A Deal He Didn't Understand (The Farewell She Couldn't Say)

by Anti-Kryptonite

"I never want to see you again." She said it. She meant it (in the moment). And of course, being Rumplestiltskin, he had to come long enough to have the last word (Baelfire, the only word that matters) and then, instead of stopping him, she let him walk away. [What if, instead of calling Rumplestiltskin back for hamburgers, Belle let him go?]

A/N: All right, I think you know the drill by now (I can't believe I wrote another story taking place immediately after episode 2x04) - I make up my own timeline for the first half of season 2 and kind of rearrange a few things to suit my story and make everything Rumbelle-centric (as it should be, of course).

Also, this is the closest thing to an M-rating I've ever written, so I appreciate any feedback.

Thanks for reading! I hope you all enjoy!

A/N: No copyright infringement is intended.

---

At first, she never sees him. As if he's faded from existence, or at least from this world. She wonders if maybe he has. Rumplestiltskin seeks a way past the town line without losing his memories, and whatever the Dark One sets his mind to will be accomplished sooner or later. So maybe he's already long gone. He gave her truth as his farewell and a library as parting gift and if Belle never sees him again (never gets to find out the conclusion of the story begun with Baelfire), then it is entirely her fault.

I never want to see you again.

She said it. She meant it (in the moment). And of course, being Rumplestiltskin, he had to come long enough to have the last word (Baelfire, the only word that matters) and then, instead of stopping him, she let him walk away.

After all, she had done it to him first.

She thought about calling him back. Of course she did. The words (the plea) hung on the tip of her tongue, ready and waiting to fall as his cane (his crutch) clicked against the floor of the second library he's gifted her.

But she said nothing, just leaned against the shelves of books (less interesting than the mystery she's giving up on) and flinched at the click of the door.

Last time, she was the one who walked away, leaving her true love behind in his self-imposed prison. This time, she can't help but think that maybe it's only fair the tables have turned.

And her (self-imposed) prison truly is lovely, filled to bursting with knowledge of this new world she wants to explore and embrace and savor in a way she was never able to with their old one. This world was born of Rumplestiltskin's clever slyness (born to Baelfire as surely as their old world burned for Baelfire) and though Belle tries not to think too much of the man she loves, she does find this world all the more entrancing for exactly who wrote them the bridge to get here.

She walks down strangely paved roads and hears Rum-ple, Rum-ple in the tap of her shoes (themselves gifts of her True Love). She hears the chime of the clock above her library and remembers that clock and candelabra sometimes set so precisely between the windows in the Great Hall. The wind smells of salt and distance and spices (of Rumplestiltskin), the air itself layered with the love of a father who cannot let go because no amount of spinning will let him forget that he already did, once, so long ago.

Baelfire.

In contrast, she doesn't hear that name anywhere. Not in the echoing quiet of her lonely apartment. Not in the heart beating behind her ribcage, fluttering against her wrists, thrumming through her throat, straining for someone who's no longer there. It's a secret, that name, a precious truth entrusted to her alone in payment for all the times she came back when he didn't expect her to.

Days pass, one week, two, and friends are gradually earned (Ruby and Granny; and the prince who's now a sheriff who's always hurting and lonely; and a boy with familiar eyes and heroic impulses and a mother Belle can't see without shuddering and having to remind herself she's free once more) or found anew (Dreamy who's now Grumpy but calls himself Leroy; and Jefferson who never lets go of his daughter because maybe, like Rumplestiltskin, he knows how great the sin is of letting go). Three weeks, and still she doesn't see him.

Belle reminds herself (when she weeps alone in a cold bed) that this is a gift.

Belle tells herself (when her library is empty and void and there is no voice to startle her, no impish grin to tease her, no soft eyes to watch as she rambles on about her favorite books) that this is what she wants.

Belle thinks (when she stares down the street at a shop with his new name emblazoned across it, so dark, so isolated, so close) that just like Rumplestiltskin and Jefferson…she too knows the pain of letting go when she could have, would have, should have, just held on.

---

The click of a shackle around her wrist takes her back. Back to a cold room with dripping pipes and a cruel nurse and cold eyes above a sickly-sweet smile. Back to a tower dungeon where light illuminated the runes in the floor and the walls were covered in too many marks to count and no one at all came to see her (forgotten, abandoned, left to rot, a long slow death by wasting).

All the progress she's made, the strides she's taken to reclaim herself outside captivity, vanish even before Ruby can turn her back on her in fact as well as action. Belle hears the door slam closed (the door to this library that should only mean comfort and adventure and love) and she's imprisoned once more. And this time, she didn't choose it.

A wolf howls outside the walls. Belle screams inside. Time slips away from her.

Drip-drip-drip. Are the pipes really leaking or is she only imagining (remembering) it? Does the moonlight really peek through past all the old newspapers and cardboard taped over the windows or is she just hallucinating that place from her nightmares (or is this her nightmare)?

No one comes.

No one ever comes.

In another world, Rumplestiltskin thought she was dead, and believing her outside his reach, she became so. The Evil Queen came, at the beginning, over and over, always with another offer (a potion to forget him, a bargain to betray him, pain if she didn't inform on him), and always Belle relied on the memory of Rumplestiltskin's soft smile and sad eyes and awe-stricken touch to give her the strength to refuse.

In this cursed world, he came after her father to rescue her, though it was him she ran from first. He'd vowed to protect her and kissed her as if she mattered and touched her as if he could never forget her, but she had still slipped away when his back was turned. In the end, he even confided in her—gave her the one thing he'd never given anyone else (his trust). And in return, she let him walk away with a permanent farewell still ringing between them (the only bell left to him).

Now, he has no reason to come after her. Why should he? What hope has she left him with? She promised him forever. She promised she'd always return. She told him she would stay no matter what.

And then she ran. She didn't look back. She didn't repent. She didn't forgive or make allowances.

The shackle cuts through her skin. Blood is slick along her wrist. Belle cries, but soundlessly, because who is there who will come rescue her?

No one.

She is alone.

David comes, long after nightfall, when she has exhausted herself and sits slumped against the shelves, her arm hanging over her head, dried blood stained in long streaks down her skin.

"Oh, no," David says softly. The key slides into the lock, snick, and easy as that (though longer than the snap of the fingers Rumplestiltskin would have provided), she's free.

Belle hugs her arm to herself, massages tingles back into it, and feels only numb.

"I'm so sorry," David says. He's tired. She can hear it in his voice. His sadness (pity?) for her paints it like a dark watercolor, all blurs and impressions and heavy brushstrokes. "Ruby meant well. But—"

"Please leave," she whispers.

He stares at her.

"Please. Thank you for…for letting me out. But that doesn't change what happened. Please just go."

"Belle, are you sure? Your wrist looks pretty—"

"I want to be alone," she says.

(It's a lie. Or at least, half a one. She doesn't want to be completely alone; she wants to be alone in a Dark Castle with the only man who ever accepted her as she is. The only monster who ever apologized and tried to correct his mistakes.)

"All right." David hesitates. "Just…let me know if you need anything."

"I need a friend who won't employ locks to take away my free will." Standing, she brushes her skirt off and pretends her hands weren't shaking. "I need a friend who won't try to justify terrible actions."

(She needs a friend who will burn the world down for her if she only asks—but more importantly, will choose not to should her better conscience reassert itself.)

(She had one of those things.)

(Now she has none.)

"I understand," David says, and if she weren't so angry, she might even believe him. "We'll be here when you're ready."

"I was ready hours ago."

When she turns her back, he leaves. This time, when the door clicks shut, it is comforting.

Belle runs her fingers along the spines of the books, her fingers level on the canvas then swooping in with the curve of the binding only to rise again along the next tale. A journey she's taken a thousand times. Adventures so ready to be plucked like a rose (if you'll have it) and savored or tossed aside (I don't want you anymore)depending on her mood.

People are so very different, though. She wonders why it's taken her so long to learn that (too long, too late).

Choosing a book at random simply because she likes the feel of it against her fingertips, Belle hugs the tome close to her chest and flees upstairs to her apartment.

Slam, the door closes behind her and Belle's alone.

(Finally, after all this time, they've succeeded in conditioning her to lock herself away of her own free will.)

---

The book is filled with a collection of what it calls fairytales. Belle hesitates (hears the echo of Rumplestiltskin's hissed rants and pained rage on fairies), then, almost guiltily, opens to the first story. There are no fairies in it after all, though the name of it captures Belle's attention immediately. Rumplestiltskin spoke of a Snow White in their old world, and here the name is whispered whenever they think David will not hear it. No one likes to see the King-Sheriff look sad or disheartened; they rely on his faith in lieu of their own and Belle doesn't begrudge it though faith has only ever led her to disappointment.

That this world knows enough of Snow White to write down some pale shadow of her tale is enough to carry Belle past all the inaccuracies even she can spot. The next tale, Sleeping Beauty, does have fairies (though none are the Rheul Gorm that Rumplestiltskin especially hates for reasons so couched in secrecy Belle can only suppose it has to do with Baelfire), but it also has Phillip. Belle smiles at the reminder of one of the few times when adventure didn't leave her worse off than before (so long as she stops her reminiscing before the Queen appeared on that hilltop like a black specter), and wonders where her friends have ended up here in this world-within-a-town.

Dawn creeps along the floor of her apartment. The sunlight has begun to warm her toes, curled up near the head of the bed where she is wrapped around this strange book, by the time she closes her burning eyes and lets sleep sweep her away. With her head pillowed on open pages, her dreams are filled with strange variations of the Enchanted Forest and quick happy endings that never lead to anything more than peaceful ever afters.

It doesn't last, of course. She has almost forgotten what it is like to sleep a night free of terror. Here, it stalks her, creeping behind, always ready to pounce the instant she lets her guard down. For a few nights, Rumplestiltskin slept beside her and wrapped his arms around her, bulwark enough to cow any nightmares that crept too near. More than anything, Belle wishes he were still here, pressed up against her in this small bed, grumbling about sunshine and shivering when her fingers sweep along the edge of his collar to touch his throat.

(That's a lie: that's not what she wishes for most. Or rather, it is only a part of it. She doesn't want just the nights—she wants forever. Her own happily ever after.)

When she wakes, with a jerk that crumples a page telling her of Cinderella and a glass slipper, Belle wonders what her happily ever after would look like in this world's eyes. Exhaustion seeps through her veins like tar, but she ignores it in favor of flipping through the pages looking for any that bear her name.

(Foolish, so foolish, she is no princess, nobody important enough to attract the attention of fairy godmothers or prince charmings, nobody shortsighted enough to take an enchanted item without asking questions first or to crave fancy balls and pretty dresses. Instead, she called for the monster in the dark and dared to see a man in disguise and made the mistake of thinking love triumphed over all.)

She finds her story nearly by accident. Beauty & The Beast. She flips past it once, twice, then happens to catch a few words extolling a beauty's bravery and a beast's loneliness. It's the very last story in the book, and Belle's hands shake as she finds her way to the first page of it so she can devour every word.

Happily ever after it ends, just like all the others, and Belle lets out a cry as she shoves the book away. It thumps to the floor, a hollow echo in an empty room near a wasted girl.

Belle doesn't pick it up again.

---

"Fairytales, sure," Dreamy—no, Leroy; she refuses to call him Grumpy—says as he shovels in his breakfast. "Not really my thing, but I guess they have a few things in common with our world."

"How?" Belle asks softly. She picks at the muffin he brought her, glad it isn't something Ruby introduced her to (she will forgive and reconcile, as she has become so good at doing, but not just yet; not until the welts on her wrist close up).

