A/N: Thanks for reading and reviewing! Much love and kisses :3
~8~8~
"Rum!" Belle screamed frantically as she raced over to her injured love. Terror gripped her mind with its owning, knife-like talons, ripping ruthlessly at her normally strong sensibilities. Even under the magic powers of Regina she hadn't felt herself sink to such dire fear as she did watching her true love crumple to the floor like a tossed away rag doll.
Glossy dark crimson blood bubbled steadily from the pronounced wound gouged out of his supple, weathered flesh and bone. His blood soaked hands weakly covered the injury as if trying to keep his essence in his wiry form as more of the deep scarlet fluid seeped and stained his silken shirt of burgundy into a morbid carnelian hue.
The stench of Regina's last burst of fetid magic still wafted repugnant through the chilled air, nearly making those about gag at the vile reek pouring into their noses and leaving a foul taste upon the tongue. Her magic's had always possessed the acrid vaporous odor of month old corpses lying unburied.
One could not help but to think of a horrid demise with its noxious aroma still entwined upon the musty air.
Shaking such an undesirable thought askance from her bright, petrified mind, Belle fell to her knees at his slowly heaving side. The crimson puddle splashed in every direction at the motion, sending warm flecks of his blood to stain the freshly white washed walls in some repulsive tears of blood that oozed down sorrowfully.
The russet haired beauty tried to ignore the fact the blood was leeching from him every second that passed without relent. She had long ago witnessed the gallons of blood in the ogres war fallen upon her land, and knew rather clearly how much blood a normal person could go without before deaths hand pulled them into its shaded realm.
Her trembling hands touched the edges of the gushing wound, desperate to stop the flow that streamed like a babbling brook from his lanky form. Flesh and skin protruded in a gory mangled state from the disastrous opening in his chest, telling the beauty no amount of bandaging or compression upon the injury would suffice to save his life.
It couldn't end this way, the honey amber haired beauty wished so desperately to scream, she had to bite her tongue till she felt the warm, iron tang of blood fill her mouth. He could not die, not there upon the dirty floor of the town hall, around those that hated him. For all he had done, never had he deserved such a horrid fate.
Tears welled, hot and misty in her cobalt depths, but she fought them back with her last scrape of determination left in her still weakened form. "No, no, no, this can't happen, not after everything we've been through!" She protested against fate itself and what it had wove for her Rum.
At least when he had traded places with her in the cell, she had known him alive and healthy and well. When she had been banished from the Dark Castle, he was still the powerful Dark One, undefeated by any mortal man in all the realms. Not once through all their hardships had they been faced with such tragic destiny as what lay horridly carved in his chest.
True, Regina had lied about her death, and with all her incorrigible wiles made her appear a cold shell in the ground to torment him, but this…this could not be fabricated by the most cunning of fabulist. He was dying right before her eyes with nothing to save him; no hope, no promise it was all just some complicated illusion or lie.
"R…Rum…" Belle stammered again piteously, her will dissolving by the second with every ounce of blood drained from his body.
His warm chestnut eyes slowly pried open to see his love looming over him like some angle come down to gaze upon his final tortuous breaths. Perhaps it was the last pall of death, but right there in the town hall, her dark amber hair all disheveled and a streak of grime and blood across her tear stained cheeks, she'd never look more beautiful.
Not even under the titanic panes of the Dark Castle windows with the golden shafts of sunlight cascading through to dance upon her maple hair, and illuminate her porcelain features, did she seem as graceful and lovely as she did at that moment.
Everything that made the world beautiful dwelled inside her. Her warmth and kindness had always melted his frigid heart and made his snowed emotions bloom into a wellspring of goodness and hope when darkness wished to keep him cold and feral.
A weak smile twitched upon his graying lips. "Belle." He coughed her name in a bloodied hoarseness fondly. His blood flecked finger lifted to her face as he stroked her warm cheek tenderly as though trying to remember the feel of her skin. The peach toned flesh was so warm compared to the chill drawing out the heat in his body, coaxing it away into a land with no more pain. "Belle-of-mine." The fond pet name sputtered gaspingly from his mouth tenderly.
He reminisced about the day he had began calling her by the strange endearment. It had been a lazy spring afternoon without much to do and plenty of time not to do it. As he sipped his tea and reclined luxuriously, he couldn't help but watch her read by the window. There she sat, under the cascading rays, so absorbed in the book he had procured for her, she wouldn't have noticed if he had started doing cartwheels.
Sitting there with one hand holding his head, he had realized shockingly that the lovely woman belonged to him. Of course he had always known such, but at the moment it hadn't truly struck him so prevalently. He had a companion, an acquaintance, a friend, that would be all his own forever with no one to steal her away; Belle-of-mine.
