He didn't need the information Ingrid had given him in exchange for his silence where Emma and Elsa were concerned. He already had the hat. But the Apprentice…how Nimue hated him. She longed to know where he was and desired it above all else, even destroying Light Magic. And the things that the Dark One could do with the Sorcerer's Apprentice out of the way…he had to admit that hat or not, knowing where that old man was in Storybrooke would be well worth his silence.

He smiled when Ingrid told him of the Apprentice's appearance. "You'd deliver him into my hands for my silence. You must not know what that hat does…"

"I know a great deal about what that hat is capable of. I also know a great deal about what the Apprentice is capable of. His doorway and that scroll did magic I'm certain you never could. He's a strong wizard. Talented. I've no interest in seeing that hat end up in your hands, but he's protected that piece of magic from people like you for ages, I'm confident that fetching it from him won't be simple." And that was where she was wrong.

"So, you are giving me this information not just to keep me silent but also to keep me busy and out of the way. Is that right?"

"When I have need of you, I'll find you. Just as I trust when you have need of me, you'll do the same."

So that was that. She wanted him busy and out of the way just as much as he wanted to be busy and out of the way. Though while she assumed that he was going to be off dealing with the Apprentice, she'd no idea exactly what that entailed since the hat was already in his possession. And her words suggested that she wasn't quite done with him, that there was something more to come. For him and for her. Something that she thought he'd need to do to get the hat from the Apprentice?

What did it matter to him? He was a step ahead of her now; he had the upper hand. But she didn't know it. And he didn't want to show it. So, he accepted her deal and walked home from the ice cream shop in triumph. His time with Belle was nearly up, and if she was in the shop and found him sneaking in, it would be harder to explain than just coming into the shop and explaining he'd gone out to do something or other. On the way back to the store he called Dove and left him with very specific instructions to go to the ice cream store and wait for the old man to show up. He promised him a raise the second he could deliver his address and a name to him. Dove was willing; money was always a motivating factor for him. So, he promised he'd report back and left him to return to the still-empty shop. A moment later, Belle walked through the door with soup for them.

They ate in near silence, which probably should have made him even more suspicious of what was going on in Belle's head, but instead, he found himself embracing the quiet. Her mind was obviously busy with something, but his was too. He knew he had to do research on the hat, but he was almost certain the books he'd need for that were at home. If Belle weren't here, he'd probably go to look at them, but even with Elsa in town, he couldn't come up with any reason why he'd look at them without having to rush out and help. Not to mention, she was a librarian; she'd notice that there was absolutely nothing about ice in what he was reading. No, reading up on the hat was going to have to be reserved for when he arrived back home. When he had an excuse to sneak away…

The glass vial he'd put the magic-infused dirt into seemed to be holding. Though just after lunch he did notice a small crack forming on the side. He couldn't, with certainty, say it hadn't been there before, but he liked to keep his equipment pristine. A crack wouldn't have been acceptable, but it wasn't impossible. Still, just in case, he transferred the dirt into another vial, noting that the grains were growing as fine as sand. That damn near confirmed it.

The magic in the sample was growing too big for its space. It was trying to expand, to stabilize the magic it was absorbing. One way it was trying to fix the overload was by breaking the sand in the glass down to take on the magic it contained.

"It's all right," he assured Belle when she watched him transfer it to a different glass vial before breaking the one that it had cracked and adding a few pieces to purposefully give it something to break down. "Just trying to let it stabilize on its own."

She nodded, asked if there was anything she could do to help, and when he answered "no" stated that she was going to go next door to get a book.

She was bored.

Yes, her mind was busy, and there was clearly something bothering her, but he could tell it was more than that. This was why he wouldn't have minded her working in the library-to prevent things like this from happening. There simply wasn't enough work in the shop for two people to do. And while he could grab a clock off the shelf that needed some repair work and let his mind drift as he tinkered, it wasn't the kind of work that she found solace in. This was going to be a problem. He'd never in a million years thought that he'd ever consider her presence a problem, but now that he had other things he wanted to be doing in the shop without her here, things that could actually make a difference in their life instead of just fixing a clock for the sake of giving his hands something to do, he knew it was going to be a problem. But to convince her to go back to the library…that seemed like just one more thing on his to-do list. Tonight, he had to find enough nickel to fashion a flask. He had to go back to that barn and rescue the grains of this magic he'd left behind. He had to do some research on the hat now that he was about to know where the Apprentice was. And now he had to figure out a way to convince Belle to go back to work in addition to solving the riddle of what was bothering her. If it wasn't one thing, it was always…

Another.

He felt the familiar warning in his head that someone magical was on his property just before the bell over the door went off. He'd been expecting Belle to return any second, but instead the presences he felt was that of the notoriously irritating Captain Hook and one other with magic he was quickly coming to recognize. Elsa of Arendelle.

Naturally, she couldn't come by when Belle was here so he could judge her reaction. It would have been nice to get at least one thing on his list accomplished before sundown.

"I must apologize, but I'm really rather busy today," he dismissed without bothering to glance at them.

"And here I was hoping for a warm hello from the newly reformed Mr. Gold," Hook drawled in a tone he supposed he was supposed to find menacing. Only in the pirate's dreams would he have that effect on him.

"This is still a place of business. So, unless you have something to offer me, I'm afraid I can be of no further help."

"Well, as it turns out, I do have something to offer you…my silence." The Dark Ones went quiet in his head, all of their attention turned to the pirate just as he felt his own curiosity pique. His silence…over what?