"Huh?" The chair groans under Leroy as he sets aside his empty container and leans back to sip his coffee.

"How does this world know about us?"

"I don't know." The dwarf shrugs. "Aren't you the one who lived with an all-powerful sorcerer? Doesn't he know?"

Belle lets her hair cover her face and picks up a book from the desk to give her something to look at. "I just found out about them. Are we all in their fairytales?"

"A good few. Even I get a mention," he says with a sound that might be a laugh. "Real riot, though at least the movie got our song right."

"Movie?"

"Lesson for another time." Leroy drains his cup and stands. "It's off to work for me."

"Dre—Leroy?"

His shoulders stiffen at her near slip, but he doesn't look angry. He meets her gaze levelly enough and Belle is suddenly so grateful for him.

"Does…does he have a fairytale?"

"You do," Leroy says softly.

"I know." Belle wraps her arms around her middle (it doesn't help; she's still just as cold as she's been since she lost Rumplestiltskin's sweater somewhere). "I read it this morning. It's…it's not true."

"Didn't say it was. I imagine real life's a bit harder than just loving someone into the best version of himself."

"I…" The library swims around her while Belle tries to swallow back nausea. "I didn't want to change him into something else. I just wanted to help him find a way out of the darkness."

"Not everybody wants to be saved."

She had. She had yearned to be saved. How could she have known that Rumplestiltskin was in the dark voluntarily? Why couldn't he just have told her that his hero's journey had taken him the long, twisted way 'round?

"So I've learned," she settles for saying. "Though I think that even if he did want to be saved, it would still be hard."

Baelfire, he'd told her as he leaned on a crutch to illustrate his weakness (the flaw he saw as unsalvageable). Maybe he does want something more (want her), but it's not enough. He already has his quest, his task, his goal, and she was only a footnote, an obstacle that had to be overcome in order to prove his resolve.

"So?" Leroy demanded, abruptly as grumpy as his new namesake. "What if it is hard? That's not an excuse to give up. What? Just because something takes a bit of sacrifice, a bit of bravery, and doesn't pay off right away—just because everyone tells her to stay away—it's okay to just let go of everything we could have? What a load of garbage. We—"

He cuts off and looks guilty at her startled look.

"Sorry," he mutters.

For the first time in days, Belle feels the start of a smile playing along her lips. "Did you find your fairy in this world?"

"Doesn't matter," he says shortly. "She doesn't want to try. Guess I'm not worth a bit of discomfort."

"You are." Belle steps forward to clasp her hand over his. "Surely she'll realize that in time."

"Yeah, maybe." Visibly uncomfortable, Leroy steps away and balls up the trash from their breakfast. "Listen, those mines aren't going to drop the fairy dust on their own. I have to go. You okay?"

"Sure." Another attempt at a smile, this one far less natural, and Leroy heads to the door.

"Oh, sister?" Leroy shifts his weight. "The Dark One's story? It's under his name—the tale of Rumplestiltskin."

---

It takes her the rest of the day, cleaning and organizing, to bring herself to search for more books on fairytales. It takes her long moments of staring at the tiny volume bearing the name of her true love (her former true love? is the most powerful magic known to their world as transient as any happiness, shifting with the vagaries of human weakness?) before she dares to touch it. And it takes nearly a week before she is so driven by loneliness (by regret, by weariness, by terror) that she actually takes the book out from under her pillow and begins to read.

The tale of her and Rumplestiltskin was so simplistic as to be galling. It glorified the Beauty's sacrifice and glossed over the Beast's growth, portrayed love as a straight line and added the fate of his servants to the Beast's shoulders while keeping the Beauty in ignorance. Above all, it ended too soon, so abrupt, so unrealistic, that Belle wondered at how she'd ever thought a simple kiss would be enough to conquer darkness vast enough to corral magic to its very bidding.

The tale of Rumplestiltskin is different. For one thing, it is sad. So tragic that Belle's tears stain the pages, with so hopeless an ending that she can't sleep, can only stay awake and stare bleakly into the darkness.

Her poor lonely imp, lamed and skilled and driven by loneliness to asking for a baby (he did do that, she remembers, but never for himself, always with ulterior purposes more noble than he wanted anyone to think), his power stripped away from him by a cheating princess, all his work overlooked and taken for granted. And in the end, for all that the other fairytales have ended in happiness and eternal bliss, her Dark One is struck down and buried belowground with nothing even close to justice as his grave-marker.

Belle hates it. She doesn't throw this book, merely closes it (so gently, as if that can make up for the terrible ending) and sets it on her nightstand.

These fairytales, for all their mistakes, have seeds of truth buried deep within. Belle thinks of the baby this story-imp wanted, and remembers the twisted pain and hope (mingled like one of his potions) as Rumplestiltskin spoke his lost son's name. She wonders exactly how Baelfire traveled here, and if it involved a hole in the ground and a crack leading to some other world while Rumplestiltskin was left maimed and broken and desperate.

But for all that she is not a princess, Belle is not a miller's daughter either. She made a deal knowing who the Dark One is, and she honored it until she was released of its power. And she didn't have to dig and spy and cheat Rumplestiltskin's secrets out of him, because he gave them to her. Freely. Voluntarily. A little at a time, parceled out as he grew to know that he could trust her (as he began to accept that she would not take his power and his magic and his help only to leave when he asked for too much from her).

(Well, for a while anyway.)

Belle leaves her bed and the dubious safety of her blankets to pad over to the window. If she stands just so and looks as far to the right as possible, she can just see a corner of Mr. Gold's shop. Her monster's lair. Her man's laboratory. (The squat tower where Baelfire touches every item and corner and darkened window.)

"I promised you forever," she whispers. "And I'm holding you to it."

For the first time since climbing out of a high window instead of walking out the open door, Belle is no longer numb.

No. For the first time in ages and worlds, Belle is brave.

---

The shop is filled with memories, most of them good. Close and packed to the rafters with hoards of things that will come in handy sometime in the future, it is a physical representation of her true love's mind. Belle loves it, but today, it's not her destination. Instead, she goes to his house. The shop is where he welcomes (or at least indulges) deal-seekers and that is not what she is to him. Belle let him walk away once (walked away herself three times), but she refuses to pretend that they haven't shared True Love's Kiss. She won't let them ignore what's between them (whatever that turns out to be, happily-ever-after or something else).

For the first time, she knocks on the front door, thump-tap-thump. There was a keyring waiting unobtrusively in the drawer of the nightstand of the apartment he gifted her. She imagines that one of the keys fits this door (another his shop, perhaps the third his strange carriage). This isn't the time to stride boldly ahead, though. If he doesn't want her to save him, she won't push in anyway.

(He must meet her halfway. She must wait for him. True Love isn't an immediate solution but a slow path filled with compromises that feel like miracles.

At least…she hopes it is.)

Rumplestiltskin is far too skilled a player to be wearing any expression at all when he opens the door, though she knows he expects the mobs that once stormed the Queen's house to eventually come for him. He's impassive—until he sees her.

For just an instant, all his masks fall away. Belle doesn't like what it reveals (he looks too raw, exposed and far too vulnerable; helpless).

"Hi," she says shyly.

He looks even more taken aback now than he did when she seemingly came back from the dead. It makes Belle remember the loneliness of the imp in the book hidden beneath her pillow.

"Hey." Just that, but coming from him, it speaks volumes.

"Can…can I come in?" The question (her own uncertainty in this place that was so briefly hers) strikes her as so sad that she fumbles. "I…I'm sorry for just coming like this. I should have warned you—"

"No, no." He beckons her inside. She notices that he leaves plenty of space between them. "You're always welcome here."

No price. No caveat. Just that.

Belle's heart cracks and warms and leaps all at once.

"Thank you."

A spasm chases lines across his face, so different in this world than the last. "Don't…" He takes a breath. "Please, come in."

His diffidence still surprises her. They had nearly a year together in their world, but she survived what seemed eternities by clinging to each and every one of those memories. In some, Rumplestiltskin was bashful, or tentative, occasionally even awkward and shy. But this self-effacement he demonstrates here is a new shade altogether. It's as compelling as it is somewhat frightening (surely he doesn't think she's trying to trick him of his name, his power, does he? or is this what an ill-timed kiss leads to, this constant guilt, this inferiority complex that divides them even better than ancient darkness ever did?).

"How are you?" Belle asks once she's standing inside the house that smells of spice and electricity, straw and metal (of him). She's careful to keep her voice soft and her eyes kind because there is more than one way to deliver a forever.

His expression shutters. "I still haven't found a way to Bae."

The name falls between them so easily, so naturally, that Belle feels herself drawn forward a step, compelled by this new openness. This new facet unlocked in the mystery that is Rumplestiltskin.

"You will," she says.

Rumplestiltskin's face (so human, so fragile) nearly crumples. His eyes are almost as large as they were in the old world, but his expression is even easier to read. It wasn't so long since he wore it in his shop as he gaped at what he thought was a ghost (she nearly was, then, before the curse broke). Belle doesn't miss the way his hand twitches toward her before he catches himself.

With a soft quirk of her lips, Belle slides her hand into his and squeezes once. Proving that she's real. She's here. (Proving to herself that he's here, alive and well and staring at her as if he doesn't blame her for temporarily breaking all her promises).

His answering wonder, his gratitude, is as thick as the clouds of magical smoke were near that well, and dissipate just as quickly.

The silence between them is companionable until it isn't (a change as abrupt as his human hints yanked back beneath the monster's skin as her kiss wore off). They stand awkwardly in the foyer. Belle's unsure how to ask what she wants while she thinks Rumplestiltskin is simply trying to reset his barriers.

"Why are you here, Belle?" he finally asks.

She lets out a tiny sigh. "I had some questions about this town. About this world, actually. I was hoping you could help me."

"Questions." Piece by piece, he remembers how to be Rumplestiltskin (the part he's fooled himself into thinking is the truth rather than the mask). It lasts only a second before cracking when he says, "Of course. Anything. Do you… I could make us some tea?" He flinches and looks away. "Perhaps just water…?"

No. They can't rewrite the past (and she has no desire to anyway).

"Tea would be lovely, thank you."

He jerks as if she struck him, but leads her wordlessly to the sitting room (nothing has changed save the roses that have grown brittle and dark). He's back from the kitchen so quickly she knows he used magic, but he is who he is and she disliked sitting here alone anyway. He serves her tea with the perfect amount of milk and sugar (it warms her to think he paid attention while she poured her own tea back in his great hall), but flinches when she thanks him.

"Don't… Please, don't thank me. It's no matter." But then he sets down a platter of her favorite biscuits and she has to bite her cheek to keep the thank you in.

"So," he says, "questions about the town. I'll answer everything I can, but, Belle, I'm not—"

"You don't have to answer anything you don't want to," she assures him (she's not here to trap him).

He stares at her. "I…I was going to say that I might not know the answers. This world is strange to me, and the curse I wrote was cobbled together from a dozen different realms."

Her cheeks warm. She takes a sip of tea, a bite of a cookie, and tries to reclaim the confidence she felt in her apartment under the darkness of night.

"How does this world know our stories? And why are they called fairytales—barely any of them even have fairies."

Rumplestiltskin chokes on his tea. "You…you've read them already?"

She knows what Rumplestiltskin looks like when he's scared (it's becoming too familiar a sight), and right now, he's obviously terrified.

"I found a book in the library. It was a collection of them. They're strange, though, not quite true, not wholly fiction."

