This was not something David Nolan wanted to do. In fact, it was probably the last thing on the planet he wanted to do, somewhere behind eating crickets and bungee jumping. But he had promised Ruby he would do it and his wife had just given him a look and so here he was.

He knocked on the door and then tried the handle. It slid open easily. Sticking his head inside the door, he shouted Gold's name.

There was no response and so he stepped inside. He hated leaving the man last night. But after the disaster outside The Rabbit Hole, he had had no choice. Gold had simply disappeared sometime between David's calling for an ambulance and the paramedic's arrival. He had turned around and he had simply been gone, as if she hadn't been there at all. And that scared him. The look on his face, the tightness, the dark eyes, and the blood on his cane all spoke of a sort of rage that even he wasn't aware Gold was capable of.

He had protected Belle. He had saved her. That much he was thankful for. But the man he had attacked had been incapacitated and the sort of blind rage that must have accompanied the attack had to have been horrible to behold. When the paramedics got the man up and onto a stretcher, David realized the man was large, bigger than he was even, and built like a football player. He probably weighed 250 pounds. And somehow Gold had taken him down. He had heard of people doing amazing feats of strength when their lives were threatened, but never like this. That sort of rage didn't come out of nowhere.

It spoke really to only one thing and he was sure that Gold wasn't ready to face that just yet.

Treading carefully, David made his way first to the living room and let out a gasp as he stood in the doorway to the room. Almost nothing was left untouched. The cabinets had all been smashed, the glass taking the brunt of it but the wood was splintered in places. The china was scattered across the ground, shattered. The piano in the corner had a few dents in it and a couple of the keys had been smashed in. The chair was overturned, the television knocked off its stand and the screen cracked. Papers were scattered everywhere, some torn in half, some crumpled. He could see things tossed on the fire, charred beyond recognition.

There was no sign of Gold in the midst of it and David started to worry that something had happened to him. He knew that Keith, the man who attacked Belle, had been taken into custody. He had made sure of that much. But there was nothing to say the man couldn't have ordered some sort of retaliation from the hospital or jail.

"Gold?" he said again and was rewarded with nothing but silence and the broken sounds of a clock that still kept ticking even though the face was smashed in.

Picking his way out of the disaster in the living room he made his way to the kitchen and turned on the light. The room hadn't fared much better, with broken pieces of pottery scattered across the floor.

And there, sitting in the middle of the mess, was Gold. He was sprawled on the ground, leaning against the cabinets. When he glanced up at David, his eyes were bloodshot.

"What the hell happened to you?" David stepped closer and held out a hand to help the other man to his feet.

"She's gone, you know," was Gold's response. He didn't take David's hand and so he dropped it uselessly to his side.

"She's staying at the inn. Ruby asked me to get her things."

"Ah, so she's gone for good then, is she?" He gripped the object he was holding in his hands tighter and spun it around a couple times. "Good." A pause. He glanced down at the object and David realized it was a teacup, a broken one, one piece missing out of the side. As he watched, Gold's thumb kept coming to rest in that spot, caressing it, moving the cup, coming back to caress it again, constant motion. "Good then. I didn't need her around anyway."

"No?"

"No," Gold said and jabbed a finger in the air toward David. "This is all your fault."

"That you fell in love with her?"

Gold's eyes met his then, dark, almost black. "I am not in love with her."

He didn't grace that one with a proper response. He knew the truth. Anyone with two eyes and a heart did. "Did you do this?" he asked instead.

"Yes."

David made a slight scoffing noise and held out his hand again. "Oh, you're in love with her alright." Gold glared at the proffered hand. "Just take it. How long have you been sitting there anyway?"

"I have no bloody idea." Probably since the night before, David guessed. Gold did at least finally take his hand and allow him to draw him to his feet, at least.

"Where's your cane?"

"My weapon you mean?" There was a bit of the sarcasm back, but there was no humor behind it. Just bite and anger and a pain that made even David Nolan's emotions feel raw. "Just help me into the other room."

"I don't think you left any room untouched."

"Hers is," he said quickly, too quickly. David watched him wince when the words came out. "My bedroom is fine," he added with a small wave of his hand.

"You're not making it to your bedroom like this." Instead, he helped Gold back into the living room, kicking scattered debris out of their way as they went. "Dammit, man," David said, taking another look around the room. Now that he knew Gold was ok, or at least as ok as he could be, he could really contemplate why he had done it.

He wouldn't tell him, of course. That much David knew. But he could see it in the rather methodical way his anger had torn apart the room. Only one thing seemed untouched and David reached to touch the cup that Gold still held protectively in one hand.

Gold snarled at him, an incoherent sound that made David back up as Gold pulled the cup away from him. "The cup?"

"She broke it," Gold said, his voice quiet and subdued, the anger leeching out of him as he held onto it. "On her first day here. She…I don't know. I think she thought I would throw her out."

"You didn't."

Gold made a slight choking noise in the back of his throat. "No," he finally said.

