A/N: Thanks for the wonderful reviews, favorites, and follows! I know it's been a terribly long time since I've posted anything, so it's nice to get so much love coming back! :) Hope you all enjoy this second chapter, and I'd love to know what you think of it!

Disclaimer: Again, pretty much every Rumbelle scene is referenced, and the inspiring episodes were written by others, not me. No copyright infringement is intended.

Touch

Chapter 2

It's overwhelming, the freedom to touch whenever she wants, as much as she wants. She has to be careful, has to ration the ways she will touch him because if she doesn't, she begins to lose herself and he forgets to speak and how to move. After all her time locked away (so much more time than she thought, but that's something else that overwhelms her if she thinks on it so she doesn't), she is not accustomed to physical contact anymore. After centuries of being alone, Rumplestiltskin isn't used to it either.

At first, it's addictive. He leads her back to town with his arm around her, her hand laced in his. She finds reasons to hold his hand or touch his shoulder, his chest, his elbow, as he gives her new clothing. Then there is an interruption and a broken promise and a betrayal that stings so sharply and strikes so deeply and for a few terrible hours, she wonders if she is wrong to love him. Wrong to think there is anything more to him than what everyone else sees.

But he is right—she has been with him for only an hour and he has been without her for decades. It took weeks, months, for him to grow accustomed to seeing her in his castle, to grow comfortable with setting aside the flashy showmanship and being quiet and himself with her. It took her days, weeks, to realize that she could be his friend (more, too, but that was later) without condoning everything he did. Does.

So she goes back, and she almost cries when she sees him sitting at his spinning wheel with that same expression of hurt bewilderment. But there is more there this time—something very like bitter resignation, something like unfamiliar nobility as he tries to let her go—and it is wool he holds in his hand, not straw or gold.

When she puts her hands on his shoulders, she knows she is right. She knows he is more, and if she can ever show him that, shining back at him from the reflection of her eyes since he does not like mirrors, then he will see it, too, and eventually so will everyone else.

They do not kiss again, not then. They hug, and that is better, because their kiss was ecstasy and bliss and sheer pleasure, but she is tired and he is confused. A hug is familiar and reassuring, soft and welcoming, everything they both need then.

In fact, they hug quite a bit. It makes her want more, but it reminds her of all she has after so long a time of not having, and it is often he who initiates them, so she is happy. For a while.

He sleeps beside her. They each bear their own nightmares, and a hug in the darkness, a solid warmth in the cold night…these remind her that she is no longer locked up. That she is herself again and with him and free. She likes to fall asleep with her head on his shoulder, his arm wrapped around her, and she thinks he likes it too because he always settles himself near her and kisses her hair when she curls into him.

But he has been alone a very long time and she is new to this intimacy, so when she is half-asleep, when he begins to stir, restless and anxious, she rolls away from him, and they sleep side by side, a narrow place between them.

Touch is precious, but sometimes precious things are best when taken (and given) in moderation.

Their separation changes things for a while. He lied (and he has never lied before, preferring instead to brandish his darkness like a torch against the cold), so she left. He tried (and he is not used to trying, preferring instead to crouch in his isolation and hold his hurts and his loneliness close to himself), so she would have come back. But then her father lies, too, and he is more of a monster than she thought, and Rumplestiltskin is more of a man than anyone else thinks, and there is danger and an adventure she never wanted, so she needs time. She needs space. She needs solitude, because as much as she has pretended otherwise, her years in chains and cells have marked her.

Besides, her father would have made her forget Rumplestiltskin, and the look on Rumplestiltskin's face when he parted her chain with the slice of his hand, when he asked her if she remembered him, is enough to convince her that such would have destroyed him. She wanted time to think, and they would have used her as a weapon against him. After all her years spent being silent, defiant in the face of the Queen's questions, Belle refuses to be a tool used in Rumplestiltskin's downfall.

But then…he gives her another library. He tells her the truth.

He reaches out, and he touches her.

