Chapter 46

Do what must be done with a docile heart.

As another week, then another, pass, Belle's concerns about the impending exile decision–for Gold, having formulated his back-up plan, believes he can keep his family together whatever Snow's decision, and that's all that matters to him–fade into the backgound. She and Gold ignore the television news, never have bothered with the newspaper, and instead, as Gold remarks, "get back on track," planning their wedding.

Which puts shopkeepers between a rock and a hard place. To be seen catering to the infamous couple would stir up ill will, and these businessfolk need to live here, need to make a living here; but on the other hand, Gold is, well, gold, and the businessfolk need to make a living here. So they sneak into the pink house after dark with their bolts of cloth and their cake samples and their photo albums. They pretend no one can see them go in or come out, and except for a few more vocal CUSSers, the rest of the town goes along with the pretense; after all, it's the color of one's money, not one's soul, that matters, and Gold's money is pure gold.

"This is silly," Belle complains as her former fiance sneaks out of the pink house and into the night. Gaston works for Game of Thorns, a natural fit: he knows roses inside and out. Literally.

Her current fiance thumps his pen against a legal pad.

Belle sets aside the order form she's just signed for six dozen red roses. "Rumple? Are you all right?"

Gold releases his pen. "Sorry, sweetheart. Just a little distracted."

"Talk to me."

His instinct is to brush the request aside: he shouldn't cast clouds over their upcoming bright day. But he's found, lately, the truth in the old saw about burdens shared. "I was thinking, there's one thing I didn't tell Bae yet. The hardest thing. I can't put it off any longer, but I'm afraid I'll lose him, so soon after I got him back."

Belle nods. "You have to tell him. The longer you wait, the more it will seem like manipulation."

"Or cowardice, which it is. I guess one's as bad as the other. But how does a father. . . how do I tell my son I killed his mother?"

Belle mulls the question over. "With honesty and regret. You and he deserve that. And with faith in human nature, that it's possible for love and anger to co-exist."

Bae isn't smiling as he opens his front door. Something's amiss: instead of inviting him over to the pink house, Gold's come to Bae's, and he's come without Belle. "Hey, Pop."

"Hey. Bae, we need to talk."

Bae stands stock-still. "You heard from Snow?"

"No."

"Come into the man cave." As the men pass through the living room to the second bedroom where Bae keeps his electronic gadgets, sports equipment and ratty-but-comfortable furniture, Gold decides that the house on Begbie is too small: when Bae is ready to move in with Emma, they will need someplace bigger to accommodate packrat Bae. That is, if Bae can stand to continue living in the same town as his parricidal father.

"Have a seat." Bae clicks off the hockey game and crosses to his mini-fridge. Gold settles on the ripped leather couch in the one spot that doesn't sag. He's been here a few times, living out his fantasy of watching baseball games and drinking beer with his son; usually, though, they gather at the more spacious pink house, where Emma and Belle can eat ice cream and watch cult movies in the library while their three guys power up with pizza and sports in the living room.

He does't have to jeopardize the wonderful life he has now. He doesn't have to say anything. After all, the past is the past, can't be fixed, best leave it in the past. What good will it do to risk breaking up this family? Henry–what shame will be brought upon him when he's told? Emma has reassured Gold that she will allow her son to continue to visit his grandpa, who, Emma believes, is one of the rare few criminals to actually reform; she thinks the magic, like a heroin addiction, might have been behind some of Gold's violence. Gold suspects she's letting him off easy, but what matters is that he's living a life now that he can be proud of and the rewards he's reaping are much too precious to lose to backsliding.

Gold is about to lose everyone, except Belle. He made a mistake in deciding to confess. There's too much to lose, too many people to be hurt. He'll claim he came here to talk about. . . to talk about. . . .

"So what's up?" Bae hands him a cold beer.

"It's about–I don't know how to tell you." Gold takes the beer in shaking hands. "Gods." Then what he never expected happens and he can't stop it: Gold breaks down in thick, messy sobs. He sets the beer on the floor to bury his face in his hands. Bae sets aside his beer too and sits down beside him, awkwardly laying an arm across Gold's shoulders, patting him, then gradually overcoming the strangeness of it and drawing his father into his chest.

