A/N: Sorry for the late posting - I ended up working late every day this week and didn't have the energy to devote to this. But the chapter is extra long, and one of my favorites, so hopefully that makes up for it! :) Thank you all for reading, and I hope you enjoy!
"Where are you now?" Belle asks over the phone.
Rumplestiltskin looks around him and immediately wishes he hadn't. Better to focus all his attention on Belle's voice in his ear than the hordes of people surrounding him on all sides. Not a one of them knows who he is. Not a one would be scared should they hear his name. And not one would make a deal with him to get him what he wants.
"Outside the airport," he says. "Ms. Swan's getting us a cab. She says it should only take twenty minutes to reach Bae's building."
"Twenty minutes," Belle says. "You're so close, Rumple."
"How did you forgive me?" he blurts out. His hand is white-knuckled over his cane, the wall is cold against his back, and he wants to close his eyes and imagine he's alone with Belle in his house, in their bed, wrapped around each other, her heart beating in tandem with his. But he can't. He can't make himself close his eyes at all. Adrenaline pounds through him, his fight-or-flight instinct ratcheted so high that it's taking every ounce of his willpower to keep from running back to Storybrooke.
It's been centuries since he's felt this helpless.
He hasn't missed it.
"After I cast you out," he says, "after Regina locked you away for so long…how did you forgive me?"
"Rumple…"
"I just…I need to know. Please."
"I forgave you because I love you. I love you for who you are—and I know that that's a man who overthinks and overreacts and is often overdramatic." There's a laugh in her voice as she teases him. Rumplestiltskin latches onto it and wishes he could reply in kind, but humor is beyond his reach at the moment.
"You know I'm a man who makes mistakes, who fails, who always makes wrong choices…how can you still love me?"
This time, there's no teasing in her voice when she answers. "I love you for the way you keep moving on after your mistakes. I love you for the reasons you make those wrong choices—your love for so select few, and your longing to be loved as single-mindedly in return. I love you because no matter how many times you make a wrong choice, you always drag yourself back to the light."
"To you," he breathes. "You said that's why you had to stay with me. So you could help me make right choices."
"I was wrong," she says, startling him. "When I stayed for that reason, it didn't last very long. I left. I told you I never wanted to see you again. But that's because I thought I was supposed to be saving you. Or changing you. Like before, with my kiss. But that's…that's not why I asked you to have hamburgers with me. I don't want to fix you, Rumple, or change you, not anymore. That was a foolish girl's hope. Now, I'm a woman in love, and I know better. I just…I want to love you. I want to be loved by you. I want my forever with you, however that looks like."
"You're so brave," he can't help saying. "To admit all these things. To want them even knowing I'll disappoint you."
"Let me ask you something now," she says. "Why did you forgive me?"
Rumplestiltskin frowns. "For what? What have you ever done to be sorry for?"
"I kissed you without telling you why I wanted to. I left you without trying to make a compromise. I let my anger keep me away from you until it was too late. I walked away behind your back, and I've been petty. And…I'm so selfish, Rumple. I want you all to myself sometimes, even though I know that's not what you want." She takes a deep breath, and Rumplestiltskin can envision her squaring her shoulders, setting her expression into that determined look he so loves to see on her. "So how did you forgive me?"
In all truth, it rocks Rumplestiltskin's world to even think that he might ever be in a position to forgive Belle anything, or that she'd ever need his forgiveness. But he's not entirely foolish, and he can follow the conversation to where she wants this to go.
"Because I love you," he says. "I love you for who you are, and that's a woman who's impulsive and leaps before she looks and is so brave and good that she tries to make that bravery and that goodness in everyone she meets."
Her laugh is watery, but still music to his ears. It eases his adrenaline, settles his heart, keeps him in place. "Then there you go. And if Baelfire hasn't learned already how to forgive, he will. I know it."
"I love you, Belle," he says. It's the distance that makes him brave, the note of insecurity he can hear so clearly through the phone—the same one that would be overshadowed by her beauty, by her closeness, by her touch, if he were standing beside her—that makes him bold enough to say, "When I come back, and see you standing—a ways off—from the town line…"
"Yes?"
"I'll have a question for you. A proposal, some might call it."
The silence is a gift. It's beauty and hope all rolled into one.
"I'll have an answer ready," she finally says, so happy and excited that Rumplestiltskin feels himself grinning. "In fact, I already have it."
"When I see you again."
"Soon."
Then Emma's back, Henry at her elbow, waving him over to a cab, and Rumplestiltskin closes the phone.
His son first, then Belle. His happy ending is so close he can taste it.
"You don't have a key?" Emma asks when Neal just knocks at the door to Tamara's apartment.
"We don't come here often," he says. He shifts his weight, as if realizing what the reason for that might be, before the door opens.
Emma can't help but take in this woman who's enough for Neal to actually stay for. The woman he chose to take a chance on rather than giving her up. She's beautiful, and her smile is wide when she sees Neal standing there, not a flicker of anything in her expression to betray that she's surprised or that she doesn't want him here—or that she feels guilty about stabbing his father.
"Neal!" she says. "I didn't expect to see you today." Her eyes drift to Emma. "Who's this?"
"Tamara, this is Emma Swan."
Both of them watch, but Tamara still looks nothing but vaguely confused. "Sorry," she says in the awkward silence, "please, come in."
There's nothing incriminating about the apartment itself, except for the fact that Tamara clearly has to have a roommate. The place is too big for a single person, and too nice. But Neal told her on the way over that Tamara lives alone.
"Is she a friend of yours?" Tamara asks.
"She helped me find this," Neal says, and he pulls the green scarf from his pocket.
It's blunt and straight to the point, which Emma absolutely approves of. They have no time for games.
Tamara gasps when she sees the scarf, her hands fluttering toward it. "You found it!" she cries. "I didn't know how to tell you, Neal, but I lost it a couple weeks ago. I know it's important to us, so I've been desperately trying to hunt it down. Where did you find it?"
Neal falters, but Emma feels complete and utter certainty settle low in her gut.
"She's lying," she says, and now, when Tamara looks at her, there's a trace of hostility there.
"And who, exactly, are you?" she demands.
"Neal," Emma says. "I'm telling you, she's lying."
