A/N: Disclaimer: This is a very different kind of story than I usually do. For one thing, it's really dark and deals with a lot of depression and suicidal thoughts. For another, it takes a while to get to the more hopeful parts. So fair warning, please be aware that there's some majorly dark themes here, including depression and suicidal and while I try to handle them tastefully and not overdo it, it's definitely outside my own comfort zone too. But don't worry: there will be that flicker of light in the ocean of darkness!

I did do research and talk to people I know who deal with this kind of thing (on a much smaller scale), but in the end, this is a fictional story and I am definitely not anyone remotely qualified to give advice about this subject matter. Hopefully, if you are currently seeing only the dark parts of your own story, this can help remind you there's light there too somewhere, but please don't model your life after a fanfiction story!

Also, this is as always based on characters and situations I didn't write; no copyright infringement is intended.

If you're still brave enough to read after all that, then I hope you enjoy this opening chapter!The skies were gray. They were always gray now. But somehow, no matter where he went, the sun still shone too brightly, like a spotlight aimed straight at him, pinning him in place beneath its heavy attention. Gold hunched his shoulders under the weight, his eyes hidden by his sunglasses, and thought about hurrying his steps into his shop. He should. He wanted to. It's just…it would take so much effort.

Chapter 1

Before he could find the impetus necessary, he'd reached his shop anyway. The bell above the door rang, mocking him with its tinkling laugh, and not for the first time, he decided he should take it down. It's not like anyone came into his shop anymore. Not since…

Gold swallowed and took his sunglasses off. It required all his energy to fold them and slip them into his breast pocket. Behind him, he unlocked his front door. Flipped the sign to OPEN. And then the whole day stretched in front of him, hours and hours of uninterrupted time.

Time to work. To update his books. To balance his ledgers. To fill up the endless, blurred day with busywork he couldn't convince himself anymore was important.

Really, he was only waiting for a phone-call. The same phone-call he'd been waiting for these past five years.

The sun's spotlight arrowed through the blinds over the windows, and Gold made himself move. Step by step—that's how he got through his days, and it's how he made himself move into the back where there were fewer windows and heavier curtains.

Back here, he was safe. Everything here was familiar. His haven, untouched, unbothered by anyone but himself. No cop had ever set foot back here with bad news and pitying eyes. No ex-wife had ever dragged her new paramour through the curtain, flaunting how easy it was for her to move on, taunting him with how easy he was to forget. No little boy had…

Very carefully, Gold leaned his cane against his worktable and sat down on his stool. There was a pocket watch in front of him. Pocket watches were fiddly work. Small so he'd need a magnifier glass, but most of them were set up very similarly which meant his mind could drift as he worked without too much trouble.

That wouldn't do. Not today.

Gold slid the pocket watch aside and turned his attention to the next project awaiting him. A necklace with a fine gold chain, hopelessly tangled. It would take a steady hand and a herculean amount of patience to untangle the strands. That was no good. It was still mindless work.

In like manner, he discarded a set of silver needing polishing, a brooch which he meant to dismantle in order to reset the stone, and a lamp that required fine detailing around the etchings before he could read the foreign inscription and price it.

None of it was good enough. All of it would take only half his attention.

He needed something more intensive. More demanding.

His mind wavered. It all just seemed like so much effort. Say he stood up and made his way to the front and inspected all his displays for the perfect project? Sure, it'd eat up a good half hour or so, but then he'd be right back here, sitting in this same place, looking at something else that didn't actually need done.

None of it meant anything. How could it? Nothing meant anything, not for five years to the day.

Gold's hand tightened into a fist. Maybe he shouldn't have left it behind. It had seemed to taunt him all last night—well, for longer than that, really. For years now. It would be so easy. So simple. No one would mourn. No one would even question. A very few might actually understand, though, naturally, everyone would assume they did.

His cane was in his hand before he could second-guess himself. He'd go to the front. He'd look for something that needed done. He wouldn't stop until his hand no longer felt empty.

His ankle twinged as he walked to the front of the shop. His ledger. Of course. It needed balancing. Dove had been keeping up on rent collections—or so he assumed, anyway. Had he actually checked lately?

No matter. He'd do it now. It would require concentration. Focus. Exactly what he needed.

Gold picked up the black leather book, and then he just stood there. He'd come to a stop, and now he couldn't remember why it was so urgent that he carry it to the back. Perhaps he should just stand here at the counter and work. It would aggravate his ankle, but all to the better. That would distract him even more than the tiny numbers and annoying red marks where some poor unfortunate souls hadn't paid their rent on time.

The book fell open with a satisfyingly heavy thump. Gold retrieved his thick pen with its gold insert and precisely sharpened tip, and he bent his head over the ledger. The numbers swam in front of him and math seemed a concept as elusive as a fish in reflected waters, but he persevered.

