A/N: Just watched Once Upon A Time and I can't even put into words how much I love Rumplestiltskin and Belle (and Baelfire). I tried to resist writing anything for a show that's not yet finished, but I didn't resist very well. :) This is just a little something that only took two days to write, but I hope you enjoy it. I'd love to know what you think-thanks!
Disclaimer: Multiple episodes and dialogue from the show are referenced or quoted within this story; they were written by others and don't belong to me. No copyright infringement is intended.
Misconceptions
Belle: Ebb And Flow
Belle had never imagined that she would spend her life in an estate called the Dark Castle, cleaning rooms, and dusting a vast collection of artifacts—some of which were valuable in a way surely only her master knew—and lugging straw into the main hall and gold out of it, and serving tea to the one person everyone in every kingdom was equally awed and frightened by. The one person who owned her. The one person who always, for some reason, chose the cup she had chipped on her first night in her new home to drink his tea from.
Rumplestiltskin.
If she had never imagined her life turning out as it had recently, she had certainly never imagined him either. He was both everything people said about him in hushed whispers with fearful glances thrown over their shoulders and nothing like their fears and recommendations at all. Her father had called him a beast, Gaston had named him a monster, and there was evidence in what he called his collection to support that theory—twisted puppets and dark vials marked with magical symbols and countless papers filled with names of the people who had owned the things he now possessed—and yet he did not seem a monster at all, not in person, not face to face.
Oh, sure, there had been 'her room.' The dungeon. It had been dark and dismal and damp, and being allowed out to serve him tea and receive his list of tasks for her to see to had been a relief, but she hadn't stayed there long. She'd only been with him a week, just starting to make a dent on all the rooms he had shown her, just finally learning her way around the large castle, when she'd come down with a fever.
She'd been so terrified, afraid that her sickness and the fact that she hadn't been able to drag herself up to make his breakfast would break their deal. All she had been able to think about was her father and all the people who depended on her for their safety. The ogres were nothing to sneer at, after all. For a long time, they had dominated any and all of her thoughts, casting shadows over her dreams of the future, haunting her memories of her past. She couldn't bear to think that her village would wake up after only a week of safety to find ogres invading yet again.
And then he'd been there, and she had been moving, and she still wasn't sure whether he'd actually carried her or used his magic, but she'd slowly realized that she was lying in a soft bed and there were warm blankets around her and the lights that had been boring into her skull were dimmed. And he was there, looking down at her, his peculiar gold-brown eyes fixed on her, drawing her out of the fear- and fever-induced haze.
"I'm sorry," she'd murmured, astonished at how smooth she felt, how all her sweat and lethargy had seemingly drained away, leaving her exhausted and hollowed-out and better. "I'm sorry, but please, please don't send the ogres back."
"Nonsense," he'd said in what she now knew as his customary matter-of-fact, teasing manner. "I don't waste caretakers as carelessly as all that. I'll put you into a sleep for a day or two and you'll wake up good as new."
Relief had swelled up within her and carried her away into a sleep heavier and deeper than any she'd ever experienced before. And when she woke up, he had been there, never giving a hint that playing nursemaid to his prisoners was unusual for him at all—though it had certainly never been mentioned in any of the rumors and whispers and legends about him—never mentioning that she owed him anything for his healing. He'd poured tea for her and told her to sit up, and even though he had never touched her, she had felt inimitably touched.
Since then, she'd stayed in that warm, cozy room, and he'd never said a word about her moving back to the dungeon.
There was a lot he didn't say, actually. He never explained where he went during his frequent absences, or why he'd return so suddenly, sometimes to stay for days in a row, other times to leave again right away. He never revealed where he'd acquired the things in his collection. He never asked her about her family or friends or past. He never told her that he enjoyed having her there. He never explicitly said that she didn't need to be afraid of angering him over things like a chipped cup or a life-threatening fever or tearing his curtains. He never voiced the fact that he liked that she laughed at his odd, amusing sense of humor. But then, he didn't need to say many of those things; they were evident all on their own.
