Chapter 3
Magic
The crisis in the kitchen sparks something in Belle.
She's supposed to be in the office, translating essays (because 'translating' sounds much kinder, though less apt, than 'banished') and while he wouldn't go so far as to say they were punishing her with busy work, if she's smart she'll think twice before interrupting them again. The parlor tricks of youth and the distinction between them and actual power was an imperative discussion he needed to have with Regina, and no one cared for Belle interjecting her thoughts.
But, now, a tray is being shoved at him and he jerks back before being jabbed with the silver platter.
He looks up to see Belle, tray of sandwiches in one hand, book in the other.
He tsks her for the accident but she's not paying attention to him, instead frowning down at the book. "Is it pronounced 'Kin-ale-door-ache-the?'"
Rumplestiltskin looks across the room at Regina; she's holding a sandwich and a drink and looks like she's not sure what to do with either.
He empathizes with her mystified expression.
Rumplestiltskin looks back at Belle, his eyes slowly travelling up.
Ah, she brought him a drink too, balanced on a second tray atop her head.
He remembers her learning that trick.
"...No," he says, reaching up for the cup.
"How then?"
The Queen says, "Ken-all-thor-ache-the."
"Ah." Belle sits down in a chair, arranging herself and flipping open a notebook.
This will lead nowhere good. He can tell.
Regina asks him, "Why can't you be so useful?" and Rumplestiltskin doesn't reply.
It might just be a fair question.
Rumplestiltskin's given up caring when he can't find Regina or Belle.
Belle can go wherever she likes with whomever she likes. It's about time she not have a captor, dictating her comings and goings and laying out restrictions.
It's not fair, not fair at all, nor healthy that he should be a suffocating and overprotective presence, needing to always know the minute details of her life.
With that in mind he covers the mirrors to avoid temptation.
It feels a bit like being rewarded when he's lying next to Belle in bed, resting his weight half on top of her while she reads and doesn't mind.
He's been desperately wishing for his spinning wheel, probably as much as Regina's been craving her tree, but this is good too. Belle strokes her fingers through his hair and he can't remember at all why he's under pressure or should be worrying.
Free of stress he doesn't even find it frustrating that Belle's asking mind numbingly obvious questions in her crusade to become a sorcerer.
Privately he's termed it 'common sense 101,' but he's aware her queries are only tedious to him from his years of experience.
"What's hemolymph?" she asks. "Why is it 'one of the most necessary ingredients on your shelf'?"
"It's not," he says, "what drivel are you reading?"
"Rumplestiltskin."
"You don't believe me?"
"Rumplestiltskin."
"It's blood," he relents, "the blood in spiders, snails, beetles..." He wants to gesture, listing off, "flies, shrimps, grasshoppers..." It's a shade close to painful not to, but he doesn't want to disturb their lovely position. "Crabs, clams-"
"Very well," Belle interrupts, pauses and says, "and that sounds important."
"How morbid you are, my love. Going straight to the bloody dark spells."
He licks his lips, waiting. He's always throwing out innocent pet names, many frequently do add such decorations to their sentences; pet, dearie, dear, sweetie. He's even called her 'love' in the past.
But never when he's been in love with her.
He's been waiting, calculating, considering, trying to find a quiet and peaceful time to try it on for size.
Belle doesn't notice.
His pet names are white noise.
She turns the page in her book and he shrugs it off. Not noticing is, after all, better than shock. "There are more important things you should be learning."
"I want to learn this."
"You don't yet know traffic lights, ambulances, cameras, elevators..."
"Do I need to?"
"Yes, dearie," he says. "Yes."
Belle puts her book down. "All right." She jostles him as she tries to rise up. "If you say so. I'll read up on the laptop." With her hands on his shoulders she urges him away. "Move."
He pushes her back down. "Not important."
She laughs, "Thought not."
He threads his fingers through hers and kisses her hand.
Belle's fingers are back in his hair and it's perfect, this is perfect. Comfortable and undemanding. There's no one else in the universe he could be so at ease with, cozy and smitten. There's no one else who could make him forget there are cares in the world.
He turns their hands to lay them back to the bed when a glimmer of light catches a shine on her wrist.
Curious, he pushes her sleeve up, seeing a thin band of gold before Belle shakes him off in favor of her book.
This from the girl who harasses him about kissing?