He looks at her for only a moment before giving an infinitesimal nod.
"Tamara," Neal says, stepping forward, "why are you lying?"
"I can't believe this! Are you saying you take the word of this stranger over me?"
"Stranger?" Neal repeats. There's something dangerous hiding in his coiled tension, concealed so well within his soft, sloped shoulders, his rounded gait—he's like a chameleon, Emma realizes, making himself look small, safe, unthreatening. But there are sharp edges hidden there, steel blade masked not so much by velvet glove but by woolen mitten. "What do I really know about you, Tamara? I've never met your family. I know what you do for a living, but I've never visited you at work. We're always at my place, or out, and whenever I ask you about your life, all your answers are about the present, about your coming plans, about things that give you an excuse for me not to spend the day with you."
"What are you talking about?" Tamara steps forward and tries to take Neal's arms, but he shrugs violently, throwing her back, his sharp edges closer to the surface than Emma's ever seen them. "Neal, what is this about? Where is this coming from? I thought…I thought we were happy."
Neal's face contorts in a way that makes Emma's heart squeeze tight in her chest. "So did I," he says. "I thought you were exactly what I needed—someone to love, someone who'd love me. Someone with absolutely no connections to magic or another world."
And this time, Tamara doesn't hide her reaction quite fast enough. It's quick, a shudder of revulsion, a curl of her lip, a coldness to her eye. Emma seizes on that since the alternative is to pull Neal into a hug.
Because she's felt the same thing he's talking about, hasn't she—that desire to close her ears and avert her eyes and run from the strange and terrible reality of magic. Of fairytales. Of saviors and responsibilities and fears that an orphan in a world without magic never had to worry about.
But she's had Henry to anchor her. To guide her. To give her a reason to keep moving.
What has Neal had?
Nothing but nightmares of a father who disappointed him—in a way Emma can't understand even after watching whatever went down between them in Bae's apartment. Nothing but a life on the run from whatever it is he's so scared of. Nothing but the seemingly engrained belief that he's not worth anyone risking anything for. He gave her up to find home, to find family, but what did he keep for himself?
Nothing.
"You know about magic," Neal says. "You know I'm from another world?"
There's a slight hesitation, and then Tamara lets the disguise fall away.
In its place, she's like a completely different person, and the sight of her makes Neal fall back, his face stricken, his softness too raw and exposed.
"Magic doesn't belong here," Tamara says with a tone of rabid belief. "It's tainting this world like a poison. And poison has to be lanced. You have to understand that, Neal—you hate magic as much as I do."
Neal just stares.
Emma knows what's going through his mind. The hope that he was wrong—now dashed. The realization that the person he thought he loved—never really existed. The crushing weight of betrayal—one that will never really go away, not completely. It'll always leave a scar. Emma can feel her own scars chafing in her chest against the rise and fall of her breastbone.
For years, if asked, Emma would have insisted that she wanted Neal to feel the same pain he put her through. Turnabout is fair play, and if anything, it's long overdue. But then, for all the lies Emma can see in other people, she never has been able to read her own.
Because right now, seeing the stages of heartbreak progressing across Neal's face—Emma doesn't feel vindicated. Or happy. Or gleeful.
She just feels sad. And so incredibly protective of him.
Stepping forward, Emma draws Tamara's attention her way. "How did you know Neal was from another world?" she demands. "And how did you know that Gold would be here?"
"We have friends everywhere," Tamara says. "Even in Storybrooke."
"That's impossible," Emma says flatly. "No one can—"
And then she remembers. The outsider Mary Margaret and David warned her about.
"Greg Mendell," she says, and sees something flicker in Tamara's eyes. "You're working together?" she asks. "Both of you are part of this Home Office?"
"Are you working for Pan?" Neal asks. His voice is hollow. His eyes, though, blaze with defiance. It makes Emma's breath catch in her throat, though she's not sure why. "Did he send you after me?"
Tamara makes a face at him. "Of course you think it's all about you. I've been doing this for years, Neal. I hunt down things that don't belong in this world, and I excise them."
"Me?" he asks quietly. "I'm the poison you're trying to lance?"
"I'm sorry," she says, and Emma can't tell if she's being sincere or not—if Neal asks, of course, she'll assure him that she was, for his sake.
Except Emma knows: Neal won't ask. He's never been someone to stop and question the past. That would mean he'd have to pause in his constant run toward the future.
"But this world is pure, and we can't allow anything to come in and mess up our order. It's not personal, Neal, I hope you can understand that."
"Yeah," Emma mutters, "because that always goes over well."
"You've been using me!" Neal cries over her. "You tried to kill my father! Why? You're just that incompetent that you leave your jobs half done?"
"I did what I was told to do," Tamara says, her eyes glacial. Emma notices too late that she's pulling something from her pocket. "And I don't question orders."
Blue electricity arcs over the stun gun she draws out of her pocket, a quick glare of light that stays in an afterimage on Emma's eyelids as she blinks. Tamara doesn't blink. She throws herself toward Neal, and though he stumbles back, he trips on the cat-shaped doorstop and falls heavily against the door.
The stun gun is only an inch from his neck when Emma slams full-body into Tamara. They land in a crash of shattering marble as a heavy figurine from the coffee table ends up collateral damage beneath them. Emma punches blindly, feels it connect with a jolt down the bones of her hand, then rolls backward with Tamara's answering blow.
"Emma!" Neal calls. He darts forward, but when Tamara sweeps her stun gun toward him, he's forced to fall back again.
Emma uses the moment of distraction to grab Tamara's legs out from under her, and for good measure, slams her head against the floor. It's carpeted, and Tamara barely seems to feel the collision, already twisting beneath Emma.
"Stay down!" Emma commands.
Tamara doesn't listen, and Emma throws herself on top of her in the hopes her weight will force the other woman to stop lunging for Neal.
Suddenly, Tamara's entire body arcs and shudders, her eyes wide and staring, and then she folds in on herself. And doesn't move again.
"Emma?" Neal's there, grabbing Emma's elbow, helping her stand, looking her over as if checking for wounds.
