As soon as there is even the barest hint of light in the sky, just enough to quantify as morning, Rumplestiltskin sneaks into the bedroom where Isabel sleeps. He very carefully does not look in her direction, and lingers only long enough to layer himself in the thickest suit he owns. In the bathroom mirror, his eyes glance over his face without seeing it to land on his tie—perfectly centered—his pocket square—just the right splash of color peeking into the open—and then to his cuffs, which he straightens compulsively. For the first time, he misses the scales. The rotting teeth. The talons and the wild hair and the inhuman eyes (anything to keep everyone just that bit further away from him).
His hand is on the front door when Isabel comes hurrying down the stairs. "Sweetheart," she calls breathlessly.
Rumplestiltskin needs only one quick look to know that she didn't even take the time to grab a robe, that her hair is mussed and her eyes wide and her hand reaching—
He yanks the door open as if he didn't hear her. Didn't see her.
"Don't run away from me!" she cries.
(Coward, Milah taunts him.)
The door slams behind him.
He's barely inside his shop when his phone rings. Pinocchio. Daring to call him—as if they are allies rather than lifelong enemies made in the lie of shared blood.
Rumplestiltskin makes a call of his own to ensure that Pinocchio's father will be there at the shop at the exact moment the wooden liar is, then tells himself that he is his usual self (not dry and brittle and fragile, a sparse collection of frail limbs and rusty joints all held together by the stiff lining of his suit) when he watches the father and son come face to face for the first time in a lifetime.
"Trust is a big ask," he tells the puppet (tells his students, his son, everyone since that beggar on the road, or the wife who left him with a lie, or his father who took his gift and turned it into a terrible weapon).
But he wants the curse broken, so when his manufactured savior comes to call, Rumplestiltskin ensures he is there with a listening ear, and an excuse to send her on to Pinocchio. And since she is doing him a favor, whether she'll ever know it or not, he does his best to spur her on with what truths he can.
"The only certainty is that Henry would suffer. You can't do that to your boy," he tells her.
Because that's what power does—even power taken on to save a child—it hurts and causes suffering and leads to greater separations than any parent can truly comprehend beforehand.
"I'm afraid I'm just simply not the man to help you beat Mayor Mills," he concludes, but she is as deaf to subtle truth as her parents, and blows right past all the qualifiers in that sentence.
(He's a monster, not a man; he will not need help to defeat Regina; he cares nothing for Mayor Mills, but everything for the Evil Queen who thought she could use a loophole to foist some unsuspecting wife onto him.)
"No," Emma says, all bristling disappointment and scathing rebuke, "you're not."
That makes him bridle, but she storms away (she is her father's daughter, he thinks ruefully), and what does it matter? The heroes never have interest in the monster aside from when they need him.
That night, after arguing with himself for too long, Mr. Gold calls Isabel and tells her something's come up and he won't be home that night.
"I really want to talk to you about something," she says. "Please, sweetheart."
"Maybe tomorrow," he says, and hangs up before she can tempt him back to that place he let himself think could be a home.
The next morning, dressed in the spare suit he keeps at the shop, he tells himself that this is for the best. Isabel is too much of a distraction (he considered, even if just for a second, delaying his search for his son for her, and that, he cannot let stand). Better for them both if he end this farce here and now. After all, the curse will be broken soon—as evidenced by the rotten apple Regina slams down on his counter.
"You think this is funny?" she demands when he mocks her. "Well, I'll tell you what I think. I think it's a sign of the curse weakening because of Emma. But do you care? No, you're content to just sit back and play house with that toy doll I gave you while all my hard work burns."
His eyes narrow, the deadness that's taken up residence inside him since the man he thought was his son wielded his dagger now transforming into anger. But he's been playing this game a lot longer than the young queen, and so he deflects her attention from Isabel to her son.
Well. Emma's son.
It isn't until Regina suddenly gasps, her eyes flying wide open as she blurts, "You want the curse broken. Why?" that Rumplestiltskin lets his careful apathy fall away. In its place, there is anger. There is fierce passion. There are centuries worth of patience coming to an end, a single frayed thread away from snapping.
"That's not something I care to discuss," he hisses.
If she were a wiser woman, Regina would back off then. But she is bullheaded and shortsighted and a hundred other things he encouraged in her to produce the perfect spellcaster, and so when she suggests a new deal, Rumplestiltskin turns his back on her.
"Unfortunately for you," he says," a deal requires two interested parties. And I'm already planning a trip."
"I'll give you anything," Regina says. She steps forward, directly into his path, her dark eyes filled with desperate calculation (a desperate soul, he recognizes it immediately, but there are none more desperate than him). "That little wife of yours. I can make her permanent. I can turn her into anything you want her to be. I've done it before, I can do it again. You want to leave? I'll help you find a way and I'll make it where she can come with you."
The shop blurs into a haze around him. All Rumplestiltskin can see is the woman (the Evil Queen) standing in his way, threatening to twist and manipulate and erase and tinker with the only woman who's ever managed to combine kind and good and sweet and brave into a single, compelling soul. He should kill her. He should reach out and pluck her heart and enact one of her earliest lessons all over again.