"What's that?" he asks.
"Hmm?"
"Around your wrist."
"Oh." She shimmies the jewelry down and unties it for him. "Just some thread."
It pools in his hand when she lays it on his palm. Of course he recognizes it instantly, he's played with golden straw his entire life.
"It's mine," he says, and Belle smiles. "Where'd you get it?" He likes the image in his head of her stealing things from his shop as a souvenir for having survived the day long drama between himself and Regina.
But Belle's words turn slow and her shrug is cautious, "I don't know."
Ah.
Well, it doesn't matter. It doesn't even feel like's there's ill intent for Regina to give her such a thing and Belle wouldn't wrap it around her wrist if she thought otherwise.
When he shifts to place it back on her Belle grins, like she's terribly grateful there will be no bickering, and takes it from him instead. "Are you hungry?" she asks.
She moves him away, a sturdy and firm motion and it feels adamant enough that he lets her go. She stretches out to lay the golden cord on the nightstand.
"No," he says.
"Are you lying?"
Ngh. "Stop being a caretaker."
"Start using your magic to be productive."
Productive?
He magics the makeshift bracelet back snugly around her wrist as a display of helpfulness and Belle finishes, "And not tricks."
"Stay," he says, catching her arm. "Stay and I'll teach you to turn out the lights with a flick of your wrist."
"Does that involve throwing things at the light switches?"
"It does now, dearie."
"Soup sounds delicious."
He rolls onto his back and gives up.
As Belle opens the door she turns back and lightly says, "And I do know what traffic lights are."
"Oh?" Kudos?
"Yes. I had to walk to your shop, after Jefferson released me."
The name clicks. "Jefferson?"
"You know him?"
"Don't suppose I do." Though he knows of his exploits with the Queen. Crazy kids, those two. "But, the name rings a bell."
"I was walking to find you and someone told me."
Flatly he says, "You almost got run over, didn't you?"
Not the best way to prove she isn't so ignorant but Belle smiles like that's not the point at all. "And I know how to use a stove. Maybe we could all eat together in the kitchen?"
What an excellent way to ruin the day.
Belle says, "You can do that much, for me."
He stares at her in dismay.
She cannot possibly have just said that.
"You'll be a dark sorceress yet, Belle." She beams at him. "Cold. Wicked. Cruel." Belle giggles so he says, "No, no, don't laugh. They'll sing songs of your terrible deeds; the atrocities you inflict upon the innocent!"
Belle says, "An hour? I'll have dinner ready in an hour."
He flicks his wrist, the lights go out, Belle laughs as she walks down the hallway.
He liked her better when she traded smiles for friends and not dinners with foes.
Four letters in four weeks.
Belle's dear Papa sends one, every Sunday like clockwork, for his dearly departed daughter.
For why not think of it that way? Belle dead in the frosted mountains of his home, forever out of reach in his mysterious lands. Only the tortured souls, braving cliffs and fields and Dark Ones, find their way inside.
And rarely leaving in one piece.
Metaphorically speaking.
Ah, well. Perhaps that's why. Praying with letters to hear she's not been cast down to hell.
Maurice has never received a reply.
His persistent mail gathers dust in Rumplestiltskin's closet because he doesn't like the idea of Belle suffering the reminders of all she's lost and never will have again.
It's pouring salt into wounds and he likes to think he's better than that.
The fifth letter arrives with a white dove and Rumplestiltskin has the patience of a saint, but this is itching on his last nerve.
He doesn't read the letters because he knows what desperation sounds like and it's never much different when written; the tremor of a begging voice will shake the pen, bleed the ink and break her heart.
Belle doesn't need that, not when he's already aware she hides away homesick tears more often than he'd like. A weekly pen pal souvenir to store away with her already meager possessions will strengthen that grief, draw it out and make him feel like the bad guy.
And he doesn't need that any more than she does. These implications that he's the wicked one for saving hundreds of people at the cost of one.
He wants her to stop and he wants the letters to stop because he is not the ruthless one, not this time. He's the... He's the antihero.
He's doing Belle a service.
And then the sixth letter arrives, ruining an otherwise lovely day, and he knocks on the door to her room. "Belle?" It feels odd asking for permission when it's his door and his room and his house but not quite as odd as Belle's voice calling out, "Wait! Don't come in!"
