Things go back to normal. Or the new normal. But slightly different. Okay, so maybe things change between them, after all. Isabel chooses to be grateful for the fact that her husband doesn't revert to avoiding her as he did months ago, and though she tells herself that she's watching him so closely just to make sure he isn't on to her, she knows that there is a different (more tender, more desperate) reason she cannot keep her eyes off of him.

They still enjoy their teatimes together, though only a few days after their date in her store, he tells her that there's been a murder. Isabel tries to imagine that schoolteacher who came to her door with an armful of candles cutting someone's heart out and burying it in a treasured jewelry box, but can't make the images fit.

"Did she do it?" she asks her husband bluntly.

"Not a chance," he says, sipping from his tea in his own chair (he hasn't laid his head in her lap since she learned just what melted secrets he keeps hidden in the cavern of his mouth, and she tries not to miss the closeness so much it hurts). "Which is why I've offered to represent her."

"You're taking on a case?" Isabel blinks at him, setting her book aside. "I thought you'd mostly given law up."

"Well, there wasn't much to tempt me back."

"Until now."

His eyes lift, meet hers, hold, then fall away. "Until now," he agrees.

"I can't imagine she can pay you much," Isabel says as soon as she's reclaimed some moisture in her mouth. Even the glancing heat of his gaze, full-on, is enough to spark infernos in her blood.

"I plan on waiving my fee."

Isabel bites her lip but cannot hold in her wide smile. She knew her husband wasn't the monster the rest of the town thinks he is. Here he is, offering his help free of charge, all to clear some ridiculous charges against a timid woman.

"Thank you," she says impulsively.

His stare is not intense this time, more puzzled. Even startled. "For what?" he asks.

Bringing her teacup to her mouth, Isabel smiles into the rippling tea. "For not being what everyone thinks you are. For being exactly who I know you are."

But instead of smiling back at her, he flinches and looks away, and a few moments later, excuses himself to bed.

Isabel is determined not to let them slide all the way back to before this new understanding (or misunderstanding, really, since she has little idea what he's thinking, but it's such a delicious one, full of so much potential, that she craves it over the stilted, cool companionship they shared before), so she follows him upstairs. They ready for bed separately, as always, and as soon as he's situated, his cane placed just so next to his bedside, his ankle carefully placed beneath the blankets, Isabel slides in after him.

There might, she thinks, be a pause before he curls his arms around her, but she doesn't let it deter her. And when she feels the slight flutter of his relieved sigh against her temple, she knows she was right not to let any distance grow between them.

Her husband is a distrusting man with many enemies, a man who's long accustomed to being alone. Perhaps she simply moved too fast. Perhaps he only needs time to learn that she isn't playing him (that she can't imagine a life apart from him; that things change). She will give him that time. She will ease him into this.

Which is why, after breakfast, when he bids her goodbye for the day, she leans up from her seat at the counter and kisses his cheek.

"Have a good day," she says, and very carefully does not let him see her amusement at his startled stillness.

"Yes," he manages, and then he turns and leaves.

Over the next several weeks, she tries very hard to remain patient—never one of her more natural traits. The murder trial drags on, more evidence being brought to light, the mayor hounding the DA with surprising ferocity, and more and more often, her husband calls to tell her he won't be home in time for tea. Several times a week, Isabel tosses and turns alone before drifting into uneasy sleep. On the nights she wakes up to her husband's return, she rolls into him, happy to have him back with her. On the nights she doesn't wake up, she's not sure if he simply sleeps beside her and rises early, or if he never comes home at all.

Still, he's helping people. He's doing good. She cannot begrudge him for it. She won't.

(But she misses him. There is an ache in the center of her chest that only grows deeper and hungrier with every passing day.)

One day, she's just finishing the penultimate chapter of a book when the door to her store opens. Her heart leaps for her throat, a smile already bursting to life on her lips—

But it's not her husband.

Instead, it's a man and a boy, whispering to each other as they come in the door, then falling silent when they see her, sitting startled and motionless behind the counter.

