The bird came in through the window of his tower and landed on top of his Great Wheel. A white dove. For a moment, he'd paused, thinking that it might have been Theseus or one of his descendants until the creature held out its leg. There was something tied to it, a note, and not an ounce of magic clung to the bird. It wasn't a shapeshifter, this was merely some kind of communication he hadn't received in the past. He gathered the bird in his hands and pulled the message free. The second it was off so was the bird, it soared right out the window and off into the distance without waiting for a response. He rolled his eyes at the stupidity of such a thing before opening the note before him and reading.
The letter was formal and sealed with an official mark of the King. King Maurice. He'd been expecting a request from King Maurice and his wife of late, for he was well aware that in the last few years ogres had invaded their land and the war they were fighting against them was a losing one, as most wars against the ogres were. He was rather famous for his defeat of ogres and figured they'd write to him sooner or later to dispatch of the problem for them. With that in mind, he read the request but quickly discovered it wasn't what he thought it was.
The request was not that he get the ogres out of his village but rather that he help the King's daughter, the princess. It seemed that days ago, the ogres had stormed the castle and trapped the King's wife, Collette, and his beloved daughter Belle in the library. Collette had been killed, the daughter had witnessed it, and it appeared that she had lost her mind because of it. The brutality of the incident had been too much for her to handle, she'd been ranting and raving ever since, unable to be calmed. They were keeping her sedated with a sleeping draught, but every time they tried to bring her out, she simply mumbled something unintelligible all over again.
Something unintelligible…he snickered. Considering she was a princess he couldn't imagine that "something unintelligible" was out of the ordinary. In his experience, most of the princesses he'd met had very little to say beyond talking about dancing, table settings, or dresses. Nevertheless, the King's request was a simple one. If the incident in the library was what caused it, then removing those memories would reset her mind. They could erase the terrors she'd seen, tell her of her mother's death, and she'd be free to attend the funeral in just a few short days. There wasn't time to waste.
He scrawled out a quick response on the back of the paper, telling the King he'd be there in only an hour time, just at nightfall, and they should prepare for his arrival, then he snapped his finger and watched as sparks rose up from the paper before it disappeared. It would reappear somewhere the King would see it. From the cupboard, he fetched his potion, the one that he would need, the very elixir he'd once given to his Baelfire after the Beowulf incident, then sat down to whittle away the hour in front of his wheel. He could've gone at that moment, but why spoil the surprise. He preferred to make the King wait.
When the moment finally arrived. He summoned his crystal ball to him and called forth an image of the King waiting for him alone in a room. He was sitting by the fire in a chair, his cheek in his hand as he stared unseeing into the flames. He could watch more, but he didn't need more than that. He set the ball aside, pictured the King, and the next second the King had started, was jumping out of his chair at his sudden appearance.
"Not the entrance you were expecting?" he questioned with a laugh.
The King took several deep breaths before swallowing hard and stepping a little closer. "Dark One?"
"Well, who else would I be? The Tooth Fairy?"
"Rump…Rump…Rumple-"
"Save yourself the trouble," he announced before dipping down into a bow. "Rumpelstiltskin," he stated formally. "At your service, my Liege."
"Thank you for coming so quickly."
"Well, your letter did stress it was of some importance. A funeral, I believe, is on the horizon for you."
"Yes, for…for…for the Queen, my wife," he choked out before turning away and looking at the fire. His lips were pressed together so it made a tight line and he watched as tears rolled down his cheeks at just the mention of her name. How interesting, a royal pair that actually cared about one another. True love? Possibly. That would be a most interesting thing to study up close, before he had to witness it with Snow White and James. What, he pondered, would the King be willing to do to save his daughter? And speaking of daughter…
"Yes…my condolences," he smiled cheerfully. "Where is the patient?"
The King took a breath to get his emotions tapped down once more, then looked at him and made a silent gesture across the room.
Ah…he hadn't noticed they were in the girl's bedroom. With the bed behind him and the girl asleep, probably from the sleeping draught, he hadn't noticed her. The lack of light didn't help either.
"Well, well, well…" he muttered, wandering over to her. He picked up her wrist and dropped it back down onto the bed. She barely twitched. "She's asleep…how much have you given her."
"Far more than is safe," he answered. "But it was the only way to calm her. She's been in a state of shock since the incident."
"Well, if you were attacked by ogres, I imagine you'd be the same."
"Not Belle, not my daughter, she's strong, and smart, this has destroyed her. Please, she can't live like this. I fear that if you can't help her…memories of her and her mother are all I'll have left."