Or he assumed he did anyway. His mind wandered, but there was no one to notice. No reason not to let the day pass him by in the myriad of coping techniques he'd accumulated over the years.

He only stopped when the light failed him. At first, he assumed it was his eyes, and he rubbed his thumb and finger against them. But when that did nothing, he looked up and realized it was long past time to close.

Shutting the book, he set it aside. He hadn't finished, nor had he marked his place, but he couldn't find it in himself to be annoyed. There would be another day's distraction coming up, and that was, he supposed, all to the good.

His hand still felt too empty. He searched for the slight weight before he found his cane. Gold rounded the counter, flipped the sign to CLOSED, and exited his shop. It took him a moment to dig the keys from his pocket, and another moment to remember he'd pulled them out to lock the door, but all too soon it was done.

Slowly, he began his walk home. He used to drive to and from the shop, but that was when there were more things to be done than there were hours in the day. In other words, a long time ago. Now that the days dragged and the hours refused to do anything but trudge on in slow motion, Gold walked because it took up so much more time.

By the time he made it home, it felt like embers were trapped in the joint of his ankle. He realized he'd never thought to put his keys back in his pocket and so they were still in his hand. Unlocking the door, he entered his home.

And this was the most dangerous moment. The time when he needed his mind to be as distracted as possible.

He dropped the keys back into his pocket, his head bent as if the movement was so complex it required his line of sight to see it done. He tried to hasten his steps past the cabinet in the entryway, but the best he could manage was his slow limp. For the length of time it took him to hit the living room, he was so close to the drawer where his escape waited.

All he had to do was pull the drawer open. There used to be a mirror in the hall, but he'd taken it down ages ago. He wouldn't even have to look himself in the eye as he raised that tiny, inconsequential tool to his temple. It would have to be the temple. There was less chance of missing anything vital if he aimed for the brain itself.

One twitch of his finger and it would all be over.

The burn in his ankle. The featureless days. The sleepless nights.

The lack of any news for nearly three years.

Gold clasped his cane tight in his right hand and squeezed his tie in his left—and kept walking.

The kitchen was cold. He didn't bother to flip on a light. Muscle memory had him retrieving a glass and the pitcher of water from the refrigerator. He drank the entire glass, clearing out the dust he breathed in at the shop all day, then poured himself another glass before putting the pitcher back in the fridge. His housekeeper had left a covered plate of food on the top shelf. Gold reached for a fork in the drawer on his right without looking as he pulled the plate out and uncovered it. It only occurred to him that he should microwave it when he was halfway done, and by then it all just seemed like too much bother.

The fork dropped back to the plate. He should finish. The piece of toast he'd eaten for breakfast wasn't much food for a grown man. But then, the only reason anyone thought breakfast was the most important meal of the day was because of an incredibly successful ad campaign on the part of cereal companies. He remembered that, because every time he tried to make eggs and toast instead of letting him eat that sugary cereal, his boy would say—

Gold threw the rest of his dinner into the trash, plate, fork, and all, and left the kitchen. He was halfway to the stairs when he realized he hadn't brought the cup of water with him, but he couldn't be bothered to go back for it.

He was too close to that cabinet. His hand felt too empty. His temple tingled, as if waiting for something to be pressed against it.

Gold only knew that he'd come to a halt when he could no longer hear the tap of his own cane.

This wasn't good. He wasn't supposed to linger here. He shouldn't be standing here, not this close.

The drawer, when he slid it open, moved seamlessly. Soundlessly. Its passage was made easy by the fact that Gold had been doing this—opening the drawer and staring down at the gun hidden inside—far too often. More frequently all the time.

He'd tried talking to Dr. Hopper about it, but sitting in that man's office, staring at the certificates and degrees framed on the wall, he hadn't been able to speak at all. What right did he have to complain when his son…his son…

Gold's hand closed around the gun. If he did it here, just standing in the hallway, his housekeeper would notice before she even opened the door all the way. It would keep her trauma to a minimum. She could turn and call the police without having to see whatever was left of him. The police would come, the coroner would declare it a suicide, Dove would see to the funeral arrangements, he'd be buried without ceremony, and all that would be left to do would be to engrave his name next to the blank spot on the headstone he'd had commissioned three years ago. Before he realized he couldn't give up on his boy, not yet. Not then. Before he'd realized that he had to keep trying, keep searching, keep everything exactly as it had been so his son would know how to get home.

And Gold was still waiting. Bae was still out there somewhere—no matter what the police said. What did they know? Statistics and averages and precedent…they didn't know Bae. They didn't know how brave and clever and resourceful his son was.

