Rumplestiltskin can pinpoint the exact moment when everything went wrong and for once, it wasn't his fault. Not really.
Belle, on the other hand, never saw it coming.
She walks to the kitchen to begin preparing dinner and discovers, to her surprise, that Rumplestiltskin is already there, pulling a pan of soft, golden rolls from the oven. The comforting smell of bread wafts through the air, mingling with the bouquet of other delicious scents filling the confined space. When she enters the room, he looks guiltily over his shoulder.
"You're home early," she observes with a wry smile. "And making dinner."
He doesn't meet her eyes. "It was a slow day."
On the table are a few covered platters and his eyes follow her as she uncovers each one to inspect their contents. Though not particularly hungry at the moment, Belle's mouth still waters. At the end of the line, a bottle of wine is already set out to breathe. She's seen it before in the back of the wine cellar, dusty and off-limits until now, apparently. Special occasion? "This looks wonderful! But you do know my birthday's already past this year." She eyes him with teasing reproach.
"It is my kitchen. Can I not cook in it from time to time? Without suspicion?" The corner of his mouth pulls into a distracted smile, eyes fixed on a point beside her. Looking so bashful and shy as he does, Belle cannot help but come up behind him, wrapping her arms around his midsection. She presses her cheek to his shoulder. Under her touch she can feel a nearly imperceptible shiver run through his form.
"Well it's very kind of you all the same," she says softly, idly fingering the laces of his waistcoat. Although he looks well in it, he's wearing the black leather suit that always makes him look too sinister for her tastes. "Maybe I could help?"
He doesn't respond immediately, so, feeling deliciously emboldened by his shyness and curious reluctance, she allows her hand to wander to his belt to tug the knot free and loosen his vest's first lace. She feels his breathing quicken a little, prompting her to undo another. And then another.
Belle is glad for their positions, as it prevents him from seeing the blush creeping up her cheeks as she makes a challenge of it, biting her lip as she draws the laces out so very slowly, one by one, daring him to stop her.
She chides herself inwardly for her blushes, for her reluctance to let him see her face even while she teases him. In the past months she has done far more brazen things than play with his laces, although admittedly not here, in the middle of their kitchen, with dinner cooking and the sun still in the sky. That part was different.
Suddenly his hand closes around hers and pulls away her mischievous fingers. In her arms he turns around to stand chest-to-chest with her and, gently framing both sides of her face with his hands, he peers at her face, his expression one of confusion and uncertainty as it always is when in such close proximity to her. His lips part slightly. Belle meets his gaze and her insides quiver.
It was a curious sort of balance, their love, and it had presented its own set of challenges. How far could they go without breaking the curse? How far could they push one another before the denial became unbearable?
For just a moment she thinks he means to kiss her, but then his hands slide to her shoulders and pushes her gently back. Slightly out of breath, he says, "Tell you what. Dinner will be ready in just a bit. No need to trouble yourself. Why don't you go outside and enjoy the air while I finish up in here? I'll come collect you."
Flushed, Belle silently berates herself. Silly girl. Of course he wouldn't, not after last time. She regains herself quickly and manages a smile, but in her voice overcompensating enthusiasm betrays her.
"That sounds perfect."
Apparently once again unable to meet her eyes, Rumplestiltskin returns a vague and unsatisfying smile, expression now distant and troubled. This time it's Belle who shies away guiltily.
"Really, it does," she assures him. "I'll see you at dinner, love."
And she retreats from the kitchen, which suddenly feels too small to accommodate them both.
It's early fall at the Dark Castle. The foliage on the grounds is on the cusp of death, but has yet to change color. Through the open windows in the dining hall, Belle can already smell the first sweet notes of autumn in the air, of change, and it makes her nostalgic for something she cannot quite place. In the sky, a broad pallet of color faintly tints the horizon and Belle cannot help but remark upon it.
"It's going to be a beautiful sunset."
