Remembrance of Thorns
By: xffan_2000
Summary: Rumbelle. An AU set after "Skin Deep." There really were scourges and flame.
-0-0-0-0-
She will die soon, she hopes, as she dangles above the stone floor. The fetid stench from her back, where deep gashes have gone untreated, signals the end. Her captors sense it as well, for she hears them whisper to one another.
"Days," one cleric mutters.
"Hours," another counters.
"Perhaps a salve?" says the third, the one that provided her with the only morsels of food she'd seen. "Continue the cleansing after -"
"She is not worthy of healing," the first cuts in. He is always the first to bring the whip, the scalding irons. His are the strong hands that hold her head beneath the water until she's certain merciful release is near, only to yank her back when she stops flailing.
He is the one that told her - his grin wide and sinister - of the Dark One's slow, bloody demise at the hands of her father's army and how her once-betrothed had the beast's head mounted on a pike outside the city gates.
Yet, he is also the same one that turned the lash on his own underlings, when one wrenched her legs open. He warned them that the Dark One had claimed her and, even in death, would surely have wicked protections against intrusions of that nature.
He steps before her now, grabs her chin and jerks her face to his, his rotten breath reeking as bad as her back. "Do you confess your sins? Do you accept the holy cleansing?"
The first day, she'd spat in his eye and railed against his words, denying any sin. Later, when she'd lost the strength to argue, she scowled at him. Now, shackled at the wrists, endlessly hanging, as her ripped flesh barely clings to her bones, she can do little more than stare into his wicked eyes.
"Resume," he says, but he doesn't let go of her chin. When the whip cracks against her, she flinches and he smiles. "Tell me you repent," he hisses into her ear, "and it all ends."
Another stroke. "Tell me!" Another.
She sees white light where the cleric's face should be, her long-dead mother smiling down at her. Her breath catches. Now, she prays. Her mother sits at a spinning wheel. I'm ready. But it's no longer her mother, it's him. And she's next to him, so very close to him. Please, she begs, take me.
She'd vowed to not call for him, for he is dead, and dead is dead, dearie, she remembers. Saying his name would show weakness to her captors. But as darkness edges around her vision and she anticipates the welcomed fatal blow, his name falls broken from her lips.
The scream she hears isn't her own. A body falls against her, slides down her mangled back, lands with a heavy thud at her heels.
Another howl and another thud, this one in the distance behind her.
The cleric holding her chin digs his fingernails into her skin as a most peculiar expression crosses his features. She hears a moist splat at her toes and he collapses. Her head falls forward and she sees his entrails in a heap.
Perhaps, she thinks as her eyes slide shut, a spark of magic can transcend death - both his and hers.
-0-0-0-0-
Death is painless and bright. And it smells of musky dragon leather.
She stirs. There is no bare, icy stone against naked flesh. She instead is cocooned in warmth, with softness beneath her side and head. At first, she moves just a finger, to test if the hurt is truly gone, then flexes her whole hand. There is no stickiness from oozing blisters, no agony as the fingers curl. Her eyes open to examine her wrists poking out from under a heavy robe, un-bloodied and un-bruised, the deep cuts from the iron cuffs vanished without a scar.
"Belle?"
Not witch, not harlot. Instead, the gentle use of her name. It sounds strange.
She lifts her gaze, sunlight blinding her, for she's seen nothing but darkness in weeks. When her vision clears, she sees a silhouette perched on the windowsill, hunched like a gargoyle.
She exhales, tries to form the lengthy name, but gets out only a weak, dry, "Ruh?"
But it's enough, because the gargoyle uncurls, dances sideways toward her, recrouches next to her.
"Belle," he breathes, his ragged teeth showing as he grins. His green-gold face is too close, but definitely not close enough.
She reaches out an unblemished hand, touches her palm to his cold cheek. His odd, reptilian eyes slip shut at the contact.
She swallows and forces a word through her throat. "Alive?"
Exhaustion claims her again before she receives confirmation.
-0-0-0-0-
Later, when she awakens, it is dark, but not the pitch blackness of the windowless dungeon. This darkness is warmed orange from firelight. The room, she recognizes, is Rumplestiltskin's, filled with rich woods, deep reds, and golden trims. Somehow, she has returned to his domain.
Belle feels a sturdiness that she's not felt since before she left the Dark Castle, as though strength has been infused into her body. She sits up on her own. No burly hands forcing her upwards, pulling her arms over her head. Her formerly-dislocated shoulders don't scream in protest.
"Feeling better, dearie?"
She inhales a sharp breath. His presence earlier wasn't a ghost or hallucination.
He sits in a wing-back chair near the end of the bed. He wears a dark, leather suit with wicked spikes rising from the shoulders and collar. It's one he wore during his dark dealings to instill fear in the populace. At least he'd thought it fearful, told her as much, but she'd commented that it made him look handsome. He'd laughed his high-pitched, mad laugh and disappeared in a cloud of purple smoke.
His demeanor now is anything but intimidating as he sits with his fingers steepled before his face, as though he's praying - which she knows isn't happening.
She smiles, tears prickle in her eyes. "You're alive?"
Rumplestiltskin tilts his head. "I've lived centuries without a caretaker." He flicks his fingers. "Why would a couple months without you flitting about the castle kill me?"
The laugh catches in her throat, shifting to a choked sob. Tears flow unrestrained.
He stands, offers her a handkerchief out of thin air. "No need to cry, dearie. There's still dusting to do, if you're so inclined."
She dabs at her eyes and looks up at him, notices his face seems gaunt, his eyes dark and sunken. She knows all magic comes with a price. "You healed me?"
