They had guarded the town hall.
They had always guarded the town hall; two identical, grey, dusty old statues, stained by weather and wear, on either side of the tall mahogany doors. Long, thin arms extended from their shoulders, palms facing skyward, covering their eyes. Eyes that were colourless, and stared at nothing, at no one. If not for the emptiness of their stares, one might even think they were in prayer. Each one had a floor-length robe sculpted onto their bodies, secured at the waist by a thin cord. Great, feathered wings grew from their backs, suspended mid-flight. And, like all statues, they did not move.
Until now, at least.
She notices their absence even in her peripheral vision. Belle takes several paces backward, until she is standing directly in front of the now unguarded doorway. No one walks in or out of the doors today, or most days, unless there is an event or an urgent town meeting. Carefully, she circles the entryway a few times, staring at the empty space where the statues had once and always stood, studying it as if it were an optical illusion. Or, perhaps, wondering if they had ever been there at all. After all, why would a statue go missing? They bore no plaques of honour, no names in memory – they were just there. Always. Nobody was hurt by them disappearing. In fact, passers-by seldom even noticed their absence. What would anybody want with them?
Belle stops pacing when the hairs on the back of her neck begin to prickle. She senses somebody watching her. She looks over her shoulder and sees Archie out with Pongo. He wears the same curious face that she does – it's why they get along so well. Mutual curiosity is a powerful thing.
"It's not just me, is it?" Belle asks, sure that someone as philosophical as Archie will agree with her.
"No, no it's not," he replies comfortingly, biting his lip. He leans slightly on his umbrella in thought. The disappearance makes him feel uneasy, almost. Then again, so did the mysterious statues in the first place. What do you make of it, Belle?"
"I don't know. Why would somebody move those heavy statues? And how could they have done it without anybody noticing?" She's perplexed, her hands on her hips.
Archie purses his lips in thought. "Why do you assume somebody's taken them?"
She scoffs, the suggestion ludicrous in her mind. "Well, isn't it obvious? Statues don't just move themselves."
He shrugs. "It's unlikely, yes. But remember where you are. Storybrooke is perhaps the most unlikely place in all the realms, capable of holding magic in a world that does not tolerate it. It exists in spite of itself, in spite of its curse being broken and its residents being entirely from another world. I wouldn't go so far as to say that statues don't move."
Belle is silent for a moment, taking in his words. Eventually, he just turns and ushers Pongo in the general direction of his office.
"But where would they go?" she shouts at him. He does not reply, just twirls his umbrella absentmindedly and begins to whistle an unfamiliar tune.
She combs through pages and pages of knowledge when she arrives at the library. In the past, books have almost always held the answer, but this is different. She has learned that books can solve almost any mystery if you read the right one. She hopes that she has the right one in her possession.
Her books mention gargoyles and gravestones and monuments and sculptures, but none of them have a hidden agenda, and none of them spontaneously disappear.
"Gargoyles," she reads aloud to herself, enjoying the sound of her words bouncing back at her in the emptiness, "are creatures that have been known to adorn old buildings such as libraries, meeting halls, bell towers and places of worship for centuries. They are statues that mostly possess grotesque faces with snouts and sharp teeth. They are fitted with spouts and used to prevent rainwater from travelling down the walls of structures."
They do all these things without ever moving. They stay right in their place, just like they're supposed to. She continues reading:
"There are some legends, instances in which witnesses have claimed that the gargoyles can speak, but this remains unproven and largely disbelieved." Belle frowns.
"So they can speak, but they can't run away?"
Hours in, and she's not certain why she's so fixated on this, but she senses something odd about this whole thing. Especially Archie's comment, and the utter lack of factual information. Is she seeing conspiracies that are not actually there?
Belle closes the book with a heavy thud and sighs, running a hand through her hair. Maybe she is just imagining it, and maybe there is a simple explanation. Her stomach grumbles and she rubs it impatiently. She hasn't eaten all morning, and she'll be here for hours longer, for her research has messed up what little organisational system the books had.
Half-heartedly, she lifts a stack of three thick encyclopaedias and carries them over to the chest-high shelf they came from, turning her back to the window.
The window outside which stands a stone-like figure, with its hands no longer covering its eyes.
She places each book in its exact place, even ensuring (albeit pointlessly) that the spines of the books stand flat beside each other. She runs her finger along the shelf, collecting only minute amounts of dust in her wake and, satisfied, turns around to tend to the fiction section.
She barely takes a step before freezing.
