The Gold Standard

A/N: This is my first story set in the Once Upon a Time arc. I have just seen the complete first season, so that is where I shall set my story. This is AU season 1, so if things are different in season 2, which I haven't seen, so be it. Hope you enjoy my take on the characters. I love Mr. Gold, so you'll see a lot of him in this, as well as Emma, Henry, the missing Baelfire, and my own characters. Also there will be bits and pieces of Gold's past that I interpret from seeing the show. Have fun reading!

1

The Disbeliever

Mary Margaret's classroom

The day after Graham's funeral:

Henry nudged his friend Alina under the desk with his foot. Since she sat next to him, it wasn't that he couldn't reach her, but he had to do it without his teacher, Mary Margaret Blanchard, seeing. The ten-year-old was usually pretty good about doing sneaky things, especially after he had gone out of Storybrooke and gotten a hold of his birth mother, Emma Swan, who was, according to a book of fairy tales, supposed to break an old curse upon the town.

The trouble was, Emma didn't believe in curses or fairy tales, even though Henry had shown her The Book. The whole town had been under this curse for twenty-eight years, and the curse had been one of forgetting and lies, where every fairy tale character you'd ever known had been transported to a world without magic, and had forgotten who they were and everything that had happened in their past lives. Families were broken and so were hearts. Nothing was as it should be. And all of it was due to Regina Mills, the mayor of Storybrooke, who also happened to be the Evil Queen of the Snow White legend, and Henry's adopted mother!

But Henry was determined to break the curse, only he couldn't do it alone. He needed Emma, she was supposed to be the savior, the only one to be able to enter and leave Storybrooke any time she wished. Only she thought Henry was making everything up. The only one who believed him at all was his best friend, Alina Rose Gold, who happened to be the pawnbroker's daughter, child of the richest man in town.

Alina was herself from the fairy tale realm, though she couldn't remember all of her past either, and Henry had yet to figure out who her father, Mr. Gold, was in that realm. All Alina knew was that her mother had died when she was born and she lived with her widowed father and their cook/housekeeper Saylah. She was also under Storybrooke's curse, but unlike most residents, she had read Henry's book and knew it for the truth. Unlike Emma, she believed.

Now Henry nudged Alina's foot and whispered, "I'll bet the Wicked Monarch had something to do with Sheriff Graham's death." That was code for his adopted mother, Mayor Regina Mills.

Alina blinked and held up her hand in front of her face, then whispered, "Well, that's pretty obvious. She got jealous that Graham wasn't making googly eyes at her anymore, but at Emma. And then—bam—he's gone." She snapped her fingers for emphasis.

They had discovered that Sheriff Graham was actually the Huntsmen from Snow White, and when he disobeyed the Queen and let the princess live, the Queen had punished him by stealing away his heart and keeping it in a box. Heartless in both realms, he had served the Queen, most recently as her lover, but he had hated it.

"I know. But we can't prove it," Henry hissed back. He had rather liked Graham, even though the idea of Graham and Emma together made him uneasy.

"Not unless we get some evidence," Alina whispered back, chewing on the end of her pencil.

"How are we gonna do that?" asked Henry.

"We need the Super Secret Detective kit," Alina replied.

"The what?"

"Children, what are you whispering about back there?" asked Mary Margaret.

Henry froze. Uh oh. Caught. He quickly pasted a smile on his face and answered, "I was just asking Alina a question, Miss Blanchard. About the classwork."

"He forgot which page we were on in our math book," Alina spoke up. Then she mouthed to Henry, "Nice save. Talk later."

"It's page 395, Henry," Mary Margaret said.

"Okay, Miss Blanchard," Henry quickly turned to the appropriate page in his book and then giggled as he realized something. "Like in Harry Potter. When Snape tells them to turn to page 395."

"It's 394," Alina corrected, for she had read the books too, at least a hundred times.

"Are you sure, Goldie?"

"Positive. I memorized that line. And don't call me Goldie," Alina ordered, rolling her eyes. "I'm not a dog."

"What are you two arguing about?" asked Mary Margaret, coming down the row.

"Harry Potter. He misquoted a line," Alina informed her. "You know the part in Prisoner of Azkaban when—"

"Alina, you know I've never read those books and right now—"

"You should. They're really good," Henry chimed in.

"Yes, and maybe I will someday, but right now we are doing math," Mary Margaret said firmly, and tapped the book on Henry's desk. "So let's get to it, before you two have extra homework tonight. You can talk about Harry Potter after class." Then she turned and swept up the aisle.

