Disclaimer: Once Upon A Time and it's characters are not owned by me. No money is being made.
AN – Because I couldn't decide there are two versions of this fic. This one is an AU in which the events concerning Rumplestiltskin and Belle in Skin Deep take place almost 300 years before the other events that we see in Fairytale Land, but is meant to be laid out in the present followed by a series of flashbacks before coming back to the present again. The next version sticks to cannon all the way up until after the Season 1 finale and does not alternate between present and past tense.
I've written quite a few things before, but this is my first time writing for this fandom and I'm pretty nervous about it. I would love to get your feedback, especially concerning my characterization.
What Comes After and Before
Her imprisonment within the Queens' castle has changed her, made her into someone that is the same, and yet different from his Belle. Before, at the Dark Castle, she had not been very particular about color. Oh she had liked it of course, had marveled at the vividly bright hues of the sunset and enjoyed them in the tapestries on the stone walls as well as appreciated them in her own wardrobe. Then, however, she hadn't really cared what color dress she wore, and didn't give the sunset more then a few minutes look at the most. Now, in this cursed place they all have been brought to thanks in part to his own hand, she always has to be surrounded by color. Crimson red walls in the kitchen, a pastel pink couch in the living room , brilliant blue throw rugs in the attic library, lime green coffee mugs and thick yellow towels, soft gray blankets on their bed. She likes to wear brown shirts splattered with white and blue polka dots, a dress shirt of pale lavender, a white sundress splashed with brilliant rainbow hues, shiny black pumps, or butter yellow sandals on her feet.
The garden behind their house is a rainbow of color. Roses of every hue have all but enveloped the small space, velvet petals of crimson and pink and white and yellow and blue and so many others he has trouble naming them all climb their way up the white wooden arches, envelop the chain link fence, and sit snugly in place in the bushes and hedges in the middle of the yard and along the back of the house. The dark green vines along the hedges and fence are almost obliterated by the fragrant blooms, as are the bushes. Every day Belle tends to them, and when she comes inside after pulling weeds, watering , or pruning thorns she often has emerald leaves stuck in her chocolate curls or small scratches that dribble scarlet blood as well as a stray petal clinging to her clothing adds an extra hue. She doesn't mind the excess color, and he thinks she has never looked quite as lovely.
It matters not to her which shade she wears or surrounds them with and he is more then willing to oblige her, for in that cell the Queen's cell there was no color. There had been only darkness. Darkness so deep, so black that she could not see so much as the size of the cell, let alone the bright crimson of the blood that she could feel trickling down her arm.
Their bed is not what one would expect the daughter of a Lord, the lover of the Dark One, and wife of Mr. Gold to posses. The bed is as hard as a rock and flatter then a board, so solid you could have been laying on the stone floor of the dudgeons of their castle. For those three months of his imprisonment in those miserable mines, - three months that had, to her, felt like three decades - she had slept on a cold and damp stone slab, only a thin pallet of straw between her and the slimly and unforgiving surface.
When they and everyone else had first arrived in this land she had been unable to sleep in the soft and luxurious bed that the curse had provided for them. She had slept curled up in a blanket on the rug beside the bed. Now, she can sleep on something other then the floor. The catch is that it has to be almost as hard as that stone had been. She can't sleep on anything else.
Noise is a strange one. During the day she must have an abundance of it: the radio playing softly, a mop squeaking, the rumble of cars outside the open window, birds chirping, a fire crackling, even the slight rustle that comes from turning the pages of a book. At night however, all she can tolerate is the sound of his breathing, his heartbeat, and occasionally his voice. Nothing more, nothing less. That cell had been sound proof. She couldn't hear the guards, the squeak of the rodents that she could feel around her nor the slide of the magically reinforced deadbolt as it was slid from it's lock. The only thing that reached her ears had been the soft sounds of her own breath and the steady thump of her heart. Her voice appeared rarely, expect in screams that she could no longer contain.
