A/N: Big thanks to FanofBttf over on AO3, who probably had no idea that a few comments on a different story of mine would lead to me writing an entirely new story, but once this idea was in my head, I couldn't get it out again! This was such a fun story to write, and I'm so excited to get to start posting it. There are nine chapters in total, all of which are written, and I'll be posting once a week. I'm also currently working on a season 2 sequel, so hopefully I'll be able to start posting that one immediately afterward. I hope you guys love this idea as much as I do!

Disclaimer: Obviously season 1 of OUaT was not written by me, and I don't own any of it. No copyright infringement is intended!

Chapter 1

Emma Swan.

The name reverberates until it fades, swamped by the deluge of memories rising to the surface.

His dagger. The curse. Regina. Magic lessons. Snow White and her Charming husband and their baby. All the magical artifacts safely tucked away in his shop here, on display as if for sale rather than waiting for a rainy day. The Land Without Magic.

Bae.

Rumplestiltskin smiles Mr. Gold's smile at Ruby and slips out into the cold night. His breath steams in the air. One step, two, three, he counts them each until he reaches his car, slips behind the driver's wheel, situates his cane, looks up to make sure no streetlight shines down on him—

And then he collapses. Open palms strike the wheel, the dashboard, his own flesh, while tears stream from his eyes and sobs scrape his throat, and Rumplestiltskin wishes he had his dagger handy so he could draw lines of fire down his own flesh.

He forgot his boy. His precious, beautiful boy, abandoned by him, separated from him, all alone—and Rumplestiltskin forgot him.

How could he have ever thought that was something he should do?

Oh, yes, of course. He forgot (bitter laughter snarls up with his sobs). He's been alone too, abandoned by his parents, separated from the only two women he's ever fooled himself (temporarily) into believing could love him, and lonely for more decades than any mortal has a right to expect. Between Milah and Cora and now, there has been no one. As he swore there wouldn't be. He's a difficult man to love and Bae deserves his entire heart, the whole of his attention. But it's been so long. When crafting the curse, it had seemed…tempting, even desirable, to let those twenty-eight unchanging years pass him by in the blink of an eye.

But Bae didn't get that choice. Bae had to live through them all. Why does Rumplestiltskin deserve any reprieve when this is all his fault?

Twenty-eight years since he's spoken his son's name, and even now he cannot get it to emerge from his gaping mouth.

Rumplestiltskin beats his knuckles bloody against the car door, then calms himself. Checks that his cane is still beside his knee. Starts the car and drives. He should go to his shop. His dagger is there and now that he's awake, he needs to find a better hiding place for it than the safe predictably hidden behind a painting that's not for sale. But as he drives, Rumplestiltskin's mind is filled with well-worn memories he has clung to for eternities.

The small, elastic weight of Bae when Milah first placed him in his arms. The smell of his breath after Milah fed him, when Rumplestiltskin pressed him close against his shoulder and patted his wee back. The time his first steps, taken toward Rumplestiltskin, were interrupted by a fall and Rumplestiltskin's heart had leapt into his throat, but Bae just looked at him with wide, startled eyes and then laughed (he can still hear the echoes of that laugh even in this new land). The feel of his little boy's hand slipping into his when he left the house to tend the sheep, and Bae's tiny little voice insisting on helping; the way he patted each sheep and said 'Take care, lamb.'

One by one, the memories unspool into the car until he is drowning in them. They lap up his waist, his chest, his throat, and even the tiny sipping breaths of air he manages are subsumed beneath the remembered sight of Bae's excitement at making friends for the first time, his delight with the ball Rumplestiltskin painstakingly crafted for him, his easy gratitude for every bit of food Rumplestiltskin managed to eke from their cruel world for his boy.

On autopilot (a word Rumplestiltskin never knew but Mr. Gold does), Rumplestiltskin parks the car and pockets the keys. He takes his cane in hand and steps out into the night, then freezes.

This isn't his shop.

But of course. Mr. Gold is a creature of habit (as are all the inhabitants of Storybrooke, Regina's little toy kingdom). After finishing his rent collections on the first of every month, he always goes home for the night.