"Of course. Of course." He looks away. Sets down his teacup. And says nothing.

Belle works very hard not to feel disappointed (she knew this would require patience).

"I just…wondered," she offers quietly. "These fairytales originated centuries ago here, but that would mean they were part of ancient history and in our world they're mostly contemporary."

"Yes, well." Rumplestiltskin straightens as he slips into his lecturing voice. It's another mask, but Belle doesn't mind it (despite what they both thought, she likes most of his masks). "Portals transcend time, and for all that this world has no magic, it's touched by magic. Besides, there must be a balance. The stories are, I believe, magic's way of evening the scales. And some of it might be the curse. The curse placed us where I could best find Bae, no matter what time that was, but it had to search for him. Wherever it touched, it might have left a residue."

"A residue of stories." Belle smiles. "How evocative. But why are they so twisted?"

"This world actively resists magic. It tried to destroy them. Tamp them out. What resulted were skewed representations of the people caught up in the curse. Hence the name as well."

"Did you know that would happen?"

"I…" Rumplestiltskin shrugs. "I didn't really care much about what effect we'd have on this world. All my focus was on getting here."

"All your deals. They were all for Baelfire."

There was a miller's daughter, she's sure (perhaps a hundred miller's daughters, and a hundred more farmer's daughters, baker's, chandler's, queen's, and just as many shepherd's sons, warrior's, king's, beggar's). Anyone who could help him to the moment of his curse. Everyone a piece, a necessary evil, collateral damage along the way.

The part of Belle that longs to be a hero recoils from such ruthlessness.

The part of Belle that remembers languishing alone in cold chains yearns for someone (for him) to love her that much, to be willing to go to such lengths for her sake (like unleashing a wraith on a town already teetering toward destruction).

"The first deal I made was with Bae." Rumplestiltskin makes an odd gesture with his hand, as if he's cupping something small, or perhaps wrapping his fingers around something round. "And I broke it. When I…when I lost him, I vowed that I would never break another deal again."

Belle looks at his cane, propped up at his side. Elaborate, sign of wealth (of power), but necessary all the same. He called magic his crutch, but she suddenly wonders if magic isn't the flaw in his being and his crutch is really the deals he uses to mitigate its effects.

"You use the deals to honor him," she realizes.

How many desperate souls did she see him manipulate into questionable deals? How many times did she hear him reiterate the terms before asking or declaring deal?

But every time he said deal, he was really saying Baelfire.

Every time he holds to the word of his agreements, attends to the subtle weapons he employs, he is thinking of the son that keeps him spinning endless nights.

"Belle," Rumplestiltskin sighs. "There were a lot of deals that didn't have anything to do with Bae. That were just because I didn't like someone. Or because I was bored. Or…" He trails off as if suddenly remembering that he doesn't want her to think badly of him.

"But you kept them all," she says. "Didn't you?"

"I did."

"And that's because you love your son."

The look he wears is the same he exhibited when she came back to his shop and told him she had to stay.

She was wrong.

(She doesn't have to stay with him. But she wants to.)

"Belle," he murmurs, "exactly what stories have you read?"

"Too many," she replies just as quietly. "But none of them are as good as the real thing."

She hopes he never stops looking at her with just that expression.

---

Belle loved this little diner when she first stopped in, on the run and looking for a place to drown her sorrows in. Ruby welcomed her, so much more friendly than Mulan had been at first, and given her options, opening the world for her. Now, though, Belle finds the place too oppressively cheerful. It's too bright, too open, and Ruby's eagerness is so much more cloying than Mulan's grudging respect and Phillip's earnest gratitude.

"I'm sorry, Belle," Ruby says for the fourth time. She pushes the plate of chicken alfredo closer to Belle (as if a gift of food undoes the clink of manacles around her wrist). "I was just so scared. I didn't know how to save you."

"What I needed to be saved from were the chains," Belle murmured.

(She wonders if this tightness to her chest, this lump in her throat, is what Rumplestiltskin felt when she told him the kiss was working.)

"Belle, the last time I couldn't control the change…" Ruby looks away. "Peter, this boy I loved…he died. I couldn't let that happen again. I can't be a monster again."

"You're not a monster." Belle squeezes her eyes closed and sighs (this is her lot in life, she thinks, to be surrounded by people who cannot see the good in themselves).

"You had good intentions," Belle reminds herself. "But, Ruby, when you asked me where I'd been during the curse…I think you misunderstood me when I said I'd been a kept woman."

Belle swallows. She'd wanted Ruby to draw the conclusion she did; bitterness is something that Belle occasionally struggles to conquer.

"The thing is…I was locked up. In a single room under the hospital. Regina kept me there the whole time. And even before the curse, I was locked in one of her towers for years."

"Belle…" Ruby's voice carries the appropriate horror. It falls like a burden on Belle's shoulder (because now she's the one locking a manacle on a friend, imprisoning her friend with pity and unwelcome knowledge). "I'm so sorry."

"Next time, just talk to me, please." Belle meets Ruby's eyes and tries to smile (hopes it looks better than it feels). "I…I don't do well with chains."

There are tears in Ruby's eyes. If she were a better person (if she were really the hero she wants to be), Belle would brush them away and hug Ruby. But forgiveness is hard, sometimes, and her skin crawls to think of getting so close to someone who might be keeping a manacle hidden behind her back.

Still, Ruby is her friend, and Belle has precious few of those, so she chokes down a few bites of the new dish Ruby wants her to try and promises Ruby that she'll come into the diner again soon.

Feeling uncomfortably like she's escaping a prison, Belle pushes out into open air. It's bright with sunshine, but the crispness to the air makes her shrug deeper into her jacket (the apartment came with fully stocked closets and Belle feels as if each article of clothing is an embrace from her true love). It doesn't help much, but that's okay. Belle relishes the realness of the atmosphere. The sting of the fresh air against her throat. The bite of wind curling around her legs.

It reminds her she's free.

---

The chill to the air was precursor to a storm. Belle pauses in her dusting and glances outside the library. The strong gusts of wind remind her of stumbling through the wraith-inflicted storm as she wiped away tears and tried not to feel her heart ripping in two.

Without quite realizing what she's doing, Belle abandons the safety of her library for the dark night. She nearly falls three times on her way down the street, and when the wind rips the pawnshop's door from her hands, the bell above clangs violently.

Rumplestiltskin looks up from some silver pendant lying on the counter before him. His cool expression transforms instantly into naked worry.

"Belle!" he gasps. "What's wrong?"

The air crackles, abruptly, with lightning so much more destructive than any the sky could ever produce. Rumplestiltskin rounds the counter and reaches for her, fierce and protective and everything she needs him to be (it's amazing, how easily a monster becomes a knight in shining armor when love is introduced into the equation). When he hesitates before touching her, Belle stumbles forward, bumps up against him, intentionally off-balance so that he has to wrap his arm around her.

Her chills intensify (he's heated and mesmerizing, stark contrast to the emptiness of her apartment, her library, her life). She presses closer, gratified when he plants his cane and lets her burrow into him (he doesn't run; he stands there and invites her close).

"What happened?" he whispers. "Was it the Queen?"

(Your friend, the Queen! his hiss echoes in her memory. Belle buries it deep beneath the caramel silkiness of his present worry.)

"It's storming so badly," she says into his shirt. She's so tired. So lonely (her fairytale mentioned that, didn't it? how isolated and alone the brave beauty was before the castle and her imprisonment that was actually an adventure she chose). "I wanted to see you."

He stiffens. Too much. Too close. She's the one who walked away. Who let him say goodbye. Who came to him only for answers, like a business associate rather than the other half of their true love. She can't just ignore what her own choices have done to him.

Reluctantly, Belle steps away. His arm falls to his cane. Belle swallows back her regret.

"Not to worry," he says with a bite to his voice she hasn't heard since the last storm. "I didn't inflict a wraith on anyone. Though, technically, I could. The Queen's the only one protected by our deal."

Instead of getting angry, Belle smiles at him (her lonely, defensive imp; he's always at his most vulnerable when he snaps fiercest). "I know. I just meant…I was worried about you."

The monster falls away to reveal the softness of his face (the spinner, she named him in his castle, so pensive and melancholy while he sat and produced endless spools of gold).

"Oh. Is…is the library warm enough?" He (shyly) wraps his hand around her elbow to lead her deeper into his shop. And there, behind the counter, she sees it: the gray sweater he loaned her. The one she took into the diner her first visit and never saw again. He's folded it neatly beneath the counter just where he usually stands.

Her breath catches in her throat when he hands it to her, and only when he gestures for her to put the sweater on does she realize she left her library without even a jacket. The sweater smells like him (straw and metal and magic; tea and paper and lightning). Belle sinks deep into it and vows not to lose it again.

"Thank you," she says.

Rumplestiltskin frowns but says nothing.

"You're here late," she finally says when Rumplestiltskin seems happy just to watch her. She leans against the counter, her back to the door, and tries to make her expression as inviting as possible.

(Very carefully, she doesn't think about what she's doing. She knows she misses him. She knows she's lonely. She knows that she craves some closeness as she hasn't felt in so long. Beyond that, she intentionally exists only in this moment.)

"A small favor for Henry, the sheriff's grandson. He's having some trouble with bad dreams, and soon enough, they'll ask me for help."

"And you'll be ready."

He blinks. "Aye."

She loves his cleverness. His wits. His planning nature, his tactical genius, the methodical workings of his mind. Of all the books she's read, the characters she's imagined, the people she's met, Rumplestiltskin is the smartest. His intelligence is the first thing she noticed, really, in the legends she studied, searching for a solution to their problem with ogres (his intelligence, and his honor, the way he always fulfills his deals).

"I'm glad you're helping," she murmurs, though she hardly knows what she's saying. The night is dark, the wind encloses them in a close cocoon, and she hasn't felt this safe, this happy, since the first nights she stayed with Rumplestiltskin in this strange little town. She remembers the way he escorted her to his home. The room he said was hers. The room she knew was his as soon as she followed him into it. The bath he ran for her, the steam redolent with the scent of roses. The softness of his bed when she slipped in and the tremble in his hands when she pulled him down with her.

Belle tries to keep her breath steady as she inches closer toward Rumplestiltskin. She's pretty sure he's not even aware of the tiny step he takes closer to her. He's not wearing his suit coat. The fine vest he wears emphasizes the slimness of his chest, and the crimson of his shirt draws her attention to the amber glints in his dark eyes.

They didn't kiss that first night. She was too tired, he was too overwhelmed, and sleep was too tempting. But the next morning, when they woke wound around each other, when she lifted her fingers to card through his hair, she hadn't been tired anymore (she'd felt ensconced in a dream that wouldn't shatter). She'd kissed him, and he'd kissed her back, and it was perhaps the single greatest memory of her entire life.

"For a price," he murmurs, and Belle laughs.

"So you keep saying." She reaches out (her hand is shaking) to twine her fingers between his. "I never found my price too burdensome."

"I think you're rewriting history," he says. "I recall quite a few nights when my spinning was interrupted by heavy sobbing."

"Even then, I knew every tear I shed was worth the lives you saved."

"I didn't save them. You did," he looks away, a glint of something darkening his eyes, "with your sacrifice."

Belle stares at their hands, the play of contrasting colors and shadows in their intertwined fingers. "The only sacrifice I've ever regretted is the one I made in the library you gave me here."

Silence. That's all right. It gives Belle the chance to tug Rumplestiltskin a step closer, until his vest brushes against the sweater wrapped around her. (Is there anyone but them in the world? She imagines not. She thinks that it's surely within the realm of possibility for Rumplestiltskin to conjure them up a world with space enough for just him and her.)

