The problem with immortality was time. It would always be time. It was odd how very often a villain sought out a life of immortality because they longed for time to stretch on and on infinitely, but a single day of waiting could threaten to drive them to insanity.

He regretted telling Emma he'd meet her when the sun went down. With the Snow Queen locked down, the time in between made for one of those incredibly long days that had him watching the clock and pacing the room, counting the seconds until he could get into his car and go. The time was good, he reminded himself. Telling Emma that he needed time allowed her to think that he was preparing for exactly what she thought he was preparing for instead of just activating a hat and letting her fall prey to it. Time allowed Emma to get a fair distance from him, to free him from anyone suspecting that he might have been the one behind her sudden disappearance.

Oh, of course, there were always bound to be those who suspected him. His villainous nature was always going to make people believe he was the prime suspect in any evil that befell the town. But it would be extremely hard to prove with a bit of magic.

So he spent the day pacing. In the shop, he checked the supply of dust he had left in his nickel container and paced.

At one point he followed up on something Belle had said the other night and checked the magic he had left in his black bag, then went home and prepared a few of the spells that had been used or removed since he last checked. And then he paced some more.

There came a moment, once, in the middle of his work when he felt someone in the shop. Further exploration proved it was someone without magic who had no respect for locks. Hook. He could have gone in then, could have had some fun taunting the pirate with what he was about to do, but there was a very fine line between what a person would do under the threat of blackmail and what a person would do because they had no choice. As satisfying as it would be to blackmail the "good" Captain into participating in Emma Swan's demise, he didn't trust his actions or his mouth. No, until the Captain's heart was completely under his control, he couldn't rely on his actions. Hook was too much of a wild card for him. Besides, this thing he was planning for Emma was only business. An opportunity that had presented itself that he was taking advantage of. He had no malice or hatred for her. At least not enough to make her want to suffer in any way more than she had to. So he ignored the Captain for the minute and a half he felt him in his store and then went back to pacing.

As it got close to sundown, he returned to the shop with a bag full of new potions. He closed the shades and cast a bit of magic. He didn't separate himself from his shadow, as he had in Neverland, but he did cast an image of his shadow onto the shades and the walls. It walked around the store, it moved, it worked. If anyone happened to glance over, they'd find that he was working here. If Belle or anyone happened to come into the store while it was happening…he'd cross that bridge when he got to it.

If…

If he got to it.

There was a light rain drizzling out of the sky when he used his magic to take himself back to the mansion, but it appeared that the rain had just ended on this side of Storybrooke. With the sun lowering itself below the horizon, he entered the mansion, just as he had with Belle, and followed along its familiar hallways until he found precisely what he was looking for. A small room with sliding doors.

Before he could take a step inside, there was a noise outside, a slight squealing of brakes that he recognized as Emma's bug. He had to hurry, but the noise of Emma's bug reminded him…

Noisy…once the hat was set, it would be noisy. Quickly, he set to casting a soundproofing spell over the room but only got about halfway through before he heard Emma in the house.

"Hello? Gold?"

Faster! He had to work faster. The hat still needed to be set!

"You here? Gold?"

He shut the doors behind him as the lights in the house started to flicker and dim. The taste of magic gone wild was beginning to creep into the air around him, flooding the house as she drew nearer. She was coming. This could work!

He smiled as he waved his dagger over the hat and summoned it out of its box. Its power overrode Emma's…how reassuring.

"Gold?"

He could focus on that later. For now, he set the hat down on the ground, onto its side facing that door so that anything or anyone magical that walked through it wouldn't see their fate coming. Quickly, he let his magic remove him from the room.

Emma was in front of him, looking carefully at the closed doors the hat hid behind. Fuck, half a soundproofing spell hadn't been nearly strong enough. It had certainly minimized the sound of the hat, but from behind the door, he could still hear it groaning, crying out to be fed. Only a moment longer.

"Gold, you in there?!"

"There's no need to shout. I'm right here," he explained raising his voice so that Emma turned to find him. He held out his hand, and she took a step closer to him. With the exception of a little noise, everything was perfect. He didn't want anything to risk this going wrong. "You'll forgive me if I keep my distance. It would appear your powers are growing increasingly out of control."

"Yeah, it was a rough night. So, what do I need to do?"

"I've already cast the spell inside that room. All you have to do is…step through the door."

Emma glanced behind her, examining the doors once more. For a moment, he held his breath, waiting to watch her run through them, but…

She hesitated. And glanced back at him. He couldn't exactly blame her, he would have done the same thing, but this morning's version of the Savior had suggested that she was ready to take anything to solve her problem without thinking it through. That was what made his plan so perfect. Hesitation wasn't something he'd anticipated dealing with.

"Is something wrong?" he asked, quietly holding her gaze to reassure her of his false innocence.

"Just…I ran into the Snow Queen."

His heart began to race as he resisted the urge to look at the clock. He should have had more time.

"Did you?" he whispered, eager to hear what Ingrid had told her. That was no doubt the reason for the hesitation.

