Disclaimer: I do not own Once Upon a time

She sang while she worked. That was one of the first things that he noticed after his caretaker's arrival. He sat in the corner spinning as she washed the floors. Though he found that he was spinning less and watching her more. Her singing was making concentration nearly impossible, and her way of leaning over to scrub the floors was making it difficult enough. At first, she had been too nervous to sing or make any noise at all in his presence. She had scurried from one chore to the next like a frightened sparrow, worried that if she stood still for even a moment the cat might pounce. It had been amusing, but after only a few weeks her initial trepidation had faded. Now she was willing to sit, sing and even daydream in the same room as him. He might have to do something about that, lest her fear and therefore respect of her master disappear completely. (Not that he was truly worried that she would lose her fear of the scaly, cackling creature that she served). But for the time being, at least she had a nice singing voice. Her silvery soprano was certainly not the most beautiful he had heard in his centuries of life, but it was pure, gentle, and hit far more sweet notes than sour ones. It reminded him of the larks that used to sing outside of the cottage every morning. Bae had loved those birds, even when he was a small boy he had woken with the sun just to hear their song—he spun faster, watching the wheel turn, and willed himself to forget.

From her position on the floor, Belle turned and he caught the lyrics.

"My young love said to me,

My mother won't mind

And my father won't slight you

For your lack of kine.

And she laid her hand on me

And this she did say:

It will not be long, Love,

Till our wedding day.

As she stepped away from me

And she moved through the fair."

"How about a little less singing and a little more scrubbing, dearie?" he called out, enjoying the way she started, as if she really had forgotten that the most feared man in all the realms was sitting a stone's throw away from her.

"I'm sorry," she murmured. Her eyes—like two glistening stones at the bottom of a clear pool—met his muddy brown ovals. He was surprised to see that for the first time there was no fear tainting those eyes, just—gentleness? She was humoring him, he realized darkly. Not obeying him. Yes, he was definitely going to need to make sure that his little caretaker did not forget her place.

He looked back at the wheel, surprised at the rush of self-loathing that he felt in that moment. Beside it, the thread of gold—bright glinting, and so utterly useless to him—slowly made its way down onto the floor.

The girl was a desperate soul if he had ever seen one. Invisible, he had spent the last week haunting her household to observe the recipient of his next deal. She was demure as she served her stepmother and stepsisters—she came when they called and didn't even flinch when they struck her. But when they were not looking, he saw the pain and the anger in her eyes. When she was alone, he heard the tearful conversations with her deceased mother when she pleaded for strength to face another day. Oh yes, she would agree to any deal he offered her if it would give her an escape from her stepmother's home.

At the moment, she was sitting at her place by the fire, dressed in rags and covered in her namesake. She was breaking her crust of bread into pieces to share with her only friends, the mice that lived in the kitchen and frequently kept her stepfamily awake with their squeaking. She was pretty, he observed. Even in this lowly state. Golden hair, a heart-shaped face, and a few womanly curves to speak of. Perhaps she could even be beautiful if given the proper aid. Beauty would certainly be an asset if she was going to land the prince and have his child—a child for him to take, though she would not find out about that term of their agreement until much later. A grin cracked across his cursed face, and he would have giggled if he had been in the safety of his own castle.

His attention was brought back to the present when the girl began to hum softly to herself, and then to sing. The mice crept toward her, their little black noses twitching as they began to nibble the crumbs out of her hands. The tune that she was humming was familiar, and it took him a few moments to place it. As soon as he did, he felt as if someone had pulled out his still beating heart and crushed it—again. His teeth clenched painfully until his smile felt cut onto his face.

"As she stepped away from me

And she moved through the fair

And fondly I watched her

Move here and move there.

And then she made her way homeward,

With one star awake,

As the swan in the evening

Moved over the lake."

In the flickering firelight, just for a moment, he could envision the girl's locks brown instead of gold and her eyes deep blue instead of pale.

Through the haze that blurred his vision he was gone and back in the Dark Castle without anyone ever knowing that he had ever been there. He had had enough of poor, singing girls for the day.

There was a drip somewhere in the dungeon that had frayed his nerves and disturbed his sleep for the first few days and nights spent in his new home, courtesy of the two people whose royal status he had helped acquire. (How is that for gratitude?) But now, he was thankful for it. Other than the occasional squeaking of the rats, it saved him from complete silence as well as darkness.

