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The whole affair was probably confusing for more than one person. Usually by now, something would happen in Storybrooke to draw everyone into high alert. A new enemy, somehow inexplicably tied to someone of import in the town. A curse, perhaps. No -- in fact, if this hadn't happened, the town would have been entering its fourth month since the birth of Snow White and Charming's second child in relative quiet.

And even now, that repose had only been upset for a handful of people, everyone choosing not to involve more than needed to be, though a few had noticed on popping by the antique shop, perhaps with a mind to ask questions of its proprietor, that he was missing and its doors were locked.

Well, not missing, his wife explained when found in the library. Detained elsewhere.

There was little real honeymoon period to speak of once they'd wed and moved on. Not emotionally, anyhow. Rumpelstiltskin continued to feel an unease, the fetters of the last year of his life not completely shaken off. Not sleeping, neither literally nor euphemistically. Spinning, all at once too much but not enough, much of his sessions stilted by sudden stops, little progress made, more time spent staring at the wheel or at nothing than creating magic or working his stresses away.

And then he'd confessed, to the lie he told her when they decided they would marry, when he handed her a false dagger and then left to murder the Wicked Witch, who stole his freedom and murdered his son. That would have been the end of it, if he'd been silent.

He didn't feel guilty for killing Zelena. True, it was Regina who had insisted he spare her when he was initially freed. She, who took her turn toward heroism, toward being a savior, would naturally demand second chances for her newfound sister.

It just could not be demanded of him.

He told himself it was guilt that pressed him to tell Belle. Because he had lied to her twice, for which he'd felt both bad, but also choiceless. He said it was all guilt that broke him down because he knew she probably wanted to believe that was all it was, a sign that the good man in him was winning out.

And perhaps that was why whenever Belle came to bring him food, or a book to read, but spoke to him little, it stung as much as it was supposed to.

It didn't explain how he didn't want anyone close enough to touch him. Or the panic he felt if he woke and saw somebody standing outside his cell. How hostile he immediately felt to be spoken to through bars. Or the nightmares when he allowed himself to sleep.

No, in committing murder, a beast he'd hoped to have slain in one fell swoop continued to roost.

When he ordered Emma to arrest him, she was a little shocked, and what instantly got to rolling was the sudden need for the leaders from the Enchanted Forest to form enough government that was uniquely theirs (but also as American as their second selves) to sentence a person for murder who was only sitting still because he had promised his wife that he would, whom nobody could kill without doing a great evil themselves.

Regina, he'd been expecting in some form eventually. She always needed to have her say, and she deserved to have one more than most, he supposed.

He looked up from his cot but didn't rise to meet her.

"No."

The calm before the storm. The time among the others where there was no crisis. The town was not on alert and there was no enemy that had to be dealt with. For once, they could just be. It was an odd feeling for Regina. Zelena was dead. Things with Robin had been going good. For once, she felt like she could have a happy ending. She didn't want to be a killer anymore.

That was why it pained her so bad that he had done it. He had his chance, with Belle. They finally could be villains that had gotten their happy ending. And yet, she should have seen it. The minute he was not under Zelena's control anymore. The fire in his eyes. She had not seen that look in his eyes in a while.

She knew that he had done it. And she knew why. That feeling had been in her too, not so long ago. As much as she wanted to be a good person, a savior, he wanted his vengeance. And honestly, she should have known he would do it. The experience she had with him, the years that they had worked together. She knew.

She knew Belle had been visiting him. And she knew it would take a while for him to find his way back into her heart again. She knew, but it would just take time. Just like it would take time for the town to figure out just what to do with him. He didn't know it, but she'd been arguing for him. He'd done something terrible, but he'd been kept in captivity under her thumb. Hook and Regina both argued for him, trying to sway their minds.

They were still thinking about it.

"You need to eat. Can I at least make you a cup of tea? I promise it won't be apple flavoured." She was trying to make things light, but she doubted she would have any success with him.

"I don't, really. I just can." His answer, though a rejection, had no real bite to it. Like he was just offhandedly supplying a simple but interesting fact.

It was pleasant. Like having tea. Or sleeping, which he now seemed to do largely out of habit. Or so he told himself.

Much of what he'd done as Mr. Gold during the curse, he continued to do even once magic was restored to them. He'd honestly never tested himself to see if he could go completely without. It felt comfortable. More normal than going back to how he'd largely been in the Enchanted Forest for some 200 years -- where he still ate out of habit from time to time.

But it wasn't habit that stopped hunger pangs. In truth, even if he were not a mostly-immortal he would probably still have no appetite.

Regina rolled her eyes, grabbing one of the bars and holding gently onto it. She knew he wasn't hungry, probably had no appetite, but he still needed to eat. She didn't care what he said, a body needed fuel to keep it going, even a magical one. Her head tilted to the side and she stared at him through the bars of the jail cell.

They didn't have the best relationship. And right now, they were both hurting for different reasons. She knew what he was going through, how he was feeling. She'd been there, once upon a time.

