Trama

Belle threatens to leave Gold if he doesn't change his ways and the Dwarves try to find fairy dust, as flashbacks show Rumplestiltskin's wife join a band of pirates.

Mr. Gold presents Belle with an opulent diamond necklace. She thinks he's following through on his promise to her to change.

Then Grumpy busts in demanding his axe. Gold says he's closed and gets angry with Grumpy. He starts choking Grumpy as Belle pleads with him to stop, saying this isn't him anymore. Suddenly Gold turns into Rumplestiltskin. "Oh it is, deary. Always has been, always will be!" Belle wakes up from her nightmare with a start.

She goes downstairs and sees Mr. Gold spinning gold and testing it for magic. It flames purple.

Enchanted Forest Rumplestiltskin, before he became "the dark one," he comes home. His wife, Mila, is nowhere to be found. He finds her at the pub drinking and gambling. She calls him the "village coward" for not fighting in the ogre wars. Their son hears her insults.

Back home, she tries to convince Rumplestiltskin to leave town and go somewhere he's not known as a coward. She agrees to try to make things work there.

Storybrooke In the morning, Belle asks Gold why he brought magic to Storybrooke. "I've told you, magic is power," he says. "Why do you need it? You don't need power, Rumple. You need courage to let me in," Belle says.

Enchanted Forest A woman comes to tell Rumple that sailors are taking his wife. He goes to port and boards a ship. He comes face to face with Captain Killian Jones, who was drinking at the bar with his wife. Rumple begs him to let his wife go. The captain offers to let him fight for her, holding a sword to Rumple's neck. "A man unwilling to fight for what he wants deserves what he gets," the captain says as Rumple doesn't fight back.

Storybrooke Down in the mines, the dwarves mine for fairy dust along with David/Charming. He excuses himself to fill in as sheriff til Emma gets back.

At Gold's house, he goes to check on Belle and finds her bedroom empty. He takes a missing poster to the "Game of Thorns" flower shop to ask the owner if he's heard from his daughter. He blames Rumple for taking Belle away from him in the first place.

Enchanted Forest Rumplestiltskin, with power now, meets with a man in a red hat in a pub who says he can get a magic bean that can transport people to other lands. He says he can get it from one of the ships that comes into port. He wants eternal life in exchange, but Rumple instead offers to spin back time so the man's a little boy again, but if he doesn't deliver, he'll turn the man into dust. They strike a deal. Rumple is then distracted when the captain who took his wife comes into the pub.

Storybrooke Belle gets her third iced tea at Granny's. Ruby introduces herself. Belle says he might be headed for a bad break-up and Ruby offers to ask if Granny has a spare room. She suggests Belle look for work at the library because she likes books.

Belle checks out the boarded up library. The same man in the red hat from the Enchanted Forest walks up to her. He asks if she has money or is meeting someone. When she says no, he grabs her.

Enchanted Forest Rumple disguises himself as a beggar and bumps into the captain with his men out on the street. The captain says Rumple looks like a crocodile. He kicks Rumple over and he reveals himself as "the dark one." Rumple asks about his wife. The captain says she died a long time ago.

Rumple wants to finish their duel tomorrow at dawn.

Storybrooke Gold visits David at home to report Belle missing and ask for help.

Enchanted Forest Rumplestiltskin meets up with Captain Killian Jones for their duel. Rumple uses magic to move around behind him but they fight evenly for awhile until Rumple disarms him. The captain dares him to finish him off, saying he's ready.

But instead, Rumple tells him that having something you love stolen feels like having your heart ripped from your chest. So he starts to rip the captain's heart from his chest. A woman yells at Rumple to stop. It's his wife, Mila.

Storybrooke The man in the red hat tells Belle he was hired to find her. Belle's dad comes in and hugs her. He thought Gold was holding her captive after the curse was broken. He's appalled when she says she chose to stay with him. "Then I don't have a choice. Do it," he tells the man. The man drags Belle off.

David tries to find someone to help find Belle but discovers everyone hates Gold for one reason or another. Gold asks how to make a relationship work and David says honesty is key.

