Rumplestiltskin tries to catch his breath as he draws Belle in against his side. She still has Bae's shawl wrapped around her shoulders, all tangled up with her curls, and when his hand rises to smooth her curls down, he finds his fingers threaded through both her hair and the shawl. It's funny—he's cradled that scrap of cloth close for centuries, wept into it, hugged it, burnt candles over it, cherished it, but it has never seemed so precious or so silken as it does now, the gold shining through its wear and tear like sheer brilliance in between strands of Belle's dark hair.

Easily, smoothly, Belle drapes herself over his chest, her own hand rising to play with a loose thread at the end of the shawl, the movements ticklish against his collarbone. Her breath flutters over his pulse point, and Rumplestiltskin hugs her tighter against him.

How is she real?

How is she here, with him, of her own free will, with her lips curved up in a smile and her eyes full of shared intimacy when they meet his?

It's a miracle that she ever came to love him. He doesn't even have words for what it is that after today—after everything she's learned about him—she hasn't run screaming for the hills.

Instead, she's here in his bed, warm and pliant over him, her mouth so close to his throat that pleasant shivers race up and down his spine.

She's so brave, and so beautiful, and so kind, and those are all things Rumplestiltskin doesn't deserve. But Charming said to be honest and Belle said to keep fighting and Bae needs him to be a better man, so Rumplestiltskin winds both her hair and his son's shawl around his fingers and forces himself to speak.

"I think," he says, "that I owe you a story."

"You don't," she says softly.

"I do." He breathes for a moment, mainly just to feel her moving atop him, with him, her hand splayed over his heart as if she wants to protect it, as if just her hand and her presence could keep it from being torn to pieces.

"I love you," she whispers, because she knows he's a coward but instead of reviling him for it, she chooses to encourage him past it.

"I was married to a woman named Milah," he says, "and we were happy. I think. I thought we were. When the Ogre's War came, I was drafted, and I thought it was a good thing. A chance to prove that I was more than the coward my father was. Only…"

He never planned on telling her this. Truthfully, he didn't expect her to stick around long enough for it to ever be an issue. But she's come back to him, over and over again, and he loves her, and she's given herself, body and soul, to him, risked her life for Bae, and she deserves to know whose kisses she accepts.

"A seer was there, on the front lines. She told me I was to be a father, but that my actions would leave him fatherless. It's the worst fate I could imagine for him. I couldn't let my son grow up like me, so I…" There's no way she hasn't seen the mess of scars and misshapenness that's all that remains of his right ankle, despite his best efforts to try to keep it out of her sight. Still, when he gestures to it, she melts closer into him. The hand over his heart rises to stroke through his hair, a soothing caress he turns his head into. "I used a hammer, and I found a way to come home."

"To your son," Belle says.

"To Baelfire. He was a month old by the time I made it back. But the tale of my actions had beaten me there, and Milah wanted nothing to do with a coward for a husband." Rumplestiltskin hates thinking about his past. His memories of Bae are worn thin from reliving them, but his memories of Milah are fresh and sharp, none of their pain dimmed by familiarity. "She…was unkind, and I was unwilling to do anything but devote the whole of my attention to Bae. It was a hard life for her, being shackled to the town coward, and the more I loved Bae, the less she seemed to think she had a place in his life. Until eventually, I was forced to fetch her home from the tavern most nights."

So far, he thinks, Belle now knows that he is a coward, a poor spinner, a pariah, and a cuckolded husband, to say nothing of the Dark One. He wonders at the fact that she still lays half over him, one hand on his chest, the other in his hair. She makes no motion to get up, to roll away, to push him off, to leave him.

It defies belief.

"A pirate came to town and Milah took a shine to him. She always wanted to see the world. She had drawings all over our home of places she imagined visiting. When I heard that the pirates had taken her, I went after her, and that pirate," he can't help his sneer, "threw a sword at my feet and dared me to fight for her."

"A spinner against his whole crew?" Belle props herself up to look down into his face. Rumplestiltskin wishes she hadn't. She's so beautiful, her eyes so blue in the light of their small lamp, and he doesn't want to see her love fade into disappointment. Or worse, disgust. "That's not fair."

