If ever there was a word that might inspire his beloved wife, it was "adventure." Content as they'd been in their bed through the afternoon, the moment he suggested they go on an adventure, she practically sprang from the bed and began dressing, instantly making his heart drop.

"Faster you get up, faster we can be back to honeymooning…" she teased when he'd made no attempt to move.

"Honeymooning" was the word that inspired him to get out of bed and join her in getting ready and resetting the cabin back to a state of stasis. She made the bed. He sent the food he'd summoned back to the house. Neither of them turned on their phones as Belle collected her bag, glanced inside nervously, then cast him a sad worried look that reminded him of a task he desperately needed to accomplish soon.

"It'll be fine," he assured her, hustling her out the door.

Soon. Soon enough. Now, more than ever, he was determined to do things right.

"Five minutes," he warned as they turned onto their street. "Five minutes, and we'll be on our way."

"Eager?" she questioned, the smile on her face so wide he could see it from the corner of his eye.

"Nervous," he corrected, scanning the street for Emma's bug and David's red truck. "Every second we're here, we run the risk of being spotted and pulled back to town to subdue some unknown evil. If they do that, then we'll never get away."

And he very much so wanted to get away and be away for as long as time, and Belle's conscious, would allow. Which was why he had the keys to the house in his hand long before he even reached the steps. He opened the door, pushed it open, and stepped inside, holding it open for her…only to find her beaming one step behind him with the newspaper in her hand.

"Front page news" she commented as she handed it to him and closed the door. He took it and looked it up and down. A picture of the two of them in his shop with cheesy, genuine grins of happiness stared back. "Mr. Gold to Marry Belle French" was the headline. And the look on her face…that had been the point of the gesture in the first place.

"Well, that's to be expected. I'm a very important man with a very important wife."

She chuckled before kissing him. Her mouth worked on his, but he hadn't gone so brain-dead as not to realize that she was also slipping the paper free from his hands. He had a feeling that he'd find that paper, years later, stored away in some well-organized keepsake box. Hell, she'd probably cut the article out to frame it, then save an extra just for emergencies. He didn't mind. He'd claim embarrassment if anyone ever saw it, but he'd wanted to do it just so that she'd feel claimed. It had worked.

And now that she was kissing him, something else was working, reminding him that this place was not a safe place to honeymoon, not where they could be easily found.

"Belle," he gasped, managing to pull away from her. "Five minutes! Five-"

"Minutes, I know, I know," she exclaimed before moving to the stairs. He hung back as she practically skipped to their bedroom, catching his breath and unsure about how they were ever supposed to stop honeymooning when he liked it this much! Precious seconds ticked by as he stood there basking in the glory of the last twenty-four hours until it dawned on him...he was alone.

He wanted to do things right. Now was as good a time as any. He hadn't planned on switching the false dagger for a week or so, but Zelena had already been found dead, he'd been confronted about it, everyone seemed to have believed the line about Belle keeping his homicidal tendencies in check…perhaps the danger was past. Perhaps now was the time. He did want to do things right.

He used his magic, located the place he'd hidden the real dagger in his shop, and brought it into his own two hands. Risky…this was entirely risky and the voices in his head knew it too, but Belle was so desperate to be rid of the thing he knew that with one simple conversation he could very easily convince her to hide it safe and sound. She'd still be the owner of it, they'd both simply make sure it was in a safe place only…

As he looked around the foyer, he realized Belle's bag was nowhere to be seen. She must have taken it upstairs with her.

Perhaps that was for the best. The Dark Ones hissed in his ear that it was for the best. Waiting a week had been the original plan, they said, why not wait? A week. A month. A year. Forever...

Come now, Rumpelstiltskin, Nimue cooed in his mind, you know it's only an excuse. If you truly wanted to return that dagger, you'd have done it by now.

No. No, that wasn't the truth at all! With a heavy sigh he put the dagger into the pocket of his jacket. It couldn't stay there too long, it wouldn't! He was going to give the dagger back to her. Besides, if he kept it where it was for too long, if she touched him just right then she'd notice. It was fine for now, but soon he'd do it. No excuses. He just needed to figure out a good time to locate the fake one and change them out.

Upstairs, as if the gods were answering his prayers, he walked into the room just as she was wrapping the false dagger in a scarf and putting it in an overnight bag. Good. That was good. Now he knew where the fake one was, it would be easy enough to switch them.

Soon.

He wandered into his own closet, found a bag, pulled out a few dress shirts and pants, matched the ties he had no intention of wearing, then carefully folded them and placed them in a bag-

Suddenly a sound like a sob echoed through the quiet of the room and drew his attention back to his wife, sitting there on the bed, the paper in front of her as she read something. Were those tears in her eyes? Anger flared within his curiosity. If that moron from the paper spelled her name wrong or mentioned her previous fiancé…

"Belle?"

Belle sniffed, then quickly fumbled to close the paper so he wouldn't see…

"Belle, what's wrong?"

"It's nothing," she explained, folding the paper up and pushing it away as if that behavior wasn't suspicious in the least.

"You're a bad liar," he commented as she looked between the bags and the paper. He simply stood there, waiting, patiently. He was quite good at patience when he wanted to be, and Belle, when there was just the right amount of guilt in her eyes as there was now, would always yield easily to pressure. With a sigh, she slowly reached for the paper, unfolded it, and opened it back up to what he assumed had made her gasp in the first place. She moved over for him so he could sit by her side instead of reading over her shoulder and-

His blood chilled the second he saw the name "Neal Cassidy" in print.

