"My father can't take me. I don't think he wants to either," the girl says, her voice shaking. There is a strange twitch in her fingers that had them jumping about as though they were playing a piano. But her eyes are straight, unfaltering, as they meet his.
"I will take you," he said. "I… You can stay with me until your father is well."
She narrows her eyes.
"People will talk."
Mr. Gold looks out the window of the police station. Yes, she is so much younger than him, though in their other world, their ages had been centuries, not decades, apart.
"An old man and a lunatic. The story is written for them," Mr. Gold smiles. Then, slowly, a smile spreads across her lips.
"Yes. The story." Her gaze pulls away, and for a moment she sits, her arms wrapped around her knees, smiling to herself at the thought.
Emma comes sauntering back into the room, but the very first sound out of her mouth is interrupted.
"She's coming home with me, Sheriff Swan," Mr. Gold says calmly, his eyes never leaving the girl. The brunette's unfocused eyes suddenly sharpen again and find Emma in the doorway.
"She's not under your custody."
"She's not under 18. It doesn't matter whose custody she's under. She has chosen me as a caretaker."
"I have," the girl says, though the quiver in her voice undermines her attempt at strength.
Emma frowns. "Mr. Gold, I don't believe Miss French is capable of…"
"This is my favor, Emma. Grant me this favor."
Emma would never realize the spell that those words had over her. Later that day, she would try to retrace her rationale in accepting him but would fail over and over again.
"Fine. But I'll be checking in every once and awhile. And she'll go home with her father once he's out of the hospital. I trust she knows how he got there?"
The girl looks at him with those empty, blue eyes.
Mr. Gold sneers. "All in good time, dearie."
Mr. Gold unlocks his front door and lets it swing into the empty house.
"Welcome to your new home," he says, watching the small figure next to him, her smallness only accentuated by the over-sized clothes she is wearing.
Slowly, so slowly, she takes a breath and steps into the house. He knows that she doesn't trust him: no one could be crazy enough to do such a thing. But the step is a sign of good faith, that she was willing to try. Perhaps this story could be remedied, he thinks. Perhaps he could have a second chance.
"Where do I sleep?" Her voice is so small. "I'm so tired."
"Of course. Follow me," he says, climbing the stairs off the foyer and leading her down the hall. "This," he says, pointing to the first door, "Is my room. And this," he says, pointing to the door next to it, "is yours."
"Mine? My room?"
"And if you need anything, anything at all, you just ask me. You need not bother yourself with anything. You are now my guest."
"But I want to help. I could clean."
"No." His response comes too forcefully, too quickly, and she visibly starts. He attempts a friendly smile and tries again. "No, dearie. You don't have to clean anything. You don't have to lift a finger. That isn't why I brought you here. Not at all."
Her hands, wrapped in the long sleeves of her oversized shirt, knot together in front of her stomach.
"Do you want to see it, or are you content with the door?"
The girl looks up at him, bewildered. He would have to remember to retain his sarcastic remarks around her, or at least until she was well. He opened the door.
It is plain, a small bed in one corner, a desk on the opposite wall next to a small bureau. The only outstanding part of the room is the large window that takes up the majority of the wall. From that window, she could sit and watch the street outside. He would find her all too often in that position during their time together, a forgotten book in her hand.
"Do you like it?"
"Yes," she whispers, sitting on the bed. "It's not cement."
Mr. Gold closes is eyes in grief, and something in his chest clenches. He will kill Regina, kill her with his bare hands, make her beg and plead for mercy for what he did to her.
"Well I'll leave you to take it all in," he says, moving into the hallway and closing the door behind him.
"Wait!" He stops, the door only halfway closed. The girl looks absolutely terrified. "Please… Please… Could you leave it open?"
Somewhere deep inside his chest aches, but all he did was smile.
"Of course I can, Belle. Of course I can."
It's only during the night that she seems to remember. He knows that there is no way she really can remember, that its only himself and Regina that really know what Storybrooke is, but somehow this beautiful little lunatic has managed to remember tiny details and string them together.