And maybe she will be his weakness, but he is hers, so maybe it's fair after all, and maybe she won't inadvertently betray him and make him look afraid and resigned for someone else centuries after she is gone.

He's walking away, and it's the dungeon in his castle all over again (only, she's the one sending him away as if she doesn't care and he was brave enough to reach across this divide to caress her face), but this time can be different.

So she calls him back.

His tears convince her she did the right thing. Her own tears remind her to be careful.

"This is the only world without magic I could find," Rumplestiltskin tells her, his voice hushed and very unlike the dealer's voice he used so often in their old world (as low and husky as it was during the quiet evenings when he'd let slip a bit more about himself while she read). "There are many ways to travel between worlds, but very few that could bring us to a world completely devoid of magic."

"So Baelfire is here?" she asks. They are alone in his shop, sipping tea from a silver tea set she remembers dusting in his castle, a set they never used because he preferred her chipped cup. Alone and tucked away in the back, but still, she is careful to keep her own voice hushed (careful not to betray his secrets).

His mouth tightens, but his hand does not shake as he takes a sip of his own tea. "Yes. But it hardly matters if I cannot find a way across the town line."

"You will," she assures him, and she places her hand over his.

His eyes smile even if his mouth does not. "Yes," he says, looking down at her hand. "I will."

Belle smiles back at him, refusing to take her hand away from his (she misses being able to touch him whenever she wishes). "Do you think he will like me?"

"I think he will love you," he replies, and Rumplestiltskin does not lie.

They have hamburgers, but they are interrupted, and for a while, he is so busy she does not see him. She knows he is helping David and the small boy (and Regina, but she does not let herself think on that for long), so she pretends she does not mind. She checks that his dagger is safe in its hiding place (only once, not compulsively as she wishes, because she cannot draw attention to it) and delves into the task of cleaning up the library and readying it to open. This world has fascinating traditions, including the novel idea of opening up libraries for anyone—even the smallest child or the poorest man or the noblest woman—to borrow books and return them for someone else to enjoy. Belle is looking forward to opening this library to the town of Storybrooke and seeing everyone enjoy the gift Rumplestiltskin gave her for her own.

When he walks in through the doors she left unlocked, late one evening, she knows he has done something bad. He is leaning heavily on his cane, and he does not meet her gaze. Instead, he looks all around at the books and the shelves and the stack of interesting novels she's set aside for herself and the bucket of water she's been mopping the floor with (pretending she is not there simply to make certain no one comes for his dagger). He is afraid, and she is suddenly very tired of the fear he carries with him everywhere.

It is dark out and she is cleaning and he does not speak immediately as he studies her library, so it feels almost as if they are still at the Dark Castle. Belle looks down at the rag in her hand and the tile she's scrubbing, and she remains quiet (just as she had when he would seek her out in their old home).

"We don't have to worry about Cora anymore," he finally says.

Her shoulders tense at the exhausted tone of his voice, but she keeps her silence (sometimes, she thinks he only needs to hear himself, to say the words aloud, and she knows, now, that she is the only one who will listen).

Rumplestiltskin looks down at his hands, on his cane, one atop the other. "I think Sheriff Nolan might be quite unhappy with me for a while, him and his family."

"So they're safe then?" she asks, softly, watching him from the corner of her eye. "Snow White and her daughter are back?"

"Yes," he says, and nothing else.

After a few moments of this, Belle sets the rag in the bucket of lukewarm water and stands to her feet. "Rumple," she says.

He takes a deep breath and meets her gaze (as if it is a feat worthy of a knight).

"Are you all right?" she asks him. Her hands are wet, damp against her skirts, and so she rubs them against the fabric until they are dry, but she does not let him look away.

"Me?" he asks, confused. "Of course."

"Is everyone else all right?" she presses, takes a tiny step nearer him. "Is everyone unharmed?"

"Regina will be tired and sore for a while," he tells her, a savage gleam of satisfaction sparking in his eyes before he blinks it away.

"And you're not hurt? We're safe?"