"Belle," Rumplestiltskin breathes. "What are you doing?"

"I miss you," she admits.

Rumplestiltskin steps away. At his tug, she lets go of his hand. Even with his sweater, she's left shivering with cold.

"You were right to let me go." A grimace makes him resemble, finally, the imp she knew rather than the beaten man she's made him. "I'm never going to be what you want me to be. All I'll ever bring you is disappointment and danger."

"You don't believe that," she tells him (he never lies, save to himself, and it's time someone finally gifted him with the truth). "If you did, you wouldn't be looking for your son."

"Oh, I know I'll only bring him pain, too," he scoffs. "But he should know that he deserves more, that he's worth so much more than a coward who can't hold on when it matters most."

"Don't you see?" Belle asks.

She didn't plan this. She didn't leave the library with the intent of inviting him back into her life tonight (admitting to them both that he's never left her heart).

She doesn't regret it, though. Impulsive as she feels right now, she knows this is what would have happened eventually.

(Forever, she promised and she's tired of being a deal-breaker.)

"I don't want to be a coward anymore."

Rumplestiltskin stares at her incredulously. "You're not a coward. Belle, darling, you're the bravest person I've ever known."

Her heart swells, strains for freedom, for him. "But I let you go. I let you go when it mattered most. And you should know that you deserve more. That you're worth more than a coward who can't hold on when it matters most."

"Belle…"

He looks so tired. So defeated. So broken.

(Did she do this? Or was she just the last straw piled atop centuries of straw that he couldn't turn to gold for all his trying?)

Belle rests her hands on his shoulders and feels the shudder ripple down his body. "Am I too late?" she asks, so quietly the wind swishing past the glass door almost devours the words. "Did I walk away too many times?"

"You deserve—"

"Do you want me?"

A breath. A hesitation. Belle's stomach swoops in on itself.

"I love you," he whispers. "I'll never not want you. I—"

Belle kisses him. The force of her grip has them both stumbling; her back presses up against the counter. A clunk tells her that he dropped his cane, but she could have guessed that because both of his arms wrap around her, easing the pressure against the counter's edge, drawing her up higher, taller, so that their mouths meld completely.

In his bed, during the nights (before he started sneaking to the basement, driven by the desperation of a father and the blindness of a single-minded genius), Belle had kissed him, over and over again, soft and tender kisses that left her warm and lethargic. Occasionally, in the mornings, if she woke up and he was still in the bed with her, there had been kisses that left her gasping, prickles sliding up and down her limbs.

This kiss is different than all of those. It doesn't start gentle and it gets fiercer as it continues. His mouth is a flame, and Belle's is oil and a spark, and together, they ignite a sun that flares between them. His lips slide between hers and Belle gasps when he delves deep inside her mouth. Her hands tighten on his shoulders, slide up into his hair, and if he tries to pull away, she thinks she might just disintegrate into a thousand broken shards.

He doesn't. Instead, he pulls her closer, all of him pressed up against all of her until the chills are finally eradicated completely and she's enveloped in warmth that sinks down into the very marrow of her bones. Belle tries to suck in a quick breath when his lips half part from hers, but his hand slides under the sweater along her hip, his fingers brush against the edge of skin between her blouse and her skirt, and she's breathless and dizzy and the world whirls around her.

Desperate to touch him, to uncover mysteries she's never seen but has imagined, Belle tugs at his collar (at his masks; at the walls between them), and Rumplestiltskin goes mad. She thought he was wild before, but as her fingers slide down the line of his throat, he surges against her, his lips and teeth and tongue nipping and plucking and painting heated lines along her cheeks, her neck, above her collarbones. She's helpless, defenseless, caught up in a riptide, devoured by a beast.

(She loves it. She craves it. This is everything they've been building up to and everything she's wept night after night for having given up. This is the mystery she's longed for since their cup first chipped and he looked at her as if she were new and strange and exotic.)

Rumplestiltskin seals his lips over hers again, pushing her (his) sweater aside, one hand clutching at her hip, the other drawing radiant strokes up and down her side. Belle feels brave, daring, impulsive, and she rises to her toes to explore his mouth with her tongue. With a shudder that reverberates through them both, Rumplestiltskin presses himself fully against her.

The storm transmutes itself into her skin. Lightning arcs through her extremities, thunder shakes her to her core, heated rain sweeps over every place Rumplestiltskin touches, and the wind gusts through her as she fights for air without tearing her mouth from Rumplestiltskin's. She's reckless chaos and unrestrained desire and a tumultuous need that lifts her aloft and has her wrapping one leg around Rumplestiltskin's, frantic to be swallowed up completely by the hurricane that is her true love.

"Wait—" Rumplestiltskin's hands move to her shoulders, his thumbs so close to her aching heart that Belle arches closer. He gasps. "Belle—wait, wait—there's—"

When he rips his mouth from her searching lips, Belle feels lightheaded. She's certain that if she can't keep touching, kissing, learning Rumplestiltskin, that she'll spiral away into nothing, so she drags her mouth down along his cheek, her fingers pulling the buttons of his shirt free.

"Belle, wait!"

Rumplestiltskin tears himself completely away from her. It's the wince of pain that crosses his face as he sets his weight on his bad ankle that jars Belle from the storm dying out along her skin.

Her beast is frantic and disheveled, his hair skewed, his shirt hanging open almost as much as those he wore in the Dark Castle on quiet days (everything she wants, needs), but it's his dilated pupils, swollen mouth, and uneven breathing that sends guilt shooting through Belle.

"I'm…I'm sorry." Her cheeks are burning (not with a sun, but with shame) and she suddenly finds herself unable to meet his eyes.

She wants nothing more than to run away (flee just as impulsively as she rushed here into this situation).

He's centuries old. He's been a husband before. He's a father. He's smart and cunning and methodical and has a plan she still knows only the very edges of.

And she is a young girl made up more of storybook ideals and unthought-out impulses than anything. She's not a princess, not a miller's daughter (nothing more than a girl who smiled at him and hugged him and reminded him there was more than darkness to the world), and fairytales end happily in a way real life doesn't.

(This isn't happily-ever-after, not for him. She will never be enough to make up for the son he seeks.)

"We…we can't." Rumplestiltskin backs up another step. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him looking for his cane. Belle pushes away from the counter and bends to catch it up. When she tries to hand it to him without touching him, he catches her hand. "Belle…what is this all about? Why did you come tonight?"

"I told you," she tells the hollow of his throat. "I miss you."

"This…is more than that." He inches closer, trying to catch her eyes. Belle drops her gaze to their hands, though the sight of the calluses that had spread heated goosebumps along her sides doesn't do much to calm her. "You walked away for a reason, Belle. You can't…you shouldn't let loneliness make you forget that."

Belle's eyes fly to his before she can stop herself (still so impulsive). "I want this," she says fiercely. "I want you. Sometimes…sometimes you have to lose something to know how much you want it."

His hand drops hers (her heart stops) and moves to cup her cheek (her heart flutters and takes flight). "Oh, Belle…"

Their kiss worked. She's never ignored that, never forgotten it (well, aside from during a curse that left her empty and blank), never let herself believe that he doesn't love her. But maybe the way he loves is different than what she's imagined. Maybe not all true love is romantic love, and maybe she's too young (too vulnerable, too naïve, too reckless) for him to want to share everything with.

"I'm sorry," she offers, and tries not to cry.

"No, no, no, beautiful Belle, don't…don't be sorry." He steps closer, and Belle actually does let out a sob when his heat presses back against her, his arms holding her close. "Please, don't be sorry for that. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have let it get that far."

Her tears escape her thin façade and Belle curls up in his arms. She should have paid more attention to his fairytale. Rumplestiltskin didn't want anything, in that tale, except a child. All the other fairytales she's read are love stories, but not Rumplestiltskin's (he has room enough, love enough, for only his son).

She doesn't belong in his story.

It's the spinning that matters, the straw and the gold and the memory of his son, the pastime he will never grow tired of, never give up, because it is all that remains to remind him of the son he surely taught to spin too. It's the deals and the end goal and the cheating miller's daughter that are important, not a girl pretending to be a hero and barging into a place that isn't hers.

"Please, please, sweetheart, don't cry. I'm sorry. I just…I missed you too. So much. I was so afraid that I'd never get to see you again. I've been afraid that…that I lost you forever. Desperate souls don't make good decisions."

Belle can't help it. She reaches up and wraps her arms around him, turns her face into his chest (his bare skin brushes against her cheek and she shouldn't savor that as much as she does).

"I love you," she whispers.

No matter what he wants out of this. Regardless of how that true love is shaped on his side. However their story eventually ends (even if it's in only a few moments when he finishes letting her down gently). This is her truth: she loves him. Forever.

(In her fairytale, the beauty had to leave the beast before she realized the truth of her own heart. She had to watch him die before she was worthy of all the ways he grew and changed for her. But she'd loved him, truly and completely, while he was the beast. While he was everything she didn't see and so much she took for granted…she loved him.)

"I never should have left you. I should have stayed. I should have stopped you when you said goodbye. I should have moved back in as soon as you opened your door to my knock. I should have—"

Rumplestiltskin kisses her. Even though it's probably his own goodbye (a different form than Baelfire and perhaps more permanent because of it), Belle doesn't miss the opportunity to kiss him back.

"Then don't leave," Rumplestiltskin murmurs. "Stay. Say hello. Come home. Even if it's a mistake, stay with me as long as you want to."

"But…" She blinks up at him, blinks again to see the raw desire written there in angles and shadows and naked hope. "I thought… You said you didn't want this."

He sputters. "What? Belle, this…you… I promised, remember, after I lost my son, that I'd love nothing else, and nothing ever seriously tempted me. Until you. And then I couldn't help myself. You…you made me break another promise to my son and I didn't even care. I don't care."

(Maybe there is love enough. Maybe in real life, happy endings come in stages.)

"But you said that…" She shakes her head. "You stopped us."

"Oh, Belle." Drawing his knuckles down the side of her face, he swallows hard. "We're both exhausted. And lonely. And desperate."

"And desperate souls don't make good decisions."

"I don't want you to regret this." When she opens her mouth to argue, he adds, "I don't want to regret this. I've already done too much that I regret. Let me keep this, at least, right."

"Okay." Belle runs her hands through his hair once more (who knows when he'll let her do it again) and sighs out a deep breath. Her tears have dried up to both their relief. "But, Rumplestiltskin, just know that I wouldn't regret it."

"Well. Even so."

For all that they're both trying to draw back from the brink, Belle finds that they take any chance for small touches. She brushes her hand over his as he straightens her clothes and then his. He presses his palm against her back before he locks the shop behind him. They walk back to the library so closely that their shoulders keep bumping against each other. And when they stand at her doorstep, Belle tips upward to kiss his cheek.

"I wish you could stay," she murmurs in his ear (she bites back a smile when he shudders).

"You have no idea." He smiles at her, tremulous and happy. "But if I did…"

"Soon," she promises them both, and carries the memory of Rumplestiltskin's dawning joy into her dreams.

---

The next day, there's a knock, tap-tap-tap, at the library door. They're unlocked (Leroy had brought her breakfast and only left an hour or so ago), so Belle thinks she knows who's standing on the threshold. When she pulls open the heavy door and finds Rumplestiltskin standing there, dark-edged against the bright sunlight, motionless save the wonder sweeping over his face as he takes her in, Belle can't help the wide giddy smile that spreads over her face.

