A/N: Thank you to everyone who's given me such wonderful and encouraging feedback on this story, even if it's just following or favoriting it. It means so much to me, and I'm overjoyed that everyone is enjoying it! Only one more chapter left to go after this!

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended.

"Are you sorry?" she asks. It surprises him, though he's not sure why (the times when she doesn't surprise him are few and far between).

He thinks about it a moment, pondering his answer (he can't lie, but he has to be careful in his phrasing). Belle waits, taking the book he hands her and shelving it where it belongs. It's late; the library is closed, but he offered to help her clean up. Following her through winding shelves and handing her books from the cart is a small price to pay for getting to see her, even if extra time with her also gives her time to hand him smiles he has to pay for.

He cannot help wondering why she cares if he's sorry or not for this latest confession; guilt, remorse, regret, they never matter, never count for anything. But he has learned by now that honesty (destructive and painful) matters more to her than the answer itself. And yet even knowing that, he does not want to disappoint her (wants, more than anything, to please her).

"I want to be," he finally answers.

The answer (truthful without committing to anything) seems to please her. She grins up at him and places a fluttering hand on his arm. "Good!" she exclaims. "That's very…very good, Rumplestiltskin."

He narrows his eyes at her (suspicious, distrustful, even with her). "Is it? Care to tell me why?"

"Because—" She laughs and shakes her head, her gaze falling away from his. "Wanting to change is the first step. It's not change itself, but it is necessary."

"Change," he hears himself say flatly. Cold, liquid lead takes the place of blood in his veins, an alchemical feat that would impress him were it happening to anyone else.

"Yes." She is uncertain, unsure, as she looks up at him, her smile banished (a common occurrence around him). Because he has not changed yet, has not transformed from beast to handsome prince as happened to this world's version of their tale (he knows because he came across her and the wolf-girl watching it, though Belle insists Ruby had no ulterior motives in showing it to her). He has not transformed, and he never will.

He had thought he would be content with what time he could have with Belle before she gave up waiting for a metamorphosis more unlikely even than a beauty loving a beast. Had thought that he would take what he could get and that those memories would help him cope when she finally gave up on him. But now he knows: it only makes it worse.

What matter that she accepts him even knowing his secrets when she still expects him to turn into the perfect prince he never was, the knight he couldn't be for her, the hero he will never become?

Nothing, he knows (and his heart is transfused to stone). It means nothing (save that he is still as unworthy and incapable of being loved as always).

Belle smiles at him, then, and for an instant he wants to lash out at something because it's that smile she's giving him, and now he owes her again (will always owe her; the debt can never be paid for all that he has done to her). "Change isn't bad, Rumplestiltskin," she tells him (lies, all lies, idealistic lies, but she doesn't know that).

"I don't like it when you talk about change," he admits, quickly because it's never wise to leave a debt unpaid for long. "It…scares me."

She blinks, then narrows her eyes. When she opens her mouth (to loose words he's sure will destroy him), he tenses and she closes her mouth and gives a slight shake of her head, almost thoughtfully. He is startled and frustrated when (for no reason at all) she smiles at him again. That smile, the smile that had seemed safe to use for his deal with himself, a smile she uses only for him, and rarely (not so rare anymore).

"Why does it scare you?" she asks carefully, and her close scrutiny makes him uncomfortable.

He glances away, down at the book he's holding in his hands. It is small and compact and smells of old paper, but he does not even notice the title. "Because I can't be who you want me to be," he finally says, and he is ashamed of how tiny, how reedy his voice emerges. He is powerful and strong and it has been hundreds of years since he has been anything else, but he sounds like a spinner who couldn't keep a wife and who lost his son, and he hates it.

"Who do I want you to be?" And Belle is not looking at the books. She is looking at him, up into his eyes, her head tilted, her expression oh so very thoughtful. He shrinks away, instinctively, afraid that she will follow the weak sound of his voice and see the coward he is beneath all the layers she knows.