"Yes," he assures her, fierce and reassuring all at once. "No one will be able to hurt you."

(No one will be able to use her to strike him a mortal wound, she thinks to herself.)

Belle lets out her breath in a long sigh of relief. "Good," she proclaims. And then she takes three steps forward very quickly and rushes into his arms (opened hastily to receive her). She holds him tightly to herself, lays her cheek against his shoulder, breathes in his now-familiar scent, and lets all the worry she hadn't admitted she'd been feeling (the fear that made her scrub until her muscles ached and made her frustrated to see answering fear in Rumplestiltskin) drain out of her, seeping away, banished at his touch as if by magic.

"I missed you," she whispers.

"Oh, sweetheart," he murmurs, kisses her hair and her brow and her cheek (his voice choked with the weight of more days—years—than her own words carry). "I missed you, too."

Sometimes, she realizes, words can touch a soul more deeply than even a hug.

She kissed him in the castle. He kissed her by the well. They both moved at the same time to kiss later, when she stayed with him in his house and slept at his side every night (lulled to sleep by the sound of his breathing and the feel of his hand stroking her hair). But they haven't kissed since he lied to her by omission and she left without telling him. They've held hands and he's stroked her cheek and she's tucked her hand against his elbow, and they've hugged as often as she can find excuse to, but no more.

And Belle wants more.

Only…she's not quite sure how to go about it.

There are very few moments when they can be alone and quiet. The diner means Ruby and Granny always near, ready to protect Belle from the Dark One no matter how many times she tells them she is happy with him. The streets are even more questionable, filled with people who stare askance at Rumplestiltskin smiling and holding hands with a woman, and no matter how hard she smiles or how fiercely she holds onto his hand, Rumplestiltskin grows tense and quiet and wary under their disapproving stares (or he grows angry and defiant, and that is dangerous, too).

Eventually, after a few weeks of this, Belle grows tired of it and she packs a picnic basket and takes it to his shop. He smiles when she comes through the door (smiles so wide, so bright, so real), and he watches her approach him as if she is a dream he is willing to give himself over to entirely. So she sets down the picnic basket and levers herself up on the counter between them to brush a kiss over his cheek (her heart flutters at the feel of his clean-shaven jaw, the tickle of his hair, the catch to his breath). When she settles back to her feet, she grins up at him.

"I brought lunch," she announces (because he needs the simplest things spelled out sometimes). She begins to unpack the basket, and he stares at each item of food she retrieves as if it is more mystical than the magical artifacts crowding his shop all around them.

She is happy (elated and hopeful) and he is finally smiling openly, so of course they are interrupted. What is worse is that these people, barging in to accuse him of a murder she knows he would never commit (he's the one who introduced her to Dr. Hopper, who told her the gentle-mannered man could possibly help her if she still has nightmares of her cells), don't even seem to realize that they have interrupted anything. David knows her and manages a tiny nod, but the other two (Snow White and Emma, Belle assumes) hardly give her more than a glance, and they do not listen when Rumplestiltskin speaks (as if they don't realize that he tells the truth if only you are wise enough to listen both to what is said and what is not).

It isn't enough, to stand by Rumplestiltskin's side and speak in his defense (because no one else will), but it makes him catch his breath, makes his eyes smile even if his mouth does not (even if he does not quite look at her while playing his game with these others). It isn't enough, but it is something, and he treats each something she gives him, no matter how small, as if it is more than he has ever been given before.

In return for the picnic she brought him, he reveals another piece of himself. She laughs to see him cooing over a dog, and he tells her even without being asked that he once kept sheepdogs (a treasure of a memory of the man he keeps uncovering just for her). Belle's heart fills to overflowing, so much so that she wonders if it is possible for a heart to break from sheer happiness.

So when the others are gone, taking their accusations and their demands and their magic with them (off to hunt down Regina, and Belle cannot bring herself to care too much about that), she steps up very close to Rumplestiltskin and lets her hand trail down his tie.

