Chapter 19
He stands in the doorway with his hands gripping his cane because he's afraid to touch her. He wants to blurt a request for forgiveness but he can't bring out the words. The Dark One never apologizes, never explains, and though much of Rumplestiltskin has been uncovered tonight, some of the Dark One remains, so Gold just stands there, ashamed and prideful at the same time, waiting for her to have mercy and give him a clue.
She stands aside to grant him permission to enter. "It's peaceful here." Belle has made a nest for herself in the rocking chair and has opened the window that overlooks the garden. She leaves the door open in invitation as she returns to her blankets. She's wearing a nightgown and her hair is damp from a recent shower. A drop of water slips from her hair to her temple and he longs to kiss it away, but now is not the time; there may never again be an appropriate time for such intimacies.
She continues, "I would have loved to sit here in the evenings, after her bath, and rock her to sleep. It's a lovely nursery, Rumple."
"I know you need rest. I won't keep you–" he begins awkwardly.
"You'd better," she warns. "I intend to keep you." She holds out her hand and he comes in, lowers himself onto the ottoman at her feet and accepts her hand. With that simple gesture she lifts the weight of two worlds from his shoulders.
"So the curse was the secret project you were working on in your tower, in the castle. Why didn't you tell me then?"
"You would have tried to stop me."
"Maybe. Probably. I would have insisted there had to be another way. Or at least, that your curse didn't have to take an entire town with it. Just those whose lives were miserable in the forest."
"The town was Regina's idea." He shrugs. "I didn't care, as long as I got what I wanted. I told myself everything would be fixed when the curse broke."
"I never would have prevented you from looking for your son." She leans forward to search his face. "I won't leave you. Just give me time. Don't push me away; don't pull yourself away from me."
"Thank you, Belle." He kisses her palm.
She looks out into the night. "The curse treated me better than most. Regina meant to torture you, but she gave me a comfortable life here. Good friends. Nice home. I was happy with Jo. He'll always be my friend. Yours too, I hope."
"That's my wish as well."
"It's Adelena. I know she never existed, but I still feel her. I need time to let go. Time to grieve." She looks back at him. "I think a funeral would help all three of us."
He clears his throat. "That. . . Yes. I can arrange that." His eyes burn and he blinks hard.
"Leave me here tonight. In the morning I'll be better, but tonight I'd like to. . . ." She removes her hand from his and rests it on her belly.
He rises slowly. He's so tired. "If you need anything. . . ."
"I'll call."
He walks away.
"Rumple?" When he pauses, she tries to smile for him. "I understand."
It's the opening he's been waiting for. He finally dares to ask, "Can you forgive me?"
"I do."
"See you in the morning, sweetheart."
She calls to him as he steps out into the hall. "It's a lovely nursery, Rumple. Thank you."
"I love you, Belle." He pulls the door nearly closed, leaving it open just an inch. Just in case she needs him.
His doorbell rings. "Go away," he mumbles. His head is throbbing from the lack of sleep and besides, his first appointment isn't for another two hours. When he doesn't respond to the bell, the visitor resorts to pounding on the door, loud enough to wake Belle–hell, loud enough to wake Boston. His slippers scuff the carpet as he drags himself away from the coffee pot to the front door. He peers through the stained glass, then jerks the door open. The vitriolic string of cuss words he was preparing withers on his tongue: the savior has returned.
In her uniform of red leather and denim, she shifts from foot to foot, but her face is set as she meets his eyes. It's not accusation or anger she's showing him, but resolve. She doesn't bother with niceties but rather jumps right into her reason for coming. "That other favor I owe you, for telling me how to save Henry." He notices her phrasing: not "how to break the curse." That's a distant second to her; her son comes first. He's counted on that: she should understand what he's done, then. If it had been Henry falling into the portal, she'd have done no less than Rumple did. He raises his eyebrows, waiting and counting on that.
"You want me to find Baelfire."
"Yes."
The corner of her mouth flicks up in an ironic smile. "Good thing I just happen to be a former bail bonds person and a current law enforcement officer. Or did you write that into the curse too?"
"I was farsighted, but not that farsighted."
She juts her chin toward the foyer. "Let me in, then. I'll need a physical description, pictures, anything you might have with his fingerprints."
He stands aside, holding the door. "Won't you come in, Sheriff?"