"Hello!" she manages. "Welcome in."

The young man offers her a polite smile, but the boy walks right up to the counter with a chirped, "Hey! I can't believe I've never been in here before! It's so cool! August, look at all these books!"

"I am looking," August says softly, but his hand is caressing the honeyed wood of the bookcases rather than reading any of the proffered titles.

"You're Mrs. Gold, right?" the boy asks.

"Yes, but you can call me Isabel," she offers impulsively. She's sure she's seen this boy somewhere but can't quite place him. "Is there something I can help you find?"

The boy's smile turns crooked, almost mischievous. "I'm Henry. And what do you know about fairytales?"

"Fairytales." Despite her surprise, Isabel perks up. "I love all of them! Here, I have a whole nook dedicated to retellings of all the tales. Is there one you like in particular?"

"Maybe…" Henry regards her as if sizing her up. "Maybe Rumpelstiltskin?"

"Rumpelstiltskin?" Isabel smiles. "That's not the most popular one, but I think I have a couple titles."

"Come on, August!" Henry gestures for the man, who moves stiffly after them. Isabel darts her eyes from one place to another, relieved that she hasn't gotten so caught up in reading lately that she's let the place go. There's a spot of dust here and there, but mostly she thinks her little store shows itself well.

It's been so long since she's had customers. But if Henry is as outgoing and vivacious as he seems, if August is willing to put in a good word for her, maybe more people will be tempted to stop by (maybe more people to talk about books with will make her miss her husband less).

Isabel pulls out a few Rumpelstiltskin retellings for the odd duo, but then remembers she was reading a fairytale anthology earlier in the week.

"It's probably still at the counter," she says with a blush she hopes they don't question. Surely everyone expects a bookseller to sample their own merchandise?

August squeezes back against the bookcase to let her by, and she notices his hand gripping tightly to the wood. She wonders if he's a carpenter or craftsman of some sort.

Grabbing hold of the slim anthology, Isabel hurries to the nook, eager to see if the other titles have caught Henry's attention. But as she approaches them, she notices that Henry's not even looking at the books. Instead, he's whispering furiously to August.

"—could be the miller's daughter," he's saying. "Mr. Gold could definitely be a greedy king!"

"Hold on there," August says, but then catches sight of Isabel. She's not entirely sure what her face is showing, but he offers her a placating smile. "Found it?" he asks.

"Yes." Isabel feels subdued, as if she's been pricked with a sharp pin, all her air let out. "What was that you were saying about Mr. Gold?"

"You call him Mr. Gold too?" Henry asks, undaunted.

Isabel smiles tightly. "In public. Was there something you wanted to know about him?"

"I'm new to town," August says, sliding between her and the boy. "Henry offered to bring me up to speed on all the major players here in town."

"Did he?" Isabel sets the anthology down, very carefully, next to the other two Rumpelstiltskin titles. "Well, then I'm surprised you're here at all. I really don't get out much."

She knows they're only interested in her husband. She wonders if they'll admit it.

"August is a writer," Henry blurts out. "He's writing a book about fairytales and I thought he could use the inspiration."

"Well, if you ask me, I wouldn't make the miller's daughter a sympathetic character," she says with an arched brow. "She's the one who made a deal in good faith and then broke it."

Henry frowns. "But she was only protecting her child! She wanted to give him his best chance!"

"Then she should have given him to Rumpelstiltskin," Isabel counters. "I'm confident that an imp who was willing to work for three nights in a row from sundown to sunrise just to be given a child would be a better caretaker than a king who threatened a girl with death for sake of his own greed—then married her for the same reason."

"That's an interesting perspective," August offers when Henry remains silent.

"Well, I learned a long time ago that you can never know what's in a person's heart until you truly know them. And the miller's daughter never tried to get to know the imp who saved her life, did she?"

"We'll take all three of these," August says.

Isabel blinks at him. "You will?"

"I want to see what's so attracted you to the idea of Rumpelstiltskin."

