A/N: So, it's been so long since I've posted on here that I'm sure everyone's forgotten me, but here's the beginning of the most ambitious thing I've tried yet. An alternate universe complete with flashbacks, tie-ins to the show, Disney nods and everything. I'm very much hoping it works in a good way, and if it does, it'll be thanks to my wonderful and encouraging beta-reader, roberre! If you haven't forgotten me or just want to give the story a try, I do hope you enjoy it and please let me know what you think!

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended.

The woods were dark, black and empty and foreboding, a stark and terrifying contrast to the carnelian and amber brilliance of the flames destroying the castle he'd invaded and then left far behind. He had escaped that fire, but he still wasn't safe. He was never safe, and neither was Bae.

Unless the beggar had told him the truth.

Hope dangled before him in the form of a fireside tale and he clenched salvation in his sweating hand.

Rumplestiltskin took a deep, shuddering breath and raised the dagger before him, examining it by the light of the flickering torch he clasped in his other hand. He felt like a beacon, standing alone in the dark, the last sentinel protecting his son, all that stood between noble and beautiful Baelfire and a gruesome, pointless death on a faraway battlefield. He closed his eyes, pictured Bae in his mind, the hazel darkness of his eyes, the drape of hair over his forehead, the way he felt when he clung to Rumplestiltskin and simply breathed.

He wasn't a brave man—he would never be that—but he could pretend. For Bae. (Pretend for his son, as he had once pretended when facing a pirate crew, but he couldn't think of that, because this time he couldn't fail.)

"Zoso," he said, so quietly that he couldn't imagine the Dark One could have possibly heard him. "Zoso!" he said again, louder, closer to commanding. "Zoso, I summon thee!"

Nothing.

The disappointment was so great, so resounding, that Rumplestiltskin felt his legs buckle and the darkness flashed with sparks going off at the edge of his vision. All of it for nothing—the wasted wool, the fire, the danger, the flaming tapestries, the days he'd wasted on this scheme when he could have been putting as many miles behind them as a lame spinner and a young boy could manage. He'd been brave, and in the end, what did it matter? Nothing at all, and he was vaguely surprised he had ever expected any differently.

But, no, he couldn't afford to think like that. Bae was still in danger, and dawn would still bring his fourteenth birthday, so Rumplestiltskin locked his knees and straightened himself.

The knife had been hidden, guarded, locked away, therefore it was important. It was exactly where the beggar had told him it would be, and there was a name engraved on it just as he had said, so Rumplestiltskin could not give up. There was something to this knife—there had to be—so he would stand here until the entire world turned as red as the skies and the ogres all crumbled to dust if that was what it took to keep Bae safe.

He turned, fighting disappointment, and came face to face with a cloaked and hooded form standing far too close.

Rumplestiltskin jerked backward, grabbed hold of his walking stick where it rested in the crook of his elbow, letting the torch drop to the forest floor even as his other hand tightened almost painfully over the knife. He had survived a fire just an hour earlier, but the knife was all that kept Bae with him. He couldn't lose it. He wouldn't let go of it. He would use it—to kill if need be (though he hoped it wouldn't come to that).

"You were asking for me," the Dark One intoned, and power and menace ground his voice to gravel. Superstitious and ingrained fear ran through Rumplestiltskin's veins, twisting and snarling around his spine. His walking stick was in his hand, tilted and useless, but it was a poor weapon; in his other hand he held the mystical dagger.

"Submit, oh Dark One!" he commanded. Pleaded. Images of all the Dark One's power and the pain he could inflict so casually, the punishments he could dole out, the magic he could summon with the mere wave of his hand—all of it rushed through Rumplestiltskin's mind in a dizzying swirl that left him limp and boneless with expectant terror.

Except his hand still held the dagger between them, and Bae's name was a talisman, protecting him from danger so long as he chanted it over and over in his head to fight back the fearsome memories of the mysterious figure that ensured a frightened populace's obedience to the Duke of the Frontlands.

"I control you," Rumplestiltskin said. He waited, unable to breathe, because everything the beggar had told him was true so far, but…but this was the Dark One in front of him! And Rumplestiltskin was only a poor spinner, a helpless father desperate to save his son, a crippled man who had given all he could to a harsh world and couldn't give up any more.

