A/N:This update is long overdue. And the longest I've written. But, you know, I only got one review last chapter ;) But I'll save my OUAT rant 'till later (as in, the bottom) and get on with the story!
"Mr. Gold?"
That's Belle's voice. Who is Mr. Gold, though? Rumplestiltskin squirms, still partly asleep. His arms are curled protectively around something —Belle?— and his head is sunk into a warm pillow.
Lazily, he opens one eye. Belle is laying —in his arms!— staring at him with her ocean-like gaze. He smiles, brushing some curls from her neck and letting his fingers linger there. Then reality catches up to him. Why would Belle be with him here —she's dead, because he sent her away. Or wait, she isn't, but his curse is enacted now. He's in the other world, without his powers. And he still hasn't found Bae. But he has found this girl. This girl with Belle's face and her smile, but not her spirit or her memories.
"Mr. Gold?" Her lips tremble. He remembers last night, with the pills. Belle —no, no; he's named her Isabelle here— looks plenty less haunted, but he can't shake off the memory of her screams.
"I-I'm sorry," She doesn't know what he's really apologizing for.
Isabelle says nothing else, and he knows the recovery she had been showing is gone now. Vanished last night. She lays there almost despondently, waiting for him to get up, Mr. Gold assumes.
"I-I have some chores I must attend to." Not many, really. But Mr. Gold needs to get these pills checked out, to see if she really needs them. To see if they cause sone sort of addiction that makes her crave them, that makes her fall apart. Or if Regina has poisoned them somehow so that Belle has these hallucinations.
Isabelle says nothing, like when he first found her.
Mr. Gold should lock her in here, to protect her. But he'd promised —foolishly— that he wouldn't. And he can't give her run of the house, where there's knives and glass and big things to throw. Then an absurd idea falls upon him so fast he snaps his fingers in delight.
"Would you...would you mind if I took you to a friend's house for a while? No harm will come to you. You can trust her." Isabelle is wary. He doesn't even know if she trusts him yet.
Rather than a whispered 'okay', she nods, but remains tangled in her blankets. He misses the Belle from last night already. The one that begged him for a story and told him it was too sad.
"I-I'm going to change." Mr. Gold imagines she would stay in that same dress. She doesn't look stable enough to change herself.
He showers and get dressed, skips breakfast and returns to her room. Sure enough, Isabelle is still sitting there. He offers her his arm, which seems to calm her. But she still doesn't speak as he locks the door of the house behind them and leads her across the town.
Mr. Gold finds it surprising that they always open the door to him. They hate him, and they know perfectly well who's at the door, but they never pretend they're not home.
"What do you want?" Emma demanded. She'd only opened the door slightly, so he couldn't simply walk in. And she couldn't see his silent companion.
Mr. Gold glanced around her inquisitively. Mary Margaret was peering at the scene from the living room. It looked like she was grading papers. "I have a few chores I need to do today. I was wondering if you could keep an eye on something for me." He paused, glad he'd had the insight not to say 'I need a favour'. The last thing Emma needed was a reminder. He wasn't ready to spend it yet. "May I come in?"
Emma still glared at him suspiciously, but some curiosity must have won out because the door creaked open wider. "What is it?"
Mr. Gold meandered over to the table. "Actually I was hoping Mary Margaret would help me. This isn't exactly the kind of thing you're equipped for Miss Swan."
The comment obviously wounded the Sheriff's fragile pride because she crossed her arms defensively. "Why not?"
Belle was still in the hallway. "Isabelle, you can come in now dear." She creeps towards him, eying the ex-royals as if they're going to flay her. Emma's eyes flare with recognition.
Finally Isabelle reaches him. She doesn't seem to like physical contact, yet she immediately snatches his arm like it's a lifeline. He wants to comfort her, to stroke her hair. To some degree she is still Belle, and it makes her protection of the utmost importance to him. But he has to restrain himself. Anything done wrong means she gets taken away.
He has to drag his eyes away from Belle, away from her pale skin and her delicate curls. Curls that he carefully twisted back on the way over. He still can't replicate Belle's old style. "Mary Margaret, would you mind?"
"You want her to watch your mental patient?" Emma's practically screaming. She's staring at Isabelle like she's a bottle of poison in a child's hands. It makes him want to punch her.
"Yes, well," Mr. Gold says through gritted teeth. "Isabelle isn't comfortable around other people. And my chores involve cavorting with large masses of people. For Isabelle's...safety, and comfort, I'd prefer it if she could spend the day with you." Emma peers deep into his eyes with a suspicious look; examining him to see if he's lying, no doubt. Mr. Gold isn't very concerned. Her skills have been incredibly lax lately. Even if he wasn't as formidable a liar as he was, she probably wouldn't be able to tell. Henry seemed to be clouding her judgement.
"Mary Margaret?" Emma finally asks. "Would you be okay with that?" It's obvious she's pleading for Snow White to say no.
"Sure. I'm just grading papers today." Mary Margaret offers her roommate a thin smile, then glances at Belle. Her fingers dig into his arm.
"Thank you, Mary Margaret." He says. Mr. Gold strokes Belle's arm before he goes. "It's okay. You can trust her," He whispers. Emma's the one Mr. Gold wouldn't trust. "I'll be back before you know it. I promise." He needs to stop making promises with her. They're far too easy to break.
He goes then, with a nod to Mary Margaret and a blank glance in Emma's direction. Luckily, the pharmacy isn't too far away. But the infernal ex-dwarf is working there —Sneezy or something of the like. He stalks towards the counter.
"I need you to check these out for me." Mr. Gold dumps the pills on the countertop. Four containers. Olanzapine, quetiapine, risperidone, and the other one —aripiprazole— roll towards the pharmacist.
