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Fifty was entirely too old to begin anew.Gold had known that, somewhere in the back of his mind. He had known it every day that he had stayed in the same town, running the same shop, living in the same huge, empty house. He had known it with every identical burger at Granny’s diner, and with every predictable conversation with the wife who looked at him with the same look of bored, stagnant disdain she had the day before, and the day before that.Milah was younger than him, and bolder too. Milah was only thirty-five when she’d decided enough was enough. They were ten years apart in age and ten thousand miles apart in ideas, and so he had told himself when she left: she was still young at heart, while he had been born with one foot in the grave.Forty-five with a fourteen-year-old son was no time for new beginnings. Then fourteen had become nineteen, and four-foot-eight had become five-foot-ten, and before Gold knew it Neal was off to college – off to a fresh start – and he was still in that same house, in that same town, eating his same burger all alone.Fifty was far too old to start a new life.And yet, with most of his old things in storage and his palatial home in Storybrooke left empty and cold, that was exactly what Gold had done.Well, it was what he would do, just as soon as he could call the previous owner of his new apartment and ask where in God’s name they had hidden the key. Neal would chide him for not having charged his cell phone. Nothing made Gold feel more like a delusional old man than how alien the ubiquitous smart phone still felt.Swallowing his pride, Gold embraced his only other option: he knocked on the door of the apartment below.No answer.He knocked again, unsure of whether he wanted a response – and for whoever answered to laugh at the middle-aged idiot attempting to revive his sad old life – or silence – to leave that same idiot to try the next door down.There was a crash. Someone was alive on the other side of the door.“Who is it?” a startled, somewhat groggy-sounding female voice rang out.Gold didn’t know how to answer that. She wouldn’t know his name, and the response that sprang to his lips, to call “rent day, dearie!” did not apply anymore. Whoever this was, he was not her landlord. He was just her neighbour.Another crash. Then, the door opened just a little, caught on a safety chain.One bright blue eye peered at him; the other was half-closed, as if the young woman in question were still half asleep. She wore a man’s shirt and little else. One half of a glamorous young Manhattanite couple, no doubt. Her messy dark hair was piled up on top of her head, with wild tendrils spiralling out. She had clearly been awoken by his knock, at eleven on a Monday morning.She looked like a disaster, and she was stunningly beautiful.“Who’re you?” she mumbled.“My name is Gold,” Gold told her. “I’ve just moved in upstairs, and I’m in need of your telephone.”“Oh,” the woman blinked. “Jefferson moved out?”“Well if he hasn’t he’s due an unpleasant surprise, as I now own his apartment.” Gold’s voice turned a little nasty, as irritation and exhaustion crept in. He needed a shower after the long drive down, and to unpack, to feel less homeless and more rooted. He hadn’t moved home in twenty years, not since Milah had fallen pregnant and he had bought the Storybrooke house. He was too old for these games.The woman blinked. Then, to his surprise, her eyes brightened and her lips drew into a smile. “You’re funny,” she said. He blinked at her.“May I use your phone?” he asked again.“You’re definitely moving in?” the woman queried. “What’s the combination to the front door?”Not for the first time, Gold lamented the substantial lack of available real estate with a doorman in this part of town. No one could vouch for him, not without the elusive Jefferson around.“Four, two, zero, six, nine,” he replied. The woman’s eyes narrowed. She snorted.“Classic fucking Jefferson,” she muttered. He didn’t get the joke, and he had the impression she was laughing at him.“Excuse me?” he said, coldly. “Four-twen- never mind,” she shook her head, clearly deciding the Luddite before her wouldn’t understand whatever she found so amusing. “Wait here.”The door closed in his face.Gold sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose. She was a brunette. If she had not been, perhaps he would have turned on his heel and tried the man on the top floor, the businessman he’d met when viewing the apartment, whom he had assumed would be at work at this time on a Monday. But she was, and he was a fool, and she had told him to wait, and so without better option, Gold waited.Just when he was about to give up hope, the door was wrenched back open, the chain disengaged. The woman still stood there in that oversized shirt, this time with a cell phone pressed to her ear. She seemed completely unselfconscious of her bare legs, or indeed her general state of undress, even with a strange man standing in her doorway. “You didn’t tell me it was today!”Someone on the other end spoke. She frowned. “Well I would have tried to put on pants at least!”She made eye contact with Gold as she said it. Gold swallowed, hard. “Yeah, okay, whatever. You’re buying next time you’re- oh shit that’s right. Well, fuck you too. Hope LA is sunny and you didn’t let a murderer move in upstairs.”Gold stared at her. It had taken until now for his mind to catch up, and notice her voice was accented, Australian, and now that she was awake her gaze was forthright and disarmingly direct. “He’s standing in front of me. Yes. Yes. Look just- okay fine, usual place. ” She rolled her eyes at the person on the other end – the elusive Jefferson Hatter, Gold assumed. “Fine. Bye.”She hung up. “The key’s around here someplace,” she said, without preamble. “Jefferson’s an arse. He told you to look under the tart, right?”She started to rummage through her things, moving past him as if he barely existed. The apartment was a mess, as if a high-end clothing boutique and a cocktail bar had merged in the middle of an earthquake. Not a spare inch was uncluttered, and yet the woman moved among it with ease, as if nothing were out of place.“I… assumed he meant the odd pie-shaped ornament by the front door,” Gold said, bracing himself with his cane between his feet, drawing himself up stiff and cold. “I assume now I was the victim of a joke?”“No,” the woman gave him a smile that was kind, for all its wry humour. “I was. I was supposed to be around to give you the key, but he said the ninth and I thought he said the nineteenth, so here we are.”“Ah,” Gold nodded. “I see.”“I’m the proverbial tart,” she clarified, helpfully.“Thank you. That much I gathered from context,” he replied, one eyebrow raised. He kept his eyes on the back of her head, and not on how that shirt rode up whenever she leaned over or reached high.The woman snorted through her nose, and rolled her eyes. “I bet you did. Lacey Rose, the town bike,” she muttered, more to herself than to him, he thought. “Everyone’s taken a ride.”Gold didn’t know what to say to that. He could comfortably say that he knew the virtues and vices of each and every one of the five thousand residents of Storybrooke, Maine. He knew what to predict in every conversation, knew every button and lever to pull to extract exactly what was necessary in any situation.The woman before him, Lacey Rose, was a complete stranger to him. And as such, he had no idea what to do.It was terrifying.“What time is it?” she asked, her head darting up out of a mound of clothing. Gold checked his watch.“Just after eleven am.”“Shit!”Lacey jumped to her feet, and ran by him, around him, as if he were another mound of clutter. She grabbed a black lump of fabric with trailing translucent ends off the floor. “Don’t mind me,” she said, as she moved past him. “And don’t look!”She was behind him. Gold, without recourse, did as he was told.“I’m sorry, I really didn’t realise what day it was,” she explained again. “After I was supposed to greet you I have an appointment at Rikers, and I need to get ready. I’ll find the keys in a minute. Could you zip me up? You can turn around.”Gold turned, and found that she had somehow pulled on a pair of silky pantyhose and a tight black dress, the top of which barely covered her upper thighs. The back was hanging open. He couldn’t help, for just a moment, staring at the sudden vulnerability of her pale back, shoulder blades jutting out like wings, the curve of her spine visible beneath her skin.“I’m gonna be late,” she urged him, as if she had known him years and not moments. It snapped Gold out of his stupor.It was clear she wasn’t going to find his keys until her dress was fixed. Gold took hold of the zipper, and tried not to focus too hard on the sensation of the soft, smooth skin of her back against his knuckles as he dragged it up.“Late to an appointment at a prison?” he queried, his scrambled brain only now catching up with him. “What in God’s name are you doing there?”Lacey turned to face him, frowning. “That’s a prejudiced attitude to have,” she told him.“Well, it’s hardly a safe place for-““For a young woman?” Lacey raised her eyebrows. “Right now, where you’re standing’s none too safe either.”Gold looked at her, five foot-nothing in her stocking feet. Even he, at his unimpressive five-six, towered over her, and yet for a moment he felt a little afraid of this tiny hurricane of a woman. “My realtor was supposed to vet my new neighbours,” he said, his lip curling a little. Her anger made the ground beneath him feel a little more solid. “She assured me there were no felons or ex-cons in the building.”Lacey Rose stared him down, her eyes sharp and bright. He’d been wrong, he realised with a sinking feeling. Her anger did not diminish her, nor did it give him the slightest sense of the upper hand. She was even more stunning with her eyes flashing like that.“I don’t have a criminal record,” she assured him. “And if I did, all it would tell you is that I was dumb enough to get caught.” She finished with a sharp smile, challenging.He felt his lips twitch involuntarily. He wanted to laugh, and she saw, and her lips twitched. Point one to her.“You’re a criminal mastermind?” he raised an eyebrow, rising to the bait. He ran his eyes over her, and about the messy apartment. “Running the mafia out of… whatever this is?”“You know nothing about me,” she reminded him. “For all you know I could be Al Capone.”“Al Capone got caught,” he reminded her, enjoying himself far too much.“I pay my taxes,” she grinned. Then she remembered herself, and started fumbling about for something on the counter top. “Ugh, I’m gonna miss my bus!”“Who on earth are you visiting in Rikers?” he asked, curious beyond belief. Nothing about her read ‘criminal’ to him – disorganised, flighty, highly intelligent, but not criminal – and in his experience birds of a feather flocked together. A family member, perhaps? A sibling or close friend fallen off the wagon of drug addiction or worse?“A very dear friend,” she told him, airily waving a hand. To his disappointment, she was focused on her search and not on him. “A very dear friend with a very wealthy wife.”Gold’s eyes narrowed, his lurid mind conjuring all sorts of arrangements from that snippet. Perhaps he simply had the wrong kind of crime. Jefferson had called her a tart, after all.Lacey paused in her search and watched for a moment, then laughed.“That’s a new record,” she grinned. “You’ve known me five seconds and you already think I’m a hooker.”This time, he knew he was being laughed at. “Please may I have my keys?” he sighed, worn out already by the twists Lacey took in the course of a single sentence. She rolled her eyes, as she had with Jefferson over the phone.“Relax,” she said. “I’m the one in a rush. But if you insist.”Lacey returned to her search, and started to rummage through a different pile of clothes and stilettos, and then another. “It’s perfectly innocent,” she continued, as he perfectly innocently attempted not to stare at her pert backside, showcased to perfection in that tight little dress. “Ana’s a very powerful woman, and her husband’s a very incarcerated thief. They’ve been separated forever, but they’re still close. But, since she works at City Hall and he got caught with half a million in stolen jewellery in his apartment… well, it’s not convenient for her to keep in touch. Not publicly, anyway.”“So you’re the go-between?” Gold raised an eyebrow. Lacey shrugged.“I pose as his girlfriend, keep him company, let him know his wife’s thinking of him… you know, the usual. Occasionally Ana goes herself in a wig and signs in under my name, you know, for the conjugal visits. I love Will, but not that much.”“Right,” Gold muttered, as though anything about this situation could be called ‘usual’.“Ah ha!” Lacey cried. She stood up triumphantly, brandishing a key ring that jangled when she moved. “There we go!” She stepped forward, and pressed the keys into Gold’s hand. “Safe as houses.”“Thank you,” he said. The keys felt like salvation, allowing him to leave this apartment and this whirlwind conversation before he was swept up even further.Her hand hadn’t left his. Her eyes were bright blue, like a tropical sea, and fixed on him.“You’re welcome,” she said, a small smile lifting her lips, sweeter than her beaming grin. His skin tingled where they touched.She stepped back, and ran her fingers through her messy hair. “Sorry,” she said. “You’ve helped me get dressed and I didn’t even get your name.”“I told you,” he said. “It’s Gold.”She rolled her eyes, again. “That’s your surname,” she corrected. “Not your real name.”“It’s the only name that suits,” he told her, stiffly. Only a handful of people knew his hideous forename, and he preferred it that way. If he never had to hear Milah sneer Ezekiel again, it would be ten years too soon.Her eyes narrowed. He knew what she must be thinking: he was old fashioned, stuffy, formalistic and uptight.It was odd: for a moment he almost thought he saw understanding in Lacey Rose’s bright blue eyes. She didn’t look like she was judging him. She looked like she was thinking, hard.“You’re certain you won’t tell me your name?” she pressed.“Gold will do just fine,” he said, stiffly.“How about if I guess it?” she asked. “What happens then?”“I suppose I’ll stamp my foot and tear myself in two,” he muttered, a private, dark little joke, remembering the stories from Storybrooke of his monstrosity.She laughed again, a soft laugh, at odds with her bright, brassy smile, almost understanding. “Like Rumpelstiltskin,” she teased. He tried, oh how he tried, not to be charmed.“Indeed.”There was a pause. If she had woven a spell, he thought helplessly, then he was enchanted.He cleared his throat. “And with that, I must be going.”He turned on his heel, before he could be overwhelmed another moment. He needed a shower, and to lie down. He needed to be out of this apartment, and away from this woman, so alive she was bursting at her seams, life radiating from her skin so bright she almost glowed.“Goodbye, Rumpelstiltskin!” she called.He didn’t turn around.
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Lacey Rose was a popular young woman.Gold supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. She was very beautiful, after all, and he imagined he wasn’t the first man to have been swept up by her dizzying conversation and bright, beaming smile. Her appearance and her slapdash approach to life made her seem foolish, but there was a razor-sharp intellect underneath that errant exterior.Any man would drown in those eyes of hers. And, it seemed, many men had.Over the course of his first two weeks in the apartment – not that he was counting, of course – Gold spotted at least five different men coming home on Lacey’s arm. They were all wealthy, that was attested by their expensive suits, and they were all entranced by her.He only saw one leaving the next morning. Two of them at least he knew had not made it past the door: he heard their pounding and banging, and their sullen exit, through the floorboards. What had become of the other two was anyone’s guess.Lacey didn’t seem phased by any of this. She was bright and fresh as a daisy whenever he ran into her in the hallway the following afternoon, and never mentioned any unpleasantness the previous night. She smiled, she chatted to him a little, and he felt pathetic hanging on her every word.He still stopped to talk to her the next time. His pride was a worthy sacrifice to be on the receiving end of her smiles. There was something intoxicating about her, a duality and complexity to her he couldn’t help but want to unravel. It was as if she were several different women, all living within the same small body.Gold awoke around six am, as had been his custom in Storybrooke when he still had a shop to run. He’d always imagined early retirement to involve long, lazy mornings, but no one had told his circadian rhythm that. He supposed such things would be more pleasant, more possible, with a companion, but that ship had long since sailed. Without someone to wake up with, to make breakfast with, to tire him out in the evening and doze with all morning, lounging in bed had little appeal.He was a fool, at fifty years of age, to be maintaining such fantasies. He forced them down hard when they surfaced, and focused instead on planning his first visit with Neal in Boston, or his reading list. He remained an early bird, and so by seven he was out the door and making his way downstairs. He enjoyed breakfasts at Tiana’s down the street, where he could sit and people-watch over black coffee and beignets, a far cry from Granny’s greasy-spoon fry-ups. Manhattan had its perks, and food was one of them.As his hand reached for the doorknob, the door opened inward, forcing him back. Lacey Rose breezed in, her face bright. He hadn’t seen her in the morning since that first day. She, apparently, felt no compulsion to rise with the sun.She was dishevelled, still dressed in last night’s clothes. A short black dress sat under a red leather blazer, her messy hair escaping the bun atop her head. She smiled when she saw him.“Good morning, Rumplestiltskin!” she chirruped. He grimaced.“I’ve told you, my name is-“She cut him off before he could correct her, yet again. “What’re you doing up so early?”“Seven is hardly early,” he scoffed. She looked thoughtful.“I suppose not for me,” she said, stepping past him to get to the mail lockers. “It’s super late for me. I guess ‘early’ is a matter of whether you’ve slept yet.”“I suppose so,” he agreed. “Where were you?”“Oh, around,” she winked. “I poured my date into his apartment around four, then got his driver to take me for a spin.”“For three hours?”She shrugged, “I like the city early in the morning. It’s the only time it’s quiet enough to think. When I’m out that late it’s too late to go home, so I walk past the Strand Bookstore to window shop, get the subway back to a couple blocks away, then get a bag of the first batch of beignets from Tiana’s and a chai tea on my walk back.”Gold hung on every word. He felt, just for a moment, as if he were getting an insight into Lacey Rose’s bright soul. “I haven’t been to the Strand yet,” he admitted. “It’s on my list.”“Oh, you have to.” She pulled her mail out of the hatch, and closed it back up. “It’s noisy downstairs, of course, but upstairs on the third floor they have all the rare books and…” she trailed off, watching him. She shook her head. “Sorry, you were on your way out, and I should get to bed.”“I was only going to Tiana’s for breakfast,” he told her. She glanced down at her own bag of beignets, and grinned.“Well, joke’s on you, I got the best of the day!” she said. She turned on her heel, and scampered up the stairs. He heard her door slam.Gold was left alone, once again, with his thoughts. Ambling down to Tiana’s, he longed for a purpose, for routine. With each passing day, Gold missed his little shop in Storybrooke more and more.He did his best to fill his time. Unfortunately, run-ins with Lacey Rose were relatively few and far between: brief flickers of light, amid a growing, gnawing darkness. The rest of the time, he felt more and more like he was just killing time, but waiting for what he could not imagine.He walked around the neighbourhood – as much as he could on his bad ankle – he read, and he looked over his accounts. There was little else to do in his apartment all day with nothing but his books and his thoughts.He could have gone out more, of course. He had more money than he knew what to do with. He could have gone to the theatre every night, dined in the best restaurants and shopped anywhere he pleased. But every time he thought about going further than a few blocks from his apartment, he felt himself seize up, and he found an excuse not to. He was home by nine every evening, in bed with a good book. One could take the man out of Storybrooke, it seemed, but not take dreary, predictable, deadening Storybrooke out of the man.Manhattan had seemed like such a wonderful, glittering proposition when he had first decided to move. Terrifying, challenging, overwhelming, yes, but also full of promise. Now, reality having set in, the excitement faded and only that terror remained. At least his apartment felt safe, and predictable. At least loneliness in one’s own home was more bearable than out in the world, surrounded by happier people.He went to bed early, with nothing to do after dinner.It was midnight when he heard his window bang closed and awoke with a start.Lacey Rose was still clutching the sill where she had just now closed it. Her eyes were wide, like a child with her hand caught in the cookie jar.“I’m sorry,” she said. He blinked at her.“Miss Rose?” he mumbled. “Whatever are you doing in my bedroom?”A loud crash from downstairs, a fist slamming against a door, was followed by a muffled shout. Lacey winced.“My date,” she explained, looking a little sheepish. “The Nottinghams are a distinguished and noble family, but their eldest son is anything but.”“Your latest conquest got out of hand?” he asked, dryly. She shot him a narrow-eyed look.“Hardly a conquest,” she replied. “He got handsy in the car. I have a rule: if he goes for the boobs before we get inside, he doesn’t get inside.”“It must happen often, if there’s a rule in place for it,” he said. He tried not to let his natural conservatism turn to judgment. She was young, free, and beautiful. Why shouldn’t she play the field?She rolled her eyes. “Men are dogs, Rumple,” she told him. “What am I supposed to do? You can’t reward bad behaviour. Next thing you know he’s peeing on the carpet and sleeping with his secretary on the side.”He couldn’t argue with that. “You could spend less time with canine men?” he suggested. She laughed.“You let me know when they perfect the asshole-o-meter and I’ll be the first in line to purchase,” she said.There was another crash from downstairs. Then, through the floor, Gold heard a wheedling “Come on, babe, let me in!”“Ugh,” Lacey’s face creased with disgust. “I’m really sorry about this,” she said, turning back to Gold. “The slammed door usually does the trick. I needed to get out of there, and I can never get the ladder down on the fire escape to work when I need it.”“Understandable,” Gold murmured. Anyone else, he thought, anyone else would be out on their ear. He couldn’t think of a single person in Storybrooke who would have come to him for help, much less pleaded sanctuary in his home. He couldn’t think of any he would have allowed inside had they tried. Nothing in that town was scarier than he was. He could hear his own cold, callous voice in his head, sneering at her, ‘I’m afraid you’ve mistaken my home for a hostel, dearie. I’m not running a charity, you’ll have to find another hiding place.’“I’m sorry,” she sighed, again. “I really don’t want to intrude.”He couldn’t contain his retort at that. “You broke into my bedroom in the middle of the night,” he pointed out. “The intrusion comes with the territory.”“Are you going to throw me out?” she asked, bluntly. “If so I’ll try the ladder on the fire escape. I’m not going anywhere near Keith again tonight.”He looked at her, and knew this was his moment. He could draw a line in the sand, save himself from her whirlwind. If he pushed her out, he could be rid of her.