The library's warmth cocooned Gold in a way he was quickly growing familiar with. That alone scared him. Life had taught him that the minute he grew comfortable, something would happen to snatch away whatever little bit of happiness he'd managed to find. But then Belle looked back at him from where she was shelving her cart of books, and Gold felt his heart soften in his chest. It was almost magical, the way this beautiful librarian had of walling his fear out of the library. Of course it was always there, waiting for him, when he left, but these few brief hours of reprieve were more than he'd ever imagined could be his after Bae's disappearance.

No. Bae's kidnapping.

Boston had been a nightmare. Not the city so much as the memories. In fact, the entire trip was a blur in Gold's mind except for the interminable hours in a cramped office that smelled of stale coffee and Phillip's cinnamon gum, hunched over papers while Phillip and David grilled him endlessly on things he'd done his best to lock away decades ago.

For Bae, he'd told himself, and he'd spilled out truths about his father that even to this day could still wake him from nightmares.

Malcolm Spinner. The name alone had been enough to make Phillip and all his superiors sit up and take notice. The head of the Neverland gang, dubbed Peter Pan, had apparently been so good at playing his long cons that they hadn't been able to dig up his real name before. Gold had been happy, even gleeful at times, to give it to them. He'd told them about Felix, and the Follow The Lady fleet—all identical ships sent out at the same time, but only a few with smuggled contraband aboard—and warehouses where he'd once slept in a corner with his threadbare coat and his too-long scarf wrapped close around him while Malcolm played and gambled and laughed too loudly. He'd written down every address he could remember, every name he could pull from his numb mind, every single clue or hint that he should have thought of five years ago.

It took him far too long to remember that he'd been the one to tell Malcolm about Milah and Jones. How could he have forgotten? It'd been during the custody battle, vicious and dirty and the only time in his life Gold had refused to give up. Malcolm had called him out of the blue and told him he could help. Exhausted and furious and reeling from hearing from his father after so long, Gold had ranted about Milah and Jones both.

Malcolm had laughed at him. Called him a spineless worm, worse than a larva, not even able to stand up to his own wife. "Following in your old man's steps after all, eh, laddie?" he'd taunted. "Who needs a kid tying you down?"

It had taken a sternly impassive mask not to react to Dove's shock when he'd seen the shattered phone that was Gold's only response for his father. But Gold hadn't heard from Malcolm again, hadn't been surprised about it, and had continued hiring and firing every divorce lawyer he could dig up until he'd finally been granted primary custody of his own son.

And only a bit later, if this Smee could be trusted, Pan Industries had recruited Jones. Maybe even Milah. And then, years after that, Jones and Milah both ended up dead and Bae disappeared. Vanished without a trace.

Until now.

Now, Gold kept his phone in his pocket, and he couldn't breathe. Not unless he was in the library, sitting quietly at a table on an uncomfortable chair, sewing books back together and rubbing out water stains while Belle smiled at him from across the way.

"Rumple," she said, "could you help me?"

Looking up from his latest project, Gold blinked to find Belle standing halfway up a ladder. She glanced at him over her shoulder, and pointed down to her cart.

"Would you hand me those two books there?"

With a swallow he tried to pretend away, Gold limped over and offered the books one at a time, doing his best to keep his eyes firmly on the shelf of books at eye-level rather than her stockinged knees so close to him.

"Thanks!" she said brightly, and then she set her hand on his shoulder. It was only to help her balance as she descended the ladder, but the touch lingered, just for a second, after she was back on solid ground.

Or maybe he only imagined it did.

Her hand slid away, and then she turned her back on him quite abruptly. Before Gold had the chance to feel rebuffed, Belle coughed into her elbow. And it wasn't the first time.

"Let me finish shelving these," he offered. "Why don't you sit down and drink your tea?"

"Oh, no, I'm nearly done, and I don't want to distract you."

Though he hated to draw attention to it, Gold tapped his bad ankle with his cane and said, "I could use a chance to stretch."

Belle went quiet, but at least she sat down.

It took mere moments to finish the last handful of books, and too soon, Gold found himself sitting back at the table, less than a foot of distance between him and Belle.

