Belle spent the better part of an hour explaining to him how taking inventory in his own shop worked now. And he spent the better part of that time reminding himself to be grateful that she'd kept it up rather than leaving it to rot. He'd liked his old system. It was simple. Natural. Logical. Frankly, it wasn't so much a system as it had been just utilizing his own mind. He'd run the shop for so long that he knew where everything belonged. Sure, it wasn't always the easiest on customers, but he liked it that way. He didn't want to invite people in for browsing; he wanted them to come in with something specific in mind, and he wanted to direct them to what that something specific should be. He was the dealmaker. Part of being a dealmaker was to have all the cards in one's hand. His version was figurative. Belle's was apparently literal.

"This section here," she explained, picking up a couple dozen cards with small pink dots on the top, "is everything that's in the glass cases. The green dots are for everything on the walls, orange for the rafters, blue for the shelves, and gold for the back room," she finished with a small, proud smile that replaced his shock with adoration and amusement. It was lucky for her he loved her so godsdamn much. He kissed her smiling face and let the stress of having his domain completely turned upside down fade away. He'd survived her organization when they'd lived in the castle and eventually even come to appreciate it. He was positive he could do it again for the shop, especially if it meant he could kiss her this time around.

The work was tedious, but taking inventory always had been, even before she'd established a new system. But together, they started with the items in the glass cases, some of the most expensive items, and began the process of reading each card, finding the item it corresponded to, and then moving on to another. There were some things he didn't recognize, items that he was positive had not been there for the last curse that he assumed came over from the previous year: a mysterious oar stored in the rafters, a box with a horned emblem that didn't open, a pearl necklace. On those, he found himself making a couple of notes that the curse hadn't and then handing them over to his wife with a smile.

The work of inventory had always been tedious, but he had to admit, he could get used to doing it with company. It took them nearly two hours to make it halfway around the cases. Two hours for Belle to stare too long down at a card out of what he assumed was boredom only…why was her heart rate suddenly double?

"Is everything all right?" he asked, looking from her face down at the card she held.

She jumped at his words, an action that only made him all the more curious. That wasn't daydreaming run amok; something on that card had held her attention. "Um…yes," she answered with a sigh. Yes, it's…pretty, is all."

That was a lie. Belle might have had fine taste, but she wasn't like women who saw something gorgeous and lost their heads over it. If they were going through old books in the back, he might have believed it, but the jewelry case?

"Where did you get this?" she questioned, holding the card up and looking him over in a way that made his stomach knot. Had she found something significant from their past? Something he couldn't or shouldn't explain?

"Well, what does the card say?" he questioned, looking over her shoulder to get a closer look at…

He'd seen this before.

Not just the item on the card or even the card itself, but this moment he'd seen before—this moment looking down at this specific card, a picture of Anna of Arendelle's necklace, burned and warped, with that description on the little card.

"Silver. Cut well. Damaged. Slightly burned. Slightly warped. Repairable. Fair condition. Current price: $200. Estimated repair costs: $150. Fully restored price: $300. Additional Notes: The repair isn't profitable, but should someone buy it, refer the buyer to jewelry repair so they can spend the extra fifty dollars themselves."

The Seer had given that image to him what felt like an eternity ago before the Curse was cast. The Seer who no longer dwelled in his head but was somehow still giving him messages from beyond her afterlife. That was certainly something of note. Right along with this particular notecard. Why would she have given him that in a vision? And what were the odds it would come to him after he'd finally located the hat?

"It's just…it's just information," Belle commented, answering his question without realizing he suddenly had a hundred more of his own. "Nothing about who sold it to you-"

"Well," he sighed, swallowing down his curiosity and trying to remember to keep himself calm and cool. The Seer never showed him anything that wasn't important. Why was that notecard important? What had she wanted him to see? "If I don't remember it being part of my collection and there is nothing about who sold it to me, then it must have found its way here in the curse. That does tend to happen in this town."

"Right…" she confirmed slowly, as if allowing the information time to sink in. "Right, of course." With a quick nod, she placed the card aside with the others, suddenly leaving him with a new question.

He knew why looking at the card had startled him, but why had it caught Belle's eye? Why had it left her so startled? And why wasn't he telling her the truth about how he'd first acquired that necklace?

Because it'll take more than a ring for a Dark One to change his stripes, Rumpelstiltskin, Nimue hissed in his head.

"I think I'll make some tea soon," Belle sighed next to him. "Maybe go over to the apartment and get us something to eat."

"Well, that sounds like a lovely idea," he responded, all too happy to have something else to think and talk about besides that necklace, despite the fact that every Dark One agreed some alone time would allow him to dig out the Seer's old vision concerning the card and get to the bottom of why it was important. Maybe while she was out, he could run home and check the chronicles. He'd cataloged a lot of his visions within them back in the day. Perhaps that had been one of them.

