Hey everyone! My apologies for taking such a long time to write this chapter; I moved to another country since posting the last one, so it's been a little hectic . However, if you're fans of Disney (and/or booze), this is your chapter! PS to KnifeInTheCrayonBox: The idea with Rumpel's name is that it breaks the curse (and thus ends Belle's life) the moment she says it out loud. Maybe it's a confusingly small difference, but I was thinking of the actual act of choosing to utter someone's name breaking their deal, instead of passively knowing it.

X

The Master returned on the first day of winter.

Yet again, Belle awoke to find that the Dark Castle had transformed overnight: rooftops, ledges and every tree branch was laden with a thick layer of snow, diamond-clear icicles lined the roof's gutters and the pond had turned into a smooth field of dark ice.

In the afternoon Belle went out into the garden, wrapped in her warm cloak and carrying a small bag of bread crumbs. It was something she had always done on snowy days back home, accompanied – as often as not – by her father. The memory had swam up from the thickening mist that was her past as she was having her midday meal, and she had acted upon it immediately. But of course, she thought now, looking up at the empty tree branches, there were no birds in this garden. She kept walking towards the wall, however; perhaps birds would have ventured there, and she liked walking through the ankle-high snow that crunched underfoot, and the cold air that made her face tingle. She knew the garden like the back of her hand by now, recognizing each bush and tree root under the thick snow. And yet it was even more lonely than usual: the snow was so completely unblemished that it was more obvious than ever that there was no other sign of life than her own solitary trail of footsteps.

Belle came to a halt near the wall and was ready to turn back to the castle when a staccato volley of twittering drew her attention. Only a few yards away a scattering of brightly coloured little birds had descended, strutting around and actively – though futilely – pecking at the snow.

With careful, slow movements, like her father had taught her, Belle reached into her bag and sprinkled a handful of crumbs at arm's length in a trail towards her. The birds descended upon the food eagerly enough, hopping ever closer. Belle took some more breadcrumbs and, crouching down, extended her hand. The most impertinent of the birds, after a moment's pause, hopped onto her hand and ate, pecking pertly, before looking up at her with beady eyes and singing a long, silvery, ululating note. Belle sighed. "Bluebirds don't occur in the mountains," she said loudly. "And they don't sound like that."

"Well, excuse me," came a familiar, affected voice. Turning her head she saw the Master's slight figure, reclined against a tree like a forest sprite, watching her. There was no trail of footsteps leading to him, and he was dressed in a waistcoat and shirtsleeves – he must have just returned from the outside world, where it was still late summer. The cold didn't seem to bother him, however, as he sauntered towards her with his hands clasped nonchalantly on his back. "You just looked so pitiful wandering around the garden with what must be a whole loaf's worth of breadcrumbs, peering up at the trees, but no birds. They're afraid to come anywhere near the Dark Castle even now." He gestured at the bluebirds frolicking adorably in the snow. "So I made you some."

"It was something of a winter tradition," Belle said, digging into her memory. "My father and I would go feed the birds together every morning after breakfast. And the castle would be decorated with holly, and there were fires burning in all the hearths day and night. And on Midwinter's Night, when the night is longest and coldest, we would have the great Midwinter Feast; everyone in town and the villages for miles around was invited. Everyone would wear their finest clothes and the tables would be laden with food, and there was dancing in the Great Hall afterwards…"

"Sounds like a right old feast of debauchery."

"At least it was all real," Belle pointed out, trying not to sound testy.

"You have your birds."

"But we could go outside the garden right now and find some real ones," she said.

"No," he replied flatly.

"You would be there to supervise."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because, dearie, everything seems to be coming along splendidly," he said. "My ex-pupil assures me that the sacrifice necessary to set off the Dark Curse will be made soon. Which means," he wagged a stern finger, "that this is the most dangerous time of all when I must keep you away from all mischief. Because this is when mistakes are made, or when the crazy, unexpected things come swooping in."

The image of the dagger, concealed at the bottom of her drawer, flashed through her head. Oh, how right you are, Rumpelstiltskin. There's something crazy and unexpected coming all right.