"Bae was only four," Rumplestiltskin says, fixing his eyes on the shadows that cloak the ceiling. But still, he is intimately aware of his hand threaded through her hair, his fingers stroking the knobs of her spine. "I couldn't let him be orphaned. And I was afraid. So I didn't pick up the sword. I went home to him and told him his mother was dead and hoped it was true."

"She wasn't, though," Belle said for him.

"No." Rumplestiltskin closes his eyes and reminds himself that he's already received more happiness from Belle than he ever imagined. Just her being alive should be enough for him. When she leaves him after this next part of the tale, he will not resent her. He'll understand. "Many years later, after I became the Dark One, after Bae…"

Belle drops a tiny kiss on his chin. So quick, so light, like the flutter of a hummingbird's wings, and Rumplestiltskin is speechless for a long moment, shocked from his habitual grief and guilt into a sort of awe. What made her think to do that? How did she know it would help him? What magic is she?

"After Bae," she prompts him a long moment—eternity?—later.

"I saw the pirate again. I had power now, and he was still free despite the fact that he'd used and abused who knew how many women just like Milah. So I confronted him and challenged him to a duel. He called me crocodile and was more than brave when he thought me a penniless beggar, but his manner quickly changed when he realized that I was the Dark One. We fought, at dawn like in one of your stories, but in the moment before I could crush his heart, Milah appeared to save him."

Belle's soft sigh is so sad that it makes Rumplestiltskin's heart shrivel in his chest. "She went with him willingly."

"Yes. She had delusions of being a pirate queen, I think. What's more, she'd obtained a magic bean, the same one I was trying to bargain for. She offered it to me in exchange for the lives of her and her crew."

"You didn't take the deal?"

"I did. At first." Rumplestiltskin loosens his grip on her, stretches his fingers wide, reminding himself not to grab for her, to snatch at her feet, to beg for her to stay, when she runs from him. "But she…she knew who I was. She knew I was the Dark One. She said she didn't know why I needed the bean."

"She didn't know that Bae had used one?"

If he didn't already love her for a million reasons, he would have fallen in love with her just for how she phrases that delicate question.

"She didn't even ask about him. She never said his name. It was like…like he didn't even exist to her. She left him…and then she forgot about him. Bae didn't deserve that, not like me. That should never have been his fate. Everything I did was to make sure he didn't share my fate."

Belle is completely still over him. He's not even sure she's breathing.

"Your…your parents abandoned you? And then forgot about you?"

He loves her. He loves her and she deserves everything, but he can't tell her that story. Never, ever, not once, not ever, not even in Neverland.

"Bae didn't deserve that," he says instead. "So I ripped out her heart and I crushed it in front of her pirate lover, and her last words were for him, how she loved him, not for Bae."

"Not for you," Belle says so quietly he can convince himself she didn't actually say it.

"The pirate attacked me and he still had the bean, so I cut off his hand and took it with me, but he tricked me. The bean was gone. And before I could follow, he'd already used it for him and his whole ship. The last bean I ever found. All magic has a price, you know, and for killing Milah, I was sentenced to centuries of plots and darkness to get here."

Belle is silent. Rumplestiltskin tries—and fails—not to read too much into that.

"I'm glad," he hears himself saying, tentatively. "In a way. I would never wish to be apart from Bae for so long, but…if I hadn't been stuck there for so long, I'd…I'd never have met you."

"You are old," she says, and if he didn't know better, he'd say there's a smile in her voice.

In fact, when she lifts herself up and looks down at him, there's a smile on her lips too, a tease in her eyes, a spark in the way she bites her lips and lets her gaze drop to his mouth.

As if, even when his secrets are spilled into the open, the darkness inside him exposed to the light, she still loves him.

"Belle," he says, because what else can he say? Her name is a word unto itself, a world entire, magic all its own.

She isn't running. She doesn't revile him. Women don't like to be married to cowards, and heroes scorn murderers, but Belle shifts until she lies fully atop him, and she frames his face in both her hands, and she says, "I love you, Rumplestiltskin. All of you. Even the dark parts of you."

