It was odd, freaky, weird, not natural, and downright strange.
Gold was whistling. Emma might even accuse him of skipping with joy. "Gold, do I need to arrest you for murder or something."
"Why would you say that dear?" Gold asked confused.
"Because you are this close to dancing around the room with joy singing Zipidy-do-da."
"Could it be that love is in the air and I have a beautiful wife to share it with?"
"No." Emma deadpanned. While she knew that could be part of it, it was defiantly not all of it.
"Moe French." Gold said like that would explain everything.
"Who?"
"The most annoying, troublesome, worthless tenant I have the misfortune of having. He sells flowers, and is late on rent."
"So?"
"So imagine the look on a flower sellers face when he learns that I am repossessing his van on February 13th. The day before the busiest day of the season." Gold was an inch away from jumping up and down with glee.
"And you hate Moe French so much because?"
"Did I not just say he is the most annoying, troublesome, worthless tenant I have?"
"Yes." Emma said. She waited, but when he was obviously not going to share the rest, she sighed. "Fine, be that way."
Gold could tell she wanted to know, but he couldn't reopen that wound, not now. "Would it help if I said that I mention the fact that I get to keep anything in the van, including however many hundreds of flowers that are in there. Now if only I knew someone, anyone really, that I loved enough to give them to?" He gave her a knowing look.
"It might help a little, set the mood and stuff."
Gold laughed. "Yes, want to come along and help me enjoy this moment?"
"Sorry, but I have things to do, and Leroys to arrest." She said going up and kissing him. "Love you." And off she went.
And I had been having a very normal day. Leroy had cause a domestic disturbance, Mary Margaret was having David problems, Henry had his theory, if Regina was a, well, you know. It wasn't until about noon, noon was when I got that very interesting call. "Sheriff, someone has broken into your house."
As Emma drove to her house, all she could think of was, 'who on earth was stupid enough to try and rob her, let alone Gold?'
She entered the house, slowly looking around with her gun pointed. As she entered the living room she saw Gold, he spun around and pointed his gun at her. "Emma." Gold said relief.
"Hey honey." Emma said also lowering her gun. "You didn't want to shoot me, did you? Because would greatly diminish my wish for us to celebrate Valentine's Day."
"I could ask you the same question Dearie."
"Touché." Emma then looked around to see if anything was missing. Other than a few obvious valuables seem to be no more than your average robbery. But unlike her Gold just went straight for a cupboard in the corner of the room. After opening the door he took a step back, his face morphing into a look of defeat, having to sit down before he fell. "What did they take?" Emma asked the only obvious question.
"Bell's cup." Was all Gold said.
Gold had told him about the cup. Apparently on her first day Belle broken, and fearing his wrath she attempt to downplay rather massive chip in the rim. He didn't know why, she had after all ruined a set that was rather valuable and pretty looking, but he just waved it off, making it seem no more important than if she had gone and dropped a tin cup on the ground.
When they had parted, it apparently had not been on very friendly terms, what with him thinking she had been sent by Regina to destroy him. With Belle yelling at him saying that the cup would be all that had to remember her by, and a broken heart.
And Emma knew that he treasured it. The last link he had to a person that he blamed himself so much for harming, the only person that he had loved and lost that really matter to him other than his son.
Emma slowly watched as Gold's face turned from despair into anger into rage into downright demonic fury. "Gold, honey, you need to calm down." But that only caused him to the table.
"Calm down!" Gold yelled. "How on earth can you expect me to calm down? He took it. The only thing I treasure in this world more than the cup is you, Henry, and the gifts I've given you. And he took it."
"Okay. Okay. Who took it?"
"Moe French obviously. When I reprocessed his Van, man is going on and on about how the town should stand up to me and I laugh, and hours later my home is broken into and my valuables stolen."
"Okay. But why would he take?"
"Maybe Regina put him up to it and told him to take the cup, maybe he thought it was valuable because it was the only damage looking object in the house, maybe he's just a moron who thinks that breaking into my house is a good idea."
"Okay, I'm going to go and pick him up, see if he's stolen our stuff. And I will get the cup."
Gold then slowly call, but not in the way Emma like. Instead of letting go of his anger, or letting it is fizzle out, he was bottling it up, storing it, waiting for a moment where he would become useful and then he would let it out with a fury, making it 10 times larger than once ones. "Emma. If we were to have fight, and then I left and went driving somewhere, and while I was gone was hit by a drunk driver and slowly bled out to, it ending in my painful to death, and the drunk driver managed to get away with it, would you be able to let go?"
"Of course not."
"And if years later, after you had found yourself a new, better looking, richer, younger husband. We're expecting a child and were happy, and then someone broke in and stole wedding ring I gave you, one you put in a place of honor to remember me, your lost love, and you blame yourself for my dying. Would you be able to restrain yourself from wanting to kill that man?"
"Probably not. But I would certainly try and let the Sheriff deal with it."
"So you'd better find him quickly, because I will try restraining myself, for your sake if nothing else. But if I should find that cup any more damage than already was, or if you don't manage to find him quickly, I will in no way be able to promise that I shall be able to restrain myself. I promise you that I will hunt him down, beat him slowly, and make him understand that in stealing that cup from me, he has invited the devil to his door."