"You look tired," he said when she didn't immediately fill the silence with words as she usually did. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Just a bit of a cold." Her eyes widened. "I hope I don't give it to you! I'm sorry, Rumple, I should have called to let you know that—"

"It's fine." He waved her off, not quite able to meet her eyes. "I…I could give you my cell number if you did need to get ahold of me."

It came out sounding the very opposite of casual, and he cringed, expecting her stilted silence and too-kind refusal.

Instead, Belle gasped—and choked, then coughed—then hurriedly pulled out her own phone. "That would be great! I'll give you mine too so you can let me know if you're ever snowed in again. Not that I'm hounding you, I promise! I just…it might be more convenient…"

Gold winced at this reminder of his harsh words to her. Malcolm had always turned him into the worst version of himself, much as Milah had after their divorce, and on his first day back in Storybrooke, still feeling dirty from dredging up the worst parts of his past—feeling defeated that he was back to his life without his son yet again—Gold had been cruel in his effort to keep Belle away from the remnants of his father. She'd brushed it off, as if she hardly noticed his snapping, but he should have known better.

Belle, he'd been learning, was very good at putting on a brave face, and never better than when she felt hurt the most.

"I'm sorry," he murmured to his clasped hands. "I shouldn't have said that."

"Oh! I didn't mean—"

"I'm glad you notice," he blurted. And he looked up at her to meet her eyes—one of the bravest things he could remember doing in years. "It helps. To think that I'm not as invisible as it seems sometimes."

Her smile was tiny, and very sad. "I get that, believe me."

It was probably too much. It was probably unwelcome. It was definitely overstepping. But Gold put his—shaking—hand over hers and said, "You're not invisible to me, Belle."

Her cheeks flushed pink, but she didn't yank her hands away or change the subject. "I'm glad," she whispered.

And even though she had to pull away to cover another cough, even though Gold thought it best to excuse himself earlier than usual to give her the chance to rest, he couldn't help but smile as he made his way home.

Of course, the gun in the cabinet in the entryway, lit by the porchlight shining in through the stained glass, sobered him up too quickly.

Belle was kind, and she needed friends badly enough that even he seemed a decent prospect to her, but she didn't know just how much of a lost cause he truly was. If she did, the smiles would dry up—turned to pity, he assumed, since she was kind—and she would find ways to distance herself from him, as all good people did from the likes of a coward who couldn't face life without the safety net of a good exit plan.

Since he'd returned from Boston, Baelfire's name bandied about between several people as if his son were still alive—still able to be saved—Gold found it nearly painful to scratch out another tally-mark in his little book. The stroke of the pen seemed to gouge yet another scar into his heart.

"Please, Bae, just hold on a little longer," he whispered into the dark.

But there was no answer. And what was worse: Gold had stopped expecting one.

Belle called him the next morning to tell him she couldn't open the library and was taking a couple sick days. Her voice was hoarse and he could hear muffled coughing as if she held the phone away from her mouth.

"Get better," he told her, chagrined when it sounded more like an order than an entreaty.

Belle only chuckled and told him she was trying.

Their first phone-call, and it stayed on Gold's mind so that he fumbled the pocket-watch he was trying to polish and dropped his gold-insert pen and then nearly tripped over his own cane as he moved to retrieve some furniture polish.

He supposed that it might count as his talking to someone every day, that brief conversation, but it didn't feel like enough. And he hadn't gone out anywhere today. And with Belle sick, he couldn't volunteer. He certainly couldn't dump his own concerns on her and expect her to care about keeping him accountable.

In fact, his whole list was pretty much shot to nothing.

He told himself that was why he closed his own shop and headed to Clark's to pick up a few things. Even while collecting his bags of supplies and trekking up the long staircase to the apartment above the library, he was convinced that he was only doing this in order to keep himself on the straight and narrow.

But then, after a long wait, Belle opened her door, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, her nose red, her eyes watery, and her expression pure surprise—and Gold realized this had nothing to do with his list at all.

"Rumple!" she exclaimed, and then coughed for a moment. "What are you doing here?"

"I…I thought I'd bring you a few things. You shouldn't go out while you're sick."

