A/N: A long time ago (seriously, SUCH a long time ago), I wrote a story called 'Dealing For Trust,' and posted it. It's one of my favorite things I've ever written, and it ended up being one of my top-received two or three stories. Which is amazing, and I'm still so grateful that so many of you loved the story I had such a good time writing...however, it was also kind of daunting. You see, originally, I had planned on writing a companion piece from Belle's POV, but 'Dealing' got such great reviews and so many kudos and favorites, that I...chickened out? I was afraid to ruin it for everyone and didn't know if a sequel/companion could live up to the first one.
However, as established previously, it's been a long time, and reading back through what I'd written, I found that I LIKED it a lot. So, I decided to finish it up and brave sending it out into the world (really, my personal crisis through this story is so fitting to the theme), so here it is. Hopefully, you will all like it as much as 'Daring,' but if not, feel free to pretend it doesn't exist. Also, this is probably self-evident, but it's best if you read 'Dealing' first to fully understand what's going on in 'Daring.'
Also, I don't know where she went (I miss you so much!), but roberre beta-ed the first chapter or so that I wrote way back when, and I want to thank her for that and for encouraging me-even if it did take me this long to finish it.
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended.
She loves him. It isn't something she can catalogue or pinpoint, and the reasons are impossible to list in a coherent fashion, but that doesn't seem to matter. Her love for him is powerful and undeniable and so subtle, weaving through who she is and underlying all her dreams and thoughts and wishes. It is ever-present and quiet and yet it overshadows all of her life, coloring it with gold and brown and vivid red.
Sometimes, very occasionally (when the Queen hurt her, when she forgot what sunlight on skin felt like, when she bled against the sharp edges of his quick, cruel words), she wonders why. Surely a few months as the caretaker of a castle owned by a man who hides himself away behind a forest of layers should not be enough to overpower so much hurt and such invasive uncertainty and years of imprisonment. Yet it does, because she loves him as much now as she did when she turned away from freedom in the wide world to return to him (came back to free him in turn and find freedom in his embrace).
But she is not as strong as others (not as brave as she would wish), and so sometimes she does wonder why she loves him (why she will not give up on him).
But only sometimes.
True love is powerful. She (who saw evil and scales and disbelief fall back before the onslaught of soft lips) knows this without a doubt. So it is not strange at all that a few months with Rumplestiltskin is more wonderful and life-altering than decades spent in prison cells. Because he is so much more than anyone else, and he hides his good deeds away behind evocative words and sneers full of hidden amusement and a plan he has told no one else (and only hinted at to her). He is Rumplestiltskin (even his name glitters with sly promises and disguised pleasures), and so she loves him (for good or ill), and she cannot bring herself to doubt or question why and how, not while she wanders through the shelves of the library he gave her (without price, without expectation, without hope). Her hands trail across the old and worn spines of more books than she has ever seen, her feet tread between aisles of strangely made bookshelves, her heart thrums loudly in the empty library, and all she can see is him.
She throws quick glances to the door and her fingers flutter again and again to her hair. Nervous anticipation beats in her stomach like drums (though these are softer and gentler, less foreboding, than the drums of war that marked the ogres' long ago triumphs) and time seems to crawl as slowly as the snails she has been thinking of adding (with a fountain) to the decorations.
Rumplestiltskin has always liked making sudden and surprising entrances (had giggled at her jumps and starts until she began smiling back at him, and then his laughter turned to soft, wondering smiles), so she is surprised when there is only a quiet tapping at the door to herald his arrival.
He is still and tentative, there on the doorstep he himself bequeathed her, and her heart is squeezed and molded by the colliding hope and fear she sees in eyes like dark and smoky honey. He doesn't speak at first, when he sees her, only looks at her, but she feels beautiful beneath his stare (she does not need a kiss to know he loves her).
"You didn't have to knock," she says with a smile. "You could have just come in."
"It's your library," he says softly, and she feels gratitude and sorrow in equal parts (remembers quiet despair in a mine and unexpected joy in a library, all painted in that dark smoky brown). She is glad to have a place of her own (a place she can use to shut out the rest of the world when it grows too overwhelming, where she can feel safe and protected), but she misses him. The place where he had so briefly been, in a two-story house with a familiar basement (everywhere, in every room, his scent and his feel and his presence), is now filled with an empty ache engraved with his name.