Despite herself, Isabel smiles as she rings up the purchase (if it takes her a moment to remember exactly how to do so, she thinks she covers it well).

"Thank you, Mrs. Gold," Henry offers in a small voice as she passes him the bag with his books.

"You're welcome," she says, but though she smiles at him, she doesn't correct him on the name.

That night, when her husband actually arrives home in time for tea, she can't resist telling him about her customers.

"I'm sure I've seen the boy before," she muses.

"Henry Mills?" Her husband arches a brow at her. "He's the mayor's son. Remember? Our good sheriff is his birth mother."

"Oh, right." Isabel can't help but look away as she's reminded where she saw the boy (at the sheriff election; when her husband was accused of terrible crimes and walked out alone; the night Isabel felt utterly alone in the world). No wonder she blurred it in her memory. "Well. He's certainly a precocious thing."

Her husband's smile is fond. "I'm sure that's what was often said about you when you were young."

"It was," she laughs. "And what about you, sweetheart? What did they say about you when you were just a small lad?"

Something dark flashes over his face, destroying every hint of good humor. "Nothing that bears repeating," he says with finality. He's quiet, then, and when Isabel takes his chipped cup, she brushes his hand with her own.

"You look tired," she says.

He lets out a breath. "I am. But never fear. I'm confident this trial will soon be wrapped up."

She's doubtful, but she approves of the hopeful thinking, so she gives him a warm smile. "I'm glad. You're working too hard again."

"Well. Needs must."

The next morning, early, he shakes her awake with a gentle hand and tells her he's needed at the sheriff's station. "Would you mind opening the shop for me?" he asks. "I should be there before you have to open your store."

"Of course," she says.

This is the most he's ever asked of her, and Isabel's conscious of the trust he's showing her. If she wasn't before, half-awake and groggy, she certainly is when he gives her a set of keys.

"You should have a set of your own anyway," he says without meeting her eyes. "Just in case."

"Thank you," she murmurs, and closes her hand tightly around the keys. (She feels as if he's handed her his heart, his very soul, and she vows she will not let him down.) "Did they say why they needed you?"

"Something about a woman Ruby stumbled into in the alley. I'm sure it'll all be cleared up soon."

Isabel grabs a banana and heads for his shop, managing to flip the sign to Open just three minutes after nine. She's always guessed that his shop is more a front for his other business than a real operating shop (that, or a place to store all the priceless trinkets that won't fit in their house), and a half hour of boredom proves he gets few more customers than she does. Though she runs a duster over the counters, she feels her gaze being drawn (like a moth to flame, she wonders, or like a dog to buried treasure?) toward the backroom.

She's here. And he's not. And this is probably the only chance she'll ever have to dissolve the remaining crumbs of her suspicions about her husband's business dealings.

(He knows, but if he does, then why did he give her the keys? Maybe he knows, and he wants her to know that she doesn't need to worry, that she can give up her foolish quest. Maybe this is his gift to her, offered in his characteristic subtle, underhanded way.)

Slowly, heart pounding like a timer ticking down to some doomed zero, Isabel drifts into the back. It looks even more crowded than the front, but she can't help but smile as she looks at the cot tucked away in the corner and remembers a stormy night when her husband held her close to keep her warm all night long. An unconventional anniversary, to be sure, but certainly a memorable one (the same night, she sometimes thinks, when she fully committed herself to being his wife in more than just name).

It takes a while to even find what he might consider his desk. Her husband is, she learned before the ink on their marriage license was dry, a packrat of the highest magnitude. The worktable where he restores his treasures is meticulously clean, arranged in an order her eyes can connect to what she knows of Mr. Gold, but the desk with his papers is wedged in a corner, half-covered by an old bike, a mangled bassinet, and several brooms she doubts he's touched in years.

But when she opens the old-fashioned desk, she sees papers that are much newer.

"Land agreements," she tells herself. "Or leases maybe. Or old receipts."

But it's none of that. It's something she never imagined. Never dreamed of. Never guessed.

