A/N: Wow, thanks so much, everyone, for the great reception of chapter one! It's a real treat to write for this fandom - not just because the characters and story and show are so amazing - but because you guys are out of this world! :) Hope you all enjoy this second chapter - and please let me know what you think of it!
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended.
The clocks in his shop assure him that time is still moving. The changes in the town under Charming's driven leadership are proof that life moves on, altered and shaped by the choices of its inhabitants. For all that, though, everything seems to him to be trapped again—not in time, just in helplessness. Even locked away belowground, he hadn't felt so helpless as he does now. But then he was still tweaking his strings and pulling his threads, could feel the curse coming ever closer to completion. Now, however…now, he can do nothing.
The town line remains stubbornly impenetrable, walling him apart from the world he needs, and his pained impatience is different now, more raw and stinging, because he is so close. So close, and yet he cannot cross the line without losing every reason for doing so.
And then there is Belle. Belle who does not come to see him. Belle who has not spoken to him since she realized he is a monster.
Belle.
He buries himself in work because it is important. Because it is easier. It is hard loving Belle, but magic is effortless and inviting, welcoming him with the ease of long practice and the familiarity of an old friend and ally. It is easier, and for a while he thinks that means it is right, but then he remembers the Prince who helped Belle, remembers him saying that it (True Love, a True Love that can be bottled, a True Love that is powerful) took hard work.
Honesty and hard work.
He has been honest, so maybe now it is time for the second half of this concoction.
It isn't easy to set aside magic, but it wasn't easy going to Granny's for hamburgers either, and that had been a gift. It is hard to leave behind his spell and potions (his hopes and miracles), but it was hard letting her go too, and he knows that was the right thing to do. He wishes (and is glad the genie is gone now because wishes are never free) that just once, something in his life would be easy.
Belle has opened the library (he knows because Henry came to tell him all about it, trying to pry information out of him with a 'subtlety' to rival either of his mothers), and he sees people coming out with books under their arms. He hopes she is busy, hopes she is successful, hopes she is happy. But if she is, then what does she need him for?
Very carefully, tucking his fear and his awkwardness beneath his tailored suit, he crosses the street and enters the library (his hands are shaking). Very intently, he gazes around the library (his stomach is tied into a maze of knots). Very slowly, he heads toward the sound of her voice, ringing softly through the library (his future is threatening to unravel before him).
She turns from young Hansel (or Nicholas) and sees him. He cannot read her sudden change of expression—it almost looks like a smile but is gone too quickly for him to be sure it is anything more than his delusional hope. His mouth is dry, the feel of fear so familiar that it, too, is like an old friend. But not an ally. Never an ally.
"Rumplestiltskin," she says, and everyone who hadn't yet noticed his entrance now scatters. She watches them go, the corner of her mouth quirking upward; he can't look away from her.
"I thought you might be able to help me," he says when she looks back at him. He thinks a flicker of surprise ghosts across her features before she composes herself.
"Oh? What did you need?"
"A book," he replies. Despite himself, he finds himself falling into his old habits of teasing and enticing her, waiting for her to roll her eyes and ask him to get to the point.
She doesn't roll her eyes, but she does say, "What type of book?"
"The type of book that tells me what food comes after hamburgers in the dinner-for-two category."
Her expression is blank and slow as she stares back at him, and his stomach unknots itself and sinks downward.
"Or perhaps," he adds quietly, looking away, "just a book on alchemy or chemistry."
He wonders if she would mind if he came to the library just for books (just to see her), just to study up on anything that can help him get to Bae (just to make sure she's all right). He wonders if he will have to use her schedule (the one he knows by heart) to rearrange his own so that he never runs into her (so that he can catch occasional glimpses of her). He wonders if this will save her from being made a target by those who want to make him pay for whatever crimes they hold against him. (He wonders how quickly she will find someone worthier of her, someone who can make her happy without hurting her, wonders if he will be able to refrain from turning such a man into another rose.)
"I think I have just the book," she says. She slips away before he can say anything, and instead of following her, he remains rooted to the floor.
Honesty, he thinks with an inward derisive sneer. What does Charming know? Maybe the advice itself was an attack against him, a way for the Prince to pay him back for what had happened to Snow White and the savior. And he had fallen for it like a gullible fool, had let himself believe that truth would earn him a happy ending (or at least a happy middle) when he should have known the truths about him could do nothing but corrode away what love Belle had left for him.
