What a night.

What a night!

Great and terrible, tiring and troublesome, slow and yet productive all at once!

After dealing with the Ice Queen he'd returned to his shop. He'd needed to pause and change into a suit the back drawer provided him with because the forest mud had wrecked his pants and shoes, but after that, he'd gotten to work.

Nimue was in a frenzy. This hat was what she'd been searching for in her time, something Merlin himself had come up with, she suspected, to capture her! Just like the Elixir of the Wounded Heart, it was made to fix and contain her, only once again, Merlin had failed to follow through. And because Merlin had never designated that it was only to capture Dark Magic, it could also capture Light Magic as well. She was giddy at the thought of that. Destroy all Light Magic, that was what she had always tried to tell him was the goal of every Dark One.

Except him. He'd never had any true interest in eliminating Light Magic. Even now, he had no urge to do it. All he wanted was freedom. Freedom from the dagger and the voices in his head. Helpful as they were, he wanted to be able to kiss his wife without feeling that there were a hundred spectators offering commentary. And if Nimue's suspicions, and the research of half a dozen other Dark Ones were to be believed, then this hat could help with half that problem, from there it would be a hop, skip, and a jump to solving the other. So, for now, Light Magic could stay in this world and reign supreme; freedom from the dagger was his only goal.

According to Nimue, the hat was meant to confine magic, much like the dust that lay in the nickel box. But there was one difference between the vessel once meant to contain magic and this hat. With the right amount of power, Nimue explained, the power within the hat could be wielded by the individual who possessed it.

To him, this all seemed like a far cry, but the Dark Ones…they confirmed it was not. They took over. They invaded his mind, flooding him with encounters and opinions and things they knew about the hat. They directed him to the chronicles that he'd packed away and brought for the occasion. And as it turned out, none of them had done more research on it than his predecessor. Zoso.

"I had to!" he hissed in his ear just before he began circling the table, staring at the object of his greatest desire in awe. "I was desperate to be free of that dagger. You think surrendering my power to you was my first attempt to remedy my situation?! Of course not! I worked and slaved and researched and learned before I came up against that curse you broke with the Arendelle girl's tear!"

"Yes, yes, we're all aware. You walked so that I could run, so show me!" he hissed at Zoso. And show him he did. The Chronicles that Zoso had kept during his time were thorough. There were sketches of the hat, sketches of what it would look like, and the night sky. A list of occupants that he suspected had met their end to the hat. The last was a Churnabog, like the thing he'd encountered on Bald Mountain in search of his Dark Curse. That made sense. The Churnabog were a rare species of Dark Magic descent. He suspected there might have only been three or four left in their world at one point. The Fairies and the Apprentice had been in touch with each other. If the Apprentice had managed to trap a few in the hat, then it stood to reason he would have been willing to provide one to Mother Superior to aid in the guarding of the Curse.

He learned that with every collection of magic, stars took their place on the hat. That had been what he'd seen. But according to Zoso, for the magic to be wielded properly, the space depicted on the hat had to be identical to what was in the night sky.

He worked all night, reading and theorizing and summarizing, and by the first lick of dawn when he finally opened the hat and got to work charting, he realized something quite delicious.

He was close.

Dangerously close, in fact! Zoso had even written out a rough estimate of the properties of the spell he'd need to cast to render the dagger a useless piece of metal, to keep his power and yet end the Dark One lineage Curse with him!

"Not all of it…" Zoso pointed out, tapping is finger on a large question mark that had been circled and underlined in his notes for emphasis. "There's missing something. Something to enact it that I could never quite put my finger on."

That was true. As he quickly looked at the properties and began to run the magical proof in his head, he quickly came to the same conclusion Zoso had years ago. There was something missing, something needed to root the magic and channel it entirely into him, stripping the dagger of it's power. Something he'd have to discover for himself, a final active conduit aside from the spell he'd have to will and the potions he'd have to take. But still, that was a small thing.

He was close, so much closer than he ever dreamed. So much closer than he had to imagine the Apprentice would have known otherwise he wouldn't have just left the hat laying out in the open for anyone to take. What other secrets could be at that house, he wondered…

He was close, but he had work ahead of him. Delicate work. Work that would require some careful manipulation and planning. The hat was close to being charged, but not fully. He needed to add magic users to his collection, very powerful magic users. The Apprentice was obviously a fine candidate since going back to capture Merlin wasn't a possibility. And with no desire to get into Merlin's tower, there was no point in keeping the old man alive. Well…not that he'd be dead inside the hat, not for a while, anyway. Zoso did point out in his research that while the hat harvested magic right away, further research had proved that it didn't harvest the body right away. It was a failsafe that Merlin had built into the hat to reverse what he'd done.

"A sign of his weakness," Nimue sneered.

Weakness indeed. But that delay he'd placed on the hat wasn't permanent. The hat wasn't meant to be an eternal prison sentence, and after time, the hat would absorb not just the magic but the being itself. But before that time passed, they could be called forth by being summoned from the hat.

That was of no matter. Once the Apprentice was in there, he intended to make sure that he stayed in there. For good.

Aside from the Apprentice, he had some other individuals in mind who could get the hat to the power level he wanted. The Fairies would be ideal. Ingrid and Elsa were also top of his mind for power at the moment. But, if his hope was to do this quietly, as under the radar as possible, then he was going to have to think carefully about how to follow through with this. The apprentice could easily disappear quietly. The Fairies were difficult, but he could manage it. Ingrid and Elsa, they'd be almost impossible with the amount of attention on them at the moment. Although, that attention would provide a wonderful distraction he could use to help him continue to fly under the radar.