Then followed an extremely awkward moment in which he tried to hand her the bags hanging from his wrist, and Belle stepped back to invite him in, and then they both tried to course-correct so that she moved to take the bags and he stepped inside. Which of course, as his luck would have it, involved a collision that had her nearly falling and him dropping the bags to spill out every which way at their feet while he grabbed for her elbows. He ended up with handfuls of mostly her blanket, but her own hand clutching at his coat kept her upright—and incredibly, mesmerizingly close.

Her eyes, as blue as he'd observed so long ago, had a ring of darker cobalt around them that he'd never noticed before.

His breath stuttered over her cheek and Belle let go of his coat and took a tiny step backward. "I'm so sorry!" she said. "Are you all right? I probably just gave you this cold!"

Stooping before she could, Gold tried not to think about how ridiculous he must look, half-crouched trying to collect the scattered supplies that now all seemed presumptuous and unnecessary. "It's fine," he said, a bit gruffly. "I never get sick."

"That must be nice," she said, instead of laughing at him as he probably deserved.

As soon as he stood—an ungainly accomplishment Belle was nice enough to pretend not to see by busying herself with the door—he set down the ruffled bags on her table and planted his cane between them. Belle didn't notice; she was already going through the bags, pulling out each item to exclaim over.

"Oh, I was running low on cough syrup—and these will help this ridiculous sinus headache—oh, this soup is still warm, and crackers, too—Gatorade, I should have thought of that—and is this…Rumple…" She looked up at him, and rather than the smile he'd hoped to conjure with the presence of the box set of a series she'd mentioned one evening, she looked as if she might cry.

"You said you wanted to give Marissa Meyer a try," he said, his voice as weak as his ideas. He'd meant to donate the books, anonymously, to the library. This had seemed an opportunity to give them directly to her—where they were truly meant to go—but he should have known it was too much. "Said the science-fiction slant to classic fairytales appealed to you."

"I…I did. And you heard me. And you remembered."

"It was only a week ago."

Before he could even frown, Belle fell forward. His heart flew into his throat as he reflexively grabbed at her, which only made him feel foolish when he realized, as she wrapped her arms around his waist and burrowed her face into his chest, that she hadn't fallen. She'd stepped forward to hug him.

She was hugging him.

Belle. Belle French, the beautiful—the young—librarian with her pretty smiles and her gentle voice and her habit of saying his name as if it wasn't a punishment—she was hugging him. Rumplestiltskin Gold.

Gold froze. Two differing reactions clashed and fought inside him, canceling each other out and reducing him to paralysis. Part of him wanted to hug Belle back. She was warm and soft and the perfect height and it would take nothing at all to fold himself around her. But the other part—the more experienced, more realistic part of his mind—knew that Belle was drugged up and exhausted and sick and she didn't really want this. How could she? No one would want to touch him, let alone hug him.

Finally, Gold patted her shoulder with his hand. He meant to draw back then, but the knowledge that this was his only chance to be this close to her had him lingering just for a moment longer, his hand still on her shoulder blade, his eyes fluttering shut as he bent his head to inhale the scent of roses and cold medicine and chai.

"Thank you," Belle said when he gently disengaged from her. "Really. Rumple, this…this is the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me."

"I'm sure that can't be true," he said. "But I'm glad I could help. Make sure you get plenty of rest, all right?"

"Not before I read at least a chapter or two," she replied with a smile. It was distracting, the way her fingers caressed the box set of the Lunar Chronicles, and Gold had to force himself to look away.

"I'd better go," he said. "Feel better soon, Belle."

"Thank you, Rumple." Wrapped in her blanket and looking just as huggable as she did tired, Belle clasped his hand. "I'm so glad you came. You have no idea how much this means to me."

Her face was tilted up toward him. At some point, he couldn't say when, he'd tilted his own face down. She was so close, her socked feet slotted almost between his shoes, and her blanket drifting along his cane.

It would be so easy to kiss her.

Belle's wracking cough jarred him back to reality.

Shaken, Gold stammered out a goodbye and fled her apartment as quickly as his limp and the cold streets would allow. He didn't stop moving until he was safely back within his shop, behind the curtain, trembling in the middle of the backroom, surrounded by his own things.

He couldn't believe he'd nearly ruined everything.