Sitting diagonally to her at the dinner table, Rumplestiltskin's back is to the window. Without even a cursory glance, he agrees with her in a voice soft and distant, working listlessly through his dinner. While Belle appreciates his efforts to not wolf down food as though he's never eaten a hot meal in his life, there is something too mechanical, too disinterested about the way he eats for this to be restraint. His thoughts are clearly elsewhere and from the way he remains dressed in his black leather and not something more comfortable, she gets the feeling he will be leaving the castle again tonight. Something has happened, she can feel it. And knowing Rumplestiltskin as she does, he won't acknowledge the possibility of something perhaps maybe weighing on his mind, even at knife point.
So after a fortifying sip of wine, Belle ventures carefully into conversation. "So what did you do today?"
"Oh, a bit of this and that," he replies with such infuriating vagueness that Belle worries it's going to one of thosedays. But a few seconds later, as though able to read her mind, he mentions offhandedly: "And I stopped by the old royal palace, too."
"How is Her Majes—Regina these days?" she politely asks, grateful for something to work with, though the subject makes her uneasy.
Rumplestiltskin's expression briefly darkens. "Oh, you know. Lovely as always... And it appears she has renounced that silly vendetta against Snow White. One might say she has had a change of heart. She has quite a few on hand, I daresay she swapped for someone else's." Furtively he glances to her face, a thin smile popping into place.
Sometimes she isn't certain when he's joking or not, but all the same Belle rolls her eyes and giggles quietly in spite of herself. "So she's given up on that evil curse?"
His voice is uncharacteristically flat. "Indeed she has."
"I knew you would be able to convince her to change her mind." Tension Belle didn't realize she had releases all through her body. Somehow it's easier to breathe.
"I suspect Maleficent had more to do with that than I did, but we shan't complain, now shall we?"
"It's such a horrible thing, that curse. Taking away all our happy endings like that..." She suppresses a sudden shiver. "I can't imagine something so evil, let alone creating it in the first place."
"Indeed," he blandly agrees and reaches across the table to top off her half-empty glass.
She thanks him quietly, all the while studying his face with a slight frown. "You don't sound terribly disturbed."
"Don't I? You'll forgive me, I've just had other things on my mind."
"You always have things on your mind," she gently chides, but with a smile. "I must confess I haven't been able to sleep much because of it... I kept thinking of what would happen if she'd done it and what would become of us." She stifles a small yawn with the back of her hand.
Rumplestiltskin murmurs something more to the table than to her.
"I'm sorry?" she asks.
"I said, I would have protected you." His brown eyes finally meet hers, forlorn and sad.
"I know you would..." She sustains eye contact as long as he will allow and reaches out to place her smaller hand over his, lily white over rough gold. "There's something troubling you, I can tell. Please, tell me what's wrong."
He stares at their physical contact for a long time, as though intellectually confirming something he cannot feel; staring long enough that Belle feels a surge of rising worry.
"Have you been happy here, Belle?"
"You know I have. Please, you're frightening me. What's going—?"
But he interrupts her, pulling away his hand. "Why don't we finish dinner first, and then I'll tell you." His lips pull back in a bland smile full of insincere cheer.
But Belle has heard this excuse too many times to be fooled. "Only if you promise to tell me exactly that's wrong and don't leave anything out. I don't want vagaries, Rumplestiltskin. I want names, dates, and places. Deal?"
He hesitates, then nods once. "Deal."
They eat in silence for a moment, until suddenly—his demeanor, he excellent wine, the meal, his guiltiness in the kitchen—it all comes together in a stunning flash of clarity, so clear she wonders how she didn't see it before. She stares hard at him. All he's forgotten is the flowers. Worry turns to betrayal.
"Cinderella is still under contract with you, isn't she?" Belle sets down her knife and fork with a clatter. It's not a question; it's an accusation.
He grimaces. Everything else in the room is instantly more interesting than she is. "Belle."
"And she's giving birth tonight." Betrayal turns to exhaustion.
"I'm not at liberty to discuss that, dearie. Client confidentiality and all that." It's the first time she's heard an edge in his voice tonight and she knows she's hit the right nerve.
"It's the worst-kept secret in the kingdom, Rumplestiltskin, and you know it. I cannot believe you're still going through with it. They already think you've abducted Prince Thomas-"
"—which I haven't—" he interjects, testily.
