Disperse in Cloud and Awe
a Rumbelle fanfic
for iamaonegirlfreakshow, who prompted "Cancer Patients AU"
~
It began with a flicker, a twinge of pain, a spasm through Augustus Gold's gimp leg.
The feeling itself was nothing new; he rubbed one hand along the thin white scar, a habit that calmed the muscle almost as much as it distracted him from the ache. It was as though his leg was some other creature separate from himself, one that could be soothed simply by being pet. He kneaded the weary skin with the tips of his fingers, massaging the pain out in repetitive, practiced motions.
A fire roared in the fireplace just across from him, providing the room's only warm glow, and his unfocused eyes seemed trained on the fire as he took a sip of his dark red wine. The light flicked across the glass, flames spiraling light and shadow across its surface just as easily as it did the book now set aside on one table and the fingers still working the scar.
There was a pause as they touched an oddly shaped lump, sending tendrils of pain through the muscle once more.
Gold's lips curled back. He placed the glass down next to his book and bent over for a closer look. One fingernail curved around the surface of the lump; he grit his teeth with a mixture of emotions he would not name even if he could. This, too, was familiar to him, even more than the spasms, the kneading, the ache and the limping.
The fear and dread he will not name, but the anger he embraced, taking up his glass once more in a firm grip before dashing it against the far wall.
The first time he'd had surgery, the nurses told him to count backwards from one hundred. His frightened eyes met Millie's, and she'd clasped his hand between both of her own, squeezed it once, then bent and kissed his forehead so softly that the comfort – or perhaps it was the fear – made his eyes water. She'd loved him, then, and smiled in a strained way that told him she, too, was afraid. His gaze had shifted to her swollen belly to avoid her concern, and he'd taken a deep breath, beginning the count backward.
Now, as the nurses were preparing to put him under the knife yet again, they said nothing about counting, choosing instead to give him pills upon pills on an empty stomach, large medical chunks that he took alone, without water. The drowsiness would come eventually, and although he was currently conscious enough to know there was no one with him, he knew that when he first began to wake afterwards, still numbed by the drugs, he would imagine Millie and Neal were both with him. Their absence would hurt all the more as he regained understanding, but within moments he would grab his gold-tipped cane and force himself forward, just like always.
He awoke alone – always alone now after countless surgeries and perhaps that should be familiar to him, but it wasn't – and ran his fingers along the scar. It felt the same as it always had, with the exception of another incision, stitched up of course, where the doctors had taken their knives and removed the new lump. At least it was gone again. There would be tests after that and, eventually, they would return to tell him how bad it was.
Augustus never once questioned that the venomous cancer had returned – he knew it had as soon as he touched the newest lump – he only wanted to know if the surgery would be enough or if his treatment would be…more involved.
No, even then, he didn't need to know anything.
This wasn't the first time the disease coursed through his body, tearing through his bones like a hot knife through butter. It may have been beaten down into submission twice before, but if he was honest with himself, he'd known it was only a matter of time before it returned. Now that his family was gone, now that what little warmth he'd built for himself after that had disappeared, now that his existence didn't matter in the slightest – now it came for him…and there was nothing he could do about it. The third time was the charm, after all.
And Augustus Gold would die just like he'd lived the past few years of his life.
Completely alone.
His hair – once a part of his pride and joy, especially after the first two rounds – fell out in intervals. The first tuft came away in his hands as he showered, and for a moment he stood there, water trickling down his chest, just staring at it. They told him once, almost seventeen years ago now, that this meant the medicine was working, but he wasn't sure how much he believed them. He only remembered the last time it happened, how his boy's eyes had widened in disbelief that this disease could do such a thing to his papa.
After a few moments blinking as the water hit his eyes, Augustus continued with his shower, scrubbing at his wrinkled skin with the knowledge that he would need a barber as soon as possible. By the end of the day, his hair was gone – bits of it scattering the floor in his apartment, clumps of it swept from the shoulders of his finely tailored suit, the rest swept away from the barber's chair. The summer breeze chilled his bare head, but he walked as he had before, a wolf shorn of the sheep's fleece.
The first time he met Belle French, he still had his hair but had yet to regain a single shred of his former dignity.
Millie remarried a certain Killian Jones, and at first, she'd thought herself and her son safe in the city of Mist Haven, despite being only a few hours away from Augustus himself. He didn't know – he couldn't remember – how he first learned of their location. Perhaps it was a scattered snatch of background conversation while he was on the phone with Neal, a little hint of the town's name in that selfish pirate's odd accent – but once he knew of Mist Haven, once he did his research and found that the town was small enough to have only one high school – how could he not visit?
Of all the teachers he spoke with that night, only two really stood out: Mrs. Blanchard, a chatty, hopeful sort of woman whom he highly suspected revealed his visit to the Joneses, and Ms. French, a much younger teacher, honest and gracious to a crippled man. Augustus might almost have been attracted to her if he hadn't been in a rebound of his own at the time with another parental victim of divorce who had lost her child to her former spouse. They'd found comfort in each other's embrace for a short time, yes, but her ambitions—
Augustus Gold never considered himself a bad parent, but he did notice when other people where and often found himself looking with disdain on Cora Mills and her kin.