It's not really home, of course. How can it be? It was given to him by the Evil Queen because he had the good sense to bargain for a good life (I want comfort—a good life, with all the usual amenities that come with that). But Bae's never stepped foot here, never ran through the rooms, pounded up and down the stairs, left his muddy cloaks (coats) laying everywhere, never eaten at the dining room table or the kitchen counter, never painted the interior with his laughter and the way he looked at Rumplestiltskin and said Papa. Bae's not here and so it's not home.

Rumplestiltskin thinks about getting back into the car and driving to his shop anyway, but… No. Best not. As soon as Regina knows that there is a stranger in town, she'll be on the lookout for any deviations in routine. Wiser for Rumplestiltskin to keep to every bit of Mr. Gold's usual habits.

Slowly, his bones creaking, his muscles protesting as he wades against the tide of returned memories, Rumplestiltskin maneuvers up the steps to the porch. He pulls the keys from his pocket and unlocks the door. Too late, he remembers that he had another stop to make for the rent (the Dark Star Pharmacy, open late for emergencies, and usually dead at this time so that Mr. Gold found some amusement in spicing up Tom Clark's life with a bit of drama in the night hours). He hopes Regina won't notice because now that he's this far, he doesn't think he can make it back down to his car.

He doesn't think he can pretend to be Mr. Gold any longer now that Rumplestiltskin is alive and on fire inside his too-frail body.

The instant the door clicks closed behind him, the deadbolt slammed into place, Rumplestiltskin lets the keys fall to the floor. He feels older than his three centuries, as ancient as if he saw the first dragons hatched from their silver eggs. A chill slides through his veins.

He's here. Here, in the Land Without Magic. After all this time, he's made it.

But he's been here already for twenty-eight years, and seer or no seer, how can his boy still be alive? It's been so long (eternities), and so much has happened in the interim, and what if Bae is just as unrecognizable to Rumplestiltskin as his papa surely is to that hurt and betrayed boy?

"Bae," he whispers.

Finally. Finally, he gets the name out. The one he should have been clinging to every day for the past nearly three decades. 1,461 weeks without his boy's name even gracing his lips. 10,226 days during which he's all but abandoned his boy all over again. Rumplestiltskin's cane slips from his hand and clatters to the floor, and he's seconds from following, his knees giving out, his hand already outstretched searching for a corner to hide in, when he hears a woman's voice from farther inside the house.

"Sweetheart? Is that you? You're early, aren't you?"

Rumplestiltskin freezes. His tears evaporate. The sobs fall back to the pit he keeps them locked within. The shaking of his hands is the only remnant of his visible grief for his son.

"I wasn't expecting you yet," a woman says, and then she reaches the front of the house, walking toward him from the back hallway.

Blinking at her, Rumplestiltskin is assailed by a different form of memories—these ones implanted and false, but still more real than he ever really expected.

"Mrs. Gold," he realizes.

Of course. Right. Mr. Gold is married.

All the usual amenities that come with that, he told Regina, and if this weren't his life, he might congratulate her on her clever means of messing with a consummate lone wolf while still keeping to the letter of their deal.

"Sweetheart?" The woman's brow furrows as she draws nearer. "Are you all right? You don't look well."

Frantically, Rumplestiltskin sifts back through Mr. Gold's memories before finally just surrendering control to the rote actions of his cursed personality (he cannot give into Rumplestiltskin yet; just a bit more pretense).

"Just a passing weakness," Mr. Gold says with a soft smile for his wife. "I'm afraid I wasn't able to get to the pharmacy."

"That's all right, I'll pick up the conditioner tomorrow." Mrs. Gold (Isabel, Mr. Gold knows her as) regards him for another moment before she seems to come to a decision. "Let me help you," she offers, and before he can do more than blink at that offer, she swoops down to pick up his cane, slides it into his right hand, then takes his left elbow. "We'll get you up to bed and I'll bring our tea upstairs, how about that?"

Perhaps Mr. Gold answers. Rumplestiltskin is speechless. His thoughts have scattered in all directions at just the fact that this woman (this young, beautiful, kind woman) is touching him. Helping him. (Not letting go even when she frowns down at the remnants of blood on his knuckles.)

