Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He hadn’t known she was married.

Gold lay in bed with his eyes squeezed shut. He could hear his teeth grinding, the vents wheezing, and his own hateful mind railing at him. Why hadn’t he asked? He’d seen her wedding ring - just a glimpse before she slipped it off into her purse, but a glimpse was still enough to be sure - so why hadn’t he said anything? Why had he pretended it was a trick of the light?

The events of the past two months raced through his mind, just a series of images so quick it was nauseating. Milah. God but she was beautiful. No one had ever expressed an interest in him before - especially not someone so pretty, so confident. Maybe that was why he’d pretended. But even that wasn’t really a good excuse - he was only twenty-one but he’d read enough self-help books in his short life to recognize certain traits that Milah shared with his father.

She laughed at him during sex. She made him feel bad when he said no. She pretended not to hear when he asked her to stop. She belittled him in front of his friends (who were better classified as “coworkers” now, Gold thought bitterly, considering how eagerly they laughed along). She twisted every little thing - things that weren’t even conflicts - into a terrible scenario where he was a villain (or worse, an idiot) and she was his patient, suffering angel.

So Gold knew how to recognize an abusive situation. Big deal. That didn’t mean he knew how to get out of it. And now he knew Milah was married, and she was married to a man who looked like a movie star, so why was she dating small, ugly, disabled, crooked-toothed Gold in the first place?

It’s just a joke , said a malicious voice in Gold’s head. He pressed his palms hard into his eye sockets, grinding until he saw starbursts in the dark. Like when those guys in school found out you liked boys and they convinced Domhnall to ask you out. It’s a mean joke.

Gold felt so drained. That sentence swirled around inside his head on a loop - it’s a mean joke, it’s a mean joke - until he took a deep breath and sat up, waiting for a spell of dizziness to pass. He’d been holding the note from Milah so tight that he worried it would be illegible - too crumpled, too soaked with sweat.

He unfolded it carefully, spelling out the words slowly like the English for Adults teacher had shown him. He had to make sure he was reading them right. He had to go about it like an inchworm, pausing whenever the letters jumped around on the page.

Milah was pregnant. She was pregnant, and it was his. She was pregnant, and she couldn’t see him anymore, because if Killian found out now, he’d kill her.

Gold pictured Milah and Killian - two of the most offensively beautiful people he’d ever seen - and then imagined with dread what a child of his would look like. No one would ever believed it was spawned by those two gods. Would Killian really kill his wife over that? Gold wouldn’t. But maybe that was just because Gold was … well, soft. Dad had always said so.

He prayed the child would turn out beautiful. It would have Milah’s face and hair. If it had any of Gold’s traits - any at all - he hoped to God that they came from his mother’s side. And then he hoped to God that his memory of his mother was correct, and not tinged with the love of the three-year-old he’d been when she died.

Milah never wanted to see him again. She would raise the child as Killian’s. That was fine, Gold told himself, his fingers shaking. Any child would be better off with them. Killian had a townhouse and a sailboat and two cars - a studio apartment was all Gold could afford, and he was having trouble keeping it. His child deserved a father who could read and speak well, who was handsome and educated, wealthy and mentally sound.

Gold ran his fingers over the names Milah had chosen for their baby. Neal if it was a boy, Cara if it was a girl. Gold didn’t suppose he would ever find out which it was.

And that was okay, he told himself. That was okay. That was okay.

Chapter Text

“Your hair is turning silver,” Hopper said. Gold grunted, unwilling to reply. He was on his way to work; there was no time for Hopper’s misguided attempts at friendships.

“It’s probably because you never take a break,” Hopper supplied, falling into step with Gold.

“It’s because I’m fifty,” Gold snapped. He sped up a little; Hopper matched the pace effortlessly. Of course he did - Hopper didn’t walk with a cane.

“No, it’s because you’re stressed,” said Hopper mildly. “You ought to take a vacation. Go somewhere warm.”

Gold didn’t grace that suggestion with an answer. He was scandalized by the very idea of going somewhere warm. Warmth meant short sleeves. Short sleeves meant the burns on his arms would be noticeable. And noticeable burns meant stares, and if there was anything Gold hated more than Hopper’s friendship, it was people staring at his scars.

