Rumple gently cradled the chipped teacup in his hands. This small piece of china was all that he had left of Belle. His beautiful Belle. (Can he even call her his? After what he had done?) Beautiful, perfect, angelic Belle, who was dead because of him. Because that is what monsters do. They kill the ones they love.

You just don't think that I can love you.

Why was she so upset about it? It was the truth that she can't love him. No matter how much he had wanted to believe her, he couldn't escape the facts. Belle was a princess, and he a peasant. She was good and kind, and he was nothing but darkness.

A Beauty could never love a Beast.

A brave person would never love a coward.

Coward.

It was something that he could never escape. That label followed him all throughout his life; and no matter how hard he tried, he never managed to rid himself of it.

He had lied to Belle when he said that he desired power more than her. His power, his magic was a crutch. With his magic, he at least had the hope of being more than a cowardly spinner who was nothing more than a burden and a disgrace.

You're a coward Rumpelstiltskin. And no matter how thick you make your skin, that doesn't change.

You coward! You promised! Don't break our deal!

You left because you were afraid. You became what everyone thought you were. A coward just like your father.

Each recrimination had stabbed him through the heart. As much as he wanted to deny it, they were true. All of them were true. Even with magic, he was nothing more than a dirty, rotten coward.

How could anyone love him? His cowardice had cost him so many things: his wife, his son and his True Love. (He was sure that Belle was his True Love. The cup wouldn't have survived the journey to the Land Without Magic if what they had wasn't True Love.)

But he always wondered how she fell in love with him, of all people.

There were times he thought about what might have been if he had accepted Belle's love. How things would have changed. Would she still love him when she found out what he truly was? Or would she have left him as well, unable to bear the shame of being tied down to a coward? But even if she hadn't tried to kiss him, she would have fallen out of love with him eventually. Being loved by a beast was undoubtedly worse than being loved by a coward.

At least the coward was human.

Beneath all that power, you're nothing more than an unloved, lonely lost boy.

You're not afraid that Baelfire would be taken away from you. You're afraid that he'll leave. After all, being abandoned is what you're good at, isn't it?

Being abandoned was one of his few talents as a cowardly spinner; it was something that he had carried into his role as the Dark One. His father had chosen eternal youth rather than be with him. Milah had chosen a life of adventure on the high seas and a handsome pirate over being the wife of a coward. Baelfire left because he was too much of a coward to take a chance and go with his boy. Belle left because he was too cowardly to accept her love.

Belle. He bit his lips, choking back his sobs. He had cast her out and had thrown her aside. He had her love and he threw it aside. She was gone forever and it was all his fault. He could still remember what the Evil Queen said when she called on him, gloating about Belle's fate at the hands of her father when Belle had returned home.

He was cruel to her. He locked her in a tower and sent clerics to cleanse her soul with scourges and flaying. After a while, she threw herself off the tower. She died.

Sweet, kind, loving Belle who harboured no evil in her heart and who was pure of soul had been subjected to unspeakable horrors because of him. He should never have taken her away. If he had never gotten a glimpse of her during that fateful day in the market just two weeks before he brokered his deal with her; she would have lived her life in peace.

Was it fate that all those who loved him suffered?

If it was to be, he made a promise to himself. When he found Bae, he wouldn't ask Bae for love. It would be too much to hope, too much to ask. He would only ask for forgiveness.

But he knew he would never get even that. He was a monster, a villain. And villains don't get happy endings.