The picture was still tucked into his pocket by the time he got home. He'd thought to throw it away at the shop but hadn't been able to bring himself to. It had only dawned on him as he drove home that crude as the image was, it was the only picture he really had of his Belle, and maybe it was the Seer, or maybe it was just a feeling inside, but he had the sense he needed to hold onto it. At least until he remembered to get a camera from the shop and take a few pictures. Nothing fancy, just small photographs he could hold onto and cherish when she was gone. He wanted images that captured her not as her father knew her, but as he knew her, as he wanted to remember her…like she was now.

When he got home, he half expected her to run down the stairs or emerge from the kitchen, to throw her arms around him so he'd get a whiff of cleaning solution again. Instead, the house was quiet, and he turned to find her in the family room, laying out on the couch a book in her hands. She was dressed but still so tantalizing he had to swallow hard to remember she was not a dream or a fantasy. Her skirt was short, her legs laid out perfectly, leaving almost nothing to the imagination as her chest rose and fell as she glanced up at him and smiled. And her smile…gods! Was the sun even shinning? Was the earth spinning? A smile like that could make a man forget everything, including his own name. Yes, if he had a camera, he would have taken a picture of this moment and saved it for all his life.

But then the room darkened. Or maybe it was just the fact that her smile disappeared that made him feel that way. Bright as she made him feel when she smiled, that was how dull he felt when it went away, and she let out a sigh. She dropped her book onto her chest before rubbing her forehead as if it hurt and his own heart set to racing then. Her head…a headache? He hadn't taught her about medicine here yet. Was she injured, or was the withdraw from her previous medications causing a problem?

"Belle, what's wrong?" he demanded, unsure about when he'd moved into the room.

But then she laughed, a chuckle that sounded perhaps a bit crazed as she shook her head and muttered "Nothing" before pulling herself up and marking her place in her book with a marker he hadn't even known was in the house. Laughter and the ability to have the sense to mark her page…those weren't indications of pain. So then, what had spoiled her smile?

"I found my favorite book, and I've been reading all afternoon," she explained, waving it in the air. "But I lost track of time. I haven't made dinner yet."

This woman…

In the past five seconds, he'd gone from panic that she was hurt, to joy that she'd found something to occupy her time, to irritation that she felt guilty over not having dinner ready for him on the table when he returned. She had the ability to make him experience every feeling on the spectrum of human emotion, and sometimes he forgot that not all those feelings were happiness and sunshine.

"You know that's not a requirement anymore," he muttered with a heavy sigh.

"Yes, I know," she snapped back in the same tone they'd taken with each other over the subject earlier that day. "But I refuse to sit here all day and do nothing, especially when I need the practice! I am perfectly capable of making meals."

Fine! Fine. He wanted to argue with her, to insist that she wasn't a servant, that if reading her book all day made her happy, then that's what she should do. But he knew that tone. She wasn't going to change her position. Neither was he, frankly, but they'd already argued about it once that day. So perhaps they should try and keep it to once a day, at least until he could find some other way to occupy her that didn't involve taking her to town or taking her to bed…though he certainly would have been happy to do the latter.

"Which book?" he asked, managing a smirk as he tried not to look at her legs. He was glad, truly, that women were so liberated in this realm. Normally he didn't notice such things, but with her…he really needed to use his magic to get her some longer skirts, at least until this honeymooning phase of their relationship wore off.

"La Belle et La Bete," she answered as he grabbed the book out of her hands and sat next to her on the sofa. He flipped it over a few times in his hands. It felt familiar. It even looked and smelled familiar, like her library at the castle. It was probably one of the things she'd found that belonged to her in his own house, and he'd never even noticed it.

"That's my favorite part, where she meets prince charming," she explained when he opened it up to the place she'd marked. "But she won't discover that it's him until chapter three."

He didn't have to fake a smile anymore. Suddenly he was genuinely amused. He remembered this book. She'd favorited it as well as Her Handsome Hero in the castle, and he'd read them both to get an understanding of her. He remembered this one because when she'd first introduced it to him, she'd mentioned the girl had her name. Now he saw it with new eyes, new understanding. All their lives, everything they'd said and done in their previous realm, they were stories here-fairy tales. Her tale was Beauty and the Beast, and he was amused at the thought that if she was Belle, the beauty from the tale, then that made him…

"What?" she demanded.

He shook his head. It was a silly idea, especially considering the way their story had ended. Some Prince he'd turned out to be. "You know that everyone outside of Storybrooke thinks this woman is you?"

She rolled her eyes. "Well, um, I'm pretty sure that Belle wouldn't forget to make dinner. Actually, I'm pretty sure she would never make dinner or do any other chores. I didn't fall in love with a prince or a monster. And it would have taken me more than three chapters time to realize I loved you."

