DISCLAIMER: Happy New Year all! Sorry it's taken so long, I went home for the Christmas season and work has been very busy since I've gotten back. I do not own OUAT or Rumbelle, however much I wish I did. And Japan, still with the no OUAT broadcasts. Seriously, if I did not love you as much as I do, we would have issues. This chapter is set post 2x08.
8.
The day, with all its hopes and happy anticipations fell somewhat short. Belle worried her lip in the wake of Regina's departure, mentally kicking herself on inviting him out for a second hamburger, a lunch invitation this time. It had been purely on impulse and they'd beamed at each other like children when he'd accepted. Then the Queen had made her appearance and this time round the bravery and bravado that had risen inside her when she'd interrupted their time together that first evening went running for the hills screaming.
This time you have a weakness.
No, Belle shook her head, horrified at the notion; this would not do at all.
They ate in silence and left in the same fashion, Belle suddenly small and fragile, clinging to his jacket sleeve as he walked her home. The mood sat heavy and brooding despite the sunny day. We have a storm cloud for a parasol, Belle thought miserably, and there is so much rain coming. She stole a look at her True Love and her heart sank further still. Rumpelstiltskin's face was shuttered, his jaw set in iron gridlock, his eyes focused on something so very far away from her.
I won, in the end.
There was so much to ask. What did she know, really? Belle fisted her hands in the material. Tell me, she thought, how was he supposed to tell me everything? She bit her lip again, the enormity of what she'd asked him sinking leaden in her thoughts.
"You'll draw blood if you keep doing that"
Belle looked up and her heart rose a little from the abyss it had been descending grimly into. Yes, she thought, smiling in spite of the mood, that's more like it. Her Rumpelstiltskin was looking at her, eyes crinkling slightly, a faint smile on his mouth and whisky brown warmth in eyes that had been distant and cool.
"You'd know all about that sort of thing, wouldn't you," she returned, smoothing the wrinkles she'd wrung into his sleeve and looking up from lowered lashes. Something in his gaze crackled into flame at her words and she knew then he understood exactly what she was referring to.
He walked her home after their first glorious date, all the way to her apartment door to watch her unlock it (landlord's prerogative and other words to that effect). They'd kissed again, inevitably, the key dangling in the lock as she realized how terribly, terribly hungry they were, a hunger that had very little to do with hamburgers or any number of sides. He'd kissed her back with fierce desperation, long fingers combing her hair in haphazard, unplanned strokes and she'd answered in kind, only half-surprised at her own aggression.
So long without each other. So very long.
It was only when she'd pulled back sharply, the intensity of the kiss blurring with brief, intimate pain that they halted, gasping for breath. His face was alight with want, features near-feral in the shadows, all eyes and mouth devouring her and Belle looked back, skin prickling with lightning. They watched each other with bated breath, chests heaving and it was then Belle felt the moisture over her lower lip and realized that it was bleeding.
Her beloved's face crumbled into apology, but she only reached for him again, fingers smoothing his jaw and let him softly softly lap at the tiny wound, his tongue warm and feline over her delicate flesh and they both whimpered into the assault. Arms could never be tight enough around each other.
"Who's Cora?" she finally ventured again when they reached her door.
Rumpelstiltskin let out a heavy sigh, eyes at his feet, uncertain.
"Someone I should have dealt with a long time ago"
"A witch?" she prompted, "like – Regina?" still hesitant over her captor's name. He shook his head dismissively.
"Worse"
Belle shivered in spite of herself, "How does she know Cora?" Former friends? She brainstormed, rivals?
"She's her mother," came the startling reply, hissed through clamped teeth.
"Her mother?" Belle echoed blankly, time and numbers not quite meeting agreement in her head, "But-"
He forced a lopsided smile.
"I am a few hundred years older than you, dearest"
She blinked in response, sheepish.
"Sorry. It's very easy to forget," hugging his arm.
"Oho," he huffed, a melancholy rendition of his usual chuckle, "Carry on like that and I'll start thinking you're after something"
"Maybe I am," she pressed back, a little of her boldness ebbing back to her in little waves, "Something like the rest of your story, perhaps?"
He caught his breath and she could practically see the effort to articulate centuries of history into concise, small words. Her True Love, striving to do as she bid. And it dawned then, that a small step, one foot before the other, was just as important as a long stride.
