Chipping Cups

Written by: Adventure-Seeking-Juliet

When: After discovering a new "ship" to obsess over.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. I only wish I did.

A/N Belle has flashes of memory, of a different life, before she was caged. She remembers feeling love, but for some reason cannot recall much more than a chipped cup. One-Shot.

So, I finally gave in an decided to write a one-shot for Once Upon a Time. I hate to admit it, but I almost feel bad about this-it seems everyone has recently fallen in love with Rumpel. However, just to clarify, I have loved him since Episode One. :) Now, here's some Rumbelle, to appease all of the other obsessed shippers, like me.

Whenever I close my eyes, all I can see is one image. An image of a chipped cup.

I don't know why I always see it, but I know it's driving me crazy.

I look at the same four walls everyday. I don't think I even remember what a person looks like-I don't think I even remember how to speak to someone.

It's been so long since I've seen another human being, since I've spoken to one. Maybe, all this time spent in this cage has truly driven me mad if all I think about is a chipped cup.

For a while, I spent my time trying to figure out why a chipped cup would be important to me. I thought that, maybe, it represented me.

I felt like a chipped cup. Like a vital piece of me was missing, and the only way I could ever escape my prison would be to find that missing piece.

When I'd spent enough months grappling with that idea, I decided that there had to be more to it than that. I thought that maybe I had been placed in my prison cell because of a chipped cup.

The problem was, when I tried to think back to what I had done before being imprisoned...I came up blank.

That's when I knew something wasn't right. There was no way I could have spent my whole life inside the cage. Someone had messed with...something.

I wasn't where I was supposed to be, and the only way to find my way out would be to find that chipped cup.

That moment of clarity didn't last very long. Something about the cage always made me forget things-one second I would be thinking about the cup, while staring at the smallest crack on the floor, and the next thing I knew, I would be asleep, struggling to remember what was so important about a broken cup.

So, to make myself remember I started chipping all the cups that were placed in my cage.

You see, three times a day, a tray is slipped inside my cell, usually while I am asleep. It's usually a typical type of food and a glass of water.

Most of the time, I ignore the food and drink. It's hard to get very hungry when all you do is cry on a floor all day...but one day my curiosity got the best of me.

I picked up my glass of water and started examining it. The cup was plastic-and blue, nothing like the white tea cup in my dreams, but after banging it against the wall for a few hours-a small piece of plastic broke off.

The cup was chipped.

I admit, that was when I realized I really was losing my mind. All I could think about was breaking the next cup. It was like a new obsession.

Then one day, while I was banging a cup against the wall like usual, a strange sensation came over me. The image of the chipped cup was still there, but there was something new.

A string of words.

Inside my head, the words were still muddled, so I spoke for the first time since I had woken in the cage.

" Now all you'll have is an empty heart and a chipped cup."

I repeated the phrase over and over again, until my voice grew hoarse from speaking too much.

Not too long after, the people who kept me inside the cage discovered my habit for chipping cups. So they started giving me metal cups. No matter how hard I tried-they would not break.

But it no longer mattered, because I could remember the twelve words perfectly.

" Now all you'll have is an empty heart and a chipped cup."

I might be crazy, but one day I will find the chipped cup and I will be set free. I will find my missing piece.

Extremely sad? Yes. But I also think it's kind of hopeful. I absolutely love Rumpel and Belle. :) So perfect together. Please review and let me know what you think!