Gold couldn't even remember the last time he'd as much as considered kissing a woman, nameless and faceless, let alone the single person who was willing to be friendly with him. Belle was his only haven, the only light he had in this dark world—and he'd nearly tainted her with a touch she didn't want.

He felt ugly, and worthless, and worst of all: contagious, as if his despair could rub off on her and turn all her smiles to sleepless nights where her hand felt as empty as his.

Barely making it to the bathroom in time, Gold retched until his stomach hurt and his throat burned. He should have known better. He should have made contingencies for the moment when his own worst impulses got the better of him.

Gold pulled himself to his feet and washed out his mouth at the sink. His reflection stared back at him, small and shrunken and ugly.

No more extra visits, he told himself. He'd keep volunteering—he couldn't give that up—but anything more was out of the question. He'd protect Belle from himself. He'd guard his thoughts. He'd ensure that she only ever felt safe with him, not scared, not taken advantage of, not uncomfortable. They were friends—she'd told him that was what she wanted, and he could do that, at least for a while, until he ruined this too. But not like this, not like an old lecher who let a pretty girl's smiles lead him to cruel insanity.

"You don't deserve her," he told his reflection, and his mirror image said it back to him. "Don't drag her down with you."

Then he flipped off the light, extinguishing his reflection, and headed into the backroom to hunt down a project that would demand all of his attention.

By the time Gold walked home, it was long past sunset. Inky blackness spilled between the streets and refused to part for him, heavy and weighted so that Gold felt it like a cold embrace. He was nearly to his porch steps when he looked up and realized that it was still dark.

His porch light was out.

Horror made him nauseous and his keys dropped from nerveless fingers. In the dark, he wouldn't be able to find them again. In the dark, a boy, freshly escaped from unknown trials, wouldn't be able to find the front door. He'd wander, lost and alone, forgotten, and pass right by the house where his papa waited for him.

Gold fell to his knees and scrabbled over the sidewalk, over remnants of ice and snow, until he found the metal of his keyring. Snatching it up, he essentially crawled up the steps, where it took him nearly five minutes and a borderline panic attack before he could get the door unlocked. Heedless of anything in his way, he stumbled back through the house, past the cabinet where he'd sat for hours without bothering to spare a single thought for the light that would guide his son home, down to the closet where the housekeeper kept all her cleaning supplies. High up on a shelf, by the light of the flickering light he sparked with a tug at the hanging string, Gold saw the box of bulbs.

They were just out of reach. Gold swallowed a roar of frustration and lifted his cane to bat the box off the shelf. It fell directly toward him and he caught it, dropping his cane in the process. Without taking the time to retrieve it, he staggered back to the front door, one hand straining for any support he could find, the other hugging the box of bulbs close to his chest. A remaining shred of rationality had him grabbing hold of the stepstool kept in the coat closet as he headed outside.

His ankle screamed with pain that Gold ignored as he replaced the light. With a final turn of the bulb, the glass turned into a supernova of light and Gold jerked backward, his eyes lit up with molten white afterimages.

As could have been predicted if he were in his right mind, he fell from the stool and landed heavily. So heavily, in fact, that the breath was driven from his lungs—and the madness from his thoughts.

Gold lay there, on his back, staring up at a lit porch light that, for all its brightness, couldn't bring his son back. His cane was stuck half the house away, in a tiny room, while his ankle felt like grated glass had been trapped in the joint, his back was bruised and aching, and all around him, he was sure, the neighbors were watching his psychotic break from behind their curtains, laughing into their hands and calling everyone they knew to spread stories of the monster's downfall.

Turning over, Gold crawled into his house and shut the door behind him, then slumped back against it. His eyes fell—by long habit? or by design?—on that drawer in the cabinet across from him.

"Bae," he muttered. "Bae."

But his son wasn't there. His son hadn't been there for over five years. And his son would probably never be there again. Even if he were to come back, against all odds…why would he need Gold there to welcome him at all? Gold was his father, but all he'd done was send him off to the woman who'd been working for the enemy. He'd let him be taken. He'd never been able to find him. He sat here, useless as an overturned turtle, and did nothing as his son suffered.

If he were even still alive. And the chances were, Gold knew, that he wasn't.

"He's alive," Gold made himself say aloud. He needed to hear the words. "Bae is alive."

