"Condiments are this world's most powerful magic." Rumplestiltskin grinned, waggling a bottle of sriracha sauce in front of Belle.

Belle rolled her eyes. She had read the label already, which explained its ingredients and uses in five different languages without once mentioning anything remotely sorcerous. "Be serious, Rumple."

"I am." His eyes were an unremarkable, human shade of brown in this world, but they still held an impish glee. He made a dramatic flourish with his free hand. "This bottle holds the secret of life."

"Rumple! You said you were going to explain everything. I was dead. How is any of this possible?" Her eyes went once again past Rumple to the window behind him, where a row of discolored, decaying faces were pressed up against the glass, staring blankly at the people inside. Belle shuddered. Apparently, in this realm, the dead rose from their graves as mute, shambling shells of their former selves. Everything in this world was strange, from the clothes to the furniture to the noisy, smelly horseless carriages that clogged the roads, but she found the undead the most disturbing of all. "They look so sad, standing out there."

"I doubt they have the mental capacity to care. In any case, the laws of this realm don't permit the presence of the undead in any establishment that serves food." He set the bottle down again. "To prevent infection, you see."

Belle glanced around. No one else took any notice of the decrepit crowd outside. "Doesn't anyone care?"

"Oh, well, a year ago, everyone would have been up in arms, fighting back the ravenous hordes. It's a good thing I showed up when I did..." Rumplestiltskin broke off as the waiter brought them two large bowls of rice noodles and a plate of fresh garnishes. He had ordered the first option on the menu, while Belle had gone with the more conservative number nine.

"You actually like tripe?" She made a face at the stringy bits floating in his bowl.

"Why not? I used to have it in my stew, as a child." He squirted a generous dollop of the sriracha into his bowl, turning the soup red, then sprinkled in leaves and bean sprouts from the plate.

Belle wondered at his upbringing, which he rarely talked about, but she guessed it had not been blessed with wealth or social standing, for all that he now dressed in extravagant finery and lorded it over kings and queens. Certainly, tripe had never been served at her father's table. She stirred a more cautious handful of additions into her own soup. "So... ravenous hordes? That sounds ominous."

"Indeed." Rumple explained that three years ago, an unmanned mission to Mars — Mars! — had brought back more than the samples planned by the scholars; the probe had been infected by some malign influence that spread throughout the earth. Under that influence, the buried dead had clawed their way free of the dirt, motivated by nothing but an instinctive hunger for the flesh of the living. "Magic powerful enough to conjure a whole person from nothing but dry bones; that's why I came here, but I could hardly let you return as some kind of... monster."

Belle glanced past him to the sad (she still thought so) faces outside the window. The sky had darkened behind them, turning them into gloomy shadows. "No. I think I'd rather be dead."

"Exactly. So I made a deal to work with some scientists to come up with a cure. As luck would have it, I had made another deal a long time ago with a fellow called Orpheus for some cuttings from an ambrosia plant."

"Ambrosia... the food of the gods?"

"And in combination with this sriracha, I was able to concoct a potion that, when sprayed onto the restless dead, pacified their savage urges." He gestured towards the window. "As you see. Saved their little civilization for them." He giggled in the unnerving way he had, looking incredibly smug.

"Good. I'm glad." Belle smiled weakly. "But, um, they... they're still..."

"Mindless? Well, I didn't have any connection with them. Nothing I could use to waken their souls. Whereas you promised me... forever." He met her eyes briefly before his glance slid away again with a flicker of guilt.

"Yes, I did." Belle knew from her studies that such contracts held magical weight and could bind someone beyond life or death, strongly enough to restore her mentally once this world had revived her physically. But surely there was more between them than a mere contract. "Rumple..."

He shook his head, saying roughly, "Eat. You need to build up your strength."

Belle sighed, knowing how skittish he could be about matters of the heart. For the moment, she turned her attention to her soup.

She had a good appetite, she decided, for someone who had been a pile of bare bones a week ago. Her revival had felt like a languid awakening from a pleasant dream, one that slipped away as she opened her eyes. Rumple had been hovering anxiously over her, his now human appearance an unexpected detail that made her think she was still dreaming. He had let her touch him. Only when her fingers met soft skin rather than the glittery scales that once covered him did she begin to believe that he was real, and that she was.

Physically, he looked no older, but something in his voice and his manner, more subdued, less manic than before, spoke of long years endured. Fresh sorrow lurked in the back of his eyes. He dressed in plain shirts in dark colors, with none of the frills that he had favored in her time at the Dark Castle.

She had spent much of that week sleeping. When she was awake, he fed her healing potions and thin soups that wouldn't strain her still-weak digestive system. Her mind, too, had barely functioned. It was only in the past day that she had recovered the ability to speak coherently. In celebration, Rumplestiltskin had promised her explanations and dinner at a local restaurant.