He's tempted to, just for that.
A minute later, when a flushed and dripping Belle slants open the door, he's grateful he didn't give into the temptation. "You're wet."
"I was in the bath."
He doesn't like that he likes envisioning this.
She's always so distracting.
Rumplestiltskin pushes the door open wider and leans in past her, "I like what you've done with the place," he says in response to the sterile nothingness of the room.
"Why thank you," Belle says, bending back and away from him. "Did you want to come in?"
Maidens inviting sinister men into their bedchambers rarely ends well in his experience, and his sweeping entrance over the threshold signifies as much.
He catches Belle rolling her eyes with a curious twitch on her lips as she turns away to sit upon the bed, combing her fingers through her damp hair.
"Are you bored?" she asks, because it wouldn't be the first time he's pestered her when he couldn't think of anything productive to do.
"No. Not yet, no. I want to make a deal."
She tilts her head to the side to signify she's listening, but doesn't reply.
"With you."
Belle blinks. "With me?" Her surprise doesn't last long, replaced instead by intrigue. "For what?"
Now you see it, now you don't, he conjures her father's letters with a twist of his wrist and fans them in his hand like an ace high royal flush.
And always that cheating card up his sleeve.
It takes Belle a moment to recognize her father's seal on the envelopes and once she does she inhales, sharp and deep and he's surprised she's not coughing at the speed of it. She stops herself half way in a mad grab for them and warily asks again, "For what?"
"A letter."
"I don't understand, you want to keep one?"
He doesn't like the pining look of longing in her eyes as she stares at them.
Far better he never should have mentioned. Far better to not feel this nagging... repentance.
"I want you to write a letter, dearie."
"Yes!" she says at once. "Deal!"
She reaches for the envelopes and he lets them go into her hands, "And in it," he says with disappointment that she so readily agreed; Belle ought to know better than to say 'yes' before all terms have been laid out crystal clear. "You will tell your father or," he waves dismissively at the correspondence, "whomever, that they are to send no more missives."
"What? Why?"
He scoffs, turning away to exit the room, "Because I say so."
"But- that... wait!" She's quicker than she looks, standing in front of him, a hundred pounds soaking wet and wide eyed. "That's not an answer."
"It's a great answer."
Belle flings her hand out, blocking his exit with her arm stretched over the door.
Well, then. He's never been trapped in a woman's bedroom before. Certainly not when she was wearing so little and it was hugging her figure like-
Never before has he been so careful to keep his eyes trained on someone's face.
"What harm are letters?" she asks.
"What harm are words on paper?"
"My father's letters?"
"A lonely king with wealth and influence?"
"Rumplestiltskin."
He chuckles.
"They're a nuisance. And who knows what unjustly things the two of you gossip about."
"Do you want to read them?"
"No, I don't want to-"
"Scan them for magical booby-traps?"
He neither likes being interrupted nor implied he could hold in his hand a curse powerful enough to jinx him and be unawares. He stares at her flatly for daring both.
"How much of a nuisance can a letter be? Surely it wouldn't take you long to deliver or send anything? Or," out of nowhere Belle deflates, looking worried and mistrustful. "Do you..." she looks down at the letters. "Are you trying to hurt me?"
He finds it extraordinary that she looks dumbfounded to think he'd do that. He wants to flick her between the eyes and tell her to think it through and wake up to the reality of her situation here.
He would, also, greatly like to tell Belle that she's old enough to know that women with those smiles and that body do not stretch out with clothes soaked to them.
"And if I am?"
Her brow furrows as she thinks it through but when looks him in the eyes, there's a steely look about her. "Then I wouldn't believe you."
Fancy that.
"I'll make you a deal," Belle says and it's his turn to look intrigued.
"Oh, is that so?"
Belle nods encouragingly like he ought to say yes, here and now.
That'll be the day.
She looks around curiously, trying to find something to barter with.
But she has nothing he wants. Even if she had, he owns her, he owns everything she has. His for the taking so there's nothing to trade with.
Belle stands there, anxious and shivering and Rumplestiltskin Does Not Look Down.
Trinket. Ornament. Maid. Caretaker.
Nothing else.
Belle smiles suddenly and sways back and forth like a child trying to endear someone into giving them presents.
Beaming, she says, "I'll be happy."