The scars are the worst. He doesn't know how she obtained them. The guards? That pathic wolf raised Huntsman – turned bedwarmer of the Queens'? Perhaps from Regina? (and he swears to God that he will rip that fucking bitch apart with his bare hands if Belle suffered so much as a scratch from her fingernail) Had a few self induced?
She never will say. This is not, he learns, because she won't, but rather that she can't. The memories have been erased from her mind, completely obliterated. He can not tell if it is due to magical means inflicted by the Queen, the result of the curse, or if it is simply the work of her own mind. Not in this world. Not without magic at any rate.
Her scars cover her body, crisscrossing and layering over her arms and legs, back and stomach, wrists and neck and feet. Some are raised and thick, others are thin and smooth. The color ranges from bright red to pale pink to snow white. Some markings he can identify: that one from a knife, this one was brought about be a whip, this…. from fire, these…. from fingernails. He has no idea where others came from. He's not completely sure weather or not that matters.
Belle is not self conciesses about them in front of others, strangely enough, wearing dresses and shorts that show her legs, tops that expose her arms or neck. When she notices eyes fixed upon her or catches the fleeting sound of a stifled gasp as a mark that had previously gone unnoticed is exposed that courage she possesses in almost an overabundance no matter the reality will make itself known.
It is the same courage that, in their world when he had still been her monstrous master, had allowed her to joke with him, to smile and laugh, to see through him in a way no one had ever done. It made her show her anger and disapproval, didn't allow her to cower before him and was what earned his respect and what made him feel the first stirrings of love before anything else. That courage is one of the things that forced her to realize that she had fallen in love with her dark master, what made her come back that time he had sent her away, fully expecting to never see her again even as he had watched out the window for hours and waited with baited breath hoping that he was wrong.
It is the same courage that she called upon to revel to him, as they sat at his spinning wheel, that she had lost a child as well – A daughter, the result of a 17 year olds' natural curiosity and lack of knowdgle. A daughter – Claire – that had been born with dark mocha skin and eyes (one of brown and one of green) that had marked her as the devil's child. A daughter that had tried to live in the barn with ducklings, had loved mud and spiders and red dresses, had been afraid of geese and would always crawl into bed with her mother or grandfather at night and who smelled like rain. A daughter whom had been killed at the age of five by reglious zealots that had existed amongst her father's guard.
In their world it is the same courage that gave him the courage to admit his love for her after a year in her presence and from that point on they continue to learn about each other, take meals together, read side by side and make love and kiss (although never once for their lips touch for this is True Love and he has told her about Bae, how he came about his powers, what would happen if their lips were to meet, and his determation to create the Curse and so even though she doesn't like the idea of a curse that will damn them all she understands because she would give anything to see her daughter again).
He would say it was that courage that made her stay with him even after her father had died and that war had long since ended and he gave the option of leaving, why she stayed by his side for 50, 100, 256 years all the while with never a wrinkle nor gray hair in sight thanks to the magic of their castle as well as the magical gifts that he unknowingly gave her that day when she fell into his arms. He would say that, but by then she had become forever embedded within the depths of his soul (well, whatever he'd had left of it), just as he knows that he had become embedded within hers. So maybe that wasn't courage after all.
When he still had green skin and black claws and scales, and she smooth and unmarred skin it was that courage that had allowed her to learn an art of which he was the master, an art that was both respected and feared by all beings that did not naturally possess it.
Magic.
Throughout many decades of study she does indeed learn it. Learns that no magic (not those of fairies nor witches and not even his own) is naturally black or white but rather verifying shades of gray, learns that it is the intention and application of the wielder that makes the hue – the very nature of the magic – to shift in either direction. She learns that magic is alive in the simplest sense of the word, that it does not like to be wrongfully contained nor abused or made to change it's nature. That when it is it will fight – will wither and twist and claw and seek to destroy the one whom is forcing this upon it – and that if the wielder succeeds in their efforts the magic will become like poison (regardless of the hue it now holds). The magic will fill said wielder with inky black and sickly green and will morph their mind and shatter their soul until whomever – whatever – is left no longer resembles the person they once were.
