They drove in silence for a long while. It was a nervous silence on his part, a thoughtful one on hers. When he glanced over at her, she had her head turned towards the window, gazing at the dark greenery blurring past with a frown on her face. He wondered what thoughts were running through that curious mind of hers. A lot had transpired and been revealed to her throughout the course of the day, with no time for her to process any of it. He could only imagine how overwhelmed she must feel. What latest piece of information had finally exhausted her never-ending supply of forgiveness? He knew it was only a matter of time until she realized he was a lost cause, until she did away with the burden of warring with his nature and found someone more worthy of her.
When he could bare the silence no longer, he cleared his throat. "Thank you for coming with me. To test the potion, I mean." She turned and smiled at him, but it was a distracted smile that did not reach her eyes. He could practically hear the gears turning in her head, and it made his palms sweat with anxiety. "It's the least I could do, since I can't go with you," she replied. The least she could do? He had to refrain from rolling his eyes. He doubted she had even the slightest clue of just how much she did for him.
"Quite the day we've had…Belle." Her gaze had drifted off again. She was looking just to the right of his face, and he waited until her eyes met his again. She refocused, looking mildly sheepish for having a wandering mind while he was trying to have a conversation with her. "I'm sorry?"
"I said, quite the day we've had. Are you all right? I imagine you must be overwhelmed or at least exhausted. Perhaps you should have stayed-" " I'm fine, Rumple," she interrupted. He blinked at her, trying to gauge her honesty. "Although…I am curious. I have questions."
He smirked, unsurprised, but his features almost immediately fell serious again. Of course she had questions. Unfortunately, they were questions he did not want to answer. He sighed, feeling defeated. "I expected as much. Go on, then."
"I want to know about your wife. The pirate said…he said you killed her."
"I did." He could not look at her, did not want to see her reaction.
"But why? Didn't you love her?"
"I thought I loved her. I wanted to. I wanted her to love me, and she did not."
Head bowed, Belle continued, "She didn't love you. So you murdered her?"
"She left Bae. She left him without a second thought. I could see why she couldn't love me. I wished that she did, but I was not surprised by her lack of affection for me. But Bae…" He stopped, to avoid the crack in his voice.
When Belle said nothing more, he forced himself to focus on the road, and where he was going.
As badly as he wanted to escape this conversation, he felt compelled to continue. "She was not happy. From the very beginning, the very start of our marriage, she was unhappy. I tried. I did what I could. I thought if we had a child, we could be a family. It wasn't what she wanted, though. "
"So she ran off with Hook. And led you to believe you were unworthy of love? Unlovable?"
He let a small, sarcastic chuckle escape him. "I knew myself to be undeserving of love long before Milah."
It was true that he had never truly felt loved growing up, not the way the other children in his village were cherished by their parents. Not important enough for his father to even say goodbye or offer some explanation for his abandonment. Milah, of course, had not helped his already low sense of self worth, and the degradation of his heart certainly hadn't ended with Milah, either. Though he did not feel inclined to wade any further into this conversation by mentioning Cora. It seemed likely that the inevitable truth would be pried from him eventually, with Belle always curious and insisting upon knowing all of him, but that did not mean it had to be this night.
"Is that why you couldn't believe that I loved you?" Belle's voice interrupted his unpleasant thoughts.
After the shortest pause, he answered, "yes." It was true that Milah had played a role. What he did not voice was the million and one other reasons he could think up to disbelieve that the woman in the car next to him felt anything remotely pleasant towards him.
Though he knew she could tell there was more to be said, Belle herself said nothing more, and covered the hand that he had resting on his thigh with her own.
He brought the car to a stop, put it in park, but remained in his seat.
Reverently, he picked up the shawl that would lead him to its owner, his son. After all of his planning and dealing and waiting, he was finally where he wanted to be. After losing hope time and time again, first when he discovered that he could not leave town and keep his memories, and today when Hook stole his key to solving the first dilemma, he was going to find his son.
"This would have been lost, if it wasn't for you, Belle." He could feel her eyes on him. "I would have been lost," his voice was merely a choked whisper.
Yes, he would have been lost without his boy's shawl, and, by extension, without Belle having retrieved the shawl for him. But he hoped she heard what he hadn't expressly said. That he would have been lost long ago, lost to the darkness in his cold heart without her to cast him in her warmth.
Her warm hand on his arm gave him hope that she had heard his silent admittance.
Unable to meet her eyes, he asked the question that nagged at him daily, hourly. Every time she forgave him, every time she stood by his side when he least deserved it, every time she merely smiled at him, he wondered, "After everything you've learned about me, after everything I've done…why haven't you given up on me?"
There was a moment of silence, during which he worried voicing the question had made her question herself, as well. After a beat, she looked at him, with nothing but the kind and endeared smile she frequently wore when she looked at him.
"I learned a long time ago, that when you find something worth fighting for," she paused, trying to get him to make eye contact with her, "you never give up."
When he finally met her gaze, she was smiling at him. In that moment, with the path to his son in his hand, and this baffling, extraordinary woman looking at him with true and actual love in her eyes, he felt that his heart would expand to the point of breaking. He struggled for words, something to say to express the gratitude and pure joy he felt, but nothing seemed to do any of it justice.
Instead, he brought her hand to his mouth and gave it two quick kisses, letting his lips linger on the third. Her smile grew.
"Come on," she said to him. "You've waited long enough."
He agreed. As he got out of the car and waited for Belle to join him, he thought of her words. When you find something worth fighting for, you never give up. He had never stopped fighting for Bae, because he was more than worth the effort. Never in his wildest dreams did he foresee finding someone else worth fighting for; someone so beautiful to her core that she could find a spot in her heart for a monster.
Belle had never stopped fighting for him, and so he would be the man she needed him to be. He would fight for her.