"Yes, you do," Zoso said calmly, and Rumplestiltskin was frozen. The torch lay in a guttering puddle of light, flickering like dying hopes against the blackness of the forest, and suddenly it all seemed like a dream. Utterly surreal, wholly impossible, completely incomprehensible. Rumplestiltskin was a coward, this he knew above all else. And the Dark One was untouchable—that was a fact known by all the desperate parents of the Frontlands.

Yet here they stood.

Zoso didn't move, didn't alter his stance in the slightest. His face was masked in shadows, and yet he seemed altogether too calm for a man who was nothing more than a puppet to the hand that sheathed his knife. (But then…he wasn't a man, was he?)

"Wield the power wisely," the Dark One advised Rumplestiltskin.

It was a warning, and in the tales Bae loved so much, the hero who didn't take the time to heed such cautions usually ended up regretting it. Not that Rumplestiltskin was a hero, but he was all his son had. He needed a moment to think, then, a moment to remember all the careful words he had strung together in purposeful lines and polished to gleam with power while he bathed wool in lanolin.

But it was hard to think when his good leg ached and his bad leg burned, when that torch was still flickering and dancing at the corners of his vision, when the knife sat in his hand with such unaccustomed weight.

When the Dark One wouldn't be quiet and let him think.

"You can wield at any time now," he taunted. When he moved, slightly, stepping forward, Rumplestiltskin instinctively backed away, thrusting the knife higher between them. "It's almost dawn now," Zoso hissed. "That means it's your son's birthday. I bet Hordor and his men are already on their way to your house."

"No, they can't take him!" Rumplestiltskin stated fiercely, desperately. The familiar feeling of helpless urgency sang through him, beating with every thump of his heart, inhaled and exhaled with every movement of his lungs. The nightmares he'd endured over the past two years assailed him again, all the more powerful for visiting him during his waking hours, so much so that all he could see was Bae being dragged away, so small and vulnerable and fragile in Hordor's cruel and smug grip. Bae being given pitiful weapons and sent to the front lines. Bae trying to be brave and strong and noble (and what good would those wonderful, beloved attributes be to him then?) as the ogres raced toward him, their footsteps shaking the ground, their blind eyes staring straight at the small boy standing so immovably before them.

Bae broken and bloody and no longer breathing. His son reduced to a pile of bones and flesh and clothes.

Rumplestiltskin shook and trembled beneath the onslaught of nightmarish images, but his hand was rock-steady, the Dark One's knife never wavering.

But Zoso was shaking his head. "You don't control them. You control me." Somehow, at some point, the Dark One had grown close, so close that Rumplestiltskin could feel the coldness emanating from him, could look straight into the shadows of his cowl and still see only corpse-white flesh cloaked in concealing darkness. His voice slithered straight into Rumplestiltskin's soul, twisting deeper and deeper, lodging itself so tightly there that he didn't think he'd ever be able to get it free.

"Have you ever wondered…was he really your child at all? Unlike you, he's not a coward, and yearns to fight and die in glory."

"No," he whispered, but it was nothing more than the tiny, broken plea of a tiny, broken man. Milah was there, suddenly, standing in front of him, never quite looking at him, casting scorn and derision and a lifetime of regrets on his lap. And her pirate captor, her killer, flicking Rumplestiltskin's face with a cold, sharp blade and denouncing him before the world. And Hordor, twisted and cruel and domineering. All of them, reflected there in the torchlight that was sucked in and devoured by the Dark One's form. All of them trying to tear Bae away from him.

"What a poor bargain that would be," Zoso continued, rivulets of pleased sadism sharpening the edges of that gravelly voice, "to lay down your soul to save your bastard son."

And for the first time, Rumplestiltskin felt something touch and weave through and temper his fear and desperation. He felt anger pool in his stomach, felt fury lick its way up his body, felt rage scorch the insides of his mind. The knife felt like molten courage in his hand, solid and real and for once so easy to attain, and for the first time in his life, Rumplestiltskin wasn't the helpless one. Because Zoso was standing in front of him…but he hadn't hurt him, hadn't touched him. The Dark One—and Rumplestiltskin (Hobblefoot, Spindleshanks, coward) had him in thrall.

Power, strange and unfamiliar and alien, filled him up from the inside out and Rumplestiltskin felt his spine straighten and his legs strengthen and his vision clear. Everything seemed suddenly quiet and calm and peaceful, while Zoso's taunts and intimations fell uselessly before him, like arrows spent before they reached their target.

The Dark One leaned forward, intimidating his master. "So I ask you: what would you have me do?"