He chokes on her words and that solves one problem at least; stupid women are not attractive. "I give you what you want and in exchange you'll... be happy that I did?"
"People do all manner of things when they're happy, Rumplestiltskin. They laugh at unfunny jokes," she looks at him like he's expected to be amused and not offended by this, "they bake cakes and cookies," the girl can't master bacon and eggs, "and sing and dance. Stay up later and wake up earlier, eager to spend time with those making them happy..."
"You're terrible at this."
"Really? It seems to me like you're getting the better end of the deal."
"And when it doesn't make you happy...?" when it makes her sad, regretful and homesick it'll just nag at him that he didn't follow through on his end.
"It will. Knowing my friends and family are well and thinking of me, will." She looks hopeful but doesn't cave to his wants when he doesn't relent. "Because of you," she wheedles. "Safe and well because of you."
Well, she's learning.
"Talking with them won't make me any less your caretaker," she adds like a mind reader.
He raises his eyebrow.
She looks frustrated. Frustrated and then crafty. "Yours."
Oh, nice. It hadn't been what he was going for, but nice.
He smirks.
So does she.
"It's a good deal," she promises.
He shakes his head in exasperation and walks past her out the room.
"Thank you," Belle says, though he can't recall agreeing to anything.
Rumplestiltskin says, "Of course."
Regina's stopped tapping her pen against her teeth when they work in the same room together because it irritates the ever loving hell out of him. She's taken, instead, to drawing when stuck in thought.
And he's grateful.
So grateful that he chooses to be flattered that she's thinking of him and ignores the skull and crossbones she's doodled around his name.
She's asleep on the couch when he walks past her. She looks innocent and soft and he wants to set her hair on fire because she has no right, no right at all, to look peaceful and lovely when she's holding the only woman he's ever loved hostage.
Instead, he taps his pen against her arm as he walks around her, onetwothree, and her shoulder, onetwothree, and the top of her head until she wakes up.
"Don't you ever sleep?" she asks foggily.
"Not when you're around."
Regina stretches out as she wakes up. "Mmm. You're safe, dear." Snide even when half dead to the world. "You're so useful alive."
He taps her nose with his pen to be irritating in return.
She asks, "Have you found something?"
"A greater respect for my tolerance, your Majesty."
Regina nods her head. "I can make use of that."
He's sure she can. "Yourself?" She smiles slowly and, actually, he doesn't want to hear her comeback, "Good, good."
It only makes her smile widen.
She picks up her notebook, looking nauseated at the prospect of getting back to work, and asks, "How do you see this turning out?"
He sits on the table, arranging documents around him for access and organization, "Hmm?"
"Can't you see the future, Rumplestiltskin?"
Ah. Well, "I know I get Belle back." He smiles.
"And how shall I interpret that?"
"However suits you best, I presume."
"I grow tired of your games."
"I think, dearie, that's my line."
Regina smiles like she's won this round. "So it is." He can't imagine why she thinks that.
Their lapse into silence doesn't last long. Regina can't stand another moment of coming so close to a solution only to watch all her hard work fall apart upon closer examination.
Regina asks, "Where is your lover?"
It nags on him every time she refers to Belle thusly.
Regina believes it fact, a perfectly acceptable title to bestow upon his love and as such it vexes him. But, he shudders to think of the conversation that would follow if he corrected her assumptions and so he remains silent on the matter.
He could hazard a guess to Belle's whereabouts, but since they're both here he chooses instead, "She wants to learn magic."
He doesn't know where this desire has come from. She's lived with him, with Regina, where magic is more important than breathing, for years and the want to learn has only taken her now.
"And you're warning me off?"
"I said no such thing, your Majesty."
"Yet." Rumplestiltskin nods his head in agreement. "How lucky for her to have you, then. Of course, your time is valuable. Can you really afford to waste it?"
Rumplestiltskin doesn't rise to bait. Regina doesn't mean it, he knows. While he isn't going mad with frustration, where he's used to years and decades and centuries of research, Regina isn't. She finds the entire process deserving of an outlet, any outlet, and Regina wants to keep him happy.
He's considered informing her of how very unwelcome her help is, but he suspects it would only make the vicious loathing that superficially wraps her thoughtful advice triple in cruelty.
"There are easier ways to have power," Regina says. "Get her a gun, she'll never master magic."
