I've been a Rumbelle shipper since I watched Skin Deep, and after rewatching the episode a few times I had an idea. I figured that since everyone we've seen die so far in fairytale land hasn't appeared in Storybrooke (except for Charming, but I figure he hadn't actually crossed over yet when the curse hit), if Belle had really killed herself, which would mean that she had been dead for quite some time, then she wouldn't be in Storybrooke at all. So here goes nothing.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
The tower is dark. The tower is cold. The tower is like a dungeon, and yet it is not. Rather, one who has never spent time in a dungeon would assume that the tower is like one. Belle, however, has spent many hours, many nights, in a dungeon, and she notes several differences between the two. The dungeon had been underground, as dungeons are wont to be, and therefore there was no wind. It had been cold, certainly, but it was a dry, stale sort of cold, simply there, never changing. Here, in the tower, she is so elevated, left to the mercy of the weather's capriciousness. A single window, barred and so impossibly out of reach that she cannot fathom why it exists, lets in winds that whip her matted hair and burrow into her skin. When it rains, water pours through the window, and she curls up, making herself as small as possible, as far away from the rain as she can. She can never remain completely dry. When it thunders, she fears that a bolt of lightning may crack against the tower and send her plummeting to her death. And during hot days, she bakes inside the tower, strips off her shift and lays her naked body on the shadowed stone to cool her flushed skin.
In the dungeon, she had a bed, one of straw. If her cloak was not enough to ward off the ever-present chill, she could nestle into the scratchy straw that became less coarse as time wore on and became a warm comfort, an embrace that she looked forward to falling into at the end of each laborious day. Later on, the straw became a comfort in more than simply the physical sense. She began to associate it with the master of the castle. When he finally allowed her an actual bedroom of her own, it had taken a while to acclimatize to the feeling of sheets rubbing against her skin again, the overbearing weight of comforters mixed with heat from a fire. Her first night in a true bed after over a month of sleeping in the dungeon, so incapable was she of falling asleep that she stripped the bed of its heavier dressings, returned to the dungeon, gathered a basketful of straw, and dumped it amongst the sheets. Sleep came quickly afterward.
There is no form of comfort, physical or otherwise in the tower. Belle sleeps on cold stone, her arms a pillow when she feels the need for one. She feels dirty, an ever-present layer of grime covering her body, even following her monthly bath, after which she shivers, trying to dry herself in the streams of light that peek in between the bars. Her shift is missing its sleeves and several inches at the bottom; she uses these rags to catch her flowing femininity and washes and reuses them month after month. No matter how hard she tries to wash her shift, it remains stained, smelling of sweat. Filth has caked under her fingernails, and she does not care enough to clean them. Greasy, wiry hair hangs heavily over her shoulders, creates a stench around her face that makes her gag. If she had a knife, she would cut the ruined locks from her head; if she had a knife, she would skip the haircut and go straight for the veins through which flows her so-called tainted blood.
Perhaps the truest difference between the dungeon and the tower, Belle thinks, is that only twice had she felt a prisoner in the former, thrown inside on the first and last night she spent inside it, the door latching behind her only in those instances. Charms were put in place on the castle to keep her from escaping, of course, not that she planned to, considering that she came willingly, but she still had an entire castle to roam. This tower, however, has been a prison from the moment she was forced inside. Once a day, two tins, one filled with water and the other with what she would call inedible slop if she had not been driven by such hunger to find that it is indeed edible, are forced through a small slot at the bottom. The door remains locked at all times, save once a month when the same unfortunate servant comes to swap out her pots for clean ones and bring a bucket of tepid water for bathing. Each time, Belle asks the servant for some straw. Her request is always ignored. The same guard remains during the ritual, making escape unattainable. Even if she could escape, there is no place for her to go. She has been shunned from the two places she thought of as home, by the only two men she has ever loved.
Her father had called her tainted. Upon her return, he asked her of her former master's secrets, his weaknesses. She told him that she knew nothing, and he did not believe her. After living with "that beast" so long, surely she must have discovered something. And she had, she had learned that he was not the monster that everyone claimed him to be. Eccentric, yes; disagreeable at times, yes; quick to tease, most certainly; a dealer of desperate souls, without a doubt; but a monster, no. He had never once hurt her, physically at least, during her stay. And so Belle defended him, argued with her father, and made the mistake of saying that even if she did know his secrets, she would not reveal them, would not betray him. Her father claimed that Rumpelstiltskin had corrupted his daughter, turned her against her family and the kingdom, that she was tainted. He sent clerics to cleanse her soul, and when their efforts that nearly killed her time after time failed to expel the evil within her, he declared her irrevocably damaged. Some wanted the monster's whore to hang, others called for banishment. He was her father, however, and despite the fact that saw her as some wretched, contaminated thing, he could not bear to sentence her to either punishment. As he departed from the tower for the last time, he claimed that this was the most humane course of action, that he did this out of love. As far as the kingdom knows, she is dead. She is a secret, like a bastard child.