"Of course I did." He waves a hand toward the bed. "You were bleeding all over my sheets."
Her mouth quirks up. "How rude of me."
He leans well into her personal space. "I realize you enjoy testing me at every opportunity, my dear, but was it really necessary to be that close to dying before calling for me? It takes considerable work to deprive death of his due."
Tears well up again. "They told me you were dead."
She didn't think it was possible for his skin to blanch, but the gold loses its sparkle and the green turns a sickening lime. Then he scowls, his normal color returning and intensifying. He turns from her.
"Fool!" he snarls. "You believe someone that wants nothing more than to destroy you?"
"My father confirmed -" Belle halts, realizing what she should have known long ago, had she been able to think lucidly.
Rumplestiltskin whirls back around. "Your father?" he titters. "Wouldn't happen to be the same fellow who hired those holy men to kill you?"
She hangs her head. "I am a fool."
He sits suddenly, his hip touching hers. He raises her chin with a fingertip and looks at her. "No more foolish than me, love," he says, his voice unusually low and placid.
She holds her breath, certain the endearment was one of his thoughtless tags. But he looks so oddly vulnerable, so strangely intense that she can't stop her heart from accelerating.
It's effortless when she leans forward, natural when her hand rises to his cheek. His brows lift, but he makes no move to retreat. She studies those strange, beautiful eyes. They seem wary, but not unwelcoming. The finger under her chin curls minutely, drawing her closer. She can feel his breath warm on her lips.
As her eyelids droop, as she tilts nearer, she recalls their last, their only kiss. She slides a finger to his mouth, blocking her path. For just a moment longer, she treasures the intimacy.
She'd repressed screams when whips slashed her flesh, refused to beg pardon for any sins, but trying to hold back tears now, to deny the transgression of love, is impossible. "Forgive me," she breathes around the barrier of her finger and she pulls away.
She cannot look at him, cannot bear to see his anger flare at her lapse. A moment passes while she awaits his wrath for daring to steal his power.
"I have something for you," he says calmly instead of shrieking in rage.
A vial of silvery liquid appears in her hand. The chill from the potion numbs her fingers.
"What is it?"
"Your homeland needs a ruler."
She blinks at his non sequitur. "I don't understand. My father..."
"I left him as he left you," he says in a growl. "His healers, however, weren't as skilled as yours."
Belle's heart stops and she looks up at him. "You killed my father?"
"I put down the animal that was once your father," he snarls.
She wants to hate him for such a vile act, wants to lash out at his cruelty, but she can't find any outrage. Her father - who ordered her dragged from his throne room, who more than once stood in the cell as they beat her, who called her the Dark One's whore - her father was dead to her long before he actually died.
"You can return and assume the throne," Rumplestiltskin says. "Be a queen, beloved by your people."
"My people," she counters, "know what was done."
He flicks a wrist. "A simple matter to change their collective thoughts on the subject."
She lifts the glowing vial. "Then what is this for?"
"To make you forget."
"Wouldn't the entire kingdom need potions?"
"Their memories of you aren't as personal and are therefore easily changed en masse by a spell. Your memories require...stronger methods."
She looks at the small bottle, twists it, watches the thick liquid stick to the glass. "How much will I forget?"
He touches her cheek. "Enough."
She recoils. "You mean everything."
"Belle, you can forget your association with the Dark One and all it has cost you."
"You're telling me to forget the man I love."
"It's for the best."
"No." She pushes the vial into his hands. "Easier perhaps, but not the best."
"Belle -"
She understands then. The packaging is prettier, the argument less explosive, but regardless of the trappings, he's sending her away. Again.
When she awoke in the Dark Castle, saw he'd healed her grievous wounds, she had assumed it marked the end of their separation. Clearly, she was mistaken. She blinks away her remaining tears, straightens her spine.
"At first light, I will go and never trouble you again. But I won't be queen. And I don't ever want to forget you."
Rumplestiltskin clinks his black nails against the glass bottle. "You will leave regardless?"
"If I were queen, I would have to leave to rule. There is very little difference for you, as both courses free you of me."
He shakes his head and shoves the vial back toward her. "The potion is meant to free you of me, you ridiculous woman," he snaps.
She wraps both her hands around his one that holds the potion. "But I don't want that." She draws a deep breath and forces a smile. "Now, since it's not yet first light and I can still trouble you, may I ask for a bit of food and perhaps some traveling clothes for my journey? Because trekking through the forest in your borrowed robe doesn't seem practical."
He leans too close to her face. "You will leave at dawn?"
"Yes." She swallows, realizing that may not be satisfactory. "Unless you prefer I leave now?" The thought of braving the woods at night is not one she relishes.
His eyes take on a shade of madness she's not seen before. "I prefer you don't leave at all," he hisses through his clenched teeth.
She is stalled for a moment, confused. But anger swiftly flares. "Then why do you continually dismiss me?" she demands.
He holds up a single finger in the scant space between their faces. "Once. I dismissed you once."
"And it nearly killed me. Quite literally."
"Hadn't planned for that," he says, and she can't tell if he's being serious or ironic.
"And stripping me of my memories and shipping me off to play queen is not another dismissal?"
He twists his head, his crinkled hair brushing against her nose. "I'm offering you a better life, Belle."
She moves her hands up, cupping his face, forcing him to look at her. "You're offering me a life, Rumple, not a better one."
"You deserve to be the queen of your castle."
"The only castle I want to be queen of is yours."
There is a startled wonder in his expression, much like when she first returned from town with a full basket of straw.
He tilts his head, touching his forehead to hers. "Why do you insist on loving me?"
"Because, despite yourself, you love me," she replies.
END.