Some days, she received more than others from him. Some days, she could hardly breathe he gave her so much, quips that made her laugh and smiles that stole her balance and startlingly serious moments that left her dazed and struck and unbelievably affected. And then other days, there was nothing, just silence and stares past her and spinning, spinning, spinning, so much spinning that surely made sense if she just knew why he did it. And then, of course, there were the days he was gone, when minutes seemed like hours and hours like days and the moment he made it apparent to her that he'd returned was as sudden and stark and brilliant as a firework exploding in her face.
Her life, this life she had never imagined—their life—was an ebb and flow, really, a constant tide made up of currents she couldn't predict or make sense of but that she could nonetheless rely on. She learned, quickly, to wake up and take whatever came her way. If it was the silence and the stares and the spinning, she stayed quiet and made sure he had straw and tea, which was all he wanted from her during those times, and warmth and light, things he never mentioned that he wanted but never said he didn't either, and sometimes she thought that they made the silent days pass much more quickly and remain fewer in number. If it was the absence that greeted her like a slap every time she woke to make his breakfast and realized by the dimness and emptiness that he was gone, she did as much cleaning and dusting and rearranging as possible to fill up the empty hours and hasten his reappearance.
And then there were her favorite days, the days that always made her smile when she woke and moved into the kitchen and put on his tea to warm. The days when he teased her and laughed with her and invited her to sit beside him as he drank his tea—always from the same chipped cup. Those were the days she savored and enjoyed, laughing and smiling and sitting beside him and doing whatever he wanted her to because she wanted to do them herself.
She never could learn to predict which days which would be which, never could tell when the currents would ebb, leaving her alone and dry and empty, and when they would flow through her and past her, buoying her up, but she did learn to accept them.
Rumplestiltskin was complex and intense and mysterious and so much more layered than she had ever dreamed a person could be. And yes, he was damaged, but he was also more real and whole than anyone she had met. He was complicated, but the moments and hours and days between them passed so easily, so simply, so…so happily that it didn't seem complicated in the least.
He didn't take offense when she first dusted one of his rooms of belongings and asked him, tactfully, whether he had arranged them himself. Instead, he smiled mockingly and said that she could rearrange them however she liked so long as he knew where everything was. And then, when she dragged out whole rooms' worth of items and organized each room to a common theme, he teased her about the dust on her face and snapped his fingers to move all the heavy things for her. And when she was done, he'd carefully walked through each room, his hands clasped behind his back, examining everything with his compelling eyes, his lips pursed, until he'd come to the end and turned to look at her. She'd stood there, trying not to be nervous, knowing by then that he wasn't likely to turn her into a snail or a frog on a whim, doing her best not to play with the skirt of the dress he'd given her with a casual shrug and the statement that she'd need something more than the ball gown she'd first come in.
"I knew there was a reason I saved your village," he'd said, and then chuckled to himself and walked past her toward the main hall. When she'd stood there, a smile on her face that she couldn't quite explain, he'd turned back and quirked his eyebrow and asked, "Aren't you coming?"
He never grew angry when she thought he would, never complained when she messed up his dinner—because she was a bit rusty on cooking and as much as she wanted to do well for him, sometimes she was a little late pulling the meal away from the fire—never snapped at her when she asked a question he clearly didn't want to answer, never refused her when she wanted to borrow one of his books, never even threatened to use his magic against her. And yet, just as she had convinced herself that he didn't have a temper at all, he scared her half to death, turning from his spinning wheel and dropping his newest chain of gold and lunging for her.
"Don't touch those!" he'd yelled, batting her hands away from the puppets she'd been rearranging on their stand. "Never touch those! Stay away from them!"
She'd stumbled back, more startled than anything, the whispers about what Rumplestiltskin did to those who displeased him running through her mind even though she'd thought she'd banished all those falsehoods after he'd cared for her during her fever.
