amicustenebris | PSL - For Archie, Set After 4a

Entry tags:

PSL - For Archie, Set After 4a

With a kind of numbness that he hadn't felt since he cast Belle out of his castle and destroyed half his collection, Rumpelstiltskin made his way to civilization the very same night he was sent away. Once he hit the interstate it was not long before someone pulled over to offer help to the hobbling man, who looked like he'd wandered from a wreck. The stranger said they'd seen an abandoned car down the way a bit and offered to get him into town to call a tow truck.

He took advantage of his good fortune and was quickly able to access food, an ATM, a cane, and finally a place to collapse and eventually rent a car the following morning. He had thoughts of what he would have to do to figure out a way back over the town line. He understood the magic at work there, knew he could only go back in if summoned back in. But already the scheming began. Belle didn't understand his motivations, and he'd been incapable of correctly explaining. That was all there was to it. Part of him believed if he could say it right, if he could make sense of it all himself -- if he could just convince her that all she'd seen never meant he didn't love her? Then he could fix everything. Then he could be home with his wife, able to visit his son, able to walk and use magic.

He tried to call her from the phone in the motel. No answer. He tried a few times. There was an answer once. He couldn't speak.

Gold haunted that little hamlet outside of Ogunquit for a few days, with limited access to the internet or contact, just hoping he'd find some loophole that'd let him back in, afraid to wander out too far lest he lose his chance.

As far as he knew, Belle never caught on that he was calling. If she did, then she was patient. She stayed on the line longer than she needed. Spoke, and waited. Spoke. Then said goodbye. He couldn't work out why he could never say anything back, or even beg forgiveness. He kept doing it, knowing he couldn't stop himself crying afterward, knowing it was going to hurt every time, because he'd gotten so used to hearing her in the morning when she woke. And now when he called just to hear her it came with apprehension, certainty he'd hear that litany of accusations all over again, but he needed to. Maybe if he did speak, if he did let her know it was him, and he allowed it to happen, she might see he was sincere. She would forgive him. Remember she loved him. He would hand her the dagger and be her slave, be everything Zelena wanted him to be for her if that was what it took.

But he couldn't even bring himself to do that. It took him days to figure out why. That was when he headed south.

His rental car died just inside of Vermont. There were questions about his license. He switched to travel by bus from there -- crowded (good that he was traveling light), slow as sin -- he saw far more of the state than he really ever cared to. It felt ridiculously long for where he was headed, given how short a trip it had been by plane, but he didn't know if he could handle flying again. Not alone.

In Manhattan, the first place that he tried was Neal's old apartment, of course, and he did not expect to find it occupied -- by the Queen's married beau and his family, no less. They offered to leave it to him, which he declined. After a cursory search of the place, he found one or two familiar baubles, things his son held onto from his childhood all these years, somehow, things from their world, and he pocketed those, feeling an uncomfortable tightness that told him to get away, and he left as quickly as his legs could carry him.

Marion seemed especially keen to convince him to stay, at least until he found better accommodations.

He didn't trust it. He got away.

Crossing out into the evening air, he felt a rush of pent emotion and memory. Unkind words said in this very place. Hook's attack and his near death.

Then his actual death.

Then Neal's.

He went numb.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All

"That's not the question, Gold. My question was will you accept what I say is the truth or will you automatically assume I'm lying? Because I fully intend to tell you the absolute truth, but that won't mean anything if you decide I'm lying."

Gold bristled a little but mostly remained composed. "You haven't yet. For now I trust you to do that much." Unsaid: But it only took once for that to be ruined. And that was with many people, not just imps who had a tendency toward doling out hard knocks once people had chosen to put their worst foot forward.

"That's fair."

He stopped scratching Pongo.

"I don't think I can secure your soul or save it or anything like else that. I can try to help you make better decisions to hopefully improve your satisfaction with your life and your relationships, but that's all up to you in the end. Fairies, gods, and who knows what else know my own soul's pretty much forfeit at this point. All I can do is just try to help however I can until Geppetto decides he doesn't need me anymore and Blue's spell ends.