…

Flames immediately sprang up in the fireplace when they entered the library and the Master spent several minutes with his back towards her, warming his extended hands by the fire.

"That fancy Midwinter Feast you were talking about," he finally said abruptly, "Let's have it. I suppose tonight is as midwinter as we're going to get, and we haven't had any festivities here since… well, ever."

"Do you really want to?" she asked incredulously.

He turned towards her and sighed impatiently. "Dearie, the only way to live as long as I have and stay as witty and lively as I am is to make sure you have fun from time to time. It's a lesson you would have had to learn sometime anyway, since you spent a good part of your first three hundred years moping."

"You've given me more than enough reason –" Belle started but, seeing the corners of his mouth turning up into a wicked smile, she said instead: "So I'll have to put something special together for dinner tonight."

He waved his hand dismissively. "That's all taken care of," he said. "You run along and do something to your hair and comb your wardrobe for something more becoming than that awful thing you're wearing right now."

Leaving the library, Belle wondered why she put up with it. She also knew she would miss it.

…

It had been years since she had had any reason to dress up and, although she had never enjoyed it in the old days, she found that she relished the ritual of it now: washing and combing her hair and pinning it up with a narrow gold band; dabbing perfume, from the old bottle found in the dresser, on her wrists and below her jawline. By lack of truly festive gowns she had been planning to wear her blue dress, which was the least worn - but when she turned away from her wardrobe she found that a gown she had never seen before had materialized on her bed.

She picked it up carefully by the shoulder straps to study it: long and full-skirted and a warm golden-yellow, so much like the one she had worn the first time she met the Master that it made her heart jump – did he remember, too, and was he trying to recreate the Belle she was back then?

The dress fitted her perfectly, she knew when she had slipped it over her head and fastened the buttons; the skirt flowed down exactly to the ground, and the straps left her shoulders bare but fit perfectly around her upper arms without sagging. Carefully, she slid her arms into the matching evening gloves that reached past her elbows and wiggled her fingers – again a perfect fit. She felt a wave of flustered panic along with a fluttering excitement when she thought of the Master seeing her in the extravagant get-up, he who had known her almost exclusively in the simple clothes she cleaned in. She could see the confusion reflected back at her in the window when she leaned her forehead against the cool glass, behind which the garden was already darkening. Unbidden, a snippet of conversation darted through her mind.

"But if I were to kill him, he would never even have the chance to become a better man. He would never have the chance to learn to trust, to be affectionate – to love…"

"What he does isn't love, Belle."

They had never discussed it, but at that moment Belle had known it with instant certainty: "You've been in love."

"Yes," Regina had said. "I loved a man once. He made me feel like we could run away together and be free until the day we died; your master is the one who keeps you locked up and holds you prisoner. I know that you're young and have been away from the real world for a long time, but please don't tell me you really believe that is love, Belle."

…

The table in the dining room was weighed down with so many platters heaped high with food that it was several moments before Belle discerned the Master, lighting the candles in a tall candelabra. He hadn't heard her come in and for a moment she had the opportunity to observe him unnoticed – the earnest, focused look on his face, lit by the warm light of the candles. Then she spoke, purposefully loud, to break the moment.

"Why on earth did you abduct me here to cook your meals when you do such an excellent job of it yourself?"

"Perfection gets dull, I suppose," he said without looking up, "I enjoy the diversity, the suspense – I never know whether my meal is going to be undercooked, burnt or oversalted this time."

"Oh, you liar."

"You're not that bad," he amended readily. "Although of course, you had years and years to practice." Last candle lit, he finally looked up at her and something might have flitted across his face for a moment before he composed himself. "I see I should have taken a hand in your wardrobe earlier," he said, gallantly stepping forward and holding out his hand for her to take. He had dressed up himself for the occasion, she noted as he led her to her seat, complementing his simple black breeches and white shirt with a black waistcoat embroidered exquisitely in grey and silver.

He poured two glasses of a dark ruby wine, handed her one and lifted the other high. "To our first and last Midwinter's Feast in this world," he said. "May there be many more in the next."