“No,” he said, at last. “I’ve nothing better to do. You’re free to stay until he blows himself out.”Lacey snickered, and visibly relaxed. “If he could blow himself I doubt he’d have bothered paying for dinner,” she said. Gold chuckled, and she winked. “Can I sit?”He nodded, expecting her to take the armchair by the window. She surprised him yet again: she plonked herself right down on the bed beside him, hands on her knees.“Would you tell me something, Rumple?” she asked. He tilted his head to one side, watching her.“That depends,” he said. “What would I get in return?”Lacey rolled her eyes heavenward. “Men,” she sighed.“It’s a simple question, dear,” he said. “I’ve already been generous enough allowing you sanctuary here without exacting a price.”“What do you want?” she asked, her eyes sharp. She smiled, but it looked a little bitter, a hard edge there he hadn’t seen before. A long pause, and he felt he was being sized up, and found wanting. Then: “Maybe I was wrong about you, Rumpelstiltskin,” she murmured. “I didn’t think you were like all the rest.”He caught her meaning a moment too late. “I wasn’t suggesting anything of the sort!” he snapped, a little offended at the insinuation. He was hardly a good man, but he recoiled at anything that would put him in the same category as the idiot howling downstairs. He drove a hard bargain, but he wasn’t a lecher. “I was thinking along the lines of an answer of my own.”She straightened, taken aback. It felt good to wrongfoot her for a change. “Oh.” She frowned. “What could you possibly want to know about me?”A thin smile tugged at his lips: what didn’t he want to know? “You first.”“Are you always this much of an arse?” she demanded. “When I see you in the mornings you never seem this grumpy.”It hardly stung. He’d been called worse, by worse people.“I’m a morning person,” he said. She shook her head.“No, you don’t look any happier in the mornings,” she said. He stared at her: she said it so casually, as if she’d noted the way he tied his shoelaces or the weather outside, as if it weren’t an incisive dissection of his personality. “Just less suspicious. So, what I want to know is, why did you come to New York?”“I believe that’s two questions, dear,” he noted. “You bartered for only one, and I’ve not had my payment yet.”“Calling you an arse wasn’t a question!” she cried, throwing up her hands. “God, you’re annoying!”“It sounded an awful lot like a question,” he replied, enjoying baiting her an awful lot more than he ought to. “And I answered, as agreed. The terms of this little bargain were very specific.”She scowled at him. For a terrible moment, he thought she might get up and leave, driven off by his unpleasantness. It was inevitable, of course, but he’d hoped her obvious optimism, however buried beneath layers of cultivated cynicism, would keep her around a little longer.“Fine,” she snarled. “What do you want to know?”“It’s just a simple question,” he assured her. “Nothing more than small-talk, really. I’m sure you answer it several times a day.”“You about to ask me for my Starbucks order?” she quipped. He quirked an eyebrow.“No,” he said. “I’d like to ask what you do for a living.”Silence.Her breath left her lungs in a slow, long breath. “What do you think I do?” she asked in return“Really, for an intelligent girl you can’t very well keep to an agreement, can you?” he tutted. “Such a pity.”“You think I’m a whore,” she said, bluntly, catching him off guard. “You don’t want to ask me if I’m a whore, but you’re thinking it. All the men, and the drinking, and the nice apartment but I’m in bed at eleven am… yeah, you’ve wondered. You’re a coward for not just asking outright.”He watched the blood rush to her pretty cheeks, but the fire in her eyes was ice-cold, the rich, sunny sky-blue turned to bitter frost. “Still not an answer to my original question, dear,” he said, softly. The air between them fell heavy, stifling, suffocating. For a moment, he was keenly aware that she was sat on his bed, and he in his pyjamas, with no chaperone and no veneer of public exposure to mitigate what might occur next. She could murder him, right here in this room, and he’d likely deserve it. She could castrate him with the heel of her stiletto shoe, and for a moment it looked as if she might.“I’m a student,” she said, at last. “But that’s not the answer you’re looking for either, is it? No, you’re well aware of the rents around here, and you’re wondering how I afford all this with student loans to pay. Are you hoping I can tell you the going rate? Turn this conversation into a party?”“I never made any assumptions about your career, Miss Rose,” he replied, calmly. “In fact, the fact that your friend downstairs has only now ceased his hammering on your front door rather indicates that if you are selling your body, you must be the worst prostitute in New York City. I hardly see how he’d get his money’s worth from the other side of the wall.”“You’d be surprised,” she murmured, but there was a smile tugging, reluctantly, on her lips.“I hadn’t presumed anything about your relationships,” he said, at last. He didn’t often make such concessions, but this time it was actually true. Riling her up was fun, but he felt he may have crossed a line somewhere, and for once he actually cared. “But you must admit your lifestyle is not the norm in this neighbourhood. I was curious about how you afford to live this way.”“Isn’t it gauche to talk about money?” she muttered. He shrugged.“Isn’t it rude to barge into innocent people’s apartments uninvited in the middle of the night?” he countered. She had to concede that.“Maybe I’m royalty,” she suggested.“Maybe,” he agreed. “But speaking from experience, you don’t read to me as someone raised with money, if only because rich brats don’t tend to drink Jack Daniels out of a novelty mug on their fire escape at three am.”He’d seen her out there once or twice, reading with the bottle between her legs and a cup with a Disney princess design in her lap. It was endearing.“Yeah, that’s fair enough,” she said, with a small smile. “Fine, you got me. I’m a sugar baby.” He frowned.“As in the other half of-““A sugar daddy, yes,” she confirmed. “You can do it online now, my friend Ruby’s made a packet. You don’t have to sleep with them – some rich guys just get off on taking you to dinner and buying you things. My friend Will-““The one in prison?”“Yeah, the one in prison,” she said. “Once he got nicked, he set me up with a handful of other fences and pawnbrokers. You’d be amazed what you can sell to the right buyer.”Gold wondered if she knew he had been a pawnbroker back in Storybrooke. He knew exactly how much money a woman in her position, with the right contacts, could make. It was impressive.“That’s quite a scam,” he murmured, approvingly.“I prefer to call it advanced wealth redistribution,” she grinned. He couldn’t help the smallest chuckle. “They don’t all want to keep it innocent, though. I make it clear sex is not part of the deal, but sometimes it goes really well and I’m happy to bend the rules, and sometimes a girl has to clamber out a fire escape.” She sighed, and flopped back dramatically over the bed, so her head was on his shins through the covers. “And here I thought my sparkling personality ought to be enough.”Gold had to agree with her on that. Her conversation was worth far more than anyone could afford. She was priceless.“So, that enough of an answer?” she asked, lolling her head to one side to look up at him along the bed. “Do I get to ask my question now?”He pursed his lips. “A deal is a deal,” he said. “But I suppose one can make allowances, given the late hour. You have been drinking, after all.”She stuck out her tongue, “Only like, two gin and tonics and a glass of wine,” she said. “As if I was going to let my guard down around that bastard.”Her insult was punctuated by another shout from downstairs. Nottingham’s voice rang out: “Come on, babe, you can’t ignore me all night!”He saw her eyes close for a moment, and watched a flash of pain cross her beautiful face, right before a bright smile covered it. She looked both very young and far too old for a second, and he wondered what a toll it took on a young woman to treat herself as a commodity. She deserved to be treated better than that. She deserved to treat herself better than that.“Your question?” he prompted. His reluctance to share had slipped into something else. He wanted to tell her anything she wanted to know, any chance to give any small part of himself to her.He was pathetic, a fool, worse even than the men who paid for her company, because at least they knew what they were signing on for. All she’d had to do was smile at him, and he was done for.She looked at him, her eyes opening, soft but intense. “Why did you move to New York?” she asked, again.He thought about it for a long moment. For a hundred reasons, he could have said: because Milah left, and the jealousy of knowing she’d done what he could not had finally gotten the better of him; because Neal moved out, and that big old house felt like a crypt; because he was a scared, small, boring old man, and New York had promised to make him big and bold, everything he had never been - young again, young for maybe the first time in his life. He’d hoped to become everything she already was.“I just needed a change,” he half-lied. She watched him, carefully. His face was a mask: he betrayed no hint of what lay beneath.For just a moment, he wanted to show her all of himself, to open his chest and present his heart and lungs for her perusal, all the dark, musty corners of his soul. But he was a coward, and more than anything he wanted her to stop looking at him like that, like she wanted to know him at all. She wouldn’t like what she saw, and he would miss her when it drove her away.“Okay,” she said, at last. He didn’t know if he felt relieved or disappointed that she didn’t press further.“Can I ask you one more question, Rumple?” she asked.“I suppose,” he agreed. Maybe another shot would make him brave. Maybe one more push would send him over the edge, and she could catch him.“Are we friends?”He was caught off-guard. He stammered. “I don’t really have friends.”She smiled. “We’re friends,” she said, definitively. “And your shins make a lovely pillow.”He took a deep breath. The weight of her head on his legs anchored him to the bed. He wondered what it would feel like to hold her properly, but pushed the idea out of his mind. If she wanted to be held, he had no doubt she would ask.“Be that as it may,” he said, at last. “I don’t think you’d want me as a friend. You must have plenty of others lining up to fill that post.”She rolled her head to one side. “You can have more than one friend, Rumple,” she said, gently, as if speaking to a slow child. “Don’t you want to be friends?”That wasn’t the issue, he thought: of course he wanted to be her friend. He just wasn’t sure where or how to even begin. There was only one relationship in his whole life that he hadn’t burned to the ground, and that wasn’t for lack of trying.What would Neal say, if he saw his father now? Gold shuddered to think. This certainly wasn’t going to be mentioned in their next phone conversation.His silence clearly told her something all by itself. Lacey sat up, and braced herself on her hands, so she could look him full in the face. A little line had appeared between her eyebrows, and she was looking at him with an incredulous expression that made him fear she had seen more than she was supposed to. “Rumple… you have had a friend before, right?”He held his dignity. He didn’t answer.She smiled, but this time he didn’t feel laughed at. “It’s alright, you know. You’re not the first person to move to New York with nothing and no one.”He wondered if that was what had happened to her. How in the world could Lacey have found herself alone? “So what does one do?” he asked, and hated himself for it the moment he had. What sort of pathetic cretin was he, asking for a roadmap to something seven year olds did every day?“One comes to the party I’m having Friday night,” she replied, with a grin that made him glad he’d asked, if only because she’d clearly been hoping he would. “And starts meeting people.”Gold’s stomach clenched with anxiety. He certainly didn’t want to do that. He couldn’t think of anything worse than standing in Lacey’s cluttered apartment surrounded by glamorous people decades younger than him, feeling alone and miserable and boring and old.“Please, Rumple?”She was smiling at him, so bright with expectation. It was on his lips to turn her down, but that smile and those eyes would overpower stronger men than he.She would be there. Gold hated parties, loathed and detested them, but if Lacey would be there… “Alright,” he said, his heart hammering in his chest. “I’ll try and make it.”She clapped her hands, beaming like an excited child, and it made all the anxiety worth it. Impulsively, she leaned in and pressed a kiss to his cheek, “Thank you, Rumple!”He felt all the blood rush to his face. His cheek tingled with the memory of her soft, warm lips. She smelled like cherries and fresh snow. He didn’t know what to say.There was a crash from downstairs. “I’m not gonna forget this, slut!” Nottingham’s voice rang through the floorboards. Gold couldn’t tell if the slamming door meant he was gone for good, or just refuelling.Lacey winced. For just a moment, she looked smaller and younger than he’d ever seen her before. She looked like someone else entirely, someone who didn’t suit her tight dresses and brassy grins. He thought he could know her for a century, and probably never unravel who she really was. He wanted to try, though, if she would let him.“Can I just… hide out here?” she asked, her voice coming weaker than he’d ever heard it. “Please?”He swallowed around a dry throat. Not trusting himself to speak, Gold simply nodded.He was surprised yet again, although by now he shouldn’t have been, when she kicked off her high heels, and scooted up the bed, until she was sat next to him and could scramble under the covers. He was in bed with Lacey Rose. Lacey Rose, beautiful, impossible, clever, complex Lacey Rose, was in his bed, under his covers, her hip just touching his.Gold forgot how to breathe.“You’re a good friend, Rumple,” she said. She meant it, he could tell. Gold had never been anyone’s friend. He was a passable father and a substandard husband, a miserly landlord and an austere, unlikeable employer. He had no doubt he would make an equally disappointing friend. But if Lacey Rose needed him to try, then she would get his very best effort.She settled down against the pillows, her dark hair a halo around her face. He reached over and turned off the light, and felt her shift and settle on her side.When he looked over again a few moments later, her eyes were closed, her breathing even. In sleep, the bright light inside her banked into a quieter glow, and her features seemed smoother and softer, younger. He wondered how old she was, and how far she had travelled to reach this place.He slowly slipped into sleep, comforted by the soft sound of her breathing even as he tensed all over, trying not to move, to not disturb her. It felt wonderful to share a bed with someone again. He hadn’t realised how lonely he had been, until she was lying beside him and he didn’t feel it quite so deeply.Hours later, Gold was awoken again with a start. A sharp cry came from beside him, and for a moment it was Milah, ordering him to get up and deal with the baby.He blinked awake, shaking off the cobwebs of a life long since lost. Milah was long gone, and Neal was nineteen and at college, and the woman beside him was not his wife but an impossible friend. Lacey wasn’t awake, or calling for him. She was fast asleep, tossing and turning, her face creased with anguish.“Papa, no!” she screamed. “No, I won’t, no, I-”“Lacey!” Gold shook her, instinct kicking in. Whenever Neal had had nightmares, Gold had been the one to shake him awake, to talk him down from his fear and settle him back to sleep. “Come on, wake up, it’s okay.”Lacey screamed, and woke. Her eyes blinked open, and for a moment she didn’t know him, confusion and fear written across her beautiful face. Then the clouds parted, and she sighed, relaxing into the bed. “Oh, Rumple, it’s just you.”He swallowed hard, and released her as if she’d burned him, suddenly remembering his propriety a moment too late. They were in his bed, alone in the middle of the night. He certainly shouldn’t be touching her, even just her shoulders. He didn’t want her to think for a moment that that she was unsafe here.“Everything alright?” he asked. She blinked at him.“Of course,” she said, and he hated the false smile that came so readily to her lips. “Why wouldn’t it be?”“You were screaming,” he said.Her face creased. “Was I?”He sighed, and wondered if she needed to talk about it. For a moment, he kept silent, about to let her pretend nothing had happened. But she had accused him of cowardice before for not speaking his mind, and so for her he would be brave. “What happened to your father, Lacey?”She blinked at him. Then, to his horror and his resignation, she shook her head, her face closing off. She shifted to the edge of the bed, and stood up. “Goodnight, Rumple.”She was gone a moment later. The bed was still warm from her body, but Gold swore he’d never felt more alone.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Gold didn’t see Lacey at all in the following days.Sunday and Monday passed, and she was a ghost in the apartment building. He could smell her perfume, heard her coming and going in the mornings and evenings, and yet he couldn’t catch so much as a glimpse of her. It was as if she were avoiding him, and yet he couldn’t imagine she’d given him enough thought to care about his regular schedule.He should have left well enough alone. She had been in his bed, and she’d looked distraught, and he’d thought that maybe if she needed to talk, she might talk to him. The more he thought about it, though, the more he realised the folly of that thought. If the positions had been reversed, he would have shut down and avoided her like the plague forever more.Gold’s life continued as it always did. He read, and he walked, and he drank coffee and coordinated rent collection with Dove back in Storybrooke and with every passing hour he wished he had anything else to do.Then, Wednesday afternoon, Gold returned from one such walk to the park to find a strange man watching the apartment building.He was young, good looking enough, and leaning against a very expensive Mercedes. He had his hands in his pockets and his jaw set, and he was watching the building like a hawk.“Can I help you?” Gold asked, coldly.“I’m good, thanks,” the man replied. Gold knew his voice. Keith Nottingham didn’t even look at him.“You’re loitering outside my building,” Gold said. “I’d say you should move along before a concerned resident calls the police.”Keith laughed, and looked at him. “I’m not doing anything, man. It’s not a crime to stand.”“No, but stalking is.”Keith’s eyes narrowed. “You her protector, then, old timer?” he sneered, looking Gold up and down. “Lacey got you pussy-whipped?”“You woke half the building with your yelping at her door the other night,” Gold replied, coldly. “Anyone could put two and two together. For what it’s worth, I doubt Miss Rose wants to see you.”“She likes to put up a fight,” Keith shrugged. “Lacey’s just like that. You gotta treat her mean to keep her keen, you know?”Gold felt a cold, terrible fury rush through his veins. Keith Nottingham was the sort of man who shouldn’t be allowed within a thousand miles of any woman, much less Lacey Rose. Gold couldn’t talk to Lacey or hold her or make her feel better about whatever it was she screamed about in the night, but he could at least keep this particular monster from her door.“You listen to me, Mr Nottingham, and listen carefully,” Gold said, and took a step forward, and then another. Keith was backed against the car, but he didn’t seem worried. That was a mistake.“You gonna beat me up, old man?” Keith laughed. “I’ll kick your ass and enjoy doing it.”“Oh no,” Gold smiled, a malicious smile, one he hadn’t had chance to use in quite a while. It felt good to snarl. He pressed his cane into Keith’s instep, and sneered when the man gasped with pain. “I just want to make sure you hear me,” he said, his tone quiet and even. “If you take one more step toward Lacey Rose, you will find yourself filing for bankruptcy before the end of the year.”“How’d you figure?” Keith asked, still wincing with pain. Gold put half his weight on his cane and enjoyed with Keith squirmed.“I have it on good authority that your family’s company is reliant on loans from EFB, the only bank in the city still willing to lend to you. A number of their board members owe me significant favours. One word from me, and the money dries up.”“Who?” Keith demanded. Gold shook his head.“I hardly see it matters. Trust me, Mr Nottingham, they’re far more afraid of me than they are of you.”“Bullshit,” Keith spat. Gold ground his cane into his foot, hard.“Try me.”He stepped back, and lifted his cane. Keith stumbled a little.“Now get back in your car, Mr Nottingham, and drive away.”Keith glared at hm. Gold knew right then that if he could, Keith would murder him on the spot. But he couldn’t. Gold had almost forgotten how good that fear could taste.He smiled, all teeth. Keith stared him down, but Gold didn’t blink.A second later, Keith was grumbling, ducking his head, and hurling himself into the driver’s seat. “I won’t forget this, old man,” he muttered, as he went to slam the door.Gold jammed his cane into the door, wedging it open. He leaned in. “See that you don’t.”The moment his cane was hauled back, Keith slammed the door. The tyres squealed as he drove away.Gold was humming under his breath as he walked up the stairs into the apartment building, feeling more energised than he had since his last conversation with Lacey. Something about her invigorated him. He felt more alive than he had in years, every emotion intensified, as if the world had had the saturation turned up. After years of pale, quiet stagnation in Storybrooke, the light and colour were almost overwhelming.He knew without question that if Keith returned he would make good on his threat. Whether she wanted to see him or not, Gold had no intention of allowing any harm to come to Lacey Rose.Despite her silence, however, she had not rescinded her invitation to her party. The very thought of going made his heart race and his palms sweat. One on one, knowing he had the upper hand, Gold had no fear at all threatening Keith Nottingham. The thought of smiling and making small talk with a hundred of Lacey’s closest friends, however, made him break out in hives.Gold had never been any good at small talk. It had been one of the many faults Milah had found with him: he preferred silence to wasted words.By the time Thursday evening rolled around, Gold had almost made up his mind to skip the party altogether. Lacey had been a ghost in the building, and were it not for the soft scent of her perfume lingering in the hallway or the vague sound of her voice in the evening, Gold would have worried that something untoward had become of her.She had not returned to his apartment, by stairs or by fire escape, nor had she run into him in the morning or evening no matter when he timed his comings and goings. If he didn’t know better, he would think she was avoiding him. But that would require her to think of him at all.Thursday evening came. By the time Gold returned from his evening walk, he could already see the bright lights streaming from her windows, and hear music and loud chatter all the way out on the street. He looked at his watch, and made an internal bet with himself: he gave it three hours before the police responded to a noise complaint.Wearily, he entered the building. He had nowhere else to go, no friends or family to drop in on or office to work late at, and his home was directly above the party. He was faced with that most difficult of choices: to listen to others having fun, knowing he was invited but still unwelcome; or to brave the event, and stomach the anxiety and sense of un-belonging that accompanied it.By the time he reached Lacey’s door, he was still undecided.He should bring a bottle of wine, he thought, as a peace offering. That seemed like a decent compromise, the more he thought about it. He could bring her a bottle of wine from his apartment, and gauge her reaction upon receiving it. He could then make an educated decision as to whether to linger or bolt.Five minutes of agonised deliberation later saw him back on her front doorstep, bottle in hand. His hand rose to knock, when the door flew open, and a tiny blonde woman rolled out, giggling, a rabbit mask perched clumsily atop her head.