Author's Note: After my mama and I finished watching season one of OUAT, we started discussing Rumplestiltskin and why he is the way he is, and that, combined with seeing more of him in season two, inspired a one-shot. :) I love his and Belle's relationship. It's so sweet. This is just something I imagined up...a conversation between the two of them during the first two to three episodes of OUAT's second season. Hopefully you can imagine the characters carrying it out in your head. :)

"But, Rumple, why do you need it?"

Belle's pretty blue eyes looked imploringly into Rumplestiltskin's brown ones. He sighed.

"I just...I do, all right, Belle?" He replied irritably. He looked away, down at the cane in his hand, down at his lame leg.

"No, you don't," Belle replied softly, placing a hand on Rumple's arm. "You don't need all that power."

Rumple shook it off. "Yes, Belle, I do! I do! I've had more than one person I love ripped from me because I lacked the power and the courage to take them back for myself, and I will-not-let-it-happen-again!" He slammed his cane down on the floor. Belle winced.

Silence.

Rumple let out a growl and limped toward a chair to sit down, a grimace on his face. Belle stared at her shoes. Then she suddenly looked up.

"What made you like this?" Tears welled up in her eyes as her brows furrowed. "Who pushed you to do these things? What put this darkness in you, Rumple? What made you crave power this badly?" She took a deep breath. "Who did this to you?"

Rumple just stared at her.

"Please answer me."

"My wife." He clenched his fists. "And my son."

Belle tilted her head and looked at him questioningly. "How?"

He patted the seat beside him, and Belle sat down. "I was called to war. I was a coward, Belle. You know that. I've always been...a coward. This was long before I ever became the Dark One." He took a shaky breath. "I, um...I hurt myself so that I couldn't fight. And when I hobbled home," he continued weakly as tears filled his brown eyes, "my wife could hardly bear the sight of me." He paused. "We had a child. Our first. A son." One tear slipped down his cheek. "But it wasn't enough for her-it wasn't enough that we were a family. She was forever branded as the village coward's wife. She could hardly bear the shame of it. She loathed me."

Belle looked at Rumple disbelievingly as tears escaped her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

"That couldn't be."

"Oh, it was. She would rather have had me die than come home to her as I did! She told me so!"

He stopped, gathering himself, then continued in a quieter voice.

"She started leaving us, little bits at a time, when my son, my Bae was just a wee little boy. You see, she never loved me." His fists clenched again, his knuckles white. "But he was just a boy! He didn't deserve it! He didn't deserve to lose his ma because his papa was a coward!" His face crumpled in despair. "I was a coward."

Belle felt as if she was watching a cruel man take a child's beloved toy away from him. She wanted to cry, wanted to cry for Rumple, for his son, for what he lost, for the horrible monster he became.

"So that's it," she said. "That's the root of this mad thirst for power you've created for yourself?"

Rumple cast her a sidelong glance and shook his head. "It-it didn't end there." He took a deep breath. "She met a man at a tavern."

"Your wife, you mean?"

"Yes. Her name was, um-her name was Milah," he said nervously, rubbing one hand back and forth over the one that rested on his cane.

Belle nodded slowly. "She ran away with the man?"

Rumple shrugged. "Ran away, was stolen, whatever you want to call it. She didn't want to stay with us. The man was a sea captain. I boarded his ship, looking for Milah. And he challenged me to a duel."

Belle pursed her lips together tightly. "And?"

"I was a cripple, Belle. I stood no chance against that man. He had the upper hand, he had the advantage!" He sighed. "Everyone had the upper hand over me."

"Did you ever see her again? Or the man?"

Rumple frowned. "Yes."

"And?"

"I was the Dark One then."

Belle raised her eyebrows. "What happened?"

Rumple smiled, and for a moment Belle saw a striking resemblance to the man he used to be, and it scared her. "I had the advantage, dearie."

Belle shook her head. "What did you do?"

With an uncomfortable expression on his face, Rumple put his arm around Belle. "What I did doesn't matter, Belle. What matters is that I took revenge for my boy." He smiled a self-satisified smile. "I refuse to ever let anyone have the upper hand on me again."

Belle shrugged his arm off her shoulders and stood up. "And that, Rumple, is what is wrong with you. Do you know what makes relationships work? Marriages? Friendships? The relationship between a father and his son? Part of it is being vulnerable. Being selfless. You can't force the person you love into the lower position. Having the advantage all the time only makes you a monster, Rumple, you should know that better than anyone."

"Belle, I-"

"No, I'm not done yet!" Belle surged into her words without stopping for a breath. "This is what's wrong with you, Rumple! This is what causes all your problems and your heartache! You've got to give it up!" she exclaimed desperately.

"But, Belle, I have given it up. I'm not practicing magic anymore."

"No, don't lie to me, Rumplestiltskin. You still have a streak of the old man in you, and it's so destructive, so blinding, that you don't even see it. You're so wrapped up in your old ways that you can't even see straight!"

"Enough, Belle!" Rumple shouted. "Enough!"

Belle pulled her lips together tightly and shook her head. "No. No, it's not enough. We're going to keep doing this until that streak is hammered out of you, until there is no bit of that old self left in you."

Rumple sighed and looked down at his cane, then back up at Belle, and embraced her in a hug.

"Thank you, Belle. Thank you."