"Rumplestiltskin!"

"Hey."

She giggles and loops her hand through his arm to tug him inside (he always waits for an invitation to approach, though often, in the Dark Castle, she was never sure what that sign was for him; only lately, after watching the others in town interact with him, has she realized it was simply her lack of revilement, the absence of name-calling or suspicion; he accepts so little as more than what he believes he deserves).

"I'm so glad you came." She is, but she also doesn't want him to feel that she's ignoring the boundaries he set up the night before, so she adds, "You should see how much progress I've made on the place."

Mostly she's just dusted and reorganized the books (and read as many as she can during the long sleepless nights), but Rumplestiltskin follows her between the stacks and looks wherever she points. She's so excited to have him here (back in the place where he said goodbye and she thought she might never see him again) that it takes Belle a while to realize he's extra quiet.

"Is everything okay?" she asks. They're standing in one of the quietest, darkest corners, farthest from the door and the papered-over windows, surrounded on all sides by books, and this might as well be the Dark Castle, might be the world so isolated from everyone else and so cozy with the two of them close and drifting closer.

"I wanted to give you something," he says quietly.

A thrill runs through Belle despite the soberness in his tone that alerts her to the fact this is more than just a casual gift. "All right," she says cautiously.

First, he hands her a flat, black cylinder. "It's a phone," he says, and flips it open to show her tiny buttons inscribed with numbers. "You can use it to get a hold of me whenever you need. Just press number one and it will connect straight to my phone. I'll answer and you can tell me if you need anything."

"I can talk to you whenever I like." Belle smiles up at him as she closes her fingers around the phone. She does not think she has ever received so great a gift before. "What if I just want to talk about a new book?"

"You…" Rumplestiltskin's lips curve up in the faintest, most beautiful smile she's ever seen. "I would like that. But if you're ever in trouble and call me, I'll come right away."

"Okay." Belle slides the phone into the pocket of her sweater (his sweater; she hadn't been able to resist sliding it on this morning, or truthfully, take it off last night).

"And this." When she looks up, there's a familiar necklace hanging from Rumplestiltskin's fingers.

"My mother's necklace!" Belle cups the dangling diamond and meets Rumplestiltskin's gaze. "You found it!"

"It was in my shop." He makes a twirling gesture with his fingers, and she turns her back to him and lifts her hair out of the way. The dancing whisper of his fingertips against the back of her neck is just as welcome as the negligible weight of the necklace. "I'd written into the curse that any important items should end up there in one way or another. I didn't realize it would bring this too."

"Your magic knew how important it is to me." As soon as Rumplestiltskin's hand falls to brush her hair smooth, she whirls and throws her arms around him. "Thank you! This…this makes me so happy."

"I'm glad." Rumplestiltskin buries his face in her hair, just for a second, but it tremors through Belle with all the magnitude of a breaking curse. "I added something to it. I know you don't like magic, but there's a charm on it now. It will protect you from offensive spells. If someone tries to curse you, or to attack you, it will turn cold against your neck. Then you can call me and I'll be there instantly."

Belle pulls back enough to study his face, her hands resting on his shoulders (he's stiff, a tension that runs through his whole body). "What's going on? Are you still worried about a mob coming for you?"

He sneers. "No, I think the danger of that is past. Everyone here is far more interested in their own petty squabbles."

"Then why do you think I need all this protection?"

"I love you," he says, so casually (as if the utterance doesn't drive all the breath from Belle's body). "And if they know that, any of my enemies could come after you. Think of this as a safeguard." He pauses, takes a deep breath, and says, "And I've just been informed that one of my greatest enemies might be arriving soon from our old world. I'll do my best to prevent her from coming through, but just in case, I'd rather if you had some recourse open to you."

"Someone worse than the Queen?" Belle tries to look brave (tries to be the hero he thinks she is), but her hands tighten on him, instinctually trying to keep him close to her.

"Her mother." Rumplestiltskin's eyes flick down to the necklace and he busies his hand with perfecting the placement of it against her throat (most distracting, Belle finds). "We used to work together and I might have slipped more information to her than was wise."

Belle swallows. "Baelfire?" she whispers.

Rumplestiltskin's eyes flicker, a softening, a crumbling, that makes Belle press closer to him. "I needed her daughter to cast the curse. Everything seemed to be getting so close that I…I was foolish. I told you, desperate souls…"

Though she does her best not to, Belle can't help but think about the implication of how being two generations away from his curse made Rumplestiltskin think it was close (he's so old, has seen so much, and she is both enthralled by all the stories he must know and intimidated by how young she must sometimes seem to him).

"She betrayed you," Belle guesses (this is the tale of Rumplestiltskin, after all; betrayal is, she thinks, the prevailing theme of it).

"She tore out her heart rather than keep her end of our bargain." The anger that coats his voice would have terrified her even a few weeks ago. Now, she finds it comforting (any flash of the indomitable imp reassures her that she has not completely shattered him). "It would have been one thing if she'd done it to keep her unborn babe from me, but she did it solely so she could have more power."

"This woman…"

"Cora," he names her, flippantly, stonily (gives the power of her name to Belle as if she won't recognize the knife he's slipping into her hand with the revelation).

"She didn't happen to be a miller's daughter, did she?"

Rumplestiltskin flinches.

Belle's heart falls.

"Belle…"

"It's okay. I know the stories aren't accurate."

He doesn't look reassured (they both know this isn't about the fairytale). "Belle, it was a long time ago. And she lied. She wanted magic, nothing else—except maybe to take my curse on her own self."

"And then you must have thought all I wanted was to take your curse away."

"That's not the same."

"Isn't it?" Belle cups Rumplestiltskin's hands in her palms. "Rumplestiltskin, I don't hate your magic. I hated that you lied to me. That you treated me like any other supplicant coming for a deal. I hate that the darkness sometimes seems to crush you beneath it. I hate that you have to depend on it so much to find the son who ran from it. But I don't hate your magic—how could I? It's what saved my home. My father. My friends. It's what brought us together in the first place. What brought us back here. And it's what will find you Baelfire. The only reason I wanted to break your curse is because I thought you wanted it too."

"Belle, please, don't…don't apologize for caring. For wanting to save me. You…you're the only one since Bae that ever has. I just…"

"You need it," she says so he doesn't have to (so she doesn't forget).

"I need it," he agrees, and then he wraps his arms around her waist and whispers, "But I want you."

Maybe it shouldn't matter so much, but that whisper reverberates through her soul, combines with the twin weights of her necklace and her phone, the embrace of the sweater, the beat of his heart against her own, and Belle has never felt so loved.

(She doesn't belong in his story, but he has rewritten his story, has brought them to a new world and woven her into the fabric of his life, has whispered his secrets to her and kissed her so truly that his curse was driven back in retreat.)

"Thank you," she breathes, and before he can tell her not to thank him again, she kisses him.

(True Love's Kiss can break any curse, even those only in his mind.)

---

For a few days, Belle doesn't see him. Whispers around town (muttered comments from Ruby with searching looks clumsily hidden; blunt questions from Leroy with a shake of his head and a "Hope you know what you're doing, sister") inform her that Rumplestiltskin is helping the little boy with his nightmares and the sheriff (the prince) find his family again. She knows (because Jefferson comes in the dead of the night, his daughter's hand held tightly in his own, and whispers it to her) that this means he is working with Regina.

Belle doesn't mind.

Or, she tells herself she doesn't mind. She's seen the hatred that boils in his eyes when the Evil Queen is mentioned. She endured the storm called up by the wraith he inflicted for one crime Regina committed against him, and she knows firsthand that it is hardly the first crime. Besides, it's her own promise, the deal she made with him in her first knowing minutes in this new world, that keeps Regina alive, so she cannot be unhappy now when he chooses to set aside enmity long enough to partner with her.

Whatever is happening, she's sure it involves Cora.

The miller's daughter.

Belle tells herself she won't, but she spends every night curled up in bed obsessively rereading the thin book with Rumplestiltskin's name on the cover. Though she nearly has the thing memorized, she seems to notice a different detail every time. For instance, contrary to all the tales she read about the Dark One being summoned, it's Rumplestiltskin who sought out the miller's daughter. He comes of his own volition and offers her deal after deal, each of them seemingly weighted more in her favor than his own.

(It was a long time ago, Rumplestiltskin said, a note of dark emotion in his voice that makes some part of Belle writhe with jealousy.)

Every night, Belle thrusts the book back under her pillow and tells herself she won't read it again. Every morning, she greets the dawn by clutching the necklace he returned to her and holding the phone in her hand.

Finally, as she watches a red and purple sunrise, she reminds herself that she is brave (Rumplestiltskin needs her to be brave and bold as much as she needs him to be clever and sly). She flips open the phone she holds so close and pushes the number he showed her.

"Hey, Belle," he says. Her heart leaps for her throat when she hears the note of happiness in his voice.

It seems a good sign (perhaps an early stage of that unfolding happy ending) that he is not immediately scared for her life when he answers her call.

"I miss you," she says, and winces (she's always so needy; one day he will tire of it).

There's a pause before he says, "I'm sorry, Belle. I…I miss you too. I have something planned for today, but maybe tomorrow…"

"I could meet you for lunch?" she offers, trying not to sound too eager.

"How about dinner?" he asks. "I could cook for you."

She can actually hear his flinch as soon as the question is between them, but Belle really doesn't mind the invitation back to his house. She was wrong to sneak out of it, and after hearing how everyone talks to him, she doesn't blame him for not wanting to parade his personal life in front of the town.

"That sounds lovely," she says, and this time, she does nothing to disguise the warmth in her voice.

If she could see Rumplestiltskin, she's sure he'd offer her that wavery smile, so slow, so beautiful. She's sure she could cajole him into another kiss. She thinks she could even distract him from whatever he's working on right now.

But he has boundaries, and she has her own dignity, so she smiles into the phone and says, "Goodbye, Rumplestiltskin."

"Goodbye, Belle."

(The words sting as much as they did in a dark and dusty library, but this time, they are not the end.)

---

She's humming to herself when the library doors burst open and Ruby marches in. Her wrists burn, and then her cheeks do as Belle realizes that she instinctively hid her hands behind her back (so much for being a brave hero).

"Ruby, what's…what's going on?"

"Your boyfriend!" Ruby snaps. "We had a chance to get Emma and Mary Margaret back, but he showed up ready to stop us. When I tried to stop him, he threw me thirty feet back through the woods. I just woke up!"

Belatedly, Belle notices the leaves in her friend's hair, the smudges on her coat, a spot of red adorning her temple. Except for the blood, it suits Ruby. She seems more made for the wildness of the woods than the domesticity of the diner.

"Aren't you going to say anything?" Ruby demands. "He could have killed Emma and Mary Margaret. It was Regina who actually saved them—the Evil Queen herself! I can't believe she's the good guy now while Rumplestiltskin—"

"Rumplestiltskin only wants to stop Cora from coming to Storybrooke," Belle says faintly. "He said she was dangerous. And he didn't kill you."

"Belle—"

"You locked me up." Belle looks away and tries not to hide her hands again. "You thought you were doing the right thing, but that…that hurt a lot. And Cora's hurt Rumplestiltskin as much as the wolf has hurt you. Maybe throwing you out of danger was the equivalent of chaining you to some bookshelves with heavy manacles."

Ruby looks taken aback. "I…I said I was sorry."

"And maybe he'll tell you he's sorry." Belle looks down at the book she was dusting. Red Riding Hood. How appropriate. "I know you think he's a monster, but…he's more than that. And aren't we all monsters in some ways?"

