Note: The word whiskey comes from uisge beatha, Scottish Gaelic for "the water of life."

Anona, the big reveal will come, sooner or later.

X

Rumplestiltskin appeared in Maurice's study, intent on getting answers. With a flourish, he produced a large bottle and set it on the small table where Maurice was going over his papers. The bottle itself looked more like a carved gem than glass. It was that glorious shade of ruby that only gold salts mixed with glass could make. Not content with that bit of showiness, the glassmaker had added jagged lines of true gold, like the streaks in marble. The wax around the sealed top was covered with gold foil as well.

It was a gift worthy of a king and as tempting an offering as Rumplestiltskin could make. The truths he wanted were ones he doubted Maurice meant to share. But, Rumplestiltskin had long ago learned it was better—and easier—to gently draw out hard-kept secrets than try to force them.

At least from a man like Maurice. Belle's secrets. . . . No, he thought, he was wrong to think of them as secrets. They were wounds, ones Belle couldn't be forced—or tricked—into showing without tearing them open.

Maurice started (as always) at Rumplestiltskin's sudden appearance then tried to look like he hadn't. Rumplestiltskin grinned like a child who'd pulled off a prank (as he always did) and produced the bottle.

"What have you brought?" Maurice asked, eying the liquor uncertainly. Since being freed of the curse, Maurice had had the chance to learn some of the stories his neighbors told about the Dark One, the good and the bad. A blood-red bottle, no matter how kingly, was something he needed to be reassured about.

"Uisge," Rumplestiltskin said. "A favored drink of the Frontlands, I believe." He watched Maurice as he mentioned the Frontlands, but there was no reaction. Didn't the man remember where Belle and Bae came from? "This is supposed to be some of their finest and over a hundred years old. . . ." He went on about its virtues, while making two glasses appear on the table, cut glass edged with gold, something befitting so fine a beverage. Maurice began to show some interest.

The Marchlands were known for their vineyards. The people were drinkers of fine wines and brandies, very weak brandies. Maurice wouldn't know the glasses Rumplestiltskin put out were larger than the ones uisge was usually served in any more than he would recognize how potent the smooth, beautifully aged liquor really was as it slid down his throat, its richness hiding its full power.

As for Rumplestiltskin, it took a great deal of the strongest liquors to make him even a little drunk, a sad fact he'd learned during some of his darker days, times over the centuries when he'd begun to despair of ever breaking the curse, no matter what the prophecies said.

The meeting itself didn't raise Maurice's suspicions. It was part of the deal for them to get together like this. They discussed trade and the Marchlands' relations with its neighbors. Rumplestiltskin, after all, was obligated to help them find their footing in this brave, new world. He'd even allowed the lord of the Marchlands certain, very limited rights to summon him. After all, if he was protecting this land, it wouldn't do to let the place be destroyed while he was too busy to notice.

Maurice took a sip. Eyes widening, impressed with what he'd sampled, he drank more. "That's excellent," he said. "From the Frontlands? I hadn't known they produced anything worthwhile. Has the world changed so much in three hundred years?"

Rumplestiltskin shrugged carelessly, wondering again if Maurice remembered where Belle had been born. The man could be insufferable but, Rumplestiltskin reminded himself, he understood the duties of a lord—far better than the Duke of the Frontlands or his underling, Hordor, ever had. When Rumplestiltskin made his bargain with Maurice, Maurice had been the one to first bring up the state of his people's homes and whether or not they would have enough to eat.

As Lady Rosamonde had said, her husband lacked imagination, but that didn't mean he didn't understand the basics of the lives of commoners. When he cast the curse and reshaped the Marchlands, he'd used it to fix cottages and erect new ones for those left homeless in the war. Refugees who'd gone to sleep taking shelter in a ditch had woken in small houses with watertight roofs and warm rooms. Folk who had been in rags found themselves in sturdy, unpatched clothes. There was plenty of food for the winter and good supplies of firewood to cook it on.

