Belle walked out of her room, beginning to cook breakfast for herself and Rumpelstiltskin. She could do it using magic now. She'd been losing track of the days, in the many months she had spent in this castle. But she was fairly certain that today was her nineteenth birthday. So much had happened in the past year. She had fallen in love with a dark sorcerer, stopped him from killing a man, had her life saved by him. And she had grown to know a bit more about him, even if most things he kept to himself. He was a man of many secrets, she knew. She had learned the name of his son; Baelfire. She knew that he had spent centuries trying to find him. But she didn't know how he had been lost, why it had taken so long to find him even though Rumpelstiltskin had magic, why he was so sure he'd still be alive after centuries. She had learned that he had been raised by spinsters, but not why; she knew nothing of his parents. She knew his wife had been named Milah, and had died, but she did not know how she had died or why he spoke her name with such fury. He was a confusing man. He was ruthless, made deals with people, tricked them. But all of it, she knew, was somehow to find his son. She knew what he did was wrong, and she did her best to stop him, but she did admire his dedication to his family. She had wondered on occasion whether her own father would go to such great lengths to find her. Yet she felt she had her answer; she had been here nearly a year, and nobody had come for her. She liked it here, but it still hurt to think that nobody wanted to rescue her from what they thought was a terrible monster.

"Hello, Belle," he said, walking in.

"Hello, Rumpelstiltskin." She frowned. "What's the date?"

He told her.

"As I'd thought." She stirred the porridge with a sigh. "It's my birthday."

"Happy birthday," he said, not sounding very surprised.

"Did you know that?"

"No, but I suspected it was near. You've been here nearly a year, and you were shortly after your birthday then."

"Not exactly where I thought I would be on my birthday."

He frowned. "You can leave."

She shook her head. "I don't wish to leave. I said it was different, not worse."

"You... you like it here?"

"Yes." She could swear the flicker of a smile appeared on his face, a real smile rather than his usual taunting one, but it must have been her imagination.

"Well. That-that's wonderful, then. I have a meeting after breakfast, and then we can begin your lesson at noon."

"Alright. Breakfast is ready."

She went up to the room by the stairs to listen to his meeting; she liked to do that, from time to time. She learned some valuable things.

"Rumpelstiltskin!"

Belle shivered; she knew that voice.

"Regina."

"What have you done now? I can never harm them!"

"Ah, but that was not what I did, Regina."

"I plunged a dagger through Snow White and nothing happened. I would say that is what you did."

"The spell is that you cannot harm them in this world."

"What?"

"You have to take them to another. To a land..."

"...without magic."

"Precisely."

"So is that it? You were pulling the strings so I would cast your curse?"

"I'm only trying to help you, Regina."

"What game are you playing, Rumpelstiltskin? Because it's clearly not the game I am playing."

"No, Regina, but if we play right, we'll both get what we want."

"Hmm."

"You know what you have to do to get your revenge on Snow White."

The door opened and shut, and Belle knew Regina had left. She ran downstairs. "What are you planning to do to Snow White?"

He went pale. "How much of that did you hear?"

"All of it. I like Snow. What are you going to do to her?"

"Regina is going to cast a curse."

"Yes... she called it your curse."

"It is. I created the curse so that I could find Bae. Regina is going to cast it for me."

"And hurt Snow!"

"By nature of the curse. She'll be separated from her husband, frozen in time, they won't remember each other. The rest of us will also be frozen in time without our memories. And we'll all be in a land without magic. But the curse will be broken," he said, before Belle could object. "Everything will be fine. We'll just be in another land."

"I don't believe you."

"It's true. Snow White's daughter will break the curse."

"Why do you want a curse cast and then broken?" she asked, confused as much as horrified.

"Because it will get me to that land. A land without magic."

Understanding came to her. "And that's where Baelfire is."

"Yes."

"But there has to be another way. Without wiping everybody's memories and freezing time."

"Only if someone cast the curse without revenge in mind. Just took everyone there. The caster decides how it works."

"Well, alright. So I'll cast it."

"No!"

"Why not? Why not you, for that matter?"

"Belle, to cast the curse, you have to sacrifice the thing you love most."

"What?"

"You need to cut out the heart of the thing you love most and use it to cast the spell."

"That's horrible. How could you ask Regina to do that?"

"The thing is, she wants to do it."

"Because you manipulated her! There must be another way to get to this land."

"I can't think of one."

"And you're sure that that's where your son is?"

"That's where he was taken."

"But... if he was taken there centuries ago, and there was no magic to keep him alive... how can he be alive?"

The thought seemed to puzzle him. "I don't know. But I know he is alive because my Seer abilities show me this."

"And they show him in this world?"

"No. They show me no location."

"Then maybe he's in a magical place. Somewhere where he could be for centuries without growing older. I don't know. A land where time stands still, or-" She broke off when she saw the look of horror that came over his face.

"No-it can't be-"

"What?"

"You're right, Belle. There's only one place he could have been for all these years."

"And where is that?"

He shuddered, and she realized she had never seen him afraid before. "Neverland."

A/N: This was going to be the last chapter, but it went a bit longer than expected, so the next chapter will be the last one.