It wasn't as if everything was perfect again; she was still nervous. This man had burned her more times than anyone else in her life ever had, and considering the life she'd led before him that was saying a lot. But no one had ever loved her the way that this man did either. She was hoping, that with time, the scars that she'd earned would be worth the pain. It had been that way years ago, maybe now they could get back to that feeling.

Their love was always unique, and that was the reason, despite her nerves, that she took yet another step in his direction. He was addictive. His mouth on hers. It had been months since she'd last kissed him, so long she couldn't even remember it! It felt like a lifetime had passed, but at the moment she just couldn't bring herself to care. It might have felt like a lifetime ago that she had kissed him, but they were kissing now. And she would absolutely love to concentrate on that, but…

She broke their kiss off, and a smile automatically tugged at her lips. "You taste like whiskey!" she pointed out with a small snort. He didn't let go of her. His arms stayed tight around her back as he let out a breath and what she thought was supposed to be a nod of acknowledgment, but she didn't see it, only felt it as she let her eyes close, and his lips pressed to her forehead. He was breathless. She was breathless as well. But she had a feeling that there was something else that they were both feeling.

"Now what?" he questioned after a moment, not letting her go.

She smiled. His lips were pink and red, tempting after so much time apart, but she managed to pull back at the sight of his half-closed eyelids and bleary eyes. There was certainly something more they were feeling.

"Now we try this again," she sighed. "We try to do what you said before, love each other with honor and courage, no matter how terrifying it is for both of us. We rebuild our trust, we love like heroes and not like we're divided, enemies. But first…we go home. We get some sleep. We can't do anything if we're tired. I've been up all night, and you look as though-"

"I haven't slept," he admitted quickly. No…she figured he hadn't. He rarely took care of himself the way that he should; it was always her job. It was time she take up the mantle once again, and maybe in one additional way.

She drove the two of them back to their pink house. It was odd for them. She almost always yielded the car keys to him when they were together, but the smell of alcohol on his breath forced her to reconsider that this morning. Any other time it probably would have irritated him, but instead, he happily slid into the passenger seat beside her and they drove home in silence. At first, the silence was typical, there had once been a time that they could sit together for hours at a time and never say anything, but the more time they spent together in the car, the more awkward it began to feel. Standing in the foyer of their home, together again, the awkwardness seemed to reach a peak.

She closed the door, and both of them looked around the house. Suddenly, after months of being packed away, the fact that all his belongings, clothes, books, projects and all, were downstairs in cardboard boxes hit her in a way that it hadn't before. She didn't know why she hadn't thought of this when they'd been in the house together two nights ago. Maybe because everything had been so undetermined then that she hadn't cared, maybe because they'd had a mission and there wasn't time to think about it.

Whatever the reason it didn't matter now. It was just the way that it was. "I um…everything is still in the basement," she acknowledged. Quiet as she'd been, her voice felt loud in the big room. She hadn't felt this odd around him since she'd been freed from Regina's prison and they'd spent their first night together.

"I could sleep in the other room," Rumple suggested softly. "If it would make you more comfortable." And he certainly hadn't suggested they sleep in separate rooms since that first night. Was that how far they'd fallen? Had they gone that far back in time? Farther?

"No," she refused. "I don't think being apart will help. Why don't you get cleaned up and I'll bring some clothes up?"

He nodded his head, but didn't seem terribly committed to the idea. He moved up to the stairs and she listened as he went into his-their room. She jumped when she heard the shower come on. The pipes ran the water through the house, and it had been so long since there was anyone else in the house that she still wasn't used to hearing it, not even the day before when he'd slept in a different bedroom. It was going to take more than a day to get used to being together again.

But standing here, frozen in their entry way, was not going to fix anything. He was home, back for good, and nothing in this house seemed like it, especially in their room. She took a deep breath and moved into the basement once more. The knob warmed and then cooled at her touch just as it always had. Even with the curse destroyed the magic remained it seemed. But she didn't have to let that come between them now. For the first time, they were both human, both mortal, and this was a new life.

At the bottom of the stairs, she opened at least half a dozen boxes. She'd packed them away when she'd thrown him over the town line, unable to bear the reminders, but she never could bring herself to get rid of them. Even in times when she'd been determined to drive them to the dump and throw them away, she'd never actually done it. Now she was thankful.

Finally, she found the box that she needed. It was perfect for this particular situation. It was the one that she'd packed that contained the last of his suits from the closet, two suits, to be exact, the others were neatly folded into the other three, this box was the holdover. It contained the two suits and what had been in the drawers in the bureau. Pajamas, underwear, socks, a couple of ties. Funny how she never thought much of the miscellaneous box, but now it seemed like a trove of gold. She was too tired to unpack all of the boxes now, but this would hold them over until they rested through this afternoon and had the time to fully unpack.

She took the box, all it's belongings, up the stairs and into their bedroom. She fought off the urge to fall onto her bed and sleep as she unpacked it. He was in the shower, and she hesitated initially, but eventually let herself in, set pajamas and underwear on the sink for him to find when he finally pulled back the curtain and left him to the rest of his business. She unpacked the box, set it aside in his closet, so the room at least looked neat and orderly, then got changed herself.