"Why?" he gasps even as his hands grasp at her greedily, holding her to him, sliding along silken skin and worn shawl.

"Because even the dark parts of you only prove how much you love."

He doesn't understand what she means, but when she ducks her head down and kisses him, he kisses her back—messily, openly, with everything he is—and promises himself he will not be the first to let go.


"I got nothing," Emma says, and isn't surprised when Henry confirms that he didn't find anything either. The kid's disappointed, but Emma's relieved. Now she has an excuse for not tracking down the shawl. In fact, she has an excuse for giving up this whole thing and getting back to Storybrooke right away. If they can't find the shawl, then surely getting Gold back to town is their best option. She'll drive him back to Belle, say she tried—which is the truth—Henry will know she did, and best of all, she'll never have to see Neal again.

He can stay here in his shoebox apartment with the dreamcatcher hanging in his window and she can take her son far, far away from him.

Tallahassee can finally be put to the past.

They head back up to Neal's apartment. Emma rehearses her speech in her mind. There's magic in Storybrooke—she's guessed that Neal hates that—and it might heal Gold—even if she hopes he forgets entirely how to use it—and she needs to get going so Neal can get back to his life. Neal never even has to know Henry's name.

When Neal opens the door for them, Emma's taken aback by the sight of Gold wheezing on the couch. He looks smaller, somehow, than she thought he was. Of course, intellectually, she knows he's a short, slender man, but seeing him shriveled in place, his skin abnormally pale, his hands shaking over the crude bandage on his chest, it's hammered in in a whole new way.

"Hi," she hears Henry say, "we haven't really gotten to talk yet, but my name is Henry. And you're Baelfire. That means you're from there, from our world!"

Panic sets Emma's bloodstream on fire as her whole plan starts going up in smoke.

"Uh, yeah," Neal says with an awkward little smile. "I go by Neal here. Neal Cassidy."

It's like a nightmare—that really, somehow, doesn't feel like a nightmare, just kind of dreamlike and what good is that dreamcatcher anyway?—the way Henry sticks out his hand, the way the world seems to slow, go elongated, as Neal reaches out and takes his hand in his to shake it.

She almost swears she can see the spark flicker there.

Kind of like the one that flickered when she and Mary Margaret first met, kneeling in her classroom picking up the books Regina had shoved over in a fit of pique.

No! This can't be happening.

Neal's eyes are narrowing. He's smart. He's always been smart. Emma did a lot to rewrite the past with her new cynical understanding of Neal while she was in prison carrying his baby, but even her lowest view of Neal could never take away that brain of his.

"Hey," he says, slowly, "how old are you?"

"Henry!" Emma snaps. "Henry, come here!"

Henry shoots her a confused look and takes one half step in her direction.

"Kid," Neal says, and the sound of that word on his lips has Emma reaching for magic she doesn't even believe in most of the time. "How old are you?"

"Eleven," Henry says, and then he stops mid-step, his eyes locked on Emma's so that she sees the slow stages of realization play out over his face with all those too-familiar features.

Mary Margaret's chin.

David Nolan's mouth.

Emma's crease between his brows.

Neal's eyes.

And Gold's jaded expression being birthed there in the betrayal on his face.

All tied together in a boy bearing a name Regina gave him.

The perfect culmination of that destiny Neal was talking about in that bar.

"No," Henry says. "My dad was a fireman."

Baelfire, Emma thinks, and if this life weren't hers, she might have laughed.

"He died."

"Emma," Neal says. He has his hands clasped in front of his mouth, afraid to hope. He's staring. Eyes so familiar. So wide. So full of longing for a family, for a home—so familiar because that's the same expression she wore when she first realized she wanted Henry. "Emma, is this my son?"

Emma frames that face of disparate features in her hands, looks at her kid, her son, the thing she loves most in all the worlds, and she says, "Yes."

Neal, she would have named him, if she'd only been brave enough to claim him.

Neal lets out a breath of disbelief, or shock, or joy, but Emma can't look at him.

All she can look at is Henry tearing himself away, throwing himself out the window, all to get away from her.


"Henry?"