Rumplestiltskin doesn't think it's about mastering magic at all. "It's not about power, your Majesty."
"It's always about power."
"Not with Belle, dearie."
Regina runs her fingers through her hair, looking helplessly frustrated. It draws his attention to how very ordinary she looks. In the near century he's known her, she has never looked anything less than supernatural in her ability to be lovely.
"Well," she says, "You'd know better than I."
He should know better than her.
When she looks at him her eyes are indulgent and curious and he's so very tired of having someone on par with his games. Regina asks, "What are you going to teach her? Something cheap?"
Naturally. All magic comes with a price and he would rather Belle not pay too highly.
"Oh, I don't know," he says with a flighty hand wave, "seeing through deception spells? Breaking disguise enchantments? Uncovering the truth of people?"
"I don't think those are spells."
"No?" Thoughtfully he nods his acquiesce, "No."
It's not enchantments trapping Belle to Regina, it's the years between them.
Years that could have been his, if he had just...
If he will just trust her. Sit her down and tell her it's not about the power, it's his son. Lost, but not dead, despite his implying otherwise. Bae is the axis his life, his ambitions, revolves around.
He needs to tell her. She deserves to know.
"Maybe if you wish really hard?" Regina offers, "It seems to work for you. The dead rose just for you, Rumple." Regina smiles sweet and sickly.
Rumplestiltskin stares at her for a long moment then slowly smiles, unfriendly, "This death wish of yours isn't cute anymore, dearie."
Regina's fingers clench around the pen in her hand and Rumplestiltskin thinks of the people in her life whom she didn't get back. He shouldn't feel joy in that, they did nothing wrong to deserve his scorn, but it's hard not to rejoice just a tad.
They both take a moment to quiet their anger down, pushing it into the places where their wants for revenge and payback go.
"I can no longer tell if you are feigning ignorance or if you truly are so slow," Regina says, shaking her head in disappointment. "The mighty Rumplestiltskin; a legend long before my time. A fool at the heart of it."
"You needn't trouble yourself on behalf of my psyche, dearie."
"And so let you have the advantage?"
She's right, of course. He catalogues her every movement. Rumplestiltskin was one of the many who failed, more than once, to see her coming. She makes him wary and she keeps him alert. Being relaxed in Regina's presence is playing Russian Roulette.
And, yes, it's dangerous to spare more than two words with him, but at the least he's never gutted someone for looking at him askance.
Rumplestiltskin raises his book like a wine glass and toasts, "To silence, then?"
Regina sneers, but relents. "To silence," she agrees.
Rumplestiltskin is upstairs when he hears Belle shriek. A shocked, panicky sound that piques his interest just enough for him to look down, down in the direction where he'd heard her cries on the floor level below.
He raises his eyebrow, considers his options, and then leans back over his desk. He's busy. He's comfortable. He doesn't want to run to assumed rescues.
Belle yelps, "Regina!" and he tilts his chair back and looks up at the ceiling.
He hears Regina laugh her Evil Queen laugh, which he's always adored for its caricature dramatics, and pushes himself out of his chair. He's curious.
He's there just in time to see Regina throw a cup of dark liquid at Belle, drenching her face and hair and making her freeze in surprise.
He'll go on ahead and assume the spilt drink has something to do with the smell of burning in the kitchen.
There are lights above Belle's head, like animated stars over a wounded cartoon character, though these are whipping around, chaotic and threatening and out of her control.
He doesn't need to look to know he'll find runes and hieroglyphics, candles and the herbs in his spice rack.
Belle has no innate ability to perform magic and only a few days of theory. This is all Regina's doing.
He walks over and stops next to the Queen, the table separating them from Belle, and raises his eyebrow in question.
Regina shrugs.
Belle bats at the fire spark balls thrashing above her, ducking beneath them when they go for her head and snaps, "A little help, then?!"
Helpfully, Regina laughs.
Helpfully, Rumplestiltskin tilts his head and smiles.
Which, to be fair, is kinder than laughing.
This is how Regina learned magic, he's sure of it, with her mother who was no doubt far less kind in teaching.
Cora would not have had Regina's genuine amusement.
Rumplestiltskin flicks a spark that drives too close near him and asks, "What happened?"
"She burned the papyrus before she said 'Occurro.'"
Ah, yes. Ritual magic will bite you every time you deviate.
Occurro: Occur.
