Chapter 72

Po: "You spoke of chance, Grasshopper, as if such a thing were certain to exist. In the matter you speak of, destiny, there is no such thing as chance, for whichever way you choose, right or left, it must lead to an end, and that end is our destiny."

Belle's head is tucked into the hollow of his shoulder. Her thick hair tickles his bare chest, but he resists the urge to scratch; he doesn't want to wake her.

He doesn't understand what happened this evening. Or rather, he doesn't understand why it happened, why these people bailed him out. Why they'd give a second thought to the Dark One.

Belle has a simple answer for him: "Because they love you."

He starts to argue, leaning on his old "no one could love me" line, but after all this community has done for him, there must be some smattering of affection in it. With a crooked smile, he decides to let Belle be right.

He stares at the ceiling for a long time. Just a few years ago, if an act of kindness had been given him, he would have assumed it a Trojan horse. He tries to feel that old suspicion now, reminds himself the townsfolk are warm, flesh-and-blood beings with hearts and souls, and he isn't. There's a reason why, when the Dark curse came upon him, his skin grew scales and his eyes became serpentine: because he's a cold-blooded, rock-dwelling thing. He's the Dark One; there's only one of him; he's not only beyond the pale, he's beyond understanding, and therefore beyond loving.

Was. Was beyond, he corrects himself. What he's dealt with recently is all too human. The false accusations, the economic woes and the infertility: people can understand them, and through them, relate to him. When he had power, he was invulnerable and out of reach, but powerless, brought to his knees, he's been rendered willing to take the hand that would lift him up.

As he has so many times before, he reaches into himself to touch the reserve of magic. He has to search for it; it's not in the same place and it doesn't feel the same as the Dark One's power. He searches and searches, but fails to find it until he stops searching. Then it rises in him, making him shudder with its strength and gentility. He touches it with the briefest of touches, then he retreats. For tonight, it's enough to know the magic is there, ready for him when he's ready for it.

Emma isn't the only one who needs lessons.

He's sitting on the back porch, seemingly looking out onto his sandbox/yard, but actually looking into himself. It's still there, the pool of magic, cool and crisp, a snow-fed mountain stream of magic, not at all like the cesspool of dark magic that always left a scent of burnt flesh in his nostrils and the taste of sulfur on his tongue after he'd cast a spell.

When Belle joins him, curling up next to him on the wooden swing, she's already dressed in her uniform, except her feet are bare. Unlike previous mornings, she's in no hurry; she pushes the swing with one foot and sips from her mug. After a long silence, she asks, with a mischievous smile, "What time do you need to leave for work?"

"Eight forty-five," he says.

They swing a little more and she shares her coffee with him. Then, because there are no secrets between them, he begins, "Belle, something happened last night. I'm not sure why, but. . . " He can't figure out how to explain, so he simply shows her. He lays his palm flat and for the first time testing his discovery, he conjures their chipped cup.

She touches the jagged edge of the cup. "How did magic escape Storybrooke?" The tone of her voice is a mix of amazement, annoyance and excitement, as if a long-lost relative has shown up on their doorstep at a most inconvenient time.

"I don't know." He summons another small burst of it, making the chipped cup glow.

"It's different." She pokes a curious finger at the cloud of magic. "It's white. Your magic is gold. And it feels like. . . like raindrops. Your magic feels like nettles."

He chuckles and sends the cup back to its proper place in the china cabinet. "You should write poems, my love. You've very descriptive."

"Where did this magic come from? Why do you have it? Why now? Did you have it before and just couldn't make it work? Do you still have your old magic? Does it make you feel 'red,' like your old magic did?"

"I don't know. I suppose I'll investigate it, eventually."

"Eventually? What do you mean, 'eventually'?"

"I don't feel the need to test it right now."

"Huh." Her mouth falls open. "Definitely not the old magic. What are you going to do?"

He surprises her, and himself, even further by reaching for his cane and rising. "I'm going to cook us breakfast, then I'm going to work."

"Rumple?"

He kisses the top of her head. "'Become the calm and restful breeze that tames the violent sea.' Waffles or pancakes?"

She follows him into the kitchen, still testing him. "But Rumple. . . magic. It's here. Aren't you going to take advantage of it?"

"Like. . .roll back time to the time before we heard of Ms. Anguem? Or turn Spencer into a cockroach and step on him? Or cast a forgetting spell on the IRS?" He's rooting around in the refrigerator. "Do we have any eggs?"

"Conjure them," she suggests.

"No, we'll settle for oatmeal instead."

"But you can, can't you? Conjure eggs, I mean."

"I think so."

"But now that you can, don't you want to use your power?"

He emerges from the fridge with a bottle of milk. "It's like you said: this magic feels different. The Dark One's power demanded to be used. It would hound me until I did. I could feel it jump and salivate in my veins. But this new magic just lies there dozing."