He teaches Belle that magic, when it is taken freely and is not made to fight and transform into poison, will shelter and protect and bow to the wielder's will. It will envelop them in cobalt and shinning silver and glorious gold and nurture the mind while repairing the soul and will extend its protection to whomever the wielder holds most dear. Belle comes to understand (to feel and smell and taste and simply know) the presence of magic – the tingling of small magic and the full body blast of larger applications, the almost sheer blackness of blood magic and the nearly white hues of fairy magic (damn worthless balls of light that they are), the steady flow of that which comes from potions and the faint glow of enchanted objects, the newness of magic recently applied and the ancientness of magic put into place thousands of years ago – until she can sense it no matter where it is used throughout the land without even trying.
So Belle learns magic – learns to respect it and how to recognize it and how to work with it – and within time becomes a master in her own right, wielding it as easily as if she had been doing it from her cradle.
Belle began to work with him after that, helping with those deals that were imperative to create the curse – putting people into place and altering events to suit the desired outcome and giving that which was desired and receiving the payment that was required. Lovers reunited and abusive partners done away with, debts repaid and money or power exchanging hands or roles, crops thrive and children are taken from unworthy or unwilling parents and given to those that desire them (sometimes only if by doing so it fits his purpose, as with the twin boy of those poor sheep herders). Magic wands are stolen from fairies and strands of hair are taken for personal important use, and the one type of magic that was considered impossible to bottle is at long last. Thousands of other deals – both large and small – are made with the same outcome in mind (the one exception being those innocent parents that turned into puppets, which he does feel bad about by the way – why else does he make sure they're comfortable, safe, and dust free instead of turning them into kindling long ago.)
Once again it is her courage that is at play when Belle meets her on her way into town. The Queen. A woman whom lost her love and is consumed by hatred for an innocent child, a woman that is obsessed with revenge and power. A vile and evil soul that had become his – well, their enemy really, many years ago even though he has made sure that Regina has not even the faintest inkling of Belle's existence while Belle has full knowdgle of her. So when The Queen leans out of her black carriage, a blood red smile upon her lips, it is most likely for once not with malicious intent. Belle however, is instantly terrified. It is not because Belle is incapable of defending herself, but rather due to The Queen's magic.
It is magic that has struggled, fought, and tried desperately to kill and shatter but has lost the battle and been horribly abused and altered and has now transformed into something…. truly awful. It is all boiling red and rust orange and poisonous green filling the woman before her to the point of overflow. It's knotted and coiled around bones and breaking the mind further and shattering shards of broken soul. The magic seems to scream and beat hopeless fists against it's prison, to cry out in rage and agony and a mindless terror that no mortal being can ever hope to know . It's festering inside of this black clad woman, turning more horrible and entangled and beating itself harder then ever against it's captor by the second - even now as Belle stands there frozen upon the shaded road – harder harder harder harder.
It is then that Belle screams his name inside of his mind, the sheer terror within her voice sending him flying from halfway across the kingdom in an instant to land by her side. He lands next to her, pride flickering within him for a moment as he sees that her magic has already flown to the forefront of her control as it prepares to defend its wilder, before rage fills him as he sees whom Belle is with. It is the same rage that he had not experienced since he killed those soldiers whom had been trying to take his son, a rage that commands him to destroy and spill the blood of those whom dare threaten what belongs to him. In the space of one heartbeat and the next he has stopped the breath of her guards, his hand squeezing her throat and his magic crushing the vile magical mess within her, and he has just finished speaking some half planned nonsense about the consequences of threatening his maid… when he recognizes it.
A soul desperate enough to need his curse, desperate enough to murder whom is most loved by said soul.
A soul that is willing to do what he himself is not, not even for his son.
