A/N: Wow. Seriously wow. The response to the first chapter was beyond anything I was expecting! This isn't exactly a huge ship to be on, so I wasn't really thinking this would get anything close to the reception it did, but you guys were phenomenal!
This story isn't planned out already like some of my others; I'm basically winging it, so there won't be anything like the regular updates, but I won't let this one die. I'm too intrigued at the possibilities of this pairing.
No beta fixed my scribbles, so any mistakes you see are solely mine. I claim no ownership of anything you might recognize, and I didn't intend for this to resemble anyone, anything, or anywhere you might have seen :)
Enjoy!
The bell above the door to Granny's diner tinkled as Emma shoved the door inside, leaning on it for a bit of temporary support. Another night of next to no sleep, not helped by Regina's obsessive attention to detail. Rather than punish her by withholding time with Henry – who had taken to living at the mansion again after Robin left with Marian, saying he needed to keep his mom company – or some other petty revenge, Regina had taken to going back through years of Sheriff's department paperwork and forcing Emma to fix every single mistake she found.
It was absurd. It was degrading.
It was taking forever.
The last time she got a full night's sleep was….Emma gave up trying to figure that one out when she counted past a week. When she did get to sleep, she never slept well these days.
When she stumbled and almost face-planted into the booth, Belle rushed to her aid from the other side. She had to catch herself with her hands, but the impact was still painful. "Sorry," Emma apologized as she slid into the booth with a groan.
"You look awful, Sheriff!" exclaimed the brunette.
Emma shot her a glare, but it was as weak as she felt. "Thanks, I was hoping to hear that from someone other than myself today."
Belle had the good grace to wince. "Sorry. I just meant that I was worried about you. It doesn't look like you've slept for weeks."
"I haven't, really. Regina's still pissed over the whole Robin/Marian thing, so rather than avoiding me, which she can't really do because of H…" Emma paused as a yawn threatened to split her face in two, then looked up at the waitress's approach with something akin to pure joy, "Sorry, excuse me. I need coffee. As strong as you have it. Grilled cheese and fries, too, please."
"And I'd like my usual grilled chicken sandwich with a side salad, please," Belle requested.
When the waitress nodded and left with Emma's order, having already taken Belle's, the blonde continued. "Damn I miss Ruby. Anyway, Regina can't really ignore me because of Henry, so after everything with the Snow Queen wound down, Regina's taken great delight in punishing me by forcing me to fix years and years of mistakes on Sheriff's Department paperwork. Every single tiny misspelling, punctuation mistake, and typo has to be corrected. I've been working until midnight every night and then getting up for the morning shift."
Concern in Belle's eyes rapidly gave way to confusion. "But you're an intelligent woman. Are most of the mistakes David's?"
Emma wanted to laugh it off, let David take the blame for her own errors, but she couldn't bring herself to lie to the woman in front of her. "Ah, no. They were mine. Honest mistakes, but Regina never cared enough before other than to point them out when she wanted me knocked down a few pegs."
She didn't think Belle would be the type to mock her, but she'd been wrong before. She wasn't this time. A soft, warm hand covered her own on the table. "I'm sorry that you've had to go through that, Emma, and more so that Regina's punishing you for it now."
"It's fine," Emma waved her concern off. "I'm not exactly new to this kind of thing. Always the problem kid. It's cool. How's your morning going?"
Concern flashed across Belle's face, but she blinked it away. "Well, I'm excited to get to the library today. I've been spending the past few weeks gathering the histories of the Enchanted Forest together for our section, but I need to work a little more on the texts from this world."
Emma grinned, glad for the change of subject. "That sounds like a really big job."
"It is, but it's something that needs to get done, and I love working with books and knowledge," answered Belle, getting a slightly dreamy quality to her voice.
"At least that's one thing Disney got right," Emma chuckled.
"I'm sorry?"
Realizing that Belle might not have had the opportunity to get caught up on twentieth century popular culture, Emma had a shot of warmth go through her at the thought that she might be able to teach the other woman something. "Haven't you ever wondered how I knew something about each of the people in this town but never the whole story?"
Belle took a sip of her diet cola. "Now that you mention it…"
"How about you come over to my apartment some evening this week and I'll show you something?" Emma offered, not wanting to specify too many details and seem overeager.
Her worries, like before, were unfounded. "Oh that's right! I heard Snow telling David you'd moved out when Henry went back to the mansion. I'd love to! Are you busy tonight?"
"Tonight would be perfect, if I can get out of Regina's doghouse. I'll call the library to let you know if I'm free tonight or if it'll have to be later this week. Either way I'll have the food ready, so you just need to come over. I'm going to have Mulan take the evening shift anyway. At some point I need to get some sleep, right?" she joked.
Their food arrived at that moment, preventing further conversation. Closing her eyes and inhaling deeply, Belle took in every note of the aroma. As usual, Granny cooked her chicken to perfection, the heat melting the cheese and combining into a mouth-watering sensory experience. When she opened her eyes, she had to stifle a snort. Half of Emma's sandwich was gone before she'd even taken a bite. "Relax, Emma! I promise it's not going anywhere! You can enjoy it, you know?"
