A/N: Just a little drabble I threw together on the 6-hour bus ride home from college after catching up on all the episodes; sorry if something similar has been done already, but I literally jumped on board this show four days ago.

Trouble Is a Friend

He is a collector. He gathers his pieces gradually, taking little pieces of people, the pieces they do not realize are so precious until they are snatched away. He watches tragedies unfold, sometimes orchestrating them and sometimes simply waiting, and then he takes souvenirs. He surrounds himself with these pieces, some of them objectively valuable, but most of them merely knickknacks to the naked eye. But Rumplestiltskin is a curator of pain. He sees the aches and the sorrows and the regrets attached to every object. He catalogs each of them in his mind as he collects them, so in the habit of this appraisal that it has become automatic. And always, with every glance, every calculation of the mistakes, the losses, the grief of others, he compares their pain to his own.

He has yet to find anyone who paid as dearly as he did for his mistakes. But there are so many desperate people in the world. He keeps looking.

P.S. I love reviews. :)