The possibilities were endless. The ideas were swirling in his head, unformed but becoming clearer with every second until-

Until he climbed the stairs, opened the door to his bedroom, and suddenly realized that it was no longer his bedroom but theirs.

Belle…he'd been up working all night; productively working all night. The hat, the dust, his experiments. He'd had success, a lot of it. Just before he'd left, he'd cleaned it all away and checked the experiment. Both clocks were working again, as he'd planned, and once he checked the time difference, five hours was what he got. That was how long the dust would work in its current state. At least, it was an approximation. It would vary, given the person or magic that it was trying to contain, but for the most part, it was a number that he could work with and use from this point forward. It was a very successful night!

But why? For who? Not for him. He was the one who would easily benefit the most from no longer being tied to the dagger, but…it wasn't just about him anymore. It was about them. Belle was his wife. His family. And yet, they'd been married less than a week, and already he'd made her sleep alone twice for this plan.

It broke his heart to see her alone in their bed. The sheets were a wreck, as though she'd tossed and turned all night. She didn't do that when he slept with her. And it was well past the time that she usually would have been up and getting ready for work. But he was her alarm clock. Without him there, she'd just slept on, none the wiser.

All magic came with a price…

If this were a year ago, before Zelena, before Pan…this would be easy. He'd use his free time to do the work and research he needed to be doing. Now that he was wed and she was so insistent in staying with him at the store, not to mention always helping the people he was going to need to try and keep at a distance, that certainly added an element of difficulty to it that he hadn't expected or factored in last night. Then again, he hadn't done much factoring in of Belle last night at all. If he had, she wouldn't have been here alone. That had to stop.

If he was going to do this without truly giving in to his darker nature, then he had to make sure that everything he did was always for "them." It couldn't be all about him, not anymore. And leaving Belle to sleep alone while he worked…that was certainly all about him.

Maybe there was a way to fix it, a way to get some of their boundaries back. She didn't have to go work in the library, but maybe if he expressed that he needed some time alone in his shop to let his mind work, she'd trust him enough to go. That would most certainly allow him to spend his nights with her. And as for tonight…tonight, he had to make up for what he'd deprived her of.

He tossed his suit jacket at the foot of the bed, then carefully positioned himself beside her. He'd meant to stroke her hair and wake her but instead the motion itself seemed to startle her from a less than peaceful sleep. He knew it was less than peaceful because never in a million years would something as slight as that have brought her fully to consciousness.

"I'm sorry," he whispered as she rolled over. "I thought you'd be awake by now."

"What time is it?"

"Late enough for you to be up by now," he admitted apologetically.

"Were you up all night with that dirt?" she questioned with blurry eyes. Ah, yes…that was the immediate excuse that he'd given her last night. It was an excuse that was truthful, but it wasn't, of course, the entire story. However, for both their sakes, he felt no reason to give the entire story just yet.

"Yes…yes, I was."

"What are you wearing?"

"Oh, I uh…I went over to the shop at some point, and things got a bit dusty." Which wasn't entirely a lie. He did want to purge himself of the dust before he worked with the hat. "This was just what I had lying around."

But nevertheless, he heard her heartbeat suddenly race as sleep fled from her eyes. Danger. He'd made it sound too much like he'd been in danger. She was worried.

"I'm fine," he assured her, reaching for her cheek. "Nothing happened last night but I do want to speak with you about it and considering the time…perhaps you wouldn't mind if we went into town and took a walk first."

He raised his eyebrows expectantly. She always wanted to talk. And a talk about boundaries now that they were married seemed like a good conversation to have. It wasn't that he didn't want her around. He did! He just needed a little more space than she'd afforded him since he'd returned from…well…being gone.

She watched him skeptically at first, then eventually nodded and sat up in bed, giving him a hint of what he'd missed last night, but all the more motivation to get things done properly. A lifetime of this life was what he wanted. Now, he just had to figure out how to get it.

Welcome to 4x04! 4x04 is a little bit of a longer section because this was about the time that I think the writers realized they weren't really putting as much time into the seasons as they thought they were and decided to spread the episodes out over the course of two days instead of one. After this they tend to pick up in the afternoon of day one and conclude the afternoon or evening of the next day. It was simple but effective and started to buy the show a little more time.

Thank you, Rsbeall12 and Grace5231973, for your reviews on the last chapter. I know this one seems like filler, and it kind of is, but there are a lot of hints in this chapter that I think you'll appreciate when all is said and done. I took a different approach to the hat matching the stars because I really hate easy consequences that make the story too difficult to believe. I don't know about you, but that whole "the stars need to line up with the hat, and that once-in-a-lifetime thing just so happens to take place a week after I find it" thing wasn't working for me. So, I went with the idea that the more power the hat acquires, the more it matches the night sky. I know it seems like that'll cause an issue for later, but trust me, I've got it covered. Also, ugh, that suit change at the beginning of this episode. The suit we see him wearing in the shop is different than 4x03 and 4x04, and yet when I review those episodes, it doesn't seem like an extra day has passed between them. I remember struggling with how I was going to get him to change clothes when I was writing Moments and then realizing that I could have him make a quip and worry about it later when it was time to write Rumple. Well...later arrived. His accidentally stepping in mud in the last chapter was designed to give me an out on that one. Up next, we're tackling a certain deleted scene! When you are ready, join me! Peace and Happy Reading!