They found a diner in some town roughly midway between Boston and Storybrooke. Well, Belle found it. Belle was the one who'd been doing everything today—from holding him together to driving to listening to whatever drivel David spilled out to getting Gold settled in a booth she asked the waitress for. Only gradually did Gold realize that it was in a quiet corner, hidden from most of the rest of the restaurant by other empty booths.

He was grateful. The ordinariness of this setting compared to where he'd been just a few hours ago, surrounded by clinical white and soul-deep horror, seemed nearly surreal. How could there still be people laughing, talking, living, when for nearly twenty-four hours that…that body…that poor, twisted thing had been, in his mind at least, his son?

"Tea, please," Belle told the waitress. "Two cups, and some milk and sugar on the side if you have it. Thank you."

Gold clasped his hands in front of him and stared at his thumbs as if they contained the answers to every question in the universe. If offered every answer, though, he knew he'd ask only one thing: where is my son?

Not on a slab. Not in a freezer. Not found and bagged and tagged and sliced open and catalogued. But… where?

"Here," Belle said a moment later, and Gold blinked to realize that she was nudging a hot cup of tea into his hands. He hadn't even noticed the waitress's return. "You need something in your belly. I know you probably won't eat more than a couple bites, so at least drink a few cups of tea, hmm? Please? For me?"

"I'm sorry," he rasped.

Belle blinked at him, so surprised he could feel it even without looking directly at her. "For what?"

"For…" He flicked his fingers as if he could so easily dismiss everything she'd been doing. "For making you take care of me."

Her smile was bright and warm and so startling that Gold was tricked into looking at her head-on. And once he looked at her, how could he be expected to tear his eyes away again?

She was a splash of realness. Of beauty. Of hope. All of that, sitting in arm's reach, when he was drowning in death and despair and nothing but more of the same lurking in his future.

"You're not making me do anything," she said. "And I like helping you. Or at least trying." She bit her lip. "I wish I could do more."

"No! You…" He stared at his hand, reaching across the table toward hers. As if he deserved to be able to touch her. As if the glass between him and that…that body…hadn't tainted his hands in some way from the moment he'd reached, strained, thinking, Bae…

Belle's lips curved upward and she reached out and took his hand herself. Her thumb rubbed over his knuckles in such a distracting manner that it anchored Gold to the moment before he could drift away once more in his thoughts.

"You do everything," he whispered.

Luckily, the waitress had impeccable timing and arrived to see if they were ready to order their meals. Their hands slipped apart. Gold let Belle order for him since he hadn't even cracked the menu, and she was right anyway—he doubted he could get more than a bite or two past his aching throat.

"It's…good," Belle said, more tentatively than he'd ever imagined she could be. "Right? That it wasn't…that your son's still out there?"

"Yes," he said before he could second-guess himself. He'd been craving answers so long, so hard, but this wasn't the answer he wanted. "He's still out there. He's still waiting for me to find him."

"I'm sorry," Belle said, retaking his hand so that her thumb could once more caress his battered knuckles. None of his memories of the morgue were too clear, but he thought he remembered punching a filing cabinet when they pressed him on if he was sure that frozen corpse wasn't his son—as if they wanted it to be. As if they knew how horrible a father he was and didn't expect him to be able to recognize his own little boy. "I…I had no idea you even had a son."

Gold bit his tongue hard enough it bled.

Bae, his heart mourned. I'm sorry.

"It…it's hard," he admitted. "To talk about him."

"Of course." Her smile was accepting. Condoning. Understanding. "We can talk about something else then. Or we don't have to talk at all. You may not believe this, but I am pretty good at sitting in silence."

He tried to chuckle for her, but whatever noise he made, it came without a smile and sounded choked.

Belle made a soft, gentler sound—he'd think it were a coo, if he didn't know that he'd never elicited such a sound from anyone—and a moment later, she was standing and rounding the table, nudging him over in the booth and then sitting right beside him, her warmth pressed up against him from shoulder to knee.