"Hear hear." Their glasses collided in a soft clang of crystal, and Belle drank deeply while the Master leaned over to cut the roast goose.

The meal was more lavish than even the most extravagant Midwinter Feast Belle could remember; even between the two of them they barely made a dent in the endless number of impeccably prepared dishes. When they finally laid down their cutlery their plates were removed – rather alarmingly – by the candelabra, coming to life with stiff movements and scuttling away with a metallic clatter.

"Where else was I going to find waiting staff on such notice?" the Master said simply in response to Belle's look, before the candelabra returned with several plates of desserts wedged into its arms, the centerpiece of which was a massive, completely unseasonable blueberry pie.

" I think we'd better not leave the cutting of the pie to the candelabra," Belle said, standing up. She had already stripped off her long yellow gloves so she wouldn't stain them, and only realized her mistake when she reached for the knife and the Master suddenly grabbed her wrist, turning her hand palm-up. "You seem to have been doing a little too much cutting yourself," he said pointedly.

In the candle light the cut in her hand, left by the dagger when she clenched it in her hand as she swam from the bottom of the pond, looked especially deep, the edges raw and inflamed.

"When I was cutting bread for breakfast –" Belle started, but broke off with a sharp intake of breath when a hot, searing sensation shot through her hand that resolved into a warm pins-and-needles that pooled in the palm of her hand. Held between the Master's two hands, her own was rapidly healing, the skin on the ends of the wound fusing into pink, unblemished skin that spread towards the middle. Magic used to do good, she thought, with an odd, clenching sensation in her throat.

"There," the Master said, releasing her hand. "I like my blueberry pie without blood."

" Actually," she said, "I'm not very hungry anymore."

…

They had quickly agreed to go for a stroll in the garden between courses, and made their way through the garden side by side. The garden was unusually bright, the snow lighting up under the clear starlit sky, and quiet other than their footsteps and the brush of Belle's skirts on the snow. As if by unspoken agreement, they came to a halt by the side of the pond and looked out in silence.

It stretched out completely smooth and dark, Belle though, like a dance floor.

"Did you ever go ice skating?" she asked without thinking.

"Sure," he said, following her gaze to the frozen pond and almost at the same time Belle had the curious sensation of growing taller. Drawing up her skirts, she realized that skates had arisen soundlessly beneath her feet.

"Really?" she said, laughing a little nervously even as they already stepped closer to the pond's edge. "It's been years and years since I last did this."

"Me too. But tonight is a night of lasts, after all."

"I suppose you're right." And they stepped out onto the ice.

As she had thought, her movements were clumsy and uncertain at first. Within the first six strokes her foot shot out from under her and she only barely managed not to sprawl onto the ice. "Careful," the Master said and, after only the briefest of hesitations, he reached out and took her hand as they skated out onto the smooth, frozen pond under the star-spangled sky. Neither of them felt the need to speak, and all was quiet except for the scrape of their skates over the ice below and their breathing, forming in small white clouds in front of them.

Belle felt herself inside her snow globe again – in the world outside the walls, it was summer; in the microcosmos that was the Dark Castle beneath its invisible dome, it was a magical winter night. But this time it was different, because she was not alone. The only time when she didn't feel like a solitary ghost haunting an abandoned castle was when he was there, she realized. To bicker with and hate and love. Because there was no denying to herself, this late in the game, that she did love him as much as she hated him, in the desperate and deranged way that no one would ever be able to understand.

But in the mud, deep deep down in the cold darkness beneath her feet, she knew there to be an empty place in the crocodile's jaws where the dagger used to be. She suddenly dreaded the thought of what she would have to do with it, where she would have to bury the razor-sharp point. And at the same time she was overcome by a desire to say the Master's name out loud, just once – so that she could feel like he wasn't so much her master as her equal. That they were, literally, on a first-name basis. But she effortfully bit back the strange word – Rumpelstiltskin – because they weren't on a first-name basis, and they never could be as long as they were here.

"Wait," she said, slowing to a halt. He spun around to face her.