Henry doesn't need to turn from Manhattan's skyline to know that Emma's eyes are wide, maybe even filled with tears. It's all in the shaky voice—and in the fact that she uses his name. Henry's never hated his name, but in Regina's iron care, it became a means of control. Hen-ry! his mom would say while pulling him one way and nudging forcefully down another. But when Emma came into his life…well, then Henry learned to like kid best of all. It was a way that Emma made him her own, acknowledged the potential of what might have been if it weren't for the curse.

Really might have been, Henry thinks, considering his dad is also from their world. The world of magic. Of heroes and villains. Of dragons and horses and saviors, castles and crowns and knights. The world where Prince Charming and Snow White vowed to always find each other—and overcame endless obstacles to do exactly that because in that world, good always wins.

"Henry, please, talk to me."

All this time, from the moment he first felt that storybook fit so perfectly in his hands—since he first flipped it open and saw Archie staring back at him—since he realized exactly how to save himself and all of Storybrooke—since he tracked his mom down and found her and brought her back—all this time, Henry's been telling himself that he deserves to be a part of this epic, triumphant family.

He's been telling himself that he'll fit into his own world the way he never has in this one.

When Emma's hand tugs on his coat sleeve, Henry jerks away. He's tired of being pushed around. Tired of being told lies when all he wants is truth.

"Why did you lie?" he demands.

If he were really a hero, he wouldn't take any pleasure in the guilty flinch that makes Emma draw back.

"I…I didn't want to admit that Neal was ever a part of my life. He's a thief, Henry, a liar, and I never wanted to go back to that. I didn't want that to be a part of your life."

"You had me while you were in prison," Henry points out. "You were a thief too."

Emma swallows. Henry has to give it to her; she displays contrition so much better than Regina.

"I wanted to put all that behind me. I wanted a clean start."

"But why lie?" Henry presses. "I asked you—I trusted you to tell me the truth—but you looked right at me and lied."

"I…" Emma lets out a scoffing breath. "Wouldn't you rather have a sacrificial fireman for a father than a criminal? I made up what you deserved."

"So you rewrote the story. Like a curse. Like false memories."

"Kid…"

Henry looks at this woman that, for so long, he's pinned all his hopes on. She's the Savior. The promised child of fairytale rulers—of True Love. His mom.

But for the first time, Henry looks at her and sees an orphan. A lost little child that's never grown up, never learned the lesson that the person you hate most is the person easiest to become. She still hasn't been able to figure out what he knew as soon as he paired his mother's name with that baby sent through an enchanted wardrobe. She still can't forgive her parents for saving her even though she made the same choice for her own baby—and without a world-defying curse and a prophecy that she'd one day be reunited with him.

She's human. Flawed. As much a liar as she blames his dad—his dad!—for being.

"You're just like her," he realizes.

"Who?" she asks, still, always, in the dark.

"Regina," he says. "She always lied to me too, and then whenever I figured it out, she insisted it was for my own good."

"I'm…I'm sorry."

Emma looks bewildered. Baffled. As if she can't figure out how they ended up here. But how can she not? He asked her about his dad months ago. Didn't she read the book—or was that only a lie too?—doesn't she realize that secrets are always brought to light?

"I want to meet my dad," he says firmly, and he tries not to hold his breath as he waits to see how she will respond.

"Okay," she says after a prolonged moment.

And maybe she looks sad, like she's lost him, but some dark, tight knot in his belly melts away.

Regina's said sorry a lot, right before she turns around and forces him to do what she wants. But Emma…Emma slips back inside the apartment, and a moment later, Mr. Gold's son clambers outside.

Henry takes fast hold of the railing of the fire escape, then covers this mark of nervousness by folding his elbows over them and leaning forward. He imagines he looks relaxed, even chill—basically, everything he's not—but it lets him glance to the side to study this man who tentatively moves to stand beside him.

"I'm Henry," he says. It feels familiar. Maybe it's how he introduced himself to Emma. Maybe he'd just dreamed of this moment so long, even after he resigned himself to a dead fireman for a father, that it feels like he's made this opening a hundred times before.

"Hi, Henry. I'm your dad." The man gives a bashful smile, his eyes dropping away only to flit back up to Henry. As if Henry is so amazing he doesn't want to risk missing an instant. "It's nice to meet you. I'm sorry it took me so long."

