Hook was predictable. He wanted to believe that he wasn't, but he was. The pirate wanted to pretend like what he'd said wasn't going to bother him or invade his thoughts and how he behaved, but as he was learning, it wasn't so easy for a tiger to change their stripes. He'd give him a day, at max, for him to return begging on hands and knees for his hook back. And when he did…he'd be ready.

Without having to worry about making an excuse for Belle, after Hook left, he locked the shop up once more, got in his car, and drove. The Mansion that he and Belle had used for their "honeymoon" was a fair distance from the town, something he made sure to keep note of because he didn't want to miss the date he had scheduled. But once he finally arrived, he put all notions of the pirate and Belle from his head. He was here for a reason. He needed to keep his mind focused on that reason.

He sent a testing pulse of magic out over the property, looking first for any signs of life. None returned. There wasn't even a mouse that he could find. However, he had felt at least something of interest. Perhaps more than one, in fact.

He finally slid out of the car and looked up at the mansion from its gravel drive and sent another pulse of magic out, this time tuning his senses to what returned.

More magic.

And not just the shimmer of Light Magic he could feel over the mansion like a cloak, actual, lively magic.

That was…odd. If the Apprentice had lived here, as Dove suggested, he would have expected it would have been like the shack he'd kept at the bottom of his mountain, warded and hidden from him. But this place had no wards on it. Obviously. He'd been inside and hadn't felt any obvious magic coming off of it. But the spell he'd sent through the property told him that there was magic here. Low-level magic, which was probably why he hadn't felt it when he'd first been here, not to mention he'd been distracted by the hat, but it was here.

He sighed as he walked back inside the same way that Belle had brought him. He walked the mansion as he hadn't when he'd been here with Belle, distracted not just by the hat but by her as well. His magic sought out those pulses of low magic that he'd found, but it wasn't out of need. It was simply out of curiosity.

Dove confirmed that this mansion hadn't been here during the last Curse, and now it was. There were a host of reasons for that. The simplest was that Regina hadn't wanted the Sorcerer here last time or that his things had been caught up in whatever hole Cora and Hook and the handful of others who'd managed to evade the Curse had been in. But given what he knew about Regina and those who hadn't carried over, he highly doubted it.

No, there were a host of reasons, but he was willing to bet that the spells over Merlin's Tower, similar to the ones over his castle, were strong enough to completely fortify it from Regina's Curse, but not the second time around. Or at least not entirely. His theory was that after the first curse ravaged the land, there were cracks and bits of magic that were destroyed or not taken care of, leaving some pieces vulnerable to the curse when it enveloped the land the second time. Vulnerable, but not unbroken.

He sought out the magic that he found when he sent the spell out. It alerted him to a few things in the mansion. There was a small pebble in the kitchen he hadn't noticed before. It heated when he touched it, threatening to burn his skin. It was the same defense as his basement doorknob only he used his own magic to keep himself safe before slipping it into his pocket. There was a painting of a grotesque man with magic clinging to it. That he left alone. He found a small trunk under a bed that resembled his black bag. It was filled with bits and baubles and potions inside of it. None of them were particularly valuable so he left them alone as well. In fact, other than the rock, none of the magic that he crossed in the mansion seemed worth noting. He knew where it was, if he had questions he could always come back later.

He was nearly done when he remembered that, according to Dove, the Mansion itself was not his intended target. The Mansion was part of the mystery but not the reason that he was here. He wanted the Apprentice. Nimue needed him to find the Apprentice.

Someone had to be the test subject for absorbing magic into the hat, and he could think of none better than Merlin's best boy.