"How about this," she offered, feeling his dilemma as acutely as if it were her own, "I'll make you a deal. Before the end of the week, you can tell me three things about yourself before we met, three chapters of your story if you like. You can choose which things you want to tell me, I won't make requests"
Rumpelstiltskin looked both thoughtful and uneasy.
"You're giving me rather a lot of freedom in this, aren't you? I can choose what I want to tell you and you will not ask for specifics? I might reveal any sort of mundane triviality"
She secreted away the smile prompted by the fan-spread of theatrical fingers that accompanied his misgiving.
"As if anything about you could be mundane or trivial," she tossed back, head tilted to one side. His mouth quirked, puzzled. Belle lifted her chin in challenge.
"Ask me for something in return. I don't expect anything to be one-sided between us, Rumple. Ask me for three things in return if you like, to balance the scales evenly"
Rumpelstiltskin was totally silent, the only movement the harried thoughts behind his eyes. Belle willed herself into relaxed calm. Whatever he requested she was ready to consider and prepared to give. She had been since the day she said the words that had bound them together in the first place. He stepped closer, ensnaring a loose curl in his finger. When he did speak his voice was quiet, low, for her ears alone.
"Stay exactly as you are, Belle. Brave, good and inherently beautiful. Do that, and you will find me more than content"
She blinked back tears. Would anyone believe her if she said the Dark One had named as his price something she did not apply effort or thought to in doing; simply to be? Clearing her throat she grasped his hand tightly in agreement.
"Deal"
He eyed her seriously, fingers tight around hers. Warning.
"I might have asked for any number of things, dearest. I might have asked for your ignorance, your loyalty, your love, with forever thrown into the bargain"
Belle cocked an eyebrow at him.
"Well, that would have been equally generous. You have two of those things already"
His brows rose this time in humbled delight.
"Although ignorance? You would've had to bargain very hard with me for that," she mused, "I don't like being kept in the dark"
Anything she has to say won't be a secret from you.
"I'll bear that in mind," he resolved, eyes flickering to hers for permission before planting a soft kiss on her waiting mouth.
It's 7:25 in the morning and there's no one else in Granny's. It's oddly peaceful sitting in the diner like this, she reflects, no hustle and chatter, just the quite hum of the lights and Ruby's heels clacking quietly somewhere in the kitchen. She's also unusually nervous. His note, an archaically beautiful scrawl left propped up on the Library desk was unexpected in its promptness, so soon after their last conversation. That he'd named as their meeting place the diner of a woman who had nothing good to say about him and made that public every time he visited spoke volumes to Belle.
She was going to learn something today, and anticipation and dread began a tipsy dance in her stomach, the two waltzing dizzily in unending circles. When his familiar step sounded at the entrance Belle looked up, the smile a reflex, prompting his own as he lowered himself with practiced ease into the seat opposite her.
"Hey"
"Hey"
He gestured vaguely at the bare table.
"You're not drinking any tea?"
"I haven't ordered anything yet," she admitted, an inexplicable blush colouring her cheeks, "But don't get me anything," she insisted urgently, "I'm here. To listen"
He clasped his hands together on the table, shifting slightly forward and she unthinkingly echoed his movements, their two figures like facing cameos from old portraits.
"I was thirteen when my leg became the encumbrance it is now," he began, and Belle blinked.
She'd been expecting a follow-on from her questions about Cora, or perhaps something relating to his association with the Queen. This opening caught her completely off-guard. Nerves prickling, she leant forward further still, her story-lover's senses jolted into increased awareness of the newness of the tale she was about to hear. The white hue of his knuckles gave the lie to the casual delivery of his words and Belle smiled encouragingly, her own palms hot against each other, tingling in expectation.
It had been their first night together; her first night outside of the asylum when she'd had that initial glimpse of his scars. Emerging shyly from the bathroom, strangely comfortable in one of what he'd called 'old' shirts and a pair of loose, soft trousers (pyjamas, that had been a new word), she found him sat on what would be their bed. The injured leg, bent at the knee, bare foot planted on the mattress and pyjama leg rolled up was exposed to the glow of the bedside lamp.
"Does it hurt very much?"
His head jerked up at her soft inquiry and his eyes said what his lips could not articulate in taking her in.
"I'm used to it"
Her forehead puckered in concern. Slowly she made her way round to his side of the bed, hugging her arms around the shirt he'd given her.
"Can, can I see it?"
Those eyes widened in blank incomprehension before he left off his inspection and sat back somewhat awkwardly, hands preoccupied with each other, unsettled in his lap.
