A Curse Upon Thee 3-6A

Gold took the curve of Main Street slow and careful, his Cadillac obedient as ever. One hand on the wheel, the other took its rest across his thigh just bare inches from his cane.

The wood might as well have been another limb at this point, yet what did he carry it for still?

Habit.

All of it, mere habit.

The cane had not been necessary since the day Regina’s curse shattered over this town, the leg beneath it sound ever since the moment that dagger bore his name. Yet, the cane still went with him everywhere, silver head worn smooth as every soul in this town looked his way as soon as they heard that sound.

It served its purpose.

Tires went through the left-over rain, the dull weather having passed him by and streetlamps throwing long smears of orange across the black. Mr. Gold took the path on Main past the clock tower, shaking his head as he took in the town once again — the old and new with darkness roaming free.

A curse broken and memory once again whole; all gone as designed, and the design had been his. The boundary remained even still, hooks set deep beneath the earth as the magics of memory refused to be shaken free so easily. To cross it was to surrender your memory and return to the pleasant little dream of Regina’s curse once again.

A temporary thing, yes; time and patience returning you to truth, but unacceptable regardless.

Gold did not particularly care for the memories of others, and had no interest in whether the whole population of Storybrooke wandered the forest and wider world vacant and vapid as they had always been.

It made little difference to him, because his goal was out there as well.

Baelfire… his Bae.

Out past the line, in a world he knew little of and had never once touched, his bouncing — not so little — boy had found a life and for him to cross the line and forget the name of his own son again was not a thing he would allow.

Not even for a moment.

Especially as he doubted his magics and might would remain with the loss of identity, leaving him a stumbling solicitor on a bus, wondering with a vague stare why he even held a ticket in the first place. 

It was only the crude working of a month’s effort — a scarf of red sitting in his glove compartment — that he had hope in, a hope he could only admit in the privacy of his own thoughts. Too crude a thing to stake too much in, unfortunately.

In the old world, where magic was simple albeit fickle, Gold knew he could have spun the thing out of a name and a lock of his own hair before the supper bell and never once would need to wonder if its workings would hold. Here, magic ran differently, refusing the ordinary shapes of symbol and song.

Rather like spinning damp wool, almost. That first fortnight, in between Regina’s requests and unliving lawmen, Gold had spent the time simply learning the feel of the weave again, a novel experience he hadn’t known in centuries.

And almost unwelcome, if not for the curiosity of it.

Three hundred years and the Dark One sat the wheel with unsure hands, squinting at his fingers like a fresh apprentice. Even still… Crude was crude, and everything crude could know refinement, given time and patience.

And, of course, if he had any commodities in genuine surplus, it was those. 

Yet, what he needed now was… there.

“Mr. Smee.” 

Gold let the Cadillac slow past the pharmacy, the portly once-pirate waddling along the sidewalk in that silly scarlet cap of his. Hands stuffed in a jacket nearly bursting from the size of him, the man jumped at the appearance of Gold.

A single word left him. “No.”

The car continued at a crawl as both Gold’s eyebrows rose high at the sudden refusal. “I beg your pardon?”

“I-I mean… look, whatever it is…” The man did not slow his pace, almost refusing to even so much as look over at Gold as he kept forward. “The answer is a no. S-Sir.”

“I haven’t asked a thing of you.”

“That’s never stopped you before.”

Gold’s mouth twitched downward, a single hand flexing atop the wheel as his window rolled lower. “Smee…”

The other man stumbled at Gold’s voice, the shift in it not a small thing. The fat man’s head finally turned, face pale as it was round. “That is… I… I only meant…”

“Spit it out, Mr. Smee.”

“Right.” A throat cleared loud, the sound almost fighting against itself. “Right, yes, see, the thing is just that… well, I’ve got— there’s a thing, of course, rest assured, in any other circumstance, I would of course say yes, obviously I’d say y-”

Gold reached across to the open glove compartment, hand coming out the window just so with a scarf. He held it up under the streetlight, the sight of otherwise unremarkable red wool drawing the eye as it hung from Mr. Gold’s palm. “There is a working at the town line. You’re aware of it, I assume?”

“Everybody’s awa-”

“I have made something to protect against it.” The pawnbroker turned the scarf over in his hands, letting it catch the light just a bit more. “You’re going to help me test the effectiveness of this little bauble.”

Smee’s gaze drifted from the scarf, those beady little eyes landing on Gold. Visible longing was clear on the man’s face as those same eyes drifted down Main Street in the direction of anywhere else entirely.

Soon enough, though, they found Gold again. “You… you want me to cross the line.”

“Shame on me for ever thinking you a slow one, Mr. Smee. Sharp as a tack, you are.” Gold smiled from his car at the man still standing there. “I knew I came to the right person.”