Memories…
"Funny thing you should mention memories. I wonder, would you be willing to trade one for the other?"
"What?"
"Memories of the past, for memories in the future," he elaborated. "Allow me to shine a bit of light on the subject…" With a snap of his finger's every candle inside the girl's room flickered to life and brightened the once dark and shadowy room. Though his night vision was excellent, it allowed him to see the girl and the King perfectly for the first time. His eyes were swollen, his cheeks red as if he hadn't stopped crying. And the girl…she was beautiful. Most princesses were, of course, it came from years of being kept indoors and never actually having to work or worry their pretty little heads, but this girl's beauty was…exceptional. It was probably just the way she was now; laying in bed, picture-perfect, her head slanted to the side ever so slightly as she slept. The only flaw he saw was a mark on her arm; something tended to by a doctor.
"You see Maurice-may I call you Maurice, or would you prefer Your Majesty?" he questioned advancing on the King. "You see, Maurice, all magic comes with a price. Your daughter can be cured, but the cost of the magic is high. For the removal of those dreadful memories tormenting your beloved daughter, I will take not gold or jewels, but rather all the memories of your dearest love."
It took a moment for the words to sink in, for him to realize what he was talking about, for the smallest of moments his eyes went hazy as he thought it through and then cleared as his jaw dropped open with understanding.
"Collette?" he realized with a gasp. "You'd take my memories of her?"
"Isn't that what I've been explaining?"
"No!" he roared before glancing, to the closed door and then looking back at him. "No! There must be something else!"
"But there isn't, dearie!" he answered. "He who has the cure, makes the prices, and that is my price."
"I have gold and jewels."
"None that you can afford to lose should you wish to retain the small hope that you can win this war."
"I have palaces at my disposal."
"So do I! What I don't have are the memories of you and your wife, and what you don't have is a daughter that can recite the alphabet without becoming a ranting mess of panicked tears. It's one for the other-memories of your past in exchange for memories of the future with your daughter. The choice is yours."
Maurice collapsed into the little chair he'd been sitting in before, his hands palm to palm against his mouth so that he looked like he was praying. He resisted the urge to snicker. Prayers wouldn't help him. Not now that he'd been summoned. He could release him, of course, choose to not take the deal, but then he'd be left with nothing. He expected the answer the King gave before he said it.
"Collette always warned me against calling for your help," he spat out the side of his mouth, not bothering to look him in the eye. "She always did say that you were more trouble than you were worth."
"Well then how convenient for me that with one word, all those warnings and conversations will be gone from your memory."
The King took a deep breath at his words. He'd been a widow once, he could imagine that they would have stung, but the beauty of this was that in a few short moments, they wouldn't anymore. The only concern he'd have would be the war and his daughter.
Like clockwork, after a few seconds ticked by, he rose to his feet and faced him.
"Will it hurt?"
He smiled at the King's acceptance. He'd said "will" not "would". That sounded like a deal to him.
"Oh no…not at all," he growled in a sinister voice as he circled the King. "'Tis as simple as remembering the magic words. Now what were they? Beluga…Sevruga…" Finally, he shrugged his shoulders and grinned. "Close enough."
He waved his hands, and the lights that he'd lit only a few moments ago doused so that the only light in the tower came from the fireplace. It flared, growing to three times its original size as the King stared frozen in fear at it. He only beamed as the rope-like hands formed from the fire before his eyes. It was probably the closest the King would ever come to knowing what his daughter had felt like in the library that day.
Unable to move from the spell he'd cast the hands advanced on him, one held him around his back as the other appeared to reached into his right ear. He glowed like a lantern. With his jaw hanging open, light came from his mouth, his nose, his eyes, his other ear…until the hand pulled free. The arms released him, and as the fire shrank back down into the grate where it belonged, one of the hands set a small rock, white with gold, into his hands. The lights in the room relit, and Maurice collapsed into the chair while he looked over his prize for a moment, then pocketed it.
"How are we feeling?" he questioned, turning his attention back to the King and his daughter. She hadn't moved, he now looked nearly as pale as she did and far more clammy. "Bit peaky, I would guess but also far less of that heartache you had a moment ago. Hard to mourn someone you can't remember." He said it on purpose just to see his response.
The one he gave was appropriate. There was no response. Maurice was quiet, his eyes roaming over the room as he put his hand to his heart. It was as if he was searching for the emotions he'd had when he first entered the room but came up empty. That was good. It meant the spell had worked. At least until he looked at his daughter lying in bed. All at once, emotion flooded back into his mind, desperation and panic as he sat on the edge of his seat and cried out, "help her!"