“Oop, sorry!” she laughed, righting herself. Two more people – a tall man with dark hair and a neat beard, and a young woman with round glasses – tumbled after her, clutching her arms and hauling her back. Behind her, Lacey’s cluttered, cramped apartment was full of people drinking, laughing and dancing. With the door wide open, the noise of the music drummed into his head. Gold instantly regretted leaving his apartment, where the music was muffled by the floorboards.“You here for the party?” the rabbit-masked girl asked, eyeing him and the bottle in his hands.“I’m here to see Miss Rose,” Gold pulled himself up to his full, unimpressive, height, but he at least still towered over the blonde girl. “If you will excuse me.”“Oooh Miss Rose!” the girl guffawed. To Gold’s surprise, she sounded British rather than American. But then Lacey’s accent was Australian and he himself was Scottish, so maybe it wasn’t so unusual. “Would you listen to him? You from the bank or something?”“Is she home?” he asked, quickly losing patience with the girl. Her eyes had flicked down from his face to the bottle in his hands. A moment later, it had been snatched away, and the girl was admiring it. To his dismay, neither of her companions seemed inclined to stop her. “Expensive taste, you have,” the girl looked impressed, reading the label. “You one of her boyfriends, then? Lace’s got a real nose for money.”Gold swallowed, hard, hating every second of this conversation the longer it went on. Thankfully, at that moment the man accompanying the rabbit girl decided to intervene.“Alice’s just drunk, ignore her, mate,” he said. He wrested the bottle from Alice’s fingers and handed it back. “Robin, get her some water, would you?”The other woman, Robin, rolled her eyes, but grabbed Alice by the shoulders and hauled her back inside. Alice kicked and protested, but not hard enough to actually get away. When they were gone, the man turned his attention back to Gold.“Lacey’s around here somewhere,” he said. “Are you seeing her? She doesn’t usually invite her men to meet other people.”“I’m not,” Gold snapped. “I live upstairs. I was invited out of courtesy, and so courtesy dictates I make an appearance. Given the hostess appears to be absent, I think my work here is done.”“Woah there,” the man held up his hands. He, too, was British, it seemed. “Like I said, she’s around here somewhere. Can’t expect Lacey Rose to stay in one place, you know? I’ve known her since she moved to the city, and I’ve never been able to guarantee where she’ll be at any given time.”Gold’s curiosity, however reluctantly, was piqued. “She’s not a native, then?”“Caught that from the accent did you?” the man replied. “Nah, she’s only been in town what… three, four years now?”“And before that?”The man thought for a second. “No idea, mate,” he said, apologetically. “Like I said, she’s hard to pin down.” He looked Gold up and down, critically. “You must know that, being her neighbour. She’s a lovely girl but she’s hardly reliable.”“You know her well, then?”The man gave a half-shrug, “As well as anybody, I suppose.” He looked as if he were about to say more, then thought better of it. “Sorry, mate, didn’t get your name.”“Gold,” he replied, shortly. “Yours?”“Rogers,” Rogers grinned. “Detective, as of last week.”“Congratulations,” Gold said.“Thanks,” Rogers replied. “I-““Rumple!” a familiar voice carried across the room, and Lacey stepped from the crowd. She was beaming, like she was overjoyed to see him. “You came!”He all but shoved the bottle at her. She took it, and read the label carefully. Her eyes flicked between his and the wine, and narrowed. “You didn’t have to,” she said.“I wanted to,” he replied. His heart hammered, and he had the distinct sense he had put a foot wrong somewhere.“That’s a very nice wine, Rumple,” she said, almost chidingly. “I don’t need it. I’m a simple girl with simple tastes.”“I want you to have it,” he said. “It’s only polite-““Detective,” Lacey looked pointedly to Rogers, cutting Gold off. “We’re supposed to be celebrating your promotion, aren’t we?” She pushed the bottle at him, and a stunned Rogers accepted it. “I want you to have this as a congratulations gift.”“I… ah…” Rogers glanced between them, then to the wine. “Thanks?”“You’re welcome!” Lacey beamed, satisfied. “Now, come on you two, lingering in the doorway! Come and dance!”Gold watched her, unsure of himself and not for the first time. There was something off, something different about her now than there had been the last time they’d met. He didn’t like it – he wished for the girl he’d spoken to at midnight in his bedroom, with her genuine eyes and her thoughtful comments. He realised this was the first time he’d seen her around other people. He wondered which version was the real one.He couldn’t judge her for that. The man who stood before her now was certainly not the same man Keith Nottingham had seen a few days previous.She led Gold and Rogers deeper into her apartment. Rogers was caught quickly by an acquaintance, and a moment later Lacey too had vanished into the crowd. A glass of something was pressed into his hand, and he took a grateful sip, allowing the hard liquor to slip down his throat and warm his stomach.All of a sudden he found himself surrounded by strangers, lost in a sea of dancing faces. His heart began to pound, and he searched frantically for an exit, claustrophobia creeping in.He made it to the side of the room, and that was better at least, a cold, firm wall behind his back. He stopped to take stock, and another sip of the whiskey someone had passed him.“Ezekiel Gold?” a voice, female with an English accent, came from his side. He frowned – did Lacey know every expat in New York? Was there a single American at this party?He turned. The woman smiling at him was vaguely familiar, but he could not place her. “And you are?”She smiled, a wolf’s smile, and held out her hand. He thought she meant for him to kiss it, but he shook it instead. “Zelena Mills,” she said.Ah. He did know her, or at least of her. In the early years of his career, he had worked rather closely with her family’s corporation, a mutually beneficial arrangement he had hoped was in the past.“Ah yes,” he smiled, but if it was perfunctory or unconvincing Zelena didn’t notice. “Cora Mills’ daughter, correct?”“If I said the one and only, would you correct me?” she asked, in a manner Gold assumed was intended to come off as coquettish. His smile stayed fixed in place.“Has something happened to Regina?” Gold asked, with false concern. He knew it had not. Regina was one of the few commercial contacts he maintained, primarily because she was powerful, reliably self-interested, and always willing to deal.Regina was predictable. When the time had come for Cora’s successor to ascend to CEO, Gold had quietly put a thumb on the scale to keep Regina on her plotted course, and prevent any sudden changes to favour her sister. Zelena was anything but predictable – unstable was closer to the mark.Zelena’s expression soured at the mention of her sister. “No,” she laughed, a high and false thing that set his teeth on edge, “But one can always wish, right?”He took another sip of his drink, and did not reply.“So,” she said, breezily. “I heard you retired. What’re you doing in this neck of the woods?”“I found myself in need of a change of scenery,” he said, succinctly. “Yourself?”“A friend of mine was invited, I tagged along,” she replied. “Honestly, house parties are so passé, don’t you think? It’s a wonderful surprise to find someone of substance at such a gathering.”Gold eyed her. For all Rogers’ dismissals, Lacey was certainly someone of substance, however she tried to hide it. “Your friend has no substance?” he asked. Zelena shrugged, and didn’t answer.They stood in silence for a long moment. Gold wished to God that something would pull Zelena away, so he could make a hasty exit. The noise of the music was suddenly greatly preferable to the sound of her voice.“So what are you up to these days?” Zelena asked, not taking a hint. “Enjoying a life of leisure?”“I keep busy,” Gold lied. “Yourself?”“Oh, to need to keep busy!” she cried, “I’m rushed off my feet at the office! I mean, Regina does what she can, but some people just don’t have what it takes to really take charge, you know?”“What is your job title these days?”“Technically I’m a senior consultant,” Zelena said. “But honestly, that’s just a fancy way of saying I’m the power behind the throne.”“Of course,” Gold smiled, coldly, believing not a word. Regina was a force to be reckoned with, having worked for years, even after Cora officially retired, to free herself from her mother’s shadow. Gold was certain that Cora Mills’ confinement to a restrictive retirement complex-slash-nursing home in Florida was not of her own doing. There was no way that Regina would go to all that trouble, only to allow her unstable sister to puppeteer her.Zelena looked as if she were about to say more, when she caught sight of something over Gold’s shoulder. “It’s been lovely chatting with you, Ezekiel,” she said. Gold swallowed down his harsh response, and kept silent. “Would you like to go for a walk? Maybe get a drink?”Gold couldn’t think of anything he’d like less. “I’m afraid I’m busy this evening,” he said. He did not elaborate.“Another time, then?” she batted her eyelashes. “Rain check?”His eyes scanned the room, desperately seeking a distraction. At that very moment, he caught sight of a dark head disappearing through the fire escape, seemingly unnoticed by the rest of the crowd. He needed to have words with the hostess, and it seemed she was finally alone.“Yes, yes,” he waved a hand, trying to get Zelena away as fast as possible. “Would you excuse me?”“Of course!” she chirped. Gold was already halfway into the crowd.It took him a few minutes to muscle his way through the party, but thankfully that reduced the odds of Zelena following him. He had all but scrubbed her from his memory, but clearly the feeling wasn’t mutual. It was uncomfortable, being flirted with by a woman whose mother he had been intimate with in his late twenties, before he’d even met Milah. He had first met Zelena when she was twelve years old, and Regina only eight. He wondered if she knew – as Regina certainly did – that he and their mother had been sleeping together during the entirety of their business relationship. Given how strongly she had been flirting just then, he deeply hoped not.Lacey was out on the fire escape. He spotted her mug beside her, the Disney princess mug she always had out there. Gold ducked his head, and, mindful of his ankle, followed her.“Hey,” he said, for lack of a better opener. She didn’t look at him.“You know better than that stunt with the wine,” she said, without further preamble. “You have to by now.”“It is polite for a guest to bring a bottle of wine,” he said. She shook her head, dark curls swaying.“A bottle of ten dollar, hell I’d even give you twenty dollar, wine from the liquor store? Sure, yeah, got ten of them in the kitchen. That bottle was fifty minimum. That bottle had pedigree.”He could lie, he thought, and claim he’d grabbed the first bottle he’d found in his apartment. But he didn’t think the wine was what she was really angry about.“I didn’t want to insult you with a cheap gift,” he admitted. “I knew it was expensive. I thought you had expensive taste.”She sighed. “If I want wine with that kind of price tag, I’ll earn it,” she said. “Don’t you understand the problem here? I have rich men lining up to buy me fancy wine. I didn’t want that from you. I thought we were friends.”He blinked at her, stunned. The thought that she wanted anything from him was astounding. “You ran away the other night,” he said. “I didn’t think we were friends anymore. I suppose I was trying to apologise, for whatever I did to upset you. I’m sorry that my apology apparently backfired.”She looked at him, at last. Her blue eyes gleamed in the moonlight, and despite the noise of the party and the pounding music, for a moment she was the only thing that existed. “I’m sorry for that, Rumple,” she said. “We all have things we don’t like to talk about.”On that point, she was right. “We do.”She took a deep breath, and released it slowly through pursed lips. When she smiled at him, it wasn’t her expansive, glittery smile, but something sweeter and more familiar, genuine. It was a smile he was coming to recognise, like she had swallowed a joke. He hadn’t seen it at all inside.“Are we friends?” she asked. “I accept your apology if you accept mine.”He nodded. How could he not?He held out his hand for her to shake, and she giggled as she took it, hauling him in for a hug that took his breath away. He only just remembered to hug her back, stunned as he was suddenly surrounded by her, the fragrance of her hair and the warmth of her soft, lithe little body in his arms. He didn’t want to let go.Gold could feel his heart thumping in his chest. He hoped she wouldn't notice how his breath had shortened, how his cheeks felt hot. She was so close it was almost too much to bear.She finally pulled away. He felt cold in her absence, but the warmth of her smile compensated. “You know what I think?” she said. He shrugged.“Never,” he admitted. She laughed, a rich and genuine sound that warmed him through.“I think you need to get out of this building,” she said. “I think a good friend would take you out on the town.”“In there is more than enough party for me, thank you,” he said, crisply. The thought of spending his evening, even an evening with Lacey, in a bar or a nightclub like the scene inside but infinitely worse made him sweat. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she shook her head. “I mean… I mean we’re alike, you and I. I think we have a lot in common. I think I could show you how to enjoy life here.”He stared at her. The idea that the two of them had anything in common was as ludicrous as it was addictive, and he was caught between denying her and desperately wanting it to be true. “So, what could we do?” She smiled, her dimples showing in her cheeks. He was enchanted. “What would you like to do?”He thought about it, and quickly drew a blank. It had been a long time since he had any friends, and he told her so. She laughed, but he didn't feel mocked."Fine, I'll make the plans," she said. "Have you ever been to the Avonlea?"Gold shook his head, "Is that some kind of euphemism?" he asked. She sighed."Nothing that interesting, I'm afraid," she said. "It's just a bar a few blocks from here. It's nothing fancy but it has the cheapest pool in the neighbourhood. How about we start there?"For a moment, Gold felt both ancient and eighteen years old again. "I haven't played pool since I left Glasgow," he admitted. She grinned."Excellent, I'm amazing at it. You ever been hustled by a 5"1 Australian before?"He had to laugh at that. "No, but there's a first time for everything.""True," she nodded. "Well then, I'll show you the Rabbit Hole, then you show me something I've never done before, how about that?""I can't imagine there's anything in that category," Gold said. He hated to spoil her game, but what option did he have? She was beautiful, clever, adventurous, and had rich, worldly men lined up around the block to show her a good time. The only useful thing about him was his money, and she had told him already she had no interest in that.She narrowed her eyes, and pursed her lips. "I'm sure you can come up with something, Rumple," she teased. "Come on, think hard.”He really, truly thought about it.“I have an idea,” he said, slowly. Her eyes brightened.“Go on…”A sharp rap on the window startled them both. A moment later, a blonde head with a rabbit eye-mask appeared. “We’ve got a situation, Lace,” Alice said. Lacey rolled her eyes.“What situation?” she asked. Alice shrugged.“Killian said his mate gave him a heads up. Someone called in the party.”Lacey’s eyes widened in panic. “Shit,” Lacey muttered. She clambered back inside after Alice, and Gold followed. The scene inside was chaos: half the flat was drunk off their ass, and all of them were scrambling for the door, trying to flee before the police arrived. Gold remembered Lacey relating the network of fences and thieves she had in her acquaintance, and thanked his paranoia for compelling him to install two extra locks on his door upstairs. Not the fire escape, though. For safety reasons (and reasons that were entirely dangerous, and standing right beside him) that remained clear.Thankfully, nobody was trying to get past them to clamber out the back, probably because there was a human wall of Lacey’s friends blocking that exit. Robin was waiting with Zelena Mills, of all people, while Rogers was trying and failing to organise the partygoers exit.Lacey stormed up to him, “You couldn’t keep them off our backs?” she asked. He shrugged.“Someone upstairs called in a noise complaint,” he said. “My precinct’s a bit shit but they’re not corrupt. They have to come break it up even if a cop’s already here.”“What bastard called it in?” Lacey demanded.“Old guy upstairs, apparently.”Lacey’s eyes narrowed. “The only guy upstairs is standing right here. The one above him is an empty airbnb, and the top floor’s just an old woman who’s deaf as a post.”“No idea then, love,” Rogers apologised. “All I got’s the name E Gold.”Lacey turned to Gold. Gold’s suspicions grew, his stomach tightening. “You didn’t call in a noise complaint about a party you were at, right?”“Of course not,” he scoffed. “Then who the hell would put your name on the report?”Gold shifted, uncomfortable. He knew of only one person who had it out for him in New York, who could know of Lacey’s party, and who would do something so puerile.“Rumple?”“Don’t worry about it,” he said.“You’ve been in town five minutes who’d you piss off?”He didn’t look at her. She was going to hate him. If she’d thought the wine was too much, she wouldn’t like him threatening people on her behalf, however warranted.“Detective Rogers,” he said, crisply, trying to brace himself for the end of their fluctuating, tentative, wonderful relationship. “If you’re looking to book someone for lying to the police, I believe the man you’re looking for is Keith Nottingham.”Rogers’ eyes widened.Zelena’s voice twittered behind him. “Of the Park Avenue Nottinghams?” she asked. “Ezekiel, whatever trouble are you in now?”“Mum, I think we should get out of here,” Robin said. Gold’s eyes widened - since when did Zelena have a college aged daughter? She was younger than he was! “Alice, you wanna come with us?”Alice nodded, “Yeah, best not be about when the coppers show up.”Robin half-dragged a protesting Zelena by the elbow toward the door, pushing the last of the partygoers out into the hallway. Alice grabbed Rogers’ shoulder. “You too. Don’t want your buddies catching you here.”“‘Spose not,” Rogers agreed. “You gonna be ok, Lace?”Lacey was glaring daggers at Gold. His throat went dry. “Yeah,” she said. “I can handle this.”Rogers cast a sympathetic glance at Gold. Gold rather felt he was being wished good luck.Then, the buffer was gone. The door closed behind them, and Gold was left quite suddenly alone in the middle of Lacey’s living room, eye-to-eye with her stormy gaze, shaking in his boots.“Lacey-”“What,” she said, “The fuck, did you do to Keith?”“I can explain-”“Oh yeah?” she said, “Then talk.”He braced himself on his cane, and awaited her onslaught. Milah would have a whole diatribe ready to burst out, although ironically part of her complaint had always been his unwillingness to start fights on her behalf. Lacey cocked her head to one side.“Well?”He swallowed. It appeared Lacey, unlike his ex-wife, actually wanted to hear him out. “When I returned home to the building on Wednesday afternoon,” he began, “I saw Keith Nottingham loitering outside the building, staring at your window. I asked what his business was here and I was rather rudely told to mind my own business. Further questions confirmed he was waiting for you. Please do correct me if you were intending to meet with him that day?”She pursed her lips, and swallowed. “No,” she said. “I had told him clearly I never wanted to see him again.”Gold nodded, feeling a little vindicated. “He said some unpleasant things about you, and your relationship. When it was clear he had no intention of clearing off on his own, I made it clear it was in his best interests.”Her eyes narrowed. “How?”Gold glanced down at his cane, remembering without remorse the pain and fear in Keith Nottingham’s eyes that day. “A former associate of mine is now a partner at EFB. They are the only investment bank reckless enough to continue to invest in the Nottingham Corporation. I made it clear that I could pull strings to change that.”“You threatened him… to keep him away from me?” she demanded. He nodded, and prepared for her to hate him. “I did,” he confirmed.“I didn’t ask you to do that,” she said, and he hated the hurt in her voice, the panic and almost helpless anger. He didn’t regret Nottingham’s discomfort, but he hadn’t intended to cause her a moment of pain. “I… I’m not your daughter, Rumple! Or your sister or your… whatever. I don’t belong to you!”“I know that,” he said, stiffly. He didn’t think of her as a daughter or a sister, nothing of the sort. “But…”“But what? You felt I needed protection? You thought he was the first creep who’d ever staked out the place? What, do you own me now?”“No!” he cried. “No, of course not! I wasn’t trying to own you and you owe me nothing! I owed you!”The words were out of his mouth before he had time to stop them. He gaped at her, horrified by the admission she couldn’t even begin to understand. She stared at him. “For what?”“I…” he came up short. What was there to say to that? That he owed her for every smile that had brightened dark days? That he owed her for talking to him, for seemingly liking him, for seeing someone worthwhile where he knew no such man existed? “Rumple?” “You’re my only friend…” he said, and then stopped, hating how pathetic and weak that sounded. “In the city, I mean. I owed you for your time and for giving me some small reason not to run back to Maine in disgrace. I wanted to do something for you, to… to pay you back for your kindness.” He thought about it, then allowed himself the smallest dark smile. “And Keith Nottingham is a bastard who deserves a fright, and a bruised foot.”Lacey’s rich eyes searched his face, flicking over his features urgently, searching for something. “I don’t belong to anyone,” she said. “And nobody belongs to me. I don’t own this apartment, or its furniture, and if I decided to take off tomorrow nobody could stop me. I’m nobody, and I like it that way. You don’t get to change that. You don’t get to make me belong to you.”He swallowed around a dry throat, and wondered yet again what the hell had happened to her, who had hurt her so deeply. “I wasn’t trying to. I wouldn’t dream of it.”“If men come by the building, I deal with them. How do you think I know Rogers?”It did soothe Gold’s concerns a little, to know that Lacey had a cop as a close friend. He had worried for what might happen if another Keith showed up, and she had nowhere to run.