Emma calls this man, Neal Cassidy, a liar. Mr. Gold lets very little slip, but whenever he mentions his son, there's such a look in his eyes as to make anyone think that Baelfire is a saint, a hero, the culmination of everything good in life.

Henry imagines the reality of his dad is somewhere in the middle, but he doesn't care. He doesn't care because his dad's alive, and he's here, and he's the son of the Dark One, and he wants to know Henry. He's happy to know Henry.

"It's okay," he says, because he has learned his lessons. "You didn't know."

And Henry forgives Neal because he hopes this excuse is good enough for him too. After all, he's supposed to find his family. He's supposed to never give up and never let anything stop him from searching and finding the ones he's lost.

But in all this time, not once after Emma told him his dad was dead, did Henry ever even think to look for his dad.

He didn't find him. He didn't even try.

"You didn't know," Henry says, forgiving him instantly, and he hopes the favor will be reciprocated.


"I can't wait to see our home," Henry says.

For one blissful moment, Neal doesn't process that terrifying statement. He's too busy savoring the tingling that spread through his left palm the instant he dared place it along Henry's back. His son. His son's back, so perfectly formed, the knobs of his spine, the firm plane of his shoulder blade, the warmth of his blood pulsing through his amazing body—the same blood that courses through Neal's veins.

His son. His family. For the first time in hundreds of years, Neal isn't alone. He's not the sole, uncorrupted survivor of his family line—now there is Henry.

Henry, who just said something, who's looking at him with eyes that sparkle as bright as Emma's did, once, when she told him she loved him. When they pointed to a place on a map and her excitement, her joy, her love, made that little dot precious and important.

"Uh…" Neal bends over the railing, propping his chin on his folded arms as he tries to find a way to crush Henry's hope without actually crushing Henry. Because there's no way he and Emma are moving into a new home together with Henry, not after what he's done to her. Not after the cold anger sparking in her face when she told him not to break Henry's heart.

He can't quench that happy sparkle in Henry's eye the way he doused Emma's, but he won't give him false hope either.

Neal feels trapped. He's only been a father for ten minutes and he's already letting his boy down.

Henry deserves so much better than him.

"Henry," he starts.

"I've been learning how to ride a horse," Henry interrupts, all excitement and glee. "And Gramps started me on sword-fighting too." He smiles reassuringly at Neal and adds, "Wooden ones only, don't worry."

Right. Because good dads—like Prince Charming, for instance—didn't endure eternities of torment in Neverland with Lost Boys who don't believe in using toy weapons when real ones draw so much more blood to appease Peter Pan's sadism.

Neal's blissful moment ends.

When Henry says home, he means the Enchanted Forest.

He wants to go back. Wants to live breathing in magic with every breath, paying underhanded prices, always at the mercy of Ogre fists and fairy blessings, dragon fire and easy magic. Enthralled by the possibility of power and beaten down by those who manage to claim that power. Monarchies and medieval technology, swords and huts, sheep and poverty, hunger and cruel fealty.

The one world Neal has vowed to never return to.

"You really want that?" he asks, tentatively. "To go to a world you've never even seen? Won't you miss this world?"

Henry's smile fades into the beginning of a frown. "I think I'd fit in there. Don't you?"

"I think you can do whatever you set your mind to," Neal says honestly.

Henry pauses. "Then…you don't want to go back?"

He looks sad. Scared. But resigned, too, already prepared to lose something.

Neal wants to give this kid everything. His hands itch, his feet burn, his heart yearns to go out and take—by any means necessary—anything and everything that might make Henry happy. He'd burn and steal and kill for this kid he's just met.

Burn…a castle?

Steal…a dagger?

Kill…the darkest creature to haunt their world?

"Tell you what," Neal makes himself say, "if you promise to really think about everything you'd lose by trading this world for another, I'll do my best to find out if it's even possible."

"Okay." Henry's smile is back, bright and beautiful. "It's a deal."

Deal.

Cold terror floods Neal's mind, turning him so cold he has to draw his coat tighter around himself, hands fluttering in search of his scarf before he remembers that it's currently soaked in his father's blood.

