And he puts as much work into the fight as he did when he was learning magic. You remember that time you tried to transmute a lion into a griffin?"

Rumple grins in embarrassment. "I ended up with one pissed-off flying lion, as I recall."

"I've known you a long time, Rumple. A long time. And you were an old bastard, no doubt about it, but when you got it in your head to do something, you'd work your ass off to achieve it. There was a courage in that, a kind of an iron-jawed determination to buck the odds, that I looked up to."

Rumple suddenly seems to have become fascinated with a blade of grass. The redness spreading from his ears to his cheeks gives him away, however. He clears his throat. "The old bastard thanks you."

Three times during their stay in the woodsman's hut, Rumple experiences withdrawal symptoms. Each time is less severe than the previous, and as Bae fetches cool water for him, Archie talks him down, cutting through the stress. Archie makes notes of the symptoms; ever the healer, he tries to learn as much as he's teaching. He instructs Rumple in meditation techniques that nip the symptoms in the bud, and soon Rumple makes the practice part of his morning routine, right after shaving and before breakfast.

They experiment with herbs, one of Rumplestiltskin's areas of expertise when he was a practicing sorcerer, and they find that certain leaves when dried and boiled into a tea will reduce the physical reaction that occurs when he comes into contact with magical energy. He is able to touch Bae now, even when Bae allows his power to rise to the surface of his skin, and Rumple's own cells reject the intrusion of the magic. Sometimes, while in a pensive mood, Rumple wonders about the extent of Bae's power, wishes to test his abilities, but when these thoughts creep in, he retreats to the lake alone and empties his mind, as Archie has taught him, for he's discovered that he's intellectually addicted to magic, too.

He comes to understand then just how complete the Dark One's invasion of him has been. What Tamara took from him was in fact a cancer, and in time—not yet, but eventually—he'll thank her for it.

Belle is drawing her library. Well, Evaton's library, but she likes to think of it as hers, because it's going to be exactly the way she wants it. She spends weeks laboring over the sketches, creating little models out of mud and twigs and stones. Architecture, she knows nothing about, but what people need in a library, she was born knowing.

Henry is her number one cheerleader in the endeavor, but David is her biggest ally. He has dreams of making Evaton a new Alexandria, a seat of learning that will draw the finest minds from far and wide. "Shouldn't we work on plumbing first?" Emma asks. "Hello? Toilets we can flush?"

"We're working on that, and electricity, and paved roads and a hospital," David answers. "First the library, because we can't have a great school without a great library, and then we build the school. After that, everything else will come quickly, because the teachers and the inventors and the engineers and the scientists and the artists will come to us to learn."

"Yeah, but, I mean, compared to running water, isn't a library kind of frivolous?"

Snow raises an instructive finger. "Nothing for the soul is ever frivolous, dear."

So Belle draws and models, and David dreams of New Alexandria, and Snow rides with her sergeant of the guard into other kingdoms, making friends, forming alliances, for she knows it takes money to turn models into buildings and dreams into cities.

On the first day of the sixth week of their retreat into the forest, Archie announces it's time to go home.

"Addiction is something you'll have to fight all your life," he advises. "And you'll have to be especially vigilant that you don't swap one addiction for another. But you have the tools you need, and you have support, and you have work waiting for you, and someone who's been incredibly patient. It's time to go home."

"Thank you, Archie." It's not much of a payment for all the effort that the psychiatrist has invented, but Rumple realizes he can best show his gratitude by proving the effort wasn't in vain. Every day of his life now will be a test and an opportunity to demonstrate his gratitude.

Bae brings the mare up to the hut to load the packs onto her back. She's sniffing the wind and tossing her head. "She smells snow," Bae explains. He brushes his hand against her thick coat. "It's going to be a heavy winter."

"We'll get by," Rumple says. They start out, following the faded trail back. "Rumplestiltskin," he says suddenly. "That's how I want to be called. It's what my mother named me, and I want to reclaim it from the Dark One."

"A generation from now, Evatonians, when they hear the name Rumplestiltskin, will think 'that was one of the men who got the first colonists through the winter,'" Archie predicts. "'The man who spun the wool that kept them warm.'"

"Let it be so," Rumplestiltskin murmurs. "And let Maerwynn bear no shame upon hearing the name."