Occurro: Attack.
Belle passionately says, "I did not!"
Rumplestiltskin takes Belle's vehement disagreement for the fact she must have made the mistake by nanoseconds. That she must not even have noticed.
It's a rookie mistake and one they've all made.
And never admit to.
"Help me!" Belle hisses.
Ah, but Belle is being helped, isn't she? She's not being attacked. A little singed, certainly frazzled, riled and annoyed, but she's not in danger.
She's not in danger because Regina is helping.
Regina's influence keeping the spell in line is the reason they aren't on the phone with police emergency, but he supposes it would be no fun for the Queen if she were to admit to it.
Scratch beneath the surface and there isn't a lot of Cora in Regina at all. He wants to ask what her first realspell was, if it left her bleeding and damaged and what words her mother came up with to express her assessment of her novice talents.
Rumplestiltskin's about to banish the lights when Belle grabs the book to her and flips madly through the pages.
She runs her fingers down the pages, speed reading and getting scorched around the edges.
She bats away the stinging sparks, hissing when they smack into her and then slams her finger down roughly on a line.
Both Regina and Rumplestiltskin lean forward to see if she's correct in what she's found.
Belle looks put out and aggravated when she reaches for the cocktail of herbs to correct the situation.
It's not all that impressive, being able to read a book and end a spell, but he enjoys that she's taking the initiative and not breaking down.
Judging by Regina's expression, she's pleased too.
Pleased, that is, until Belle wraps the herbs in the charred papyrus, mumbles something under her breath and tosses the bundle at Regina, who catches it on instinct.
All those little balls of torment swarm her and Rumplestiltskin ducks quickly out of the way and cracks up. Cackling at Regina's sudden yelp and the way the lights are vicious in their attack without the safety net of a spotter to keep them in line.
It doesn't last long, the spell easily broken at Regina's command, but she's still peppered here and there with burn marks.
Rumplestiltskin puts his hands over his mouth to embellish a look of terrible contriteness for his amusement and even Belle's lips are twitching to smile in vindication.
"Thank you," Belle says, "for your help."
Her words certainly don't sound like gratitude but Rumplestiltskin bows in his servitude anyways. "That's magic, dearie. There's always a price to pay." It's hard to have an overwhelming sense of sympathy for her when absolutely every sorcerer has to go through these trials.
Belle's eyes meet Regina's, throwing down a clear daring gauntlet between them.
Belle pushes her hair, sticky with spilt cola, away from her face and shoulders and says, "If you don't mind..." She grabs the spell book to her with righteous flare and turns sharply to leave them.
Regina hums a sympathetic sound, "That's right, dear," she says, watching Belle exit, "Get back on that horse as soon as possible." The sentiment leaves Regina with a moody sort of look about her as though the words mean something more than they are.
He doesn't like when Regina goes off meaning more than she appears to. She's expecting something and he does not know what.
Regina doesn't acknowledge him for another moment yet and when she finally does turn to him she has a suddenly bright smile that's incredibly unnerving. "I have something for you." She nods her head that he should follow her.
She leads him back to the den and, once again, is shoving papers at him.
There're half a dozen pages, three of which include scatter graphs, pie graphs, things that look like candlesticks and why does Regina have charts?
Oh, god. Is she back to homework assignments?
At least there are insulting doodles around the edges to show she was thinking in picture grids and not just dissertations.
At the center of it all is, "Lake Nostos?"
"You used the Well," yes, because it always comes back to what he did, "and the Well is from..." she pauses, nods her head in correction, and adds, "contains some of Nostos' water."
He has to think on it and while he does she begins talking just that bit faster, "It's how you connected our world to this one. It's the conduit, Rumplestiltskin, why not turn it into the source? After all, you said-"
"No need to get defensive. I understand." He understands and doesn't need her to draw him a literal picture in order to win him over.
"And you agree."
"I don't disagree." But they can't very well bust out shovels and dig their way into the Enchanted Forest.
And even if they could, Lake Nostos was never pure magic and, like everything else, it too has been corrupted by this land.
Her, ugh, area graph begins with Nostos and spikes out to the areas it has contaminated and where it has possibly spread off to in degrees of potency. Her network diagram shows different, failed and conceivably successful, methods and conclusions.
Regina crowds his space, leaning into him until they're touching so she can obsessively see which threads he's crossing out as immediate failures.