(But she is Cora's daughter, and once, in his imaginings of the future, she was his, and she brought him to a Land Without Magic, to his son, when nothing else could, so…so she will live.
For now.)
"Ah, ah, ah," he warns in a sing-song voice that has her drawing away from him instinctively. "We already discussed this. You are not to mess with my things."
"But I—"
"Get out," he says, lowly. "Please."
As her hand reaches for the door, he says, "One last piece of advice, dearie, free of charge. I'd plan a trip of your own. Because once people waken up and remember who you are—and what you did to them…they are going to be looking for blood. And none more so than whatever poor soul you made into Isabel Gold."
He shouldn't. He knows he shouldn't. He knows it so well that he delays until long after she'll have already gone to bed and fallen asleep with the lamp on. But Rumplestiltskin has always been weak (even with power, he is still that crippled spinner somewhere deep inside), so he finds himself locking the pawnshop, driving a familiar route, opening the door with the stained glass inserts, ghosting up the steps to the bedroom where, sure enough, Isabel sleeps. Her arm rests over the spot where he usually lies, as if she searches for him even in sleep.
Because Regina programmed her to.
She's not real. She's never been real.
And even knowing it, there is a weakness inside him that craves her closeness. He longs to climb into bed, drape her arm over his chest, turn his face into her hair, and pretend that it's all real.
(But anything that seems too good to be true…is.)
By the time he finally forces himself to move, it's nearly dawn. Rumplestiltskin locks himself in the bathroom to take a shower and dress himself. Mr. Gold, he names himself in the mirror, but the remnants of that cursed personality are woven through him too finely for him to pick apart the differences anymore. (He wonders if that means Isabel is part of whoever she really is, or if Regina tampered with her too heavy-handedly.)
Unfortunately, he spends so much time debating the useless question that by the time he emerges, Isabel is already awake and downstairs in her dressing gown. For a moment (an eternity, actually), he considers slinking out the front door without facing her (it's not like she's real; it's not like whoever she really is would want to see him), but no, he is better than that (liar!), he is not the coward that let go of his son (liar!), and he can hold himself together long enough to ensure that she sees no weaknesses in him to pass along to whoever it is she is loyal to outside the curse.
"Good morning," Isabel greets him with a pot of tea on the counter between them. There is no smile on her face and her tone is tentative, and if Rumplestiltskin wanted one last morning to say goodbye to his dreams, this is not it.
He nods at her and makes a beeline for the chipped cup already set out for him on the counter.
She takes a deep breath and says, "Sweetheart."
Rumplestiltskin's armor crumples. That endearment, in her voice (implanted there by Regina's cruelty), is enough to crush him all on its own—and he can't let it. Bae is so close. He already betrayed him with that puppet boy, he can't do it again with this mirage placed so distractingly, so purposely, in his path.
"I have to go," he says, and sets the cup down (he can't trust himself with it). He can do without his morning tea. (He'll make do without it, as he has without the kiss to his cheek she'd been making a daily habit before he hid from her like a coward.)
"I need to talk to you."
"I really should go."
"Sweetheart, please—"
"I'll be late tonight too. May not even make it back—"
"Stop running away from me!" she cries, and Rumplestiltskin feels the crack, jagged and sharp and in danger of widening with every breath, that splits his chest in two.
He whirls on her, wild and feral and more Dark One than pawnbroker (more real monster than façade of husband). "Oh, I'm not running, dearie!" he snarls. "I simply don't have the time to waste on you. There are more important things—more important people—that deserve my attention."
Her eyes widen. He's never seen this look on her face before (he thinks, for the first time, she is seeing the beast that everyone else already knows him to be).
Satisfied (he is, of course that's what he's feeling, what else would it be?), he turns to go.
"I found the papers in your shop," she says. She sounds brash and defiant. Like a hero confronting a villain. Like a knight facing a dragon. (She sounds nothing at all like a wife talking with her husband.)
(And she isn't. She isn't, she isn't, she isn't, this is all just pretend and the curse is crumbling and none of this is real and she was never his to keep.)
"You…" Slowly, afraid that if he moves too quickly, he will fall to pieces, Rumplestiltskin swivels in place to face her. His cane is poor barrier between them, but all he has. "Oh, I see. I knew this was all a trick. I knew you could never truly care for me."
"You're looking for a child," she says over him, her words tumbling out of her mouth like they've been trapped there for…for how long? A little over a year? All this time? The whole time? "A son. But…you don't have a son. There aren't any records of you having a child at all."
"Is this all you?" he demands. "Or is this her too, pulling your strings?"
Isabel is so brave. So stalwart. Every inch the champion intent on killing the beast and saving the town. She steps forward, her hand reaching for him (a beautiful lie). "Is…is this why you dealt for Ashley's baby? Is it…is it why you married me? Are you just trying to cobble together some mimicry of a perfect family?"
The accusation, gently spoken, stings like acid. Like dragon fire. Like a curse rooting itself deep in his bones, transmogrifying his skin, tainting his thoughts, blackening his heart.
"You liar," he hisses. He rips his hand from hers, the force of it knocking her back a step. "Don't you dare talk to me about playing a part!"
"This isn't the way!" she insists (she's not running; Regina wouldn't have let her creation take any escape). "I could help you. You don't have to buy a baby, or steal a kidnapped child, or—"
"Shut up!" he shouts.
