Once Upon a Time
Please Come Home for Christmas
By Lucky_Ladybug
Notes: The characters are not mine and the story is! I'm sure canon will knock it over come March, but I wanted to have my fun with this anyway. Since season 1 I've wanted Rumpel to sacrifice himself for the others, but I also wanted Belle to then save him, as per the original fairytale. The winter finale gave us the first half; now I want the second! And Storybrooke is back because it says in the episode 12 promo that the new villain will invade Storybrooke. She can hardly do that if it's gone for good! However, I will leave how it came back up to our imaginations for now. That isn't the story I want to tell.
Storybrooke was different this time around. Belle wasn't sure how long she had been gone, but she didn't really care. Time had not passed the same way for her since the horrible day of the second Curse.
When they had first been sent back to the world they had come from, she had still been shaking and reeling from Rumpel's death. And not that she had really expected much different, but scarcely anyone in town had spoken to her or extended sympathies or kindnesses. When they did, it rarely seemed sincere.
Oh, she knew why she was being shunned. Rumpel had not been liked or trusted, either before or after the townspeople had recovered their true memories. And it was not that she didn't understand the reasons why they would feel that way. He had done terrible things to them and others. He was a villain, and she was the villain's girlfriend, the one person who had seen the goodness in him when no one else had. They were uneasy around her because of her complete ease around him. They didn't trust her because she trusted him. And they didn't show sympathy because more than likely, they felt she didn't deserve it.
But understanding didn't mean she liked it. Whenever she walked down the street or went to eat, she couldn't help longing for a kind word or even a gentle smile. Instead there was mostly silence and discomfort. Most people didn't meet her eyes. They didn't know what to say or how to begin saying it if they did. They probably didn't want to have anything to say.
She could see or sense guilt from some of them. They knew they should be doing different than they were, yet they couldn't bring themselves to do anything other than what they were doing. And from others, she felt accusations and unspoken questions. Why had she fallen in love with him? Why was she wasting time grieving over him? Why, why, why!
She had not been able to take it for very long. During a particularly uncomfortable gathering she had snapped, screaming at everyone present. "Why do you all stare at me, saying nothing?! Why can't you get whatever you're thinking off your chests? I already know what you're thinking. And you're not sparing me some unfeeling cruelty by keeping silent! Don't you think it hurts to feel your wordless gazes? To know that you think I'm some tainted creature in your midst?
"I know none of you cared for him. I can't even say you weren't justified. But I saw in him what you never did. And at the end, all of you should have seen it too! You know how much living meant to him and how terrified he was of letting go of his power. And he gave it up, willingly. He gave it all up, for me and for Bae, and really, for all of you! He destroyed Peter Pan and stopped him from taking not only our memories, but some of our very lives. Peter Pan was going to kill us! Who knows how many of us would be dead now if not for Rumpelstiltskin, the man you have feared and hated!"
She had stunned and shamed them all into further silence. Then, from the back she had heard Leroy mutter, "We're not so well off right now, either."
"That wasn't his fault," she had retorted. "We're where we were before, but we could be far worse."
Rumpel certainly hadn't wanted to or planned to die. It had been so shortly before that horrible scene when he had told her that the only path he was interested in was the one with her. It had been the closest thing to a proposal that he had ever given her. She wished so much that his infamous survival instinct would have kicked in again and he would have known of a way to live that he would have used at the last minute. But that most certainly wasn't the case this long after what had happened. He would have come back if he could have. Obviously there had been nothing he could have done. For a reason she did not understand, he had truly needed to give his life to end Peter Pan's reign of terror and hatred.
Bae, or Neal as he preferred to be called, had been shaken to the core by Rumpel's sacrifice. He had spent so long hating his father and not being able to forgive him for not going through the portal with him, but in Neverland they had finally managed to start picking up the pieces. When they had come home, they had been on far better terms, even though they had still had a long way to go.
She wasn't sure how to help Neal now. He had hated the Enchanted Forest and had been determined to get back to Emma and Henry. He had become obsessed with it, almost, as though that was now the only thing that gave his life meaning. And after he had found a way back to the modern world and she and others had come with him, he had started a search for Emma and Henry that was still on-going.