Belle lowered her gaze to his knee and swallowed.
A ghostly lattice of crisscrossing lines, wriggling in uncertain cords tattooed his knee and some of the area above and below the joint. Faded pink like worn satin, they formed an odd pointelle on skin that was otherwise a light beech. She reached without thinking, fingers spread to press against the scar tissue, tracing the raised skin and finding it unnaturally smooth to the touch. Their appearance alone told the jagged, crushing pain of their birth. She winced at what awful accident could have constructed the gridwork on Rumpelstiltskin's leg and only looked up to meet his eyes when he let out a shuddering, embarrassed sigh.
"Belle, are you sure about this? There are more guest bedrooms, more sofas in this house than I need, if you want, I'll be more than happy to sleep-"
"With me," she managed, the words a husky gulp, vocal chords only just readjusting to all this talking, "- if it's alright? I'm not sure how this world-" she struggled to find words conduct, etiquette, propriety, "I've had rather too much time by myself, lately"
His mouth wavered at that and then he nodded briskly, drawing back the heavy duvet, eyes darting too-quickly to hers, anxious, waiting.
The breeze was stronger here, more playful, more boisterous. His legs dangled in space, his hair blew into his eyes. Beneath his palms and thighs the bark was tough, gnarled, reassuringly solid. Above him only the highest, most slender branches that even a cat would hesitate to test. The dog's incessant barking drew his eyes earthward, down from the blanket spread of fields and open, promising sky. He grinned happily at the sheepdog, a piebald mess of hair, front paws raised to the trunk with no hope of climbing.
"Sorry boy, I'll be up here a while longer"
The dog whined, a keening, self-pitying sound. He turned back to the sky. Birds were darting across the blue, dark arrowheads against the rolling clouds. Something was going on in the village. On the small stone bridge that crossed the stream and connected the outside world large carts were toiling, dark blocks moving almost in slow motion. He frowned.
"You can climb trees. We get it. It's old already"
He blinked. The girl at the foot of the tree stood legs akimbo, a thick shock of dark hair tousled by rough play. He climbed quickly down, thin legs moving swiftly, lightly over the knotted bark.
"Milah!"
The girl sniffed imperiously. "Bet you can't do what the other boys are doing"
"And what's that?"
He stooped to ruffle the sheepdog's floppy ears affectionately. Blue eyes glittered with excitement. She tightened the sash tied jauntily around her growing hips. She threw a discerning look at his tunic.
"Your shirt's torn"
He studied the garment. Too big, this tunic was, one of Father's old ones. The sleeves had been trimmed so as not to dwarf his arms but the hem trailed if not secured with a belt. He fingered the ragged hem. Milah clapped her hands decisively.
"Follow me!"
They ran, leaping through the as-yet unmown long grass, thin blades brushing bare ankles. When green met the dust of the road leading to the bridge she stopped abruptly, pointing a somewhat grubby finger at the carts looming ahead.
"Over there. It's a new game and so dangerous!" her eyes flashed, "They're so quick at it too"
He squinted in the midday sun, following the line of her finger until he saw flashes of movement between the massive wheels, dark shadows larger than the birds he'd been following from his favourite perch. As his eyes adjusted to the glare he saw that the shadows were figures, scuttling between the giant wheels, stopping for less than a second to grasp at something small and glittering in the dust.
The carts were huge, larger than any he'd ever seen passing through their tiny village. Their wheels were oak and iron and their cargo was concealed. He frowned in suspicion, the forbidden word Ogres forming unbidden on his tongue. Father said there had been trouble. Something stirring in the forest. Fear in muttered conversations he was supposed to have been too deeply asleep to hear snatches of.
"What do you think they're carrying?" he asked aloud.
"Who knows?" Milah shrugged unfazed, "Anyway, are you going to try it? You get to keep the marbles if you can take them. They're real glass, all the way from Avonlea"
He looked in her eyes, bright with anticipation. The last time he'd had that look sent in his direction he'd climbed the poplar at the edge of the forest to snatch an egg from the next in its highest branches. She fiddled with the sash, worrying the worn tassels with exaggerated deliberation.
"I still have the egg you know. It's still that nice colour. Matches my eyes"
The carts rumbled by, their wheels like slow thunder.
Belle's face was tense, her eyes narrowed in an empathic wince. She knew what was coming.
"And…" she fumbled for words. He managed a rueful half-smile.