"Well, come in, please," she invites him, her voice overly cheerful to hide the emotions he stirs so easily (simply with a look or a touch or a word; simply by existing).
She is nervous and excited and her hands shake as she leaves him to work his magic on the strange devices of this world, helping her prepare the library for opening. He is here, and he has come back to her as she came back to him (willing to try for her), and she is hopeful and tentative and afraid all at once. Because he is Rumplestiltskin, and he makes her feel more alive and real and beautiful than anyone else can, but he can also hurt her more deeply than any other. Sometimes (in those rare moments when she wonders why she loves him), she thinks it is the contradictions that exist within him that draw her to him, the mysteries he offers even without thinking and the puzzle he is (even, especially, to himself).
The library is quiet around them, but it no longer feels empty or waiting. It is full and complete, and Belle lingers in those areas where she can look over her shoulder and see Rumplestiltskin. He is intent on his work, his eyes so focused, every line of his body turned toward his task (she remembers long days and nights of spinning, remembers watching him furtively, captivated by his dedication), and she finds herself sneaking more glimpses of him than of the books in her hands. She wishes she could stand next to him, soak in his presence and his strange form of intent beauty, but he is busy and she does not wish to distract him.
Her patience is rewarded when he finally calls her name and gestures her to his side (invites her close in the way he doesn't seem to realize he always does). She arranges herself very close to him (conscious, always, of the distance between them since lies and leavetakings and libraries) and listens to the rise and fall of his cadenced voice that is at once so new and so familiar as he explains the intricacies of this world's library database.
He finishes his instructions all too quickly, and she feels these moments slipping away from her, the seconds speeding past, snatching away her stolen moments with him. So she smiles up at him and asks, "Would you like to see what I've done with the place?"
For an instant, he pauses. She thinks he will decline the invitation, thinks he will find some way to slip back into darkness, but instead he gives a small, warm smile and says, "Yes."
It isn't effusive or enthusiastic, but his smile says what the words and tone do not (the emotion in the eyes he can't completely shutter gives him away). Belle feels warm and happy as her nervousness melts away.
She hasn't really changed very much, not yet, but she wants to walk these shelves with him at her side. She wants his scent and his feel and his presence to imbue the interior of this library so that she will see him here when she wanders from aisle to aisle on her own. He could not let her see the world, could not break the town line (yet), so he gave her this library with its hundreds of books detailing the places and peoples of this world (granted her wish in the only way he could). Even now, after she has begun to think of this library as hers, when it has become more normal in her thoughts, she cannot help but swallow back thick emotion at this gift of his.
Rumplestiltskin follows her silently, listening to her as intently as he focused on the computer, and though he walks behind her, his steps do not lag. He is careful to stay always a foot or two away from her (so far, because she said she didn't want to see him; so close, because he is as drawn to her as she is to him), and he never looks away from her (even when she points to books or alcoves) and he smiles when she teases him. It is still not the comfortable familiarity they had almost achieved in the Dark Castle, or the tentative joy they'd started to find in his home here, but it is something (something more than the nothing she'd been so afraid they would have by now), so she is happy.
When she finishes the tour (when her throat goes dry because his gaze is dark and burning in the shadows), she gathers what remnants of bravery she still has left to her and takes his hand. It is soft and callused and more heated than she would have guessed it to be. "Dinner, then?" she asks softly, afraid that he will not come. He is Rumplestiltskin, after all, and courting (she thinks that is what they are doing, anyway) wasn't mentioned in any of the legends about him.
He is hurt and lonely, and she had told him (in a moment of weakness and fear, when terror and desperation still sang like lightning in her veins) that she didn't want to see him, and maybe he will think that she is not worth another try, another chance, another opportunity to be hurt.
Because they can hurt and tear and rend at each other's hearts (she remembers this, too, in those moments when she wonders what it is about him that she loves), so easily, so awfully, and maybe it would be easier and simpler and even wiser to part ways.
But he is here (even after she sent him away and he told her goodbye) and his hand curves around hers so perfectly (even after he sent her away and she walked away) and he is smiling at her (in a way he never smiles at anyone else), and Belle could say goodbye. She could pretend to be strong and call it bravery and tell herself that one day the pain would go away. She could let him go and turn to her library and make friends and try (in vain) to fill the hole his absence would leave in her heart.