It's a little strange. His fiancée's the one on the floor with blank eyes. But Emma doesn't mind. In fact, she almost sinks closer to his steadying heat. Or maybe she just doesn't want to look down and see why Tamara's not getting up again.
"What kind of stun gun is that?" she asks. Her tongue feels like a thick slab in her mouth, which makes her words nearly indistinguishable.
Neal hears her, though, and understands the question. "Not one anyone should be using," he says.
And together, his hand still clasped around her elbow, they look down at Tamara.
She's dead.
She must have been about to stab the stun gun against Emma's side—or Neal's, and cold terror snakes its hand down her spine—but when Emma pushed her down, the prongs bit deep into her own skin instead. There are burn marks along her flank, and the stun gun lies, gray and inert, on the floor.
"I killed her," Emma says. She's about to hyperventilate.
She's supposed to be the hero. The savior. The good one. Now Henry's going to look at her and call her as much a murderer as a liar. She really is as bad as Regina.
"It was an accident," Neal tells her. He turns and moves closer until he fills her field of vision, his hands on her arms all that keep her upright. "You didn't mean to do it. She did it to herself."
"It's my fault. I did this. I should have—"
"Let her kill you?" he interrupts. His eyes are wide and dark, fixed on her the way she has missed them being for so long. The way they were in that bar when his gaze flicked down to the swan keychain hanging around her neck. "No, Emma, you couldn't. You're safe. She hurt herself by trying to hurt you. That's not on you. You're safe, and that's what matters. That's always what matters."
"I—I couldn't let her…not you. I can't…"
"Shh. It's okay. This wasn't your fault." And though he moves slowly, telegraphing every movement, Emma doesn't jerk away or yank herself free when he pulls her into a hug. In fact, she steps closer, her nose against his throat, and slowly, as if having to cajole each muscle one at a time to move, she loops her arms around his waist. His hold on her tightens, pressing her up against his warmth, against the soft chameleon curve of his chest, so familiar that she can't help the nostalgic feeling of safety it conjures up.
Neal was her home. The first home she ever had. The only home she wanted.
And even after all these years…ever after these weeks living in Mary Margaret's apartment with Henry and David and Mary Margaret…this is what she thinks of when she thinks of home.
This is her Tallahassee.
And he always will be.
"Did you find it?" Henry blurts as soon as Neal and Emma come bursting through the door. He's overjoyed to see them. Mr. Gold isn't as scary as Rumplestiltskin can be, but the dullness in his eyes is disconcerting. Almost as disconcerting as the calculating way Rumplestiltskin studied him for long moments before Henry thought to get Belle back on the phone. Even then, he's had to stay close. Anytime he moves too far away, Mr. Gold becomes…well, more Mr. Gold.
Turns out, having a powerful sorcerer for a grandfather can be a little terrifying.
So even though he doesn't mind helping, Henry is definitely glad to not be alone with him anymore. He's even more glad to see that Neal looks like he's carrying something in his hand.
"Yeah, kid," Emma says. She's pale and shaky, and she doesn't quite meet his eyes.
Henry tries to remind himself that he's angry with her, but it's hard when she looks so tired.
"Emma," he says. It's not quite Mom, but it's something, and she almost smiles as she finally looks at him. "Are you okay?"
"I'm…okay," she says. "Not great, but I'll be better when we get back to Storybrooke."
"And you found the shawl?" he asks, looking behind her to Neal, who hasn't moved away from the door. He's staring down at the cloth in his hands, bundled up tight and frayed in some places. "That's awesome! Now Mr. Gold will be okay, right?"
Neal blinks, blinks again, then looks at Henry. "Right," he says. "Right. That's…what all this was about."
"Bae," Mr. Gold says from behind them. Everyone looks back at him. He has eyes only for Neal.
It must be nice, Henry thinks wistfully, to be so loved by someone. To know with just a look that someone loves you that much.
But then, maybe it's not all good. Maybe it's a little scary too.
Sometimes, when Regina looks at him, eyes burning and hopeful, her mouth twisted in that careful smile, her hands reaching for him, Henry feels like he's being crushed by the weight of her love. Her hope. All the desperate desires she places on his shoulders.
He wonders if his dad feels the same way when Mr. Gold looks at him with all that awful love blazing out of him like a fire.
He wonders if Neal can't help but feel as responsible for all the people Mr. Gold's killed as Henry sometimes does about all the people Regina hurts.
"What about Peter Pan?" Henry asks. He asks it because he wants to distract Emma from what has her looking so small and scared. Because he wants to give his dad something to think about besides the sheer hope coloring Mr. Gold's voice every time he says his name. Because he can't help but think it's cool to have yet another story from outside the book coming to Storybrooke.
What he doesn't intend is to set off Mr. Gold's spiraling memories again. Though maybe he should have expected it. After all, he's not sitting by him anymore. No one is. And if Belle's still on the phone, he seems to have forgotten about her. So it's just Mr. Gold, all alone, losing grip of his own mind, and whatever memories the name of Peter Pan calls up for him, they're the very opposite of happy ones.
Mr. Gold screams. Not a shrill, piercing scream—more like the startled cry someone might give when they yank themselves out of their nightmares. In fact, Henry remembers making a very similar sound when that netherworld started leaving burns on his arms from the heat of its flames.
Mr. Gold cries out, and his hands stretch pleadingly—toward Henry.
"No, please!" he begs. "Please, Papa, it's a monster! Don't let the shadow take me!"
"Papa?" Neal says in a very tiny voice.
"Please, Papa!" Mr. Gold says. He sounds much younger than he looks. He thrashes in the hold of something that probably hasn't existed for hundreds of years, making the bandage on his shoulder bloom red. "Help me! Don't let it take me!"
"Neal, what is this?" Emma asks. Henry notices her place a hand on Neal's arm like she wants to hold him up. "What is he talking about?"
Mr. Gold stares at Henry, his eyes so wide, so dark, that Henry is frozen in place. He's never seen him look so terrified, not even while waiting for Emma to bring his son back to him.
"Papa," Neal says, a bit louder.
"Papa, don't leave me! Don't let me go!" Before Mr. Gold can say anything else, Neal is suddenly there, across the room, perched on the couch right beside him. His hands are gentle, slow, even, as he wraps the shawl around Mr. Gold's shoulders with a tenderness Henry can't help but imagine is how he would have handled Henry as a baby.