"And I did. I tried my hand at the game the other boys were so good at," he scrutinized his knuckles, brow crinkling at the memory, "I was not so quick"
Fear ran cold through his veins despite the hot sun. Suddenly he was conscious of his thin legs, ankles trembling, somehow uncertain. Spindleshanks, some of the older boys had called him once. He hadn't liked it. Milah had laughed at it, stopping when he looked at her. She had never laughed at it again since.
He sprang. The nearest cart towered dark and foreboding above him as he scrambled in the dust on shaking legs. Forward, forward. Under the next carriage he scuttled quickly, eyes darting frantically for the marbles thrown in challenge into their path. Sweat beaded at his temples in shocked relief when he realized the cart above him had stopped. Nervous fingers reached for the shining globes in the dirt. A vivid green marble slipped cool into his damp palms. The cart rumbled, its wheels creaking in obvious warning of onward movement.
One more.
A tiny ball, smaller than its compatriots. Sparkling and light blue, a cat's eye. Milah.
He reached and the prize was his. On his knees in the sand-coloured dust he felt for the floor of the cart above his head and shuffled awkwardly into a crouched position. There was another cart ahead of this one to dodge, but if he was quick enough he could slide between the wheels of that one too and be on the other side of the road in no time. He readied himself behind the spokes of one gigantic wheel. I can do this.
He moved.
The wheels turned.
Afterwards he felt, as he had not in the instance it happened, the bright spurt of elation in his dart forward, knowing he was out from under one of the unseeing behemoths and so close to his goal.
In the moment all he knew was panic and the crushing, splintering pain that exploded behind his eyelids and rendered him incapable of anything but screams, on his back in the dust. Afterwards and every day that followed he woke knowing he would never climb the poplar again.
Rumplestiltskin sighed heavily.
"It was my tunic, you see. That too-long hem caught in the wheels and dragged me back under. I only saw the wheel coming towards me when it was too late. So huge, as big as a dining table, or so it seemed at the time. When I finally awoke, my leg was a mess of splints and bandages and Milah was gone. They'd sent her away to an aunt's in a neighbouring village. Punishment for roping me into the game we should not have been playing"
Belle's face, when he finally lifted his head to meet her gaze, was awash with tears. He reached for her over the table in the exact instant that she scrambled upright and scurried round to his side of the booth, nearly crushing him against the wall as she threw her arms around his shoulders and buried her face in his neck, quietly sobbing. He held her gently as she sniffled into his collar, ignoring Granny's silent threat of imminent and painful death as she passed them to refill the coffee pot.
"It's alright love. It's an old story from a long time ago. I'd very nearly forgotten it"
Belle looked up, her eyes watery with brimming tears.
"You were so young. It's such a horrible thing to have to suffer, I don't know if I could have coped"
He shook his head, wiping an errant tear away from her cheek.
"No use crying over it, sweetheart. What's done is done"
He was still holding her when her tears subsided and she rubbed a warm hand against his chest in silent comfort, when the door opened to let another customer in. Belle looked up in reflex, wary of another unwanted appearance from Regina.
The tall woman, a polished badge at her hip and tumbling blonde hair like a princess's fixed her beloved a stern, knowing look as she passed on route to order coffee. Rumpelstiltskin smiled back, clearly amused at the cool reception.
"Don't worry about the Sheriff, we've-"
"A complicated relationship?" Belle surmised.
"Precisely. And that's a story for another day, or month" he finished, stage-frowning into his drink.
"I look forward to it," she replied, conjuring a short giggle at the harassed look that gave way to an oblique half-smile.
Days passed.
"It'll be a rather brief tale this time," he muttered, shoulders unsettled under his jacket, his whole stance radiating quiet apprehension.
Belle looked up from her work, rising from her seat behind the desk. She opened her mouth to suggest they meet another time but before the words came he shook his head abruptly.
"Of all the people I could undertake the closing of a portal with," he trailed off uncharacteristically, sneering, "can't keep her Majesty waiting though"
Belle attempted a sympathetic smile.
"Are you really going to close it?"
Rumpelstiltskin looked at her, the uncannily penetrating look of old searching her features.
"I will not have Cora tear this world apart," he vowed under his breath, "not when I have so much here to protect"
Belle nodded silently, waving him over to their corner.