Bae is his. He's his. His son, his precious boy, his baby.
His hands close around her arms.
(Dark One, the man he thought was his son called him. I command thee. A dagger wrapped in his hands. A lie wrapped in his tempting deception.)
"Shut the hell up!" he cries again, and she's shaking in his arms, he's spitting in her face as the dream shatters into a nightmare.
(Papa, a boy said, and Rumplestiltskin believed him because he wanted to, but it was all a lie, and he's not a desperate soul anymore, he doesn't make deals he doesn't understand, he will not be deceived ever again with a heartless love—and Isabel Gold is nothing more than an evil curse in a beggar's disguise.)
"You think I don't know why you're really here?" he asks this trick (this snare, this beautiful woman who could never love the truly ugly man he is, not outside a curse…not even inside one). "You think I don't know why you married me? You think you can seduce me and trick me into being weak?"
"No, sweetheart, that's not—" She's still reaching for him, still trying, still pretending.
"Stop calling me that!"
She won't flinch. She won't cower. She won't have mercy on him.
So he does instead.
He pushes her away. Lets her go. Tears himself free of her. (Removes her fragile flesh, her frail bones, far from the fists his hands insist on curling into.)
"Why won't you listen to me?" she cries.
"You only married me so you could destroy me," he says.
He wishes he didn't. He wishes it could have remained forever unspoken. Mr. Gold certainly never bothered to think of it past his suspicions. And even Rumplestiltskin, once he remembered himself, did nothing beyond confirm those muted suspicions.
But he has to get her away from him. He has to end this nightmare before it utterly destroys him.
So he speaks the truth for them both.
"No," Isabel says, but now her voice is small. Now, she curls into herself. Now, she cannot meet his eyes.
"Yes."
"Please," she says (a beggar, like Zoso, desperate to shift the burden onto him). "Please, just listen. Things change. You said that, remember, and they do! They do change!"
A bolt of lightning pierces his heart. She stands in front of him, his wife, and her hair falls over her eyes, her feet are bare beneath her dressing gown, her hands reach out imploringly toward him—the very picture of a desperate soul.
And desperate souls will do anything.
Rumplestiltskin turns his back on her and stumbles blindly toward his study. She follows him, desperate, pleading, words that pile up between them like gold (precious to so many, but common and useless and nothing to him), words about how they can start over, how she cares for him, how if he only tells her why he wants a child, she can understand. He closes his ears to her, fills his brain with white noise, and fumbles at his desk for his portrait of Bae (a brief glimpse of it all the reminder he needs for why he's doing this: Bae is worth any sacrifice), then for the pile of small papers kept like treasures in his safe.
"Sweetheart." Isabel's hand falls on his shoulder. Her eyes are so blue, rimmed in tears. She's soft and warm and everything he should want (but he wants his son more). "I love you."
Rumplestiltskin throws the papers in her face and spits, "No one can ever, ever love me."
If he were watching her, he'd see her face blanch and crumple as she realizes that the papers are her coupons, so lovingly crafted. Six of them (the six he once so naively thought he'd never use). If he were staring at her, he'd see the hurt bloom in her eyes like bruises on skin. If he were looking at her at all, he'd see it, the instant she gives up on him.
(The curse is crumbling, after all. Real personalities are asserting themselves.)
But he doesn't.
(He's still a liar.)
Instead, as she kneels to the floor to gather up the tickets that guarantee her absence, he walks past her (flees). He strides to the door (runs away). He stops to center his tie, pat his pocket square, straighten his cuffs (put on the mask of man over monster). And then he leaves her (and all his dreams, his foolish, deluded, cursed imaginings) behind.
It's better this way, he tells himself, over and over again. Isabel Gold is a naïve girl who thought that a dangerous man's attention was her ticket to becoming like the characters in her books. As far as he can tell, aside from her mere existence, she's not working for Regina (she still has her heart, after all, rooted deep in her chest), but that doesn't make her innocent. Anyone can betray a beast and still be thought the hero of the story.
Besides, Isabel has only days left to exist. (If he has anything to say about it, and he will, it will be less than six days, before those coupons run out.)
(Not that it matters. There's no chance that Isabel will ever want to speak with him again, coupons or not.)
Rumplestiltskin finds himself in the backroom of his stop, staring at the thousand dead ends piled in neat stacks on his desk. He remembers Isabel standing back here, picking up a broom, taking his hand, giving him that sweet, warm smile as the bell rang over her head.
Lying. The whole time, every bit of it, all a lie.
There's a crack from somewhere outside himself. He likes that (if it's cracking outside, then it can't be his own heart), so he lashes out again. And again. Everywhere he can reach, he strikes out with his cane, with his hands, with his whole (chipped and jagged) heart until he stands, like the eye of a storm, in the center of devastation.
But his eyes are dry. The portrait of Bae is safe inside his jacket. (Isabel's chipped cup is safe at home—no, at the house where he sometimes sleeps.) This will not break him. It will not deter him.
He is still a father, and Bae is still his son, and all of this will be worth it when he once more holds his boy in the circle of his arms (or at least just sees that he is alive and well and safe).
