Since she had realised that the knife was fading, taking with it her chances of bringing Rumple back, Belle had been spurred on with a jolt of agitated determination. It had now been a few hours and she was closing on the end of a third heavy tome that had started with a promising title and some snippets of potentially useful notes she had spotted on a first, brief flick through but had ended with her frustration that it couldn't give her anything that she was actually looking for.
She finally reached the last page, annoyed that it had been another fruitless waste of time and closed the book with a testy snap. She jumped when a tittering laugh came from the end of the table and froze in alarm when she saw the impossible.
Rumple was perched against the end of the table, looking at her with an amused smile on his face and arms nonchalantly crossed over his chest. She stared at him, unable to find words to express everything that flew through her head in that moment.
At her silence and clearly amused by the bewildered expression on her face, Rumple only smiled more. Belle stood slowly and was just stumbling out a few noises that were meant to include "How? What? Where? And When?" but Rumple simply looked her in the eye with a sincere expression to cut her off.
"Belle, I'm so proud of you."
She felt his voice wash over her like a calming draught she hadn't realised she was so in need of.
"I didn't think it had worked. Nothing happened before." She gasped, afraid to even blink in case he would be gone again when she reopened her eyes.
"And yet, I know you can do it."
"But it brought the knife back and then I thought I was losing you all over again." She babbled and her voice cracked. Instead of talking she needed to feel him there and so she pushed past her chair, moving towards him gently in case any sudden movements would break the spell that had fallen thickly over the room. As she drew near him however, Rumple drew back.
She looked at him in confusion. She was unbelievably happy to see him but something wasn't right. Why would he pull away from her? His strange choice of words suddenly replayed in her head and the smile that had been growing on her face slid away in a second.
"And it didn't work, did it." It wasn't a question because she had already figured out the answer; instead it came out a miserable quiver.
"No, but it will. You'll make it work." He began stepping away again and she jumped forward after him, not willing to let him leave yet.
"Rumple no. I can't do it without you. I don't know how." She reached out to him again and this time he didn't recoil. Instead he also reached his hand back towards hers and in the briefest second she saw the expression on his face mirror hers in its yearning for more. His fingers were so close to hers she could almost believe she could feel him, the lightest of touches.
"My Belle."
She jerked to a sitting position, hands scrambling in an undignified manner for the person she knew was supposed to be there, hadn't he just been here? Slowly her breathing returned to normal and Belle realised she had been asleep. It had all been a dream. Still, she looked to the end of the table and her face crumpled when she found herself alone once more.
She began to feel guilty for falling asleep when she had something so important to be working on but quickly the rational side of her brain kicked in. It was ridiculous to push herself so hard, when a sleep-deprived brain was only more likely to miss something important. Belle decided to do the sensible thing and walked away to get some sleep, leaving her book open at the page she had fallen asleep on.
As she walked up the back staircase that led to the bedrooms she found a small smile breeze across her face. She heard echoes in her head of all the times she had told Rumple off for not looking after himself properly. He didn't need to sleep often but he would insist on going until he was running on what Belle could only assume had been magical fumes and she had dogged him until he relented and would allow her to send him to bed.
She told herself that Rumple would be scolding her in return now, joking that it was a case of "Do as I say, not as I do". His teasing tones made her chuckle to herself and with the lighter feeling hearing his voice brought her she found it easier to walk across the threshold into his bedroom.
The room was one she hadn't even considered entering since she got back, she had idly thought she would return to the small bedroom that had only been used when Rumple had quietly suggested she could move out of the cold cell in the dungeon. Now walking into the familiar dark room felt like the most natural thing and a lightheaded laugh came out of her at the absurdity of thinking of going anywhere else. She climbed into the bed and gratefully fell under the shroud of sleep.