It's endless papers documenting children who've been found but not identified. Isabel hadn't realized there were so many cases like this, but she finds reams of information, all of them about lost boys who've turned up with no family to claim them.

But…he let Ashley keep the baby.

He wouldn't…

"No," Isabel says, backing away from the desk, shaking her head, feeling her heart in her throat, thrumming away like a baby bird that doesn't know how to fly and flaps madly on its careening descent to the forest floor. "No, no, this isn't what it looks like."

It isn't (it can't be). But…what is it, then?

Sean's dad insists everything's legal, but Ashley's not happy. She's been pressured into this, Graham told her. He used to drop by the store on his lunchbreak every couple weeks. He liked to look at the books with glossy pictures of wolves and wild animals. Isabel, lonely and desperate for conversation, would coax him into telling her what was bothering him. And most of the time…most of the time, that was Mr. Gold.

Selling babies—buying them—it's all illegal, he said more than once before he'd shake his head and say, But there are people who can always find loopholes.

She wasn't lying when she told her husband that she barely knew Graham. A few conversations here and there don't make a relationship. But she listened, she always listened, and the more books she read about heroes and mysteries and brave young women who knew how to use the opportunities they were handed, the more she thought that maybe this was something she could do. Some way to make herself matter. To be a part of the town in a way she's never quite managed even with a business of her own.

There's no one to flip, Graham said on one of the last days she can remember him coming to the store. No one close to Mr. Gold at all. He has one henchman who's mute and antisocial to boot, and…and that's it. There's no way to get close to him and try to figure out what his methods are.

But then Mr. Gold let Ashley keep the baby. It's one of the first things that made Isabel think he isn't what she'd thought.

One of the first. But not the first.

"He was crying," she remembers, her lips numb. She lifts a hand to place over her mouth, but it doesn't help. "In the study. That one night. He was crying."

Did I ever mention a son? he asked her. Just that. And then he cried the following night.

The bell over the front door rings and Isabel jumps violently, knocking over a broom and making a horrible clatter.

"Isabel?" her husband calls.

"Uh, s-s-sorry!" she calls. "Just—"

He comes through the curtain and Isabel tries not to react, but looking at him, it's as if she's seeing two people.

The man she married (mysterious and aloof and so private she knew nothing more than how he took his tea for almost a year).

And the man she kissed on the floor of her bookstore, his hands so heavy and warm on her skin, his lips like melted chocolate against her throat.

"Are you all right?" he asks.

"Uh. Yeah. Yeah." Forcing herself to move, she bends and scoops up the broom. "Just thought I'd sweep."

He frowns. "You don't have to do that. You're not a maid, Isabel."

"I know."

(She's his wife.)

(She's the mole in his home. In his bedroom. In his arms.)

"Well, thank you for opening the shop for me."

"No customers," she says, rather inanely. She focuses all her attention on leaning the broom against that bassinet, hoping he doesn't notice that his desk is open, his papers rifled through.

But he's already turning, shaking his head, escorting her to the front of the shop. "All good news," he says. "Turns out our poor murder victim is alive and well having escaped from some mysterious abductor. The case against Miss Blanchard has been dismissed."

"Oh." Isabel knows this should matter (she should care that there's a woman who's not been killed and another who's been saved from a horrible trial), but all she can think of are those heavy stacks of papers on lost boys. "That's good for you."

"I've never been so pleased to waste my time," he says, something darkly amused in his voice. "Anyway, I am sorry to have kept you so late. I know you must be anxious to open your own store."

"Yes. Right. It's almost ten."

"Isabel." His hand brushes against her elbow. Isabel feels lightheaded as she simultaneously wants to lean into his touch and cringe away from him entirely. "Thank you."

He meets her eyes, and his are dark and warm and so deep she thinks she could fall into them (and be so easily lost). His hand is so light, so tentative, on her arm, as if he questions her reception to his touch (as if he's as confused as she is). He's her husband, and he's the dreaded Mr. Gold, and Isabel doesn't want to break anything between them (unless he deserves it), not yet. It's too precious to her (has taken her too long to build), so she smiles up at him and brushes her hand over his.