"That's better," she said, already pulling her own teacup over toward her.

Words escaped him.

Belle hummed softly, almost tunelessly, as she read the dessert menu tucked behind the napkin dispenser, then the menu up on the wall behind the glass counter where pies and cakes and cookies were displayed, then something on her phone. She was always reading, it seemed, no word too unimportant for her attention, no spot of ink too small for her to take notice of it.

"Bae loved Redwall," Gold heard himself say.

Pressed close to him as she was, he could feel Belle go motionless. He thought she was even holding her breath.

"It was the last thing he was reading before…"

"Oh," she breathed.

"That sequel…the main character's son was taken and he found him." He let out a pained scoff. "Even a mouse can do it. But I…I've tried everything. I've spent over a million dollars on private investigators and bribes and computer trails. I've hounded every police station that will take my calls. It's all just…useless. I'm useless."

"You're not," Belle said quietly. Under the table, she wound their hands together. "I promise, Rumple, you're not."

He was forced, then, to look out the window, between the slats of the blinds, to the parking lot where clouds were massing overhead. By the time he'd blinked his tears away and could look back at Belle with a modicum of composure, the waitress was setting identical plates down, each one boasting a hamburger dripping with melted cheese and stuffed full of pickles.

"They don't charge extra for them here," Belle said with a mischievous wink, and that's when Gold knew.

He loved her.

He was in love with her.

He'd love her forever, in whatever way she allowed, for as long as he was alive.

Strangely, it wasn't as much of a revelation as he thought it should have been. It felt…nearly anticlimactic. As if someone had burst through the doors, gasping and heaving, only to proclaim that water was wet and gravity made you fall and Gold didn't deserve anything so good and pure and wonderful in his life.

Still, it settled deep inside him, seeping into every crevice, took up space in each cavern of his heart, readjusted the rhythm of his inflating lungs, filling him up from the inside out.

He felt grounded. Steady. Anchored in a way he hadn't been since his son—his only other foundational stone—had gone missing.

Slowly, a bite at a time, he was able to eat most of the hamburger and almost half of the fries, doused in the ketchup that Belle passed him without a word.

And eventually, after spending the whole meal gathering his courage, Gold pressed his knee into Belle's and said, "His name is Baelfire, but I call him Bae. He's eighteen years old now, but the last time I saw him, he wasn't quite thirteen. He calls me Papa and he loves me more than I deserve and he's the best thing that's ever happened to me. The only good thing I've ever done. He's so kind, Belle, always ready to help others, and so brave—like you."

"He sounds amazing," Belle said, gently, and he knew if he left it there, if he never said another word about Bae, she'd let it be.

But she hadn't even known he had a son— her, his closest friend—and Bae deserved to be remembered. To be known.

"When he was eight, he found himself a puppy and hid it upstairs in his room. It took me over a week before I figured out what was going on, he was so good at keeping the wee thing happy and cared for. I tried to get after him for it, but how could I make him give up the babe he'd already half-raised? That puppy followed him everywhere 'til…well, his mom kept her in the divorce and then gave her away while Bae was with me one November, but…she was a good dog. Moirraine, Bae called her. After he went missing, I wished I still had her. Something to remember him by. Maybe she'd have been able to sniff him out."

"Do you have a picture?" Belle asked, leaning on his shoulder.

And Gold blinked, surprised to remember that, yes, he did. Bae had sent him pictures on his phone every time he visited his mother.

It had been years since Gold risked opening the text thread of his conversations with his son. He used to look at it endlessly, losing hours in going over every word, every careless abbreviation, but finally, he'd realized it hurt too much, to think that these were the only words of his son's he'd ever have, and he'd stopped.

But they were still there.

Gold brushed his thumb over the blue and gray dialogue boxes before the feel of Belle's hair falling on his wrist as she leaned forward to see recalled him to his mission. As soon as he came across the first picture of the little black and white dog, he passed the phone to Belle.