Enchanted Forest Mila doesn't want to leave without Killian. She was enchanted by the stories Killian told about his travels and she fell in love with him. She didn't know how to tell Rumple the truth. Mila tells Rumple she has something he wants and takes out the red knit hat. She'll trade him the bean for their lives.

Storybrooke David visits Granny's looking for Belle. Ruby at first says she hasn't seen her, worrying about Gold. When she sees Belle left a coat behind she offers to sniff Belle out. She tracks Belle's scent to her father's flower shop.

David, Gold and Ruby go in the shop, where her dad won't let them see her. He wants to make her forget about Rumple, even it means she forgets him, too. He's sending her across the town line.

David marches him outside but has to pull Gold off him. He sees mine dust on his hand and realizes she's down in the mines, which lead out of town.

Enchanted Forest Mila and Killian return to the ship. They bring out the man in the red hat and show Rumple the bean. Mila tosses it to Killian, who holds it in his hand. Before he lets them go, he asks Mila how she could leave their son. She says she let her misery cloud her judgment. She was miserable because she never loved Rumplestiltskin.

Rumple reaches into her chest and pulls out her heart. He crushes it to dust.

He demands the bean from Killian, who says he'd have to kill him first. Instead, Rumple chops off his hand.

He wants him alive so he'll know the pain Rumple felt. Killian picks up a nearby hook and jabs it into Rumplestiltskin's chest, but it has no effect. He disappears in a puff of smoke. Killian becomes Captain Hook.

Storybrooke The man who finds things handcuffs Belle to a mine cart to send her across the town line to forget. He gives her a flashlight so she can find the handcuff key at the bottom of the cart, but she drops it. She's barreling through the mine when suddenly she's pulled backward by magic.

She comes back to the top of the mine to find Gold, Charming, Ruby and her dad waiting for her. She remembers who everyone is.

She thanks Gold for saving her, but tells him it doesn't change the fact he's too cowardly to be honest with her. And she wants nothing to do with her dad, either. She doesn't want to see either of them again, ever.

At Granny's Ruby introduces Belle to pancakes. She gives her a box that someone left for her at the front desk. It's a key to the library. She goes in and finds Gold there. He tells her there's an apartment for the caretaker if she wants it. She says he can't win her back.

He tells her she's right about him, he is a coward. "I tried to make up for it by collecting power and the power became so important that I couldn't let go, not even when that meant losing the most important person in my life," he says.

His son Baelfer. He dedicated himself to finding him after he left, until he found a curse that could take him to the land where he'd escaped: Storybrooke.

He was waiting for the curse to be broken so he could find him, but he brought magic instead because he's a coward and it's his crutch. So now he can't ever leave because he wouldn't remember Baelfer if he left to found him.

He's using magic now to break the new curse. He tells Belle he didn't want to lose her again without her knowing everything.

He walks away. She suggests they get burgers some time.

Enchanted Forest Rumple pries open the closed fingers of Hook's hand, looking for the bean. It's empty. Back on his boat, Hook still has the bean. He buries Mila at sea. The man he'd held captive wants his bean back. Instead, Hook says he can join his crew and sail with them to a land where no one will ever get old and he can get his revenge on Rumplestiltskin. He asks the man's name: William Smee.

"What's the name of the place we're headed, Captain?" Smee asks as the ship steers toward the whirlpool portal in the sea. "Neverland," the captain says.

Storybrooke Gold visits Smee, who he has tied up in his basement. He wants information on Captain Hook. "I've never seen him in Storybrooke, I swear. For some reason when the curse hit, it didn't take him," Smee says. "Then where is he?" Rumple asks.

Enchanted Forest, Present Captain Hook meets Cora on the shores of what's left of the Enchanted Forest. She shows him her vial of ashes from the wardrobe. "Sparkly dirt, wonderful," he says. She explains the wardrobe can travel between worlds. It's not enough to get them to Storybrooke, but it's a start. She's looking for her daughter. "And I can skin myself a crocodile," he says.