A deal between father and son. Two worlds and a choice laying between them.

If you find a way, son, I'll take it. His papa's voice, so long pushed away, brought back by the confused man on his couch, now rings in Neal's ears, and it's all wrong. Neal doesn't have a papa. Neal never looks back. Neal is a blank new slate.

A blank slate that's been filled already with mistakes—stealing what he shouldn't, abandoning Emma, letting Tamara give him an excuse for not making amends, leaving his son without a dad.

Being a father, Neal begins to realize, is infinitely more complicated than being a son, or a lost boy, or a thief, or a blank-not-blank slate.

A crash sounds from inside the apartment and Neal tries not to feel guilty for seizing on it so quickly.

"Stay out here a minute, kid, okay?" Neal says. He can't resist the quick clasp of Henry's shoulder he makes, so when he ducks back inside, his hand is tingling all over again. Any opportunity he might have to savor it is lost, though, when he sees his father crumpled on the floor. He's obviously tried to rise to his feet, even more obviously he couldn't make it, particularly without his crutch, and now he groans, blood blooming along his forearm where he scraped it against the corner of Neal's coffee table.

"Are you crazy?" Neal says. Part of him thinks irritation is probably the wrong response, that if he were a good person, he'd find some compassion for the hurting man on the floor, but he can't help it.

He didn't ask for this. He's never wanted this.

Well, almost never. A hurting child's longing dreams don't count, do they?

Crouching, Neal helps the familiar stranger sit up, and even through his shield of irritation, his heart clenches at the confusion scrawled over Rumplestiltskin's face.

"I have to feed the baby," his papa says. "He's crying."

"There is no baby," Neal says shortly. He really hopes that this world got the tale of Rumplestiltskin completely wrong and that his papa never actually traded in infants, but if he did, Neal doesn't want to know. He takes his papa's elbow and begins pulling him to his feet—how many decades between, but the movement still comes so naturally to him—and Emma rushes out of the bedroom, shoving her phone in her pocket.

"What happened?" she asks. She steps forward to take Rumplestiltskin's other arm, but then freezes when Rumplestiltskin cowers back.

"Milah, please," he mutters, his eyes locked on Emma. "Let me get him. You just sleep. I'll make sure he doesn't disturb you again."

Emma's quick indrawn breath matches the whirling shock keeping Neal motionless. "Milah," she repeats, as if she impossibly knows who that is.

"Please," Rumplestiltskin begs. "He's just a wee baby. He shouldn't have to cry alone. I'll take care of him."

When he pulls free of Neal's hold and staggers on his bad leg, Emma grabs for him. "Careful, Gold!" she snaps.

"He's my son!" Rumplestiltskin cries, throwing himself outside her reach.

Neal's heart turns over in his chest, and he feels nauseous. The expression on his papa's face—that mingled fear and crushed love—is too familiar. If time were allowed to pass in Neverland, Neal's own face would show the grooves and lines of that same expression, worn all too often around Pan.

The fear of expected pain.

The crushed love for those moments when pain isn't given and the heart finds stupid, flimsy reasons to hope for better.

"I'm his papa," Rumplestiltskin nearly whispers. He averts his eyes, unable to meet Emma's—Milah's—gaze. "I know you hate that I…I did this to my ankle so I could come back from the front, but I had to. For him. For Baelfire. A child needs his papa. How could I leave him? Please, just let me hold him."

Neal feels Emma's eyes on him, wide and seeing far too much. He can't look at her. He can't look at anything that will make it impossible to pretend that he's not really here.

That this isn't the monster he's spent centuries convincing himself never loved him enough.

That this crushed and broken man wasn't hiding behind the mask of loving, affectionate papa little Bae never looked behind.

"Please, just let me comfort the boy…"

Unable to stop himself a moment longer, Neal grabs his father's arm, takes his weight on his own shoulders, and lifts him up. "Papa," he says, and the tension in Rumplestiltskin's form eases. Big, dark eyes latch onto Neal, taking in every small detail.

"Bae," he breathes, like it's the exhalation of his very soul.

And he goes quietly, meekly, fully trusting himself to Neal's care.