And yet, Rumplestiltskin, looking over the Marchlands before the curse was broken, had seen things he would have done differently. The clothes Maurice provided the peasants were plain and all alike. Their food was bland and flavorless. Maurice understood his people's needs but . . . Rumplestiltskin was tempted to say Maurice his people the way a herdsman saw his cattle, without individuality or needs beyond food and shelter. Except the herdsmen he knew didn't think that way. The shepherds in the Frontlands knew the personalities and quirks of all their sheep, better than Rumplestiltskin thought Maurice understood his people.

He'd saved them, Rumplestiltskin reminded himself. It wasn't his fault he couldn't see how small, seemingly insignificant kindnesses would have eased his people's suffering even more. A small child could have woken with a familiar-seeming toy in his hands when nightmares threatened. The young woman who had seen everything she had go up in flames on her wedding day might have slept in a bed much like the one her husband had made them and rested on linen sheets like the ones her grandmother had helped her sew.

The children who'd lost their families and who were crowded into the Marchland orphanages might have woken up members of families. Or some of them might have. There were too many, Rumplestiltskin thought, for even the curse to have found them all good homes—or bad homes. But, some of them.

It wasn't how Maurice thought. Those were the kind of needs he couldn't see. Besides, it was too late now. Rumplestiltskin's power might be able to preserve the good the curse had done, but even his wasn't strong enough to add so many changes, not without a price they were all better off not paying.

Yet, it was still more than so many had had after the Ogre War in the Frontlands. Rumplestiltskin himself, who led the child-soldiers home from war, had been unable to do as much for them when they returned.

It was not in keeping for the image Rumplestiltskin wanted Maurice to have of him for him to suggest finding homes for orphans—but he had managed to convince Maurice to have the idea on his own. As for the ones he couldn't place, the world was large. Rumplestiltskin, Deal-Maker and Child-Seller, might yet find homes for the rest.

But, that wasn't what he was here to discuss with Maurice tonight.

He listened with half an ear as Maurice described how life was returning to a kind of normal. Ships were coming to the harbor again. The sailors had been afraid at first. There were risks in using a harbor that had vanished for three hundred years, after all. But, Maurice happily reported, they seemed to be learning that the curse was really gone (they'd also been driven back by storms and, in a few of the more stubborn cases, what looked like very large, convincing sea monsters, not that Rumplestiltskin meant to boast). Trade was beginning to reestablish itself. Maurice's main concern, now, was rebuilding ties with their neighbors.

"You should marry off Gaston," Rumplestiltskin said, with absolutely no malice towards the overgrown clown. "Make a proper alliance instead of expecting me to do all the work." He fixed his cold eyes on Lord Maurice and, with even less malice (really), said, "Or you. You could remarry, someone young and pretty whose family would be only too glad to go on protecting these lands when you're dead and she's left ruling the place in your name."

Maurice glared. "Gaston is my heir. I won't replace him."

Rumplestiltskin poured Maurice another glass. "No, no, of course not. But, surely, a child of your blood. . . ." He cleared his throat delicately. "There are ways to ensure conception, herbs, spells. If that concerns you. . . ."

Maurice's interest kindled. "Belle was barren, you know."

All right, that was quicker than Rumplestiltskin expected. He'd meant to carefully lead the conversation to Belle and Bae. But, he wasn't one to refuse what he'd wanted just because it had been gift-wrapped and handed to him. Feigning innocence, he said, "What do you mean? She has a son."

"That coward's grub," Maurice said. "To have that be the only thing she's ever—ever spawned, the weaver's brat. Three years—nearly three years she shared Gaston's bed, and what came of it? Nothing."

Rumplestiltskin kept a look of polite amusement on his face, sipping his drink while he got control of his anger.

The coward's grub. Spawned. The weaver's brat.

Maurice saved Belle and Bae, Rumple told himself. Without his curse, they'd have been killed by Ogres. They'd have died years before I could cast a single spell. Without the help Maurice gave Belle, they'd have stayed Jones slaves till the day they died. Which might not have been long, Rumplestiltskin thought. Even if Belle survived Jones cruelty, he would have become bored of her, would have decided she was growing old, would have decided he'd had enough of her son. Jones may have mourned the beauty he'd lost when Rumplestiltskin finally met him, but that was because he wasn't used to losing what he thought of as his. If Belle had died, Jones would have recovered quickly enough. If he'd killed Bae . . . Rumplestiltskin knew Belle wouldn't have survived Bae's loss. Maurice had saved her from that.

