Storybrooke, 1997

The shop was full of atlases to the point of bursting. Gold couldn't ever quite figure out where they'd all come from, but somehow he had more atlases in his shop than there were anywhere else in the town (and probably the state). If they'd all been antiques, he could have probably blamed it on people in Storybrooke being anxious to be anyplace else, but it was a hodgepodge of vintage and new books.

He didn't remember ever ordering any of them, but then he also didn't like thinking about it too hard. Surely there was some reason for him to have those books, wasn't there?

Storybrooke, 2011

If Belle were going to be honest with Rumpelstiltskin – which she certainly was not, just yet – then she'd have had to admit she wasn't just upset for Henry Mills losing his mother. She hated herself a little bit for the role she'd played in the attack on Regina that had caused all this. She hadn't pulled the trigger (Jefferson had) or even handed him the loaded gun (Rumple had), but she had known what would happen and she hadn't cared. Rumple had as much as told her that there would be an attempt on the queen in the same breath he'd told her that he had murdered a man in and she simply hadn't cared. Belle had been happy to know that she was safe and that her baby was safe, and now two innocent women had been hurt because of it.

Belle was sad for Henry, but she was also terrified that she'd lost herself somehow in all of this. She wanted to run. She wanted to pack her bags (Lacey's bags?) and get in the car that she'd only rarely ever driven in and go as far away from all of this as possible. But she owed it to her daughter to try to keep Rumple in her life as long as possible, and anyway she had nowhere else to go. Her father would take her in, but he still thought Rumple had cursed her and what kind of a life would her baby have if they were dependent on a man who viewed Belle as a victim and her child as a product of a rape?

No, she couldn't go back to her father even if she'd wanted to. Her safest place was with Rumpelstiltskin. She didn't even really want to be home alone right now, just in case someone came for her. Belle hated being so afraid all the time. She'd never been afraid before, but then nothing truly horrible had ever happened to her before. Well, no – her mother had been killed by ogres, but that had been an invasion to their home that Belle had no real memory of. Belle had never been a victim herself.

Now, though, she was afraid. She was afraid Regina would get out and come back for her to use their baby against Rumple, she was afraid Nottingham would try to come back for her, she was afraid her father would try to steal her away in a misguided attempt to 'save' her. The only one she wasn't afraid of anymore was Sir Guy, because she knew that Rumple had killed him, and she hated herself a little for being happy about it.

With all the threats around, she was a little surprised Rumple even wanted to leave the house, but he'd apparently been stockpiling his research about this new world in his shop and he needed to retrieve some things to help him find his son. She didn't think he was any more comfortable with her being alone in the house than she was - and besides she had developed an odd dependency on Granny's for cheeseburgers and basically had to eat one on a daily basis or she was pretty sure she'd be forced to murder someone herself - and so they had gone first to the diner for takeout and then retreated to the pawn shop to eat and gather his belongings.

It shouldn't have been surprising to encounter one of Lacey's flings around town, but it had still taken Belle by surprise to encounter the random mechanic whose name she couldn't quite place in line at the diner. Everyone was out after the wraith attack and in a borderline panic over the return of magic, and Belle and Rumple had been given a wide berth. It had still been a distressing encounter, though, as he tried to pretend not to see her and she wondered if it was just her company or if he remembered the same things she did.

"Are you okay?" Rumple asked her as he flipped the sign on the pawn shop door to closed and triple checked the locks. "You seemed a little jumpy at the diner."

She had truly hoped he hadn't noticed that, but since when did he miss a damn thing when it didn't involve her developing feelings for him?

"I'm fine," she said. "I just...recognized someone there. That's all."

"Who?" he replied, his voice suddenly filled with a dangerous suspicion and she could hear the unspoken is it someone I need to protect you from?

She shouldn't like that he was overprotective of her, and she didn't think she would have in any other circumstances, but here and now, with everything she'd been through, she couldn't help but feel a little bit safer. She shouldn't feel safer. The fact was that Belle had only been in that situation to begin with because of him, and she definitely hadn't forgiven him for that yet, but no matter what else she knew about Rumple, he had only done all of this to be reunited with his son. Even if he hated her (which he apparently didn't), she was certain he'd extend that same all-consuming love to their daughter as well.

"He was somebody Lacey knew," Belle admitted after a little while. "From before Gold."

She was trying not to watch him as she said it, but she could tell the exact second he realized what she meant and suddenly they were both avoiding eye contact with each other.

It wasn't fair, she decided as she picked at her fries. None of it was fair at all. Belle hadn't done any of the things Lacey remembered doing. She'd never even had sex, and yet here she was bearing the consequences. She was the one who had to live with absolute strangers being unable to look her in the eye, she was the one who would give birth to and raise a child. Belle had only ever wanted to go on adventures, fall in love, and live happily ever after. For a while it had seemed like she was on the right track for that, but now things with Rumple were hopelessly complicated and she was afraid they might never fully untangle it all, and a baby was going to postpone any adventures at least for a little while longer.