I love you. Those words were never going to get old. They were also never going to get any more believable than they had been that first dreadful time she'd kissed him, and yet…

If his curse had broken, and it had, then it meant the love was true. He had proof that she loved him even if he couldn't understand how or why. He'd been awful to her in that time at the castle, a terrible beast indeed. How had she ever managed to love him? How had she ever realized she did?

He closed the book in his hands. "When did you?"

He hadn't meant to ask the question out loud, not of her. It was a mystery that he felt determined to answer one of these days, but it had never dawned on him to ask it out loud. He hoped he'd muttered it quietly enough that maybe she hadn't heard but then-

"On the road, with the Queen," she answered softly, like she was sorry or even embarrassed she had to give him that answer. He was sorry for her. How in the hell had Regina seen it before he had? How might their lives have been different if he hadn't been so blind, or if he'd been braver, or kinder or gentler…

"But I loved you long before I actually knew that I did!" she responded with an optimistic and teasing hint in her voice, as if she were tempting him to ask again. So, he put the book down on the freshly polished table in front of them and looked over at her again.

"When?"

He watched as she smiled, and her gaze got distant. He felt like he could see her thinking, see her remembering days of old when she'd been one way, and he'd been another. To him, it all seemed terrible. It seemed like she should hate him, scorn him, never utter special words that made him feel like he was glowing. But she smiled, and he knew that somehow, by some miracle, that wasn't how she saw it. What he wouldn't give to see it through her eyes and understand.

"A while…" she finally stated with a shrug.

"I thought you hated me for the longest time."

"I did," she admitted sadly. "But I never feared you. You tried to scare me, but I knew you would never hurt me. Well…I didn't know, I suppose, it was just an instinct, the same one that told me there was more to you. I knew it even when I hated you. I was just too consumed to act on it, not until Robin Hood…"

Ah, yes…that little act of rebellion. She seemed certain that he would never have hurt her, but thinking back on how angry he'd been when he discovered that…no. No, now that he really thought about it, he'd never had a thought to hurt her. He'd been angry. He'd wanted to scream and yell at her. He'd wanted to scare her as she'd suggested. But he'd never thought to hurt her. How had she known before he had?

"You know it's not like a light switch that you can throw on one moment and off the next. The knowledge of it is, I suppose. You know one minute what you didn't a minute before. But love, it's something that grows and builds over time. It's…layered," she sighed with a smile.

"Where have I heard that before?" he joked. He could still imagine the day he'd first heard it perfectly. Her dress, the look on her face when he'd given her the rose, the pain in his chest when he'd told her he never expected to see her again.

"What about you?" she asked, shifting herself so that she could be closer to him. "When did you start to love me?"

Well, if he'd known that he loved her, then things never would have gone as far as they had. But…she hadn't asked when he'd known. She'd asked when he'd started to love her. He sighed and closed his eyes as he thought back, back to a simpler time. Like paging backward through a book, he tried to find a time he hadn't thought or felt about her as he did now. Before their kiss, before Samuel, before Gideon, before the Queens of Darkness, before Robin Hood, before he'd taken her from her father…the first time he'd seen her in her bed when her father had summoned him to heal her. He couldn't remember not feeling something for her in all of those instances. He just hadn't been aware that what he was feeling, that the chords of curiosity that bound them together, might evolve and grow into this.

"I think I always did," he realized.

"Really?" she asked, sounding surprised and even excited. "Was it love at first sight?"

"When I first saw you…"

It might have been. He hated to admit it, to think that he the Dark One ever felt something as childish as "love at first sight," but that night he'd first seen her in her bed and known she was special, familiar even in her unfamiliarity…yes. That might have been love at work. He just hadn't known it! And he was fairly certain that given the potion he'd given her for her memories, she didn't know that moment existed either. She wasn't thinking about that night in her bedroom. She was thinking about when he'd come to claim her, in her father's war room.

She'd been a curiosity at first. He'd known she fit into his future somehow but hadn't known how and he'd been desperate to get her away from her father and fiancé to figure out how. But then he'd been struck by something more than her beauty. Her bravery, her fearlessness, her courage…they'd called to him somehow.

"When we first met, I admired you for standing up to your father and that oaf you were engaged to. I thought you were courageous for talking to me. I don't think you realized the moment I set foot in that room no one else wanted to be there. They were all afraid of me, and then there was you. This small, meek Princess, willing to talk when no one had called upon you. No one expected you to talk, much less take my deal. It was admirable and heroic beyond belief. I was intrigued. You caught my attention in a way no one else ever has."

His eyes were still closed, a memory of her in his mind in her yellow dress consuming him when he felt her shift closer and lace her fingers with his.

"What about when I dropped my chipped cup?"

