Pairing: Rumbelle
Rating: K+
Disclaimer: It could not be less mine. Once Upon a Time belongs to Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis, ABC and Disney.
Summary: Once a year she's taken from her cell to get a medical check-up. This year there's a man across the room yelling at a nurse for hurting his ankle. Because of sneak-preview of Gold in a hospital gown.
Setting: Season 1 before the curse broke. Rumple has his memories back, but does not yet know that Belle is alive.
November comes, cold and unforgiving. A watery snow falls during the night, barely sticking to the streets and pavements. Once morning traffic starts, the thin layer of snow quickly deteriorates into grey mush. Halfway during the day it starts freezing again and by the time Mr. Gold exits the pawnshop the streets are frozen and slippery. His Cadillac is parked just around the corner, he just needs to cross only a few feet before he reaches it.
Inside him Rumplestiltskin fumes as he carefully puts the foot of his bad leg down on the shining cobbles before moving his good leg, leaning on his cane to keep his balance, the familiar sharp dolts of pain shooting up his calf, the freezing weather only further aggravating his injury.
One thing he had not anticipated when he'd moved to a land without magic twenty-eight years ago was that he had to deal with this again. A gross oversight on his part, one he had cursed himself for every single day.
Just as he is about to take another step his cane slips and so does his good leg. On reflex he flings his body to the side, colliding against the wall of the pawnshop, desperately stretching out his hands, trying to hold on to something that will prevent him from collapsing to the ground. He manages to stay upright, but for a few moments, all of his weight is wearing down on his bad leg and his shattered ankle twists with an audible snap.
Hot, white pain shoots up through his entire leg and he groans out loud. Caught like a fly against the wall, unable to move left or right and with his ankle throbbing and screaming in agony he fishes his cellphone from the pocket of his coat and dials the ER.
Usually the days at the ward blend together like a grey blur, the routine stringent and never changing. Breakfast shortly after the first light breaks through the tiny window at the top of her cell, medication afterwards that usually has her sleeping for another few hours, followed by lunch.
During the afternoon she is most lucid. Often she sits on the spartan bed, as close to the light as she possibly can, her arms wrapped around her raised knees. Usually in these few hours until mealtime and more medication, the chemical-induced fog inside her head clears long enough for her to focus on the jumble of images that float through her mind. More clearly then everything else she remembers a golden thread. Shining, sparkling, delicate and thin. Somehow that thread means something, but as much as she tries to concentrate on it, her memory refuses to unclog.
Her other memories are more hazy and blurred. She remembers more gold. Gold silk… a dress perhaps and she ruefully looks down at the shapeless sack she's wearing.
Gold skin… sometimes she thinks she remembers gold skin, but she doesn't dare to linger on those thoughts.
Those thoughts are crazy thoughts, thoughts that have landed her in this place to begin with. She's just a crazy girl…
Two things break her monotone routine. The woman with the dark hair and dark eyes that comes every now and then to watch her through the small shutter in the door. The woman scares her and she can't help but curl up every time she's submitted to her cold gaze and smirking lips. She never knows when to expect the woman, the periods between her visits forever varying.
And then there are the times the nurse comes to take her upstairs. She's brought to a small room and examined by a doctor. The doctor doesn't speak to her, doesn't even look at her, he just touches her with cold, clinical hands, methodically going through the steps of a physical exam, the grim-faced nurse watching her like a hawk from the corner of her room.
After some time she figures out that this happens once a year. She's a woman after all and her body lets her know when another month has passed. She always starts counting again after the nurse has taken her upstairs.
It's happened twenty-seven times so far. And if her calculations are right, she's due for another exam soon.
He's brought into the ER on a stretcher and he loathes the feeling of helplessness. He's also terrified. He can't afford his ankle becoming any worse than it already is. Without the possibility of magically restoring the injury, he's facing the risk of becoming even more seriously disabled.
Shortly after his arrival they send him in for X-rays and the twenty minutes he has to wait before the results are back are the longest of his life here.
Finally the doctor offers him absolution. What remains of the bone in his ankle isn't broken any further. He has just pulled a few muscles. Extremely painful, but nothing that won't heal naturally over the next couple of weeks.
He's told a nurse will come in to tape his ankle, to give the muscles a better chance at healing and the doctor writes him a prescription for pain killers.
His relief is short-lived however when the nurse send in with tape handles his painful ankle as if she's stuffing a sausage.
Aching, over-wrought and extremely short tempered, he lashes out to the incompetent woman, not holding back an inch as he berates her furiously, not caring a jolt if the entire hospital can hear him.
Her medical check-up is as uneventful as always, until she hears screaming from across the hall. A man's voice and apparently he is livid about something.
Instead of startling her, the voice piques her interest, unused as she is to hearing someone talk in the first place. And she can't help but grin when she hears the man's snarky tirade.
"I didn't think that damned ankle could become any worse, but you're proving to be capable of accomplishing just that, dearie!"
Something stirs inside her at that last word. A hint of a memory… to vague and too intangible to grasp, but she can't ignore it. Doesn't want to. As if in a trance she slides off the examination table, passed the doctor and into the hallway. She needs to see this man, she needs to ask him, she needs to…
She doesn't make it one step passed the threshold before the nurse and the doctor have grabbed her and start to pull her away.
Before the needle injects her arm she manages to cry out once: "Please… wait… I just want to see him!"
But then the blackness enfolds her.
The voice stops him cold in the middle of his rant. That wonderful voice, with its particular accent that he would recognize everywhere.
Belle's voice.
He grabs his cane, ignores the stabbing pain in his over-tasked ankle and hobbles to the door, his heart pounding in his chest.
It's Belle's voice, but it can't be.
When he steps outside the room, the corridor is empty and silent and he sags back against the wall, his heart sinking before breaking all over again.
Belle is gone. He's heard nothing but his imagination.
Belle's gone and no curse or scheming on his part can bring her back to him.
Belle's gone and all that is left to him is an empty heart and a chipped cup.
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