Spun with Gold
A/N: My goodness you guys work fast in finding this stuff. I had planned on saving this update till tomorrow, but I've set that aside as an Alice day, seeing as I have, for the moment, decided to play hide and seek with my DVD copy. It's kind of winning. So here you go, ahead of schedule.
Read, review, sneer, or sparkle, as you wish.
Always my loves,
|ACP|
Chapter 2: What happened before
He wasn't late. He was making them wait. There was, in fact, a difference. Rumplestiltskin was summonable, sure. But he was slave to none. If he was to come at one's beck and call, he would do so on his own specific terms. He'd paid a heavy price long, long ago for that luxury, and he intended to exploit it heartily. The merchant Lord that had summoned him was being heavily beseiged by the Ogres, which was, admittedly, 98% Rumplestiltskin's fault. It was the least he could do to show up and demand payment to fix the poor, pathetic Lord's problems. This particular man had in fact called upon him before, once or twice long ago. The last time he'd seen the family, the Lord's small monstrosity of a daughter had tried to hold his hand every time it came into her vicious little eyesight. The thing had just lost her mother to disease, and for some intensely obscure reason saw in him a special confidant. She couldn't have been more than four then, trailing around in his footsteps, calling him "Rumblebumblin" through a mushy mouth and grinning wickedly with her little teeth every time she tried to take his hand and he yanked it away.
He'd had enough of baby spit coated hands when Bae was a child.
As an All-Powerful, Supremely Impressive Dark One, he shouldn't have been babysitting the little squishy thing at all. But those were the terms of the deal. In exchange for half his lands off in the mountains, including the summer palace (which was supposed to be cursed anyway), Rumblebumblin was officially a babysitter for the wet, pooping monstrosity. So, for a whole month, he humored the thing, playing with it and amusing it with magic tricks while her father made a (rather brave actually) attempt at getting the lands and finances back together, which had fallen to disrepair after his wife's sudden death. The creature's name was Belle, but the title didn't fit her. She was rather ugly to him: a constantly dirty mess of scrapes and owwies, with a perpetually tangled knot of brown hair and glinting blue eyes buried beneath the layers of dirt. The only clean thing about the monster was her hands. When Rumplestiltskin chanced to ask the child why, the thing was quiet for one blessed moment while she mulled over her response. "Mama's books are clean, and I don't wan' thems to die too, but I still wanna read them." she managed to squish out between her awkward little teeth.
Rumplestiltskin was quiet no himself, but only for a moment. Then he grinned and said, "Come along dearie. It's dinnertime if I'm not wrong-"
"And you're never wrong." the little girl finished, returning his grin, just happy to be included in a special phrase. It was, after all, one the scaly, grumpy man with the funny laugh said often. She reached for his hand once again, and this time he let her take it. After all, her hands were clean.
That was the last time he'd seen the pestulant little imp.
They've stewed long enough now. he decided, rising from his spinning wheel and vanishing in the customary puff of smoke, appearing with a flourish outside the heavy wooden castle doors. More than sixteen years had passed since last he entered these halls. Straightening his jacket and entirely too confident in his plots for his own good, he grinned widely and pushed the doors open.
~Later~
To say that Belle had grown up well would be a massive understatement. Her brown hair had finally met with a hairbrush sometime in the past sixteen years, and her long, thin brown nubs of eyelashes had darkened and thickened to frame those vivid eyes that now sat in a woman's face. Her baby fat had melted away, and boy but the golden gown she wore showed it. The bodice hugged her thin frame and accentuated all of her curves. The sheer tightness of it made even Rumplstiltskin feel as though he were having trouble breathing, and he pitied the girl for being made to wear it. He remembered that the small demon spawn he sat for had resolutely refused any manner of dresses, and would've sooner burned the shoulder-sitting thing the woman before him wore than deign to wear it. She, however, didn't seem to remember him at all, which was understandable and really not important.
He'd known that she was his price even before he strode into the war-room, and had been prepared to see her progression into an equally wicked, homely young lady, but now he could fairly say the years had been intensely kind to the girl. But he certainly hadn't expected her to actually agree to his insane terms. He was half counting on her protesting, if not for her own sake then for the sake of the apparent fiancee who was so eager to be turned inside out that he had opened negotiations by pointing his sword at the legendary Rumplestiltskin. He'd have liked to be able to raise his terms to her firstborn child (the trafficking of children from desperate dealers to husbandless nobility was on the rise after all) perhaps, or even the remaining years of the Lord's life. But she had agreed after all, looked him straight in the amber eyes and promised him the rest of her life in exchange for the safety of her people.
How exceedingly odd.
Belle sat in her cell downstairs now, cold and alone and probably stewing in pent up anger. Well good. The next day when he set her to her work cleaning the mess he'd managed to accumulate in sixteen years, she'd be sure to want to bargain her way out. And he'd be waiting, with a million options, each more nasty than the last. But all, he thought with a giggle as he caught sight of his reflection in a darkened window pane, more attractive than living with me forever. Because forever was an awfully long time.