He turns his head to look pointedly at her but when she meets his eyes it's clear she doesn't understand his deliberately raised eyebrow. She cards her fingers through the pages he holds and pulls one out of his hands.
There are scripts of smudged cursive writing going on and on about DNA. He throws his head back in frustration.
"Already, Rumple?" she says in response to his instant rebuff, "You haven't heard my idea."
"Well, dearie, it's hard to take seriously without pictures."
And they can't very well re-write human DNA.
...can they?
Is that what the knife of the Dark One did?
But even if it had, it would take more time than he can bear to find the method, means and... What? Multiplying bacteria? Mutating virus?
Rumplestiltskin runs his hand over his eyes.
All right, no. Back, back, back.
To her chagrin he dismisses the page back to the end of her notes. "Lake Nostos," he repeats.
She seems mollified that he didn't trash the paper and might therefore go back to the joke of a theory.
They need something that won't spread and liquid spreads through everything, goes anywhere, into the bloodstream and membranes and skin and organs and...
They need that which will contain itself only to a specific living organism. Microorganisms to grow and reproduce and water does nothing but evaporate.
They need... to latch onto particular cells in the body and there's no such thing as a broad spectrum single virus. It's why there's no one antiviral to save the world.
While the image of Regina's head inflamed or her respiratory system seizing is, indeed, lovely, it's not productive to his plans.
He sighs. These are all the same problems he's been having. Regina has yet to fall a step behind him in this mad plan of hers but that's not to say he's following behind.
All right, no. Back, back, back.
The Wishing Well.
No.
Not that.
The Wishing Well vs. True Love.
True Love poisoning the water, right. Back to basics. True Love powerful enough to kick up a storm of magic, kick start the small glimmer of the power from the Enchanted Forest's realm and blow the Well wide open.
But Regina isn't an ingredient powerful enough to transcend realms.
And, of course, there's still the problem of the body's natural immune system that kicks out hijackers trying to latch on.
No.
Not that.
Regina is watching him like a vulture, quiet and treacherous. When he looks at her she straightens in anticipation, like his silent consideration of ideas has led him to the perfect conclusion.
He feels almost disappointed in himself, like a failure of an authority figure, that he's about to let down a child who has so much faith in him. Who believes there is nothing beyond his capability.
Then he remembers how much he hates Regina, and why, and feels better about it.
He shakes his head and Regina looks up at the ceiling like his frustration has absolutely nothing on her own.
He drops himself into a chair, kicks his feet up on the seat and says, "From the top."
Rumplestiltskin's thoughts go into overdrive the next day, thinking on their dialogue. His ideas are bouncing around insanely in his brain, unable to find order and balance. He feels so very close to beating them into uniformity that his nerves are stinging with the frustration of the solution so close to his fingertips.
Rumplestiltskin needs symmetry.
He evicts the idea that Regina might have unearthed a profound conclusion that she hasn't yet shared but he wants to hear her thoughts on the matter, just once more. A simple odd phrasing on her part could inspire the disorder inside his mind to find peace.
He asks Belle, "Where's Regina?"
"Her room, I think."
Everything is so possessive in his mind that he privately reshuffles Belle's words into, 'the room you gave her.'
He's halfway up the stairs when he hears Belle's voice, sudden with realization, call out, "She wants to be alone."
Belle might care for Regina's privacy but if Regina wants his help she has to accept it day or night and whenever he so deigns to give it.
He can feel the magic outside her room as he gets closer. She's enchanting his house and that is ten kinds of irritating.
Belle's there to hold his hand back when he, magnanimously, tries to knock on the door.
He can't look at her for a moment, needing a second to curb his irritation that Belle's supporting Regina again.
"Belle -"
Belle shakes her head 'no' and says, "Shh."
He considers digging his feet in and refusing to be moved when she tries to pull him back but her look of disappointment overwhelms his own into acquiesce.
"I don't want to argue with you over this," Belle says, her voice whisper soft, steely and resolved.
"I'm not arguing." She knows what it's like when he argues and he hasn't begun. "But why are you doing this, dearie?"
And it's so much more than knocking on a door. So much more than Belle requesting peace between them.
Belle pulls him back further at his insistence not to lower his voice. "No," she says, "I'm not dealing with you."