When he wasn't looking, he was drinking. He didn't know how to deal with his father's death. Like so many others, he either hoped to find his answer in a bottle or he wanted to forget.
She had told him he had to pull himself together, that Rumpel's dying wish had been for Neal to find happiness even though it couldn't be with him. And Neal had exclaimed that he would really like to fulfill that, but he couldn't until he found Emma and Henry.
She doubted that even that would help, as long as he couldn't come to terms with Rumpel's sacrifice. But no matter how she tried, she could not get through to him, so at last in despair she had backed off.
Now she was walking up and down the city streets, looking at the Christmas decorations but finding it extremely difficult to get into the Christmas spirit. She had spent two Christmases with Rumpel—one at the Dark Castle in the Enchanted Forest and last year's in Storybrooke. This year's Christmas, one of many without him, did not hold any hope of getting back to him—which was something she had had while Regina had held her prisoner. It was going to be utterly bleak and cold in comparison.
Perhaps she should return her father's calls. He had been desperately trying to reconnect with her since Rumpel's death, but following one conversation she had granted him, she could not shake the feeling that he was only coming around now because he believed that Rumpel had poisoned her against him and now he had a chance of winning her back since Rumpel was dead.
Possibly she could be wrong. And in any case, she knew her father truly loved her.
She paused and bit her lip, staring at her reflection in a store window. If she went to him now, she was afraid that it would be selfish on her part, just her longing not to be alone when she was aching so tremendously. She did not want to use her father like that and falsely raise his hopes that she was coming back for good.
On the other hand, though, maybe she would decide to do exactly that. She didn't like being estranged from him. It felt even worse when she thought of Rumpel and Neal, and everything Rumpel had done in his desperation to repair his mistake towards his son.
She had to wonder now just how much of his fear of entering the portal had been because of what had happened between him and his father after going through a portal. At least some of his cowardice had been his fear of losing his power, she knew, but perhaps it had been less of that and more of the other.
How ironic if he had feared that going through the portal would disrupt his and his son's relationship, when in reality it had been not going through it that had done that.
And how tragic, that so soon after finally beginning to find a way to mend the damage, Rumpel was dead and it could not continue. Tears pricked her eyes again.
The sudden strains of a female singer's version of Please Come Home for Christmas wafted from a passing car and brought her sharply to the present.
She flinched, turning away. She had first heard the song last year and had found it too depressing and bittersweet for the Christmas season. This year it was worse. It was painful. It was personal. Rumpel could never come back now, for Christmas or any other day.
Casting her gaze to the star-studded Heavens, she blinked in surprise to note one star that seemed brighter than the others. It looked remarkably like a star she had seen when they had first returned to the Enchanted Forest. She had wished on it in desperation, pleading for Rumpel to survive the stabbing even though he had fully believed that using the dagger on himself would be the end of him.
Of course, nothing had happened. And, she had frowned in realization, if The Blue Fairy was the one in charge of overseeing wishes on that star, she would never grant such a thing.
But there the star was again, and Belle was still longing so much for a miracle that she could scarcely stand it. She sent one last wish up to the skies before continuing her journey down the street.
Her phone went off in the next moment. Frowning, she drew it out of her bag and looked at the number. "The hospital?" she said aloud in confusion. Quickly she pressed the button to talk. Perhaps something had happened to her father or to Neal. "Hello?!"
It was Dr. Whale's voice that she heard next, and he sounded both urgently panicked and confused. "Belle?"
"Yes," Belle said with impatience. "What is it? What's wrong?"
Dr. Whale drew a deep, ragged breath. "I really don't know how to say this," he said slowly. "Belle, a man was found and brought in tonight. I can't imagine how he was alive at all, considering how serious the stab wound was and how much blood he had lost . . ."
Belle nearly fainted. ". . . What you're saying can't be true," she choked out at last. "Rumpelstiltskin can't be . . ."