The ringing of his phone disturbs the oasis of calm his violence has bought him. After deliberating over whether he should just smash the phone to pieces, Mr. Gold answers it.
"I thought I might just check up on you," Dr. Hopper says, all pretended boldness and gullible helpfulness.
"No need," he says.
"Oh. Well, the other night, talking about your son, you seemed—"
"It was a mistake," he says. "And I trust this will remain between the two of us."
Then he hangs up over whatever the cricket stammers in reply. He's beyond help. The only thing remaining to him is his search for Bae.
That night, Rumplestiltskin sleeps on the cot in his backroom. Or, well, he lays there for hours hoping sleep will come. Instead, his eyes go dry as he stares up at the ceiling he can't see in the dark. He misses the lamp Isabel leaves on. His nose twitches in search of the smell of her lotion, her shampoo, her tea-soaked breath. His arms are empty and limp, and he doesn't know what he's supposed to do with them when he doesn't have a small, pliant body to wrap around.
Eventually, he gives up. Rolls out of bed, turns on the lights, and sets about cleaning up the mess his backroom has become.
When Dove comes by in the morning to say that Isabel didn't return home either, choosing to sleep on the couch in her store, Rumplestiltskin swallows back the strange lump in his throat (not guilt, that's certainly not what it is, what does he have to be guilty about when she's the liar?) and sends the man to his erstwhile wife with a set of keys.
She might enjoy the cabin, actually. It's cozy. It's solitary. There's a decent collection of books there. And he will be far away. Really, it's more of a gift than he's given…anyone…and though he tries to convince himself she doesn't deserve it, he thinks of whoever she really is waking up to realize she's spent years with the Dark One, forced to endure his touch and listen to his stories and encourage his attentions.
She deserves more than a cabin for a few nights, but it's at least a start. (And if, after the curse breaks, she still chooses to stay there, well, he won't stop her. He'll leave her be. He'll have to. It would be too painful to look at her and see, not Isabel, but whoever's trapped inside.)
Only…the curse doesn't break. Pinocchio doesn't succeed in getting the savior to believe. Neither does her own son (parents are woefully bad at listening to the warnings their children give them).
"Only a matter of time," he murmurs as he rolls out of his sleepless bed and begins to pack a bag. He'll need clothes, money, any item with inherent magic that might be useful in tracking down a missing person. He'll need a passport, a government ID, and thanks to how his accent sounds to people in this world, proof that he's an American citizen. Perhaps he should bring Bae's old things too. Yes, yes, he definitely should. Once he leaves, there will be no reason for him to come back here.
(That will give Isabel all the space she could possibly wish for.)
Every morning, Rumplestiltskin checks his phone. There are never any messages.
He doesn't expect any.
Every time the bell over his door rings, he looks up. It's never Isabel.
He doesn't expect her (she promised him at least six days free of her company, no questions asked).
Dove brings him updates, always the same: Isabel is staying at the cabin, she goes to work, she eats at Granny's but keeps to herself, and aside from packing her own bag when first moving to the cabin, she hasn't returned to their home.
Good. All good. She never found enough on him to cause problems (contrary to what Graham thought, and what so many people in town and in their old world believe, Rumplestiltskin doesn't often deal in babies, and never with the intention of keeping them). Emma doesn't trust Mr. Gold enough to rely on him (not that he wants her to) and she is growing desperate. Every day, the curse grows more and more unstable—as evidenced by the magic he feels Regina expending, far away.
The Evil Queen has grown truly desperate.
Any day now—any minute—the curse will break.
"I'm coming, Bae," he whispers when he receives word that night from his contact at the hospital that Henry's been admitted, the young boy in a coma for no apparent reason. His hand drifts over the spinning wheel he pulled from its dusty storage, and his eyes flutter closed as he pictures his boy once more sitting at his knee. "I'm coming."
(And if, that night, while dozing off after polishing Prince Charming's sword, Rumplestiltskin dreams that Isabel is there too…well, he can't control his dreams and he's well used to disappointment.)
The next morning, fresh off the success of seeing a Savior who believes and sending her forth to slay a dragon, buoyed by the thought of how close he is to his son, Rumplestiltskin tells himself he has time for one final stop before he heads over to the closed library to retrieve the object he sent Emma after. He has one thing left to pack for his departure, and it will take him only a moment to collect.
His ankle twinges as he makes it up the steps of the front porch, and his hand shakes when he goes to unlock the door. Though he reminds himself that Isabel isn't here, it doesn't seem to penetrate his attack of nerves.
And little wonder. Just the sight of the hallway, as the front door swings open, takes him back to that morning nearly a week ago. He can see Isabel falling back from him. He can feel her arms, so thin and breakable, in his grip. He can't forget the pale, dejected hurt that made her movements so slow as she collected the coupons from the floor.
It shouldn't matter. She's a stranger hiding beneath a curse. She's a contrived personality set like a spy in his home, looking for weaknesses, for proof of crimes, for anything she can use to see him sent to prison, his dangerous presence safely locked behind bars on behalf of the town that treats her like a ghost.
Leaning heavily on his cane, Rumplestiltskin makes his way back to the kitchen. His chipped cup still sits there, on the counter, as if nothing has changed. As if he might still turn and see Isabel coming into the kitchen with a smile on her lips and a sweetheart floating between them.