"I don't want to be a monster," Ruby says in a small voice.

"I don't think you are one. Not most of the time." Belle offers her a smile (afraid she will be rebuffed). "Are your friends okay?"

Ruby blinks, and blinks again, then looks away. "Yeah. Yeah, they're okay. They're down at the diner with David."

"Have you ever read the fairytales?" Belle asks. She leaves the comfort of her books and joins Ruby in the middle of the room. Lights from the streetlamps slant in past the papered-up windows in the doors.

With a wet laugh, Ruby nods. "I'm just the victim in mine, and not terribly bright."

"But not the monster."

Ruby stares at her with wide eyes. "No. Not the monster."

"But Rumplestiltskin…he was only a monster because the miller's daughter broke the deal."

"He asked for a baby, Belle."

"So do adoption agencies. The miller's daughter lied and cheated and stole his name to get her way, but people still read that story and think he's the monster. They think he deserved being ripped in two and buried inside a crack in the ground."

"I guess he did save her life from the king, didn't he."

Belle smiles at Ruby in return for that olive branch. "My point is, sometimes you have to give things a second look before you recognize who the real villains are."

"And you don't think that's Rumplestiltskin?"

"No, Ruby, I don't. And I don't think you do either or you wouldn't treasure your red cloak so much."

There's a pause that stretches until Belle thinks maybe this is it (the moment she loses her first friend, and who will be next? Leroy? Jefferson? David or Henry?). With a sob, Ruby bends and throws her arms around Belle.

"I'm glad you're okay," Belle says into her hair (because she can't put into words how relieved she is to have been forgiven for her part in not condemning her True Love).

"I'm glad you're my friend," Ruby says. She backs away, teary-eyed and sniffling. "I'm sorry I came down here. I just…I was so mad. But…"

"It's okay. I understand." Belle rolls her eyes. "I've made quite a few impulsive decisions myself."

Ruby doesn't stay for too much longer, eager to get down to the celebration at the diner. She invites Belle, but Belle declines.

She has some thinking of her own to do before dinner the next evening.

---

At exactly 5:55, Belle puts on Rumplestiltskin's sweater and makes sure the phone is in the pocket and her necklace is secure around her neck. At 5:58, she exits the library and locks the doors behind her. And just as the clock above her begins ringing out the new hour, Rumplestiltskin pulls up in his car. She knows if she doesn't hurry, he'll get out himself and open the door for her (she remembers a carriage ride on a carriage with no horses, a temperamental Dark One and a chase he dragged her on as if not noticing her willingness to follow; she remembers cruel words and biting sneers and the hand he then turned around and offered so casually to help her descend in her ballgown). With a skip in her step, Belle pulls open the car door (Jefferson showed her how, on his nocturnal visit, so she could hug Grace goodbye) and slides into the seat beside Rumplestiltskin.

He smiles at her (Belle's heart rolls up into a purring ball). "Hey."

"Hey." She smiles at him, and then they do a strange sort of half-shuffle where he leans forward, she ducks her head, they both pause, and then she darts close to drop a kiss on his cheek. His eyes flutter before he turns his attention to the road. Belle carefully secures the safety strap he helped her with when he first drove her from the well in the woods to his shop.

"I heard about your adventure yesterday," she says (she hopes she doesn't sound prying or judgmental).

Rumplestiltskin stays quiet.

"Did Cora end up coming through?"

"No. It appears I overestimated her abilities." She feels it when he darts a sidelong glance her way. "It doesn't mean she won't find another way. Our world is nearly empty. She'll have nothing to occupy her time other than finding a way to cross realms."

"Like you." Belle carefully memorizes the route he takes from her library to his home. Each turn is familiar, but she engraves it perfectly into her memory.

"Belle…"

"Ruby was upset you tossed her aside."

"If she'd interfered at that moment, quite a few more people than the Savior and her mother would have died. The backlash of expended magic would have left quite a mark."

Belle bites her lip. "Will you apologize to her?"

"No."

"Rumple—"

"You think I don't know she locked you up like a prisoner?" he snarls. "The wolf deserves far more than a little tumble and a long nap."

Belle waits until he parks the car beside his house before saying, "I don't need you to be my bodyguard, Rumple."

"Yes, you do." He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. "I've lived a long time, Belle, and for all that I've ensured most of them owe me favors, I've accumulated a fair number of enemies. All of them will see you as a weakness."

"Is that what I am to you?" Clasping her hands carefully in her lap, Belle feels the edge of the phone he gifted her nudge against her arm.

Rumplestiltskin hesitates. "In one way. I told you, Belle, you'd be better off walking away for good."

The car insulates them from most noises, but Rumplestiltskin's yard contains a pretty tree, and among its branches, a bird sings sweetly. Belle focuses on the trilling notes as she fights for composure.

"I'll drive you back to the library," Rumplestiltskin says resignedly.

She's been working on not being so impulsive, but her hand covers his on the key before she can think it through (not that it matters; she chooses him every time). "You promised me dinner," she says.

Neither of them smile, but she feels the wall between them disappearing as easily as purple smoke.

---

Dinner is wonderful. Belle teases that if he could cook this amazingly all along, he should have been the one supplying the meals back at his castle.

"It wouldn't have been as fun as watching you try," he says. His lips twitch up in a familiar smile (mischievous and cunning and mocking; her imp). "Besides, after you burned everything in sight, I believe I did conjure us up quite a few meals."

Belle laughs. "Your own fault for choosing a lady as a maid."

His impish smile falls away. She doesn't mind. The wonderstruck man left behind is just as much her true love as the Dark One.

"I'm glad I chose you." His attention seemingly turns completely to the dishes he's clearing, but Belle reads the sincerity in his sudden aversion to eye contact (when he's tricking, dealing, playing a part, he never looks away, avidly intent; it's when he's most open, most vulnerable, that he hides himself away). "I never asked for anyone to come into my home before you, Belle. I never did again."

"Why did you pick me?"

She's asked the question before. Why did you want me here? He's never answered, but Belle suddenly feels the answer is important (maybe even enough to make her forget the fairytales always crowding her thoughts).

Rumplestiltskin stares down at the sink full of plates and silverware, cups and pans. "Belle…"

"Please," she whispers. She sidles closer, until their elbows are touching, until he has no choice but to meet her eyes, as understanding and patient as she can make them. "Please, Rumple, just tell me. Why me?"

"You were kind." His hand rises from his cane to hover a hair's breadth from her cheek. "You were smart. I know you were the one who wrote me that message. And you looked only intrigued when I appeared rather than frightened. And you smiled, just a bit, when I said I made gold. And you let me touch you without recoiling. And…and you weren't important."

Belle blinks. "What?"

"For centuries, all I'd done was set up pieces and move them where I needed them to be. For decades, I'd waited for important players to be born. Finally, everything was in place and all I needed to do was wait for the years to pass." Rumplestiltskin takes a deep breath. "But you…you weren't in any future glimpses I could see. Upending your life wouldn't threaten any of my plans."

An ember kindles to slow, glowing life somewhere deep in her chest (he didn't want a princess, a miller's daughter; he wanted her). "And then…"

"And then." His smile this time is almost helpless. "And then you nearly toppled all of them just by being you."

"I love you," she blurts (she doesn't regret it). "I love you, Rumplestiltskin."

"I love you too." He sounds just as wondering at his own admission as he does hers (she thinks of the imp in the story, so alone for so long, no one to talk to so that he must chant to himself alone in the woods; he only wanted someone to love).

Belle moves forward so that his hovering hand alights on her cheek, and she tips upward so that she can drop a kiss, quick and light and easy (all the things they've never been allowed to be before), on his lips. Before he can reciprocate, though, she steps back.

"Can we go somewhere?" she asks. "There's something I want to see."

---

When she leads him out the back door, he follows unprotestingly. When she turns toward the basement, he balks. When she tugs his hand to get him to follow her into his makeshift laboratory, he goes as if he's a man headed for execution.

Belle walks to the wheel where she saw him, so many weeks and weeks ago, spinning with a purpose. Then she turns to face him where he lingers near the door, his eyes glancing over a chair set in the corner. Belle only needs a glance herself to see the restraints laying there, and she rolls her eyes (some things, it seems, will never change).

"Has anyone died down here?" she asks (because she's been so lonely that it would be easy to overlook things, but there are some lines she won't cross even for him).

"No," he replies (and she believes him, because even after being shot in the heart by a thief, he didn't actually kill Robin; death is a wasted resource for Rumplestiltskin).

"Then…" She tries to smile for him. "I don't want to resent this place anymore."

"Belle, I didn't mean to lie to you before." He pauses, almost helplessly, before saying, "I know you don't like my magic. But Bae—"

"I love you," she says again (of all the things he needs to hear most, she's glad it's this phrase that she so loves saying). "Magic is part of that. I just don't want to feel like you're keeping me locked into one small part of your life while magic occupies the rest of it."

Rumplestiltskin cocks his head. He studies her blatantly. She can nearly feel his mind ticking away, wheels turning, cogs clicking (her heart speeds up, warm and brilliant and purring yet again). "Belle…magic isn't my mistress."

"Am I?" she asks softly.

And this is the crux of it all.

(Is she the wheel upon which he spins straw into gold? Or is she the miller's daughter, needy and tricksome and a means to an end?)

(Is she the beauty he needs to ensure feels a certain way, to accomplish certain ends? Or is she the cursed servants whose lives depend on him and weight him down with responsibility?)

"Belle…" Slowly, he advances on her. One step at a time, each move so graceful, so fluid, especially with the cane that lends him an extra air of humanity he never had before. He stops only where there's an inch of distance between them. "You're something new," he whispers. "Something a bit alarming, even. Something I never saw coming. Something I've never had before."

"Your wife," she reminds him (the miller's daughter, she thinks).

"New," he reiterates. His hand wrapping around hers makes her want to believe him. "Unique. Special. Unlike me. I'm not a good person, sweetheart. I'm a villain. A monster."

"A beast?"

Something (terror) flickers in his eyes. "You found the story."

"It's not our story," she tells him. "You said it yourself. They're twisted, perverted by this world in an attempt to destroy them."

"It's easier. In the story. Isn't it." His eyes drop down to their clasped hands. "The beast doesn't fight the beauty for breaking his curse."

"Fighting for something only makes you appreciate it more," she counters. "Which means that when you find your son—the firstborn you want above anything else—all the things you've done to win your way back to him…it will all matter that much more."

Because Rumplestiltskin isn't in just one fairytale. He's in two. In both. One happy ending with her. One happy ending with his son.

They can have both.

"Why…" He can't finish the question.

(Belle knows what it is. She's thought it herself a hundred times. Why me? Why do you love me? What miraculous combination of events all came together to ensure we are both happy here, together, choosing each other?)

Slowly (so he can pull back if it's too soon), softly (so she can savor every instant of this), Belle slides her hands up his lapels, along his shoulders, around the back of his head. His hair is so fine it slips right through her hold, which only makes her twine her fingers through more of it.

Rumplestiltskin shudders and presses forward until she feels the spokes of the spinning wheel against her back. His hand is calloused and so gentle as he cups her cheek and tilts her mouth up into his. She doesn't know where his cane is, but she gasps when his other hand slides along her waist into the small of her back, pulling her into him (as if she wants to be anywhere else).

"Are you sure?" he pants between kisses. She nods, almost frantically, but the ridiculous man actually pulls back enough so their eyes can meet. "Belle, please, be sure. I'm…I'm not good at letting go of what I love. Never again."