"Why do you call me 'Belle'?" she asks one day. He hadn't realized, that he had been doing so.
"A nickname, my dear. You are too pretty for your real name…"
"But my real name is Rose," she said. "Rose French. That's a pretty name."
He thinks of the rose that he gave her, the flower that was really her cursed fiancé, and can't help but giggle.
"I will call you whatever you want," he tells her.
She thinks for a moment.
"Actually, Belle sounds right. You can call me that." Then she wanders away, trailing her fingers over the surfaces of the tables and the tops of the couches. These little stories, these little memories, only make her more confused.
But he knows, he understands, and he feels the curse slowly starting to break.
One day she finds the trunk of his son's clothing. When she tells him about the discovery, she does not ask or question it. She simply says, "Oh yes, I forgot you had a son."
The doors in the house are never closed, she makes sure of that, and when she moves from her bedroom and wanders around the many rooms of his estate she is silent. At night, he never hears her come in, only feels her slide into the bed next to him, feels those twitching fingers touch his back, feels her face pressed against his back. It isn't romantic at all, and when he rolls around and takes her in his arms, he hasn't an ounce of sexual desire anywhere in his body. He just holds her, and she falls asleep and her fingers finally lay calmly, unmoving, against his chest.
Sometimes she stays awake and touches him, his face, his hair, the line of his nose and the skin of his neck. He is terribly self-conscious, waiting for her to draw away, to realize how hideous and old he is, to tell him that his hair is stringy and his wrinkles are grotesque. But she doesn't. Her touches remain as affectionate as they can be.
"Your skin isn't as green as I thought it would be," she murmured once. "It was greener in my mind."
He doesn't miss a beat. "Am I so old that I'm beginning to grow moss?"
She wrinkled her nose and smiled. "You are not as old or as ugly as you think you are."
He remembered the room in his estate, and Belle in her blue dress saying the very same thing to him. But here, in the dark room, she doesn't understand what has happened and presses herself against him more fully. And soon her breath becomes shallow, and he allows himself to go to sleep.
She is very curious about his injured leg, a detail she also says she "doesn't remember." Her interest peaks when, while passing through the living room, his cane slips on the edge of the carpet and he begins to fall. But she is there, impossibly quickly, and throws her arms around his chest. Somehow, her strength suspends him in the air for just a moment. He regains his stance and clasps a hand around her clenched fists.
"Thank you, Belle. You can let me go."
But she doesn't. Her face is buried in his back, against the material of his suit jacket, and she cradles him. He remembers the day in the spinning room, when that happy girl almost fell trying to show him the light. Now he is the one falling, and she is the one that desperately needs to see that light.
Finally she lets him go.
"What happened to your leg?" she asks bluntly.
"Just the punishment of time," he says with a grin.
"I don't believe you," she counters, but her words are light and amused, and he has a flash of the Belle he knew before. There is a mischievous curl to her lips, though her eyes remain hard and focused.
"I'll tell you another day," he says. "Deal?"
Belle goes about the house as if it is her own now. It isn't uncommon to find Belle cooking her own meals or tidying about the house. She goes for walks down the street, and while the men and women of Storybrooke originally tried to avoid the town lunatic, her growing charm is now met with a cautious smile or a careful wave from whomever she meets on the street. And she always came back, always returned to the house of Mr. Gold.
Her smile is wider and more frequent. Her fingers don't twitch very much at all anymore. Mr. Gold knows that she isn't cured by any means, that there is still so much darkness behind those bright blue eyes. But he loves to see her happy again.
Yet, he spends less and less time at home. She makes him nervous, not because he expects something from her, but because he feels his self-control dwindling at an alarming rate. But what if true love's kiss is enough to break his spell on Storybrooke? Was it worth the risk? Was it the right moment?
Mostly, would she still be by his side if they returned to their original world?
He came too close to these possible consequences one night, when he was so reckless as to kiss her forehead. She had beamed at him, but he had regained his commonsense the moment after and dodged her incoming lips.
