In Storybrooke, Mr. Gold strives to be the man Bae used to love--until Belle is kidnapped to Neverland. If he resumes his Dark One powers to save her, can he control them? In the Enchanted Forest, Emma battles ogres, zombies and her ex to get back h...
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Mulan: No. We should leave him here to die. To pay for all the lives that he took. (The Doctor)
August slouched at his dad's kitchen table. He couldn't hide here forever. If he didn't bring the promised coffee to the stragglers in the den and his favorite wolf girl in the living room, they'd come looking for him. But ever since he'd gone upstairs to check on Geppetto and saw Mr. Gold disappear into the extra bedroom, he'd been avoiding Belle. Right now, the Blue Fairy was shattering her boyfriend's world. The prospect of being dragged into the middle of that set August's teeth on edge.
Wouldn't it be great to just leave a note for Dad, hop on my motorcycle, and get out of here? But he didn't. Despite a lifetime of sidestepping messy situations, his gut told him to stick around. If anyone knew how the shock of Blue's news would rip Mr. Gold apart, it was the guy who'd spent a week pretending to be his long-lost Baelfire.
August scratched his bearded cheek. In his defense, at the time, he'd been frantic to stop the strips of wood relentlessly replacing his flesh. When the remarkable being who'd first animated him confessed she was helpless without fairy dust, she'd proposed an alternative: Rumplestiltskin.
August recalled how that suggestion had made every remaining inch of his skin break out in goosebumps. Like all Enchanted Forest boys and girls, he'd been raised on tales of the imp that snatched naughty children and roasted them for supper. But with his left shin turning into a baseball bat, what choice had he had? According to the Blue Fairy, if he could get his hands on the imp's magical dagger, then he could demand a cure.
To accomplish that mission had required deviousness rivalling the heroes in his thriller novels. With Blue's coaching, he had left a sketch of the dagger lying about his room, let himself be caught sneaking around the pawnshop's back office, and dropped hints all over town about Enchanted Forest connections—each action designed to make Mr. Gold wonder, Is this my son?
Every step had gone according to Blue's plan—right up to the point where Mr. Gold had confronted him in the woods outside his cabin and August had called him, Papa. That's when the scariest-being-in-the-Enchanted-Forest, the most-feared-man-in-Storybrooke had crumbled. With growing chagrin, August had watched him weep as he appealed to Baelfire's generous heart and begged his forgiveness. None of the countless lies he'd told before or since had ever made him feel like such a dick.
That night the truth had been as plain as the nose on August's face. Rumplestiltskin wasn't a monster. He was just a man. Cursed daggers aside, that was the secret Mr. Gold trusted him to keep. If an enemy understood his vulnerability, he could really hurt him.
Not that it matters anymore.
August chewed the inside of his cheek. He got a kick out of bantering with Mr. Gold—his roundabout way of assuring him he'd never cross him again—but if the man really broke down, could he handle it?