"Belle?" he asks, but there is hope igniting like fireworks in his eyes.

"I love you," she whispers. She feels as if she's falling (it's the first time she's said it since walking to a well), as if there isn't enough air in this shop (the Dark Castle compressed into one tiny building), as if his eyes could swallow her up (and maybe they can).

"My darling Belle," he breathes, his clever fingers trickling like water down her cheeks. "I love you, too."

She smiles, bites her lip, and then decides she does not care to wait any longer, and she slides her arms around his neck and goes on her tiptoes and kisses him.

When he kisses her back, she wonders why she waited so long.

When he leans his brow against hers and closes his eyes, soaking in the moment, she does not think she will wait so long again.

They are happy, for a while, so very happy that Belle thinks maybe she will finally be able to chase away the fear that shadows him so often (maybe he will finally be able to convince her this will not all disappear into the shadows of her cell). He calls her on the phone he gave her and he looks at the changes she makes in the library and he begins to smile back at her without hesitation, without tears in his eyes (without thinking she will never smile at him again). She visits him in his shop and helps him find a new place for their chipped cup and she no longer pauses before reaching up to leave a kiss on his cheek, the corner of his mouth, his lips (no longer blushes when she thinks of kissing him more deeply, longer, in more private places than the library or the shop).

There is sadness, too, of course, because this is real life and not one of her storybooks. When she is invited to Archie's funeral, she isn't sure she should go. She hardly knew the man, kind as he was, but when she asks Rumplestiltskin, he tells her to go.

"Let them know you for you," he tells her, a flick of his fingers gesturing to the whole of the town. "Better for them to think of you as a friend than as the companion of the Dark One."

"They can think of me as both," she retorts, and hugs him because she can (because he wants her to).

But she is scared. Rumplestiltskin thinks her courageous, calls her his brave and beautiful Belle, but she is afraid of the funeral, with graves and tears and so much anguish in the people around her that she barely knows. She will go, and she will try to give what comfort she can, but they are new people who have already formed their own opinions of her, and if she is to be brave, she needs something to be brave for.

So she invites Rumplestiltskin up to the small, comfortable apartment he gave her (and she has never paid for it, with anything, and he has never asked for it). "For dinner," she says, "because I want to see you," so he comes because he doesn't like to deny her anything. Sometimes, when she finds him in the backroom of his shop or in the basement of his house, he has magic in his eyes and his hands tremble with power, but he always opens the door to her or invites her in or agrees to go out with her. And maybe he had plans for tonight (plans and hopes and obsessions all revolving around Baelfire), but he only smiles and weaves his fingers through the hand she offers him and follows her up the narrow steps to her apartment.

They eat, and he teases her until she can't take a drink or another bite lest she choke on her laughter, and his eyes sparkle and gleam with thoughts and desires he no longer bothers to hide from her (and this trust is as precious as the tidbits of his son he entrusts to her). Eventually, they move from the dining table to the couch, his cane set aside, her hair spilling loose around her shoulders.

It is dark outside, moonlight spills past the light curtains to froth along the carpeted floor, and the light from the kitchen leaves the living room illuminated in a private, golden bubble. Belle feels, then, as if this is all there is. No Storybrooke, no funeral to attend in a few days, no scared and desperate people to accuse or stare or judge. No father to look at her as if she is already dead. Just her and Rumplestiltskin, alone in the world and world enough for the two of them.

She pulls her legs up and leans against Rumplestiltskin, and the closeness of her apartment (so strange and different from the tall shelves and vast expanse of space and maze of books that was her room in the Dark Castle) feels like home when he curls his arm around her and tips his head to rest against hers.

He's been so good lately, been trying so hard to be honest, to tell her the things he wants to keep secret and safe, to include her in the life that for longer than she can comprehend has included only one (Baelfire, not Rumplestiltskin, because she does not think he realizes there can be a Rumplestiltskin without Baelfire). He's been honest and forthcoming, but as she holds the flickering fear of what will come in two days hidden inside her, she realizes that she hasn't been entirely open with him.

