A little ficlet of what might be, set in the future and concerning Rumple, Belle, and their future life in Storybrooke. Not related to anything else I've written, but I got a plot bunny, and Belle wouldn't leave me alone til I wrote it…

Lucy was a delight, a sweet gift to both of them after the Rumplestiltskin and the Charmings' return to Storybrooke. Henry was safe and sound and Bae roughed up but there. Regina… well, she wasn't coming back again. The family had struggled to re-create itself, and Lucy had, in her own way, much to do with it. Babies had a way of bringing people together, or at least she did. Rumplestiltskin decided it was his little girl's own special magic.

They hadn't exactly planned a family so soon. They weren't trying, but they weren't not trying, either, as Bae liked to point out. Both Belle and Rumple had decided that, after enough surprises, they wanted to know the gender. Belle had planned out the nursery, everything soft and welcoming and very much ready for their baby girl.

Rose, however, was a surprise in every way. They hadn't intended on a second so soon—Belle was shocked to find she was expecting hardly a month before Lucy's first birthday. Despite all of the luxuries of modern medicine, they had agreed to be surprised. For whatever reason, Belle had been convinced she was having a boy this time. She had waffled on colors for the new room for months, finally settling on a soft dove gray and white.

When Rose made her appearance five weeks early, both parents were simply grateful that the cautions and concerns they and the doctors shared at the sudden delivery were unfounded. They'd had a good plan for a second birth with their midwife, wanting to avoid the hospital. It was dramatic—an emergency cesarean when it was apparent that even bed rest wasn't going to buy some time. Rose was tiny but healthy, screaming at the world and most definitely a second little girl.

Rumplestiltskin had never been more grateful for medical advances.

Both girls had all of the men in their lives wrapped around their little fingers. Lucy had been fascinated by Henry as an infant, and she could spend hours plying him with book after book, begging for one more story. Rose was a ball of energy, gravitating to Bae and somehow always coercing him into a tea party or press-ganging him into service as her pony. And both could charm even Charming into extra bits of sweets or a new set of coloring pencils on whim.

Rumplestiltskin basked in the whole of it—discovering the twinge of jealousy when Rose came down with croup and wanted only her mama, basking in the ability to soothe Lucy when she broke her wrist learning to ride her bicycle and would let no one but him pick her up and take her to the doctor. Lucy was his night owl, often climbing into Belle's lap for one more book, while Rose was up with the sun and clambering to be allowed to help crack the eggs into the bowl and to whisk them into the beginnings of scrambled eggs.

By the time they were six and a half and eight, Rumplestiltskin and Belle had assumed their family was complete with the happy four plus Bae and extended family. And, as the case proved with their previous children, they were decidedly wrong as they learned after school started and it became apparent that Belle's sudden nausea and exhaustion wasn't an early fall strain of the flu.

She'd had a rougher pregnancy, her nausea hitting at all times of day and lasting nearly into her fifth month. They agreed to find out this time, to have the midwife reveal the gender as soon as they could. This baby, however, had a mind of its own. Rumplestiltskin decided their third was shy (Belle called it stubborn, but he wisely kept silent about stubbornness and exactly from which parent their baby inherited that trait).

This round was different in every way, having to acquire new baby things that had been given away years ago. They finally decided on a sunny yellow with grays and whites and a teal for some contrast for this nursery, and in retrospect he was sure it took so long because they both knew this time that it would be the last nursery they would plan for their own children.

None of the names they considered seemed just right, and it hadn't helped that they didn't know if they were having a son or a daughter. The gender neutral names hadn't appealed, either. He vividly remembered the afternoon he came home from collecting rent only to have Rose insistently tugging him to the closed doors of the house's library and say he needed to 'fix mama' because she was crying because they couldn't even find a suitable name for their third child.

But when baby number three arrived in the early evening in April, he was awe-struck. They'd managed delivery with their midwife, calm and almost normal with no surprises this round except… except that he was holding their third little girl who cried enough at birth to satisfy everyone she was healthy and calmed as she was handed over to her parents. She was three days early but certainly ready to join her family.

"A girl," Belle breathed, reaching over and resting her hand over his, her thumb sliding very delicately over a soft, pink cheek. "I was so sure this one was a boy," she laughed lightly, words falling away in the wonder of the moment and the serene little girl content to mouth at her father's knuckle.

"Well, sweetheart, I honestly wouldn't know what to do with a boy these days," he teased, unable and unwilling to hide his grin. He was proud, proud of these three girls, and amazed that he could feel this same surge of protectiveness that was every bit as strong as the moment he firs saw Bae or Lucy or Rose. One final gift for him and his Belle. He easily shifted the tiny bundle, handing her over to his wife to let them meet properly.

Belle pressed a kiss to their daughter's forehead, her own smile growing when the baby gave a little sigh and blinked open newborn blue eyes to look up at her parents. He had hoped one of his girls might inherit their mother's beautiful blue eyes, but both had turned to brown—Lucy's a tawny amber, Rose's to a rich mahogany. Perhaps he might get his wish after all.

"Rum… we don't even have a name," Belle murmured all while taking inventory of the tiny fingers, exactly five on each hand and cooing over the miniscule cresecent of a fingernail on each and the cap of dark hair that might turn to his mousy brown or her gorgeous auburn, and the amazingly soft newborn skin. "She can't be 'Baby Gold' all her life."

He chuckled softly, thinking she would always be his Baby Gold, feeling certain in a way he hadn't before that she would be their last. It was less a feeling and more of a knowing. "Bonnie," the name fell from his lips before he knew he was speaking it. "Bonnie lass, beautiful after her mother."

They'd considered so many variations of Belle, but this was fitting, and when they looked down at their newest sweet bairn, and they were sure. Three girls, and he wouldn't have it any other way.