But she does not want to.
She wants to love him. And maybe she could give up, but she will not. Because he is trying, trying so hard for her, and he is all alone, and he did not have to give her a library and offer to help her set up the database she needs. He did not have to smile at her and speak so kindly and look at her with so much longing pouring outward from him. But he does, and so she will try too. She wants to be brave. She wants to be good. So she will love him, and she will go to dinner with him in front of a town who hates him, and she will not let her fears and her (occasional) wonderings separate them.
So she smiles and keeps her hand clasped in his when he opens the door for her, and she follows him out into the street (their steps perfectly synced) and to Granny's.
Maybe one day she will regret it. Maybe he never will make the right choices she knows he can make. She (who has been locked up and hurt and used and forgotten) knows that sometimes bad things happen and happy endings don't always come.
But he is Rumplestiltskin, and so he is worth the risk, and she is Belle, so she will be brave and love him no matter what the consequences.
"Thank you, Rumple," she says when he sets aside his napkin on the remnants of his meal. He does not reach out for her, but he leaves his hand on the table between them (leaves himself open where she can touch him), so she does. She puts her hand in his and curls her fingers over his palm, and she smiles at him and hopes he can see the happiness and the gratitude and the joy in her eyes as easily as he can see terror and desperation in those to whom he offers deals.
"Thank you," he replies, soft and hesitant. His lips twitch crookedly, a broken smile emerging from between the jagged edges of a broken heart. "For coming."
For second chances, she thinks he means to say, and she wonders if he knows that this is her second chance as much as it is his (after leaving him, after kissing him when she did not know what he wanted, after sneaking away without facing him).
"I'm glad I did," is all she says, because actions speak louder than words and she is here now, with him, her hand clasping his (afraid to let go lest he slip away from her), a smile on her face (because it is impossible to look at Rumplestiltskin without either smiling or staring).
For an instant, the tension (of vulnerability, of openness, of sharing her with all the others in this diner) eases in him and his smile's brokenness is smoothed, healed. Just a little bit, but she has time (they have time) to soothe his sharp edges and jagged teeth (to calm her fears and restore her confidence in herself).
But then the waitress drops their check at the end of the table and the moment is gone.
Belle slides from the booth to her feet and busies herself smoothing her skirt while Rumplestiltskin stands, clutching his cane. When he is upright and steady (his pride still intact), she looks up from her skirt and steps to his side. She can feel the stares of everyone else, but they do not frighten her. She is in love, and she is loved, and these things make her strong (make her brave and defiant). Easily, smoothly, she loops her arm through his and clasps her other hand over his suit coat (warmth and pressure and hope in the wondering look he casts her) and walks with him. Unafraid and proud because Rumplestiltskin is hers and she doubts that anyone in that diner (in the world) can claim anything half as precious.
The fluttering, aching feeling in the pit of her stomach as her steps match his are a delightful reward all their own, and she cannot stop smiling.
He is here, and she is with him, and that makes this night beautiful.
He walks her back to the library. Their steps sound in time with one another, a matched rhythm, stars are starting to peek out from behind the cover of darkness, and Belle is content. It is a new feeling, far different from fear and defiance in one cell, from numb blankness in another, from exhilaration and disappointment and apprehension in those first few days of unfamiliar freedom (when every emotion was too strong, threatening to sweep her away). This contentment is quiet and sweet. It fills up hollow places inside her, carries the scent and the heat of Rumplestiltskin beside her into the cold, lonely crevices of her heart.
It will not be easy, she knows, loving Rumplestiltskin in a town that fears him (when even her father believes her cursed), but in this moment, she doesn't care. He came and he took her to dinner and even while he sat there so rigid and distrustful, he smiled at her and listened to her words. That, too (someone listening to her), is new, better even than the contentment she feels as she gazes out at this town that shelters a world.
"Belle," he says, and his voice thrums through her like a pulse. "There's something I have to tell you."
"Okay," she says. She can hear the somberness threaded through his voice, and beneath her hand, his arm trembles. She wants honesty from him, of course she does (wants his trust and his heart because she has already given hers to him even if he does not seem to realize it), but for an instant, she wishes he would swallow back whatever he is about to say. She wants to walk through the gathering dusk with her arm tucked into his and just let the rest of the world disappear for a while.
But she does not say that (she wants to be brave). Instead, she is silent and listens to his confession.
