Disclaimer: Not mine.
Short, sweet, and sappy. I can't help it.
"So, should I call you Grandma now?" Henry asked Belle, giving the beauty a mischievous grin.
She raised her eyebrows and placed her hands on her hips, frowning. "And do I look old enough to be anyone's grandma?" she asked in mock indignation, eyes dancing.
Neal sauntered through the door from the kitchen and waggled his eyebrows at her. "Hell, you don't even look old enough to be a mother, 'Mom,'" he announced, placing a hand on his son's shoulder and giving Belle a roguish grin.
Belle's eyes narrowed. "Language, mister," she chided, rolling her eyes as father and son exchanged knowing looks. "Honestly," she teased, a huff of laughter escaping her lips, "the two of you should know better.
Neal shrugged. "Hey, I'm the one still trying to come to terms with the fact that my father found his True Love and that she-that is, you-is so..."
"Don't you dare finish that sentence Neal," Emma declared, striding through the front door, employing the rolled-up newspaper in her hand to smack said man on the shoulder. "Or Bae-whatever it is you're calling yourself nowadays."
He snickered. "You make it sound like I'm Prince or something."
"Prince of the annoying, maybe," she remarked, grinning. "C'mon-the sun is shining and it's actually warm in this tundra we call home and I promised the kid here we could get some ice cream today."
Biting back a laugh, Belle watched as a look equivalent to kids at Christmas stole across both Henry's and Neal's faces.
"You're coming too, right Dad?" Henry asked, giving Neal an earnest look.
"Wouldn't miss it for the world."
The trio trooped out of the house, laughing and talking with an ease Belle knew the man at her back envied. He had stepped up behind her just prior to their departure, but she refrained from saying anything to him until they had gone, the door swinging closed behind them. "You're sad," she remarked, still facing away from him. "Why?"
Rumplestiltskin sighed, hands wrapped tightly around the head of his cane, his breath ghosting over the back of his neck. "Because even after everything we've been through, even after finding my son and finding his son and bringing you back-even after all of that, I lost all of the moments like these." He passed a hand through the empty air, a vague gesture meant to encompass all of the family time he had missed.
Frowning, Belle swung around to face him, taking his hands in hers and holding them captive against her chest. "You're not alone, Rumple," she insisted, peering earnestly into his face and tracing the callouses that lined his palms. "Bae is here; he loves you. He just has to get used to this, to everything-as do you. He went from having no family to having more of a family than he'd ever imagined." Her lips quirked. "After all, just think of your extended family: Prince Charming and Snow White as in-laws."
He grumbled good-naturedly at that, but the fleeting smile slipped all too quickly into a tightly-drawn frown. "I feel awful," he confessed quietly. "Every time he leaves, every time he-they-go out together, I feel torn apart by this fierce jealousy. That time he spends with them is time he could-should-have spent with me. I did that, Belle-me."
Her eyes swam with unshed tears at the amount of self-loathing packed into his words. "Rumple," she began warmly, reaching up to clasp his shoulders. "You cannot change the past. You and I are living proof of that but," and here she gave him one of her brilliant smiles, "I like to think we made it work anyway. No, you can't get back the time you lost with Bae, but you did get him back. It's up to you to decide what to do with the time that you do have together."
Rumplestiltskin opened his mouth to reply, his sentence bound by emotion and catching in his throat, and cast his eyes downward as he nodded wordlessly instead.
Belle frowned and caught his chin in her hand, forcing him to meet her eyes. "I mean it, Rumple," she said sternly, "you are loved." She brought her lips up to his, then, a gentle caress meant to comfort and console, and his hand rose unbidden to cradle her face. "Never forget that."
The sound of footsteps on the stair outside drew them apart, and Rumplestiltskin watched bemusedly as Henry darted inside the house and grabbed him the the hand not grasping his cane, tugging him insistently toward the door. "Come on, Grandpa," he chirped, ignoring Rumple's raised eyebrows and incredulously-mouthed 'Grandpa?'. "Mom and Dad said we could eat our ice cream down at the pier."
His brain and emotions still scrambling to catch up, Rumplestiltskin looked to the door to see Neal lounging against the frame and brandishing two cones. "Yours is rum flavored," he said by way of invitation, looking awkwardly across the room toward his father. "It seemed appropriate."
Rumplestiltskin looked down a the smooth young hand of his grandson wrapped insistently around his wrist and over to where his son stood hovering by the door with a small encouraging smile. "I..." His voice croaked and failed. Looking down at the insistent Henry at his side, he wet his lips and tried again. "I'd love that, my boy. Truly." His voice was soft, his smile small, but the words could not have been any more sincere.
He was through with walking alone. He had his family, and he was finally starting to realize what that meant.