Henry thought she reminded him a little of a princess then, though she couldn't recall her alter ego was Snow White. He bent over his book and began doing the problems on the board.

"Ooh, Mills and Gold are in trouble!" singsonged one of their classmates, a tall boy with a rather prominent Adam's Apple called Tom.

Henry blushed and continued working. Tom was always spouting off whenever anyone else was in trouble.

Alina jerked her head up and snarled, "Be quiet, Tom. Like you can talk, you're in trouble every other day!"

"So? At least I'm not the teacher's pet, like you and Mills, Gold. And we all know why that is," the boy sneered. He had buck teeth and reddish hair. "'Cause your dad's the landlord and his mom's the mayor, so you're both suck-ups."

"And you're the village idiot, Tommy Mason," Alina hissed back angrily. She hated it when kids reminded her who her father was, as if it made a difference in how she behaved. It didn't. She wasn't a snot, like Aria Tremaine. "Better do your work, before you fail another paper and get left back again." She turned back to her math assignment, longing to get up and punch Tom out, but her dad always told her ladies didn't hit boys. Unless they did something totally inappropriate. Whatever that meant.

Tom glared at her, red-faced. That was the school joke, that he'd been left back a year because he was lazy and refused to do his homework.

When the bell finally rang, Henry waited until Alina had put everything in her sparkly pink backpack and everyone else had left before he said, "What was that you said before about the Super Detective kit?"

Alina grinned at him. She had deep brown hair and beautiful brown eyes, and her navy and white uniform, which all Storybrooke students wore, looked cute on her, though she hated it. It makes me feel like I'm in reform school, or trapped with nuns, she told Henry once. "It's a kit my dad has in his shop. I'll ask him if I can borrow it tonight over supper. We need it to investigate."

"Investigate what?"

"Your house, silly! We need to see if she left any evidence lying around," Alina whispered.

"We can't! You know what would happen if we got caught?" Henry gasped.

"Yeah. I'd tell her 'sorry, Madam Mayor, we were playing in the basement.' And she'd believe us. We're only junior detectives to us, Henry, everyone else thinks we're kids playing."

"You think she keeps evidence in my basement?"

"Why not? My dad keeps a lot of old things in our shop basement."

"Like what?"

"Oh, you know, old things. A broken spinning wheel, some leather, you know stuff like that. We just have to look around a little. The Detective kit will help."

"I'd better not get grounded for this," Henry warned.

"You won't," she assured him.

"What if we do find something? Then what?"

"Then we show it to Emma and maybe convince her to help us," Alina answered.

Just then a long blast of a car horn blared.

Henry winced. "Gotta go. That's my mom—I mean the mayor—waiting for me to come out so I can go to my session with Dr. Hopper." Archie Hopper was the town psychiatrist, and Regina had scheduled sessions with him for Henry because of his delusional imagination. Only Regina knew her son wasn't delusional, it just suited her to play that card and make everyone think Henry had problems. Since she had cast the curse, she was the only one, besides Emma and Henry, unaffected by it.

"Okay! Bye, Henry! I'll call you tonight after I talk with Papa!" Alina waved as Henry rushed out the door. You didn't keep the mayor waiting, not even if you were her son.

Alina made her way down the sidewalk towards her tall brick house with gold trim. It was a large house, Victorian in style, and it practically screamed a rich family lives here. Well, one did, even though Alina didn't really care that much for money.

She went around the back near the kitchen and entered the house, tossing her backpack on the floor and yelling, as usual, "Saylah, I'm home!"

"In here, darling!" called a cheery voice with a faint accent. "I've got your favorite peanut butter cookies and milk on the table."

Alina rushed into the kitchen to find a stout middle-aged woman wearing a blue print dress and a white apron standing over the stove stirring a pot. She hugged the housekeeper around the middle. "Mmm! Smells delicious!"

"I'm making your papa's favorite—Guinness beef stew tonight," Saylah chuckled, hugging the girl back. She was the only mother figure the child had ever had, since she was born, Saylah had watched over her, loving her fiercely. She had been in the Gold employ for years.

"Yum! But right now I'm hungry for cookies," Alina exclaimed, sitting down at the table, where there was a platter of freshly baked cookies and a glass of milk awaiting her.

"After your snack, Alina, remember to do your homework," Saylah reminded.

"I know. I know. Or else no TV and no comic books," Alina finished the familiar statement. She wondered how Henry was doing and couldn't wait for supper tonight.