"Here."
At her soft voice just behind him, he turns (remembers turning to face her in this library, remembers being given another chance when he had lost all hope of any). Numbly, he takes the book she offers, not even bothering to look down at it.
"Thank you," he forces himself to say politely. As quickly as he can when the world is spinning all around him, he moves past her toward the door, and it doesn't count as running away, not when she wants him to go.
"Aren't you even going to look at it?" she asks.
He wants to keep going, wants to move past the door, wants to escape this terrible disappointment and grief. He wants to leave before she can leave him. But she is talking to him, and that's something, something better than polite silence, something better than denunciations. So he comes to a halt and he looks down at the book in his hand…and he stops breathing.
Guide Through 101 Sandwiches.
"I was afraid you wouldn't come back." She moves to stand between him and the door, and he wants to say that he can read the emotion on her face, but if he's wrong about the pleasure and the hope shining there, it might break him. "I know you weren't…weren't too comfortable with our dinner."
"I thought…" He frowns. She hasn't given him that special smile, so he's under no compulsion to tell her this. But she is looking at him and her eyes are shining and in his hands he holds her heart. "I thought you wouldn't want to see me."
She lets out a sigh. "Would you stop thinking that? If I don't want to see you, I'll tell you."
"You did tell me," he whispers even as he clutches the book tighter.
"Once," she admits with a shrug (as if the event, the words, the desire can be so easily dismissed and forgotten). "But then I told you I'd see you later."
"This is later," he observes, and he is surprised by the hint of a smirk on his own face.
Her smile, her tiny laugh, are enough to strengthen him and make him stand just that bit straighter. "Yes, it is. I…" She looks down and then up at him through long lashes. "I could take an early lunch now. I even brought a sandwich with me. We could share it."
"I'd like that," he says because maybe she didn't give him that one specific smile, but she has given him much, and anyway this is not a secret. He is pretty sure it is beaming outward from him, brightening the glow in her smile as she reaches out and brushes her hand against his sleeve before going to close the front doors.
Maybe Prince Charming knew what he was talking about after all.
"I used to turn people who displeased me into snails and then step on them," he interrupts her before she can make too many plans.
She only blinks at him, distracted from the book on interior decorating open on the desk before her. "Oh. Then I…I guess…no pet snails for the library," she says, and he loves her for the valiant way she tries to hide the tremor in her voice.
She glances around, makes certain none of the people browsing the shelves this late in the evening heard his confession. He knows they are keeping their distance (they always do around him) so he doesn't bother to tear his anxious gaze from her.
With a slight shake of her head, she bends back over her book and her notepad filled with scribbled ideas. "How about regular fish then? An aquarium would look nice behind the Poetry session, and they'd be easier to take care of than a fountain with turtles and snails."
He never forgets that he loves her, but he is often reminded just how much he loves her.
He is always careful to wait until that special, private smile is gone before he tells his secret. He never wants to see it fade and die, murdered by his dark side. So he waits as she munches on grapes, watches the birds fly overhead, free to leave the town without fear of reprisal.
She has not asked him to a restaurant again, not after that first time. She finds other ways to be in the open with him, like the picnic they're on now in a quiet park during the hours she knows children are in school. Like walks in the evening after most people have gone home. Like staying in the library, curled up on the comfortable sofa she found somewhere (he suspects Widow Lucas) and reading. Like calling him at his house in the morning and telling him her plans for the day while they both eat breakfast, separate but together.
She has not yet set foot in his shop or his house, has not even come close, and she has not sought him out in person, only welcomes him when he comes to her. He could worry about that, but he chooses not to. She has not left him, has not turned him away, has not reviled him for his secrets, and he is content. He is happy. (He is breathless, waiting for the shoe to drop and crush him, for the end that is inevitable.)
The air is warm here, the sun bright, but it is Belle who seems truly radiant. If he still had scales, he would think himself a cold-blooded reptile, needing to bask in imparted heat in order to stay alive and warm and mobile. But he is a man (mostly), so he knows it is love, not warmth, that he basks in. It has been good, having her back, having her alive, having her with him. And this morning has been wonderful, a last memory he can savor.
But finally her smile is gone, the birds have disappeared, the grapes have all been eaten, and he has a smile to pay for.