"Like a kitten on a hearth."

"Yeah."

Belle purses her lips. "Is it weaker than the Dark magic?"

"It doesn't feel weaker, just. . . at peace with itself. The Dark magic, when I gave in to it, destroyed indiscriminately. It would have destroyed itself if it had nothing else to attack." He puts a pan of water on the stove to boil.

"Do you want me to use this magic to fix our problems?" He folds his arms. "It's your decision too. I could put us back the way we were before." He reaches out, takes her hands in his and runs his thumbs over her roughened skin. "Life hasn't been fair to us lately; you've gotten the brunt of it. I can restore the life we had before. I'd be glad to do that for you, sweetheart."

"But not for yourself," she puzzles.

"I was happy then," he admits. "I had important work to do. I had you and Bae, Henry and Emma, all our friends. If you'd have asked me this twenty-four hours ago, I'd have said I'd return to that life in a heartbeat. And to have my power too, on top of it, would've been perfection to me."

"But?"

He shrugs. "Emma promised us a miracle. Things are happening, she said, just have faith. Well, some of those things happened yesterday; I want to see the rest of them. I already know what magic can do; now I want to see what miracles can do."

She gapes at him. "Instead of using magic to make things happen, you're going to trust them to other people."

"Yeah. I think there might be fewer mistakes that way." He reddens. "I might have had more power than anyone else, but I didn't always have the best judgment. But if you think it would be better if I used magic–"

"No," she interrupts. "I want to see the miracles too."

The steady hum of the sewing machine beneath his hands is as pleasing as the roll of a wooden wheel, so when he and Browning stand, stretch and lock up the shop for the night, he feels refreshed by his labors.

"A good day's work," Sam judges. "We'll make the deadline. See you in the morning, Rumple." It's the first time Browning has referred to Gold by his first name, despite Gold's earlier requests to do so: it's just not fitting, Gold has said, for an employee to be on a first-name basis with his boss if the reverse is not also true.

"A very good day's work," Gold agrees, rubbing his thumb against his fingers to relish the memory of the cloth. "Thank you, Sam, for everything."

"It was the right fit," Sam remarks. "Good night, Rumple."

Belle cuts back on her hours at the motel. She won't quit until the levy is lifted, she decides, but she can afford to follow a fifty-hour work week now. On her first Saturday off in six months, she sleeps past nine o'clock, and after a shower she goes right back to bed, propped up with pillows so she can read. Her husband serves her breakfast on a tray, with a little bunch of wildflowers in a rosebud vase. He can't yet afford to buy her roses again, but she pronounces the wildflowers superior, because they smell of the outdoors instead of her father's greenhouse. "They smell like freedom," she declares. He has a pretty good idea what she means.

Gold and Sam survey the six tuxes they've completed, almost alive on their wooden hangers, each as individual as the man who will wear it. The tailors look at each other and smile in satisfaction. They're not worried about making their deadline; they'll do it. They're not worried about satisfying they're customers; they'll do it. They're not worried about whether there will be future projects; there will be. Their talent is indisputable; their work ethic, obvious.

"I wonder, Rumple," Sam speculates, "if, after we've completed this order, you would consider staying on. Knowing how busy you are with your other commitments, I would settle for part-time, but if you'd consider joining me full-time, we could negotiate a partnership."

Gold pretends to be thinking it over as he pretends to examine his cane, but he's struggling to keep his face from twitching. He hasn't gone to trial yet, so for all the public knows, he may be an embezzler and a tax cheater. How can Browning even consider offering him a partnership? He manages to pull himself together. "I will consider it, with thanks, Sam."

"We might have done something that we might need legal representation for," former Deputy Swan-Gold picks off the sprinkles from a donut and makes a pile of them on her plate. She doesn't like sprinkles, but Granny was out of bagels and bear claws and Emma had to bring pastry to the Golds': it's tradition.

Gold's intense gaze passes from her to her husband, then back again. Neither of his breakfast guests is actually worried, so he relaxes, leaning back in his kitchen chair: this is just their way of admitting to their elder that they've been naughty. "Okay, what did you do?"

"We might have. . . mmmm, borrowed the key for one of your rental properties, from Josiah," Bae begins. "And, uhm, used it to gain access while the tenant was out."

"I take it you didn't have Sheriff Grayson with you, let alone a warrant." Gold scowls.

"We might not have," Bae says. "We were in a hurry, considering the trial starts next week."

"We really didn't have a strong enough reason to ask for a warrant," Emma says. "I mean, it was strong enough for us, but a judge wouldn't have seen it our way."

"Besides, isn't it a gray area, sort of?" Bae ponders. "You own the property. You can enter it if you want to. Right? And Emma and I were kind of like acting as your agents–" His voice trails off as Gold shakes his head.

