Lucky Penny

1

Changeling

A/N: this is the sequel to Love is Memory. Written with greatest respect and love for Robert Carlyle and Emilie deRavin. Don't own, dearies!

It had been almost two months since Belle had regained her memories and come home to her family. She had spent much of that time getting reacquainted with her husband and daughter, and returning to work at the library for four days a week. It was drawing near St. Patrick's Day and Belle wanted to plan a special day for the family. She had thought a picnic might be nice, in the park beside the playground, so they could eat lunch and have fun playing with Ava on the swings and in the castle. She had bought several books on food she might cook, though she thought she would keep it simple and opted for potato salad, carrot salad with raisins, and corned beef sandwiches with mustard and coleslaw. She would also make some Irish soda bread for breakfast, and bring some cinnamon scones and shamrock sugar cookies for dessert. Since neither she nor Bobby were drinkers, Belle opted to have fizzy lemonade instead of beer. Plus she would make sure to pack a shamrock tablecloth and some festive paper plates and silverware.

While she was planning this in her head, she was also making breakfast for her husband and herself, making some feta cheese and spinach omelets, with whole grain toast, and some broiled tomatoes sprinkled with parmesan cheese and pepper.

Bobby Gold, also known as Rumplestiltskin, was dressed in his usual Armani gray suit and this time was wearing a deep cobalt blue shirt and midnight blue tie. He was currently trying to get their toddler, Ava, to eat her cereal, which was sometimes a breeze and sometimes a feat worthy of Hercules depending on the mood the child was in. Today the little girl was in one of her Royal Pain moods, as Belle referred to them, and kept refusing to eat, shaking her head and pursing her rosebud mouth shut whenever her papa brought the spoon near her mouth.

"Ah, come on, Ava. Just eat one bite. Just one for Papa," Bobby said, using his most persuasive tone on the little imp. "You like Golden Grahams, I know you do."

Ava stubbornly shook her head. "No!"

Belle rolled her eyes at her toddler's intransigence. Sometimes Ava made her long to run screaming down the street. Bobby, on the other hand, had the patience of a saint, and almost nothing fazed him. He took temper tantrums, potty training, and fevers in stride. Belle supposed it had to do with the fact that he was a sorcerer and had raised a child before, and he was also technically three hundred years old. So his patience seemed legendary.

Gold sighed and set the spoon back in the bowl of cereal, which was getting soggier by the moment the longer Ava kept refusing to eat it. "Okay, baby girl. Why won't you eat your Golden Grahams?"

"'Cuz I want Lucky Charms!" Ava sang. "They're magically delicious!"

Gold couldn't help smiling at his brilliant daughter, who besides inheriting his magical ability, had inherited her mother's brains as well as her beauty. Ava's vocabulary was growing in leaps and bounds every day, she spoke in complete sentences now, and she remembered everything she heard or saw. So much so that both parents needed to mind their P's and Q's around her, lest she end up having a mouth like a truck driver.

"Lucky Charms, huh?" he mused. He knew they didn't have that kind of cereal in their pantry. But that didn't really present a problem for him. "All right. But if I get you Lucky Charms, Ava, will you eat them?"

"Uh huh. I eat them all up!" the toddler said, and clapped her hands.

Bobby gestured and a box of Lucky Charms now appeared on the table in front of him. He vanished the soggy bowl of cereal and got a new bowl and put in Lucky Charms and milk. Then he floated the bowl over to his daughter and said, "Okay, now you remember our deal, right, dearie?"

"Yup. An' nobody breaks deals with you, Papa!" Ava stated.

Belle started chuckling as she flipped the omelets. Ava was very much her daddy's little girl.

Gold chuckled and gently tweaked her nose before sitting down and saying, "Now open wide, here comes a flying—" he brought the spoon close to his daughter's mouth.

"Monkey!" she yelled, having watched The Wizard of Oz for the tenth time that week. She now opened her mouth and let her papa feed her. "Mmm!"

"Good job! Now chew and swallow," Bobby told her, waiting until the child had done so before giving her another mouthful. To his relief, Ava ate without protest now that she had the cereal she wanted, and though she could feed herself most things, she liked her papa to feed her cereal.

Once she had eaten the bowl of Lucky Charms, Bobby washed her face and hands with a wet dish towel and gave her a sippy cup of apple juice to drink while he and Belle ate their own breakfasts.

