She had cried until she couldn't. Until her muscles ached, and her head ached, and the energy ran out of her like rainwater. Until she slept. And, sleeping, she dreamt.

She dreamt strange things. About a castle. She dreamt about the castle too often, so often when she was back there, in the dark, when no matter what she had tried the only real escape had been in her sleep. Dreamt, again and again, that she was back there or that she went back, running up the drive, pushing the massive doors open. Sometimes she dreamt that she was pulling at the doors, pulling and hammering, but this time they opened, slow and heavy, and she ran through the halls, shoes ringing on the marble floors, and there was light under the door and the scent of straw and the sound of spinning. And then he looked up and he reached out and his hands were warm, so warm…

"Belle."

She tried to reach out to him, but her arms were so heavy. But she could smell it, the scent of him, warm and sweet and dry, and it was the scent of home. She would hide in barns while she was traveling. She would tell herself not to, that it hurt too damn much, promise never again, and still she would seek them out. Just for a hope of that scent, for a chance to close her eyes and pretend.

His fingers, warm and slender, brushed her cheek, trailed down her face.

She felt herself drifting up toward consciousness, and squeezed her eyes shut tighter, trying to cling to the dream. Home. Don't wake up, don't wake up. Let her stay there. Please, let her stay — in that moment, with his skin against hers. But the dream drifted away, and carried her along into the dark.

The dark…

It was always so dark in there. Closing in on her, pressing down, suffocating –

Terror ripped her awake before she could fully comprehend and seized her by the throat. Dark walls dark space around her… Panic had her chest in a vice and it squeezed, and she couldn't think and she couldn't breathe, and she felt the scream in her, the scream that couldn't escape, the scream that built and built…

Light flared, blinding her, and she froze.

"Are you all right?"

It was a young woman, tall and lanky, with long dark hair. The light from the hall shone through the open door, and her red blouse seemed to glow with it.

"Don't freak out," the woman said, holding up her hands. "Okay? Everything's okay."

She blinked and nodded, her heart still shaking in her chest. But the sight of the woman had startled some of the fear away, enough that she could breathe now. The hospital air was cool and dry and carried the tang of bleach, and she heard the desperate, ragged edge that was almost sobs as she pulled it into her lungs.

The woman's red mouth curved into a wide grin. "Hey, a nod. That's almost like real communication. It's a step, anyway. Keep breathing, that's it." She mimed deep breaths. "In, out, just like that. Better?"

She nodded, the sting of fear still vibrating along her skin.

"Another nod. How about we try some real words? I'll go first," the woman said, sitting down on the bed. "I'm Ruby Lucas. And you are…"

Lacey. Her name was Lacey felt odd to think the words; she didn't try to say them.

"Hmm…" Ruby tilted her head and peered at her with dark eyes that seemed to gleam gold in the shadows. "Just yes and no questions, then? Are you hurting? You want me to call the nurses, for drugs or something?"

She — Lacey — shook her head. Ruby gave her a look, but all she said was, "I'm going to hang for a bit, all the same. If that's okay. Emma — that's the sheriff — she thought it'd be a good idea. Since you keep trying to run off," Ruby added, but her eyes were warm and she didn't sound angry. She nodded toward the open door. "I can wait out in the hall, if you want."

She glanced at the door, uncertain.

"How about this?" Ruby suggested. "I'll hang for a bit, and when you're sick of me, you can just point at the door and give me a shove, or something."

She nodded.

"Awesome. Hey, you're a fan of Dumas?" Ruby reached over and plucked a book from off the bedside table. It was thick, bound in brown leather, and the pages yellowed with age. "Monte Cristo's really great." Ruby flipped through the book, her eyebrows lifting as she did. "Wow, unabridged version — let me guess, you're an overachiever," she said, and it was only when she handed the book over that Lacey realized she had reached out for it. The leather was supple underneath her fingertips, and the smell of old paper was a tangible comfort. She traced her fingers across the faded gold lettering of the title. This hadn't been here before. She was sure it hadn't. "I usually go for the abridged myself. I mean, Al tells a great story, but that guy could yak — "

"Lacey," she said, and looked up. The solid weight of the book in her hands was like an anchor. "My name is Lacey."

