Title: A Price To Be Paid
Rating: T
Word count: ~107,300
Characters: Belle, Rumplestiltskin, minor appearances from Maurice, Gaston, Regina, and sundry original characters.
Disclaimer: Anything you recognise from 'Once Upon A Time' does not belong to me.
Note: Quick note on pregnancy. I have leaned more than a little on my mother's experiences during her pregnancies, here. Whilst I'm very aware that she's an oddity, she was aware of each pregnancy within a week because she's so sensitive to hormonal changes. On the other end of the spectrum are women who don't know they're pregnant until they go into labour: both are extremes, both are possible.
Belle does not bleed, but she does not tell Rumplestiltskin for a further two days. She tells herself it's because she wants to be completely sure, because she might have misremembered when her last cycle ended, but she can't quite lie to herself.
She doesn't tell him because she's afraid of his reaction.
For, she reminds herself, he hadn't wanted a wife. He'd taken her as such, but he hadn't wanted her, and surely that means he has no desire for children either. There is his lost son, as well, the son who is enshrined in Rumplestiltskin's mind, and she has no wish to upset him, but she thinks that another child may bring bitter memories for him, even if that bitterness is eased by joy.
She must tell him today, for even in her hopeless optimism she knows it has been too long since she bled, and that Edith must be right: she is with child.
And yet she is so afraid of what he will say to her, when she tells him the truth. She's afraid he won't want this child, that he'll twist her happiness into something wrong, something cruel. For she is happy, she thinks, although it's hard to focus on the joy she feels at the thought of a child, her child, their child growing within her.
She's thought of children, since coming to the Dark Castle. She's thought of the happiness that she could gain through children, when she'd thought there could be no other happiness here. There would be the joy of cradling a baby in her arms, of hearing its cries, of seeing it grow and teaching it as much as she is able. The happiness of knowing that through motherhood, at least, she has a purpose that cannot be taken from her.
She brings him their customary afternoon tea in the great hall, where he's been sitting all day spinning. She doesn't know why some days he works and others he spins, and there seems no pattern to it. Some days he spins half the day, and some days he holes himself up in his workroom and barely manages to leave his work for long enough to eat with her at supper.
Today he's spinning, and when she appears in the great hall with the tea tray he breaks off, rises and comes to her. He takes the tray from her hands, sets it on the table, and then, with a crooked smile, holds out her chair.
"Thank you," she says, but she hesitates, reaches out for him instead of sitting. "I – I'm not really thirsty, though," she says, falteringly, and Rumplestiltskin's smile fades into a frown, his mouth down-turned and a wrinkle between his eyebrows.
"As you wish," he says, and he tilts his head, draws her closer to him and settles his hands at her waist. It feels natural, and she lifts her hands to rest on his shoulders, tries to smile at him but doesn't quite manage it. "What's the matter?" he asks her, and she drops her gaze, focuses on the carved wooden buttons of his waistcoat.
"I need to tell you something," she says, her words slurring together a little in her nervousness. Rumplestiltskin's grasp of her feels a little tighter, but Belle presses closer to him, as close as she can be, rests her head against his shoulder for a moment. She's trying to show that there's nothing wrong, nothing for him to be upset or angry about, but she's not sure how well she's succeeding.
Regardless, she loves being in his arms like this, held close by him. She could never have imagined how she would grow to enjoy it, for how could anyone imagine such a thing from a creature such as he? And yet she enjoys it, relishes the closeness and the warmth and the feel of his arms around her.
She leans against him, closes her eyes, and stores the feeling up inside her against whatever is to come.
"What is it, my lady?" he asks her, and there's something tense beneath the velvet of his soft question, something she can't name. Perhaps it's worry, perhaps it's fear. Perhaps it's anger, for he must realise now that she has been concealing something from him.
"It's not bad," she says hastily, opening her eyes, pulling back a little. She can't read his expression, and that worries her, makes her even more nervous. "I – at least," she says uncertainly, "I don't think it's bad."
"Well," says Rumplestiltskin, slow and puzzled, "tell me, then, and I can decide for myself."
Belle bites her lip, takes a deep breath. "I – " She can't manage it, she breaks off, pulls away from him and hugs her arms about herself as she stares down at the tea tray. The chipped cup, the cup he always uses now. It seems oddly sentimental.