"I promised Bae I would give up my power," he tells her, reverence in his tone, the only way he can bear to speak of his son. It is painful to speak of him; it is liberating to be able to speak of him to her. He has practiced these words, the truth etched into the very building blocks of his soul, so even though he has to dredge them up from deep inside him, they come quickly. "It was the first deal I made, and I broke it. He found a portal to a world without magic, where the curse would be gone and we would be safe. I told him I would go, but when the portal roared open like a cyclone, I was too afraid. I let go of his hand."
He cannot cry, but he wants to. If he cries, though, he will never stop, and he will break, will fold in on himself and shatter and it will be more than a chip then, will be impossible to put back together. So he does not cry, only looks straight ahead and keeps his voice a monotone.
Belle is silent. She usually is, after he tears open his chest and pulls out his pulsating secrets, glowing with unholy power, and hands them to her for her to crush to dust or to keep safe and hidden. He is usually surprised by what she says when she finally does speak (when she does not run away), but this time he is certain he can accurately predict what she will say.
How could you let your own son go?
How could you be such a coward?
What kind of man chooses power over his own son?
She will phrase it as a question because she is kind and forgiving, but she will ask it because she is brave and loyal and she would never have let go of something she loved just because of selfish fear and possessive greed.
So this time he will not be surprised by her response.
Except that he is.
She asks nothing. She makes no accusations. Instead, she slips her hands around his arm and rests her head on his shoulder and says, "I'm so sorry."
"I let him go," he repeats (she must not have heard him), and his monotone is broken by a quiet plea. "My own son."
"I'm sorry," she says again. "I'm sorry."
She will say nothing else, and in the end, he does bend and break and fold in on himself and her arms are there to catch him, her hands to save his tears from falling to cold ground, and her presence to mend him even before he can shatter.
They are reading together in the library. She has convinced him to take a turn reading aloud because, she says, she will cry through this section and if she is reading it, he won't be able to understand her through her tears. (He agrees so that he has excuse not to look at any tear she might shed.) She watches him while he reads and usually he is uncomfortable when others look at him (he knows their thoughts—coward, lame, evil, despicable). With her, though, he doesn't mind (doesn't know what thoughts lie behind crystal eyes and pink lips). With her, he hopes she never turns away.
She watches, her eyes dry, her lips curved upward. She is not crying; he thinks she is not paying attention to the words he reads about rings and quests and volcanoes. He is certain of it when she smiles. He was looking at the page, not her, so he can't be sure it was his smile, but he's not sure this counts as a secret either, so it all comes out even in the end.
"I think you were my Crack of Doom," he says, settling the book on his lap before Frodo and Sam can be saved by the eagles. "And I, too, failed the test."
She looks thoughtful, her chin propped on her hands. She is lying on her stomach on the sofa, her feet in the air. She is taking up so much room that he is squeezed into the corner against the armrest, but he doesn't mind. He feels a thrill of inward delight that she is so obviously comfortable around him.
"No," she says decisively. "I think I was your Sam, willing to take the power away from you, but so very wrong. Or at—at least, at the wrong time," she adds, shy and nervous. Offering another chance, a tiny glimpse into the uncertainty he rarely sees in her.
Like every chance she gives him, he takes it. And it has been so long, so very long since his home was their home, since she was his, since he could touch her—so long and she is so very close, so amazingly tempting. So he leans down, tilts her face upward with a single, trembling finger, and kisses her. She could tell what he was going to do, so he is almost surprised when she lets her eyes flutter closed and lifts her head toward him.
Then her lips are on his, so light and cautious and hopeful. It lasts no longer than their first kiss. It is like another first kiss, he thinks, one where he does not have to turn away temptation and fight back terrified betrayal and ruin it all (where he can do it right).
So he kisses her, a brush of lips, a taste of perfection, and then he pulls away. She smiles up at him, a delighted smile. And for this instant he is happy and there is no foreboding warning tangled up inside him, no fear. He smiles back at her and then, one hand resting on her back, goes back to reading.
Neither of them cries.
"Can I ask about him?"
He gives her a sideways look, suddenly apprehensive. They are walking through the early evening streets, paralleling the forest on one side so that she is framed against green leaves and silvery blue sky and verdant life. On his side, he is framed by the city he made sure would exist and once controlled. He wishes he could say he controlled it still, but he has been too distracted with his own concerns and Charming has firmly taken charge.