Carefully, afraid of his own jaggedness, Rumplestiltskin reaches out and wraps his hand around the cup. His thumb traces the familiar ridge of that chip, already worn smooth by the repetitive movement he's made a thousand times, usually while listening to Isabel tell him about whatever book she's reading, or ask him what his favorite dessert is, or just breathe while she reads, content to be in his presence (wanting nothing from him, expecting nothing of him, blaming him for nothing).
His hand tightens over the cup, and breathless with terror, he lets go of it entirely until he can pull himself back together. Then he scoops it up, wraps it in his pocket square, and deposits it in his coat pocket.
There. Done. Now he's ready to leave town after Bae as soon as he's brought back magic enough to ensure he can head straight from here to wherever his son is, like an arrow loosed from a bow with unerring aim. He's so close, he feels lightheaded.
Rumplestiltskin turns, then comes to a halt at the sight of Isabel standing in the doorway between him and escape.
"Sweetheart," she says. "We need to talk."
When her husband's hired man comes to deliver a set of keys and printed directions to a cabin in the woods, Isabel isn't sure whether to break down in sobs or explode into incandescent rage. So she does nothing. She stays at her store until closing time, she balances the till, locks the door, gets into her car…and then sits there, motionless, caught between two extremes.
She's not proud of herself, exactly, for avoiding the situation by staying in her store the night before. But then, she's not proud of how she contributed to the situation either.
Are you just trying to cobble together some mimicry of the perfect family?
(The accusation doesn't sit right with the memory of him crying in a corner of his study. Did I ever mention a son?)
Her hand turns the ignition. Her car's engine turns over. And Isabel drives.
She's not even surprised when she turns the car off and realizes she's parked at home. But her husband's car is gone, and she imagines he's probably hiding at his shop (the way she's been hiding at her bookstore).
"Do the brave thing," she tells herself, and she heads into the house.
The sight of his little chipped cup, that banged up piece of chinaware he refuses to let her throw away (that he touches so gently, handles so reverently), breaks her. Isabel crumples to the floor, her face hidden in her hands, and feels her tears eke out between them as her sobs echo through the empty house.
They were so close. So close to building something extraordinary. And now it's all ashes and rubble at her feet.
Slowly, moments or hours later, Isabel stands. She feels drained and empty, and even though it's dark outside, she's certain there's no danger of running into Mr. Gold. He won't come back. Not if there's even the slightest chance that she'll be there.
And she promised him she wouldn't be.
Clutching at her pocket where she keeps the crinkled, torn coupons he threw at her, Isabel swallows and forces herself to be strong.
No one can ever, ever love me! The desperate cry echoes through the halls, leading her toward the library where they've taken tea together so many times.
She wonders if they'll ever enjoy peach pie again.
Hurrying up to the bedroom, Isabel retrieves a suitcase and throws in everything she thinks she might need for six—no, five now—nights away from home. She promised him space and distance, no questions asked, for as long as the coupons last. But as soon as their promise is fulfilled…if she wants to…
Isabel's arm jolts against the doorframe as she stumbles through, and a dull ache starts up where he gripped her tighter than he ever has before. She was afraid to look, the night before, whether there were visible bruises. She doubts there are (she doesn't bruise easily). He shook her, he shouted at her, but he let her go and walked away before anything else could happen. Still, the memory stings.
I simply don't have the time to waste on you.
With her suitcase in hand, Isabel leaves the house, locking the door firmly behind her, grateful for the cover of darkness (no matter what this fight really turns out to be between her and her husband, minor altercation or life-destroying argument, she doesn't want to give the neighbors anything to chew up in the rumor mill).
It takes her a few wrong turns and worrisome moments, but Isabel makes it out to the cabin. The last time she headed for it, she was intent on proving her husband innocent (while still fearing him guilty). But instead of reaching its dubious shelter, she turned back and stumbled into the pawnshop instead.
Their anniversary. One year of marriage.
All founded on a lie.
I knew this was a trick.
Isabel swallows down more sobs as she wrestles her suitcase up to the cabin door. The key slides in easily enough, and soon, she's sheltered from the dark by the fire that's already laid and waiting only for the match she lights with a single stroke.
It's a tiny, cozy place. A rug over the wood floor, a comfortable couch, the crackling fire, a tiny kitchen area where (she has no doubt) Dove has ensured there will be food and tea and whatever else she might need out here. Her husband is many things, and can be accused of more, but above all, he is thorough.
Though it seems to require all her energy, Isabel manages to heat up some soup and make herself a cup of hot chocolate (she reaches for the tea out of habit, but a fresh round of sobbing drives her to the chocolate powder instead). Wrapped in a blanket, warm and exhausted but unable to close her eyes, Isabel huddles in a corner of the couch and tries to think this through.
Her husband has secrets.
Well, he's always had secrets. She's known that since even before she met him in person. If she expected anything differently, that's on her. (He could have told her, could have confided in her, but she thinks of how hard it was to extract his favorite dessert from him, how tentatively he accepted that offering of brownies and ice cream, and knows that it isn't quite as simple as all that.)