“I understand. I… I’m sorry, Lacey,” he said. He wondered when he last apologised to anyone. He wondered if he had ever felt this vulnerable, this desperate to get a relationship right. Not since Neal was a boy, he reckoned. Not since the difficult time after the divorce, where he worried every day that he couldn’t measure up to being what his son needed. Lacey took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. “You scared me there, Rumple,” she said, softly. “On paper you’re everything I should stay well away from. Please, please don’t prove me right.”Anxiety coiled in his gut, and he felt the back of his neck prickle and begin to sweat. He had done worse than hurt her, he had disappointed her. He had done what he always did, and failed to live up to expectations, and now he would walk away and she would not call him back. The tension in the air was hard and thick, and it clogged his throat. He’d made a right dog’s dinner of all of this. Even when he tried to be kind, it came out all wrong. He’d been right to sequester himself away upstairs. Even when he tried his best, he just put his foot in it, and now he had probably lost the only friend he’d had in decades.She was going to close the door on him anyway. That knowledge of the inevitable - that his fate had been sealed already, that nothing he did now would change it, that he had nothing left to lose here - gave him a jolt of unexpected bravery, and he spoke before he knew what he was saying.“That’s a high standard to live up to, dear,” he said. His voice came low, and soft. “Unpredictability breeds mistakes.”She would shout now, he knew that much. Call him needy and jealous and possessive, pathetic and weak, every name Milah had come up with and worse. Maybe he would even deserve it. He braced for the blow, hands clenched on his cane. But her shoulders slumped. She looked at him, and her gaze was open, vulnerable. He saw an echo of his own fear there, desperation for a different, better ending and certainty that it was impossible, and for an inexplicable moment he felt so tangibly connected to her that he could almost feel her heartbeat as his own. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said. “Or to scare you. I was only trying to help, and I apologise for going about it the wrong way.”Lacey nodded. She was searching his eyes, and he knew like he knew his own name that she felt that strange connection too. He willed her to believe him. For once, for once in his life, he had been trying to do something good. That had to count for something. “I don’t need protecting,” she reiterated, slowly. “If this happens again, you tell me, and let me deal with it.” He nodded. He had been a fool to look at her, and think she couldn’t protect herself. She was a hundred times stronger, braver, and scarier than he was on his best day.“I understand,” he said.“Okay,” she nodded. The moment held just a second longer, long enough for Gold to realise he had been holding his breath. She was close enough he could count her dark eyelashes, close enough to feel her sweet breath warming the air between them. Their eyes held; he couldn’t look away.She blinked, looked down, stepped back. Gold felt that connection fail, the heavy tension of moments ago lifted, as if someone had turned on a bright light in a dark room and caught them standing far too close. They both blinked, and stepped further apart. What had seemed natural a moment ago now felt awkward and out of place, boundaries that ought to have remained solid shown to be crumbling and incomplete.“Alright.” He fumbled for the door, suddenly lost and confused in her small, familiar apartment. He found the handle and turned it, backing away and out of the room, back to safety. He didn’t know what to say; he tried and he failed. “I… goodnight, Lacey.”“Rumple-” she said. He turned to face her. She looked so very small standing there in the party-strewn wreckage of her apartment, cups and plates and the occasional shoe scattered across the riot of clothes and books on every surface. “We’re still on for pool next week, right?”A lump rose in his throat. He tried to force it down to speak. “Yes, of course.”“Good,” a small smile came to her lips. She nodded. “Goodnight, Rumple.”He closed the door behind him.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
In the intervening days between the party and their plans, Gold did not see much of Lacey.She was like that, he was coming to realise: she came and she went, like bright sunlight between clouds, flickering in and out, light and shadow. He heard one date come through - polite, he left her at the door without shouting and screaming, and Gold heard him leave as the front door slammed - but no more drama, and Nottingham was nowhere to be found.The mornings were quiet without her bounding in, beignets in hand, but he supposed if she didn’t have plans in the evenings there was no reason for her to be out so early or so late. He missed her, but the knowledge of their plans a few days hence gave him anticipation, a treat to look forward to. He even hazarded that he was excited, if excitement weren’t well beyond the reach of grumpy, insular, fifty-year-old divorcees. But while Lacey Rose had vanished back into the mist, Zelena Mills was ubiquitous. Apparently embarrassed by the unwanted revelation that young Robin was her daughter, Zelena had made it a point to prove her youth and vitality. Where she had been absent before, Zelena was now everywhere: at Tiana’s, ordering coffee before a ‘hectic but invigorating’ day at the office; in the park, on a brief lunch break, bumping into him accidentally while on a vitally important - and yet stallable for an old friend - phone call with a client; he even caught a glimpse of her at the grocery store, although a well-timed call from Neal facilitated a plausible escape.Gold had hoped his lack of interest in her had been clear at the party, but he had not counted on her being delusional to the point of insanity. He had forgotten - purposely, and with force - most of his involvement with the Mills women. He remembered clearly only enough to know that Cora was to be avoided at all costs, Zelena was unstable, and Regina capable but ruthless. Of the three of them, Regina was the only one he would associate with willingly, and then only if there was something he needed.Now, recognising that Zelena was all but hunting him, Gold remembered how she had conjured tall tales as a child, constantly seeking to win her mother’s approval with wild and improbable stories. She had been so authentic in these tellings that it was clear she herself believed her own fairytales. She had probably sold herself on some delusion that he harboured some romantic interest in her, and took his brusqueness for anything but what it was: a desire for her to go away.Zelena was easy to avoid, however, and any unpleasant memories or suspicions she brought up were easily banished with memories of Lacey’s rich blue eyes. Gold could not stop thinking about that long, connected moment for more than a few minutes at a time. He was enraptured by her, and the thought that he would see her - spend a whole day with her, and only her! - in just a few short days’ time smothered any other thought he may have had.When his doorbell rang, two days before his plans with Lacey, Gold hoped it was his neighbour with some dilemma. He missed her, and while he was certain she would not back out of their plans, he hoped he would see her sooner than Friday as promised.He schooled his expression into one of polite interest when the eyes that met his on the other side of the door were green, not blue. “There you are, you recluse!” Zelena cried.“Zelena,” Gold said. “To what do I owe the… ah… pleasure?”Zelena tried to sweep into his apartment. Gold leaned on the doorjamb, subtly blocking her path. She stepped back, and for just a moment he saw a glimpse of irritation cross her face, before she covered it. “May I come in?” she asked. “Can I help you with something?” he replied, not answering her question. She changed tack, her smile dropping, a look of concern crossing her face.“Well, I was hoping we could talk,” she said. “We keep bumping into one another, but never for long enough to have a real conversation.”“Indeed,” Gold replied, ceding no ground. “If you don’t mind my asking, how did you get in here? This building doesn’t have a doorman and I didn’t hear my intercom buzz.”“Oh, your lovely downstairs neighbour, Robin’s friend, she let me in,” Zelena said, brightly. “Such a nice young thing, isn’t she?”“Miss Rose?” Gold blinked, as if she didn’t occupy his every idle thought. To express his admiration - adoration - for her felt too much like showing his belly to a woman he knew to be a predator. Cora was calculating to the point of predictability, and Regina took after her mother. Zelena was anything but. “I suppose so.”“Anyway, I really need to speak with you,” Zelena gushed, “May I come inside?”“What do we need to discuss?” Gold asked. Zelena looked about, furtively.“There are eyes everywhere,” she said, mysteriously. Gold decided not to point out that, aside from the two of them, the only other people in the building were Lacey downstairs, and Mrs Grimm on the top floor, who was profoundly deaf.He reluctantly stepped aside. Zelena swept in as if she owned the place.“Oh, but this is Spartan!” she exclaimed. He looked about: he actually agreed, the space still needing the level of artful clutter that his old home in Storybrooke had accumulated over the years. He had tried to bring as little of his collection of antiques and nick-nacks with him as possible, hoping to try for a more minimalist, less encumbered existence. Instead, it found his instincts rebelled at the emptiness. The bare walls and surfaces felt more like one of the hostel rooms he had slept in as a boy with his father in Glasgow than some contemporary modern space.He grunted. He would have rather pulled out his teeth with pliers than share any of that insight with Zelena Mills.“You need a woman’s touch, Ezekiel,” Zelena continued. Gold hated his given name, and hated even more when people used it without permission. He vastly preferred Gold, or even Mr Gold. He liked Rumple even more, although he could not explain why. It was a stupid nickname, but it had been invented by a very clever person.Zelena was looking at him with what was probably supposed to be a coquettish expression. He caught the double entendre a moment too late, and repressed a shudder.“It suits my needs quite well,” he said, stiffly. “What was it you wanted to discuss?”She looked pointedly at the open front door. Reluctantly, Gold closed it.The moment he had done so, Zelena collapsed melodramatically into his favourite armchair, with a look of despair. “It’s mother, Ezekiel,” she said, voice dripping with sorrow.“Did something happen to her?” Gold asked, dispassionately. The thought of Cora Mills falling from a cruise ship deck and being eaten alive by sharks, or perhaps being accidentally run over by her own ostentatious limousine, had kept him warm many a lonely night after her betrayal. Hard to see how either option could occur with her ostensibly locked away in a Florida nursing home, however, and the vision of her suffering some wasting illness was less appealing somehow. “You must have heard!” Zelena cried. “What my sister did to her… well, it turns my stomach.” Gold eyed her closely. Her anger at Regina was genuine, at least, and he had to admit he hadn’t paid enough attention to Cora’s familial life when they were together to have any real idea of her relationship to her elder daughter. He had always remembered Regina as the favourite, groomed for succession from the cradle, Zelena always trapped in her younger sister’s shadow. But they had been children the last time he’d spent any time with them, and God knew family dynamics could shift over time.Why she thought it would be his problem either way was beyond him. “I heard she had taken early retirement,” Gold said, slowly. “I believe Florida was mentioned.”“It’s practically a prison!” Zelena wailed. “And poor mother, she hasn’t lost her wits you know, far from it. She’s as sharp as she’s ever been. But my sister... ““I can’t imagine your mother allowing herself to be locked away anywhere for very long,” Gold said. “If she’s as sane as you say she is, she’ll be out in no time.”“It wouldn’t matter,” Zelena said. “Regina stole her ability to even decide for herself!”“In what sense?” Gold took a seat opposite Zelena, far enough away that she couldn’t reach out or touch him. Zelena Mills’ histrionics moved him not at all, and Cora’s suffering even less, but knowledge was power. Zelena was clearly up to something, and Regina would pay handsomely for the information, and it would feel good to know she owed him a favour. It never hurt to have a CEO in one’s pocket. “I don’t even know how she did it!” Zelena cried. “I wish I knew. I have my suspicions, of course, and you know Regina will do anything for power.”“If you don’t know what she did, how do you know she did anything?” Gold asked. Regina had certainly done something, but if Zelena had no information then she was as useless as she looked. “She stole power of attorney,” Zelena said. Gold nodded, his suspicions confirmed. “I don’t know how she convinced Dr Whale to turn on mother, they have always been such very good friends, but somehow she had mother declared mentally unfit and now she controls everything!”Gold smothered a smile. However Regina had pulled it off, one had to admire artistry when one saw it. “When did this happen?” he asked.“Three months ago.”“And you didn’t try going to the police?” he arched one eyebrow. “If your allegations are correct, then at the very least this Dr Whale should have had his license revoked, and the power of attorney declared invalid.”“The police won’t listen,” Zelena sighed, melodramatically. “Regina would just talk them into believing her.”“I see,” Gold pursed his lips. There had to be more to this story - even at her most conniving, he couldn’t imagine Regina being so cold-blooded as to turn on her mother with no provocation. The timeline issue confirmed it: Cora had stood down as CEO of the Mills Corporation at their Christmas party the previous year, almost nine months ago now - the Wall Street Journal had covered the whole affair in depth. There was therefore six months unaccounted for, where Regina had control of the company and Cora had her freedom.“Do you know what compelled your sister to do this now?” he asked. Zelena looked at him as if the answer should be obvious.“She’s crazy, pure and simple,” she said. “She already had everything, but she had to have more!”Gold grunted at that - it wasn’t worth dignifying with a response. “Still, it seems quite complex for a madwoman. Something must have provoked her.”Zelena’s eyes hardened to flints. “I was never anything but supportive of my sister,” she said, “And she was mother’s favourite.”“That’s not what I asked, dearie,” he said, slipping into his old cadance. They could have been in his shop in Storybrooke, and for a moment he almost missed the oppressive gloom of his lair there, where every visual clue told the visitor they would be wrapped in his web soon enough. His apartment was bright and airy, albeit a little bare, and here by the tall windows the bright sunshine somewhat undercut the mood. “She’s insecure,” Zelena sniffed, dismissively. “And paranoid. She must have decided that poor mother was too great a threat to have walking around, although she would never hurt a fly!”Gold snorted at that, unable to quite stifle a laugh. The thought of Cora as gentle and harmless, the hapless, innocent victim of her cruel daughter’s machinations, was absurd.“That’s a fine story, dearie,” he said, once he had composed himself. “But why are you telling me?”“I need someone I can trust,” Zelena leaned forward, and he saw her judge the distance between them, her hand poised to reach out and take his. Thankfully, she resisted the temptation. “She’ll come for me next.”Of that Gold had little doubt. It was in fact uncharacteristically careless of Regina that Zelena was still walking around Manhattan spreading conspiracy theories against her. “You’re worried she’ll have you declared mentally unfit as well?” Gold asked. “In that case you need a doctor, not a retired pawnbroker.”“I can find doctors,” Zelena waved a hand, “lawyers too. I need someone I can confide in, someone who will protect me when she comes after me. I’m so scared, Ezekiel.”She did reach out a hand then, awkwardly perching on the edge of the armchair to cover his clasped hands with her own. She widened her eyes, attempting to look appealing and innocent. Gold weighed his options. On the one hand, he had no interest in being Zelena Mills’ protector, and was certain she had played a key role in the souring of their familial dynamic. He had been dragged into the Mills women’s tornado once before, and he had barely escaped in tact. Whatever their internal squabbles, they were none of his business.On the other hand, the situation was intriguing, and where there was strife there was money to be made. While he had always strictly avoiding taking sides in other people’s wars, a key part of that strategy was to make both sides believe that he had, in fact, taken theirs. Maybe it was boredom at how quiet his life had become, and the memory of the exhilaration of his early career when such intrigue had been his stock and trade. Maybe it was his shark’s instinct, unable to resist the scent of blood in the water. Whatever drive possessed him, he found himself softening his expression a fraction, and nodding.“I understand your fear,” he said. “I knew you would,” she simpered. “You were always there for me before, when you were in business with mother. I always knew you cared for me.”Gold forced down the revulsion in his throat. He opened his mouth to reply, when there was a sharp knock on the door.“Rumple?” Lacey’s voice sing-songed from the hallway, and at once he felt his whole body shift toward the sound, his mask slipping from his face and shattering on the floor. He hoped Zelena didn’t see; by the way her fingers dug in, he knew she had. “You home?”“He’ll be free in just a moment!” Zelena called, before Gold had the chance to answer. “It seems our time together has been cut short,” she said, and her hand lingered as she withdrew it, her sharp nails dragging just a fraction too hard over his hands. “Unless…”“I should answer that,” he said, with a half-hearted attempt at regret. His heart was hammering, his mind already racing as to why Lacey might be here. Did she want to cancel their day together? Did she need something from him? Was she in trouble?“She’s a sweet girl,” Zelena said, rising to her feet. She followed him to the door, her sharp black boots clicking on the floor. “It’s very kind the way you look out for her. From what Robin tells me, she needs a father figure in her life.”Gold felt as if ice water had been poured over his head. He saw how Zelena’s eyes brightened, cruel victory tugging at her lips at the knowledge that she had gotten even a fraction under his skin. It was true: he was old enough to be Lacey’s father, and it probably said something deeply unflattering about him that he hoped to God she didn’t see him that way. He was more than satisfied to just be her friend, but he was self-aware enough to know his feelings for her were far from paternal.“Rumple?” Lacey’s voice came again. Zelena wrenched the door open like she owned the place, her sugary grin enough to rot Gold’s teeth. Lacey took a step back, and Gold could not blame her. Zelena had a solid foot of height on Lacey, and her smile was almost aggressive. Lacey’s jaw set: Gold recognised her stubborn expression, the one that said ‘fight me’ and meant it, even though she was also smiling. “Oh, I didn’t know you still had company,” she cocked her hip, one hand braced there. “You let me up, darling,” Zelena reminded her, breezily, with a laugh like a broken wind chime. She turned back to Gold, “Give me a call when you want to continue our conversation,” she said, and slipped her business card into his breast pocket. She was very close, he could smell her perfume, an overpowering scent of green apples and lime that reminded him of cleaning fluid. He didn’t reply. She didn’t seem to take it for the dismissal it was.“Until next time, Ezekiel,” she purred. She pulled back, and swept past Lacey with a dismissive smile. Gold didn’t relax until he heard the front door close behind her.Lacey was smirking at him, one eyebrow arched. “Ezekiel?”He grimaced. “You understand now my reluctance to give it out,” he said. She shrugged.“I’ve heard worse,” she said. “I’m gonna stick with Rumple, if you’re happy with that.”He sighed, a tension he hadn’t realise he had been holding releasing in his chest. “I’m… not unhappy,” he admitted. She grinned, and bounced on the balls of her feet. “So,” she said, a teasing note entering her voice, “You’re entertaining ladies now, Rumple?”Gold felt himself blush to his roots at the insinuation in her voice. He couldn’t find a word for ‘no’ strong enough to make sure any trace of that suspicion was erased from her mind. The thought of ‘entertaining’ Zelena Mills was bad enough, but that Lacey might think so was doubly awful. “I… no... “Lacey laughed. “You know this isn’t a convent, right? You can have women over, even if she is the mother of one of my seminar students.”“I knew her mother,” he said, knowing that adding yet another generation between them - Lacey was friends with Cora’s granddaughter! - was suicidal, but unable to stop himself. “She just wanted to say hello.”“Looked more than that to me,” Lacey winked, and then laughed again at his horrified expression. “Your face!”“Did you… ah.. Need anything, Lacey?” he asked. Her giggles died down to that infuriating, adorable smirk. “I just came up to ask if you’re ok adding something to our itinerary tomorrow,” she said. “Assuming you’re not busy with a certain redhead…”“I’m all yours,” he promised, and instantly regretted it because it was true. Or at least, he wanted it to be true. He would give anything to belong to her. She cocked her head to one side, speculatively, eyeing him. “You know what I mean,” he said, brushing off his admission with a wave of his hand. “What do you want to do?” “Ana needs me to go see Will,” she said. “Next visiting time’s tomorrow morning.”“You want me to come with you to prison?” he checked, eyes narrowing. “Well, that certainly falls under the category of things I’ve never done before.”She shrugged, “We can meet after, if you want,” she said. There was a tension in her shoulders that belied her carefree tone. She wanted him to come with her, he realised with a start, for some reason it mattered to her that he be there. “I suppose I could come with you,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant. In reality he was still reeling from the impossible thought that Lacey actively wanted his company. It was heady, and beautiful, just like the smile that bloomed over her face.“Great!” she said. “Okay, come down to mine at nine then, and we can split a cab.”“Sounds wonderful,” he said. She beamed, and all was right with the world.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Gold wasn’t sure what he had imagined, when Lacey had described Will Scarlett.He’d probably conjured some variation on a stereotype: a tall man in stripes with a dollar sign bag and a balaclava, perhaps, or some hulking, broad-shouldered mountain with a broken nose. Maybe he’d seen the Godfather one too many times, and imagined an Italian-American accent and a thin moustache.Will Scarlett was none of these things. He was short, for one thing, slight, only slightly bulkier than Gold himself. He spoke with a muddled accent - Northern English, Gold would have assumed, but with a twang he couldn’t place, and chalked up to time served in the States. He was earnest, and talkative, for which Gold was grateful. Once the pleasantries had been dispensed with, Will and Lacey chatted away and all Gold had to do was sit and listen.They had covered some standard topics - Will was clearly a friend of Alice and Detective Rogers, and there seemed to be plenty to discuss there. They’d discussed briefly Will’s time in prison, although that conversation was shorter. Whatever message Will’s estranged wife wanted delivering, Lacey hadn’t mentioned it yet.“So that’s enough stalling,” Will said, suddenly. “You gonna introduce me to your fella, then?”Lacey glanced to Gold, and Gold was stunned to see just a tinge of red to her cheeks and ears before she snorted. “He’s just a friend, Will. And didn’t I already do that? Will, Rumple, Rumple, Will?”