Page~*~*~*~Break

Henry sighed with relief after his session with Archie was over. Dr. Hopper, who was a tall man with a shock of red hair, was nice, but it was hard to sit there on his couch and be told that everything he knew to be true was just a fantasy world created by his fertile imagination. Archie thought he was humoring Henry, but then he was an adult with no memories of his past life.

Instead of going back home, Henry decided to head to Granny's diner and get some ice cream, and perhaps see Emma. Emma usually hung out there, if nothing had her attention down at the station as deputy. And in Storybrooke, almost nothing ever happened. Unless you counted Leroy getting drunk and passing out in the street. Or Bambi crossing the street. Or the Queen killing Sheriff Graham.

Henry wished that someone else besides Alina believed him about his stepmother. It was hard to break a curse when your only ally was another ten-year-old, even if Alina was smart and could get the Super Secret Detective kit from Mr. Gold. Well, maybe after some evidence was found, Emma would believe him.

The bells on the diner door tinkled loudly as Henry entered. He waved hello to Ruby, who was the waitress as well as Granny's granddaughter, and sat down at a table next to Emma, who was nursing a hot chocolate with whipped cream and cinnamon, her favorite drink. It was also Henry's.

"Hi," he said.

Emma looked up, her blue eyes red-rimmed and tired. But she mustered a smile for her son anyway. "Hi, Henry. How was school? Don't you have homework to do?"

Henry shrugged. "It's easy, I'll do it later." He waved Ruby over. "One hot chocolate, please. With cinnamon. And a chocolate donut."

"You eat all that sugar and your mother's going to have a fit," Ruby teased, scribbling down his order.

"Which one?" Henry teased. "I don't hear her saying anything," he indicated Emma.

"I mean your other one," Ruby corrected.

"What the mayor doesn't know won't hurt her," Emma said. She was Henry's biological mother, and Regina his adopted one, and she had only recently discovered him, but it still hurt to have to share him with that witch of a woman.

"Cool! Maybe I'll get two donuts," Henry grinned.

Ruby dashed off to fill his order, while he turned to Emma and said, "It's too bad about Graham, isn't it?"

Emma nodded wearily. Graham had died in her arms and she still was shaky and grieving. "Yes. He was a good friend."

Henry nodded. "I know. And his death wasn't an accident," he whispered.

Emma winced. This was all she needed. "Henry, please. None of your conspiracy theories."

"It's not a theory," Henry protested. "The Queen took his heart and crushed it . . ."

"Henry!" Emma hissed through her teeth. "That's not true! Graham died of a heart attack. Now stop, people are staring." That wasn't strictly true. Only a few were.

"Brought on by the Queen's magic," Henry insisted maddeningly. "It's right here in my book." He unzipped his backpack and brought out the old leatherbound copy of Once Upon a Time, the book that supposedly told about all the fairy tales and the truth about Storybrooke and the curse. "She keeps hearts in boxes somewhere in the basement."

Emma rolled her eyes. "Henry, I know she's not a nice person. Hell, I can barely stand her, but even so that doesn't give you the right to go around accusing her of murder. Especially without proof."

Henry bit his lip. Why couldn't Emma see? "Okay, but what if I found proof? Then would you believe me?"

"Henry . . ." Emma sighed. But his puppydog eyes were too hard to resist. "All right. If you find me proof that Regina was behind this, I'll arrest her."

"Good!" Henry said, smiling. Ruby placed his hot cocoa and donut on the table in front of him and he began to eat hungrily. He hoped that Alina was able to convince her father to give her the detective kit. He was sure they could find the evidence they needed . . . hopefully without being caught.

Page~*~*~*~Break

Gold residence

That same night:

Mr. Gold, pawnbroker and maker of deals, and once upon a time a powerful sorcerer, quietly spooned up the stew and ate it. "Perfect, as usual, Saylah."

Saylah smiled from her place at the foot of the table. "Thank you, Mr. Gold." She was always pleased when he complemented her cooking. He was not an easy man to impress, in fact some would call him downright impossible. But though he was a hard-nosed businessman and opportunist, he also had hidden a softer side, one that he only showed to a few people, one of those being the mischievous imp sitting at his left, slurping her stew.

"Alina, don't slurp," he corrected softly. "Ladies don't make noises when they eat."

Alina paused, looking up at him with big eyes. "How come men can?"

"They shouldn't," Gold replied, somewhat exasperatedly. The girl had habit of asking questions that some would regard as impudent. Like her mother. "I don't." He carefully spooned up another mouthful, making sure none got on his expensive Saville Row gray suit. He'd set a good example if it killed him, which it might very well do someday.