He could still come home. And when he did, he deserved to have a father waiting for him.

Gold set the gun back into the drawer, slid it closed, and turned to the stairs. On autopilot, he went to his bedroom and readied for bed. Only when he was sitting propped up against his pillow, the lamp the only flicker of light in his house except the front porch light—always kept on to guide his son home—did Gold pull out the tiny book he'd found a use for five years ago exactly from its place on his nightstand. It fell open easily to the bookmark made of a hospital bracelet tiny enough to fit the wrist of a newborn babe. The name on it had long since worn away, but Gold traced his thumb over it and could tell where every letter had been.

Baelfire Gold.

Then Gold took a pen and marked another tally on the endless rows filling up nearly every page of his tiny book. Soon, he'd have to get a new one.

"I love you, Bae," he whispered to the faded picture of the twelve-year-old boy his son had been the last time he'd seen him.

With the book safely set aside for the night, Gold flicked off the lamp and pulled the covers over his shoulders. He hoped wherever his son was, he was warm. He hoped he wasn't hungry. He hoped he was safe.

He hoped he was alive.

One more day down, Gold thought. He'd survived one more day without his son.

He wondered if he'd make it through the next.

A week later, Gold was determined not to be sidetracked. He had a project, and he knew it would take all the focus he could possibly conjure, but it had to be done. As soon as he was sitting at his worktable in the backroom of his shop, he pulled out the laptop he kept, mainly as a paperweight, buried beneath papers. The night before, he'd spent nearly three hours standing in the hallway with the gun in his hand. It had taken chanting his son's name until his voice was hoarse to convince himself to put the easy escape down.

This morning, even though he'd fallen asleep in his bed, he'd woken lying in the entryway, leg blazing with pain, his hand stretched toward that drawer, still half-ajar.

He couldn't do this anymore.

Bae needed him. Gold couldn't bear the thought of his son fighting to get back home for half a decade only to arrive and find…nothing. No one who remembered him. No one to take care of him. No one who loved him.

Bae deserved better.

But the nights were getting harder and harder to endure. Gold had already attempted to get rid of the gun, but in thirteen months of trying, he hadn't been able to do anything more than move it from the nightstand by his bed to the cabinet by the front door.

He wasn't strong enough, Gold knew. He never had been. He never would be. So…he needed to do something drastic. Something to shake everything up.

Something to make him forget that his hand felt empty without the gun—without a boy's hand—resting in it.

Gold stared down at the keyboard, his heart rattling in his chest like dice in a cup—not a good comparison. He'd always staunchly refused to be a gambling man like his father. His hands shook as he picked out the keys he needed.

How to fight depression, he typed.

There were so many results. Hotlines and resources and doctors and hospitals.

Gold slammed the computer closed, too overwhelmed to look at it all. He was tempted to give it up as a bad job, but he'd known this would happen. He had to be strong, like Bae was wherever he was in this world, and for that, he needed focus—a reason to focus. Slowly, with hands shaking but careful anyway, Gold slipped the picture he'd stolen from his little book to bring with him for just this moment.

His son stared back at him. Hair too long, tousled by the wind, his mouth stretched in a wide grin, he was mid-word.

Papa.

No one else would know. No one else would look at this picture and know that his son was laughing because Gold had made him laugh as if happiness were pouring out of him. No one else could still hear the easy, loving way his son called him Papa.

But Gold knew. Gold remembered.

He hoped his son still laughed occasionally, wherever he was.

Setting the picture at his side for motivation, Gold reopened the laptop. This time, he typed in: things to do to keep from growing depressed.

He nearly typed in a different word, one that started with S rather than D, but that seemed too revealing. Too dangerous. As if the sun would beam down on him and let the whole town see the truth of his weakness.

Depression was normal. Most people grew depressed once or twice in their life. That didn't scream coward like the other word did.

There were still too many results, but every time he grew panicky and exhausted, every time he longed to shut each article with the painful words—like recurring and temporary and long process—Gold would look at the picture of his son—would think of how betrayed his son would feel if he made it home only to find an empty house that once was his home—and he kept doggedly going through page after page. Eventually, he even retrieved the tiny book from his pocket and carefully, deliberately, wrote down a succession of words.

A list. He could manage that. Step by step. A checklist. Something to work toward. Something to keep his mind focused and distract him from the bullet waiting to find its home in his brain.

Spend time outside

Talk to someone every day

Volunteer

Have accountability with at least one other person

Truthfully, each one of these seemed like a mountain that would take more than his stamina to summit. But it was a start. The least he could do was try.

What did he have to lose?

Gold startled at the sound of his own rusty laughter—how many months had it been since he'd last laughed?—and wondered if the list was already helping.