He felt himself smile as he had on the night it happened. Once he'd gotten past the blush on her chest and caught himself drawn into her beauty, he'd resisted, or at least tried to resist getting pulled into her. And as for the cup…

"I was entertained. When you live as long as I have, you learn that most things are unimportant. To see someone so worried about breaking something as silly as a teacup was humorous.

"And I was just glad for the company in the beginning. You were right. I was just as lonely as you suspected, I imagine…maybe more. I just didn't know it."

"When I freed Robin Hood?"

"Oh no!" he tightened his fingers over her own as those thoughts threatened to invade again. He was still trying to figure that riddle out from earlier. He'd been so angry, so upset that he hadn't seen anything remarkable in her at that moment. She was lucky he hadn't thought to kill her. Though, maybe that was why. Maybe it was whatever he'd been feeling for her that had saved her.

"I was far too…upset with you to feel anything else."

"But you didn't hurt me," she insisted quickly. "You could have killed me, but you never raised more than your voice against me when others would have without a second thought."

Even the suggestion of such a thing, the reminder that Regina could have killed her, that the Queens of Darkness had raised more than their voice against her on his behalf…it made his chest tighten.

"The thought to harm you never crossed my mind."

"And you saved me from that terrible sheriff."

He had to bite his tongue to keep from snarling at that particular memory. It wasn't one he liked to remember because he knew he shouldn't have let that man live knowing what kind of a bastard he was. If he had known he'd loved Belle then…he wouldn't be on this earth now. In fact, it was probably only his thoughts of Belle, of getting her out of there safely and quickly, that he'd neglected to kill him. But he wasn't about to lay weight on her.

"I wouldn't say that I 'saved' you so much as put you in that situation, but…he was lucky. If I had known that I loved you then, he most certainly wouldn't be alive today. As it is, he should hope he never crosses my path again." Because if he did, he'd rectify that mistake.

"But you spared Robin Hood."

Yes. Yes, he had, but not because of her. At least not entirely because of her. He'd spared him because the Seer told him to. Because somehow that man was going to be important to Regina in a way he hadn't figured out yet, and he had to live. But disappointing as that had been, Belle had certainly brightened that moment, that loss of revenge in his life.

He opened his eyes and smiled at her. She blushed as he raised her hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it. "And you embraced me like you didn't care who I was or what I had done. Like what I had tried to do was nothing. It was as if you saw me as more than the beast that I was."

"That's because I did," she whispered quietly. And it still amazed him to this day.

"I couldn't remember the last time someone had touched me that purposefully before, with heartfelt gratitude, certainly without being repulsed by my appearance alone. And I knew-"

"That you loved me?"

"That you were different," he corrected. He hadn't been on a path of love at that point, not to his knowledge, but he'd known he'd been dangerously close to something. "That you made me feel and think things I hadn't for a long time. Things I never had felt or thought before. I thought it was guilt and that I could get rid of it by giving you a library-"

"My library was a bribe!" she accused through a small laugh.

"Your library was created to make me feel better, or so I thought. But when I gave it to you and knew that you saw me clearer than I saw myself, I realized it was more than that. I had an unexplainable urge to make you happy. I'd never had that feeling before in my life. That should have been my first hint."

But it hadn't been. And what an idiot he'd been for that.

"Is that why you let me start going to the market after I asked?"

He nodded, recalling that conversation and what he'd felt when he'd told her "no" the first time all too easily. He hadn't been able to bear her broken heart. "The look on your face after I'd turned you down…watching you across my table, miserable as you were, it was too much for me to take. I didn't like saying 'no' to you, and when I knew that I couldn't say 'no' any more…I knew we'd become something more than what we were supposed to be."

She sighed, her smile growing now with each memory as if she'd been just as eager to get into his head as he was to get into hers. "Did you love me when I found that blue dress?"

The dress…the dress had been earlier than the market but after Robin Hood.

"Most certainly, I just didn't know it. And I was too stunned to even consider what I felt for you at that moment. I don't know if you realize how perfectly exquisite you looked in that plain dress. It suited you far better than your previous attire. You were…"

He didn't have words for how beautiful she'd been when he first saw her in it. He'd waited all afternoon for her to find that dress, he hadn't been able to keep his thoughts to himself when he thought of her wearing it, and when she finally had…she'd been stunning. She'd looked like she found herself. And he was embarrassed to admit that more than one of his nighttime fantasies had involved stripping her of it slowly, piece by piece…

"I thought I was going to die when those women kidnapped me…but you came! I was so worried you wouldn't-"

"No, there was never a chance of that," he assured her when her voice broke in terror. True, he'd tried to find a way to get around making the trade that he'd had to make for her, but she was always going to be okay. He was always going to make sure she was safe. "Even then, you had me…"

"Then you saved me when I fell off that ladder."