"Who?" he asks. She hasn't come back to his shop so she could not have seen him confronting the few who still think they can steal from him just because they happened to own the items in the previous world. He has been careful and hasn't hurt any of them; no need to upset Charming when they've established a tenuous truce (no need to risk losing Belle through carelessness and a short temper).
"Baelfire." Her voice is so quiet even he can barely hear it, and her caution with his secrets warms him. "I know he's yours, but…but I'd like to know about him. If that's all right."
Possessiveness flares hot and quick in him. He tamps it back, quickly, stamping it down because she has proved (just proved again) how adeptly she hides and guards the secrets he gives her and he does not want to let his suspicion and paranoia turn toward her.
She glances away, shadows cast across her always-changing features. "I understand if you don't want to talk about him," she murmurs.
"I do," he says, and is surprised that it is the truth. He stops and turns to face her, waiting until she meets his eyes. He wishes he knew how to say this (wishes he were brave enough to say it without hesitating). "I haven't…ever…told anyone about him. But…I'd like to tell you."
She blinks away tears (he tenses) and smiles (he relaxes again) and then throws her arms around him and hugs him tightly. He is bewildered, unsure why she should show so much emotion when he hasn't even told her anything yet. He is exhilarated, glad of this opportunity to hold her so close, press her heart close to his, pretend they are similar, twinned, connected irretrievably.
"Thank you," she whispers into his ear.
When they start walking again, her fingers closely threaded through his, her warmth heating him up from the inside out, he collects his oh-so-precious memories, opens his mouth, and says, hoarsely, "When he was scared, he would always hold onto me. But he wasn't scared very often; he was brave, like you."
Only later, after he has shared with her his oft-visited and careworn memories, given her more secrets for safekeeping, does he realize that she had not given him that private, beautiful smile in payment for them. Yet he had told her anyway, confided in her, trusted her.
Strangely, he does not mind.
Of all the secrets still left to tell her, there is one he wishes more than anything to avoid. He's already told her that he lost his wife, long ago; no need to bring it up again or go into more, damning detail.
But a deal is a deal, and this is why he made the deal in the first place.
So he plans when he will drop this secret, like a time-sensitive curse, between them. He waits until after she has stepped close to him and kissed him. He waits until they are well into their Guide Through 101 Sandwiches. He waits until she is established in the community, Ruby and Charming and Henry and Abigail and Frederick and the dwarves all won over by her brilliant beauty and now staunchly on her side, able and willing to protect her from her father or Regina (or himself). He waits until he can wait no more, until he is dredging up things to tell her that are more forgotten sins than closely guarded secrets. He waits until he cannot bear to look in the mirror lest he see Coward branded there in lines of mocking fire.
He waits until he is about to make his bid to break open the town line through means that would make her angry with him anyway. Easier (by degree; by comparison) to face her anger when she is no longer with him, when she no longer has a stake in his actions, when she takes her heart back from his clumsy, trembling hands.
It is sneaky and manipulative, but he knows no other way to be. It's who he is and what he is, and he has tried to be something else for her, but it is not getting him any closer to his son, and the more he talks of Bae to her, the more he remembers how desperately he needs to find him, to apologize, to let him know he is loved.
After all, to think that he is unworthy of being loved is one thing his precious son should never, ever have to fear.
For a time, he considers inviting her to a dinner at Granny's, taking her out in front of everyone and giving her what she had wanted that first time, but in the end he doesn't. He doesn't want to curry favor or try to earn some kind of points or pretend to something he isn't. Besides (and he hates that he knows this, thinks it, but it's his nature), she would know the instant he asked her that he was planning something and the game would be up.
So instead he ensures good weather, coaxes the sun out from behind the clouds it's been using as cover, and takes her out on a picnic. Usually, they eat at a park and sit on a bench, but he takes special care with this instance. He prepares fried chicken and several side salads (no sandwiches; no false pretenses that this is just another of their lunches together), brings iced tea (with the extraordinary amounts of sugar she likes in it), spreads it all out on a blanket (a blue one that matches her eyes and helps the sky frame her above and below in sapphire), not in a park, but outside the cabin he keeps in the woods (a risk, since she'll have no quick way back to town, but it will give him time to tell her the whole story before she can run).