One of the statues, eyes hollow and haunting, bore into hers from outside the window and she lets out a panicked shriek, clamping her hand over her mouth in shock. Her chest heaves, inhaling and exhaling rapidly, and once her heart rate has settled, she heads for the door, watching the statue all the time.
This has to be a trick, she thinks. Somebody must just be trying to scare me.
Its once expressionless face is pressed up against the window, and though it's just stone, she is almost certain she sees a predator where she did not before. She could have sworn it had its eyes covered, but now it looks right at her, its face expressionless and yet terrifying. Its hands have remained in the same position – only its head has moved, as if it had spotted her and now ceases to move its gaze from its target.
With careful, reluctant side-steps, she heads for the door, feeling entrapped all of a sudden. She needs to get out. She needs to run. She needs help.
Belle crosses the threshold from the inside of the library to the outside and nearly trips on her heels, for though her eyes follow the statue, by the time the door has stopped obstructing her view, its position is different again. One of its arms has lifted to shoulder height and is extended fully in her direction, one long, clawed finger pointing straight at her. Its mouth is open the slightest bit, wrinkling the texture of its face and showing a mouth full of razor-sharp fangs. Its wings are spread just a little wider, ready to unfurl fully and take flight.
Too scared to move, to run, to even look away, she blindly reaches into her coat pocket, fumbling for her phone. She does not know who she hopes to call – Rumple? Emma? She curses to herself, because she finds nothing, and notes that she must have left it on the counter inside. Droplets of sweat start to form at her brow and she feels utterly paralysed. Her knowledge is failing her, and that's mostly because she has none. She doesn't know what this thing is, or how to get rid of it. All she knows is that she's scared, and that this thing, whatever it is, is going to move the second she looks away. She knows it is going to come for her.
Oh, and there is one more thing she knows: over the statue's shoulder, in the corner of her sight, she knows there is a man, a tall man, with a brown pinstripe suit, wild, unruly hair and long legs pumping as fast as they can to get to her. He is calling out to her.
"RUN!"
"It's – it's after me!" Belle protests, her hands shaking. She squeezes them into fists, trying to suppress her fear.
"It won't move, I promise! Just go!" the man replies, stopping a little way down the road. He's panting, and she wonders how far he has run. Still, she stays frozen in place. He resumes his running then, and within moments, he's closer to her than the angel is, coming between them.
"Every time I look away, it gets closer," she tells him, her voice quivering uncontrollably. "What is it?"
"It's trouble," the man replies, edging closer to her, trying very hard not to startle her. Very gently, he places a warm hand on her shoulder, his mouth close to her ear.
She gasps at the touch. "Now go."
She's never seen him before in her life, but for some unearthly, unknowable reason, she believes him. She kicks off her stilettos, picks them up with one hand, and sprints along the main street, ripping the feet of her stockings to shreds.
Belle rounds a corner, heart thumping in the most liberating yet horrifying way, when she comes to such a sudden halt that her feet begin to bleed and her knees give, and she falls backwards onto the pavement, her hands barely steadying her. For right in front of her, mouth wide open like a creature about to engulf its pray, and claws extended ready to swipe, the other missing statue stands.
She scrambles to her feet and staggers backward, hurrying back in the direction she came from. She keeps her eyes on the creature the whole time, and yet when she blinks it only grows closer and more menacing. But how? Nothing of this world – or any that she knows of, for that matter – can move that quickly.
She's quickly losing her sense of direction, so she calls out hopefully to the man in the pinstriped suit. "I … I found the other one!"
"Oh, good," he replies, his voice low and tinged with just the slightest hint of sarcasm. From how well she hears him, she deduces that he can't be more than a few feet away.
With one last step, she collides into his the side of his body.
"Sorry," she mutters.
"I thought I told you to run," he says, holding up a metallic device with a blue light on the end of it like it was a loaded pistol.
"That didn't really work out," she replies.
"Right, well, since you're here." He clicks his tongue in thought. See over there – don't look away – on that block diagonal from us, what's there?"
Belle squints, both in confusion and because her eyes sting from staring. "I a park."
"Describe it," he orders.
"Why?"
"Because if I'm right, you're about to witness one of my very good ideas," he promises. And considering the predicament they are in, she decides that might be among her best options.
"Uh, well, there are swings and a playground and in the middle there's this big white – "
"Gazebo!" he finishes for her, his voice full of glee. She's surprised just how overjoyed he is about it. "Oh, that is brilliant. Right, now tell me this: how fast can you run?"
"What?" She's too petrified and out of breath for these sorts of games.
