Belle doesn't wait for Gold to come and meet her. She listens to Emma's apologies, her assurances that they will find him and bring him back in as soon as possible, in a kind of comatose daze.
She runs home as fast as her feet will carry her, unheeding of the stares she attracts.
The world had been perfect, fine, shining and whole just five minutes ago.
Now it's back to its old chaos and disarray, and everything is falling down around her. She needs her home, a cool and dark hole to hide in, and her daughter warm and safe in her arms.
Astrid cries out in concern when Belle bursts in the front door and runs up the stairs, two at a time. She's by Rose's cradle within seconds, and has the baby in her arms, holding her as tight as she can against her and trembling, rubbing Rose's back as if she's the one who needs comfort.
"Belle?" Astrid is quiet in the doorway, uncertain, "Belle what happened?"
It takes her a moment to be able to speak, and when she does her voice is hoarse and strangled, trying not to sob, "Nothing, nothing, it's fine."
"No, it's not." Astrid's worry is tainted with genuine fear, and it only makes things worse: this is her problem, and no one can save them, not forever, not permanently, "Belle, what happened? Was it George?"
"He's gone," she whispers, after a long moment, "He got away."
"George… wait, I thought Sheriff Swan caught him?"
"She did." Belle really doesn't want to talk about this, but Astrid's worried little hand is on her shoulder, and she needs a friend more than anything in the universe, "But somehow he escaped. He's out there right now, and he'll be here sooner or later."
"What're you going to do?"
The only thing she could do: Belle was going to run.
She couldn't be safe here, any more than she could have been safe with her father, or in the convent. She needs to get out of Storybrooke altogether, however daunting the prospect.
"I have to go." She murmurs, and suddenly everything is a flurry of action. She places Rose in her little car seat, and her eyes follow her mama around the room as she grabs her duffel bag from under the wardrobe and starts to throw clothes inside, grabbing blindly at soft piles of cloth and hurling them inside with no pause for thought.
"Belle?" Astrid watches her as if she's lost her mind, wringing her hands, "Belle, what're you doing?"
She grabs a handful of Rose's baby clothes and stuffs them in too, along with a couple of books, and runs across to her underwear drawer, caught halfway by Astrid's firm grip on her forearms, "Belle!" her voice cracks, harder than Belle has ever heard it, "What are you doing?"
"I have to get out of here…" she's trying not to sob, but her face is too hot and the tears start coming and suddenly she can't stop, "We- we have to go. Now."
"No, you don't. You're safe here, Belle, you always have been."
She shakes her head, swallowing down her tears, "No, not anymore. Not now. He'll come for us, Astrid, he's going to come and we can't stop him and-"
"Isobel!" Astrid looks like she's going to smack her; Belle has never seen her so angry, "Calm down, okay? He can't hurt you anymore."
She shakes her head, hysterical, unable to breathe, "Yes, he can. He's already tried."
"And Gold stopped him."
"He can't stop him forever. We have to run, Astrid, so get out of my way!"
She shakes herself free, and hauls her duffel over her shoulder, grabs Rose in her car seat in her other hand and pushes Astrid aside, making for the stairs.
Nothing matters now: everything becomes an obstacle to overcome. Astrid runs after her, but Belle pays no mind, doesn't hear her calls for reason, to slow down and talk things through. There's nothing left to talk about, and Belle was a fool for thinking anything different.
All she's ever done, all she's ever been good for, is running and hiding.
And although she knows it's stupid, knows it's wrong, she can't help but think that allowing herself to settle down, to find one bolthole and stay there, to love someone who was no blood of hers, somehow caused this.
This world doesn't allow for safe havens and happy endings.
Belle is a rabbit, and rabbits don't lie in the sun or fight with teeth and claws. Rabbits are soft and fragile: rabbits run.
Astrid tries to stand in the kitchen door and bar her way, as Belle ransacks the fridge, grabs all of Rose's spare bottles as well as a few snacks for Belle herself. She's shut down, panic switching her to autopilot. Collect supplies; get out of the door; and head for the hills.