"It's okay, Papa," Neal says. "There's no monster here."
"Bae?" Mr. Gold asks. His eyes fall away from Henry—Henry sags in relief—and turns to Neal. "Did he give you to the shadow too?"
Neal clenches his jaw. "No. Not exactly."
One of Mr. Gold's hands rise to flutter around his neck, feeling the shawl there. His fingers sink deep into the worn material even as tears spring to his eyes. "Oh, son," he says. "You found it. You really are a hero."
"Yeah, well…" Neal clears his throat as he drops his hands from around his father's shoulders. "Emma did most of the work. All I did was find Tamara's hiding spot for it."
Henry decides it's time to stop being upset. Neal is taking care of Mr. Gold, and the shawl's back, and they're going to be starting out for Storybrooke any minute now. And…well, he misses her. He wants to feel her arm around his shoulder.
"Mom," he says, quietly, and he sidles up close to her.
"Hey, kid," she says. "You did a good job looking after him. Thanks for that."
Slowly, a bit at a time, Henry leans into her side. Something in his heart loosens when she bears up under his weight. And gradually, tentatively, Emma slings her arm around his shoulders.
Henry lets out a shuddering breath and turns to hug her. He's glad when she hugs him back just as tightly.
"Can we go home now?" he asks.
Above his head, Emma's eyes move to Neal, talking quietly to Mr. Gold. "Yeah," she says. "Let's go home."
It's only gradually that the ringing fades from Rumplestiltskin's ears and the world trickles back in. He's been off-balance for so long, lost inside his memories—first spooling away from him, then burying him in choking folds—that every step feels hazardous, as if reality will vanish from before him at every footfall.
Eventually, bit by bit, he comes to realize that they're in a car—"Tamara's," Bae said shortly in a tone that forbade further questions—and that they are long outside of New York City and that his son has said hardly a single word since he began driving them toward Storybrooke. Back to a place with magic and his father—the very things he's been running from.
Rumplestiltskin knows it is more than likely Henry or Emma Swan, sitting together in the back seat and helping with directions, that really keeps Baelfire here. He knows that if his son is coming back to his world, it is only incidentally for Rumplestiltskin's sake.
Nevertheless, he hopes.
After all, the shawl around his shoulders is there only because his son hunted it down and, from what inferences he has picked up, fought someone he cares about to retrieve it. He must still care at least a little.
It's a chance. More of one than Rumplestiltskin has had in centuries, since a magic bean, and he won't let this one slip from him as he did that bean in Hook's hand.
A shift in his seat trying to ease the pain in his ankle jostles his shoulder, and Rumplestiltskin winces at the sharp surge of pain in his chest. He's lucky there wasn't poison in whatever he was stabbed with, but as he was so forcefully reminded in that airport bathroom, without magic, wounds are much longer lasting than he's accustomed to.
"Uh…"
It's not even a word, but just that tentative sound from his son has Rumplestiltskin freezing in place, holding his breath as he waits to hear what his son might have to say to him. Even if it's terrible, he reminds himself, he will take it.
It's his son saying it after all. New words, new thoughts, new memories of the son that has for so many eternities been memory alone, a creature trapped in amber.
Bae glances into the rear-view mirror. Rumplestiltskin looks behind him, sees Henry slumped against Emma, sound asleep—or at least pretending to be—and Emma herself gazing out the window with an abstracted expression that seems to indicate she's miles away.
Outside the vehicle, dusk is falling. A deep twilight encompassing the land as they head north down a road that will only grow less and less populated the further they go. It makes Rumplestiltskin feel as if he and his son are practically alone, hovering in a nether space, a between moment, where maybe nothing counts and everything matters.
But the moment stretches. And Bae says nothing.
"Son," Rumplestiltskin says, "I know that I made mistakes. When I got to this world, when I…remembered myself…I realized just how many mistakes I did make with you. I don't know how you could still love me enough to want to find a way to save me. But you did. And I…"
"You let me go," Bae says. Unforgiving. As he should be. A son shouldn't have to forgive his father for abandoning him.
"I let you go," Rumplestiltskin says. His eyes fall closed at the confession. The admission they both already know. "It doesn't matter that I immediately regretted it." He remembers scrabbling on the floor at his son's feet, a broken excuse for a man revealed as a sham of a father. "It doesn't matter that I've spent lifetimes trying to find you again, to tell you that I love you and that I'm sorry. It doesn't matter…because I did let you go."
Bae's hand is white-knuckled on the steering wheel. The oncoming headlights shine like tears in his eyes. "It does matter," he says, so quietly Rumplestiltskin almost misses it.
"But not enough," Rumplestiltskin says. "Because nothing I do can ever make up for what you went through." He doesn't want to ask this question. But he needs to. He has to know, has to hear it said aloud. Swallowing hard to try to get rid of the lump lodged there, he says, "You went to Neverland. Didn't you?"
The world zips by outside their tiny haven. Lights come and go, the darkness reclaims them with each passing, and Rumplestiltskin has to knot his hands together over his cane to keep himself from reaching for his boy.
"Not at first," Bae finally says. "First I came here. England, a couple hundred years back. It…wasn't the greatest place for a boy with nothing, but a family took me in. Everything would have turned out fine, except…"
"A shadow came," Rumplestiltskin says for him.
"Yeah. I couldn't let magic tear another family apart. But my brilliant plan to fight him off didn't work long, and instead I'm the one who ended up in Neverland."
Rumplestiltskin locks his eyes on something outside. It doesn't matter what so long as it isn't the torment evident in his little boy's face. "You met Hook?"
"He took me in at first. But he just wanted to find a way to get back at you." There's a pause before Bae says what Rumplestiltskin hoped he never would: "He told me about Mom."
She left you, he wants to say. She left you, and even though it would have been so easy for her to come and find you, to see you again, together in the same world, to tell you she made a mistake and she was sorry, she never even tried. Not like me.
But he doesn't. Sometimes, all a child has to cling to are the comforting lies he's told himself. Rumplestiltskin won't take those away from Bae.