"Gold," she said, and even though it wasn't his real name or even his first name in this new world, it sounded perfect on her lips. Coming from her, it doesn't reflect his greed but his own inherent value as a human being. "Gold, let me."
"Perhaps you should go back to your room, Belle," he said, pushing her away.
"Do you really want me to go?" she whispered in the darkness.
"Yes," but his voice strained against the lie.
"Do I repel you that much? Do you still see me as that frail girl you rescued from the mental ward?"
He is silent and she begins to leave, but instead of letting her go his arm reaches out and grabs her hand. For several moments, neither can tell how long, they stare at each other. Silently, Belle slips back under the covers and curls up next to him, her fingers shaking. How long can they go on like this? How much longer can Storybrooke last?
Rumpelstiltskin opens his eyes and feels the charge of dark power running through his body. He's lying in a field, and from the look of the trees around him and the mountains in the distance, he figures that he is only a few miles away from his own estate.
His estate. He's back.
He is alone, though only moments before he remembered smoke, an explosion, and Rose by his side. As if in slow motion, he remembers watching her as her thin white arms rose to cover her face moments before the Queen did her final work of evil.
He stands, looking out across the field toward the mountains. He wonders if he is the only one here in this new Old World, if he is the last survivor of Storybrooke. Somehow his feet begin to move and he is walking, slowly, as if every muscle in his body is resisting.
By nightfall, he reaches his estate. The lock on the gate is broken, and one of the doors hangs on a broken hinge. Inside, the house is covered in a thick layer of dust, but everything remains exactly was it was before. A teapot on a tray on the table, a pile of drapes yet to be put up and nailed shut again on the ground, and the brown, rotting straw curled and hard in the basket beside his wheel.
He sits down in a chair and conjures a fire with a snap of his fingers. Despite the mess, the state of the place, it feels as though nothing has changed. He never fought the Queen, he never lived in Storybrooke, and he never met Belle.
He hardly moves, hardly eats for the next few days. He waits desperately for some evidence that others made it back, but cannot force himself to leave the house. What if she is looking for him? What if she comes to this place? He cannot lose her again.
He begins to see smoke trails in the sky, curling above the village near his estate. He begins to feel those little tugs on his body, where his magic could sense men who needed deals or women who wanted favors. Little evidences. But still he could not move.
And then, late one night, a single knock. The sound reverberates up to the dining room, and he is so lost in the sight of flames that he almost doesn't hear it. Then another knock.
He jumps out of his chair and runs to the grand front doors.
And there she is, the moonlight caught on the hood of her pale traveling cape, a basket around her arm holding only crumbs of whatever she must have packed before she began her journey. There are bags under her eyes, but when she sees her face, she smiles.
"You. You came back."
He ushers her in and she plants herself on the nearest seat: a wooden chest meant to keep muddy shoes.
"I thought it was about time I came and rescued you, not the other way around," she says with a smile before she allows her eyes to close for a few moments. Slowly, cautiously, he sits next to her. She can feel his weight beside her and she opens her eyes. She frowns, and reaches out a hand and touches his face. "You look so thin."
"You don't have to take care of me, not anymore," he says firmly.
"Let's take care of each other then," she says. "Like we did in Storybrooke."
"No."
Her face falls. "I don't want… I mean, you don't have to lose your power. We don't have to…" – she blushes – "We don't have to do anything. Just let me sleep beside you from time to time, like we did then…."
But she cannot finish her proposal, because he does not let her. His hands surround her face and he kisses her. Her arms wind around his neck and she clings to him, kissing him back with all the love she had in her body.
At first the Dark One fights, screaming in his ear, but Rumpelstiltskin does not give in. His time in Storybrooke, and those days he spent back in this world, only cemented his wish to get rid of that evil power once and for all. He can feel the darkness seeping out of his body, his feet, away from the touch of her lips. The darkness, a shadow or a fog, crawls across the floor and under the door. Despite the moon light streaming through the windows, he feels sunlight for the first time in centuries.
When the last of the fog had gone, he pulls away.
"Your eyes," she said, smiling. "They're the loveliest brown I have ever seen."