" You want to help him, right?" Nova asked quietly, settling down near Belle in the diner.

Belle glanced up.

" Is it that obvious?" she tried to smile.

"It is obvious that you have had a quarrel, and I guess it is not hard to know why. You have had a glimpse of the monster, didn`t you?" she added with an understanding smile.

Belle nodded and glanced at her cup of tea, chewing her lip.

" He isn`t like that. He is- different. He was, I know. And he could be again, only…He keeps clinging to his magic, though it does all that to him."

Nova studied her eyes.

" How much do you know about him?" she asked suddenly, " I don`t mean Gold, or the Dark One. I mean the man Rumplestiltskin. Nothing, is it?"

'He never talks."

" He wouldn`t. But you would like to see him, wont you?"

Belle frowned, puzzled.

"What do you mean?"

Nova pushed a three cornered stone in Belle`s hand.

"Take it. And when it is dark, squeeze it in your hands and think about him. It only works with someone you truly love" she explained. "Otherwise those who are willing to snatch a glimpse of the Dark One`s past would have formed a line."

"The Dark ones` past? You mean… "

"You saw the monster. Тow take a look at the man he used to be. I don`t know for certain, but I think… It may help. You, or him or you both. " Nova answered, pressing Belle`s other hand.

Belle shoot her head doubtfully.

" It will be… like tearing somewhere he wouldn`t let me in."

" No. The stone doesn`t work that way. It will only show you that which he would have told you himself- sooner or later. And – you need it. Both of you."

Belle silently curled her hand over the stone.

She was standing in front of a tiny, dilapidated hut.

And a man with a child at his side were approaching the hut, walking slowly, for the man was leaning heavily on a staff.

Belle froze, but in a moment realized that she was invisible to them- the barriers of Time were solid on their part. Her heart was beating wildly, when she looked at him more closely. At Rumplestiltskin as he used to be.

He is younger, and it is not just the years. He is younger because he is not bitter and guarded and cold and distrustful and powerful and dangerous.

The Dark One of the Dark Castle had been surrounded by fear, steeped in alienness and got used to it so much that a single touch of hers staggered him. And Gold was distanced from everyone, cloaked in his coldness and his sarcasm and his inreadableness.

And this man struck her at once as- unguarded. Vulnerable.

And his eyes were brown, but they seemed to be lighter that Rumple`s – because they were naked as well, not coated with centuries of pain and regret and loss.

On his face there was still a shadow of sorrowfulness, but a gentle, peaceful one. And there was joy in his eyes whenever he looked at the child by his side.

She saw the way he keept his right hand lightly touching the boy`s shoulder, the way he smiled, when the boy lifted his head to say or ask something and the way this smile gently lightened up the dark eyes.

And she followed them home. Entered it and saw immediately the way he faltered before the words that a woman ( Bae`s mother, she understood swiftly) hurled at him as soon as he crossed the threshold. He never answered her, just patted the boy on the head and limped across to his wheel. The boy left and now the woman spoke freer (not that she had been trying too hard to hide her anger and disdain before ). She was not scolding as Belle at first had osupposed- the words took long to penetrate to her, but finally she made something out.

" Laughing- stock... keep hiding ... can`t stand it…"

He answered something and Belle saw how with every sentence of hers his head was bowing lower and lower. Belle knew his wife was blaming him for something and he knew she was right.

"If only you had fought like every one - every MAN - did…If only you hadn`t scurried home, like a coward that you are, that your father was… And don`t tell me you did this for your son - he deserves a better father than you!"

His fingers stop now and his hands drop into his lap and she sees the tremble in them pass to his lips. He is still silent, but the rugged breath speaks for him. To her.

And she knows now about the leg and limpness and the cowardness he spoke of in the library.

And it doesn`t come as a surprise. She knew, she had always known, that he wasn`t brave- not really brave. But it didn`t matter, She knew that he needed a

lot of things - he needed bravery and he needed courage and he needed unselfishness and he needed learning to make right choices.

Just as much as he needed help and love and trust. And her.

And then , shakily, like he is used to being struck in the face and rising quietly again, he lifts his hands once more to the wheel.

