Chapter Text
Game of Thorns was up for sale.
Mr Gold smiled to himself when he saw the sign on his walk home from work: it was about time, after all. Moe French had been dead for over a month, and the shop was starting to look shabby and bleak, its windows boarded up and the rose arbour outside growing out of control. Mr French had grown his plants outside as well as in, and under his patient care the place managed to look at least looked after, if a little overgrown. The oafish man had always claimed that was part of his little shop’s charm: ‘‘More the flowers’ than mine, really” he’d said, when asked.
Once upon a time, Gold had been French’s landlord, and he’d been able to enforce the strict maintenance agreement embedded in the tenancy. Gold missed those days: it had been a moment of madness in which he’d sold the property to the florist outright. Had he known then that Moe would die within half a decade, he’d have been more careful about keeping hold of the deed.
Now, whomever French had named in his will would be able to sell the property as they chose, and pocket the profit. Gold had his suspicions about who that person could be, although the obvious choice was doubtful. French was unlikely to have left his shop, his pride and joy, to his wilful, unreliable daughter. They had, after all, parted on the absolute worst of terms. Much more likely that it was some old Australian cousin, who would sell the asset remotely, desperate to be rid of what could only be a financial burden.
A seller based abroad would also be unaware of just what he was parting with. It was a lucrative piece of land, with the shop below, the beautiful garden French had kept in back, and the little apartment above for the owner. Big enough, Gold knew, to house a small family in relative comfort. The place was also right on Main Street, and Gold did enjoy the idea of owning the entire block.
A desperate seller would sell fast, and sell cheap. Gold was smiling uncharacteristically broadly as he walked home that evening: there was yet a chance to redeem his past mistake, it seemed. If only all such mistakes could be rectified so neatly.
He spent the next few days making casual but pointed enquiries into the sale of the French property. He came up against a dead end abnormally fast: the seller was keeping their identity private, and all the correspondence was by email, so the clerk at the office couldn’t even give Gold a gender to work with. He left the office in a poor mood, and wondered if it was too late in the month to go terrorise a few residents for their rent personally. That always seemed to brighten a day.
Of course, the easiest option would be to simply put in a bid, and see if the seller wanted to haggle. That would allow him to draw the person out, if they were shrewd enough to bargain, or even to buy the property outright for a ridiculously low cost, if the seller really wanted a quick sale.
Unfortunately that would also involve showing his hand. He knew it was likely that once he did word would get out that Mr Gold was once again monopolising poor, innocent Storybrooke. He could do without the angry letters.
Mayor Mills would then bite back with some spiel about turning it into some thinly veiled public vanity project. Worse still, she could financially back some earnest local business-owner in an attempt to reveal him for the shark he was. Once, Gold hadn’t given a damn about what the town thought of him. How times had changed: with a seven-year-old in the elementary school, he couldn’t risk burdening his son with the weight of his bad reputation. He knew what it was to grow up the child of a man universally despised.
Still, Gold couldn’t decide what would be worse: having to pay through the nose to prevent Regina Mills from succeeding, or losing and then having to watch whatever business moved in succeed without cutting him into the profit. Either way, it was too soon to express an interest. Better to see if anyone else took the bait first, before making a move himself.
That strategy had served Gold well on many occasions. But then all those times, with any other piece of land, there had been no personal stake. He bought and sold as was financially expedient, and for the most part the real estate was confined in his mind to numbers on a spreadsheet. The French property was a little different, in that regard, and he found it annoyingly difficult to remain impartial.
There were few places in town that stirred any kind of sentiment or memory in Gold. Unfortunately, the unpleasant, buffoonish old florist hadn’t always lived alone in that house.
Gold was lost in his thought when, upon leaving the estate agents’ Monday afternoon, he decided to skip his afternoon meeting and finish early for the day. The tenant he was supposed to see couldn’t say anything to convince him to grant an extension anyway, so the meeting was for all intents and purposes useless. He could reschedule with no damage done.
It was the end of the summer, the sun still warm and the leaves only just browning, and it was the last day before the schools started back in session. He shouldn’t be spending it working: even Gold, of all self-confessed workaholics, knew that.
He stopped at the Nolans’ on his way past, and his first genuinely warm smile of the day formed on his face when the door opened. Not for the Nolans themselves: David and Mary Margaret were nice people, he supposed, but they were a little wholesome and self-righteous for his taste, and he knew that the vague dislike was mutual. He ignored both them in the background along with the bite of pain in his leg, and crouched down and opened his arms.