She meant the comment to be teasing, but the way the blonde's pale face flushed scarlet, she knew she'd inadvertently offended her friend. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you…I've just never seen anyone eat that quickly."
Emma refused to meet her eyes, swallowing the bite she had in her mouth and taking a drink. "Um, sorry. Old habits, I guess," she muttered to her plate.
"Old habits?" asked Belle, hesitating to push too far but wanting to establish a more meaningful connection with the blonde.
But Emma merely shook her head. "Maybe some other time. Tell me more about this library project."
Belle nodded, filing away both what Emma said and what she didn't say.
Emma trudged into Town Hall, having spent the entire afternoon working on a stack of supposed paperwork mistakes. Regina was still insisting they all be fixed so the town archives weren't 'riddled with your abysmal spelling, grammar, and incomplete thoughts, Miss Swan'. It was drudgery, but without a lot of crime to actually police, there wasn't anything else she could use to get Regina off her back.
Regina's secretary attempted to waylay her outside the office door, but Emma just waved her off with a yawn. "I'm just going to drop this off with Her Royal Bitchiness and be on my merry way. Whomever is in there with her can wait a few minutes."
Against the flurry of limbs, Emma eased the door open, not wanting to cause too much of a disruption for the person meeting with Regina. She heard the voices in the quiet office, but it was one voice in particular that made her stop dead in her tracks.
…"It's beneath you, Regina. Even the Evil Queen wasn't this petty. You're humiliating her for no reason!"
"I've got my reasons, Mrs. Gold, and they're none of your business. Suffice it to say that Miss Swan is an idiot and idiots need instruction."
"First of all, it's Ms. French again. I just dropped off the divorce paperwork with the office downstairs. Second of all, whatever happened when Emma came back from the past was months ago! Rubbing her nose in her own mistakes is just cruel. She's not an idiot, she just never had the formal education that you or I did because of YOUR curse!"
"I wasn't the one who shoved her through a tree, if you remember your history, Librarian. Her parents were the ones who decided to FedEx her to Maine!"
"Regardless, she doesn't need you mocking her education. You could be a lot gentler about this. If you're not careful you'll do real damage to her, not to mention your co-parenting relationship."
Emma couldn't stay to hear the rest. The two women in Storybrooke she respected more than any other both thought she was a moron. Belle hadn't come right out and said it but the way she told Regina that she needed to be coddled cut her far deeper than she thought it would.
She turned to Regina's secretary and handed her the folder. "Could you see that Her Majesty gets this? I just remembered I have something urgent I have to do." Without waiting for a reply, she marched out of the office, trying to hold onto what remained of her dignity.
"Open the door Emma Swan!" Belle shouted, pounding on it with her first. "I don't know what you think you meant with that voice mail you left me, but I'm not buying it."
Silence greeted her.
Something had gone horribly wrong between their lunch at Granny's and the time she left her apartment. Putting her phone down to read a book, she hadn't noticed that it was still on silent from her meeting with Regina, requested in haste to try to get the Mayor off Emma's back.
"Hi, Belle. Listen, I need to cancel our plans for tonight. Something's come up, and…yeah…I just can't tonight. I'm sorry. I'll see you around sometime."
Whatever had gotten into the blonde's head had spooked her, and Belle was afraid of whatever had that effect. Hearing no sounds from inside the apartment, she resumed pounding on the door. "I'm not going away, I promise you that! Whatever is going on in your head, you can tell me!"
An uneven thumping sounded from inside the apartment. At one point Belle would have sworn she heard someone curse after thumping into a piece of furniture. Another few seconds elapsed before the door jerked open to reveal a very disheveled Emma Swan. "Yeah? Why are you pounding on my door? Didn't I leave you a voice…a voich…a message?"
The waves of alcohol flowing off of her smacked into the librarian with an almost physical force. "What happened to you?"
Rather than the guilt Belle expected to see at the accusation, Emma just rolled her eyes and stumbled back into the apartment. "I guess it was just another bad decision on my part," she growled, the menace in her tone sending shivers up and down Belle's spine, "after all, it's not like I'm smart enough to know any better, right?"
"What are you talking about? I don't think you're unintelligent," Belle protested.
Emma snorted. "Yeah, right."
"Emma! What's going on?" pressed the brunette as she sat down on the sofa, feeling dread growing in her stomach.
Whirling on her – a bit unsteadily due to the alcohol she must have imbibed – Emma marched over. "You really don't know what's going on?"
"I truly have no idea what you're talking about!" Belle glanced around Emma's sparsely furnished living room/dining room/kitchen open floor plan, trying to get an idea of how drunk her friend was. Spying a half-empty bottle of whiskey, her shoulders slumped. It was going to be a lot harder to get through to the blonde when she was also fighting through a cloud of liquor.
Emma snorted. "I was powering through a stack of paperwork to get Regina off my back for today. Imagine my surprise when I went to her office and heard that she had a visitor already."
