You Are Loved
Chapter Seven
Not long after Gold returned to his pawnshop upon leaving the dragon sorceress and her daughter, Belle walked back in and paused in the doorway when he turned to look at her with sadness in his eyes, then he spoke up first saying, "I was hoping for a chance to talk to you without anyone else around. How are feeling, Belle?"
She lowered his head and responded sadly, "It's like you heard me tell Emma and Killian earlier. I'm fine and so is our child. The sleeping curse didn't hurt him, or her. If there was any chance I thought it might, I never would have done it."
"That's good," Rumple answered sincerely. "That's very good. So, you don't know if it's a boy or a girl yet?"
"I told Dr. Whale that I didn't want to know until he or she is born," the red headed beauty replied curtly. "Listen, I didn't come here specifically to talk. I left something precious behind that I would like to keep with me, as a reminder of all we once had together. I still love you, Rumple. I always will and I assure you, our child will grow up knowing who you are, who you were… and who I hope you will be again. I still believe that you can be that man again and I hope you can find him, no matter how far you've buried him. However, I can't be with you any longer if you refuse to even try. You had a chance to be a man again and not a man with a beast inside of him. You willingly took the darkness back from Killian when he died to try to destroy it. If it weren't for you, the darkness would have been gone forever."
He tried to object as he responded, "Belle, please. You know that I still love you and that I always will, as I will always love our child. The power I have, I use it for us. We will never want for anything ever again."
She sighed as she walked into the back room and opened up the drawer of her nightstand to pull out her chipped cup Rumple had repaired for her after he got his powers back, then she looked back into his eyes as she answered, "You're wrong. All I want is your love without the fear that the darkness will consume you again as it did Killian and Emma. The difference between them and you, is that they never wanted it when it was forced into them. And they were willing to lose everything, to give up everything they loved and to die in order to rid the world of it. You never once could do that."
"But I did die once, to save you and Bae," Gold retorted sternly. "I sacrificed my life to rid this town of Pan. I did that for you."
"A part of you did," she replied as tears came to her eyes. "I know that you did. But we weren't the only reason why you sacrificed your life. You also needed to prove to your father that you were more powerful than he was. And when we were in the Underworld, I saw that you had given up fighting against your power and that you were reveling in it. I won't subject our child to that. Emma told me about what you did to hurt Killian earlier this morning. A good man doesn't do that. Hook's given up his hate for you, even when the darkness was threatening to consume him. Why can't you do the same for him?"
He chortled and then turned his back to her as he responded, "You can only ask me that because you don't understand what it's like to have a hate for a man for as long as I have."
Belle walked back to the door again and opened it, but before she left, she turned back to him once more as she answered despondently, "You're right and thankfully I don't have it in me to do so. Killian does know though, the same as you. And if he can do it, then you should be able to as well. If you can find yourself again, find a way to destroy the darkness once and for all and bring Rumpelstiltskin back to me, only then will I let you into my life. Only then, there's a chance for us. It's your power, or me. If you really want your happy ending, only I can give it to you."
"Have you forgiven your father for what he's done yet?" the Dark One asked quickly before she could leave. "After I told you when I first woke you why I had to resort to searching for another all-powerful being to wake you, I told you that he refused to kiss you so that you would never again choose to be with me and yet here you are doing exactly as he wants."
"No, I'm doing what I need to do because I need to take care of myself for once, and protect the baby from your evil," she replied in frustration. "As for whether or not I have forgiven my father, the answer is yes. I have because he's my father and I love him. Even though he made a cruel mistake and it hurt me, I know he was only doing so out of love. I have forgiven you too. You just have to show me you're worthy of my love again if you want me to come home to you. If you can't understand that, then I'm sorry. Good bye, Rumple."
With that said, the beauty he loved left his shop as though it was for the last time. Once she was gone, the Dark One turned his head and looked at over at the gramophone at the end of one of the counters, then snapped his fingers as the needle dropped and the song that they had first danced do as husband and wife sounded for nearly a minute while he stared ahead becoming lost in the memory, until all of a sudden, a single stroke of magic blasted the musical antique into oblivion.