“Papa!” a grinning face with an unruly mop of curly dark hair appeared around the Nolans’ staircase, and Gold suddenly had his arms full of laughing seven-year-old.
“Hey Bae,” he half-grunted, smiling as he stood, lifting with his legs as he kept hold of the boy even while straightening up, one arm under Bae’s backside, holding the boy over his shoulder. Gold didn’t enjoy exercise – he’d never wanted to lift a heavy thing just for the sake of lifting it – but he knew he must have gotten somewhat fitter just lifting Bae. He’d learned fast how to do so while maintaining his balance on his bad leg. It had been a necessity, since Bae had none of his father’s vertigo and his favourite thing was to be carried.
“Hey Mr Gold!”
Mary Margaret was washing her dishes, watching the scene, but she wasn’t the one who had spoken. No, from her he’d received only a somewhat wary nod of recognition: the actual greeting came from the small blonde girl stood at his feet.
Emma was perhaps the only evidence Gold could find that the Nolans had ever been worthwhile people. For all their conservatism and self-professed goodness, Emma was a little hooligan – clever, irreverent, and with sticky fingers that Gold appreciated on sheer talent. More than once he’d caught her wearing a necklace or a belt he recognised from his shop that had most definitely not been paid for, and he knew that most of the time his son was her chosen partner in crime.
Gold pretended to be horrified by this behaviour. He also pretended not to slip the pair of them caramels from his pocket as a reward every time he caught them at it.
This blatant favouritism probably explained why, despite all the precedent set by everyone else in town, Bae’s best friend wasn’t remotely afraid of him. “Hey, Emma,” he replied now, for he’d never seen the use of speaking to children as if they were imbecilic, “How’re you today?”
“I’m good,” she grinned, toothily, displaying proudly the huge gap between her left incisor and right canine. “Mom says the tooth fairy will come tonight!” she announced, and Gold raised an eyebrow at this news.
“The tooth fairy, huh?” he mused, hugging Bae close for a second before planting him back on the ground. “If I were you, and some strange woman was going to come into my room and steal a bit of me, I’d stay up and barter for more money.”
Emma leaned in close, confidentially, and looked from side to side before whispering, “I got dad’s flashlight under my pillow, she won’t get far.”
“Emma,” Mary Margaret’s voice came warningly from behind, and she came over and put a hand firmly on her daughter’s shoulder. “Are you taking up Mr Gold’s time?”
“She was just showing me her missing tooth, Mrs Nolan,” Mr Gold told her, smoothly. “They do grow up fast.”
“Yes, they do,” Mary Margaret softened a little – parents tended to do that, Gold found, when the passage of time was pointed out to them – and rested a hand on Emma’s golden head. “Is Bae missing any yet?”
“We tried,” Bae murmured, regretfully. “But they won’t budge.”
Gold looked at his son, his eyes narrowed. “Bae…?”
“Emma’s mom said her tooth would come loose if she tied some string to it and then to a door, and closed the door,” Bae shrugged. “So we did. Nothing.” He sighed, regret clear on his small face, and Gold pinched the bridge of his nose.
“You did tell your daughter that that little trick only works if the tooth is already loose, I hope,” Gold asked Mary Margaret. She looked a little doubtful.
“I thought it was implied,” she stammered, her smooth brow furrowed. “I-“
“Because in my experience, Mrs Nolan, if you tell a child you’ll pay them if they perform a certain task, they tend to try to accomplish it. Especially if it seems as easy as removing one of their bones.”
“Your son is corrupting my daughter,” she accused, wearily and for the hundredth time, but it was a mutter and a weak one at that. They both knew that Emma was the leader of their little band of thieves, and that Bae was if anything the staid, sensible conscience of the pair. How that had happened Gold was sure he didn’t know. It certainly wasn’t genetic.
“And on that sorry note, I believe we should be going,” he smiled, thinly, with no warmth at all. “Always a pleasure, Mrs Nolan.”
“Have a nice day, Mr Gold,” Mary Margaret retorted, with a civil smile, and closed the door.
Gold was feeling generous that day, and he needed a distraction from the French issue, so he decided to take Bae for ice cream to celebrate the end of the summer vacation.
“You didn’t really try to rip your own tooth out, right son?” he checked, when they were settled in Granny’s, Gold with a cup of coffee and Bae with a heaping chocolate sundae.
“Emma said her mom said the tooth fairy would bring a dollar,” Bae shrugged, seeming a little embarrassed now that his father clearly thought he’d been foolish. Gold was always more than a little pleased – if surprised – to see that his son valued his good opinion so highly. “And I’m saving for roller skates.”
