This little story is set AU (without the finale events ever occurring), however the forget-me-not section was influentially written after I watched that beautiful finale episode. Even though it's quite short, I've spent all I can editing it a hundred times and have thus given into putting it on here for public viewing. It was created on the idea as to why Maurice specifically owns a flower shop in Storybrooke. I would have loved to expand this into a more developed story, but I was aiming for a short and sweet tale mixing my love of flower meanings with my favorite couple. As always, criticism and lovely comments are welcome.
In the newborn light of the morning, if one were to look out any window in the east wing of their lord's castle, they would witness a mother walking midstride with her child about the flowerbeds of the private gardens. The young girl would commonly frolic amongst the lilacs and irises in her flowing skirts whilst the lady of the castle hung back, reprimanding her daughter now and then for acting out of mannerly order. This lady in particular was known for taking the liberty of pleasing her daughter with these walks before the break of dawn every day, as if time was of certain essence to spend with her bundle of sunshine. Some would say it was merely an act of motherly love and endearment, others would claim the woman had been training her girl since birth to fit the mold of nobility, but talk is talk. Regardless of the rumors and gossip, no one knew that the clock was inevitably ticking down to her last year of life. She would spend every precious second with her young child before life could be ripped from her. None could have predicted that the Lady Gwendolyn's second pregnancy would be her last, no one but her. For when she had been but a mere child of a nobleman, many many years ago in her early youth, she had wandered into a witch's garden by mistake while picking flowers for her mother. It could be because of the fact that she had been a child that the witch took pity on the innocent girl and spared her life. However, all misdeeds could not go unpunished, even the misdeeds of an unknowing child, and the witch cast a curse of foresight on her for her insolence, so that her future and the future of others would be predicted long before their happening.
She had foreseen the day she would meet her husband, Maurice, and she had just as easily ordained the birth of her lovely Belle. Gwendolyn could see above and beyond the bleak darkness of her curse, turning it into a gift for her loved ones in hopes of happier days—she saw her daughter's fate long after Gwen envisioned her own personal doom, the fate of their people resting on the critical moment in which Belle will willingly give up her freedom for the territory's safety from the Ogre Wars. Her husband will certainly grieve once that ill-fated day arrives, but until then, Gwen pressed onward in preparing her daughter for the misfortunes to come… and oh they will come blazing in like wildfire, beginning with the severing of ties between mother and daughter.
Belle was far too young to be separated from her mother—too full of vigor and gleeful sparks of childlike folly to have the weight of the world dropped upon her shoulders. Gwen has aimed to teach her little girl to love with all of her heart, to observe but not judge others until she has learned their innermost desires, and to utilize wit and intellect carefully when in the presence of relentless negotiators from faraway lands. She intended to turn her daughter into the sweet yet briny rose Lady Gwendolyn knew she would become, and that would be enough for her precious Belle to swallow back those tears bravely and face the world mind first and heart second. If only she could get that wildflower's head grounded on her shoulders for a few minutes, the task at hand wouldn't have been difficult to succeed in as Belle was currently making it.
"Belle, darling, don't touch the butterfly's wings. You'd be forcing her to a lifetime of walking, and we wouldn't want her to lose the privilege of flying, now would we?" Gwen gently brought Belle's hand down to her side, curling her fingers under her palm as a warning for her daughter to restrain her curiosity.
"But Mama," she countered, "it's a dirty butterfly! I was trying to dust it off so we could see its pretty coloring!" Gwen laughed silently into her hand, forgiving her daughter entirely for her innocence.
"Dear Belle," she began, "the butterfly's color you mistake for dirt is the true shade of its wings. It is the color Mother Nature decided to give her."
Belle's brows curved into the shape of a frown. "But why would she make its wings ugly? Butterflies are supposed to be bright colors, not brown and muddy."
Gwen sighed and pulled Belle into her lap, one hand running through the mess of her daughter's curls and the other rubbing her slightly swollen abdomen. "You see, my little rosebud, this will be one of the most important lessons I ever teach you for the rest of your life. Listen, and listen well." Belle's mother tapped a slender finger on the button of the girl's nose, beckoning her to direct her attention to Gwen's words for just a moment. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is only skin deep, little one. Something that is akin to beautiful to you might be the most evil and ugliest creature at its core. Something that visually strikes you as distasteful might have a beautiful heart." Gwen paused for a second, letting her words sink into Belle's sharp mind. She took her daughter's petite fist in her hand, outstretching it toward the ugly and diminutive butterfly. "You must search for beauty within the heart; it is there that you will never be fooled of a person's true splendor or malice. You must give everyone a chance to show you how they truly are, Belle. Try to know them, try to love them."
