A Curse Upon Thee 19

This town… His fingers tapped out a beat, some half-remembered pop-punk riff, against the hard metal casing that hung dead-center atop his chest. This town is fucking insane, I swear to God.

It was one thing that they were on day seven of a kidnapping case — a whole three grueling days into Mary Margaret’s personal Storybrooke murder mystery hell — but it was entirely another that jewelry was just appearing out of nowhere. The red heart-shaped locket stood out stark and vibrant against the black cotton of his t-shirt, the thing resting perfectly around his neck on a black chain that blended in perfectly.

Finn wished he knew where it had come from and why that fact didn’t bother him more but he didn’t and it didn’t. All he knew that he’d bolted up two nights back, bleary-eyed and still in his work clothes, with the piece of jewelry already in the same place it had been since. He hadn’t even been fully asleep, which was how he knew it had literally just appeared there.

One second he was dozing off and the next, he had a cold weight pressing against his sternum.

Ghost gift…

He had questions about it, obviously. 

A lot of them. 

Hell, too many that could reasonably be answered in one sitting session.

Especially considering the polished metal kinda felt like a Cursed Tool, the thing radiating a very faint residue that made him feel warm and more… stable? He wasn’t sure how that worked, especially because he wasn’t skilled enough in the study of Cursed Tools to decipher these kinda things in the first place. None of his silent questions managed to summon an instruction manual or a convenient amnesiac flashback to explain the jewelry either, so he was pretty much left guessing. 

No matter what, Finn sure as hell wasn’t gonna let this thing out of his sight anyway. You don’t just toss unidentified magic equipment into a junk drawer. No, this thing was staying right around his neck.

The bell above the station’s front door chimed loud, Finn refusing to blink up from the office’s coffee machine. He’d been attempting to make coffee more than actually succeeding, the plastic monstrosity easily as old as he was and twice as temperamental. He’d spent the last five minutes watching it spit and sputter some murky brown through its shitty filters, wheezing the whole time like a fat kid in desperate need of an inhaler.

It was annoying enough to deal with, on top of everything else.

However, all of that fell away the second someone new stepped into the station, Finn’s grip tightened around his still empty mug. The air thickened, atmosphere curdling to something more miserable than the old sheriff’s office as the energy of the room bent out.

Toward the threshold Finn turned to face.

Molars snapped shut with a sound almost as loud as the door shutting, blue eyes locking on to the new guest as Finn’s heart sped up in his chest. 

Gold.

The pawnbroker stood there, leaning up against his polished cane, dressed in his usual expensively tailored suit and wearing that untouchable businessman smile like it was a freshly ironed tie. Of course. Of fucking course.

“Sherrif Swan.” Pure syrup poured from Gold’s lips with just two words, four syllables oily and warm in a way that made the hair on the back of Finn’s arm stand up. He turned over to look at Finn with that same smile widening barely a fraction. “Deputy McHale. Good afternoon to you both.”

Emma took a second to catch up but a second was all it took as the woman snapped her head up from the towering stack of incident reports on her desk. “Mr…” Her back straightened up, shoulders locking tight as the exhausted woman sitting there vanished under the hard shell of the town Sheriff. “Mr. Gold.”

“That is my name, isn’t it?” The man limped forward into the room, weight pressed up against the cane as it helped him forward. “Or so I’ve been led to believe.”

“What can we do you for, Mr. Gold?” Emma rose to her feet. “Did Moe pull off another heist?”

“Ah, no… no, nothing of the sort.” Gold tutted as he took a few more steps inside the office. “I simply heard our poor Miss Blanchard is in desperate need of some  legal representation.” The businessman’s cane hit the linoleum with a tap, then another, and another; the sound a metronome keeping deliberate time, a bomb ticking down to zero. “Thought I might offah my services.”

“She didn’t call you.” The words left Finn’s mouth before Emma could even take another breath, let alone respond to Gold. “That doesn’t seem like any of your business, Mr Gold.”

The deputy abandoned the barely-breathing coffee machine entirely, planting himself squarely between the pawnbroker and the drab hallway that led back to the holding cells. Arms crossed over his chest, Finn widened his stance and set his shoulders, red sneakers planting him like a physical barricade. 

Gold’s pleasant smile didn’t fade for a second, not even flickering as he stared back at his once-gofer “No. But I am offering, none-the-less.”

“Yeah, I bet you are.” Something in his voice sharpened tight enough for even Finn to notice, the Cursed Energy wrapped tight in Gold’s chest doing its very best to throw him off guard. “I bet you have all sorts…” Finn bit down for a second, consonants coming rough and aggressive the longer he spoke. Calm down. “All sorts of offers.”

Both eyebrows on Gold’s face rose high. “That is what I tend to do, yes?”

“Yeah…” Finn grunted back. “I’m just sayin’… it’s funny how you always manage to show up right when people are desperate and drowning. Never when anything good happens.”

“Finn—” Blue eyes snapped over to his boss, Emma’s tone sharp and jagged with an edge of warning. The sheriff held his eyes for a second longer, before turning back to Gold; a sigh leaving her lips as she spoke. “Pro bono, I assume?” 