"Someone better," he replies hoarsely. "Someone good."

"And aren't you?" Her own voice is quiet, almost as small as his (though surely, surely for different reasons).

He's given his secrets, bought and paid for his wonderful smiles, and he doesn't owe her this.

Except that he does. He owes her everything. For all the pain and the suffering and the wasted years locked away and the terror and the heartache and the lies he's intimated. For the kisses and the touches and the I love yous and the promises he gave her that he knew (even while giving them) he couldn't live up to.

He owes her.

So he meets her gaze, and he says, "No."

And then he puts the book down and turns around and walks away.

He feels himself turn to dust inside when she does not stop him.

He is spinning because it is better to spin quietly, softly, slowly, than to roar and rage and lash out when the potions and spells around him are too delicate and fragile to withstand the outburst (when his heart and his soul are too delicate and fragile). The knock surprises him; no one comes to his house, and even should Charming dare, he would not come to the basement.

For an instant, he contemplates ignoring it, but the knock sounds again, and it is tentative and urgent all at once. A desperate soul, he thinks, and so he rises because he is Rumplestiltskin and desperate souls are his life, his profession, his salvation (his reminder that he is not so badly off as they are; as he used to be).

But the desperate soul knocking at his door can't reassure him that he is good enough as he is (can only remind him that he is as bad off now as he was before his curse).

"Belle," he says, and it is just a name, but it has a potent force all its own on his tongue.

"Rumplestiltskin," she replies, and now she is nervous and awkward, shifting her weight and wringing her hands together as she stands on his doorstep.

Words come easily to him (so simple to twist them like a weapon when power is on his side), but they elude him now, twisting and darting outside his reach (because she's the one with the power, who can make or break him with only words). He feels unutterably tired, and old, and so very frail as he looks at her, and he wishes he hadn't left his cane over by his spinning wheel.

"May I come in?" she asks timidly.

Easier to say no, to turn her away and let her go free. Easier to stop pretending to her (to himself) that things between them will eventually get better, smoother, less painful. Easier to remember his hurt and grief when he walked away (when she did not call him back), to call up his frustration and impatience with all his powerful magic (so frustratingly useless to help him take one step over an invisible line) and use it to strengthen his resolve and shut the door on her. Easier to let her go and satisfy himself with his magic and his quest and his loneliness (to let his heart turn cold and immobile and protected) once more.

Easier, and for an instant he thinks about it before opening the door wider and standing aside and saying, "Of course."

Because he does not want easy. He wants her.

"How are you?" she asks him as he closes the door behind her (sealing her inside the beast's lair). He cannot tell if the question is polite or meaningful, but it doesn't matter. He would answer either way.

"Not so good." He stands there and regards her, out of place in this basement. Out of place next to him, and he wonders how they got so caught up in this tangled, twisted web of pain and heartbreak. "I thought I was close to crossing the town line, but…well, I'll start again."

"I'm sorry," she offers, and he thinks she probably is. After all, the longer it takes him to find a solution, the longer he tinkers with magic. Dabbling in darkness, he thinks, and is amazed by the similarities between her and Bae, neither one of them happy for his successes, his triumphs, his strengths. He supposes their agreement in that is proof that he should not be happy either, but he cannot consent to that, not when magic is all that will bring him back to Bae, not when it is all that saved Belle from being turned into a blank slate in a mine.

"I'll find a way," he says. Warns her. "I have to find Bae."

"Yes," she agrees quietly. She falls silent and glances around. He is grateful for this moment, this chance to observe her without having to worry about the pitfalls of conversation. But (like all good things) it cannot last. "This looks like your tower in the Dark Castle," she observes.

"It is," he tells her. "Mostly. A few additions or subtractions here and there." He would say more, but she looks so uncomfortable, surrounded by his magic (the thing she tried to take away from him with a beguiling kiss), so he catches himself, licks his lips, and looks away.