Her husband mediated an adoption, then let it go when it looked to be forcing a mother away from her child.
Seeing as Ashley's (maybe) coerced signature on this deal is what got her into this whole thing in the first place, Isabel thinks this should be the crux of everything. But it isn't. The truth is, adoptions are handled in a multitude of ways, many of which involve money, almost all of them legal via complicated loopholes, and for all Mr. Gold's underhanded dealings, she has no doubt that an investigation would reveal every t was crossed, every i dotted.
Which means that she married him for all the wrong reasons. A bunch of papers about children who haven't been reunited with their families doesn't exactly scream mob business, or even any crime at all.
So why is her husband looking for a specific boy?
Because he is. He has to be. If he wanted a son, there's no reason he couldn't procure one for himself, just as he did for Mayor Mills a decade ago.
Isabel thinks of their argument in the kitchen (what seems a million years ago), remembers how she accused him of wanting to steal a kidnapped child, and nearly spills the last of her hot chocolate as her entire body shudders.
She shouldn't have confronted him like that, not when he was so closed off already, retreating out the door (scared, she thinks). She should have been kinder about it.
But then…he could have been kinder too.
I simply don't have the time to waste on you. There are more important things—more important people—that deserve my attention.
It's not like he's wrong, exactly. Mr. Gold is a vital part of this town, his fingers in almost every important pie there is, while Isabel…well, hardly anyone even knows she exists, and if her bookstore were to close tomorrow, no one would even notice. But she thought…she'd thought he saw her as important.
Isn't that why he kept coming to her store to see her? Isn't it why he offered his proposal? Why did he marry her at all if he thinks her worth so little?
But then, she already knows the answer, doesn't she?
He's lonely. All he asked of her was shared tea and chaste companionship at night. And in return, Isabel married him with a lie.
You think I don't know why you're really here? You think I don't know why you married me? You think you can seduce me and trick me into being weak?
The night is long and morning comes under protest. The sun peeks through the plaid curtains to reveal Isabel still awake, still staring at the dying embers of the fire. The thought strikes her that she should get up and go open her store, so she does (out of habit, because that's all that powers Storybrooke, it seems to her).
Nobody comes. Isabel knows better than to expect anyone (certainly not her husband, come with a rose, or a bouquet of carnations, a dark red blossom to signify romantic love hiding amidst the paler red of affection and fondness). When she heads to Granny's for lunch, she thinks she catches sight of Dove, but she doesn't bother double-checking.
Mr. Gold is possessive, and protective of his things, and she imagines a wife is little different (no matter how much they have hurt each other).
Each evening, she returns to the cabin. On the third night, she finally thinks to search it for any clues or hints to her husband (like she planned to do after Ms. Swan was elected sheriff), but she finds nothing. It's cozy, even comfy now that she's moved from the couch to the bed to sleep, but it's just as empty of personality as anything else of her husband's. Full of secrets (each item here has a story, she's sure), but none that are his.
Except…she saw him, during that awful morning, that tragic argument, when he tore through his study, just before he threw her gift back at her (transformed into a weapon). He lifted a drawing of a boy from some hidden place in his desk she never found. She caught only the barest glimpse, but it was enough.
A drawing of a boy, she thinks. Just like those papers filled with ink spelling out the location of countless missing boys.
Did I ever mention a son?
Gradually, Isabel realizes that she's not even questioning it anymore.
Her husband is a father. Somewhere, there is a boy. A son. Another Gold in the world. And Mr. Gold cannot find him. She knows there's no record of him having been married before (she checked), so perhaps this was a teenage dalliance, or a young relationship that fizzled out. Perhaps he only just recently found out there was a son at all. Is that why he came home that one night, startling her from her snooping through his study, and looked so small and broken and grieving?
All this time, he's been searching. Alone. And he didn't say a word.
On the fifth day at her store, that makes Isabel furious. She has offered him everything, has given him countless chances to confide in her, has promised her help and her support, has stood beside him against the whole of the town—but still he does not trust her.
But then, shelving her latest untouched book, Isabel runs her hand along the smooth honey wood of the bookcases he commissioned for her. Such a thoughtful gift from a man who's truly a husband. While his wife…his wife forgot. She couldn't come up with a single personalized gift. She had to make something up and give it to him late because instead of planning a celebration of their marriage, she was wandering through the woods trying to catch him in a lie.
Is it any wonder he doesn't trust her?
She doesn't really deserve his trust.
Isabel spends the last night he bought free of her in a deep sleep. When she wakes, she finds herself sprawled halfway across the right side of the bed (his side), searching for him even before she fully wakes.
It's funny, she thinks. When she had no choice but to stay away, she pretended that she was deciding whether or not she wanted to go back to him. But now that his six days are up, now that she is free to seek him out, there isn't even a particle of doubt in her mind.
There's been so little in her life worth fighting for, but her husband? He's worth it.
Isabel dresses in her last clean outfit, packs the rest away, loads her suitcase back into her car, and then takes a moment in the dawn light to look back at the cabin. It's been a welcome haven, a tiny refuge as she puts herself back together, and maybe one day she'll come back—if her husband will come with her.
She doesn't let herself turn for her bookstore. There have been enough delays. Enough stalling. She's given him his space, his distance, his time to work things through for himself, and now it's her turn to get what she wants.
