When you're temporarily isolated and bound to a chair, it really gives you time to think.
Belle hadn't counted on appreciating that so much; she certainly hadn't appreciated her prison in Storybrooke. However, in the wake of her horribly jarring encounter with Dr. Rush, her time on Earth was a blessing. For the briefest second, she thought she'd died and gone back to her Rumpelstiltskin. Realizing it was a glitch in the FTL… death might have been easier.
And now the only thing she could do was wait. So, Belle took what she did have – time and a brain – and she started to process everything.
It would be easy to scream at Rush, or put Greer and Young on his case, but Belle kept the peace. Rush, for his part, was the same as he'd always been.
After a few weeks, it was Rush who finally spoke first. "Belle, I think I owe you an apology…"
"Don't," she said. "We both know you're not sorry. Come on… there's something that I need you to see."
In her quarters, Belle showed him her only remaining photograph of Mr. Gold and he had the decency to look ashamed. It was easy to talk to him when he was speechless. She could forget for a while that his voice wasn't quite right, or that all he ever said to her was techno-babble. So Belle talked, and told him that her husband was the only man she'd ever been intimate with. Explained what she'd thought when she'd woken up naked in his bed.
"So, you see… it's not that I never thought about it. I just… it's hard for me, seeing you here every day." Then she leaned in to kiss him, and his hand pushed her away.
"Belle, Mandy is…"
She didn't need to hear the rest. "I'll make you a deal, then. I never take my monthly leave with the stones, Colonel Young just drops me in whenever we need medical support or a specialist to supplement one of the away teams. I'll take it from now on. Command will let me switch with Dr. Perry, Telford owes me one."
He looked at her, measuring. "And in exchange?"
Belle just grinned.
It was nice. Not perfect, but nice, which was good – because Belle found the fantasy addicting. She couldn't have stopped, not even if she wanted to.
He shaved, put on a collared shirt, and they did their best not to talk too much. The first time, he'd moaned the other woman's name. After that, Belle made sure to keep his mouth busy. If Rush resented her for proposing the trade, he kept that to himself. She doubted he minded very much. They both got to pretend for a little while, and then he got the real thing for a couple of days. In her opinion, the deal weighed heavily in his favor. Rumpelstiltskin would call her the spirit of generosity.
Sometimes, though, when all she wanted was to be held and smell the old leather of Rumpelstiltskin's flamboyant wardrobe, she'd send him away with his "debt" unpaid. He never complained.
A hundred million light years from home, Belle finally found within herself to forgive the person she'd hated most. She could thank Rush for that, in a round-about way. It stilled her, a little, to think of that other woman. But, as surely as Belle still lived and breathed and made her deals with Nick, she could finally face down her demons.
It was empathy. She knew now what drove otherwise kind women to be unkind. Out of every sentient being in the universe, Belle felt herself most kindred to the single person she hated most. And, as much as that scared her, she had a burgeoning respect for a fellow survivor — even if that woman was the Evil Queen.