"Well, sort of. It was a projection or hologram, or I don't know what it was."

He kept his face stony, even as he wanted to kick himself. He hadn't covered up that blasted mirror of hers before he'd left. Fuck! Projection: mirrors of extreme power had the ability to project an image. He'd been so focused on that monstrosity simply being the conduit for a curse he'd forgotten that, at its heart, it was still a fucking mirror! That was sloppy of him. And how was he paying for his mistake?

He continued to stare at Emma. Eye contact was a trick he'd learned long ago to show honesty and truth, but it was difficult to make eye contact when the Savior herself would barely look him in the eye.

"She said I shouldn't do this, that you were trying to hurt me."

Well damn…luck was on his side. He could work with a warning like that.

"All right, so now we know who doesn't want you to do this…the villain. Sounds like an argument for it, but maybe that's just me."

"That's what I said," Emma breathed, sounding willing to believe the lie, but then…why was she still standing here?

"But you still have doubts."

"Do you blame me?"

There she was, looking him in the eye again, just as she had days ago when she'd come by to ask questions, reminding him of that "superpower" she possessed. He didn't quite know how much he believed in that power of hers, but he knew he didn't particularly want to test it. Words had to be chosen carefully here, and fortunately, the truth, the real truth, was easy enough to hand over.

"No," he muttered. With a history like his and considering what she thought they were here to do, he didn't blame Ingrid for getting into his head one bit.

"Is it safe? Will I be okay?" she questioned further.

No…but how to properly hide the lie in a truth…

"No magic is without risk, even magic used to take away magic. Look, this is very much your choice. And, of course, it was also your idea."

"But it's gonna stop me from hurting people."

"That much I can promise, yes." With complete honesty, no less.

Emma turned around to look at the door again. But just when he thought that perhaps he had her caught in his snare, a hum of magic filled the room, and she turned back, looking at her glowing hands. Uncertainty and stress were almost always sure to trigger unexpected magic in young ones. Ironically, if Emma had come to him for training, the first thing he would have told her to do was to calm herself down. The state she was in was only serving to worsen her condition. Of course, at the moment, that was also what was helping him to get her over the finish line.

"What would you do?" she questioned suddenly, looking him dead in the eye again, making him think that while the last few questions might have been curious, this one was truly a test of his honesty. And a clever one it was. A lesser wizard might have been stumped by it, but fortunately for him, he had an answer, one that would easily pass Emma's test because it was the absolute truth.

"I wouldn't go in there for anything."

"What? Why?"

"Because, Emma, I'm not like you. I'm a man who makes wrong decisions, selfish decisions."

"But you spent all that time looking for Neal. You sacrificed yourself to save the town. You married Belle."

"And each time, I meticulously undid all the good," he confessed. "Neal is still gone, the town is still in danger, and Belle, for better or worse, she knows who I am, and that's the man who always chooses power."

"She believes you can change."

"And I love her for that. But I fear she's quite likely wrong." What was it children learned in school? Honesty was the best policy, after all. "But you, Emma? You don't need to change because you do the right thing. Always."

His words, their manipulative truth, sank in as she turned back to the door and stared at it. When she finally began taking timid steps forward, he turned away to leave the room, leave the danger zone the hat would place him in when those doors were opened. Besides, just because he knew he had to do this didn't mean he needed to personally watch it. He did want to change and be the person Belle believed he could be; he just had to do this before he could get to that.

"Gold!" Emma suddenly called, making his heart jump as he was nearly across the room. When he turned, she took a couple more steps toward him, then stopped. "Thank you," she whispered with a small smirk of gratitude on her face that cut him right down to the heart.

"Of course," he whispered back, managing to return her smile. "We have no choice," he reminded himself before striding out of the room and toward the door.

I think, on the whole, I enjoyed getting to write this chapter. I think, in general, I like when Rumple deals with Emma. Whether it's for good or for bad I like their relationship. It's always just been so hard with Emma in the past because she's one of those characters that I'm never 100% sure I have down in this fiction. This chapter, though, was nice and easy because the conversation was provided for me, just leaving me to sit back, relax, and just worry about how one of the cleverest wordsmiths was going to get through a human lie detector.

Thank you, Rsbeall12 and Grace5231973, for your reviews and constant support. I'm hopeful you'll find this chapter up to par, but I'm also aware the first half felt like I was covering for myself. Sometimes, it's the simplest logistics that get in the way, and this was one of those times. See, I'm convinced that Rumple must have some kind of spell on his shop to know the comings and goings of people. That's why I've written those enchantments into the tale. But that's still just something that I've invented, not something that's confirmed. But there are times like in this episode that Hook walks into the shop and I sit there and scratch my head at how Rumple would allow something like that and...well...it messes things up. Still, I don't do anything about it because I think 95% of the time it makes sense, but this bit with Hook here falls into that 5%, which means I've got to come up with a reason for why Rumple doesn't go charging in and sometimes I feel like it makes things a bit...clunky. I'm sorry if it comes off that way to you too. Peace and Happy Reading!