Ruby grinned, and it wasn't at all like the Woman's smile. It was real. It was kind. Ruby held out a hand and Lacey took it and shook it without thinking. "Nice to meet you."

He sensed when she started up from the dungeon, the quick, bright energy rushing up the stairs. She entered on a spin, the skirt of her gown twirling out around her. "What do you think?"

"It's blue," he said. He had known that. He had chosen it. He had not known the color would make her skin look like cream.

Then her smile turned genuine — too much so for his comfort — and she said, "Thank you," and would have crossed over to him if he handing found it absolutely necessary to see to something on the other side of the room.

He did so, waving his hand absently as he strode quickly away. "I was growing tired of seeing that old gown. It was so last season."

He wasn't looking at her, but he could hear that ridiculous smile in her voice. The knowing one. He found that smile particularly…irritating. "And this is much more de rigueur."

"It is practical, dearie, that is what it is," he said, turning back to her loftily. "Much better suited to a servant than that ridiculous frippery you insisted on sweeping about in. I brought you here to work, not to play at cook and scullery maid."

Belle curtseyed meekly, but her eyes, peering up at him, were sparkling. "Yes, sir."

He found himself struggling not to smile back. "Now I'm hungry. It's a half-hour past breakfast — what have I told you about schedules?"

That bloody curtsey again. "Yes, sir."

"And do try not to burn the kitchen down while you're at it."

"Yes, sir."

He waited until she was at the door to the kitchen. He almost didn't say it. "And…when you're finished with that — you may as well take whatever things you don't care to lose up to the Green Room in the East Wing. You might as well sleep there from now on. It's not a kindness," he said quickly, pointing a finger at her to forestall whatever ridiculous thanks she might feel inclined to start gushing. "It's simply that you are taking up valuable space. In the dungeon. I very rarely have guests, but I torture people all the time, as you well know, dearie." Not that Belle counted as a guest. She was — well, she was not quite a guest, is what she was. The help. She was the help.

"Yes," she said, and then said, "Thank you," anyway, as if he had not just explained why her thanks were not necessary.

"Those rooms need a good airing out, now that I think of it," he continued blithely, as if he hadn't heard her. "You should add that to your duties as well, and I cannot even recall the last time the linens were properly inventoried — "

"Why do you do that?"

He stopped, blinking at her. "What?"

"Stop me. Whenever I try to thank you, you…" She stuck her nose up in the air and waved her hand, in an irritatingly accurate imitation of him.

"Perhaps I am simply tired of hearing your incessant thanks, bothersome girl," he tossed back at her, fighting against the urge to stick his chin out it the exact way she had just mimicked. Blast it all. "I've done nothing you should thank me for. It isn't kindness — "

"It is to me."

"Yes, but your head is full of rainbows and rose petals. I should provide room and board and a uniform for any of my servants — "

"You don't have any other servants."

"I would if I bothered to get some. A mere dress and a room are not kindnesses; I am not a kind man."

"No, you're not," she agreed.

"There you have it, then." He clapped his hands, rubbing them together as if to rub away the past five minutes of conversation. "In the meantime, it has not escaped my noticed that my breakfast still has yet to appear — "

Belle held up her hands, and stepped towards him. She had a look in her eye; he had been noticing that look more often lately. It was not the sad, uncertain look she had worn when she first came to the Dark Castle. It was warm and frank and unafraid. To his satisfaction, Rumplestiltskin managed not to step back as she drew closer. "Let's try this again. Thank you, Rumplestiltskin, for my dress and for the room." He opened his mouth to protest, but she arched an eyebrow and pinned him with a look, and whatever words he was going to say died away. "Now you say 'you're welcome.'"

He said, "You're welcome. Belle."

She smiled, and he wished desperately, through the sudden sharp ache, that she wouldn't, that she would go away. Everything was so much easier when he was alone. He didn't have to think about things. He didn't have to want. "Wonderful. A little more practice and you'll start to sound like you actually mean it. I'll see to breakfast," she added, in that maddening meek housekeeper tone, and turned back to the kitchen.