“What about Hawaii?” Hopper suggested. “Or Florida? You could go to Orlando.”

“Can’t afford it,” Gold said. He stepped onto the sidewalk and cut a sharp right, hoping to lose Hopper in the tiny crowd at the crosswalk. He was unsuccessful.

“Very funny,” said Hopper, sounding thoroughly unamused. “We all know you can afford a trip. Financially, at least. You just don’t want to.”

Gold’s ears pricked at the qualifier in that sentence - financially, at least - but he didn’t question it.

“I’m quite enjoying this conversation, Dr. Hopper,” he said. He came to an abrupt halt at his shop, relishing the way Hopper scrambled not to bump into him. As Gold unlocked the door, he could practically hear Hopper forming another line of attack,

“At least go on a small vacation, then,” Hopper wheedled. Gold unlocked the front door and hurried in. Every day, he hoped the door would slam shut on Hopper and leave him outside, but every day Hopper managed to work his way in before that happened. “Somewhere in town,” Hopper said. “Storybrooke’s great for little vacations. You can go fishing, apple-picking - heck, you can just go for a walk in the woods. They’re a national reserve for a reason , you know.”

“Ah yes, hiking,” said Gold, limping around the counter. “My favorite sport.”

Hopper had the grace to look chastened, once he figured out what Gold meant. But it was a defiant and short-lived remorse, if it was even real.

“You like spooky things?” he asked, his eyes landing on the pair of wooden puppets Gold kept on display. “You could go visit the cemetery. They say it’s haunted.”

Gold detested spooky things. And his stomach churned at the thought of the cemetery. He’d bought a house as far away from it as he could get and he had no intention of going near it if he could help it.

“Oh, I love evil spirits,” he said flatly. “I’ll just head up there tonight and see if they have any deals on demonic possession. Sounds like a blast.”

Hopper gave him a grand attempt at a glare.

“Just think about it,” he said. Gold’s chest felt abnormally hollow.

“I won’t,” he promised. “I have work to do, Dr. Hopper.”

Hopper just stood there for a minute, staring at Gold helplessly. Then he heaved a big sigh and headed for the door.

Belle had lived by the cemetery all her life. Storybrooke had two, just a half mile from each other, and Belle lived next to the oldest, creepiest one. The graves were dated back to the 1700s, so eroded one could rarely make out the names. As a child, Belle had loved to walk around the graveyard, making crayon rubbings of the epitaphs and inventing wild stories about how the people there died.

It had never frightened her. Belle had a taste for horror but that didn’t mean she was immune to it - it just meant she knew the difference between the unusual and the bad. The bad was the thing that lived in the closet upstairs, where Belle had slept as a middle schooler until fear and constant nightmares drove her back downstairs to sleep on the couch. The things she saw in the cemetery weren’t bad -- they were just odd.

It had started with the boy. When Belle was no more than ten, she’d been sitting in her bed and looking out the window, staring at the graveyard, when she saw him. A white-blue apparition walking up the road. It was a head shorter than she was, and when she’d seen it and realized what it was, Belle had fainted clean away and not woken up till morning.

Papa said it was a bad dream, brought on by too many scary books. But Papa was always looking for a way to dissuade Belle from reading, regardless the subject, so she wasn’t keen on listening to him now. She knew what she saw. And she knew he wouldn’t believe her if she saw anything else; some children are slow to lose faith in their parents, but Belle was a realist, and if she’d stopped believing in Santa Claus at age two, she couldn’t really expect her dad to start believing in ghosts at age 35.

She did her business in secret; when Papa was at work, Belle hurried up the road with his Polaroid camera, snapping pictures of gravestones. Sometimes it seemed like the age-old grit caked on the stones looked like a face. Sometimes the faces were so clear there was no denying t. And sometimes there were orbs -- bright, incandescent balls of light hovering in the graveyard, over by the unused patch of land that faded into trees. There were only two graves out that far -- one with only a first name, Guy, and one that Belle was fairly sure had been knocked down elsewhere and dragged over here.