Neal feels the full intensity of his terror, and tries not to name himself coward when he avoids his papa's reverent stare.

But then, maybe he's never known the true definition of a coward.

"Did you know?" Emma asks quietly when Rumplestiltskin is calm, lying on the couch and watching Neal's every movement. "About his leg?"

"No," Neal says, and hates himself.


They think he sleeps. Rumplestiltskin lets them. His mind is whirling, decades slipping by him in a dizzying swoop that comes back around on itself, like an ouroboros, only he's the one being devoured. As he tries to find some manner of holding onto himself, he keeps his eyes slitted nearly closed and he listens.

He listens to Emma try to make herself a barrier between this man who Rumplestiltskin is convinced, for some reason he can't quite remember, is Baelfire and the boy in the corner. He listens when Neal asks her about the boy, this Henry, any details at all, wanting to know more about…about his son.

Tension thrums through Rumplestiltskin's muscles, making his self-imposed task of remaining still nearly impossible.

His boy has a son. Henry is Rumplestiltskin's grandson.

And Henry was there—wasn't he?—when Rumplestiltskin was driven to his back in a cold alley and felt his memories yanked away from him. Henry called Emma, and she came, and with her came his son, and their reunion occurred—all because of a boy.

There's something about the succession of events that tugs at the back of Rumplestiltskin's mind.

The boy will be your undoing.

He's not sure where the words come from. He can't quite catch hold of them. Instead, he follows Baelfire from one end of the room to the other, trying not to beg for his attention, doing everything he can to memorize each flicker, every expression, the lilt of his voice, the words he chooses, the way he speaks.

He has been starved of his son for…for so long. Every crumb is like a feast he cannot help but to devour in case the famine comes again.

"We have to get back to Storybrooke," Emma says. He gets the feeling she's said it many times. "It's the only chance Gold has."

"I thought you said he needed the shawl," Neal argues. "We can't go without finding it."

"We?" Emma says. Her hair is brightly golden, demanding attention Rumplestiltskin doesn't have to give her, as her voice goes low. "There is no 'we' here, Neal. Henry and I will take Gold back to Storybrooke and you can stay here."

"Emma, I just met him. You can't take him away from me already."

"Hey."

Rumplestiltskin startles at the soft word, and when he tears his eyes from Neal's distraught face, he sees a boy standing just beside him. There's a cane in his hands, one that gleams gold at the tip, and Rumplestiltskin is certain he's never touched anything so fine in all his life. Not since a magic bean, anyway.

"It'll be okay," the boy says. "Neal's not going to let us go without him. You'll have lots of chances to make it up to him."

"Make up what?"

The boy tilts his head. "Leaving him."

"I will never leave my son," Rumplestiltskin grits. "He will never grow up fatherless like I did."

There's a strange silence behind the boy. Rumplestiltskin has the idea that it should bother him, but he's suddenly struck by the knowledge that he's not in his castle. Which means Belle isn't nearby, and if Belle's not around, then this boy isn't safe around him.

"Where's Belle?" he hears himself ask plaintively. He needs her. He shouldn't, she's only a maid, just the caretaker he dealt for. If he gave her a choice, he doesn't doubt that she'd fly free and far from him. But he hasn't given her the choice, and she gave him her forever, and he…he wants her here. "Belle!"

She should be around somewhere. Probably knocked something over, the clumsy little thing. He'll tease her, and she'll laugh, and he'll sip tea from their chipped cup, and maybe, when she draws close this time, he won't let himself run.

"I'll ask Emma to call her," the boy promises. "But, here, maybe you'll feel better if you have this in reach."

The boy offers his cane. Mr. Gold reaches for it, surprised that young Henry Mills has it, even more surprised that Regina isn't right behind him, doing her best to keep a distance between her son and the man who procured him for her.

When Mr. Gold's hand touches the cane, he remembers.

Beware: the boy will be your undoing.

Rumplestiltskin's hand bypasses the cane and clenches tight around Henry's coat. "Stay away from me!" he hisses. "You brought my son back! You're the reason we walked past that alley! You caused this!"

"Hey, hey, let go of him! What are you doing?"