She clutched his calloused hand zealously to her cheek as though trying to suffuse it with her warmth whilst feeling it grow colder and colder with every stabbing breath heaved sharply from his slowly rising chest. "Rum, listen to me. You have to find a way to use magic. Heal yourself, please try."
He had to do something, anything! Oh what would she have given to anyone who could spare the love of her life from such an end; her very last breath if that had been the fee to keep him alive.
"I…it's depleted." A racking wheeze painfully assailed his form. "Nothing left for me to use…" Swallowing hard, he allowed a paltry half chuckle to pass his blood tinged lips. "At least…at least I got to save you."
At least he had gotten to see her alive one last time before the dark waves of demise swept him away.
A sob of abject disparity blurted past her mouth as she placed her forehead upon his sopped, weathered brow crinkled in pain. "It wasn't supposed to go like this. We were to find your son and live as a family; oh Rum…"
At that, a gentle snort of humor fell from his ever weakening body. "Haven't you learned yet? Life doesn't go as we suppose it will. You inadvertently taught me that lesson in the Dark Castle."
Had she not yet comprehend that critical lesson those years in the foreboding stronghold when they had become far more than mere master and slave? When she had become more than another possession procured in a deal? When she had tumbled from atop the ladder to free the drapes and spread light unto his darkened heart? Or when they had shared books in the monolithic library over cup after cup of warm tea? Or when he watched her dance with the fireflies, or even crafted her cloak?
She was to have only been a slave girl to keep his trinkets tidy and free of dust while to a lesser degree a companion for him to stave away the creeping loneliness of the ominous citadel stealing upon his eternal years, and yet they had blossomed into so much more than had once been 'supposed'.
Somewhere on the outskirts of the troubled, lamenting morass of her mind, Belle faintly heard the muffled words of a stunned Emma and see the hulking wolf form of Ruby, from the corner of her eye, take off into the driving snowstorm pounding the whole of Storybrooke with its curtains of stinging flakes and sleet.
It was like she was stuck in a marred, smoky world where only her and her slowly passing beloved existed. All other life fell into some hazy back drop where words were foreign and every gesture made little sense.
Cold air pounced through the briefly open portal infusing the room with a bitter chill, but such bite of frigid atmosphere paled to the icy dread inside the beauty who knelt down looking upon her dying love in his last strained moments.
A few bitter crystals of snow swirled into the room, but Belle never gave them a thought even when they sprinkled upon her dark amber tresses. All that mattered was the man in front of her, passing away slowly into the realms of darkness and the world beyond the light of mortality never to share a smile or a witty quip or his sanguine laugh.
Her pale bottom lip quivered indomitably as the tear broke through any amount of strength she possessed. "No, please, Rum, you can't die. I love you far too much to be away from you again."
To Belle, her love, her very best friend, her mate, her entire world was slipping away, and this time there was no magical remedy, no quest no bargain to be struck to repair the damage. Try as she might to grab at the fibers and threads of his life; all was for naught as they slowly slipped from her hands like sand shifting between her fingers the tighter she tried to hold on.
She begged him piteously; tears streaming unrepentantly down her paled features. "Please don't leave me, Rum. You're the only thing in this life or the last I cherished. Please don't go…I love you so much."
"Hey now." He smiled in that way that had almost always brought a grin sneaking upon Belle's lush pink lips. Now it only helped to stab the lance of pain through her newly restored heart. Brushing the flakes precipitation from the chestnut locks of her hair, he shook his head solemnly and shushed her gently with a finger upon her lips. "It's alright, beloved; don't weep."
Truly he did not want to leave her, but what more could he do? The deed was done, and now death stalked the corners waiting for his fight of will to end. He did not wish for her to weep when he departed, but only to remember him and the brief joy they shared through the years.
"How…how can I not? The love of my life lies before me with a mortal wound in his chest." Her tears fell in hot, scalding drops to entwine with his warm blood in last mingling. "Without you, I loose the half that makes me whole."
His heart twisted to see her in such strained mourning, but he brushed her scorching tears away from her porcelain cheek and bespoke gently to soothe her broken heart. "It's not forever beloved. This is not our final goodbye. It wasn't in the Dark Castle and it will not be at this moment. I will wait for you wherever death bring me."
"Promise?" A golden ray of hope broke through the dark clouds of turmoil. For now, it was all she had to cling to life itself, simply to bear his passing with the proclamation of meeting again.
"Have I ever reneged on my word, beloved?" Rum replied in a gurgled gasp of fatal breath. I would rip the lands of death apart to seek you when the time comes.