"Perhaps this time you won't burn it," he tossed after her, desperate to regain something of his footing. It wasn't the best volley, but it was the best he could do at the moment.

"I'm still learning," Belle said. "A month from now — "

"Don't make promises you don't intend to keep, dearie," Rumplestiltskin said, and allowed himself to add, carefully, casually, "We'll just wait and see, shall we? After all, you're going to be here for a while."

"Forever," Belle said. He had said those things to punish her, but the way she had said it...it wasn't sad or angry or despairing. It was, simply, fact. She paused at the kitchen door and gave that damned, damned, damned curtsey again. It made him want to…to…

Stay here. Right here. In a different room, with a wall between them, and wait for his breakfast like a proper lord of the manner.

There weren't any forevers; Rumplestiltskin knew that. But he wondered if, for a little while, it wouldn't hurt so very much to pretend.

He had been right. There weren't any forevers.

Gold stalked through the wet, secluded streets back to his shop. It had come on to rain, an icy, persistent drizzle that was just strong enough to soak through coat and clothes and snake past his collar. He hadn't bothered with an umbrella. He rarely did; it was difficult to manage that an the cane.

A few short months — that had been his forever — and then he had thrown it all away. Out of fear. He had been a cruel, useless, cowardly fool; he had wasted so much time. Months he had with her — not years, not a lifetime, months — and he wasted them out of fear, and then he had spent forever after regretting it. Wishing things had been different, wondering how they could have been. Torturing himself wondering what might have happened if, for that one moment, he could have been brave. Those dark, endless nights, when not even the wheel had been able to give him comfort, to help him forget, even for a moment, and the castle still smelling of roses even after she was…gone.

No, not gone. Dead. He had thought she was dead. The Queen had told him Belle was dead. And he had believed her. He believed that she would come to lord it over him. Her original gambit had not paid off, but she had discovered a gap in his armor, and it was like her to see if she could slip a dagger in and turn. It had all been poison, but he had believed it…

Because it was like Belle. To return home, to her father. To insist on her love for him, to her father as she had to him, and for her father to view it as something she must be cured of. Gold knew well the extent of cruelty a weak man was capable of out of kindness.

Her father. Her father had known. Known she was here, known where she was and what was being done to her. Known who had her and he had let it happen.

Gold would deal with him. Later.

First...

Gold let himself into his shop, his fingers frozen and slippery on his keys. Inside it was dark and quiet. And clean. It had taken some time to restore things to order again, after his...madness. But he had sorted them. It had given him the time he needed to get past the first, devastating blow. To regain control, and reason. To be able to think.

He removed his overcoat and went to hang it on the coat tree in the back. Something crunched underfoot. A small shard of glass glittered up from the floor. Gold bent to pick it up, remembering how the Mayor had tip-toed around the wreckage when she came to cry peace.

That shrew. That poisonous shrew. She said Belle was dead and he had believed her, and all that time — all this time. Twenty-eight years. She had Belle hidden away, holding her, waiting for the right time, the most desperate time, to bring her out for ransom. Knowing that, as the days and years added up, he would be that much more desperate to get her back. That he would do anything Regina asked.

He would have done anything.

Gold's hand closed around the shard of glass, focusing on the pain, and not the black and burning thing inside him. The thing that could not be merely be called anger or fury. That could only be called, weakly, rage, and even that was far too pale and little word to be compared to what he was feeling.

Twenty-eight years.

It was long enough. He was done. Done playing at enemies. Done with the silly games, and their pretty little truce, and with with wielding his power in the shadows while she tried to rule in the light.

He would break her world apart. He would tear from her everything she most loved, bit by bit, he would make her watch, until she had nothing, as she had left him nothing. It would not be Justice. It would not even be Revenge. Revenge was too small a word for what he intended.

It would be a reckoning.

AN: Thus ends Episode 2. I'll start posting the next Episode/Part/Whatever as soon as it's finished and in good shape. Again, I want to thank everyone for the lovely reviews, and comments, and suggestions. I really appreciate them, and it's nice to see people enjoying the read.