"What is it?"

She opened her mouth and closed it again. She wasn't sure what she wanted to say; she knew what she wanted to do – to lay her hand on his chest, over his heart; to lean in close and –

"How about we go back to the Castle," she burst out abruptly, "and I break out the booze?"

…

They started off with cognac, poured carefully into delicate little glasses in the dining room. Two glasses later they moved on to cherry liquor. Finally, they settled on the couch in front of the fire place in the library with their glasses and several bottles, and cut big, oozing wedges out of the blueberry pie that they ate with their fingers.

"I think I might actually miss this place," Belle said, looking blurrily around the massive library. "When we're in the next world."

The Master chuckled to himself quietly, then said: "No, you won't."

"How would you know?"

"Because," he said, tapping her on the cheek (he had been aiming for her nose), "you won't remember a thing about it. Any of it."

She stared at him, wide-eyed. "How so?"

"Because," he said, spreading his arms in a gesture that sloshed whiskey over the couch, "the Dark Curse wipes everyone's memory of this place. Completely blanco. You'll think you've always lived in the world without magic. No deal; no enforced servitude; no dead family. We start with a completely clean slate."

Belle frowned, trying to comprehend it. "But then how do you know we'll even know each other, in the next world?"

"The skeleton of this world as it is at the moment the curse strikes will be preserved. Children of lost fathers will stay lost to them; lost princes stay lost; but grandmothers and granddaughters, crickets and carpenters, will stay together…As long as we're together when the curse hits, we'll be together in the next world." Belle lost him when he started about the grandmothers and crickets and decided another glass of wine might clear it up.

"What about you?" she asked then. "Will you forgot, too?"

"Oh no," he said, wagging a finger, "a man can't be fooled by his own illusion."

"You'll remember everything?"

"Yes."

She took another long gulp. "Are you going to tell me about this place?"

"No."

"Why not?" she demanded.

"Why not tell you how I made you trade in your freedom to scrub my floors for three hundred years?"

"Right."

"For one thing," he said, "you'd never believe me." They stared at each other wordlessly for a moment. Then they both shrieked with laughter.

"I think you've had quite enough of that," he said, prying the bottle from her fingers.

"It's nothing compared to what they drink at the Midwinter Feast at home," she countered indignantly.

"Speaking of which – didn't you say they'd dance after that midwinter shindig? Come on." He stood up, grabbed her hand and pulled her up off the couch until, laughing, she relented. She had kicked off her shoes and stripped off the gloves, and his waistcoat hung unbuttoned, but Belle tried to retrieve the decorum and memory of long-ago dance lessons. She took one of his hands and laid the other one on her waist. "Start on the left foot. One-two-three, one-two- you're not doing it right," she slurred, but then gave it up and they twirled and twirled around the room. The Master had begun to sing an old song under his breath and, after a few moments, Belle recognized it as a song about old tales that used to be sung at her father's castle. "Certain as the sun rising in the east," she joined in, a little breathlessly, "tale as old as…" They both fell silent at the same time.

"I forgot the rest."

"Me too," she said, frowning. "I'm sure I used to know all the words, but it's too long ago."

"We'll learn new songs," he said, "after."

…

The fire in the hearth had died down to glowing embers when Belle slowly and effortfully opened her eyes. In the pale, grey light of very early dawn it took her a few moments to realize that she was still in the library. The Master was sprawled on the couch next to her, one arm outflung, and her head was resting on his shoulder. She heard his deep, calm breathing and realized that he was still fast asleep. She sat up, careful so as not to awake him, and sat on the edge of the couch for a few minutes looking down at his sleeping face in the glow of the dying hearth fire. Called to reality by the beginnings of a thudding headache between her temples and the light of a new day outside, she cursed herself for losing sight of everything the night before. I think I might actually miss this place, when we're in the next world… will you tell me about this place, in the next world? When in fact, there would be no we in the next world. She did not know what it would be like, there – but it would be a world without him.

With a heavy feeling, she gently tucked his outstretched arm back by his side. Then she tiptoed from the room and closed the door softly behind her.