"You were cursed," Bae says, unexpectedly. "I knew that. I mean…that was the whole point, right? To save you from the curse? I just…I think somewhere along the way…I forgot what that meant."
Rumplestiltskin knows, better than most, just how dangerous the Dark Curse is. He knows its effects, its ramifications, the whispers always dogging his steps, the past Dark Ones ever ready to step in and lead him further and further astray. But he also knows that a father blaming a shadow, a darkness, another world…it never really matters enough. He also knows that here, in a world without magic, freshly exposed to a wealth of memories he usually keeps locked up tight and hidden, he can see the truth more clearly than he'll be able to when they reach Storybrooke. He can speak more rationally now than he'll be able to after some time to lock all these unwanted ghosts back up.
If he dares. If he can be brave enough.
"I'm your father," he says. "A curse doesn't change that. And it shouldn't have changed my desire to protect you. To shelter you. To shield you from whatever the curse changed me into."
"I wouldn't have gone if you tried to send me away," Bae says staunchly. "And it's a curse. I don't think it's supposed to be easy."
"Bae…"
"Your father traded you for something too, didn't he? He gave you to the shadow?" Bae chances a look at him, at exactly the wrong moment, when Rumplestiltskin has dared peer toward him. Their eyes meet. Rumplestiltskin's breath catches somewhere in his chest, maybe along the stitches his son sewed into his flesh. "Why would he do that?"
Lies never come cheap. They always have a cost.
But so does the truth.
Bae's eyes lock with Rumplestiltskin, and the lies turn to ash on his tongue.
"He was a coward," he hears himself saying. "A trickster. A conman who got us run out of town after town. And when he sold me to a couple spinsters, I believed the pretty lies he spun me. I thought we could be happy together in a place where no one knew him to hate him. So when I was given a bean that would open a portal to any realm, I handed it over to him."
"A bean." No one else Rumplestiltskin has talked to has ever had the same tone in their voice as he does when he speaks of the magic beans grown by giants in fields long since razed to the ground—a mixture of awe, and terror, and deeply seated resentment. But Bae's voice has that tone. He knows, now, just like Rumplestiltskin, that nothing tears a family apart like a magic bean.
"Aye. He spoke of a magical world he'd visited in dreams when he was a boy. A place where he could fly. Where anything was possible. Where he could make his dreams into reality."
"You went to Neverland?" There's horror there. Horror and disgust and, probably, pity that Rumplestiltskin doesn't deserve.
"It was empty. No one lived there except in their dreams. My father wanted to fly, but he was too old. Neverland is a realm of dreams, a sleepscape. No one's actually supposed to live there in physical reality. But Neverland was lonely, and the shadow it manifested itself into offered my father a trade. He would stay and power the realm with his burning desire for more—if he got rid of the one thing holding him back."
"That's sick," Bae says. His voice is harsh. "Who would do that? Who would make that trade?"
Rumplestiltskin lets his eyes be blinded by the oncoming lights of passing cars. "Not everyone wants to be a parent. There are plenty willing to trade away their children for whatever it is they desire."
"So he's still there? In Neverland? Is he part of the shadow now?"
"Bae." Rumplestiltskin's brow creases as he studies his son, trying to figure out if it really is so unbelievable, or if Bae simply doesn't want to make the connection. "He renamed himself. A new name for a new form."
The car swerves as Bae jerks in realization.
"Pan?!" he cries out, barely keeping it to a loud whisper as he's reminded of Emma and Henry in the back seat. "Papa, please say it—"
"It is."
And now he knows. Now he knows that Rumplestiltskin was no more suited to being a father than he was a son. He knows that the sins of the father are perpetuated onto the son, and that their family is darker and more messed up than even he guessed.
It takes a long time before Bae's ready to speak again. So long that Henry really is asleep, Emma's dozed off herself, and Rumplestiltskin has begun to believe his father's dirty secret will be the last words that ever pass between him and his son.
But then, out of nowhere, Baelfire says, "I thought I loved a girl, and it turns out she was working for Pan. She has a partner inside Storybrooke who must have let her know where you were. She says she had orders to take the shawl from you. She thought she was working to destroy magic, but…"
"It's Pan," Rumplestiltskin says. "It must be. He's able to touch the land without magic easier than anyone else, and Neverland's shadow has always had a presence here."
"So Pan's coming for us."
"And if he's searching for you," Rumplestiltskin says, "I won't let him get you."
"We won't let him get anyone." Bae's glance into the backseat shows clearly where his thoughts are planted.
Rumplestiltskin feels a soft smile on his lips. "You're a good father," he says softly. "Henry's lucky to have you."
Henry. His undoing. That's another confession he could make. But why? It would only ruin this, and it's not going to change anything anyway. Rumplestiltskin has plenty of time, surely, to figure out how to make an undoing work for him rather than against him.
For now, things are better than he's worried they'd ever be. And maybe this is enough. If this—tolerance and a modicum of understanding—is all Bae can ever give him…he'll survive.
As long as he has Belle.
The ringing of Emma's phone blares through the car, startling everyone, and Rumplestiltskin tries to still the shaking of his hands as she groggily answers it.
"What?" he hears her say. "Okay, keep him there. We think he's working for Pan." A pause, then Emma says, in a tone Rumplestiltskin doesn't need to look to see comes accompanied with a roll of her eyes, "Of course Peter Pan, who else would it be considering where my life has ended up? Okay." A long time where she listens and Rumplestiltskin tries to get used to the sound of his long lost doll's name being bandied about so carelessly. "Okay," she finally says. "Got it. Thanks, Mary Margaret. We should be there in an hour or so."
"Well?" Bae asks as soon as she slips the phone back into her pocket.
"I think we have a problem," she says.
"What is it?" Henry asks. "Everyone's okay, aren't they?"
Rumplestiltskin tenses. "Belle?" he demands. "She's—"
"She's fine. This is about something else. Something worse."
"I highly doubt it," he says, looking away to hide the force of his relief.
"Well, is it true that there's some kind of magical dagger that's the source of all your power? Because David and Mary Margaret said that while they were apprehending this Mendell character, they found Cora and Regina searching for a dagger with your name on it."
Bae's eyes fly to him. Rumplestiltskin feels the force of it, and because his son is looking to him for reassurance, Rumplestiltskin isn't afraid.