He speaks of the curse he made (and of course he did; she'd already guessed that) and the woman he sold it to. He tells her that he manipulated Regina into becoming the heartless Queen who would cast a curse to destroy a world and gain vengeance. He admits to his crimes as if he is on trial, and Belle knows this is her fault.
He confesses as if she is somehow better than him, as if she can absolve him of his crimes (as if he must confess in order to be worthy of her), and she hates it because she wanted him to be honest—but she never wanted him to feel as if that honesty would drive her away (not when his honesty is what will keep her at his side).
"Why are you telling me this?" she asks (though she knows the answer). She feels sick, something twisted and scared in the pit of her stomach.
"It's the truth," he says quietly, but he isn't looking at her and his arm is rigid beneath her touch. He is afraid, and he thinks he is a coward, but he stands there and looks at her library in the distance and he lays himself bare for her (expecting revilement and anger and horror).
Emotions (so thick and ungainly and all tangled up one in another) surge through her. Happiness that he is trying to trust her. Shock (and pity for a woman who has shown her no kindness) at the confession itself. Pride, because he stands there and does not flee even though she knows he wants to.
"Look at me, Rumplestiltskin," she commands him, and when he turns to meet her eyes, when he faces her full-on, she cannot help but love him. (She could, but she chooses not to.)
"I'm sorry," he whispers, so quietly and hopelessly that she wants to weep (she smiles instead because it is easier that way), wants to reach out and hug him and wipe away every scar and wound and hurt. Except if she did that, he wouldn't be the Rumplestiltskin she knows, and he wouldn't need her anymore, and then where would they be?
"I know you've done bad things, Rumplestiltskin," she murmurs quietly, because she does know that (cannot deny it anymore). He is the Dark One, and he is centuries old, and he loves without reserve, without question, without compunction, and these things make him infinitely dangerous. "And I know you make deals with desperate people. I can't say I find it too surprising that you sometimes make them desperate before coming to them with your deal. But like you said," she continues, wanting to wipe away the terror and the resignation so terribly outlined in smoky brown (hating how small and frail he looks), "she made her own choices, chose her own fate. We all do, and it's up to us whether we choose to link our fate with yours. Like I did."
She wills him to understand her (to read between the lines), but she does not think he does. Does not think he can see anything but the mercy he craves and fears all at once. He reaches out a trembling hand and touches a finger to her cheek. The gesture is so innocent, so wondering, so him that Belle gasps (feels a tremor shudder through her very soul).
There is gratitude scrawled all across his face, like her signature on one of his ill-fated deals, and she hates it. Hates that he thinks her his judge. Hates that he has placed her so high above him (high up where he cannot attain her, cannot touch her, where she cannot reach out a hand to him and meet him on level ground).
But did he put her there? Or did she put herself there?
The dusk has turned into night and cold envelops her as she drops her hand from his arm and casts her gaze down to the ground (too ashamed to look at him). "Thank you for dinner," she whispers into the still air.
"Belle," he says, but nothing more, and it is too much like a plea to comfort her.
"Good night, Rumplestiltskin," she says quickly.
She turns away from him. Before, between the shelves of her library (where she has imprinted his image to accompany her in the days when he isn't there), she imagined (hoped) that this night would end with a kiss, a hug (something to bridge the distance only growing between them). But she will not kiss him, not now, not when it will seem only a benediction.
If he kissed her… But he won't. He does not feel himself worthy, and that is her fault (that is her nightmare).
Weariness floods her body like cloying lead, dragging her down, crowding out the pleasure and fondness she'd felt over hamburgers and iced tea. This is not what she wants, not what she hoped to accomplish with this dinner. The future is spiraling away from her, so fast, so dark, so taunting.
But she does not like being weak (does not want to be helpless again), so she grasps hold of her own fate and turns at the door to look back at him. She could weep (could scream, could fight, could give up) at the sight of him standing there, as still and tentative as he was on her doorstep hours earlier, watching her with a stare as entranced as it is hopeless. She could smile at the pure wonder and longing she reads there in his large, expressive eyes, in the way he tilts his body toward her (in the fact that he reads her eyes and face as avidly as she reads him).
"I'll see you later," she promises him.