"Around the block to the park. You come in one side, I'll come in the other."
"Again, why?"
"Have you got a better idea?"
"Right."
"Now, circle the statue till you're on the other side, and then on my count," she hears the smile forming on his face, "run for your life."
"Are you sure it will – "
He does not even let her finish the sentence. "You don't wanna know the answer to that."
She does as he says, mirroring his actions as best she can and slowly circling the statue, because he's right: she doesn't have a better idea and apparently he does.
"One!" he calls, and she gulps in mouthfuls of oxygen.
"Two!" She clenches her fists harder and bends her knees.
"Three!" They turn and they run, stone creatures right on their heels.
Belle has to turn two corners before she reaches the park, but her stature is an advantage for speed. She does not look back and that, in the end, is what helps her make it to where the dewy grass is cool on her sore feet and where the gazebo is only a few yards away. The man is running towards her and she keeps running, only barely registering his final hollered instruction.
"GET DOWN."
They reach the middle of the gazebo together, and he extends a hand to her. Breathless, she reaches out for him, and he gets her wrist, pulling her to the ground roughly. She collapses into his arms and waits for a crash, an explosion, a flicker of lights, something. But there is only nothingness. She resumes hearing the sounds of life around her – cars passing by, kids and their parents playing in the park (seemingly unfazed by their little display), and loudest of all, the sound of their harsh breaths and the reassuring thud of blood pumping through their veins.
His breath is warm, and it tickles her cheek, leaving gooseflesh. His strong arms are wrapped around her and endless moments later, she realises that her face is hidden from the danger, pressed against the right side of his chest, where she is sure that she can hear a heartbeat.
"What happened?" she asks, still trembling a little. He sits up a little straighter and momentarily releases his grip on her to adjust his tie.
"Looking at each other. That's the trick – you've got to get them looking at each other." He slowly rises to his feet and steadily pulls her up with him. "Don't touch them. Just to be safe," he warns before climbing over the edge of the gazebo and cocking his head for her to follow, which she does, shortly after dropping her shoes onto the ground to free up her hand. It's hard to do in a skirt but she manages it with some degree of grace. Or, at least, enough that the pinstriped man is impressed by it.
"I don't think we've been properly introduced," she says, combing back the windblown curls that have strayed from their styled positions, and brushing the dust and dirt from her rumpled clothes.
"Quite right," he says, extending a hand. "I'm the Doctor." Belle is fairly sure that they just risked their lives several times over, so his wide smile, too big for his face, looks terribly out of place, but in a very endearing way. She likes it. "Just the Doctor."
"Belle," she replies with a sweet expression, and his grin widens even more. Then he releases her hand and gives her a polite nod. "Well, Belle, it's been a blast, but I really must be getting back to – "
"Hold on!" she protests, her face and voice firm all of a sudden. "You're not leaving without explaining to me what those things are. And why they came to Storybrooke!"
"Storybrooke? Is that where we are?" He circles himself clumsily, looking up at the sky and frowning. He pulls the metal device from his coat pocket again and presses a switch that makes the end light up. It makes a strange noise when he does it. "Blimey, have a look at these readings! Never seen anything like it!"
Either he's deflecting, or he's actually incredibly interested, and she's not sure which, but after scraping too close to death for her liking, she's feeling particularly impatient.
"Doctor," she says, almost stunning herself at the way his name sounds on her tongue. It sounds almost familiar. "Tell me."
He looks at his bare wrist as if a watch were there, a joke which sadly flies over her head, and then shoves his hands into his pockets and exhales, puffing his cheeks out. "Oldest creatures in the Universe, those."
"You mean they're actually living creatures?" she asks, having assumed it was some form of black magic. Apparently, though, since that device of his looks hardly anything like the few wands she's encountered in her lifetime, magic is not in the Doctor's wheelhouse.
"Yep. They're called Weeping Angels. 'Cept they're not really weeping, they're just covering their eyes."
"Why?"
"They've got this thing – call it a defense mechanism – called a quantum lock. When any living thing looks at them, they turn to stone. And you can't – "
It is Belle's turn to cut him off: "You can't kill a stone."
He looks a little baffled. "Right. Anyway, if you get them looking at each other, it creates a cycle. They can't ever move. Just statues now, really."
"What do they do to you?"
"They just zap you back in time and consume the energy you would have used by living. You end up living your life a century or so earlier than you were meant to. Well, I say a century but you can never really be sure. Depends on the angel. Not such a bad way to go, if you think about it, provided nothing else gets you along the way." He pauses, having rambled himself into deep thought. He shakes it off a few seconds later. "Well, best be off."
