Title: "Another Cold and Lonely Night"
Author: Kat Lee
Dedicated To: My beloved Drew - Happy Valentine's Day, my darling heart! I love you!
Rating: PG/K+
Summary: She cries, though she does not know why.
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, names, codenames, places, items, fandoms, titles, and etc. are always © & TM their respective owners, not the author, and are used without permission. Any and all original characters and everything else is © & TM the author and may not be reproduced in any way without the author's express, written permission. The author makes absolutely no profit off of this work of fan fiction, and no copyright infringement is intended.
He shouldn't be here. He promised himself he would not return until his world was made right. He promised himself he'd change his focus back to where it belonged, back to his son, the one person who might not hate him, but instead, he's come back yet again to a place where he knows he's not wanted, to a place where he knows, deeply and in truth, he can only cause more harm than good, to see again the one person who's believed in him all this time, the one person who had never looked at him in fright while in her right mind, the one person who he learned he would have done anything for too late, the one woman who had made him feel hope until she'd been stolen from him.
She's asleep as he slips into the hospital, and he waits until she begins to dream before ever so quietly entering her room. The hospital's visiting hours are over. No one wants him, and any one who saw him would try to throw him out. That's not going to be a problem, though, he vows, for no one's going to find him. No one will know he's been here any more than any of them will know how badly he's hurting.
They could enter the room right now and look right through him, never being any the wiser to his presence. His thin lips twist into a wry expression somewhere between a smirk and a sad, sad smile as he muses silently that that's not very different than how they already look at him. They see him when he allows them to see what stands before them, but they don't see him. They don't see the man he's become, or the hero he secretly yearns to be, the hero that she awoke within him, the man who wanted to do better, who wanted to become a hero, so that he might somehow be worthy of the love and trust she invested in him. They see only the Dark One, and even the ones who claim not to be afraid, like Sheriff Swan, still cringe in reality.
They're all afraid of him. They hate him for what he's done. They've never once seen him for his real soul within him. They see him only as they choose to see him. It wasn't that very long ago that he believed that that was all right with him. It still is, really. It doesn't matter what they see in or think of him. There are only two things that still matter to Rumpelstiltskin, rather he'd being himself, indulging the Dark One within, or pretending to the world that he is just Mister Gold, procurer of fortunes and fantastical things. He's still not quite sure where one of those that still matters to him is, other than that he's in this time somewhere and not in this town, and the only other one who matters to him, who will ever matter to him, is right here with him in this room.
But she doesn't remember him. He's no longer important to her. Instead, like every one else, she's now afraid of him, so afraid that she might hurt herself in her panic attacks caused by the mere sight of him. He's the one who cringes now as he nears her bed in the dark, and he doesn't try to hide it for no one can see him. No one can see how much her screams hurt him. No one can know how much her disbelief in and fear of him hurt him. Even he does not quite know how to describe the pain he feels every time he remembers the way she's recoiled away from him every time she's so much as seen him since her memory was stolen from her, and she, thus, was stolen from him. He doesn't know how to describe it; he just knows it's the worst pain he's ever felt.
He needs her so badly. His hands trembles as he reaches out and touches her with the softest of touches, a gentility he'd not even thought himself capable of until she'd awakened it in him. There are tears in his eyes, but he won't let them fall. He also won't stay long. He can't. He can barely handle being in the same room with her now that she loathes and fears him like the rest of the world. Her belief in him has been crushed, her love for him destroyed, and that harsh reality is slowly crushing the good that remains in him.
He should kill Hook, he reflects as he softly strokes her long, brown hair. He should kill him for what he's taken from him. Stealing Bael's cloak was nothing compared to destroying his beloved, cherished Belle. He thought the last item he had that had belonged to his son was his most relished treasure, but he knew the moment that he saw Belle fall in the other world that he was wrong. She is what's most important to him. She has been for a long time now, and he'd do anything, give anything, even his last chance to find his son, to have her back and loving him again.
He curses himself as a tear falls free from his control, slipping down his long, cold cheek and splashing onto Belle's upturned face. She stirs but doesn't wake. Even if her eyes do happen, though, he knows she won't see him. He won't disturb her again, but he has to see her tonight. He wanted to come today but couldn't bare the thought of her seeing him and screaming again in her fright of him. So, like the coward he still remains even after all this time, all his many sacrifices, and his great power, he's come to her again in the dark of the night.