His smile, slight though it is, is enough to drive back the exhaustion and defeat invading her thoughts (enough to make her smile, too). The subtle relaxation of his posture is enough to ease the twisting uncertainty in the pit of her stomach. He is enough to soothe her.
So even though the door closes between them, she knows (knows with every particle of her being, every ounce of her faith) that this is not the end (their end). She will not give up on him (on them). Not again.
A few days later, she wonders if it matters that she decided not to give up. Maybe he decided to end things on his own. Maybe he's had enough of the young, naïve princess who doesn't even know how to work a computer. Maybe he's realized that it is too much trouble to bend himself and walk on eggshells and do his best to ignore the loopholes he has spent long centuries familiarizing himself with.
Maybe he's given up on her.
The library is her haven and her shelter, his gift to her (his heart bound up in the things she keeps close to her own heart), but it is lonely, after a while. Too big. Too open. Too empty. The books distract her, but they don't comfort her. They offer her entertainment and education, but they are devoid of Rumplestiltskin and so they can do no more than hold her attention for brief amounts of time.
She set herself up too high above him. She pushed too hard too fast. She turned him away when she should have simply asked him for a bit of time.
Belle's heart beats leaden with regret (she should have been braver, courage to match his own in confessing to her) before galloping ahead in fear (will he ever speak to her again? let her see him aside from the brief glimpses she steals of him going in and out of his shop so like the Dark Castle she once called home?).
And then, like magic, like hope, he's there.
His steps are tentative as he broaches the sanctuary he gifted her, his smile unsure, his eyes already resigned to the futility of his visit. (He stood in nearly that same spot and told her he was a coward; she wonders if he's aware that he lied to her.) He's never been smooth, not with her, all awkward surprise and clumsy hope and nervous flirting, but his attempt does more to ease her fear than anything any prince or lord or peasant could ever do.
Her dark sorcerer. Her manipulative deal-maker. Her shy spinner. All wrapped up together in the man who asks for another chance and nearly leaves without even processing her answer.
He stares down at the book she handed him (the tome she set aside as soon as she saw it, stubbornly hopeful even as her mind teemed with worries she'll never admit to).
Guide Through 101 Sandwiches.
It should take them a very long time to work their way through the book, Belle thinks with satisfaction. Long enough for him to grow more sure of her (for her to learn all the hidden pitfalls and snares that loving him entails).
"I could take an early lunch now," she offers (her heart in her throat, her palms damp). "I even brought a sandwich with me. We could share it."
"I'd like that," he says so sincerely, so gratefully, that Belle's hands shake as she sets out the sandwiches, carrot sticks, and cookies she bagged up that morning.
"Tuna fish," she says (wishing she had something more clever, more engaging, to say). "I don't think I ever tasted it in our land."
"You're not missing much," he says. "Unless you added pickles?"
"Of course." She can't help but smile at him, has to bite her lip to keep it from spreading too wide and eager. "Someone told me that condiments are this world's most powerful magic."
"You're a much better student than many I've suffered," he says. She's sure he's smiling when he begins the comment, but by the end of it, there's a shadow behind his eyes, a tremor to his hands.
"You've had many students?" she asks (curious but casual, something else he's taught her, a lesson she learned the long, hard way back in the Dark Castle when she was still a caretaker, there to dust away his loneliness).
"I…" He takes a breath. "A few. It took a while before I could find the perfect match to cast the Dark Curse."
He stares at her from under his eyelashes. She doesn't think he's even breathing as he waits to see how she will take this reminder of his confession.
Stubbornly, Belle pretends obliviousness (she is not his judge). "Well, until you can keep a library properly organized, I don't see why I should put myself under your tutelage." She giggles, then, so he won't convince himself she is serious, and indeed, he relaxes (a strong reaction for such a small exchange; so many secrets hidden there, so easy to trip over and ruin everything).
"Why do you think I asked for a caretaker, little maid?" His smirk is very nearly the one from their old land, enough to set her heart leaping and dancing. "At least dusting the library was one chore you never shirked."
"And tea," she says quietly. "I always made sure I brought you your tea so I could sit with you."
"Yes." There's something tragic (something beautiful) in his expression as he looks at her, stares as if he's never seen anything like her in all his centuries. Stares as if she could crush his heart with one wrong smile, one judgmental word (one ill-thought out action on a morning filled with frustration at his inability to answer her questions).