When she woke the light was fading outside so she figured she had had around 5 hours of sleep. It hadn't been particularly restful but there had been no more dreams. She had tossed and turned yet now that she had opened her eyes to see the waning light she felt completely alert
As she climbed out of the bed she found herself wishing for an instant coffee machine, the first time she had found herself missing that world. Now she stopped to think about it, there were many everyday things she was going to have to readjust to living without. She was just thinking of going downstairs to start heating up a kettle of water for tea when her gaze wandered around the room.
In her fatigued state she had simply accepted the room to be as it had always looked. Now she looked around she saw a couple of slight changes that hadn't registered before. Intrigued by the differences she couldn't quite put her finger on and telling herself that investigating could be helpful in her task she pulled the covers aside and started to look around more attentively.
As Rumple had never spent any time in here the room was very sparse, there was nothing out on the surfaces around the room, a single candle that had never been lit but was in a small candle holder on the bedside table.
She smiled fondly at the fact the curtains were neatly drawn back – she had worked hardest to make him remove the nails from them in here. His argument had been "But whenever I'm in here I want them to be closed anyway." When she finally pulled them back anyway she had been very sure that he still didn't agree with her sentiment that it was "nice to let the light in during the day".
Slowly the ties around the curtains drew her attention. They were new. She raised her eyebrows in surprise at the addition. Homemaking was hardly a Rumplestiltskin trait. Nevertheless she pushed the thought to the edge of her mind, ignoring the bittersweet smile that threatened to reach her lips when she considered the only reason he may have tried to spruce. She continued her search of the room more thoroughly. There were no items in the drawers, none at all. She rolled her eyes before she could stop herself; the settling in had purely been an aesthetic attempt.
Once she had exhausted the possibilities in the room she turned to go and had another jolt of surprise as she saw a single picture frame on the wall next to the door. She looked more closely at it and was torn between whether to laugh or cry in despair when she realised there was no picture in it, simply an elegant golden frame, as if it was too much effort to find a picture to put in it. Or it was too difficult to find something suitable.
She turned out into the corridor, deciding that she was going to investigate what food there was available in the kitchen before anything else and ended up almost bumping into him. She jumped back before she actually collided with Rumple and stood rooted to the floor, mouth gaping in surprise, a feeling she was getting a little too used to experiencing since she had returned to the castle.
"Now Dearie, I always thought you had a little more grace than that." He said in a teasing tone and it almost snapped her back to herself. She snapped her mouth shut but then her mind started working in overtime, as it often did.
"No, you're not really here. I'm just dreaming again and I don't realise it."
"Well, I expected a better welcome than that." He continued when she paused only to study him again, drinking in the sight before her.
"I'm doing my best, I'll find the way to bring you back properly but I just don't know how. Yet." She never took her eyes from him but this time she didn't bother trying to reach out for him, even if it meant clenching her hands to fists at her side and digging her nails into her palms to remind herself. Just a dream.
He said nothing, just smiled at her, the teasing look gone from his eye and replaced with something softer and sadder. Instead he flicked his hand, gesturing towards himself in a 'May I?' gesture. Frowning slightly she nodded, she couldn't refuse his help, even if it was only a construct in her mind desperate for his expertise.
With a flourish, Rumple turned on his heel and started walking down the hallway, away from the main staircase. She knew what was down here. It was just a few more empty bedrooms, a closet or two and…
"Your straw room!" Belle said out loud as it came into her head. It was a joke name of course, it was in fact where he kept all the products of his spinning. A room of golden thread. He barely even came into this room himself, if she remembered correctly, when with a flick of his finger he could send all the gold away wherever he pleased. At her exclamation Rumple turned in front of her, a ludicrous wicked grin on his face and gestured onwards with a finger.
She did laugh at his playfulness, it was the lightest she had felt in days and she wasn't going to let the fact it wasn't real distract as they approached the door of the least used room in the castle that held the most valuable commodity she started to notice the faint haze in her vision. Shaking her head to clear it only confirmed the fact that Rumple was becoming less distinct. She sped up to walk by his side and turned to look at his face.
