The Orphan Jones

Mr Gold feels a tug in his chest that sends a chill right down to his fingertips. Rumplestiltskin's compulsion to answer the plea for a bargain sends his magic thrumming into life within him.

Rumplestiltskin has been mostly dormant within Mr Gold for over a decade, since he made a sacrifice for his child that altered his magic significantly. Mr Gold has become accustomed to the change, but the primal, monstrous creature within has had little use for it.

Until this moment Mr Gold had not even been entirely certain that this would work, that Rumplestiltskin could take to the new magic enough to still be summoned.

All magic comes with a price, but Mr Gold had gifted the child this one use for free.

“What do you need?” Gold asks, but something in his voice has changed, it's familiar and Other all at once, and it startles him a little to realise just how much of himself has altered in thirteen years.

Iridiana hears the change in his voice but does not appear to mind, gazing instead at Mr Gold's skin. He lifts his hands slightly and notes their faint glitter with mild surprise: he had always thought it had been the darkness which had caused that.

However, it's much subtler than it used to be.

His magic is much less than it used to be.

Iridiana swallows, and approaches Mr Gold's personal space bravely, quite aware that the air around them is thick with magic waiting for her words.

“I… I need you to show me how it happened,” Iridiana enunciates firmly. “I need to understand what happened to my mother.”

Even the monstrous thing inside Mr Gold seems disturbed by the statement, and Gold wonders whether the neglected persona is less inhumane than he had always thought. Perhaps he has changed more deeply than he realised.

Mr Gold licks his dry lips and asks, “Are you sure, dearie? There's no taking it back once it's done.” Unless he wipes her memory afterwards, but that's just going to leave her needing the exact same answers.

Iridiana steels herself, because part of her never wants to know at all what could make her mother reject her so completely. “I need to know,” she says sincerely. She will never be able to fix, or even simply accept, what happened if she doesn't know.

If she doesn't do it, her father might make the biggest mistake of his life. Worse than keeping and loving her.

Mr Gold nods and takes a deep breath, and he doesn't know what's at stake here, but he obviously knows that what he's gifting Iridiana is going to hurt.

“As you wish, Miss Jones,” Mr Gold says soberly.

It does not occur to him to use any other means than time travel, even though he once thought it so complicated. It doesn't seem complicated now. It feels like that time already has a pull on him, as though becoming so intimately acquainted with Emma's magic before Iridiana's birth has made him highly attuned to that moment. That wound.

Sometimes the magic within him seems foreign: a body all its own. The magic is insistent, Mr Gold can feel it pressing on his eyeballs, he reaches for Iridiana in a blur, and… then they're not there at all.

The Underworld is not, nor will it ever be, somewhere that Mr Gold wants to spend much time. That being said, he's pretty sure he's going to hell when he dies, so an eternity spent here might be a reprieve.

He does not want to be here a moment longer than he has to.

Iridiana is looking around at their surroundings: a twisted, apocalyptic version of Storybrooke. Gold can feel her tension through his hand.

“What happened?” the girl says at last, her voice weak.

Mr Gold looks at her quickly. “We're not in Storybrooke,” he explains quickly.

Iridiana gazes around him dubiously. “We're not?”

“We're… we're in the Underworld,” Mr Gold announces.

“Hell?” Iridiana asks, wide-eyed.

“More like… purgatory,” Mr Gold says softly.

“Oh,” says Iridiana, and various snippets of overheard conversations from the past start to make sense.

Mr Gold has the worst sense of deja vu, and it doesn't just seem to be the dread of returning here. “I'm not certain… exactly which moment we've arrived at,” Mr Gold confesses. The doors he had expected to be guarded by Cruella and the Blind Witch are as deserted as the rest of that space, and he gets a horrible feeling in his stomach that perhaps he's taken her too late.

There's nothing strange about the sky, and no heroes running towards a portal.

“I, ah, wasn't expecting you,” declares a voice that sends mild chills down Mr Gold's spine. He had hoped not to hear that voice again.

Mr Gold turns slowly, keeping Iridiana slightly behind himself, and warning her silently with his grip to be on her guard.

“Hades,” Mr Gold greets carefully.

“I'm quite a fan of yours, Dark One, what are you doing down here when you could be up there sending me more souls?” Hades questions. He eyes the washed-out looking child beside Rumplestiltskin speculatively.

Mr Gold licks his lips, getting his bearings. “So I can gather we have not already met then?”

Hades raises his eyebrows and twists his neck. “You've lost me.”

“I'm still making sense of it myself,” Mr Gold mutters. Thinking back, he remembers Hades already knew about the heroes arrival before they met. Perhaps Gold himself had already mentioned it?

“I'm expecting myself, my two successive Dark Ones, and some entourage to arrive here,” Mr Gold explains carefully.

Hades gives him a perturbed look. “Yourself and your successors? But you're not dead.”

“Evidently,” Mr Gold responds. “Instead, events are going to transpire here which will have lasting effects.”

“Like what?” Hades asks, tilting his head suspiciously.

Mr Gold isn't certain what the wisest thing to say is, but a careful use of the truth seems the smartest option. “Your heart is going to start beating.”

Hades takes a step back. “What?”

“Just as I said,” Mr Gold says curtly. “But I won't give you any details, in case it causes anything to change.”

“Why are you here?” Hades asks.

Mr Gold indicates Iridiana reluctantly. “The girl needs to witness what is about to transpire,” he explains.

“Why?” Hades asks.

“What can I tell you?” Mr Gold considers. “You won't get along with the group much, but you will get your own way and you will leave this place. However, something of significance will get broken, and the girl will need to witness that if it is ever to be fixed in the future.”

Hades considers his treasures. His Olympic Crystal is already broken, but he knows how to fix that, surely? “How does my future look?” he asks suspiciously.

Mr Gold is careful yet honest when he replies, “You were your usual smug self the last time you spoke to me.”

Something seems to draw Hades' attention and he looks away. “It seems you might just have arrived,” Hades says huskily. He frowns, “That you is a lot more powerful. Darker.”

Mr Gold concedes with a dry smile. “It turns out I'm not as much of a coward as I thought I was.”

Hades gives him a puzzled calculating look, but seems drawn towards the others. “Should I go to them?” he asks.

“By all means, they're going to cause chaos for you before you leave,” Mr Gold states.

“Should the girl come?” Hades asks.

“She should stay out of sight,” Mr Gold declares, waving Hades off. “And I do not think it is a good idea for me to meet my former self.”

“Wait,” Hades says. “One of your successors… that would be Captain Hook?”

Mr Gold gives a small nod.

“We've met,” Hades admits slowly. He turns to follow the pull of the other living visitors, quashing any chance Iridiana has to ask about her father.

Gold pulls Iridiana close. “Do not tell him who you are, but if you feel endangered, tell him that you're Zelena's daughter.”

Iridiana's nose crinkles with surprise and mild disgust. “Robyn?”

“Don't tell him what Zelena called 'you' unless you have to, but if you do, explain why 'you're' called Robyn.”

“Because Robin Hood died?” Iridiana says skeptically.

“Because Hades killed him,” Mr Gold explains.

Iridiana's eyes widen.