"I smell coffee," she hints as she brushes past him. She takes notice of his silk pajamas and slippers. "How about if I pour us both a cup while you get dressed?"
He starts up the stairs to his bedroom. "Make yourself at home, Ms. Swan."
She glances back at him. "Henry. That's why I'm here. I was going to say 'screw you' last night, and when I told Mary Margaret what you told me, I figured she'd be coming after you with Granny's crossbow. Oh, she was plenty pissed all right, but after talking all night about what we should do to you and Regina, she said, 'Remember one thing. If there hadn't been a curse, we wouldn't have Henry.' So we decided to let you live."
He thinks about this, then nods. "Eggs Benedict is on the menu this morning, if you'd care to start the hollandaise." He grips the railing as he climbs the stairs. He has gained the savior's tolerance, if not her forgiveness. Understanding is a powerful magic.
"All right. Let's get down to it," Emma says around a bite of cantaloupe. She slides a pocket-sized notebook from her jacket, clicks her pen and begins to write in a spidery scrawl he can't read, replete with abbreviations that mean something only to her. "Description: male, Caucasian, I presume?"
"Yes."
"Age?"
"I'm not sure. When I lost him, he was fourteen."
"And that was when?"
"Two hundred sixty-one years ago."
She frowns as she sips coffee to buy time. "Uhm, what's the average male lifespan back in the Enchanted Forest?"
"He's alive," Gold says quickly and firmly. He has to be, or else nothing Rumplestiltskin has done in life matters.
"Okay." Emma poises her pen again. "Hair color?"
"Dark brown, almost black. A bit curly, especially when the weather's humid. Dark brown eyes. Bit of a pug nose." He stands. "I have a picture." He hesitates, but as likely as this is to blow up in his face, he has to tell them. "But. . . there's an easier way. I came prepared, you see. To this world."
"Of course. I mean, you wouldn't have spent all those years planning the curse without figuring out the most important part." Emma's frown vanishes and she pops another bite of melon into her mouth. She makes a "go on" motion with her hand.
"I'll be right back." It's now or never. Emma will fulfill her end of their bargain, he's sure, even after he explains the rest of his plan, but Belle–she's been through so much in just the past two days. Her love is true, but that doesn't mean she will put up with his machinations, especially this one. His throat tightens with the dread that robbed him of sleep last night: if she backs him into a corner and makes him choose between finding Bae or staying here, magicless, with her. . . .
In his study he retrieves two of his most precious possessions. He sets them carefully into a box, which he rests on his left hip so that his right hand can continue to carry his cane. Taking a hard swallow, he makes his way back into the kitchen.
The women are talking about hamburgers. He nearly laughs at the absurdity. Emma jumps up to take the box from him. "Here, let me help with that." Belle clears a space on the table and Gold unpacks the box.
"Oh, I know that," she remarks as he lifts the globe. "You've had that in your study for years. I always thought it was odd: just the outlines of the continents. No details."
"That's because. . . because magic supplies the details, sweetheart." He rests his hand protectively on the globe and waits for her reaction.
"I don't remember seeing this in the Dark Castle," she says slowly. A light enters her eyes; she's beginning to figure things out and she doesn't like what she's figuring.
"I fought a dragon for this one," Emma says, picking up the egg.
"What?" Belle exclaims.
"Please, ladies, be seated. The story I told you last night–there's more."
Emma is still holding the egg. "It's vibrating, like it's alive."
He raises his eyebrows. "You can feel that?"
"Yeah. What's going on?"
"You and I must have a long talk about that sometime. You may have more power than you realize," he studies her. "But first things first." He reaches into his pants pocket for a brass key, with which he unlocks the clasp on the egg. As the halves fall open, he removes the contents: a vial filled with a fuchsia-colored liquid. "So that's what True Love looks like," Emma muses. "Not much of it, is there?"
"It's rare," Gold admits.
"Beautiful. What did you call it? 'True Love'?" Belle reaches for the vial and he allows her to hold it. "Lovely. Great name for a perfume."
"No, Belle. It's literally True Love."
She scowls and hastily sets the vial back in the egg as if it had burned her. "Magic," she spits. "A love potion you brought over from the Enchanted Forest. But what good is it here?"
He covers her hand with his. "It's more than a potion, Belle. It's magic itself."
"What the fu–" Emma yelps.
"I don't understand."
Gold nods sadly. "Yeah, Belle, you do. When I pour this," his finger strokes the vial, "into the waters of Lake Nostros, magic will enter this world."