But even if he came back…what could Gold do for him? He'd only pull him down into the depths of despair. He'd taint him by sheer association. He'd make his son take care of him. The truth was that Bae had always been a blessing Gold didn't deserve. He was brave and cheerful and friendly and outgoing and kind—everything Gold had never been.

Gold planted his hands, palm-down, against the floor and told himself he wouldn't move. He couldn't. If he moved, it would be to cross to that cabinet. If he made it to that cabinet, he would take the gun in hand. If he touched that gun right now…

Outside, the moon rose, dimmed by the glow of the fresh porch light. Inside, Gold told himself he wasn't moving—and he kept telling himself that until he found himself against the cabinet, the drawer opened, the gun hard under his fingertips.

Bae, his heart keened.

But Bae was dead. That was what they'd been telling him for years now, and only madness and hubris had kept him thinking that he knew better than the rest of the world with all their statistics and averages and precedents. Gold knew precedent too, and that was that when Malcolm got his hands into something Gold loved, he always destroyed it.

He'd taken Bae. He'd stolen Gold's son. And he wouldn't have let there be anything left alive for Gold to reclaim. Gold kept telling himself he was waiting for a phone-call from the police, but really, he was waiting for that call from his father. For that moment he held the phone to his ear and heard his father's laugh. I have to solve everything for you, laddie, don't I? he'd say, and Gold would disintegrate into dust.

Why not save himself the agony of having to listen to his father gloat? Why not just end it all now?

Gold picked up the gun and slumped back against the wall with it in hand. It was loaded. A click of his fingers turned the safety off. It only took one hand to bring the gun up to his head.

But his cane wasn't here, and his other hand was empty—until he pulled out his phone. With one hand, he flicked the gun's safety back on. With the other, he pulled up his contacts. One finger rested on the trigger, the other played with the button that would send out the call.

It might have been minutes or hours, but finally, Gold's finger pressed down.

"Hello?" Belle's voice issued into the entryway. A place she'd never been and Gold would never presume to make her come, but here with him anyway.

"Belle," he said. "It's Mr. Gold."

Maybe she still sounded stuffy and maybe he'd woken her. He couldn't tell. All he knew was that he could hear her smile. "I know, Rumple," she said. "I have your picture in my phone."

"When did you take my picture?" he asked, startled despite himself.

"Well, I don't want to give all my secrets away, but you look very distinguished sitting bent over a book you're industriously putting back together."

"Flatterer."

"Pictures don't lie," she retorted. "Haven't you heard? They're worth a thousand words."

"And you call yourself a librarian with that lack of respect for the written word?"

Belle's laughter shattered the gloom around him. The gun was too heavy in his hand. Carefully, Gold replaced it in the drawer and slid it closed.

"I never have liked that saying," she confided. "But even if it's true, so what? A thousand words is barely more than a couple paragraphs. What single picture can convey a whole book made up of hundreds of thousands of words?"

"Like the one you've been reading?" Slowly, a bit at a time, careful not to make a sound, Gold levered himself up from the floor and limped back to the storage room to reclaim his cane. "Cinder, was it?"

"Yes, it's so good! I'm so glad you gave it to me! I did sleep some, I promise, but I'm feeling better now, and I couldn't put it off any longer."

"That good, huh?"

"Even better than I hoped! Oh, Rumple, I love when a book can just pull you in right away—you know the feeling?"

Gold closed his eyes as he made it upstairs to his room and sank down onto the edge of his bed, his phone pressed tight against his ear. "I do," he said. "I love that feeling."

"Well, this book succeeded so quickly. Less than a chapter and I was completely hooked."

"You're already halfway through the first one, aren't you?" The pillows were soft behind his back, the blankets warming beneath him, and in his now-empty hand, he cradled his tiny book.

"You know me so well," she said warmly, and then she launched into a description of the story.

His little book fell open to the last marked page. Gold made his newest tally-mark and then found himself unfolding the flyer with Belle's information on it. With her voice in his ear and her paper in his lap, Gold drowned out the allure of a quick end with all things Belle.

By the time the sun began to rise, Gold was asleep, and his dreams were full of an accent he'd never forget and the feel of a child's warm hand clasped in his.