"You overheard something I said to her? Something that has generated this hostility?" Belle asked in a small voice, trying not to provoke her friend any further and cause any more damage to their nascent friendship.
"I heard you tell Regina that my mistakes weren't my fault because I wasn't as well-educated as either of you two," Emma shot back, masking the deep hurt of the moment with her anger.
Belle's eyes grew wide. "Oh, no. I didn't know you were there."
"Well, I was! Let me tell you it didn't feel great to hear what people really think about how stupid I am," Emma spat, wrapping her arms around her torso.
Understanding and compassion swept through Belle. "Okay. I didn't think about how that would have sounded. I promise there's a reason for what I said, and it wasn't to insult you."
Emma gaped, the glaze in her eyes fading. "How in the w-world was I supposed to take that?"
"I probably didn't express myself very well, but I promise you that I had a reason for it," Belle began, moving closer to Emma and patting the seat next to her on the couch. "Hear me out, please? You know I'm not the kind of person who would say those things about you."
It was hesitant and halting, but eventually Emma perched on the edge of the cushion Belle had indicated, maintaining distance and looking like she was ready to flee at a moment's notice. "Okay," she agreed in a voice so low the brunette had to strain to hear it.
Taking a breath, Belle made sure she had eye contact before she started talking. "Regina, of course was a queen and grew up with Cora as a mother, so she was always going to be given…maybe forced would be a better word…the best of everything. I was a princess myself before I went to live with Rumpel. Nobles, especially royalty, were subjected to a rigorous education growing up. Reading, writing, math, history, politics, we had to know it all. You had to be educated to know how to lead a kingdom."
"Not seeing what this has to do with me other than how much better you and Regina grew up than I did," Emma grumbled, visibly tensing and looking for her escape path.
"You were born a princess, so you would have been raised the same way, with the same curriculum expected of you. From what I've seen you're a very intelligent woman, so I know it wouldn't have been a problem for you. I was actually criticizing Regina, since it was her curse and your parent's decision to send you to this world alone that meant you had to grow up without the advantages of royalty," explained Belle, warming to her words as she saw Emma relaxing the more she listened.
"Oh," breathed Emma, understanding, "I didn't hear that."
Belle reached out and put a hand on Emma's forearm. "I get that, I do. But Emma, this friendship isn't going to work if you always assume the worst of me."
"I know. I'm sorry," the blonde murmured, "it just hit on one of my biggest insecurities."
"You're not stupid," Belle insisted, grabbing Emma's hand and giving it a reassuring squeeze, "and I'm sorry that something I said made you feel that way."
"No, it's okay. I get it. I just took it the wrong way," Emma demurred, "I've been known to go off half-cocked before."
"What makes you so sensitive to perceptions about your intelligence?" asked Belle.
This time it was Emma taking a deep breath, marshaling her courage to reveal something about herself. "I, um, well, I'm sure you heard the stories of how I grew up bouncing around to different foster homes as a kid, running away from more than one of them?"
Belle nodded silently, waiting for her to continue.
"Well, I…let's just say I've never completed a full year of school at any one building. I was the problem child who no one ever cared about," explained Emma, shame over her abysmal education keeping her from meeting the brilliant librarian's gaze. She knew what would be coming. The same thing that she saw on the faces of everyone she chose to share that defect of herself. Pity, with an occasional side of mocking derision.
Except it never came.
"That must have been awful for a child to experience," Belle answered, never breaking their touch. "Emma, you have to know that your education isn't not your fault. Whatever they did or didn't do doesn't reflect on you at all. In the little time we've interacted I've been impressed at how clever you are. The way you figure things out before most of the rest of us even know what to ask is amazing to watch."
Punctuated with another squeeze of hands, Emma looked up, meeting the librarian's steady gaze and hoping hers wasn't as watery as it felt. "Thank you," she breathed as the warmth from the feeling of not having lost a friend spread through her body. "I'm really sorry for how I answered the door. It just felt like we were starting to be friends after the other night and then when I heard what I thought I did…"
"Don't worry about it," Belle dismissed, "I would have reacted the same way, both in the office and here."
"And now I've ruined our whole evening!" Emma groaned, falling back onto the couch. "I'm drunk, and I don't have any food, and…"
"Hey, hey, hey," Belle shushed. "It's okay, I promise. Why don't we just order a pizza and watch some TV?"
"Are you serious?"
"Why not? That way I can relax while I catch up to your drinks," grinned Belle, bumping Emma's shoulder.
"Why order one? I may be a bit drunk but I think I can still do this. What are your favorite toppings on a pizza?"
"Pepperoni and mushrooms," Belle answered, furrowing her brow.
So saying, Emma moved into the kitchen, staring at the empty counter. As Belle watched, she shook her arms and wiggled her hands. "Okay, here goes nothing." With a flick of her fingers and a cloud of grey smoke, a steaming pizza appeared on the counter, topped with mushrooms and pepperoni on one half and ham on the other.
"Dinner is served," she grinned at her friend.
A/N: First angst out of the way. Not too bad, right? Let me know what you thought! Constructive criticism and reviews are always appreciated!