"And I suppose I should take the library sign down while I'm there."

Now, that thought was certainly enough to take his mind off the card. It was enough to take his mind off the work in general and simply look over at her in shock. She wanted to take the sign that said the library was opening soon off the library? Because she wanted to open it right away? Or because-

"I put that up last year when opening was imminent," she explained. "Now…"

Now it wasn't? What on earth was strong enough to take the librarian out of the library? And yes, he certainly wanted her around the shop on days that he suspected there might be danger afoot, but he hoped that wasn't going to be every day. The idea of putting Mr. & Mrs. Gold's on the shop sign had only been a joke. They were not and never would be like the Charmings. They needed their separate lives. They'd learned that the hard way when they'd spent too much time together. The library and shop provided that. Helpful as it was having her do inventory with him, she needed that place for herself. Just as he needed this place for himself while, he assumed, occasionally working in the library to help her with her own inventory if she wanted. She had to see that. Marriage didn't mean giving up their separate lives.

"I don't think you should give up on it so soon," he countered, trying to push a button.

"I'm not giving up on it," she corrected immediately. "I just think, maybe…maybe now isn't a good time. In a few months, after some time has passed, for us, once we've had some time to get things settled, maybe then it'll be time again to think about opening it. Until then, I'll still go over and clean and organize…"

"Be a librarian…"

Because that was what she was. A librarian. He had no interest in making a pawnshop owner out of her. As much as he loved her, she didn't have what it took to be a salesman. She had everything it took to be a librarian. And a damn good one at that.

But, as much as he wanted to insist on it, there were some things in life that people had to learn for themselves, the hard way. She said a few months, he gave it a few weeks, tops, before she started wanting to go to the library more than she wanted to be in the shop and realized that the library was her dream, and the shop was his. They'd have plenty of dreams they could make together until his heart turned black or until he figured a way free from that with the sorcerer's hat. She just had to see that for herself.

"If that's truly what you want, I won't stop you. and I won't say that I wouldn't enjoy spending more time with you after everything we've been through…" he nodded. "We'll wait a few months. But I'll take the sign down for you. For some reason, you on a ladder makes me nervous."

She laughed at his joke as they both turned their attention back to the task at hand-

Only for the bell over the door to chime and interrupt them once again. The second he looked up to see David and Hook striding into the room, their faces set with determination…fuck, he knew this was more than just a power outage.

"It appears our honeymoon is over," he stated.

"Yeah, there's an emergency," David confirmed. There always was in this town. "Emma's trapped under ice by a woman with some kind of ice magic."

Ice magic…like the kind Anna of Arendelle's sister and aunt possessed.

The chill in the air, magic that was familiar but not, the vision with the necklace…

"And this involves me because…"

"You're the bloody Dark One, do something!" Hook demanded angrily.

No. That was too easy of an answer to this mystery. The Seer wouldn't have given him a vision just for that.

"Well, I could melt the ice and destroy it with a thought, but that would also destroy your girlfriend. Is that what you want?!"

"No one's destroying anyone," David insisted, putting his hands between him and Hook as if that would stop him from killing the man one of these days. Honestly, Baelfire wasn't even cold in the ground, and Hook was already moving in…

"Now, the woman who has Emma trapped is in there with her and she's looking for her sister, name of…Anna. She thinks she's in town because of something she found here in your shop. A necklace."

Oh, there was no fucking way all of this was a coincidence.

And now his curiosity was piqued. Now he wanted answers and information. He wanted to put the mystery together and get an idea for why on earth the Seer wanted him to have a vision of the future for-

"Is that it?" Belle questioned, immediately pressing the card with the photo of the necklace into David's hands. He held back his disappointed sigh as the Dark Ones in his head laughed hysterically when she gave away their one and only bargaining chip. No, she was certainly not a salesman.

He kept his face stoic as Hook took the card greedily in his hands first before David got more than a passing glance at it and took it for himself. Honestly, they were going to wrinkle the paper, and then he'd have to make up a new one…

"Wait!" David exclaimed. "I know this! I know exactly who Anna is!"

"Wonderful, perhaps you wouldn't mind filling the rest of us in so we can bloody well save your daughter!" Hook lashed.

"Perhaps you wouldn't mind filling everyone else in outside of my shop," he suggested. He already knew how David knew Anna of Arendelle, even if David didn't know that he knew. And he was confident that the Seer wouldn't have given him a vision of this for such a trivial task. There was something else going on, and the sooner they left the sooner they could-

"No! Wait!" Belle insisted, staring at David with desperation. Desperation and the same hitch in her heartbeat that she'd had when she first saw the card. Oh, there was most certainly something he was missing there. "Wait, who…who is she? Anna?"