At her stare, he had calmed, the puppets righting themselves by magic. "I promised I'd take care of them," he'd said more quietly. "You can clean the rest, but these are mine."
"Right," she'd murmured. "Sorry."
He had fussed over the dolls a moment more before returning to his spinning wheel while she had hurriedly turned and busied herself with something else, and that had been the end of it. Or so she had thought, but maybe that incident had been the reason he'd spent the entire night spinning, slowly, careless of the gold he made, staring instead at the wheel so gradually moving, as if he thought the movement of the wheel would purge something from his mind. She had stayed close to him, keeping the fires going, wordlessly offering him tea that he ignored, but in the morning, he'd left and hadn't returned for nine days, the longest he'd ever been gone.
They had been the longest, slowest, dullest, emptiest days she had ever spent. There was only so much dusting she could do, even considering how large his collection was, and his laundry didn't take up nearly enough time, and there was no need to cook when he was gone and she didn't feel hungry at all. By the third day, she had been entertaining thoughts of trying to escape just to get out of the empty castle; by the fifth day, she had seriously wondered if she'd be stark raving mad by the time he came back; by the seventh day, she had been terrified that her mistake had so angered him that he'd decided to abandon her in the Dark Castle forever, that he would never come back to her at all; by the ninth day, she had fallen into an almost apathetic lethargy that made it hard for her to move at all.
And then she'd woken the next morning, and she'd known he had returned. The castle shone when he was present, not literally, but truly. It shone and vibrated with usefulness and happiness, felt realer and steadier and more solid, felt less like a castle and more like a home—more than her father's castle had ever felt. She couldn't explain it, but she couldn't deny it either, and a smile had sprang instantly to her lips. She had leapt from bed, all her lethargy completely evaporating, and dressed in a flurry and hurried to the kitchen. When she'd brought the tray into the main hall and seen him standing there by his spinning wheel—not touching it, just looking—she'd thought her smile might actually be big enough to make her burst.
She thought that maybe that was the moment she first began to suspect she felt more for him than possibly she should. At first she tried to convince herself she only felt so happy to see him because he was the only person she saw anymore. But it was more than that, more than the fact that he owned her, more than the way he could make her laugh even on the days when she ached with missing her father, more than just that he listened to her more intently than any in her father's court ever had or watched her more closely than Gaston ever had or talked to her more meaningfully than anyone else ever had. Or maybe those were all pieces of it, single currents that combined to make the tide flow over her.
For several days, she toyed with the idea. She held it in her mind as delicately as if it were the spun-glass swan figurine in one of the rooms upstairs, turned it over and over to examine it from every angle as studiously as if it were the puzzle box stowed in a drawer all on its own, thought on it more fixedly even than she thought on the child-sized clothing she had found in a bedroom all set up as if readied for a boy who might enter at any moment.
She had just been ready to set the idea aside—more out of frustration than anything—and dismiss it as a product of her loneliness, and then she'd woken one morning and Rumplestiltskin had been standing over her, and before she'd even had time to process how automatic and easy it felt to greet him with a smile, he'd smiled back at her and set a tray filled with breakfast before her with no explanation or excuse, just another quip about how she'd rearranged the kitchen so that he could hardly find anything.
And when she asked if he'd stay and eat it with her, when he sat on the edge of her bed, when he peered at her as if he wished he could puzzle her out or memorize her or maybe just keep her captured forever in that moment, she had felt her heart beating furiously in her chest, felt the breath catch in her throat, felt her stomach drop away. All good signs, but none of them as much proof that she had fallen in love with him as the way she suddenly and wholly wanted to make him as happy as he was making her this moment. Wanted to give him as much as he had given her. Wanted to make him smile the way he could make her smile. Wanted to chase all his ogres and demons and ghosts away as surely as he'd rid her world of them.
She loved him. She loved Rumplestiltskin.
