Gold couldn't believe he was back here, again.

It was the evening of the annual Valentine's Day Charity Dance in the ballroom of Mayor Mills's grand mansion and as usual Mr. Gold had paid the most per plate. It wasn't that he was particularly generous by nature; it was simply important to remind the town he still owned the place and functions like this were a good way of showing it.

That, and having his name put on things. He and Regina had an escalating competition over whose name could be plastered over the greatest number of hospital lobbies, pet shelter atriums and public school paper towel dispensers. Of course, it was never his real name, real names held power and he didn't want his on every paddle pool this side of the town line; but Regina knew which aliases were Rumplestilskin's and annoying her was all that really mattered. He conceded it was a childish game for a sorcerer of his advanced years and powers, but this form of one-upmanship with Regina had kept him somewhat sane through many a tedious year in this tiny town, so why not continue the tradition?

As traditions in Storybrooke went, it was far better than, say, this stupid Valentine's Day Charity Dance he'd sat through every year. Of course, it was Regina who'd initiated it. He was positive she'd done it solely to remind him of how human he, was here in Storybrooke, the former Dark One changed to another regular, middle aged man and one who couldn't even dance properly at that.

The joke was on her though, because he really didn't care. He prided himself on his detachment. Or had prided himself on his detachment. Since Belle came back into his life things had been a little different. For example, he was rather shocked to wake up one morning and find himself actually caring about things again, after 28 years of explicitly not giving a shit. Emotions could be a dangerous weakness for a man in his position, a way for people to undercut his power, but then magic came from emotion, too, and magic was power. It was all a little confusing.

Now it turned out all those feelings he'd thought dead, had only been frozen, along with his magic, biding their time in the soil of his mind like seeds waiting out the winter. It was exciting, but rather scary too, how he was starting to feel differently about things, about people. He was disconcerted to discover a long foreign desire to connect with them, to do things other people did, things he'd long thought beneath him.

Things like…he was not thinking this … dancing. Not jigging maniacally about to his own tune like he had back in his Dark One days in order to terrify people into giving him the upper hand in a deal, but to really dance with somebody, hand in hand, romantically. To dance romantically with Belle. Beautiful Belle, who'd excused herself to the bathroom and left him alone with his drink and black mood.

Here he was, the most powerful mage in all the kingdoms trapped in a small town like that man in that stupid Christmas movie by the very curse he'd designed himself. When you see the future there's irony everywhere.

He had devised the curse to please his lost son, Baelfire, who despised magic, to reset himself and everyone else from the Enchanted Forest back to their nonmagical human forms in this Land Without Magic. Of course, nobody bothered to tell him that when you went back to your original human form, what you went back to was the last specific human form you'd possessed in the Enchanted Forest, defects and all, to be your perpetual default setting for the next 28 years, no matter what magic you tried to repair it with. Gold had the abilities of a seer. He prided himself on the long con, the well planned scheme, with everything checked and accounted for ahead of time. However the details… He sighed as he shifted his bad leg to a more comfortable position, the details were always a bitch.

As he had every year he watched the couples of Storybrooke turn about the dance floor, and the children conspire to put all their chicken fingers on one plate and mush them together to make one giant chicken finger. He watched everything with old, old eyes, saw the whole crowd in the ballroom and it all just amused him…In a way it was pretty funny if you looked at it with a skewed sense of humour, and if there was one thing Gold's sense of humour was, it was permanently skewed. Everything seemed either fatalistically depressing or unintentionally hilarious.

He took a sip of his alcoholic cider. Of course they would only be serving cider at one of Regina's functions. At least it wasn't Pim's. With a quick flick of magic, he began to transform it into a scotch on the rocks.

"Hey!" piped up a little voice from somewhere at his feet, disturbing him mid-spell, changing the liquor back to cider. He looked around for the source of this unwanted interruption and spotted a mop of black curls and straggly pink ribbons peering up at him from under the tablecloth.

"What's your name?" asked a little girl.

"I am Mr. Gold," said Mr. Gold with a formal tip of his head to the small child. "And who are you my dear?"

"Rose," said the little girl.

"Ah, Snow and Charming's child," said Gold knowingly.

"How did you know?"

"It's my job to know stuff around here," he said sagely.

"Really? My mum said it's your job to take people's stuff when they can't pay money for their apartments."

"Is that so?"

"Uh huh."

"Then let me ask you a question," said Mr. Gold. "What are you doing under there?"

"Hiding," said Rose.

"And what are you hiding from?"

"I- I was supposed to be on a time-out at our table."

"And why are you on a time-out?"

"Oh, uh, I did something bad and Mum got angry."

"Really? And what naughty thing could you have possibly done to raise the ever patient Mary Margaret's ire? "

"I don't know if I should tell," Rose said shyly. "You might be angry with me, too."

Gold smiled in his most encouraging and least shark-like way and offered her his hand. "C'mon, try me."

Rose took his hand and pulled herself up from under the table. Still, she would not look him in the eye. She focused on her shiny black party shoes instead as she told her tale in a single breath: "So I had to go to the bathroom you know, only I couldn't find where the bathroom was cause this house is so big and there's all these weird people everywhere and I really had to go and I couldn't find Mum or Dad to ask about it and one time Mum and Dad took me camping in the forest, you know and I remember how there weren't any proper toilets in the forest and they showed me how in the forest you could just wee on a tree and that was okay, so I went out the back and there was this tree, and it kinda had apples on it, so I started to wee and then Mummy and Mayor Mills came out of the house and they saw what I was doing and then I was in trouble." Rose stopped, finally out of breath. She moved a black curl out of her eyes and dared to look up at Mr. Gold to gage his reaction.

