I'm doing this thing on Tumblr where every now and then, I open up the floor to five-word-and-under prompts from the people lurking me. Then, I take the prompts, and write heartbreaking Rumpelstiltskin things.

This prompt was: "Rumpelstiltskin is not the father."

He Remembers

Gold remembers.

He plods and plots, smiles and whiles, uses his 'pleases' so sparingly that even Regina, knowing and remembering, does not suspect.

But she would, if only she knew where to look.

Storybrooke is his sandbox. Between the two of them, he and Regina have built all the sandcastles here. Gold can go anywhere he pleases. There is no door that will not unlock for him. No house that will not open its windows. No land that will not swallow a fence.

But he cannot walk through the library door.

Inside, there is a woman. Older now than he remembers. She must be, though he has not seen her in more years than calendars can counts. Mostly, Gold pretends he does not remember. When he forgets, he catches himself wondering if her nose still crinkles when she smiles.

There are things – small things – that hurt worse than ogre clubs and shattered teeth.

Once, and only once, so many years ago when the curse was fresh and new and he was not a coward, Gold crossed the many streets that led towards hers, a book under his arm and some weak premise of a rare story, her name thick like chocolate on his tongue, maddening as wine, persistent as feathers to the spine.

And he was not a coward. Not a coward, not anymore.

But as he crossed Le Prince to the library steps, he passed a child. A wee thing, hardly higher than his cane, drawing happy people holding hands in the sidewalk with her rainbow of fat chalks. Such a sweet, tiny creature. She'd looked up at him, waved a blue streaked palm, and smiled.

Her smile. The same constellations of freckles. The same crinkle between the eyes.

But not her eyes.

And he'd thought – in that searing, rending instant his heart clenched and leapt and the grief battered itself blind against the backs of his teeth – he'd thought, he'd bent, he'd dared to hope that maybe, maybe, maybe, before this curse took hold… once upon a time…

But no. Gold knew better. This girl child, this precious treasure… he'd had no part in this.

Unseeing, cold to the bones, he'd pivoted on his undamaged knee and limped back the way he'd come, hearing ogres in the thudding of his heartbeat. And behind him, so faint through the roar of old wars and heartbreak, he heard a door open, a laugh like bells and, "Come in and eat your lunch, little cat."

Happiness. So fat and bright it seared through his chest like a knife with a new name.

The happily ever after, the fae wisp he'd once glimpsed in the after throes of a vision – her eyes and his smile – dissipated into the familiar dusty dragon's hoard of his shop. Full of lost things. One more lost thing. The dust won't notice.

Gold shoved the book into the very back of a drawer, stood like a statue at the edge of the counter and now he waits, waits, waits once again for the day the hero-child will return and bring the sky crashing down. And if his smile pulls too sharp, if his words hurt, if he wakes broken in the night to the strains of a song for which he can no longer remember the words. Well.

Only Regina would have known. And Regina does not know where to look.