Throughout the village, the trees bend under the weight of snow and ice, but do not break. As he waits beside the fire for Bae to return from visiting Emma, Rumplestiltskin gathers a blanket around his shoulders and studies the steel ring in his palm.

He shifts his hand back and forth so that the steel ring catches the firelight. Through this ring, the women who raised him will be in attendance at his wedding: his Aunt Krea, who taught him that love is strength; and his Aunt Maerwynn, who taught him that nothing given in love is ever a sacrifice. He has no doubt that Slightly's boss will be in attendance too: he will see her in the eyes of his grandson, his son and his bride. He will hear her blessing in the prayers spoken by Queen Snow as she unites the two couples. He will feel her gentle touch in the handshakes and hugs of his neighbors—his friends.

Gods, he is rich.

He dreams he is walking down a long hall, the ceiling, the floor and the walls of which are painted white. His footsteps, steady and firm, echo. He doesn't know where he's going, but he has the sense that he's moving in the direction he's meant to go. As he proceeds, he passes open doors leading into white rooms, and in each room stands someone he once was: the abandoned child, the bullied teenager, the naïve young husband, the self-mutilated father, the powerless pariah, the Dark One, the feared father, the vengeance seeker, the Jaded One, the pawnbroker, the lover, the builder, Dad, Grampa, husband. He looks into the eyes of each of them and as he passes, he forgives them all. He comes to the end of the hall and before him is one last door, standing open. He steps through into the light.

Second Year

Of course Rumplestiltskin thinks about It. Most nights, he thinks about it. He's a man in love, a healthy man. It's such a strange place they're in, though: everyone's confused. He and Bae, after some hemming and hawing, have discussed the problem: with the old world mores of the Enchanted Forest (further complicated for Bae by his long stopover in Neverland, where there's no such thing as romance), they came to the Land without Magic, where a whole different set of social conventions were followed. . . where "chemistry" is considered as important as compatibility; where "Hi, can I buy you drink" is followed by "When was your last HIV test"; where a relationship is considered a failure if the couple doesn't fall into bed on the third date.

Gold, having other priorities, simply ignored the whole business. Rumplestiltskin wonders now if perhaps True Love was working on him then, steering him clear of romantic entanglements, because the one he was meant for was there in Storybrooke all along. Bae, a young man in the big city, met Emma and followed the conventions of the place and time: a sexual relationship, followed by a friendship, followed by a romance, followed by love, and throughout, an unwritten commitment of love that was spoken only after months of lovemaking.

Now here they all are, Enchanted Foresters-turned-Storybrookers-turned-Enchanted Foresters. They are both, but "both" is an incompatible union; they are, then, Evatonians, but that's a place they made, so they have to make the rules for themselves too. The married couples have it easy. But everyone else has to work it out from scratch one relationship at a time.

Bae and Emma are in love and committed to each other; that's not in question. What they haven't figured out yet is just what name they want to give their commitment. They're old enough to realize that their union affects other people, including an observant and impressionable teenager. "We're going to get married," Bae says, "just not yet. We changed. It was twelve years we were apart. We have to learn about each other all over again."

And that's fine; it's wise to proceed slowly, Rumplestiltskin assures him.

But, Bae wonders, what about sex?

Rumplestiltskin coughs into his tea. He had expected this question to come up—about two hundred years ago. But it's encouraging, really it is, that his son feels comfortable asking the question.

It's a big castle, Bae points out; Emma has entire wing of it to herself. She can have overnight guests without disturbing her parents or Henry.

But she hasn't. Rumplestiltskin doesn't even have to ask, because Bae comes home every night. He comes home late, but he comes home.

"And you—if you ever want the house to yourself some night, you know the old tie on the doorknob trick, don't you?" Bae asks.

Actually, he doesn't. "I don't have a tie any more."

"Dad," Bae tsks. "Just tell me, okay? 'Bae, I'm gonna have Belle over for the night. Sleep at Archie's.'"

"Uhm, all right."

Bae pats his shoulder. "It's okay, Dad. Even old guys have needs."

"Yeah, but old guys also have patience."