It's hard, harder than she thought (and no wonder he has to work to reveal his fragile vulnerabilities), but she opens her mouth and she begins to talk, in quiet, hushed whispers, of her fear of everyone else, rushing in to maybe rend and destroy the world she has created (with just the two of them) for her and Rumplestiltskin. She admits that she is furious with her father but that she misses him. She confides in her True Love, uncovering her secrets and her nightmares and giving them over to him. Everyone else seeks to hide any weaknesses from the Dark One lest he take advantage of them, but of this, Belle is not afraid. She knows he will take her secrets and he will put them next to his own, and they will be safe there, guarded from anything and everything for all of eternity.

When her words finally run out, when her silent tears have trickled down her cheeks in the soft glow and patient darkness, she gradually realizes she is curled up on her side, Rumplestiltskin lying behind her (on his good leg), tucked between her and the back of the couch, his arm wrapped so tightly around her waist that she knows he would never let her fall. His breath is soft against her neck, warm and wispy, and when he shifts his chin to smooth her hair down away from his mouth, she lets her eyes flutter closed. This is a moment she can memorize, a memory she can keep with her forever should she ever find herself in a cell again. He is all around her, his touch all over her, and every rise and fall of his chest behind her is a miracle.

Sometimes, it's hard to believe she isn't dreaming this all up (curled up on her bed in Regina's cell while the moon adorns her skin with frost), imagining that she is free and lying beside a Rumplestiltskin who freely admits he loves her.

But this is real. She couldn't make up the feel of him, the realness of him behind her, the length of his arm curved around her just so, and the details of his fingers as she plays them through her own.

He's here and he's real and he loves her.

Belle smiles, her tears forgotten, secrets once more put away, her heart full and fluttering. She makes to move away, to give him space, careful not to stifle him, but his arm tightens and he nudges his chin down on her shoulder, and so she subsides.

"I'm here," he whispers, and maybe he thinks she is still raw from the confessions she poured out before him and wants to reassure her, but she doesn't care (she isn't raw or worried or upset at all). Because he's here and that's what matters.

"I'm here, too," she replies, and she laces her fingers through his and leans her head back against him.

In the morning, when she wakes, he's still there, and she has never felt so warm and loved (so touched) before in her whole life.

She promised him her forever, so long ago, and she thinks that for the first time, someone actually managed to get the better end of a deal with Rumplestiltskin.

She's very glad that it was her.

He is absent the next day, but she is busy with Ruby and Leroy and a few others, all talking to her in whispers and dancing around the subject of Archie and what he meant to them all. Belle gives what comfort she can, and she tells them of the compassion she'd noticed in Dr. Hopper the few times they spoke, and she convinces herself she does not notice (or mind) when she spends the next night alone and faces the morning's funeral on her own.

When Rumplestiltskin calls her from the funeral and greets her with secretive triumph and fierce pride as she enters his shop, she spares a moment to wonder if (to hope that) it was her beside him, her trust and her faith in him and her warmth next to him that night, that made him finally realize whatever it was he was missing. But even if it was not, even if he discovered this entirely on his own, she is happy for him. Finally, he will find his son and banish some few of the nightmares that plague him. (Finally he will look at her and he will see himself as a man, a father, not a monster with a goal, and she will be a woman who loves him.)

Baelfire consumes his thoughts, and it's right, it's natural, it's proof of the love she knows he possesses within him, so she hates that it is she who distracts him. An attack in her library, and Rumplestiltskin comes immediately to protect her ("I'm here now," he tells her, and she thrills at this reminder of their night spent sleeping side by side, connected so closely, so magically). A walk down the street, and he confides in her ("I took his hand," he says, and she has to take his because here, at last, is part of the reason he still looks at her as if he cannot believe that she could love him). An argument in the remnants of his shop and the happiness they've been gifted with is disintegrating all around them ("This is my fault," she admits to him, and as angry, as scared, as determined as she is, she cannot help but relax a bit at his answering look of complete incomprehension).