"—Which you haven't—" She's too tired to deal with this again. "—But I promise you that Prince James isn't going to listen to me again. Why can't you just let this go?"
"Because that's not what I do," he says, each consonant over-enunciated and irritable. "She signed the contract."
"Would you do it for me? Because if you don't, you'll be incarcerated again for good this time..."
He responds with stony silence.
"I try to stay out of your business as much as I can—"
"Belle."
"—but there are some things that even I can't ignore."
"Can we not discuss this right now?" A flash of temper and something else, something desperate, colors his words as he interrupts, serving only to embolden her.
Rumplestiltskin won't look at her, his eyes fixed resolutely on the opposing wall, and so she stares hard at his profile as though able to will his attention this direction. "Leave the poor girl alone," she pleads. "Please, try to work out something else with her.. for me. I can't bear for us to be separated."
Immediately, and to her surprise, he mutters, "I'll consider it," morose and miserable.
"Thank you," she says, but deep down she knows it will do no good. Something terrible is going to happen, she can feel it. He won't look at her and he has stopped eating entirely. The guilty resolve is written so clearly on his face that she could slap him. In spite of her supplication, he has every intention of going out tonight and there's nothing she can do, except pray he'll be struck down by common sense before someone gets hurt.
After drinking down the last of her wine, she informs him shortly that she's having an early night and makes briskly for the door, skirts rustling. "I hope to see you in the morning, Rumplestiltskin."
Her hand is on the handle when she hears him softly call her name. She turns to back to look at him, expectant.
"I—" But his voice falters. "...Goodnight."
"I love you, too," Belle replies with a note of exasperation and leaves. The door still closes more forcefully than necessary. He must learn.
Rumplestiltskin takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, lips pressed into a thin line.
It takes a moment, but it soon comes: the sound of a distant thud in the hallway.
Then he pushes away his untouched goblet of wine in favor of a hip flask, the contents of which he gulps down in its entirety.
Belle was right—it is a stunning sunset. But for Rumplestiltskin, it's a deadline fast approaching, merciless and finite. He has no time left to appreciate it.
Beneath the fiery crimson sky, he hunches over a prone, feminine form in the back garden. Her dress is torn open to expose her pert breasts to the evening air and a stone block shoved beneath her torso makes them thrust obscenely in the air. A silk kerchief obscures her face from view; it shifts slightly with each slow, deep breath she takes. He toys anxiously with a long-bladed knife and, almost regretfully, he softly murmurs: "I imagine we should have talked about this but, Belle, there simply wasn't time and, let's be honest, it wasn't up for discussion."
It's over with the flash of a knife. Bright red bursts from a savage ribbon slashed ear-to-ear across her throat and continues to pulse out in decreasing intervals. Rumplestiltskin had forgotten just how much blood was in a person, even a small one. Gods, it's everywhere. He can smell it coating the inside of his nostrils. Droplets bead and drip down the leather on his thighs. It runs thick over his hands. It stains her clothes. Numbly he watches her life and color wane to nothing before his eyes, soaking silently into the grass beneath them like water. It's happening so fast.
And then, just like that, in a moment, Belle is dead, irreversibly gone to where no magic can bring her back. And even if it could, he doubts she would come willingly. Not to him. But it's done now.
With a shaking hand, he begins by dragging the blade through the thin flesh and muscle of her chest, shoulder-to-shoulder then throat to navel. Having already exsanguinated from the throat, nothing really seeps from the cuts. It makes the work a little easier. Rumplestiltskin's brow furrows as he peels the skin back, thrusting the knife beneath the tissue where necessary. "This was never supposed to happen, never meant to be like this—not at all, never like this, no. You see, Regina was meant to enact the Curse like a good little girl—sorry, dearie, I have fingers in every pie—and then everything would have been fine. Better, even. I know you hated the idea of the Curse, but oh, you would have liked where we were going. A land without magic... But that worthless soul!"