Rumplestiltskin wanted to lift the knife and plunge it into Zoso's chest. He wanted to unleash the entire lifetime's worth of fury he'd never realized he held yet could now feel roiling inside of him. He wanted to kill the Dark One and take all that wonderful, unbelievable, invigorating power for himself. (He wanted to silence the taunts and whispers and rumors that had followed him since Bae's birth.)

It would be so easy. Only lift his hand and let it fall again, with more force behind it, and give one simple command—his first—to the Dark One he now controlled.

"Die."

So easy. So simple. So quick.

But it was almost as if that was what the Dark One wanted him to do. As if he were baiting him, mocking him, leading him ever on into a trap.

And Rumplestiltskin was tired of being led around, controlled by forces outside of himself.

So he shook his head and let his hand drop to his side. "Why do you want me to kill you?" he asked.

For the first time, Rumplestiltskin saw a flash of emotion in Zoso's fluid, mysterious features. The cloaked form drew back slightly, surprised, perhaps even taken aback.

"Tell me," Rumplestiltskin commanded, the knife burning so hotly in his hand that he was half-afraid he'd bear the brand of it on his palm forever afterward.

Resentment coiled through that crushed voice as Zoso answered. "All magic comes with a price. I am tired of being the one who pays it."

"So you want me to?" Rumplestiltskin asked. He was not surprised; he only felt tired, unutterably weary of being used.

"I know how to recognize a desperate soul," Zoso hissed, and Rumplestiltskin was not so confident in his newfound power that he didn't feel a surge of fear at the hatred rolling outward from the Dark One. "You want power and I have it to give—seems a worthwhile bargain."

"But not one I want to make," Rumplestiltskin decided. Slowly, purposely, he sheathed the magical knife in his belt and stooped to pick up the guttering torch. "I don't want to pay any price. I just want to save my son."

"What is your command?" Zoso asked, defeat banking the sibilant hiss of his earlier words, resignation making him look smaller than he had only a moment before.

"Take me to my house," Rumplestiltskin commanded. "We're going to kill Hordor and his men and whoever else tries to hurt my son. And then we're going to end the Ogre's War."

When the world swirled all about him at his command, Rumplestiltskin felt stronger, more powerful, than he ever had before in his life. When smoke danced away to reveal Hordor dragging his son out of his house, Rumplestiltskin felt a cold, grim smile curve his lips upward. When the Dark One slaughtered the soldiers that had frightened and terrorized him and all the families of the Frontlands, Rumplestiltskin felt his fear actually receding, disappearing, wiped away as if it had never been.

When Bae was safe in his arms, trying not to cry and asking a dozen questions in the space of a breath and there, Rumplestiltskin decided that he liked the feel of power.

The moment the savior first sets foot in Storybrooke, Mr. Gold feels the spark of power sizzle through the air, a chain reaction prompted by dormant magic stirring from its long slumber, a spark that travels invisibly through stagnant air to reach him. It grows into a tingle, resonating in every particle of his being, reawakening and revitalizing him. He feels alive and awake and aware, all things he hasn't felt for exactly twenty-eight years to the day.

He is out of the door of his quiet shop without even bothering to lock it behind him, his cane clutched painfully tight in his hand. As he walks the streets that were built at his aloof direction, he takes in deep breaths of air and feels a freshness that wasn't there only moments before. He's been living a dream for almost three decades, and now finally, the dream is fading away, loosening its grip to the point where he can feel its tenuousness.

Freedom is so close that it is almost tangible, and he imagines he can smell it in the new scents the stirring air brings him.

He does not need to ask anyone where the savior is, does not need to procure directions. Instead, he follows the feel of her power and reality and prophesied purpose as clearly as if there is a blazing path laid out before him. It is dark and the stars are dim and distant in the sky above him; more closely, the lights of Storybrooke shine vaguely, absently. When he sees her, standing beside a yellow bug parked across the street from Granny's bed and breakfast, her hair—as golden as her father's—glinting in the ambient light, he has to blink to shield his eyes from the brilliance she casts out around her.

The savior, finally here to save him from this hell and free him to be a hero.

The car she leans against so casually, her arms crossed over her chest as she calmly surveys the town sprawling out around her (a trap so cunningly designed to confine and conceal), is cheerful and ostentatious and not at all what he expected the savior to come riding into town in. But the desperate cannot be choosy about their saviors, he thinks, so he merely gives an inward shrug and continues toward her.

