"I see you're quite certain of that," he says, adopting a bored tone, examining the other man with an evaluative, sweeping look. "Charming. But you've no need to worry on my account."

Dreams are funny things. One moment Rumpelstiltskin looks as he did in Storybrooke, as human and innocuous as his target. The next, there's the flicker of something changing, and as quickly as it shimmers over his skin and into his eyes, igniting them with something ancient and hellish and strange, it is gone again.

"The Dark One has life eternal," he says, his smile assuming a jagged edge. "Power eternal. That is the price of my curse."