"You're welcome," she says. "But I should…I should really get going."

"Right." His hand drops away from her (he never does hold on; he holds, but only for brief moments, for nights that come to an end).

"I'll see you for tea?" she offers, backing toward the door, anxious to escape this dark shop (desperate for light, for clarity, for space to think of an explanation that will not shatter everything between them).

"Nothing to keep me away," he says. Then, after the slightest hesitation (she sees it, recognizes it, stalls to give him time—because she wants to or because it's become habit?), he says, "Maybe…I should pull out another of those coupons?"

And her heart softens. Melts. Turns into liquid and then into steam that flushes her cheeks and makes her yearn toward him.

"Whenever you want," she says with a smile so soft it eases the anxiousness around his eyes.

Then she pushes through the door, a bell tinkling over her head, and stumbles out into the bright morning.

But there is no clarity to be found.

Henry comes for a gift for his erstwhile grandmother (Rumplestiltskin steers him toward the bells without quite understanding why; certainly Snow White has no connection to them, nothing at all compared to the way his bell rang so cheerily over his wife's heated smile), and serves, Rumplestiltskin learns, as decoy for the man who slips into the back of his shop.

Rumplestiltskin has always been fond of Henry, in a distant sort of way (hard not to appreciate the very thing that brought to town the means of breaking this curse), and Mr. Gold certainly bore him no ill will, but this is the second time this week that the boy has showed up with the stranger.

Bad enough he came nosing through Rumplestiltskin's shop of useful treasures (though he trembles with relief that the dagger is not present), but it is worse that first he went to bother Isabel.

At the party celebrating Miss Blanchard's innocence (Mr. Gold is certainly not wanted there, but his part as her defense lawyer is well known, so he is invited regardless), he questions Emma about the stranger.

"August Wayne Booth," he sneers. "Clearly a false name."

It rings wrong. Strikes him oddly. Or maybe that's just the fact that the man didn't seem afraid of him in the least, even after being caught snooping. Maybe it's the fact that when Rumplestiltskin checked to make certain he hadn't stolen anything, he found his papers with his pitiful, magic-less searching for Bae all rifled through.

The man knows something. Or perhaps he's looking for something.

"You trust him?" he asks Emma with not-quite-idle curiosity.

"Yeah. A lot more than I trust you," she replies, and perhaps she'd have said more, but Isabel joins them, one hand sliding through Rumplestiltskin's left elbow, the other holding a cup of punch.

"Hello, Emma," she says before turning her head toward Rumplestiltskin. "They didn't have tea, just punch."

"No matter." He summons a smile for her (it's been so long since his true showman days that the act grows harder each day). "I hardly expected anything different."

"Be nice," she chides before looking back to Emma. Who is, he can't help but notice with irritation, once more staring between them as if at a car wreck. "You must be relieved," Isabel says.

Emma blinks. "What? Oh, yes, of course. I knew Mary Margaret was innocent, but it did seem a bit close there for a while." Her sidelong glare toward Rumplestiltskin is not subtle at all.

Isabel's hand tightens on his arm, and he doesn't think he imagines the way she slides closer to him. "Well," she says in a voice that carries, "you must be extremely grateful to my husband, then, for ensuring the trial wasn't just pushed through too quickly. And all without asking a cent in return, isn't that right, sweetheart?"

"I'm afraid that's between me and my former client," he demurs.

There's something pressing down on his chest. A pressure, a heat, that leaves him pliant and has him bending toward his wife. A hundred parties he's attended, dozens of balls and masquerades, countless events (from public executions to private alleys with the truly desperate), but this is the first he doesn't face alone. The first when there is someone at his side, linking herself so publicly to him and speaking in his defense.

It is such a new, such an unexpected, feeling that it leaves him reeling.

That night, when they return home, when Isabel insists on making him a cup of tea, Rumplestiltskin wonders if he is a terrible father (all over again, still) for wishing for this curse to hold on just a bit longer.