"You must understand the differences first," he began, hunched over his knees, hands clasped as though thinking through the legal jargon of a particularly delicate contract, "I inherited, you might say, my powers. Dark Magic came to me from the outside in. Cora," even now his voice grated over the hated name, "like her daughter after her, was born with hers. I took her on to school that talent into something I could wield"
Belle drew the line across the dots, acknowledging his words, the spoken and the unsaid. The Dark Curse. Baelfire.
"She was young then, " he continued, "headstrong, ambitious, thirsty for more of the power I helped discipline", he shook his head at the memory, "I underestimated the last part. She grew quickly in power and ambition, and one day that desire led her to take me on, breaking all the promises she'd agreed to in allowing me to teach her. Defeating, killing the Dark One," he scowled, "the ultimate proof of absolute power, for she wanted the unique abilities that came with my title too"
The Library itself seemed intent on his every word, willed into silence. What tomes he could fill, she wondered, hundreds of volumes marked Reader, beware. Belle cleared her throat.
"But you defeated her," a half question.
"Oh yes," he conceded, eyebrows arching briefly as though it were news to him too, "but it was closer than I would have liked"
That's not how she tells the story, Belle remembered, and her chest tightened.
"But you didn't kill her"
Rumpelstiltskin straightened, tapping his cane absentmindedly on the floor, his back a perfect ramrod.
"No, more's the pity". Cora defiant, even on her knees before him, eyes murderous, mouth bloody with the force of his attack and her own exertions. So thoughtless, even of her own body and that growing inside it. If ever a woman could spit fire, he'd dimly thought then, and this one literally could. He'd had a dragon on a leash, and a collar means nothing once the fire becomes hot enough.
"I made her a deal. Something to keep her under control"
Belle looked puzzled. "But you said that she broke her promises"
"Oh, I managed to coax one from her that she would do well to keep in order to continue possessing a head. A child. Her firstborn"
"Regina," Belle concluded, her mind racing to understand the logic, pieces clicking into place, "A life for a life"
"She was promised to me. When time proved my theory right that she would inherit her mother's aptitude for Magic, I had my replacement, my means to set in the motion the Curse that would bring me here, to the world where Bae was"
"And you were told she'd died. Cora"
"There were infinite things I had to teach her," he bared his teeth, glowering at nothing, "and clearly she put them to good use if even her own daughter believed her dead"
He stood then, straightening his suit jacket with the air of one about to head back to work rather than potentially do battle. Perhaps that is his work too, Belle reasoned. To plan sieges, negotiate terms, create chessboards of entire worlds, to wage war with and against mortals and Magic.
I have to break this new Curse.
Clearly her eyes spoke her worry as he rubbed her elbow awkwardly when she rose, brushing off her skirt, his head downcast.
"Don't worry. I'm a very old, very bad penny, " he quipped, "I'll be back to regale you with more tales of darkness and woe"
She frowned, fussing over an already perfect tie knot.
"Be careful," she warned, "I'll never forgive you if you come back to me in pieces"
"I won't"
He didn't, although the sore head he'd given Ruby gave her cause enough to purse her lips disapprovingly when he emerged from the back of his shop the following day.
"And how is our lupine friend?" he inquired, reading the accusation in her eyes.
"Ruby says she fine," his beloved confirmed, "but the bump on the back of her head feels like a robin's egg"
"Ah," he conceded, leaning on the register, "Wolves have thick skulls, I wouldn't worry"
"You wouldn't," Belle shot back, privately noting his use of 'our' in relation to her first friend in Storybrooke and inwardly smiling, "I'm not accustomed to having my friends hurled about"
He froze, eyeing her with a long, neutral look.
"Would you like me to apologize to Miss Lucas?" he asked evenly.
Belle found her mouth empty of a prompt response. Stumped by his question, she looked at her hands. He was really offering to apologize, should she so desire him to, despite the obvious consequence being Granny's magnified contempt. She would never let go of an apology from Rumpelstiltskin. Belle wrinkled her forehead in thought.
"I'll think about it. Am I here to be told the last of these three chapters?"
"Let's have tea first, " he beckoned.
At last, once their first cups had been drained and their seconds poured hot from the china teapot, he began.
"You know now that Regina was my apprentice of sorts, as was her mother before her"
Belle nodded confirmation.
"You made me admit it that night, " he smiled, tiredness in his eyes and she resisted the urge to pet his hair, too smooth away the lines of fatigue.