Guy was a baby, Belle knew. She didn’t know where she learned this; it was something she’d known as soon as she saw his grave for the first time. He was a baby, no more than two years old. Not the boy she’d seen walking up the path. But he was still here -- she could feel him.

As Belle grew, her ghostly experiences seemed to wax and wane. She would go years without seeing so much as an orb, and then suddenly she’d have a spate of face-to-face encounters with apparitions, so solid one barely knew they were ghosts. She’d met a girl in a colonial dress when she was twenty-three, and she’d met old Mr. Green, her pharmacist, a few years after he passed away.

In her early thirties now, Belle ran the local bookstore, a tiny thing that thrived mostly off its rip-off Starbucks coffee and not off books. There was an occult section in the back, something Belle often peeked at but rarely touched. The graveyard had turned sour for her a few years ago, the stench of untended garbage filling it whenever she stepped too close to the graves. She still wasn’t sure what had happened -- why she was no longer welcome. But she stayed away from it, more than willing to accept a warning.

Still…

It was right down the street from her. If she wanted to … if she was reasonably sure that nothing would attack her but that stench …

Chapter Text

23 years. Gold felt a rage blow through him that he hadn’t experienced in decades. He stared at the balloon in the diner, his fists clenching, nails biting into his palm.

23 years. There was a happy couple sitting underneath the balloon -- a little older than Gold. He didn’t know them. But that didn’t stop him from breaking out into a cold sweat when he stared at the number on their anniversary balloon … and on their cake … and on their t-shirts.

Queasiness took over so fast that Gold’s rage had nowhere to go. It fizzled out in short tea-kettle bursts of steam, his stomach cramping as it went away. He needed to get out of here. If it wasn’t for his cane, he’d be on his feet already.

The bathroom. Gold stumbled to it, unable to tell if he was successfully maneuvering through the crowd or if they were all just swaying to avoid him. His face was tingling; when he got to the men’s room and looked in the mirror, it was deathly white.

23 years. It had been 23 years since Neal died.

Gold’s stomach clenched; he wedged his cane against the door handle so no one could get in and leaned over the sink, retching silently. Nothing came up. It was twenty long minutes before he stopped heaving and sank to the ground, not caring if his suit got dirty. Someone rattled the doorknob, cursed, and walked away.

23 years and Gold could still remember picking the pink envelope out of the mailbox, staring at it curiously until he suddenly recognized Milah’s handwriting and his world tilted to the left. He could still remember the possibilities floating through his head: that Killian had left her and he could see his son. That she was giving up custody. That she’d told Killian the truth.

But the note inside had been painful and curt -- just long enough to suck the air out of Gold’s lungs like he’d been sucker-punched.

Gold: Neal is dead. Car accident yesterday. Thought you should know.

-Milah.

23 years. Neal would be 29 today if he had lived. And Gold never knew what he looked or sounded like, never even learned his son’s birthday or his middle name. He’d searched the papers for a birth announcement, but either Milah hadn’t printed it or she and Killian had moved away. Both seemed likely. She’d never sent pictures of Neal -- never sent him anything, in fact, except the note that she was pregnant and the note that Neal was dead.

Deep breaths, Gold told himself. Deep breaths. It wouldn’t do to get caught up in this in a public restroom. Neal wasn’t his to mourn, and there was no sense in acting like this now, decades after the fact. He must be sick, is all -- he always got emotional when he was sick.

The doorknob rattled again.

“Anybody in there?” came the all-too-familiar voice of Dr. Hopper. Gold stifled a groan. He wondered if the anniversary party was still going on and if there was any way he could ruin it.

“Be right out,” he said.

23 years, Belle thought. Had it really been so long since she first saw a ghost? She paged through her fifth-grade diary, smiling at the wide-spaced, loopy handwriting, grimacing at the spelling mistakes. 23 years and two days. She pouted a little at that; Belle liked to imagine every moment of her life as a scene in a book, and this scene would be much better if she’d happened to page through her diary on the exact anniversary, instead of two days late.

