11 May 2014

Something made the skin at the back of her neck prickle. Belle had learned long ago to pay attention to that prickle.

Maybe it was that his eyes were just a little too wide, or that he was talking a little faster than normal. Or maybe it was simply that the Dark One was offering for his wife to use his dagger on him, to force him to tell the truth to the crowd now standing in their shop—once again, for information, not a sale. When she thought about it later that night, after they'd gone to bed back in the pink house and he'd fallen into a fitful sleep, what bothered her most was that he'd not only encouraged her to use the dagger on him, and in front of a crowd, but that Hook had been standing less than a yard away.

Rumple trusted Belle implicitly, of course; he'd said so over and over, and he'd insisted on her keeping the dagger as proof of the total extent of his trust. With the dagger in her possession, she held much more than his life in her hands; she held his magic, a force strong enough to destroy the entire town. And having been under the complete control of a horrible, murderous witch just a short time ago, that Rumple would allow anyone else to even see the dagger, let alone for Hook to be permitted within arm's reach of it, was just unfathomable.

But Hook hadn't made a grab for it (though perhaps the pirate was satisfied just to know who had the dagger and where). The rest of the heroes had gaped as, reluctantly, Belle fulfilled Rumple's request: they saw for themselves the power of the dagger as Belle commanded the Dark One to tell the truth. What else might he have been commanded to do, they wondered; she could read the question in their eyes as she issued her order, and she felt small and ashamed. Were they imagining Rumple under her control, in the privacy of their home, with her flashing his dagger gleefully and demanding he take out the garbage?

Or were they imagining him on his knees to Zelena. . . .?

Belle's stomach churned. Just as soon as the little show was over, the heroes satisfied that he didn't know Anna of Arendelle and therefore couldn't direct their search, she turned away from the lot of them and shoved the horrible knife back into her bag, and she looped the bag over her shoulder, her hand tight on the straps, Hook caught in the corner of her eye. Had he made a single motion in her direction, she would have dove for the Smith & Wesson that Rumple kept in a drawer under the cash register. But Hook left peaceably with the others, and she made a mental note to relocate the dagger as soon as possible, to someplace he couldn't just walk right into.

There was something else too. . . . As she leaned up on her elbow and watched his eyelids twitch under the force of a dream, Belle sought to pin the memory down. "My life had turned upside down," she recalled him informing the heroes. "Lost a son, gained a wife, so you might say, I've decided to turn over a new leaf."

At the time, Belle hadn't doubted him. In all the years she'd known him, she'd found the rumor to be true: Rumplestiltskin didn't lie. And here was Emma's "built-in lie detector" to back him up. So Belle had taken him at his word, too worried about that damned dagger to think about anything else. Now, though, she was having second thoughts. He'd made that confession, not to her or Archie, but to Emma, a stranger, and Hook.

Once again, making himself vulnerable in front of Hook.

She lay back down and stared at the ceiling. These moments of self-exposure, so uncharacteristic of him, were they signs he was ready to open up, to seek therapy?

Or were they, along with the bouts of insomnia, the nightmares, the loss of appetite, signs of a coming breakdown?

In the morning, after he'd gone off to the shop and she'd opened the library, she sneaked into her office and called Archie.