"He isn't," Dr. Whale interrupted, shattering any vague hopes that Belle had just conjured in her mind. "The man who found him wasn't sure, and the paramedics tried to revive him, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.
"I was here when they brought him in. The incredible, impossible thing about it is that he certainly doesn't look like he's been dead a long time. We all know this happened weeks ago, but he shows no signs of that. For him, it might as well have happened within the hour."
There was significance in his words. Belle would cling to that. "I'm coming there," she declared. "Please, don't do anything further until I've seen him." Dr. Whale sounded so fascinated that she was afraid he might decide to start the autopsy immediately, eager to see if he could find the source of such a phenomenon. And she was not about to let that happen.
"I'll wait," Dr. Whale promised. "But can you be here soon?"
Belle glanced up at the clock on the tower. "In ten minutes," she said.
She was in a cab in the next instant. She had wanted to learn how to master these modern things Rumpel called cars, but in between so many things going wrong for them she had not had much of a chance beyond a few lessons Rumpel had given her. And since returning to Storybrooke from the Enchanted Forest, she had not gathered the heart or motivation to pick it up again.
She would, though. But not for a while. Not until she made some sense out of tonight.
"Rumpel," she whispered in anguish and a sliver of hope that she could not push back. How had he appeared here and now? Where he had been? How could he look like he had just died when his sacrifice had come weeks before?
She nearly flew out of the cab upon arriving at the hospital. She barely remembered to pay the driver, and she had the feeling she might have given him too much, but she could not care about something like that right now.
Dr. Whale was waiting for her inside the lobby. "Where is he?!" she demanded of him breathlessly.
"One of the interns took him to the morgue, but nothing's been done yet," Dr. Whale added quickly. "We waited for you, as I promised."
"Thank you," Belle said, hurrying to the elevator.
Dr. Whale came with her. "I'll ride down with you," he said. "It's in the basement, you know."
She should have known, she supposed, but she hadn't really stopped to think about it. She was agreeable to Dr. Whale coming now, and to going down, even though it would mean being too near to the prison where Regina had kept her during the duration of the original Curse on the town.
She could deal with that, she had dealt with far worse than that, and what was that horrible room to her when Rumpel was lying in some cold morgue on some hard slab? It was nothing to her compared with that.
She was not prepared for her first glimpse of Rumpel. He really looked like the experience had added ten years to his life, instead of taking his life away that instant. He was so pale, so still, looking as though he was asleep and should wake up. But he didn't and couldn't.
Above the sheet, the fatal wound in his chest was visible for her to see. Even though it was no longer bleeding, it twisted her stomach to see what had been the cause of his demise.
Belle ran to him, crying his name, sweeping his hair away from his face. She had been away from him for so long. Now, although she was with him, they were really still separated.
Dr. Whale lingered in the doorway but finally tried to force himself to tear away, to shut the door and leave them with a bit of privacy. Belle could say Goodbye to him now, something that had been denied to her when this had happened.
But Belle was not about to say Goodbye. It was most certainly a miracle for Rumpel to appear looking like this, not decayed at all, as though his life had just barely been forfeited. Belle was going to grab onto that hope and pray that the miracle would extend a great deal further.
"Rumpel, please come back to me," she begged. "I love you. I don't want to be without you!" Leaning down, she kissed him desperately and firmly on the lips.
In the Enchanted Forest, such kisses could do amazing things, even to revive the seemingly dead. And in this world, it had happened as well. True, all of those deaths had been brought about by spells, but what if this one also was? Rumpel had supposedly shattered the spell of the Dark One by plunging the dagger into his chest. What if that had somehow left him in some other enchanted state instead of outright killing him?
For a moment nothing happened and Belle felt her hopes begin to sink. But then a wave of energy swept over Rumpelstiltskin's lifeless body. As Belle watched in amazement and increasing hope, the color started to return to his flesh. The wound began to knit together and fade into a faintly visible scar. In a moment his eyes fluttered open in awe and confused disbelief and he gasped, drawing breath.
Belle could barely contain herself in her joy. "Rumpel!" she cried, her heart filled and overflowing. "Is this real? It's not some incredible dream?"