Oh, well. She bent her head over the old notebook, smiling at the self-conscious way she’d veered between earnestness and faux aloofness as a ten-year-old, struggling even then to emulate her favorite writers. That was a trait Belle had never grown out of -- her current diary was a hodgepodge of different styles, stealing from Frank McCourt on page one, JK Rowling on another, and Nick Cave for a solid ten pages. The only stories that read clear and simple -- her real voice -- were about the cemetery. And Belle didn’t have many of those stories left.

She glanced out the window at the moonlit graveyard, not even realizing that she was biting her lip. Did she feel scared by it? No, not quite. There was that strange garbage smell the last time she visited -- the overwhelming feeling that she was unwelcome -- but she knew deep in her heart that it wasn’t her spirits projecting that aura. Not the ones she grew up with, who showed up in her Polaroids and whispered to her from the trees.

Still, there was something familiar about it and Belle supposed there would have to be. No one had been buried in that cemetery since 1925, so if someone disliked her, it had to have been one of the spirits she’d grown up with. She just couldn’t figure out why.

And she never would, Belle realized, if she never went back.

She pulled her journals off the shelf all at once and dumped them on her bed, suddenly determined to find the day she’d been rejected by the graveyard. It was six years ago -- no, maybe five? She’d just come back from California. Papa had moved to Florida and left her his flower shop and old home, practically forcing Belle to move back.

God, what year was that? Belle scrunched up her face, flipping hurriedly through her diaries, skimming every few pages for mentions of Florida, of California, of a move.

She found it at last, in a cheap faux-leather journal she’d picked up from Barnes & Noble. Five years ago. Belle settled down on her bed, nudging the other journals aside absently as she curled up in the corner to read.

She’d come back home. (Her writing here, to her dismay, was embarrassingly dry). She’d been disappointed that no one was there to meet her at the airport -- Papa had already left the state. And she’d moved back into their old house, disgusted with the state of it, and -- oh yes, those were tear stains on the pages -- she’d spent a good month in distress, wondering how to keep the business going, weeping over the fact that, all things considered, she just didn’t have a green thumb.

And then -- Belle blushed, looked away from the journal, and then peeked at it again, like she was reading a particularly smutty romance novel -- she’d met Mr. Gold. Or rather, he’d stumbled upon her in a shop full of dead flowers, weeping because how on earth had she killed them all overnight? And he’d told her it was rent day -- of course Papa failed to mention rent day -- and then she’d just cried harder and he stood there awkwardly, not even knowing who she was or why she was so upset.

“You’re Mr. French’s daughter?” he asked eventually, handing her a tissue.

“Yes,” Belle said, her voice sounding waterlogged.

“He left you the shop,” said Gold flatly. Then, with a little more emotion, “He failed to inform me.”

Belle sighed thickly, on the cusp of tears again, waiting for life’s next big blow. Gold was going to land her with her father’s debt now. He was going to take the shop back. Or, judging from the rumors she’d heard around town, he’d come up with something so terrible that ordinary minds couldn’t even imagine it.

But Gold only looked around the shop, an expression of mild curiosity on his face, before saying, “You don’t have much of a green thumb.”

Belle choked, then sputtered out a laugh. “I -- no, I-I don’t,” she said. “I don’t know why he left me this, honestly. I -- I never really helped him with growing the flowers. I just delivered them.”

“I remember,” Gold said grimly. Belle wondered at his tone for a moment -- later she would recall, however vaguely, riding to his big pink house on her bicycle as a girl, carrying a huge bouquet from Dr. Hopper, expressing his condolences. Gold’s father had died -- Belle remembered wondering if his mother was dead too, and if that made him an orphan. She’d asked Papa later, but he said adults without parents weren’t called orphans. They were just called adults.

“As it happens,” said Gold, “I did a fair bit of gardening when I was a young … but I have a feeling it’s not gardening advice you’re after.”

Belle blinked, unsure what to say. She didn’t even know if she grasped his meaning,

“From one business owner to another,” said Mr. Gold, his warm brown eyes meeting hers, “I firmly suggest that you consider shutting the flower shop down. Storybrooke has many florists, Miss French, and you’ll recall that each of them is thriving.”

Belle’s heart sank. Her father’s shop had been thriving once, too, before she got to it.