Dove had said that the Mansion was new, but before that, the Apprentice had been living in the area in a gardener's cottage that appeared to be abandoned the last time that he was here. If that was true, that would be very interesting indeed. Out in the backyard, he saw no evidence of a gardener's cottage or a cottage of any kind for that matter. He'd expected it wouldn't be far because Dove had mentioned that it used to have an amazing view, and if he ventured too far into the forest, then there would be no view. But…

If it was abandoned, there had to be a reason the Apprentice hadn't taken up residence again. He wasn't even going to try and begin to come up with where the Apprentice had been or what he'd been doing before either Curse struck to make sense of why he'd have a cottage and now wouldn't. But he would reason that if something up here had changed it stood to reason that something else had changed. If the Apprentice had been delivered back to Storybrooke at the Curse, and he could safely assume he had been because Dove had seen him, and he hadn't been delivered back into the very bed he'd had from the beginning, it stood to reason that he'd likely go looking for his former home. If the Apprentice had come up here and seen the mansion but no cottage, that could explain why there was no magic warding any of it. Perhaps he'd just assumed that it belonged to someone new, someone who hadn't crossed over in the last curse.

At least, that was the theory he was working with.

He sent another pulse of magic out across the wooded area in the back. He didn't expect a heartbeat to come back to him; he already knew that no one living was on the property, but he did feel…something. Weak magic. Not even a low-level spell, just remnants of magic. As if something had been in the presence of magic for so long it couldn't lose its association. There was something out there. He intended to figure out what.

There was no path. He spent the afternoon climbing over fallen trees and avoiding patches of mud as he tried to navigate toward the magic he felt. The forest was thick. It was lush and difficult to see. It was especially difficult to make out when the thing he was looking for was made of wood and just as mossy as the trees.

Fuck, he hadn't even realized he'd been looking at it until he saw something glint up ahead and he'd stared, trying to figure out what it was. It was a window. A small window in a very small house. The roof was green. The siding was brown. In many ways, it reminded him of the hovel. It blended into its new surroundings so well that he might have missed it if not for the way that the tree cover cleared and allowed a ray of sun to hit that window.

He closed the distance with magic. There was no use climbing through the forest that grew around the house when he could just transport himself onto the front step. It was just as it had been at the Mansion, only…less. There were no wards on this place. No spells. There was no magic even, only that faint hint that he'd caught a whiff of that wasn't really magic in the first place. Hell, frankly, the entire place looked like it might collapse if he opened the door. It looked battered. As if the magic hadn't known what to do with it when the mansion was created in its spot so it just flung it out into the middle of nowhere. Even if the Apprentice had wandered out here to find it, he could easily see him concluding that the shack wasn't worth the time and effort.

But that magic he felt…

He turned the knob on the door handle, gave it a tug, then a good yank when nothing happened. The door flung open for him, but something from the roof, dusty and powdery, fell from the sky, and there was a creak and low rumble from the structure. It was coming down. There was no doubt in his mind that it wasn't structurally sound enough to remain where it was as it was, but if he could find something to indicate the Apprentice's location, then he had to give it a shot.

He reached out his hand and froze the shack in place. It wouldn't hold forever, but maybe just long enough…

He stepped inside…chaos. It looked like it had been caught up in a tornado. There were dishes strewn about on the floor, along with gardening tools, paper, and towels. In the tiny kitchen, all the cabinetry was open, leaving nothing to be stacked on the shelves, even if they had been level enough to do it. There was a refrigerator on its side. An overturned easy chair that had crushed a lamp beneath it. Toward the back of it, a ladder leaned precariously against a wall, and he noted a lofted mattress over what would have been a back door.

It was small, but on a solid foundation, he could see how the one-room shack would have made a nice home for the hermit. It wasn't much different than what he'd seen of the shack at the bottom of his castle, which excited him a great deal. If Ingrid was telling the truth, then the last known location of the hat had been with the Apprentice. If he'd been keeping it with him here during the first Curse, then perhaps that was how it had ended up in the Mansion for the second. Perhaps that was why something in this place was stained with magic!

What was it?! Compulsion took over. He wasn't even sure why! It was the Apprentice he needed to charge the hat! Not whatever remnant of magic he was feeling!

But he had a theory that if he could manage to sever the connection he had to the dagger, then maybe, just maybe, he could manage to sever the connection to the Dark Ones in his head, and oh, how he longed to have his mind back!