He should make this visit short for both their sakes, Rumpelstiltskin thinks. Every second he's near her brings him closer to falling apart, and there's only one place, even if he's cloaked, where it's safe for him to crash into his sorrow and let his tears run freely. If he falls apart here, his spell might falter, and she might awake, see him, and panic yet again. No, he's got to make this visit short for both of them.
Holding determinedly to that thought, Rumpelstiltskin removes the package he'd brought from his coat and lays it next to Belle in her hospital bed. His hands linger where they are, one on his gift for her, a long-stemmed, red rose with an ancient book, and the other on her beautiful face. She's actually sleeping peacefully for the first time tonight - probably he thinks, with growing fury, because he left her alone today -, and in her peaceful, smiling slumber, she looks the most beautiful he's seen her since that bastard, Hook, shot her.
His tremblings spread from his hands up into his own face. He wants so desperately to cry, but he'll not allow himself that indulgence, not here, not now, not where he might yet bring her still more harm. She was shot because of him, her world destroyed, her mind ravaged, her memories and all that made her her taken - all because of him. His head lowers as tears fill his eyes.
He strokes her hair, her temples, her cheeks that now seem so pale and small, so void of the life and happiness that he's always found her so full of. His hands drifted lower to touch her palms. He holds and gently squeezes her hands for a moment. He'd had such plans for this day, such plans for them. He'd been ready to have a family again, had planned to ask her, if it was not too late, to be the mother that his Bael had never had when he returned with the boy, had planned to ask her to marry him on this Valentine's Day if he'd made it back home in time or, at least, when he did make it back to this land they now called home with his son.
But everything had been taken from her and, in so doing, from him, as well. Her love for him was gone, he feared, forever, but he still loved her. He loved her with all his heart, all his soul, more than he'd thought himself capable of loving any one ever again, more than any one except for his beloved Belle thought him capable of loving. He's still stroking and holding her tiny and delicate hands when she again stirs. He freezes. He loves her enough to keep her from feeling any more pain or fright ever again because of him, but he also loves her too much to let this day dedicated to lovers and romance go without acknowledging that love he still feels, that love she would still feel for him if it wasn't for that damned Hook, who, Rumpelstiltskin vows, he will - but not today or, rather, tonight.
Valentine's Day is for lovers, and though he can no longer be with the only woman he'll ever love, he'll not let the holiday go without acknowledging their love. He lays her right hand gently down upon the rose and the book underneath it, and then he forces himself to turn and walk away before she awakens.
She wakes to find the book and the single, slender rose. She lifts the rose to her nose. Her brown eyes drift closed as she lets its sweet scent fill her senses. Something within her tingles. It's almost as though it reminds her of something, but the memory just won't come. The tingling soars up into her mind as she touches the book, a book she knew well once, her favorite story of all the tales she once held so dear: Beauty and the Beast.
Her fingertips graze the hard, leather binding. She opens the book and finds the musty smell of its old pages almost as alluring as the rose's sweet scent. She runs her fingers over the letters as words jump out at her. The story seems familiar, but she can not remember ever reading the tale.
She soon finds herself engrossed in the story that seems so familiar. Tears spring to her eyes. She shuts the book and stares at the cover through a misty vision. She almost remembers . . . something. The story, she thinks but is no longer sure. It's as though another life is calling to her, and for a moment, she considers the strange Mister Gold's insane words of another world, of magic, and of a supposed love of which she remembers nothing.
In the quiet dark of the hospital, Belle lowers her head and allows tears to race down her cold cheeks. She almost remembers another life, but she can not. She tells herself the images she sees in her mind of a broken cup and a broken man, of a broken heart a heroine tried to mend, of a couple very much in love waltzing through a library . . . All of it happens somewhere in the pages of this book she holds, this book from whence she knows not where it came.
It had to happen in the story which she must have read at some time past, because it could not have happened to her. Magic can not be real. She's a normal girl who lived a mostly normal life up until the point she was shot and find herself in the arms of a man spouting gibberish about things that can not possibly exist, a man whose touch made her tingle, a man whose touch she wants more of, a fact that scares her almost as much as the glow she remembers having seen on his hands when she was shot.
The town clock strikes midnight, ending Valentine's Day for another year. Belle refuses to consider from whence her presents may have come or give Mister Gold's bizarre story any chance of being real. But she does weep bitterly from a pain whose source lays much deeper than her bullet wound and something that she almost remembers but yet does not. As she cries, so too does Rumpelstiltskin, locked safely away once more inside his antique shop, but although he remembers well all the reasons he weeps, his beloved Belle still does not know why she can not stop her own tears as they fall yet again throughout another cold and lonely night.
The End