"Promise me," she asks him, and maybe it is wrong of her to try to force such a concession from him, but she saw it more as a safeguard. He lost the shawl because of her, through her (she has become the weapon she tried so hard to avoid becoming), but Rumplestiltskin is a man (not a monster) who makes wrong decisions, and this…this has all the makings of the worst decision (one that will haunt and destroy him).

Rumplestiltskin secretly wants to be a hero, to be a father worthy of his son, to be the prince he thinks she deserves, and this one-handed pirate threatens all of that, in some way she can't be sure of because she has only pieces of their story. But Belle secretly wants to be a hero, too, and there is nothing better, nothing nobler, than saving Rumplestiltskin's quest and aiding him in his search for his son. Finding Archie alive (and the funeral she attended that morning, the tears his friends shed, all of it was for nothing, but she has never been more happy to have wasted her time) and rescuing him is a definite bonus, but still she can think only of the shawl that made Rumplestiltskin's eyes soften and grow wistful and hopeful, some inner light burning there in a way she has sometimes feared only exists in her imagination.

When she thought he was a beast, when she held a cup of water to the lips of a man he tortured, when he was little more than an ambiguous enigma more full of mystery and questions than hope or potential for goodness, she convinced him not to kill a man (because the woman was pregnant and all he could see was Bae, she realized later). Now, standing on the deck of a ship where he once stood as a powerless man, where he once reached out his hand and tore out the heart of his wife, where he now beats a man with his cane (his crutch, and only now does she begin to think that it is his fear of helplessness, powerlessness, vulnerability that is his true crutch, not magic), she once more does her best to remind him that he is more than evil and darkness and vengeance.

"This is what he wants," she rationalizes, because Rumplestiltskin does not like being manipulated. "There's still good in you," she blurts out, words so similar to what she'd told him in Sherwood Forest, because they worked then and maybe they can again. "Please…please show me I'm not wrong," she begs him, and finally he meets her eyes, and the Dark One slides away to reveal her Rumplestiltskin staring back at her, remnants of the Dark One tangled up together with the spinner, the father, the lover.

She pauses, hesitates, breathless, motionless, afraid to move and break the spell and see him give himself over to the Dark One. The pirate is still beneath him, watching, shaken for the first time she's known him, staring at Rumplestiltskin incredulously.

And Rumplestiltskin reaches out to her. Takes her hand. Curls his fingers around her.

Belle holds on as tightly as she can, pulls him after her, wanting nothing more than to leave this ship forever (this ship that holds too many memories of his wife, of a woman who made him afraid and nervous and resigned to never being loved, a woman he killed with his bare hands), leave the pirate and the blood on the deck and the stench of fear and pain and tears in the hold where Archie was tied up.

Rumplestiltskin's hand is tight in hers. He's holding onto her. He's touching her (his eyes avoiding her as assiduously as he once watched her, so afraid, so ashamed, so full of brimming, bitter darkness he doesn't want her to see). He reached out for her (he is changing, is growing and evolving and learning and how can she judge him for crimes committed centuries before her birth?).

He's touching her, and nothing is simple or absolute or clear. It's all gray and shifting and changing, black and white fading away into shades and hues that reflect back the molten brown of her Dark One's eyes. He's a man here, weathered skin and worn creases and calloused hands and mangled ankle, vulnerable eyes and fragile smiles and wispy hair and delicate touches, and he is hers. Broken and twisted and full of shadows, scarred and mangled and a conscience stained with blood—but hers.

He's the Dark One. She knows that, knew it the first time she met him, knew it when she gave her life to him. Knew it when she hugged him, trailed her hand over his, dared to caress him, kissed him, pulled him down beside her and slept at his side all night.

Rumplestiltskin, and some layers are darker than others (like a murdered wife and a world-destroying curse), but so many are more beautiful than anyone would guess (like a quest to find his son and a library given her in every world she's lived in), and in the end, he is still hers.