"All I'm offering you the ability to go back to Storybrooke. That's it. No promises on anything else from either one of us. And if you don't want to go back, that's fine. I just want to make sure you'll be okay out here before I go back. Again, it's all up to you."

"I have already said I mean to go back." He sat back. "I don't know if there is much that can be done to make matters better. I don't even know if I care. But there's nothing out here that I want." And everything he didn't.

It might not be missed that he was scanning the area around them.

"You never know until you try," Archie pointed out. He paused as he saw Gold's eyes scanning. "Something wrong?"

Now the question: how crazy would he look if he explained Marion? Was he crazy?

Gold sighed. "Does anyone know where you're staying?"

An odd question to ask.

"Just you. Why?"

"And what of the queen's beau and his wife?" As far as he knew they hadn't come around since the first night. Not noticeably anyway.

"Haven't seen or heard from them since that first day you were admitted. And if they'd asked me then, I didn't have anything in place at the time to give them an answer. I wasn't sure if I'd be staying or, if I did, for how long. That and I must've gone to ten different hotels before I finally got a room that would let me keep Pongo in there long after midnight."

However, the fact that Gold had asked particularly about Robin and Marian tickled something in his brain that had been pushed onto the backburner when Gold had his stroke. He looked at Pongo for a moment before looking back to Gold.

"When you started having your stroke, Pongo moved between us and Marian on the stoop and stayed between us until we'd left the apartment complex behind. He was pretty wound up, so I had to give him the signal that I'd drop the leash if I felt threatened. Does this have something to do with that?"

Gold glanced at him. That...he didn't know if it was a relief to hear someone else noticed, or confirmation that he should be guarded. "Do you think I am insane? Specifically that I should doubt my faculties?"

"No," Archie stated bluntly.

True, Gold had done some things that were rather extreme, but he certainly didn't fit the medical definition of insanity.

"That wasn't Marian." And he didn't know if she would pop up again. But he didn't believe she wouldn't. And now part of him worried that if they stuck out this minute they might be followed.

...Well, Archie didn't know what he'd expected Gold to say, but it certainly wasn't that.

"A spell? Like the one Cora used to look like Regina?"

Without thinking, he started rubbing one of his wrists at the memory of the ropes, the sounds of the ocean and the hidden ship echoing in his ears.

"I don't know, but it's possible." After a fashion. After you get past the fact that if she's who she said she was, then Gold killed her. "...She let herself into my room, the first night."

Cora was dead. Cora was dead. She wasn't going to pull that trick again and leave him to rot on the ship with everyone thinking he was dead and a stranger wearing his face lying in his grave --

Pongo's nose on his neck helped him refocus. Think now, panic later.

"Well, unless she's been following me, she won't know where my room is so we can leave for Storybrooke first thing in the morning. Or we can go back to the hotel, I can get my bag and checkout, and we can start driving once that's done."

Edited 2023-05-19 22:36 (UTC)

He shook his head. "...I would have a better idea if I had my magic." If she were around. But then if Archie was right about Pongo, then the dog might be a good barometer when his own senses were failing him.

She was looking for a way back in to Storybrooke too. If he suddenly vanished back to Maine she might use that as a signal to follow. And with no idea how closely she was watching?

Damnit.

Archie gripped the steering wheel and blew out a breath. He wasn't some adventurer or hero. The major adventures in Storybrooke always seemed to revolve around Emma, Regina, and Gold to a certain extent. He was just an ex-thief who wanted to make up for past mistakes.

"Okay." He started up the engine and pulled out of the hospital parking lot. "Either way, we need to go to the hotel, but if you're that worried, we can start driving right away and just drive through the night. Even if she follows us, she won't be able to get past the town line without the scroll, and I've been keeping that on me."

The last thing they'd needed was to lose their only ticket home.

"I'll leave Pongo in the car with you just in case."

The labored sigh of a very annoyed immortal cursed with sudden mortality. "I hate to say it, but I am under orders to do some resting, not take a long drive. And that will allow time to plan, at the very least."