"Like how you love Papa… and my baby brother?" The butterfly came to rest in the center of Belle's palm, muddy wings fluttering appreciatively against her fingertips. Gwen flashed a tender smile at her daughter's excitement, eyes falling down to rest on her belly for the hundredth time that day.
"Yes," Gwen responded. "I love you all for those big hearts you have. Yours, dear flower, glows the brightest."
"Mine?" Belle questioned, caught unaware. The butterfly lifted off of her hand, pressing a faint flicker of a kiss against her cheek before it took flight to the skies.
Her mother nodded, leaning over to pluck a daisy from its family of brothers and sisters and tucking it into Belle's hair—its stark white petals contrasted brilliantly into her hair, a full representation of the innocence that clung to her daughter's soul with vigor. The child's cheeks blushed into a charming array of pink shades within seconds, flustering her enough to duck her head into the curve of her mother's neck. She will be beautiful, Gwendolyn thought, and so cunning she could trick an entire army into surrendering their kingdom.
"You do not need reminding, little one, that you are by far the kindest and most noble lady of the land. Your heart is full of mirth and affection, and always remember that that is the greatest weapon against despair. Keep that safeguarded, Belle, for you never know when the day will come when true love winds its gold strings around that heart of yours and yanks." Belle let out a gasp of surprise when her mother squeezed her hand into a ball, bringing it downwards to rest against the part of her chest where her heart beat fervently.
"I cannot wait to fall in love, Mama," Belle whispered.
Gwendolyn gazed into the distance, recalling that significant memory to mind when true love finally breaches the horizon of her daughter's destiny and comes in the guise of a cursed, desolate man. Belle will be the light to his darkness, the dawn to his dusk, the shining beacon of hope in a hopeless place. But the course of true love never did run smooth, and to say that her daughter's path through life is without desperation and wretchedness would be a far cry from the truth.
"Whomever you love would be a fool to let you slip from his hands, darling."
"He shall love me as much as Papa loves you, and we will have hundreds of princes and princesses to call our own once we are married!" Belle declared, sweeping herself out of her mother's arms and into her own twirl of a dance with her imaginary knight.
A certain light flickered in Gwen's eyes at the mention of children, causing her to release a sad, tired sigh from her lips. One could only hope that these unsullied imaginings of love in her daughter's head will not diminish the moment Gwen departs this world. Gods know Belle will need her strength of mind and heart in two decades time.
"He shall love you far beyond the adoration your Papa has for me," Gwen confessed. "Your True Love will go to the ends of the world to ensure your happiness, daughter."
Gwen moved in closer, and as she weaved little rivulets of daisies into a crown upon Belle's head, she whispered a single line of knowing for Belle to steal for safekeeping until she breached adulthood, "You will meet him under the most unexpected of circumstances, my dear. Remember that. Keep your head on your shoulders and your heart under chains until that day."
Belle's smile spoke of sunshine and fresh dew reflected on the morning glories after it rains. She reached up to touch the daisy circlet that rested there, for deep in her thoughts as her mother had previously taught her, she knew that daisies meant I will not tell.
"I promise, Mama. But, what happens if a person's true love breaks their heart? What, then?"
Gwendolyn's lips parted for the answer in the back of mind. The gift of foresight had indeed passed inadvertently from mother to daughter, under development until her child has grown a little older than barely six. Time must be given for the gift to intensify, for now it is just a mere suspicion at the back of Belle's mind. But, she was correct with one thing. He will break her daughter's heart.
"All hearts can be mended with True Love's Kiss. But in order for it to work, their True Love must recognize their adoration for them back." She hesitated. "They say it even has the power to overcome death."
But death was a perpetual and permanent foe for Gwen in the oncoming four months, and not even a kiss from Maurice could break her from her eternal spell.
Gwen will lose her life in the throes of childbirth, as will the unborn baby brother Belle so wished to welcome into the world.
