The Enchanted Forest, nine days pre-curse

Robin and his men saw her as far as the borders of King Midas' kingdom, but once they reached the first major population center, Belle was left to her own devices. Going through the familiar city brought back memories of her girlhood and of happy times spent at court with her friends. She'd loved her time in this part of the kingdom, and being back cheered her heart.

Getting into the castle had proven to be slightly more challenging than Belle had anticipated. In years past, she had been a lady travelling in a carriage with her father's crest and a full complement of liveried servants. She had belonged in the castle, and it had been a simple matter to arrive at the portico and be shown into the throne room. Dressed as a peasant and dirty from the road was a whole other situation. The guards wouldn't even let her through the front door, so she'd had to take a room at an inn and decide on her next course of action.

Her first thought was that she could wait until Abigail came out shopping and approach her in the market, but she thought the better of it. While she'd spoken to a good many peasants in her life, the ones she met while shopping had almost entirely been shopkeepers. There were guards to keep the masses at bay and Abigail would be no different in that respect.

She got her first little bit of luck within a week. The start of a new month meant that the king held court, but King Midas was away. The kingdom had fallen in line with Princess Snow White and her war against Queen Regina, and the king had taken the army to join with the alliance's larger force. If her father was gone, that just left Princess Abigail to hear the petitions. The hard part was actually getting on the list of people allowed to petition the crown. She was one of the last few people let into the line of people that day, and it was far past noon when she finally got into the throne room. She was so overwhelmed by nerves and nostalgia that she almost missed when it was her turn. Her stomach was suddenly twisting with nerves as she stepped forward with her request.

"What can the Crown do for you?" Abigail asked, barely looking at her as she knelt properly before the throne.

"I ask for sanctuary, Your Highness," Belle said, watching for the moment when Abigail finally turned her eyes on her. "I've been forced to flee my father's home, and I would like to throw myself on your mercy."

"Belle?" Abigail said in a slightly high pitched voice, coming down from the throne and approaching with her eyes wide in shock. "My gods, what are you doing here?"

Belle stood and Abigail immediately swept her into an embrace. Belle felt embarrassingly happy at the contact – she'd left home so long ago and it had been ages since somebody had touched her like this. Even while she was staying with the Merry Men, the only one who'd dared to hug her had been little Roland. It was so comforting just to have someone's arms around her that she almost broke down into tears.

"I had to run away," Belle said at last. "My father was trying to force me to marry someone terrible. Can I stay?"

"Oh goodness, of course you can," Abigail replied. "You have to tell me everything, come on."

Abigail took Belle by the arm and called to a man who had been standing nearby to hear the rest of the petitions for her and the two of them made their way into the corridors of the castle. Belle had done it; she was finally safe.

Storybrooke, 2011

Rumple moved back into the bedroom that night. He'd tried to go back to the guest room, but Belle was sick of playing coy and she was tired of sleeping alone. She'd knocked on his door not long after he had left for bed, and he was in pajamas when he opened it.

"Come on," she said, taking his hand and pulling him into the hallway.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," she replied. "Come to bed."

His mouth twisted in confusion, but she wasn't going to indulge his doubt tonight.

"There's plenty of room in that bed," she continued. "I want you to stay with me."

His shoulders sagged and she hadn't even realized he'd been so tense until she saw him relax in front of her. It only took another tug of her hand before he'd followed her into the master bedroom, and after that first night he seemed to accept that she really wanted him there. They didn't cuddle or anything quite so intimate - despite their newly reawakened sexual relationship things were still a little strange between them - but it was just nice to have him there at night. It was warm and domestic, and so close to being something real that it was easy to forget that their relationship had been so severely damaged.

She wondered sometimes if the captivity and constant threats to her safety and the pregnancy had traumatized her more than she thought it had. She was starting to become uneasy being alone, and while she didn't think Rumple minded that she would stay in the house with him all day and follow him into town if he had to go, she missed her independence – she'd followed him to provide a potion to let Henry Mills communicate with someone in the Enchanted Forest and gone with him when they put a sleeping curse on Prince David. Rumple was so good about providing for all her needs, but she missed the part of herself that had traipsed across the country in pursuit of her own happiness and not the terrified woman who was scared to leave the house anymore.

Rumple seemed to be noticing something was wrong, and that bothered Belle more than it should. He was watching her when he thought she wasn't looking, and every time she asked him to do something she should be doing herself she could feel his uneasiness. She wasn't sure if he was relieved or scared, but he never asked her about it. Instead, he traipsed all over Storybrooke with her because she would suddenly need a specific type of ice cream or a particular pasta, or because the nursery needed more blankets or just because she couldn't fit her old maternity clothes anymore.

They'd gone to the diner for her daily cheeseburger, and Granny Lucas had just dropped them off at the table when the door swung open and Regina stormed in.

"Gold, we need to talk," Regina said as she approached the table and leaned over it.

"Do we?" Rumple replied, barely looking at her.

"Folks, I think we may need to close early," Granny said loud enough for the entire room to hear her. "Everybody out!"

"No it's okay," Regina said to the older woman. "We're civil."

"Yeah, we're not," Rumple replied. "Belle, you remember the woman who tricked your father into thinking I cursed you?"

Belle looked back and forth between the two of them and she wasn't really sure what to do. Regina clearly wasn't going anywhere, but Belle didn't want to leave Rumple in her presence ether.

"I should probably just…" she let her voice trailed off as she realized she didn't have a plan for this.