It could be something of a sacred trek, this long, slow walk toward his salvation. He could ponder all the things that brought him here, could contemplate what might have been done differently. But it is better, he has found, to leave the past in the past and to focus only on what he needs, what he must obtain, what he will one day find. The past is harsh and cold and empty and it doesn't matter at all except in that it happened. The future is much more immediate and pressing, and the present infinitely more useful.

She sees him coming before he reaches her, and straightens slowly, her hands falling to her sides. Gold gives her a half-smile (the only smile that comes easily to him now) and pauses a healthy distance from her.

"Good evening," he greets her softly.

"Hey," she replies, standoffish and wary. Her red jacket soaks in the light but her hair reflects it, as do her eyes. Gold has never been anyone's friend (not truly, not wholly, not without betraying or being betrayed), but he spent enough time with James (David, really, but he'd been a better prince than James ever dreamed of being) and Snow, before the end, to recognize pieces of each of them in this woman before him, come to the call of destiny like a sheep led to the slaughter.

Of course, her fate will be much kinder than that of the proverbial sheep's.

Probably.

He leans on his cane, examines her surreptitiously. "New to town, I see. Just visiting, or are you here to stay?"

"Just visiting," she replies shortly. Her silhouette is clean and narrow now that she is standing straight, and there is the sense of coiled energy wound up within her tall, slender form. She does not seem inclined to trust him, though he is small and seemingly frail with a limp that slows him, and there is suspicion in her eyes as she regards him. She is not the average cut of hero made famous in countless stories and idealistic books. She is more cynical, perhaps, harsher, more jagged around the edges.

Gold approves.

Of course, he thinks, he has been waiting for this moment for so long (sacrificed so much for it, paid for it a hundred times over) that perhaps he is more inclined to soften his standards.

"Naturally," he says and allows the hint of a wry smile. "It's a small town and we don't get many visitors—pardon my curiosity."

"Yeah, well, it wasn't exactly my idea to come," she says with a shrug, her suspicion at least mildly allayed. She leans back against her car again, though she does not take her eyes off him.

"Few volunteered to come here," Gold says, amused by the humor only he can see in this situation. He is content to stand here and converse with the savior for long moments more (savor the unpredictability of conversation with someone whose lines haven't all been written and replayed a hundred times over, who is new and powerful and exciting), but he does not want the mayor to be suspicious of him. She would not hesitate to kill him, he knows, should he draw undue attention to himself.

"I can see why," the savior says acerbically, then winces and gives him an apologetic grimace. "Sorry, it's just…not really much around here, is there?"

"Oh, there's more than you might imagine," he tells her, but he knows his warnings fall on deaf ears. They generally do. "Will you be here long?"

"I don't know." The woman flicks her eyes away from him to take in an encompassing glance of the town. "It's not really up to me. I'm only here because of a favor I owed to a friend."

"Ah." Gold narrows his eyes at her and shifts his weight. "Owing favors is always a tricky thing."

The savior eyes him, an eyebrow arched. "Yeah. Sure, I guess." He has startled her, he thinks, or perhaps he has discomfited her. It would not be an uncommon reaction to his attempts at conversation. Cryptic remarks and inside jokes no one else has the memory to understand are not inclined to endear him to anyone, even without his more unsavory reputation.

"I'm sorry, how rude of me," he says with the precise amount of flustered embarrassment, mingled with just a touch of ironic humor. Enough to let her know, if she is watching as carefully as he knows she is, that he is not really flustered and that this is a game he is playing, for reasons she does not (cannot) know. "I'm Mr. Gold."

"Mr. Gold," she repeats with another quirk of her eyebrows. He cannot help but hold his breath as he waits, hushed and expectant and tingling with that awareness, for her reply. "Huh. Nice to meet you."

He breathes out a soft sigh of disappointment when she does not give him her name in return. He remembers it (of course he does, he paid for that in blood too, blood and death and betrayal), but he needs to hear her say it. Needs to remind himself that he is not as crazy as everyone in town thinks he is.

There are no crickets to break the silence that falls then, and aside from the glow surrounding Emma (the energy that is drawn to her outlining her in a haloed nimbus) there is nothing to illuminate them. The bed and breakfast seems suddenly farther away, and Gold is not the only one who notices. He manages a thin smile when Emma first shrinks into herself, then braces and straightens.

She pauses before letting out a quiet huff of air. "Emma," she tells him. "Emma Swan."

The moment is surprisingly anticlimactic. She says it, there is a brief flash of sheer satisfaction, almost smugness, radiating through him, and then nothing. It is just a name, albeit one oft-repeated and long thought of.