But now they had finished eating, and there was still too much she didn't understand. Once outside, under the cover of night, Rumple transported them in a cloud of red smoke to a quiet street lit by tall lamps.

"This is your house?" Belle looked down the driveway at a building that might have passed as a rich merchant's town residence back in her world.

"Yes." It was not as imposing as the Dark Castle, nor as isolated, being set in a neighborhood full of similar homes. The street was deserted except for the cluster of shambling undead who lurked outside a brightly lit house in the distance. "You... you can stay here until you are fully recovered. Then you can go to... I'll find you a world where you'll be safe."

Belle gaped at him. "You're throwing me out again?"

He met her eyes. "Belle, despite appearances, despite what you hope, I'm still a monster."

"You're not a monster." She remembered his gentleness as he cared for her over the past week. She had thought — she had hoped — and the words burst out of her, "I love you."

"Yes. And... I love you." The admission looked as if it pained him. He closed the distance between them and took her in his arms. "Belle, I'm so sorry."

"It's all right. I forgive you." She held him tightly, trying to drive away his doubts. "You... you were right about the Evil Queen. But my love is not a trick."

"But it is. A cruel trick of fate." When Belle stiffened in protest, he shifted his grip and whispered in her ear, "I bring nothing but darkness. Love sent you to your death."

Belle resisted an urge to shake him. "It saved me! Would you have brought me back if you hadn't loved me? There is good in you. I know there is."

Rumple sighed. He broke free of their embrace and led her to the front porch, where a wooden bench swung on metal chains. He sat down and pulled her next to him, and the bench swayed at the shift in balance. "I almost didn't. I almost couldn't. Thirty years your bones lay unmourned, because I had to find him... I had to tell him. I made the wrong choice once, and I couldn't abandon him again, even if it meant you..." He looked away. "I'm sorry."

"Your son." She was confused at first, until comprehension came in a sudden bolt of illumination. He meant that he had chosen his son over her; that was why he had not come to look for her before. But he had found her in the end, so did that mean...?

"Baelfire." He choked out the name, the name he had never trusted her with before.

"You said he was lost." Belle remembered it as the last thing he had told her, before her disastrous attempt at True Love's Kiss had shattered his trust in her. But he had changed, or she had, and having been given this second chance, she was determined not to lose him again. His love for his son had something to do with why he had driven her out, that much she had pieced together once she had been imprisoned in the Evil Queen's tower with nothing to do but think. However, she knew she was missing vital pieces of the puzzle. She hoped that this time, he would be willing to share them with her. "You've been looking for him, all this time."

"Yes."

"Did you ever find him?"

"He found me..."

Belle's heart sank at the look on his face. She reached out for his hand and squeezed gently. "What happened?"

"He... died."

She knew there must be more to it than that, and slowly coaxed the story out of him. He seemed relieved to tell it to her, as if it were the first time he had allowed himself to speak of it.

He told her about the centuries he had spent trying to find his son. He told her about being trapped by prophecy. "I can see the future. Did I ever tell you? But only in bits and pieces, and it's always full of tricks..."

Nevertheless, he had followed the path laid out for him, because it was the only one that guaranteed a reunion at the end of it. It had come with false turns and dead ends, sending him in pursuit of a Dark Curse that led nowhere, then stuck him in the Evil Queen's secret dungeons to wait. And wait he had, even after the queen herself was vanquished, until the day his son found him there.

"It was only then that I found out what had happened to him. My father... my father had saved him." He said it with a bitterness that puzzled Belle.

"Your father?"

"My father, who abandoned me as a child for the sake of magic and eternal youth," Rumple explained. "But fate has a sense of irony. My father, who despised me as a burden, saved my son from dying alone in a strange land, and preserved him long enough to finally send him to me — fifteen years into my captivity."

"You mean your father knew you were locked up?"

Rumple shrugged. "He has eyes and ears everywhere. Who knows what he was thinking? Was it a message? To mock me? Or to ask for forgiveness? But there was only one person's forgiveness I was interested in."

Belle nodded in understanding. "Baelfire. And did he forgive you?"

"He was angry. For good reason." His face softened. "But he still came back, once a year, to see me."

"He didn't free you?" Belle thought sadly that, angry as she had sometimes been with her own father, if he had been locked in a cage, she would have tried to rescue him.

Rumple laughed humorlessly. "He thought I deserved it. He was probably right. Of course, he didn't believe me when I agreed with him. At least, not until I gave him the squid ink."

"You had squid ink?"

"Oh yes. It was my little loophole."

