Oldandnewfirm prompted: Pocket full of stones

Hats and Hearts and Pockets Full of Stone

She is so tired. Her legs weigh a thousand pounds. Belle feels she must be filled with stone.

"We can't stop here," Hatter hisses, when she leans against a tree. "Clean cup, darling, clean cup. Gotta move down."

He grabs her hand and pulls her on. Belle grits her teeth, she staggers forward. Though her head swims, she follows him along.

"There's a lamb," he soothes. "Mint and mutton. Not much farther now."

He's been saying this for hours, but she knows he must be right. Hatter knows his guards and cards. She follows. She runs. Together, their heaving breaths paint an asthmatic orchestra in the crackling underbrush of the woods. They are too tired, too desperate to move with silence, and they have been locked up for far too long to run.

She hopes the mayor will not call out her dogs. Their huffing and puffing will blow the whole house of cards.

Abruptly, the woods come to an end and Hatter stumbles, catches his foot in a root and falls. Belle drops with him, trying to catch him, but too weak to hold him up.

"Alas and alack," he mutters, looking out into the sudden, open world. "Wrong turn."

"How's your ankle?" Belle whispers. "Did you twist it?"

"Don't think so. It's these damn shoes."

Belle nods. Her feet are sore, too. The smallest shoes they stole from the lockers in the hospital above were still too big for them.

But as Hatter untangles himself from the undergrowth, more slowly than he should (no doubt an opportunity to catch his breath), Belle sees the house they have nearly stumbled up to. Her heart aches. She knows this place. It doubles in her head, her memory—a castle, a manor, and back again. It makes her head hurt, but she knows that's the medicine as much as the curse.

"What?" Hatter asks. He understands. "Where are we?"

She nods.

"It's his," she says quietly.

They know each other's loves and loss, but they do not speak of names. Some secrets are worn too close to the breast. And usually, they are careful of each other's scars, but this time, Hatter purses his lips.

"You think your prince is in there, sweet cheeks? He's not. Oh hell, maybe he is. But if there's a prince in there, he's not yours. He didn't rescue you."

"Shut up," she snaps.

"Come on. We've stopped too long. We've gotta run."

He pulls on her arm, tries to tug her to her feet. But Belle is tired, so tired, and she cannot tear her eyes from those towers. "I want to see him."

"See who?" he asks. "The man who abandoned you?"

And she wants to say no. She wants to say Rumpelstiltskin and let him quake under the force of that name. But she knows she can't tell him. She knows the truth carries too much power. And she knows this man with his strange fetish for hats well enough not to trust him with certain painful things.

"You gotta know you can't just walk in there," Hatter whispers and his voice isn't cruel, it's urgent—it's true. "He doesn't want you. He'll have you shipped off back to the dungeons before you can blink."

Belle swallows. She closes her eyes and turns her face. Hatter is right. Hatter is right, and she knows it. Rumpelstiltskin is the strongest sorcerer in the whole world. No one could stand against his wrath. He destroyed a kingdom once—poof—right off the face of the map.

How could hospital walls hold him back?

"You're right," she says and stands with effort. "Let's go."

And they stagger off again through the woods. Together. Sometimes hand in hand, when the limbs and roots and rocks jump up to block their path. They run as fast as they can go. Away from the town. They know—out of everyone here, those of the dungeon know—that they can never go further than the walls of the curse. But Hatter says he knows a cabin somewhere by the cliffs where they should be safe and he is not her prince—she has no prince—but she trusts him.

With some things, anyway, she trusts him.

Rumpelstiltskin never loved her. She does not know the man that he's become. Belle keeps her head down. She plunges on.

And Belle's scrub bottoms do not have pockets. But if they did, she'd have two pockets full of stones.