"I don't mind," Belle says suddenly, quickly, dumping the words at his feet like an offering. "I don't mind that you have magic. I mean," she offers him a mischievous smile, startling and abrupt, "I don't like you using it to hurt people. But I know it's part of you, and…and I know I kissed you, before, but I thought—I thought I was helping you. I didn't know about Baelfire and the Queen and…" She lets out a shy laugh and he knows he is gaping at her, but he cannot stop himself. "I just…I'm sorry. I wouldn't ask you to give up your magic any more than you'd ask me to give up books."

He blinks, shakes himself minutely, trying to gather his scattered thoughts. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because it's true," she whispers, and her eyes are so intent on his that he forgets to even breathe. "And because the other night, when you left…there is good in you, Rumplestiltskin, so much of it, and I don't know…I don't know why you can't see that. But it's there, and magic doesn't take that away—it's only a tool you use, I think—and I didn't want you to think that I…that because of your magic I couldn't really love you."

Time has stopped around him. Vaguely, he thinks that perhaps he should check the clock tower and make sure it hasn't once more come to an imprisoning halt. He cannot move, cannot think, cannot speak (cannot weep). He can only stare at her as she inches nearer him, her eyes so wide and bright and earnest, her smile so shy and innocent and determined, her presence sending a shockwave to ripple through him.

"Because I do," she says, and she is so close he can feel her breath ghost past his chin when she speaks. "I do love you. In the Dark Castle, I loved watching the intensity and focus you gave to mixing together your countless potions. I love how you almost seem to crackle with tangible energy when you make a deal with someone. I love the dedication so apparent in every magical spell and deal you make, the devotion you so wholeheartedly give your son."

"Stop," he whispers, the word finally propelled from him. He wants to collapse, to kneel before her, wants to bow his head and shrink away, because she should not be saying these things, should not think or feel these things. But truth burns like fire in her eyes and caresses his soul and he knows (knows down to his very bones) that she is not lying.

"Stop," he says again. He does not remember reaching out, but her arms fit just so against the palms of his hands and she is stepping forward until he can feel her whole body next to his. "You don't know what I've done with magic."

"After all you've told me, I think I'm starting to get an idea," she says seriously, but she is twining her arms around his neck so she must not truly know. "I don't like everything you've done with magic, and I'm not saying that I'll ever agree with everything you do. But some things—things like healing Dr. Whale and helping Henry with his nightmares and giving your aid to David—some things are very admirable."

"Only if they give me something in exchange," he protests as his arms tighten around her waist.

Her lips twitch. "Liar."

He raises his brows in mock offense and feels his own mouth quirk crookedly, and there is nothing (nothing in either world) easier than holding her close and smiling back at her and teasing her. "Now, that is the one accusation I try to avoid."

"Don't avoid me," she says. Her smile is gone and there is earnest plea and sober wisdom replacing it. "Don't keep shutting me out just because you think I won't like what I learn about you. Please."

For an instant, he wants to protest, wants to distract her without actually making the promise. Because she won't like what she learns about him as he continues to barter away his secrets, and she won't like that there is no hero beneath his scales and his suits. But she is here, and she already knows so much, and she is in his arms, and he is weak and greedy, so he nods and says, "I won't," and when she smiles and kisses him, he almost believes that this (this kiss, this feeling, this—them together) is forever.

Almost.

Fairies, as irritating as ever, dance in his stomach, tying his composure into knots, as he waits for Belle's answer.

"What's the occasion?" she asks, tilting her head, leaning over the circulation desk toward him.

He leans forward too, daring her to close the distance between them. "Do we need one?"

Her smile is pleased, maybe a bit surprised, and that makes this whole evening worth it. This time he has no ulterior motive for inviting her out to Granny's for dinner, no secrets to soften. This time he has asked because she has lasted oh so many more secrets than he thought she would and she is still capable of smiling at him. This time he asks because he wants to make her happy, and a night out at Granny's is something so simple, so little of her to ask of him, that he wants to give it to her.