"I thought you liked the boy," he said mildly, refilling Maurice's glass. "There was talk of you sending him to train as a page."

Maurice's expression softened. "The boy might have made something of himself. He was his father's son, but he had good blood on his mother's side. He might have lived down his father's blood—I'd have been proud of him if he lived it down. But, not as my heir."

Rumplestiltskin's eyes narrowed, like a tiger eying its prey. "Belle's yours then?" he asked softly. The question Belle had been forbidden to ask, the question Maurice would never answer.

The lord of the Marchlands looked up, blurry-eyed. There was none of the wariness Rumplestiltskin had been watching out for. It wasn't just the liquor making the man talkative. Maurice wasn't Rumplestiltskin. He didn't enjoy manipulation and secrets for their own sakes. Yet, he'd had to keep the secret of the curse—and his part of it—for three hundred years that only he remembered passing. He could have broken down and screamed the truth to his courtiers day after day (there may have been days when he had), and no one would remember.

Rumplestiltskin, for all his demonic appearance, was the first soul Maurice had been able to share the truth with. Since making off with Belle and Bae, Maurice was the only person in the whole castle Rumplestiltskin bothered to speak with. In an odd way, Maurice already recognized the Dark One as a confidante, someone he could tell the terrible secrets he couldn't tell anyone else.

Just so long as he didn't reach the horrible, drunken stage where he was likely to grab the person he was telling all his secrets to and start burbling things like, "Y'r m'only friend, m'besht friend." And then, likely as not, start blubbering all over the suit.

"She's mine," Maurice said. "Mine and Elise's. I should have told Rosamonde. Or Elise should have told her. She would have forgiven us. She forgave me when she saw Belle. I think she'd suspected all these years. But, Elise ran away instead, and she sold that beautiful girl to a coward, gave my daughter to him as if Belle were a—a sow being mated to a prize pig. A child of mine could have married a cousin of the king's—we discussed it when I married Rosamonde. If she'd ever had a daughter. . . . And Elise shackled my girl to a muck-eating cripple. It was her revenge on me, letting a worm so low, it would have been an insult to let him lick the dirt from my daughter's shoes, letting a beast like that rut with my precious child. . . ."

Rumplestilt skin went hot, then cold. He couldn't kill Maurice. They had a deal. He couldn't curse him or transform him. Belle would be angry with him if he did. "And Jones," he grated, bringing up the other beast who should never have been allowed to touch Belle and who made a safer target than Belle's father. "Don't forget the pirate captain and what he did to her."

Maurice grunted, taking another drink. "At least, Jones was a gentleman. And an officer. I wanted Belle for Gaston, but maybe I should have married her off to Jones. I could have paid him to claim the weaver's brat was his. Maybe marriage would have kept him from throwing his life away in a fit of pique. He'd been a good captain, by all reports."

And whose reports would those be? The sharks who ate the corpses buried at sea? Rumplestiltskin put down his glass before he could crush it in his hand. "Belle begged you to save her from Jones, and you'd have given her to him? Forced her to marry him?"

"It would save the honor of the house," Maurice said. "He was a hard man but he was honorable. And he'd never have been able to press for the coward's brat to inherit, not if the marriage couldn't hold up. . . ."

"That man tortured her. He forced her into his bed. He—"

"Oh, don't be foolish," Maurice said. "It's all Elise's fault. Do you know what Belle told me when I asked her why Elise sold her to that ragged beggar? Belle said her mother wanted her husband to be kind." Maurice sneered. "Kind. Not honorable. Not noble. Not brave. Not even rich, though a rich peasant is like an ass disguised as a warhorse. Kind. Jones did what a captain needed to so he could keep order on his ship. Belle herself admitted she did the things he punished her for. He didn't know she was noble born. He should have recognized what she was, but how could he? She was proud of having gotten down in the mud and let that pig ruin her. That grub of his was all she ever cared about. I thought, when you came for him, I could finally break her free of the past. If she had only had another child, one without his filthy blood, I could have married her to Gaston. The coward must be dead by now. It wouldn't matter. . . ."