That evening, instead of walking straight home, Gold walked to Granny's and made himself sit at a booth. He ordered…something. Whatever he'd seen first on the menu. As soon as he finished ordering it, he'd forgotten what it was. Food always tasted like ash anyway—how could he enjoy it when he didn't know if Bae was eating at all? He'd eat enough to keep himself alive, for his son, but anything more seemed a crime.

Only after the waitress had already walked away did Gold realize he was supposed to talk to someone. Somehow, he didn't think reading a food item off the menu counted.

The diner was unusually empty. Ruby stayed near the kitchen, exchanging fierce whispers with her grandmother, and though Leroy was sitting at the counter, Gold couldn't think of a way to start a conversation with a man half the dining room away and with his back to him to boot.

And then the door opened and a young, beautiful woman spilled inside in a flurry of umbrella, coat, and flutter of raindrops. Which was the first time Gold realized it was raining—and the first moment he thought he might actually be able to accomplish an item on his list.

Belle French, the librarian. When she'd first come to town, he'd found himself in the library several times a month. Something about her smiling greeting every time he came in, her polite, clever chitchat as she checked out whatever book he found, her kind eyes when she'd wish him good evening…it had lured him in over and over again. But that was…was that two years ago now? Or three?

Oh. Yes. It was before his breakdown. After that all too public travesty, he'd never been able to make himself brave facing the pretty librarian again, not when he knew what the whole town thought of him—how far he'd sunk in their already low estimation. And after a while, he'd…simply stopped thinking about her. About the library. About anything but the first—and only, really—clue the police had found in their long, interminable search for his lost boy.

"Good evening, Mr. Gold!" Belle said brightly as soon as she saw him. She wrestled her umbrella into submission and then smiled at him. Her eyes were so blue, her dark hair tumbling over her shoulders, and every inch of her screamed that she was on a whole different level than him. "It's so good to see you again—we've missed you at the library. Found somewhere else to support your book habit?"

Gold stared.

She'd noticed. He'd stopped coming, and…and she'd noticed.

Her smile wavered.

Right. He was supposed to talk to her. Answer her. Reply. The whole point of conversation—an exchange of words.

"Yes," he heard himself say. "Sorry. Yes. I…I've been a bit preoccupied."

"Oh." He thought her cheeks flushed pink. "You don't have to apologize. I mean, it's not a requirement that you use the library. I just…I hoped you were okay."

His brow furrowed as a bolt of panic speared through his chest. How did she know? Was it written all across him? Could she see it in his eyes? And if she could…why hadn't anyone else?

Or had they? Did everyone know?

"I'm fine," he said too loudly.

"Right. Of course." Her smile this time was a bit smaller, but no less sincere. "Well, I'm glad to see you out and about. Whatever you're having smells delicious. Is that the hamburger special?"

"I…" Gold blinked down at his plate. It looked like a hamburger. "Extra pickles," he realized, and glanced up hurriedly when Belle laughed.

"I thought Granny charged extra for those."

He knew he should say something back. If he were a normal man, not the weak coward he was, would he have invited her to sit with him? Talked with her over dinner? Offered to walk her home?

He didn't know. He couldn't imagine doing any of those things. The truth was that his throat was closing up and his heart was going a mile a minute and this all seemed like one of the biggest mistakes he'd ever made.

What had he been thinking? His son had been missing for five years and one week, and here Gold was, out on the town, eating an expensive meal, smiling at a beautiful woman—as if Bae didn't matter. As if he didn't miss his son with every cell in his body.

With his best attempt at a smile, Gold clambered out of the booth. Belle's eyes on him, for all their kindness, made him feel hot and self-conscious, and he nearly dropped his cane. His face burned as he put some money down on the table.

As he passed her, he chanced one glance up from under his brows.

She wasn't smiling anymore. In fact, she almost looked…sad.

"I hope you have a good evening," he managed, and was beyond gratified when that made her smile reappear.

"Oh! Here!" Belle stepped toward him—Gold only narrowly avoided lunging backward—and offered him her umbrella. "I see you don't have one, and it really is coming down out there. Ruby will lend me one. Please. I'd feel much better if you took it."

About to turn her down, Gold suddenly had a thought.

According to his list, he had to talk to someone every day. And if he had to return her umbrella tomorrow…he could make sure it was Belle he spoke to then as well.

"Thank you," he murmured, and took the umbrella, careful not to let their hands brush.

Her smile brightened. "Enjoy your walk, then. The rain really is very pretty in the dusk."

It was funny. For years now, the skies had been gray. It was only as he walked home, Belle's words ringing in his ears, that Gold noticed the way rainbows sparkled through the silver mist.

It really was beautiful.

He wished Bae were there to see it.