Hands pry his fingers from the boy's coat, an arm held up bracingly against his chest knocks him back into the couch, and the elbow brushes against the right side of his chest. Pain blazes like lightning across Rumplestiltskin's mind.

"What's gotten into you?" a man demands, in his face, low voice intent and angry. His eyes…Rumplestiltskin remembers his eyes. "You're crazy, just as out of control as I remembered!"

"Bae," he whispers. He's found his son. His boy is here, in arm's reach, angry as Rumplestiltskin always knew he would be, but here. "Oh, my boy, I'm so sorry. I never meant to break our deal. I'm sorry."

"Just…be quiet and don't move," Bae says. He's not looking at Rumplestiltskin. Instead, he's peering over his shoulder, at a boy, maybe, pressed close to the Savior. "We've got other things to worry about."

If there's anything Rumplestiltskin knows, it's worry. His boy is here, but where is Belle? He can't see her, can't catch even a trace of her rose perfume, sees nothing to betray her presence. She should be here. He wants her to meet his son. He wants Bae to meet her. If Belle is with him, then surely, surely his son will give him a chance.

But then, the last time he couldn't find Belle, her father had taken her. She'd nearly been sent across the town line.

"Belle!" he cries, sitting bolt upright. "We have to find her! If her father has her, he'll send her over the town line! She'll lose her memories. All she'll remember is the Queen's cell."

Bae tries to quiet him, but Rumplestiltskin thrashes. Belle left him. The clerics have her. No, no, she threw herself off a tower. Or did she rip out her own heart to free herself of him?

No. That was Cora. Belle would never do that. With Belle, when it really mattered, he's the one who ripped out his heart and sent it out into the world to be taken advantage of. All he was left with was a chipped cup.

"Here," a woman says. She's thrusting some object in his boy's face, which draws Rumplestiltskin's attention to the man's eyes.

Dark blue, hazel in some lights, concentrated and intense.

"Bae," he says, and he lifts his hand to trace those features.

His son avoids the touch and slides something into his hand instead. "Here," he says shortly. "Talk to her."

"Who?" he asks, but then he hears it.

Belle's voice.

"Rumple?"

It's quiet, distant, so removed that he can't help but clench tight hold of this magical object and hold it to his ear so he misses nothing.

"Belle!" he cries. "Are you all right? Are you safe?"

"I'm safe," she says. "I'm perfectly all right. I'm working in the library you gave me. You remember it? Beneath the clock tower?"

The clock tower. Something uncomfortably close to terror squirms through the pit of his stomach. "Belle," he whispers into the enchanted object. "Keep it safe."

"I am," she says just as softly. "I'm waiting for you to come back to me. Can you tell me how we met? Maybe I should write a book about our story."

Slowly, Rumplestiltskin's lips curve up in a soft smile. He can see her, curled over a journal filled with empty pages, her hands ink-stained, scribbling down chapters of her life.

"It would be my favorite book," he says. "Maybe I'd finally understand how you could love me."

"I do love you," she says. She's trying to sound happy, but he can hear the tears hiding behind her bravery. "Tell me how we met."

"Belle," he says. And then again because it grounds him. Steadies him. The world stops whirling as quickly. He is Rumplestiltskin and he remembers. "Your father sent me a letter, offering gold in return for saving your village from the Ogres."

"I wrote that letter," she says. He can see the arch of her brow in his mind's eye. "I learned about the Dark One in my books, and I told Papa about it and begged him to call for you. And finally, when Avonlea was nearly overtaken, I convinced him."

"I know," he admits. "I traced the ink on the page to you. It's why I asked for you."

"Really?"

"You knew my name. And you called for help before it was too late. And you offered to pay the price without being forced into it. It intrigued me."

She laughs, a chiming sound that sinks deep inside him, anchoring him to this little apartment filled with clocks that all tick away moving time. "I think I surprised you. You always looked so surprised by everything I did."

"You do surprise me," he tells her. "Even when the Ogres were gone from your village, you didn't run. You stayed."

"I made a deal with you."

"Forever?" he whispers.

"Forever," she assures him, and finally, Rumplestiltskin can breathe.