So he picks her up after she closes the library and he walks with her to the diner and he does not allow the stares of the patrons to bother him (much). The few times he feels himself tensing beneath the watchful gaze of Ruby or the half-caught whisper of a person at a table behind him, he only looks at Belle and reminds himself why he is there. And as she always does, she reads him so very well, reaching out to place her hand over his and smiling and asking him questions whenever she sees him go rigid.

"Thank you," she says quietly when they finish and stand to leave. "For doing this. I know it's silly, but I like doing this. I like…I like knowing that you will."

A dozen humorous or dismissive responses flood his mind, but for once, the right one emerges (sincere and warm, as if he is not a monster). "It's not silly. And you're welcome."

Her hand slips into his as they walk back toward the library, and he is warm (really, fully warm) for the first time since she left his house without telling him.

He does not deserve her, he knows, but he has decided that he will fight to keep her anyway.

"Did you love her?" she asks one evening as they meander through softly lit, deserted streets.

"Who?" He frowns, wondering if he missed something. She has been quiet all night, scarcely saying a word, and they had been walking in silence.

"Your wife." Her face is downcast, the fall of her hair hiding all but the curve of her cheek. A cold shiver worms its way through him at her quiet voice. "Did you ever love her…before?"

His hand goes slack and heavy around hers. He stares straight ahead and sees nothing (certainly not a woman denouncing him in front of the town tavern, or a stranger tossing hope and redemption in the form of a magic bean to her pirate lover; above all, not a hate-twisted face sneering that she never loved him).

"Why do you ask?" It is all he can manage to say, and he forces himself to pretend to bravery, looks down to study her face.

She glances up, and for a startling moment, he thinks she will give him his precious smile. Her lips start to twist upward, her head starts to tilt, her eyes start to shine, but then she loses the expression. She shakes her head and looks away again, and he wishes he had a hand free to brush aside her hair and see her expression.

"I just think about her sometimes," she finally says.

He is ice and fire, a sickening combination that mixes into nausea and foreboding within him until the world itself sways all about him. If she fears him…if she is afraid that he will kill her as he did Milah…he has long regretted his actions on that pirate's ship, but never more so than in this moment.

"I think I could have loved her," he says, and smile or no smile, he tells her the truth. "But there was very little opportunity."

"Why?" Belle glances up at him through her lashes, an innocence about her curiosity that makes him hope (hope with incandescent strength) that she is not truly afraid he will rip out her heart. Not in the physical sense, anyway.

"She wanted to be free to explore the world," he says, and spares a bit of his hope to put into the prayer that Belle doesn't think he has found in her a replacement for Milah (as if she did not outshine and dwarf Milah in every way; as if there could be any comparison at all). "She did not want to be married, and before that could change, if it would, I went to war. And then she was ashamed, and then there was a baby, and she felt trapped. And…she couldn't love me so she left." He thinks a moment, then adds, "But she gave me Bae. I could have loved her for that if nothing else."

Belle is silent for several streets (though her hand tightens in his, calming the nausea roaring inside him) before she speaks, slowly and cautiously. "Is that…is that why you let me go when I said I wanted to see the world? Did you think I would leave you anyway?"

"You came back," he says instead of answering her. He does not think about that time with her in the Dark Castle anymore, not since she's alive now; he spent decades with only those memories to haunt and beguile him, but now he has her and hope. Besides, he does not like the direction of this conversation, does not like that Belle is comparing herself to the woman who abandoned Bae to a man she knew could do nothing but fail him.

"Yes, but—"

"I love you, Belle," he interrupts, turning to face her, halting them in a shadowed area between street lights. "You and Bae are…the only things I have ever loved. I wouldn't hurt you, Belle. Never. I promise. I couldn't."

But he knows that she will not be able to believe him. Two people he has loved and he drove them both away, hurt them both, shut them both out. And Belle knows it (the only one who does), so how can she believe him now?

But she is Belle, and so she surprises him.