"Talk to me. Do you want some coffee?" She sighed, staring at him, hating to see him in any sort of upset.

If Regina had come in with an agenda, she was doing an amazing job building up to it. She was usually too impatient not to get to the point as soon as possible. If there was no scheme, however, that just left the uncomfortable notion that she was actually concerned.

He didn't much like that. He didn't trust it.

He didn't turn himself in because he wanted people to pity him -- and he wasn't sure that was where this was going, but it skewed too close.

"I want to know their plans for me. You must be part of deliberations. Have I no right to a speedy trial?"

"I am..."

Regina had hoped she could speak to him a little bit first, attempt to get him to open up to her. If there was anyone, they thought, that could get him to be frank and honest, they thought it would be her. Past history and such. In theory, nobody knew Gold the way that she did. She didn't fault them for thinking that way. They weren't wrong.

She didn't pity him. If anything, she understood him.

Regina sighed. "They want me to ask you..." She frowned, gazing up at him. She knew how this was going to over with him and that was the reason they had sent her. "Therapy. Sessions with Hopper. You want a trial, you'll get one, but you have to admit it probably won't be a fair one. You haven't really been the best person here. Neither have I."

Regina pulled up a chair and sat down, giving him a look. She wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. "I know you. And I know Zelena. And I'm sure things happened, things... Things you may not want coming up during a trial." She raised an eyebrow. "Talk to me."

She was right in that regard. A trial wouldn't be fair. As yet he was playing by the rules because Belle would never speak to him again if he didn't, but it wasn't as though he didn't know Snow and Charming and others were capable of keeping him stuck in one spot by other means if they so wished.

But another part of what she said stuck in his craw now, set him to standing and pacing in the small expanse of his cell.

Therapy? He looked almost offended, though perhaps it wasn't immediately obvious what part had done that. Pouring his heart out to someone, all his darkest secrets, all to what? Satisfy that he wouldn't do it again?

As if he wouldn't kill Zelena twice if he had the opportunity.

He stopped when Regina mentioned her. Suggested she might know things. A long pregnant pause, and he started pacing again.

No. His story was not changing. He killed her for what she did to his son. That was all.

"I'm not crazy," he finally said, pulling it back to Hopper.

Regina was quiet as she sat there, watching him think. She could almost hear the gears of his mind grinding in the recesses as he turned thoughts over and over again. She wondered just what he was thinking, almost wishing she had that gift in her repertoire. And yet, she didn't either. She'd be the first to admit that both of their minds were probably very scary places. So, she sat. And waited. And wondered.

"I don't think you are," she murmured softly. Her hands rested lightly in her lap as she watched him pace. He did appear to her like a caged animal. She could only imagine what he was going through, what he was doing all for Belle. There was no other reason he would give himself up so easily. Anyone could see that.

She tried to think how she could put it into words and not have them thrown back in her face. "I think you were hurting. I think you were angry. And... I've been in your shoes. I've done things just like you did." She was, probably, one of the few people in town who could say it and actually mean it. She wasn't just placating him or saying words to make him feel better. She had been Evil. She'd earned that moniker with pride, not so long ago.

She sighed. "It's not that you're crazy. It's more like..." She paused. "You went through something dark. Something bad. You... They want you to get help with dealing with that situation. They want you to have help processing what occurred in a bid to help you move on."

Her eyes narrowed at him. "Look, think about it logically. You've confessed to murder. There isn't much Emma can do in the eyes of the law. Her hands are tied. If they want to give you this as a get out of jail free card instead of a death sentence or being in a jail cell for a lot longer, why don't you at least consider it?"

He almost argued that he was moving on, but how had that turned out? Stuffing it down until he couldn't ignore it anymore. And Belle. Failing her in his crumbling.

But it was oddly comforting that Regina made any attempt at all to level with him on that -- to say she didn't think he'd gone mad. What he didn't expect was for it to go beyond that; she could say she didn't think he was crazy, which could have communicated she thought their ruling was bullshit, or that he was feigning the state he was in (as if she'd been there when he confessed to Belle). That she tried to reason it at all.

It felt so genuine he wanted to think it was a lie, but she'd proven herself hadn't she? This time, she got to be the savior.

He moved the subject to something easier to traverse.

"You've been in my shoes. And yet you stopped me from killing her back in that barn."

"I did." Regina paused, hesitating as she tried to wrap her mind around the statement. It wasn't a question, and yet it was. Rumple was a man who was multi-layered, almost like an onion. Even when he wasn't asking something, he was, albeit indirectly. "I did. And I would do it again without even thinking about it."

Another pause, she hesitated as she tried to work out just how she wanted to say what she wanted to say. "If you had killed her, you would be no better than her. You are, though. You are a better person. Belle sees it in you. I see it. I've known you a long time and you're not the man you used to be. Belle makes you better. We need to be better people, we need to show them that villains can have their happy ending."

Dark eyes gazed down at her shoes, before glancing back up at him. She didn't think he was crazy. Far from it, in fact. If anything, she thought he was calculating and smart, like he'd always been. Gold had just been hurt, badly, by Zelena in a way that not many would understand. While she didn't know for sure what happened, she could guess.