Regardless, his short chat with Ms. French had been almost civil, he grasping tightly to the golden crook of his much needed cane and she digging her fingers into the seams of her navy blue pencil skirt. They only met the once – Millie put out a restraining order on him soon after finding out about that insurgence (she'd yelled at Augustus over the phone; the pirate demanded to speak to him man-to-man in an effort to smooth things over; Gold had sneered – there'd been a distinct lack of Neal in the conversation, but he hadn't thought to be bothered by that until much later) – but the teacher had certainly made an impression – a good one.
Two years, his hair, and his health passed before Augustus saw Ms. French again in one of the chemotherapy waiting rooms. Perhaps it was his loneliness that drew him near to her familiar face, or, if he were honest with himself, it was his desperate desire to glean any information about his son that he could, however long it might have been since he'd been in her class.
Ms. French regarded him with a confused glance, a moment of awareness, then a look of immense sadness before reaching out and, on instinct, rubbing his head with one gloved hand.
"Your hair."
"Yes, dearie. My hair. It happens to everyone eventually."
She'd smiled then – a painful thing – and nodded once before returning to her book.
He thought, initially, that he only attempt interactions with Ms. French to learn about his son, and although Ms. French would become, for various reasons, a good source of that, Augustus soon found himself sitting next to her for something else entirely.
The first time he'd dealt with the disease, there'd been a handful of visitors, but by his second round, there weren't many – only his wife and his ten year old son sitting with him in the hospital, distracting him in waiting rooms, holding his hand in surgery pre-ops, having to see his cowardly fear firsthand. He liked to fool himself into believing that his problems with Millie didn't come until after that round, but if Augustus was truly honest with himself, the fights had started then, in the early mornings when he'd been unable to sleep too exhausted from his body's fight but too nauseated to leave the coolness of their porcelain toilet. His constant retching kept Millie up, too – her eyes red and rimmed with bags as she watched…and watched…and—
The arguments were over small things at first. Gold blamed the medicine and the disease for causing him to snap at her every time she didn't pull over fast enough and he was forced to use the cold, black plastic bucket they'd bought after too many failures. He felt like a dog, noticed patterns in the grass, and she watched the healthy cars passing by.
When he recovered, the arguments grew worse.
Augustus didn't like to think on them.
Now, with no one at all, he began to think that the arguments were better than this empty silence.
Belle French became, for lack of a better term, a good waiting room companion. More often than not, their schedules overlapped, and although she often read, it was better, in his opinion, to sit with this complete stranger than to sit alone. At first, she spent most of her time reading – Augustus noticed as her books shifted from East of Eden to the last book in the Wheel of Time series to The Diary of Anne Frank to a how-to book on building a website. The last one was the most troublesome; she made it only through a chapter before placing it on the chair next to her, rubbing her temples with one hand, and letting out a half-hearted sigh.
Augustus folded his newspaper forward, crinkling the sharp edges, and gave her the slightest of nods. "Is something wrong, dearie?"
"No, nothing's—"
She glanced up to him then, the hint of a smile curving the corners of her lips. "Actually, is there any chance you know anything about web design?"
He didn't know much, not anymore, but he could certainly pretend.
"What do you want to know?"
This was, perhaps, the first time Augustus Gold saw Belle's face light up and, in the instant he noticed, he was reminded of Millie's face the first time she laid eyes on Neal or on their wedding day, images now tarnished with the brokenness of her eyes when she left, the haunted hollows found in the center of every angry glower.
…which is to say that he noticed the change but did not yet see her.
Belle grabbed her book and crossed the short space between them, opening it to one of many dog-eared pages and flopping it half in his lap, like a child with a stuffed animal. "Explain it to me."
The newspaper folded again until it became a tight little package, and he placed it on his briefcase before glancing to her, taking in the furrowed brows. "For a price."
Her expression froze. "What do you want?"
"Information on my son."
The teacher's lips pursed together, and she took the book back, fingers grazing the folds of his pans, and crossed back to her first seat. A moment longer she looked at him, then she shook her head once and returned to her web design book. Her name was called shortly after that, and Gold sat alone with no response.
"You want me to get information on my daughter's boyfriend so that you can learn web design…for a school website?"
"No."
A beat, hands raised to stop the impeding interruption, to allow a moment of thought.
"I'm curious."
"Your curiosity is worth selling out my daughter's boyfriend?"
"…I should have asked David."
Another beat.
"You can't fix this one, Belle."
"I can help."
Crossed arms, a frown, a patronizing glance, then—
"Fine. But I won't—"
"—keep it a secret from anyone. I know."
