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Gold stared down at the carved wooden pipes. Dimly, he realized his hand shook. The Dark One gripped his wrist with his other hand to steady it.
He could feel his newly reacquired power course through him. Dark magic pounded in his ears like the steady, oppressive drumbeat of a heart. He had more power than he'd ever had.
And still the man had never felt more helpless.
He stared around the shop, empty save a few dusty trinkets, and laughed—a low, heavy thing, like his spirits were—and threatened to be—for a long time. Hades had backed him into a corner—one that he couldn't see a way out of. Every direction his wily mind turned the walls grew taller, more insurmountable. A dispassionate Rumplestiltskin could have bowed to the Lord of the Underworld for having trapped him so throughly—but his desperate, blinding panic—one that was fast turning to despair, like rancid milk, sickening in the sun—overwhelmed all objectivity.
Which was how he had ended up here, about to do the one thing he'd sworn he’d never do again.
He lifted the pipes to his lips and blew a single, low note.
"Come around, have you?" a soft voice said in his ear—in spite of himself, he jumped.
Peter Pan...still dressed in that suit, Gold couldn't help noting, it looked so ridiculous on the lanky, boyish form his father had taken up again—circled his son and slipped behind the glass partition of the case. He leaned forward to study Rumplestiltskin, his bright eyes narrowed in keen and clever interest—his expression, typically opaque. In his right hand he held a very familiar crystal.
The boy threw it up and down a few times, experimentally.
Rumple's eyes followed it as Pan tossed it higher and higher into the air.
"In a...manner of speaking," he said, voice steady and guarded. "I believe we can help each other—"
"Oh, come now, Rumple," Pan chided, abruptly. "There's no point in playing coy with me."
He caught the crystal and held it to his son's face—the swirling shadow of an image coalesced before Rumplestiltskin's eyes. Just as quickly he appeared in the glass, standing before Hades' domain—fresh and painful, a new wound on top of a hundred others.
"You're in one of your fixes, aren't you, my boy?"
Rumplestiltskin snatched the crystal out of Pan's hand.
"It's nothing I can't handle." He pulled it down to his side, squeezing the glass sphere so hard his fist nearly turned white.
“Is that so?” Pan crossed back around the counter and walked over to the pedestal where the innocent doll still lay. He picked it up and fiddled with its straw arms, gently. “That doesn’t explain why you blew the pipe.”
“Getting out of here is taking too long,” Rumple said, tearing his gaze away from the doll and forcing himself to stare directly into those fathomless blue eyes. “I thought you might have some means in the shop for a living soul to return and that we could—”
“You’re trembling, Rumple,” Pan interrupted, in a low, clear voice he remembered from the cave in Neverland—the closest he imagined his crafty father could come to sincere. “You’d be better served just having out with it. You know it’s only a matter of time before I figure it out—I always do.”
“I’m not here to play games with you.”
“Nor am I.” He narrowed his eyes. “We both know you wouldn’t have come here unless you were prepared to tell me the truth.” Pan hopped up on the glass and sat, his eyes patiently fixed on his son. “If it’s just a matter of easing in to it, I can wait.”
Gold’s temper flared.
“I don’t—” He jerked his head away from his father—and then he saw it—
The cup, still sitting where he’d left it on its pedestal. Her chipped cup.
Belle.
Then it all came flooding back—every tightly leashed feeling he’d wanted so desperately not to show him, of all people—and his facade broke like a china doll cracking on the floor.
Rumple’s vision blurred, and halfway through turning around his thin shoulders racked with a sob that was—despite his best efforts—impossible to conceal.
The sound of light steps, and then…
“You’re in trouble.” It wasn’t a question. “Hades has some…power over you.”
Through the mass of tears he saw the indistinct, slim figure of Peter Pan. As they fell his father’s face became clear to him, and he squeezed his eyes shut again.
“I—I don’t know what to do,” he admitted, voice shaking. “I don’t have anywhere else to go—I…”
“—Made a deal you didn’t understand.” He didn’t flinch as the hand was laid delicately on his shoulder. It was warm—that surprised him. “That’s a lesson you’ve never been able to learn, laddie.”