Yes, she longed for a shower after the events of the last few hours but she doubted she'd make it that long standing up, she was so exhausted. She didn't even manage to get her clothes into the hamper, just tossed them neatly over a chair. If she tried to shower, she'd probably fall down! The bed felt good, though. Nearly as good as it had two nights ago before-

The door to the bathroom opened. She gasped and her breath caught in surprise. It had been so long since anyone had been in this room with her, let alone her husband. He looked just as handsome as she always remembered he was after a shower, his hair was wet, and his pajamas were unbuttoned at the top to reveal his chest, and his eyes…

His eyes were nervous.

Her heart was pounding.

She was certain that this was the right thing to do, sharing their home and their life and their bed again, but it did feel odd. It hadn't been this tense between them in this room since the first night they'd spent here, though maybe that was fitting. This was a new life, a new relationship; maybe it was right that the steps they'd taken had brought them back this far.

"I'm, uh…I'm tired," she muttered when neither of them said anything. "I know there's a lot to talk about, but I think I just want to go to sleep."

He took a deep breath and finally averted his eyes off of her, to the side of the bed that had always been designated "his"…or the side that would have been if they hadn't always slept together in the middle…

She pushed the thought from her mind and let herself sink down into the bed, roll onto her side away from his side and close her eyes. Odd, this was exactly what he had done, the first night they'd been together. He'd let her shower and change and then when she'd come out of the bathroom he'd been rolled onto his side of the bed facing as far away from her as he could. It had been respectful then, she'd been virginal, and he'd wanted to respect that privacy…not that they had for very long.

She held her breath as she felt the bed dip beneath his weight and finally settle when he did. It was strange. It was the middle of the day, they were trying to sleep in the same bed, and yet she felt worlds away from the steps they'd taken only this morning in the shop, more awake than she did after a good night sleep. This was the strangest thing-

"Belle?" his voice behind her was small and questioning, testing if she was still awake or if she'd gone to sleep. For a moment she was tempted to ignore him, to just let them patch this up when they'd both gotten a decent amount of sleep…but curiosity got the better of her.

"Yes?" she asked rolling over onto her back. He was there, folded under the blankets just as she was. The quilts made an indention between them that she'd never seen there before. Was that what it looked like for most couples when they slept?

"Belle…why did you come back?" he questioned, his eyes never once leaving the ceiling above them.

It was a familiar question, and the answer was just as familiar: "I wasn't going to, but something changed my mind." That was what she'd said the last time when Regina was behind her return but she didn't want to tell him about the conversation they'd had. This was different, though. Someone had helped her back, just not in the way they had the last time. It would be easy to use those words again now, but she'd made a promise to Neal, to tell Rumple about his son and what he'd meant to her even if it saddened him. They had to grieve his loss together because they surely hadn't before now.

"Neal helped," she finally admitted quietly.

"Bae?" he asked, finally turning his head to look over at her. His voice was confused at her answer, but also desperate and his eyes…there was a spark of interest there, of intensity she hadn't seen in months! Was that the power Neal still had over him?

She nodded. "Sometimes when I feel alone I think about him," she admitted, "about what he'd say, what he'd want for me, and…what he'd want for us." When she looked over at him, their eyes finally locked for the first time since they'd been in this room and she saw the vastness of the words left between them. So, so much! "And Merlin helped…" she added, even though her gut told her to stop looking at him she couldn't. "After I got my memories back I remembered meeting him and talking, about his relationship with Nimue. Between what he said and…and what I know Neal would have said, and what I felt...I realized that this was where I needed to be. Right here. Neal would want us to work on this relationship as long as it's living."

"Living?" he questioned with a small snort. "Is it?"

She felt her throat close and the pressure building behind her eyes told her that the suggestion brought tears to her eyes. "It is," she confirmed. It might not feel like it in the confines of this bedroom, but it certainly had back in the shop. Just for effect she reached over beneath the blankets, her arm appearing as nothing more than a vein of connection between their bodies, and laced her fingers with his. He allowed her to pull it between them and he grazed his thumb over the skin he could reach. It was gentle, and touching, and intimate like it hadn't been between them in a long time. It felt nothing like this room did now.

"You said your memories were back…all of them? Even from when Regina…"

It took her a moment to figure out what he was talking about, what he wanted her to confirm, probably because the sad truth was she still had no memory of the memories he wanted her to recall. "Oh…no, those…those Regina must have erased permanently instead of just taken."

He nodded. "She did, I just wondered..."

His voice trailed off, indicating the sentence should have been forgotten and dismissed, but her stomach tightened because she knew that the tone he'd taken was too confident for an assumption. "You…you know?" she assumed letting go of his hand and hoisting herself up on an elbow. "You know what happened to me? Where I was?"

He shook his head. "It's really not worth mentioning."