"Tell me," Bae urges.

Bae's going to be deeply hurt by this revelation. He's been so happy lately; how will this news do him any good? Gold will spare him, won't–"About two years after I lost you." And he's babbling the story despite his better judgment. "I found them. The Jolly Roger. They'd pulled into port for repairs after a rough storm."

"Them," Bae says slowly, catching on. "The pirates."

"I had them where I wanted them, cornered, powerless. They had pistols and swords, but against my magic, powerless. I found him first, in a tavern. Jones. I thought it was my lucky day: his first mate had summoned me, promising me a magic bean. I'd get the bean, then I'd get Jones. I'd kill him, I'd torture him slowly right in front of Milah, and if she fainted, I'd revive her before I resumed the killing. She would witness every bit of it, and I would have the pleasure of her suffering and some of my pain would be eased. I'd have justice. My pride would be restored. It was allowed. Not sanctioned, but tolerated in most of the kingdoms: honor killings, cuckolded husbands avenging their honor–a right granted only to husbands, though. Women whose husbands took mistresses had no recourse, nor did abandoned wives or misused mistresses. It was all financial, you see, and men controlled the purse strings.

"I found him in a tavern with his mates. All the better, I thought: I'd kill him in front of them too, emasculate him as he had me. I cornered him in an alley. She wasn't with him. I asked how she was; in spite of everything, I really did want to know. I wasn't sure if I wanted to hear that she was well and happy. If he'd said she was seasick or homesick, would I have felt justified, or would I have taken her home? But Jones said none of those things. He said she was dead.

"I had to pull up short then. It shook me more than I'd known it could. She'd left me. She left you. I was angry as hell, but I loved her. Underneath all that anger, I loved her and I'd believed, deep down, she still loved me and would one day waken up to that fact, leave her glamour boy and come back for her family. How ignorant I was. Why would any woman choose a lame, scrawny, bedraggled nothing over a dashing young adventurer with leather and chest hair?"

"He made her promises," Bae says. "Exotic lands, fine clothes, jewels, rich foods. It was his reputation, he said, that attracted her most. The meanest, strongest men in the village lowered their eyes and stepped aside for Captain Jones. The meanest, strongest men in the world followed him and obeyed his every command. What he couldn't buy, he'd take by force or charm. The night before she left, while you were selling thread in Avonlea, he came to our house to woo her. It didn't take much; she wooed him even more. She sent me to bed in the loft. I was supposed to be asleep but I heard noises; I thought he was hurting her. I looked. I didn't know what was going on. She kept moaning but she kissed him. It didn't make sense. I pulled my blanket over my head and tried to hide."

"I'm sorry you went through that." Gold grips his son's arm. "If I'd had any idea how far she'd gone–of course I realized she was unhappy, and I was angry with her for leaving you alone while she went off drinking, but. . . we'd always been faithful to each other, even when we weren't honest with each other. Until the day she ran off with him, I still believed we could be happy. After Jones told me she was dead, I had all the more reason to kill him. I challenged him to a duel–as if it could possibly be a fair fight. I was going to kill him. He couldn't scratch me; my magic shielded me. But first I had to go away. Think. I was too shaken up over your mother's death. I still loved her.

"The next night, I came back to have my revenge. I'd kill him in front of his men, then while they quaked in fear I'd steal the bean that would open a portal to take me to you. We started fighting. I let Jones get in a few blows, just to get his hopes up before I crushed him. It was nearly finished when your mother suddenly called out my name. Jones had lied; she was alive and I was gobsmacked. She had grown into a gypsy queen, daring in her dress, her eyes darkened with kohl and her lips rouged. I couldn't take my eyes from her, even though she belonged to him as she once had to me. She offered me the bean in exchange for sparing their lives. I agreed. I would have given anything for a chance to find you."

"I know that, now."