"You can be a better person. We both can."

"Of course you would. She didn't kill Henry. But you had best understand that I would also do what I did again without even thinking about it," he said tersely.

He listened. His mind was everywhere, looking for ways out, shifts in the conversation, tributaries he could take to change its course, but he was listening.

"No."

His pacing took a sharp turn, had a different tempo.

"I did kill her, and that didn't make me like her. I am not like her, and if being a better person forbids me from avenging my son, I don't care to be one."

"We are not back home in the forest, here. We're more evolved. We have laws and jails and ways to punish someone that doesn't involved death." Regina watched him, noting the pacing and the way he seemed like a caged animal. She hated to see him locked up in the jail cell as he was, but there was no way out of it.

Not until he acquiesced to what the others demanded.

She frowned. "Can't you avenge him without death? Making sure she's locked up and paying her penance?" One hand reached up to run through her hair. "If she killed Henry, I'd be angry, but I'm trying to be a better person now." Robin and the others kept telling her she changed. She wasn't the woman that she used to be. She had trouble believing it, but she wanted to.

She wasn't the woman who had kept a certain huntsman as her own personal toy anymore.

At least she could see he was listening. "Maybe it wouldn't hurt to just talk to Hopper, hmm?"

Rumpelstiltskin's fist connected with the bars of his cell with a resounding metal reverberation loud enough to mask the crunch of skin and bone. He would never before have allowed himself to lash out in her presence in that way back in the Enchanted Forest. But it was not at her -- this was not an issue of him aiming for a target and missing. He knew exactly what he was doing, reinforced when he repeated it, two times, three, a flurry of pure adrenaline.

"IT'S NOT ENOUGH!"

When that exploded out of him, some of his sense came back. His hand recoiled from the bars, fingers rippling with magic as they moved mechanically and righted the damage he'd done, the pain edging away as he caught his ragged breath.

"She doesn't get to live while my baby rots."

Not after what she did to both of them.

Regina jumped back, eyes wide at what she had seen. As angry as she had ever seen him, or as conniving, she'd never seen him like this. Her head tilted and she was tempted to raise her hands in protection, but she did not. Instead, her arms hung loosely at her side.

That anger, it had more to do than just with his son. She didn't dare voice it, but she wondered just what Zelena had done to him in captivity.

"I'm very sorry. He was a good man. I wish that there was some way we could bring him back," she said softly. And she meant it too. She'd liked him, what she knew about him. It wasn't like she was as close to him as Emma was, but it would have been nice for Henry to have his father around. "I mean it," she murmured.

Though, if ever there was an argument for him taking therapy, he had just proven it.

"If there's one thing you should never do to someone that's died is bring them back," he muttered, arms resting against the bars, his forehead resting against his arms.

For all the pain he was in, as much as he wanted Neal to be alive, he knew that much. He knew he wouldn't go where Zelena had tried to go in order to make it happen. Because it would fail. Because those legendary paths of dark magic that were deemed just impossible enough to tempt were there just to string together stories of failure and hubris.

But he also knew because in accepting his death and doing the right thing, all his worst fears had come to pass, and here he stood alive.

Regina blinked, staring at him. "You forget. We tried that, remember? You, with the help of Hatter and Frankenstein. It didn't work," she grumbled. Not that she cared anymore. Long ago water under a bridge, but she couldn't help remembering it. "I get it. I do. I just... I'm sorry."

A small sigh slipped out and Regina lingered back, unsure what to do in this situation. Comforting Gold was the one thing she'd never thought about in her life, ever. "He'd want you to be better. To try to move on and find peace."

"I wouldn't do that to him." He didn't want it done to himself, either, but he left that unsaid.

Gold pushed away from the bars and sank back onto the cot, bent over his hands that even fresh from that sudden burst of violence, he was still wringing.

"...You can tell them I will do it."

"I'm glad to hear that." Regina bit her lip, hesitating a moment. "I... I used to talk to Hopper. I didn't tell anyone about it. I... I've been doing it a little more since the whole trying to be good thing." She sighed, almost not sure she wanted to share this with him. She didn't know how he'd take it. "It's not easy. It's awkward and difficult, but... Sometimes rehashing the past is a good thing."

She chuckled. "I can't even believe I'm saying this. I know what you're thinking..." She bit her lips, watching him. "How is your hand? I can get the first aid kit and an ice pack?"

It was only a secret to some that before Cora came back, Regina was seeing Dr. Hopper. She was accused of murdering him, after all, and that was seen as the prime motive. That she'd been back, though, he definitely didn't know.

And it wasn't even that he mistrusted him -- his parents regarded him as a fence when they came through his part of the forest, so he'd known him longer than anyone else here had, even Geppetto. He'd trusted his cursed self to counsel him when August was sniffing about. ...He'd presided over his wedding.

There were worse people he could be going to.

He lifted his head a little in acknowledgement. "It'll pass. Spell's already working."