It had made the breakfast, the whole day, pass in a crystal-clear haze of rediscovery, when everything he did or said took on a whole new meaning, as if she had been given new eyes. The day after that had passed much the same, and the day after that, until gradually she'd realized that she'd loved him for a long time, that maybe she'd been in love with him even before she'd met him or known his name—that she'd been born already loving him, just not recognizing that fact until now. And then she had wondered why she had been surprised at all, wondered how she hadn't known it, wondered why anything had seemed different when there was nothing more natural than to love him.
But then she had decided to take down the curtains and he had given her a beautiful red rose—the timeless symbol of love—and she had gathered enough courage to ask him about the child's clothing and had quelled a burst of happiness that he could so obviously love…and he had released her.
Freedom. She had dreamed of it those first days after she had struck a deal with Rumplestiltskin. Staring despondently at the dungeon around her, shivering and huddled up in a ball, terrified the least wrong movement or word would see her transformed into some kind of creature, longing for freedom and trying to comfort herself with the fact that her imprisonment meant her family and friends were all safe.
She had yearned for freedom, but how long had it been since she'd even thought of it? How long since anything outside the Dark Castle had called for her earnest attention? How long since she could bear to imagine a life without Rumplestiltskin's intriguing complexities and mysteries always there to tantalize and hypnotize her?
It had all seemed simple then. Even walking away, convincing herself that she wouldn't go back, that her father needed her, that she could rejoin the life she'd left what seemed an eternity ago. And knowing, somewhere deep inside herself, that she couldn't just walk away and only needed an excuse to turn around and fly back to him.
An excuse and a hope, and true love's kiss had been all she needed. Only, they hadn't been enough, not to counter the terrifying abruptness with which everything changed.
He never lost his temper, never grew angry with her, and yet he had erupted so suddenly, filled to overflowing with so much rage, so much raw fury, all flaring up and boiling over until the hot grip of his hands on her arms had temporarily overshadowed the memory of his lips feather-light and fairy-dust-gentle on hers, until the sight of his face twisted in rage and suspicion and hastily hidden hurt had consumed the memory of his eyes, so wide and deep and disbelieving, gazing into hers with the beginnings of hope.
She did not understand him. Did not understand why he could be so happy and amusing and vibrant one day and so empty and sad and preoccupied the next. Did not understand why he thought he was a monster when he could be so gentle and giving and spontaneously compassionate. Did not understand why he could look at her with the love she was sure matched her own and then the next moment give himself over in immolation to all the darkness she had seen in him and hoped to help soothe away.
She didn't understand him, but she did love him. A night spent in the dungeon, replaying everything that had happened over and over again, realizing that her chance meeting with the queen on the road hadn't been such a chance after all, knowing he was afraid and hurt and heartbroken even though she didn't know why or how—all of it enough to convince her that she loved him no matter how much he shook her and shouted at her that she couldn't.
She loved him and it didn't matter because he'd sent her away. And even knowing why he did it, even seeing past the artificial masks and desperate lies to the hurt and fear and desperation and wistful longing, it had hurt her more than anything. It had made the days when he'd been away seem the mere blink of an eye in comparison to how slowly days moved without even the memory of his presence in the things around her. She would take those days—the days when he was gone—back in a heartbeat because at least then she'd known he would return eventually.
She would take his dungeon back in less than a heartbeat because it had been infinitely better than the cell she had been locked in, the cell lit only by diffused sunlight and the infrequent, rare visits from the woman she hadn't known then but now knew as the queen she'd met on the road leading away from Rumplestiltskin.
She had always thought of their life together as an ebb and flow, as tides that might recede but would always rise again, that might leave her for a transient amount of time but would always return to soothe and amuse and comfort and entrance her. It was only when the doors to the Dark Castle had closed behind her, when she'd faced days and days and weeks and weeks and months and months without even a glimpse of him, when she'd forgotten him altogether and had nothing to look forward to and nothing to look back on save confusion as to how and why she'd ended up in the dark padded cell—it was only then that she'd realized maybe it wasn't an ebb and flow.