“Rumple’s your first name then, eh?” Will cocked an eyebrow. Gold snorted.“Hardly.”“You in the CIA then? That your codename?”“For completely understandable reasons we pretend our illustrious Mr Gold was born with just his title,” Lacey drew herself up to her full height, nose in the air. “However, I refuse to call anybody Mister, except when I’m on the clock.”“You’ve been living in Jefferson’s place what… three months now?” Will asked. Gold frowned, “I didn’t tell you that.”“She mentioned when you moved in,” Will nodded to Lacey. Gold’s heart hammered in his chest - she had mentioned him? “I’m just impressed you’re still sticking with her. She’s a liability, this one.”Lacey rolled her eyes. “Arsehole.”Will ignored her. “So, you’d rather be Mr Gold than Rumple, I’d wager?”“Gold will do just fine,” Gold said. Will nodded.“See Lace? Everyone’s got the right to choose what they’re called, even your men.”“He likes Rumple!” Lacey cried. “And don’t start that shit with me. What’d you pick Prisoner #1725?”“‘S got a ring to it,” Will said, but he looked a little deflated. “So what d’you do, Gold?”“I’m retired,” Gold said. He swallowed down the bile in his stomach. He hated how old that made him sound, especially sat with two young people who could be his kids. He knew a midlife crisis was a cliche at this point - and the sudden move, the new apartment, the younger friends, all played right into the story - but it was more than that. Even sitting here, in Rikers prison with his beautiful, reprobate neighbour and her jailbird friend, was more exciting and interesting than anything he’d done in the twenty years he’d lived in Storybrooke. Life could be so much more than what he’d known, more than the accumulation of wealth and the petty machinations of small town politics or Cora Mills’ bedroom. The way Lacey looked at him, he almost believed he could be someone worth knowing, someday. It was his own fault he’d only started at fifty.“You’re a bit young for it, aren’t you? Made your millions then scarpered?”“Something like that,” Gold muttered, his feathers smoothed just a little. “You’re not from New York,” Will noted. Gold shook his head.“Seems like no one is.”“You’ve stumbled into our little expat community,” Will said. “You’re Scottish, right? Edinburgh?”“Glasgow,” Gold corrected, a little affronted. “Newcastle?”“Originally,” Will said, “But I was raised in Melbourne. Known this one since preschool.”Gold’s curiosity roared up inside him, a million questions bubbling to his lips. Lacey shared so little of her life even as it was now, the thought of knowing where she’d grown up, who her parents were, what her life had been before she had become who she was now, was irresistible.But before he could speak, he heard Lacey mutter: “Shut up.” It was followed by a small movement, a clank, and Gold was sure she’d kicked Will under the table.“Anyway,” Will said, unsubtly changing the subject. “How long’ve you lived in the city?”“Only three months,” Gold said. “I moved from a small town up in Maine.”“I’m teaching him how to live,” Lacey grinned. Will raised an eyebrow, “Oh, you are, are you?”“And why shouldn’t I? Who in New York is better qualified?”Will glanced between them, eyes narrowing. “Look, Gold, you seem like a decent guy from the five minutes I’ve known you, so please don’t take what I’m about to say personally.” Will turned to Lacey, “Golden rule: don’t shit where you eat.”“I’m not shitting anywhere!” Lacey cried.“You can’t have a sugar daddy who lives in the building!” Will replied. “You know that’s just gonna fuck up your boundaries.”Lacey stared at him. Then, suddenly, she started to giggle. “Oh, Will, sweetheart, no,” she laughed. “No, Gold’s not paying for anything!”Gold cocked an eyebrow, “It’s true,” he said. “She gave me hell over one bottle of wine.”“He’s my friend, Will,” she said. She reached out and took Gold’s hand. Stars burst up his spine, and he held on for dear life, the warmth of her palm against his burning him up. Everything was beautiful when she held his hand; the prison could have been a meadow.Will leaned back in his chair. “Alright. To be fair, you’ve never brought one of them around here.”“We’re hanging out today,” Lacey shrugged. “The deal is we’re doing things one of us has never done before. I was gonna take him to the Rabbit Hole, but then… oh, yeah shit, hold on.”She reached into her handbag and rummaged for a moment, eventually pulling out the envelope that the guard had inspected when they walked in. She handed it across the table to Will. “Ana needed you to have this, urgently. I think she must be missing you.”Will grinned, and opened the envelope. “‘S been opened,” he noted. “You read it?”“Me and the guard,” Lacey confirmed. “What? They’re not gonna let me come in here and hand you just anything, are they?”Lacey was grinning, that irrepressible grin as if she were laughing indulgently at the whole world. Will’s eyes widened, the tips of his ears going pink. “Jesus,” he murmured.“Yeah,” Lacey sniggered, “Like I said, missing you.”Will shoved the letter into the pocket of his overalls, and shook his head. “My wife, ladies and gents.”The conversation shifted then, and Gold withdrew. Lacey told Will about Nottingham, and as she began to gesticulate he reluctantly let go of her hand. She left Gold’s role in the story out of it, save for her taking shelter in his bedroom that night, for which Gold was grateful.Fifteen minutes later, visiting hours were up. They stood to leave, and Lacey and Will hugged tight goodbye. She left, and Gold moved to follow, when Will stopped him.“Listen, man,” he said, urgently, his casual demeanor dropped. “You’re gonna look out for her, yeah?”“Of course,” Gold agreed, easily. “Why?”“Be- look, Lacey’s not as tough as she says she is, but she won’t admit it. I think something bad might be coming… someone might be coming after her, is all I’m saying. I just wanna make sure someone else will hurt them.”“If Lacey’s in trouble…”“Just promise you’ll keep an eye out.” The guards came to take Will away, and he looked urgently into Gold’s eyes. “I can’t help her out this time.”Gold was left to watch the guards usher Will back to his cell, until their fellow escorted him out to the entryway, where Lacey was waiting.“What took so long?” she asked, her bright eyes curious.Gold thought about Will’s warning, how he’d taken the opportunity to catch Gold alone when he’d had almost an hour to talk to Lacey, how he’d not worried about the guards hearing but kept it from her. It wouldn’t be breaking his promise to learn more before alarming her. The moment he knew what the threat was, then he’d tell her. Will could be wrong, after all.“They just needed to frisk me again,” Gold lied, with a shrug. “Must have thought my cell phone was a bomb or something.”“Oh,” Lacey frowned, then nudged his shoulder, playfully. “Well, that’s why you gotta wear minimal clothing to jail, Rumple,” she teased, shimmying her hands down her own skimpy black dress, “Nowhere on me to hide a bomb.”Gold looked where she was gesturing, and felt his throat go dry. He coughed, and looked away.“You’re creative, dear,” he said. “You’d find a way.”“And here I thought my body was the bomb,” Lacey snickered. “My mistake.”She was laughing at him, and he stalwartly ignored her, leading her back to the taxi rank. He had never missed his Cadillac, sat in a garage a few blocks from his apartment, unused since moving day, more than he did in a New York cab. Driving in the city would be a recipe for a panic attack or a mass murder, but as they clambered into the back of a car that smelt like burnt cheese and old cigarettes, Gold felt it probably worth the risk.“So,” Lacey turned to him with an expectant smile. She was so beautiful, her eyes bright and excited, that he momentarily lost his bearings. “Where to?”Gold blinked. “I believe you were to hustle me at pool?” he prompted. Lacey shook her head.“Forget that,” she said. “We already did my thing by coming here. The Rabbit Hole isn't going anywhere, and I’m not feeling that scene right now. I want to do something different - I want to do your thing.”There was something in her tone that caught him, something anxious that tugged on a sense he had caught from watching her with Will. Lacey Rose fit in perfectly with the scenery of a smoky bar at an inappropriate time, but the girl sitting next to him somehow did not. Her hair was in its accustomed messy bun, her black dress short and painted on, heels high, lips red. Nothing about her had changed, and yet she was a whole different person. She had been right back in the prison: she was teaching him how to live. Maybe, just maybe, he had more to offer her than misplaced longing and money she didn’t want. “How can you be sure wherever I’ve chosen isn’t a regular haunt of yours?” he asked. Lacey shrugged.“I trust you,” she said. Gold’s heart lurched.He turned to the driver, who was looking at them impatiently in the mirror. “You made up your mind?” he demanded. Gold nodded.“26 West 8th Street, Manhattan,” Gold said. The driver nodded.“You got it.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
When they pulled up outside, Gold hoped Lacey did not notice his quietly covering the exorbitant fare. “I’m buying lunch,” she said, the moment she caught him on the sidewalk. He nodded. There was no point arguing with her, after all.“Deal.”Lacey bounced over to the door, and looked up at the sign in the window. “Textile Arts Centre,” she read aloud. “Well, Rumple, you win: I haven’t been here before.”“I didn’t think you would have,” he admitted, “But I’m always braced for a surprise with you.”Lacey beamed at him, a slight flush in her cheeks. She nudged him, “Flatterer.” She looked up at the outside of the building. “This is a bit hipster for you, isn’t it?”She was right: the Textile Arts Centre was not a place that suited Gold’s usual tastes.He was a hoarder by nature: decades of poverty and empty shelves had taught him to fill every inch of space with knick-knacks, antiques, books, anything he could get his hands on. Moreover, he was twice the age of the usual clientele, and did not frequent denim, wool hats, or oversized glasses. In his three-piece suit, he looked entirely out of place among the young ‘makers’ and craft enthusiasts who frequented the centre.But there was one thing the Centre had that Gold had not found anywhere else within striking distance of his apartment. He had only attended one session thus far, but he didn’t really need the instruction. It was, apparently, like riding a bike. “They have a spinning course here,” he admitted. “Once a week.”“Spinning?” Lacey teased, “Like on the bikes?”Gold looked down at his cane, and snorted. “Hardly.”“C’mon, I bet leggings and a headband would look sexy as hell.” She was mocking him, and he would have been offended had the image not been so ridiculous.“We can go to the gym instead if you prefer,” he said, instead. “I’ll read a book while you do whatever it is young people do.”“You have got to stop talking like you’re ninety,” she complained. “I am, in fact, three hundred years old,” he said. She laughed.“Well you don’t act a day over one fifty,” she replied. “So, spinning? Actual spinning?”He nodded. He suddenly felt intensely vulnerable. He hadn’t thought this through, so eager to connect with another person that he had forgotten why he avoided exactly that. Once he showed her this, it would no longer be his, and when she inevitably left it would be tainted by the memory.But of course the same could be said for any aspect of his life in New York. Lacey came and went, but the soft scent of her perfume lingered in every room. “Rumple?” she prompted. That softness had returned, and he couldn’t help but wonder who she was under the make up and the brassy attitude. Every time she looked at him that way, it seemed like more of an artifice. He wanted to know her so badly it hurt.But he was a coward: he could not say the words. But he could show her. He could show her, and maybe then he’d be able to steal a little of her bravery to explain. “Come on.”He led her up the stairs, and into the studio. As a paid up member of the spinning class, he was allowed to come by and practice when the equipment was free, and he’d thought to call ahead and check. He had also paid for Lacey to come too, although she didn’t have to know that.He greeted Ari on the front desk, and she showed them into the workspace. A couple of people Gold didn’t recognise were in one corner, working on something with rope and knots, but nobody was near the spinning equipment. They were too far to overhear anything, and once Ari had left it suddenly felt very, very quiet.Lacey was looking at the beautiful chestnut wheel, the only spinning wheel at the centre. They were learning on drop spindle, but the wheel was the reason Gold had signed up. She ran a hand over the arch, a contemplative look on her face.“I didn’t know you were artistic,” she said. “You never talk about hobbies.”“I… I have to fill my time somehow.”“Why spinning?”He felt a small smile tug at his lips. He touched the wheel, and for all it was sat alone in this clean, airy craft space, he was suddenly back in his aunts’ cramped tenement attic flat, half a world and forty years away, watching Aunt Lottie spin raw wool into thread as her grandmother had taught her.“I like to watch the wheel,” he said. “It helps me forget.”She was watching him, a small line between her eyebrows. “Forget what?”He thought for a moment. He looked at her. A million true answers came to mind - his abusive father, the poverty he was raised in, the lack of love or warmth in his life for decades after his aunts passed, Cora’s manipulations, Milah’s emptiness, stagnant Storybrooke and his many failures as a parent… but for the first time, the thought did not fill him with the thick black dread he was used to. They felt like memories of another life, like they belonged in a different world, the sort of world where he’d never have the luck to meet Lacey Rose, much less convince her to spend time with him.A new beginning indeed.“I guess it worked,” he said, at last. He felt a crooked grin come to his lips. The joy of this feeling - how freeing it felt to let go, even for just a moment, even just now - was indescribable. She stared at him, and then caught the joke. A laugh bubbled to her lips, irrepressible, and she shook her head.“Are you going to show me, then?” she asked. He nodded.“We’ll start with the drop spindle,” he said. He pulled two from the shelf and prepared the raw wool before handing one to her. “It’s easier,” he explained. “Technically the whole course is drop spindle, but they’ll let you try the wheel when you’re sure you won’t break it.”Lacey nodded, and he watched her face scrunch in focus as her dainty fingers worked out the motions. He guided her - any excuse to cover her hands with his, and have a little of that focus turned on him - and after a while she’d gotten the hang of it, and he could focus on his own spindle.“This is fiddly,” she noted. He nodded.“It requires a certain concentration,” he said.“Alice knits,” Lacey noted. “I think she took a course here. You guys should hang out sometime, I think you’d really get along.”Gold snorted, “I’m old enough to be her grandfather,” he said. “I doubt she’d want to spend any time with me that wasn’t community service.”“Rumple!” Lacey chided. “Alice is only a few years younger than me! Is that what you think I’m here for, then? Care in the community?”Gold eyed her. She was joking, but the thought had crossed his mind. “It’s very nice of you to look after the old man upstairs,” he said. “I have lots of old war stories and wisdom to share, and I keep peppermints in my coat pocket.”She looked at him, a level glare. “You’re not funny,” she said.“You noticed,” he replied.She snorted. “You’re a little old fashioned,” she allowed. “But that doesn’t make you old.”He looked at her, “How old do you think I am, Lacey?” he asked. She paused the spinning, and looked at him closely. “That’s a dumb question,” she said, after a moment. “There’s no right answer.”He shrugged. “I know you’re twenty-eight,” he said. “You still have a birthday card on your mantel.”She grinned, “No, I’m lazy,” she said. “And in denial. I’ll be thirty in six months.”He considered that. Somehow her pushing thirty did a little to assuage his worry that she was still somehow a flighty child. That and the gravity in her eyes when she didn’t think to hide it, how false her flightiness actually seemed when one spoke to her for any length of time. “Now you,” he said. “How old am I?”She rolled her eyes, “Is this like the name thing, Rumple?” she asked. She paused, then glanced to the spinning wheel. “Holy shit,” she murmured.“What?” Her expression was alarming: far too pleased with herself.“You spin,” she said. “And I called you Rumpelstiltskin the day we met. Get it? He spins straw into gold!”He thought about it. “Well,” he murmured, unable to keep a small smile tugging at his lips. “That’s quite a coincidence.”“It’s bloody weird is what it is!” she cried. “What are the odds?”“Perhaps I am Rumpelstiltskin,” he suggested. “Then I truly could be three hundred years old.”Lacey cocked an eyebrow. “You’re not a day over forty-five,” she declared He preened a little at that - she had knocked a solid five years off his age, and it sounded much better than fifty.“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said.“You’re insufferable,” she sighed, and somehow he took that as a compliment too. “Why spinning, then? For real, I mean, no jokes. It’s a very specific hobby.”He swallowed, hard. To tell her a little would be to open the door to everything, to break down whatever illusions she had about his history, his upbringing, his very identity. He didn’t like to think what else about him may start to make sense with that knowledge, how it could be used as a key to unlock things better kept hidden. She had said she trusted him. Whether serious or in jest, that was meaningful, and he owed it to her to try in return. She would only keep asking, anyway.“The women who raised me,” he said, slowly. “They had a spinning wheel. I would watch my aunt spin for hours, and she taught me to use the wheel myself after a time. After I left Glasgow… well, I didn’t have time to spin. After several decades I lost the knack, and she is no longer around to teach me.”Lacey nodded. She reached out, and covered his hand with hers. A warm thrill ran up his spine; when he met her deep blue eyes, he felt more understood, more comforted, than he had since those days by the wheel.“I’m sorry,” she said, softly.“It was a long time ago now,” he replied. “I wasn’t there.” Milah had wanted to go to the Bahamas on holiday, not chilly Glasgow and a dying old woman, and so he had not been there with either of his aunts at the end. He could blame his ex-wife for that, but it had been his own weakness of heart, his own unwillingness to return home or to incur her displeasure by doing so, that had kept him away. He would carry that forever.“Still,” she said. “It’s very hard, losing someone who meant that much, especially when they’re far away. I…” Lacey swallowed, uncharacteristically hesitant. “I couldn’t go home to be with my mother, when she died.”“I’m so sorry,” he said. He didn’t know what else to say. She blinked, and any moisture that was there vanished. She straightened her spine, and nodded, her smile returning - not her thousand-watt beam, but something softer, warmer, and altogether more genuine. It was a smile he wanted to curl up and live in.“I’m really glad you have a way to connect back with her,” Lacey said. He nodded. He didn’t know what else to say. He hadn’t thought of it that way, that he wasn’t spinning to forget but to remember the only people aside from Neal who had ever truly loved him. It felt right, though. It felt less lonely, that way.“Will you show me the wheel?” Lacey asked. Gold nodded, and smiled.“Of course.”He moved to sit at the wheel, and Lacey moved to sit closer, watching how he prepared the spindle and moved the pedals. She looked down at the basket of raw wool with pretend confusion. “But… where does the straw come in, Rumple?”He laughed, the deepest laugh he had felt come from his own chest in years. She laughed too, and forevermore the creak of the spinning wheel would remind him not only of low ceilings, mildew, Scotch broth and patient instructions, but of cherry perfume and the rose scent of Lacey’s hair, high ceilings and bright sunlight, and that high, musical laughter.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“I still can’t believe you’ve never been here,” Lacey said, looking up with bright eyes at the Strand Bookstore “It’s the best bookstore in the city.”“I thought young people all demanded their books electronically and immediately,” Gold replied. It was a weak attempt to rile her up, but remarkably it worked: he was rewarded with a flash of that trademark expression, half glare and half grin. “You’ve seen my apartment,” she said. “You think a Kindle is going to fit in there?”Gold had to give her that. The handful of times he had entered Lacey’s cluttered den, he had yet to spy so much as a television. He knew she owned a laptop and a cellphone, although the latter was older than he would have expected and rarely used, and whenever he saw her outside on her fire escape she had a book in her hands and not a screen in sight. If he were honest, the odd anachronisms of her existence were one of the things he liked most about her. He, too, felt a little out of place in the current century.“No,” he admitted. She grinned.“You need more books, Rumple,” she told him, as she led him into the store. As expected, the ground floor was bustling with a good mix of students, busy New Yorkers, and tourists wandering around aimlessly.“I own enough books to fill a library,” he corrected her. She eyed him, skeptically, “You must be hiding them well, then. From what I’ve seen you have one shelf of books in your apartment.”“Not here,” he admitted, “But back in Storybrooke.”“Oh,” Lacey bit her lip. “I just assumed you sold any stuff you didn’t bring with you.”He’d thought about it, of course he had. He’d made enquiries with the contacts he’d used in the antiques trade about taking his better items off his hands, and Neal had even set up an eBay profile to offload some of the rest. Nothing had ever been posted, however, and following those initial enquiries he had not gotten back to anyone about removing his furniture, his treasures, or his books. Aside from what Neal had taken to college with him and what had been necessary to bring to New York, the Storybrooke house stood ready for its occupant’s return, as if he had never left.Now, as he considered telling her the truth, he realised how that sounded: that for all his pronouncements about moving on and new beginnings, he had been unable to let go of his past after all. He had left his burrow, his fortress, ready and waiting for a swift retreat. Coward that he was, even in his bravest moment he had maintained an escape route.She wouldn’t understand. Had she been in his place, Lacey would have burned those comforting bridges without a backward glance. “It was a hassle to put it all in storage,” he said, instead. “I’ll get around to shifting the clutter eventually.”They made for the escalators, avoiding the crowds of the first floor and its shiny displays. “The best stuff is upstairs,” Lacey told him, conspiratorially, as if they were to sneak backstage at the theatre. As they stepped out onto the third floor, they were greeted with soft, blissful silence.High bookshelves lined with stacks upon stacks of second-hand, rare, antique, and simply old books stretched as far as Gold could see. The smell was as familiar as it was welcome: the musty, cool, quiet scent of knowledge and old paper. The few fellow customers who had made it up this far were quiet, speaking in hushed tones or browsing alone, as if understanding that in the presence of this many books one ought to respect their silence. For the first time since he came to New York, Gold felt completely at ease. Lacey took a deep breath through her lungs, her chest expanding as she breathed it in. When she released it, it was as if her whole body relaxed and softened. “I love it here,” she said, her voice dropped to match the quiet as they entered the stacks. “It’s an antidote to the rest of the world.”As soon as they were away from the escalators the high shelves enclosed them, isolating them from the other customers in the warm enclosed space. Gold had always been a little claustrophobic, but he couldn’t imagine anywhere more perfect than here, alone, with her.