"I would have let them go. There would be other chances, later on, I thought. I'd promised not to kill them, but I hadn't promised not to send their ship into a hurricane or cast a pox upon them. To have the bean, I would have kept my promise, though they didn't deserve it. Kept the promise when I couldn't keep my promise to you, who did deserve–" Gold loses control of his grief again. When he recovers, his eyes darken with rage. "It was me and her both I wanted to punish. We both had abandoned you. She said she never loved me; that was the end for me. I almost had the bean, I almost had a way to come to you, but rage and guilt–I thrust my hand into her chest, yanked out her heart and crushed it, for him to see. She died in his arms. Her last words were for him. I cut off his hand as it clutched the bean and I returned to my castle in triumph. I had my revenge and the bean, I thought, except I didn't. He tricked me. And many years later, after I met Belle, I realized I'd tricked myself. Revenge can never be had. And I'd lost you all over again. I killed the woman who had given me my hope, my son. Any chance you may have had to see her again, I took from you. I killed your mother."

Bae releases him and pulls away. "I know." Picking up his beer, he walks away. He fiddles with a sketchbook lying on the pool table as he sips his beer.

Gold gives him time to overcome the shock, but when Bae speaks again, there is no shock to overcome. "About a year after I fell through the portal, I was snatched up and taken to Neverland." Gold had previously shared the story of Malcolm, so Bae now knows the identity of the kid who kept him prisoner in Neverland, though he's never figured out why Malcolm kidnapped him in the first place. "I ended up on the Jolly Roger for a few days. He called himself Captain Hook and he had a tattoo on his arm-'Milah'-and a drawing on his desk." Bae turns around, holding the sketchbook open. "Like this."

It's an image of Milah, smiling saucily, love and lust in her eyes.

Gold forces himself to look, to feel. "I'm sorry. Of all the awful things I–I'm sorry."

Bae turns away, returns the sketchbook to the pool table.

Gold picks up his cane, hauls himself to his feet. Head low, he starts for the door.

"Don't go." Bae's voice is muffled. "Just give me a minute."

Gold waits in the doorway until Bae's shoulders start to shake, and then he forgets that his son may hate him, may order him gone; he comes to him and wraps his arm around Bae's shoulders, as Bae–despite knowing already what his father had done, those three hundred years ago–did for him. Bae doesn't turn around, but he doesn't push away either.

After a long moment, Bae says, "We don't tell Henry. It won't help him to know."

"All right."

"Em and I agree about that. He needs his grandpa."

Gold gulps.

"The man you are now, that's who Henry needs. Em and I need you. I can't forget, but Rumplestiltskin did those things and Rumplestiltskin is gone. I hate him. I can't forgive him. But you're not him." Then his face screws up in pain. "She was your wife! I've had a couple of hundred years to process it and I keep coming back to that. You loved her. You just said so. I remember you pretending you weren't hungry so her and me could have a full meal. I remember you knitting socks for her to sleep in so she wouldn't get cold in the night. This was the woman you made a baby with. How could you. . . push your hand into her chest and drag out her heart and crush it to dust? I love you, Pop, but I hate Rumplestiltskin."

Gold falls silent for a while, then suggests, "I have a friend I talk to sometimes, about right and wrong and anger and forgiveness. Would it help, do you think, if we went there together?"

Bae's eyebrows shoot up. "A counselor? You?"

"Surprised me too, that I could open up to someone besides Belle, but yeah, a confessor and a counselor, I guess you could say. She gets judgmental sometimes, but she's seen the worst men can do, and she says I'm not a lost cause."

"'She'? Not Archie?"

"The Blue Fairy."

"The Blue–? Gods, Dad." Bae needs a long pull on his beer. "Gods. You really have done a one-eighty. This I got to see."

"Hello, Rumple, Baelfire." Blue closes her Bible as Bernie shows the men into her office. "Excuse me: I should have said 'Neal.'"

"It's all right. I'm getting used to it again."

"Thanks for seeing us. I know it's rather late–"

"I'm glad to be of use. Shall we go into the kitchen?" She rises from her desk. "I've learned that's the best place in the house for conversations. A friend taught me that."