It feels like preparing a last meal.
"Thank you, Rumplestiltskin," she says when they've eaten. She's been watching him intently, waiting for him to tell her the purpose of this special occasion, but he has been careful to keep his regret, his resignation, his fear all hidden away. "This is beautiful."
He wants to say that she is what makes it beautiful, but he fears that doing so now will make her think he is only trying to flatter her, soften her before he unveils this terrible secret. So he only forces a smile and offers to retrieve a book for her if she'd like to read.
After all, she hasn't smiled at him yet, so technically, he doesn't yet owe her this secret.
As good as he is at pretending, even he can't make himself believe that.
He does owe her this (owes it to her to give her the chance, the excuse, to walk away). Owes it to her to warn her that he has killed before, killed a woman he promised to protect and cherish (no vows to love, though, not for him and certainly not for her). Owes it to her to remind her that she is in the presence of a murderer, and who is to say he will not do it again? (He knows he would not, knows he could never, but how is she to know that, to trust him after all the pain he has caused her?) So he will tell her, and it will hurt—her just as much as him because even he can no longer deny the fact that she does love him (though he still does not know why).
Belle purses her lips and then cocks her head. "Ruby thinks you're going to propose. She said that's why you asked to bring me out here, for privacy, to make it more romantic."
"Indeed?" His tone is flat (his heart is squeezed between two conflicting desires). "She warned you not to come, did she?"
"Not in so many words." Belle giggles, and the sound is so melodious and sweet that for an instant he forgets what he plans to do to her heart. "She's not sure what to think of you anymore."
"And you?" he asks. The desire is strong (and it will be his last chance), so he reaches out and strokes a careful finger down her cheek. "Do you know what to think of me?"
She smiles a secretive smile, eyes soft and sparkling so brightly that she might mistake him as a knight with gleaming armor simply from the glare. "You're not as complicated as you think you are, Rumplestiltskin," she teases, and he loves her so much that he thinks he might die, in that moment, simply because he feels so much all at once that he cannot contain it all.
He shouldn't, not when he is living out his last moments with her, but he is weak and she is smiling so invitingly, so he leans forward and kisses her, drinking in her smile, hiding it away inside him to take the place of his heart and his secrets. Her lips are soft and warm and beautiful, just like her, everything he wants and cannot have. But then, wanting what he cannot have has ever and always been his defining sin.
The sky is clear and cloudless, but her hands are like raindrops in his hair, trickling down and sending a shiver through him. The sun is shining brightly, but her smile when she pulls away to meet his gaze outshines it. His soul is shriveled and cold and so lonely, but hers finds and nurtures his. She is a miracle, living and breathing in his arms, and for an instant he thinks that he can keep her, imagines that they will be together always, dreams that she will stay by his side and help him find his son.
But then she smiles that precious, oh-so-valuable smile up at him. Sweet and shy and private and special, and he is doomed. Because now he owes her and the truth always destroys.
Tears threaten to fall before he bites them back. He will not cry, will not break, will not make her set aside her horror out of pity. A shudder ripples through him when she caresses his cheek with her hand, but her smile never wavers.
"I love you, Rumplestiltskin," she whispers.
Life is cruel (he's always known that), but he hadn't before realized just how utterly sadistic it could be. These words, the first time she's said them since fearful silence and half-lies and underground cages, and they are nothing but a precursor to the end.
"Oh, Belle." He wants to weep; instead, he smiles at her. Truth (life) is painful, honesty (love) is hard, and he is an expert at laughing at pain and capering before heartbreak and reveling in despair. Now, he learns how to smile at complete and utter desolation. "I love you too."
She reaches up and kisses him, mercy and grace and blessing all in one.
He is a coward so he wants to forget his deal in favor of her lips and hands and forgiveness. But he is Rumplestiltskin and he honors his agreements no matter how they rip and tear and shred at all of himself he has managed to retain over the past centuries. He is a man and Belle has been teaching him to be brave (makes him want to be better than he is).
So he pulls back before he wants to (he wants to stay like this forever), and he smiles (because she is), and he offers again to read to her (because he is still a coward).
It takes him three chapters before he can wrestle his fear and his desperation into submission. Belle is lying beside him, her face in shadow beneath a tree so that he cannot tell if she is dozing or awake.