"I know," she says, and she looks straight at him, fearless and confident and tender. "I wasn't worried about that, Rumplestiltskin, really. I'm not afraid of you, not like that."

He is relieved and reassured, so much so that he does not dare ask her in what way she is afraid of him.

"You are welcome, you know," he tells the book in his hands (thick and solid, it is a newer one Belle has found to shelve in a prominent position). "Anytime you'd like to come, you can."

She avoids him for an extra moment, but when she reaches out to take the book from him, when their fingers slide against each other, she falls still. "All right," she says.

He is tempted just to leave it there, to drop the subject and ask her if she liked the book they're both holding. Eye Of The World, another story set in a fantasy world he never personally encountered. But he wants to know her, wants to hear her secrets. Wants to know why she is so frightened of coming back to his shop, to his house, to anyplace he had taken her when she still lived with him.

"If you're afraid," he begins tentatively, because this is the only answer he can think of, "you don't have to be. I wouldn't keep you there. Our deal was finished a long time ago."

"I know." She tugs at the book until he releases it and then she turns and sets it upright on a shelf visible to anyone entering the library.

Everything in him is telling him to move on, but the question slips from him before he can stop it (she always makes him say and do things he never would otherwise). "Then why won't you come?"

The words fall like eggs, smashing against the floor and lying between them, sloppy and slippery. Rumplestiltskin looks down at his hands on his cane and tries to pretend that he did not just break something fragile and young (tries to pretend he has not ruined everything).

"I'm the one who left," Belle says abruptly, freezing the breath in his lungs because she says it like it's a confession. "I didn't want…I didn't think that it would be fair to just go back to those places, to be there where you wanted me, and yet deny you all the things you wanted with me. I thought…I thought it would be too painful for you." Her voice goes even quieter, so soft he almost cannot hear it. "I'm the one who left, and I didn't think it would be fair to expect all the same benefits I had before I made that choice."

"Benefits?" he questions with a raised brow. There are a hundred other things he wants to say, but that seems the safest.

"Yes." She rolls her eyes exasperatedly, and as easily as that, the air is clean and comfortable once more around them, the danger averted. "Being with you is a benefit, Rumplestiltskin. I like all the things you have in your shop. I like getting to see you in your home, away from the eyes of everyone else."

His smile is soft and gentle and tender; it feels like a stranger's smile on his face (it feels like her smile on his lips). He reaches out and paints a delicate line down her cheek. "You have that here, do you not?" At her nod, his smile grows stronger, more familiar, more him. "And I want you there, my darling Belle. So long as you want to be there, I want you there, for tea or conversation or a simple hello."

Her smile is much more familiar, brilliant and beautiful. "Okay," she says, and that's all.

It's enough.

He is surprised, when he opens his front door, to find her standing there in the drizzling rain with tears on her face.

"I'm sorry," she says immediately. "It's just…I saw my father."

He knows there is nothing he can say. He knows that releasing the rage exploding into incandescent fury within him will not help her. And he has learned something, in his time with her, in his memories of his son. So he simply opens his arms and lets her fall forward into him. It pleases him that she came to him, that he can offer her some comfort, even as he hurts for her tears and the sobs shaking their way through her slender body.

She is soft and boneless and vulnerable (so trusting, in the arms of her beast). He leads her inside to his own library, where books will surround her and comforting quiet envelop her. It is not how he envisioned this, her coming back to his house, but she is hurting and fragile and she came to him (as if she thinks he can heal her, can make something better; as if she does not think he destroys everything he touches) so he does not mind. When he lets go of her so she can sit on the sofa, she whimpers and clings tightly to him.

Touch is new to him, the intimacy and trust and humanness inherent in it something he has never been very accustomed to, particularly after centuries of being one of the most feared beings in the Enchanted Forest and beyond. She was the first one to touch him, and she did it so often, the only one to breach that distance he likes to keep between himself and everyone else. Even here, where there are no scales or claws or reptilian pupils, she is still the only one who touches him (aside from the savior handcuffing him during one particular incident).

