Mrs. Gold was the only one at the pawn shop by the time Will got there. He hadn't really noticed it at the diner, but he could see how she'd piled on the make-up, hiding the bruise Keith had left her with. He was supposed to be good at spotting things like that—sheriffs setting traps, wizards hiding in the mists, women hiding how hurt and broken they really were—but that one had slipped right by him.
Mrs. Gold was busy emptying out a large box of what looked like jars of dried or pickled herbs. She examined each jar, made marks in a ledger, and put them away. She didn't notice him till he put a Styrofoam container and a large iced tea down on the counter in front of her. "Potion stuff?" Will asked, looking at the bottles.
"Mostly," Mrs. Gold said, studying his offerings as if they might have poisoned snakes hiding inside. "What's this?"
"Granny sent it over. She said you're getting too thin and need to eat more pancakes."
Mrs. Gold looked at her box of herbs. "I don't have time. . . ."
"Then you can call Granny and tell her it's not my fault you aren't eating. I'm not sure she was joking about the hamburger." He gestured towards the jars. "This was Hook's emergency? Bottle inventory?"
"Magic herbs," Mrs. Gold said. "There's an old woman, Professor Longneaux. She has several degrees in botany. Or her Storybrooke self does. Back home, she was an herbalist." Mrs. Gold smiled at the irony. "That's why being a botanist was a curse for her. She didn't just enjoy knowing about the herbs, she enjoyed preparing them and using them to help people. Here, she spent twenty-eight years collecting samples, cultivating gardens and green houses, and letting them collect dust."
And she'd told Mrs. Gold all this on their first meeting. He got that. Mrs. Gold did that to people, getting them to pour out their life stories by the warm way she looked at them. Or get them to make up really good life stories to pour out instead. That would be the safe way to go. "And, now, the botanist is using them? Or just foisting them off on you?"
"This is helping me," she said quickly. "Some of them were magical plants, ones I didn't even know made it to this world with us. And not just from her garden. I think she has notes on every blade of grass in town."
That sounded better. Maybe the professor really was trying to help. Maybe. "And she preserved them and all that? Dried them or canned them or whatever?" She didn't dump even more work on you?
"Oh, yes. All the ones she brought over are taken care of. And look at all her notes. I need to start reading them—" Mrs. Gold pointed to a stack of untidy looking notebooks, with post-its and bits of paper sticking out of them. Uh-oh. Will had some idea what would happen to the food if he let Mrs. Gold bury herself in those. It was time for an intervention.
"They'll still be there after you eat," Will said. When Mrs. Gold gave him an exasperated look, he added, "Hey, this is self-preservation. You saw Granny's meat cleaver. You really want her coming after me?" He tried to do sad, puppy-dog eyes. That one didn't work too well with people who'd known him a long time—maybe a week or two—but he hoped it would be enough for Mrs. Gold.
It wasn't. But, it helped. It took a bit more persuasion, but, in the end, Will got her to open the container. Mrs. Gold grimaced slightly as the smell of warm food drifted up, but she pulled a stool over to the counter and sat down. Then, with a determined look on her face, she took the plastic knife and fork Granny had included and began taking slow, methodical bites, chewing thoroughly before each swallow. It was like watching a kid trying to avoid death-by-vegetables. Will decided not to comment.
Instead, he picked up one of the jars. There was a label on it in delicate cursive, Dragonwort. Near the bottom, on the left-hand side, it said, From the kitchen of Artemisia Longneaux.
"Artemisia Longneaux? I wonder what she did to Regina to get a name like that."
"Who knows? And it's Longneaux." Mrs. Gold said the Long with the o way back in her throat, the way Bostonians said law (Will may have never left Storybrooke, but Will's cursed self said he'd spent a lot of time up and down the eastern seaboard before coming to a small town to lay low). The neaux sounded like new, if Inspector Clouseau were saying it or maybe someone from a Monty Python movie. We are the knights who say neaux. That had worked getting rid of King Arthur, com to think of it. Maybe he should try it next time the sheriff came after him. "The professor was very particular about it," Mrs. Gold said. "She corrected Hook every time he got it wrong."