"A deal is a deal," he muttered, pulling from his pocket the vial of clear memory tonic.
"That's it?!" he questioned. "All my memories for a single vial."
"Oh, no, no, no, dearie! All your memories for four drops of what is in this vial."
"Four drops!" he howled in anger. He supposed it might seem unfair, but he was nearly certain they'd been down this road just a few moments ago when he was a grieving widower.
"Four drops!" he confirmed as he pulled the cork out and went rummaging around in his pocket for the dropper. "Memory potion will wipe the mind of memories but is tricky stuff. Too much and she'll forget her childhood, too little and she might just remember this conversation we've had. Four drops should be sufficient, unless of course you'd rather not and we could leave her as-"
"No!" Maurice shouted only to have his eyes once more drag back to the door. There must have been a guard there, someone he was afraid of overhearing all this. For the words that always came after were softer and gentler. "No. Do what needs to be done to save her."
He nodded and put the stopper to the vial on the girl's bedside table next to a small stack of books. Odd for a princess. Dropper ready, he sat down on the bed beside her and moved her slacked head toward him…
And then froze.
He could have sworn his heart stopped for a moment, that all of time stopped with it. He might have suspected it was the Dark One warning him of his heart again, but then there was something flashing through his mind. Something was important about this, about this moment.
No, not the moment.
The girl. The girl was important.
To him? To Baelfire? To them both?
No! It was important and important moment, but there was something more that even that.
Familiarity.
She was familiar. Her hair? Her hair was familiar.
It didn't sound right, but something about this situation was right. It was the complete opposite of the feeling he had when he sensed that something wrong.
Something was right.
About her hair.
About her angle.
About sitting beside her.
About her being asleep.
What was it?! What was important about that?
He searched his mind, his heart raced as he tried to find the solution to this mystery. But the Seer was being unusually silent for a moment like this. Typically a feeling like this meant that she was trying to tell him something, whispering in his ear. Instead, all he felt was the shudder from all the Dark Ones who had come before. What had them so edge? Why was the Seer quiet? What was he missing?
Who was the King's daughter really?
"Is there a problem?"
Maurice's voice called to him, pulling him out of his thoughts and bringing her face back into focus. Was there a problem? No. No problem at all, not with her. And he supposed that was, in fact the problem. How could something so odd feel so familiar?
"How long ago was the attack?" he asked.
"Almost two days ago."
"Hm…only three drops then," he muttered, coming up with a quick excuse for his hesitation. He couldn't forgot the feeling. He tried. He tried to pushed it out of his mind and tried to ignore it as he used the dropper to suck a bit of the potion out of his vial. But he felt it tingling in his skin as he worked. Focus, he needed focus as he delicately pulled her jaw open and dropped three of the drops on her tongue.
That was that. He let her mouth fall closed and moved away from her as gracefully as possible despite the fact that he felt like she was on fire and wanted away from her. She didn't move or respond at all, but in the morning, so long as they didn't give her any more, the sleeping draught would wear off, she'd wake, and go back to the way she had been before the attack. She'd adjust to the death of her mother and go back to reading…
He glanced at the books she had stacked on her bedside table as he collected the cork. La Belle et La Bete, A History of Disenfranchised Kingdoms, and a book written in what appeared to be a fairy language, not even he could read. Clever girl. Not what he expected for a Princess.
"That's it? That's all it takes?" Maurice begged as he sealed the bottle. He took one final glance at her sleeping form and swallowed. What an odd feeling to leave him so breathless...
"That's all," he confirmed, pocketing his potion and turning back to the King. "In the morning, your girl will wake up the girl she was before all this happened. Personally, I'd break the bad news to her about her mother gently."
"Oh, thank you," he sighed.
"No thanks necessary," he added forcing the smile back on his face. Whatever she was, however she was supposed to be important, it had disarmed him. The personality he'd spent over a hundred years constructing had slipped suddenly. And he felt like he was desperately trying to fix it back where it had been at the beginning of this meeting. "That's the deal we've made unless you wish to discuss another…."
"Another deal…haven't you taken enough?!"
"That's relative," he dismissed, feeling more himself with every word and every step he took away from that bed. "For the right price, I could take these ogres from your lands. I've done it before, you know. I ended an ogre war practically overnight." He took a step closer to Maurice and put his fingertips together. "I might be willing to do it again."