Bae catches the smile that his father and the nun share and he blinks. "So it's true, you really are friends now. I'll be damn–excuse me, Reverend Mother."

"That phrase has a very particular meaning in my profession, Baelfire." She leads them down the hall. "There was a time when I would have agreed with you. I thought you were damned, poor child. Everything against you and it only got worse. The only good I could see in your life was that you and your father did your best for each other." Arriving in the kitchen, she gestures to the table. "Please, be seated. Coffee or tea?"

"A cup of tea would be lovely," Gold answers.

As she puts the kettle on, she continues, "And then the Dark curse came upon him and I thought the only hope for you, Baelfire, was for you to get away from your father. We thought he was a lost soul." She pauses to smile at Bae. "We didn't know then what we learned in this world: that with God, all things are possible. All things, including the restoration of a soul. And I thank God every day that I was allowed to witness the miracle that changed the Dark One back into a man. That experience made me look into myself, and I didn't like what I saw there, and I asked God to do for me what He'd done for the Dark One." She seats herself across from Bae, reaches out to touch his hand. "When I heard you'd come here, I couldn't have been more delighted, because it gives me the chance to say I'm sorry and I hope you will forgive me."

"What do you mean, Reverend Mother?"

"When you summoned me, you asked me to help your father. That's not what I did. My intention was to help myself. I was looking for an easy way to be rid of evil and after millennia of fighting Dark One after Dark One, I thought my chance had come. I could see how much your father loved you; I thought that if I could get you to go to another realm, so would he, and for him to go to a land without magic, where he couldn't hurt anyone again, where there could never be another Dark One created-that was perfect, I thought.

"You see, there's a saying about the Dark curse: 'You feed the madness and it feeds on you.' We believed that the curse chose its victims: men and women whose souls were already dark with anger or greed or lust. We were puzzled at first when Rumplestiltskin became the Dark One. He certainly wasn't the type, but all humans have some degree of evil in them; we assumed the spinner had just never had the power to exert himself. When magic came upon him and for the first time, he had power, he wielded it. And we were deathly afraid, because he was so much more intelligent than his predecessors, always learning, always thinking ten paces ahead. To control him seemed impossible. It never occurred to us that he might be able to control himself, if he could be made to see what he stood to lose.

"So I took advantage of you. Had I done things the right way, the responsible way, I would have gone with you to talk to your father; to give that kind of magic to a fourteen-year-old and expect him to take such a huge decision, that was cowardly of me. The truth was, I really was afraid of him. It was my responsibility, but I palmed it off on you, and I'm sorry."

Bae toys with a salt shaker, buying a few minutes to think. "I accept your apology. As sins go, I'd say that one was a small one."

"But it had huge consequences, not the least of which, it cause a boy to grow up an orphan. I've thought about you every day since then, wondering how your life would have been different if my decision hadn't separated you." She looks to Gold. "I saw the consequences of my decision on your life. What torture you went through because of my cowardice."

"We've worked through that," Gold reminds her. "All the wrongs we did to each other, forgiveness did away with them. The work we've done since then, it's good. It's helped me."

"God can take the most broken, most shattered soul and make it new." The nun grins. "I began to see that on the day you and Belle came to ask me to help you break the boundary curse. And just to let us know it was Him behind it all, God sent us our work in the form of a dove." The kettle whistles and she sprinkles tea leaves into a pot, then adds the boiling water. It was Gold who taught her how to make tea properly; the Sisters had been using bags from a box all these years.

"I'm not sure what I believe about your God," Gold admits. "Dark Ones don't believe in anything but magic, and I was a Dark One a very long time. But since I awoken from the curse, I've begun to have doubts about the Dark Ones' ways of thinking."

"Well, thank God for doubts." Blue distributes cups and saucers and spoons. "Lemon or milk, Neal?"

"Lemon, please."

"But I've been monopolizing the conversation." She fetches the sugar bowl for Gold. "You had something you wanted to talk about?"

Bae squeezes a few drops of lemon into his cup. "Actually, Reverend Mother, we just did."