“No doubt, Miss Swan.” Gold tilted his head to the side, smile still firmly in place. “And while I hate to use the term bleeding heart, given the unfortunate occurences, I cannot deny that mine does beat in sorrow for our poor Mary Margaret.”

“Wow.” Finn blinked, managing to shove all the sarcasm in his soul into one syllable. “You truly are a philanthropist.”

“Pre-cisely.” Gold’s eyes glittered as he took another step forward, smile widening just a fraction as he ignored the assault of snark aimed his way. “A schoolteacher’s salary being what it is, I thought it only fair to—”

“You and Regina are really similar, you know?” The sentence came out quick, cutting straight through Gold’s polite velvet-wrapped spiel like a greatsword. The sentence seemed to pull almost as muc air from the room as Gold’s presence had, leaving the space in complete silence as Gold tilted his head back over to him. 

Snake-like eyes blinked at him, as if assessing what Finn just said. The smile thinned out the tiniest bit, reduced by just enough for it to be noticeable. “I beg your pardon?”

“Mr. Gold…” Finn took a deliberate step forward, closing the distance and Emma taking one of her own to match him. He didn’t bother looking her way, eyes still on Gold as the scent of wood polish mixed with the chasm of power lurking just beneath the man’s skin. “Like the both of you think that everyone who’s not you are stupid. Or that they can’t see that you’re up to something. Like, you’re really high on your own supply for some reason.”

Gold blinked again, slower. “Is there a point to this rudeness?”

Emma sighed. “Mr Gold, I’m s-”

“No, I’m just… like…” Finn shook his head, cutting off Emma’s apology with a scoff. “Like, let’s be real, nobody’s buying that. I’ve only been in this town half a year and I don’t even buy it. It’s one thing if you’re coming in to offer help for your own reasons, which is sketchy enough.” One hand gestured up and down at Gold’s entire polished persona. “But out of the kindness of your own heart? Next, you’re gonna tell me Ms. Mayor is donating her mansion to the homeless.”

The air in the station stilled even further as Mr. Gold’s mask slipped, the civilized look easing up for a second as something warned him from behind those dark eyes. Even the sputtering coffee machine seemed to hold its breath, suddenly silent as Finn stared back at the man.

Then, faster than a blink, it was gone. Replaced like it never left by that same patient oh-so-reasonable smile.

“Deputy McHale, regardless of what opinion you might have regarding my motivations…” Gold’s eyes closed for a moment, the man as calm as he always seemed to be. “They are nothing like those of our esteemed madam mayor.”

Fair… Finn fought the urge to nod at that, because while Gold wasn’t going around doing witchy shit with people’s hearts, he was still… Gold.

“I am simply offering help to a treasured member of our small community.” Gold opened his eyes, the man blinking slowly at the deputy in red. “No contracts necessary. Not everything requires your… particulah paranoia. If young Miss Blanchard truly is in no need of my help, then let her tell me that herself.” Gold’s knuckles went bone-white against the silver  handle of his cane, grip hard with a tension that didn’t reach his face. “Or is the Storybrooke Sheriff’s Department truly so underhanded that they would deny suspects their constitutional right to counsel?”

“Finn…”

The deputy turned to the sheriff, green eyes serious but almost desperate as they stared over at him. “Emma, you gotta be kidding—”

“Let him talk to her.”

“Emma…” Finn echoed again, the word almost as pleading as her eyes.

“Just… just let him talk.” Professionalism and exhaustion both coated her words thickly in equal measure, his boss already straining from the last three days with no evidence and no way to help Mary Margaret. “If she wants him gone, we will personally kick him out into the street. But she gets to make that call. Not me. Not you.”

He wanted to argue.

Thing was, though, he had no argument.

At least none he could make that wouldn’t just be screaming like a little kid.

Finn’s hands clenched tight at his sides, fingernails digging painfully into his palms as he formed both of them into punishing fists. She’s right. Emma was right — absolutely right, legally and practically — and there was nothing he could do but just step aside.

Finn did.

With just a smile and no other word, Gold limped toward both sheriff and deputy, cane tapping a measured beat against the floor with each step. He paused as he reached Finn, the businessnman standing shoulder-to-shoulder for a second, just close enough that only the teenager could hear the low words that passed his way as a murmur. “You are learning, Mister McHale.” 

The smile on Gold’s face spread even wider, thick as the man’s accent. 

“Slowly, of course. But you are learning.”

The tailored back of the suit disappeared down the drab hallway as Finn stared at Gold. Before he could take another step or even say another word, a hand clamped down hard on Finn’s shoulder, fingers digging into the red leather.

“What did I say about abuse of authority, Finn?”

The young man turned around, red hair whipping around his shoulders as he looked his superior in the eye. “You don’t get what Gold feels like, Em-“

“I don’t need to.” Her grip tightened, the physical pressure grounding him, keeping him anchored to the spot. “I know exactly what he is. I’ve seen guys like that my whole life. I’m not blind. But Mary Margaret is sitting there in a cell and unless you trust a public defender to get her off, she needs a lawyer. And he is the best one in this twisted zip code.”

“No wonder he owns half the town.”

“Yeah.” Emma let out a laugh of exhausted ragged air as she dropped her hand from his shoulder, suddenly looking older than twenty-eight. “Welcome to Storybrooke.”