Until she returned. He sensed her before he saw her. But he didn't need to see her to know that she was sitting in her usual spot in the far corner of the cell and wearing the blue dress that he had last seen her in.

"Why did you let them capture you?" she inquired softly. "You knew that the princess intended to trap you with that quill."

"Of course I knew. I'm only biding my time, dearie," he replied, taking care to add the usual lilt to his words. When she had come the first few times, he had ignored her, but he found that that method made her even more persistent. He was aware that this was not Belle. Just a figment of his imagination created to remind him of his slipping sanity and to keep him company while he waited for his former apprentice to finally get on with it and cast his curse already—but this illusion was just as inquisitive and willful as the real flesh-and-blood woman who had once been his caretaker.

She leaned forward, just enough for him to see her face. The torchlight was dim, but it revealed the red gashes crisscrossing her pale skin. "Would you like me to tell you a story, to pass the time?" she asked simply, as if they were still in the Dark Castle and she was daydreaming and pretending to clean while he spun late into the night.

"I have my own thoughts to keep me company, thank you dearie," he responded curtly.

Unabashed, she simply shrugged her shoulders. "As you wish, Rumplestilskin."

She leaned back into the shadows again, and began to sing softly.

The people were saying,

No two e'er were wed

But one had a sorrow

That never was said.

And I smiled as she passed

With her goods and her gear,

And that was the last

That I saw of my dear.

He leaned against the prison wall and closed his eyes. Just a little longer. Just a little bit more of the isolation, the rats, and this sweet torture, and he would be in the land without magic at last.

Mr. Gold woke up in a sweat. His heart still pounding, he sat up in his bed and looked around his room. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness and he saw his familiar things, he began to calm. Nothing was wrong, he told himself. It had just been a dream. These nightly episodes were rare but were becoming increasingly less so. After all, it had been a particularly sweltering summer for Maine, and he was an old man. But what was strange to him was that he could never remember this dream that caused him to wake in such a panic, and he was usually good at remembering his dreams. All he could recall was that there was someone in his bedroom—a female someone. She had slowly walked toward him and gently touched his shoulder. He thought that she had said something too, but he could not remember what it was.

But when he tried to picture her face, he never could. He had tried drawing a picture of her, and for a moment he would hold the crystallized image of her in his mind, but before he could touch the pencil to the paper, it would be gone like ripples in a lake. But why did this woman frighten him so? No one frightened him, Mr. Gold, the owner of Storybrooke. On the contrary, he frightened others. People scrambled to get out of his way when he walked down the street and just one look or word from him could silence anyone. Even Mayor Mills, who was even more power hungry than he was, gave him her cold respect and kept her distance as best she could. So he couldn't be frightened of this mystery woman. But if it wasn't fear, then what else could waking in a cold sweat and with a pounding heart signify? What other emotion could he possibly be feeling?

He sighed and pulled himself out of bed, cursing as his leg protested. He limped over to the window and opened it to let some air in. The night breeze was as hot as the day breeze, and it was as limp and languid as a newborn puppy.

He would be glad when it was autumn and the nights were cool again.

He returned to bed, determined to get some sleep before he got up to mind the shop and collect rent the next day. He closed his eyes, but all he could see was her features, swimming before him in a massless jumble. Her face appeared and then vanished just as quickly. It was almost as if she was taunting him. He rolled over onto his side, frustrated. This dream woman, whoever she was, seemed determined to rob him of his sleep. "Dreams are memories of another life." He remembered hearing that somewhere. But he had never believed it. He had taken a psychology course at the University of Glasgow, at what seemed like lifetimes ago. Dream interpretation had been part of the course. He had been required to keep a dream diary for a few weeks, an assignment that he had found utterly laughable, but now he wished that he could remember what the professor had told them about the meanings of his dreams.

As he drifted back to sleep and his thoughts became less and less coherent, the words of a long forgotten song began to weave through his fuzzy mind.

Last night she came to me,

My dead love came in.

So softly she came

That her feet made no din.

As she laid her hand on me,

And this she did say:

It will not be long, love,

'Til our wedding day.

Outside, a cool breeze was stirring. It brushed the wind chimes, causing them to clink softly in the still night, and it gently ruffled the curtains in the upstairs bedroom of the pink house.