"See…I know that that dagger you gave Belle was a fake…"

He said it with confidence, quietly so that Elsa, looking something over in the back of the room, didn't hear. It was convincing, but…he couldn't know that. No one had been around when he'd switched the daggers, no one but Belle. Hell, with his magic, if he wanted to, he could switch them back right now or switch them a million times over, and no one would be the wiser, least of all Hook. He was posturing…

"Is that right?" he questioned with a smirk. He let the gears and cogs on the clock work without him as he stood up to full height to assess Hook, his intentions, his seriousness, the threat he posed.

"I've hunted you for a long time, my old crocodile, and I know you better than most. And I know that you would never let anyone have power over you. Not even Belle."

A fair assessment of him from the pirate, though in his own defense, was wrong. He had given that dagger to Belle once, and he intended to give it to her again. He was honest when he said he trusted her with it. His reasons for taking and keeping it right now were entirely his own and would remain his own.

"And you expect her to believe you without a shred of proof?"

"Well, I could ask her to summon you with the dagger. And then, when it doesn't work…proof."

He restrained a huff. Given how Belle had responded to using that dagger thus far, he seriously doubted that she would ever listen to him. That alone would have made the threat null and void, except for the fact that Belle also trusted him. If Hook asked her to summon him just because she wouldn't do it, but if he asked her to do it to prove his innocence, or if he ever set her up to believe she was in danger and needed to call on him for help…

Fuck. He didn't like the risk in that.

"That's a very dangerous insinuation," he growled, glaring at the pirate.

Hook only glared back. "So we have a deal?"

A deal, not so much. An arrangement…potentially. It was blackmail, but it didn't worry him. He'd gone toe to toe with Hook before; he always won in the end. He was smarter and had better resources. He'd get him. Likely very soon, he'd get him. He'd have to give the knowledge he had. But until he had a plan for that…just one more thing on his endless to-do list.

"I do hope Miss Swan's worth it," he agreed with a smile, knowing that with his black heart, Emma would be the only one who would bring him to his door, even if it was Elsa he had in tow.

"Good news!" Hook shouted. "He's agreed to help."

Elsa looked up from whatever she'd been exploring across the room and crept closer to him, her hand extended with something in it that looked like-

"This hair is from Marian. Someone cast a freezing curse on her. We need to know who it is."

A freezing spell on Marian? The woman Hook and Emma had brought back from the past? Robin's wife? The woman who was likely the reason Henry had been here wanting his memories of Regina taken away from him? That was news to him.

But the second he plucked the white hair from the Elemental's hand, he knew that it was also of no consequence to him, given his earlier discussion. Ingrid. The magic belonged to her. And given that Elsa was not with Emma at this moment but rather with Hook, this was likely all a part of her plan to get her niece alone and convince her she was sister material.

How? It didn't matter—not to him. The only thing that mattered to him at this moment was that he could not tell Hook or Elsa that the magic belonged to Ingrid.

He might not call what he had with Hook a deal, but he'd certainly made one with Ingrid. His silence in return for information on the hat and the sorcerer. He'd accepted the deal before he'd left, asking her how he could help her. The only thing she'd mentioned was that she had it under control. Elsa would be the town's immediate threat; she'd appear to her first, and then once she had her on her side, Emma would trust Elsa's opinion of her. His job was only to keep his silence. He'd doubted her plan when she said it, clearly not understanding the way Emma thought. And yet here he was, with Emma and Elsa separated and Elsa primed to encounter someone from her past. He very much so doubted Emma would stay out of it, especially with the pirate helping Elsa, but that wasn't his problem, not since the Ice Queen didn't want his assistance. His problem was that he couldn't tell them that it was Ingrid, but to send them away without answers would have been suspicious and potentially invited the pirate to run along to Belle.

But he was the King of Loopholes. Perhaps there was a third option in between tell and don't tell.

"Well…you're in luck. Magic can change forms but never be destroyed," he repeated, reminding them of what he'd said yesterday. "We'll simply return it to its natural state." With a wave of his hand, he broke down the curse in the hair to its natural state. For water Elementals, he would expect to see raindrops or steam, but in Ingrid's case, as well as Elsa's, he suspected, it was-

"Snowflakes," Elsa whispered with amazement.

"Magic similar to yours, dearie, though not quite the same," he informed her, choosing his words carefully. "Much like a snowflake, each person's magic is unique."

"Poetic. How does that help us?" Hook questioned, sounding far too much like Emma for his own good.

"Well, magic seeks out like-magic. So, if I set this free…" he leaned forward and gently blew on the flakes in his hand at the same time he allowed the magic holding them captive to drop. Never to be destroyed, it would return to the individual who cast the curse. "It should find its way home, back to the person who cast it."

In other words, he would not lead them to Ingrid, rather Ingrid would lead them to Ingrid. Or, as she liked to call it…destiny…

I actually kinda enjoyed sowing in some seeds of division for Belle and Rumple early. Here we see him displaying a desire to have some privacy from Belle, but while in his mind the privacy is something natural, we can see that what's really pushing it is a desire for secrets. I'm really loving the idea of exploring the difference between privacy and secrecy in marriage. That's not a theme we're going to see play out a lot in this particular fiction, but I have plans to bring it back later in some other Rumple fictions.

Thank you, Rsbeall12, for your comments on the previous chapter. Not too much left in 4x03. I hope that you are enjoying the experiments with the dirt. I found that there were some little things in this season that required a bit more explanation to make sense. Rumple does say he went back to harvest more of the urn's magic, but I couldn't see him being happy with just wasting that little bit that he had on Ingrid alone. And besides, he uses some later in the series if memory serves, he had to have more of it somewhere, so I had to figure out how to let it be grown and harvested for later times. Hope you don't mind! Peace and Happy Reading!