So she doesn't hear Astrid's commands for her to stop, or Rose's panicked crying as she watches her mama slowly lose her mind.
But she does notice when there're a pair of larger, warmer hands on her shoulders, and she's forced to stop by a suit that won't move.
"Belle!" Gold's voice cuts through her hysteria, and she looks into his face with wide and glassy eyes, "Stop!"
"I have to run," her voice sounds alien, dead and numb, "We have to run, so move."
"No. You're staying right here." His voice is firm, unyielding, and all she wants to do is hold onto it and use it as a shield, let him take every weight from her shoulders and win all the battles that she's too scared to fight.
"He'll find us."
"He's not getting within a hundred miles of you while I'm breathing, do you understand me?"
Astrid comes from behind her and gently takes Rose's car seat from her hand. She puts it on the ground, and scoops the baby up, trying to comfort her. Belle barely hears or feels any of it: she's too busy trying to find a way around Gold, and out the door.
"He's going to come for us." She whimpers, and Gold brings one hand from her shoulder to her cheek, brushes aside a tear with his thumb.
"That as may be, but who says he'll succeed? This is your home, our castle. You're safe here."
And she wants to believe it, so badly it hurts.
But she can't. Even here, George could throw more stones through the windows, or kick down the door. She would never, never be safe, and she was amazed that she could ever have believed otherwise.
But still, she stopped struggling, and relaxed her arms, letting her duffel bag fall to the floor at her feet. She let her mind go blank when he kissed her, all passion and sweetness and comfort, soothing her panic as she melted into his arms, clinging on for dear life.
The next few hours pass like days.
Astrid melts away, confident that Belle will be okay with Gold there and suddenly desperate to get back to the cool confines of the convent. Gold spends his time calling around, threatening his tenants, asking for any information about George's location, about where he had been seen.
Belle just curls on the sofa, Rose on her lap, and tries not to think.
She doesn't know how she ended up under the dining room table, but she knows it feels better than sitting on the couch, all exposed and vulnerable.
Yes, she thinks, as she settles Rose on her cross-legged lap and pulled out her book, this feels better. The tablecloth makes it a secret little den, where she cannot see nor be seen by the outside world: a place for her and her family, warm and safe.
She's startled when the cloth moves, and a smiling face appears, "Ah, Belle?"
Gold looks entirely bemused, and Belle chews her lip, "Yes?"
"Why are you under the table?"
"I… don't know. Felt like the right thing to do."
"Alright…" he's giving her a look, like she's lost her mind.
"Just… let me stay here, okay? It feels safer down here."
"It's going to be alright, you know." He says, as he sits down properly and stretches out his bad leg, "There's no need to hide."
"There's always a need to hide." She replies, and strokes the top of Rose's head, needing the reassurance of her daughter, safe and well and there with her: she's more scared than she's been in months.
"Well, is there at least room for one more?"
He cracks a broad and irresistible smile, and here, in her safe, warm little cave, she can smile back. She nods, shifts aside a little to make room for him, and he scoots under the table so he's next to her, one arm around her shoulders.
He presses a kiss to her cheek, and rests his head on top of hers, so she's slumped against him, head on his shoulder. And for the tiniest moment, nothing that happened today is true, and they're back in his bed, warm and dappled in sunlight, and the world is kind and peaceful.
They eat dinner there, huddled under the dining room table, and it's late when Gold finally complains of a cramp in his bad leg and helps Belle out, and they stand up straight for the first time in hours.
It's dark outside, which strangely manages to make her less scared of what could be out there. With curtains drawn and blinds down, golden light warming every beam and corner of this warm little house, it's almost like being under the table, like their den has just expanded and moulded to fit a larger space.
She lays Rose to sleep, and she almost sees her own anxiety, her own mind-numbing fear reflected in her little daughter's eyes. But of course she doesn't, of course Rose cannot truly understand a thing that's going on.