Oh, that moment. The first time the Seer had put images in his head of her in his future. That was it. That was the moment he'd began to fear that there might have been something there between them that needed to be contained or controlled. Oh, he hadn't thought of those images in years. Unable to see how they could possibly have been true when she'd been dead, he'd convinced himself that they were fantasies. He'd made her feel like a man, and he'd excused those images as hormones running amuck in his human body. If only he'd listened to the Seer, he might never have believed she'd died.

"I'd hardly say I saved you. You wouldn't have died, but you were lucky I was there. I suspected then," he admitted, trying to get that vision of her in white out of his head. "I suppose that was when I knew. I would have been devastated if something had happened to you, and I would have used any amount of magic, any means possible, to fix you. Then after I had to let you go to the market, after you brought that boy back and I saw you chase him away to keep me from a terrible fate…I knew.

"I didn't know if you did, but I knew we both cared for each other in a way that I couldn't allow. I knew you were more of a danger to me than some of my greatest enemies. I knew I had to send you away. If I was right and there was something there, I couldn't risk the connection growing any deeper, but it was too late. It took me a long time, I selfishly kept delaying the inevitable because I liked having you close, but I finally managed to dismiss you, thinking that would be the end of it.

"But I should have known better. I knew you better than that even then. Still, when you came back to me…" he placed a hand over his heart where he could feel it beating in excitement even now. Seeing her on the road to his castle that day would remain one of the happiest images he had in all his life. "My heart soared. It felt lighter than it had in centuries!"

She smiled when he reached out to touch her, to brush some of the hair that hung loosely over her face over her ear so he could touch her face. He had many memories, a lot of emotions surrounding those days in the castle, but if he wanted her to remember any of them through his eyes, it was this one.

"For the first time in my life, I forgot about why I couldn't let you come back, about why you were a risk. The sight of you coming back on the road when you didn't have to, when you could have just…"

She could have left. She could have gone away so easily, found a job, fallen in love, raised children. But, instead, she'd come back to him. She'd come back to him then just as she had now, and he couldn't have been happier if he tried.

Across the room, the clock chimed. She twitched a little and took a breath as if to say something, probably that they should eat. But before either of them could suggest it, she rose up on her knees, leaned forward, and kissed him.

And he was too worked up, too lost in old memories and regrets to let her go so easily after one kiss. He imagined it was all those years ago, imagined doing what he wished he'd done then. He let his fingers tangle into her hair, opened his mouth to slide his tongue over hers, and then gave a greedy tug forward to pull her closer.

She didn't resist. She barely even broke their embrace as she settled her weight over his lap and wound her arms around his neck to deepen the embrace. And it felt surreal, knowing how their tale had ended in the Enchanted Forest, that it would be in this place now; that he'd be the one to keep her safe, to provide a place to escape, that she'd let him kiss her and touch her and make love to her as he did. But here they were. Together again. He'd be damned if he ever let anything happen to her again.

They both pulled away practically at the same time, and after meeting her eyes once, she drew him in to put his nose into her neck so she could hold him. "Thank you," she whispered into his ear.

He'd be damned if he ever let anything happen to her…but he'd also be damned if he didn't tell her every day, every moment of their lives, what he should have told her all those years ago.

"I love you," he muttered back. "I love you so much more than I ever thought possible."

Finally, after what felt like too long and yet too soon at the same time, she released him. She placed a couple of swift chaste kisses against his lips, then smiled. "Dinner?"

"Dinner," he nodded.

When she moved off of him, she reached back for his hand, and they moved off to the kitchen together. All things considered, he couldn't think of a better way to spend his evening than being wherever she was.

Oh, this chapter. This chapter has been a lot of fun to write. It's long because it's had a long evolution process. Obviously, it really began as an original chapter in Moments, one of the rare times we got to see Belle through Rumple's eyes in the Dark Castle. Because of this chapter's importance, this was written ages ago. It was another of those test chapters, but also to be an anchor and reminder when I wrote "The Dark Curse." I found myself peeling sections out of this chapter to inspire that writing and some of their earlier relationship. And then, of course, after Dark Curse was written, I was able to come back to this and add some further embellishments. Fun fact, I never wanted anything he said in this chapter to be a lie, and so if you go back to The Dark Curse for any of the memories listed above, you'll find some wisp or sense of the emotion or thought he had that he tells her about. Sometimes it's small, an echo of the words he uses here, but it's all accurate and honest, and that's what really matters to me.

Big thank yous going out today to Grace5231973, Spunkymouse, and Alarda for leaving your reviews! I do so love them, and I'm thrilled to see that you accept Rumple's finding of Belle's drawing. Peace and Happy Reading!