With a snarl, he stabs the knife into the ground as though it were royal flesh and not harmless earth. "She told me she was willing to go 'as far as it takes' but lo, upon the eleventh hour, what do I hear? Oh dearie dearie dear, Her Former Majesty can't actually do it, can't cut out the heart of the thing she loves most! " Rumplestiltskin magics a towel from the air and scrubs furiously at his sticky palms only to toss it aside and snatch up a pair of shears. The towel evaporates into purple smoke as it hits the grass.
"I was never meant to bear this burden. Have I not suffered enough?" he snarls, spitting consonants. Her collar bone snaps loudly under the crushing power of the shears. One by one, a few ribs follow, but more quietly. They're unexpectedly pliable. "Sometimes I wish you'd never come here and complicated everything. Why didn't you go away when you had the chance? Why didn't you just stay away? If you'd had any sense at all, I would not have been forced to-!"
Rumplestiltskin stops short, looking to his sky, his throat closing. Suddenly he's breathing harder and faster than he should. A moment is required to regain his composure. It's a moment before he can speak and when he does, it's pinched and keening. "I warned you, dearie. I warned you, that no one can ever love me and I meant it. Because these wee estrangements always follow. If you'd never kissed me, if you'd never loved me, this wouldn't hurt so much. Gods, you can't imagine how much this hurts. But you chose me, you chose the monster, you chose this danger! None of this is my fault!" In panting silence, he makes quick work of the last several ribs, shears squeaking and bones cracking while crickets sing in the dark. When he's done, the right side of her ribcage comes away easily with a quick tug. He flings it over his shoulder where it lands gently in the grass, pearly and pink.
"You see, this has happened before," he murmurs quietly, plucking up the knife once more. He wipes the blade free of blood and mud on her dress before carefully slitting through lung and tissue. "And I can't disappoint my boy again. It's cowardice to shy from sacrifice. That's how I lost him in the first place, you see. I love you, dearie, but... this is for the greater good. You're a brave girl. You'd understand, I'm sure."
Belle's heart is still warm and supple when he finally prises it from her chest. Blood oozes from the severed arteries and drips from his elbow as he holds the precious flesh at eye level, staring blankly at his prize. In the darkness, it's black and wet. His skin itches where blood has begun to thickly congeal.
What a relief to finally have this done.
True love is the most powerful magic of all. Just imagining the potential of a Dark Curse fueled by the heart of his makes Rumplestiltskin lightheaded with wonder. Could it even be broken?
But he could dwell on the implications later. He wasted more time with dinner than was conscionable and he still has so much work to do before the night is out, preparations to make. Rumplestiltskin could nurse his broken heart later, if there was anything left to patch together when this was through anyway. One more hole might have finally destroyed it for good. But again, problems he must address later.
It's just one last wicked deed, Bae, and then he'll renounce it for good. You'll see.
An oncoming gale greets the churning cloud of destruction that erupts from the fire at Rumplestiltskin's feet. Amid the sweet, crackling smell of ozone and magic is rot and smoke. Lightning tears blindingly bright across the blackened sky while thunder rumbles deafening and dangerous in the distance. It burns the nose to breathe. In all its history, the Enchanted Forest has never seen a storm of this kind nor will ever see one like it again.
With dwindling interest Rumplestiltskin watches it all for a moment, then drops down exhausted into the grass. All that was left to do was wait. Waiting he is good at.
On this most terrible of nights, at least he is not entirely alone. Belle's magically-mended body lies beside him, looking as she ought to at this hour of the night, making it very easy for the imp to imagine that she is peacefully sleeping, albeit a little too still, a little too stiff. Carefully he gathers her up into his arms so her head rests upon his shoulder and gently he rocks, cheek pressed against her hair while the wind whips and screams around them. Their time left together is precious. Very soon he won't have even this. More than once he presses his lips to hers and slowly kisses her unresisting, cold, blue mouth, savoring the contact he deludes himself into feeling.
Regina will suffer exquisitely for what she has done to them. This he promises Belle, all the while twining her soft hair between his fingers until the world decays around them.
It will all be worth it in the end.
Prologue to a Silent Hill/OUAT crossover.
A knowledge of Silent Hill will not be necessary to follow it.