Belle looks at the deft, gentle movements of his fingers, at the patience on his face. " It helps me forget"…

The spinning wheel suddenly whirls wildly and when it stops the scenery is changed.

Belle glanced swiftly around the smoky, dark pub. Bae`s mother, half- drunk, was laughing and flinging cards on the table.

And then Rumple- again with that softness that seemеd to mark his every movement and gesture and glance in this world and life said something to her and she laughed harshly. The man, sitting by her side, asked something, pointing at him and she answered with a derisive laughter:

"No one, just my husband."

There was another bout of laughter and she saw him wince under it, crumple, saw the nervous gesture as he fumbled with his staff, and yet he never once looked away, keeping his eyes on his wife, pleading her to leave this place. And there was no resentment in him- none. Acceptance and patience.

Belle`s heart gave a wrench when Bae, who had made his way into the pub, stepped forward and she saw Rumple place his hand on the boy`s shoulder in the same shielding, loving gesture she had noticed before. And at once he seemed to be filled once more with peaceful light. And she wanted to burst forward, to stop this. And through the pain for him, through the blinding, furious indignation, she was wondering all the time at how they could be so blind , how- how could they do this to him?

The walls of the pub dissolved- and she was standing on board a ship.

She saw him rise softly from the boy`s bed . She watched him limp noiselessly to the door and his limp never seemed to be causing him so much pain as now. Twice he stopped, gave a shuddering breath, half- covered his face with his free hand and then kept on.

Finally he stumbled out, and, managing to remove himself a few steps from the hut, he dropped, no longer caring about the noise, on his knees. And she heard his half- strangled sobs. The sobs of a man who had told his son that his Mother had died ( and had kept silent about it being his fault). Dry, hopeless sobs.

When she next saw him, she recognized it - the mournful line at the mouth, the stillness in the eyes. She knew then that something had snapped in him on the day he believed he had failed to shield his wife, on the day he chose his son.

She knew he would learn to live with it- like he lived with so many things: with mockings and pieces of mud falling accidentally across his way, with half- lazy blows that would send him to the ground and his staff would be jeeringly kept out of his way, with walking through the village keeping his eyes to the ground and speaking in whisper, with never having a kind word or a friendly hand to help him along. He would learn. He did.

And time was passing, and the boy was growing and Rumple was moving around and his face was getting lined and the little spark of vitality he had had before his wife left, was leaving him.

And finally it was night.

A dark night and there were two figures walking a dark road.

And there was a man stopping them and smiling cruelly and jeering. And a desperate fear filling Rumple`s eyes: she knew it. She had seen it. Down in the mine when he had been afraid he wasn`t in time to save her.

And here he was trying to do this for his son- if he ever tried to do anything else for him.

The man had struck him across the face with the word that kept dogging him all through his life here. A coward...

And he was threatening to take Bae way.

And he was telling Rumple to kiss his boot.

And Rumple was begging him. Like he had begged the pirate.

Like he would never do again.

And he was kissing it.

A rough thrusting aside,

Belle was tearing across the borders of time, tearing towards him, straining to touch him, to help him up, to let him hold on to her. To explain to him that that had not been the cowardly thing to do…Just holding to him and helping him hold together. Because he no longer can do it alone - he never would again. Not until an awkward girl stumbles into his arms from a high place.

And she now had seen so much.

She had seen everything

She had seen the scars , the barely distinguishable traces that marked in future his face, his eyes, his hands, and his silence, and his words - she had seen them as fresh wounds, had watched them cover him, fester, untended…

And all through this she never once heard his voice.

Until this hour.

" I am lame. Friendless. I have only my boy and if they take him away from me than I truly, truly, become dust."

Belle was still. As if the despair in his trembling voice, in the anguished eyes were touching her heart. And it was.

And it became dark - time to go back.

Time to wake up and meet the man she had learned so much about.

The man she loved.

And when the dawn of Storybrooke touched her eyes she was still hearing his last words. " Then I truly, truly become dust."

Only he did not.

He, the gentle, patient, loving man with soft brown eyes and heart full of love became- the Dark One.

.