They hissed at him now, shook their fists and roared at such an idea, but he…he rejoiced in it. To no longer have them in his head, to live his day-to-day life out with a quiet mind instead of constant commentary and judgement. It sounded exquisite. Exquisite and complicated. He wouldn't want to get rid of them completely. Their memories were helpful. Hell, sometimes even their opinions could be helpful when he wanted them. But to be able to have better control, keep them quiet, and only call them forth when necessary. That was his goal. And it was his hope that it might have one other added benefit.

If he could mute the voices and free himself from the dagger, he wondered, would he be able to stop the blackening of his heart. Nimue had mentioned it herself when he'd gotten free of Zelena. His heart was black because of his own choices, true, but it was also black because he carried with it the sins of those who had come before. If he could free himself from the dagger, why not free himself from their blackness as well and buy himself some time to banish some of the darkness he had accumulated? Why not truly turn over that new leaf now that he had Belle? He could accept his own blackness and work to put red back into his heart. It seemed like a wonderful idea to him. Certainly something worth trying if only-

There!

The magic he was scouring the floor for suddenly called to him. He was right on top of it! He knelt down in the debris and began to sift through what he saw. Some knitting needles, napkins, a slipper, broken glass and porcelain, and…there…

Stuck between the crevice of the floorboards, a few twigs were lodged. He'd hardly have noticed them if it wasn't for the fact that they were all that was left after he'd cleared the area. With a bit of force, he pulled the ginger-colored material out and examined them.

Yes, this was most certainly what he'd been sensing. These three little twigs were not magic themselves, but they were covered in it as though they'd been around it for a good long while and absorbed the power. Quite a bit of it, by feel. But…what on earth…

It was only as his eyes swept over the rest of the debris that he realized…sweeping…

Memories from Nimue and Zoso and a handful of other Dark Ones, not to mention his own from the encounter with Anna, played in his mind. The broom. The one that Nimue confirmed Merlin had given the boy when he was his Apprentice.

First, to teach a lesson. Then, as a reminder of a different lesson he learned at the hands of it.

He didn't care why Merlin had given it to him or about these lessons, only that the broom was something that was always in the Apprentice's possession and it appeared that it still was. He couldn't find it anywhere in the mess. As far as he was concerned, that confirmed that the Apprentice had come to this place after all or perhaps because it had traveled with him, but these fibers, these bristles, they'd been left behind, probably from the last time the man swept the floor. He could-

From above, a loud groan and creek stole his attention. His eyes darted to the roof as he realized that his freezing spell had worn off and…the cottage was vibrating.

Without hesitation, he closed his fist over the bristles in his hand and used his magic to take himself back outside just far enough to watch the cottage collapse in a heap of wood and dust.

I really enjoyed writing this chapter, and I'm hoping that y'all will enjoy it as well. There are a lot of reasons that I made Rumple search for The Apprentice a little bit more than what we saw in the show, but one of those reasons is that I just can't see it coming easily to Rumple. This is the Apprentice we're talking about. He spends his time in the Enchanted Forest, hiding from the Dark One, protecting the hat, and doing his duty. I couldn't see him stopping all of that just because of Storybrooke. And at the same time, I couldn't see Rumple having something of his, like his broom, and just ignoring it. Nimue seemed to have such a hate for Merlin that I couldn't see her not hating the boy as well and leaving him dead. It wasn't possible to me that Rumple would have had the Apprentice's broom just sitting around in his store and done nothing about it for so long. At the same time, it also didn't seem plausible that the Apprentice would allow Rumple to have his broom and do nothing to retrieve it. So, I sent Rumple on this little scavenger hunt. What comes next? I guess you'll have to read more to find out.

Thank you Grace5231973, Rsbeall12, and my guest for your reviews on the previous chapters. As I said, I really do hope that you will like this chapter and this little hunt for the Apprentice. I know there is a lot to do this season that probably makes this little side quest of Rumple's seem unimportant, but really, when have I ever been one to cut corners? Peace and Happy Reading!