Rumplestiltskin stared at Maurice, the words not making any sense.

Except they did.

Maurice had called him a coward, a cripple, unworthy of Belle. Rumplestiltskin had grown so used to hearing those names in the years after the war, he'd almost forgotten there'd been a time when no one called him that. But, they hadn't, not before he returned from the war.

He'd said Jones would never have been able to press a claim for the Marchlands based on marriage to Belle because "the marriage couldn't hold up."

"You knew," Rumplestiltskin said. "You knew her husband wasn't dead."

Maurice nodded, brooding on the unfairness of it. "I sent word to the Frontlands to learn the truth. Elise was dead. Did you know it? She died before the coward ever disgraced himself in the war. If that was part of her revenge, she never saw it completed."

Rumplestiltskin closed his eyes. Elise had died when the river flooded (the Ogres, attacking upstream, had destroyed a dam that protected the lands below). She could have saved her own life but she was leading children to safety. Stubborn, brave, merciless Elise. It was one of the reasons Belle had been so afraid for him when he went to war. Women, children, the Ogres spared none. It was one of the reasons he thought he had to go.

"The village headman tried to get Belle to leave that piece of filth when they had news how he'd turned craven—he crippled himself rather than face battle, the coward—but, she wouldn't hear of it. The headman admitted he'd pressed her harder than he should have. But, the man was her liege lord's servant, the leader he'd put over her people. She should have done as she was told. . . ."

Done what she was told. Rumplestiltskin remembered Hordor dragging Morraine out of her home, telling her to do as she was told.

And Hordor had called him a coward. While he was cobbling together a collection of lies and half-truths to protect himself from a noble's wrath, to hide how he'd had a woman whipped and sold because she wouldn't do as she was told, he'd been accusing Rumplestiltskin of being a coward.

And Maurice believed him. Because, in Maurice's mind, what made a story the truth was who told it—and what they told. A village headman, loyally obeying his duke while he sent children to be slaughtered? He had to be an honest, decent man. If he had a woman publically abused and sold as a slave, he did it with her best interests at heart.

And Maurice thought it was all right Jones had had Belle , of course, a woman struggling to survive Jones company must be a true threat to a battleships day-to-day command. Maurice regretted not forcing her to marry a man who would leave those scars on a woman's back and the deeper scars Rumplestiltskin's magic had revealed inside her—not just any woman, but the woman he forced to share his bed each night. Because Maurice would sooner believe Belle had deserved it than question an officer's honor.

"Kind," Rumplestiltskin breathed. "Elise wanted her daughter to have someone kind. If you cared for Elise at all—" Had he? Why was he so certain Elise would want revenge on him, even if it meant destroying her own daughter? Besides the obvious fact that, in Maurice's mind, everything that happened was about him. "—you would honor that."

Maurice fixed his drunken, confused eyes on Rumplestiltskin. "What's the point of kindness?" he asked. "It wears out. If a man marries a noble's daughter and knows any power or influence he has with her family depends on treating her well, he'll treat her well. If he starts out kind, but there's no one to protect her interests, what happens when food runs short? What happens when she's sick and has to choose between tending their crops and tending her? How many men stayed kind during the Ogre Wars? How many were generous when they had nothing? Kindness wears out."

Rumplestiltskin started to snarl an answer—but he saw Belle begging to protect Bae when he'd wanted to leave her behind and carry the boy off; he saw her hands bleeding and oozing puss from the work he'd given her; he saw the terror in her eyes—terror he'd refused to recognize for what it was—when he'd tried to embrace her by her bedside in an inn, her son sleeping just a few feet away.

He saw Belle, frozen and nearly dead, when fear of him and what he'd do to her had driven her out into the snow.

Rumplestiltskin got up, leaving the uisge behind. "You're right," he said. "Kindness doesn't last.

"Enjoy the uisge. Drink it in good health." Then, he vanished into the darkness, reappearing in the cold, empty halls of his home.