Hesitantly, the ex-dwarf turns them in his hands. "These are all medication for Schizophrenia." He says. "It's a complex mental disorder involving hallucinations and the inability to tell real from not real. A patient with this wouldn't be able to think logically or use normal emotional responses or normal reactions to social environments." That all sounded like Isabelle. But she'd been so much more like Belle last night, before the hallucinations hit.
"Okay." Mr. Gold says blankly. There's something about this hesitant man that makes him unsure. "Do...do these medications cause addiction? Do they have side effects? If someone didn't need them could they provide hallucinations?" Mr. Gold hates asking so many questions. There are much more reliable ways to find answers."
"Nope." The pharmacist responds, sneezing.
"But I need you to check the pills themselves. See if they're tainted. Perhaps they've been switched for something else? Something that would cause hallucinations?"
The ex-dwarf looks at him suspiciously. "If you know someone who's behaving this way, you should take them to a therapist, or a physician." He sounds like Emma, prattling on about her obstructed justice.
"Just check them." He growls.
The pharmacy will be open for quite a while. He can check on the pills later. Mr. Gold has plenty of rent to collect. Ever since he got Belle back he's become very lax about it. And he hasn't been searching very hard for Bae lately, either.
People get lazy when you don't collect their rent. They think they're immortal, that the rules don't apply to them. That they can get away with anything.
He does his usual rounds. The nunnery, Granny's, the apartment complex where Jiminny Cricket lives. Mr. Gold, granted, collects a little early for some places. They don't argue of course, because he could kick them out faster than they could say "I don't have enough today." Really, he's only paranoid that he might not have time to do it again next month, or week in some places. And he knows better than to leave Belle with Emma and Snow White again.
"The pills haven't been tampered with." The sneezing pharmacist tells him when he returns.
"Well, have you checked all of them?" Mr. Gold suggests, but his casual tone still sounds demanding.
"Look, sir." The ex-dwarf knows his name. Even those in Storybrooke who've never actually met him know his name. "The pills haven't been switched. This medication has no side effects. I've checked—"
"Fine," Mr. Gold restrains from snarling at this man. He doesn't have the same fortifications as in the old world. He doesn't have the laugh to hide behind; and if someone were to stab him, Mr. Gold is sure he would die.
He can't take any more of this sniveling, babbling man. He just wants to take Belle and go home.
The door swings open when he knocks. Mary Margaret is seated at the table with Belle and some little girl —her patient, he assumes. But the surprising thing is they seem to be playing a card game, and Isabelle is actually paying attention. Or at least a little attention. She's also nibbling on a chocolate chip cookie, and when she hears the door open she looks at him, and her eyes almost look as though she's smiling.
"Oh, Mr. Gold," Mary Margaret smiles. A little tensely, but at least she tries. "Hello."
Belle doesn't seem to concerned about leaving. But then again she's not one to greet anymore, and this counterpart of her would stay rooted to the chair for her protection.
"How was she?" Mr. Gold asks. His throat is clogging, and his voice sounds to fragile and emotional for his liking.
"Oh, Isabelle was great! Kelsey and I made cookies," Mary Margaret ruffled the little girl's hair. "And Isabelle passed us the flour. She's more of a watcher than a helper, I think. Then we put them in the oven and Kelsey wanted to play speed. Isabelle even joined a couple rounds. And we've just dug into the cookies. You like the chocolate chip ones, don't you, Isabelle?" Mary Margaret must babble when she's nervous. He can't take listening much longer, but he's glad Belle did well. Or at least better than last night, when she was screaming. And at least as good as the first day.
"Uh...Thank you." He hates owing someone. That's why many of his deals involve the opposite. "Ready to go now...Isabelle?" He almost calls her Belle again. In front of Snow White and Emma, who will surely get suspicious.
Belle is quiet the whole way home. Most of Storybrooke's population is still out and about, but they give him a wide berth. Sometimes being the town loan shark has its advantages.
"Why do you call me Belle?" She asks the moment they step inside. Belle sounds so much like herself that he almost says 'Well, that's your name!'
"I..."
"If you wanted to call me Belle so badly, why did you decide to name me Isabelle?"
"Um..." It's hard to come up with a response that won't make her scared, hateful, or more confused. But she's talking again, which makes his his heart and lungs soar. He's finding it a little hard to breathe.
They stand in a silence that can't seen to break. Finally Isabelle says "Just...just call me Belle, okay? Please." Mr. Gold can tell that she knows there's something behind that name. But she doesn't ask. Even though she knows the name may belong to someone else.
"As you wish." He breathes. It brings a sense of relief, that he won't have to concentrate so hard on calling her Isabelle, that he won't have to try so hard to separate them. But he can feel the lines between his Belle and the one who stands before him blurring.
Belle nods, but it makes her seem more confused than certain. She stands there for a long moment, staring. Her eyes are resting on him, but Mr. Gold gets the sense she's not seeing him at all.
Then she turns and goes onto the back porch where she spent the second day.
And he's left wondering if she remembers.
•••
A/N: So Emilie DeRevin was rumoured to return in Apple Red As Blood. At the part where Regina's trying to deal with Gold, I was like "Okay, she's going to offer him Belle." And she didn't. (By the way, anyone else figure out that Rumple/Gold wants the curse to break so he can leave and go 'traveling' to find Bae?) And then at the end Henry eats the apple turnover thing. So now Regina will go back to Gold when she finds out, and beg him to bring Henry back. THEN she will offer him Belle —I scoured websites and Emilie will definitely be in the finale! I'm not as concerned with what else happens. But Belle! And Gold/Rumplestiltskin will finally have her back!