"Don't worry," he tells Bae. "It's safe. Cora's not going to find it."
"I think we should tell David and Mary Margaret where it is," Emma announces. "If they have it, they can protect it from Cora."
"Why does anyone need to protect it?" Rumplestiltskin asks testily. "Cora has no idea where it is, and we're on our way back to town."
"Look, Gold, you really should start trusting people, and who better to start with than family?"
"Belle knows where the dagger is." Rumplestiltskin looks out the window, to the side-view mirror, his eyes blurring until he sees both things ahead and things behind. It's moments like these he misses his foresight the most. Misses being so distant and removed from people that he didn't care when they looked at him and saw only a monster.
"Tell him, Neal," Emma says. "Belle's great, but she's not a fighter."
"Really?" Rumplestiltskin bites out. "She faced the Evil Queen and spent years as her prisoner, locked alone in a cell with only her own mind to keep her company, and she came out of that with both her sanity and her kindness intact—and you really think she's not a fighter?" He twists and glares at Emma head-on. "Belle's stronger and more resilient than you'll ever be, Ms. Swan."
"Hey," Bae says. "That's enough, both of you." He pauses, meets Emma's eyes in the mirror, and Rumplestiltskin feels a pit open in his stomach. This is it. His son loves Emma Swan—it's evident in their shared past, in the way he looks at her or doesn't look at her, the way he says her name—and what better way to get in her good graces than to side with her over his estranged father?
"Neal, that dagger sounds dangerous," Emma says, quietly. "If we get to town, and Cora can control him…"
"I don't know who Cora is," Bae says, "but I do know that Papa's kept that dagger safe for centuries. And if Belle's guarding it…" He shoots a sidelong glance Rumplestiltskin's way, not quite landing long enough to catch his eye. "Well, that's good enough for me. Trust me, that dagger's not something you want around anyone for too long. It's…seductive."
"Thank you, son," Rumplestiltskin murmurs.
Emma says nothing.
The silence stretches, turned awkward, damaging. There's something he should be saying. He can tell that it's there, but the specifics of it elude him. He licks his lips, tries not to jar his chest as he turns in his seat to face Bae.
"Bae," he starts.
"Looks like that's the town line up ahead," his son says.
At first, there's nothing. Just an excuse to forestall whatever Rumplestiltskin might have tried to say. But after a moment, Rumplestiltskin sees it.
The last time he was here, it was as dark as it is now. The orange spray paint delineating the barrier is invisible from this side, but as soon as their vehicle passes the sign welcoming them to Storybrooke's confines, Rumplestiltskin catches the splash of garish paint behind them. Magic floods his system, revitalizing him, sharpening his senses, waking him from what feels like a dull haze.
"Stop the car," he blurts.
"What?" Bae frowns at him.
"Stop the car!"
The brakes screech and even before they've come to a complete halt, Rumplestiltskin's opening the door. He slides to his feet, wincing when his cane comes down an instant too late, and with a wave of his hand, banishes the wound in his chest. Though he doesn't miss the pain, he allows himself a second to mourn the stitches placed there by his son's hand. And then he has no more time to spare for it because the figure he caught sight of sitting on that welcome sign has stood up.
"Rumple?" she says.
"Belle." The name slips from him like air, like his soul, flying between to reach her before his limping steps can make it back to her. She takes a step toward him, then another, then she's running, and the shawl is sliding down his arms as he holds them out in invitation to her and—
And she's there. In his arms. She's holding him tight and he's clinging to her with everything he is, and the shawl is caught between them—and this is where he belongs.
"Belle," he whispers into her hair. "I have a question for you."
She laughs, her whole body quivering against him, and then she draws back just far enough to tilt her face up. There she waits, expectant, her eyes gleaming bright against the dark.
"Will you give me your forever again?" he whispers.
"Every forever," she says. Before he can do more than incline his face toward her, she goes up onto her toes and kisses him.
He's so dangerous for her. Pan and Cora and Regina and Hook and who knows how many others, all more than ready and twice as willing to go through her to get to him.
But he's even more dangerous without her. And she chooses him. She wants him. And that…that has to be enough.
"I love you," he gasps into her mouth, and swallows her tears with his joy.
"Oookay," Emma says. Neal shares her discomfort. Some childlike part of him thinks he could have gone centuries more without seeing his papa locked in an embrace with a young, beautiful woman who's even shorter than him. But a wiser, more adult part is mesmerized by the sight of the couple twined together.
There's never been much time for thoughts of true love in Neal's life. When he was a kid, he and Papa were far more concerned with getting enough to survive than they were with rumors of love powerful enough to transcend magic. Nice stories, sure, but not really relevant to their hand-to-mouth reality. And in Neverland…well, love in all its forms is anathema to that place.
Here, he did think, for a little while, that maybe, just possibly, true love could exist even in a world without magic.
But he messed that up.
Still, he is from that other land. He does inherently recognize the power bound up in two souls merging irretrievably. He thinks of Belle telling him that his papa turned away from her kiss for his sake, and feels…he's not sure what. Something warm and liquid flowing through his veins like melted gold, transforming him into something new.
"Okay," he says, reluctantly turning his back to the unlikely beauty and the beast. "You think they're going to be ready to get to town anytime soon?"
"Uh…" Emma says, her gaze going past him.
When Neal turns, it's to see his father leading Belle toward him. With her hand curled over his left elbow, with their steps matched so carefully, she looks as if she belongs. Which is strange, given any time to think. She's too young for him. Too good for him, more than likely. Too pure, too innocent, too nonmagical, too anything and everything.
Except that Neal can't help but remember who Rumplestiltskin used to be. Before the curse. Before everything. And that man…well, the part of him that's still Baelfire thinks that man deserved a lot more than he ever got. Maybe, if Belle had been alive back then, they would have looked just as natural walking together.
Besides, it must be a family trait to love someone too young and too good and too beautiful for them.
"Bae," Rumplestiltskin says in that tender tone he uses only with him. "I want you to meet Belle. Belle, this is my son. This is Baelfire."
Well, he used to only use it with Bae. Now, it seems he uses it for this stranger too.