Belle bites her lip and shivers at the way his eyes darken as they drop to watch the nervous gesture. "I'm not good at staying," she admits. "I'm impulsive and I walk away. But…" She cradles his head in her hands and makes sure he's looking straight at her as she adds, "I'm very good at coming back."

His lips draw a line from the corner of her eye down her cheekbone to the very edge of her mouth. "I can be patient."

"Not right now," she warns him, and he laughs. He laughs while he kisses her, and Belle traces the shape, the flavor, the pleasure of his warm amusement with her tongue.

(This is who he is, the whole him: Rumplestiltskin and Dark One and Mr. Gold, all three tangled up together, diffident insecurity and smug slyness and quiet calculation, all three combining elements of ruthlessness and singlemindedness with almost slavish regard and idealistic awe. A dangerous combination, but hers. Hers and she loves him, she loves him, she loves him.)

"Belle," he whispers into her mouth. "Beautiful Belle," he paints along her neck and above her collarbone. "My darling Belle," he says as he pulls away, and Belle throws herself forward to try to keep him here, with her, in this moment.

(Names matter to him. Names are everything, and he speaks hers as if he is spinning it through his heart until it is solid gold, woven through every piece of him, painted over every part of his life.)

"Don't let go!" she begs.

"I won't," he promises. "But we should…we should go upstairs."

A rush of warmth flushes her cheeks, but her embarrassment is forgotten when his fingers sample the feel of that blush. Heat envelops her, and she giggles at herself, and at him when he stumbles trying to coordinate his cane and his steps without untangling from her (it's the least graceful she's ever seen him, and that it happens now, in this moment, is so endearing she feels nearly mad with want).

"Come back with me. Come home," he asks when she draws him inside and toward the stairs.

"Every time," she vows. "Forever."

"The deal is struck." He's said that before, but never while she's tangled in his arms. Never smiling so warmly, so happily, at her. Never with so much hope beaming from every inch of him (this is more the real him than anything she saw in those few seconds after their first kiss).

Belle leads Rumplestiltskin from the basement to the house and upstairs to his bedroom. From there, she lets him take the lead.

(And she was right: she does not regret it at all.)

---

The next night, she invites him to the apartment he gave her. She wants him to see the ways she's lived there: the teacups in the sink, the books spilling over every available surface, the blankets that were never as warm as him on the bed. She wants him to know that she appreciates this tiny little haven he gifted her. But most importantly, she wants his help packing up all the clothes he left in her closet, the books she likes enough to want to reread, the boxes of teas that Jefferson gifted her.

Rumplestiltskin makes several snide comments about being able to pay people to do this for her, but his hands are gentle on the books he boxes up, and if he takes multiple breaks to kiss her, Belle's not exactly complaining. She giggles and laughs and teases and stores up every shy smile, sly smirk, surprised laugh, and soft whimper he makes.

Her apartment has been a shelter, but a silent one. Tonight, Belle delights in the new noises that fill it up and make it feel like home. The tap of Rumplestiltskin's cane, the clink of their cups, the shared laughter, and then, when she tugs him impatiently into the small bedroom, when he buries his hands in her hair (and doesn't look unsure or diffident or hesitant; only needy and confident and happy) and kisses her until they both fall atop her squeaky bed, the noises get even more beautiful, more welcome, until they dwarf all the sleepless nights she huddled alone.

"Belle," he whispers, again and again, and Belle is incandescent with joy (she feels her happy ending playing out all around her and through her).

It's easy to fall asleep, after that, with Rumplestiltskin's arms wrapped around her and his breath warming her neck, his heart laid so trustingly beside her own. Even without his sweater, she is warm and safe and loved. Nightmares can't dare come close, and Belle wonders if every night with Rumplestiltskin will become her new favorite one.

When she wakes, Rumplestiltskin is already awake (she wonders if even in this new world, he doesn't really need to sleep). Her heart purrs contentedly when she realizes that he's stayed beside her, sitting near enough for her to feel his warmth, so that she wouldn't wake alone. It stutters back to silence, however, when she sees the thin green book held in his hands.

A shiver of warning works its way out from her bones. They're so happy. She doesn't want this book she forgot to remove from under her pillow to ruin that for either of them.

"Is any of it true?" she asks quietly.

Rumplestiltskin smiles down at her, and Belle thinks that maybe this won't be so bad after all. "Good morning."

Her lips curve wide and happy. "Good morning. Did you sleep?"

"Enough." One of his hands leaves the book to tuck one of her curls behind her ear, a caress she'd happily wake up to every morning for the rest of her life. "You looked happy, while you slept."

"I am happy," she murmurs, and she sits up, one hand on the sheet against her chest, to kiss Rumplestiltskin. She just woke up, so she keeps it short and close-mouthed, but they're both smiling when she settles herself against his side. She looks down at the book still in his hand. "So…?"

"So." Rumplestiltskin wraps his arm around her (her heart's purring again). "There's a miller's daughter. And I did go to her when a king locked her up demanding gold from straw. But there was none of this nonsense with rings and necklaces. Cora didn't want me to spin the gold for her. She wanted me to teach her how to do it so she could ensure she never had to kneel again."

"And you taught her?"

"I did." If she weren't pressed so close to him, she wouldn't have felt the tremor that ripples through his body. "It was a mistake. I thought…"

"You loved her." Belle says it so he doesn't have to (so she doesn't have to hear him say it).

"I thought I did. I was wrong. She told me she did. She was lying." Rumplestiltskin ducks his head, avoiding her eyes (Belle lets him, not sure she wants him to see whatever is in hers). "The only thing Cora cared about was power. Now, she can't care about anything, not with her heart kept tucked away in a chest."

"Doesn't that make her more vulnerable?" Belle asks.

Truthfully, she only asks because she doesn't want to be silent too long. Because she wants Rumplestiltskin to feel like he can tell her anything. (Because she's trying to distract herself from the urge to snatch that book from his hands and throw it into a fire.)

But Rumplestiltskin stares at her as if she's just discovered magic or found his son. As if she's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen in any of the realms he's visited. As if he never wants to look at anything else.

"Ah, Belle," he whispers. If he were another man, he might wax poetic about how much her outlook means to him. If he were another man, he might write odes about her pure heart and wise kindness. But he's Rumplestiltskin and all those things are written there in the brightness of his eyes, the shape of his expression, the tremble in his hands as he brushes his knuckles along her cheek.

Belle doesn't need his words (she's read millions and said thousands and learned whole languages and knows how to translate what she sees). And she assumes he doesn't need hers either, because they don't spend a whole lot of time talking for the rest of the morning. They find other (much pleasanter) ways to communicate.

That thin green book disappears sometime during her move back to Rumplestiltskin's and Belle doesn't miss it.

---

"You're Belle, I presume." It's not a question, and Belle tries not to look frightened of this tall woman dressed in a floor-length blue gown that looks like it came straight out of their old world.

As it probably did.

Mr. Gold's shop is just half a block away, but it suddenly feels like a million miles (Belle can't help but compare this older woman's sudden appearance to the sudden appearance of the Evil Queen on top of a hill where Belle had just barely finished promising Rumplestiltskin of her return). The necklace is cold against her neck, a tiny chain of ice.

"Cora," Belle says as calmly as she can manage. She's no actress. She's sure the miller's daughter can tell she's frightened, but the chill of her mother's necklace and the tiny weight of the phone in her pocket are proofs that this will not end the same way it did back on that hill in their old world.

"So he's told you about me?" Cora arches an elegant brow, all cool condescension and affected concern. "He's always been a bit too talkative when a pretty face doesn't shrink away."

Belle doesn't rise to the bait (he loves her; he's told her a dozen times, showed it a thousand ways, demonstrated it with every touch, every sigh, every utterance of her name against her skin).

"I thought we could talk," Cora shrugs slightly, "woman to woman. I imagine we have quite a few things in common."

Belle might not be a princess, but she's made her fair sure of visits to court and she can hear insinuations as heavy as Cora's dropping without even trying. The pit of her stomach feels empty save for something that squirms, but she tries not to let the mind-game get to her. Rumplestiltskin said that the necklace would go cold when someone tried to touch her with magic; he never mentioned that it would alert him, and though she wouldn't put it past him to have let it go unsaid, she thinks she'd better call him as soon as possible.

And if Cora knows as little of this world as Belle originally did, she won't recognize a phone should she catch sight of it.

"Let's step into your library." Cora hooks her arm through Belle's (just like her daughter did on a road back when Belle was more naïve, more trusting; when she had less to lose). "When I left him, he gave me a rundown castle. I can't quite decide if a moldering library is a step up or down."

"He gave you power," Belle says as conversationally as she can manage, "and he gave me freedom. I know which I value more."

"Oh, darling," Cora laughs, "Rumple doesn't give anything. He makes deals. I dealt for power, though of course, he ensured I could never quite match him—or so he thinks. But if you think he gave you freedom, you might want to spare a thought as to what he took in repayment."

Her hands shake, just a bit, as she unlocks the library doors and leads Cora inside. If the miller's daughter brought any back-up (like a daughter with her heart, brimming over with anger and resentment and loneliness and grief, still in her chest and a grudge against Belle as if she isn't responsible for saving Regina from a slow, vindictive death), Belle didn't catch sight of them. Her library rings with its usual muffled quiet as she leads Cora into the place where Leroy's eaten breakfast with her most mornings. Where Jefferson came in the dark and the quiet, his daughter never more than a step away from him. Where Ruby chose not to blame her and Belle chose not to be angry. Where David has offered her help and friendship, even if it is distracted, and Henry's quizzed her about their old world.

Where Rumplestiltskin said goodbye for what they both thought might be forever. Where he entrusted her with his son's name (Baelfire, a name that will never pass Belle's own lips with anyone other than Rumplestiltskin or his boy). Where he gave her a necklace and a phone and forgiveness, and she kissed him as if they both thought there would be a lifetime more of kisses to come.

She doesn't want Cora here. (She wishes she'd never read that little green book with the hopeless ending and the wrong villain had triumphed.)

"I must admit, darling," Cora says as she circles Belle slowly, "I don't exactly see how this is anything but a step down. Perhaps it's your very uselessness that attracts him? He doesn't want to risk another woman who can challenge him? Simply and unadorned is less dangerous, after all. I think we both know just how few risks our dear imp prefers to take."

Belle backs up behind the counter and sits in the seat. She doesn't love having to look up to Cora so obviously, but the edge of the counter provides her cover to reach her hand into her sweater pocket.

"You used him," Belle says. "For his magic. For his connections. For his knowledge. Does it really surprise you to know that he can move on?"

"Of course not." Cora's eyes are sharp, deceptive, as shifting as quicksand. "Rumple's at least two hundred years old, maybe more. We're only a few in a long line. The man craves adoration and acceptance and company."

New, Rumplestiltskin called her. Something I've never had before.

"You kissed him," Belle observes. Her voice covers the click of the phone as she flips it open.

Cora smiles a sphinx smile. Belle thinks she might hate her. Her auburn hair, graceful movements, deceptively bright eyes, elegant comportment, sly words—it seems a strange mixture of the worst parts of the Dark One and the most superficial parts of Belle herself. Envy is an unfamiliar feeling, and for that alone, she might be persuaded not to deal for Cora's life. Jealousy is a faster flare, burning itself out and turning cold with every new word this miller's daughter speaks.

