Dreams Come True:

Page 80: Whatever It Takes:

*A Few Minutes Later*

Neal and David helped set Gold down in his back office. "Emma, did you find it?" Gold asked, looking at Emma, who walked between Neal and David. "Yeah, there's nothing in it..." Emma said, shaking the empty-looking jar in her hands until they heard something rattle in it. "What the--" Emma furrowed her brows before reaching inside to pick up something that felt like chalk but was invisible.

"Invisible chalk. Use it in the front doorway. Draw a line..." He instructed Emma, who just looked confused at her hand. "The rest of you? You might want to prepare for battle." Gold said to them when they started to leave. "Oh! Oh, wait, wait, please." He said, stopping Mary Margaret. "Can you get me a warmer blanket? From the cabinet." He asked her when she sighed, opening the cabinet door, shocked to see what was inside. Something she had not seen in years. The life and death candle that she did not use to save her mother because she would have taken another life to save her mother.

Gold watched her sigh to herself when she pulled out the candle, holding it in her hands. "Why do you have this?" She asked, looking at Gold, who was resting his head on his cane. "For a rainy day." He said, making her look at him, scoffing to herself since she now knew that Cora was the one to give her this instead of the Blue Fairy.

Emma tried her best to draw a line in front of the door of Gold's shop. But she could not see anything due to the chalk being invisible. "Missed a spot," Neal smirked to himself, causing Emma to turn, looking at him, unamused. "You're hilarious." She scoffed at him sarcastically. "I didn't know you were magical," Neal said, leaning on one of the counters, making Emma look away from what she was doing again.

"Oh, my... Are you being judgy about this? 'Cause you're not allowed to have opinions about surprises, Mr. Son-of-Rumpelstiltskin." Emma scoffed when she went back to drawing the line.

"Oh..." 

"What, "oh"?" Emma asked, stopping what she was doing again. "I didn't mean for Tamara to be a surprise." Neal sighed, looking down at his shoes, making Emma scoff out a chuckle. "You think I care that a guy I dated a decade ago is engaged?" Emma asked, sighing to herself.

Neal sighed, about to say something, but David entered the room. "We're all clear outside," David said, but he immediately noticed the tension. "Everything okay?" David asked when Neal smirked, looking over at Emma, who nodded at her dad.

"You're not getting any better, are you?" Mary Margaret asked Gold while she was still in the back room with him. 

"The candle can save me. There's nothing else." Gold sighed, looking down at the ground when he looked at his cane with marks on it. They were marks that kept track of Dream's growth from ages four to eight. He would come into Granny's, where Dream would stay with Granny, when Regina was busy, so he kept track of her growth, as she did with Neal, when he was growing up. "I wouldn't use this to save my own mother. What makes you think I would use it for you?" Mary Margaret asked him when Gold chuckled a bit.

"Because you're all grown up now." He said, looking up at her. "And for once, our interests are aligned." He continued, making her sigh, staring at the candle.

"She dies instead of you..."

"I know you can do this... I know you wanna do this." Gold said, causing Mary Margaret to pause for a moment, looking up at him. "There's no coming back from murder." She sighed at him. "And there's no coming back from death, either. And that's what will happen to your loved ones." Gold said, trying to guilt her into such an unforgivable act.

"Even if I were to do this... the candle only works if you whisper the victim's name over them." Mary Margaret said, remembering what she told her when she was a young girl.

"The heart will do." Gold said, malice-like when he continued to put the idea in her head. "Just like she is using against my daughter." He said, continuing to guilt Mary Margaret over doing this.

"Cora's heart... It's not in her body." Mary Margaret sighed aloud.

"Use the candle, curse the heart, and then, here comes the tricky part--"

"That's not the tricky part?" Mary Margaret asked, scoffing at him. "You have to put the heart back inside Cora's body. She will die, and I will live." He said, explaining what would happen if she agreed to this malicious act of getting her revenge for her mother and Johanna. "There is another way. I get Cora's heart. I control her and make her do the right thing, and I let you die. Takes care of two evils at once." She tried to threaten, making Gold chuckle at her.

"I was just imagining poor Henry's face when he finds out that you killed his grandpa... Or my poor daughter... My little Dream when she finds out you killed her father... who just came back into her life." Gold continued to guilt her when it seemed to do the trick, by the sad look on Mary Margaret's face.

"I drew the invisible line..." Emma said, walking into the back room before anything else could be said. "I think..." She sighed to herself, knowing that it was hard since she couldn't actually see what she was doing. "What now? You cast a protection spell?" Emma asked, walking farther into the room.

"No, no... You're going to do that for me. I'm relying on you." Gold said to Emma but looked over at Mary Margaret, who knew that she had to stop Cora. Whatever it took.

~season 2, episode 16: "The Miller's Daughter"~

~972 words~