"She'd have been a good sheepherder, I always told Bae," he said. "She sure herded him and me well enough."

Belle was swiping across the phone, doing that thing everyone but him seemed to know how to do, and accessing all the pictures from the thread immediately. "Do you mind?" she asked, looking up, her teeth nibbling on her bottom lip.

"No," he said after a slight pause. "I don't mind."

And together, heads bent close together, they went through the pictures of Bae and his dog, stories Gold had all but forgotten—well, not forgotten, but packed away and left to grow dusty and cobwebbed—spilling out between them.

It was hours before they left the diner, and Gold didn't begrudge the few hundred dollar bills he left behind on their table. He'd have paid millions more for another afternoon spent just like that one.

The act of driving, monotonous and familiar, calmed Gold. The fact that he had to keep facing forward—that he couldn't obey the constant impulse to turn his head and meet Belle's gaze—gave him a false sense of privacy. And in the car, there was no one to overhear. Only Belle. Belle who hadn't yet pulled away from him. Hadn't yet grown frustrated with his frequent tears and infrequent words.

"Bae's mother and I had split custody," he made himself say when the sky was dark outside and there were only woods and the occasional ocean view to distract Belle. "His mother picked him up for her weekend with him, and I haven't seen him since."

"Five years ago?" she asks, so softly he could almost think her voice, her presence, her acceptance nothing more than a dream.

"Yeah. I sent the Redwall book with him so he could finish it. But there was an accident. His mother and her fiancé died. A car accident. They thought Bae was in the car, too, at first. But…he wasn't. He was declared missing. For two years, there…there was nothing. They started saying maybe he had been in the car. Maybe he'd been thrown out as it fell from the cliff. Maybe they just hadn't recovered his body."

His throat closed up and ten miles of the road disappeared behind them in silence.

Belle didn't press him, but he was acutely aware that she was turned in her seat, her back wedged up against the door, so she could see him.

And she hadn't known about Bae. The best thing about him, and she hadn't even known.

Bae deserved better.

"Then they found something in a warehouse that was a front for a company that…facilitates adoptions for parents who are too desperate to ask questions. His backpack. His baby blanket. His belongings. They said…he could have been anywhere. They'd have changed his name, moved him far away, made him afraid to ask anyone for help."

"That's horrible."

He shrugged uncomfortably. "In this country alone, there are ten times more couples on adoption waiting lists than there are kids to be adopted, and the process when followed legally is both expensive and glacially slow. There's a lot of money to be made in child trafficking."

"But he had a father already."

Hands clenching over the wheel, Gold fixed his eyes on the rim of lighter blue sky that seemed to wall the road in ahead of him. Always moving, always changing, never attainable, but still something to keep him from falling back into the pit of despair that kept him trapped.

"I didn't take hearing the theory of his fake adoption well," he said with a twist of his lips. "You might have heard about my breakdown. Sheriff Nolan was kind enough not to press charges when I blamed him for finding Bae too late. I'd been so insistent that I'd find him, but after that…there seemed to be less hope every day. All the statistics say… Well, they don't give a parent any reason to think that their child will be the miracle one that shows up alive and okay after all that time."

"I wish I could have helped," Belle murmured, her voice a melodious counterpoint to the hum of the car. "I knew you stopped coming into the library, and I did think about visiting your shop and making sure you were okay, but I…I talked myself out of it. Thought you'd suspect I was only there because of town gossip. Thought maybe I was only looking for a distraction. But I should have—"

"You noticed," he said. "When I stopped coming, you noticed. That's…that's enough."

He doubted she agreed, but he didn't want her to keep finding regrets. He didn't regret a single thing about his relationship with her. Every bit of it was just exactly what he'd needed when he needed.