"Really? I think I like her." Will waved an arm towards the box and bottles. "But, that doesn't mean this was worth skipping a meal. You're just sorting seasonings."
Mrs. Gold shrugged. "It needed to be done."
"It didn't need to be done now. Look, Mrs. Gold, I know how guys like Hook think. Your husband almost did him in, and you saved his life. He's not going to forgive either of those."
Mrs. Gold was a smart woman, but she was also tired and worn out. She didn't follow. "He's not going to forgive having his life saved?"
"Not by someone like you. If it had been someone else—Mr. Mary Margaret, maybe, whatever his name is—if the mayor's husband showed up at the last minute and saved Hook by beating Gold in a sword fight, that would be OK. Mr. Mary Mayor's a big, manly guy, and it doesn't make Hook look like a wimp if he beats someone in a fight when Hook couldn't.
"Or maybe if the queen had showed up and had an epic, magic battle with Gold, lots of fireballs all over the place. Nobody expects Hook to be throw fireballs around. Tiny the Giant cam get whipped by magic, and nobody thinks it makes him look weak, right?
"But, you're not a warrior and you're not a witch. You're not big or powerful, not the way Hook reckons it. No offense, but you're also a woman. For a guy like him, that makes it worse."
"Emma's a woman," Belle said. "He respects her."
Will rolled his eyes. "OK, pretending 'respect' is the what Hook feels for the sheriff, she's also a warrior. She doesn't call herself that, but she is. And she's proven it. She's taken on dragons and ogres and things that'd make Hook wet his pants. And she's the bloody sheriff. Around here, that's like captain of the guard. She's as a good as an officer in the king's army—and she's royalty. The way I hear it, Hook used to be a snot-nosed officer from an upper-class family who got to hob-nob with the king himself." Will knew the type. Anastasia's family had been social-climbing merchants—a lot of money but none of the bloodlines. Ana's mum, Lady Tremaine (and don't you ever forget the 'lady' part if you wanted to keep your skin) got her title by marrying her second husband. She'd never forgiven Ella for being the genuine article—or, as Anastasia once put it, the competition—or she hadn't forgiven her till Ella married a prince and raised the whole family's connections. That was when Ella became the favorite child, the apple of stepmummy's eye. But, that didn't mean old families (like Hook's) didn't still treat Anastasia like a flea-ridden gutter-dog that snuck in while the guards were looking the other way. "And Emma's good looking and willing to go out with him. Cora had less going for her than that, and Hook put up with her for twenty-eight years." Licking her majesty's boots every step of the way, Will would wager.
He went on, "That's not you. You're a scholar. You beat the most powerful wizard alive because you were smart. And you saved Hook's neck because you don't let folks get killed if you can stop it. You didn't care if he fluttered his beady, little eyes at you. He could look like a toad and poison," and he does, "And you'd still save him."
Mrs. Gold picked at the pancakes. "Hook doesn't flutter his eyes."
"Sure he does. Guys do it all the time. We're just not supposed to call it that. He also likes to stand around and pose so women can see how good he thinks he looks in a leather jacket."
"Excuse me, but aren't you wearing a leather jacket?"
"Yeah, but the difference is I really do look good in it. I don't need anyone telling me."
Nobody except one person.
No, he'd told himself he wasn't going to think about that. His wife . . . wasn't here. And the woman in front of him had problems of her own. Even if he'd wanted to flirt with her—and she was up there with Meat-Cleaver Granny and this Professor Longneaux (old-herbalist-botanist? Really?) for women he didn't want to flirt with—that was the last thing Mrs. Gold needed.
He wanted to flirt with a woman whose eyes lit up when she saw him, even when she was angry with him and wanted to throw him into next week (or another world). OK, maybe they hadn't lit up then. Maybe they never would again, no matter what he did to try and set things right, not after what he'd done. But, it was what he wanted.