“Emma’s mom is a bit of an idiot,” Gold confided, which drew a giggle from Bae. “And as for roller skates…” he reached into his wallet and pulled out a crisp five dollar bill. “Put this in your savings, and leave your teeth in your head until they’re good and ready, okay?”
“Okay,” Bae beamed and snatched up the money, cramming it into his pocket. “Thanks papa!”
“You’re very welcome, now eat your sundae before it melts.”
Bae grinned and dove into the ice cream headfirst, with inevitable result that most of the confection dripping from his chin rather than in his mouth. Gold watched with a sigh, but it was no use trying to slow his son down. Even eating at half-speed Bae was a messy eater at best.
They spent the late afternoon in the park and the evening watching movies. Gold even allowed Bae ordered-in pizza, a treat for the end of the summer. He knew he was overcompensating: he’d been absent for much of Bae’s summer vacation, leaving his son with the Nolan’s more days than not, and the sale of the French property was dragging up memories he’d rather have had buried. In any case, Bae was ecstatic to spend the evening watching Disney movies and eating pizza with his papa, and that was all that really mattered.
School started the next day, and Gold walked Bae to the bus and saw him sat down with Emma before he walked to the shop. No one ever came to deal or browse before ten anyway, so he could afford to open twenty minutes later than usual. The day was a slow one, in any case, which was a pity: the last thing he wanted was a chance to think. He ended up in the office, poring over files from back when he’d owned the French place, looking for what he didn’t know. It wasn’t as if he needed a reminder of why he’d sold it, after all. That decision was one he was unlikely to ever forget.
He didn’t believe he had a copy of the deceased man’s will, and of course he hadn’t been invited to the reading. A day spent searching the town archives’ online database and his own records for that one elusive document came up fruitless, although he was becoming more and more certain of the identity of its sole beneficiary. After all, for all Gold’s hopes of a foreign heir looking to sell fast and move on, Gold knew well that Moe French had broken all but a very few of his ties back home when he’d set up in Storybrooke.
Moe had had ties to just one person, his only family left in the world, despite her glaring flaws. Even that relationship had been strained at best, but it was enough, Gold supposed. It was becoming clear that French had, in his addled later days, decided to leave his shop and his home – her home – to her upon his death. The answer had been obvious days ago, but Gold had managed to convince himself otherwise. Gold was an excellent liar, but he’d never been able to buy his own bullshit for very long.
Belle French was selling Game of Thorns, and she hadn’t even come home in person to do it.
Honestly, Gold had been surprised – and relieved, and disappointed, and crushed, all at once – to see that she hadn’t even been at the funeral a week ago. Of course he hadn’t looked for her: he’d been too busy trying to work out the legal state of Moe’s business to do something so sentimental as seek out an old flame. But he thought he would have seen her there, if she had been. She’d always been an emotional girl, and fond of her useless father, at least until she’d burned all her bridges and flamed out of town. He would have expected her to read the eulogy, but she had been nowhere to be seen
Gold supposed that if Miss French was cold and callous enough to have skipped her own father’s funeral, then she probably had also elected to sell her childhood home from a thousand miles away. It certainly sounded like her. He wondered where she was now: Paris perhaps, or Rome, or somewhere even further afield, hiking in the Himalayas or eating sushi in Tokyo. Wherever she had set up camp, it was doubtless somewhere adventurous and stylish, and a million miles from dreary little Storybrooke.
He shoved the French file to the back of the cabinet, next to Ziegler, and started on inventory instead. He tried to leave his bitterness and his memories there with it, and let them rot where they belonged.
The next few days passed in similar fashion: he spent as much time as he could with Bae outside school hours, and focused on reorganising his shop during the day. By Friday, the shop was cleaner and tidier than it had been in a decade, and Gold had run out of places to hide.
He gratefully picked Bae up from school that afternoon, but was surprised when his son didn’t automatically follow him home. “What’s up, Bae?”
“Emma’s having a sleepover tonight,” Bae told him, hope written all over his little face. “She’s invited me and says she won’t have it if I’m not there. That’s ‘cause her mom made her invite Lily and Roland as well, so it’s kind of a party and I’m her best friend so can I go? Can I please?”
Bae had stayed over with Emma the odd night here and there during the summer, and while Gold didn’t enjoy having his son not at home at night, he knew the Nolans to be excellent caretakers. They called with updates when the kids went to sleep, and the one time Bae had skinned a knee on their stairs they’d called right away and patched him up perfectly, so he knew his son was safe in their care. And despite his self-confessed selfishness, his animosity toward the whole world, and his overwhelming protective urge, he wouldn’t deny his son his friends.
