"There," Rumple declares proudly, "Now you can rest, and you can't go running off. Enjoy your little vacation," he retorts with an arrogant smirk before poofing into mid-air before Belle could respond.
Alone at last, a precious moment of unfamiliar solitude that Regina relishes at the mayor's office. There hadn't been a sighting of Emma all day, nor Rumplestiltskin, nor Belle. It was peace on Earth – absolutely nothing could spoil her mood now.
All it took was an insulting poof of purple smoke and all of Regina's miniscule hopes and dreams shattered, a sense of annoyance gnawing at her already emotionless soul.
On the other end of it though, was a very irate looking Rumplestiltskin, out for blood and storming her way. She knew exactly why he was mad, which was why this would be a very interesting conversation.
An arrogant smile plastered across her face, "Hello, Gold, come to finish the j—"
"What have you done, you vile witch?" Gold growls into her face.
Regina pretends not to be dissuaded by the presence of the Dark One over Gold. "You're gonna have to be more specific, I'm afraid."
"What else? The poison you inflicted upon Belle, Curse of the Nether Asp. There is no cure in this land."
"Well, it's not my fault. The viper was meant for you, but she stole from me. Naturally, I had to defend myself."
"Against a naive little maid? No, no, you knew it would kill her."
"Maybe you should have thought about that before you sent her to steal from me."
The Beast slams his hands down on the Evil Queen's shuddering desk so fast that it almost made her jump. Almost. "You will give me the cure to this ailment."
"And what makes you think that I have it?" Regina sneers at the fuming man opposite and crosses her arms. "You said it yourself – there is no cure in this land."
"Nothing natural, of course. But the elusive vipers you keep inside your vault, they are the key."
Regina huffs. "They're endangered, Gold, and you know what the cure is. Only two left, and you want to kill one? What would your precious Belle think?"
"Belle need not be aware of the component to her treatment," Gold's cold stare could melt the irises of Regina's eye sockets. "If my love dies, so shall yours."
"Your love?" Regina scoffs, "Belle's soon-to-be untimely demise is hardly my fault, you sent her to my vault alone. I wouldn't call that love."
That was the final taunt that awakens the slumbering beast.
An inferno of fiery red hurtles towards her, narrowly missing setting her hair ablaze.
Regina ducks out the way and magically pulls a coat-hanger into her grasp, using it as a shield against the barrage of fireballs. One successfully catches the wood alight – she blasts it back in Gold's direction, frantically attempting to think of a way to get him out of her office. She debated whether to tell him the truth – Gold would almost certainly stop at nothing to kill Robin after this.
As the broken remains of her office desk soar towards her, Regina throws up her hands and blocks the attack midair with a protection bubble, allowing it to clatter to the floor.
"Gold!" She shouts, unwilling to imagine having to clean up the charred remains of her prestigious office by the time he's done destroying everything. "Just hold on!"
It took a few more discombobulated objects to fly into the wall before the barrage stopped. His gaze was apathetic, adeptly hidden emotion hiding his fury. "What?" he hissed through clenched teeth.
"Just let me explain," Regina says steadily, which noticeably came as a surprise to the other man.
"Explain what? There's nothing to explain!" And down came the ceiling chandelier, individual crystals flickering ablaze that would form into a dozen miniature weapons. Several fragments are already curtailing into the walls and blew out the windows, shattering the little glass ornaments she had left on display.
"Stop!" Regina shouts hastily, "It was an accident, for god's sake! Will you calm down!" She had never seen him so irate in her life! Insane, yes, psychopathic, yes. But incensed with hatred? It seems casting blame upon him for Belle's sickness just made it worse.
The fragments of the chandelier shards shatter to the ground – Gold looked raggedly exhausted now, and likely couldn't continue his tantrum anyway. "How the hell could that possibly be an accident?"
"It's like I said," Regina says, taking a few steps back with her head held high as to not make him think she was slightly afraid, "It was meant for you – a trap. I thought you'd jump in and save her. Seriously, why didn't you?"
All she saw now was the look of a defeated man. No-one had to know she felt a slither of pity for him.
"I trusted you were not stupid enough to harm a hair on her head."
"Yeah, well... you were stupid enough to underestimate how much I value my things," she sighed. "And from where I stand, you need to make a deal."
"A deal, yes. For the possession of one of your precious vipers... and yet, what could you possibly want from me?"