"Belle." A soft, yet assured voice pierced the dismalness in gentle tone like a feather upon the mild breeze.
The maple haired beauty did not turn to face the speaker, but stood staring at the man who fought with last will to stay in the realm of the living and give one another proper good-byes. "Mother superior." She announced staunchly in quiet, stifled sobs.
The fairy turned nun, knelt solemnly by the kind beauty's side. Smoothing her woolen coat with her tiny hands, she placed a consoling hand upon the gorgeous young woman's shoulder. "Ruby told me what happened. Rumpelstiltskin took the brunt of Regina's dying magic full force for Emma." She turned her head down to the pallid Dark One and sighed in something close to pity mingled pride. "For the first time in ages he has accomplished something brave."
"And…and now he is dying." Belle gripped his silken shirt desperately as though holding on to the last part of soul still lingering in the realm of the living. "Surly there must be something that can be…"
The Blue Fairy sorrowfully shook her head. "I can ease his pain; little else. The wound was meant to mimic Regina's own; a fatal blow with no recovery."
Another heart wrenching cry howled from Belle's throat as she bowed over him and buried her face into his straggly, dirty brown hair; her body shaking in mourning. His body still held the fragrance of his sickly sweet magic she had grown to adore in the Dark Castle.
Breath wheezed intermittently from his ever failing lungs, foretelling the end was irrepressibly close. Each inhale and exhale was fraught with pain, and ever shallower than the one before it.
With his last reserves of strength, he weakly grabbed the back of the beauty's head and pulled her down to his pallid, quaking lips. His ghastly palled lips hovered a mere fraction from hers in desirous want to meet them one last time before death's heavy shroud blanketed him as the snow did the hard ground of Storybrooke.
"This is so I can remember the sweetness of your kiss while I wait your arrival." He explained in a dying whisper so frail the beauty barely comprehended it through the noise of his sharp breath and the screaming wind unfurling its strength.
Tenderly pressing her lips to his own, they shared the last warm kiss of the man named Rumpelstiltskin.
So enchanted upon the long, good-bye kiss, sealing their final farewell, neither noticed the snow billowing out in the frigid world had taken a slightly lilac hue. As the driving flakes barreled harder down to the earth, the faint purple began to transform into a dark amethyst. Magic thrummed through the snow and about the world. How the air howled in tormented shrieks as power of a curse broken shredded the air and coiled upon the currents like a dragons injured wail of death.
"The curse, it's breaking." Snow exclaimed as the lavender magic fueled flakes picked up their speed until the world was nothing but a blot of deep purple surrounding the curse laden town.
At the proclamation, Belle perched her head up eagerly, a spark of hope alight her darkened, broken heart dampened by the end of her loves long life.
To her side, the nun was slowly shrinking like a piece of wet paper left out in the sun for far to long. Twinkling blue, diaphanous wings began to sprout from her back and flutter spasmodically like a butterflies wings when just coming out of its tight cocoon.
The entire world, it seemed was shrinking and spinning and turning and twisting, like a snow globe in a child's perilous grip as magic worked its wondrous power.
He had rewritten the curse, the beauty recalled aburptly. Regina's death was to have shattered the fetters of her hateful curse and send them back into their own world.
Things were transforming from this world to the last, Belle suddenly realized, Rumpelstiltskin had taken a blow to the chest, but in the last he had not. Perhaps, she hoped and prayed with what small bit of hope still clinging stalwartly to her shattered heart, there was a slim chance, and opportunity that he might survive once in their true home if only he could breath a little while longer.
"Hang on Rum, for just a bit more." Belle pleaded, hoping and praying to any deity that would ear her pleas, the thought would work. It had to, it was her last hope.
She shook his shoulder desperately to keep him awake, but he did not respond. Her brow knit furtively in the brimming, frothing terror wallowing inside her as he remained prone and still without so much as a twitch of response from her wounded love.
"Rum?" She shook him again to no avail. "Rum!" She all but shirked his name like the bitter howling of the wailing wind.
Before she could scream his name once more, the windows in the town halls burst into a million indiscernible shards floating slowly through the snow wafted air. Glass and magic and tears whipped through the wind as the hosts of living and dead were swept up into and undulating black miasma of lilac stained clouds.
A cry, more for the loss of her love than the powers of the magic, sailed from Belle's lips, but was stolen by the raging wind and crystals of snow as she grabbed on to his body, determined not to let go. A small part of her hoped, perhaps something heavy being tossed about the hall would end her life and there she and her love would finally be together once more.