“How so?” Gold had spent half his career in a dark shop not entirely unlike this, surrounded by old, storied, valuable things, and never come close to the feeling of contentment that had bloomed on Lacey’s face. He needed her to tell him how to feel that way. Maybe he could take the colours and paint over the memory of his shop, his quiet boredom, the life that could have been happy had he only known how to try.“You can’t be anxious or sad in a place like this, you know?” she sighed, and spread out her arms. “There’s a thousand stories surrounding you, and there’s always one worse - sadder, or scarier, or more unfair - than whatever story you’re living right now. There’s a hundred worlds you can choose to live in, and they’ll protect you. If I could find somewhere that made me feel like I do in a book… well, I’d get a paying job and tell someone my real name.” She said the last so softly, had he not been listening so intently he wouldn’t have caught it.She reached up, and pulled the hair tie out of her messy bun. Her dark curls cascaded down over her shoulder, a tumbled river of chestnut and bronze. With her hair down she was smaller, somehow - vulnerable, genuine, her sharp shine softened to a glow. A whole different woman, who didn’t suit the name Lacey Rose at all.“Lacey?”She shook her head, and flashed him a disarming smile, as if to end his question before it had started. “One day I’ll live someplace like that,” she said. “Somewhere where my story fits, you know? Where there’s quiet, and maybe a small garden, and a cosy nook to read in…”Gold was struck by the image of her like this, exactly like this, standing in the library of his Storybrooke home, surrounded by all the books he had never taken the time to read. She would fit there, he knew that instinctively. She would love the deep, mysterious quiet of the forest, where one could walk for hours and never arrive at a destination. She would love the friendliness and subtle strangeness of Granny’s Diner and the dive bar on the edge of town, the huge expanse of the empty beach and the clock tower that never ticked. The thought of her there was intoxicating, and impossible. Gold hadn’t thought he ever wanted to go back until he thought of her coming with him.“Sorry,” she snorted and shook her head, as if mocking her own sentimentality. “Ignore me.”“Never.” The word was out of his mouth before he could second-guess himself. Lacey laughed, a little nervously. Her eyes met his, then slid away.“Anyway,” she said, back to business, “You want to browse?”She pointedly turned to the shelves, and started perusing. Gold wanted to ask her a dozen, burning questions - what was her real name? Why was she here, if she wanted quiet and peace? How had she found herself here in the first place? - but her back was turned, and he worried if he pushed he would break whatever trust they had found. He remembered that night in his bed, when she awoke screaming for her father. He remembered how she had run, the moment he had asked her why.He didn’t want to watch her leave again. He kept his mouth shut.They browsed in silence for a while, and when Lacey moved to another row Gold didn’t try to follow her. A little of Lacey - even just these teasing hints, these glimpses of the person beneath whom he desperately wanted to know - was infinitely better than no Lacey at all. He was in the fiction section when he stumbled across a handful of copies of Peter Pan. There were a few battered Penguin paperbacks, but what caught his eye was a beautiful illustrated edition, with lovingly drawn pictures that were achingly familiar. It was the same edition his Aunt Nessie had bought him at a car boot sale when he was just a boy, one of the first things he’d ever owned that was truly his. It had been lost when he moved away from Glasgow, a casualty of his aunts’ move into a sheltered flat and his emigration, and at the time he had decided he didn’t care: he was starting anew, after all, and didn’t need such things to hold him down.Now, it felt as if that old book had somehow found its way home to him. It was expensive - that seller back in 1970 hadn’t known what a gem she had on her hands. Gold was still holding it when he heard Lacey approach.“Oh, did you find something?” she asked, excitedly. He held up the book. “Peter Pan,” she read aloud. “Didn’t peg you for a fantasy fan.”“I had one just like this,” he said, tracing the cover with his fingertips. “A long time ago.”Lacey bit her lip, glancing from the book to Gold and back again. “You should buy it, then,” she said.He looked at her, her bright blue eyes full of understanding, and felt suddenly vulnerable and exposed. The book in his hands brought up a lot of memories, good and bad, and he wasn’t sure if he was ready to face them all yet. Their time at the spinning wheel had stirred up enough for the time being. He set it back down, and looked back at her.“Did you find anything?” he asked, changing the subject. Lacey grinned, the smile of a child caught pilfering sweets, and held up a heretofore unnoticed basket full of paperbacks. “Yeah.”“You have a problem,” he murmured, but he couldn’t keep the smile from his lips. She adored her books wholeheartedly, unselfconsciously, and her excitement was infectious.“I’m a hoarder,” she admitted, cheerfully. She went through her basket one by one. It was an eclectic mix, fiction and nonfiction, contemporary and classic. A translation of Aeschylus’ Oresteia bumped up against a collection of Truman Capote’s writings, two travel books, and a book of art prints, and that was before one got to the lower half of Lacey’s findings.“You would probably be a millionaire if you saved what you spend on books,” Gold said. Lacey shrugged.“What use would that be if I couldn’t spend my millions in here?”He couldn’t fault her logic there.They made their way to the tills, and Gold watched as Lacey packed her new treasures away in several brown bags. Once again, he was nostalgic for his Cadillac - how Lacey was to transport all of these purchases home was beyond him, but somehow she juggled the bags in her arms without too great a difficulty.They made their way out of the store, and hailed a cab. They had eaten before visiting the Strand, and the sun was beginning to get low in the sky, the day coming to a close. Lacey doubtless had plans for the evening, and reluctant as he was to relinquish her, Gold couldn’t cling on. She had made it plain the night of the party: she didn’t belong to him, and much as he wished it were otherwise, he couldn’t belong to her either.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Gold was surprised when Lacey stopped the cab two blocks from home, outside Tiana’s. “Let’s get coffee before we go back,” she said. He couldn’t have said no if he tried.They settled themselves at a table, two plates of beignets and two cups of rich black coffee between them.“Can I tell you something I hate about New York?” she said. He nodded. “You cannot get a good cup of tea, no matter how much money you pay.”Gold snorted through his nose. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but it wasn’t that. “There are plenty of specialist tea stores,” he noted, playing devil’s advocate. “And high-end cafes with a tea menu as long as your arm.“Yes, and the moment you order black tea with milk they bring out coffee creamer and the charade is over,” she replied. “Not to mention half the time it’s Liptons anyway.”Gold gave a shudder. “I discovered not long after I moved to the States that that issue persists regardless of where you go. I’ve been bulk ordering proper tea bags for decades.”Lacey beamed, and leaned in. Her rose and cherry scent, delicate but unmistakable, sent Gold’s senses reeling. “How much for your stash?”“That supply is mine, dear,” he replied, showing his teeth. Perhaps he had leaned in too, but only to match her. Lacey’s eyes flicked from his mouth to his eyes and back again. “I’d charge a high price indeed.”“Oh?” the sound that came from her throat was soft and breathy, suggestive even. The tone had shifted suddenly, the warm, close atmosphere descending from where it had loomed and threatened above them all day. He reeled back. Lacey was a natural flirt, and he was a lonely old man, but neither of those attributes were conducive to their long-term friendship. He couldn’t let himself be fooled that her jokes and insinuations were more than what they were. She was playing around, as one apparently could with one’s friends, and to read more into it would be to spoil the game.“Oh, hey,” she said, while he gathered his composure. “I got you something.”Gold gaped at her, as she reached into one of her many bags of books and withdrew a familiar tome. The gold lettering of Peter Pan winked back at him in the late afternoon sun.His hands shook as he took it.He stared at it. He had considered buying it, he had even wondered on the way home about doubling back tomorrow and finding it. He had regretted setting it back down the moment he did. But he had not expected, in a million years, for her to notice.“Is it okay?” she asked, worriedly. She had never sounded worried before. “Y-yes.” He took it from her, and tried to mask how his hands shook.He couldn’t fight the tide; for a moment, he was overcome with the memories this simple thing evoked. How he had watched the Disney movie with his father as a small child, lifted from the ground in his arms and spun, a rare moment of joy. He had dreamed that they could run to Neverland, where there was no alcohol and papa could be happy. He had even named named his ancient stuffed animal, his only legacy from his father’s house, after that memory. That had been why Aunt Nessie bought the book for him: a haphazard but well-intentioned attempt at comfort.When the book was lost, gone the same way as that moth-eaten teddy, he’d buried the memories with it. He’d all but forgotten, until today. When Milah had put the cartoon on television to entertain Neal once, Gold had been in a terrible mood for a week after, and never really stopped to question why.He’d wanted to forget again, like when he’d watched the spinning wheel. But, yet again, Lacey refused to let him. And, yet again, her intervention changed the hue of those memories. Now, the sight of the book in his hands would remind him of her, her thoughtfulness and generosity, her desire to make him happy of all things.“Thank you,” he said, when his silence clearly unnerved her. He couldn’t hope to put into words all that was racing through his mind. He only hoped she would understand.“It’s not a three hundred dollar bottle of wine,” she teased, trying to haul him out of his sudden introspection. “But I figured it’d go some way toward the cab fare.”“You bought lunch,” he reminded her. “You owe me nothing.”“Yeah, I know,” she admitted. “But you seemed freaked out by getting a gift, so there was your out.”“I’m not freaked out,” he denied, as if it were remotely true. The only person who gave him gifts was Neal, and a tie on his birthday and a bottle of scotch at Christmas were hardly the same thing. It had been a long time since Gold received a truly thoughtful gift, and to receive it from her…“Are you happy, then?” she asked, eyebrow quirking. “Is that your happy face?”He looked at her, and fell deeply, hopelessly in love. “I’m… not unhappy,” he said, when he caught his breath.This time, he was not imagining her blush. It covered her cheekbones and spread to her ears, peeking out from under the mantle of her loosened hair. “Why?” he asked. It wasn’t the question that needed asking, but it was the one his dry throat scratched out.She shrugged, as if put on the spot by his question. Her eyes met his and lingered. “I… I remembered what you said by the spinning wheel,” she said. “You said you wanted to forget, but even you know that’s not true. It’s easy to run from the past, and very hard to embrace it, but you’re brave enough to try so I want to help.”“I’m not brave, Lacey,” he told her. “I’m a coward.”“You’re not,” she said. She reached out, and one hand covered his where it still held the book. Her touch was warm and comforting, and it felt as if the light within her spread to him, as if she had covered him with her glow. He wanted to deny it, he knew he had to. She was wrong, she didn’t know him, she hadn’t seen all that he was capable of. He had run from Glasgow to America, from Boston to Storybrooke, from Cora to Milah, and allowed himself to wallow in numb stagnation for decades because it was easier than feeling or doing anything at all. He had felt more alive in the past three months he had known Lacey than he had in the thirty years preceding it, maybe in his entire life.She was special, yes, but he wasn’t stupid enough to think she alone could save him from himself. The fault for all that bad blood lay with him - not with Storybrooke, sleepy though it was, not even with Cora or Milah. He had spent his life seeking the lesser of two evils, without ever believing in or reaching for anything truly good.Now, something truly good had found him. She was looking at him with those beautiful blue eyes, one hand covering his, and he hadn’t a clue what to do next.“Rumple-” she started. Her eyes searched his. He held his breath. He saw it, the moment she thought better of what she was about to say. She blinked, and smiled, and said instead. “I think you’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”His heart raced in his chest, warmth suffusing every inch of him. If he had done anything, anything at all, to bring her joy, then he was content.“You’re the only friend I’ve ever had,” he admitted. She laughed, as if he’d told a very funny joke, and shook her head.“If that’s true,” she said, “then you’ve known a lot of idiots in your time.”He couldn’t disagree with that. “I’ve been a very difficult man to love,” he said. “I can’t blame anyone else for that.”She took a breath, as if to speak again. Then, instead, she released her breath in a slow stream, and said nothing.A moment later, she withdrew. Her hand left his, and she shrank back into herself, as if regretting whatever decision she had almost made. She reached down and, to his horror, put her hair back up atop her head. She finished her coffee, and left half her beignets.“Lacey?”“I should be getting back,” she said. He made to leave with her, but she shook her head. “No, no, you stay, finish your coffee.”“It’s alright, I’ll come with you.”“No,” she smiled, and put a hand on his shoulder, gently encouraging him to remain seated. “Don’t. I need to clear my head.”“Alright,” he settled back down, and watched as she shrugged her red leather jacket back on over her dress and slung her bag over her shoulder. “Well, thank you for a lovely day.”“You’re very welcome,” she smiled, that swallowed smile he loved so much. “I had a really great time today. You’re… you’re one of a kind, Rumpelstiltskin.”Her hand lingered on his shoulder. Then, she was gone, and the bell over the door jangled to indicate her absence.Gold returned to his coffee, his hand still resting on Peter Pan. He was so distracted by whatever had just happened, that he almost missed the tall, broad man a little older than him sat a few tables away, who watched Lacey leave with piercing eyes.Almost, but not quite. Will Scarlett’s words from that morning still echoed in his mind, and the man’s presence reminded him of that dire warning. He put together the information he now had: she had a past she was running from, her name was not her own, and someone might come for her.Lacey Rose was a pseudonym - Gold had, truth be told, always suspected that. But he had assumed that, if it was adopted, she had done so to facilitate her lifestyle courting wealthy men, and would drop it once she chose another life. The thought that she had done so under duress, that perhaps she was not flourishing here so much as hiding out, chilled him to the bone. He had promised himself he would wait until he knew the nature of the threat before keeping his word and telling her, but he couldn’t be certain he would not take action to neutralise the danger beforehand. The thought of anything or anyone harming her made him sick to his stomach.The man a few tables over rose from his seat two or three minutes after Lacey left. Gold knew her route home; she would still be visible for a few more blocks before she turned onto their street. If the man was following her, it would therefore be obvious.Thirty seconds after his departure, Gold followed.The man was taller even than Gold had anticipated, with a frame that was probably muscular in his younger days but had long since turned to fat. Gold watched as he looked for Lacey, and then, having spotted her passing the florist on the corner, proceeded to follow her at what he likely considered a stealthy pace. When he turned onto their street, just in time to see Lacey enter the building, Gold knew his paranoia was justified. The stranger lingered, watching her, but did not move.“Friend of hers?” Gold asked, casually. He positioned himself at the man’s side, his cane between them. He was half the stranger’s height and build, but Gold had been short and sleight his whole life and had long since learned how to intimidate men twice his size. “You talking to me?”The man spoke with a thick Australian accent. Gold’s suspicions deepened.“The young lady who just entered her home. You followed her from Tiana’s. Don’t bother to deny it, you saw me with her. So, are you a friend of Lacey’s?”“Who?” the man frowned, and thought for a moment. Gold felt he could almost hear cogs and gears grinding in the stranger’s head. He clearly wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box. “Oh, yeah. That’s her name now, isn’t it? No, I’m not a friend of Lacey’s. I’m Belle’s father. Moe.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Gold sized up the man before him, and came to a quick realisation: Moe was clearly not half so stupid as he looked.He had known his daughter’s new address when he came to New York, but until today had not seen her exit or enter. Now that he knew for certain that it was in fact her home, he was bright enough to recognise that his next steps were less clear. Had they been on good terms, he would have just walked up and rang the doorbell, or caught her on the street or in Tiana’s. Even without Gold’s limited prior knowledge, their estrangement was obvious.That Moe was the subject of Will’s dire warning that very morning was also fairly obvious. Gold had to wonder whether that had been the primary purpose of his wife’s insistence that Lacey - or Belle, or whatever his neighbour’s name truly was - visit the prison today. But if that were the case, why not tell her directly?What mattered now, regardless of the past, was keeping her safe from any danger her father may pose. It was with that sole aim in mind that, after a moment’s strategic thought, Gold spoke.“I don’t know any Belle,” he said - lied - “but if you’re here to speak to Lacey, I suggest we take a walk.”“And who’re you then?” Moe demanded. “One of her suitors?”Gold clenched his hand on his cane, and tightened his jaw. He would not be provoked into rash action, not again. This had to be handled delicately, if only because otherwise she would never forgive him.“I’m a friend of hers,” he said, and that at least he knew to be true. “Perhaps I can help.”Moe’s piggish eyes narrowed with suspicion, but behind them Gold saw something eerily familiar: desperation tinged with hope. Once upon a time, that look had been blood in the water to Gold. Even now, his shark’s nose could smell weakness, and he knew instinctively the pressure points necessary to incapacitate the other man without raising a hand.Unfortunately, he was no longer Storybrooke’s monstrous landlord. His opportunism was now tinged with pity, perhaps even the smallest shred of empathy. The look behind Moe’s eyes was the the look of a man who would do anything to reunite with his child. Gold had seen it on his own face countless times, on dark nights when Neal was in the county jail and he’d had to stumble out of bed yet again to pay the bail and hope that this time, this time, his son would tell him what had gone so terribly wrong.Luck, time, and Neal’s ambitions for more than shift work at the Storybrooke Cannery, had reforged the connection between father and son. Gold had the feeling something far worse had happened here than adolescence and an absent mother.“Alright,” Moe said, at last. Gold led him away from the apartment building. “Where’re we going?” Moe asked. Gold shrugged.“Someplace we can talk,” he said. Moe did not reply. They walked in silence, Gold leading him on a deliberately circuitous route intended to leave him disoriented and less able to find his way back. Eventually, they reached a small park, where Gold was able to take the weight off his bad ankle. “That recent?” Moe grunted, the first thing he had said in fifteen minutes. Gold shook his head.“Near on twenty years now. Car accident,” he replied. Moe grunted again in understanding. Reluctantly, it seemed, he took the seat beside Gold on the bench.“You gonna tell me about my daughter, then?” Moe asked, his abrupt tone belying his clear anxiety. Gold let out a dark laugh.“Oh I don’t think I need to do that just yet,” he said. “After all, she’ll happily open the door to me. You’re the one I caught stalking a young woman down a public street.”“What is this?” Moe demanded, turning on Gold. Gold didn’t look him in the eye, his gaze fixed on the pond with the ducks. “Was that a threat?”“An observation,” Gold corrected. “I don’t have to stand for this,” Moe snarled. Gold laughed again.“Mr- what was your name, sorry?”“French,” Moe snapped. Something like recognition rang in the back of Gold’s head.“Mr French,” he continued, “Do not make the mistake of believing you hold the cards here. I am giving you the opportunity to explain yourself, and why you believe my neighbour is in fact your daughter. It would be careless of me to provide information without being assured of your connection with her, after all, wouldn’t it? You could be a serial killer for all I know.”“And you could be some asshole who walked up to me on the street and knows nothing at all,” Moe replied. Gold spread his hands.“You saw us in the cafe, as I saw you. Fortunately, Lacey is not as paranoid as I.”The hint of an unkind smile pulled at Moe’s lips. “She’s got you wrapped around her little finger, doesn’t she?” he said. “Her signature move, you know. She ensnares rich men like you and then cuts ‘em loose without a word.”Gold’s stare was stony. Moe reached into his pocket, and pulled out his wallet.“You want proof?” he said. He opened it, and pulled out a photograph tucked behind his credit cards. “That’s me and her on her wedding day.”Gold took the photograph and examined it. The woman in the picture - smiling, young, barely out of her teens - was unmistakably Lacey. She wore a traditional white wedding dress, her dark hair neater than Gold had ever seen it. She held the hand of a hulking young man beside her, twice her height with broad shoulders, handsome and smiling into the camera. The man beside him stood next to the couple, back straight, beaming with pride.“That’s my Belle,” he said. “Not Lacey, or whatever the hell she’s calling herself these days. “That’s her and her lawful husband, who’s missing her terribly. If you’re her friend, you’ll send her home where she belongs.”Gold swallowed hard. She was married. And, apparently, estranged from her husband. She had fled her marriage, and he tried, oh he tried, to not connect her with Milah in her mind.