To find Bae, he must give Isabel up. But if he tries to keep Isabel…

No. He can't. He's come too far to forget his son now. And he will not have this stranger endangering either the chance of his son or Isabel.

It all seems a moot point, anyway, when she serves him his tea and then slips up to bed alone.

Over the next two days, Rumplestiltskin finds himself playing a game of cat and mouse. He's sure this August knows that he's being followed. He suspects that the meager excuse of the Blue Fairy in this world thinks she's thrown him off the scent with that tale about fathers and sons and painful partings. He even thinks that the cricket masquerading as a conscience believes Mr. Gold has seen the light and will turn over a new leaf.

And he should. He knows he should. The man has a picture of his dagger, drawn in precise detail. He's carved a donkey (like the one that nearly killed Bae in a crowded road back in their home village). He is well acquainted with the Blue Fairy (as if there is the memory of a magic bean between them), and he's here for his father, and he's not afraid of Rumplestiltskin.

It's a clear picture.

Isn't it?

Rumplestiltskin drives away from Dr. Hopper's office in a daze. It's autopilot that brings him home, only a few minutes late for tea. Isabel smiles to see him, but she's oddly quiet. He could believe she were simply engrossed in her book if she'd ever turn the page. But she doesn't. She just holds the book in her lap and stares straight ahead.

More than anything, he wishes he could lay down beside her and rest his head in her lap. He wishes she'd run her fingers through his hair and tell him everything is going to be okay. He wishes there weren't another woman hiding at the heart of her, waiting to come out and ruin everything he longs to build between him and the shell who's his wife.

"Are you all right?" he asks her when she sets her full teacup aside.

"Just tired," she says with a strained smile.

He had such grand plans of offering her one of her gifted coupons and inviting her out to their third-floor balcony three nights from now so they could watch a meteor shower. He remembers thinking to himself that for all the magic inherent in falling stars, they would be twice as potent reflected in her eyes (maybe, if he wished hard enough and strained for every spare drop of magic that has eked into this world, he could make Isabel the true personality).

But her smile is fake, and she keeps her distance, and she makes no protest (doesn't tease him at all) when he says he thought he'd stay up and work in his study, and so he keeps the coupon tucked in his breast pocket, pressed flat and dried against his heart.

"All for the best," he tells himself. If she'd hugged him, if she'd pulled him down into her lap, he'd have told her everything. Truths would have come spilling from him (and the last time he told a woman about his son, he was shown her heart in a box and a boot out the door). Isabel might be accepting and understanding (she might tell him what to say to make his son see him in the kind way she does), but whoever she really is…that woman doesn't deserve the knowledge of Baelfire.

Rumplestiltskin stands in the hallway leading to the front door for a long moment (that's a lie; he stands there for many long moments), torn between ascending the staircase and finding a few precious hours of comfort in Isabel's arms…or going out into the cold night and learning if his son hates him enough to risk becoming the Dark One himself.

Bae, his heart keens, and his decision is made for him.

Alone, Rumplestiltskin heads into the night. He's had Dove following the man, and he follows him out, not far from his cabin, to find the stranger peering down at the dirt.

He's tall. So much taller than Rumplestiltskin. His hair is as dark as Milah's, with that hint of curl hers used to get in the heat, and there is nothing of Rumplestiltskin in him (but the blood magic worked, in their old world, and that's an old fear he has no time to indulge).

When you're face to face, you'll know what to do, the cricket-doctor told him.

Obviously, as well-made as his curse is, it couldn't implant true wisdom in that cricket with his absurd platitudes.

(Rumplestiltskin has no idea what to do.)

"I know who you are," he says, and watches the stranger freeze in place. "And I know what you're looking for."

The stranger turns and meets his eyes—defiant. Unbowed. As unafraid as when he faced down Hordor and his men on the road in the dark.

"Well then," he says. "I guess the lying can stop—Papa."

And something inside Rumplestiltskin's chest goes still (like a rabbit in the shadow of the hawk).