"Belle," he says. She doesn't move; he owes her a secret but maybe it still counts if he says it while she is sleeping. That wouldn't be his fault, would it? And anyway, he will never be able to work himself up to telling her again, so this is his only chance.
He takes in a breath and lets out one of his darkest secrets.
"I killed my wife," he says, and he wishes he did not sound quite so conversational, as if it means nothing (it doesn't mean everything, but it should mean something, he knows). "She left, you see, left her son. Left Bae. Everything anyone could want…he deserved it all, and she…she left him. He needed his mother, and she left him with me."
He has to pause, has to take a breath, because letting go of Bae is the greatest sin that has ever been and it strikes far too near his own damning mistake, pours salt in jagged wounds.
"There was a pirate," he continues grimly, "and she wanted to see the world, and they said she had been captured, that her fate was so awful death could be the only conclusion. I could have fought for her. I could have, but I'd never held a sword and it was an entire pirate crew against me. So I left her because Bae needed at least one parent even if he should have had two." He breaks off abruptly (after all, justification never matters, not when actions speak louder than any thousands of words spoken over hundreds of years). It takes him a minute to compose himself and pick up the thread of his toneless narrative.
"And then…after Bae was…gone…I could have found him. I could have followed him. All she and the pirate had to do was give it to me and I could have found Bae. But they wouldn't give it to me, and she never…she never asked about him. Never asked me where Bae was. How could she leave him and then…forget…him?"
He swallows. He has never told this story, never put it into words, never tried to make sense of that day. But he owes Belle, owes her so much more than a secret, and she deserves to know even if it can do nothing but shatter him and break her heart and drive them so cruelly apart. Maybe she is sleeping (safe from this secret) or maybe she is listening (breaking apart at his side). He is not strong enough to look at her and find out which is true. He looks straight ahead, at a cabin he has not let Belle enter because that would be too much even for him, to take her to the place where he beat her father for a crime he didn't commit (though the crime that awful excuse of a father committed later makes it all worth it, in his mind)
"I asked her why she left, and she said…she said it was my fault. She didn't love me. Couldn't love me. So she left him. With me. And I lost him. And she didn't even know. And she wouldn't give me what I needed to find him. So I killed her. Tore out her heart and crushed it in front of her pirate lover." Even still today, he feels a cold rush of anger at the mere memory, a phantom echo of the rage that had torn through him then, aided and swelled by magic. "But it was all for nothing. They tricked me. I was too impatient, too desperate, and I didn't get what I needed anyway. When I went back for it, the pirate had already used it to escape to another world. And I was left alone. Without Bae. Without anything."
Just what he deserves, he knows, but he had been so determined to make sure he'd never be tricked again, had taught himself to ensure that every deal worked in his favor. No one would ever escape or evade or trick him again; no one would keep him from Bae. So he'd made deals and searched for any and every path that could lead him to his son. Until the deal when he'd bargained for a caretaker for his large estate and fallen in love.
If Milah hadn't left, maybe he wouldn't have lost Bae. Maybe Bae would have been safe. But he hadn't been good enough for her and so she'd abandoned them both and he'd been left with nothing. It's only fitting, then, that the tale of her abandonment and death will also be the cause of losing him the woman who actually does (or did) love him and leaving him, once more, with nothing except an eternal search and a never-ending quest that keeps him sane just as surely as it maddens him.
"That's awful."
He flinches at her hoarse voice. Slowly, as if all the long years he has lived are finally catching up to him, he turns his head and sees Belle sitting up, wrapping her arms around her knees as if she is chilled. Her eyes are wide and wet, her features shocked and disbelieving and dismayed.
It is the very thing he was afraid of, the incredulous horror exactly what he has feared with every revealed secret, the struck and numb voice the one that has before only visited him in his nightmares. He feels himself shrinking, withering, before her (I'll truly, truly become dust; his own words echo through his mind), and he wishes he could go back and choose to conceal this one secret.
But he has had laughter and smiles and touches and kisses and I love yous and that is more than he deserves, more than should have been his, and for just this once, he will be content. He will not let his covetousness, his greediness, his possessiveness ruin this for him.
"I'll drive you back to town," he says quietly, unable to meet her eyes.
"She left you." Belle says the words as if they are foreign. He stares at her as if she is, in fact, speaking a foreign tongue. "She abandoned you and her own son without even telling you? She let you believe that she was dead at a pirate's hands? And then told you it was your fault?"