Gold cut into his broiled tomato and ate some. "This is delicious, Belle," he told his wife. "I've never eaten them like this."

"I know, I usually only eat them in salads and on hamburgers," she said. "But Granny gave me the recipe and suggested I try it, so . . . I did. I brushed the tops with a little olive oil, sprinkled some oregano and basil on them and parmesan cheese and I really like them, Bobby." She cut up her tomato and ate it with her omelet, enjoying the melding of flavors, from the slightly tangy feta cheese and mellow spinach to the hearty tomato with spices.

"Me have some, Mama," Ava said, reaching her hand out to grab some food from Belle's plate.

"Wait, let me get some for you," Belle said, and put some tomato on her fork and fed it to Ava. She had been trying to get the little girl to try new foods gradually.

The child chewed for a moment, then said, "I like it!"

"It's yummy, isn't it?" Belle laughed, and ate some more herself.

"More, pwease!"

She ended up feeding Ava half her tomato and some of her omelet as well, before the toddler was full and Bobby had to leave for work.

Ava waved goodbye sadly to her father, who kissed her and said, "Be good for Mama, and I'll see you later, babydoll!"

"Bye, Papa!" the toddler sniffled, looking woebegone.

Belle spent the rest of that morning playing with her daughter and doing laundry.

"The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout!" Belle sang to Ava and made climbing motions with her hands as she sat on the floor with her daughter.

"Down came the wain and washed the 'pider out!" Ava chanted, and made swishing motions with her hands.

"Up came the sun and dried up all the rain!" Belle held up her arms in a circle around her head.

"Then the itsy bitsy 'pider went up the spout again!" Ave finished and made climbing motions again. "Yay!"

Belle then played other games with the toddler, until she started yawning and crawled into her lap, laying her small head against her mother's shoulder.

She rocked Ava to sleep in their maple rocking chair and put her down for a nap in her crib before returning downstairs to get the last load of clothes out of the dryer.

As she went upstairs with some folded sheets and towels, she saw Mittens, their black and white cat, come racing down the hall, her fur on end. The cat ran downstairs looking frazzled.

"Mittens! Silly kitty!" Belle smiled. Then she went to put the laundry away.

Upon shutting the linen closet door, Belle noticed that the door to the nursery, where Ava was sleeping, was shut and she went to open it, finding it odd it had closed by itself.

As she opened the door, she noticed a draft and saw that the window was half open. Puzzled, she went and shut it, wondering why it was open. Surely she hadn't left it that way? The weather wasn't quite warm enough for that, and she was always careful not to leave open windows around the baby, because Ava could fall out of them.

She turned to check on her daughter, and saw the blanket was covering the baby's face. Belle leaned over and tugged it down . . . then froze, her mouth gaping.

For Ava was not sleeping in the crib.

Instead there was a stick-like thing shaped vaguely like a person lying there, with a carved face and staring coal eyes and green shoots for hair.

A horrified Belle started screaming. "Ava! Ava!"

She looked under the crib and all over the room, calling for her daughter. But Ava was gone.

Utterly panicked, Belle reached in her pocket and dialed Bobby's work number.

Two minutes later Gold transported himself home after listening to his wife's frantic phone call.

He hugged and comforted Belle, who was almost hysterical, and then went to search the nursery with magic, hoping that he would find his baby hiding with her magic.

But there was no trace of her, only the odd changeling in the crib. Rumple picked up the stick figure to examine it, feeling a latent magic within it. And beneath it he found an Irish penny, glinting in the sunlight.

"Bobby . . . what happened to her?" Belle half-sobbed.

"I . . . think I know," he said softly, holding the penny in his hand. "This . . . construct in her crib was left here by a powerful worker of magic . . . and only one type of being I know leaves this in place of the mortal child they've taken."

Belle stared at him, her blue eyes misted with tears. "You mean . . .?"

"They've taken our baby, Belle!" Gold said hoarsely. "The Sidhe have taken Ava and left a changeling in her place. The penny confirms it."

"Oh my God, Robert! We have to get her back!"

He put his arm around his wife. "We will, Belle. Or my name isn't Rumplestiltskin." Then his hand closed around the penny, crushing it in his palm until it left an indentation there.