Present!Belle comes to terms with the fact that she cannot remember her child.

Belle was numb as she sat in the front seat of the Cadillac, a silent tear slipping down her cheek. Rumple had his eyes on the road; the icy fear and regret that had hold of her heart seemed to be present in his as well.

In the backseat, strapped into her car seat and sleeping soundly, was Rowan. Their daughter. A daughter Belle had no memory of. She squeezed her eyes shut at the thought.

They pulled up in front of the pink house in silence, and Rumple quickly unbuckled Rowan from the back seat, lifting her to his shoulder so seamlessly that she didn't even stir. Holding the little girl in one arm he fumbled with the keys with his other hand, eventually getting the front door open. He seemed completely natural with her, but then again he'd been a father before, hadn't he? He'd carried a sleeping child home after a long day, tucked them in, kissed their forehead.

Baelfire.

This had to be so much harder for Rumple than it even was for her.

"We should get her to bed," Rumple whispered. It was the first thing he'd said since they'd departed the diner.

"Where do you think her room is?" Belle whispered back, thinking of the myriad guest rooms in Rumple's large home.

"The one closest to ours," Rumple said without hesitation. He dropped his keys into the bowl on the table in the entry way and set up the stairs to put their daughter to bed. Belle followed silently.

He was right, of course, the bedroom next to theirs was painted a pale blue. It seemed they'd gone with an enchanted forest theme for Rowan's room complete with a mural of a large tree on one wall. A Rowan tree, Belle thought sadly. She wondered if she'd painted it herself. The white canopy bed had leaves and branches carved into the posts, the comforter a soft pink.

Rumple laid the little girl on the bed while Belle moved to the white dresser against the wall. In the top drawer she found a pair of soft white pajamas with little roses on them and together they managed to get their daughter changed and tucked into bed.

Rowan only woke up once, her face confused for a moment before she spotted Belle.

"Mommy!" she cried out, reaching for Belle, who froze unsure of what to do.

"Hush, sweetheart, go to sleep," Rumple intervened, rescuing her. "Sweet dreams, darling." He pushed the little girls dark curls back from her face, kissing her forehead before he stood to leave the room.

Belle just stood there, staring at the sleeping child, willing herself to remember something, anything. But it was like trying to remember a dream after waking. The harder she concentrated, the faster it seemed to slip away. She thought she could almost recall a smell like baby powder, a baby's giggle, but then it was gone again.

By the time she joined Rumple in the living room he was slouched down in an armchair, a glass of scotch in his hand.

"I don't remember her," she said uselessly. Rumple continued to stare forward unblinkingly.

"How can I not remember her?" she continued, panic rising in her chest. "She's my child. I carried her in my body but I have no idea who she is."

When Rumple still didn't answer, Belle grew impatient.

"Damn it, Rumplestiltskin, answer me!"

Rumple jumped, turning to stare at her as if he'd only just realized she was in the room.

"I don't know," he said after a moment of silence. "I suppose when we changed the past, the future corrected itself to follow those events. No one but us remembers that there was ever an alternate path. When we arrived back from the past, the versions of us that existed in this future disappeared for all intents and purposes and we took their place."

"Will we ever have those memories? It happened to us, we should remember."

Rumple shrugged, taking a sip of his drink. "It didn't happen to us. Our future played out the way it always did. I threw you out, you died, I died, and here we are. We created an alternate timeline that we are now living in. Our timeline no longer exists."

Belle felt cold, like icy fingers were gripping her insides and twisting them.

"So you're saying I'll never remember the first four years of my child's life?" she asked tearfully. "That I missed a huge chunk of her childhood and I'll never get it back? How can you just sit here? Do something!"

Rumple had been so calm thus far, moving mechanically as they brought Rowan home and put her to bed, but he snapped suddenly, hurling his half empty glass at the fireplace where it shattered loudly.

"Do you think I'm not destroyed by this, Belle?" he asked, standing and rounding on her. Belle shrunk in the face of his fury even though she knew it wasn't directed at her. "I spent three hundred years trying to find one child after abandoning him for most of his life only for him to die right in front of me. Now I have no memory of another child. I've failed utterly at being a father for the second time."

Belle didn't bother holding back the tears now, letting them run freely down her flushed cheeks.

"It's not your fault, Rumple."

"Isn't it?" he demanded. "We never should have left them – us – alone back there. We should have watched them every moment, we should have done something. We've completely changed everything, Belle!"

Belle shook her head. "I can't regret it," she said. "I can't regret that little girl, Rumple. She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. When I look at her, I feel something like I've never felt before, like my heart is being squeezed so tightly. And I know that she's mine. She's ours. I cannot and will not regret that."

Rumplestiltskin blanched, staring at her for a moment before reaching out and pulling her into his arms and kissing the top of her head.

"No, sweetheart, of course not," he murmured against her hair, rubbing soothing circles against her back. "Any child we made together can only be a wonderful thing, a bloody miracle. That's not what I meant."

Belle cried against Rumple's shoulder until she felt like there were no tears left in her. When she felt shriveled and dehydrated she finally pulled away from him.

"I just want to remember her." she said plainly.

Rumple nodded resolutely. "I'll find a way, darling. I promise."