He missed her.
Oh, how he missed her.
Why did she grab onto his heart so tightly? She was only a servant girl. A servant girl who was kind, intelligent, beautiful inside and out, and she loved him.
She loved him.
And he loved her too.
But how could he allow himself to ruin her life like that? He could not offer anything close to what her suitors from her father's kingdom could. He was not the man for her. He wasn't a man at all. He was a monster.
And that is why he let her go. But he didn't know of her fate. The Queen had visited a few months after his Belle had been casted away. She brought news of death. Her death. Belle's death.
That wasn't supposed to happen. She was supposed to be better off without him. She was supposed to return to her father and have the best life she possibly could. Fall in love. Get married. Have children. Not die.
To make matters worse, it had been done by her father's hand. At her return, it had been thought that she was tainted, that the Dark One had ruined her. He sent clerics to cleanse her soul. Horrid forms of torture were instilled. And she couldn't take it anymore. She threw herself off a tower. All because they thought that she had been impure of soul. And it was his fault.
He was angry. Angry at himself. Angry at King Maurice. A parent should love their child unconditionally, not bestow this kind of fate.
And now as he stared at his old wooden spinning wheel, he tried to forget. He wanted to forget his pain, her pain. But he couldn't.
Not when he could still hear her voice.
Rumpelstiltskin
That was indeed her voice, but that was impossible. She was dead. She couldn't call for him.
Rumpelstiltskin, the beautiful voice rang again. This time, it was a little more scared and less confident than the one before.
A cloud of purple magic engulfed him as he sent himself to the location of the voice he longed so much to hear again. He appeared in a damp, cold, stone cell. Chalk marks were aligned in tallies about the walls. A hard slab of stone was chained to the wall in a horizontal position, to serve as a bed he supposed.
"Rumpelstiltskin?" she breathed shakily.
He twirled around to see her. A beautiful girl with matted hair and hardly appropriate clothing for the conditions that she was in. She sat on the floor, propped against the wall and looked up at him with hopeful eyes.
His Belle.
Alive
"B-B-Belle?" he stuttered.
She stood up and closed the space between them.
"I knew you would come!" she said with tears streaming down her cheeks as she threw herself into her True Love's arms.
Rumpelstiltskin, still in shock, reacted with holding onto her as tight as he could.
"How- I- I thought you were dead," he said , "Oh, my darling Belle, what has happened to you?"
"Do you know where we are?"
He took a moment to ponder this. He knew exactly where they were
"The Queen's castle," he said with gritted teeth as he released he slightly.
Belle nodded. "She captured me a few moments after I decided that I was going to come back to the Dark Castle."
"How long ago was that?"
"About a week after I left."
"Belle, that was six months ago."
"Yes, well…" she said looking down.
"Why didn't you call for me sooner?"
"I couldn't find the courage to do so. I thought you might not even hear me and I couldn't risk my sanity by you not answering."
She smiled warmly and then hugged him again. "Can we go home?" she asked.
"Of course, my dear, of course. But first, I must pay a visit to our dear friend, Regina," he said darkly.
"And do what?" she asked skeptically.
"Well, to begin, she told me that you had died after you returned to your father's kingdom. And now I found out that you have been alive all this time, and imprisoned by her," he snarled.
"Rumple," she said calmly as she brought her hands up to his face, "You can't give in. Promise me you won't give into your hate. Promise me that we can be together."
Rumpelstiltskin paused for a moment before letting out a sigh. "She will not get away this. Belle, what she did to you- to me-.."
"She will pay her own price," Belle interrupted, "maybe not now, or anytime soon but she will."
Rumpelstiltskin held out his arm for her. "Well, shall we?"
Even after everything that happened the last few months, all she could do was smile as she linked her arm with her true love's and was whisked away back to the place she had called home almost a year.
A/N Hey guys! Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think:) And I promise, I will try to keep up with this story, unlike many of my previous ones. If I'm gone for more than a week, started sending hate mail or something and get my butt in gear lol Hope you enjoyed the first chapter and feel free to leave suggestions.