A/N: Just a little idea I had. I'm not generally a Rumbelle shipper but I had this idea and I liked it so, here it is. I'm sure about the quality of the writing overall, I think I get a little confused sometimes but I hope you like!

PROLOGUE

It had been weeks, fading into months that Belle lingered by the side the man who used to be the Dark One, rarely leaving her comatose husband's side even as the world outside whirled into chaos. As the mission to save Emma Swan stormed outside, as vines and greenery coiled around the window frame, as day after day faded into night after night, Belle stayed.

She knew she should be helping, however she could, to save the saviour from the darkness. The darkness that destroyed her love. But each time she tried to leave his side, she found herself tied to him on a short string. Pulled back to his side by an inexplicable force that kept her from leaving. The pull was strong, undeniable. She felt it each time she had to leave, for she did have to leave. In the time and distance that she was gone, she could feel the pull, beating, thrumming with the pulse of a heartbeat. She knew, realised that it was the bond that the darkness had, for years, corrupted, shrouded and blocked from her. That the darkness had prevented her feeling. The tie of two hearts tied together, completely, irrevocably, eternally.

It was the bond of two hearts in the truest, purest of love.

Now the darkness had been swiped clean, eradicated from the deepest corners of her love's heart, she finally felt it. She finally found her true love. But could she keep it?

Would the love she had finally found, survive?

Would her love, her true love, ever awaken into her arms?

After months spent in ignorance and anticipation. Days spent blind to anything and anyone but her love. What was happening in the world outside, Belle knew not. All she knew, when she awoke that by his side that morning, is that something felt different. In her sleep riddled daze, she rubbed her eyes and shook her head, looking down at the sleeping man before her. The storm raging outside quelled, the room, time faded from existence, a strong, powerful tug Belle felt pulled her forwards.

All she knew, in that blurred and hazy morning, was that after months of waiting, staring, hoping, the man she knew as her true love, began to stir.

In a heart beat she was right by his side once more as his eyelids began to flicker open, involuntarily she reached out her hands to grasp his, cling to his like a life line. Tears glazed over her eyes in joyous relief as she said,

"Rumple? Rumple your-"

"Bae? Bae!?" he struggled to sit up, fear, confusion and shock fighting a present battle in his eyes as he wrestled with the sheets. "BAE!" he screamed.

"Rumple" Belle muttered softly, "Rumple, it's okay-"

He ripped her hand from hers, as if her touch scalded him.

"Who- who are you!? Where's Bae? Where's my son?!"

And it was the worst. In his eyes were confusion, fright and... nothing. No recognition. No love. Nothing at all. And it was worst that could have happened at all.

He didn't know her.

Belle's heart, she felt shatter, break into a thousand tiny, irretrievable, irreparable pieces. As if he had ripped her heart from her chest and slowly crushed it right before her eyes.

He didn't remember her at all.