Gold smirked, trying to contain his laughter, surrendered to it and giggled out loud. Rose thought it was oddly high pitched for a grown man. "Gods, I would've loved to see Regina's face when you did that!" he laughed gleefully.

"So that's why I'm on a time-out and you gotta pretend I'm not really here, okay?"

"You can trust me not to spill the beans, princess" said Mr. Gold stoutly. "No one's to know you've used your parents distraction in dancing as a clever ruse to escape the confines of your table. Very cunning plan if you ask me."

She smiled and preened visibly at his acknowledgement of her cleverness. Suddenly, she felt brave enough to ask him a question in return. "So how 'bout you Mr. Gold? Why'd you have to get a time-out?" she asked.

"What? What makes you think I'm on a time-out?"

"Well, you're not out there with the other grown-ups," she said, waving her hand at the dance floor, "so you must be on a time-out. Also, when I came here you were making the time-out face."

"The time-out face?"

Rose pulled the corners of her mouth down in an exaggerated grimace. "The 'I'm so sad and grumpy' face."

"I was not making a face like that!" insisted Mr. Gold, somewhat taken aback. He was certain he always schooled his expressions to nonchalance, but apparently not.

"Now c'mon," Rose insisted. "I told you my story. Now you gotta tell me yours. What did you do? Was it something really naughty? It must've been super bad, for a grown-up to get a time-out."

"For your information, I am not on a time out," replied Mr. Gold stiffly. "I did not do anything 'really naughty' or 'super bad,'" he said using sarcastic air quotes. "I happen to have a bad leg, that's all."

"Uh-huh," Rose nodded sagely. This was the sort of thing she said to her parents when she broke things in the house, like blaming the wind for knocking over the cookie jar or naming her rubber ducky as the culprit in flooding the sink by stopping up the drain with toilet paper. "So it's just your leg's been bad, huh? You had nothing to do with it? Completely innocent, huh?"

Gold grinned an imp's mischievous grin at the little girl, flashing what looked to her like a small golden fang.

"Why of course I am, my dear," the pawnbroker said, practically oozing buckets of insincerity. "Completely innocent."

Rose narrowed her eyes at him. "I don't think I believe you."

"Oh, that's so unfair," he replied with downcast eyes. Suddenly, there was rustle of movement beneath the fabric of the table cloth. Rose jumped back in astonishment as a perfectly creased pinstriped pant-leg and black shoe emerged from beneath the table and hopped right up next to her on the seat.

To her credit, Mr. Gold noticed, she did not scream, but he was willing to chalk that up to her recent trip with her parents to Wonderland.

"You see?"

"Wow! You were right!" exclaimed Rose as reached out to touch the trouser's fabric. It danced nimbly out of her reach. Had her hand actually grazed it, it would've gone right through, as it was just one of Mr. Gold's magical projection, no sense in letting his little audience in on the secret though, he thought gleefully. How could he have forgotten how much fun it was to play with young minds this way?

Rose watched, eyes nearly popping out of her head as Gold's leg shimmied up a balloon arch towards the ceiling before doing a somersault in the air to land on a branch of Regina's crystal chandelier. Now the pant leg was upside down, silently tapping away, jigging up and down to the speedy beat of the music.

"See, it just won't behave," Gold sighed theatrically.

The leg snaked around the moulding on the ceiling, twisting itself around the chandeliers on the ceiling, while still keeping time to the music. On the dance floor below, no one seemed to notice the crazy shenanigans going on just above their heads.

"It won't even stay put when I call a time-out," he confessed to Rose, spreading his hands in a helpless gesture.

"Then you have to be more stricter," insisted Rose.

"Yes stricter," mused the older man. "But how?"

"Hmmm, I don't know," Rose nodded, "but maybe I can help." She stood up to her full height on top of the chair beside him. "Now this is what Dad does to get me back when I run too far away from him when we're exploring in the forest."

"Wait, Rose—"

Rose cupped her hand around her mouth and shouted at the top of her lungs "COME BACK HERE RIGHT NOW AND YOU'LL GET AN ICE CREAM!"

Suddenly, everyone stopped dancing and turned to look at Gold's table. With a small poof of purple smoke the pinstriped illusion jumping on the chandeliers made a discreet disappearance.

"There," said Rose, with a satisfied nod to Gold. "Works every time."

"Uh, thanks," he said in a small voice, his face red.

Somewhere on the dance floor Charming and Snow were having an argument about how Charming's version of strict behavior management mostly consisted of bribing his daughter with ice cream.

"You're welcome," said Rose politely as she'd been taught and climbed down off the chair.

Five minutes later Belle came back to the ballroom to hear a slow song playing. Couples clung together on the floor, leaning on each other, swaying gently to the music. This type of dance she was certain her Rum could manage. She weaved her way back to the table, eager to ask him.

He was there where she'd left him, though his mood seemed altogether different, brighter somehow. However, she knew him too well to overlook the mischievous glint in his eye. "Soooooooo, what've you been up to while I was away?" she crooned, knowing he'd been up to something.

"Oh just a little time-out," he said with a grin.