"I only want one thing," she steps closer to him, nose to nose with the monster. "Your word that you won't lay a finger on Robin. No revenge. This is between us."
If Gold still wanted to kill her, he was certainly hiding it better this time. A mask of stoicism stares back at her. "Very well."
Their unsavory moment was interrupted by an irritating vibrating pattern coming from Gold's pocket. His mobile telephone device, no doubt. He flips it open effortlessly, mindful of Regina watching him. "Yes?" he sighs in exasperation hearing the response, "Emma, to what do I…"
Regina watches as Gold's impassive façade slips in a matter of seconds, terror on his face that made even her own heart drop.
"I will be there momentarily," he says with a surprising amount of composure given the look on his face. He stuffs the phone back in his pocket and peers up at Regina. "Belle has deteriorated significantly and has been admitted to Storybrooke's hospital. You're coming with me," he says, poofing them away before she can even get a word in.
As the haze of purple dissipated, the two villains in crime were greeted with the noisy bustling environment of the hospital reception. A clamber of staff and a stretcher whoosh past them, but it wasn't the young girl they were looking for.
"Where is she?" Gold shouts at no one in particular, hoping someone would figure out what he wanted by the very fact he was present here. He was astutely aware of Regina groaning with boredom next to him, but chooses to ignore her and focus on the more important issue. "Where's Belle?"
Just then, a blonde woman, Emma, bursts out of a side door, apparently having heard his voice. "Gold!" then she pauses, noticing his guest. "…and Regina?"
Mr Gold simply strides towards her and shoves himself through the door, desperate to see the state his Belle was in.
"No, you can't come in..." Emma trails off with a sigh. It was well known by now that denying him was pointless.
It quickly became apparent why they wanted him far away. Belle lay at the back of the room on a stretcher ashen grey, surrounded by doctors that were trying to keep her alive. The dire straits the young woman was in would set anyone off.
An orderly notices him and tries the same thing. "You can't be in here, sir."
Gold couldn't hear him. One nurse was holding an oxygen mask to Belle's face, another was injecting some unknown substance into her arm. Rapid beeping came from an obnoxious machine in the corner, various eyes fixated on it. He tries to make sense of the instruments, but they were a mystery to him in this land. "What's going on?" he finally manages to ask.
They all turn back, recognising the voice. He can feel them staring into his soul. "Why is he here?"
A nurse throws her hand up. "No, hang on, Mr Gold, do you know what this is?" She then points to Belle's legs that were overwhelmingly crawling with black veins, which were now hardly indistinguishable from her pale skin.
Yes, of course he knows what it is – just a little too late. "It's called the Curse of the Nether Asp."
"Ruby called it in." Emma begins, garnering Gold's attention. "Apparently, your sweetheart here wanted some books from the library, but by the time Red got there, Belle had passed out."
"Yes, yes," Gold strides towards Belle with undeniable worry crowning his features. "But the cure isn't from this land," he pauses when shrill alarms fill the room again, doctors rushing to push him out the way. "What are you doing now?"
"If you've got a cure, you better tell us fast," Doctor Whale says, looking up at the monitor, "This thing has almost reached her heart, she's not going to last much longer like this."
With no time to assert his dominance over the human rabble, Gold desperately searches the room. "Regina…" he mumbles under his breath. He'd been so worried about Belle that he forgot she brought the Queen with him - she has the cure. "Regina!"
"Quit your shouting, I'm here!" Regina suddenly appears behind him with a familiar wooden box, "Was just summoning the box away from everyone. Or would you prefer it to bite your precious Belle again?"
Gold grumbles under his breath and snatches the box from her, "Give it here…"
As he approaches Belle, the scornful scoff of Regina echoes from behind his back. He scowls, but doesn't move. "What?"
"I hope you're not planning on opening that in front of her."
Oh, right. Yes. His troubled mind couldn't afford to make careless mistakes right now. Gold spun on his heel and quickly strode to make his way out of the room. Regina rolled her eyes and waved her hand, a hissing sound suddenly filling the room, stopping him in his tracks.
"Seriously, what's wrong with you today, Gold?" The viper from the box now found itself hanging limply from Regina's fist, its neck securely gripped in her grasp. Gold purses his lips, holding back the urge to lash out once again at his public display of failure, but keeps his cool for Belle's sake. "You know what to do." Regina says quietly.