Darkness suddenly washed over the inhabitant of Storybrooke like a veil of slumber, taking the inhabitants of Storybrooke where they truly belonged. Good and evil, brave and cowardly were engulfed in the maw of ravenous magic that worked its ancient task as the curse untwined and set things aright.
~8~8~
Belle awoke groggily with the sounds of birds tittering gaily in their morning songs high above her. The ground under her did not feel like a cold hard wood floor, but like soft moss and dead leaves of a summer's forest floor.
Her brow knit slightly in confusion as her body began to move at a stiff degree; her muscles straining in protest of being disregarded for so long in one position. A frown dipped at her lips as she struggled valiantly to remember why she was laying the forest on a cool summers morn?
Had she fallen asleep there, had it all not been but a dream and she was still in the forests of her childhood waiting for the pages and guards to find her for supper?
Inching her eyes open carefully to ward off any side effects of light, the beauty was greeted with the sight of shafts of morning sun filtering in through the openings betwixt the plumed branches of wet tress; their leaves bedecked with the diamonds of rain drops from a nights perilous storm. Pale mist wreathed the laurelled boughs of the towering trees making the honeyed beams of summer's dawn stream down upon them.
From what she could see from her scant vision, the earth was cool and radiant with the rich, flaxen light beaming sparsely from above and a light breeze carrying the tantalizing perfumes of heady earth and wood and flowers sprung up from the forest land entwining in one sweet fragrance to peel her fear away.
To her left she could hear a rustling from the season old leaves and a tiny voice groan as though having imbibed far too much ale from a night of carousing.
What had happened, where was she, and why were others surrounding her?
The curse! Her mind shot back to the last instance before the magic had washed over her mind and caused her to black out for heavens knew how long. Days, weeks, year; curses and spells did have a way of keep those enthralled in some stasis for long periods of time and then sometimes suddenly break upon their own.
Images of the evil queen being shot ran circumspect through her throbbing head. Scenes of winter snow and a heart being implanted back into a hollow chest all seemed to rise like mists from the dewed earth. She recalled distinctly Rum looming over her, and…
Rum.
His name burned through her mind akin to a fiery ray of sunlight shooting through her head like the bullet that had shot through Regina's sternum. They were back in their own world where guns had no existence. It was only logical one could not be dealt a wound by an object that had no semblance of existence in a world where no such weapon had ever been concocted! He had to be alive, he simply had to be!
Yanking her eyes open, she fought the urge to hiss in torment at the bright light assaulting her sense with its stinging brilliance. "Rum!" She yelled confusedly, her tone littered with desperation.
Staggering about the verdant forests menagerie of browns and greens and mulled oranges under her unsteady stride, she tripped over a still unconscious Ruby, but forced her self up from the black earth up to plow onward.
He had to be there somewhere, the beauty assured herself to keep her optimism bolstered. Perhaps he had awakened before she and had gone to seek shelter? Perhaps…Abruptly she paused in her foot tracks as though an arrow had pierced her mind at the sight before her.
There she saw him, upon his back, with palled face towards the cloudless firmament.
Leaves crunched numbly underfoot as she slowly lumbered to the still, bloody figure lying in one shaft of light that illuminated his stiffened form.
He looked tranquil or at a peace of sorts as though for once in his life he did not have to worry about deals and bargains and manipulation. There was no time to think if a friend held a dagger to stab him in the back or was a betrayal on its way. No, he seemed akin to be in a restful repose without a care of life's ills or hazards to hound him.
Assuredly, the whole in his chest was gone, but no breath flowed through his body. While the magical bullet hole was gone, death was irreversible no matter what the realm they called home.
Falling down dumbstruck to her knees upon the glades rustic carpet of leaves, she tremulously placed a hand to his cheek. It was colder than the sleet and ice of that night.
"Rum, my heart." Belle wept in solemn mourning as though her voice would awaken the dormant spirit and lead his soul back to his body.
But it was too late, the man, Rumpelstiltskin, was dead.
"You…you knew my Papa?" A strong and yet gentle voice asked curiously sad in the dense growth of the towering forest.
Footsteps padded warily under the canopy of towering woods like a hunter finding a strange creature wounded in the forest.
Slowly, Belle tilted her red splotched tear stained face up to see a young man in his late twenties stride towards her.
His shaggy brown hair fell messily about his eager bright brown eyes that scanned her intently over the body of the one he had dubbed Papa. In his hand was held a sharp rock that testified to him willing to defend the body against anyone who would seek to defile its sacredness to him.
Shifting a bit by her fallen love, Belle nodded lugubriously, fighting back the tears she thought would never cease to fall from the wellspring of her broken heart. "A-are you by chance Balefire?"