It's the curse. It's the deal he made with Regina. It's just a passing phase of an implanted personality, and once this curse is broken and their true memories are all restored, she will cringe away from him and run as fast as she can and hate him just as well as everyone else in this town.

But for now…for now, she is Mrs. Gold and he is Mr. Gold and she is touching him, supporting him on his way up the stairs (and he doesn't need her support, he's had decades of practice in managing his mangled ankle, but if he leans on her anyway, well, it only helps sell his performance), murmuring gentle encouragement to him.

Mr. Gold is not terribly close to his wife. They have never been overly affectionate, and most days pass with them living generally separate lives and coming together only for a late teatime in the evenings.

Flitting back through Mr. Gold's life, Rumplestiltskin sees (remembers?) that from the moment Isabel French first spoke with Mr. Gold, he was drawn to her. He wanted her. Was fond of her. So he kept coming back to her bookstore, kept buying copies of books he already owned, and all so he could exchange just a few spare words with her a couple times a week. She was the one who eventually asked him to dinner, and bewildered as he was that she'd noticed him at all, Mr. Gold is as much an opportunist as Rumplestiltskin and quickly accepted. When Isabel's bookstore ran into financial problems, Mr. Gold offered to help, and as could be predicted from such a strong-willed woman, she refused, so to ensure she had no other choice than to accept his help, Mr. Gold proposed. He was the most surprised of all when she accepted.

Theirs is no great love affair, Rumplestiltskin thinks, but it is workmanlike and suits the amount of time and creativity Regina bothered to put into his 'life of comfort.' Mr. Gold is happy having someone to come home to (someone who doesn't openly hate or fear or revile him) and Isabel seems content enough with her bookstore never being in the red and a husband who prefers to smile at her over their breakfast table, share a cup of tea with her, and curl up beside her in bed rather than some charming knight overeager to prove his love with grand acts of heroic flair.

"Here we are," Isabel says as she leads him into their bedroom. As soon as he sinks onto the edge of the bed, she excuses herself to go get the tea. "I'll bring up some of your pain medicine, too, shall I?" she asks, but doesn't wait for a reply.

Rumplestiltskin lets her go, though he has no plans on taking those tiny pills. They dull his thinking—what's more, they'd ease his pain, and he doesn't deserve that. Not with Baelfire so newly returned to his mind (but not to his heart; no matter who he is, Rumplestiltskin knows, Bae is always in his heart, even if Mr. Gold had no name for that quiet yearning and so confused it for a general fondness toward a kind bookseller).

Once he's taken off his shoes and socks, Rumplestiltskin looks around the room. Mr. Gold moves them to the closet where he changes from his suit into a silk pair of pajamas that covers him from neck to ankle, then to the bathroom where he sees to all his usual nighttime activities. It's not until they're back in the bedroom that Rumplestiltskin once more begins taking notice. And what he sees is a room that is clearly shared.

Mr. and Mrs. Gold.

They don't have separate rooms. Why don't they have separate rooms?

Oh, yes, of course, because Mr. Gold is as lonely as Rumplestiltskin, but unlike Rumplestiltskin, when given the opportunity to alleviate his solitude, Mr. Gold actually took it.

Rumplestiltskin tucks his hands under his thighs to hide their trembling as he stalls over the question of whether he should get under the covers or find some excuse to move into one of their guest bedrooms. He did say he's sick, after all, and surely a good husband wouldn't want to infect his wife with his germs. Yes, that will do. He'll simply tell this Isabel that it's smarter for him to stay elsewhere, and then, if he never chooses to move back into the master bedroom, well, he doubts she'll complain. From what he can recall, theirs is more a deal for companionship than a true marriage.

And thank everything magic for that small favor. The last thing Rumplestiltskin needs to deal with is some random person from their old world being forced to remember intimate deeds with the Dark One, even if they are fake. The last time he was stupid enough to fall for a pretty face and soft words, he ended up teaching magic to a woman who assumed he was setting her up to defeat him, not to mention signing his name to a contract that didn't give him anything he wanted.