Millie always said her first husband had an addiction to making deals and that, in the end, was what drove her away from him, the feeling that everything she did was owed under the obligation of a deal lost. There was a certain sense of fear, too; she knew what happened in the case of a broken deal…or a promise not kept. What she didn't realize was that he didn't care so much that she left as he did that she took Neal with her, proving to foreign judges without the shadow of a doubt that he was not only unfit both to be with her and as a parent, but also that he was a danger both to her son and to herself.
She could keep her flea-infested pirate for all he cared.
But he deserved to know his son.
"He has a girlfriend."
Augustus glanced up quickly, brown eyes locking on Belle's blue ones, stunned into silence. He gave a nod that he hoped was nonchalant, and his fingers tangled together in a heap on his lap. "Who does?"
"Your son, Neal Jones—"
He didn't hear the rest of the statement, a roar building in his ears as his chest began to feel like one's head did after balancing books on it for half an hour and suddenly taking them off. One deep breath followed another, and his hand clenched each other until his short, ragged nails left semi-circles just beneath his knuckles. (Doctor Whale would comment on that later, his lips a smug curve of their own.)
"If you're going to react to every tidbit of information like that, I may have to—"
"More." His eyes, hungry, pleading, met hers once more. She waited, and he struggled to think of what he could say to make her continue until, finally, he stumbled on this one word: "Please."
The smile – small, yet firm – returned, and Belle pulled the web-design book out of her purse, handing it to him with fire in her eyes. "Teach me."
There are many different classes of teachers in the world, and in that hospital waiting room where their veins waited to be pricked, they found out that Augustus Gold was of a lower class and Belle French was, in spite of her virtues or, perhaps, because of them, was the best of them all. Weeks passed – their meetings both frequent and sporadic – where Augustus helped Ms. French with the fine art of web design, helping her learn to structure her website. As a result, he learned as well – not just about his son but also about the teacher with whom he was spending so much of his time.
Interspersed with such lines as "Your son is a rapscallion and a horrible kisser" (which made him question how, exactly, Ms. French could know such a thing) were bits and pieces of her own life – a longing of her own to bridge the gap between teachers and students in her own way – not just to set up mentoring possibilities but also to somehow integrate a second sort of program based on a relationship she'd somehow struck up with two of her students.
"After all, reading is important in everyone's life. It's a form of escape, a way to find in ourselves a connection with the past and with other fantastic people, a way to explore the universe beyond the four walls of our own minds—"
"You're getting carried away, dearie."
Belle glanced up at him, eyes narrowing in that delightful little way she had – not frustrated or annoyed, just…there, and when did he first start noticing that? – and her lips pressed together in a firm line. "I'm not getting carried away. I'm telling the truth. Books are—"
"Important."
One hand started to brush back a lock of her hair – one that hung out of her messily made bun, curving into the blue of her eyes – but as he noticed what he was attempting to do, he froze, forced his hand back down. He kept her gaze. "Tell me more."
And she did.
At some point in time, their infrequent meetings became the favorite part of his day.
Sometimes their treatment wasn't scheduled together, but they took note of the days that did. Sometimes she needed to reschedule appointments, but she made sure, eventually, to get his number, to alert him to those changes. Sometimes he wanted to respond, to call at a time other than their waiting room meetings, but he was forever waiting for the right moment – forever uncertain that this was even worth his time.
He forgot that they were sick, that there was a possibility of—
The last time Augustus Gold saw Belle French, her hair was gone, head covered with a purple hat with a broad band. He hadn't made a comment on the color or the hat itself, only gave it a quick glance up then back to her so that she knew he'd noticed. His eyebrows raised, and she stifled a little laugh, smiling, before sitting in the chair next to him.
She murmured something about his son – about how much Neal missed him, how much he hated his step-father and the new baby boy that was on his way – and for once in his life, Gold didn't tense up in anger at any mention of the pirate. He nodded once – the newspaper was long gone, but so was the web design book. Belle had decided she no longer needed it – and for a brief, fleeting moment thought to say something to her.
But in that moment, Belle leaned over, resting her head on his shoulder. This time he froze, uncertain of what to do, and swallowed a couple of times as though to regain his bearings. "Belle? Is something—"
"Nothing's wrong. I'm…."
She sat up then, gave a little shake of her head, then smiled. "I'm perfectly alright." Her gaze flicked to the hands in her lap, head lowered, and she repeated herself, her words a whisper. "Perfectly alright."
Belle never returned to the hospital after that, and if she did, it certainly wasn't when Augustus Gold was around.
There were no phone calls, no incessant little messages, no warnings.
Perhaps her mere presence should have been warning enough.
Sometimes, he lied to himself, promised that she simply found a better doctor, or moved to another state. He tried to think that maybe she'd simply gotten better – because, as he was, so he hoped she would be. Or, maybe, she was simply tied up in her work. The school year was only beginning, and as time went on….
But, in those waiting rooms when he searched the faces of the other people as diseased and frail as he was, he remembered that, perhaps, she'd simply….
He would never get farther than that, because he refused to believe that she would be the one to die and he to live.