"Crap," Emma hisses. "You've got to be jerkin' our chain."
"No." Belle provides the answer. "He's not joking. He spent many long hours shut up in his tower, in the Dark Castle, and this was what he told me he was working on. A power purer and stronger than any other source of magic. But during my time with him, he didn't find it."
"It was only after you'd gone that I realized I had the ingredients at my fingertips all along. This, Ms. Swan, I made from a lock of your father's hair combined with a lock of your mother's." He smiles at Belle. "But had I known, I could have made it from our hair."
Despite her apprehension, Belle can't resist a small smile. "I told you, didn't I? What we had was real." He looks alarmed at her use of the past tense, but she hastens to add, "What we have now is just as true. But Rumple, bringing magic here, where it doesn't belong–"
"I have to. It's how I'll find Bae. Once I have magic, this globe will locate him for me." His voice drops. "And enable me to fix what I did to him."
"Rumple, no," Belle pleads. "What magic does to you–don't you remember? It's what drove him from you to begin with. It can't fix relationships. Only love can. Honesty, regret, forgiveness. From everything you told me about him, that's what you must give him and that's what you need in return."
"No, no," he blurts, "magic will take care of everything. Magic broke us; it'll fix us. I can set back the clock, Belle, make him a child again, to when he loved me, before he started hating me."
"No, Rumple, you can't. You'll only be robbing him of part of his life and cheating yourself of the chance at an honest relationship with him. And he'll fear you all over again when he finds out you used magic to manipulate him. Didn't you always tell me magic can't compel someone to love?"
"But I owe him the happy childhood my cowardice took from him."
"No," Emma interrupted. "You owe him the truth. And the right to decide for himself." Her eyes glaze as she admires the vial. "If magic could erase all these years apart from my parents, hell, yeah, I'd take it, but it would be a lie. The life I'd have with them might be happy, but it would be a lie. As much as my childhood sucked, it was mine, and I don't want a redo, not really. Listen, Gold, at least give reality a try, huh? Your kid may surprise you."
"But without magic, what chance do I have of finding him in a world of five billion people?"
"Give me a chance to surprise you. With the Internet, my connections and my know-how, I can work magic of my own. I've done it before. Hell, do you know how long it took Henry to find me? One month. And he's ten. Imagine what I can do with all my years of experience."
"Give Emma a chance, Rumple, please."
"It's why you brought me in on this to begin with, right? Deep down, it's how you want this to go. No magic, no cheating. One month, Gold. I promise I'll work on it every spare minute. Pull every string I've got, and that's a lot. If I don't have your boy in thirty days, we'll do it your way, magic globe and all, and I won't squawk. Deal?"
"I'll help too, whenever I'm not working on law cases," Belle offers. "I'm a social networking maven. That'll be my angle, Emma. You use the law enforcement tools and I'll use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn–we'll cover both ends of the research spectrum. One month, Rumple. That's a reasonable request, isn't it?"
Their eyes are bright with excitement as they stare at him expectantly.
Belle has caught him off-guard. He anticipated pushback from her, but what he hadn't anticipated was this offer, and certainly not its importance to her. He kicks himself mentally: he should've known she'd want to help find Bae, and he should've guessed she'd want to do it through research. To use her special skills to help, of course it makes her happy. She needs that now: she's lost her child and there's nothing she can do about it but bury her hopes. But perhaps what she can do is to restore her beloved's lost child.
He's waited so long. He's planned every detail and so far, his plan has succeeded. If he released magic this morning, he could be on the road tomorrow and be reunited with Bae tomorrow night, perhaps. Doesn't he owe it to Bae to get to him as soon as possible–and to bring as many options as possible to offer Bae in compensation for–
To buy Bae's forgiveness. In all honesty, that's what he's planned to do. Belle's right. Bae has too much integrity to be bought off.
But Rumplestiltskin has nothing else to offer.
The women are staring at him, eyes shining, smiles bright. He hasn't seen Belle so excited since she announced her pregnancy.
He nods. "One month." He replaces the vial in the egg and relocks it. The women cheer and high-five each other.
Belle has been turning his plans inside out since the day he met her. Why should today be different? But when she leans over to kiss him, a month doesn't seem like too high a price to pay to make her a part of his family.
"Now." Emma clicks her pen again. "That picture you said you have?"