Never again. Rumplestiltskin may not be the smartest of men, but isn't there some saying about fooling him once, shame on you (and he will never shed tears for Milah, not after her sins against Bae), fooling him twice, shame on him (but of all the crimes he has to confess to his poor boy, he thinks Cora is one he will conveniently forget). He won't fall into Regina's trap and let another pretty face distract him from his final days before finally reuniting with his son.

When Isabel enters the room, bumping the door open with her hip since her hands are full with a tray, she finds Rumplestiltskin standing awkwardly in the middle of the room.

"What are you doing?" she asks. "Get into bed, you silly man. You're not going to feel any better if you stand on the cold floor all night."

"I thought…" Rumplestiltskin tears his eyes away from the graceful way in which Isabel sets the tray down on the chest at the foot of the bed and pours their tea. She adds the sugar and milk exactly as he likes it and then offers the cup to him.

"It's your favorite blend," she says, as if that's why he's just standing there, staring at her like an idiot.

Hesitantly, Rumplestiltskin drifts close enough to take the cup from her. His fingertips brush hers and the sudden shock that jolts through him has him starting wildly. She startles too (though probably just because he's acting so differently from the reserved Mr. Gold she expects him to be) and the cup tumbles to the floor between them.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Rumplestiltskin stammers. Or is it Mr. Gold who apologizes? His masks are all being shredded away, held on only by the tips of his fingernails (his claws?), and there is a geyser of grief trying to erupt from him. Awkwardly kneeling, he snatches up the teacup, but then just stares at the tea-soaked carpet. Only when his hands clench around the cup does he feel a jagged edge and realize that the cup isn't whole anymore. "I'm sorry, it's chipped."

After a pause that seems to drag on forever, Isabel says, "It's just a cup, don't worry about it. See? No harm done." And she plucks the cup from his hands to set aside, drops a washcloth from the bathroom over the tea, and then bends to help Rumplestiltskin back to his feet.

Even Mr. Gold can't save Rumplestiltskin now. He stands there dumbly while Isabel bustles around scrubbing the tea from the carpet, taking the tray of tea things back down to the kitchen, and then comes back only to close herself in the bathroom.

Now she surely won't protest when he moves his things into a second bedroom.

Rumplestiltskin snatches up his pillow (no need in trying to make do with a subpar pillow; Isabel's so tiny there's no way she'll need his pillows as well as her own on that massive bed) and begins to limp toward the door.

"What are you doing?" Isabel asks from behind him.

When he turns, he sees her standing in the doorway, the bathroom light silhouetting her form, illuminating gold and copper highlights in her dark hair. Dressed in only a short nightgown, she slides her earrings from her ears and deposits them in a bowl on the vanity. Her feet are bare. He supposes his own are too, but…she's just standing there, without self-consciousness, barely dressed, and her feet are bare…and she's not cowering. Not running. Not doing anything but gently smiling at him (as if she doesn't mind him seeing her so vulnerable).

"Sweetheart, you really are out of it, aren't you?" she says with the suggestion of a laugh in her voice.

Rumplestiltskin tenses. He will not be laughed at, not even by her.

But she just smiles with what he thinks might be fondness (implanted by Regina, he makes himself remember) and shakes her head as she turns down the covers on her side of the bed. No. On that side of her bed.

"I thought I'd sleep in another room tonight," he makes himself say. The lamp on the bedside table is the only light now that she's flicked off the bathroom light, and it casts a warm gold circle around both Isabel and the bed. She looks warm. Soft. And most importantly (most astonishingly) of all, not averse at all to his company.

Of course, she doesn't really know who he is. If she did, she'd be screaming bloody murder and running out of the room so fast one might think she vanished by magical means.

He's going to make Regina pay in blood for this trick of hers.

Isabel blinks up at him. She's already under the covers, propped up on an elbow as she tries to decipher his oddities. And he is acting odd. Mr. Gold's memories tell him that he should already be crawling beneath the blankets, settling himself on his side, spooning up behind his wife, and falling into a fast sleep.

But then, Mr. Gold doesn't have a son to miss. To find. To make amends to. Mr. Gold has only twenty-eight years of a day repeated over and over again, and dim memories of a life he never lived in a Land Without Magic. Mr. Gold, though feared and hated by many, isn't nearly so much of a monster that a woman would condemn herself to either a heartless state, a life with a pirate, or even perhaps to the clerics to cleanse her body of the taint inflicted by being loved by him.