He craves her touch, longs for it, revels in his own freedom to reach out and touch her, caress her skin, take her hand, stroke her hair, all without her flinching away from him. But he is captivated, now, by the idea that she craves his touch as much as he does hers. She holds onto him and pulls him down with her onto the sofa and curls up in a ball and cuddles into him, all knees and hands and tears and wet hair.

He has never seen Belle really, truly cry before, and comfort isn't something he's used to giving, but he does his best. He is awkward and clumsy and fumbling, but she holds onto him as if he is all that keeps her from drowning and at his (trembling) touch, her muscles quiver and relax. Eventually, when her sobs dwindle and fade, when her tears begin to dry and disappear, he coaxes her into lying down beside him, pillowing her head on a cushion in his lap. He distracts himself from his fury at her father (pushing away to protect, letting go, when the fool should be holding on) by brushing feather-light fingers through her hair. The motion, the sensation, is hypnotic, and she is quiet and relaxed and still beneath the blanket he tugged over her.

"I'm sorry I came like this," she whispers a while later, her voice lazy and slow, lilting in tandem with the movements of his hand. "But he…he wouldn't even listen to me."

"I could turn him into a fish for your aquarium," he offers, and he is joking only because he knows how disappointed she would be in him if he weren't.

Her laugh is sad and muffled. "I'll keep that in mind."

But he knows she won't. She is too forgiving, too understanding. It's how she can love him; it's part of why he loves her. Still, he passes a pleasant moment imagining what kind of fish would best suit Moe French's pompous personality. A puffer fish perhaps, or an eel. He's not sure if an eel is even a fish, but it's surely close enough.

"Why me?" she asks, interrupting his contemplations.

"Why you what?" He is fascinated by the endlessly shifting colors in her hair as he runs his hand through it, as light and shadows play against it. He is entranced by her docility, her easy acceptance of his touch.

"Why me anything," she replies, and she turns to lie on her back, her clear eyes flying straight into him. Empty, his hand hovers for an instant before tentatively alighting on her shoulder (warm and firm and so fragile). "Why do you protect me from everything? Why did you even deal for me at all? Why…why me?" (Why do you love me? He hears it even though she leaves it unsaid, dangling voicelessly in the air.)

He is stunned by the question. Stunned because it is the question he wordlessly asks her all the time, the question he cannot find an answer to. But he is a monster and she is…she is Belle.

"You're you," he says aloud, and it is all the answer needed, but she doesn't seem to realize that. A wrinkle appears between her brows; his hands itch with wanting to smooth it away.

"But you're Rumplestiltskin," she counters, the forlorn note tainting her voice making his throat tighten even as his name on her lips touches (as it always does) something deep and shriveled within him. "You're a legend—you don't…you don't need anything. You've met people of all sorts, exotic and powerful, and outsmarted them all, and gone to so many far-off places, and…and…and I'm nobody special at all. It's just…" She swallows and looks away before confessing in a rush, "Sometimes I feel like I'm a young, silly girl with naïve notions and immature ideals, and I don't know why…don't know why you picked me."

He can't help it any longer; he lifts a finger to erase that worried crinkle, brushes his knuckles over her cheek, and curls a finger around her chin, tilts her face up toward his until he can see her eyes again, can see inside her soul.

"You're Belle," he says firmly. "There is no one like you. If there's one thing being a 'legend' has done for me, it's taught me how to spot that which is most precious—that's why I picked you. And, Belle…I do need something. I need you."

The free admission doesn't even hurt, especially when his words make her smile and blink away tears ("Happy tears," she murmurs reassuringly) and launch herself upward to wrap her arms around his neck. Her mouth meets his in a heated rush of sensation and touch, her weight wholly in his arms (her heart wholly in his hands), his hand splayed against her spine, and all he can taste is Belle.

More than air, more than food, more than magic, as much as Bae, it's what keeps him alive.