So it really had been his choice to stay in the queen's dungeon! Belle swallowed a twinge of resentment, reminding herself that it had all been for the sake of his son. "I see."

"After that, I was well and truly trapped. I hoped that someday he might forgive me, and when he had a son of his own — he married a princess, can you believe that? — I think that was when he remembered better times, before. Before I became the Dark One. It was in his mind to release me, then. I'm sure of it."

But something had obviously happened. Rumple could barely bring himself to speak of what came next. A skirmish with the ogres. His son, a knight, driving them back, but mortally wounded in the process. "My brave, brave boy. He died a hero."

"I'm sorry." Belle put her arms around him, hugging him as he poured out his grief. She wondered, then, if he had brought his son's bones to this world, but knew better than to ask.

Even so, he seemed to hear her question without it being said aloud. He hadn't dug up his son's grave, no. His divinations had shown him Bae's soul at peace. With no more unfinished business, it had moved on.

"Unfinished business." Belle risked a glance at Rumple.

He nodded unhappily. "I thought... if I gave you your life back, your freedom, you could live out the fate you deserved."

"Never mind 'deserving'! What about what I want? What about what you want? Do you truly, truly want me to leave?"

It was a long time before Rumplestiltskin answered. "No. And I never have. But—"

"But nothing! We can make our own fate."

A ghost of a smile flitted across his face. "So you've always said. But you're far braver than me."

"Then have some faith, Rumplestiltskin. I thought, when I was dying, that I would never see you again. Yet here we are, both alive, even if it took you awhile." She frowned curiously at him. "And how did you manage that, if you were 'well and truly trapped'?"

"Luck. Regina came to see me." He grimaced at the memory. "A Regina from a different timeline, where she wasn't quite as evil. Told me I wasn't real, but agreed to a deal with me, anyway."

"Not real?" Belle clutched at Rumple in alarm, her heart suddenly pounding. This was a dream, after all, and at any moment she would wake up and lose everything.

He gave her a reassuring pat. "Nothing to worry about, sweetheart. The joke's on her. As a wise man once said, we're all stories in the end."

"All... stories." She took a calming breath, nodded. "Right, then. If we're stories, then let's write ourselves a happy ending."

He opened his mouth to answer her, when they were interrupted by a buzzing noise.

Belle squeaked and jumped back instinctively, causing the bench to swing wildly, chains rattling. "What is that?"

Rumple chuckled, shame-faced, and extended a hand to steady her. "Sorry. I forgot to turn it off." He fished a small black rectangle from his pocket. It glowed, words marching across its surface. "Ah. A message from my colleagues at NIH — that is, the National Institutes of Health." He tapped his fingers on the device.

"I've never seen that spell before," said Belle, scooting back towards him and leaning over to read the text.

"It's not magic," he told her. "This world's technology surpasses anything from the Enchanted Forest."

"Yet they still need your help." Belle smiled, proud for him, and glad that he was helping. "See? You are a good man."

He scoffed haughtily. "Nothing of the sort. I merely made a deal with them." He stood up and gestured at the house. "In return for their assistance and a few material comforts."

"But that's not the real reason, is it? You wanted to help them."

"None of your business, dear." Rumple lent her a hand, supporting her when her legs wobbled treacherously. "I think we'd best go inside. You need rest."

She stopped, another thought freezing her in her tracks. Was there a reason for his doubts? She didn't budge even when Rumplestiltskin tugged impatiently at her arm. "Rumple. Wait. You said you could see the future. Can you see... does something happen to... are we...?"

He stopped and turned to face her, his eyes widening at her question. "Oh, Belle, sweetheart. I have seen so many things. But we make our own futures. If you will have me, then I promise you, we can be together. I bow to my fate." He took a step back, flashing a smile at her and literally bowing, a graceful and incongruous gesture.

Belle laughed. So what if he had once cast her out? So what if she had been imprisoned, so what if she had died? So what if he had spent decades in a cage? His son had died, but he was still alive. So what if it had taken decades before he and Belle ever saw each other again? In this moment, none of that mattered. Whatever the world, whatever their reality or lack of it, they could still love each other and have a future together.

No ending, only another beginning.

Author's notes: Yeah, pretty pointless, but I just wanted a story where they were at a pho restaurant while a bunch of zombies were staring at them through the windows. Because reasons. (It had to be Rumple because of his ridiculous remark about condiments.) Also me trying to explain how the heck Emma met Neal in the Wish!Realm and what was going on with Rumple (he had a MAGIC BEAN!? WTF!?) and...whatever.I thought he might be a lighter Rumple, not having been traumatized by Zelena nor having his son die for him. And this is me getting him away before the show decides to make Wish!Rumple the Big Bad Villain (although it would be amusing if he crashed the CS wedding with fireballs and meteor storms).