The two were silent for a time. David didn't know what else to say. Gold's denial of any feelings, his anger that seemed more directed inward than not. "He's going to live," David finally said.

"Who?"

"That guy…"

"Oh. Well, I suppose that's good," Gold said with a small wave of his hand. "He doesn't deserve to," he added.

"What exactly happened there?" David had been left to pick up the pieces, left to explain to the paramedics. When he went searching for Gold to get some sort of explanation for what had happened he was gone, disappeared into the night. He didn't even know how he got home. He had still been in a bit of a daze when David had found him, breathing hard, cane held tight in his hand. He should have made sure he remained, should have made sure he was alright. "You said he attacked her…" His voice trailed off.

Gold shook his head, looked like he was trying to clear his mind. "I only heard the tail end."

"But…"

"Attempted rape, Mr. Nolan. The man attempted to rape her." He hissed the last at him and David let out a few curse words, words that he hadn't said in a long time.

"He didn't…"

"Get very far? No. I stopped it before anything truly heinous happened." His voice was flat, unemotional, but David could see what was simmering just below the surface, the rage behind his dark eyes.

"That's why you…"

"Yes," he cut him off with.

"You're going to need to make a statement."

"I have no doubt of that, Mr. Nolan." Gold sounded tired, desperately so.

"Well, good then…" Silence again and he wasn't quite sure what to do about it.

"Second door on the left," Gold said and David blinked. What… "Her room."

"Oh."

"You were here for her things, weren't you?" He gave him a pointed look and David sighed.

"I guess this discussion is done?"

Gold didn't bother to meet his eyes, just waved a hand at him. With another sigh, David went upstairs and gathered up everything of Belle's he could find. When he came back down, Gold was exactly where he left him, still slumped in the recliner, eyes still glazed. He still held that cup in his hands and was twisting it around, fingers running across the surface, thumbs hitching over the side.

A cup.

One single cup that had survived his madness.

"I'll just…see myself out?"

Gold's eyes met his briefly then slid away. "Of course."

David nodded and stepped away.

"Mr. Nolan?"

David turned quickly. "Yes?"

There was a moment of silence, tense, fraught with emotions even David didn't entirely understand. "Nevermind," Gold finally said and he watched as the man seemed to curl inward just a bit.

"I'll tell her you miss her," David responded with and then was gone before Gold could say another word.

Six days. It had been six rather long days since she had walked away, left Gold in that alleyway. And Belle still didn't have any damned idea what she was going to do about it all. She had gone down to the station again, made her official statement. The man who attacked her was still locked up and she got at least a decent look at him before Graham escorted her into another room. He looked like he had been hit by a bus and she wasn't quite sure how Gold had managed it. She couldn't reconcile the man who could do such serious damage with the quiet, sarcastic shepherd she had been getting to know.

It was a new side of him.

Or maybe a side that was always there, another layer she had peeled back unintentionally.

Her father had asked her if she were afraid of him. The answer was most certainly a definite no. He wouldn't harm her. That much she was sure of. He had saved her, come to her rescue and kept anything worse from happening. She was grateful for that much at least.

But at the same time she couldn't get the image out of her mind, couldn't help but see the black rage that overcame him. She shuddered at the thought. He had saved her. But what had that cost them? Their friendship, their budding…well, whatever it was that was going on between them? She couldn't deny that she found him attractive, but what else was there lurking beneath the surface she was still so very unsure of.

That kiss in the library had been something, a promise of something more, something grand. She hadn't felt like that in, well, she had never felt like that. For a moment they had had such a perfect connection.

And then he had run.

And they had never gotten a chance to talk about what that meant.

She had been living above the diner, just as she did the first weeks in Storybrooke. After finding out what happened to her, after what Gold did, Granny had offered her the place to stay for free while she figured out what she wanted to do. I always knew he was bad news, she had told her. But he wasn't, not really. He had saved her from a horrible fate and she couldn't easily forget that. If he had simply stopped there he would have been her knight in shining armor.

"Is this seat taken?"

Belle's head shot up, her reverie cut short. "Mary Margaret!" She had barely seen the woman since the birth of her daughter. David said it was "Mommy and baby bonding time" and Belle was happy enough to allow her that time. She had no children of her own, but she knew how special they were, especially the first when everything was still so new and a little bit frightening. "You look well," she said as the other woman sat down, pulling the baby carriage with Emma close to the table.

Mary Margaret smiled, but then frowned slightly as she watched Belle. "I wish I could say the same for you."

Belle gave a rather wan smile. "I haven't been sleeping well." It was a huge understatement really. Every time she tried to sleep, the feel of Keith's lips on hers, the fear, the look in Gold's eyes as he took him down, interrupted it. She felt like she had barely slept at all since night of the attack.

"He'll be brought to justice." Belle was thankful for everyone's certainty in that. With there being witnesses, witnesses no one would want to cross like Gold, the chances of Keith walking free without any punishment was rather slim.

"I know." Though she also knew the statistics. He'd be let out in no time and would he be angry? Go after her again? Retaliate in some way? She hoped that Gold had sufficiently scared him enough to stay away but one never knew.