It is hard, sitting beside him and feeling his disbelief when their hands so much as brush, to smile at him without weeping for all that he has endured and suffered and internalized (until something as simple as human touch brings fear to swirl there alongside shock). It is hard, looking at his heartbreaking hope as she smiles openly (gently) at him, to love him without being afraid of destroying him.
It is hardest of all to watch him (when the sandwich is gone, eaten as slowly as she could possibly drag out a simple lunch) walk away with his cane and his suit and his power, to believe that he will come back to her (that he will keep coming back to her despite the pain always there at the ragged edge of his sweet smiles gifted to her so tentatively).
Hard, but not impossible, she thinks. It is only a challenge, after all, and one she has no intention of failing.
There are more lunches spent cozy together in her library, curled up so near each other (nearer every time, the distance between them shrinking gradually), his voice warm and familiar now, so familiar, so beloved, that it doesn't surprise her to hear it rather than the higher trill she once dreamed of. There are walks in the evening, no destination in particular but the journey so important, the steps taken in matched synchronization (slightly different in timing, in weight, in balance, but perfectly matched nonetheless) enough to leave her as breathless as if she were once more chasing a yaoguai. There are sandwiches in lunchbags, in picnic baskets, to-go from Granny's; sandwiches made for her and sandwiches made by her, and Belle cannot remember a single taste of any of them next to the color of Rumplestiltskin's eyes, the curve of his hand over his cane, the slope of his shoulders (the important things, the details worth noticing and remembering and storing up for long, dreary days when she is deprived of them).
Always, when the sandwiches are eaten and the crumbs are swept away, she lets him go (returning a favor from long ago). Always, he comes back to her (mirror reflection of the times she has walked a path in reverse). Belle knows she shouldn't test him, shouldn't make him prove himself so devotedly to her over and over again (but he tests her, too, in the shy touches and the tentative invitations, in how close he stands and how long he stays away, so perhaps they are even, their insecurities matched as well as their steps). She knows she should reach out in turn, reassure him that she still wants him (still loves him), but that first step is so hard, so daunting, when every day there are more secrets in his eyes.
But then…he confesses those secrets to her. Bit by bit. A secret here, an admission there, a confidence in between. One by one, he drops pieces of his past in bite-sized chunks, always with that fear underlying the eyes he averts from her. Always with that hope he tucks away so very deep down (that hope she breathes in so that she can taste it, can imagine as her own).
And yet, for all that, all the confessions and admissions and confirmations (all the times she does not send him away or turn her back to him or judge him as he so obviously waits for her to do), still he does not tell her about his son.
Was there a child? she asked him once. Tell me about your son, she said again, later, when the future seemed so close and her toes were dangling over a trap so large it swallowed her up and spat her back out only decades later. Why do you need magic? she asked in another world. Your son, she realized in a library with the truth finally, finally, dropped between them like a burden he had no choice but to reclaim as soon as they were parted.
She has asked and she has been patient, but aside from the name (Baelfire, a name she keeps cradled close in the deepest, most protected part of herself), she still knows nothing of this boy who shares Rumplestiltskin's heart with her.
And it's okay, she tells herself. It's fine that he tells her about crimes, sins, dark thoughts, the truth behind his seer abilities, the twisting turns of his enmity with her father. It's enough for now because no matter how many times he walks away from her with his shoulders rounded and his steps heavy, he always walks back to her with a smile curving his lips and a soft, "Hey," to greet her.
It's okay because trust is a lot. Trust is the hardest thing she could have asked of him—even without his confided account of past betrayals, she'd known that (she suspected when his reaction to a thief was so extreme; she knew when his reaction to her first kiss was enough to drive them both into nearly a lifetime of misery; she is reminded every day, when he watches her, resigned to her eventual betrayal, when he looks so awed and disbelieving when she does not turn on him).
She cannot expect him to break the habit of centuries in only a few weeks. And his son is important to him. She above all knows how deeply, how fiercely, how unreservedly Rumplestiltskin loves, and so it only makes sense to her that his son is the seed, the root, the core, at the very heart of the trickster Dark One, the manipulative deal-maker, the scared man. The secret around which all the others have tangled themselves.
And like the seed at her own heart, she cannot forget that the last time she breached walls and dared climb the highest tower in the search of that most elusive and powerful of magics: he drove her away. Pushed her away, locked her up, sent her out—and even when they were reunited, he did what he'd never done so blatantly to her and lied. So he keeps his son tucked safely away, and she keeps a tiny escape route always in the corner of her eye.