It's early enough that she expects him to still be sleeping at his shop, but he's not there. Instead, she finds his car at home. A quick spurt of hope leaps in her chest at the thought that maybe he's waiting for her. Maybe he's been hoping she'll come back to him. Maybe he's ready to move past this awful limbo too.
She finds him in the kitchen. Her heart is in her throat, blocking her voice, as she watches him wrap his chipped cup so carefully in his handkerchief. But when he turns, when she finds herself looking into his sad, beautiful eyes again, Isabel reclaims her voice.
"Sweetheart," she says in the softest tone she can manage. "We need to talk."
There are lines around his eyes she doesn't remember being there before, or at least not so clearly. The gray in his hair gleams, picked out by the sunlight behind him. He looks tired. Weighted down. (Bereft.)
"Please," she says, and she steps aside, out of the doorway.
If he wants to run, she won't stop him (not this time).
But she hopes he doesn't. She hopes he wants this (wants her) as much as she does (as much as she wants him).
For a moment, he wavers visibly, his body tilting between her and the door. But then a terrible resignation enters his eyes, and he sets himself in place, immobile, by leaning heavily on his cane.
"Isabel," he breathes out, as if her name has been caught there, on a breath he couldn't expel, for nearly a week.
"I'm sorry," she says.
He cringes. "And what do you have to be sorry for?"
"The reason I married you…" She bites her lip, not wanting to say it. Trying to put it into words…it sounds awful.
"You thought you could be a hero by ridding the town of its monster," he says for her, bluntly, and it's her turn to wince.
"I didn't know you then," she says. It's meager excuse, but all she has.
"Yes, well, think nothing of it. I married you for the reasons I stated, and I still hardly know you," he says.
This isn't going the way she thought it would. Not that she'd thought this far ahead, but in the back of her mind, turns out she'd been envisioning scenes of her apologizing, him accepting and apologizing for his own beastly words, and then…and then a happily ever after.
(She really does think she's the hero in a storybook. A children's storybook, on top of it. It's enough to make her cheeks flush hot with shame.)
"But you, at least, married me because you wanted a relationship," she says. "I…I always meant to keep my vows. Even if—"
"That's all in the past now," he interrupts. His hand is white-knuckled on his cane, and his eyes are fixed on the door rather than her. "Trust me, dearie, none of it will matter a whit here soon."
"It does to me," she insists. Bravely, she steps nearer him, though she is careful not to reach out (not yet, not until his eyes soften; she refuses to make him feel trapped like she did before). "Sweetheart, I really did mean it when I said that things have changed. You're not who I thought you were, and I do—"
"Please," he grits out. There's a note of raw pain in the word, that single syllable drenched in horror, and it silences Isabel immediately.
She stares, unable to step aside, helpless to step forward.
"I can't…" Her husband straightens his shoulders and finally meets her eyes. She can't read the look in them (is it fear? is it grief? is it longing? Whatever it is, it hurts to look at). "I have an appointment that I'm already late for."
Behind the too-thin protection of her breastbone, her heart cowers. "I choose you," she whispers. "I promise. I'm going to keep choosing you."
A sound escapes him, something so close to a sob that it chips her heart and leaves a permanent impression. And then he's falling forward, his free hand reaching for her, and Isabel flies into his arms. He enfolds her completely, burying his face in her hair, his hand clenching a fistful of her dress as he pulls her flush against him.
"Please," he breathes into her skin. "Please, just let me have this. Just one more moment."
"I'm here," she whispers in his ear. She stretches up on her toes, ignoring the burn in her calves, and wraps her arms as far around him as they'll go, one hand raking through his hair while the rest of her soaks in the feel of his ensuing tremor. "I'm here, sweetheart. I'm right here."
"I wish I could keep you," he murmurs.
He's said that before, but it still doesn't make any sense.
"I'm not leaving you!" she insists, impossibly tightening her hold on him until her entire spine is arched as she cradles his head against the crook of her neck. "I made a vow to you, sweetheart. I'm yours. Forever."
"Oh, my darling Isabel." Her husband lifts his head and caresses her cheek with his knuckles. She loves that gesture, it makes her feel cherished—but in the moment, it also feels like a goodbye (like he doesn't think he has the right to touch her in any greater way). "If only you could stay…"
"Stop talking like I'm leaving!" she cries. She arches higher, presses a kiss against his cheek, his other cheek, his jaw, his throat, anywhere she can reach. "I'm yours, I promise."
He shudders and lets out another of those sounds, making tears spring to Isabel's eyes.
"Sweetheart…" She doesn't know what else to say. But it turns out she doesn't have to.
"Isabel," he says, fiercely, voice all full of anguish, "please, please, let me have this moment. Just one. Just this. Let me pretend for a single—"
"Anything," she blurts over him. "Anything, it's yours, sweetheart—"
He kisses her. Not the slow, tentative kiss that was their first. This is a surge of passion, his mouth pressing tight over hers, and the instant she parts her lips, he's there, taking everything she offers. His lips are feverishly hot, his tongue wet and warm, and his hands on her back, clutching at her dress to hold her close, are like brands of flame. Isabel hadn't even known how cold she felt until he's warming her up on all sides, setting her ablaze, making the blood in her veins boil and steam.