“Anyone can run a business to the ground, especially if the have no interest in running it,” said Gold crisply. “I’ve done it myself. The key is to find something you enjoy, Miss French. You’re plenty smart enough to run a business properly; you just don’t have the motivation.”

Belle gaped at him. Gold stared back -- well, really, it was more of a glare, but he’d been glaring at her ever since he walked in and Belle was starting to suspect it was just his neutral face.

“Open a bookstore or something,” said Gold finally, looking confused by her prolonged silence. He picked his way back toward the door, stepping carefully around the broken flower pots and stringy brown weeds. He was gone before Belle knew it, not even discussing the rent.

And of course, the first thing Belle did was grab her diary and write an essay about how handsome he was. Belle closed the journal briefly, her face bright red. She’d plain forgotten about her crush on Mr. Gold -- it had faded, unrequited, about three years ago, when it became clear to her that Gold wasn’t even interested in being friends.

He was probably gay, Belle mused, not for the first time. A well-dressed, wealthy bachelor who lived in a pink house and hung around with Archie? Archie was Storybrooke’s only openly gay resident. But it was always possible, Belle reminded herself, that Gold was bi. Or pan. Or asexual -- she’d be fine with asexual, so long as he was still into her romantically--

And holy shit she did not need to start this crush again. Belle skipped a page and stopped, her eyes landing immediately on the word “cemetery” in the middle of the page.

This was it. Her heart pounded faster -- Belle read the whole entry intently, searching for clues. But there were none; the more she read, the more she realized that there was no new information to be gained. She’d read this entry over and over again in the past, so much so that every detail was permanently plastered in her brain.

She’d gone to the cemetery with her camera and a tape recorder. She’d made it ten steps in when a blast of cold air hit her and the smell of garbage filled her nostrils, making her gag. Then came the nauseating sense that something in the graveyard didn’t like her, wanted her to leave.

So Belle had left.

She sighed, closing the journal once again. There was nothing of use there -- in fact, other than the cemetery rejecting her and the introduction to Gold one day before, there was nothing interesting in the diary at all. You’d think an aspiring writer would latch onto a personal storyline like Belle’s life had been that year -- moving back home, inheriting an old shop, dealing with the past. But it hadn’t been so interesting to her at the time, and even now, all she cared about was the damn cemetery.

Belle flopped backward onto the mattress, kicking her legs out and accidentally knocking a diary off the bed. She glared at the ceiling, thinking of the graveyard.

There was nothing to it. She would have to visit it.

Chapter Text

“More gray hairs,” Hopper commented. Gold looked up from the antique lamp he was fixing, his face the picture of exasperation.

“The shop is closed,” he said. Hopper just shrugged, depositing a bag of takeout from Granny’s on Gold’s desk.

“Front door was unlocked,” he said. “Besides, it’s lunch time. And you’re ignoring the question.”

“You didn’t ask a question,” Gold said. He refused to even peek inside the takeout bag. Granny’s was, like any small-town diner, extremely overrated.

“Your hair,” Hopper said again, “is gray.”

Last time you said it was silver, Gold thought, somewhat hurt by the downgrade. He didn’t say anything aloud. He turned back to the lamp, trying to ignore Hopper’s presence.

“I’m guessing you didn’t take a vacation,” Hopper said pointedly. Gold let out a quick, inaudible sigh.

“A vacation won’t turn my hair brown again,” he said.

“Well,” said Hopper, hedging, “it was really more of an auburn color…”

Gold put down his tools with a loud clank and gave Hopper a look of mixed exasperation and disbelief.

“I’m trying to work,” he said.

“No,” said Hopper in voice so gentle it made Gold’s cheeks turn red. “You’re avoiding a lunch break. People need to eat, Gold. And in case you haven’t noticed, you are a person. I’m starting to think you might have an eating disorder.”

“I don’t eat your cheeseburgers because I’m a vegetarian,” Gold snapped. He was lying -- Hopper’s comment had cut to the bone, bringing back uneasy memories of Gold’s youth. The self-inflicted cigarette burns and starvation. The need to feel clean, or at least repentant.

The voice of one his fosters came to him suddenly, unbidden: They’re drawn to that, you know .