(She is not nearly as brave as he thinks, her own secret a confession locked up behind high walls, and maybe he is not the only one who must learn trust.)
Without the bravery she longs for, the least she can give him is patience. Especially when he makes the wait so worthwhile, each of his small smiles, his quiet (heartfelt) words, the feel of his arrested movement whenever she loops her arm through his and then, an instant later, the way he relaxes into her, as precious to her as his magic is to him.
One day, he brings her a picnic basket and coaxes her from the dusty library shelves out into a park where birds wheel through the sky and the sun shines down on them. He reaches out and takes her hand—just for an instant, but oh, such a sweet instant. Belle's heart is warm as she weaves her fingers through his, her skin alight with pleasure at his nearness, and loving him has never been so easy.
"I promised Bae I would give up my power," he says, so suddenly that Belle is startled into silence. His hand falls away from her. He hunches into himself as the sun passes behind a cloud.
Bae.
Baelfire.
"It was the first deal I made, and I broke it."
This is trust. Trust so great it leaves her breathless and gasping.
This is honesty. Honesty so frightening that her heart pounds like a rabbit's in her chest.
This is everything she's ever asked of him, everything she's ever wanted, and suddenly, Belle is so intimidated, so daunted by this overwhelming responsibility, that she trembles in fear.
"He found a portal to a world without magic," Rumplestiltskin says, so softly she'd almost believe (if she didn't know him so well) that he hadn't set up a magical boundary to prevent such dangerous (vulnerable) words from escaping, "where the curse would be gone and we would be safe. I told him I would go, but when the portal roared open like a cyclone, I was too afraid. I let go of his hand."
Belle is speechless. Motionless. Terrified. It would be so easy, so heartstoppingly easy, to break his brave, fragile trust. Too easy to react the wrong way to these secrets he places in her small, trembling hands. To say the wrong thing, to wear the wrong expression, to break his heart without even trying (to become nothing more than another line in a long list of betrayals stretching back hundreds of years).
But his words have all dried up now, each one so priceless that it must be parceled out from the depths of his soul a syllable at a time. He's silent, and he's waiting, and Belle can only say the one thing that matters most.
"I'm so sorry," she says.
He lost his son. Centuries and worlds, realms and powers, magic and deals, all of it because of this one moment when his son was torn from him. She thinks of the Dark Castle, so lonely and vast, filled with rooms that never made any sense (toys and clothes and books and spinning wheels and wealth he didn't need), a storage place for all the components of a home he hoped to one day build. She thinks of the Dark One, so alone and afraid, but frighteningly patient, focused so resolutely on the deals that never seemed to follow any set pattern (babies or cloaks, strands of hair or princess-caretakers, all of it leading somewhere, all of it for the sake, not of power, but of love).
"I let him go," he says again. "My own son."
She loves him (the Dark One cursed beyond his understanding), she loves him (the father who cannot, will not, give up), she loves him (the man so blind to the nobility of intentions that he thinks himself a monster).
His own son. His greatest secret. His highest priority. And it doesn't matter that Belle knows, suddenly and irrevocably, that she will never be first in his heart, that she cannot be his happy ending when his son is what matters most to him (that she will ever and always love him more than he is free to love her). It doesn't matter at all next to the gift of this trust.
The greatest gift he (who has given her so much: libraries and freedom and attention and love) has ever given to her.
"I'm sorry," she says again. "I'm sorry."
And she suddenly believes that no one has ever said this to him. She doesn't think anyone has even once reached out a hand in sympathy, in compassion; has bothered to ask him why he hurts, why he deals, why he plans, why he manipulates. And she knows he doesn't know what to do with such a reaction because he bends, so brittle, under the force of his long-repressed tears.
She's almost afraid to touch him, thinking he will flinch away, back into his worn shell. But he doesn't. Instead (like a hug in Sherwood Forest, a touch of the hand in a bequeathed library, a kiss beside the spinning wheel that is his haven), he leans into it instead. Lets her bear his weight and see his tears and understand even a fraction of the pain he carries inside.