He wants this to be Bae. Sure, the stranger is angry, and he's looking for the dagger, but he doesn't want to kill his papa. He just wants to know that he's changed.

(And he has. Of course he has. He'll never let go of his son again, no matter what the cost.)

But the whole time, with every shovel-full of dirt uncovered, there is a tickle at the back of his mind. A tremor to his hands. A bell tinkling muted warnings (anything that looks to be good to be true…is).

"You're not my son," he says, and he suddenly can't see anything in this stranger that looks familiar (he's not Bae, not his boy; he's just another beggar on the side of the road, offering salvation and delivering disappointment).

It surprises himself—the mercy he shows in not killing the boy. But then, just moments earlier, he thought these were Bae's eyes. Bae's hands. Bae's easy forgiveness.

But it's not. His son is still out there. Still hating him. Still running from him.

His ankle seizes up and nearly gives out on him by the time Rumplestiltskin stumbles home. The door slams shut, too loudly, behind him, and he slumps heavily against the banister. The porchlight gleams through the stained glass and fractures the familiar setting around him so that Rumplestiltskin feels as if he's wandered into another man's home.

And when Isabel's lilting voice calls out "Sweetheart? What's wrong? What happened?", he knows she should be another man's wife. Someone good. Someone noble, and strong, and heroic. Someone who'd never let go of his son's hand in the first place (but if he hadn't, he never would have met her; she as she is now would never even exist).

Isabel's gasp in his ear recalls Rumplestiltskin to the present—to the fact that she's half-supporting, half-dragging, him up the stairs toward their bedroom. "You're crying," she whispers with more astonishment than he thinks the moment deserves.

"Well, I am human," he sneers, and then he laughs at the joke. (Some might say he sobs rather than laughs, but he'd kill them before they could finish that ridiculous assertion.)

"Oh, sweetheart, what happened?"

Rumplestiltskin finds himself surrendering to Isabel's care. For the first time in ages, he's not afraid that someone will hurt him. He's not reluctant to let a touch grow close and familiar lest it turn painful and betraying. This is Isabel Gold, his wife, and she let him kiss her—she kissed him—as if she never wanted them to stop, and she offers him smiles simply for existing, and she sleeps in his arms as if she trusts him with her very life.

"Oh, Isabel," he murmurs as he plays her hair through his fingers. She's kneeling in front of him, rubbing something into his ankle, but he has eyes only for the sight of her curls bright and shining against his hand. "I wish I could keep you."

She frowns up at him (but even this, such a dour expression, is layered with kindness, with fondness, with genuine affection, and he never knew he was this good at writing curses). "What are you talking about? I'm not going anywhere, sweetheart. Here, can you change into your pajamas by yourself?"

He might be dazed and in shock (grieving for a boy he feels like he's lost all over again), but he's still aware of just what he looks like. Isabel's closeness is a balm, and he won't ruin it by stripping himself of everything that makes him seem powerful for her to see the truth (won't proactively ruin the dreams he has of her unbuttoning his shirt, reaching for his belt, helping him step out of his trousers, and only pressing closer rather than shrinking away in aversion).

By the time he emerges from the bathroom, she has a hot compress waiting for him and his covers drawn back.

"Where did you go?" she asks as she fusses over the placement of the compress on his ankle. "Did someone do something to you?"

"I went for a walk," he says shortly. "I thought…"

No. No truths. He can trust Isabel, but she won't be Isabel for much longer.

"It was a disappointing meeting," he settles for saying, and he tugs at her hand, hoping she'll lie beside him.

She does, but she doesn't burrow into his arms as she usually does. Instead, she props herself up on an elbow and studies him in the light of that lamp she always leaves on (he's noticed her fear of the dark; it's another reason to dread the breaking of this curse, knowing that she'll run from that which even the dark fears).

"I'm worried about you," she says bluntly.

He looks up at her. She looks sweet. Kind. As concerned as she claims.