"You remember when I went to Boston last month?" he asked to distract her. "David has a friend in the Boston police department who's taken an interest in the case, and it seems that maybe instead of Bae being adopted out, he was kidnapped by a gang instead. I…was able to give them some information, and that led to them raiding this latest safehouse where they found…remains."

"And here we are."

"Here we are."

And where was Bae? It was a constant question, always at the back of his mind, a relentless tick-tock; beat-beat went his heartbeat, where-is-Bae? went his brain, spinning and ticking and rolling in a ceaseless cycle.

"And you're not going to stop," Belle said, as if she didn't doubt it.

Which…Gold wasn't, of course, not when Bae deserved everything Gold could do for him. But how did she know that? How could she possibly look at the pathetic shell of a man Gold was and just seem to know that he would act like a better, braver, nobler man?

There was no way to put any of that into words, of course, but maybe he didn't need to.

Of her own accord, Belle leaned toward him and slid her hand over his, a warm weight sandwiching his hand between her soft palm and the leather of the steering wheel.

"You love so deeply and so unconditionally," she murmured. "It's amazing."

A last squeeze and then her hand drifted back to her side—Gold had to bite his tongue to keep from chasing that tender touch.

It was late by the time he pulled up outside the library. An impulse he didn't examine too closely had him getting out of the car to open her door for her. Instead of slipping by him and tossing a wave over her shoulder as she headed up to her apartment, Belle just stood there, sandwiched between him and the car, her face tilted up toward him. And as if that weren't enough to fuel his imagination for weeks on its own, she smoothed his coat down and straightened his tie.

"Thank you," she whispered. "It means a lot that you trusted me with all this. I'm glad you let me come."

"I find that hard to believe," he rasped. "Unless you like lost causes."

"You're hardly that." Her eyes locked with his, her hands curling over his shoulders. Keeping him close. "But I do like mysteries. I like uncovering them a bit at a time. I like knowing there will always be more to discover down the line."

He didn't know what to say. Even if the words were there, he wasn't sure he'd have been able to reclaim his voice quickly enough to speak any of them. Silence was an engrained habit, and though he'd spoken more today than he had in years, it still enshrouded him whenever he felt anxious. Stressed. Uncertain.

Wanting.

Belle's breath shuddered past his cheek, and he wished that time would stop in its tracks. Just freeze and hold until he could fully comprehend everything that was precious and poignant about this moment.

But time never obeyed him. The seconds trickled by, and Belle's mouth made a strange, nearly resigned move—not quite a smile, but certainly a quirk of some kind. She patted his shoulders, once, before letting her hands slide down and off his chest.

"Well. Good night, Rumple."

"Belle."

He didn't mean to say her name. It just slipped out at the step she took away from him.

Instantly, she turned back toward him. "Yes?"

If he said he didn't want to be alone, she'd invite him up. If he fell on her mercy, she'd wrap him in blankets and coddle him close—and never see him as a man outside her pity for him. She'd be manipulated by her own kindness and his propensity for taking advantage, manipulated into giving him the very things he wanted, so fiercely and intensely, for her to offer on her own— but only because she wanted to, not because she felt sorry for him.

"Thank you," he finally said. "Again."

"Anytime," she replied, and if Gold were brave, he'd have stepped close, he'd have bowed his head, he'd have kissed her on her cheek—tested the waters, pushed the boundary a bit.

But he wasn't brave. He was broken and bereft and defeated…and a coward.

So instead, he just watched as Belle slipped into the library and up to her apartment. He got into the car, alone, and drove home, alone, and faced the shining porch light, alone.

Like always.

But that was okay. Because tonight, when he opened his little book to put down his tally-mark, he knew that his son was out there somewhere too.

"I'm coming, Bae," he whispered, and fell into dreams of a grave and a body and a little boy hiding beneath the rotting remains, sobbing and begging for his papa to come save him. But Gold was too busy staring after Belle, thinking of her lips, her arms, her warmth, to hear his son's pleas, and so Bae suffocated alone and abandoned.