A/N-This would take place during the curse while Belle is locked in the basement.
Belle remembered words. Long, round words that hung heavy on her tongue and refused to pass her lips. Vowels and humming sounds lingered in the back of her throat, and sudden hisses of air between teeth came to her in the dark of night but never in the right order. They were soft, round words that roll her lips together and echoed round and round and round like the wheels she sees skirting by her window.
Were they wheels?
Too sharp a sound, and how does she know they're wheels? They sound like wheels, like the little spinning things on the bottom of the meal cart that rolls through with soup and medicine and medicine and medicine rolls just right off the tongue.
Round medicine.
Under the tongue so they can't watch her spit it out and grind the paste into the stones as ink. Gritty, white words smeared across the underside of her feet to keep her busy. The round little pills with round letters and a bitter, medicinal aftertaste build up and up under her tongue even though they never stay. That taste and taste and taste.
The missing one is sharp. She knew it was sharp and quick, and she hissed out the sounds, but that was the wrong—
Ah.
Sound. The hiss of air between her two front teeth shook her hands.
She remembered a word. One long word that was soft and rolling until the hiss of air between her teeth and sudden stop at the end.
"Roummstes," she hummed.
The click, click, click of wheels on the concrete rolled to the door. She was missing a sound, a very important sound. A key clicked in a lock.
"Cut," she said to the wall. She brushed a finger down a crack in the plaster.
The door creaked open and the nurse held out a cup of pills.
"Swallow them in front of me like a good girl."
Belle traced the rim.
"Your cups not right," Belle said.
The nurse raised an eyebrow and her nostrils flared. A syringe rattled across the cart. Belle threw back her head and tucked the pills beneath her tongue. Bitter, bitter, bitter pills and all the wrong sounds were all she had, but Belle smiled at the nurse and handed back the cup.
"Open your mouth."
'Roumstescut,' Belle thought. So many words and none of them were right, and even the things that weren't words were wrong. They were all jumbled up beneath her skin.
Oh.
"Now, lift up your tongue."
Rumpelstiltskin.
Belle remembered words. Long, round words that reminded her of the tiny red holes circled by black bruises in the crook of her elbow and left a bitter, bitter taste on her tongue.