“Okay, I’ll walk you round there,” he conceded, sighing. “But you make sure and call me before you sleep, okay? I don’t want you partying all night and coming home exhausted.”
“Okay papa,” Bae agreed, happily. “You won’t be too grumpy with me gone, right?” he checked. Gold was always taken aback by his son’s perceptiveness, but then it was hard to hide a whole town’s animosity from a clever child. No one was exactly subtle in their dislike of Bae’s father, after all.
“I promise I’ll only bite people if they really deserve it,” Gold said. “How’s that?”
He bared his teeth jokingly at Bae and growled, and then snapped them, and Bae giggled and did the same. They’d done that since Bae was very small, since his babyhood in fact. She had once laughed at them, lights dancing in her eyes, and called them her ‘papa croc and baby croc’. Gold winced at the memory.
He left Bae with David and Mary Margaret, who promised once again to call if anything happened, and he kept his cell phone on as he walked home alone. The house was unusually silent without a small boy charging around, and Gold found he’d lost his taste for eating dinner alone around the time he’d started raising a child. He was well aware that the only reason he wasn’t lonely was because he had Bae, and that he was overwhelmingly lucky that Bae seemed to love him as much as he did. The moment the boy was old enough to see what a selfish villain his father was would be the moment Gold would have to get used to silent dinners again.
It hadn’t bothered him much in recent years, when it was only the odd night here and there. But tonight, for reasons so obvious they were cliché, there were ghosts running around Gold’s home, and he couldn’t sit still.
Eventually, he realised that spending the evening alone in his house was a poor idea, and upon receiving a call at around nine to tell him that his boy was safe and sound asleep, he no longer needed to be on call. He had two options: to drink alone in his home, or to drink alone surrounded by strangers.
He chose the latter. The Rabbit Hole was a fifteen-minute walk if he took the fastest route, but instead he added five minutes, and took a stroll along Main Street.
Gold paused for only a moment outside Game of Thorns, and tried not to remember other nights, dark and warm as this one, when he hadn’t walked alone. Back then the windows had been open, full of light; the flowers in the front had been well tended, and he’d been bidden goodnight with a passionate kiss before walking the last few blocks home alone. Back then things had been different, but he had no illusions that he’d been somehow some kinder, more selfless version of himself. The house had been brighter and warmer and so had Gold’s world, but Gold himself had always been cold and dark.
He paused for only a moment, ruminating on how everything had ended up as dark as he was, when he saw a flash in one of the windows. It was small, a brief flicker of light in the ocean of darkness that was the boarded up façade, but he knew what he’d seen, and then saw it again. Someone had broken in, and was likely rifling through French’s unclaimed possessions, looting and lowering the property value as he went.
Gold, armed with his cane and wound tight from a week of emotional origami, was more than ready to make any burglar wish he’d just called 911 and turned himself in.
He strode quickly around to the back of the house, and hoped that French had forgotten to mention to his executor that he always left a spare key under the mat. How Gold knew that didn’t bear dwelling on, but thankfully the florist had been both predictable and doltish to his dying day: the key was still there.
Gold let himself in the back door slowly, and wished for a moment that he’d brought his gun out with him. Engaging a potentially armed looter suddenly seemed like utter lunacy. But the man could be gone by the time Sheriff Humbert arrived, and there were things in this house worth keeping safe for their rightful owner. The thought of some stranger desecrating Belle’s childhood bedroom was more than he could bear, despite how inappropriate it was to care about such things. She hadn’t laid any claim to it for half a decade, after all: surely anything of value, sentimental or monetary, was long gone.
And it wasn’t as if it was any of his concern, in any case.
A creak upstairs told him the intruder was in one of the bedrooms – Moe’s, Gold thought, since it sounded like it came from directly above. He crept up the stairs, cane ready to brain anyone who came near him, and rounded the corner into the bedroom. A small lantern cast shadows across the floor, and someone was muttering under their breath.
“Now, dearie,” he snarled, before he actually saw the person’s face, “If you don’t wish for me to call the police, I’d suggest-“
He stopped, cut off in midsentence by pure shock, as his jaw all but hit the floor. The figure on the floor was devouring of a small pot of cheap yoghurt with a disposable plastic spoon, and her hunched little figure, her hair spilling down around her pale face, and even her chipped nail varnish, were all suddenly horribly familiar.
Belle pulled back her heavy parka hood, and her eyes widened with shock and recognition.
“Cam?”