Under a headline marked "The Missing and the Dead" were names of those in the last year who were unaccounted for and obituaries for those who had not survived Zelena's terror. Those like his son.

"Neal Cassidy, also known as Baelfire, born in the forests of Mist Haven, former lost boy and rebel of Neverland, wanderer and citizen of New York City, died among his family in the forest of Storybrooke, one of the few unfortunate victims of the Wicked Witch of the West in Storybrooke, Maine. Neal Cassidy is survived by his father, Rumpelstiltskin, and a son, Henry, and his son's mother, his beloved friend, Emma Swan. At the time of his burial, he received highest honors from The King and Queen for his sacrifice and assistance in destroying the Wicked Witch. He will be remembered as a true hero, a loyal friend, and loving father by all who knew him. He is laid to rest in Storybrooke Cemetery, in a plot provided by an anonymous donor."

Survived by his father…words no parent should ever have to read and yet…

"Did you-"

"No," she answered quickly, saying what he'd already known to be true. "Emma and Mary Margaret…they handled the arrangements. One of them must have called the paper, and it looks like they're just now getting around to…"

Of course…because who worries about newspaper deadlines when there is the ever-present threat of being turned into a monkey with wings?

She had loved Baelfire, just as he always knew she would and yet she wasn't mentioned anywhere. She was humble, but she knew what she'd meant to Baelfire as well and she would have put herself in there if she had been the one to write it, which meant the person who wrote it was even more clueless than he was. But still…she hadn't handled the arrangements? An anonymous donor? Emma and Mary Margaret could be headstrong. Had they shut her out, he wondered.

"There's no mention of you here," he commented.

"It was before we had our memories back, before anyone had any reason to think we were anything, let alone friends!" she whispered, reminding him of the proper chain of events. Between endless days and nights in the cage and more memories than he was supposed to have in his head…sometimes the past week or two blurred together.

But…"friends." Was that it? He didn't have the memories any more but he remembered the impression, the deep love Bae had grown for her. Was friendship all there was to the relationship?

What had it looked like?

"And if you'd had your memories? What would you have done then?"

She took a few shallow breaths as she looked down at the paper, looking more haunted from her lack of presence in the words than he'd ever have expected for someone mourning a friend. She looked like she was mourning family.

"More…" she finally answered simply. Certainly not just friends. And obviously not lovers, but then…where would that have left them? Bae had been adamant that he didn't need her or want her as a stepmother, but…had it happened anyway? It wouldn't have been the first time Belle broke down the walls of someone in the Gold family. And Belle would have seen it as her duty to step in and parent him, even if she was centuries younger than him.

"I wish I'd known him as a boy," Belle exclaimed sadly. "I wish I could have known who he was before all this happened, before we lost you. We talked a lot before he died, but his past…I could only get bits and pieces, fragments of that. But we did talk about this, you know…you and me, marriage. He'd have been happy we got married. He'd have been more than happy to be up there on that hillside with us."

Happy they were married? That was a far cry from the look of shock he'd given him when he'd confessed his intentions on Hook's ship, which felt like a lifetime ago. Was that because he'd had a change of mind or just a conversation with a different person?

"Standing with you or me?" he asked out of genuine curiosity. He was suddenly beginning to feel like his son had become more her son than his own.

"Both of us," she burst out with no hesitation. "He wouldn't have been able to choose, but…he wanted us to be happy. He wanted us to have the kind of love that we deserve with each other…the one he searched for with Emma and Henry. He'd be happy Rumple, very happy."

And she knew that, did she? Wasn't guessing or assuming, she just…just had the privilege of knowing it?

"He approved of you then?"

"Yes. I think he did," she answered with forced speculation that hid her earlier confidence. She'd caught on. But he didn't want that. "We were important to one another. He'd be happy that at least we have each other."

A family of two instead of three; that was the true curse of being a Gold, a curse she was taking on in taking his last name. They'd never be the family he wanted. It would never be him and his parents, always him and his father, or him with two spinsters who'd adopted him because it was Malcolm and Peter Pan. Never him and Bae and Milah, always him and Bae and then him and then Bae alone because he'd chosen the Darkness over Bae. Never him and Belle and Bae, only Belle and Bae because of the Darkness. And not him and Belle…because…

He rose from where he'd been seated beside her and took one final glance at the paper, one last confirmation of something he needed to know before he began to fold it up tight and set it aside for safekeeping.

"Belle…I don't want to take any more time, but before we go anywhere…" he swallowed down a lump in his throat, suddenly feeling more courageous than ever. "I think there's something I have to do first."

It was time he see his son.

We interrupt fluff to bring you, drama. But good drama, necessary drama. Necessary for the story at least. For everyone who has read Moments you already know that Belle is the keeper of something very special where Baelfire is concerned. She, ultimately, gets the opportunity to spend more time with Bae than Rumple does. And so she becomes the keeper of his memory. While they'll eventually learn to embrace that, it's going to chafe for a while, for both of them. She's going to have to learn how to share Baelfire with him without feeling guilty and he's going to have to learn how to communicate with her his desire to know about Neal. Moments readers already saw how Belle worked through her side of that, now we need to work through Rumple's side of it.

I hope that you'll enjoy this chapter. Aside from dealing with the Baelfire stuff we can really start to see that he's not nearly as resolved about giving Belle the dagger as he wants to be. For goodness sake, we watched him freeze her to return it later in this episode, so we know that being alone in the room is no excuse. Peace and Happy Reading!