Red.

Nothing but red.

Everywhere she looked the color red met her eyes.

Red and orange and yellow and-

Fire!

Bright flashes of light that burned her eyes and threatened to blind her.

The moment she realized that there was nothing but fire everywhere around her she screamed and began to frantically search the room around her for shelter, for a door, for a way out! But there was none. The room was four solid walls with columns and curtains but no windows and no doors. And heat. So much heat. Just when she got a good look around her, the flames flared and forced her to look away as another flash roared up and temporarily limited her vision. She could feel the heat and quickly pushed the hat and jacket she'd been wearing off of her and onto the floor, rolling her sleeves up. She was so desperate for comfort that she even reached under her skirt to peel off the tights she'd put on days ago.

Days ago…

Days ago she'd been in Storybrooke, she'd been an optimistic woman, with the promise of her husband, a job, a home…and now here she was. No optimism. No promise, at least not one that she wanted. No job, no home, it was just her, a sleeping curse, and a small being who she hoped was safe inside her.

"It's alright," she whispered hugging her arms around her stomach. "It's alright; there's got to be a way out of here. We'll find something."

But she heard her lack of commitment in her own voice. This wasn't a puzzle or a threat or a villain. It was magic. It was a curse. And curses were called curses for a reason. They weren't pleasant. Or rational. If she were in Storybrooke, if someone had just captured her again or she was being held hostage in the Dark One's castle again she would have yelled and screamed and tried to find a door she knew had to be hiding somewhere. But this wasn't Storybrooke. She wasn't even convinced that "this" was anywhere. She'd heard of people trapped in Sleeping Curses before, and she knew that their bodies didn't go anywhere or disappear. Which meant that she could only assume she hadn't either. This wasn't a real place. Her body was probably still in the Underworld, still in Rumple's shop, safe and sound, protecting the baby within her just as she'd intended to. But her mind…it was here, in this odd place which resembled hell far more than the Underworld did.

How unexpected. She'd left one kind of hell for another.

"Hello?"

She froze at the sound of the voice and began to look around. She had heard that, hadn't she? Or was it just another trick of the room?

"Hello?!" she cried back. She never knew fire could sound so loud, but the rush of it was overwhelming it was deafening. And it was hard to locate anything in this room that wasn't red or burning! Even the unblackened paint on the walls appeared red.

"Hello?!" she finally heard again. "Is someone there?" The voice was deep and unfamiliar. It seemed to echo around the room, but she could have sworn she heard it coming from across the room. The floor, she hadn't looked at it before, but it was made of bright white square lights. The fire was spread over it of course, but…nothing was burning.

She hadn't noticed that before, but now she found her eyes frantically searching the room once more. It was burning, the entire thing was, but the columns didn't crumble, the curtains didn't turn to ash, the beams of the room didn't fall, and the lights of the floor didn't go out. Her clothes?

"Oh!" she rushed back to the place that she'd dumped them and tried to step on the flames that were smoldering on the cuff of her jacket. Her clothes burned. So…the room was fine, but she wasn't. Oh, this really was hell. It was miserable! How was she supposed to wait here to wake up?!

Hope, said a small voice in her head. The hope that if Rumple woke her up, if she was able to hold her child in her arms in nine months knowing that he was safe, she could endure this. She knew she could! Even if she wished with all her might that the tears streaming down her cheeks could put the fires out.

"Who are you?!"

The voice! It called to her again! Though she would regret letting her things burn, she had to acknowledge that as long as the room was on fire she wasn't going to need them and they weren't real anyway.

"Hello!" she called turning away from them. "Where are you?!"

The woman didn't need to answer her call, as soon as she turned back to the lighted floor she saw her standing there. A woman with hair that was either dark brown or black, but it was too difficult to tell with the discoloration. She was wearing a dress, singed at the bottom, with a corset of some kind around her abdomen. Lacey's mind rebelled against that thought. Whatever it was that she was wearing was not doing the job a corset was meant for, this was more like an armor of some kind. And it had to be hot! She couldn't fathom why she hadn't taken it off! And she was at least still wearing her shoes; she couldn't understand that either.

"Who are you?" she asked the girl in a small voice. Was it possible she was here to help? Was this part of the curse?

The girl only stared at her and shook her head. "What?!" she hollered pointing to her ear.

Right. The noise. Though she had approached the girl and they were standing relatively close together, they were still separated by flames, and the noise was still loud. She had to yell to be heard.

"Who are you?!" she cried louder.

"Dorothy!" the woman called back. "Dorothy Gale!"

Dorothy Gale? Why did that name sound familiar? Someone she'd heard of? In a good way or a bad way?

"What are you doing here?!"

She watched as the woman looked around the room and then shook her head. "I don't know!" she called back. "Who are you?! What are you doing here?!"

So, was she under a sleeping curse too and just didn't know it? "I'm Belle," she answered. "I think I'm in a sleeping curse!"

"A sleeping curse?!" she woman screamed sounding hurt and confused, maybe even a little bit scared. Did she really not know what happened to her.

"How long have you been here?!" she asked.

The girl answered, but she couldn't make the words out, she hadn't said them loud enough. But judging from the overwhelmed and hopeless look on her face and the shapes her mouth had made, she didn't know how long she'd been here. That was frightening.

"Well…how did you get here?!" she questioned next.

"I don't know!" the woman called back. "One minute I was in Oz and the next…" the woman held out her hands as if to say that the next moment she was here, but that wasn't what caught her ear.

"Did you say Oz?!"

Dorothy Gale nodded. "I broke into the witch's castle alone! She caught me and pricked my finger…"

The rest of Dorothy's story was irrelevant. She understood. In fact, from the sound of it, she understood what had happened more than Dorothy understood. If she was from Oz then she could think of only one witch that would have had a castle. It was Zelena. She'd broken into Zelena's castle and been caught, but…that must have been at least a week ago! Zelena had been in Storybrooke and the Underworld with her for days! Had this girl really been here all this time? Longer?! And…Dorothy Gale…

She felt her jaw drop as suddenly she placed the name. She'd read it in a book she'd used to do research on Zelena when she'd first started terrorizing the Enchanted Forest a year ago. But she hadn't read it in any book that had been from the Enchanted Forest, she'd read it in a book that had somehow made it's way into their world from the Land Without Magic. And this girl didn't know of sleeping curses, or magic…was it really possible?

"Dorothy Gale," she muttered. "Hey! Are you the same Dorothy Gale who-"

She was gone.

Breathless, she turned around and around in the red room trying to locate the girl she'd just been talking to. But there was no mistaking what she saw. The girl was gone! She'd vanished into nothing! And she just couldn't figure out how it was possible! She hadn't taken her eyes off of her for long! It had been barely a second of shock that she'd looked away and now she'd just disappeared!

Her mind was spinning as she tried to figure out what had happened. What kind of room was this? Was the girl real? Had she ever actually been here or was she just a figment of her imagination? She didn't seem like someone she would ever have imagined. If she pictured a person then she knew that the corset she was wearing would have at least been a real corset! And she couldn't come up with any reason why this room or her mind would summon Dorothy Gale from the Wizard of Oz to keep her company. Which left her with only more questions. If Dorothy Gale had been real, then why was she even in Oz in the first place, nearly every book she'd ever read told her that Dorothy had gone back to Kansas! How and why had she gone back to Oz? Why had she broken into Zelena's castle? And perhaps the most important question of all: where was she now?

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 13th 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 from the moment that Belle wakes up in the Red Room in "Ruby Slippers" up to the moment that she says good-bye to Gideon in "Changelings".

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!