Swiftly, the Doctor begins walking away. She is immediately puzzled. "Where are you going? Doctor?" Though she cannot see it, there is a smile on his face again. He wants her to follow, and follow she does.
The Doctor heads for Granny's, which is right nearby, and walks around the building to the back entrance. She has been there before, but never has she seen what she sees now.
A tall, blue box stands proudly, its front windows lit up. The Doctor pats it almost lovingly. Across the top there is a black banner that says "POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX", and there is a light that does not flash. One white, tattered sign on the door provides what Belle assumes are instructions or information but she is too far away to read it. He leans his weight on it, crossing his legs nonchalantly.
"My, uh, means of transport. You like it?"
She does not reply, just shakes her head. "You're … a marvel, Doctor. Your heart beats on the wrong side of your chest. You take a strange blue box with you everywhere you go. You claim to know about alien races and you carry that blue thing!" Looking a little hurt, he pulls out the blue thing in question.
"It's a sonic screwdriver!" he beams at her, speaking at a rapid pace. "And I don't just claim to know a lot about alien races, I do know a lot about alien races. That strange blue box you are referring to is called the TARDIS. T-A-R-D-I-S. Stands for 'Time and Relative Dimension in Space'. It's my spaceship. Oh, and my heart? I've got two of them because I'm an alien. Any questions?"
Belle's eyes are so wide that there is white totally surrounding her irises. She tilts her head and peers at him curiously for a long while. Then, finally, she asks: "What's a sonic screwdriver?"
He lets out a guffaw. "I knew it! I knew I liked you!" She smiles girlishly and feels the faintest pink blush rise in her cheeks.
"What do you do in there?"
"Just travel. Hop from place to place. You know, the life." He rocks back and forth on his heels.
She looks sympathetic. "And you're all on your own?" She knows what that is like. More than once since getting out of the asylum she has felt lonely. But in the end, she has Rumple, and others. He, apparently, does not.
"Don't have to be," he says, shrugging, the corner of his mouth turning upward ever so slightly.
"You … you mean … me?" Belle gestures to herself. "I … I don't understand."
"Come," he tells her. "With me. In the TARDIS." He gives the wooden box a gentle tap with the palm of his hand.
She takes a step away from him in surprise. "Why would you want me? You don't even know me. I don't even know you!"
"Oh, you will," he reassures her, grinning and twitching his eyebrows at her. She wonders just how many women he has reassured with that same grin. But then again, he did save her life.
"What makes you so sure?" There it is again, that playful nature. She wonders just how he can bring it out in her so easily.
"Don't tell me you've never looked up at the stars and wished you were up there, looking down on earth. Don't tell me you've never wanted to see whole planets come and go from existence like that." He snaps his fingers. "You could live forever in any number of days. I could show you, you know. Every supernova, every star, every species. Any time, any place. We could explore them together. If you like."
Her blank expression has transformed to one of curiosity and fantasy. She wants to trust him. She's known him barely an hour and yet she can feel his heart – hearts – reaching out to hers. A marvel he may be, but in the end, he's just another wandering soul. She could ask him any number of things – why he has two hearts, why his spaceship is a telephone box – but in the end she settles on, "Why me?"
It's important, she decides. Why choose a stranger to cheat death with across the stars?
"I knew you were one of the good ones."
"How?"
"The good ones, they listen when I tell them to run. Even if it takes a little persuasion. Pep talk, hand to hold, that kind of thing." He smiles that smile again, this time small and understated, and she laughs softly. But she says nothing. Her silence must translate to him as rejection, though, because he inhales deeply and stares at his shoes. "I mean, you could stay here. I'm sure you've got a life, a family. Such a waste, though."
"A waste of what?" she asks, almost expecting an insult.
"Heroism," he replies, and that stuns her. "You saved the town today, Belle. And let me tell you: Weeping Angels? Not exactly a minor issue. Imagine the lives you could change, across all of time and space."
Belle presses her lips together and looks over her shoulder, in the direction of the pawn shop.
"So you do have a family," he observes. "Or at least, a special someone?"
"And you have a time machine."
He tilts his chin up and frowns. "So?"
"So," she finishes, her face almost mischievous. "You can get me back here before they've got time to miss me, right?"
His cheer is loud and full. "You bet! We'll have an adventure, Belle, just you wait. And you'll be back in time for tea!" The Doctor pulls from his pocket a silver key and inserts it into the lock on the door. "Allons-y, Belle!"