On the last day of winter, as she has on most days of winter, Belle leaves her housemates to their own devices and comes to Rumplestiltskin's house. Bae, as usual, has gone to the castle to talk plumbing with the prince and baseball with the princeling—and sweet nothings with the princess.

There's something different in the air tonight, an undercurrent of spring beneath the winter wind; a stirring, not yet an awakening, within Belle. As they prepare dinner—canned fruits and vegetables, alas, nothing fresh for the table yet—she moves in small, tight steps, her thick sweater and denim trousers stiff on her body, like a housecat's collar on a caged puma. She is, in Storybrooke years, thirty: old enough to know everything she wants and how to get it, but too honest to play games for it. Nor would she have to.

She watches him, even as she talks about meaningless matters, and her eyes are frank and unembarrassed in what they're revealing to him.

He is flattered, relieved and very, very pleased. He is wearing one of his son's shirts, and instead of hanging on him like a curtain on a rod, it shapes him, or rather, he shapes it. He's aware of the changes his body has undergone this year. Not all of them have been for the better: more and deeper wrinkles, especially around his unprotected eyes (for no one remembered to pack sunglasses in Storybrooke); thinning hair, white around the temples and sideburns, streaks of gray elsewhere; skin dry and brown as jerky, and beginning to lose its elasticity; a squint when he tries to read close up. But at the same time, he's filled out some with the muscle that daily living now requires, his shoulders are no longer bowed with secrets, his stride has lengthened. He looks like a man of fifty-one, as his drivers license, if he still had it, would claim; he moves, however, like a man of thirty. He will keep up with Belle, when the time comes; she will be satisfied.

She watches his hands as he slices the bread, stirs the stew, pours steaming water from the kettle into the teapot. There are fine lines on his hands and the skin is loose around the knuckles. The pads of his fingers, once callused, have hardened in response to the heavy labor. But his fingers are still an artist's, long and tapered, and knowing of the effects of touch. His hands are compellingly beautiful.

After supper, they set up the chess board, but it's difficult to concentrate. Across the small table he watches her mouth instead of the chess pieces. He keeps staring at her lips, in his imagination, tracing their lines with his fingertips: the bow of her upper lip, with its sharp peaks that suggest cleverness and elegance; the luxurious lower lip, suggesting stubbornness and sensuality. Then he decides no, it wouldn't be enough to trace those lips with his fingers; he wants to trace them with his tongue. Slowly, beginning with the left corner of her lower lip, which she has a habit of chewing when she's nervous. He would stroke the tip of his tongue against that corner of her mouth until her nervousness dissolves. Then he would draw his tongue to the bow of her mouth, urging her cleverness forth, because he wants to see just how clever her mouth and her hands can become. And at the last he'd tease her lower lip, take it gently between his teeth, and it would soften and rise to meet his mouth, just as her body would soften and rise under his hands.

When their eyes connect, it's impossible to pretend their thoughts are innocent.

She's not concerned with social rules. Her values are what they've always been, and she would come to him without hesitation or regret. She doesn't need for him to speak vows in front of an audience; she hears his vows every day, in everything he does.

He, who at the peak of his power overruled queens and kings, set his own rules for three hundred years. Something's changed now, though. He's found his reasoning flawed, and therefore, his rules meaningless. He's come to realize, this year, he wants something reliable. He wants to bend: submit to the laws of True Love. And that means speaking the words before the queen and the community.

When he walks her home, he kisses her, allowing his tongue to play against hers, and she entwines her hands in his. "Soon," he promises, and he lets her go.

There is no library yet, nor a school, for it was as the mare predicted, a rough winter, and the harvest, stripped by the drought and their own ignorance, would have left the colonists hungry if they hadn't traded with Gloucy. But they hunker down in their well-made houses and the soft wool spun by Rumplestiltskin and woven by Belle, and they make it through. And on the first anniversary of the founding of Evaton, the residents gather at the castle for a celebration that Snow calls "a workman's ball": they are dressed in the clothes they wore when they built this town.

The prime minister of Gloucy and his cabinet arrive for the celebration, bringing, as considerate guests do when they intend to stay a while, wagonloads of supplies. In one of the wagons is a bag of raw silk for which Rumple has traded Sinbad's saber; he believes he's gotten the better of that deal. He yearns to feel silk beneath his fingers again, fragile as a fairy's wing as his wheel transforms it to thread. That's the part he tells Belle, but there's another part to that story he won't reveal yet.