"I don't want to get you sick," he mutters, and turns toward the door, his pillow under his arm.

Better to find another room. There's no way he's going to sleep, not now that he's actually made it to this world that's eluded him for so very long, only months at most away from his son. He's so close he can nearly taste it (and yet so far that it nearly drives him to his knees).

"Sweetheart," Isabel says. "Please. You know I never get sick. Just…come lay down."

"I shouldn't."

He won't. He's already spent twenty-eight years basically ignoring his son. He can't spare another night distracted from his goal.

"Why not?" There's a touch of impatience threading her voice now even as she pats the bed beside her. "You'll feel better if you get a good night's sleep, and you know you only sleep well here."

Beside her? Well, Rumplestiltskin thinks, someone has a high opinion of herself.

(He pointedly ignores all of Mr. Gold's memories that support her assertion.)

"Come to bed," she says, and Rumplestiltskin sucks in a breath.

He said the same thing (though with a wholly different connotation) to Bae. So many times, when Bae was happy playing with their sheepdog, or making a mess of the wool he was meant to be cleaning, or just drawing his little doodles on whatever spare scraps of parchment Rumplestiltskin could rustle up for him. He'd have to cajole and bribe and threaten until Bae would drop whatever amusement distracted him and come to cuddle close in his papa's arms.

Those were the only times, really, when Rumplestiltskin felt that he wasn't failing as a father. As a man. Feeling Bae snuggle close, hearing his breaths even into faint snores, lying beneath the dead weight of whichever limb his boy threw over him, Rumplestiltskin would finally be able to relax, knowing that his son was fed and clean and warm and that he felt safe enough to sleep without care in his papa's arms.

Quite suddenly, Rumplestiltskin's arms feel so empty that it hurts. His chest aches with missing that weight of his boy.

"Bae," he whispers.

Mr. Gold is nearly gone. Soon, any second now, Rumplestiltskin will be the only one left.

"What?" a woman asks, and he's jolted back into the present—to a room that isn't his own, and a house that isn't empty, and a stranger that presumes on an intimacy that isn't real.

But she's here. She's warm. And she's inviting him close.

The guest room will be cold. Dark. Empty. And within its walls, he'll drown beneath the onslaught of three hundred years of darkness and loneliness.

Carefully, daring himself to change his mind (to do the right thing, for once), Rumplestiltskin drifts nearer and nearer the bed. He sees Isabel roll her eyes before she pulls the covers aside for him. He sits. Sets his cane aside. Lifts his legs onto the bed. Lies back.

This is his normal routine. If Regina suspects him at all, she'll go sniffing around the ready-made spy she's placed in his bed, asking if he's been acting strange, different, more like Rumplestiltskin than Mr. Gold. A life of comfort isn't the only thing he ensured in that deal of theirs, but no use in playing his trump card when instead he can buy time and space simply by sleeping in the master bedroom. In his bedroom (he's the one who dealt for it after all, not this stranger).

"There," Isabel says. He stiffens all over when she drapes herself over him, her head resting just over his heart, her arm loosely embracing him. "Isn't that better?"

Milah slept with him like this only a few times. She always ran hot, and more often than not, she'd sleep clear across the bed from him, the blankets all shoved aside so that he'd wake shivering and numb. After he ran, there wasn't even that. Women don't sleep in the same beds as cowards (not unless cursed into it, apparently). Cora and he never shared a bed, not for a whole night. Before he could even think of relaxing into the sleep the Dark One took so rarely, she'd be pushing him aside so they weren't caught together or prodding him for another magic lesson.

But Isabel snuggles close, her chilled nose pressed under his jaw, her hot breaths moist on his throat. She's heavy and warm, and Rumplestiltskin tries to pretend that it is only Mr. Gold's habit that has him curling into her, pulling her close with his arm around her waist (he's awful at lying to himself, but he always tries anyway).

His arms aren't empty. There's a weight pressing him comfortingly down into the mattress.

He's not alone.

She's a stranger, he tries to tell himself. You have no idea who she even is. She could be anyone. She's probably an ally of Regina's. When the curse breaks, she'll hate you. She'll have ammunition to use against you.