Bloody hell, maybe he should just break into the library again and spend the night curled around another book. That had worked so well before.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Gold actually laughed. It was a weak laugh. But, that was progress, right? Only, it vanished too quickly, as if it had never been there. "Hook's not the reason," she said, half-heartedly stabbing a pancake with her fork but not taking a bite of it. She hadn't eaten much. She hadn't even opened up the little packages of syrup on the side with all their calories (you could get real syrup at Granny's. But, no one—even in Storybrooke—put real maple syrup in little packages for take-out. He should have gotten some at the store last night. Maybe she'd eat that). "I need to finish." Her voice was a low whisper and raw with pain. "I can't leave till—till things are set right. Till the fairies are out of the hat. Till someone else can deal with the potions and magic. Till. . . ." She shook her head, unable to finish that list. "I just need it done."
"Leave?" Will said, baffled. "Leave where? Back to the Enchanted Forest?"
"Leave Storybrooke," Belle said. "I need to leave Storybrooke."
Will knew what the Jabberwocky's victims looked like when she was finding their greatest fear minds and tearing their minds apart from the inside. He knew what a woman suffering that looked like when she was desperately trying to hold on and not betray the person she loved.
No, Mrs. Gold didn't look like that. She couldn't. She had no reason to. None. There shouldn't be that naked agony in her eyes.
Mrs. Gold hunched over, arms hugged close against her chest, as if she were in pain. "I threw him out," she whispered. "He had nothing, and I threw him out. He—he couldn't even walk. I didn't even listen to him. He tried to tell me . . . I don't know. I don't know what he was trying to do, or why, and I didn't even listen." She glanced at one of the cupboards (Will, remembering his own foray into one of those cupboards, immediately looked innocent). "I check his dagger every day. His—his name would vanish if he were dead. It would start to fade if—if—I have to go to him, I have to help him. I have to. But, I can't. Not while things are like this."
"Uh. . . ." Will tried to think of something to say. Don't. That was the first thought. You think you can do something the Dark One can't? Even if it is out there? That was the second. How can you even find him? He couldn't say any of that.
"Regina?" he tried. "The evil queen? Doesn't she know about magic?"
"Not like this. Regina's always relied on power. The theory behind magic, why it works the way it does, why it costs the price it does, those are the things she never bothered with." Mrs. Gold gave a weak, broken smile. "She said herself, she's more likely to try and blast the hat apart as soon as she gets frustrated. She said that would be about five minutes after she started. Maybe ten. I have to keep working on this."
She checked the dagger. Every day. She was working herself to death so she could find her husband. Will looked at his memories of big cities, the real ones and the others, and wondered how long a woman who would let a creep like Keith go without even pressing charges would last someplace like New York.
"You won't be able to come back," he said. Didn't she have friends here? Family? People she couldn't leave behind? OK, she was wearing away to nothing right in front of their eyes without anyone doing anything about it, but didn't she have someone?
Granny, he thought, looking at the pancakes. And Ruby. And maybe even the sheriff, if she stopped looking at her pretty boy's fluttering eyelids long enough to notice what was going on around her.
Mrs. Gold smiled again. It was only half a smile, really, broken and hurting, but it was stronger than the last one. "I know I can't come back," she said. "But, it's all right. I left everything behind for him before. I can do it again."
Will thought about another meeting and a parting. He thought about all the pain and the angry words. ". . . . and, if he doesn't want you?"
Her smile faltered but it didn't go away. "It's all right," she said, softly. "This isn't for me. It's for him. I—I can't fix what I've done. But, I can do this much. That's what matters."
X
A few days before Will stood outside a store, waiting to rob it, Rumplestiltskin had stood at the town border. Maleficent had been bound in sleep all the years of the curse, but her dreaming mind had wandered the world outside Storybrooke. Strange things had happened to her, there. She had told Rumplestiltskin of a wizard whose mind she had touched in Hong Kong, whose murder she had been too slow to prevent. . . .
She could not have returned once her body was slain, not without his help. But, those remains still walked in the darkness beneath Storybrooke. She existed on both sides of the line. It had no power to keep her out—or to keep out the one who held her metal form in the palm of his hand.
Rumplestiltskin smiled as he felt the magic flood back into him. The pain in his leg faded like a distant memory. But, this time, he knew better than to let go of his walking stick.