Today the sun's heat was oppressing. Its tendrils of fire sent rivers of sweat down Belle's back and into the crevices of her neck and shoulders as she spent the day planting rose bulbs in the east garden. The task itself was simple enough, however Rumpelstiltskin neglected to inform her that today of all days would be warm enough for Belle to feel as if she were being roasted in the kitchen hearth.
But oh how she did love the garden—it had been a growing fascination of hers since she had been a small child, catering to nature's beauty and watching it flourish with a touch of a finger. Despite the long, dwindling hours carefully approximating the depth of the soil and the space of the bulbs, Belle felt at peace in a place so reminiscent of her mother. The flamboyant hues of color surrounding her reminded her of the gowns Gwendolyn took to wearing as often as time allowed. A mere flash of her mother's smile could light up a dreary room, and it made her Papa's serious demeanor fade away into laughter without any restraint.
Belle spent those six precious years of her childhood aspiring to inherit some semblance of Gwen's ability to make the world a better place, because although the feeling all those years ago was a faint shadow of a doubt, she anticipated the loss of her Mama. She caught the edge of her despair on the forefront of the wind, a soft whisper that death would seek out another soul on the morn of a blistering summer day.
Gwen's foresight had been a secret not shared with Belle until several years after her demise; yet still, the very perceptive daughter of Lord Maurice and Lady Gwendolyn uncovered the inheritance of this gift long before it passed to her ear. It came to her in a flash of violence and woe whilst walking the halls of their home one day—the wails of her mother in agony, the bloodstained sheets growing evermore crimson by the hour, the silence of both mother and babe stopping the hearts of every occupant in the castle. That vision would be the first of hundreds that seized her mind during her lifetime, and hundreds more that had yet to come. She predicted along with the end of her mother death, sickness, the Ogre Wars, and even Rumpelstiltskin himself. The latter was a curious one, to say the very least. Her foretelling of his arrival came to her in the dead of night, it shook her awake in the confines of her sheets, it stirred her heart into a mix of terror and anticipatory dreamlessness, and by those circumstances she brushed off his gleaming eyes as a figment from her dreams. But as the Ogre Wars raged on and his true identity came to fruition, Belle prepared herself for the deal that would change her life.
Six months after the imminent decision, she is tending to plants on the outskirts of his castle, content with the knowledge that her Papa and her people can sleep safely in their beds at night. Not only did Belle inherit her mother's gift, she also acquired her willingness to sacrifice. It's what enabled her to give up what was left of her family in exchange for a lifetime of servitude to a dark sorcerer, and she doesn't regret to admit that Rumpelstiltskin keeps pleasant and amusing company on occasions when he wasn't in an ill humor.
Belle had just finished her final row of rose bulbs, patting the soil back into place, when a memorable brown-speckled butterfly flew into her line of vision.
"Why hello, little one!" she greeted, unfolding her dirtied palm as the butterfly perched itself on the edge. "I remember seeing the likes of you when I was only a child, how fare thee?" Belle beckoned. It circled the surface of her hand once and then twice, resting its antennas against her skin as if saying it fared well now that spring was in full bloom. She grinned in return, arranging the skirts of her dress so that she could rest comfortably on the patch of grass next to the flowerbeds.
"Talking to insects, are we?" Belle turned from the creature in her hand to Rumpelstiltskin, who appeared to have had his fill of entertainment for the day watching his housekeeper have a conversation with a butterfly, and a dull one at that. "Have my week-long trips left you lonely, dearie?" Turning from where he sat atop the stone wall encasing the garden, he hopped off, clasping his hands together in amusement as he approached Belle's work area.
"Well, the butterfly is more of a conversationalist than you've been lately, and I much prefer the garden over the dark rooms of the castle," she countered playfully. Belle directed her attention back to the tiny creature. "Besides, it reminds me of my mother."
Rumpelstiltskin shuffled his feet awkwardly, ignoring her pointed remark the moment she brought up her mother, which had been a topic Belle avoided since the beginning of her new life here. Emotions were not his forte since he had become the Dark One, especially whenever it concerned the family he once had. Perhaps his inability to keep himself from prying into other peoples' lives is what provoked his interest in this strange and damnably beautiful creature, or perhaps it was the painful notion of a parent being separated from their child that made him reach out to her in question. Nothing could bring him to escape the next few words that came out of his mouth.
