Not Quite
Pairing: Rumple/Belle
Prompt: What happens if Regina never gave Belle new memories after Mr Gold promises to get her out- taintednightstar
Thanks to: passionsanddevotions for the awesome betaing.
Author Note: I promise to get to all the prompts I have gotten, I'm really sorry for the delays.
Mr. Gold strolls back into her hospital room, looking almost surprised that she is still there... or it could be the dress.
The girl named Ruby had dropped off some sweatpants, pajamas, and a few dresses one day when she was not so, for lack of a better word, drugged. She was thankful for something to wear underneath and over the thin fabric of the hospital dress.
The clothes were her size, but they didn't fit her. She wasn't Belle, but she had no other name or identity. And from what everyone told her about "Belle," she wouldn't mind her borrowing her name or things.
She had quickly taken to the blue lace dress that she hung up and dreamed of wearing outside the walls of her prison. She wears the platform shoes she was found in and wobbles slightly as she walks towards him with her bag in hand.
"You have an apartment above the library or..." he pauses.
"Or?" the woman who was Not-Quite-Belle asked.
"Or you could stay with me, I have plenty of empty rooms."
She took a moment to ponder the idea, but spoke up: "I would like to stay with you. I'm tired of being alone."
"So am I ," he says and she can't help but give him a curious look. He takes her duffle from her and leads her out of the cold halls into the world she has only dreamed of.
A few days later she went on a walk with Henry and his father Neal one day. It was her first time outside the house. Everything seemed too bright, too loud, too new for her. While she enjoyed the chatter of the kind father and son, Not-Quite-Belle could feel the eyes of not-quite-strangers on her. She remembers the eyes of a woman peeking through her door and it makes her shiver.
However when she comes back he is surprised she is out and about so soon but he tells her she has always been brave.
"I don't know if I'm brave," she says sheepishly. "I just figured I couldn't stay hidden forever. I thought do the brave thing and bravery will follow."
The teacup in his hands clatter to the ground and he just stares at her. She picks up the cup and hands it to him.
"It's chipped," she says, biting her lower lip and in that moment he stops staring and laughs at the piece of broken china. She thinks it odd, but even stranger is her desire to see him always smile like that.
She wakes up suddenly breathless one night, a dream or a memory becoming too vivid.
"My name is Jefferson, and I need your help to do something that I can't," the man dressed up as a nurse told her. "There's a man, his name is Mr. Gold. Find him. All you have to do is tell him where you've been, and that Regina locked you up."
Her head spins as she tries to remember, however after who knows how long she gives up and goes down stairs. She remembers reading somewhere that warm milk helps people sleep and she is willing to try anything other than the pills that Dr. Whale prescribed.
What she doesn't expect is to see him at the kitchen table. Even in the late hour he still looks stylish, and put together, even in his simple pajamas and dressing gown.
"Couldn't sleep dear?" he asks. He doesn't call her Belle, only certain pet names, however she does not mind, she doesn't respond to Belle anyway.
"I couldn't sleep, I had an odd dream, or maybe it was a memory..." she trails off looking at the wall.
He perks up at the last word. "What was this dream about, if you don't mind me asking?"
She shakes her head, how could she mind anything this man does.? "I was in a cell again, below the ground and a wild eyed man let me out. He let me go..."
His eyes widen at the admission and he seems to have forgotten to breathe. She tries her hardest to think of more details. She closes her eyes and then opens them suddenly.
"You'll protect me." she says, it's not a question.
"What? Of course!"
"No, that's what the man said. And you. You couldn't believe I was alive. Was that real?"
"Yes," he says almost sadly.
But she can't understand why he is frowning now. She was remembering.
Not-Quite-Belle wakes up a week later on a chilly morning morning with a cold. Her nose stuffy and her head full of fluff. When he passes her bedroom and hears the cough he instantly insists she stay in bed.
He brings up the book she was in the middle of and a whole pot of tea with honey. He checks her temperature and promises he will be back within the hour.
She is half awake when he returns, with dreams of Pemberley and misunderstood men playing in her mind.
He brushes his hand gently across her cheek as if he has done it a hundred times before and she smiles at his touch.
"I've brought you some soup, sweetheart," he says softly.
"Granny's?" she croaks.
"Aye."
"You hate Granny." she says now, sitting up with her back against the pillows.
"I don't hate Granny, we just don't see eye to eye."
She raises her eyebrow at the understatement. The way Neal tells it, the last time Granny and Gold had "talked" it had ended up with the matriarch pointing a crossbow at him.
"The soup is the best cure for a cold in Storybrooke. And if I have to deal with a woman who may be a little trigger happy, then so be it. I would do anything for you."
The instant he finishes, he looks as if wants to backtrack or grab the words from the air and swallow them back down.
"You really would," she says looking into his worried eyes. And in that very instant she forgets about her cold, her fear, her hopeless ability to be not quite anyone. She decides for herself, the girl without a name, without a past but with a future, she decides to kiss him.
It only lasts a few seconds, but when he pulls away he looks full of shock and hope.
Belle smiles at him and says "Kiss me again, it's working."