Emma was heartbroken. Not because Gold was threatening this man, because in all honesty she would probably do the same if that scenario had ever come into to play. No, her heart was breaking because her husband was obviously in so much pain. And if there was one thing she hated, it was seeing the man she loved in pain. "Gold. I will find him, I will do whatever it takes to bring him back and throw him in jail if I find anything that could possibly be from our house. And I will leave him there to rot until the jail has rusted and fallen apart if he doesn't give me exactly what I want. Okay?"
"Okay." Then Gold kissed her and she left to go hunt down Moe French.
As Emma drove up towards the cabin, her mind was in about a billion different places all at once. A part of her wanted to just turn around, another part of her wanted to keep going, part of her that one to keep going wanted to go to stop Gold from doing something stupid, the other part wanted to help him beat Moe French, and part of further want to go back was saying that if she did go up there, she wasn't sure what part of her that one kid to go out there she would listen to. She got up there, got out the car and went to the door. But what she heard stopped her did her tracks.
"Ow! Gold! Listen!"
"Tell me where it is!"
"Ow! Stop!"
"Tell me where it is!"
"Ow! Stop! It wasn't my fault!" Moe said begging.
But Emma could hear her husband responding, and there was absolutely nothing kind in his voice. "'My fault'? What are you talking about, 'my fault'? You shut her out. You had her love, and you shut her out!"
That caused Emma to freeze, he couldn't possibly talking about...
"She's gone. She's gone forever – she's not coming back. And it's your fault! Not mine! You are her father! Yours! It's yours!" And then Gold began beating Moe. "It's your fault! It's your fault! It's your fault! It's your fault!"
Emma ran and grabbed the Cain from him. "Stop." And when Emma looked at her husband, she couldn't see any love or compassion or even a little bit of kindness, what he saw was a man who's finally letting go of who knows how many years of rage, anger, and pain that he had bottled up. And it had some very unpleasant results.
Gold just sat in his cell, his eyes downcast, and his fists clenching and unclenching. "I don't suppose saying I'm sorry will suffice."
Emma looked at him. She had been crying to, more for him than anyone else. "No. But to be perfectly honest I'm not sure if you need to apologize to me or anyone else."
"You're angry with me."
"No. I'm disappointed, but I'm not angry."
"I don't suppose you could make it become anger, I'm used to anger, it's it's familiar know how to deal with it, but I've never had someone be disappointed in me. I don't think I like it."
"Well I don't normally have someone I can be disappointed with and it just as uncomfortable for me."
"How much did you hear?"
"Enough to know that Moe French is Belle's father." Emma sighed. "If it's any consolation, I would definitely say that he deserved it."
"I broke a promise today. I promised Belle that if she came to work for me that I would never allow harm to come to her father or the people she loved. As the second promise I've ever broken in my life, and the results of breaking that promise were just as unpleasant."
"And what was the first promise you broke?" Emma asked.
"The promise to my son, and when I broke it I lost him." Gold then looked up at her, not as the pawn broker, or the town monster, or her husband or anything other than a broken man. "I don't suppose this is the part where you realize just how terrible a person I am and file for divorce."
That felt like a hit over the head for Emma. She knew it wasn't him trying to emotionally blackmail her, or trying to do anything manipulative. She knew that he honestly expected that to be the way this was going to end. "I'm not going to leave you over this. Or anything else you could do that comes to mind. Gold I want make a deal with you."
"Oh this can't be good."
"I promise to stay with you always, always love you, and you never attempt to separate you from anyone you love if it's within my power to do so without a damn good reason, that are in your best interests. But if you want that, then I need you to trust me, or at least believe in me that when I say I love you I do. And that if you ever come to me for any reason, and you've decided you want to get revenge on someone for something they did to you in the past or someone you love, know that I will back you up, as long as you're not going to do something crazy like beat a man to death."
"I think I can make the deal." Gold said with the first smile on his face he had all day. "But in my defense I had absolutely no intention of beating the man's death, just as very close as I could get him to shaking hands with the Grim Reaper."
"Good. Now I can sleep at night." Emma said laughing, and Gold did join in after a few seconds. "Now I do have some terrible news."
Gold features instantly morphed from one of slight happiness to terror. "What?"
"I'm afraid as far as the video surveillance is concerned; I have been questioning you about what you are doing. But I'm afraid I forgot to read to your Miranda rights, which means come morning you'll be let off on a technicality." Emma said smiling.
"Well then. See you in the morning dear." Gold said lying down on his cot, but as Emma went to turn off the lights and leave the night he called out to her. "Emma."
"Yes."
"I love you." Gold said. Emma smiled at them before turning off the light evening.
Thank you to everyone for the very kind reviews. Thank you to Guest, Twyla Mercedes, and sorry but note to Grace5231973, it's not pleasant boots. And thank you lozzy035.
And thank you to everybody who has been following along with my new story The House of Gold, I think I will be updating that story every Tuesday if I can, I'm finding that to be a very easy story to write for so I already have a few chapters saved up, who knows, this could very well be the first story that I will be able to regularly update. Now that is a novel idea.