None of it matters.

There's a deep ache in Rumplestiltskin's heart, one branded with the name of Bae, but with Isabel's weight and warmth pressed against him, it's endurable. He can make it through tonight. He can see to the last stages of his long plan. His mask, aided by Mr. Gold (who seems lulled into contentment by Mrs. Gold's closeness), can last just a little longer.

"What's really wrong?" Isabel whispers into the night. She never clicked the lamp off; the golden light comforts Rumplestiltskin, who knows exactly what nightmares the darkness can hold. "What happened?"

"Just…a bad day," he murmurs.

She doesn't believe him. He hardly knows this woman, but he can feel the skepticism rolling off of her.

"Did I…" He closes his eyes, and beneath his lids, he sees a baby. A toddler. An energetic boy. A teenager. All of them fated to become fatherless. "Did I ever mention a son?"

Her breath stops, her body tense, before she slowly, so slowly, exhales. "You have a son?"

The feel of his tears sliding down his cheeks makes Rumplestiltskin surrender all control to Mr. Gold, who curls in tighter around the wife he wanted for exactly this purpose and says, "Never mind. It's just been a long day. Tomorrow will be better."

(It won't, Rumplestiltskin knows. But one tomorrow, weeks or months from now, when he's holding his son in his arms again, all of these countless terrible, awful, painful days will be worth it.)

Isabel can't figure her husband out. He nearly gave her a heart attack coming in early the night before, and now that she's prepared for him, planted firmly in the kitchen rather than rifling through the papers in his study, he's late.

Mr. Gold is never late. Or early. Everything he does is calculated down to the last cent, the most crucial second, the smallest detail. He leaves nothing to chance and plans his attacks (which are what all his days and deals and desires amount to, she's long since figured that out) months or even years in advance.

He knows.

The knife in her hand slips and she only narrowly avoids carving a gouge into her finger rather than the carrot she's chopping for no particular reason other than that she wants to look busy (innocently busy) whenever her husband finally decides to come home.

With careful movements, Isabel sets the knife in the sink, sweeps the cut carrot pieces into a Ziploc bag, deposits it in the fridge, and then…just stands there.

"The tea," she says. "He'll want tea."

There are only two things her husband has ever required of her in this marriage, and the first of those is to take tea with him in the evenings. In the beginning, she dreaded the task, certain she'd let something slip that would give her away. But now, nearly a year into their marriage, she actually looks forward to the companionable moments shared with another person.

It's always so quiet in her little bookshop. Sure, she no longer owes any debts on the building and Mr. Gold's money keeps the lights on and the shelves stocked, but without customers, it's a lonely life dusting her bookcases and reading her own wares. (Perhaps that's one of the reasons she latched so firmly onto this plan of hers; if nothing else, it gives her something to do.)

The kettle is just beginning to whistle when she hears the front door open.

"Sweetheart?" she calls out as she deftly removes the kettle from the stove while pulling the tray out of the cupboard with her other hand. "Is that you?"

The silence that greets her is almost as unusual as him being over half an hour late.

"Hello?" she says, a shiver of foreboding creeping down the nape of her neck.

"I'm here," he finally calls back, and Isabel tries not to question her sigh of relief.

"I was starting to get worried," she says loudly, busy setting the tea leaves to steep. "You're lucky I didn't start the tea as soon as I got home today. You'd be drinking a very cold cup."

"I might skip it tonight."

Isabel nearly drops the teacup in her hands. When she looks up, she finds Mr. Gold standing on the threshold, and the last time she saw him this nervous, he was proposing marriage. She'd dropped more than a teacup then.

"No tea?" she asks. Her hand tightens over the cup in her hands, and at the feel of a sharp edge, she realizes it's the same cup her husband chipped last night. She doesn't mean to sound so shaken, but in their ten months of marriage, they haven't missed a single night. "Are you still not feeling well?"

"I'm fine." He waves a hand (she can't help but follow the motion, trying to see if there is more blood, more scabs, across his knuckles), his eyes drifting past her to something over her shoulder. Isabel looks, but there's nothing there, just the kitchen cabinets. "But like you said, I'm a bit late today."