But it's just a lie. Just a beautiful lie crafted by his own curse. And to find his son, she has to disappear.

"Isabel," he says (he loves saying her name and knowing she doesn't begrudge him the possession of it). "My darling Isabel."

And as his hand rises, almost of its own volition (he's so good at lying to himself), to card through her hair, her eyes flutter shut.

He could kiss her. He could pull her on top of him. He could run his hands up that silk nightgown of hers and make her gasp and shiver and sigh into his mouth. He could do a thousand and one things to her, and he knows she would let him. And she might even thank him for it—tonight.

But next week (or month, seeing as how stubborn this savior of his is)? She will look at him, and those beautiful eyes will be hard as diamond, cold as ice, angry as Bae's. She will hate him (and he will hate himself).

"Isabel," he breathes out, his control hanging by a thread.

Her hand lands on his chest. If she moves, even a millimeter, her finger will brush against the sensitive skin of his throat. And that thread he's so depending on will snap.

"Sweetheart," she murmurs, "do you have a son?"

His skin flashes cold. His heart stops dead in his chest. And his hand falls free of her hair. If he were everything he should be (if magic were here as he longs for it to be), he'd snap himself out of this bed, would be clear on the other side of the room, dressed in the most layered of his suits, bristling and combative and, above all: not vulnerable.

But he's weak, and lame, and lonely, and he doesn't move at all.

She shouldn't be here. This curse he crafted was built in such a way as to divorce all means of happiness from each other. The charming prince and his wife will never be allowed to find common ground and compromise their way to a shared life. The princess with her glass slipper and her little baby will never be able to win out over the demands of work and labor from her beleaguered prince. The werewolf waitress will always feel out of place, her grandmother will forever be on the edge of dying, the dwarfs will meet for mere evenings but never recognize each other as family, and the nuns will always remain on the outskirts of town to struggle.

So why does Isabel still smile at the sight of him? Why does she still snuggle close every night after spending a couple hours of pleasant companionship at his side?

They're not allowed to be happy—but she's still here.

Which means she's not actually happy (it certainly isn't him; he hasn't been so happy since a little boy called him Papa and still thought he could slay all the dragons in the world). She doesn't want to be here. Even as his wife, she would choose a different fate for herself.

(And he knew that, of course he did, no one ever chooses him. He knew this was all a trick, a trap, a means of taking down the beast. That's all it could ever be.)

And all to the good. He vowed never to love anything but his son—and this temptress, this knife-in-the-back wrapped in pretty dressing, will not sway him from his path.

"You know," he says conversationally, "I've suddenly remembered something I need to do."

Ignoring her protests, her hand (soft and clinging) on his arm, Rumplestiltskin rolls out of the bed, lets the compress fall where it will, and grabs for his cane. It, at least, is familiar. He knows the weight and the heft of it, feels the callouses on his hand welcome its presence, and ignores the bite in his ankle that's like an old friend.

"Sweetheart, please!" Isabel calls, but he doesn't turn. He doesn't look back. (He can't; he'll be turned to stone if he looks in her eyes.)

The retreat to his study, to the desk chair and the thin afghan draped over the back, is nothing more than a rout. He makes little effort to disguise it as anything else.

(There is a part of him, long-buried with the forgotten wisp of that doll his papa fashioned for him, that longs for her to follow him.

That part is as disappointed as it's always been.)

The night is long, and lonely, but this is as it should be. He doesn't deserve anything else. He cannot be distracted from the only thing that really matters. The portrait of his son is cold comfort compared to Isabel's warm willingness, but it is the talisman he's clung to the longest, the hardest, the fiercest.

A man unwilling to fight for what he wants deserves to lose it.

Well, he'll fight. He'll fight even though it means employing a scorched-earth policy. He'll fight until there is nothing left for him (certainly not a young, beautiful woman with more kindness in her little finger than generations of people have held in their entirety). Until the day comes when he looks into his (real) son's eyes, and his son sees nothing in him, nothing about him, nothing around him save one thing and one thing alone:

Papa.