"No, no, please stay where you are," Rumple said to her. "Whatever she has to say won't be secret from you; whatever she wants, she won't get."

"I'm actually coming about the one thing that might unite us," Regina said to him.

"And what on earth could that be?" he replied.

"Cora." Regina said it like a curse word. "She's coming from our land. I need your help to stop her."

"But she's dead," Rumple said darkly. "You told me you saw the body."

"Apparently you taught her well," Regina said. "She's not; she's on her way and I don't think I need to remind you how unpleasant that would be for most of us."

"For you," he said. "I can handle Cora."

"That's not how she tells the story," Regina replied.

"I won in the end."

"Maybe," Regina said leaning closer to him and shooting a glance towards Belle. "But there's a big difference this time. This time, you have someone you care about. This time, you have a weakness."

"I'm sorry," Belle interrupted. "Who is this woman?"

"Someone you'll never meet," Rumple replied before turning back to Regina. "So you say she's coming. Where is she now?"

"With them."

"Them?" he said. "You mean Snow White and the Savior."

"She's going to try to make her way here with them," Regina said. "And I'm not going to let her get anywhere near Henry."

Rumplestiltskin looked at Belle for a long time, and she wasn't sure what to say or do. The news of Cora coming to Storybrooke had set him far too on edge. She was uneasy about the whole thing, but he clearly didn't want to discuss this in front of Regina, and while she could respect that, without more context she couldn't help him decide what to do.

"All right," he said at last, facing Regina again. "I'll help you keep her from coming here."

The rest of their meal was largely silent, as was the drive home. Belle had so many thoughts running through her head, and she couldn't quite shake the feeling that he was hiding something from her.

"Who's Cora?" Belle asked Rumple once they were safely inside the house. He froze in the foyer and she could tell he didn't want to talk about it, but she wasn't going to let him get away with keeping this secret. "Who is she?" Belle asked again, more forcefully. "Is she a threat?"

"Regina's mother," he said. "She's Regina's mother."

"And?"

Rumple turned to face her slowly, and Belle locked eyes with him, refusing to give ground until he had answered her question truthfully. There was no way that was the end of that story, and she was not about to stand there and let him treat her like a child who had to be protected from the truth. At last, he looked away and let his shoulders sag.

"She's also my former apprentice," he said to the coat rack to her right. "And my former lover."

Belle felt her face flush with some emotion she couldn't immediately name, but found incredibly unpleasant. She wasn't sure what answer she had expected given his caginess around the idea of telling her, but something about her didn't like knowing. She liked that he'd told her, but didn't like thinking about him with this other woman. It was silly, because he'd been married before and had a son and she had known all of that, and she certainly didn't expect him to have been totally chaste before she was even born. But knowing something in an abstract sense and knowing the name of the last woman he slept with were two entirely different things.

"I'm assuming there's no question of Regina's paternity?" she said at last, crossing her arms over her chest. It was a low blow, but the vaguely stricken look on his face made her feel a little bit better in a petty sort of way.

"Of course not," he said. "It was over long before Regina came along, trust me."

She should trust him – she didn't have much choice but to trust him unless she wanted to move out – but it felt so much better not to right now.

"So were you teaching her before or after you slept together?"

He looked miserable, and she hated herself for being pleased by that. This was silly, but she was so irrationally angry about it and she didn't know why she was so...so jealous about this other woman.

"Does it really matter?" he asked her finally. "It was a mistake from beginning to end."

"So she dumped you?"

"Why are you so upset?" he asked. "It was a long time ago! I haven't even seen her since Regina pushed her through a mirror to Wonderland."

Belle froze for a second and stared at him, trying to figure out if he was joking or not. Sometimes, talking to Rumplestiltskin was a little like trying to speak a second language where she'd be going along fine with the flow of the conversation until he'd drop some word or phrase she'd never heard before and it took her a moment to get her train of thought back.

"I'm not upset," she replied. "I just think I should know how many of your ex-lovers are going to be showing up and whether or not they're a threat to the baby!"

He opened his mouth to say something, but then he stopped and pulled back. His eyes went wide and he almost smiled for a second, but then he pursed his lips and looked at her intently.

"Are you jealous?" he asked her cautiously, and she felt all the blood rush to her head.

"No!" she snapped. "Why would I be jealous? I don't care who or what you did before. It's none of my business, and it's not like we're dating just because we're sleeping together."

She brushed past him to the rest of the house, hoping he'd let it go but she could hear him following her and she couldn't really move a lot faster than him in her condition.

"Belle, wait," he called from behind her, grabbing her elbow and stopping her as she tried to hurry up the stairs. She spun around to face him and tried to summon whatever righteous anger she could manage, but it was rapidly dissolving into embarrassment in the face of him. "It means nothing," he said earnestly and she could see tears starting to form in his eyes. "Cora means nothing and she never did. It was a handful of weeks in three hundred years of terrible decisions. You mean everything – you were always special. Always."

She could feel herself starting to tear up as well, and she didn't want to be angry at him. She just felt so stupid, and it was so easy to let him pull her into an embrace at the foot of the stairs. She'd overreacted, and she knew it.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled into his chest without looking at him. "I was being awful."

"It's okay, sweetheart," he whispered into her hair. "You know it's not just sleeping together though, don't you? I love you so much, Belle. I've never loved another woman the way I love you."

"I know," she admitted. "I was just upset. I shouldn't have said it."

She snuggled into him and tucked her head under his chin. It was warm, and safe there, and she didn't want him to ever let her go.