"Something came up at the shop?" She tries not to sound too interested, looks down to arrange the milk and sugar on the tray to hide how intently she waits for his answer.

"No, nothing like that. I merely stopped by the mayor's to wish her luck in her newest endeavor."

"Oh? Is Regina campaigning for something new already?"

Mr. Gold's smile is thin and threatening (everything that Isabel remembers so clearly he is when he isn't actively in the room with her). "Apparently, there's a stranger to town—little Henry's birth mother. I'd say Regina's vehemently opposed to her staying."

"Isn't that the adoption you arranged?" Isabel asks as casually as she can manage.

But Mr. Gold is already turning away. "I have a few things I need to look over in my study. Don't wait up for me."

He knows!

Isabel swallows hard and quickly pulls her hands down to her sides so the counter will hide their trembling. "All right. You're sure you don't want tea?"

If he pauses, it is so slight she can't catch it. "Quite sure. Like I said, don't wait up."

It's bizarre how much this throws off Isabel's whole night. She tosses the half-steeped tea, puts the china in the cabinet out of sheer habit (later, she remembers she should have thrown out the chipped cup), and then finds herself standing stock-still in the hallway down which are two doors: her husband's study and the library in which they usually take their tea.

Isabel thinks about going into the library anyway. She's midway through a fascinating retelling of Beauty and the Beast, and without Mr. Gold's breathing and sipping and few conversational forays into their separate days, well, she might be able to finish it. (And if she's right across from the study, she'll hear if her husband makes any phone-calls, or gasps in realization that his papers aren't precisely as he left them, or simply decides, solely for the sake of helping her out, to monologue aloud about what exactly is wrong with him.)

But for some reason, she drifts upstairs instead. It seems she blinks and she's in her nightgown, blinks again and she's brushing out her hair in front of her vanity, a third time and she's settling into bed.

It feels wrong. The sheets are chilled, for one thing, and as much as Isabel snugs the blankets around her shoulders, she can't quite get warm. And she never realized before how big this bed is. And the room is suffocatingly quiet.

A sudden thought strikes her, and Isabel sits bolt-upright in the bed.

If he does know…then he must want to nullify their deal. But Mr. Gold would never do such a thing, it goes against the reputation he's so carefully cultivated, so what if he's trying to force her to break the terms of their agreement?

Two things her husband asked of her, and she vowed to do them both (no matter her personal feelings about him).

Take tea in the evenings with him.

And sleep beside him in a shared bed every night.

Isabel feels a rush of defiance. She won't let him get away with calling her a deal-breaker.

Rehearsing her angry insistence in her head, Isabel shoves on her robe and pads down the stairs to his study. She'll insist on making him tea, and then she'll drag him up to bed if necessary. Then they can both get a good night's sleep and tomorrow, everything will be back to normal (and he won't know, he won't find out, he won't ever learn what she's been doing).

But she doesn't get further than pushing the door an inch open before she freezes at the sight before her.

Her husband, crumpled on the floor in a dark corner, his battered hands over his face—

Weeping.

She thinks he says something (a single-syllable word), and maybe this is exactly what she's been waiting for (maybe this will make all her sneaking around, her sacrifices, worth it), but Isabel has already backed away, is already turning back to the stairs, is fleeing to their bedroom, pulling the covers over her head, and huddling in a tight ball.

Mr. Gold is crying. Right now. Downstairs. In his study. (It's like a twisted version of a Clue game: Mr. Gold in the study with an emotional breakdown for the win.)

The same man who thought exchanging ten words with her every two to three days was tantamount to a confession of pining. The very man who used her business woes as a means of leveraging a marriage out of her. The husband who stopped her (after all her efforts screwing up her courage to do it in the first place) from taking off her nightgown on their wedding night and told her he only wanted to sleep with her in his arms.

The most emotion she's ever seen Mr. Gold betray before is the soft smile he grants her over his teacup. Until now.

Downstairs. Right now. Her husband is sobbing like a child. Like he's lost something he can never get back.

He knows, she thinks, and for the first time, instead of fear, she feels regret.

He never does come upstairs to bed. And Isabel doesn't get a single wink of sleep.