"She was a girl once. Articulate, idealistic," he paused, considering the Queen as if she were quite a new concept to him, editing his choice of adjectives along the way, "and heartbroken. I offered to teach her Magic and she refused. She was aware of the danger, though she already loved the idea, the sensation, but-" he circled her chipped cup in his hands, "she was afraid. Of what Magic could to the wielder, and she'd had her fill, I suppose, with Cora for a mother"
Belle weighed his words carefully, "In spite of that, she still came to you in the end, though"
"Someone once told me that anger is one of the most natural emotions between a parent and child. What's between those two paragons of womanhood goes far beyond simple anger"
Rumpelstiltskin sighed heavily, "Never underestimate what a heart robbed of True Love is capable of doing, Belle," he stressed pointedly, "I saw the state hers was in as plain as day. I," and here his pace slowed, "used it to my advantage."
The room was quiet.
"You're not going to ask for more details than that?"
Belle shrugged. "That was part of our deal. I keep my promises"
They sat in total silence. Tense minutes passed. Then Rumpelstiltskin held up an index finger and wordlessly nodded assent.
"Did you teach her to take hearts?"
It was a damning question and she knew it the moment it left her lips. Rumpelstiltskin looked at his hands, grimly locked into one another. When his eyes met hers again they were dog-weary and waiting for rebuke.
"Yes," came the soft answer. Belle felt acutely, almost saw the air leave her body.
"It was a unicorn," he added, with the air of someone recalling a childhood pet, "She didn't want to take it. She hesitated. I told her nothing was innocent," hands released each other, fingers pointing resignedly skyward, "it wasn't too long after that she took a heart without hesitation."
A half-hearted shrug.
Belle's expression was grave.
"Well," she deliberated, "I think I would have questioned that. It is possible to stand up to you"
"I think you would have, dearest," reaching for her, rubbing the back of her hand with his palm, "because you have courage. Always remember that," he insisted, fingers curling around hers as if to imprint the sentiment into her flesh, "you are stronger than she is"
Belle fidgeted, not quite convinced.
"Well I don't know about that. If it ever came to blows I'm pretty sure I know who would win, Dark Magic powers and all," she smiled ruefully, still colouring prettily from his compliment, "but I can be a pretty mean hair puller"
"Well I can testify to that," he agreed, eyes darkening in lusty recollection. She pinched his hand gently.
"Thank you," she murmured.
Many paths, she remembered, and all of them dark. Belle exhaled slowly, limbs heavy with fatigue she had no business feeling, dull as if from running doggedly for miles. Regina's words took on a new resonance now I would know. She felt as if she had traveled those roads instead, lonely, thorn-riddled, treacherous, quagmires and pits to the unaware. But then a small figure she would not know even on sight cleared the phantom brambles, if only a little.
There was a child at the beginning, middle and end of this, she resolved, a child for whose sake a father did unthinkable, indefensible things in the name of reconciliation and parental love. Her eyes widened, clarity hitting home with the force of a battle ram and she chewed at her lip.
"Have I horrified you enough for one week?" he weakly joked, looking like a man waiting on the noose to circle his neck.
"It wasn't just anger towards Regina, was it?" she faced him directly, "The night you sent the Wraith. You were angry at yourself too, for sending me away and giving her the chance to abduct me"
Rumpelstiltskin's face quivered in confirmation, a subtle, there-and-gone ripple that to the unskilled eye was less than perceptible. Belle felt it like a tidal wave. His eyes were saucers, trembling on spindly balancing rods.
"If I had thought for one second that she would use those powers against you-"
"But you didn't," Belle finished succinctly, "You couldn't".
She tapped an ink blue nail on the rim of her cup.
"You didn't mean to fall in love with me, did you?"
I wasn't asking if she was engaged.
He looked stricken.
"No," he whispered, a deathbed confession, unexpected relief awash on his features, "but I'm so very glad I did"
She crumbled at that, circumnavigating the side table and practically collapsing into his lap with no thought for his leg or the delicate pleats ironed painstakingly into her dress.
"I'm glad too," she whispered into his hair and Rumpelstiltskin hugged her fiercely, possessively, like she was a lifeline thrown to a drowning man. Quiqueg's coffin to Ishmael, her bibliophilic mind leaping to draw parallels to her latest discovery before reason intervened, objecting to the morbid tone of the image. A chill sank deep into her stomach and Belle squeezed her arms tighter around him, sheltering. I will not be a coffin for him, she thought ferociously, I will not be the death of him.
"I love you," she breathed firmly into his ear and his grip on her waist tightened reflexively.
"Darling Belle," he breathed in return, "I love you more"