Still, the idea that George could scare someone other than Belle herself, that the terror he brings in his wake could pass on to her child, twists something painful deep inside her.
Gold doesn't try to lead her from the cradle side, seems to understand without words that this is where she needs to be, tonight.
She doesn't know how he can possibly understand so much about this, unmarried, childless man that he is, but she's thankful for it all the same.
She doesn't focus on the loneliness when she curls down to sleep, when she balls herself into the smallest little shape she can under the covers and tucks her head down, a protective little shell. Perhaps it's better that she's alone: perhaps this is a state she needs to relearn, a pain she needs to re-acclimatise to.
But then he's there, minutes or hours after she's drifted from watching Rose and into her bed, an uncertain shape in the darkness. And he must have limped those twelve steps, for there is no cane to be seen, and he looks oddly small by her bedside, almost fragile, awkward angles and plaid pyjamas.
She just rolls over, and awkwardly pats her vacated space with one hand.
She feels the bed dip as he clambers under the covers, and then he is there, right there, his arm slung across her waist, body curved around hers.
And it's not a perfect fit, because no one could be: people are not puzzle pieces to be slotted neatly together. There are places where his arm is a little too warm, where his knee is a little sharp behind her own.
But it's still the best thing in the world, and maybe those little discomforts only exist to remind her that this is real, that he is here. To confirm that this is imperfect reality and not some utopian, halcyon dream of perfect safety and untainted love.
He's not sure what made him take such a stupid little risk.
Because despite all that had happened the night of the arrest, despite the vivid memories of her lips under his, open and inviting, and her breathy little cries in his ear, and the sensation of her perfect skin shivering under his fingers, this is still a very delicate situation.
It was one thing to make love in his bed, in a daze born of released tension and unbelievable relief. It is quite another to share a bed in a time of fear and worry, when the world was falling down around her ears.
But she rolls over to make room for him, and her fingers weave between his where his hand rests on her stomach, and her tense muscles seem to relax gradually the longer they lie there, the further she curls into him as she drifts off to sleep.
He pretends not to notice the tear tracks on her face, the redness of her skin. If she has been crying alone, it means he's not supposed to know.
He doesn't notice as he falls asleep, doesn't know anything until he feels her shift suddenly, the motion jolting him into semi-consciousness, "Everything alright, love?" he murmurs, looking down with bleary eyes into a pair of turquoise-blue ones, wide and awake.
"Why do you care so much?" she asks, absent hand caressing his cheek, and there's such wondrous doubt in her tone that he's suddenly intensely angry at the whole fucking world.
She's Belle, and she's beautiful and so much braver than she knows, and she shouldn't even have to ask the question.
"Because…" he sighs, tries to think of how to phrase this without telling her everything, without scaring her with nonsense about the Curse, without poisoning her with Rumpelstiltskin and deals and dark, dark magic. "Because I had a child, once, a son. And I lost him."
She looks like she's about to die, she's suddenly so sad, and her arms wrap around him like the warmest, sweetest little vice. "Oh." She clings to him for a moment, and he soaks up the comfort, the understanding and warmth that radiates from her skin like it's sunlight, like oxygen. "Oh, God, I'm so, so sorry."
"It's alright," he lies, because of course it's not, of course Bae is the one love, the one awful and shameful memory, he can never, ever be strong enough to carry, "It was a long, long time ago."
"How did it happen?" she asks.
The fucking blue fairy stuck her nose where it wasn't wanted, and I was too much of a bloody stupid coward to do a damn thing to stop her, he wants to answer, but he can't, of course he can't, so instead he says, "I… I lost him. He slipped away from me, there's not much more to tell." He sighs, braces himself against pain he knows will come from even thinking his next words, "I suppose he's out there, somewhere, living a normal life. He could be happy, and I'll never know."
He's not crying.
Mr Gold doesn't cry into his lover's hair in the dead of night, over a boy who has been long gone and lost for nigh on three hundred years.
But if some drops of moisture fall on her chestnut curls, then he won't deny ownership.