(She was distracted by the glare of the gold thread and missed the wonder in the straw that it was before. She sees only the curse of the Dark One and misses the mystery that is a father trying to become a monster for the noblest of reasons. She is who would break Rumplestiltskin, shatter him, brand him with the word coward that he uses as self-castigation, and it is her ghost, Belle realizes, that is her true enemy that she wrestles with every time she tells Rumplestiltskin she loves him.)

"I've kissed him too," Belle says. The 1 is the easiest number to find by feel on the phone and it takes so little to press it while her necklace turns so cold it burns. "True Love really is the most powerful magic of all, isn't it? Seeing the Dark Curse retreat from just the touch of my lips…that's all the power I could ever want." She tilts her head (did she hear Rumplestiltskin's voice, so tiny, say Hey, Belle?). "Tell me, Cora, you know magic—wasn't it True Love that broke the most powerful curse ever cast? It's too bad you'll never know what it's like, to feel that power inside you, connecting you to someone else. I guess keeping your heart as a curio must have an appeal only the lonely can recognize."

That calm is only an inch thick. Cora's mysterious smile vanishes beneath the cold nothingness (the truth) that lurks just behind the mask.

"Listen to a bit of wisdom, little girl—True Love doesn't last forever. It can be destroyed in less than an instant. And if you think that coward who fancies himself a Dark One won't disappoint you and betray you and leave you behind for bigger and better things, you're even more foolish than you think."

"True Love is worth fighting for," Belle tells her (tells the man listening on the other end of the phone). "And I'll never stop fighting for it."

"Oh?" Cora regains her calm so quickly that even if Rumplestiltskin hadn't told Belle that she had no heart, Belle might have guessed right then. "And if I take your heart for you?"

Belle swallows, regretting her seat now. Cora presses forward, so close that Belle leans back as far as she can. Her heart shrieks within her, and her breastbone seems far too thin, too fragile, a shield.

"If I hide it in a little box I could keep with me?" Cora tilts her head as if Belle's fear is an experiment she wants to test from every angle. "If I whisper words into it? Words that will crush our dear Rumple until even he'd rather take out his heart than face the disillusionment of seeing his precious pure angel as nothing more than a little girl playing make believe on a cracked pedestal? Don't worry. I'll keep you alive—for as long as it's useful. Until he stops loving you and starts hating you."

Her hand plunges into Belle's chest. It's like spiders crawling over every inch of her skin. Like maggots revealed from their place wriggling and breeding and gnawing out of sight. Belle feels as exposed as if she were stripped and paraded in front of the world with all her innermost secrets, embarrassments, foolish whims all written across her bare flesh.

Cora's triumphant expression freezes. Cracks. Turns into confusion. The searing pain in Belle's chest persists, but her heart doesn't move.

"Remove your hand."

Belle's not ashamed of the sob that escapes her at the sound of his voice from behind Cora.

"Mother," Regina says coldly (and, okay, did Rumplestiltskin have to bring her to witness Belle's plight?).

When Cora's hand leaves her chest, Belle sags and would have fallen if she weren't already seated. Breathing deeply, her hand splayed over her chest as if that would be more protection than whatever protective spell Rumplestiltskin laced into her mother's necklace, Belle tries not to break down into sobs. She blinks her tears back until she can look up and see Rumplestiltskin and Regina, side by side, facing down Cora. In her hands, Regina holds a little wooden box that glows red from between its hinges.

"Regina, my love," Cora says. "It's so good to see you. I wanted to see you, but I didn't think you'd want to see me."

"Better if you'd thought of that before you came to this world," the Evil Queen snarks. Her hands are trembling, but she doesn't loosen her hold on that box.

"I know I made mistakes, but—"

"Step away from Belle," Rumplestiltskin interrupts.

"Rumple," Cora says. Belle's really tired of hearing this heartless woman say the pet name.

(But then, names are power, aren't they? Rumplestiltskin gave Belle Cora's and Belle slid that weapon home the instant she said it with the phone open and connected to Rumplestiltskin. Names are power, and none more so than the Deal-Maker's himself.

For all that Cora called Rumplestiltskin a coward, it seems she's too afraid herself to name the Dark One in full.)

"If I were you, dearie," Rumplestiltskin says (his own pet name, employed whenever he can't be bothered even to use a name against someone so far beneath them they might as well be a gnat), "I'd be silent. I've told your dear daughter that the only way you'll ever be able to love her is if you return your heart to its rightful place."

Belle can't see Cora's face, but she can read fear in the hesitation before Cora says, "There's no need for that. Regina, you know—you remember—the drawbacks to having a heart? You might have stopped a certain tattle-tale from spreading rumors before I had to step in if you'd been thinking as clearly as you could have unobstructed by pesky emotions. You might have been able—"

"Shut up," Regina snarls. "Just…stop talking." She lets the box drop to the ground as soon as she has the quivering, glowing heart in her gloved hand.

Belle stands, slowly, and inches around the counter. Rumplestiltskin meets her halfway, his arm so warm, so bracing, that Belle has to grit her teeth and clench her hands into fists to keep from breaking down right then. Instead of watching Regina advance on her mother, she turns her face into Rumplestiltskin's shoulder. Rather than listen to the wet thump and the Evil Queen's too-young, too-hopeful Mother? behind her, she presses her ear to Rumplestiltskin's chest and listens to his heart beat (strong and whole and braver, willing to commit itself wholly to whoever he loves, and right where it belongs no matter how painful life gets).

And when Cora says her daughter's name, when Regina sobs, when there's the thump of a body falling to the floor, when Rumplestiltskin straightens (tall and defiant and smugly triumphant as he always is when his plans play out perfectly), Belle just holds on tighter.

She thinks she should care that he probably cursed the heart before he gave it to Regina (revenge in the only way Belle left open for him to take). She thinks she should feel sorry for Regina as she sobs over her mother's body (sobs the way Belle did endless nights in that tower cell). She thinks she should try to stop Rumplestiltskin from telling Regina that she's better off without Cora (pity for the Queen he cares about just as much as he hates her; the daughter that might have been his, Belle thinks, though she doesn't like to consider it often).

She doesn't do any of it.

"You came," she whispers as soon as Regina's vanished in a puff of smoke, taking the body of the miller's daughter with her (no crack in the ground, but she did tear herself in two, ripped herself into pieces until she could never be put back together again, and finally this is the kind of ending that fits with the other fairytales). "You came for me."

The smell and feel of smoke envelops her (Belle tightens her arms around Rumplestiltskin's neck) and then they're safe in his house. She smells magic and wool and straw, gold and tea and ink (home). And though she thought she'd collapse into tears as soon as she was safe, Belle doesn't. She drinks the cup of tea Rumplestiltskin conjures for her. She lets him wrap their sweater closer around her. And then, when he leads her into his (into their) bedroom, she curls up in his arms and soothes herself with his heartbeat.

(He chooses her. He loves her. He's here with her. He's hers.)

---

"The fairytale spelled your name wrong."

It's dark, the only lights coming from a streetlamp down the street; its golden ribbon just barely unfurls across the bedroom floor. Rumplestiltskin has wrapped them in a soft comforter, and for all that Belle's sure it's been hours, he hasn't even tried to move away from her.

"Hmm?"

"The book with your story." She watches her hand, splayed over his chest, as she plays with the tie he still wears. She can't tell the color, but she can see the gleam of light reflecting off his dark eyes, can feel his relaxation despite how close her hand is to the heart Cora tried to rip from him. "It spelled your name wrong. I noticed right away, but I thought maybe it was just more of the twists engineered by this world's aversion to magic."

"Why would you think that?"

"Well," Belle closes her eyes and breathes him in, "your name is magic. This world had to change it if it was trying to repel magic."

"I always hated my name," he admits in a whisper. "It was a punishment inflicted by my father before he learned crueler weapons. Even the few I loved couldn't bother to say it most of the time. And then Bae…he called me Papa and I loved that best of all."

"It has a ring to it," Belle agrees (she very pointedly doesn't let herself think on her own papa, the father who didn't only let go, but pushed away and still hasn't come to try to make amends though they're in the same realm and he knows exactly where to find her).

"Turns out, my name was something of a gift, though. Names have power all their own, and the more who know yours, the more vulnerable you become. The fact that so few can spell my name right makes it hard for them to curse it in written spells."

"Handy." Belle hardly knows what she's saying. She just wants him to keep talking. The feel of his voice reverberating through his chest, vibrating against her cheek, is entrancing.

"You say my name. You've always said it—except in the letter you sent me on behalf of your friends and family. Another reason I chose you."

"So many reasons?" she asks with the hint of a smile.

"I didn't think them all through," he admits with a shadow of his usual bite. "But they were there, all muddled up in a place I didn't examine too closely."

"The future didn't show this? Us?"

"I wouldn't have believed it if it had."

"Do you believe it now?"

He's silent so long Belle scoots a little closer, so close she has to settle half her weight over him.

"I have disappointed you. And betrayed you. And left you behind." The breath he sucks in shudders and puts a skip through his heart. Belle presses her hand closer over his chest (reassurance; protection; love). "But you came back. You keep coming back. No one else has ever done that before. No one."

"No one's ever seen me as a hero. Or as someone who could make her choices. My papa tried to take them away. Gaston did. Regina and Ruby. Cora was going to take…"

"I would never let that happen," he promises, fierce and bristling and powerful enough (loving enough) to destroy whole worlds to keep this promise (enough so that every time he says deal, maybe he's saying Belle just as much as he is Baelfire).

"I know. But whenever I choose to stay, or to leave, or to come back, you always let me make that choice on my own." Belle raises her head so she can meet his eyes in the dark. "And that's why I chose to go with you. Why I stayed. Why I came back. Why I'm here."

"Belle…"

"Yes, and because of that." Her smile isn't a hint or a shadow anymore. It's bright and whole and happy. "The way you say my name."

"I'm not sorry." For all the steel in his voice, his brow is wrinkled with worry. Belle brings up a finger to smooth the lines away. "For what I did to Cora. I'm not sorry."

(He's scared. He's alone. He's searching for a son he loves more than life itself. All these things he's admitted to her.

She can admit her own secrets in turn.)

"I'm not either," she whispers.

(She's not good. Not pure. Not a hero like in her stories. She's sometimes foolish and occasionally vindictive and often bitter and always trying but not always succeeding.

He takes these as the secrets they are.)

When he kisses her (or does she kiss him?), it feels right. The lines of darkness in her match perfectly with the creases of goodness in him, and together they make a whole. Beast and beauty. Imp and just a lady (not a princess or a miller's daughter or a magical apprentice). The father and the hero. Rumplestiltskin and Belle.

The dark cloaks them in a blanket that makes her feel safe and free. His touch vitalizes her in an electric haze that sparks against her every nerve and fills up ever chamber of her heart. His kiss metamorphoses her from an unimportant girl into a woman with True Love filling her up from the inside out. His voice whispering her name turns her future from straw into gold.

(He's not only a monster. She's not always a beauty. Together, they make up half a story and most of a happy ending.)

"Belle," he whispers when their pants turn into gasps turn into glancing kisses turn into sleepy breathing. "Will you go with me? When I leave to find my son?"

She smiles against his skin and knows he feels it when his heart stutters against her cheek.

"I will go with you. Forever."

(Maybe endings are just new beginnings, a happily-ever-before become a happily-ever-right-now unspooling into that coveted happily-ever-after.)

"The deal is struck." And she feels his smile in every part of his body pressed against hers.

There are a thousand stories waiting for them. The potential for endless variations and chances and possibilities. In every one of them, though, Belle knows that she won't make the same mistake.

This time (every time) she will hold on.

This time, she chooses Rumplestiltskin—and makes her own happy ending.