The heart of the writhing creature was such a delicate thing, one had to be careful when pulling it out of a body virtually made of straw. That is, if the situation didn't call for urgency – Gold spared no thought ripping the viper's soul from its chest, crushing the little red pebble into dust. As the grey dust piles up in his hand, Regina waves the remains of the creature into thin air.
"What the hell was that?" Emma exclaims from a distance, "Did you just kill that thing?"
"No-one will miss it," Gold grumbles, taking slow steps to Belle as to not lose any of this rare lifeblood in his hands. He gently pulls back her blue dress and squirms – it was even worse up close. Was it too late?
Taking her ankle, Gold sprinkles the dust over the epicentre of the blackened veiny wound, hoping to the gods she wasn't too far gone.
When nothing happens though, not even after fifteen seconds, he could feel his own coal of a soul shrivelling up. No unravelling of the veins, nor a change in the dire frantic beeping of the monitors.
"Maybe it just needs a while," Emma suggested.
"No, it should have worked by now," Gold whispers, taking Belle's limp face in his hands. "Belle..."
"If the poison was too deeply woven into her body, it might not be reversible." Regina offers, but doesn't move from her spot in the corner. Everyone stays far away from the Dark One.
There is a horrible silence hanging in the air, other than the morbid sound of rapid beeping.
"Gold..." Emma begins after a moment, but Gold hisses at her to shut up. All he could think about was how his failure to find an answer in time could lead to her death. He spent too long researching, and not enough time skinning the Evil Queen alive for answers.
But in that moment, the rapid beeping somehow grew even faster, louder. More desperate, more dangerous. In an instant, the doctors started to run laps around Belle, before she finally gasped for air. Not for life, not for being saved, but a gasp of sheer panic that had her eyes as wide as dinner plates.
Gold rushes to her side, kneeling beside her as the chaos around him ensues, not sure what was wrong with her. "Belle," he says softly, brows furrowing in confusion as she continues to hyperventilate, her eyes lost and rapidly traversing the room. "Belle," he demands her attention more firmly. "It's me, it's Rumple."
Her blue eyes finally find his, locking them into a stare as if his own eyes held all the answers. "Rumple," she gasps, trying to take his hand but ends up squeezing her eyes shut instead. "What's going on? It... hurts! What's wrong with my legs?!"
Rumple notices a doctor quickly checking her legs again, apparently having the same idea he did. They just shrugged – nothing had changed, so it was just the cure doing it's thing. Very viciously.
"It's the antidote to the toxin, it's healing you—"
"It's burning me alive!"
"Don't be so dramatic..." Rumple jumps when Belle suddenly lets out an unholy scream of pain that he mentally noted to take a forgetting potion for. "Why is she doing that?" he demands to the doctors – it must be their fault. It has to be. They were doing all sorts of things to her before, and now his Belle was in agony.
Dr Whale is already jamming more liquids into her IV. "I don't know, it might be something to do with the drugs we—"
"Fix it!" Rumple curses at himself; magic and medicine could have untold effects when mixed. "Or I can do something much worse that I shall make every one of you suffer from."
"Why do you think it's something they've done?" Emma asks before Gold loses his cool again, "This could just be how it works? She's awake now, right?"
Amidst the sounds of Belle's quiet groaning, Gold remains silent. He wanted to punish them all for her suffering, but unfortunately he still needed them. "Belle," Gold's voice is a whisper, his hands gently cupping her pained face. "The magic to take away your pain is at my shop."
"No..." Belle murmured, cracking open weary eyelids, "Don't leave me."
"I don't have a choice," he strokes a thumb over her cheek, "The medicine in this world does not mix well with the antidote from our land."
"I'll be fine," Belle forces a smile that does not fool him at all. "I'll wait it out. It's okay, Rumple."
Gold watches her for a moment and comes to an unwanted decision. "Well, your majesty, looks like you get to go rummaging in my shop after all."
Waiting for a reply that never came, he turned around and found her missing. "Where's Regina?"
Emma shrugged.
"Excellent," Gold sighs and turns his attention back to Belle – she was still writhing in his arms. "How necessary are these instruments?" he gestures at the IV and monitoring equipment, to which Dr Whale folds his arms.
"Not as necessary now she has the cure. Do you plan on taking care of the patient?"
"If there is no other threat to her mortality, then we shall take our leave." He completely ignores the other staff and turns to Emma. "Goodbye, Miss Swan," he says abruptly, before disappearing into a plume of purple smoke once more.