Gold fought back a shudder; he realized he was sitting there, frozen, just staring at the lamp while Hopper watched him curiously.

“Gold?” Hopper said.

“I’m fine,” Gold murmured. He used a pair of tweezers to push the takeout bag off his desk; Hopper lurched forward just in time to catch it. “You can go now. I don’t like an audience when I eat.”

Hopper was silent; Gold could feel him trying to make eye contact, so he kept his gaze trained on the lamp, refusing to look up. Finally, Hopper muttered a goodbye and turned away; Gold continued fiddling with the lamp until he heard the front door close. Then he set his tools down with a shaky sigh, leaning back in his chair.

They’re drawn to that.

He’d dreaded every day with those fosters. Two old women, nice enough in most ways, but batshit insane. One had claimed to see ghosts everywhere she went; the other thought just about everything could invite demons into your life. She’d warned ten-year-old Gold about the dangers of bathing vs. showering, claiming that stagnant water drew dark spirits in. Anger had been a forbidden emotion, sure to lure a demon into the house -- Gold’s first and only beating there came when they caught him retreating to the woods, taking his anger at his father out on a tree. His fists had been raw and bloody when his fosters found him, and he’d thought at first -- with dread -- that they might try to comfort him. But instead they’d started wailing in fear and (ironically) anger of their own, insisting that Gold had invited the devil himself into their house by punching a tree.

If they’d known about his teenage penchant for burning himself, they’d have died of shock. And Gold would have died of embarrassment -- he still cringed whenever he saw his bare arms in the shower. He’d spent his teenage years wavering between stubborn disbelief in the occult and the harrowing fear that his fosters were right, that any small misstep could lead to demonic possession. He burned himself, pretending that he didn’t believe in evil spirits, pretending that you couldn’t invite them in because they just weren’t real. And then he would panic, go into religious terror, and fast, pretending that if he denied himself food, it would drive the demons away.

That was the key. It was all pretend. He’d been just young enough to get sucked into their insanity.

Gold grabbed his cane and trudged to the front of his shop, locking the door. He hadn’t thought of his fosters in what felt like decades and it wouldn’t do for someone to come in and see his hands shaking and his face all white with slow, roiling resentment.

They messed him up almost as much as his parents had. Almost as much as Milah.

Gold sat back down at his desk and pushed those thoughts from his mind. He picked up the tweezers, put them down, and picked up a screwdriver instead. He couldn’t remember what it was that needed fixing.

Maybe Hopper was right, he thought with a long sigh. He could use a vacation.

Everything was just as Belle left it in the old cemetery. They were the same old grimy stones, the same broken fences surrounding family plots, the same white pillars with a different person’s name written on each side.

She took one step off the road and onto the cemetery’s grass, holding her breath. She waited for a sign that she should leave -- a sudden gust of wind, a rotten smell, an ominous sound -- but nothing came.

Despite herself, Belle smiled. She took another step, and then another. At the first grave, she stopped, surprised to realize that she remembered exactly who was buried where. She whispered the names under her breath as she walked by, pausing in front of each stone.

Elizabeth Bradley, 1843.

William Theodore Grant, 1901.

Theresa Salwarth, 1892.

She’d seen faces on many of these stone before, and she’d seen brief apparitions in the darkness, some of them attached to names. Belle smiled down at them, feeling warm and welcome, like she’d walked into a party full of old friends.

She reached the plot of unused land near the back and closed her eyes, counting to thirty. There was no way to tell whether anything would greet her when she opened them, and no traceable origin of this ritual that Belle could remember. It was just something she’d always done. Something that felt right.

She opened her eyes and, 23 years and three days after her first sighting, saw the ghost boy once more.

Chapter Text

Belle paced back and forth, her cell phone in hand, gnawing at her bottom lip. This was the most nerve-wracking thing she’d ever considered doing. And her mind kept looking for a way out. She didn’t have to call -- she could just send him a text. Or a letter in the mail.

But what if he ignored it? If she called, he couldn’t just pretend he never got the message, But he could hang up on her, which meant she should go in person. But if she went in person, there was no anonymity. Did she need anonymity? Did she want it?