He waves off the notion as not being the point of his question, "I'm not dealing today."
Belle looks away, thoughtfully considering her options. He thinks she's going to walk away and leave him continually guessing but when she looks back at him she nods, "She's done things," Belle says slowly, "for me. That... no one else would have."
Rumplestiltskin blinks. There isn't a thing on this, or any other, earth that he would not bend over backwards to give to her. "Not even me?"
Belle takes a breath and says, honestly, "I don't know. I just know you didn't."
"What?" he asks, "What is it?"
Rumplestiltskin, the coward, too afraid to meet this denial and conquer it.
Regina's voice, defensive and angry, snaps out on the other side of the door, "He's my son," she says with brittle venom in her tone. "I want to talk to him, Princess Swan."
Belle and Rumplestiltskin freeze.
He hadn't cared to consider whatshe had enchanted in the room, but nothing will now convince him it wasn't a mirror.
Belle knew. She knows. Of course she does.
"Tell me," he doesn't mean the words to sound unkind but it's the love of his life and his greatest enemy. It's the need Regina has to cling and the kindness Belle indiscriminately possesses.
It's that he doesn't know when Regina stole Belle's heart.
He doesn't know when Regina stole her.
He doesn't know and it's thin ice to make Regina tell him.
"Please," she says, "I don't want to-"
Regina's voice behind the door says, "Henry," with relief that's painfully sincere.
Even when she's not trying, Regina makes the world revolve around her.
Rumplestiltskin invades Belle's space and whispers, like she wants him to, "You're asking for a lot, Belle."
Belle laughs softly, looks up at the ceiling and avoids eye contact with the man who is pushing incredible gall to say such words.
But he's right and she knows it. She knows it so she acquiesces, "I lost someone," she says, "That I loved with all my heart."
"Who?" he asks, not wanting to assume.
Regina says, "I am." He can hear delighted, muted and incredulous tears in Regina's voice, "I am okay."
He draws Belle away from the hallway as Regina says, "I miss you," to her son.
"Who did you lose?" Was it him? Is he the cause of all of this?
"It doesn't matter," Belle says, her voice still soft though there's no threat of interrupting the Queen now. "Not anymore." There's steel in her tone, the sound of someone who's moved on. "But... it changed me." She makes the words sound like a question and it makes him, in turn, unsure if it's fact. "It..." She makes a helpless gesture with her hands; she doesn't want to say the words.
Overwhelmed, then? Defeated? Did it break her?
Rumplestiltskin reaches out to take her hands but she lowers them away from him. It doesn't seem a hostile nor pointed gesture and he tries not to take it as such. "You understand?" she asks.
"Yes. Yes, I do."
"She believed in me." Belle looks like she's pulling teeth, but she doesn't cry and he certainly hopes that's not for his benefit, "And no one else did, Rumplestiltskin. No one."
Belle doesn't even bother to hide the fact she knows the Queen had alternate motivations in return for her help. It's in her eyes; she knows Regina's actions came with self-profit.
Belle looks too close to being overwhelmed by the topic for him to push it. Despite the reasons, Belle believes she's received more than Regina did from it.
He can wait; he has infinite skill at patience.
"You don't have to do this for her. You don't owe her this."
"You don't know that."
"No one knows that better than I, dearie."
"I'm sorry," Belle says, and it breaks his heart that she isn't, "I'm so sorry. This isn't-" She bites her lip and he can see the effort she's putting into not looking away. To face him head on. "It's not supposed to hurt you."
He almost believes with her. Almost.
But she must know now, as she must have done then, that it would hurt him.
"It's not forever," she reminds him.
Whatever she owes Regina, he owes Belle double. He doesn't believe her, but he can absolve her. He wants to absolve her as he's wanted her forgiveness for decades. "It's not forever," he agrees.
Instantly she looks like a great weight has been lifted from her shoulders. "Come," he teases, "You can stop me from setting her things on fire." After a moment's pause he scrunches his nose like that was a distasteful offer. "Would you like to see what a 'fire extinguisher' is?"
Belle laughs and wraps her arm tightly around his waist as they walk down the stairs.
Notes:
Much thanks to Nym for not minding me borrowing her Rumbelle ribbons and to Katers007 for knowing Latin and being a fantastic beta! :)
Thank you to all the lovely reviewers, I'm delighted you like my story!