He looked up at her, clearly wondering the same thing she was. "Belle?" he rasped. He reached up, touching the side of her face. "I'm alive?"
She nodded vigorously, laying her hand over his. "Yes!" she exclaimed. "Yes, yes! You're alive!"
He gazed up at her, wanting to believe, to understand why and how this had happened, but he could not. "I can't be," he whispered. "I know I plunged the dagger through both Pan and me. I have to be dead. That's what was supposed to happen. If I'm alive, then Pan must be as well." Panic filled his voice and his eyes and he started to push himself upright. The sheet slipped down to his waist.
"We'll deal with it!" Belle insisted, trying to gently push him down before he strained himself. "There has to be another way to defeat him."
"He has already been defeated."
Both Rumpelstiltskin and Belle jumped a mile at the voice intruding on their reunion. Looking up with a start, they found The Blue Fairy standing beside Dr. Whale in the doorway.
She had never been one of Rumpelstiltskin's favorite people. "What are you talkin' about?" he sneered now, not entirely sure he would believe whatever she was going to say.
"You killed him, Rumpelstiltskin," she said. "And you should be dead as well, save for one vital factor. There was always one other way to break the Curse of the Dark One. Only one of the previous Dark Ones ever came close to shattering it, and he too chose his power in the end. I had no reason to believe that you would be any different."
"And what is this way, Mother Superior?" Rumpelstiltskin retorted, his voice still dripping with suspicion and sarcasm.
The Blue Fairy ignored his tone. "First there had to be an unselfish sacrifice of the Dark One's powers and his life. Then there had to be one person who loved him and wanted him back, even while fully believing he would still have those powers if he returned." She looked to Belle. "I knew you had the second. But you clung so fiercely to life that it seemed the only way you would lose your powers would be if you were killed by someone else wielding the dagger, as had happened with every prior Dark One."
Belle found Rumpelstiltskin's hand and took it, lacing her fingers with his. "But after he sacrificed himself, you said nothing about this to me," she cried. "You were one of the only ones who actually spoke to me, but you expressed your condolences and nothing more."
"It only works if the Dark One truly believes he is to die and knows nothing of this possible saving grace," The Blue Fairy replied. "I didn't know if Rumpelstiltskin knew about it or not. I knew that if he was to be saved, the way would be provided even with my silence. I didn't want to give you false hope by telling you of something that might not even work."
Belle frowned. "I would have wanted to know anyway," she said.
Rumpelstiltskin was not impressed. "It seems to me that you have a history of keeping these important little facts from people, Mother Superior," he remarked.
"I have always done what I felt was best under the circumstances," The Blue Fairy said. "Maybe sometimes I've been wrong, but it was never my intention or desire for anyone to be hurt."
Belle decided to forget about that. "But so he's truly back, without any clauses or strings attached?" she demanded.
"Yes," The Blue Fairy said. "When he disappeared with Peter Pan, Pan was killed. There was no one who could or would save him; he had destroyed the only life that had always been blindly loyal to him. But Rumpelstiltskin was instantly transported through time to this night, where he was found by that man passing through Storybrooke."
"Then that's why he looked like he'd just been killed," Dr. Whale said in amazement.
The Blue Fairy looked to Rumpel. "Of course, you have been brought back to life without your powers," she said. "You will live the rest of your life as a normal man, Rumpelstiltskin, if you believe you can."
Rumpelstiltskin's lips curled in a quiet smirk. "Oh, I don't think I'll ever be a normal man, Dearie, even without the mantle of the Dark One."
Belle had to smile and laugh. The Blue Fairy just sighed. "No," she consented, "I don't suppose you ever could be, especially now."
"Thank you for telling us," Belle said. "At last."
The Blue Fairy nodded. "I'll leave you now. Goodnight." She paused. "Merry Christmas." With that she turned, departing the morgue.
Dr. Whale lingered. "Is there anything I can do?" he wondered. "Anything you need?"
"There is something, actually," Rumpelstiltskin said. "What have you done with my clothes?"