"Spit it out, dearie," he says, and his voice is high and sharp now, hatefully high, and Belle closes her eyes, exhales. Nothing she says now will be met with pleasure, but neither can she refrain from speaking now that she's got this far, now that he's waiting so coldly for her to answer him.
She turns, but keeps her gaze lowered, focusing on his booted feet. "I – I'm with child," she says, the words rushed and barely comprehensible to her own ears, but she's said it, and she's sure he understood her words, sure she doesn't have to repeat herself, because she looks up in time to see his eyes widen a fraction, his lips pressed together into a thin line.
He's silent for long moments then, long moments that stretch out and threaten to become endless, and with every passing minute Belle feels more agonised, more sure that whatever he finally says will not be good. She hugs herself tightly, feels a surge of protectiveness for this child within her, even though the child seems barely more than a nebulous thought. It's barely more than a dream.
"There are ways to get rid of it, you know," he says at last.
Belle doesn't realise what she's doing until the sound of her hand hits his cheek, until his head is flung to one side and she can see a dark mark on his face from where she's slapped him. She can see distinct finger marks, and she chokes on a gasp, brings her hand to her mouth, stares at him in horror – at her own audacity as much as anything else.
But Rumplestiltskin says nothing, does nothing in retaliation. He lifts a hand to his cheek and rubs at the mark, turns his head so he's looking at her again, dark eyes and horrible blankness. Tears cloud her vision until she can't see him properly anymore, and she can hardly breathe, and he says nothing.
The silence is dreadful, cold and heavy, and broken only by her breath hitching as she fights tears. Of all things she imagined he might say, she never imagined that.
She never imagined he would suggest that.
Finally he moves; finally he turns and walks away from her. He leaves the great hall, and the door closes quietly behind him. Belle takes a great, gasping breath and lets herself cry. She collapses into the nearest chair, covers her face with her hands and cries in a way she hasn't cried since her first night in the castle.
Not even when he'd thrown her across the room and shouted at her had she felt so wretched, so rejected. So utterly heart-broken. She'd known he might not welcome a child, but to reject it so utterly, so callously, is more than she could ever have imagined.
Belle cries until she can cry no more, until she's choking on it and her eyes are puffy and she feels utterly exhausted. Then, her face hot and her eyes aching, she calms down. She has nothing to dry her face with, so she just lifts her skirt and uses the hem of that to wipe her cheeks dry. She should, she knows, go up to her room or to the kitchen and wash her face, make herself presentable, for she's sure she looks appalling. She knows from experience that she is not a pretty sight when she cries, not like some women.
But she doesn't seem to care how she looks; it doesn't seem to matter. There had been a pleasure in looking her best, before – in dressing carefully, in appealing to his eyes. It's vain, but she's enjoyed it. Now it seems pointless.
She'd thought she'd felt lonely before; now, here in the great hall, she feels utterly isolated and alone. She is reminded, now, that Rumplestiltskin is not a man. He does not feel things as a man does.
It's something she's foolishly forgotten, over the past days and weeks as she's seen something else in him, something softer and kinder and something that, she thinks, is desperately lonely.
But he is not a man. He's not a man, and his suggestion, so utterly abhorrent to her, has acted as a painful reminder of that. And if he can be so callous, so cruel, she thinks wildly, why has she tried so hard to please him? Why has she hidden her questions, her curiosity, her very self even, in the attempt to be a wife he could want? If he can be so utterly, wretchedly cruel even in the face of something that he must know would bring her joy, why has she tried so hard to be a good wife to him?
She sighs, a heavy exhalation, and covers her face with her hands once more. She'd let herself forget that he is not a man, in the face of his kindness and generosity and, yes, the desire she feels for him. She should have remembered what he is, as he'd instructed her to do, and she should never have allowed her heart to become so bruised.
She longs for her friends, for Laura, for her father, even though she could not possibly tell her father what's happened, because she knows Maurice, she knows he would try to defend her and his defence would be swatted away as if he were nothing. She wouldn't dream of putting her father into that position – nor, Belle has to admit, would she do it to Rumplestiltskin either, for even now she thinks, hopes, that he would feel guilty for the action he would take in response to an attack.