"Let's hope," she whispers, and it's completely not what he expected to hear. But yes, of course, yes, "Let's hope he's happy. If nothing else."
Gold would rather Bae be happy and safe and on the other side of the universe than miserable, cold and alone, but by his side. And it's with a huge amount of guilt that he realises that, back in that village, when this really mattered and Bae was before him, the opposite was true.
No, Gold would never miss being the Dark One.
"What… what was his name?"
Gold takes a deep, ragged breath, and closes his eyes. Because he's a coward, and he hasn't said this one word in eternity, and now is the time to be brave, "Baelfire. Bae."
"That's beautiful," she hums, running sweetly soothing circles on his back with her palms, and how is this amazing creature even here, comforting him for his hurt three centuries past when her own world is so fractured and broken? "Family name?"
"Yes, I suppose. It was common where I came from."
Past tense, because those lowlands, those rivers, even that sky, are long gone and past, destroyed by his hand.
By the curse that was supposed to find his family.
Magic is a terrible, tricky, mighty thing. It has a mind of its own, and an awful sense of warped humour.
And with that thought, he wants to rage and scream. He wants to force Belle away from him, and storm from the room, smash everything in the whole damn town, and tear the whole world apart searching for his son. He wants to judge her as a distraction, thrown in his way by the same forces that want to keep him from succeeding, want to keep Bae lost and lonely in this strange, strange world.
For a brief and horrible second, he wants to hurt her.
But he catches himself, and stops. For the first time in his long, long life, he does the brave thing, and hopes to all the Gods that bravery will follow. He looks down at Belle's head, cradled against his shoulder, and murmurs something against her hair.
"I love you."
Because that is what you say when you find your family. This is the way it is done.
She sighs and shifts against him, and he thinks that perhaps the poor, tired little thing is asleep, that maybe his admission will go unheard and unnoticed.
But then she's looking up at him, and leaning up to kiss him and it's like all the stars and every moment of sweetness and magic in the Universe, distilled into one moment of touch. "I love you, too."
Then she curls into him, and he's holding her so close he thinks they might merge in the night into one person, and they fall asleep huddled together under the covers, all warmth and safety in a world of ice queens and dragons.
Gold is gone when Belle wakes, but since a glance at her clock tells her that it's already 10am, she guesses he must have gone to work already.
Rose is quiet, just stares up at her when she goes to check on her, and Belle realises with a small amount of wonder that Gold must have fed and changed her while she slept. It's an even greater surprise when she realises that she doesn't mind at all.
But then, she's admitted that she loves him, that she's in love with him, and there's no one in the world she'd rather be Rose's father.
The horrors of yesterday seem distant and tiny this morning, and she carries Rose around the house, sweeping her in a little dance that has her beaming, giggling in her mama's arms. Today the world is fine and shining, and Rose is happy, so solid and warm, and Belle is loved, and nothing else could matter.
She still doesn't leave the house, but the curtains are open, and the sunlight streams in as she sits on the sofa and reads fairy tales to Rose, who smacks the illustrations in the book with her chubby little hand.
She lingers on Beauty and the Beast, and reads it twice, tracing the words as Rose does the pictures with her fingers.
What if the beast wasn't a hairy, growling, fanged monster? What if he was well groomed, in a dark suit and tie, with a towering reputation to do all the growling for him? What if he didn't mean to trap Beauty in the castle, but did all he could to protect her from the world when it came roaring at the door?
Belle had never given much thought to the old story, but now it seems strangely relevant.
She just hopes that her daughter doesn't end up the same way. Fairy tale princesses usually seem to end up poisoned or cursed or tricked, and all Belle wants is for Rose to be happy, bright and normal. For her life to be filled with good things, with everything safe and sweetly domestic.
She wonders if perhaps she should have bigger dreams for her child.
But everything she wants for herself rests in this wooden house, with her lover and child and books and sunshine, and if this is all she needs in her life, why should she expect anything else for her daughter?