She felt her eyes go wide and her brow knit together. "Not to me!" she shouted pushing herself up on her knees and tucking her hair behind her ear. "It's not worth nothing to me, Rumple! One minute I was in the shop and the next minute I was here, with no memory of how I'd gotten home! The car was gone, there was dirt on my hands and shoes and…" she took a deep breath as she felt the throb in the back of her head begin to buzz. "And every time I think about it, my head starts to hurt!"

"Then you shouldn't think about it," he concluded propping himself up on an elbow.

"Then tell me, so I don't have to!" she begged, reaching for his hand again. It was the last thing, the final piece in all these months that she didn't have! She needed to have it back in place! "I have to know what she made me do!"

There was a pained look on his face, a look that she'd seen too many times to count and she knew she wasn't going to like what he said, but she knew he was going to say it. If he weren't, the look wouldn't be "pained".

"Regina took you to get to me, to hold you over my head-"

"So you wouldn't go after Robin Hood, I know that part but what about me? What did she do with me? Did she keep me somewhere or…or make me do something?"

He shook his head. "No, no. She…she had you summon me to the well and act on her behalf without my knowledge. We had a conversation; it was one, maybe two minutes before she finally revealed herself and your heart in the palm of her hand." His eyes went to her chest, and she knew that he wanted desperately to reach out and touch that place, to feel her heart beat beneath the skin, but she couldn't let him.

There was more to it. He wasn't the Dark One anymore, but she knew this man. Curse or not, it didn't undo hundreds of years of lies and deceit. He knew how to use words to cover up important things, and she knew he was doing it now. And she had a feeling she knew where to look for the buried treasure she desired most.

"A conversation…what did we talk about?" she asked.

"It was nothing Belle," he whispered.

"If it was nothing you'd tell me. What did we talk about?"

"I don't know. Regina used you to get information from me about what was happening, and she played on my emotions."

She held her breath. She didn't have the memories, but she knew what was happening during that time. It was the other part that made her nervous. The well. It was an important place for them and after last night a horrible place as well. If any place could play on deep emotions it was the well; the question was how had she used it?

"She played on your emotions…what did she make me say?"

"Belle…I told you, it was hardly worth mentioning."

"It's worth it to me! Rumple what did she make me say?!"

"She made a comparison!" he finally yelled giving in. "She made a ridiculous and childish comparison that I should have seen through, but didn't. I was weak and vulnerable."

She shook her head. What was he talking about?! "What kind of comparison could-"

"I kissed you, Belle," he inserted. "I kissed you, or you kissed me, it happened too fast to really tell. And then you pushed me away and what she made you say…trust me when I say it's not worth it to know Belle!" he stressed.

She was quiet for a few heartbeats. A silly comparison. "Childish" he'd said. It was another of his riddles, but this time she could figure it out in her head, with Lacey's help of course. What could be more childish and upsetting than comparing one man to another?

Will.

She didn't know what Regina had made her say to him. Frankly, she was no longer interested in the details because she knew that it wasn't something she'd said. Regina had made her. She knew it because there was no comparison. Not in her mind. But clearly, it bothered him.

"It wasn't true," she muttered after a swallow. "Whatever she had me say it wasn't true. There is no comparison. Between you and…anyone. Ever! What we have it…it's different, Rumple," she insisted setting her hand over his heart. It was pounding, just like her own suddenly was. "It's alive, even when I don't want it to be, and…it's different than anything I've ever felt before. Anything I ever will feel. Ever."

He reached up and covered her hand with his own again. His eyes fell over hers again as stared and then gave a short and quick nod. "I know that," he whispered.

But she could hear the words in between. He knew it, but knowing it wouldn't take the words away. He'd have to learn to live with her voice saying whatever it had said and she…

She swallowed and shook her head. Enough of this. This was enough! Enough separation, enough war, enough fighting, enough division. Enough of the voice in his head telling him that he wasn't enough. Her voice could do more than that.

With a deep breath, she pulled the blankets away from his chest and straddled his waist. "Belle!" She grabbed his reeling hands and placed them against her legs, the place that her nightgown rode up. "Belle what-"

"You need to touch me!" she insisted placing her hands into his damp hair. "You need to touch me, and you need to know…you need to know that I'm yours that I've always been yours. You need to touch me in a place no one but you has ever touched me. You need that. And I…I just need you."

And with that utterance hanging in the air, with his hands firmly on her skin, she leaned down and kissed him.

Hi! For those of you that are just checking out this fiction, welcome! For those of you who are a fan of the Moments Series, welcome back! I hope you'll enjoy this fiction. It's the 12th in the Moments Series, a series that is an attempt at an accurate portrayal of Belle's perspective during the Once Upon a Time series. This fiction features everything that happened in Storybrooke and the Underworld from the moment that Belle returns to Rumple in "Swan Song" up to the moment that Belle places herself under a sleeping curse in "Ruby Slippers". Also, as a side note, if you are an Exile Reader, please contact me after reading this chapter to get Exile Part V, you'll be needing it.

If you enjoy this fiction, please review! I always enjoy those wonderful gems waiting for me in my inbox, and I love writing back to thank you personally for reading! It helps me know that I'm doing a decent job! Peace and Happy Reading!