A/N SO excited about this premiere. It pretty much saved the dynamic of this relationship, which I was a little worried about after the finale. And so... a little plot-bunny about Belle and Rumples, post their fight about sparing Regina. Enjoy, review, etc.

It had been easier when he had looked like a monster.

When he looked as repulsive as he felt inside, people had known to step back from him, to keep distance, to ward themselves so his evil didn't touch them. In this place, even though they didn't remember him as the Dark One, they had filmy almost-memories of some frightening tales of this new world. He had quickly found ways to push away the other residents of this cursed town who didn't have that niggling almost-feeling that told them they didn't trust, or just didn't like, that Mr. Gold. This had preserved his privacy, even without magic, for twenty-eight years.

But it didn't help him with this girl, the one who had never looked at him and seen a monster. It had been hard enough to push her away when the curse had marked his very skin with its corruption. He knew she looked at him now and saw a man and thought that he could be something he was not. Her disappointment when he sent the wraith after the Queen proved that; anyone with a lick of sense would have known as simple a promise as that wouldn't hold him. He had done what anyone with the slightest, passing knowledge of his nature should have expected, and she still looked at him as if he was breaking her heart.

And then she was gone, and his world was empty again. He wandered his shop, a familiar path through the trophies of his deals in another world when he was the same monster, just less disguised. There was no solace in the power he had amassed. He wondered, as he had so many other empty nights, why he had thought there would be. There had been no respite from his loneliness in all the years since he had let go of Bael's hand, not until she had walked into his life, willingly taking his arm in her father's house. Even then, the respite had been fleeting. It seemed his fate to lose everything he truly treasured.

("Coward," they had all named him, and he knew in his missing, blackened heart that it was true; he was always afraid).

So, once again he had lost Belle, pushed her out of his life and into the light outside it, and he wondered why it felt worse than ever, why every time he lost her it hurt him more. How a monster without a heart could have such a traitorous one in this respect. How he could last one more night without everything he loved.

And then she came back and refused to listen, refused to save herself from his company again, and he couldn't help but hope that maybe, just maybe, he could keep her a while longer.

Walking around a world she barely remembered in fake memories she had never been able to hold onto, Belle thought of the man she loved. There had been no hope for her; the moment the curse broke and her memories of all they had been – and hadn't been, too, because she remembered, now, that he had chosen power over her – had returned, and she had realized that she wouldn't let him go, that she would fight for him despite everything.

But she had hoped that he could be the man she saw inside him, so long ago, when he had talked of spinning and a child's clothes and loss. She had hoped that without his curse, he could see how good he was. She knew that he didn't want to see this man, that he was frightened of facing the world, after everything he had been through, without the power at his fingertips and so he pushed it away and hid his heart from it. He hid his heart from her and tried to tell her the lie that he believed, himself: that it meant he didn't have a heart at all. She wanted, more than anything, to show him that he wasn't lost in darkness. There was light all around him, but his eyes were closed. All he had to do was open them and he could be free.

"Stupid," she named herself, angrily, as she turned back towards his shop. Stupid to think that she was making the same mistake, again. Returning to him with only the expectation that he would throw her out; didn't she know this old story from some other life? Was that her fate, then, to throw herself at the walls Rumplestiltskin built around himself, only to be shown the door by the man himself when she finally broke through?

And yet, her pace quickened. She would throw herself at the wall and try to save the man from the monsters he hid within himself because she loved him, despite everything.

And when she walked in, this time, he let her stay.

And she wasn't ready to give up on him. Not yet.

Not ever.

Standing in his shop, there was silence between them. Each of them, in their own way, had been trapped with only themselves since the curse had been cast and they tried to figure out what to do with each other.

Rumplestiltskin didn't look at her, half-believing that if he revealed how very much he wanted her to stay, she would disappear once again, this time forever.

Belle studied the person standing across her, looking for signs of the man she had known in their other world, looking at the differences between the incarnations of him. Her eyes alighted on his cane and she frowned, thinking of his limp as he led her back from the well and through town. There had been too much to think on, and remember – and he had been there, at her side, after so long – that she hadn't even noticed that he had obviously been injured at some moment since she had seen him last. Now, some small part of her heart twisted at the thought.

"What happened?" she asked, touching the cane he leaned on. She didn't quite dare to touch him, yet, the memory of their first kiss and his anger, of his broken promise and ruthlessness, still fresh in her memory. There was sweetness in him, and she knew that he loved her more than he would admit even to her, but that didn't mean he didn't scare her a little, too.

He was quiet for a long moment. "There were... restrictions to the curse I did not foresee. It blocked people truly of this world from entering our town, and prevents us from leaving."

He stopped talking and she watched him with her brow furrowed as he fiddled with a pen on the table beside him. He looked as if he was simply uninterested in the conversation, but she could read him well enough to know it was an act. There was tension in the way his other hand gripped the cane, sadness in the way he tilted his head and avoided her gaze. She stepped forward a little bit, close enough that she could reach the pen. She held it still with her slender fingers. He still stared at it, at their hands, so close to touching. "You tried to leave Storybrook," she prompted. "Why?" she asked when he only nodded.

"He wasn't here."

His voice was soft and she almost didn't catch the note of old, worn pain in it. She didn't have to ask. There were only two people Rumplestiltskin cared about enough to look for. Why his son would have been in this world was a mystery to her. Belle didn't know even close to everything yet – one usually didn't, where this man was involved – but she knew that his inability to seek out his child would have eaten at him for every moment of the twenty-eight years he was trapped in this town. He was as caged as she had been, in that dark room under the hospital, and her heart ached for him.

She stepped forward into him, leaning her head against his chest. There was only one small moment of surprised hesitation before his arms wrapped around her. She felt his chin rest, softly, on her hair.

"I'm sorry that you lost so much," she said, closing her eyes as she felt him against her.

"Everything," he whispered into her hair. "But at least I have something precious back, now." A hand smoothed over the side of her face and she smiled. She had broken through the wall, again, and this time he was holding on, not pushing her away.

There would be times in the coming days that she would be forced to tame the monster he carried within himself. But for now, he was the man she had fallen in love with and she held him tightly.

And he held her back, and she dared to hope that there would be a happily ever after for her and, especially, for him.