"Was he..." Rumple began, nervously tearing pieces of his napkin while he intently examined his lunch. "He wasn't...It wasn't one of..."

"No," Belle replied firmly. "He wasn't one of the ones she actually did anything with, I don't think. It's hard to put everything on a timeline, but I remember having sex with him so I think he's just a curse memory and not a real one."

Rumple nodded, clearly feeling relieved at this fact - which, incidentally, was only half-true. Belle remembered two encounters with the mechanic, and in the second one they had gotten all the way to oral sex in the backseat of his car before she stumbled home for the evening. She had no idea how many of the blowjobs she remembered had actually happened, and she wasn't sure she really wanted to tell him that part either.

Half of her was too scared he'd think differently of her if he knew the things she'd done, and the other half wanted him to hate her for it. She knew it would hurt him to hear, and the part of her that was still angry wanted to say it, wanted to pour out all the things that had happened to her and make him hear them. Maybe that was a good enough reason to tell him the truth, then. Tell it to him now before she could do it in a fit of anger.

"You're crying," he said softly, and she was startled back to herself. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she replied on reflex, shaking her head and swiping the tears away as fast as she could. "This is all just so much to take in."

"I understand," he said. "When Miss Swan arrived I could hardly make heads or tails of what was going on. I actually forgot Lacey would be there when I got home."

"And you've had your memory back this whole time, then?" she asked him. "I was so confused about why your behavior changed – I mean, Lacey was confused. It was all so sudden between that afternoon and that evening."

He looked guiltily at his burger and took a bite, chewing it as slow as she'd ever seen a man eat something.

"I hadn't planned on Lacey," he said eventually. "Despite what people always said of me, I wasn't ever one to take young maidens captive. You were the first. And the last, incidentally. I'd hoped to spare you from myself in both worlds, and to spare myself from your leaving."

Belle felt a little bit of her anger deflate at his little confession. She'd always known he'd pushed her away for fear of her leaving, but he'd never been able to say it in so many words. As much as people hated him, Rumpelstiltskin had always been nothing but gentlemanly towards her right up until the very end, when everything had gone so spectacularly wrong.

"You believed Regina," Belle replied simply. "You believed her when she told you I'd moved on."

"I did," he admitted, taking a sip of his drink.

She waited patiently to see if he would offer any other justification, but he didn't. It was on the tip of her tongue to press him for more information, to see if there was some reason she could puzzle out for why he'd believed Regina over her, but she caught herself. He'd given her all the explanation she thought she was likely to ever receive for it already – he hadn't trusted her to love him, he'd always expected she'd leave; Regina had simply confirmed everything he'd already believed would happen, so of course he'd listened.

It made her heart hurt to think about it too much.

"I was a little worried I wouldn't like cheeseburgers anymore," Belle said as cheerfully as she could manage. "It would have made the cravings really difficult to manage, I think. I wonder if any of my tastes have changed."

He looked at her peculiarly for a few seconds and then smiled.

"None of mine have," he replied. "It hadn't occurred to me to wonder about it, though."

"None of them?" she asked him. "My aesthetic preferences definitely changed. Once I have the baby I'm going to have to buy a whole new wardrobe."

"Well all right," he conceded. "That part changed a bit, I'll admit. What kind of clothes would you like?"

"I'm not sure," she replied. "I'll have to figure that part out later I guess. Everything Lacey owned was tight and short."

"That they were," he agreed. "Though I suppose that's who she wanted to be."

Something in the way he spoke drew her attention to that last statement. There was almost a wistful longing in his voice.

"Do you ever wish they were real?" she asked him. "Lacey and Gold, I mean."

He looked startled at her question, but he didn't attempt to dodge it like she'd expected him to, thank the gods.

"It would have been easier, wouldn't it?" he replied a little sadly. "I don't know how she felt about him, but he held a definite affection for her, and he would have loved the baby."

"She cared about him," Belle said with as much emotional detachment as she could manage. "She was less thrilled about the baby, but by then...I don't think even Lacey knew what she wanted, really. But she was happy."

"I'm sorry all this happened," he said. "I'm sorry to put you through this. It shouldn't have happened to you."

"No, it shouldn't have," she snapped. "But I don't want to dwell on it. It happened, alright? Let's just try to move forward?"

Why did he have to bring it up? She was trying so hard to forget how angry she still was, and it was impossible when she could still feel Lacey inside of her, telling her to run before he could break her heart and trying to keep her from falling in love with him again.

Rumple nodded apologetically and returned to his lunch. Belle wished she'd ordered more food to eat, it would at least give her something else to focus on. She'd keep eating forever if it meant not having to face the rest of her life.