His fist curled around the crystal.
“You don’t know anything about—”
“—Trading away a child?” Rumplestiltskin’s mouth snapped shut. “I may not know much about second-borns, true…” His voice softened at the broken look on his son’s face. “But I thought you of all people would’ve known better.”
“I had no other choice!” he spat, defensively bristling, slipping out of Pan’s hold. The boy watched his son walk shakily to the nearest chair and collapse in it—Gold felt the piercing scrutiny keenly. He stared at the floor, at the glass in his hand that he would dearly love to throw at a wall—anywhere but at Pan.
“What would you have done in my place?” he asked, unable to temper his sarcasm—or the bitterness that lingered. The idea of being judged by this man, of all men, galled him too much, and he knew in his heart he would never be able to really conceal what he thought from Pan, so why not unleash his anger, his guilt, his self-loathing upon the man whose actions had, for better or for worse, defined his life more than anyone else’s? His father has set him on his course more surely than even Milah.
He could see her face, still—the shock, the pain of betrayal, it was burned into his brain so vividly that, no matter how tightly he squeezed his eyes shut, she was there.
“If you had been poisoned, you mean?” Gold’s head snapped up—the pointed implication hadn’t even occurred to him. The boy tilted his head and shrugged, casually. “I would have stabbed the man and stolen the antidote, of course.”
Of course…Rumple rubbed his temple and laughed—typical. There was something comforting in this predictability…there was no one he could talk to, living or dead, who he’d known as long.
“You know, I believe you would’ve.” He shook his head.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, honestly.
“Then I ask again…” Pan looked down at the doll, his namesake—casually flicking a piece of dust off it. “Why did you come here?”
“Because I…” Dear God, he was going to make him admit it. “…I need your help.”
There it was.
“Why me?” his father asked, and through everything, Gold could detect something he recognized from experience—silkiness, offense, perhaps even—in whatever small way he could dent Pan’s ego—hurt. “What about those ah—supposed friends of yours?”
“They don’t have what it requires to circumnavigate the contract—or Hades.”
“And I do?”
He opened his arms wide, the picture of flattering placation.
“Everything I know about cheating I learned from you.”
Pan’s narrow smirk widened with something—the barest flicker of a genuine emotion, so quick not even Rumple noticed it.
“And you trust me?”
“Not one iota,” Gold laughed, again, more steely this time. He could feel the tears on his face dry, as if he was back in Hades’ Hall, blue fire crackling in his face. “But you’d take me for a fool if I did.”
Pan’s eyes narrowed into cat-like slits.
“And what if you try to betray me?”
“You plucked that thought right out of my head,” he said, eyes narrowing. “It’s almost as though you understand me.”
A flash of surprise—Rumple had to admit, it addition to distracting, it satisfied.
“You want my help but you won’t even pretend you’re considering starting over with me?” Pan asked, his voice turning frosty. “Rather cold of you, my boy.”
“Have you got a better option?” Pan’s cold smile dropped. “At the very least, it’s a more interesting proposition that rotting here for all eternity. I’m all you’ve got, now.”
And you’re all I’ve got.
His father studied him in silence. Three centuries later, and…here they were again, improbably together. Just the two of them.
He could’ve laughed again, but it wasn’t really funny. It was just a fact.
“Isn’t this what you always wanted?” Rumple asked, eyes locked on Pan’s. Recognition—understanding flickered in them. And that was what he craved now—not love, but understanding, and if there was anyone ready and willing to give it…
“What?”
“For me to admit, at last…” Rumplestiltskin swallowed. His tongue was thick—something in the air down here, death was dry and papery—but he wouldn’t stop until he got the words out. “…that I’m my father’s son.”
It took a moment for it to sink in—then Pan let out a giggle that Rumple recognized well. He had heard it echoed back in his own ears so many times before…never realizing, until this moment, where he’d learned it.
Peter Pan tossed the doll towards him—Rumplestiltskin dropped the crystal—it shattered again—and caught little Peter Pan in the air.
The straw felt like steel under his grip.
“It took you long enough.”