And yet, for all that, they don't stumble, don't fall forward, don't budge from this spot of floor in their kitchen. And for as hungrily as his mouth works with hers, his touch is gentle. His hands grip tightly, but they don't squeeze or force.
(This, she thinks possessively, this is the man behind the monster, the gentle soul behind the beastly façade, and it's all hers.)
"I'm sorry," he gasps into her panting mouth when they each have to draw back to breathe. "I'm so sorry, Isabel. Whoever you are."
"I'm Isabel Gold," she says, and plucks his lips with her own. His hair slips through her fingers like fine silk, and his heart rattles against her chest, and she never wants this moment to end (even as she can feel him already setting distance between them). "That's the only person I want to be."
Everything she says seems to hurt him. She can't understand it. Instead of speaking again, she kisses him, letting one hand slide from his hair to his face. The rough feel of stubble is as tantalizing as the slide of his mouth from her top lip to her bottom.
"Isabel," he murmurs—and then he steps away.
He's dropped his cane, sometime during their embrace, and so he limps heavily and has to grab behind him for the counter. Though she can't figure out why he's stepping back (why he's put any distance at all between them when all Isabel wants is to meld their bodies together), she bends and scoops up his cane to offer him.
Taking it without meeting her eyes, he straightens his jacket. His hair. His tie. Erasing every sign that she's touched him at all.
"Please." The word slips from her like an alarm.
"I have to go," he says. But he looks up at her, his eyes so dark (so sad), and tries to smile at her. It's the most anguished smile she's ever seen. "But, here."
The feel of him pressing something into her hand takes a moment to process because at first, she thinks he's just taking her hand. But no, his fingers slide away, leaving a piece of paper in their place.
One of her coupons. A guarantee for time spent together doing something of his choice.
Isabel wishes she could burn every single one of these papers.
"I will come see you as soon as I'm done," he tells her. "That's my guarantee, okay?"
"Where?" she asks.
He hesitates. "The cabin. I'll meet you there. If you want to see me… Well, I won't hold you to these papers you've given me, all right? I promise you that. But if you do want to—"
"I do," she says, ready to shake him until he believes her. "Don't you believe me?"
"Oh, I expect I may never see you again," is all he says, with another of those tortured smiles. "But whatever the case… As soon as I'm done, Isabel, I'll go to the cabin. Whether you're there or not—is entirely up to you."
He caresses her cheek again, this time with his fingers, and Isabel is tired of doing this at his pace. She throws herself forward (careful, though, not to hit him with all her weight) and kisses him once more, a blazing mark like a seal over her promise.
"I'll see you soon," she promises.
Through wide eyes, he nods, looking dazed (disbelieving).
And then he's gone. And she has to let him go unless she wants to drive him away all over again.
Isabel lingers only long enough to unpack her suitcase (she'll meet him at the cabin, but she doesn't plan on staying there; not unless he stays with her). There's no sign that he's been here at all other than to get dressed, and it both pains and comforts her that he dealt with their separation in much the same way she did.
There should be pictures of them, she finds herself thinking as she heads back downstairs. The house is full of empty picture frames, but not one of them holds a picture of her and her husband. She can't even remember if they took any at their sparse wedding. Well, there's still time. She'll fill up whole picture albums with the visual history of their life together.
She's only just gotten to her car and reached to turn the ignition when a wave of purple and pink and red sweeps toward her. Her brow crinkles at the sight of it—then the wave engulfs her.
Warmth. Spicy, slick warmth. Magic. She's felt it before, not often, but just enough to recognize the feel of it.
Isabel Gold put her hand to the key, but it is Belle of Avonlea that lets it fall away to her lap.
She remembers: a world with magic. A tiny realm known as the Marchlands. The ogres. The calls for help to neighboring countries, to fairies, to any magical sorcerer or witch they could find (well, almost any). And then the rout, the long, arduous retreat as they fled for their lives. She remembers endless weeks hidden in a cave, cut off from her father and Gaston, her betrothed, surviving on what plants she could recognize from the books she'd brought with her and a spring deep in the cave. She remembers the darkness she thought would swallow her alive. And she remembers finally striking off, setting out on her own, headed for anything but shadow and stone. She found a dwarf who was in love, a flaming monster who was really a prince, and a female warrior who'd told her that she could be more than just a girl who dreamed of future accomplishments.
And she remembers another wave of magic—green and black and gray, bitter and astringent as it chewed her up and spat her back out.
Well, spat out Isabel Gold. Quiet, meek little woman who married a man rumored to be a monster because she thought she could be a hero.
Mr. Gold.
Belle blinks, blinks, blinks again, and there is something caught in her throat, and her hands are shaking, and she cannot breathe, and there isn't enough magic in this world or the last to keep her from the dreadful realization of just who Mr. Gold truly is.
Rumplestiltskin, the deal-maker, the Spinner, the trader of children.
Everyone she knows is cursed, they are living in an alien world, and she is married to the Dark One himself.
Just barely managing to get the car door open in time, Belle vomits into the street.
A/N: This was such a hard transition to get just exactly right! I'd love to know what you think of it!