She wonders what he's thinking now, wonders if he's hidden himself up in his work room and is sulking or brooding or –
It's pointless to think about that. Belle refuses to think about that.
It's also pointless to continue sitting here, so she forces herself to get up, to take the tray and to leave the great hall. She goes to the kitchen, finds it empty even of kittens, and she pours away the wasted tea and mechanically washes up the dirty crockery. She had cut slices of bread and spread them with butter, for their mid-afternoon snack, and now she cuts the slices up into small cubes and goes to throw it out into the kitchen yard for the birds.
Something, at least, can profit from the wasted meal. The birds will enjoy the unexpected treat.
Belle pauses then, hesitates. She had planned to cook supper, to try her hand at a new recipe, but she has no inclination to cook now, and no desire whatsoever to eat with Rumplestiltskin tonight. The castle will provide, if she does not or cannot cook, and Belle stands in the middle of the kitchen looking around and feels weary. Meal preparation seems beyond her capabilities just now, and so she decides, for once, to allow the castle's magic to provide instead.
So she goes upstairs, to the kittens slumbering in her sitting room, to the welcoming fire and the sanctuary of her own rooms. Here she can be by herself, alone and private, for he will not break his word, she's sure. He will not come in if she refuses him entry, for he gave her his word, and he's not a man who breaks faith lightly.
Although, she thinks bitterly, he is clearly a man who views the taking of a life lightly.
But Belle refuses to think of that now; there'll be time enough to think about it later, when she sees him next. She will think about other things now – or, better yet, she will think about nothing.
She goes into her wash room, splashes her face with cold water to relieve some of the hotness of her cheeks, the soreness of her eyes. She uses the chamber pot and then looks for a moment at the bath, trying to decide if she can justify a bath when it can't be long past mid-afternoon. A bath would soothe her, but it would also give her time to think, and that's not something she wants right now.
A bath would also mean undressing, it would mean being without the defences of clothing, and Belle shudders at the thought of making herself more vulnerable. She is hurting too much to lay herself open to any further hurt.
So she returns to the sitting room, to the warmth of her chair by the fire, feeling at least a little better for her wash. She picks up her knitting, but has to discard it again when she remembers his teasing of it, of her lack of skill at the craft. She tries to read, but her mind is too chaotic, and she can't focus on the words. She contemplates writing letters to her father and Laura, but she rejects the idea as wholly unsuitable, given how she's feeling. She must have distance from the events of the afternoon, if only a little, before she could dare put pen to paper. Otherwise, she's sure, she would end up writing things that are better left unwritten.
Things that she wishes could be undone, words unsaid. She regrets telling him, now, and yet she knows she'd had no choice. He would have discovered it, eventually, and the pain would have been worse then for she would have had to lie to him, and he would have found her out in the lie.
Belle thinks it would have been worse then, that she's taken the right course of action in telling him as soon as she was as sure as she can be. And yet he had reacted in a way she had never dreamed of, a way that makes her feel sick to her stomach. This child, the child growing inside her, is not a bad thing. Perhaps it's not what he wanted, but why, then, had he married her? Why had he come to her bed? Children are a natural result of such things, and if he hadn't wanted children…
She touches her stomach, closes her eyes. He does not want children; that much is obvious now. He does not want this child. But she knows she will fight to keep this child, with every fibre of her being. She might not have wanted this marriage – or any marriage – but she wants this child. She wants it enough to fight him for it, if that's what must happen.
She will fight for this child, and for her own happiness, if she has to fight.
But the thought of it is exhausting, and she sighs wearily, thinks of her bed and thinks she would feel better for a sleep. Or perhaps, she decides, a nap here in the chair. She'll be woken up more easily here, for the kittens are never asleep for long and they are loud and boisterous. In her room there would be silence, and perhaps she would be more comfortable, but she doesn't wish to sleep for long.
Just for long enough.
She kicks off her shoes, reaches for the knitted blanket that's slung over the back of her chair. It takes her a few moments, but eventually she is curled up into a reasonably comfortable position, her head resting on the padded arm of the chair and her feet tucked into the blanket.
Then she closes her eyes, yawns, and tugs the blanket so it covers her whole body. Warm, exhausted, Belle drifts off to sleep.