The visitors stay in Snow's castle, of course, but they are served by the queen herself, for she has no servants, and they clean up after themselves, for they come from a country that is ruled by the people, and though they are dignitaries now, they were born farmers and millers and masons.

Regina arrives for the ball, escorted by Dove. "Did you invite her?" Snow whispers to David; he answers, "Are you kidding?" Emma confesses to the crime: "She's Henry's mom too."

But Regina has ignored the content of the invitation. She is a queen: she dresses in velvet and lace, with diamonds on her wrist and ears. She is greeted with stares.

Dove, in the requisite denim, fetches her punch and stays a while at the bowl, chatting with the other men. "So how'd you manage to avoid the royal make-over?" Whale wonders.

"I'm an employee, not an indentured servant," Dove replies. "She may ask—but I may say no."

"And she doesn't force the issue?" David asks.

"We have found a working relationship that's based on mutual respect." But his eyes twinkle. Rumple will not pry with personal questions, but he suspects Mr. Dove will never come back to work for him again.

"Hey, you notice somebody's missing?" Archie's question gets everyone to count heads.

"Hey, yeah," Whale says. "Hook. Come to think of it, I haven't seen him around in days."

"He ran off," David reports. "About five days ago. Emma saw him hop on a horse and ride off towards the east. She figures he's headed for the ocean."

"Did she chase after him?"

"Nah. Good riddance to him and the horse he rode out on, she said."

"Just as well," Whale comments. "He cheats at poker."

Bae joins the men at the refreshments table. He pops a handful of cracked walnuts into his mouth and munches as he listens to the conversation, but his gaze keeps creeping to the front of the Great Hall, where the dignitaries are chatting. It's not the strangers that have attracted his attention, nor the queens, but rather a certain princess who insists the only title she'll accept is "sheriff" and anybody who calls her otherwise is going to get the cuffs slapped on them. She's wearing a soft white tunic over her skinny jeans, and her hair gleams in the lamplight.

Rumplestiltskin comes up behind his son and whispers, "When are you going to marry Emma?"

Bae throws it right back at him: "When you marry Belle."

But Rumplestiltskin is ready for that challenge. "Fine. How about the first day of summer?" He walks away before Bae can object.

Rumplestiltskin had accepted his invitation to the ball with some trepidation, for Belle had been raised a duchess, and until the Second Orges War, balls had been a part of her duty and her joy. Rumplestiltskin, however, had never been invited to a ball—though he'd crashed a few, just long enough to wreak havoc—and he hadn't danced so much as a box step in thirty years, for numerous reasons beyond but including the obvious.

But he's ready tonight, thanks to a therapy session that evolved into a dance lesson from the surprisingly nimble Hopper. When the music starts, he crosses the dance floor with his hand outstretched, and his lady in her cotton blouse and denim skirt curtseys to him, and he sweeps her into a waltz.

As she sets her left hand on his shoulder, he sneaks glances at her fourth finger, wondering what size it might take. But he doesn't worry about it too long, for rings, even steel ones, can be remade. He's come to believe now anything can be remade.

After he walks Belle home and kisses her goodnight, he mounts the hill overlooking Evaton. He has an invitation to extend, though he has no idea how to do it, since it must traverse worlds, but he remembers that True Love heard his plea once when he called out to her in desperation, so he thinks perhaps she will listen again. "I don't know what you prefer to be called," he begins, addressing the moon. It's kind of silly, he supposes, for him to expect to find her there, when, if the rumors are correct, she's everywhere, but something about the moon makes him feel at peace. "But I guess you know me well enough. Despite that, you never gave up on me. I thought you might like to celebrate with me, because if you hadn't kept after me, I'd still be a powerful but miserable old bastard. Well, I don't have much in the way of power any more, but I've got everything I ever wanted, and I've got you to thank for it. So I'd like to invite you and your employee, Mr. Slightly, to a wedding, the first day of summer. I know you'll be there, everywhere I look." He starts back down the hill, then pauses to reflect, "You know, I always used to tell people 'love is the most powerful magic of all.' But what I didn't get then was that it's the only power worth submitting to. I performed magic, but you perform miracles."