So he releases her, tells her that he can give her what she wants at the price of never coming near his maid again. Regina must know what he is referring too, because she agrees with a evil gleam in her eyes and then her horses are in motion, quickly pulling her away from Belle and himself. It is after the Queen is gone that he pulls her into his arms, stroking her hair in an attempt to sooth her as she clings to him and cries in the aftershocks of fear, and he tells her what it took him so long to learn: it is not a lack of courage to ask for help.
He does not know if her courage came into play during those last months in their world, for it had been part of their plan to allow his powers to be frozen and for him to be imprisoned in the drawf mines with all contact between them ceased for a time (that deal with Cinderella had been in ploy, although banishing the blonde's prince had not been, some of his rage at being separated from Belle for so long finding an outlet), in order for Regina to feel safe enough to enact the curse. When he found out what the Queen had done to her upon his imprisonment, he wished he had never made that false deal.
In this world, the land without magic that his son had been transported to, her courage shone through every day of those 28 years. It shows when they wake up, side by side in a bed – their bed – and instead of succumbing to the false memories she fights with him to remember. She displays it when she sees people they know and yet don't living in a fog that they created, year after year as she faces the insults toward herself that steam from the hatred and fear of him, and every time she stands toe to toe with the woman whom had ridden along side her in a black carriage (she's just as vile here) and doesn't bat an eye.
When she cries in his arms after she learns that there will be no child of their own inside her body as long as the curse is active, that is courage. All those times that inside their home they read and sit by the fire and talk about their old life as well as magic, when they clean and fight and make love or he carves blocks of wood while she draws on a tablet beside him, when they drink tea (him out of a chipped cup) and she fiddles with his tie or he strokes one of her scars, whenever he goes over the books for his shop while she records the books she checked out to children and adults in the library that day all the while keeping one eye on Maleficent's boiling hot cage, or whenever he plays with her hair ( tenderly tucking a rose behind her ear, playing absentmindedly with a lock or gently untying the ribbon holding her braid or ponytail in place and allowing her dark curls to tumble to her shoulders, his nimble calloused fingers unmindful as always of sweat or dirt has they thread through the thick mass). …. every time they are Belle and Rumplestiltskin, that is courage.
In public, when they walk hand in hand down the street and she brings him his forgotten breakfast in his shop or he visits her in the library, when they eat lunch at Granny's Diner or she drags him to a school event that she is participating in and she subtly allows him to lean on her when that worthless leg of his is acting up and his cian isn't doing a damn thing, when he glowers at the other men and woman watch her with lust in their eyes as she bends over, on rare occasions when they argue on the sidewalk or she when she looks at him and her love is present in her eyes for all to see, at night when they sit on the front step before moving to the bench in her rose garden and she looks so beautiful in the soft silver moonlight that it takes his breath away, when they pretend to forget and are forever on their guard around Regina ….. when they are Aimée and Robert Gold… that is also courage.
Belle revels her courage when she hands the child of the savior over to Regina (a woman who will never be able to love him even though she will desperately try and desire to, a child whom each of the already love, just a little) and cries bitter tears with him on their couch that night. It's there when she stays awake with him long into the night painstakingly writing and illustrating and binding together a special book of special fairy tales. A book that will appear on Mary Margret's – Snow White's – doorstep, and that will make it's way to Henry Mills and will be vital in his decision to bring Emma – his mother and the savior into Storybrooke.
It's there again when 28 years latter time moves and she bursts out laughing and crying and pulls him into an awkward dance around the kitchen in full view of anyone whom might be watching (yes, he makes his best attempt anyway, for he never could deny her anything).