"No and no. Which place did you let yourselves into and why?"

"Might have been Camelot Apartments, number 9," Bae answers.

Gold purses his lips. "Sidney Glass' apartment. Of course. You weren't there to unclog a sink, were you?"

Emma tilts her head sideways. "If we were, would we be asking about legal representation?"

"What did you find?"

Emma nods at Bae, who slowly reaches a hand into his jacket. Gold exclaims, "You took it? You let yourselves into an apartment and stole something?"

Bae huffs, "Recovered, Pop. Recovered stolen property."

"An unauthorized recovery, maybe," Emma admits. "I suppose we could give it back."

Bae nods. "I think we should. Today. We'll drive back to Storybrooke and give it back to Sidney. That's the right thing to do." He sets the object onto the kitchen table. "Or would the right thing be to return it to its rightful owner?" He shoves the object toward Gold, who gapes at it.

"My Montblanc! Where–Glass had this?" He picks up the pen to confirm his first impression. "Yeah, this is mine; this is Belle's inscription on the clip." He runs his finger over the engraved forever. "You should've left it where it was. Now we can't prove he took it." He pushes the pen back toward Bae.

"Yeah, about that," Emma ponders. "That was never our intention. Even if we had managed to get a warrant to search Sid's apartment, what would it prove? That Sid stole a pen. Even if it is a $400 pen."

"We think we have a better use for it." Bae's practically snickering as he pockets the pen. He wipes his mouth with a napkin, then stands. "Come on, Em, it's after nine." Emma stuffs a last bite of donut into her mouth.

"But it's Sunday," Gold protests. "You don't have to go to work."

"Oh yeah we do." Bae really is snickering now. "Watch GMS tomorrow."

Gold neglects to remind them he and Belle no longer subscribe to cable TV or an Internet service.

Tomorrow the trial begins. Tomorrow, at six a.m., Gold, accompanied by his lawyer and his family, will drive to Portland, where USA v. Gold will be heard in Room 2 of the Gignoux Courthouse. It's the same room in which the preliminary hearing took place six months ago. "Is that a good sign or a bad one?" Gold asks bitterly. "Considering the hearing went against us. . . ."

Kamen shrugs. "You know, Rumple, the thing about portents and omens and such is that they're like a garage sale puzzle: so many pieces missing that they aren't worth the quarter you paid for them."

Today, though no one can afford to, the Golds and the Swan-Golds all take a day of unpaid leave to gather around the former's dining table to help develop the plan of attack: since they can't make a forgery argument, they'll pluck at the reliability of every witness for the prosecution, casting subtle aspersions by exposing reasons for revenge against Rumple. There are reasons aplenty, though most can't be introduced in court without exposing Storybrooke's true nature. This, as much as the possibility of going to prison, worries Gold: someone's bound to slip and say something about magic, and then taxes and accounts won't matter any more: Storybrooke will become a locked-down government preserve, its citizens objects of examination. Outsiders will find a way to sneak in, to gawp at the freaks, to beg for magical favors, to slaughter witches.

Over breakfast, Gold discusses this possibility in depth with his family. He's vowed, to their horror but eventual agreement, that if any signs of exposure start to emerge, Gold will stop the trial with a guilty plea. "You don't owe Storybrooke anything," Bae growls. "You don't have to do this, Pop."

"It wouldn't be for Storybrooke. It would be for the Doves, the nuns, the Hoppers, the–"

"I get it," Bae acquiesces. "Guess I'd do the same."

"Don't worry, son. You know me and my deals: I'll wrangle a sweet plea bargain."

"Let's make damn sure we don't have to make any deals," Belle insists. "We're going to win this fight."

"Keep your spirits up," Emma urges. Such optimism is unlike her, but she persists: "I know it doesn't look like it now, but things are happening. Expect a miracle."

Kamen arrives at nine o'clock with his laptop in his grip and a tune he's whistling between his teeth: when Belle asks him to identify it, it's Bae who answers, "'We Are the Champions.' Good thing it's not 'Bohemian Rhapsody.'"

"Why are you so cheerful, Kevin?" Belle asks. "Do you have good news?"

"Better," he replies. "Faith." He raise an eyebrow at Emma. "I saw the morning talk show from Storybrooke. Your Plan B, I take it? You have my congratulations."

"Why? Did Anguem drop the case?" Emma frowns.

"Not yet, but miracles aren't as much fun if they don't come at the twelfth hour."

Well wishers drop in throughout the day, staying only long enough to offer food ("We knew you wouldn't have time to cook") and positive thoughts (in Blue's case, prayers). At four o'clock Henry skips baseball practice and trots in with pizzas he's bought with his hardware store pay. "I know you don't think much of it, Grandpa, but Good Morning, Storybrooke is on our side."

"Too bad Goldie Locksley doesn't work for the IRS," Bae quips.