The clean shaven young man nodded precociously as he reverently knelt down upon the other side of the cold body. Like the man stretched before them, he too, seemed to have a good grasp about others just by looking at them to judge their intentions. "Yes. I was on my way to this place called Storybrooke when the blinding blizzard I was riding through suddenly became a dark purple. I remember just trying to see a few feet in front of the headlights with my windshield wipers slapping out on full blast. The next thing I knew I was here again lying upon the forest floor…"
He swallowed regretfully, his eyes turned in melancholy to the dead Rumpelstiltskin. "When I awoke, I was merely wandering about…then I found him here looking so peaceful, like I had never seen him not even when he was not the Dark One." Bae flickered his warm brown eyes, so much like his fathers to Belle curiously. "Did you know him?"
"Yes." The luscious beauty choked. A warm tear brooked down the side of her cheek. "He and I…we were…" Placing a hand on his still, blood soaked shirt, she curled her hand into a fist. "He was my true love."
Oh but had been so much more. Far more than mere words could express; more than the heart could articulate in what means it comprehended that fervent love.
Balefire turned his head away, looking at the dead leaved crinkled under him. A dour frown etched upon his features as he flicked a few flecks of dirt away from his fathers blood stained raiment. To think, even after all those years, his Papa had even managed to find a woman who loved him without reserve. "I…I…I'm sorry. He must have been dear to you."
A moment of silence past in the bright mornings glow, with streams of golden beams weaving through the verdant boughs before Belle sought the steady words to speak once more. Slowly, she placed a comforting hand over Bae's own, squeezing slightly.
"I think he would want you to know that for all his days in that strange land the curse took us to, he spent every day looking for you." She stated quietly, hoping the words would be something Rum would like him to know. "He desired nothing more than to make amends with you. To search for his -"
"Bae." Another voice finished numbly in shock. A voice, Belle thought held the sound of life itself.
For Belle, the entire world froze in its fastidious cycle. Time had no meaning in the coppice of cedars and pines and oaks towering about them with the lofts of birds in their widened branches.
A part of her that was still able to think properly thought the sheer emotion thrumming through her veins must have been what Rum had felt when she had walked into his shop those months ago. But it couldn't be…
Could the dead be called forth from their graves to hear the cries of a weeping heart? Surly the voice had to be an apparition, the one last thing they heard upon the whispers of the wind to remind them of the man they had cherished despite his faults and weaknesses.
"Belle…" The voice spoke again softly nearly in disbelief, making Goosebumps prickle against her alabaster flesh.
Turning about slowly, the beauty prepared to see a thin shroud of mist holding the last remnants of his essence before he bid them goodbye. Some magic that allowed him to see them one last time.
Instead she was met with soul piercing black eyes and gray-gold skin that glittered in the golden rays of days suffusing the glade with homely warmth. His dark, fathomless onyx orbs she had known so well, searched her diligently, as if trying to figure out if it was a dream he found himself in.
But it was real, so wondrously real!
It was the Rumpelstiltskin she knew of ages past. The one that had grown to be an endearing companion, who had bloomed slowly into her love.
Before her stood the Dark One.
A small grin snaked upon his thin gray lips as he perched a brow inquisitively. "Missed me, Dearie?" His voice a high trill, that had normally brought a small grin stealing upon her pink lips.
Air barreled from his lungs in one great whoosh as she wrapped her arms about him in a vice, determined if it was a grand delusion to fall whole hearted into its mire of glorious insanity forever. And yet she knew it all to be real, more real than anything in her life.
His scaled gray-gold skin pressed against her, his talons curled about her shoulders, all bespoke the truth that he was tangible and not formed of the vapors of a broken mind. "Rum! You're alive, but how?" She inquired joyously, her body suddering with abject relief.
"I was Rumpelstiltskin the human in the other world, beloved…" He explained gently. His arms wrapped around her lithe form in comfort as he buried his face into her dark amber mane. "Things have reverted back to the way they were in this land; what we once were. Mother Superior is once more the Blue Fairy, Leroy is now Grumpy the dwarf, and as surly as he was as a human. That Mr. Gold that you see there is truly dead, but I am back to being…"
"The Dark One." Belled smiled through the glistening of mist brimming in her cobalt orbs. Tears of joy coursed down her cheeks as she brushed away the straggly dirty brown hair from his gray-gold face. "You're my Rumpelstiltskin. The one I fell in love with…"
~8~8~
A/N: Not knowing too much about Balefire besides speculation, I didn't want to put a decisive bit of story about him. I mean he's really an obscure fellow at this point. Also, one more chapter to go!