Much to his horror, it shows itself the night after Emma Swan comes to town, when he is having one of his bad days and the scarred, twisted, and knotted mass of red and purple flesh that has the audacity to be labeled a knee is white hot with the same agony that he'd felt when he'd been a poor spinner and Baelfire had to make his crippled father tea and broth and take on his father's duties in addition to his own while he, the boys father, lay in bed trying not to scream. Agony that now, in this world, pain medication barley makes a dent in and has him clenching his teeth all the same, and it is then that Belle takes his dagger out of it's hiding spot in the house and sneaks into the woods, burying in deep within the trees and coming back just an hour short of sunrise and covered in dirt and scratches. When he'd realized what she'd done he had nearly had a heart attack. If Regina caught her or that Mad Hatter – Jefferson – had seen her and found it in his best interest to report back to The Queen…. Belle apologizes for frightening him, but he notices that she doesn't promise not to do something like that again.
Once again, it's there when she puts the fool whom broke into their home in the hospital (an Ogre turned man that he himself had taken the proptey of when the blasted buffoon couldn't pay his rent), when she refuses to help him kidnap Kathryn Nolan and yet she still makes sure all supssion is turned away from him and stabs Sydney Glass in the hand with a letter opener when he comes sniffing around his shop after Kathryn is found. It's present when she goes up to Booth's rented room the morning after the woods and – eyes blazing blue flame in such a way that he can almost feel her magic churning through her blood – punches him right in the face while screaming at the moaning man upon the floor in twelve languages native only to their world. She doesn't make a single mention how she had held him as he cried for hours in her arms the night before for it had felt as if he had lost his son all over again, nor how upon seeing his pain she had felt as if her Claire had been ripped from her once more.
Now, in this world that they find themselves in where time is moving once again and memories are slowly being restored, when she notices them looking she (his oh so brave Belle) gazes at their neighbors with eyes as cold as blue ice and it is as if she is daring them to say anything, to look at her with pity or horror in their eyes. To the other residents of Storybrooke she has had these scars for as long as they can remember. The curse supplies them with hazy and unknowingly false memories of an attack by a wild animal and how she survived a fire a few years ago. They accept the lies that have become their reality out of unfortunate nessacity and, out of the sense of etuqite that the curse tells them is proper they do not make mention of her scars.
With him however…. she shied away at first.
Covered her skin and averted her eyes and looked at him with apprehension and fear.
She had feared that he found her undesiberale. Ugly and fragile and not worth touching.
How he once thought himself to be.
So, his heart breaking, he kissed the scars on her wrists and told her she's beautiful. He rubbed the thick and jagged scars along the expanse of her back and revels (once again) that she's the bravest and strongest person he's ever known. He encouraged her to wear skin bearing clothes, touched and held and hugged and rains kisses upon her every chance he got, and expressed his desire to see her body in the light from the sun as well as the moon, hoping to crave it into stone that he desires her.
That he loves her.
That he will never stop wanting her.
As if he ever could.
Slowly, oh so slowly, Belle – this woman whom is his True Love of almost 300 years, who is a powerful wielder of magic and is so much more then the simple titles of wife or lover can ever express - begins to believe him. She starts to wear the clothes that make her comfortable and show her skin and soon she accepts his touch and his lips once again and blushes prettily with a pleased and shy smile when he tells her she's beautiful.
By the time Emma Swan enters their lives Belle is as confident and as sure of her own beauty and worth as she had been that long ago night in her father's war room.
Even after 28 years he could kill whomever did this to her.
Now that tomorrow is on the horizon he will get his chance. For tomorrow Henry Mills will eat the poisoned apple and his mother will fight the same dragon as her father, retrieving the potion of True Love for him from it's fiery hiding place. He and Belle will restore magic to this land and the curse will be broken, their own magic will be given back to them and then both of them will set out to fulfill the purpose of this curse. Baelfire. They will find his son (they've already got an idea of where he might be), see the world along the way, and just maybe, with magic and power at their fingertips his son will be able to forgive him and grow to love him once more. Then he, Baelfire, and Belle can become a family and get their happy ending without anyone trying to kill them or having to kill anyone…. expect Regina (that is if Emma doesn't get there first).
Was it any good?
The rose species mentioned in the garden are meant to be all of the ones that are depicted here: www . rose – gardening – made – easy . com /