"Over here," Dr. Whale replied, crossing to the table near the door and lifting two plastic bags. "Along with your other personal effects."
"Is the dagger there?" Rumpelstiltskin studied the bags from his current location, trying to determine the answer.
"Only the handle," Dr. Whale told him. "The blade seems to have broken off or dissolved."
"Perhaps that means that no one else can become the Dark One," Belle exclaimed.
"It would seem that way, wouldn't it," Rumpelstiltskin mused. He wasn't about to believe that, knowing how tricky magic could be, but it was a possibility, at least. "Alright, Doctor. Get out of here and let me get dressed."
Dr. Whale handed over the plastic bags and hurried for the door. "Yes, Mr. Gold," he said, not about to protest even though the Dark One's powers were gone. After all, everyone in town had feared Mr. Gold under the Curse, no magic necessary.
Belle looked to her love. "I'll leave as well, if you think you can manage." He certainly seemed to be back to full health, but after such horrible, soul-crushing days and nights, Belle wanted to be sure he was alright.
Rumpel gave her a smile filled with love. "I can manage, Belle," he said softly.
Encouraged and believing it, Belle smiled and left, waiting just outside the room. When he emerged moments later, dressed but limping, she went to him and took his arm.
"Your cane is back at your shop," she said. "We'll go and get it." She looked into his eyes. "You see, Rumpel? You will have a happy ending after all."
He looked back, his face kind and gentle. "Perhaps I will, Belle. Perhaps I will.
"But what about Bae?" he rushed on immediately. "Where is he, Belle? What happened to him?"
Belle swallowed hard. This was the one thing she had dreaded telling him about, if he really were to come back to her. "He's . . . he's been looking for Emma and Henry," she explained.
Rumpel stiffened. "They're missing?!"
"Well . . ." Belle hesitated. "Not missing, exactly; we just don't know where they are. I'm afraid it's a very long story." She drew a shuddering breath and briefly told him what had happened following his sacrifice. "Bae . . . hasn't been handling things very well, I'm afraid. Right now he's probably either continuing the search or . . ."
"Or what, Belle?"
Of course she had to tell him. She looked him in the eye, filled with sadness and regret. "In a bar," she said. "Drinking."
That was all Rumpel needed to hear. "Nevermind my cane," he said. "We have to find him, now!"
She had known he would say that. And she was certainly willing to help him keep his balance throughout their search.
Everything still felt like an incredible dream, really. She was holding the arm of a man who should be dead, who had been dead, at least to her. But he was alive and well. With every step, she marveled and rejoiced.
xxxx
Neal was indeed in a bar. When they found him, he was slumped over the counter at The Rabbit Hole, staring blankly at a half-empty glass.
Belle had wondered if she should call to him first. But Rumpelstiltskin couldn't hold back. "Bae!" he exclaimed.
Neal stiffened and nearly fell off the stool. As he reached to support himself and whipped around to look, he was shaking. "Poppa?" he choked out, hopeless and helpless and unable to believe what he was seeing. "I haven't even had that much to drink yet and already I'm seeing things."
"You're not seeing things, Bae!" Rumpel tried to assure him. He took a step forward. "I'm really here. I'm alive! Belle saved me."
"Belle?" Neal looked to Belle, who smiled and nodded.
"It's true," Belle told him. "Every word of it."
Neal slowly rose from the barstool, wanting to believe it even though it still seemed impossible. "Poppa? You . . . you're really here?" He reached out a hand to touch his father, still afraid this was a mirage.
"Yes, Bae." Rumpelstiltskin took his son's hand, gripping it firmly in his own. "I'm here. And I'm not going to leave again."
The dam broke. "Poppa!" Neal flung himself into Rumpelstiltskin's arms, embracing him tightly.
"Bae." Overcome with joy, Rumpel returned the welcoming hug just as tightly.
Belle stood by, smiling, filled with a happiness that she had never thought she would feel again. As the static-filled radio behind the bar began to play a Christmas carol, she rejoiced.
Rumpelstiltskin had come home. Now it truly felt like Christmas.