The Library

By: TriplePirouette/3Pirouette

Category: angst

Spoilers: through 1.12

Disclaimer: They're not mine.

Word Count: 413

Distribution: my , LJ, and my AO3. Anyone else please ask first :)

Summary: Mr. Gold never went past the Library anymore. Stand alone. Look at the Library (under the clock tower) next time they pass it in Storybrooke. It's boarded up.

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AN: Anyone notice the library in Storybrooke? Um, yeah. Short, sad, and open if anyone wants to play more here, this is all I have on the particular subject.

Mr. Gold never went past the Library anymore. It was one of the first places he sought out in Storybrooke. He knew beyond any hope that if she were alive, if his endless searches had somehow missed her, that she would be there.

The library was a small building on the corner, beneath the clock tower. From that very first day in this new land, it had been boarded up. Newspapers covered the windows, the front door touted a chain and padlock, and the clock in the tower never moved.

The first time he passed it, he sighed and felt the hope sink from his bones. It was closed far too tightly for anyone to be inside. He rattled the doors and pulled at the chain, but nothing moved and nothing inside stirred. He accepted the reality that she wasn't here and didn't dig any further.

But the second time he passed it, something in the window of crisscrossed news print caught his eye. Anabelle French. Her name here. It was on every page. He read line after line, tilted his head front ways and sideways and nearly upside down to devour every single word. Every page told the same story in slightly different ways.

Anabelle French, town librarian, suffers a psychotic break. She holes herself in the Library storage room, just beneath the clock tower. For four days and four nights, she lets no one in, but the crowd gathered below can hear her screams. Her estranged father, who turned her out after the death of her mother, does not come. Unexpectedly, sometime between three and five am on the fifth day, she jumps. She is rushed to the hospital, but she cannot be saved.

It is so close to the story that the Queen told him so many years ago that his heart constricts. He had always held hope that he'd been lied to, that he'd been too blinded by his desire and love for her that he couldn't tell the evil lies from truths.

This is the truth. If she's dead here, she is dead there.

Mr. Gold doesn't walk past the library anymore. Even with his cane he takes long routes that baffle the people around him just to avoid the building with the broken clock. He quietly and efficiently keeps up his reputation, places his pawns for the upcoming war and slides all he needs into position. It doesn't matter if he wins, though. He has already lost.