"Emma," he repeats, to make it more real, to solidify the two syllables in his mind. It is the first time he has spoken the name since the curse engulfed the land. "What a lovely name."

She is studying him through narrowed eyes, again, puzzled and suspicious still. He doesn't have time to soothe her concerns.

"Emma!" A man lopes toward her, emerging from the bed and breakfast, his hand upraised to catch the woman's attention. Gold watches him come, flicks a glance to Emma to see her rolling her eyes and nodding at the approaching stranger, a silhouetted form that resolves into a man with dark hair betraying a hint of curl and a slight beard tracing the planes of his face.

"Get the rooms all right?" Emma asks.

The man takes a long time to reply. He is staring at Gold, first intently, then with rising…horror? fear? confusion?…before it is all subsumed beneath a polite mask, a careful smile, a casual reply. "Of course. I told you I'd take care of everything. You need to have more faith."

Gold smiles (another small smile that is easily masked by the shadows he stands in, separated from the spotlight on Emma and her companion). It appears that, despite lingering doubts, the puppet has actually come through for them.

"This is Mr. Gold." Emma points to him. "And this," she jerks a thumb back at her companion, "is August Booth."

"August W. Booth," the man interjects with playfulness most would think natural. "You always forget the W."

"Can't imagine why," Emma mutters. "So, how long did you book the rooms for?"

"Why? In a hurry to leave already?" Their words sound as rote, as worn and faded, as the scripts the Storybrooke residents have followed for nearly three decades. Gold can tell this is an argument they have rehearsed and recited a dozen or a hundred times before. The savior, he realizes, has not come willingly.

Not that it matters. The curse recognizes what can destroy it, realizes those who share some kinship with it, restrains all it finds in its net. Now that Emma (Emma, and he remembers David confiding the name to him, remembers trust and hope and desperation in a combination so sickeningly familiar) is here, Gold does not fear her leaving.

"Well, a pleasure to meet you both," Gold cuts in, and does not miss the slight flinch August betrays at the sound of his voice. He wonders if, in the years they've been separated, the memory of his voice has comforted August or haunted him. "But I'll wish you both a good night. I'm sure you've been informed, Mr. Booth, but the diner next door is adequate if you're hungry."

"Just adequate?" Emma asks, her brow arched yet again. He thinks that suspicion is probably the emotion (the mindset) she is most comfortable with. He wonders if that will help or hinder her. The mayor is a woman prone to spotting challenges, adept at subtlety, and practiced at insinuating herself into the good graces of those she plans to murder. But then, murder is more difficult here than simply reaching out a hand and plucking a heart ripe for crushing.

"The food is passable—it's the company I don't much care for," Gold says casually. "And we rarely receive strangers, so you'll be stared at. Now, if you'll excuse me…" He begins walking again, tosses a "Good night" over his shoulder, and resists the urge to look back. He can feel their eyes on him, imagines he hears their hushed whispering begin as soon as he puts a bit of distance between them. But it would be too dangerous to have stayed longer and foolhardy to turn back or follow them into the diner.

The only way he has survived this long, the reason the script has not altered to accommodate his death, is by avoiding attention. So he ignores the way the townspeople he passes on his way back to his quiet store avoid him to the point of crossing to the opposite side of the street, the way they slide their eyes past him and pretend not to see him. He refuses to imagine what is happening behind him, even when he sees the sheriff racing toward the diner in his squad car, his eyes tight with pain (as they always are after his visits to the hospital) and the stress brought on by always having to answer to the mayor's every whim.

Gold keeps his eyes fixed forward and he puts one foot in front of the other, and he comforts himself with the fact that now, finally, he is moving toward something more than another day checked off his prison sentence. Now, finally, he will see how much of the curse he managed to save and how much was ruined beyond repair by the loopholes he'd found too late inserted throughout.

His shop is quiet and dark and forgotten by the rest of the town, shoved into an obscure corner between abandoned buildings. But it is familiar and within it he has gathered trinkets of power and souvenirs of the past, dying echoes of a world so few now remember.

He enters the shop and closes the door firmly behind him. Locks it. Climbs the stairs to the small, cramped apartment above the shop where he lives. Sits at his wheel and begins to spin. Inwardly, his mind whirls with plans that take cohesive shape as his fingers wind wool into thread. Outwardly, he smiles, because when he is planning he can forget that he is so utterly alone.

"Emma," he whispers, and though no one hears him, it is a victory cry.