There was silence between them as Maurice stared at him. His jaw was set, and the swelling that had been in his eyes when he'd first arrived was going down so that he was nothing like the grieving man he'd first encountered. That was fascinating to him. He had removed from his memories, arguably, one of the most profound influences in his life. What did that do to a person? Judging by this reaction, he'd taken a fair amount of his ability to consider his options and replaced him with something harder.
"For the right price," the King commented after a moment, an accusation coming through in his tone.
"All magic comes with a price," he smiled, taking another step away from his daughter. He felt better every second, more like himself. He could feel no magic on the girl but...what power she had!
"Get out," the King ordered quietly, intensely. "I may not remember what I'm missing thanks to you, but I know enough to know I never wish to see you standing at my door again."
He nodded. For just a second he wanted to look back over his shoulder at the girl, he wanted to discover what she was, what she meant to his future, what he meant for Bae's future. But he resisted. He'd figure it out, one way or another he'd come to know why she gave him the feeling he did. Even if the requirement was that he never see him standing at his door again.
"Very well," he muttered before disappearing from his sight without glancing back over his shoulder.
Look at that! You made it Rumbellers, to the first appearance of Belle! I told you it would be a while, but you stuck it out and now we've got our girl in the story...kinda. And look at that, I'm sure it's going to come with its own little controversy and there will be people asking why I had to make Rumple the guy that took Maurice's memories, but truth be told I've had this idea for Belle and Maurice ever since I wrote Moments Lost. If you go back and check you'll see a wizard that comes to see Belle to heal her mind and takes her father's memories in exchanged is finally the answer she spends most of the fiction looking for. In my mind, that wizard was always Rumple, Maurice just never tells Belle his name, something I'm sure he regrets when Rumple shows up for Belle later. In my mind, who else was ever going to make a deal like that other than Rumple. Here though, you can see, I made sure to mention he's not doing it just for the hell of it. He thinks he can study the memories and learn a little bit about true love before Snow meets David. Will it happen? We'll have to find out next. But, while we're on this subject, (because I did think this through a LOT!) Belle's my girl, I spent eight years writing her story from beginning to end, I know her and I know that there are a few who are realizing that Rumple never told Belle about this in Moments. My explanation for that, painful as it is: "water under the bridge". No, I never had him tell her this in Moments, partly because they were always too busy, partly because while I knew it was going to happen I hadn't written Rumple's side or this chapter yet and didn't want to say something I'd have to go back and edit, but ultimately it was because it didn't matter in Rumple's mind. He has Maurice's memories, yes, but later (if I can stick with this long enough), a lot later, I have plans for those memories. He's going to do something for Maurice that really will make this event something that doesn't have any bearing on Belle or their marriage so he just doesn't see the point in telling her. But, as I said, that's a ways off for us! Like...years.
Thank you Alarda, Grace5231973, and Jennifer Baratta for your reviews on the last chapter. I hope you'll find this one to be informative and maybe even answer some questions for you. I wrote it this way because I wanted to see motivation from Rumple. Before he asks for Belle, he's never asked for a person before in his deals. And even though we know that at one point he did have a maid, we know it's been several decades since then. Plus, it's not show-canon but Chronicles canon, if you've been reading from the beginning you know there are reasons he stopped getting maids. So I needed to see why, after years of dealing in objects and avoiding people, he'd suddenly say "I want Belle". This chapter does that in my opinion. Now, fun story, I've had this chapter written for a long time, but I was talking with RolfB, a reviewer, about this chapter when I hinted it was only going to be an "appearance" and she nailed it, correctly assessed it was going to be a situation where he saw Belle in some way, recognized she was important, and without details decided he wanted to keep her close. (Did that need a spoiler alert?) However, she then asked if I took that storyline from a con answer RC had recently given. At my confusion, she sent me a video. Apparently, in Paris, at a con where RC and EDR were guests and took questions, someone asked RC why Rumple wanted Belle. His answer? Rumple probably saw her somewhere, decided he wanted her, and decided to take her in a deal. I swear, I had no idea that it had been stated. This chapter is in no way based off that answer, it was written well before, you will just have to take my word for it. However, while there are differences between RC's answer and my scenario (I wanted to be vague because I do think if Rumple knew she was going to be his TL he would have avoided her at all costs and NOT taken her), I was very giddy to get that news because I felt like I was really on to something and it wasn't just me that thought it. Were you in that category too? Let me know! Peace and Happy Reading!