“Any children?” he asked. He tried to keep his voice level. He could taste the tidal wave of relief in his mouth when Moe shook his head. “They were young,” he said. “She was still in university when this was taken. Nineteen’s a good age for a bride.”Gold snorted through his nose, “Nineteen is just a child.”The girl in the photograph, the bride, Belle, beamed back with an open innocence he could barely imagine on Lacey’s face. “If she’s married, what is she doing here?”“She ran off,” Moe said, taking the photograph back from Gold’s unresisting fingers. “About five years ago now. There was a big fuss made at the time, criminal investigations, the whole nine yards.”Gold nodded. “I remember.”He did: the Belle French-Aston case had been international news for a few weeks, the kind of lurid tale the media loved to spin out of control. The story was almost a cliche: the beautiful young wife of a rich and famous young man suddenly turned up missing, her friends speculating to the police that her husband had murdered her, a missing yacht and he with no alibi. The running theory had been that he had thrown her off the boat and drowned her after a drunken fight the night before, which had been helpfully caught on CCTV. No body had ever been found. Gold now understood why.“So,” he said, “This charming young man did not, in fact, murder his wife.”“I never thought he had,” Moe sniffed. “George is a good, upstanding young man, and he loved her like nothing else.”“If that’s so, then why did she essentially fake her death and leave the country?” Gold asked. He thought of the woman he knew, the woman he had spent the day with - genuine, kind, funny, daring - and tried to imagine her capable of cruelly destroying a good and honest man. He thought of her screams in the night, and her panic at the thought of belonging to anyone. He remembered her fury when he tried to spoil her even with wine he already owned, compounded when he had threatened Nottingham on her behalf. Her friends had thought her husband capable of her murder. Perhaps, although he thankfully had not done the deed, they weren’t far off the mark.“She was unhappy,” Moe conceded, with a sigh. “She changed, after she graduated. She wanted to be wild and free I suppose, have more… experiences.”“You think she went to all that trouble just to be promiscuous on another continent?” Gold asked, one skeptical eyebrow raised. He knew Lacey was a flirt, and had no illusions about her bedroom proclivities, but it seemed like a weak reason to abandon one’s entire life.“I think she made a commitment and lacked the sticking power to live up to it,” Moe said, stiffly. “But it’s in the past now. They never got divorced, you know.”“Hard to divorce a woman presumed dead,” Gold murmured.“He couldn’t move on from her if he wanted to,” Moe insisted. “He’ll love her until his last breath, and she’ll love him too. This whole thing is just a misunderstanding. Once she understands, she’ll want to come home.”“Then go to her,” Gold spread his hands, knowing every word Moe said was delusional nonsense. “Tell her how her dear husband feels, and let her make her own choice.”Moe swallowed, hard. “I haven’t spoken to her since she arrived here,” he admitted. “She called me… she called me from a payphone. She told me she was alive, and safe, and not to come looking for her. The police couldn’t trace the call, but I never stopped looking.”“She must have worked hard to hide herself, then,” Gold said. “Did you consider she doesn’t want to be found?”“She doesn’t know what she wants.” Moe waved a dismissive hand, and Gold wondered if he had ever met his daughter. “She’s needed at home. Her family needs her; her husband needs her. She shouldn’t be running around like a wild thing here when she has responsibilities at home.”“But you worry she won’t agree with you,” Gold said, as if the obvious needed stating. “I worry she won’t hear me out,” Moe said. “That’s why I’m wasting my time here, talking to you. So, your turn. Who is she?”“You know her name already,” Gold said. “She calls herself Lacey, now. I believe she’s studying English at a local university, although which I’m not entirely sure. She makes good money and has many close friends. She seems happy here.”Moe swallowed, and nodded. In the smallest voice, Gold heard him ask: “Does she ever… mention me?”Gold considered lying. Gold wondered where he would be now, if Neal’s orphan girlfriend hadn’t forced the issue out into the open at the Storybrooke Sheriff’s office three years ago, when he’d been in danger of losing his son forever.Maybe Lacey wouldn’t want to see her father. Maybe Belle, whoever she was, was dead and buried, and Moe would be better mourning his daughter than trying to convince her ghost to return. But maybe, just maybe, the girl Moe remembered was the same one Gold kept almost seeing, when Lacey’s guard was dropped. Maybe the dreams of libraries and rose gardens, long walks and reading nooks, were Belle’s all along.“She did, once,” he said. “She sounded sad.”Moe nodded. He looked down at his meaty hands, clasped between his knees. Gold wondered if he was praying.“Will you help me?” he asked. The question seemed directed heavenwards, but Gold knew he expected an answer.Gold had the strong sense Moe wasn’t worth the air it took to keep him breathing. But Lacey, or Belle, whoever she was, was worth the world. And he had promised to never take away her choices again.“I’ll talk to her,” he said, finally. “Meet me at Tiana’s cafe tomorrow morning. If I come alone, then she doesn’t want to see you, but I will let her know where you’ll be.”Moe swallowed, hard. His hands were shaking. “Alright,” he said. “Tomorrow it is.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Gold raised his hand for the third time to knock on Lacey’s door.The walk back to the apartments had been slow going. The day’s exertions had taken their toll on his bad ankle, and with every laboured step he became more convinced he was walking to his own damnation. What business had he had, interfering with her family life? Her friend he might be, but she had made very clear where the boundaries lay, and he had trampled all over them this afternoon.She would despise him, and rightly so. If he just kept his mouth shut, didn’t tell her any of it… but then, that was interference too, wasn’t it? If she didn’t show at Tiana’s tomorrow then her father would draw the necessary inference from that, and the decision would have been made for her regardless. He had boxed himself in: there was no neutral course of action to follow.“Rumple are you coming in or what?” Lacey’s voice from within startled him. He hadn’t even tapped on the door yet. “I saw you through the peephole, idiot,” she explained, when she was greeted with awkward silence. “Door’s unlocked, so come in or shove off!”Her voice sounded so light, so carefree and happy, that he hated himself even more for what he needed to tell her. His stomach tightened. His fist clenched hard around his cane. He wondered if he would even survive this encounter.With all the meagre bravery he could muster, he stepped into her apartment.“Hey,” she said. She was on her second-hand sofa, a book over her knees. She had changed out of her tiny black dress into leggings and an oversize shirt, and with her hair still down she looked like a wholly different person than the outrageous, glitzy doll she imagined herself to be. “What’s up?”“I um… I need to talk to you,” he said. He closed the door, and braced himself with his cane between his feet. She frowned, and looked at him, an unaccustomed anxiety crossing her face. “Belle.”The effect was instant, and heartbreaking. She winced back, as if he had slapped her, closing her book and curling in on herself. Her bright blue eyes widened. He had never seen her afraid before, and it killed him that he had caused it. “How did you…”“Your father came to see you,” he said, heavily. She swallowed, hard, and nodded as if in a daze. “He was in Tiana’s when we were. He followed you back here.”“So where is he?” she demanded, glancing behind Gold as if she would see Moe appear behind him in a puff of smoke. “Did you let him in?”“We took a walk,” Gold said. “I didn’t feel comfortable allowing a stranger into the building, you understand. I wanted to make sure he didn’t mean you ill.”“I don’t need a bodyguard,” she snapped. “We’ve been through this!”“You wanted to be ambushed?” Gold retorted, certain of her answer. “Or have him linger and catch you leaving this evening? All I did was buy you time to think things through.”“Think things-” she stopped, shook her head, raked her slender hands through her wild dark hair. “I don’t want to think about this!” she said. “I want to… oh, I don’t know.”Gold watched in horror as Lacey collapsed, her knees seeming to give way beneath her. She tumbled half-gracefully onto her sofa, as if exhausted. All the fight had drained out of her. Her eyes stared at the ceiling.“How much did he tell you?” her voice was soft, helpless, hopeless. Gold swallowed hard around an uneasy lump in his throat. He didn’t know how to approach her like this. The shine had dimmed, and with her bare feet sprawled on the floor and her body slumped on the couch she looked at once so young and so tired.“Well, ah, your case was international news,” he began. She laughed, a sharp little noise that broke his heart.“Yes,” she said. “The heiress murdered by her jealous husband. They thought I’d been thrown over the side of that stupid yacht, didn’t they?”“That was the leading theory,” he said. “Until you made contact, and the police closed the case. Nobody heard from you again.”“Belle French vanished into the wind,” she agreed, bitterness dripping from her voice. “And here I am. Shoved into a new dress, rootless, and still they found me.”“It seems that way,” he agreed, uneasily.“Papa made big eyes at you, didn’t he?” she said. Gold wasn’t sure what she meant. “I’m not sure I follow.”She sighed, and a piece of her hair was blown off her face. “He sold you some sob story about missing his little girl and my place being at home, with my husband, didn’t he?”“I assumed there would be more than one side to such a contentious story.”Lacey snorted through her nose. “You can say that again. You’re looking for my side then?”“This is none of my business,” he said, stiffly. Deeply uncomfortable and missing the quiet and still of a life without missing heiresses and emotional tumult, Gold felt a headache beginning behind his eyes. Too much stimulation, too much thinking, too many feelings. She would throw him out any moment, and he hoped he had the chance to jump before he was pushed.“You made it your business when you got involved,” she said. “I was doing you a favour,” he said, although he knew it wouldn’t do him any good. “You don’t have to go to see him tomorrow - if I had left it be, you would have had to see him tonight whether you wanted to or not!”She was silent for a long, tense moment. Gold felt his muscles turn to stone as he stood there, waiting for a response, for damnation, for absolution, for any kind of answer at all.She lifted her head, and looked him in the eye. He was horrified to see her bright blue eyes were wet. He had never seen her express a drop of sadness; he crumbled in the face of her tears. “I ran away,” she said, her voice shaking. She swallowed and wiped away her tears with the flat of her fingers, as if ashamed of shedding them at all. “Sorry, sorry,” she shook her head, and forced a smile.He blinked, mystified. “Don’t apologise to me,” he said. “Do you want me to stay?”“Yes,” she nodded, firmly. He was surprised, but he wasn’t about to argue. She patted the sofa beside her, and he saw a hint of her old bossiness, the ability to take charge that he had always admired in her. “We’re friends, right Rumple?”“Of course,” he said. He came to sit where she put him, next to her, looking out at her cluttered mess of an apartment. How had he never seen before that all these disjointed items belonged to a girl pretending to live in another’s skin? How had he, so accustomed to lying and being lied to, missed this great deception right under his nose?“If I… If I tell you everything, will you… will you help me?”“Yes,” he agreed, without asking for terms, without knowing what help he could offer or even caring. He would do anything she asked of him, anything at all.“Thank you,” she smiled, as if reassured just by his presence. Which was absurd - there was little he could offer that she would want. But she got to decide what reassured her, he supposed. “I mean, I’m sure you already know the basics. Like you said, it was international news.”“I don’t trust the news,” he replied. That earned another very small smile.“And you’re not angry that I lied?” she checked. Remarkably, the thought to be angry with her hadn’t crossed his mind. She had lied to everybody, and probably even to herself, and he couldn’t believe that everything she had told him and everything he had seen of her in the past months of friendship had been deception. Nobody was that good an actress. More to the point, he had made a career of lying and creating false perceptions - he could hardly hold her to a lower standard than he held himself. He was a liar and a cheat, but he wasn’t a hypocrite.“I know you had your reasons,” he said. “Everybody lies.”She snorted. “I don’t know that everyone would be so philosophical about this.”“You were running from something,” he said. She nodded.“I… I married young,” she began. “My dad’s never had much money, and he’s never been any good at holding onto it… but I won a scholarship to go to university. I worked so hard, all I ever wanted to do was study, and read, and travel maybe someday. Mostly I just wanted out of papa’s house and to make my own decisions.” Gold had to smile at that: he couldn’t imagine Lacey ever letting someone make her decisions for her. “I didn’t even know how rich George was when we met, and I think he liked that about me. I was naive and I didn’t realise that he wasn’t looking for a partner who would challenge him and meet him halfway. He wanted a little wife he could boss around, and he assumed that because I was poor and always in the library that I would let him.”She paused, her face creasing with disgust. Gold couldn’t help but remember Milah, and the crushing weight of her expectations of him. She had wanted swagger and bluster, though. She had wanted a man of the house.“But I was young, and I was in love,” she shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. “I was blind. I walked into an engagement still believing he would let me study - let me!” she broke off from her study, and raised her arms as if annoyed by the memory of the girl she used to be. “As if where and how I lived my life was his decision! As if my freedom was his to give or take away!” She shook her head, her hands raking through her curls leaving them helplessly tangled.“You were young,” Gold murmured, trying to be comforting. “And it’s hard not to listen when those we love tell us how things ought to be, even when they are wrong.”She nodded. “Yeah. But then I got accepted to study my masters over here. Not in New York, I was due to go to Boston, but I was so excited. He told me it was out of the question. That was when I knew who he really was. I tried to break off the engagement but his father got my father involved and… well, papa needed the money. I didn’t realise that George had been tightening the net even before I wanted to leave. His father had agreed an interest free loan to save papa’s business, to even help him expand. He couldn’t do that for someone who wasn’t family, he said.”Gold fought back the bile rising in his throat. He had sat beside that man, empathised with him, even agreed to talk to his daughter on his behalf. Moe French had sold his daughter like so much chattel to save his pathetic, failing business. His knuckles turned white on the handle of his cane. He ought to have just called Detective Rogers when he caught Moe skulking, although even jail might be too good for a man like that.“So anyway,” Lacey said, once she had composed herself a little. “I didn’t want to lose my family, and I thought maybe George would… I don’t know, I thought he might change? Is that really stupid?”Gold looked at her, really looked at her, and had to bite back his instinctive answer - that he could never in his life believe she was capable of stupidity.“You were in love,” he said, instead. “And in a difficult situation.”She nodded. “I went through with it, anyway. But of course things only got worse, and then… well, long story short, it was more than I could take anymore. After I started having to explain injuries to my friends...”Gold’s own dark, twisted imagination filled in the blanks. Lacey trailed off, caught in her own dark memories.“How did you get out?” he asked, when she fell silent. She almost managed a smile.“Embezzlement,” she said. She started a very small smile from him, she just sounded so proud of herself. “I started using the money he gave me. I got back in contact with Will and figured out what I could buy that he could fence for me, and then when I had enough together that he could get me set up here I took out as much cash as I could on all my credit cards, then bought a plane ticket in cash and left. I was never even on the yacht, that was… I don’t know who that was.”Gold stared at her, both impressed and a little intimidated. “So your spending once you got here was untraceable,” he said. Lacey nodded.“I knew he’d come looking,” she said. “I didn’t want to live on fake documents, I’m here legally. I knew I’d be even more exposed once my green card application was approved, but it’s been half a decade and I guess I hoped he’d have given up by now.”“Maybe he has,” Gold suggested. “It was your father I met today, not your husband. Former husband.”“We’re still married,” Lacey muttered. “What?” Gold frowned, confused. “Why?”She turned and looked him directly in the eye, and the full force of her silenced him. “Because if he’s married to me he can’t marry anyone else. He can’t trap anyone else.”“That’s not your responsibility,” Gold said. Lacey shook her head and rose to stand, beginning to pace her apartment in her bare feet. “You don’t understand,” she said, “What he took from me… I mean look at me!” she tugged at the high hem of her dress, and shoved her other hand into the mass of her hair. “I had to give up everything to be free of him, and it still wasn’t enough! I’ve hidden and called myself Lacey for years, I gave up my whole identity, and now Papa’s here and he’s going to put me on a plane home and it will all have been for nothing!”He watched her pace, and tried to piece her meaning together. “You don’t have to go anywhere or do anything against your will,” he said. “You have friends here, a whole life… he can’t drag you back to Australia in chains.”She nodded, and he could almost hear her bright mind whirring, working over a hundred ideas. “Maybe he just wants to talk,” she muttered to herself. “Maybe he… fuck.”Lacey had both hands buried in her hair, tugging at the roots. He saw the tears beginning to well in her eyes, saw her squeeze them shut. Gold got up from the couch almost on instinct and stood in front of her. “Look at me, eh?” he tried so hard to sound gentle, to make her listen. It was hurting something deep in his chest to see her in pain like this. “Lacey?”She shook her head, clenching her jaw. She was muttering under her breath, and he wasn’t sure if she could even hear her.“Belle?” Her eyes opened, and met his. “It’s going to be alright.”He reached out and took hold of her shoulders. Almost without thinking, he rubbed small circles against her skin with his thumbs, trying to be comforting. It had been instinctive, the need to touch her, to ground her. She was so close and so warm, and he hated that he noticed how she still smelled of vanilla and cherries. Her eyes were so open, so vulnerable, that he wanted to hug her tight and promise nothing would ever hurt her again.He wanted to kiss her, and show her how deeply she was loved, how special and important she was, how much joy she could bring into a miserable life just by being herself, whoever that was.He swallowed the feeling down. She had too many men demanding that of her, and she had said what she needed from him was friendship. If she needed him to crush every stupid, romantic impulse for the rest of his life, then that was what he would do.She was still looking at him.“Rumple?” Belle said, softly. He nodded, a little dazed.“Yeah?”“Will you… would you come to Tiana’s with me tomorrow?”He swallowed around the lump in his throat. “Of course.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Rumple?” Gold looked up from the menu, as if he didn’t know it by heart by now. “Yes?”“Talk to me,” the woman opposite him - Belle, definitely Belle, it suited her so much better and she smiled when he said it - looked desperate. “Please?”Gold suddenly forgot every topic of conversation he had ever known. He racked his brain, trying to think of anything to distract her, anything that would take her mind off what they were about to do, who was about to walk through the door.They were ten minutes early to meet Moe. Detective Rogers was on standby, parked around the corner and ready to come to the rescue if necessary. Belle hadn’t told him the whole truth, concerned that his duty to uphold the law would conflict with his desire to help a friend. She claimed she didn’t want to put him in a position like that. Gold suspected she was also terrified of what her friends would say, once she told them that she had been living a lie for as long as they had known one another. She had been fiddling with her napkin, turning it around and around in her hands, since they arrived. It was unnerving to see her without her brassy self-confidence - without her mask - but not as alien as he might have expected. She had always been herself, and he had always seen it, it had just taken some time for the picture to come into focus.“Rumple?” she prompted. He swallowed, and nodded. “Please, keep me talking.”“Alright,” he thought for a moment, his mind suddenly a total blank. “Uh, what would you like to talk about?”She shook her head, her dark curls swaying. She had left her hair down, and Gold found he liked it that way. It framed her face, and made her look softer somehow, like a girl from a fairytale.“Anything,” she said. “Please, just, anything but this. Tell me about your son!”Okay, yes, that was a topic Gold could discuss for days. “I’ve never told you anything about him, have I?” he murmured, astounded. She shook her head. That didn’t seem fair, somehow, that he knew so much about her and she knew so little in return. He wanted her to know him. That he even felt that way was unique to her: ordinarily he was keenly aware that knowledge was power. “Alright. Well, his name is Neal, he’s nineteen years of age, and he’s currently a freshman at MIT.”“MIT!” Belle’s eyebrows hit her hairline. “That’s impressive!”Gold felt himself puff up a little with pride. “He worked very hard,” he said. He grimaced a little. “Once he decided professional car thief wasn’t the future career for him.”“Car thief?” a smile was tugging at the corners of her lips. “Maybe he and Will would get along.”“It was a long time ago,” Gold shrugged. “He was acting out because his mother left, and I wasn’t… I wasn’t always the most attentive father. When the most time one spends with one’s child is in a holding cell while paying his bail, something’s gone badly wrong.”“I’m sorry,” Belle frowned, a small, concerned line appearing between her eyebrows. “I ah… I remember what it was like, being that kid. I never stole anything but, I mean, my father didn’t make the transition to single parenthood well at all.”“Apparently not,” Gold muttered, darkly. “Well, ah, we worked it out anyway. I found a way to be around more, and he found a way to channel his energies into more reputable pursuits. The irony of his studying to become an automotive design engineer isn’t lost on either of us.”Belle laughed at that. It was softer, more a chuckle than her usual full-throated laughter, but it was something at least.