"David's been up to see Gold," Mary Margaret said and Belle suspected this was where she really wanted the conversation to go.

Belle closed her eyes for a moment. She was glad that he had David, that he wasn't completely alone while she tried to figure her own mind out.

"Are you really not going back to him?" If Mary Margaret didn't sound so concerned, Belle might have been annoyed at the nosey question. But she did sound concerned and when she met her eyes, they were soft, a little crinkle between her brows.

Belle shook her head, looked down at her tea long gone cold. "I don't know," she finally answered honestly. Could she go back to him? Should she? That was the question that kept going around and around inside her mind.

"He misses you," Mary Margaret said after a moment.

"He does?" The other woman nodded and Belle's eyes narrowed slightly. "I thought you wanted me nowhere near him." She let the words hang and watched Mary Margaret's cheeks redden a little.

"I might have been too tough on him?" she offered.

"Really?"

Mary Margaret heaved a sigh. "Well, maybe just a little bit," she amended.

Belle tried to smile, though there was an ache to her cheeks, as if the gesture was not familiar anymore. She had spent so much time frowning, crying, worrying, that the muscles had come to expect that in the past few days. "Does he really miss me?"

Mary Margaret reached out and touched her hand, just that one small gesture of compassion. She hadn't gotten to know her, not all that well at least. She knew David better at this point, but what she knew of Mary Margaret through him and from what she had seen, the woman had a huge heart, capable of bringing almost anyone into it. "David said he's wallowing in despair."

Really, Belle should not be surprised to find out that someone who could have such a dark and intense rage could have equally dark and intense despair. Gold didn't do things in halves, that much she had figured out about him. "Still?" Belle asked.

"He was up there earlier and said it's quite a sight to behold. He wouldn't give me details. Just that…I guess he thinks you should go see him." Her voice trailed off at the end and Mary Margaret looked away from her, occupying herself with adjusting baby Emma's wrap.

"I should." Belle realized she didn't phrase it like it was a question. Because she knew. She knew. She couldn't just walk away from everything they were building. Not without some sort of discussion, confrontation, whatever. "Why are you pushing me to go back?"

Mary Margaret gave a little shrug, still not quite meeting Belle's eyes. "David wanted me to."

"But you don't?"

"I don't know. Gold's a difficult man. But I suppose he's not all bad." It was the best explanation Belle suspected that Mary Margaret could come up with for Gold. He was the town monster and yet wasn't. She could see the man behind that façade though, had gotten to know him little by little. He had allowed her in, had kissed her and the passion behind that kiss had been telling.

He had saved her, swooped into the alley like an avenging angel and taken her attacker out with several swings of his cane. He could have been hurt, killed even. Her attacker had been much larger than Gold, but it hadn't mattered. He had the upper hand from the moment he stepped into the alleyway.

And she had run.

"He's right," Belle finally said.

"Who is?" Mary Margaret looked up from tending to Emma.

"David. I need to go see Gold."

"Are you sure?"

"Now you're going to backtrack?" Belle asked and she couldn't help the bite of the words.

"Sorry," Mary Margaret mumbled. "Old habits die hard."

"I'm sorry," Belle said with a slight smile. "I know what you think of him. But I appreciate your coming here on David's behalf." She leaned over and put her hand over Mary Margaret's. "Truly."

Mary Margaret squeezed her hand briefly and then stood. "Belle?" She paused and Belle waited for her to continue. "Just…don't hesitate to call us if you need something. Anything."

And then she was gone and Belle was left watching her rush out of the diner, pushing her stroller out the door and around the corner before she could even really think of a response. Mary Margaret was a good woman. But she didn't know Gold. David did, at least to some degree. She supposed he knew Gold as well as Gold would allow him to. If he felt she should go back, at least talk to him, then he was probably right.

Gold had, after all, told her once that David was the closest thing to a friend. Oh don't misunderstand dearie. I didn't say he is a friend, just that he's the closest to one. Belle interpreted that as a round-about way of saying David was his closest friend. The man could deny it all he wanted, but he always let David into the house. In fact, David often entered without even knocking these days, knowing that Gold found it more difficult to get to the door than he used to. It wasn't unusual for David to simply step in the door and call out to them before rounding the corner and entering the living room or kitchen.

Gold would snark at him. Does this look like an open house, Mr. Nolan? But he always offered him a seat, something to drink or eat.

And David always seemed to think highly of Gold, though she rarely saw him showing that side of himself in front of the older man. No, instead he would say things to Belle, that he was in awe of how Gold ran his farm, that the older man had taken him a bit under his wing when he first arrived on the outskirts of town, that he had always been there for him even if "being there" meant sarcasm, rudeness, and aloofness.

He was less aloof these days and Belle wondered if it were the pain talking or if her presence had something to do with that.

She realized she had to find out.

She had to finish whatever this thing was that they had started.

And she needed to find out just what had caused that blind rage, that near-panic she had seen cross his face when he realized exactly what was happening to her.

She had to return. It really was as simple as that.