"Joan," David stated, providing the false name Dove once reported Anna gave him.

"Joan?" Hook questioned skeptically.

"Joan?' Belle echoed, confused.

"Not Anna?" Hook clarified.

"Yes, Joan! And…yes, Anna!"

For fuck's sake, he knew there was a reason he'd never taken a liking to comedy.

"I met her a long time ago in our land. She told me her name was Joan. I always knew it was a fake name, that she was lying, but she never did tell me who she was exactly or why she was on my doorstep in the first place. But she helped me…and she was…Gold, I need your help."

"I assumed."

"Bo Peep, you know who she is, right? Who she was in our world? Her staff, where is it?"

"What makes you think that I've got it?"

"Because you have everything," David pointed out as if it was obvious. "I need that staff to find Anna and save Emma."

He wasn't wrong. He wasn't right, either, but…he wasn't wrong. The staff had, in fact, been in his possession. But it was also one of the first deals he'd made just after the Curse broke. Why Bo Peep had wanted it back so bad wasn't his concern, and he'd had no plans for it, no visions that involved it, so he'd gladly traded it away to keep his family safe from her, something he was suddenly grateful he'd had the foresight to do.

That was all information that he'd gladly give up…for the right price. Nothing in this shop came free. Information, as well as magic, all carried a price of some-

Belle's hand suddenly drifted over his own, drawing his gaze from David to her. Her eyes were just as desperate as David's, just as nervous. There most certainly was something to that necklace that he was missing, something that related to Belle he wasn't aware of. He wanted to know that story, wanted to understand what had happened. But he was certain that information would not come with Hook and David in the room. And fortunately for her, she was the only other person in the world who would never carry a debt from this shop.

"That particular piece of magic left my shop almost as soon as the first curse broke," he sighed. "I haven't seen it since."

"Really?" David tested. "You really just let someone walk off with it?"

"It didn't match my eyes," he answered, wondering why he was being quizzed on his business practices when two seconds ago, rescuing Emma was the most important thing in the world. "Its magic was far from useful. Big and long, it was inefficient, nothing I needed, so I sold it back into the hands of the woman it belonged to soon after she remembered who she was."

"Bo Peep," David balked. "You just sold her staff back to her? Just like that?"

"Well, seeing as how she's been little trouble since the curse broke, I've never come to regret my decision. She was a warlord and a pathetic one at that. She owes me a bigger mortgage on her little shop than anyone else on her street; perhaps a little bullying, a taste of her own medicine, reformed her a bit."

"Okay, reformed or not, Gold, I need that staff. Now! Where is she? Who is she?!"

"What do I get in return for the information I have?"

"Rumple!" Belle snapped by his side. But he wouldn't take the words back. The first bit of information he'd given for free because Belle asked, now, he found that he was growing more and more impatient.

"I go away," David breathed, suddenly speaking his language. "At least until the next time I need something. I go away, and the two of you can get back to…your honeymoon?" he assumed, glancing down at what appeared to be the ring Belle now wore on her finger. Well, if Archie hadn't spread the news already it most certainly would be common knowledge by the end of the day now. "Gold, please…Emma…we don't have a lot of time!"

Fine then. In exchange for their departure and his freedom from this encounter…

"Then I believe the woman you're looking for currently goes by the name Shari Lewis. She's the owner of the butchery, The Lamb Chop. You'll have to ask her where your staff is."

"Thank you!" David breathed, pushing off the counter before his own magic could do it. "Thank you! Thank you!"

The pair of them left in accordance with their deal. But Belle continued to hold that card with Anna's necklace in her hand. She stared down at it, leaving him with more questions than answers.

I think that one of the reasons this fiction was so much fun to read is because of just how different Belle and Rumple's stories are despite being so similar. I ended up using Belle's fiction a lot when writing this one, but it was only really good for the physical actions and getting the dialogue right. Beyond that, Rumple and Belle emotionally are going through two very different roller coasters and it was fun enabling him to miss some of the signs that she was having issues because of his problems and vise versa. I remember writing a lot of space into Moments Rumple for just that and finally getting to fill in the blanks was wonderful!

Thank you so much to Rsbeall12 for your review on the previous chapter. I'm glad that you like it. I'm excited to have you read a lot of the chapters that are going to come next, not because there's more fluff, which, of course, there is. Rather because I think this fiction is going to take a couple of twists and turns early that you probably aren't expecting. So, if you are ready, let's see where this takes us! Peace and Happy Reading!