"Hey," Neal says awkwardly. "We talked on the phone, actually."
She smiles at him, and Neal wants to take a step away. That smile is friendly, sure, and pretty, and nice. But it's also a little too wanting. Too knowing. When Belle looks at him, she doesn't see Neal. She doesn't see him at all. When she looks at him, she sees Rumplestiltskin's son.
And why wouldn't she? That's how she knows him. It's the only reason she knows about him at all.
But it's uncomfortable. It's disconcerting. Neal's spent decades eradicating every remnant of Baelfire. Now that he's finally almost used to his papa seeing that old ghost of him, here comes a new person to unearth even more of that little boy he left behind so purposely.
"Baelfire," she says, "it's so nice to finally meet you in person. Thank you for getting the shawl back and bringing Rumple home again."
"Uh, yeah, sure." Neal swallows bile at the thought of Tamara. Her cold words. Her lethal intent. Her dead eyes. He tells himself it was worth it, and maybe if Belle keeps looking so happy as her spare hand strokes the sides of that shawl hanging down his papa's chest, he'll be able to believe that one day.
But not today.
"I'm just glad we didn't end up needing that blood after all," he says with a forced smile.
"I thought you said Belle was guarding the dagger," Emma asks abruptly. "How is her being here alone in the middle of the night safe at all?"
"Ms. Swan," Rumplestiltskin says with overly correct pronunciation that allows him to draw his lips back from his teeth, "you seem entirely too fixated on learning the location of my dagger. Should I be worried?"
"Stop it!" Neal says harshly. "Come on, Emma's done nothing but help you these past twenty-four hours."
For some reason, Emma flinches at this.
Rumplestiltskin gives her a thin-lipped smirk. "Is that so?"
"Don't be like this!" Neal cries. He steps between Rumplestiltskin and Emma, searching in this man's face for something, anything, to remind him of their quiet conversation in the car. He's never spoken to his father like that before, never heard so many truths unveiled before, and even if he's still angry, still not sure he can fully forgive, he…he liked it. He doesn't want to lose that. "Come on, just…let's just go get your dagger, okay?"
It's the only thing he can think to do.
But he doesn't think it comes out right.
It must not. It can't. Because Papa's not looking at him anymore. His eyes are locked on the ground, his hands tight over his cane, and Belle looks to be the only thing holding him up.
"Very well, son," he says. "Let's go."
"Where to?" Neal asks when they're all in the car. He very pointedly does not let himself feel anything at all about the fact that Rumplestiltskin climbed into the backseat with Belle, leaving the front for Emma. Henry looks between them all, missing nothing.
"The library," Rumplestiltskin says.
Neal rolls his eyes. "Why am I not surprised?"
"I'm surprised," Emma says, her voice low as she leans toward him. Henry, hanging over the seat, includes himself in the conversation, while Belle slides right up against Rumplestiltskin and whispers something in his ear. "How is that a hiding place? If Cora knows anything about Belle, she'll look there first."
"There's a false trail with clues to lead away again," Belle says. "Which they've been following. I've been able to track their progress the entire way. They're not anywhere near the library. Right now, they're digging up a hole to nothing out in the southern part of the forest."
"That's smart," Neal says despite himself.
"Yes," Belle replies, a hint of sharpness ever so light in her tone. "We thought so."
By the time they pull up to the library—an imposing building in the center of town, topped by a clock tower that Neal is relieved to see ticking—he's not sure this was a great idea.
"Who is this Cora?" he asks before anyone can get out of the vehicle.
"She's the Evil Queen's mother," Emma says. "She's pretty powerful with her magic, and from what I understand, she doesn't have a heart."
"She ripped it out herself," Rumplestiltskin says softly, and Neal's stomach tightens.
Hadn't his father said something about that in his apartment? Oh, yeah, he did. He implied, heavily, that she ripped it out rather than love Rumplestiltskin.
"And now she wants to control you so she can manipulate her daughter and do whatever she wants," Emma says. "So we should really get going."
"That's all she wants?" Neal asks. He turns in his seat to face his father. "Just to control you?"
"I imagine she would rather take the power for herself," Rumplestiltskin says.
Emma slams her car door as she heads toward the library, Henry right on her heels. Rumplestiltskin takes his time getting out of the car, and then he turns to help Belle down. It's an archaic gesture that makes Neal look away.
"Wait." Neal pulls his father up short. Belle stops with him. She doesn't look as if she's willing to let go of Rumplestiltskin for anything. "Won't Cora have some way of knowing that you're back in town?"
"More than likely." He hesitates, then admits, "She does know I went looking for you. She actually helped me—all the better to get me out of town so she could see to her own goals unimpeded."
"And she knows you know she's coming after the dagger."
"I do believe you have the basics down. Is there a point to this?" Swerving around Neal, Rumplestiltskin makes for the door into which Emma and Henry have already disappeared.
"I don't think we should do this," Neal blurts out.
"Do what?" Rumplestiltskin asks. His hand is on the door, he's pulling it open, gesturing Belle ahead of him—but Belle doesn't move. She meets Neal's gaze, and very gently, she says, "What do you mean, Baelfire?"
"There's no way Cora's not watching, not if she has magic and wants the dagger. We're leading her straight to it."
"Yes," Rumplestiltskin says.
Belle jerks and stares at him. "What?"
"Trust me," he tells her lowly. She doesn't look happy, but she nods.
"I don't get it," Neal says. "Why are you okay with endangering yourself like this?"
"You'll see," his father says.
Then he strides into the library. Neal follows at a distance, every step begrudging.
"You okay?" Emma asks him.
"No," he says. "I don't like this."
She looks puzzled, but nothing seems able to stop his father, who leads them up a staircase, past a landing with a door, and into the clocktower. Neal looks all around, but there's nothing to see. A bare platform, the clock in reverse, and the capped dome roofing them.
"Where is it?" Emma demands. "If this is one of your tricks, Gold—"
"No trick," he says.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, the clock chimes through the cavernous space with an echo. The sound is inordinately comforting, but Neal still wishes he were anywhere else.
And then his father removes a pane of glass leading to the clock face, sticks his hand through the gap, and detaches the dagger from the back of the minute hand.