When her eyes snap to his, he is startled by the anger sparking there; not the hot anger that has occasionally been sent his way, but cold icy anger adding frost to her very being. There is still shock there, too, and he thinks that maybe she has not understood yet, not fully comprehended what he has confessed, but for now, he treasures this brief reprieve.
"Rumplestiltskin, is that why…" She is unsure suddenly, almost tentative as she reaches out to place her hand on his wrist. He stares at it, but if he is imagining the touch, he has gotten even better at pretending than he thought. It is warm and calloused against his thumb, her fingers slender and small, milky pale against his slightly darker skin. "Just because she didn't love you doesn't mean that you…that you're not worthy of love. You know that, don't you?"
He tilts his head, but her hand remains where it is. So (while terror and entranced wonder battle for preeminence within him) he lets his eyes travel up the delicate wrist, the tapered arm, the rounded shoulder, pale neck, and finally to her face. She stares at him, and all her anger, all her horror and disbelief and dismay, are gone. His vision has gone suddenly hazy, but he is almost certain that he sees tenderness there. (Ridiculous, he knows, just as ridiculous as thinking she could ever love him so truly that she could break his curse with a brush of her unflinching petal-soft lips.)
"I'm a coward," he whispers because she is waiting for an answer (a secret he can give her only because he has already passed this one into her safekeeping). "I ran away from the ogre war; she wanted me to fight. I shamed her. Women can't love cowards."
Blue eyes narrow dangerously, but she takes a deep breath and shakes her head. "We're all cowards, Rumplestiltskin. Some of us are just better at hiding it than others." He is astonished when she scoots closer to him and wraps her hand even tighter around his arm. "If being afraid meant we were unworthy of being loved, no one in the entire world—in any world—would be loved. And I do love you."
"I killed her," he repeats. He has been practicing this moment for so long, afraid of it, dreading it, and he does not understand what has gone wrong (not wrong; right).
"I'm not your judge and jury," she says calmly, her fingers running quickly through his hair. "You've done lots of bad things, but I can't absolve you of your guilt or punish you for your crimes. I can only take you as you are and love you or leave you. And I love you."
It's the third time she's said it. The first time was a temptation, one he'd avoided by telling her his secret anyway. The second time was a puzzle because she can't love him, not after all he's done, everything he's been, the lives he's destroyed (the first life being his own). The third time is one time too many.
His self-restraint crumbles. He reaches out blindly and pulls her into him, clumsy and desperate as he wraps around her, and he wishes he could keep her forever, make her into his heart and keep her radiance and beauty inside where there only resides something dark and starving and slowly turning to drink in her light. She comes to him willingly (quick and warm and everything Milah wasn't), and her arms twine around his neck (in a way Milah's never had), and she's the one who tips her head back and covers his lips with hers.
Everything he's ever been and done tells him that this just proves that life is sadistic, toying with him, baiting him with sheer and utter happiness, giving him a taste of perfection before it rips it all away from him. He's listened to those fears (let those experiences rule him) for too long. But Belle didn't leave him, and she's helping him find his son, and she has never sneered at his secrets, and she loves him. He is weak and he is a coward and he is a monster, but she loves him.
So he banishes that twist of guilt and foreboding and he kisses her so deeply that he brands her goodness into his flesh so that he will never be without her.
And when they're driving back to town, when she's sitting beside him with her hand placed halfway between them (when he's finally begun to believe that this is real), he glances at her and says, very quietly, "I…I know there's no reason you should believe me, but…I would never hurt you, Belle."
"Of course not," she says. She is somber as she looks at him. "I knew that already."
"How?" he asks, barely able to get the word past the deluge of emotions overwhelming him and threatening his all-important control.
"Because when you thought I betrayed you with everything, you put me in a safe place before you let your rage loose. And when you thought I could lose you every chance of ever seeing Baelfire again, you sent me back to the one place you had personally promised me would be safe." She smiles at him, then, and he has to blink away the sparkles from his vision. "And you always keep your promises."
Sometimes, he wonders if Belle is pure magic given human form. Sometimes, he wonders if she is composed solely of dreams and miracles and blessings, of goodness and innocence and kindness.
He doesn't have to wonder anymore. Now he knows.
She is.