Part Two: Words Dead on My Tongue

I pushed you away
Although I wished you could stay.
So many words left unsaid,
But I'm all out of breathe.

The woman lay in the hospital bed a sick ache in her heart, an ache she didn't know how to explain. With a mind void of memories it surely should have held, she wondered how to name the things she felt were missing. She felt empty and void, there was no better word she could recall…all words, all feelings were slippery things to her now. She would reach and she'd grasp, searching for them but finding they slid from her fingers, slid from the tip of her tongue, slid dead just off her tongue.

It was such an odd feeling, to feel so disconnected from everything, to wonder who you were, wonder about what was before, before the void, before those words went to die on her tongue…to feel the way she did. She laid with noting at all to compare this feeling to, no memories of what she might have been like before. She breathed out a long breath, if she could just explain why there was this ache in her chest.

Mr. Gold. The name floated into her mind, unbidden and from places unknown. The man was, well she had no idea who he was actually. He was something, someone to her, or whoever he thought she was. To this woman she might have possibly been before. To this Belle of his.

To her, this woman she didn't know in her head, he had no meaning, no connection. But he was someone, so clearly someone.

She thought back on him, on his face. That beautiful and imperfect face. He was a handsome man even if she didn't know who he was she knew he was handsome. Her eyes worked perfectly fine after all, it was just that her mind had decided to flee, or at least her memories, and with those any words that might have been once on her tongue to describe him, define him.

As much as she felt like she didn't know who this Mr. Gold was, she felt equally she hadn't even a beginning of an idea of whom she was. Except, except when Mr. Gold was around. He made her think perhaps she did, just a bit, just little. Made her think that perhaps she did know who she was, somewhere down deep.

He made her think that perhaps she knew just a little about this woman that dwelt in the voids, in blanks in her head.

She liked men in suits. This person, whoever she was.

She liked quirked smiles and kind eyes.

She liked the accent that this Mr. Gold had she liked his voice.

And the way he moved his hands.

This person that she was didn't understand at all, these things that she apparently liked, didn't understand why, but well, all doubts aside she liked them all the same.

She only felt these stirrings of faint interest around this baffling man. When that woman, what was her name? Ruby, yes that was it, had brought her that book? No, that wasn't right, that woman did not know her, did not stir in her things that made her believe she might understand, it didn't make her feel or think the way Mr. Gold did. He almost made her believe she could find out whom this woman in her head truly was.

He had terrified her at first, she still didn't know why this traitorous mind was torturing her not just with the blanks and the voids, but with images of fireballs in this Mr. Gold's hands.

She didn't understand why that at the same time she was terrified to have him touching her, calling her Belle, to have him kissing her she also would look him and have a flicker, like the words and thoughts that slipped through her hands were almost back in her grasp. A flicker that said he was something more, that there was something she wasn't seeing, that little something more. It left her exhausted, trying to remember things she didn't know and feelings she didn't understand.

Tired and weary she turned to her pillow, the pillow that was stiff and flat in a case that was scratchy and laid her head down with a sigh. It was of course, just as her mind started to settle that the phone decided to ring.

The voice on the other end was cracked, broken and filled with gutted pain. She knew the voice, the voice that spoke a name she didn't recognize as her own, no matter how he claimed it was. A voice that somehow, in some why she still couldn't name, touched a piece of her she knew was there, just misplaced, just forgotten, just slipped from her fingers, like that fragile china cup.

"Mr. Gold, I told you, I don't remember you," she felt the ache in her chest lessen at hearing the timbre of his accent breaking through, even while it increased, hearing the pain it came with. She sat up as much confused by the irrational feelings she had as by the evident pain in his voice. Something was wrong, something wasn't right. The ache was increasing.

"I-I… I know. I know. It's just… Sweetheart, I… I'm dying... I know that you're…confused about who you are. So, I'm going to tell you. You are a hero, who helped your people. You're a beautiful woman, who loved an ugly man. Really, really loved me."

"You find goodness in others. And when it's not there, you create it. You make me want to go back. Back, to the best version of me. And that never happened before. So, when you look in the mirror and you don't know who you are, that's who you are."

She hears the words, she hears what he's saying and she finds she's crying. She's crying and she can't stop. She doesn't have words to say, they are all sliding from her fingers, dying on her tongue. She doesn't know why she's shaking in her marrow. This man that she doesn't know, doesn't remember is the reason for the ache in her chest, the reason that the voids in her uncooperative mind sting so bad.

She can't stop crying. She wants to speak, but she can't form the thoughts, she can't find those words! Why are they forsaking her now!

Words her constant friends, her constant guide and comfort…

Words. Words upon pages…pages in a book.

Words. She knows them, she sees them, words her sanctuary and her salvation.

Words. Where were they now? Why had they abandoned her as she listens to this man breaking, dying with every breath and word he gives to her?

Why can't she find them? Why can't she remember?

"Thank you… Belle…" he says as the phone goes silent and the line dead.

The breath chokes in her throat, the words gone, unsaid. She pushed him away all those times before, pushed away the man she couldn't remember. Couldn't remember like those words on the tip of her tongue.

Her words. Her books. Her library…her libraries. Those books, those chapters…those lines written upon her heart…no her mind does not remember him, but her heart? Oh her heart knows the words written there, the words to the song that was older than time, to a story written in prose engraved deeper than the chasms in her mind. Her heart knows the words, the words that would never die again on her tongue.

"I remember…and I love him."