"How did she pass?" the question itself was quiet, almost uncertain as he tasted the words on his tongue. It even caused Belle to look up in surprise from her long lost musings. The butterfly that had been resting on her finger for the past minute or two lifted off in finality, fluttering over to the magnolia beds for its afternoon lunch. Belle wiped the dirt from her hands on her apron, picking up the garden shears and making a point to occasionally meet the dark eyes of Rumpelstiltskin as she gathered her thoughts. He wondered what her childhood tale would be like, or if she would even give it—why she refrained from mentioning any hint of a mother, why she always looked sad when he would ask her to work in the garden.
She set aside a bundle of daffodils, snipping each stem delicately until she began with, "My mother died giving birth to my younger brother. Neither survived." Belle answered. She dared a glance toward Rumpelstiltskin, who stared back unblinking at his caretaker, listening. "She adored flowers. My father scoured the lands in search of any blossom she desired. We planted whatever we could cultivate. When I was a little girl, she was so adamant in my learning of herbs and the raw power of flowers that I knew every single one of them by name and property." Belle plucked a daffodil from the pile and held it up for example. "Chivalry, unrequited love." The flower's vibrant petals bent under her nose as she inhaled its fragrant scent, proffering it to him in question. "For a man who claims to be relentless and unforgiving with his ways of life, I see a man of well-earned gallantry and hope. You can fool an entire kingdom with your craft, but you can't fool me."
With a flourish of a hand, he snatched the fragile bloom from her waiting fingertips, observing her gift with a strange incredulity. It took quite a while for him to meet her waiting expression, but he managed to look back at her, eyes piercing the clouded shroud of mystery he had been hiding under. "You mistake me for your typical knight in shining armor, dearie. I'm afraid your high expectations of me are mere delusions." Awkwardly moving a distance away from his dangerous beauty, he feigned a toothy smirk in her direction to mask any emotion cracking through. "I am no man, and I am far from a brave knight you dare to call me."
At his last statement, Belle laughed almost too knowingly, putting together the remnants of her garden tools and the bundle of flowers into her basket, rising to meet him at the edge of the flowerbeds. "Tell me, was there ever a time when you had hope, Rumpelstiltskin? When the world seemed like it was going to shatter on you and you scorned the land and everyone that breathed in it, wasn't there some shred of hope that one day the pain would end?" Surprise did not etch itself on Belle's face when Rumpelstiltskin turned from her, as if to conceal the weakness that was his heart she had just pierced. He tried to hide the fact that yes, he did have a measure of hope—for finding his son Bae, and for the silent wish of having such a beauty as his Belle return the love that began to harbor for her in his broken heart.
He refrained from answering her query, eliciting a familiar unspoken response from whence she asked about his frequent spinning. Belle paced in a half circle around him, pressing further, "I thought the gods had intended to ruin my life when they took my Mama away from me, but she had given me hundreds of words of wisdom, some even secrets of the future, that gave me enough hope to move on." The last bit that Belle uttered came out in anguish, "I placed poppies on her grave the day that she passed." She managed to gather her wits about her when she stopped in front of him, nearly nose-to-nose. A faint emotion amassed in the depths of them both, passing through the eyes and settling in the curve of their hearts—it spoke of promises to pass, words that would sting and warm the soul until two welded into one. Belle knew exactly what he was supposed to be to her just then, and she added faintly in a whisper so close that their breaths were in unison, "So tell me now, Rumpelstilstkin, after all of what I have revealed to you, do you not have hope in me?"
Of all the feelings running rampant in him, of all the thoughts dancing a tricky rhythm in his head, he only thought of the poppies and how they were symbols of the words Belle could never admit out loud as the final state her mother lay in, eternal sleep, oblivion. Something deep in his heart bled for her, and he wanted nothing more in that moment but to kiss her senseless until their hurt faded away.
When Belle finishes her days helping out her Papa at their flower shop, Game of Thorns, the young woman can be caught in between the hours of three and four o'clock every afternoon walking along Briar Heart Lane with a new bundle of flowers in her waiting arms. Sometimes they're ambrosias, often times they're red roses, but the flowers she most frequently tended to on her way back from work are the forget-me-nots. Typical is the name; straightforward is the meaning; however, the power behind the little blue flowers is something not to be tampered with.