Belle groaned aloud, tossing her phone down on the counter. She was glad there were no customers around to see her distress.

Think calmly, she told herself, her heart thumping. You do need anonymity, because if Gold knows who you are, he can retaliate. And he probably will. He’ll think this is a sick joke.

So a letter. She knew where he lived -- she could drop it in his mailbox directly. But that might be a little creepy.

Belle ran through all her options, but before she could come up with a plan, the door opened, shattering her concentration as a customer walked in.

Oh fuck.

“Good morning!” Belle squeaked. Gold might have murmured a response, but she wasn’t sure -- he walked past her quickly, heading deep into the bookshelves. To the occult section, Belle realized. Her stomach felt like it was falling into her toes.

Follow him. She had to follow him.

Belle wove through the shelves, stepping quietly, listening to the tapping of Gold’s cane. By the time she got to the occult section, he was already there, paging through a book. He stopped when he saw her, eyebrows raised.

Belle suddenly couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Is … this section closed?” Gold asked uncertainly. Belle had to try a few times before her voice would come out.

“Uh, no. No. Sorry.”

Gold cocked his head questioningly, a look which Belle pointedly ignored. She squinted at the book he was holding, trying to read the counter.

“Interested in ghosts?” she asked, her voice painfully cheerful. Gold narrowed his eyes at her, looking more confused than suspicious.

He didn’t answer. Belle’s nervousness was fighting with her urge to share the message she’d gotten last night; a voice inside her head was screaming it over and over, but her mouth had clamped shut. Finally, Gold turned away from her placing his book back on the shelf. His fingers trailed over the titles and he picked another one, pretending she wasn’t there.

Finally, Belle took a deep breath and blurted it out.

“Neal wants to meet you,” she said. “At the old cemetery down the street.”

Gold was still staring at the book, not at her, but his back was stiff and his eyes were frozen, unmoving. Very slowly, he turned to look at her. Belle couldn’t read him at all; mouth dry, she plunged on.

“Tonight,” she said. “When it’s dark out. He wants to meet you there.”

Gold shook his head ever so slightly, his mouth a thin line. Belle could see a thread of panic in his eyes and tried to ward it off.

“I know it sounds crazy,” she said desperately. “But please just believe me on this. If you’re not ready tonight, I’m sure he can wait, but --”

“How do you know about Neal?” asked Gold, his voice deathly quiet. Belle stuttered her way into silence; she’d never been on the receiving end of a true glare from Gold before.

“I -- he -- I saw him,” she said. “Last night. And when I was a kid.”

She watched Gold’s throat bob as he struggled to swallow; his chest was moving rapidly up and down.

“When you were a kid?” he repeated, his voice not as composed as he’d like to believe. “How old, exactly?”

Belle stared at him. “Ten,” she said. “Why?”

“And you’re … how old, now?”

“Thirty-three,” said Belle. Gold nodded tightly, his eyes skittering away from her and over the wall of books. He looked ill, like he might faint.

“Alive or dead?” he asked finally, and it took Belle a moment to realize what he meant, and to recognize the small, desperate spark of hope in his eyes.

“Dead,” she whispered. Gold turned away, refusing to let her see the hope fizzle and die.

He didn’t speak for a long time. Belle watched him, wringing her hands all the while. Gold wasn’t shouting at her, like she thought he would, and he wasn’t threatening to raise her rent. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to feel relieved.

Finally, Gold turned his face toward her just enough for her to see one of his hooded eyes.

“What do you think summons them?” he asked, and Belle brought her gaze down to the book in his hands, the one on dark spirits and demons. For the first time, she recognized the tension in his shoulders as fear, not as anger, and her chest began to ache.

“Loneliness, maybe,” she said. Gold turned to face her fully, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “A lack of love. Neal … isn’t a demon, Mr. Gold. At least, I don’t think so. If you managed to summon him somehow, I doubt it was through anything dark.”

Gold didn’t nod; there was a flicker of emotion in his eyes, like maybe he wanted to believe her but just couldn’t force himself to. He looked back down at his book, silently opening it and turning away once more.

Belle realized she was being dismissed.