“Wa-wait, hold on, hold on now…” Smee’s hands came up and the man nearly dared a full step back. “What happens if… if it doesn’t work?”

Gold kept a single eyebrow high. “Then I’ll have wasted the drive and the yarn both. A few moments of my time and a few cents of cloth are far from a tragedy, though.”

“No, what happens to me?” The man almost slapped at his chest, palm stopping just short of that. “Me?”

“Well, you’ll forget.”

Gold offered nothing further, the whole point of the exercise rather clear. Even still, Smee waited for the rest of a sentence that was nowhere to be found, silence heavy as the pawnbroker stared back.

“...and then?”

“And then I’ll fetch you and point you back to town.”

“That’s… that’s not—” Smee raised a hand to scratch at his head, fingers going under that hat of his. “Not tremendously reassuring, is it?”

“Well, it wasn’t meant to be, Mr. Smee.” Gold didn’t bother to hide the cold in his voice, eager to get this over with. “Now get in the damn car.”

The ride out toward the edge of town took a mere half hour, a decent pace that Smee spent the majority of trying to negotiate his way through. "—opper, what about Hopper? He’s a smart one, right? A doctor? And he owes you fo—”

“Hopper owes me nothing but his monthly rent.” Gold kept his eyes on the trees as they came in on either side, streetlamps long left behind as the headlights carved out the dark of the night.

The other man’s mouth kept running and Gold let him, Smee’s words costing him nothing at all but a fair bit of quiet. As much as the man kept talking, he wasn’t thinking and a Smee without thought was a far more cooperative animal. 

“—r, or, here’s a thought, I c-”

“Mr. Smee.”

“What about Whale? You gave him his arm back, right?”

“William, would you rather we discuss certain of your activities in the service of your oh-so-brave Captain?” The words left him in a hum, Gold’s voice not raised in the slightest. “I have no problem with that tangent? Do you?”

The car found a beautiful quiet as they finally pulled up to the edge of town.

By itself, it was nothing to look at; a stretch of road with an orange marker on the black where David had someone mark the most recent crawl of the Curse’s limit. The ‘Leaving Storybrooke’ sign was a good distance back, a mile or so where the proper border actually was.

Gold put the Cadillac in park and stepped out, cane placed out in front of him. The passenger door opened a few seconds later, the pudgy man joining Gold at his side. The scarf left his hand a moment later, Smee taking it as the businessman held it out for him.

Wrapping the red cloth around his neck, the fat man stood there and did not move.

Gold simply waited.

He was rather good at that at this point. Three centuries of practice had instilled a certain level of skill that would be hard-pressed to leave him. Moments passed by, the fat man’s breathing going shallow in the dead of night.

“C-can we…” Clammy hands passed over each other, those sausage fingers wringing each other from worry. “Sir, I-” Smee swallowed his words before they came back up in the next breath. “Can we talk about this, this, ple-”

“Cross the marker, Mr. Smee.”

The former first-mate crossed, two steps turning into three into four and then five past the orange paint and onto simple asphalt. Arms out as if he expected the ground to fall out from under him, Smee stopped and stood in front of the headlights with one eye closed.

Nothing.

Not a thing happened; no burst or shimmer or even the pirate falling to his knees to clutch at his skull under the strain of two lives worth of memories battling for dominance. The last had been a genuine possibility and one that Gold had somewhat been looking forward to.

No, Smee simply stood there, doughy face donning that same expression; resigned and unhappy but possessing enough good sense to watch his tongue and tone.

Gold tapped the ground. “Name.”

“...William Smee.”

“Your Captain.”

“The legendary Black Hook.”

Gold stared, his own silence followed with narrowed eyes. “...and myself?”

Smee’s mouth hung open for a moment. “...either Mr. Gold or the Dark One. Mr. Dark, I suppose.”

“No.” Gold tapped the ground again as Smee walked toward him, the man hiding his relief as he removed the scarf from his neck. “That name belonged to another.”

Scarf in his hand once again, the pawnbroker stared at the wool that had just been round that fool’s neck, the trinket still bearing the magic he’d worked into it. One crossing.

One test at that, but he knew little to nothing of distance or duration or even if the charm would hold at four hundred miles as well as it had at four feet.

But it still held.

That it did.

And if it could do that much, then eventually he could make his way out of this town with his head on straight and no risk of losing it. I’m coming, Bae.

He turned back toward the car, scarf balled up in one hand.

“That’s it?”

Gold opened the driver’s door and looked back at the first mate of his greatest enemy. “For you? Yes.”

“Well… hold on now, what about getting me back?”

Gold paused, a hand on the roof as he looked back over at it. “You remember how to walk, don’t you?” The smile was still on his face as he spotted Smee in the rearview, car pointing him back to town.