Forget-me-nots had gradually become Belle's symbol of endearment for Mr. Gold, for her Rumpelstiltskin. The blossoms bore the truth of a love planned long before either of their births, a passion that not even a single red rose exchanged between the couple can contain in the depth of its crimson petals. These forget-me-nots brought to their home in the late afternoon embodied the hope they had lost in a previous world, a love that needed replenished and found once again—they were an insistence that everything needed to be healed. Luckily, patience is a virtue Belle was not lacking, and as she had done while working as his caretaker in their other life together, she waited for him. Hope is also a very fickle thing, and now that the curse had its roots laid down across the land without magic, leaving Belle without an inkling of what the future held, it would be the sole factor that determined what lay ahead of them.
Though they are still in the process of repairing each other's hearts, it should not be mistaken that Belle and Rumpelstiltskin still possessed a deep, unchanging love for one another. From the start of Belle's stay in his castle, when their relationship had been built out of scraps of loneliness, playful banter, and an indescribable yearning to uncover the history behind the broken heart, she knew based on her mother's final secret that he would become both the start and the end of her world as she had become to him. But their love is what separated them and brought them together, and Rumpelstiltskin, now Mr. Gold, couldn't help but remain terrified that it would isolate them twice.
Thus, the forget-me-nots that Belle took great care to bring home every Tuesday have come to be a secondary reminder to the pawn shop owner that Belle's love is not brief, not unjust, not unkind, it is true love, and it will never flicker out even in the darkest of days.
She came home that day to a well-planned dinner and to the sharply dressed man that she would never tire of loving. He had the table set, the meal plated, and a new book resting in her designated seat. The gift was accepted with a tender kiss on his mouth, followed by a much deeper, longing kiss that spoke of awaiting pleasures to be fulfilled that precise evening. However, something lurked in the glint of Gold's russet eyes when Belle pulled away, and it was enough to spark the hint of curiosity blooming much like her fellow flowers in the recesses of her thoughts.
"So," Belle started after allowing the both of them to settle into the meal contentedly, "what's the occasion?"
Gold looked up from his dinner, putting on the front of perplexity at her query. "What do you mean occasion? You wound me, my dear. Can't I cook a nice meal for the woman I love without there being motivation behind it?"
"Everything that you do is based off of your own motivation," she insisted. Belle pointed her fork at the bundle of forget-me-nots resting in a vase at the center of the table. "But, I just so happened to bring these back this specific day, as if you knew that today of all days they'd be sitting here. I'm curious, what have you planned?"
Setting the cutlery down for a second, Gold's mouth quirked to one side at her lovely sharpness of mind, and he rose from his seat at the table. "Nothing can slip past you, can it, dearie?" A hand slid into his right coat pocket, fumbling about for something briefly unseen by Belle's eyes as he moved over to where she remained sitting. "I had the entire evening arranged. We would have dinner, share your favorite dessert; I would read to you your new book over a burning fire and woo you into bed, dearest. But of course you had to be hasty, so let me begin with what I had intended to be last."
And with all wiry details unveiled, Gold dropped down on one knee.
A white, velvet box wrapped beautifully in their forget-me-nots emerged from his pocket, and Belle's mouth had nothing left to say, so it dropped in shock.
"I'm afraid I am a very unconventional type of man when it comes to these things, but as you had in the past revealed to me that flowers speak words a person cannot, I wanted to approach this question in a different way." He brought their hands together to untie the knot of flowers around the box, letting her lift the lid to reveal an enchanting diamond set in the vines of a rose-gold band. "I was a fool to lose you all those years ago because of my cowardice, and I don't intend to lose you again. Be my wife, Belle. Be with me until the end of time, and in the life after."
Tears began to pool in the corners of Belle's eyes, her heart palpitating at a rhythm so rapid she thought it would beat straight out of her chest. Slowly, she extended her left hand towards him, for Belle desired to relish in this moment for forever, and nodded in reply. Her smile brought him back to the day when she had offered him those daffodils; it spoke of promises and requited love, of better days when all they had to fear was how long it would take for them to get out of bed in the morning, and most importantly, it spoke of a happy ending they had lost hope in recovering.
"Yes," she whispered. "It will always be yes."
Just then, it was like her mother had spoken to her, a murmur of a thought buried inside the meaning of their forget-me-nots: Rumpelstiltskin and Belle were without a doubt the essence of true love, remember me forever, and memories.
He kissed her then, and all the hurt went away.