"Unless you're choking," she pointed out.

Gold frowned at her. "I'm not, now hush and eat your stew, dearie, before it gets cold," he ordered. It had been a long day at the shop today and he was tired.

Alina obeyed, eating the rest of her portion and then some bread with butter quietly. Then she set down her spoon and looked at her father expectantly. "Papa, do you still have that Super Secret Detective kit in the shop?"

Gold almost choked. "The what?" He hastily blotted his mouth with a napkin.

"The Super Secret Detective kit," Alina repeated, looking at him like he was insane. "You know . . . the kit that teaches you how to become a great detective and find clues and break codes. It was on the shelf next to those puppets."

Gold raised an eyebrow, brushing aside a strand of his immaculately groomed brown hair. "If you know where it is, then why are you asking me where it is?"

"Because I'm not sure if it's still there. You might have sold it. Can I look?"

"Now? Alina, I just closed up for the day and it's almost seven o'clock."

"So? It's just down the street, Papa. Please? I need to see if it's still there," she pleaded.

"Alina, why must you have this now?" he demanded, a little sharply. "Can't it wait till tomorrow?"

"No. Please let's get it now. Before you forget and sell it."

"It's not like I'm in my dotage, girl. Not yet anyway," he huffed exasperatedly.

"You forgot to buy Oreos last time you went to the store."

"It wasn't on my list!" he cried.

"I reminded you," she said maddeningly.

"Forget that," he ordered hastily. Kid had a mind like a steel trap, he thought wearily. Like someone else he could name. He put on his let's make a deal face. "If I go back to the shop with you and find this . . . detective kit . . . what will you trade me for it?"

Alina looked thoughtful. This was an old game of theirs. Her papa was the best deal maker in Storybrooke and he had taught her to never give away something without getting something in return. "Umm . . . I'll give you my vintage Spider Man comics," she bargained.

"How much are those worth?"

"A lot. Just look it up in the Comic Price guide," she urged, her eyes sparkling.

"Deal, sweetheart," Gold smiled and shook her hand. She was learning fast, his little girl.

Further down the table, Saylah coughed in disapproval.

Gold looked up and said, "You have something to say?"

"She's too young to be making bargains that way, Mr. Gold," Saylah snorted. She knew it wasn't her place to go correcting the master on how to raise his child, but she had been with him long enough to freely express her opinion without worrying that he'd turn her out. Who would mind Alina when he worked if he did that, anyhow?

"Nonsense, Saylah!" Gold returned, amused. "She's old enough to learn how to make a deal and stick to it. That's what makes the world go round."

"I thought that was love," Alina interjected.

Gold coughed. He looked a little uncomfortable. "That too, dearie. Let me finish up here, then we'll get your detective kit. What are you going to do with it anyway?"

"Play detective with Henry, of course," Alina said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Right," Gold laughed.

Alina waited until he was eating before she rushed from the table to get the promised comics and in about ten minutes, she was walking beside her father on the way to his pawnshop, keeping her steps slow to match his as he limped along with his cane.

Page~*~*~*~Break

Henry heard the phone ring and quickly picked it up before Regina could. He already knew who it was. Only one person would dare call his house at seven thirty at night.

"Alina? Did you get it?"

"Yes. I have it right here on the bed."

Henry heaved a sigh of relief. "Oh, good. Was it hard to find?"

"No. I traded some Spider Man comics for it. But that's okay, I'd already read them."

"Okay. Meet me at the diner tomorrow after school. My mom's in a meeting with Sydney Glass all day so she won't be home till after supper."

"Okay. That's perfect! We can look for clues and then if you want you can eat supper with us."

"You sure that's all right?" Sometimes Henry wasn't sure whether Mr. Gold liked him or not, being the mayor's son.

"Uh huh. Saylah always makes enough to feed an army. Wait till you see this kit. It's super cool!"

"Great!" Sudden footsteps were heard coming up the stairs. "Gotta go. She's coming to check on me," he whispered. "Operation Cobra out." He hung up the phone and scrambled back into his bed before Regina was halfway up the stairs.

"Henry? Are you asleep?" Regina's cold voice floated around him as she peered into his room.

Henry closed his eyes and waited until she was gone before sitting up. That had been close. But tomorrow maybe they could find some evidence, something that would make Emma sit up and take notice before it was too late.

A/N: Saylah and Tom Mason are characters from fairytales also . . . but let's see if you can guess who they are.