Dearest Belle,

I have all the possessions for which a man may dream. My castle is spacious, I have the finest of furniture, and I possess endless spools of gold.

But I have no heart.

Black as it may have been, I once had it working again. No. You had it working again. It was you, and it was yours. And you took it. You took it from me-my heart. You took it and you left. You hurt me, and I hate you. I HATE YOU. Because I love you, and you made me need you. And I DON'T CARE that I told you to go. You're gone! You LEFT. You're gone, and I will never forgive. Never forgive. I wish, I wish you were dea…

He was in tears before he could finish that line. He felt like he'd been torn apart from the inside out. His body was wracked with sobs, his heart felt shredded from grief; from the loss of her. He'd cried so much over the last week that he felt more human than he did Dark One. He'd sat down to write this letter a handful of times since then, he'd done everything to try and fix himself, to shift the guilt from him to her, but it always ended the same. He couldn't wish her dead. Because she was already dead. He couldn't shift the guilt. Because he felt it heavy upon his own shoulders. He couldn't fix it. Because he couldn't turn back time. No one could. If such a thing existed, he would have used it so many times by now he didn't know what the future would look like. It certainly wouldn't be this, crying alone in his bedroom because he didn't feel strong enough to work or make deals or even care about what was going on in the world! If he could turn back time then he'd be with Baelfire now, Regina would be married to the King still, she might even have gotten past her anger with Snow and managed to find some happiness with the King, the Curse would still be in the vault, and Belle…

She might be dead now, no matter what. Without him in this world, the ogres probably would have taken over her Kingdom, she would have been insane after the death of her mother, and then death at the hands of those beasts would have been merciful.

But instead, she'd died this way. She'd loved him and tried to free him, and he'd destroyed her.

It didn't feel like she was dead. He felt like he was grieving, but he didn't feel like she was gone. True Love…he should have felt something. Just like everyone else who shared in true love, he should have felt something when she died! But he didn't. Maybe he would have. Maybe he would have felt something if she'd stayed and their bond had grown beyond what it was. As much as he cared for her, as much as he'd loved her it was a weak bond, a simple, single thread that connected her to him. A single kiss that would forever be frozen in time.

He looked down at the paper in front of him and felt sick. Such words. Such terrible, false words!

He rose quickly, paper in hand, and tossed it into the fire, but he'd been so upset when he stood that his hand was on fire and it was ash long before it would have hit the fireplace. Still, he fell to his knees and watched the fire burn as he cried.

He didn't wish her dead. He wanted nothing more than for her to be alive and well and downstairs reading her book or making tea. How could he ever say or think or even write such a terrible thing. He didn't wish her head. He couldn't, not anymore, but he couldn't even wish his memory of her dead. When he thought of her, of all that she'd brought to him…he'd hold onto those memories forever! He was darkness, but he felt as though he held a candle inside of him, one small tiny flame, a spark of light spurred on by the memories he had for her.

He loved her. He hadn't said the words, but she knew just as much as he did because of what had happened to him when they'd kissed.

Had.

She had known he loved her. Past tense.

But he still wished he could have told her. He wished he could controlled his temper. He wished he could have thought to bind the curse to him before. He wished he could have handled it better. He wished a lot of things.

Now here he was, still trying to shake himself out of this stupor he found himself in. Logically, he knew this was foolish. There was no use in wasting love on the dead. She might have been gone, and it might have been because of him. But Baelfire lived. Somewhere out there his boy was still alive and waiting for him. He couldn't lose sight of that!

He wished he could have told her everything about him, about Bae. If she'd known the whole story, he felt certain she would want him to be with his son, to have that love. But now the opportunity was gone. But the opportunity of getting Baelfire back still hung in the air, a very real possibility.

He took a breath, in through his nose out through his mouth. There was something good that had come out of this, something he'd discovered days ago but hadn't done much with since. She'd given him a key, an understanding of a missing piece of the puzzle. Now that he'd loved her, now that he'd been loved, he saw his task through new eyes; eyes that she'd given him. He knew what was wrong with creating a potion of True Love…it was the preposition.

People, wizards, witches, and laypeople alike, were all so hung up on creating love from nothing. It wasn't possible. True love couldn't be born out of nothing. Lust could be. With the sands of Avalon it was possible to induce complacency, but when he thought of what he'd felt for Belle, he knew that it was simply not possible to ever make a potion of True Love. What he needed was a potion from True Love.

If he could capture the essence of two people in love, Snow White and Prince Charming, now, at a time like this when they were deeply and radically in love with one another, then he might be able to craft a potion that would be viable. One that would stew and grow just as they would, as he and Belle never had. A potion like that would be able to get the desired effect when placed on the scroll of the Dark Curse. Better yet, if allowed to stew for years, stored in a safe place, one with magic as opposed to without, under the proper circumstances, it might have an even greater ability; an ability to bring magic to a place without it. He'd need that to find Bae.

He swallowed as he pulled himself to his feet and used the back of his hand to wipe his eyes. He had to get to work. Sitting here wasn't going to get him to Baelfire. His son was his only chance at redemption now. Belle would want him to go find him.

"Thank you Belle," he whispered as he stared into the flames. "Your life will not be in vain or forgotten. I promise."

Okay, just hear me out on this one cause it's sort of complicated. I pride myself on the fact that everything that is considered "canon" is in these fanfictions, even the tough stuff. Before season 2 released, there was a facebook game featuring OUAT. The "prizes" in that game were letters that characters on the show wrote to one another. There's one from Regina to Henry, one from Snow to Emma, Rumple to Belle, etc. I think there are eight total. According to A&E these letters are considered canon. One of those letters that was originally released was the letter that starts this fiction. The letter here appears just as it was released, cutoff and everything. Now, as you can imagine, fans were not terribly impressed with it, Rumbellers especially were pissed with it, so A&E removed the letter and replaced it with a different one (the replacement letter appears currently in Moments Seen and Unseen, chapter 15, "Standing on Her Own"). However, A&E have still stated that this letter from Rumple is just as much canon as that one. And I used the other one so I sort of backed myself into a corner and had to figure out a place to put this one. Here seemed...well...just as good as any. I needed a filler chapter here, something to connect the Beauty and the Beast section to what we have next and I figured that putting it here worked just as well as anywhere. I hope you don't mind it. I tried to get into Rumple's mind with writing it, and offer an explanation of he is a man deeply hurt by what he precieves as the death of his True Love. Get used to that because it's gonna become a common theme.

Thank you Grace5231973 and Alarda for your reviews on the last chapter. As I said before this is the last chapter of the Beauty and the Beast Section. Six sections down, two to go! This chapter really is a bridge from this section to that section. You can probably already sort of tell where it is going story-wise, but this is also a good example of where Rumple is going to be emotionally throughout the rest. He's not just going to go back to the person he was before Belle. He's changed. You can expect to see a different version of him from here on out. And yes, that version is going to be a little sadder and a little quieter, but also a lot more focused and determined. So, without further ado, onto the next. Peace and Happy Reading!