It is so utterly, unbearably silent in the tower. There was silence in the castle as well. He had such a way of walking, sneaking about the castle on silent feet; he managed to frighten her countless times. She learned though, forced herself alert, listened for even the tiniest sound, and eventually his footfalls became known to her. The expression on his face the first time she spun around just before he made his move was priceless. Of course, he could magic himself anywhere he wanted, which she found to be quite unfair, and he did so numerous times. It was a game for him, and eventually it was one that they both played and enjoyed. Words were sparse between them at first, interactions tense. He did not seek out her company, and she did not seek out his. They merely co-existed with one another. Belle had been terribly nervous around him at first, afraid of irking him, Rumpelstiltskin, the imp she had heard tales of growing up as a child, of how he stole away children and maidens and had the nastiest temper and the greatest power in all the land; she soon learned that most of the stories were false. And he was able to sit at that wheel for hours, so quiet and still but for his hand spinning the wheel. Words came eventually, as did the seeking of company, and their silences became comfortable.
This silence is anything but comfortable. It is stifling, smothering, bears down on her ears so hard that they buzz. At times, it is a nearly solid mass that feels the need to press Belle up against the wall and leave her gasping. She goes so long without even the tiniest pinprick of sound, even her breaths coming and going without that audible whoosh of air, that she fears she may have gone deaf, and the fear, the need to hear, builds within her chest until it bursts out in a scream or a harsh bark of laughter that echoes in the tower. Sometimes the laughter that burbles from her lips is high pitched and makes her smile even though bile rises in her throat.
The dungeon was silent too, a place where he never visited, where she only spent her nights. Nights tend to be quiet, when living things fall to sleep and stay that way until the sun rises. Her first few days as caretaker had been trying, as she was not yet accustomed to waking up at dawn. Her master kept such early hours, and that meant waking up just as early in order to serve breakfast. If she overslept, the dungeon door would fling open, slamming against the wall, and tendrils of that utterly magic feeling, as though the air around her was shifting, heavy and cluttered, would prod at her face. A rude awakening, but it ceased when it was no longer needed.
No one wakes Belle in the tower. She has no agenda. She sleeps, and she continues to sleep as long as she can until her stomach's growling can no longer be ignored; she eats the should-be-inedible slop, then sleeps some more. She sleeps because there is nothing else to do except think. At first, she paced the tower, fingers dragging and scraping over the walls. Then she counted the stones of the tower, a task which she completed more quickly than preferred. She longed for a book, anything to distract her from thinking. All thoughts eventually led, no matter how long and convoluted the path was, to Rumpelstiltskin. She does not want to think about him, about could-have been's and should-have-been's and never-will-be's, about words said to one another that sting anew, so she sleeps. Even when she dreams, she returns to the castle; as though by magic, though she knows it is not, she never experiences a single nightmare, not one unpleasant memory. In her dreams she returns to the spinning room, sitting on the floor by his side as he works at the wheel, listening to his clever quips, both serious and in jest, and she can laugh again as his lips twitch in what wants to be a smile, and it is an amused laugh, not one forced out to break silence. His own laughter had unnerved her at first, sent nasty shivers down her spine, but eventually she grew to love it.
Belle grew to love him.
There is no love in the tower.
A crow perches on the window. It caws loudly, ruffling its dark feathers. Its presence is welcome, its noise breaking the awful stillness. Here is a creature that knows nothing of why she is imprisoned, of her dallies with the "beast". It does not judge or condemn her. She peers up, searching the glossy, puffed feathers for its eyes. She immediately regrets doing so, falling back against the wall and crumpling. Its eyes are dark brown, flecked with gold.
Tears spring to her Belle's eyes. She has not cried in, well, ages really. She did not cry when she was first incarcerated. Only the pain of the scourges and flaying was enough to bring her to tears, leaving her body raw and bleeding; she lied face down for days, moaning into the stones as hot agony bloomed across her broken skin. Her back is scarred; she can feel the crisscrossing rises in her flesh when she runs her fingertips across them. They do not hurt anymore. She has not cried since then. And now, the mere sight of gold-flecked eyes sends salty tracks trickling down her cold cheeks. Perhaps the crow understands that it is the source of her wretchedness, for it flies away, and in its place leaves a sense of loneliness, abandonment, that clutches as her throat. She wishes, because now she is thinking and her thoughts arrive where they always do, that Rumpelstiltskin would come, rescue her from this prison. However, he is no fairy godmother, far from it, and her wishes will not be enough to summon him to the tower. She wonders if he is aware of her situation; it doesn't matter, for he no longer wants her.
Belle misses him.
In the dungeon, she never missed him, never felt compelled to do so. Even when he disappeared, away on business, making deals, trading babies for favors, whatever it was he did – he refused to tell her – she knew that he would return. She might have desired his company, but she did not miss him. The straw helped. After all, he himself had said that it was a permanent arrangement.
It's forever, dearie.
Belle had at first thought of her forever with chagrin. To go from leading a privileged life of royalty to that of a caretaker, a servant, to the most abhorrent trickster in the land had not been in her original life plans. She learned to accept her forever though, determined to make the best of the circumstances. Eventually, she enjoyed the idea of it, looking forward to her forever with a not-man-yet-not-monster who bit by bit became more than simply her employer. Rumpelstiltskin was supposed to be her forever.
Now, this tower is her forever, one in which he shall play no part. She wipes her tears away and longs for a piece of straw to twist in her fingers.
Hope you enjoyed :)