Perhaps Rose will be braver than her mama. Perhaps she will be an adventurer or a dragon-slayer.
But Belle is still a rabbit, and a safe bolthole is enough for her.
She makes dinner with the radio on, dancing to songs she recognises from her youth, songs from a hundred years ago when she was a raw and foolish girl, with a heart full of painful dreams. She revels in the nostalgia, spinning in clumsy pirouettes and singing at the top of her lungs, entirely off-key and without a care in the world.
She waits until eight, but she is hungry and Gold is nowhere to be seen. So she eats her soup alone, and leaves his on the oven to be reheated later. She even tries giving a little of the broth to Rose, and is stupidly proud when she swallows it and smiles.
Her baby is growing into a sturdy little child, and it makes her heart swell.
But nine o'clock passes, and then ten, and worries begin to coil in her stomach. She decides to go for a walk to Granny's, stop by the shop on her way past and tell the stupid man to call it a night.
Of course he is hung up on inventory or a juicy new deal.
Of course he is fine, and she'll take him out for a drink, a real date as a real couple, and they can save the soup for another night.
She calls Astrid, but she is overtired and can't come babysit. So it is Sister Mira who comes over to look after Rose, and she has such a warm and wide smile when she sees the baby that Belle regrets having only really kept contact with Astrid since she moved out of the convent.
She'll visit them, she decides, as she bids goodbye to Mira and tells her to help herself to anything in the kitchen, as she heads own the porch and onto the street. Soon, she'll visit the convent, or perhaps invite all her old friends over to her home, and introduce them to Rose properly.
She wonders about the wisdom of being outside at this time, with George on the loose. But the streets are fairly busy, and he wouldn't try something so publicly.
She reaches the shop, and is surprised when the lights are all off.
Perhaps he's on his way home, and took a different route, and she's simply missed him.
But something makes her open the door and peer inside, and all her hopes die in her throat.
The place is a ruin, a cavern of smashed and broken things, and Gold's cane lies on the floor by the counter, thrown carelessly aside. There is a smear of blood on the glass of the countertop. Gold's blood.
She lets out a little cry, hand clamped over her mouth to keep from screaming.
She knows who did this, knows exactly what happened, even without reading the scrawled note left on the counter, in George's crude hand.
'You'll find your boyfriend in the secret place. Come collect the body.'
Gold is gone, and the world is coming apart at the seams, and George is a fucking psychopath and maybe he would do it, maybe he is really capable of cold-blooded murder. She wants to scream, to cry and fall apart.
Because Gold is gone.
But she doesn't.
Because this is one bridge too far, one step too close to apocalypse.
George can come after her all he likes: he always has and she thinks he always will. He can scream and smash and rage, and she will run and run as fast as she can, terrified little rabbit.
But he cannot hurt those who she loves.
Not Rose, never Rose, and now Gold has come under that banner as well. And Belle was never brave, never a hero or a soldier or a warrior. But perhaps she can run but can't ever truly hide. Perhaps now it's time to try fighting instead.
Even if it means driving into the woods, to their old secret place, and finding only the body of the only man she's ever truly loved: the true father of her child, if not in blood then in action, in bond.
It's better than running and hiding in her bolthole, calling the Sheriff's cavalry and cowering under a table until the war is over.
She finds Gold's gun in its hidden place behind the counter, and tucks it into her cardigan pocket. She holds his cane over her arm, and stands for just a moment, trying to keep from shaking and disintegrating into a thousand little broken shards.
Then she grabs the car keys from their bowl in the back room, and sprints as fast as her feet can carry her, a blur on the ground beneath her, out to the long black car parked out back.
One way or another, tonight Belle will fight. Even if she's doomed to failure; even if her love is already a pile of dead flesh and bones on the cabin floor.
George Gaston has terrified her into inability for the last time.
Tonight Belle is not a frightened rabbit-girl: tonight Belle is a lion-hearted woman, a force of vengeful nature. Belle is a lover and a mother, and tonight she will live up to those titles.