She tightens her hand in his and slows her step so she can lean into him.

She pretends not to notice his stumble, or the catch in his breathing, or the tears in his eyes.

"Here we go," he says, his hand trailing after hers, holding on as long as possible.

Belle wants to weep at that statement alone ("This is my quest, my journey," he'd told her, still not quite accustomed to having anyone to walk at his side, but now there is a we, and that means more than any number of roses or necklaces ever could), but she must be brave. She must be strong. She will not be a weapon to hurt him, a tool to aid in his downfall, or a heavy chain holding him back. So she will not cry and she will not open her clenched fist and drag him back to her side (to safety). She will stand here and she will watch him step over this dividing line and she will wait for him to return to her (because she knows he will).

There is a moment of utter terror, when he freezes as a magic chill shimmers over him, when he turns and studies their surroundings as if he can't quite place them (a moment when she wonders how a world without Rumplestiltskin could even be worth living in). And then he points at her, his nimble fingers marking her out as adeptly as he can summon magic, and he smiles his crooked, mischievous smile at her, and he says, "Belle."

There is a moment, then, of sheer happiness, when she reaches out for his hand (careless of the line painted between them), when he gives it to her as naturally as if he does not need to think about it anymore. She smiles up at him, so relieved, so hopeful, so jubilant for his sake that she almost cannot breathe past the swelling of her heart. He is smiling down at her, his fingers are curled around hers, and nothing in the world can come between them (and she decides, then, that she will not go to her apartment tonight, that instead she will go home with him and lay beside him and hold him, engrave the memory on her mind for all the nights when he is gone, searching for his son).

"Oh, Belle, I so wish you were coming with me!" he exclaims, nothing of artifice or calculation in his eyes or his voice.

"As do I," she admits. But she is proud of him (for leaving the pirate behind, for being brave, for stepping over the line) and she loves him (for holding her hand and smiling at her and wishing she could accompany him on his adventure), so she says, "But it doesn't matter."

He tilts his head, just the slightest bit, and for an instant, he is scaled and restless, confused and entranced by whatever it is in her that confounds him, the Dark Castle protecting them behind its ramparts and spells. "And why not?" he asks her.

I will never leave you, she wants to tell him. I will be here for you forever. I will love you forever. My heart is yours. Don't forget me. Don't leave me behind. I will keep your heart safe. You can trust me. I trust you.

She wants to say much, too much, so much that she is trapped in the space of a moment, the interval of a heartbeat, and his eyes contain the world within them, and his hands cradle her heart. But she has already told him all of those things, in the brush of her fingers against his, in her arms around him, in the play of her lips on his, in the way her steps fall in time with his, in her smile as she looks at him.

"Because," she settles for saying (and it's not enough, but it will do), "you'll find him, and when you do, I'll be here waiting for you when you get back."

He has been abandoned and betrayed, her dear Dark One, and once upon a time, he never would have believed her. He would have suspected treachery, would have demanded a promise and a contract and a signature. But he is more Rumplestiltskin than Dark One now, and he has learned to reach out on his own, to stretch forth his hand and touch her. So he smiles at her (and she doesn't mind the tears gleaming in dark eyes because these are happy tears), and he bends down to kiss her.

There is an instant of expectation, of waiting, of patient contentment. His hand is a warm, solid weight in hers, his smile real and soft and so very gentle, his eyes fluttering closed to hide the magnitude of emotions he has never been able to contain. She is chilled, but more urgently, she feels overheated, flushed, ready and oh so willing to tilt her head back and kiss him.

There is an instant of fear and pain and confusion. Terror erasing the smiles, the happiness, the trust, the future easing the worn shadows in the hollows of his face. Burning, searing pain in her shoulder, stumbling forward, into his arms as he struggles to catch her, to hold her up.

There is a flash of light, a blue shimmering. The sound of a gunshot belatedly echoing in her conscience. A splash of orange at her feet. Hands on her, warm breath against her cheek. Starbursts of pain at her back.

Then there is nothing.