Neal's own hand itches for a sword. He had a nice cuirass in Neverland; for the first time, he wishes he hadn't left it behind. While everyone else seems content to stare at Rumplestiltskin, Neal watches the staircase. Although, if Cora really has magic, she probably won't use the stairs.
And if Pan decides to come himself…there's not one thing any of them can do to stop him. Or at least, Neal doesn't think the Dark One is a match for Pan. Not a Dark One who's also his abandoned son anyway.
"Bae."
The name still packs a punch. Despite his wish to refuse the compulsion, Neal feels himself turning.
His father, divorced from Belle, stands too close to him. In the hand outstretched, offering something to Neal, he holds the dagger that has tormented Neal for centuries.
In Neverland, in the cave he made into the semblance of home, Neal drew endless pictures on the walls to remind himself that there was more to reality than that dark hell. He drew the Darlings, and Big Ben, and Tinker Bell, and even Hook. In a tiny, neglected corner only he could see, and only when he was curled up in a shivering ball under a blanket, he drew a hut, with sheep outside and a spinning wheel inside.
But he never, not once, drew this dagger. August came to him with a picture of it and questions, but Neal never answered. Never said a word. He'd made that mistake already with Hook and he didn't plan on repeating it.
His father let him go and Neal doesn't know that they can ever move past that. But even at his angriest, he'd never wish Zoso's fate on Papa.
"Here, son," Rumplestiltskin says. "I want you to have it."
"What?" Neal's not sure if the word emerges, or if it just hangs there like a marble on his tongue.
"I chose it once over you," his papa says. "But I won't make that mistake again. You can't trust me, and I understand that. So I want you to have this."
"Why…" He has to pause, has to try to swallow, has to work to find moisture enough in his dry mouth to manage it. "Why would I want it?"
A flash of pain flares and then dies in Papa's eyes. "Isn't this why we're here?"
"What?"
"Because if you have it, you don't have to be afraid anymore," Rumplestiltskin says evenly. "You can ensure that I never hurt you again. You can command me to protect your own family."
His papa doesn't have scales anymore. He stares at Bae with that longing look in all too human eyes. His hand shakes like it used to, the dagger quivering between them, and there are no more claws, only a spinner's callouses. And from his neck hangs Bae's old baby blanket, worn and tattered but no more so than when Bae first decided he was too old for it anymore.
"Rumple," Belle sighs behind him. With his cane in one hand and the dagger in the other, they're no longer joined by touch. But she stands right behind him, and there is a sad, knowing look in her eyes as she meets Neal's stare.
What did she tell him over the phone? We both know that if you asked for it, he would hand it over without hesitation.
And here he is, not for the first time, holding that dagger between them as if there's no difference between him and his son. As if handing over his heart, his free will, his life itself, is nothing more than he's already done a thousand times over.
"Please," Papa says. "I choose you."
Neal looks past Rumplestiltskin. Past Belle. Past Emma, even, staring at the tableau with a dawning look of comprehension scrawling slowly across her face. Finally, he lands on Henry. His son, eyes darting between Rumplestiltskin and Neal. He's been through a lot today, and so much more before Neal even knew he existed, but he still looks engaged, interested, concerned.
And Neal imagines what he'd do to keep Henry alive. Innocent. Safe.
He imagines becoming a monster—like he was when he was in Neverland, when he saw no other alternative, and inflicting pain was better than receiving it—and trying to hand his very heart over to Henry.
Would he really want his kid to take it? Would he really put that kind of burden on his own son?
Could he ever trust him that much?"
"This isn't the first time you've offered the dagger to me," Neal says. Very slowly, feeling the full weight of his age, Neal reaches out and, palm-up, cups his papa's hand with his own. "You've never hidden it from me. Or forbidden me to touch it. In fact, once you held it out to me and asked me if I wanted you to die. As if you would have let me kill you."
His papa tries to remain impassive, but Neal knows him too well for that. There's terror there, and for some reason, Rumplestiltskin looks back to Henry too. Then he straightens, meets Neal's gaze, and slides his hand out from between Neal's and the dagger. In an instant, before he can quite comprehend it, Neal's holding the dagger.
Nobody moves. He's not sure anyone is even breathing.
"It's more yours than it is mine," Papa finally says. He's afraid, but he doesn't move. He looks at Neal rather than the dagger. "Just…please. For your sake, son, don't kill me with it. You don't deserve to bear the weight of this curse."
"What does that mean?" Emma asks. She circles around Rumplestiltskin to come up on Neal's left. He should look over at her. Answer her. Try to reassure her. But he can't tear his eyes from the dagger.
It's so small. Light. It's not nearly as heavy as it looks. It'd be so easy to claim it for himself. He could tell Rumplestiltskin never to hurt anyone again. He could remake his father into the hero that led a thousand children from the battlefield. He could force him to be the papa Bae's never stopping missing.
And become the monster himself.
"I don't want this," Neal says, and lets out a huge breath. He holds it back out to Papa. "Please, take it back. I don't want it. I never wanted it."
"Bae…"
"No!" Neal jolts forward to grab his papa's hand and shove the dagger back into his grip. Then, breathing heavily, he stumbles backward. He might have even stumbled right down the stairs if Emma didn't catch him, one hand on his arm, the other on his spine, as she faces Rumplestiltskin side by side with him.
She's here. Still here, even after everything. And maybe she can't tie him to a land without magic, maybe she's magical in her own way, but Neal wouldn't step away from her touch for all the clocks in all the realms.
"Papa," Neal says. He stops himself, closes his eyes, then opens them again, and this time, it's Bae who clasps his papa's—empty—hand, over his cane, and says, "Papa, that's not the way. Thank you, for offering it, but I would never take that from you."
"Oh, but I will," someone says from behind them. Two women, still adorned with fading wisps of red smoke, stand on the landing, both wearing cold smiles. The older of them doesn't spare a glance for anyone except Rumplestiltskin. "Come, Rumple, if you hand it over willingly, no one has to get hurt."
"Mom?" Henry asks. But he's not looking at Emma. He's staring at the younger woman, whose smile fades into horror.
"Henry!" she gasps.
"Well," Rumplestiltskin says, the dagger clasped close in a tight hand. "This just got interesting."