Belle is fiercely glad there is no one else around, a surging flurry of protectiveness rising up inside her as she curls herself as far around him as possible. It's so strange to think that people consider him hard and unyielding and merciless, unfeeling, inhuman, animal. Here, with his heart clattering against the palm of her hand and his head heavy on her shoulder, she cannot comprehend anyone misjudging him so greatly, not when he daily hands her such treasures, such awful, precious pieces of knowledge he has hoarded and kept to himself for hundreds of years.
Not when he weeps at the mere mention of his boy and shatters at the suggestion of any understanding toward his past.
"I'm sorry," she whispers into his hair. (I love you, her heart whispers to his.)
But much as her heart aches for his pain, she has to dip her head to hide her face against him. Has to secret away her own blinding smile.
Baelfire, she thinks, a secret shared between them. Trust growing and rooting itself deep and steady and strong.
Belle made her choice to love Rumplestiltskin a long time ago (on a pathway leading either toward or away from the Dark Castle; on a pathway leading to a well from which magic was about to pour; in a library with a heart placed at her feet as parting gift), but now she seals it to herself with this secret (this name). With her own joy and with Rumplestiltskin's tears.
The next time she sees him, he's perfectly composed save for the tremor of his hands. Belle smiles extra warmly at him and wastes no time in looping her arm through his. (Honesty will never drive her away; the truth may shock her, but it will not change her mind about him.)
His smile is soft and tremulous and so wondering that Belle's heart aches with the power of her love for him.
"I have something for you," he tells her as she tugs him to their favorite reading alcove.
"Another story?" she asks, trying (and failing) not to sound too eager.
His step checks before he offers her a strained smile. "Not exactly. Here."
Small and bearing a ribbon wrapped meticulously around it, the box looks very like the one that held the key to her library, so she's not entirely surprised when she opens it to find another set of keys within. Three keys, all looped around a chain of gold so familiar she can't help but draw a finger down its tingling warmth.
"The shop, my house, and my car," Rumplestiltskin identifies them each with a flourish she suspects is to hide his nervousness (as per usual). "Just in case."
Belle narrows her eyes at him. "In case of what?"
"In case of anything," he says simply. He looks away as he adds, "I have many enemies, Belle, and some of them will see that you matter to me and interpret it the same way Regina did. So…just in case."
"I matter to you?" Belle's smile erupts from her heart to paint itself across her face. "Is that what we're calling it now?"
Staring at her, Rumplestiltskin raises a finger to trace her smile just as gently (as fondly) as she traced his gold. "Ah, sweetheart," he whispers. There's meant to be more to follow the endearment, but Belle catches her breath at the sound of just that one word.
(Once, she thought that maybe he didn't love her. Once, she despaired of ever seeing him again. Once, she was certain she would die without getting to hear him admit he loves her. Once, she imagined that even if she did free herself and make her way back to him, he would turn her away again.)
Belle squeezes the keys so tight their impression brands itself temporarily along her palm and throws herself at Rumplestiltskin. He catches her with a sound of surprise and a strong arm and a warm embrace that grows warmer the longer she leans against him.
"Thank you," she whispers (and wonders if he knows everything she is thanking him for.)
"No matter," he says (and she knows that he doesn't, that he still sees only mistakes, shouts, shaking, lies, a barred door).
"Thank you," she clarifies, "for letting me in."
"Oh, Belle." Once more he traces her lips, as if remembering her smile. "I'm not a very strong man. Or a brave one. But I am a selfish one, and I could never keep you out."
Belle hugs him again, holds onto him so much tighter than she does the keys. "Then I'm selfish, too," she says, "because I could never give you up."
He once brought her to his castle (and together they made it a home) and let her tear down the drapes and rearrange the library catalog (such as it was) and help him chase back the darkness (chased away her loneliness as assiduously as she chased away his). Now, even though she left him, snuck away and repudiated all he offered her, still he wants only to protect her, to provide for her, to offer her a sanctuary from the world that so misjudges them both.
She left their haven once. She won't do it again.
Rumplestiltskin shivers and hugs her tighter (hides his face from her). He doesn't need to. She knows that he doesn't believe her (knows that he is selfish with her today because he believes that their time is finite, always counting down), but that's okay. One day, decades from now, when she is still at his side, he will know that she meant it when she vowed forever.
Magic works differently here, but she thinks that if she were to kiss him right now, with this joy in her heart and strength in his embrace, she would drive the beast away from the man forevermore.