“I’d like to meet him someday,” she said. “He sounds like a good time.”Gold felt warmth rising up the back of his neck at the thought of Belle and Neal in the same room together. There was an inherent intimacy to meeting someone’s family, although he supposed he’d shattered that boundary already by meeting her father. It was different when it was intentional and positive, however. “He is,” he said, covering his sudden lack of composure with a sip of his coffee. “A much better time than his old man, at least.”“Oh, now that can’t be true,” Belle chided, nudging him. “Who else could make me laugh right now?”The warmth continued to creep up Gold’s spine and the back of his skull, until he was sure he was blushing and even surer that Belle would be able to tell. The change in her from the day before was both remarkable and entirely consistent, as if by shedding her former name she had shed a heavy skin, allowing someone new to free herself at last. Freedom was challenging, especially when it was sudden and new. It took time, and work, and patience, and pain to renew oneself, even if it was entirely necessary, and even if that new person was far better than the old.She had helped him to learn that. He could do the same for her.The bell jangled over the entrance. Moe lumbered in through the doors, and looked around, looking about as apprehensive as the woman sitting next to Gold, practically vibrating with nerves. Gold tried to separate himself from his own feelings about the man who had now seen them, and was making his laborious way toward them across the crowded cafe. That shred of empathy for a father who had failed and lost his child remained, but it was covered now by an inexpressible anger at what he had done to Belle, disgust at what he had been capable of doing to his own child. Gold would have crawled over broken glass to save Neal from a papercut. Moe had valued his bank balance over his daughter’s autonomy and safety.Moe reached their table. He looked between them, his eyes narrowing in suspicion at Gold but softening when they looked beside him. She stood up. Gold could see her shaking, caught between embracing her father and running from the man who had sold her to her abuser. Five years apart couldn’t erase the bond between parent and child. She looked at war with herself, frozen in place. Gold didn’t rise to shake his hand. Moe looked to him. Gold nodded once in greeting. “Hi Belles,” Moe said. “Hi papa,” she replied. Her voice was so soft Gold barely heard it, but he heard the quiver beneath it, the nervousness she couldn’t contain. Her hands had almost shredded her napkin.She put it down. Her hand reached out, and Gold took it, trying to offer her what comfort and stability he could. She squeezed, hard. He squeezed back.“I uh, have you ordered yet?” Moe asked, lamely. Belle nodded.“We have beignets coming,” she said. “We already got coffee.”“Yeah, I can, uh, I can see that,” Moe said. He sat down, the chair scraping against the floor, setting Gold’s teeth on edge. Belle sat down gingerly, but her hand didn’t leave Gold’s. “I’ll, uh, order when they bring the food then.”“Okay,” Belle nodded. They looked at each other for a long moment, the silence settling over the table like a heavy, suffocating blanket. Gold suddenly wished to God he could have waited outside in Rogers’ cruiser, anything to be away from the awkward tension building between father and daughter. Moe cleared his throat. “Belles, I-”“Why’re you here, papa?” she cut him off. Moe looked uncomfortable.“I wanted to see you,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you.I’ve missed you.”Belle’s lip trembled just a little, her eyes shining. Gold saw her swallow, hard, and get herself together. “I missed you too, papa.”“Good,” Moe nodded, gruffly. “That’s, uh, that’s good.”“But it’s been five years,” Belle continued. “Didn’t you think that maybe after all that time I didn’t want to be found?”“Everyone has missed you so much, Belles,” Moe said, and Gold hated him a little more for the wheedling note in his voice. “Your whole family has missed you.”Belle bit the inside of her lip, and squeezed Gold’s hand so hard it almost hurt. Gold just squeezed back, and hoped she knew she wasn’t alone, that her new family would stand behind her, that she didn’t have anything to be ashamed of.“I miss them too,” Belle said. “Please tell Aunt Tina and Uncle Graham and everyone I love them.”“They’re not the only family who miss you,” Moe said, tentatively. “You have a family of your own, and they need you home.”Belle’s face hardened. “No.”“Belles-”“No, papa,” her voice tightened, anger replacing her hesitation.“You’re a wife and-”“No. Papa I… you know why I had to leave. Please, please understand, I wasn’t trying to hurt you, but I had to get out of there. I couldn’t stay with him, I needed to find my own life, make my own decisions, see more of the world than Melbourne… please understand that.”“That’s all you have to say to me?” Moe replied, incredulous. “After everything that happened… it’s been a long time since you ran away from home, it’s taken a long time to find you.”“I didn’t run away from home,” Belle snapped, as if a torrent had been unleashed inside her, her awkward silence broken. “I wasn’t a disaffected fifteen year old climbing out the window, I left my bastard husband to find a better life. And I did! I found a better life, I’m happy here! I hoped you’d be happy for me!”“Well I don’t know if you should use that kind of language, my girl,” Moe said. Belle gaped at him.“My language is the issue?” she demanded. “What about an apology?”“Yes, what about that?” Moe retorted. “How about an apology for abandoning your husband, for faking your own death, for embezzling several hundred thousand dollars from a family that treated you as one of their own, and vanishing for half a decade?”“Keep your voice down, Mr French,” Gold said, softly. He looked pointedly at the door, and back to Moe. “What’re you doing here anyway?” Moe demanded. “You didn’t mention you would come with her!”“Papa, you will be nice to my friends or you will leave,” Belle said, firmly. “You should leave anyway. I thought… well, I was an idiot to hope you had come to make peace.”“And I hoped you might have grown up a little since we saw one another last,” Moe said. “I hoped you might see sense and understand that we can’t always have everything that we want. You have responsibilities, you can’t just hide in another country under a fake name, eventually they’ll find out and deport you back to where you belong, home, with your husband.”“I’m not hiding,” Belle said. “I’m living. All my documents are in my legal name. I’m on a student visa, legally, and once I graduate I’ll be eligible to apply for a green card. I’m sorry that Interpol doesn’t search for people who aren’t missing, and that whatever shitty private investigators or whoever George hired couldn’t find me until now, and that they don’t extradite women for daring to disobey their fathers, but here we are. It’s a free country, and I’m a free woman, and you’re welcome to go home and tell George that.”“You’re living a lie here, Belle,” Moe said. “How long can you keep fooling everyone you know, huh? How long before they learn what you did to the last people who cared about you? Come home, come clean, and fix what you broke.”“You’re wrong,” she shook her head. Gold felt sick to his stomach at the grotesque, false image Moe was painting for his daughter, but he didn’t dare intervene. This was her fight, and she had to win it her way, or she would never be free. “You’re wrong, and even if you’re right, it’s none of your concern. It was already broken before I left. There’s no home there for me to come back to.”“I didn’t come here to fight with you,” Moe said. He sounded suddenly so weary, his face sagging. He sank back in his chair.“Then why did you come?” Belle demanded. “You found me, congratulations, now what? You’re going to bundle me in the back of your van with duct tape and rope and force me to come back with you?”“Don’t be so dramatic,” Moe snapped. “I came hoping you would see sense. The truth is… the truth is we found you over a year ago.”“We?” Belle frowned. Moe nodded.“George and I, and his father. They’re not as forgiving as I am.”“Good,” Belle said. “Because I’ll never forgive him.”“They’ve tried to contact you several times, but they couldn’t find a connected phone line or an address that didn’t bounce back. All they ever received was a single email from a woman named Ana, telling them to leave you alone.”Belle swallowed. If she was surprised to hear that her friends had somehow protected her without her knowledge, she hid it very well. “That wasn’t enough of a hint? They had to send you to beg me to come home?”“They didn’t send me,” Moe said, heavily. “George’s lawyers have been trying to send these for over a year.” He reached down into his backpack, and pulled out a thick manilla envelope, placing it on the table between them.“Rumple,” Belle said, tightly, not taking her eyes off her father. “Would you open that, please?”Gold nodded, and reached out with his free hand to take the envelope. Regrettably, he had to release his hold on Belle’s hand to open it. She gripped the table instead, her knuckles turning white.Gold was already sure of what he would find when he opened the packet. He was correct.“Divorce papers,” he said, softly. “Already signed by Mr Aston. They’ve even helpfully marked where you are to sign.”Moe looked at her pleadingly. “Belle, please, if you come home they’ll reconsider, he’s even said he’d take you back if-”“Is that why you came?” Belle said, her voice soft and seething, more angry and terrible than Gold had ever heard her. “George doesn’t want me back, does he papa? But you do. You want me back in his bed so his money will be back in your bank account.”“Belle, there’s no need to be so dramatic-”“Mr French I think it’s best you left now,” Gold said. He rose to his feet. Moe turned his wild, desperate eyes from his daughter to Gold.“I’m taking orders from you now?” Moe scoffed, his piggish eyes sizing Gold up. “From the pathetic old man who’s screwing my daughter?”“Papa!”“I’ve not laid a finger on your daughter, Mr French,” Gold said, coldly. Moe rolled his eyes.“George’s man did more than find your new name and address, my girl,” he sneered at his daughter. “He found out how you’ve been funding your lifestyle here. So you can get off your high horse. I know exactly what you’re willing to do to keep yourself in designer handbags, even if you’re not willing to lift a finger to save your own father.”“You don’t get to decide where I go, what I do, or who I do it with!” Belle cried. “I do! And I’ve decided you should leave before I really lose my temper.”“If you sign those papers, I won’t come back,” Moe warned. “You’ll be cutting more than your poor husband out of your life.”“Good,” Belle snapped. “Maybe this time it’ll fucking last.”She rose to her feet, and stormed out of the cafe without another word. Every other patron, watching the fight and trying not to show it, watched her leave. The bell jangled as the door slammed behind her.Gold picked up the papers and her handbag. “Mr French, I trust you can find your own way out.”“I hope you’re paying her well for her time,” Moe sneered. Gold swallowed the urge to drive the handle of his cane into Moe’s skull. He deserved it, and he could probably get away with it, but Belle would hate him for it.“Mr French, listen to me. You don’t know my name, but I am a very influential person, and I care very deeply for your daughter. Her disappearance was international news. Her reappearance and the story of the abuse she suffered at the hands of a very powerful, well-known man such as George Aston, well… times are changing, aren’t they. Those sorts of stories make headline news, ruin the lives of powerful men. Now, Belle isn’t the sort to go public. Her privacy matters to her. But she is also a good person, she’s kind and principled and cares about other people. If this issue doesn’t go away, if her privacy is forfeit anyway and she feels that others may be protected by her going public then, well, then her silence may not be so reliable. And trust me when I say that I will be very helpful to her in finding the largest audience possible for such a story. Am I perfectly clear?”“What does that have to do with me?” Moe muttered. Gold smiled with all his teeth.“Well you’ve got the starring role, Mr French,” Gold said. “You’re the disgusting bastard who sold his daughter into essentially a forced marriage to pay his debts. What would that do for your business, hmm? Your family? Your future?”Moe’s face paled. Gold nodded, and straightened.“I thought as much. I dearly hope never to see your face again, but if I do, you had better come with nothing but the love and acceptance your daughter deserves from you. Am I clear?”Moe glared at him, the grimace of a wounded predator, cornered and beaten, snarling at the victor. “You’re a disgusting old pervert, running around with a girl half your age,” he sneered. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”“I’m ashamed of a great many things, Mr French,” Gold said, collecting his cane from the back of his chair and making for the door. “But she isn’t one of them. Goodbye, and enjoy the beignets.”The door closed behind him, leaving Moe all alone with his thoughts.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The heavens had opened while they were inside, and Gold was quickly drenched as he looked about the pavement frantically for Belle. He couldn’t imagine she would leave alone, having left her belongings behind in the cafe, but neither could he see her anywhere.“Belle?” he called. He began walking down the sidewalk, making toward their building. “Belle!”The thought of her emotionally broken after that terrible confrontation with her father, stumbling alone down the streets of New York in the rain was too heartbreaking to contemplate. He needed to find her. He needed to make sure she was alright. He needed to be there with her, wherever she was, so she knew that she wasn’t alone.That was what you did for people you loved, he thought: you didn’t leave them alone in the rain.“Belle!”“Rumple?” Belle’s voice came from the road, and he turned down an alleyway, back, and out again to find her making her way into a cab. He was behind her without even thinking about it, following her into the cab and slamming the door behind them. She was soaked to the skin too, her dark hair plastered to her scalp, her blue dress turned navy from the rain. “Where’re you going?” he demanded.“Anywhere,” she said, shaking her head.“JFK,” the taxi driver supplied helpfully. Gold frowned.“After everything you said back there, you’re just going to run away and leave?” the thought of a life without her was too awful to contemplate. New York was nothing to him without her in it. His new life, his new self, the joy and hope he’d found himself capable of, the love that was growing and burning in his heart, lighting everything around him, chasing out darkness that had festered there for so very long… none of it was anything without her. She was everything, she had to know that. He needed her here, and he thought, maybe, possibly, she needed him too.“I don’t know!” Belle cried. “I just have to go somewhere, alright? Somewhere he can’t find me, just to clear my head, just so I can think straight.”“You’re coming back, right?” he checked. She didn’t answer, pressing her lips together in a thin line. “Belle-”“I don’t know right now,” she said. “And so what if I didn’t? I don’t belong to you, I’m free to go wherever I want and do whatever I want and nobody, not you or my father or my husband can stop me.”She was out of her mind, not thinking clearly, and who could blame her after everything her own father had just said to her? This wasn’t the Belle he knew, this wasn’t even anyone he would have recognised as Lacey. The woman he knew was fire and lightning, fearless and adventurous, and in love with New York and her friends and her studies and her life here. The thought of her abandoning it all, her books and her apartment, her loved ones, leaving it all behind just because the men she hated had found her made him sick to his stomach. “Then I’m coming with you,” he said.“No!” she rubbed her hands over her face, smearing her wet makeup. “God, no you don’t have to do that.”“Why not?” he demanded. “Why not come with you?”“Because- because my father is right!” she cried. “I’m… I’m selfish and I’ve been lying to everyone I care about for years, and I barely know who I am or what I want right now. I’m destructive and dishonest, and I know I’ve been in and out of your life, I know I’m hard to get to know and hard to hold onto, and you’re better off without that in your life. I don’t even know how to sign those divorce papers. Technically I’m still Mrs Aston, and I don’t know who that is anymore. ”“You’re Belle,” he said, gently. He took her shaking hands in his. “Or you’re Lacey, or you can be someone entirely new. Whatever you call yourself, you will always only be yourself, and who you are is incredible.”“Rumple-”“No I… if you’re leaving I have to say this,” he said, a lump forming in his throat. She had taught him to be brave, and if he could never summon the courage again, he would say this now. “I know that you're confused about who you are. So I'm going to tell you. You are a hero, who saved herself when nobody else was willing to. You find bravery in others, and when it's not there, you create it. You make me want to go back, or forward, or wherever I have to go to be the best version of me. That never happened before. So when you look in the mirror and you don't know who you are... that's who you are. You saved me. You showed me that happy beginnings are possible, even for miserable, lonely people” He swallowed hard, trying to keep a hold of himself. “Thank you, B-”He couldn’t finish saying her name, cut off by the sudden pressure of her mouth on his, impossibly soft and sweet, kissing the words from his mouth. Her hands were in his soaking hair, holding his face in place for her kiss, tentative and deep all at once. His whole body was shaking, sparks shooting up his spine, his body on fire. His hands came to her shoulders, and he kissed her back, his head reeling and heart pounding. He had never been more sure of anything in his life than he was of her.He didn’t know how long they stayed like that, kissing in that gentle hypnotic perfect rhythm in the back of the cab. Gold thought he might well have died and gone to heaven, and he was perfectly alright with that, if heaven was kissing Belle. She was a beautiful, impossible puzzle, and he would spend the rest of his life learning her and be happy doing so.She wrenched herself back a moment later, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she babbled. She looked desperately to the taxi driver, “Will you pull over please?”The car screeched to a halt. Belle hurled herself out of the door. Gold shoved a ten dollar bill at the driver, and followed. His head was still spinning from her kisses. He followed her out into the rain.“Belle!” he cried. She was sobbing, and he wanted so desperately to hold her. She had kissed him, she had kissed him, and he knew her, she wouldn’t have kissed him if she didn’t feel anything for him. That gave him a little confidence. He had not imagined the affection between them, the strange bond that went beyond friendship.“No, you have a life here, Rumple, you have… you have a girlfriend and your son and and and spinning and I can’t ruin that for you. You don’t belong to me either, people don’t belong to people, you shouldn’t be out here with me!”“Wait what?” Rumple blinked, shaking his head. “I’m not seeing anybody!”“Okay, whatever you call you and Zelena, fine, whatever. She needs you.”“She needs a psychotherapist,” Rumple muttered. “I’m not interested in Zelena, Belle.”Belle frowned. “But… she told me the two of you were dating. She was very insistent, I mean, she said you don’t like labels but…”“She’s a liar,” he said, flatly. He would have to have words with Regina about her sister, and potentially words with the police as well if things continued this way, but that was unimportant right then. Nothing mattered but the woman in front of him, soaked and shivering in the rain, bright as a candle in the dark. He took Belle by her shoulders. The rain ran down their faces, soaking their clothing, he was dripping wet and freezing but he didn’t care, he was with her, and she was a human bonfire, she would keep him warm. “I’m only interested in one person, and I’m here with you.”“Oh.”That was all she said, just that little ‘oh’, biting her lower lip like she had no idea what to do next. “Rumple…”“I know you don’t belong to me,” he said. “I know that. But i want to belong to you. I want to help you find that place where you use your own name and find a job and build a life that feels like your own. I want to be here for you while you figure out who you are, whoever that is, because whoever you are is an incredible, amazing, wonderful woman.”“Rumple-”“I love you,” he barrelled on, blurting it out, horrified at his own mouth but incapable of stopping, everything he had thought and felt for months pouring out of his mouth. “I have done since you crawled in my fire escape in the middle of the night without so much as an apology. I have done since you gave me a new name, even if it’s ridiculous. You’re bright, and fearless, and I want to be more than I am when I’m with you. I’m yours, if you’ll have me.”“And what if I’m none of those things?” she demanded. “What if I’m scared, and small, and all I want to do is curl up under the covers and miss home? What if I don’t want to belong to anyone, what if I need to make my own choices?”“Then I’ll come lie beside you until you don’t feel scared or small anymore,” he said. “And I’ll support any choice you make, so long as I’m still beside you. That’s what you do when you belong with someone.”She thought about that. The rain clung to her eyelashes, and she was shivering. They needed to get inside, but he was rooted to the spot, holding her arms, the heat of her skin a counterpoint to the cold rain. “You… you’re impossible,” she closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. “Every time, every time you’re supposed to walk away from me, you hold on tighter. How am I supposed to not love you when you’re so… so you all the time?” He blinked, his brain scrambling to a halt, unable to process what she’d just said. He stared at her, a ridiculous smile spreading over his face, stupid in love with her and not caring, not caring at all. “I… I don’t know how to belong with someone. But I… I feel more like myself with you, more like Belle, than I ever have before. I don’t want to go away from you. I just… I don’t know how to hold you closer, either.”“We can figure that out,” he promised, giddy, happier than he had felt in decades. He stepped closer to her, running his hands down her arms to tangle her fingers in his. The envelope under his arm was getting soaked, the papers inside doubtless wet through, but they could be replaced. “Whatever else happens, we can figure it out. Together.”To his overwhelming joy, she nodded. She stepped closer too, until they were almost nose-to-nose, a breath away from kissing. “We belong together,” she murmured, as if testing the words out. Her smile could have lit the entire city. She tilted her head up, leaned in, and kissed him again, and again, and again, until he had his arms wrapped around her waist and her lips had parted his. She tasted like rainwater and coffee and pure, roaring life, and he drank her in, dancing her tongue with his, swallowing her happy little moans and sighs. Her hands raked through his soaked hair, and even through their kissing, he could feel her smiling.He had to pull away eventually to breathe. He gazed down at her, overjoyed, drunk on her.“Belle,” he said, just to say her name. “Oh, Belle.”“I like hearing my name when you say it,” she said, softly. “It… it makes me believe that maybe I didn’t have to leave myself behind and become someone else. Like I can begin again. A happy beginning.”“That’s what you gave me, the day we met,” he said. “A happy beginning.”“Together,” she murmured, nodding. She let out a happy little laugh, the freest noise he had ever heard, and he felt like he could fly.“Yes,” he agreed. “Together.”