"No!" She saw the same expression that had amused her only moments ago fixed in place, like a mask.
He turned to face her at the exclamation and the expression faltered, once again moving as naturally as ever into a look of concern. He stopped and frowned slightly at the fear lingering on her face. Then, in the space of a blink, he seemed to disappear away, dissolving into the air like dust particles scattered by a breeze. Belle shouted out again, calling his name but he was already gone without a trace.
She reached out to the place he had been. It was too soon since she had last lost him for her to be able to take it in. Slowly it filtered back to the more lucid part of her brain that she was just dreaming. She had known it from the beginning. She closed her eyes and opened them, to find she hadn't moved. She tried again, squeezing them tighter shut and counting to 10.
She pinched herself, jumped up and down and hit the nearby wall with her palm. She was still in the main corridor, with a sore hand, directly outside the door to the straw room. She put out a hand to touch the wood, it was solid. After she had reassured herself of the walls around the door again she felt for the handle and cautiously pushed the door open.
Looking inside, the room was just as she remembered it from the first time she had taken a sneaking look. That had only been because Rumple had told her not to go in there in her first week. So a few weeks later, when most of those other rules had gone out the window she had decided to take a look. Once she had seen what was in there – and had satisfied a question she had been keeping to herself about where all of the gold ended up – she had hastily closed the door. She hadn't wanted to think about the kind of guards or alarm systems he might have on a room containing such wealth. Of course it hadn't taken long for her to find out how little he actually valued the gold he spun. Knowing he had a room bursting with it had helped put his attitude into perspective.
She hadn't had a chance to return to the room; events conspired and besides, while it was more gold than she had ever seen in her life, material wealth wasn't what intrigued her most in the Dark Castle.
Driven only by the feeling that Rumple must have wanted her to see something in this room, Belle picked her way around the piles of spun gold, all neatly twined into balls just like yarn. This was definitely where the magical balancing of items came into play and Belle didn't question it, afraid to touch one of the stacks in case that was all it took to send the whole load tumbling to the floor. There were no tables or surfaces to study, the gold was laid floor to ceiling. Instead a number of cabinets set into the wall held collections of assorted items.
After an hour of tedious searching she had found little that she could call useful. It seemed this was where Rumple kept all his meaningless items that he had hung on to for reasons only known to him and Belle was losing hope again. There were pieces of clothing she couldn't imagine him wearing, an old wooden walking stick and random pieces of crockery. Hidden under some pencils and books of meaningless sketches she found a leather bound book, covered in dust that she blew away and then immediately recoiled to avoid it rebounding into her eyes. The book itself had a plain cover and inside she recognised the scrawled handwriting on the pages to be that made by Rumple's own hand. It took her a little longer to realise that this font, without the extravagant flourishes she was used to, was much more similar to Gold's writing in Storybrooke.
Curiosity truly piqued, she flicked back through more pages to find the book was mostly filled with delicately drawn maps, sketches and some paragraphs of text. Her heart skipped a beat when she found herself staring at a faithfully reproduced sketch of the Dark One's knife and she hastily skimmed to the section of text underneath it.
All it said was a quick summary of the things she already knew about the knife – it shows the original name of the Dark One, killing the Dark One with it would curse the wielder with the power of the knife and the person who holds the knife wields power over the Dark One.
Her mind stuck on the last point written under the picture. At a loss of any other immediate plan of action she closed the book and carried it downstairs with her, back to the spinning room where the knife itself still sat on the table where she had left it earlier that day. She lifted it from the table and stepped away, raising the knife at arm's length into the air.
"Dark One, by the power of the Blade, I command you to come back to me." She felt disappointment trickle slowly through her as she felt nothing, no tingling from the knife. No one materialised in a puff of smoke.
Instead she stood alone in the room, watching helplessly as the 'u' of the dagger faded out of existence.
Endless thanks for your comments, follows and favourites. I hope you continue to enjoy this as much as i do
Many thanks to my beta ArtjuiceRP once again