Maybe it was all or nothing.
She'd had it all, even imprisoned and alone and confused. She'd had it all because he'd been with her and he'd teased her and he'd laughed at his own jokes and looked startled when she laughed too and he'd taken care of her when she was sick and brought her breakfast in bed for no particular reason at all, just because he wanted to. She'd had it all even when he'd stared at his wheel and spun endlessly and never spoke a word and seemed to look right past her, had it all because she'd been with him and she'd been able to ease his darkness and offer him some light and hope and draw him back to her and take care of him, not because of their deal but because she'd wanted to.
She'd had it all until she hadn't. It had been more than an ebbing away, more than a receding. It had been nothing. No hope, no love, no point, and she had wandered aimlessly.
All or nothing.
Rumplestiltskin or nothing.
Synonymous. No difference at all. Silly, maybe, to fall in love with her captor and lose purpose when he threw her out of his life, and hardly as brave or heroic as she'd always wanted to be. Seeing the world hadn't mattered, though, not without him. She'd wandered and traveled, and yet none of it had meant a thing because he hadn't been there with her.
All or nothing.
She had never imagined the twist her life would take, never known that she would have it all only to have it all taken away from her, never dreamed that she would forget all that had happened only to remember it all again so suddenly it struck her as if it were that firework now exploding so brilliantly in her vision.
And he was there in front of her. His back to her, limping, leaning heavily on a cane, moving forward. But there. Calling her. Promising her his protection. His eyes—so different and yet just as deep and compelling—staring into hers with so much amazement. Human. An ordinary man.
Belle had never imagined that her life would turn out this way. She had never imagined a curse and her efforts to break it transforming her life so drastically. She could not begin to understand how she had come to be in this strange world where magic was only a legend and the everyday news of her world's kingdoms were mere fairytales. She didn't know why her memories had so suddenly and completely been returned to her.
But she knew one thing: for so long, she'd had nothing, and now, in her grasp, striding ahead of her, there was everything.
He was complicated and complex and layered and mysterious, and yes, there was a darkness in him. But he was her everything, so it was simple and uncomplicated and oh so easy to open her mouth and speak the name that had been etched into her heart so deeply his rejection could not sear it away and forgetting him could not obscure it.
"Rumplestiltskin. Wait."
Everything standing in front of her, stopping in his tracks—when had he gotten a limp?—slowly, so slowly—as slowly as he'd stared at that spinning, spinning, spinning wheel—turning around to look at her, his expression so arrested and fearful and breathless.
She knew what nothing felt like. Knew what it was to live with nothing. And she knew what everything felt like. Knew what it was to live in the light of his smile and the feel of his arms catching her and the bliss of his lips on hers. And knowing those things, how could she not take the chance on getting everything back? How could she not try?
"I remember," she said, and smiled because golden skin or not, scales or not, peculiar pupils or not, limp or not, she loved him. And it felt so good to finally see him again. "I love you."
And he moved forward when she did, and his arms were opening to receive her, and he was smiling to match hers, and then his arms were encircling her and his warmth was easing its way into her and his smell was still the same, so unique and tangible, otherworldly allure mixed with the grounding scent of wool. And then he was whispering in her ear, words she had longed to hear, words she had hoped were true, words that banished all the nothingness and filled up every crevice of her heart with a collection, not of concrete valuables, but of memories and feelings and dreams, all of them precious and valuable because they contained Rumplestiltskin.
"Yes. Yes, and I love you too."
Precious words. Valuable words. Words of great worth. Because they came from him. He gave everybody what they wanted, gave them the desires of their heart, granted their wishes and fulfilled their dreams, and now he did the same for her by giving her his very own heart.
She had never imagined her life turning out this way, and yet…she wouldn't have traded it—wouldn't have traded him—for anything in the world.
