***Warning: this story is very sad***
'My dear Bae', thought Rumpelstiltskin as he limped alongside the highway, 'I will always remember how much you hated magic. this is why I am here, in the land without magic. I also hate magic, now.'
The early traffic contained mostly trucks but some cars were whizzing by as well. 'It was magic that killed you, Bae, my magic; dark magic. When I was freed I left storybrooke almost immediately. Belle came with me,' he thought with a sad smile, 'Belle wouldn't let me go alone to the land without magic….'
'We found a small apartment in a small city, Belle and I, thinking we were safe, at least, if not happy. We couldn't be fully happy without you, Bae.' Rumple kept limping along as he continued thinking. 'Belle didn't realize how far she was from fairy-tale land, until she happened upon some strangers. She was nice to the wrong people and they attacked her, leaving her dead in an ally.'
Rumpelstiltskin was able to hear the "whoosh" every time a car sped by, the power of the speed almost knocking him over, but his mind was so deep in his grief that he wasn't really seeing the traffic at all. He limped on as though he was walking in an empty desert. 'I thought that it was the land without magic that killed Belle, and that maybe I should go back to Storybrooke, back to magic, but I had no reason to. I do not need power, Bae, I no longer have anyone to protect.'
He felt as lost and alone as his father always told him he was. He had nothing to live for and nothing to die for. He dreaded living life without the people he loved. He was terrified of dying; there was some sort of existence after death, he knew, because he's been dead before, but it was an empty existence. When he was dead, he couldn't see or hear or smell or even touch anything, but he could feel. While dead, he felt an endless nightmare of pain and darkness which was more empty and more horrible than even his worst moment alive. He fervently hoped that Bae and Belle were in a better place, in death, than he was.
"They have to be," he thought, "I was in hell because I deserve it. I am a monster. They were good…" he felt heavy and hollow at the same time. He knew he failed them. He failed to protect the only two people in the world who ever cared about him. He felt that hopelessness hanging over him. He felt guilty for his son's death because it was magic that killed him, and he felt guilty for Belle's death because it was this "real world", as Emma called it, that killed her. Maybe if he'd stayed in Storybrooke…
He stood.
The truck hit him so hard and made him fly so high that when he landed on the side of the road he broke almost every bone in his body. He lay, mangled, and scared. He knew that he was dying. He tried to move, but he couldn't. He tried to shout for help, but he could hardly breathe. All he could do was stare at the sky, frightened and alone, and wait for death.
His breathing was ragged, a few long minutes later, and he knew that the air he just inhaled would be his last. He held onto it for a few seconds. "Bae," he whispered with his last breath, and as the light was fading from his eyes, a single tear was rolling down his lifeless temple and into his hair on the ground.
The sun set, and rose again, birds of prey pecked at his eyes and his body began to stink. When the sanitation department found his body they took some DNA to check if it matched any missing person's report, but it didn't. No one was looking for him; no one missed him. No one knew of him or cared to find out, and, eventually, his clothes spoiled around his rotting body in a landfill with all the other trash.
***Note: This is what I felt when I was watching "Quiet Minds"**