"Well then, we're still going to the same place unless you want to switch hotels."

Pongo gave an irritated woof as someone cut Archie off.

"For a night at least it will do, and if needed I can put us somewhere else." Which...sounded odd to him to say out loud. That it was just...accepted in his head. This was happening.

And whether he had planned for it or not, he wasn't really alone.

Well, considering that Archie was the one with the scroll, it made sense that they were going to stick together.

Rather than saying anything else, Archie nodded his head as he focused on navigating the streets, sighing with relief when they finally stopped in the parking lot of the hotel and reached his room.

"I hate this city," he muttered.

"It's not high on my list, either." If anything, because of that apartment. Because there were things here he had wanted to share with Belle and his grandson. "What were you expecting of it?"

Archie sighed as he sat down on one of the two beds. (Honestly, the space was a bit larger than most hotel rooms. Almost like a tiny apartment with the kitchen area.) "This is my first time here, but technically I've been here a lot thanks to my Cursed memories. It was one of my parents' favorite places."

That stopped him short a moment. He didn't give much thought to his own cursed memories. It provided him some useful knowledge, certainly. But the weight of his first life was always going to elbow its way in once they were competing for space in the same brain. But Archie also added a new wrinkle by virtue of the fact that not only did they not ever talk about the doctor's experiences, but also that Gold had some knowledge already just by virtue of knowing his parents.

It did make one wonder how many of the parallels that occurred between lives were intentional or coincidental. Did he live a similar life here because that was simply how the cards fail, or did Regina either bank on similar experiences creating a similar conscience or aim to punish him with no regard for how that might make him less effective at taking care of people -- including her?

"I suppose it would be," he mused.

One of the issues with the breaking of the original Curse was that Archie had had to help so many people reconcile having two lifetimes in their heads while having to constantly push his own issues with the same problem to the back of his mind. Seeing the puppets of Geppetto's parents in the front window of Gold's shop had been the final straw to push him to be among the first headed for the town line to lose their Enchanted Forest memories. It was hard enough having one life of misery constantly in your head without having two...technically four in Archie's case because he'd been a thief, a conscience, a thief again, and then a psychiatrist.

During those sessions, he'd learned everyone's stories, both their Enchanted Forest ones and their Storybrooke ones. He strongly believed that the Curse had taken the path of least resistence in regards to building those Cursed memories: creating lives that echoed their original ones but then taking away whatever would've given them a happy ending. He had plenty of anecdotal evidence to support the theory, but he kept his findings to himself due to both doctor-patient confidentiality and due to knowing if he shared his personal experiences, Dr. Archie Hopper and Jiminy Cricket were both done.

Nobody asked whom they considered a living conscience about his own struggles. If the person they relied on to keep themselves stable was barely holding it together, how could they trust him to help them? And in a bizarre twist of fate, as miserable as his Cursed existence had been, the Curse hadn't truly touched him until after it was broken: He'd had a good job that had kept him comfortable, two best friends in the form of a dog and an older gentleman, and Marco wasn't a patient so he could proverbially let his hair down around him, show that he wasn't as put-together as his patients desperately needed to believe. With the Curse broken, the illusion had shattered. He still had Pongo, but he'd effectively lost Marco. As good a listener as Pongo was, the intelligent dog couldn't talk to him, and going to a bar to have a few drinks and bend the ear of a sympathetic bartender was absolutely out of the question due to the same issues as before. Some nights he stayed late in his office or stayed up late in his home sipping bourbon and quietly petting Pongo in hopes that maybe whatever worry or care that was bothering him would just go back on the backburner so he could be able to handle other people's problems again the next day. Not the healthiest coping mechanisms, but at least he only had a glass or two on the rare occasions he needed to use them. Though he kept that bottle of bourbon in his office under lock and key in his desk lest someone think he was secretly a raging alcoholic.

He leaned forward for a moment, clasping his hands together and resting his forehead against them as he took slow, deep breaths. Then, after a long moment of silence to tell his demons to come back another time, please and thank you, he sat back up.

"So where do we go from here?"

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject